#he’s with edwin. how he doesn’t want to be anywhere where edwin can’t follow. would and Did go to hell and back for him. believes him

[redgillan]

Under Pastel Skies - 11

Sugar daddy!Bucky Barnes x Reader

Summary: Modern!AU Bucky doesn’t need anyone, especially not a sugar baby. He isn’t that desperate… but she smiles so sweetly and she’s endearingly awkward, and he’s so lonely. She’s an artist, a painter, the type of person who always puts others before herself. Throwing caution to the wind Bucky offers her a place to live, a place where she can finally paint whatever her heart desires. He doesn’t need much in return; a friend, a muse.

Word Count: 6,696

Warnings: Unprotected Sex (non explicit) 

A/N: And finally... Just a word before, and it’s important, I wanted to put the explicit between two ‘*’ but I settled for one at the end because explicit means different things to different people. So whenever it starts to get too steamy for you, skip to the *. Thank you for reading, I appreciate your support!

Wannabe sugar daddies, don’t interact with this post. 

Bucky moved behind the kitchen counter when he heard the door close. You and your guests were in the hallway where you took their coats and asked them to remove their shoes. He took a deep breath to calm himself. He had to stay calm, you depended on him tonight.

“It smells nice in here. What did y-”

Bucky straightened himself up and tried to keep a casual, friendly smile on his face as he came face-to-face with Okoye. He had seen enough pictures of your siblings to recognize them.

She looked surprised to find someone else there. He raised his hand and waved, and she frowned at him in confusion. The rest of the guests stopped short when they saw him waving like a dork. You pushed through them and came to his side.

“Guys, this is my friend, Bucky,” you said. “He’s the one who invited you.”

“Thanks for the invite. I hope you like wine,” Scott said, extending his hand as he walked over to Bucky.

“I sure do.”

Then he shook Wanda and Okoye’s hands, telling them how good it was to finally meet them. Your sisters introduced him to their partners, W’Kabi and Edwin who preferred to be called ‘Viz’.

You led them to the living room while Bucky prepared the drinks. W’Kabi decided to stay behind and help Bucky carry the drinks to the living room. He praised Bucky for having such a nice home.

The conversation seemed to flow easily between your siblings, though as Bucky arrived with your drink, he couldn’t help but notice that you were not participating. You took the glass from his hand, smiled then went back to staring at the coffee table. He sat next to you and rubbed soothing strokes on your arm before he reached for his drink.

Okoye was telling everyone that she had decided to return to New York after King T’Chaka’s passing. His son carried the mantle of the Black Panther, surrounding himself with his father’s Dora Milaje, but Okoye wanted to live closer to her own family.

She was a Dora Milaje, loyal to her king, but she was also a sister, loyal to her family. She felt like there were no good choices, and it ate away at her until her king found a solution to her problem. His little sister, Shuri, was starting her own business in the United States and needed her own bodyguards. Okoye accepted and W’Kabi followed her.

Scott didn’t share much. He showed everyone pictures of his little girl, Cassie, and said he was now working at Baskin-Robbins.

Wanda was evasive about her life and whereabouts. She told everyone that she’d been backpacking across Europe and met Viz, a wealthy businessman, on a beautiful sunny day in Berlin. They’d been attached at the hip ever since.

“And of course, you’re all invited to the wedding,” Wanda said while Okoye admired the ring. “It’s going to be a small wedding. I just need my family.”

“Excuse-me,” you said, standing up abruptly. “I think something’s burning.”

Bucky watched you disappear into the kitchen. He glanced at the group again, no one was paying attention so he followed you into the kitchen.

He found you leaning back against the counter, your arms crossed over your chest, staring into nothing. He walked over to you and pulled you into a one-armed hug that you accepted with a pleased sigh.

“I don’t think I can do this,” you said, your voice muffled against his shirt.

“Is it a code ‘flamingo’?”

“No,” you chuckled, pulling away. You took a deep breath and leaned back against the counter again. “It’s just...”

You huffed, unable to find the words and grabbed him by the waist, seeking his warmth again. Bucky let out a surprised laugh as you squeezed him tightly. He wrapped his arm around your shoulders and pressed you against his chest.

“I know it’s hard,” he said, kissing the crown of your head. “It’ll be over soon, angel.”

Bucky rocked you side to side in a slow, soothing rhythm until you were practically melting against him. He felt you take a deep breath, your nose buried in his chest. He didn’t want the moment to end, but you’d been gone for several minutes now, and the others would barge in the kitchen soon.

He pressed a long kiss to your forehead and gently pushed you away, his arm falling to your waist. You smoothed out the wrinkles you had made in his shirt without looking him in the eye.

He could tell you were thinking about something but before he could ask what was on your mind, you kissed the slight cleft in his chin and quickly moved away from him.

He smiled to himself, his heart beating a little faster.

You were transferring the dinner rolls from the pan to the basket when Scott poked his head into the kitchen. Bucky was still smiling to himself like a lovesick idiot.

“Everything okay?” Scott asked, taking a step closer to you. You turned to him and nodded. “It’s kinda weird, isn’t it?”

“What?”

“Seeing each other again after all this time.” He leaned his forearm on the counter next to you and smelled the bread. “Baby Wanda’s getting married. Did you know they flew me first class? And the hotel is incredible. I feel like a prince.”

“Viz seems very nice.”

“I can’t believe Wanda backpacked through Europe,” Scott scoffed. “She hates camping.”

“Yeah, I know.”

Bucky watched as Scott leaned closer and whispered in your ear. “Listen, I wanted to thank you for everything you did for me and for Cassie-” Bucky quietly left the two of you alone. It was a private conversation and he didn’t want to impose himself.

He finished setting the table, and soon everyone joined in. Bucky was sitting with his back to the kitchen, W’Kabi sitting next to him. You took a seat across from him, Wanda sitting next to you. Okoye sat next to Wanda, facing Scott, and Viz took a seat at the end of the table.

The food was good, and everyone complimented Bucky on his cooking skills. He said that you had helped him a lot, but you refused to take credit for chopping up a bunch of vegetables. You gushed about his cooking skills and his delicious recipes. It made them salivate just thinking about it.

“And your house is amazing,” Scott said with a dreamy look on his face. “A place like that...” he sighed, “that must have cost you an arm and a leg.” The whole room fell silent, and something that sounded like a foot hitting a shin made the table jump. “Ouch, why did yo- oh.”

Okoye was looking at him with the widest pair of eyes Bucky had ever seen. She looked furious and exasperated at the same time. The others stared at their plates as the uncomfortable silence grew.

Bucky glanced at you, not surprised to find you smirking. You knew he lived for moments like these, and you knew he already had the perfect comeback. As he watched you bit your lip, trying to contain a little giggle, he couldn’t help but love you even more.

“It was the original price but I’m a good negotiator,” Bucky said. “Only cost me an arm.”

W’Kabi was the first to laugh at his joke, then the whole table broke into fits of laughter. Scott looked equally amused and relieved.

“I’m so sorry, I didn’t-”

“No problem,” Bucky cut him off.

“Can’t take you anywhere,” Okoye said with a smile and a shake of her head. She turned to Bucky as everyone calmed down. “So, Bucky, strange name, uh? What do you do for a living?”

“My name is James, Bucky’s just a nickname.” He wiped his mouth and set the napkin down. “I’m a writer.”

“A pretty good one, judging by your apartment.”

“I’m all right.” He shrugged. “Literally.” Scott snickered at the joke.

“He’s too modest,” you said. “His books are best sellers. They’re autobiographical, he’s very sincere and honest and funny. He has a way of making you laugh about things that are pretty awful.”

“Yeah, we saw that,” Wanda said with a grin. “Are you working on anything at the moment?”

Bucky shifted a little in his seat. “Yeah, it’s uh,” he cleared his throat. “It’s a very important one. I don’t really want to talk about it. Don’t wanna jinx it.”

He wasn’t going to tell your family that he was writing a book about how he fell in love with you. That’d be pretty awkward.

“I understand,” Okoye nodded, then looked at you. “You’ve been really quiet tonight.” You shrugged. “I thought you were still living with Natasha. Do you still work at the hotel? Where is it again? Chelsea? That’s one hell of a commute from Brooklyn.”

“I wasn’t exactly living with Natasha,” you said. “I was crashing on her sofa. And no, I quit six months ago. I’m a full time artist now.”

“That’s great,” Scott said, raising his glass toward you in a silent toast. “How’s that working out for you?”

“Not too bad. Bucky’s friend is a professional photographer. He helped me set up my website. The pictures he took are amazing. I sold a few pieces online but I’m struggling to find gallery representation.”

“Hey, as long as it pays the bills.”

“I don’t really have to worry about bills these days.”

“What do you mean?”

The room got quiet again, and Bucky could feel the tension in the air, buzzing like static electricity. All eyes were suddenly on you, waiting for an explanation. Bucky knew you were not going to lie to them. He locked eyes with you, and braced himself for impact.

You set your fork down and folded your hands in your lap.

“Well, Bucky and I have an arrangement.”

“I don’t like where this is going,” Scott cut you off.

“I’m not going to beat around the bush and I’m not going to use pretty words to make it sounds more appealing,” you continued as if you hadn’t heard him. “He’s my sugar daddy.”

“You’re joking. Please, tell me you’re joking.”

“Nope,” you replied smugly, popping the ‘p’.

A chorus of voices rose in protest. Okoye and Scott were shouting while the others kept glancing around wondering what had just happened. Wanda was strangely quiet next to you.

“Oh, shut up!” you shouted. “You left me alone. All of you. We were all grieving our brother but it doesn’t give you the right to fuck off when things get tough. Do you know how fucking terrifying it was when mom started to lose her memories? Or when the police drove her home at three in the morning after one of her spells? No, you don’t know because you weren’t there.”

Bucky had never seen you so upset before, and he didn’t quite know what to do but he felt like you needed to get it off your chest.

“I didn’t have friends or boyfriends. I went to class, then got home, hoping mom hadn’t set the house on fire. I took the first decent job I could find because she needed a new home and professional help. Without Natasha I would have been homeless.” You turned to Bucky. “I’m so sorry, I’ve ruined dinner. You’ve worked so hard.”

“It’s okay,” he replied immediately. “I’m with you.”

“God, you’re so nice,” you sighed, then turned to your siblings. “See? That’s the kind of person he is. I was lonely and lost, and I found him and he’s the best thing that’s ever happened to me. He’s kind and sweet, he’s selfless and generous, and you have no right to criticize our relationship.”

Bucky stared at you, his mouth hanging open a little. Slowly he shook himself out of his trance and reached for your hand on the table. He had no idea you thought so highly of him.

“We needed each other,” you continued. “And I don’t care what you think.”

Dinner was officially ruined but Bucky didn’t care. He smiled at you, soft and reassuring, and let go of your hand when you smiled back. He was proud of you for speaking up, for standing up for yourself.

Bucky noticed Wanda and Viz exchanging looks.

“Okay so, since we’re sharing truth bombs,” Wanda said, shifting a bit in her seat. “I wasn’t really traveling through Europe. I went to Sokovia and after that, everything’s kind of a blur. I did things I’m not proud of. I wanted to forget,” she paused and sighed, “everything. I hit rock bottom, pretty hard, and checked myself into a psychiatric hospital. That’s where I met Viz. He helped me send you those postcards. I screwed up, real bad, but I couldn’t tell you guys the truth. I’m not really proud of myself.”

“I got fired from Baskin-Robbins for yelling at a costumer.”

“Okay!” Okoye exclaimed in her big sister voice. “Enough truth bombs.” She pointed at you. “I’m sorry you had to do this alone, it wasn’t right but we’re here now and we won’t let you down. As for the sugar daddy thing... well you’re a grown woman, you can do whatever you want. Bucky seems like a nice guy.” She turned to Wanda. “We are all dealing with our pain in our own way. I’m not judging you. We’re here for you, Wanda.”

“I know,” Wanda said, sniffing.

“And Scott, stop yelling at people.”

“Yeah, good idea.”

Bucky turned to W’Kabi and Viz who looked proud of their girls, albeit a little uncomfortable with the whole situation. Someone started chuckling, he couldn’t tell who it was, but suddenly the whole table broke into a fit of laughter.

“How about some dessert,” he said. “Then you guys can fill me in on some childhood secrets.”

As he walked away from the table, he heard you warn your siblings to keep their mouths shut. They laughed in response, which made Bucky smile. Surely it’d take more than one outburst at a family dinner to fix your broken bond but it was a good start.

During dessert, he learned that everyone called you ‘Splotchy’ because you painted on the living room walls as a child. He learned that you always wanted to play board games with Okoye. Your favourite one was Mystery Date.

“She had a crush on Tyler, the beach date.”

“No, that’s not true, don’t listen to them.”

When they finally left, you spent a few extra moments hugging everyone. Promises were made, and Bucky couldn’t help but smile as he watched you wave goodbye to your siblings.

It was just the two of you again, and the mountain of dirty dishes and silverware. He told you not to worry about the dishes, but you knew if he went to bed he wouldn't be able to sleep, not when the kitchen was such a mess so you cleaned together.

He loved these moments with you. There was something very peaceful about the night; the dark skies, the soft lights, the quiet apartment, knowing people all around town where getting ready for bed. It used to make him feel tiny and isolated but now, with you, the night didn’t seem so frightening anymore.

A few weeks went by, and things were changing a bit. You spent your Saturday mornings with your sisters, bonding, and facetimed with Scott at least once a week.

Bucky also noticed a subtle change in Sam’s behaviour. He seemed happier and he wondered if his friend had already forgotten Natasha.

It was almost June, and the building’s swimming pool reopened as the weather got warmer. Despite living there for several years, he had never gone near that swimming pool until you dragged him out one scorching afternoon.

The rooftop was surprisingly calm, apart for the group of children playing in the pool. There were people sunbathing around the pool, enjoying a good book, socializing. You dropped your bag on the floor and laid out your towel on the reclining chair.

Bucky had never seen you in a bathing suit before and it caught him completely off guard, but what made him literally growl was seeing the little pendant of your necklace rest against your skin. He didn’t know why but it awoke something in him.

You both slathered on sunscreen before you went for a swim. Bucky recognized a few neighbours, and while they all knew he only had one arm, they had never seen him shirtless before. Bucky didn’t mind their inquisitiveness, as long as you were beside him.

“Do you think the kids peed in the water?” you asked as you rested against the edge of the pool.

“Probably,” Bucky cringed. “When I was a kid, my mom told me that there were chemicals that turned the water a different color when someone pees.”

“Ew,” you laughed.

After a while, he lay out in the sun, enjoying the feel of the sun on his skin. He could still hear you playing water polo with the kids when a shadow passed over him. With a frown, he pushed his sunglasses up onto his forehead.

“It’s nice to see you, James,” his neighbour beamed, taking a seat on your unoccupied chair. “I don’t think I’ve ever seen you out here.”

“Hi.” He wasn’t surprised when his voice came out hoarse since he had been on the verge of falling asleep. With the grace of a walrus, he propped himself into a sitting position. “Yes, well, swimming pools are more fun when you’re not alone.”

His neighbour turned to look at you. “Congratulations, by the way. I didn’t know you were seeing someone. Must have been serious if you two moved in together. How long has it been since she moved in? Six months?”

“Seven.”

He knew he should have corrected her, you weren’t his girlfriend, but it felt good. It was just a harmless little lie.

“Does she make you happy?”

“I’m the happiest man on earth,” he replied with a bright smile, then slid his sunglasses back on his face.

His neighbour chuckled quietly. “I can see that!”

When you returned to your seat, his neighbour was gone. You hummed to yourself as you settled into your seat, big droplets of water running down your body. Bucky tilted his head down and peered at you over the top of his sunglasses.

“Where did you get that popsicle?”

“Jealous?” You licked your treat without looking at him. “The kids’ mom gave me one as a thank you for looking after her kids.”

“That looks good.”

“So good.”

“Mind sharing it with me?”

You pursed your lips thoughtfully, then held out your popsicle. As Bucky leaned closer, you pulled it away and jumped to your feet. The look he gave you was one of pure betrayal.

“Oh, angel, you should have never done that.”

He grinned to himself when he saw a shiver run through you. When he stood up, you took a step back. He strutted toward you, his grin predatory. The floor was slippery so you couldn’t go very far.

“Are you ready to share now?”

“No!”  

The popsicle melted down your hand, creating a mess. You turned your arm and licked the drops of popsicle juice from the inside of your wrist. It distracted you long enough for Bucky to wrap his arm around your waist, pulling you against him. You squealed and grabbed him around the neck to keep from falling while also trying not to smush the popsicle against his chest.

You waved the treat in front of his face and he tried to bite off the tip of your popsicle. It made you laugh, your body sagging against him. His face was close to yours. He was so close he could smell the artificial orange scent of your popsicle.

Your laughter died down and your breath caught in your throat when you saw the way he was looking at you. Without thinking, he went for it. He felt your fingers flex against his skin, urging him closer.

His lips were barely a breath away from yours when one of the kids repeatedly slapped your thigh, obviously oblivious to what the two grownups were about to do.

“Come back! We haven’t finished the game,” the kid whined. “Come on!”

Reluctantly, you let go of Bucky and took a step back. Your exhale came out shaky, and in your almost-kiss-induced trance you handed him the popsicle without saying anything before you followed the kid.

You turned back to look at him, one hand sprawled across your stomach, the other across your chest. He knew you were feeling it too: the butterflies, the racing heartbeat, that pleasant heat going through your body.

The difference between like and love.

A week later, he came home to an empty apartment. He climbed the stairs to your studio but you weren’t there. Instead, he found a canvas stretched out smooth and tight on the floor, and several bowls of paint arranged in a semi-circle around it.

He knew you were home, you wouldn’t leave without your phone or bag. Out of curiosity, he went up on the roof and let out a relieved breath when he found you.

You were sitting on the edge of the rooftop with your knees up to your chin and your arms wrapped loosely around your shins. You looked so beautiful in the golden hue of the setting sun.

He stood there, watching you as if he was looking at a painting in a museum. Entranced. You hadn’t noticed him yet, and a quick glance around the roof told him you were alone.  

Slowly, he made his way to you and took in your appearance: a short sleeve white shirt and a pair of denim overalls. The shirt was surprisingly spotless but the overalls were covered in dried paint splatters of different colours.

“I looked everywhere for you,” he spoke softly, trying not to disturb you.

“Did you?”

You straightened up a little but kept your eyes trained on the horizon. Bucky sat close to your feet and let his hand slip under the hem of your jeans to close around your ankle. A sigh slipped past your lips, and he let his fingertips linger for a moment on your smooth skin.

He knew you had a meeting today, and judging by the resigned look on your face, it didn’t go well.

“What’s on your mind, angel?” he said, caressing the top of your foot.

“I was thinking about the night we met. God, I was so nervous,” you said, laughing softly. “I told you that agreeing to meet you was like choosing between a pack of wolves and jumping off a cliff.”

“I remember,” he chuckled.

“I never told you how glad I am that I jumped off that cliff,” you said. “I’d never jumped head first into something, not knowing what was going to happen. Now I think I’m addicted to it. Before I met you, I was living for others. Everything single decision was thoroughly analysed. There was no mystery, fun, or impulsiveness. I put my entire life on hold, and now I see that I can’t do that anymore.”

“What are you going to do?”

You paused, searching for the right words. “I don’t know if I want to turn my passion into a career. Painting is my safe-place, and right now it’s giving me so much anxiety. I haven’t had the inspiration to paint in weeks.” You looked at him and pressed your lips together tightly. “And, if I don’t want to become a full time artist, then I guess our deal is off.”

Bucky stared at you, mouth agape. He really hadn’t seen it coming.

“Please, don’t be angry,” you pleaded. “I don’t want to stop seeing you. When he didn’t answer, you leaned forward and touched his face.

“I could never be angry with you, angel,” he said, kissing the inside of your palm. “I understand, and I’ll help you however I can.”

“I’m not sure yet. I’m still thinking about it.” You looked away from him and stared at the sky. “Do you know that feeling when you stand in a high place and you think about jumping? You don’t want to jump and you don’t do it, but there’s that urge.”

“I think I do.”

“It’s called ‘call of the void’. People say that it’s an affirmation of our will to live. That knowing we’re going to die one day makes us appreciate life even more.” You looked at him. “I want to jump but I can’t. I’m scared.” You lowered your voice. “I don’t want to ruin what we have.”

“You’re scaring me a little. You can’t talk about jumping when we’re sitting on the edge of the roof.”

You chuckled under your breath. “It’s a metaphor.”

“Let’s go home. We’ll make dinner together, put on some music and pretend we’re in a movie.” He got to his feet and held out his hand to you. “Please.”

You took his hand and let him lead you to the staircase.

Once you were inside the apartment, he removed his shoes and you removed yours. Silence settled between the two of you as you entered the kitchen. Bucky moved behind the counter while you stood close to the dining table.

When he chanced a glance at you, he saw you staring into nothing while you played with the charm on your necklace, rolling it back and forth on its chain. You often did that when you were daydreaming.

Bucky walked over to you and placed his hand on top of yours, halting your movements. You let go of the pendant and held his hand instead. He ran his thumb soothingly over your fingers.

“Tell me what you’re thinking,” he spoke softly.

“If I say it, it’s going to change everything.”

He pressed your joined hands against his chest, over his heart. “No, it’ll make it real.”

He let go of your hand and cupped the side of your face. You leaned closer until you were only inches apart. His thumb traced your cheekbone, then moved to trace the outline of your bottom lip.

He let you come to him, let you take that first step, and when your lips brushed against his, he closed his eyes and sighed. He kissed your parted lips; once, twice, three times, tiny little kisses against your trembling lips.

His kiss grew bolder, turning into something so intimate, so passionate and intense that tears gathered in his eyes. He pressed his mouth more firmly against yours, his large hand still cupping the side of your face. His bad shoulder jutted forward as if his missing arm wanted to touch you.

He let out a groan, frustrated that he only had one hand to finally explore your skin. Sensing his inner turmoil, you held onto his bad shoulder and pulled him against you.

His tongue swept into your mouth, moving in a slow and deliberate rhythm. A growl escaped him and he deepened the kiss, tasting, sliding, retreating and entering again. He poured everything he had into the kiss.

“Bucky,” you moaned after your broke the kiss, breathless.

Hearing his name fall from your lips, your voice hoarse with desire, sparked something inside him. He swiped his thumb over your bottom lip, feeling the softness and collecting the moisture that had gathered there.

“You’re so beautiful,” he said, looking positively entranced. “My pretty angel.”

You pulled him in for another kiss and wrapped your arms around his neck, your slightly cold hands felt amazing against his heated skin. He pressed himself against you, letting you feel the rise and fall of his chest, the desperation in the jerky thrust of his hips.

He needed more but he wasn’t going to force you into anything. He was more than happy to stand here and kiss you for hours. He cupped the back of your neck and rubbed the sensitive skin behind your ear with his thumb.

“I’m yours,” he spoke against your lips, his eyes screwed shut.  

You pulled back to look him in the eye, searching his face. He opened his eyes and you saw nothing but honesty in the depth of his eyes.

You untangled yourself from him and took his hand. Slowly, you took a step back, then another, his hand still in yours. His eyebrows lifted slightly when you bit your bottom lip and gave him a coy look.

He nearly growled again, the wolf inside him eager to touch you, feel you, claim you. He stood taller, his chest puffed out and breathing fast.

You led him up the stairs to the second floor and turned on the light in the corridor. You slowly made your way down the corridor with him behind you.

But instead of turning left towards his bedroom, you turned right into your studio, and it changed everything. Your studio was your sanctuary, your safe place, and knowing that you were about to bare your soul and body to him tamed his inner wolf.

You hesitated at the threshold of the room and glanced over your shoulder to look at him. Bucky squeezed your hand to encourage you.

“I bought some body paint on my way home,” you said, letting go of his hand to step into the room. “I wanted to try something different, something more personal. I wanted to use my body to express my emotions, to create something raw and messy. My interpretation of somatic art therapy.”

You moved around the darkened room; bent down to adjust the canvas on the floor and made sure the bowls of paint were still full.

“I sat there and thought of my mom and Pietro,” you continued, barefoot on the canvas. “I only feel sadness and anger, and I don’t want to create something that makes me feel sad. And I realized the only thing that keeps me inspired is hope.”

Turning to face him, you held your hand out, palm up, and his eyes widened at your silent request. Without thinking twice, he joined you on the canvas. It was both soft and scratchy under his feet.

Bucky watched as you unbuckled the right strap of your overalls and slipped the second strap off your shoulder. You tugged your jeans down your legs and tossed them aside, leaving you in your underwear and white shirt.

Swallowing thickly, Bucky let his eyes travel up and down your body. He had seen you in your bathing suit before but this was different. Then he reached behind his neck and pulled his shirt over his head, baring his strong chest, hard abdomen and marred skin.

The room was dark; the pastel sky, visible from your studio thanks to the floor-to-ceiling windows in the living room, didn’t provide much light. The light was still on in the corridor, casting a faint golden glow over the room.

You took a step forward to examine his scars more carefully and Bucky took that opportunity to kiss you again, slowly, intimately. He peppered kisses along your jaw and down your neck, then went down on his knees in front of you and continued his journey down your body, pressing soft kisses to your stomach.

He accidentally knocked over two bowls of paint; the dark colours spilled out onto the canvas, chasing each other. His kisses made you light up with desire, your moans music to his ears as your hands came down on the back of his head.

When it all became too much, you gently pushed him into a lying position and helped him out of his jeans. His belt buckle made a faint clink when you pulled it open, and Bucky swore out loud when you planted a wet open-mouthed kiss right below his navel.

In the back of his mind, he knew he wasn’t going to survive the night. He let his head fall back against the canvas and closed his eyes shut. Your talented mouth sent sharp jolts of pleasure through him, making it difficult to breathe.

He could feel the paint stick to his back, creating the shape of his upper body on the canvas. It was strangely exciting.

He moaned, arching his back, and slammed his fist down on the canvas. His fist landed in one of the bowls of paint. It splashed paint everywhere. He looked down at you and saw tiny flecks of paint splayed like freckles on one side of your face.

It made you both giggle. As he pushed himself up into a sitting position, Bucky left a print of his forearm on the canvas. You climbed into his lap, straddling him, then removed your shirt and bra. You wrapped your legs around him, one hand on his upper arm, the other hugging his neck.

Bucky was sitting on the canvas with his legs outstretched and slightly bent at the knees. He held you against his chest, rocking back and forth, his arm around the small of your back. You sighed together, sharing the same breath.

“You have the prettiest nose.” You let your index finger run down the length of his nose, your finger wet with paint. “So pretty.”

Laughing softly, he brushed his nose against yours and kissed you. He changed the angle of his thrusts, catching you by surprise.

“Does that feel good, angel?” he asked, lightly biting your jaw. You answered with a short cry. “Look at me.” You slowly opened your eyes, your movements faltered a little. “You’re so beautiful like this. You drive me crazy, y’know that?”

“Bucky,” you cried out.

He felt you shiver when he moved his hand from your back to your face. He cupped the side of your face and you immediately pressed yourself closer to him, craving the warmth of his touch.

He stopped your movements and looked you in the eye. “I’d do anything for you. Anything. You’re my one and only.”

He laid you down as gently and safely as he could, and once you were lying flat on your back, he sprawled between your thighs. He supported his weight on his forearm, careful not to crush you. Your hands slid up his sides, and as your thumb traced over his ribcage, a violent shiver went through his body.

He had never seen anything more beautiful than watching you come apart; your eyebrows furrowed, your lips parted in a silent ‘o’, the way your body shook in little spams. Absolutely stunning.

Exhausted, he collapsed on top of you and hid his face in the crook of your neck. You wrapped your arms around him and slowly caressed his back.

After he kissed his way down the side of your neck, he straightened himself up into a kneeling position and looked down at you. Your naked body was on display, covered in paint and glistening under the moonlight. He wished he could take a picture, immortalize this memory.

*

He helped you up, and after another passionate kiss he led you to his bathroom, the two of you leaving colourful footprints all over the clean floor.

The bathroom's bright fluorescent light was harsh and unforgiving as you looked at each other in the mirror. Yet you were both glowing, streaks and dots of paint covering your bodies. Bucky turned on the water and waited for it to get hot.

He wrapped his arm around you from behind and rested his chin on your shoulder. “We look like we blew up a rainbow,” he said, smiling wide when it made you chuckle.

In the shower, you took turns washing each other, laughing and kissing until the water turned cold. You pushed his hair out of his eyes and smiled sweetly at him.

“We’re going to catch a cold if we stay here.”

“Mhh,” he replied, kissing your temple. “You’re right. There are clean towels on the shelf. Go, I’ll be right behind you, I still need to take care of my scar.”

“Can I help you?”

Asking for help wasn’t something he was comfortable with, especially after years of being babied by his ex-girlfriend, friends and family. After his accident, he couldn’t do anything on his own. He had to rely on others and it made him feel like a burden, like he was incapable of taking care of himself.

He knew it was all in his head but he couldn’t help it.

“It’s not exactly sexy,” he said.

“I don’t care. I want to help. Tell me what to do and I’ll do it.”

Patiently he guided you step by step through the process of cleaning his stump. You inspected his skin thoroughly, looking for irritation or any signs of infection, then washed it with a mild soap.

He had to admit that watching the woman he loved take such good care of his scar made his stomach fill with butterflies. You looked so focused, so attentive, that he could help but smile and try to kiss you.

“Bucky,” you complained, turning your head away, avoiding his kiss. “This is serious business, stop fooling around.”

He almost said it. I love you. But something was holding him back. He didn’t know what would happen next and it scared him. He didn’t want this to be a one-time thing, but he also realized that things were moving too fast.

“Okay, now you’re shivering,” he said, holding you close, trying to share his body heat with you. “Let’s get out of here.”

He wrapped you in a fluffy bathrobe and patted you dry. Then you carefully dried his scar and applied corticosteroid cream to his shoulder, massaging it gently into his skin. He slipped on his robe and you loosely tied the belt at his waist.

“We should talk about what just happened,” you said, playing with the belt. “What does it mean? What are we going to do? Can we-mph”

He cut you off with a kiss, long and hard and filled with passion. You smiled against his lips and finally pulled away.

“Is that how you’re going to shut me up from now on?” you asked with a grin.

“We’ll talk,” he said, pressing his forehead against yours. “But not tonight.”

“When then?”

“Tomorrow, I promise.”

You looked down at your hands on his belt and nodded. He tilted your head up and lowered his mouth to yours.

“Don’t avoid me tomorrow. Please.”

Your words felt like a knife in his heart, and it left him momentarily speechless. He took one of your hands and pressed it against his heart. “No matter what we decide to do, you’re my angel and I’m yours.”

You shared a long, silent hug before you both decided to call it a night. Once he saw the footprints in the corridor, Bucky felt the urge to clean them. He tried to resist but he knew if he didn't clean he wouldn't be able to sleep.

You understood –you always understood. That’s why he felt so comfortable with you.

Once it was clean, he joined you in the kitchen and made you breakfast for dinner, opening the cupboard and pulling out a couple boxes of cereal you didn’t even know he had.

He told you that he was keeping them for a special occasion. He remembered you telling him that it was your favourite meal as a kid, watching TV with your siblings every Sunday night, eating cereals.

“I can’t believe you remembered that,” you said, tears in your eyes.

The two of you sat on your bed, sharing random thoughts and spoonfuls of cereal. You giggled as milk dribbled down his chin and stained his robe. You wiped at the spot on his chin with your thumb and gave him a chaste kiss.

Your lips tasted sweet. Bucky pulled you in for another kiss, discarding the dirty dishes on your bedside table. You helped each other undress, then slid under the covers where you laid your head on Bucky’s chest.

“Bucky,” your voice cut through the quiet. “Do you mind-”

“Don’t worry, my angel, I’ll wait until you fall asleep.”

“Thank you.”

Part 12

[iam93percentstardust]

First of all, Happy Birthday Month!!! Many happy returns!! I have been reading fanfiction for e very long time, but this is the 1st time I have ever submitted a prompt. I kinda think Stuckony would be great but I am down with Winteriron or Stony, wherever the prompt takes you. You're amazing so I know it's gonna be fantastic! Thanks in advance!💜💜💜 “Is that your robot?” “That’s a rude way to talk about my husband.”

This was such a fun prompt to write, thanks for sending it in! And thank you for the birthday wishes!

As always, everything I write is also on ao3

~

Something taps against Bucky’s foot. At first, he ignores it, figuring someone just bumped into him, but then it happens again and then for a third time. He looks down, fully expecting to see a small child, only to see a small gold and blue robot run into his shoe, back up, and then run right into it again. It looks a little like an atom with a central core and three rings spinning around it in multiple directions. He smiles at the oddly charming behavior and bends down to pick the robot up, wondering if it came from one of the many glittering exhibits he and Steve have walked past today or if it belongs to someone.

“Hey, Stevie,” he begins, thinking to share it with his husband, but when he looks around, Steve isn’t anywhere near him. Bucky sighs and turns in a circle, hoping to spot him somewhere in the packed crowd. Who knew the Stark Expo would draw so many people on a Tuesday in the middle of March? “Stevie, you’re too small to wander off like this.”

He feels a tug on the hem of his coat and then a small voice primly says, “Excuse me, Mister Sir, that’s mine.”

“Huh?” He looks down again, this time to see a young girl of about six or seven years holding onto his jacket. “Oh! Is this your robot?” he asks, crouching down to her level.

“That’s a rude way to talk about my husband,” she informs him, holding her hand out for the robot.

Bucky blinks at her. He’s heard about kids playing pretend with their toys but that’s usually things like Legos or dolls, right? Not a whirring, circular robot that doesn’t even have a face.

“Can I please have Jarvis back?” the girl asks, insistently tugging on his coat again.

“Oh, sure, sorry about that.” He passes it back to her and then looks around, hoping to spot the girl’s parents before she realizes she’s left them. He’s dealt with plenty of upset kids at the school he and Steve work at, so he’s more than capable of handling any meltdown she might have, but he’d like to stave it off if he can. Unfortunately, he doesn’t spot anyone frantically looking for a lost kid, so he’s just getting ready to resign himself to dealing with a crying kid when Steve appears from out of nowhere.

“Hey, Buck, sorry about that, got sidetracked by one of the exhibits. The person works with sand and sound to make art, it was really—” He stops short at the sight of the girl hugging her robot. “Bucky. You didn’t pick up another stray, did you?”

“Excuse me?” Bucky asks, affronted. “I never—”

“No? So what’s Alpine then? Or Dodger? Or, for that matter, me?” Steve crouches down next to the girl and holds out his boney hand for her to shake. “Hey, kid, my name’s Steve. This is Bucky. What’s your name?”

She gives him a suspicious look, but must decide that he’s safe because she says after a moment, “Morgan.”

“Well, Miss Morgan, why don’t we see about finding your parents?” Steve offers. “It looks like they’ve gotten lost.”

Morgan turns one way and then the other, noticing for the first time that she’s alone. Her lower lip trembles, eyes welling up with big, fat tears. “I—”

Bucky, sensing an impending meltdown, quickly says, “Hey, it’s okay. We’ll find them. We grown-ups are pretty good at getting lost. It’s up to brave kids like you to help us get found again.”

Morgan sniffs, but nods. “I’m here with Uncle Happy,” she says, sliding her small hand into Bucky’s.

“Then let’s find Uncle Happy,” Steve says decisively. “Would you like me to hold your robot?”

She shakes her head, clutching the robot tighter to her. “You can’t take JARVIS,” she says. “He’s mine.”

“Okay,” Bucky says soothingly. “We won’t take him away.” He shares a quick glance with Steve. “Should we start at Lost and Found?”

“If I may, Sirs,” the robot suddenly says in a cool British voice. Steve yelps, jumping away from it. Bucky startles, dropping Morgan’s hand.

Morgan giggles. “Don’t worry, that’s just Jarvis. He’s an artificial intelligence.” She pronounces the words carefully, like it’s something she’s been taught to say. She holds the robot up, who lights up with every word he says.

“The tracker in this device has been activated. There will be no need to move from this location. Sir will be here momentarily,” Jarvis tells them.

“Jesus, Mary, and Joseph,” Steve mutters, taking a closer look at the robot. “It talks.”

“I am Just A Rather Very Intelligent System or—”

“JARVIS,” Bucky realizes. “It’s an acronym, not a name.”

“Quite so, though I was named for Edwin Jarvis, an old friend of Sir’s.”

“And Sir is…?”

JARVIS lights up like it’s going to talk again but before it says anything, they hear someone say loudly, “Morgan H. Stark!”

Morgan’s face brightens and she turns, running right into the arms of a slender man in a suit, closely followed by another larger man. “Daddy!” she exclaims, throwing her arms around the man, who catches her up in a tight hug.

“What have we said about running off?” the man asks, sounding worried. He has a familiar voice, Bucky thinks. He wonders where he’s heard it before.

“I didn’t run off,” Morgan protests. “JARVIS did and I had to get him.”

“You didn’t think to tell Happy where you were going?” The man gently brushes her hair out of her eyes before straightening up, setting Morgan on his hip.

“I didn’t have time! JARVIS was moving too fast.”

The man makes a dissenting noise. “Flaw in your logic.”

She shakes her head. “No flaw.”

“Yes flaw. JARVIS has a tracker. You, O’ Great and Powerful Maguna, do not.”

It’s adorable watching the two of them together, seeing the way the man softens the longer he holds Morgan and the way Morgan leans into him. And it doesn’t hurt that the man is wildly attractive too: all big brown eyes and curly hair that Bucky wants to feel between his fingers (he bets they’re as soft as they look). Bucky feels something stir in his heart that he hasn’t felt since the day he met Steve. He quickly glances at Steve, wondering if Steve feels the same way. Steve’s eyes could practically be cartoon hearts, he’s melting so obviously, and Bucky smiles to himself. Maybe, if they play their cards right…

“But I didn’t get lost,” Morgan protests and points at Bucky and Steve. “I had Mister Bucky and Mister Steve.”

Abruptly, all the warmth drains out of the man’s expression. He looks at Bucky and Steve coldly, mouth a thin, tight line. “Oh you did, did you?” He turns to the second man behind him. “Happy, could you take Morgan for a moment?”

“Daddy—” But Happy—who looks more like an Angry than a Happy—has already nodded and taken her from the man’s arms.

“You got it, boss.”

The man now stalks closer to Bucky and Steve. “Alright,” he says abruptly. “How much do I owe you?”

Steve’s expression goes blank. “I’m sorry?” he repeats, voice tense with hidden anger.

“What do you want for this?” the man says. “Finder’s fee, something to keep you quiet, what do you want?”

“Look, I don’t know who you think you are—” Steve begins heatedly, right as Bucky realizes where he’s seen this man before.

“Stevie, stop,” he mutters, catching Steve’s arm before he can get too angry and take a swing at the guy. “That’s Tony Stark.”

“Huh?” Steve looks again and then his face clears. “Oh. This must happen a lot, huh?”

Stark glances between the two of them, looking confused now, rather than angry. That’s good; that’s something Bucky can work with.

“Look, we’re sorry about all this,” Bucky says apologetically. “But we’re really not trying to cause trouble. Morgan’s robot ran into my foot, that’s how we met. We didn’t even know who she was until you got here. You don’t need to pay us off or anything.”

“Really,” Stark states suspiciously. “So I’m not going to wake up tomorrow and all the headlines are saying that I can’t take care of my kid?”

“We’re both teachers,” Steve says, gesturing at him and Bucky. “We know kids wander off all the time. They’re more slippery than a bar of soap in the shower. You’re not going to hear anything from us.”

Stark slumps and runs a hand through his hair. He looks tired all of a sudden, not that Bucky can blame him now that he knows this entire Expo is being run by him. “Sorry,” he says quietly. “You just can’t be too careful in this line of business.”

“I can imagine,” Bucky says soothingly. “If it would help, we’d be happy to sign an NDA.”

“Pepper would probably kill me if I didn’t ask you to,” Stark admits. He sighs. “Great, first time I contact her since the divorce and it’s about my fuckup.”

“You’re not a fuckup,” Steve insists. “Seriously, this happens all the time. Just last week, I had a kid decide he wanted to keep looking at the snails in the Botanical Gardens we took the kids to while the rest of us went to lunch. Took me an hour to find him.”

Tony gives him a hopeful look. “Really?”

“Really. It’s okay. You’re not a bad parent.”

“I’ve just—I’m supposed to be presenting in—” He checks his watch.

Happy shouts, “Five minutes ago, boss.”

“It’s my presentation, I think they can wait for me if I’m running late. Morgan didn’t want to wait while I was prepping so I asked Happy to take her to see some of the exhibits. I didn’t think she’d wander away.”

“Well, hey, we’d hate to make you any later,” Bucky says. “So we’ll let you—”

Morgan pipes up, “Daddy, can’t Mister Bucky and Mister Steve come too?”

“Well—”

“They were so nice,” she says, making her eyes big and wide. “And I think we should be nice and let them watch.”

Stark smiles helplessly at her. “You know what that is? That’s extortion.” He turns to Bucky and Steve again and shrugs. “Do you want to come? It’ll be backstage, so you won’t get to see as much as you would if you were watching from the front. But it’ll be fun, I’m presenting the new arc reactor. Oh—and please, call me Tony. We’re all friends here, no need to stand on formalities.”

Steve and Bucky have one of their silent conversations that always bothers their friends. “Are you sure?” Steve asks. “We wouldn’t want to be a bother.”

Tony gives Bucky a very obvious onceover, followed by a look at Steve, just as obvious and just as hungry. “Oh yes,” he murmurs. “I’m sure.”

“Then we’d love to,” Bucky says, giving Tony a onceover of his own. He and Steve don’t often invite a third partner to their bed, but there’s just something about Tony.

“Great!” Tony chirps. His eyes go dark and heated as he adds, “And maybe afterwards, we can talk about a way to pay you back for helping Morgan out.”

“Tony, really, we don’t need anything,” Steve begins.

“Please,” Tony purrs. “I insist.”

[imaginetonyandbucky]

Keeping Me Alive

Chapter 11: Heathens

by @dracusfyre

They made it to the long-term cruise liner parking lot where Tony had staged an SUV for their escape when James stopped and said, “Tracking devices.”

“Shit.” Of course Hydra would have some way of tracking him; he was an expensive tool, after all, not a person. Tony had Jarvis scan him and found two transmitters, one in the metal arm and one in the back of his neck close to the spine. “I can jam them both until we are in a safe place to remove them,” Tony said, “but I can’t get the one out of the arm without tools. And the one in your neck…” Tony trailed off when James pulled a knife out of the sheath on his thigh and held it out.

“Get rid of it.”

Tony wanted to protest but he bit his tongue when he saw the look on James’ face. He would want it out of him as soon as possible as well; he was lucky that Stane hadn’t thought to put one in him too. He climbed laboriously out of his suit and took the knife as James turned around and bent his head. Guess I get to stick a knife in the Winter Soldier after all, Tony thought with a grim smile. Years of working on circuit boards had given him a steady hand, so even though he grimaced as blood welled to the surface when he sliced through James’ skin, he was quick and efficient. “What should we do with it?” Tony asked when it was on his palm, tiny and shaped like a pill capsule. James took it from him and crushed it with his metal hand, letting it fall to the ground before grinding them into the pavement with his boot.

James helped him pack the suit in the back of the SUV and then they both went for the driver’s seat.  “I have the key,” Tony said, pulling it out of his pocket and closing his hand around it when he saw James eyeing it. “Also, you don’t know where we’re going.” 

“If Hydra comes, I should be driving,” James said with a scowl.  

“If Hydra comes, you should be shooting,” Tony countered, and James considered that for a second before going around to the passenger seat. He’d already stashed one of the duffle bags of arms and ammunition that they’d taken from the lab in the floorboard, and as Tony pulled out of the parking lot he began methodically loading all of the rifles and spare magazines. It was a funny thing to find relaxing, but it made him feel safer to think that all of the Soldier’s lethality was on his side for once.

By the time they got onto the 5, the car had fallen into a strained silence, so Tony turned on the radio. The news of his demise had made headlines about an hour into their drive, though the police being interviewed were very careful not to officially declare Tony dead. The radio was the only sound in the car until they were four hours north of LA, when James finally spoke again. “Why?” He asked, his voice low and gruff and barely audible over the radio, even though Tony had the volume low.

Tony, who had been waiting for the question since he first took his helmet off in the lab, glanced over to see James studying him. “Do you recognize me at all?” After a moment of hesitation, James shook his head and Tony turned his eyes back to the road. “You and I have a long history,” Tony said finally. “None of it good. I don’t blame you for it,” Tony added hurriedly when he saw James stiffen. “I mean, I did, but I don’t now, because...Well, the point is, I realized recently that we are – were – both prisoners of Hydra. So I figure that means we have a common enemy, and that we should work together."

"You want me to help you take down Hydra?"

"Well, yeah." Tony glanced back over; James' expression didn't say what he thought of that. "Unless you don't want to, I guess. But we should still stick together until it's safe. I don't know about you, but I'm not going back."

James snorted at that. “So where’re we going?”

“Safe house.” There was silence in the car again as Tony pulled off the next exit to get gas. After he started the pump, he climbed back into the car and opened the center console. It was filled with protein bars, candy, chips, and drinks. “Pick your poison,” Tony said as he grabbed a bottle of water and a candy bar. James eyed Tony and then the stash of snacks before picking out a protein bar and bottle of Gatorade.

“What’s this?” He asked as he eyed the unnaturally blue drink.

“Sugar water, mostly.” Tony chugged his water as James took an experimental sip. “Your file says after you, uh, wake up you need a lot of protein and electrolytes and stuff. So drink up, it’s good for you.”

James grimaced at the taste but drank it steadily like a person that is used to taking medicine. When he was done he started making his way through the stack of protein bars with a grim determination that was almost impressive, if Tony hadn’t started to worry that he should have packed more food for the drive. They weren’t even a quarter of the way to their destination and James had eaten more than half the food. Finally the pump turned off with a thunk, so Tony finished paying and climbed back into the driver’s seat.

“If you've read my file,” James said as they got back onto the highway, “then you know a lot more about me than I know about you.”

“That’s not a high bar,” Tony said with a ghost of a smile. “I know more about you than you know about yourself.” James shot him an unamused look and Tony shrugged. “What do you want to know?”

“You said your name was Tony Stark,” James said. He pointed to the radio. “If that’s true, why do the police think you’re dead?”

Tony’s eyebrows climbed. He didn’t realize James had been paying attention to the radio; he’d spent the entire drive so far staring out the window and checking the rearview mirror, presumably looking for Hydra. “Because I want them to think I’m dead,” Tony said. “That way I can be free to do what needs to be done.”

“What did Hydra want you for?”

“I make weapons. Made,” Tony corrected. “Their little pet engineer, cranking out planes and tanks and bombs for them,” he added bitterly, gesturing to the weapons in the bag at James’ feet. “I have also been fixing your arm for the past few years.”

That made James’ eyebrows draw together. “Music,” he said after a long moment. “I remember loud music.”

“Yeah, that was me. You remember that?”

“Hydra doesn’t exactly play me tunes on a regular basis,” James said dryly. “It stood out.”

Tony barked out a surprised laugh and turned the radio away from the news to classic rock. They switched vehicles a few hours later, then again at the border with Oregon. When they finally pulled in to Tony's cabin - one left to him by Ana and Edwin, and significantly renovated over the past month - Tony turned off the car and sagged against the seat. It wasn't until he felt his shoulders and jaw relaxed that he'd realized how tense he'd been the whole drive; he was suddenly acutely aware that he had been awake for almost 24 hours. "Home sweet home," he said unnecessarily as the engine ticked and cooled.

"I'll be the judge of that," James said. He climbed out of the car then proceeded to fit an unlikely number of firearms on his person before he disappeared into the woods. Tony shrugged and started to lug the suit piece by piece into the house, and when he took a moment to fire up the surveillance system he could see James evaluating the perimeter, pausing each time he noticed one of Tony's cameras. "I may not be an expert, but I am paranoid," Tony said to the monitors, then went back to the SUV for another load. By the time he had the suit in the gantry and ready for the next time he needed to put it on, James had finished his patrol and was standing in the middle of the living room. "Does my security meet your standards?" Tony asked as he headed for the freezer. For now, the cabin was stocked with shelf-stable food and the freezer was packed with instant meals, enough that they could avoid leaving for a few weeks as long as they didn't want things like milk or eggs or fresh fruit and vegetables.

"I have some suggestions," James said, following Tony into the kitchen. "Mostly involving explosives."

"Then you must not have checked around the foundation," Tony said. He picked out a frozen pizza and, checking the instructions, turned on the oven. He turned around to see James still standing there, looking uncertain, and he cursed internally. He wasn't used to having someone else in his space; it was going to take a while for him to get used to having a roommate. "Come on, I'll show you around."

James' room was in the top of the house, in a renovated attic space. Tony had picked it because the windows gave it excellent views on all sides of the house, and since James' files said he was a sniper he thought James would appreciate it. But as they stood there, Tony realized he had underestimated how tall James was, because if he stood anywhere other than the middle of the room he would have to duck. He'd also have to sleep diagonally on the queen size bed, but from the way James had gone all still and quiet when he'd looked at the room, Tony thought it might be good enough. There was one bathroom and it was on the ground floor, next to another bedroom. That was supposed to have been Tony's, but when he'd tried to sleep there he had woken up multiple times with panic attacks, feeling exposed and vulnerable, so his room was now in the basement. The basement had started life as a cellar but Tony had expanded it and reinforced it until it could probably now be classified as a bunker instead.  "And this is HQ," Tony said as the lights came on to the main room. He'd moved everything important out of the LA home before he'd sent it into the Pacific, including his computers, JARVIS's servers, and all of the tools and machinery he would need to design and build new suits. What drew James' attention, though, was the murder board that took up one wall of the room. It was pretty sparse at the moment because Tony had only just started to dig through the Hydra files he'd downloaded, but there was Stane, Pierce, and Stern, as well as some of their more prominent hangers-on.

There were also the people that Tony had seen last time he was in the lab with Stane. Tony picked up a marker and put an X on all the faces he remembered. James pointed to one that he'd missed and then Tony hesitated, fidgeting with the marker before he finally said, “I was there the last time they…” Tony blew out a breath, unable to finish his sentence. "With the.."

“The chair,” James finished for him.

“Yeah.  And I wanted to say I’m sorry.”

“Why? You weren’t one of…” James made an aborted gesture towards his head. “I knew them. I didn’t remember them, but…I knew them.”

“Because I didn’t stop it earlier. I mean, I didn’t know about it, but it was because I didn’t want to know. I was scared and…” Tony swallowed thickly and forced himself to keep going. “Weak. I let Hydra break me down for so long and they didn’t even need the chair to do it.”

“How long?”

“Over twenty years. Since I was sixteen.”

“Sixteen? Christ, you were a child,” James said with disgust. “Where were your parents?”

“Um…” Tony glanced over at him and grimaced. “They died. When I was eighteen.”

“Died?” James caught the look on his face and cursed long and low under his breath. “It was me, wasn’t it?”

“Yeah.” Tony fidgeted with the marker in his hand. “I told them what was happening, and Hydra had them killed.”

“Ah, fuck. When you said we had a bad history you weren’t fucking kidding.” James ran a hand over his mouth and crossed his arms. “Well, for what it’s worth, I’m sorry.”

“Well, it’s not like it was your idea,” Tony started, and then got cut off when James snorted. “What?”

“Look at us idiots, apologizing for shit that was Hydra’s fault,” he said. “I’m sorry Hydra made me pull the trigger on your parents. You’re sorry Hydra tortured and brainwashed me. I hope you got me out because you have a plan to make Hydra sorry I killed your parents and they brainwashed me,” he said, pointing to the murder board.

Tony met his eyes and felt a smile tug on his lips. He pulled out the picture of Ana, Edwin, and Maria from Christmas out of his pocket and propped it up on his desk. “Yeah. Yeah I do.”

[hphmmatthewluther]

HPHM April Prompts 2021: Day 7: When Your Reflection Plots Against You (Part 3)

What is this, a crossover episode?

Okay, so funny story! The end to the story I’ve been doing recently and today’s prompt are about the same thing, so I sort of have to have them both be the thing for today because yeah! Part 1/3 Part 2/3

Anyway, onto...

Prompt 7: MC’s First Kiss

When Matthew finally came to, he had a pounding headache. He pushed himself up with the guitar case, getting back onto his face, before noticing the mirror. He wasn’t in it. Of course, Matthew thought, I’m the reflection now. He looked behind him, hoping to see where that light had come from. There was nothing. Apart from him, the bathroom was empty. Suddenly, he heard a door creak. On the other side of the mirror, in the real world, Charlie Weasley had walked in. Matthew moved towards the mirror.

“Charlie!” he tried, but to no avail, “Charlie!” 

But there was nothing. It was like he was a ghost. Actually, I’m less than a ghost now. He sighed, moving back towards the guitar case. With nothing else to do, he picked up the instrument and slung it onto his back, before leaving the boys’ toilets. It occurred to him that he needed to find Edwin before he did anything too embarrassing, or before he got to his friends.

It was bizarre to see the halls of Hogwarts empty, but with all the same buzz of people moving up and down. It was rather like there being a conversation happening in the other room, but you couldn’t for the life of you find that room. He tried to marshal his thoughts as to where Edwin would go with his body. The lake, obviously, he thought to himself. But something rather strange happened to this alternate Hogwarts as Matthew approached the school grounds. What should have been the quidditch lesson area and the whomping willow, and the Forbidden Forest, was instead an inky black void, with large tubes of light jutting into it from various windows. It was solid, and Matthew couldn’t pass through it. A good way away he could see the grass around the Black Lake.

“So I can’t go anywhere that isn’t reflected.” he deduced aloud. Matthew tried to relax his breathing. This was just another riddle, and he would have to solve it. And for that, he’d need to focus.

“Shut up, Barnaby!”

Matthew twisted around, noticing the images of Merula, Ismelda and Barnaby hanging in the air through a small shield-shaped window. A Prefect’s badge, Matthew thought before leaning in to take a closer look.

“What is it?” Barnaby asked quietly.

“I just...I thought I heard him...” Merula said, her violet eyes scanning the corridor.

“Who?” asked Ismelda, irritated at having to stop.

“Luther, of course!” she snapped. Matthew’s eyes widened. “He was saying something about reflections...”

“Yes, I’m over here!” Matthew yelled. He didn’t care how it had happened, he was just happy that it did.

Merula moved up and down the corridor. “Luther, where the hell are you?!”

Ismelda and Barnaby watched, both very much confused by all of this.

Matthew felt relief wash over him. “Merula, I’m-”

“I’m right here.” came his own voice. Coming into view from the side of the badge was Edwin, wearing his body.

“Oh, there you are.” she said stiffly. Matthew watched as Edwin flicked his braceletless hand at the badge, and he knew he had placed a Silencing Charm on it. Matthew could only pray Merula could sniff Edwin out.

“What’s got you so happy?” she asked with a scowl on her face.

“Oh, nothing really...” Edwin said absentmindedly. “Anyway, what did you want?”

“W-What did I want?” she asked incredulously. “You’re the one who called me over!”

“I’m pretty sure I didn’t.” he said, shrugging. Matthew felt a surge of anger at him.

“Yes you did!” said Merula, exasperated.

Edwin cocked his head, then turned to the other two Slytherins, “Did either of you hear anything?”

“No, I didn’t.” said Ismelda.

“No, nothing.” said Barnaby. 

“Well, there you go.” Edwin concluded, “Maybe you’re hearing things.”

“I am not!” Merula yelled, going slightly red.

“Sure. Whatever.” he said, running a hand through Matthew’s hair, “So, you going down to the lake later?”

“W-What? No...” said Merula, confused. Barnaby, however, nodded.

“I am! It’s gonna be great fun!” he exclaimed.

“I don’t care.” Ismelda sneered.

“Mm, it’s just that everyone is going to be there. And I thought, seeing as you can’t go to Hogsmeade, you’d want to go to a party when you could.”

Matthew felt his heart break as he saw Merula’s expression. This wasn’t fair. Nobody treated his mortal enemy like this, especially not someone like Edwin.

“F-Fine, I’ll go.” Merula conceded. “C-Come on, you two.” They stepped into the inky void, Merula wearing an expression that Matthew knew all too well. Fear.

“You could have been a bit nicer, Matt.” came a voice. Matthew realised just which Prefect’s badge he was looking through. And Edwin had no idea.

“Oh...I guess I could.” he admitted, “But I got her to go to the party, and isn’t that what matters?”

“It does if she doesn’t actually want to go.” said Bill Weasley, “You of all people should know that.”

Edwin shrugged, before heading into the void too. Bill must have followed him, for the Prefect badge vanished too. He had to get to the lake quickly, and find Merula and tell her what was happening. From there, however, he was at a bit of a loss. Maybe if he got the book back and managed to reveal the ink, he could find a way to return to his body. That would explain why he didn’t want me to get the book back, he thought. But before all that, he had to actually get to the lake in the first place. He looked up at the tubes of light which splintered the void. Matthew grinned. He’d had an idea, and it wasn’t half bad. He headed up towards Ravenclaw tower at breakneck speed, avoiding the void that appeared in corridors with less mirrors. Eventually, he found his way up to the door to the Common Room. The Eagle knocker looked up at him.

“You are here, yet you are not here.” it said. “Curious. Now, I am at the start of every race, the end of every Bludger, and in the middle of Paris. What am I?”

Matthew thought for a moment, before smirking. “R.”

The eagle nodded, before the door opened.

“Hmm, that’s odd.” said Rowan,as Matthew came in. “ Wonder why the door’s opened...” Matthew sighed as he and the other Ravenclaws looked up and saw right through him.

“I’ll tell you when I get out, Rowan.” he said. There was no reaction. Matthew headed up to his dormitory, where he found his Cleansweep resting against his four-poster bed. He reached for it, hoping, and while his left hand went straight through it, his right hand gripped the wood, the silver bracelet’s carvings glowing as it happened. Matthew grinned, before looking back at the mirror. In it, he could see the Black Lake out the window. He also saw the Cleansweep floating in midair. This gave Matthew another idea. He crept back down to the Common Room, and saw the Ravenclaws’ expressions of pure shock at a floating broom.

“Hey, isn’t that Matthew’s Cleansweep?” said Andre. Matthew couldn’t help but grin as he twirled the broomstick in his hands, causing it to spin. Then, he started to back up into the boys’ dormitory. Rowan, Andre, Tulip and Talbott all followed it until they came to Matthew’s four poster bed. He used the broom to wave at the four, then tried to make a beckoning gesture. After that, he hopped on and flew out the window, leaving them flabbergasted as the pilotless broom headed towards the lake.

It was an odd sensation, flying down a thin strip of the Hogwarts grounds, going over a small fraction of the Whomping Willow, watching students blip in and out of existence. He sped down the hill until he was over the lake, when he noticed a large gathering of students reflected in the water near the shore. He saw that there was a table with food laid out before them. He slowly moved down a few yards away, landing his broom and resting it against a nearby tree. He couldn’t risk Edwin finding out he was here again. Matthew shook his head. He had hoped that third year would be a little less eventful than last year, though he should have known that this would be impossible. Rueing his bad luck, he headed towards the party, not registering four Ravenclaws show up behind him.

“I’m so glad you all made it!” he heard Penny cheer, as the party got underway. At least, it did in the waters of the Black Lake. Matthew, meanwhile, only had a few feet of ground to work with before it gave way to the void. He saw people enter and exit the darkness, until he finally saw Merula. He knew he couldn’t just talk to her, as much as he wanted to. No, he had to find another way. Then, it occurred to him that he had Edwin’s guitar on his back. He set it onto the floor and undid the zip on the leather, before pulling it open.

For an acoustic guitar, it was pretty impressive. It had several magical runes on the wood, and the strings were a brilliant blue, just like the ropes which had pulled him through the mirror. He silently thanked his father for being part of a band when he was younger and pulled out the guitar, putting the strap around his shoulder. Even from here, he could see Edwin moving everyone’s groups away from the lake, especially Merula’s. Matthew had been where she was several times before, feeling like everybody knew how to act at a party except for you. Matthew gritted his teeth,  moved towards the lake, both him and the guitar invisible, and started to play.

A A A A, D D, Em Em Em Em, D D…

***

Merula looked up, hearing the sounds of a guitar. It wasn’t a song she recognised, so she assumed it was some Muggle music. She could recognise the chords though. A A A A, D D, Em Em Em Em, D D… though she couldn’t see anyone playing. She walked through the students, ducking out of the way when she saw Matthew. He was talking with Chiara and Penny, but it didn’t look like how Matthew usually talked. Normally, he was reserved, quiet, a little hunched over. Not here. No, here it reminded her of some of the irritating sods in Preston’s gang. Merula scowled, before heading towards the music. Strangely enough, it seemed to be coming from inside the Lake… but that couldn’t be…

“Psst, Merula!”

She looked down into the water. There was her reflection, but next to it stood Matthew Luther, with a rune covered guitar.

“Don’t look at me!” he hissed, “Turn around and act like you don’t see me!”

Merula obeyed, turning on the spot. Secretly, she had been hoping for an explanation for his behaviour today; he had been amicable enough at first, but over the last few hours or so he had become rather cocky and boastful.

“Merula, that isn’t me.” he said, still playing the guitar, “That arse took my body!”

Her eyes widened. “He’s a changeling?!”

“If...if that’s what they’re called, yeah.”

Merula found it in her to smirk. “Really Luther, I forget how little you know about the Wizarding World.”

“It’s not my fault our Defence against the Dark Arts teachers have been rubbish.” he remarked.

“Eh, you’re not wrong there, they have been awful.” she admitted. “So how the hell did this happen?”

“Long story short: Some guy named Edwin appeared in the mirror saying he was trapped and needed help escaping.” Matthew explained, “I agreed, though I didn’t realise just how I’d be helping him.”

Merula stared at Edwin. Yes, she saw it now. It was like a Metamorphmagus had turned into him, or someone had used Polyjuice Potion. That’s why she’d felt so uncomfortable around him. Because it wasn’t Matthew. “So, how do we get him out?”

Matthew looked a little surprised. “Oh, I thought you’d suggest leaving me here.”

She laughed, genuinely, before shaking her head. “Luther, if I left you there this Edwin would have to be my rival. And I don’t like the sound of that at all. You’re my mortal enemy, Luther, and nobody gets to doom you for eternity except me.”

Matthew grinned through the water. “Thanks, Merula. Now, do you have anything reflective on you?” She shuffled through her pockets until she pulled out a silver comb.

“By the way, since when could you play guitar?” she asked, as Matthew appeared in the comb.

“Oh, my Dad taught me. I just know a few songs, though, not much.” he confessed.

“Alright...” began Merula, nervously moving towards the throng of students, “What do we do?”

“There’s a book in my bag called The Ramifications of Our Reflections.” Matthew explained, “It has some text in invisible ink that Edwin really didn’t want me to see, to our best bet is grabbing the book and finding out what it says.”

“Ah, so we’re stealing from him!” she declared quietly.

“Well, no, it’s my book!” Matthew yelled, before adding, “Well, it’s technically Snape’s, but he took it from me, so there.”

They neared the pile of everyone’s bags, and Merula bent down to grab hers, before manoeuvring towards Matthew’s satchel. Slowly, while eyeing the changeling, Merula bent down and grabbed the book, quickly placing it in her own bag. She took a sigh of relief, and quickly walked away.

“Now what?” she whispered, before seeing Ismelda.

“This party's boring. I’m heading back to the common room.” she declared.

“Good idea.” Merula said, walking with her. 

“Don’t worry, she can’t see me.” Matthew reassured her, “Now all we need to do is heat up the book and we can see the information.”

Merula nodded as they headed away from the party, but they were stopped on their way back by Edwin.

“Hey, wh-where you going?” he asked, his usual cocky demeanour in full swing.

“We’re leaving.” Merula declared, “This party is boring, and you shouldn’t have invited us.”

Edwin stared at her for a moment. “Is that so.” he said, not even trying to make it a question.

“Yeah...I’m leaving now...bye.” she said, heading off. Ismelda looked at her, then at Edwin.

“Wow, she really doesn’t like you.” she said, “What’d you do to her?”

“I would worry more about what I’m going to do.” Edwin growled.

“Merula...” Matthew began, “Get to my broom. It’s right by the lake.” When she looked at the comb, confused, Matthew just shouted “GO!” and that got her moving.

She sprinted back down the hill, where she saw the Cleansweep resting by a tree. She grabbed a hold of it and saw Edwin racing after her.

“Just wait a minute!” he yelled, as Merula kicked off the ground. Matthew quickly put the guitar onto his back as the ground fell beneath them, and soon they were soaring over the grounds once again.

“Now how’d she know the broom was there?” Rowan asked aloud. “Matthew, do you-”

“Curse them!” Edwin bellowed, heading off after her, wand in hand. Ismelda hissed.

“Oh no you don’t...” she muttered, running after him. Bill stood nearby, very much concerned.

“Something’s going on here...” he deduced, before joining the chase. Of course, Merula and Matthew had the advantage of having a broomstick, which allowed them to get to the other side of the school in very little time. They ended up on the second floor, just above the Great Hall.

“Nobody uses these toilets.” Merula explained, “Myrtle’s always kicking up a fuss.”

They headed into the girl’s bathroom, which was oddly quiet.

“That’s strange.” said Merula, “I wonder where she’s gone.” Matthew appeared in a mirror near the sink.

“That was close.” he admitted, looking on as Merula pulled Ramifications out of her satchel. “Now all we need to do is heat it up and we’ll be set. Be careful though, we don’t want to set it on fire.”

“Right.” Merula said, placing the book on the ground. Matthew moved closer, appearing in a puddle of water. “Incendio Parvus!” A small flame appeared on the tip of Merula’s wand, which she moved down towards the paper. “Hey, it’s working!” she said excitedly.

“Great! Find the part about freeing people from mirrors!” Matthew implored, placing down the guitar.

“Okay, okay...” she said, flicking through the pages.

“Um...Merula...” Matthew began, “Sorry for dragging you into this.”

“Hmph...it’s...I mean, it wasn’t you, was it? It was that changeling who was the arse.”

“I know, but I made the deal with him...” he lamented.

“Yeah, I know, but...” she paused, looking over at Matthew’s puddle. “Oh come on. He gave you what you wanted, right?”

Matthew considered this. “Yeah. I guess he did.”

Merula smirked again. “What’d you even ask for?”

Matthew suddenly looked nervous. “I...um, I just wanted advice. We’d had that argument yesterday, and so I was just...I didn’t want to make things worse every time I saw you, or anyone else.”

Merula frowned. “Th-That’s it?!”

“Yeah...that’s it.”

She looked at him through the water, before bursting into laughter. “What?” he asked, more confused than ever.

“Sorry, it’s just...” she paused to wipe her hair out of her face, “It’s weird how little you trust yourself. I mean, you make friends all the time. I’m the one who can’t make friends and can’t go to Hogsmeade.”

Matthew frowned at her. “You don’t have to talk about-”

“It’s alright.” she reassured him. “I-I just...it’s my aunt. She says I’m not doing well enough in Defence against the Dark Arts.”

“But that’s not fair, the teachers are total tw-”

“I know that.” said Merula, “But my aunt thinks that I need to revise more...and she’s my legal guardian...so...”

“Merula, I’m sorry. You know...if you wanted to, I could give you a hand with...you know, studying and stuff.”

“Is that so?” she said, flicking through the pages with her other hand. “I don’t know...we’re mortal enemies. I don’t know how I’d feel about- Ah ha!” she exclaimed suddenly, “Freeing those trapped in the Reflected Realm! Bingo!”

Matthew craned his neck to see, but to no avail. Merula seemed to notice. “Oh, right, sorry. If a wizard or witch has been trapped within the Reflected Realm, they must be freed by breaking the contract forged between them and a changeling. To do this, one must return to the mirror of entry, destroy the surface they made the deal with and recite the phrase “Contractus est inanis. Corpus meum.” From there, the changeling will return to the Reflected Realm once it touches any reflective surface.”

“Brilliant!” said Matthew, “What are we waiting for? Let’s go!”

Merula extinguished the flame. “Okay, okay! You remember the phrase, right?”

“Course. Contractus est inanis. Corpus meum.”

“Good. Where’d you make the deal?” she asked, packing the book away.

“The boy’s toilets. Sixth floor.” This caused Merula’s face to scrunch up.

“Look, it won’t be for long. Once I get to the mirror, we can leave right away and find Edwin.” he explained.

“...Fine. I’m gonna get you for this one day, Luther...”

“I hope you get the chance, Merula...I really do...”

A minute or two later, Merula had made her way to the sixth floor, and was standing right outside the boy’s toilets.

“C-Can’t I just wait outside?” she asked. Matthew nodded, before heading inside on his own, the guitar still on his back. He instantly came back out.

“I’m afraid you can’t, Merula.” he said nervously. Merula groaned, before poking her head into the room. Standing in the U-bend, in front of a large magical field, was the body of Matthew Luther, and the vile grin of Edwin.

“We meet again. I’m so glad I don’t have to hide from you anymore.” he said. Matthew sneaked into view on one of the nearby mirrors, glaring at the sphere.

“Listen to me, Edwin. I am the Most Powerful Witch at Hogwarts,” Merula announced, “,and unless you vacate my mortal enemy’s body this instant, I will rain hell upon you!”

Edwin stared for a moment, before bursting into maniacal laughter. “Ooh, that’s a good one! I see why Matthew likes you!”

“I’m getting to that mirror, Edwin,” declared Matthew, “And you won’t stop me.”

Edwin pointed Matthew’s wand at Merula. “I somehow doubt that. I haven’t had a wand of my own in so long, I-”

“You still don't!” Matthew butted in.

“Silence!” Edwin yelled, sending Charm after Charm at the various mirrors. Merula watched as Matthew tried to mouth his words, before opting for a simple hand gesture. Merula pointed her own wand at Edwin.

“Sorry, I don’t take orders from you.” she sneered. “Flipendo!”

A burst of magic shot out of her wand at Edwin, who quickly moved out of the way, before yelling “Incendio!”, causing fire to leap towards Merula. She moved quickly out of the way, before pointing her wand back at Edwin, but he was faster. “Petrificus Totalus!” he shouted, sending a wave of paralysis at Merula, who felt herself fall to the ground. Matthew leapt towards the field of magic. He stepped through it, ending up on the other side with relative ease. Oh, the joys of the Reflected Realm, he thought to himself before reaching the mirror. Now he had to destroy it. He loosened his silver bracelet until it became a sort of fisticuff around his hand, and pulled back his arm.

“No!” roared Edwin, pointing Matthew’s own wand at him. “CRU-”

“Expelliarmus!”

Matthew’s wand flew out of Edwin’s hand over to the other side. Into the room came Rowan, Bill and Ismelda. But it wasn’t them that fired that disarming spell. It was Merula.

“It’s funny.” she said, “I never bought into that ‘wand chooses the wizard’ crap. But I think it well and truly has this time...changeling. Now, Luther!” she yelled, as the three newcomers looked around confused. Matthew took the bracelet and bashed it into the mirror. There wasn’t a scratch on the silver, but the mirror cracked into a thousand pieces.

“Contractus est inanis. Corpus meum!” he recited, as the several shards of the mirror began to glow. Blue ropes appeared between Matthew and Edwin, which snapped in two with a loud twang. Rowan pointed at the mirror. 

“Matt! What are you doing in a mirror? With a guitar?” they asked, flabbergasted.

Edwin glared daggers at his double. “Matt...my guy Matt...” he snarled, wiping the hair out of his face. “If you think getting that mirror broken was difficult, you’ll have one hell of a time putting me back-”

“Glacius Maledictus!” Matthew yelled, having picked up his wand. His bracelet glowing, ice began to coat the floor of the toilets. Perfect Ice.

Edwin looked down at his blue reflection. Matthew looked back up at him.

“...It’s a fair cop.” Edwin admitted. He looked at Merula. “A very fair cop...You know what Matt, I’ve changed my mind about you. You’re no coward. You just needed a push is all. And here I am to give it to you.” he stepped forward to Merula, grinning. “It’s been fun. You’ll thank me later.” Edwin leaned forward. There was a great flash of light, and Matthew was pulled up from the ice and into the motion. When he opened his eyes, his lips were on Merula’s. Rowan audibly gasped. Ismelda actually stopped picking her nails. Bill took a deep breath, knowing what was about to come next.

“Uuurgh!” They both said, disconnecting instantly, Matthew bringing a hand from behind Merula and her placing her feet firmly back on the ground. They both, however, couldn’t hide their very red faces.

“Oh, that bastard!” Matthew groaned, wiping his mouth.

“Yuck, yuck, yuck!” said Merula, spitting onto the ground. Suddenly, they heard his laugh. Rowan pointed downwards. Inside the glass was a boy in denim and a flannel shirt, scowling.

“I was just the first of the monsters of the mirrors.” he announced, “There’ll be more, trust me! And when they get out, they’ll-” “Incendio.”

There was a horrifying screech as the ice suddenly melted, until the bathroom floor was covered in water. Then there was silence. Ismelda smiled, before placing her wand back into her pocket. “That’s for messing with my friends.” she droned, before turning to Matthew. She looked at him for a moment, before slapping him across the face. “And that’s for kissing Merula.”

“I didn’t do it on purpose!” Matthew said, rubbing his cheek, which was red for a completely different reason to Ismelda. Out of the corner of his eye, he saw two figures appear in the mirror for a moment, nod, then vanish.

“Ok, now can someone please explain what’s going on?” Bill asked.

“I can try.” said Matthew, stretching his jaw. Merula was still a bright pink, and was still wiping her mouth. “Was I really that bad?” he snickered.

“It was...just a surprise, Luther.” Merula said stiffly. “Don’t worry. I won’t slap you. Just don’t get any ideas.”

Rowan looked at them all, aghast. “Sorry, but are we overlooking the fact that Ismelda just killed a man?!”

***

“So, in summary...” said Dumbledore, sitting at his desk, “It’s been quite an eventful day or two for you, hasn’t it?”

Matthew nodded rapidly. They were all now in the Headmaster’s Office, along with Professors Snape, McGonagall and Flitwick.

“I am just glad that you are okay, Matthew.” squeaked the smallest wizard. “Changelings are very dangerous forces of nature.”

“I would like to remind Mr Luther,” sneered Snape, “That the next time he sees something unusual in the mirror, he is to come straight to a Head of House...and that goes for all of you, too.”

The students all nodded. “Well, if that’s everything,” said McGonagall, “I do believe you will all need sleep after a long day like this.”

“Minerva is correct.” said Dumbledore, “Though, if you have any questions or concerns...”

“Actually...” said Merula, “There’s one thing I still don’t understand. Why was I the only person who could see Matthew in the Reflected Realm?”

Dumbledore smiled. “Now that is a very interesting stroke of luck. You see, a very powerful Artifact of Protection can sometimes lend its protection to others around them. It is likely that Matthew’s bracelet,” he explained, leaning towards the boy, “Has seen your connection as the closest, and has decided to protect both of you. And perhaps, more. I imagine Mr Khanna was unable to find Edwin while he was in Matthew’s body for a reason.”

“So...what does that mean?” asked Merula

“It means you, Matthew, are Merula’s Artifactidal Guardian.” he declared. Matthew looked down at his bracelet. Was that why he gave it to him?

“Hang on...how much of a guardian?”

Dumbledore’s eye twinkled knowingly. “Enough of one, Matthew.” he said.

Merula looked at him, turning a little pink still. “What does- What do you-” But Matthew understood. He pulled out the sheet that the riddle was written on, as well as his pen, and began to scribble on the back of the parchment. Then, he gave it to Merula. She read it. Her jaw dropped.

Dear Professor Dumbledore,

I Matthew Luther, Artifactidal Guardian of Merula Snyde, hereby give her permission to visit Hogsmeade.

Merula passed the letter to Dumbledore in silence, who read it and nodded. “Very well. Now, off to bed, chop chop.”

As they all walked down the stairs, Matthew felt Merula grab his shoulder.

“Thi-” she stammered, “Th-Thank you, Matthew. I don’t… You know, I-”

“Don’t worry about it, please.” Matthew said, smiling. “This changes nothing. You and I can still be mortal enemies.”

Merula grinned. “Gotcha.” she said, smiling. “Also...um...that was my first kiss.”

Matthew nodded. “Oh. Um...mine too.” He could see something flicker over her expression after that.

“Oh...well, I’m going to say it was with you, because if I don’t it would have been with Edwin, which is even worse.”

“Yeah, I understand.” Matthew said, a smile forcing its way onto his red face. “Well...there’s another Hogsmeade trip tomorrow...see you then...”

“Y-Yeah...see you then.” Merula said, before marching off. It took only a few days for them to get back to their usual bickering selves, but people noticed that for some reason they never argued and never insulted each other when they were in Hogsmeade. The few who knew why kept that secret close to their chests.

[pancakexspacexdragon]

Long ass post ahead. TL;DR I found an old set of questions and decided to answer them again 7 years later because why not.

1: What are you wearing?

2014: Some Shorts and a shirt I accidentally stole from my brother.

2021: Panic! at the Disco shirt and some running shorts

2: Ever been in love?

2014: Oh yes, sadly...

2021: pfft.

3: Ever had a terrible breakup?

2014: Not technically, but I once had my homecoming date hook up with another girl.

2021: hahahahahaha. Yes.

4: How tall are you?
2014: like 5 foot 1, maybe 2? I dunno.

2021: 5’4”, apparently

5: How much do you weigh?
2014: How about no...

2021: Who’s to say ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

6: Any tattoos?
2014: Yes! I got one on my left shoulder blade not too long ago. I often forget I have it, actually lol.

2021: I’m up to five, and six is planned.

7: Any piercings?

2014: I do. I have double lobe piercings, and my left ear at the top. No non-ear piercings. Those seem uncomfortable to get, tbh.

2021: Uh...double lobe, helix, forward helix, tragus, nose, and septum.

8: OTPs?
2014: Marshall and Lilly on HIMYM. I mean, I think that's what this is asking. Right?

2021: I’m still not 100% sure what this means but I’m doubling down on Marshall and Lilly.

9: Favorite show?
2014: I'm still recovering from the ending of How I Met Your Mother, but I also love Criminal Minds, and the Big Bang Theory.

2021: HIMYM, Criminal Minds, Stranger Things, and Masked Singer.

10: Favorite bands?

2014: I pretty much love anything, so I'll try to shorten it to Love and Theft, Newsboys, t.A.T.u, Beast, and Fun.

2021: My Chemical Romance, Panic! at the Disco, twenty one pilots, Maroon 5, Relient K.

11: Something you miss?

2014: Going to the park and just lying in the grass with my friends or crushes. I know, I'm Cheesy.

2021: Not having responsibilities or bills to pay.

12: Favorite Song?
2014: ...why do they even bother asking this? Tbh, “I'll Be” by Edwin McCain, and “Hello, My Name is” by Matthew West

2021: “you should see me in a crown” by Billie Eilish and “no body, no crime” by Taylor Swift

13: How old are you?
2014: Nineteen. I feel old.

2021: ...twenty-six.

14: Zodiac sign?
2014: Aries, barely.

2021: (not) shockingly, I’m still an Aries.

15: Quality you look for in a partner?
2014: Just someone who's willing to go on cheesy dates at the park, and love me for who I am. And a Christian. Yea, I'm one of those people. Sorry...

2021: dude just someone who’s gonna stick with me.

16: Favorite quote?
2014: It's actually a verse. I love Jeremiah 29:11. It's actually part of what's tattooed on my shoulder; right below a cross.

2021: “it do be like that sometimes”

17: Favorite actor?
2014: Uhhhhh. Matthew Gray Gubler, or David Tennant. I love them both :)

2021: Matthew Gray Gubler.

18: Favorite color?
2014: Green, or pink. Depends on the shade and whatnot.

2021: pastels. mostly green.

19: Loud music or soft?
2014: If I'm alone in the car? loud. Anywhere else I enjoy my soft music.

2021: If I’m by myself loud but if there’s others I like to keep it low enough so we can still talk.

20: Where do you go when you’re sad?
2014: My Room, or the park not to far from me. I like parks, if you haven't noticed.

2021: My room

21: How long does it take you to shower?
2014: Uh, probably about 10 minutes.

2021: Either 10 minutes or 45 minutes. There is no in-between

22: How long does it take you to get ready in the morning?
2014: About 30 minutes. I like to sleep tbh.

2021: Maybe 20 minutes at the most. Cutting off all my hair really took some time off my getting ready list.

23: Ever been in a physical fight?
2014: heck no.

2021: hell no.

24: Turn on?
2014: Cute shy smiles, and geekiness. I love someone who I can be comfortable with.

2021: dorks with a lame sense of humor. I am all about the dad jokes.

25: Turn off?
2014: Those guys who try to make you uncomfortable, or act like they're super cool. I guess that would be douches, huh?

2021: the “oh you should smile more” men.

26: The reasons I joined Tumblr?
2014: I was trying to find a place where I could post stuff without my parents seeing it tbh. I like having a place where like 2 people actually know me.

2021: Because where else can I release the true psychotic chaos within me?

27: Fears?
2014: Being abandoned. And darkness, for sure.

2021: Finding out people only stayed in your life out of obligation and not out of their own choice. And spiders.

28: Last thing that made you cry?
2014: The guy I liked totally looked past me and started telling me about this other girl, after I told him how I felt (not RIGHT after, it had been about two months...but still).

2021: My mom manipulated me into showing up to something I didn’t want to because “I should really go visit family”

29: Last time you said you loved someone?
2014: My best friend and I say I love you after we hang up the phone Lol.

2021: Other than normal parent “Love You”’s, it’s probably been about 3 years.

30: Meaning behind your Tumblr name?
2014: I'm short, totally socially awkward in new situations (and with old friends, now that I think about it) and Idk about the fox. I just like foxes, I guess...

2021: There is no meaning. I like pancakes, space, and dragons.

31: Last book you read?
2014: If you don't count my English Lit book, then it was probably "Only the Good Spy

Young" by Ally Carter, but I don't remember.

2021: oh geez. It was probably “George” or “Rick” by Alex Gino

32: The book you’re currently reading? 
2014: Nothing yet. I do have that last Gallagher Girl book to read though. I'll probably start it this weekend.

2021: Nothing. But I never got to that last Gallagher Girl book...

33: Last show you watched?
2014: The Big Bang Theory.

2021: The Masked Singer

34: Last person you talked to? 
2014: My dad lol. We were watching the NFL draft.

2021: Guy friend of mine. I went to his place for dinner and some video games.

35: The relationship between you and the person you last texted? 
2014: Good Friend

2021: hahahahahahahaha. We’re just friends.

36: Favorite food?
2014: Cajun. Blame my grandparents, that's what they cook a lot lol.

2021: Pasta

37: Place you want to visit?
2014: I wanna go to Alaska. Even though I know it's super cold.

2021: Europe. Specially Spain or France.

38: Last place you were? 
2014: I honestly left home like twice today, to bring something to my brother at the High school, then to bring him to a friends house. He has a better social life than me.

2021: Friends place to hang out. We played Stardew then ordered wings and watched a movie.

39: Do you have a crush?
2014: Yes. See question 28 lol. Also, there's this other guy who I got close to last year, but I haven't spoken to him in weeks, and it's killing me.

2021: See guy referred to in 34, 35, and 38.

40: Last time you kissed someone?
2014: Never. I have never kissed anyone. Well, besides like a kiss in the cheek from family. Yeah...

2021: wow it’s probably been about three years.

41: Last time you were insulted?

2014: Recently lol. I guess... I don't really pay attention, or care...

2021: I don’t know. Probably recently.

42: Favorite flavor of sweet?
2014: I'm just gonna act like this doesn't exist, cause idk what it's asking.

2021: Chocolate.

43: What instruments do you play?
2014: I can play the French Horn and Mellophone! I also want to learn the flute, but I can't unless I have something to practice lol.

2021: French Horn, Mellophone, and Ukulele. Still want to learn the flute.

44: Favorite piece of jewelry?

2014: My purity ring. If I forget to put it on, I can seriously feel the emptiness, and it bothers me...

2021: My septum ring! I feel like it’s the first piercing I got for myself, and not just something I thought others would like on me.

45: Last sport you played?

2014: Maybe Soccer? Idk.

2021: pfft. Sports.

46: Last song you sang?

2014: “I'll Be” by Edwin McCain. But I really don't sing well, so it doesn't happen much, unless I'm alone.

2021: “You Belong with Me (Taylor’s Version)” by Taylor Swift and I 100% sang it to my dog.

47: Favorite chat up line?

2014: I don't have one

2021: It’s been 7 years and I still don’t have one.

48: Have you ever used it?

2014: Since i don't have one, no.

2021: Nah.

49: Last time you hung out with someone?

2014: I hung out with my future roommate before I left college yesterday.

2021: When I went to the previously mentioned Guy’s house earlier today.

50: Who should answers these questions next?

2014: Well, I guess any of my followers can choose to, if they want.

2021: Bold of you to assume anyone’s actually going to see this.

[pacifistofpatience]

this may be the most self indulgent thing I've ever asked, but what sort of weddings would each of the skeletons want?

((ANON TAKE RESPONSIBILITY FOR THE MONSTER YOU CREATED!!)

Elop-ish—Papyrus, Red, Rus, Pappy

Quite one/family and friends thing—Sky,Sans, Boss, Jupiter, Mars

Big Party!!—Black

And on top of that:

Mix and match- Jupiter, Sky, Pappy, Mars, Boss

More monster centered- Black, Rus, Sans

More human centered- Red, Papyrus

AND ANOTHER (This is more of an afterthought):

More likely to be running around talking with others (Within Reason! Of course!): Mars, Sky

Stays by your side the entire time: Black, Sans, Pappy, Red

Follows you around: Rus, Jupiter

Drags you with him: Boss, Papyrus

Below the cut is a very long post along with outfits depending on weather you’re a dress or suit wearing Human

Undertale

Is Papyrus gonna be there? Awesome. Oh shoot wait how about Tori? She’d love it. Well if we’re gonna invite them then we gotta invite Undyin and Alphys and… Sans started out thinking it would be a quiet little thing until he remembered that he actually… has a good amount of friends that would be pretty sad (Or hell bent on beating him up) if they didn’t get invited to the wedding. A lot of the planning going to be left up to his S/O with his little additions here and there that… don’t quite make it an actual wedding but somehow make it feel like the best day of their lives. Honestly, during the entire planning session you’d think he didn’t doanything, but then he comes out actually looking nice for once in his life and (if they’re doing them) with his own, tear inducing, vows that it hits his S/O just how much they love him.

Songs you could dance to: Can’t help Falling In love with you – Elvis/ Fast Car - tracy chapman

 Impulsive to a fault Papyrus falls hard and fast. It’s not that his emotions are any less genuine because of how quickly he moves, it’s just that sometimes he needs to take a step back and think of what his S/O wants before he jumps on the old marriage wagon. If he had it his way, the two of them would be married five months in and already living that blissful married life. But, given the chance to plan out the wedding, Papyrus would love to experience a human marriage first hand! He’s been to plenty of monster ones! And knows the steps well enough that you two can have your own one at a later date!

Songs you could dance to: Lucky - Jason Mraz / Earth, Wind & Fire - September

 Underswap: 

Sky has the wedding planned out long before he proposes. He’s probably been dropping little hints here and there, asking what colors his S/O would love to have for a party. Would they prefer an indoor or outdoor one? At some point they’re going to think he’s planning a surprise party for them… or… something? His S/O will be unsure of what it is until he’s finally popping the question! And then it’s a whirlwind of planning and sending out invitations as both of them rush to get married (Which is part of the reason why he had it planned out so far in advanced!) Thankfully! Sky is very much flexible and willing to work with his S/O to make this the perfect wedding! And, while you guys are at it, how about you pick and choose some of the fun monster and humans’ bits!

Songs you could dance to: I’m Yours – Jason Mraz/ Ed Sheeran - Photograph

 Pappys a sweetheart, and he loves his S/O dearly…but…maybe they could do something with less people? Maybe even something with no people. Pappy is not good with the whole ‘get married in front of a crowd of people judging him’ and, stars, if he’s going to pour his (nonexistent) heart and (very much anxious) soul out to his S/O he’s going to need the peace. More than anything he’d rather jump into the heat of the moment and marry you in some far off place somewhere with a nice view (both outside and right next to him) and just… somewhere he can just outright tell his S/O how much they really mean to him. Of course, he knows that it’s a lot to ask of someone, so he’s willing to work around his insecurities in order to make it the perfect day for the both of them. Or, if yhis S/O is willing, he’d be happy to do the whole party marriage thing and than on their honeymoon have a small, Two person affair.

Songs you could dance to: Iris – Goo Goo Dolls/ Marry Me- Train/ Poet – Bastille

 Underfell: 

The moment Red decides that his S/O is the one is the moment he knows he’s jumping all in. And that means he needs to act now, before he chickens out (like he did the last three, four, five times) He didn’t mean for it to happen like it does, but you two are probably on vacation or something and he spots a ceremony happening and just, suggests it offhand (in that totally not joking tone) and the second his S/O seems down with it is the second he’s yanking them along and thinking that as long as he can get the ring on quick enough there’s no way they can call takeies backies. (one thing he would be adamant about though is having a Elvis impersonator there, he doesn’t care what for he just needs)

Songs you could dance to: Honeybee – Steam Powered Giraffe/ Safe and Sound - civil wars/ Take Me To church – Hozier/

 Boss Is actually… Pretty quiet about the whole affair. After he asks he spends almost all his time quietly planning everything out as soon as he possibly can, its not nerves that have him, but theres a buzzing, giddy, energy thrumming in him that if he doesn’t use for something he’ll probably end up bursting! That goes all the way up until the big day, where he’s there and his just sees his S/O and crashes, Error 404 Boss not working. Its like the wave of what he now knows was anxiety just dispersed the moment he saw them there, real and solid and undoubtedly his (Because sometimes he was worried that at any moment they could change their mind, any second they could see him as he sees himself and just… just leave… and stars he cant deal with that)  But then his S/O is there, and getting married and spending the rest of their life with him because his S/O loves him and… And he’s so in love! During the end of the night there’s going to be that one big kiss where he ends up sweeping his S/O off their feet and just… never puts them down. Then for the rest of the party he’s just there holding them in his arms shoving them in everyone’s face because “LOOK! LOOK! THIS IS MY BEAUTIFUL AND STUNNING WIFE/HUSBANDS/PARTNER AND THEYRE MINE!”

Songs you could dance to: I’ll Be - Edwin McCain/ Shallows – lady Gaga & Bradley Cooper

 Swapfell: 

For Black, it’s less of a party and more of a “invite everyone I can so that they know this amazing and stunning person officially MINE’ thing. He’s going to invite every monster, he’s going to get your family there, and, if you don’t stop him, hell invite all your Exs too just to rub it in their noses that he’s the one you  choose to spend the rest of your life with! Which may also make it more of a monster-oriented wedding, where you both have a collar to give to the other instead of the traditional wedding rings. A good amount of the wedding is him putting of a calm of easy front when hes pratcally just brimming with energy underneath, because their his, because he loves them so gosh darn much, because their wearing his collar and the restrain he’s using not to jump them right there is killing him.

Songs you could dance to: Hallelujah – Jeff Buckley/ I See the Light – Rapunzel ,

 Rus  doesn’t mean for the marriage to be sudden. Heck he probably would love to have something big and smoopy where he can proclaim to everyone just how much he loves his S/O, but the impulsiveness kicks in and… well Black had always been most of his self-restraint. His S/Os going to have to rein him in so that they can have a proper wedding like he wants! And Rus likes a little familiarity, so he’d prefer a monster wedding to a human one, especially because he desperately wants to see his S/O in the collar he picked out for them! (And stars he’s getting weak thinking about the collar they have for him as well!)

Songs you could dance to: Perfect – Ed Sheeren/ Die A Happy Man - Thomas Rhett

 Horrortale: 

Jupiter, ever the sweetheart, would probably have something for just the two of you if he could (Or, like, a lazy movie night that ended with you guys saying your vows and that’s it) but after a little while on the surface he started to come out of his shell again… and gained a few friends (Both old and New) that would be really sad if he just came back on day announcing he’s was married to one of the greatest S/O’s in the world without them knowing! So! With the help of the greatest little bro in the world! You guys set up a nice little backyard wedding (Or anywhere in an opened field) where you guys can celebrate however you want to!

Songs you could dance to: Thinking Out Loud – Ed Sheeren/ Blackbird – The Beatles  

With Mars you never have to worry about planning! He’s going to be the one making calls and setting up dates and sending out invitations all on his own! And sure maybe he’ll burn himself out a little but he’s riding high enough that he cant tell! Just to make sure he doesn’t wear himself out  his S/O will have to sneak their way into his very tight planning regime to make sure, and the best way to do that is to just… give their opinion. The second Mars hears his S/O’s input he’s already making room for them to help! And, while Mars is very much a practical monster, wouldn’t it be nice to have a… sort of fairy tale wedding? It doesn’t have to be all out there but… he would love to have something sort of… Mystical about it! Because, by the stars, does he feel like a miracle happened when his S/O agreed to marry him!

Songs you could dance to: Bubbly - Colbie Caillat/ You Are in love -Taylor Swift / Laughter Lines – Bastille

[boldausterities]

RP Stuff: “Spike” (Balmung)

The Basics –––

Full Name: Spencer Noah “Spike” Teague

Race: Hyuran Midlander

Gender: Male.

Sexuality: Bisexual

Marital Status: Single

Age: Thirty-something (he knows he’s old)

Birthday: Fifth Sun of the Sixth Astral Moon (5 Nov)

Physical Appearance –––

Hair: Dyed deep blue, naturally blond

Eyes: blue/green depending on lighting and surroundings (some people claim they can’t tell which...)

Height: Six fulms thereabouts

Build: toned, slightly muscular

Distinguishing Marks: A noticeable scar on the left side of his cheek

Common Accessories: While he always appears with some sort of accessories on, he usually carries a “book” on his person. He is also fond of hoop earrings

Personal –––

Profession: Researcher (what he’ll tell most people these days)

Hobbies: Reading, people-watching

Languages: Common/Eorzean (and whatever may be spoken in the “Far West”)

Residence: Teague Estate (Ul’dah)

Birthplace: The Sultanate of Ul’dah

Religion: Common beliefs in The Twelve, though open to other religions as a form of “research”

Patron Deity: Althyk

Fears: Losing control of himself, becoming desolate, dying alone

Relationships –––

Spouse: None

Children: None

Parents: Sabrina Joyce Teague (neé Johnston, mother, deceased); Norman Edwin Teague (father, deceased)

Siblings: Stephen Nathaniel Teague (younger brother), Nora Sophia Teague (younger sister)

Other Relatives: Several of Spike’s cousins are on the Johnston’s side (his mother) and he doesn’t care for them too much

Pets: he likes to refer to his “pets” as “elements” sometimes...

Significant other: none

Traits –––

Extroverted / In Between / Introverted

Disorganized / In Between / Organized

Close Minded / In Between / Open Minded

Calm / In Between / Anxious

Disagreeable / In Between / Agreeable

Cautious / In Between / Reckless (situation-dependent)

Patient / In Between /  Impatient

Outspoken / In Between / Reserved

Leader / In Between / Follower

Empathetic / In Between / Apathetic

Optimistic / In Between / Pessimistic

Traditional / In Between / Modern

Hard-working / In Between / Lazy

Cultured / In Between / Uncultured

Loyal / In Between / Disloyal

Faithful / In Between / Unfaithful

Additional information –––

Smoking Habit: Non-smoker

Drugs: None, see below

Alcohol: Socially. Spike can hold his alcohol rather well though he’d lose to most Lominsans.

RP Hooks –––

Arcanists’ Guild: Approximately 10-15 years ago, Spike (then a late teenager) ran away from home and headed to Limsa Lominsa to extensively study Arcanism. His foundation for the aetheric arts would be developed and grow here and he was shown to be very adept at it to the point where he even wrote his own tomes.It helps that he was once a student in the highest academy in Ul’dah and all the other kids wanted to be friends with him because he was actually smart and they were all lazy sons of bitches.

Marauders’ Guild: Around that same time, Spike took to the axe and became a Marauder just to spite his parents and to show how unhappy he was with the plan that did not coincide with his own. Despite that, he holds his own well but he knows and is quite aware that many of them are better at this than he is.

Ul’dahn connections: It’s likely that you’ve heard of the Teagues if you are in the “high society life” in Ul’dah. His mother, Sabrina, was an excellent seamstress and textile designer. His sister, Nora, is trying to follow in her footsteps but she seems to be more interested in having someone else make her dresses than she making it herself. If you knew of Sabrina, you likely knew of their kids and how their oldest is the biggest pain in the ass but cannot deny his academic prowess. His father, Norman, was a Captain in the Immortal Flames and wanted for his son to do the same but, as previously stated, it was not meant to be. If you were/are an Immortal Flames soldier, you’d likely have heard Captain Teague say what a huge pain in the ass his eldest son was before The Calamity took place.

Are you a traveler by any chance? Especially in dangerous places? If you have a character that somehow found their way to Carteneau (Carteneau is supposed to be closed off to the general public), you may have seen Spike there. Likely wearing some... kind of weird robe and a tome. Prior to his departure from Eorzea a few years back, he could have been found all over Eorzea. You’d have likely seen him in places such as U’Ghamaro Mines, Zahar’ak, Loth ast Gnath, and The Great Gubal Library.

Are you involved with The Sons of Saint Coinach? There was some sort of... inventory count discrepancy regarding relics they have discovered while traversing around the open area of Mor Dhona. Some special stone and several tomes have been left unaccounted for, for years. Regardless, Spike is known to have helped them on their excavations from time to time.

Riding the Aether: Because of Spike’s talents with the aetheric arts, he can easily ride the aether anywhere in Eorzea, including Gyr Abania once he ventures there. This allows him to be anywhere that he needs to be. (Within reason, of course.)

Contact Information –––

Tumblr: I can always be contacted here on Tumblr, either on this blog @boldausterities​ or on my main blog @rakuza​.

Discord: I can also be contacted on Discord. If you’d like to get a hold of me on Discord, shoot me a message here on Tumblr and let’s see what we can do.

Time Zone: I am in the U.S., Pacific Time. (GMT-8, sometimes -7).

My characters are mostly lore-abiding with some little bit of bending. It’d be great to connect with characters who follow with this as well. Too much lore-bending or stretching is cool but it’s not really for me.

I am up for most RP. Slice of life, adventuring, business ventures, open world, things like that. I am a huge fan of character development and it is precisely this that interests me. Let me set up a character and see how much they can grow, both good and bad. Spike is a “researcher”, which means he will travel. A lot. He can be just about anywhere if need be.

Formatting stolen from @thebaileymail with some cleanup. Thanks buddy LOL!

Also tagging @balmungrp and @ffxiv-crystal-rp (Balmung server) for visibility and for interest! Thank you!

[mpischasingstories]

Bike Accident

Fandom:  Pokemon, Hoenn Region

Rating: E

Word Count: 2,474

Triggers: None that I know of.  Let me know if there is something!

~*~*~*~*~

No no no no no no NO!

Amber dug furiously through her bag, but she couldn't find the stone.

“Ok Amber, deep breaths.” she muttered to herself. She forced herself to lean back in her chair and close her eyes for a moment. It was possible that the stone had fallen to the bottom of her extremely full bag.  Or perhaps she had placed it in a different pocket by accident?

Other people in the Mauville food court gave her strange looks as Amber started laying out her items very methodically, one by one, murmuring mental notes to herself.  Once her bag was empty, she stood back from the table and huffed. The thunderstone she had found wasn’t anywhere in her belongings.

Then she remembered: on the bike trail, a triathlete had slammed into her. Perhaps it had fallen out of her bag there! And, hopefully, it would still be there.

Amber checked her watch. She still had ten minutes before Jason would be there. She could cycle there and back in time. Hopefully.

As quickly as she could, she placed her items back in her bag and rushed outside to her bike, neatly chained up against the otherwise haphazard pile of bikes crowded around a rack. She carefully pulled it out, doing her best to not disturb the rest of the pile, then hopped on and raced to the bike route just south of Mauville.

Her bike wasn't fast. But it was a relief to know that she had time to calculate her turns so that she didn't waste time pulling a crashed bike out of bushes.  She cycled as quickly as she dared, rounding a white picket fence that marked the beginning of the bridge that composed the bike route.  A few minutes later she arrived to the crash scene. She looked across the steel bridge, but the thunder stone was nowhere in sight. She circled around the area a couple of times. Still no glint of stone. Frustrated, she cycled over to the ledge where the triathlete had slammed into her and got off her bike, leaning over the edge.  Sighing loudly, she could taste the salty breeze of the ocean.  It was only momentarily distracting though.

Where could it possibly have gone?

“Excuse me! You cannot be off your bike on the bike route!” a voice hollered.  Amber’s eyes went wide and she turned around. But before she could respond, the person said “Oh, it's you. The girl from the bike accident.”

Amber nodded, recognizing the bike officer from earlier. “Yes, I seemed to have lost my thunderstone from the accident earlier today. Did you find one by chance?”

The officer frowned. “No, I don't remember seeing one.” His eyebrows furrowed in thought for a moment. “The triathlete slammed you into the railing, right? In fact, wasn't it this railing here?”

Amber sourly replied, “I hate to state the obvious, but that's why I'm here as opposed to somewhere else on the bike route.”

The officer looked over the railing. “Is it possible that it fell onto the route below?”

Oh no.

Amber looked over the railing herself. Directly twenty feet below her was the walking path for route 110. And Edwin was known to claim Route 110 as his turf. Anything on the ground belonged to him.

“Officer… I gotta go.” She stammered, reaching for her bike and hopping back on. As she raced back down, she could hear the officer yell something back at her; but it didn't matter. She just had to find that thunderstone before Edwin did.

One she reached the spot underneath her bike accident she abandoned her bike and fell immediately to her hands and knees. “Come on, it's gotta be here….” She muttered to herself.

“If you're looking for something, Edwin might have already found it.”

Amber looked up. Edward, a local psychic, was looking down at her. He had refused to battle her because he sensed she would always beat him, but they had become good acquaintances over the last couple of years.

This can't be good.

Amber took a deep breath and stood up. “Edward, has Edwin been bragging about finding a stone?”

Edward smiled a bit.  “Ah, so you did find a thunderstone. And promptly lost it.”

She rolled her eyes. “Yes, just like you said I would.” With that, she fished out some coins and placed them in his hand. “You forgot to warn me that it would land in Edwin’s hands.”

“I don't choose the visions, the visions choose me.  Also, I don’t know why you bother to place bets with me.” he responded. He shrugged and put his new coins away. “Anyways, if you want to find Edwin, he's heading towards Slateport to make plans on what he's going to do with the stone.”

Amber was up and running before Edward had finished. “I'll talk to you later!”

Grass rustled under her feet as she ran; her breath was in rhythm to her steps.  She had to stop Edwin at all costs.  She could not lose that stone.

As the path cleared for the Tricksters Home, there was Edwin, talking to a middle aged lady, a green object in hand. “STOP!” Amber yelled, sliding to a halt on a dirt path.

They both stopped talking and stared at her. It took a moment, but Edwin’s confused face soon twisted into recognition. “Well, Amber. What item of mine do you want to claim today?”

Amber couldn't help but snarl “Again, an item that is actually mine.”

Edwin hid the item in his hand behind his back, straightening up. The sunlight hit his glasses lens, making it hard to keep eye contact with him.  However, Amber refused to look away. Perhaps her squinted eyes from the bright light would make her look a little bit more intimidating.  “I know you have my thunderstone.”

He laughed. “Your thunderstone? Why, I do have a thunderstone, but it was a gift from the thunder storm a half an hour ago, and certainly did not belong to you.” He chuckled, running his free hand through his black violet hair.

“You and your damn stories. The sky was as blue as it is now and it fell out of my bag when I got in a bike accident on the cycling road above.” She responded, straightening her back.  Be confident.  Just like Jason.  That’s how he gets what he needs.

The middle aged lady eyed Edwin. “You know, she's right about the blue sky part.”

Edwin made a sound of frustration. Unbuttoning the top button of his shirt, he muttered “Well, do you want the stone that bad? Fine. How about we battle for it then, hm? We'll have Isabell here be our ref.”

Amber looked down at her belt. Only one pokeball hung from it at the moment. The rest had been damaged in the accident and were currently being pried open by Nurse Joy. And she wasn't sure if she wanted to battle with this Pokémon yet.

“Um…. Anything else I can do to get my stone back? Like, you know, just giving it back to me like a nice human being?”

“If you really did lose this and I found it, you're gonna have to fight to get it back.”  With that, he tossed a pokeball up, releasing a Nuzleaf. “One Pokémon, one shot. You lose, you give up on the stone.”

Amber groaned. She had no choice. She reached for her own pokeball and tossed it. Out came Mistreavus. Brand new, and had no opportunity to bond with yet. This was going to go bad.

“Nuzleaf, use thief!”  Edwin barked.  He was smiling, arms across his chest.  He had this battle won already.  He knew it.

Nuzleaf slammed into Mistreavus, tackling her to the ground.

Come on.  Think quickly!  Jason told you you’re a quick thinker!

“Mistreavus, use astonish!” Amber commanded.

Mistreavus screamed back at the Nuzleaf, which startled him enough that he backed off her.

“Nuzleaf, Feint attack!”

Nuzleaf started running around in a zig zag pattern. He first ran to Edwin, then circled around him and started running towards Mistreavus. A dark aura started surrounding him.

“Careful…." Amber murmured. She watched Nuzleaf, trying to predict what side he would hit on. “Left!”

Amber had meant look left. Mistreavus moved left and was slammed by Nuzleaf back into the ground.

Already, Mistreavus was looking rough. The moment Nuzleaf let her up, she flew behind Amber, not willing to continue.

Edwin laughed. “Well, it seems to me that Mistreavus doesn't want to continue. Perhaps that thunderstone will be mine all along.”

“How about you give her one more shot of winning it?” A voice hollered out.

Amber turned around. There stood Jason, hands on his hips and smiling, daring Edwin to follow through with his dare.

It was so much easier to be confident when the strong, capable, and handsome Jason was there.

Edwin gawked. “And you are?...”

Jason, continuing to smile, walked over and held his hand out.  “Jason. I'm the friend that Amber was delivering the thunderstone to.” Edwin continued to stare at the athletic Jason, refusing to shake his hand. “I hope you realize you challenged Amber when she only had one Pokémon. The rest were at the pokecenter. Not very good battling etiquette.”

“She agreed to it.” Edwin snapped back. “And a deals a deal, Mr. Ace trainer. Even you should understand that with your thick skull.”

Jason let out an audible sigh, still smiling. Most likely for spite’s sake. “Are your treasures so important to you that you would honestly fight a clearly unfair battle? Even I can tell that Mistreavus is new to battling with a trainer. And pitting a new Pokémon against its weakness its first trainer battle? If you’re going to give someone a chance, you should actually give that someone a chance.”

“Well fine then! If it's you that wants the stone so bad, then battle me with your Pokémon! Don't make someone else do it for you!” Edwin hollered.

Jason’s smile flattened, and he took on a deadly tone. “If I had known earlier that this is what she would have to go through, I would have been here earlier to avoid that.” Finally dropping his hand, he walked over to stand by Amber. “Also, Amber dear, here's Zeus.” he said, handing her a pokeball. “Nurse Joy explained the accident to me, and I sort of figured out what happened from there when you weren't at the food court.”

“Am I really that predictable?”

Jason’s smile came back. “Always dear. Now, if you’ll excuse me….” Poised as always, he tossed a ball up and down in his hand as he turned back to Edwin.  “Are you ready to battle for the thunderstone?”

Edwin’s mouth twitched.  “Ready as I'll ever be. Let's destroy this brat Nuzleaf!”

Jason chuckled. “Interesting nickname for me. Well, here goes nothing!”

Jason threw a curveball with the pokeball, and a Swallow flew out, carrying its pokeball back to Jason before landing on the ground. “Swellow, use double team!” Jason commanded.  

Swellow started circling around the Nuzleaf slowly. But it quickly picked up speed to the point that it looked like there were about six Swellows instead of just one, vibrating in the air.

“Feint attack to your left!” Edwin yelled.

Nuzleaf followed through with the order, only to fall through an image of Swellow.

“Swellow, Arial Ace!”

Suddenly, the circle of Swellows disappeard. Something hit the back of Nuzleaf with a loud thunk! Nuzleaf fell.  Swellow had swooped up behind him, knocked him over, and then flew up into the sky.

Edwin growled. “Razor leaf, now!”

Nuzleaf stood in pain before whipping his head around. Leaves sliced through the air, heading towards Swellow.  Swellow tried her best to weave in and out, but was clipped on the wing.

It didn’t matter.  She was in the perfect position.  Less than three feet over Nuzleaf.

“Wing attack!” Jason ordered.

Swellow dive-bombed Nuzleaf.  There was no time for him to react as Swellow slightly turned left, catching Nuzleaf with his good wing, and tossing Nuzleaf back to his owner.

Nuzleaf didn’t stir.  The battle was won.

Edwin’s chest puffed up, stone clutched in his hand. “This.  Was.  MINE. It was mine from the beginning!” He yelled.

Jason’s mouth twitched into a smile for a moment. It faded just as quickly.  “I don’t care if it was yours or not.  You agreed to give it up if I won.  And I did.”

“You asked me to judge the battle.  And you changed the rules so that he could battle. And he did win.” Isabelle pointed out. Amber had nearly forgotten the lady was even there.

Edwin’s teeth grinded together, his breath heavy. With an anguished “RAUUGH!” he threw the stone to the ground, where it skittered further away from him.  He returned his Nuzleaf to his pokeball before looking at Jason again.  “I won’t forget you.  Next time we battle, I.  Will. Win.”

“Quite frankly my acquaintance, I hope to never see your face again.”  While he said that jokingly, Amber could see his face darken.  “But if you ever mess with Amber again, know that you will see me again.  And you will regret it.”

The two men stared at each other for several moments.  After what seemed like a half an hour to Amber, Edwin let out a huff and headed towards Slateport City.

Jason sighed, and walked over to the thunderstone, picking it up.  “I’m sorry I put you through all of that.”  He turned back around, shining the stone up a bit on his red jacket.

“Well, it’s not like either of us expected it, right?” Amber laughed, nervously.

Jason laughed as well, running his free hand through his thick brown hair.  “I suppose so.  I’m still sorry though dear.”

“What for?”

He sighed.  “Simply because it doesn’t sound like it was the best day for you.  Bike accident, smashed pokeballs, lost thunderstone, arrogant trainers…”

Amber couldn’t help but laugh at the last one, and it made her happy to see that he smiled when she laughed.

His smile relaxed, but his eyebrows scrunched together a little bit.  “Really though.  Can I make your day a little better?  By treating you out to lunch?”

“Like a date?”  Amber asked, a little too hopefully.

He gave a chuckle.  “Like a date.”

Well, I suppose that would make my day better…

She nodded, and he walked back towards her, offered his arm, and they headed back together to Mauville.  As they walked, she carefully leaned closer, eventually resting her head on his shoulder.  And he didn’t shrug it off.  Maybe this meant that she was more than a delivery girl to him.  Maybe he really was a friend.  

And maybe, just maybe, one day they would be dating.

[ecotone99]

The Last Dance

She sat in the corner of the room, where the glow of the lights could not reach her. The dancehall was lively and the couples moved slowly to the rhythm of the soft melodies of the band.

She sipped on a cool glass of wine, her dark brown eyes trying to avoid the passing gaze of the single men. Emily was certainly a lovely sight to behold with her slender face, long blue dress, and low cut blouse. She had originally felt uneasy wearing something so revealing, but her friend had convinced her otherwise.

“You look absolutely stunning Emily!” Her friend Amber had exclaimed earlier in the evening.

“Thanks, but I’m just not sure Edwin would approve.” Emily answered as she tried to pull the low cut top further up her chest. “It’s a bit, revealing for an engaged woman isn’t it?”

“Oh don’t be so self critical,” Amber said as she tossed her long dark hair behind her, “you’re engaged, not detained! I’m sure Edwin would be thrilled to see his bride-to-be in such a radiant glow. After all, it is your birthday.”

Emily straightened her bun of auburn colored hair, looking herself up and down in the mirror of the bedroom with the eye of a critic. Her friend Amber was quite beautiful, especially tonight, and was wearing a red dress that cut off above the knees. The girl wasn’t afraid of not being modest in society, and she loved the attention of the men. But Amber wasn’t the one who was engaged to be married.

“Yes,” Emily said, “it is my birthday. But I wish I could spend it with Edwin, instead of frolicking around at some dancehall.” She spun on her heels and faced Amber directly. “And don’t expect me to drink much either. I need to remain proper for Edwin’s sake.”

Amber shot her dazzling dark eyes at her friend. “Edwin would want you to enjoy yourself, Emily. You only turn 23 once, and he’s over in France to make sure the Huns aren’t going to make you speak German before you turn 24.”

“I know,” Emily said, “it just doesn’t feel right going out and celebrating while he could be getting shot at in a trench. I feel horribly about it.”

Amber rose up slowly, went up to her friend, and wrapped her slender arms around her.

“Emily, it’s 1918, and you’re 23 years old now. You’ve been controlled by your parents your whole life. Edwin is a great man, a real gentleman, but he wouldn’t be happy knowing that you skipped your birthday because you were worried about him.”

Emily stared into her friend’s comforting eyes. “Listen, if you don’t want to dance with anyone tonight, then don’t. But at least come out and have some fun. Edwin wouldn’t like knowing you skipped out on your birthday so you can sit in this lonely apartment and listen to war news on the radio.”

Emily took a deep breath, and slumped her thin shoulders.

“Okay,” she whispered to Amber, “I’ll go. I’m not going to dance, but I can at least have a drink or two.”

Amber smiled happily, “A drink, or two, or ten! The tab’s on me tonight, girl, and we’re gonna have some fun...men or no men.”

The two girls laughed and smiled, and Emily finished getting ready.

The evening had passed rather quickly, and Amber had danced across the floor with at least three different men. Emily was on her third glass of wine, and her senses were just starting to feel a little tipsy.

After the long ending of a song, the band stopped their show for a brief break. Amber stepped towards the table with a handsome brown haired man who was holding her little hand.

“Emily, how are you looking so radiant just by sitting in the shadows of a corner?” Amber hollered out at her as she led her handsome follower to the table.

“Because wine is the nectar of the Gods!Blessed are those who drink it.” Emily said with a smile and took a sip of her drink.

“Ya know,” the man said as he pulled the chair out for Amber to sit in, “it’s a bad thing that a gorgeous doll like you ain’t got no guy to treat you nice.” He said towards Emily.

“A couple of the boys are alright dancers. How ‘bout I fetch ya one, huh dove?”

Emily put down her glass harshly, the dim light of the dancehall glistening off the silver band around her finger. Her shimmering blue eyes trained towards him like angry spear points.

“Actually,” Amber interrupted before Emily could say something, “my friend is engaged.”

“Oh,” the guy replied, “that ain’t no big thing to threat none about, just means there’s plenty of time for you to change your mind.” He grinned a half crooked smile at Emily.

“Her fiancé is a soldier,” Amber said stoutly, “fighting somewhere in France. So, why don’t you go and buy your pals a drink huh?”

Amber’s dark eyes burned deeply into the man’s gaze. He tried to start an excuse, but Amber’s unmoving glare caused him to get up from his seat in silence and walk away.

“Sorry about that Emily,” Amber started, “some guys are just low down idiots. Can’t be helped, but they surely can be gotten rid of.” She picked up her glass of whiskey and sipped it gently.

“I think, I’m about finished for the night.” Emily said.

“Already? But you’re only on your third glass.”

“I know, but I just can’t stop thinking about Edwin. I miss him, and I just wanta go home and read through the letters he’s sent me. I just want to imagine him being here.”

Amber eyed the soft hints of heartache that painted itself onto Emily’s slender face. She nodded her head in reluctance.

“Very well,” Amber said, “I’ll go and pay the tab. Then, we’ll be on our way for the evening.”

Amber got up from her seat, and the band started up another slow moving tune. Emily closed her eyes, images of Edwin passing through her mind like the silent movies in the theatre.

She wanted him to be home. To be sitting across this table from her, holding her hand, and looking into her soft blue eyes as they listened to the music of the band play on.

“I’ll be home for your birthday,” she could see Edwin’s scribbled words saying, “neither the Huns or General Pershing will keep me away, Angel Eyes, I promise.”

She could hear his voice perfectly. The low drawl, the slow pace of his warm West Texas accent, resounding in the inner realms of her young mind.

In her eyes, Emily could feel the tears starting to swell as her thoughts were trained upon the handsome features of Edwin’s face. She could see the sunlight that glistened in his bright eyes, and the wavy curls that crashed through his dirty blonde hair.

The masses of couples and lovers crowded the floor. Emily sat in her shadowy corner, trying to push the saddening images of her husband-to-be out of her mind.

A cool breeze seemed to drift across the warm dancehall, as if a breath of winter had escaped through the exhale of some invisible god. It seemed to strike Emily directly, causing her to open her reddening eyes and cast them towards the front door.

Stepping out of the swirling masses of the dance floor, came a broad shouldered and lengthy figure of a man. He wore a heavy uniform of dark wool, oddly splotched with deep stains of mud and muck.

As he stepped closer to Emily’s table, her young heart started to beat like a wild and silent thunder in her breast. Even before he stepped up to the edge of the chairs, Emily could see his rounded face and curled up grin.

“Edwin?” She said softly as he got to the table.

“I told ya I wouldn’t miss your birthday for the world, sweet Angel Eyes.”

He extended his right hand towards her, his palm opened, rough callouses along the bottom of his fingers, black splotches of soil stained across the tan flesh. “Treat you to a dance, beautiful?”

His blue eyes glistened in the dim glow of the overhead lamps, and Emily took his hand with a smile just as bright. The warmth of his fingers wrapping around hers sent a stir of love through her slender body.

“Why didn’t you write me that you were coming home?” She asked him.

“Because sometimes,” Edwin said lowly, “God grants you an answered prayer.” He smiled at her, and started to lead her towards the dance floor.

The music was like the recording of a dream. Soft melodies that moved swiftly from the instruments, the huddled masses across the dance floor floating all around the two lovers.

Edwin held her close, and Emily stared warmly into his eyes. Not a word was passed between them, because no words were needed. It was love, pure, passionate love.

The band continued on for another few minutes, the music flowing like the gentle ripples on the face of a river. When the song faded, Emily could resist no longer.

She pulled her soft lips to his, and he held her in his strong arms against the warmness of his body. A kiss like the two had never experienced before.

“Emily,” Amber suddenly shouted behind her, and Emily slowly let loose of her lover’s embrace, “what in the world are you doing, girl?”

“Kissing my husband, what else does it look like?” Amber laughed at her.

“You must be really lit,” she said, “because I’m pretty sure Edwin isn’t made out of empty space!”

“What are you talking about?” Emily asked, confused, and turned back to Edwin...but he was gone.

“He was standing right here.” She said. “We just finished dancing...and I kissed him.”

Emily’s dark eyes scanned through the scattering masses, searching for her future husband in the crowds but not seeing him anywhere.

“Well, I’m happy you enjoyed your wine anyhow.” Amber said.

“He was right here,” Emily exclaimed, “he was in his uniform and it was all caked with mud like he just got back from the battlefields, I swear.”

Amber glanced around the room. There were a few men who had just sat down and started enjoying their drinks, but none of them were wearing an army uniform, and none of them were even casting a glance towards Emily.

“Well, I suppose there’s a soldier boy here somewhere who can tell his pals about a cute drunk girl suddenly kissing him.” Emily turned towards her, eyes narrowed with a hint of anger at the joke. “I won’t tell Edwin.” Amber said smiling.

It was shortly after midnight when Emily stepped into the lobby of her apartment building. Amber followed behind her, still sometimes teasing her of the intoxicated kiss.

Emily wasn’t sure what happened. Edwin had been there, standing in front of her, holding her tightly, and dancing lively. Their kiss was passionate, full of love and intermingled with a mixture of emotions that focused on their futures together.

Had she imagined it all? Gotten lost in some form of an intoxicated dream? She just didn’t know.

“Ms. Andrews,” the clerk at the counter called out to her, his dark eyes seemed heavy with weariness and grief, “we received a telegraph for you, madam. It came to us via a soldier, not long after you had left this evening.”

“A soldier?” Emily asked surprised.

“Yes mam, and I wanted to tell you in person.”

Emily and Amber stood motionless in their steps, and the clerk stepped out from behind the counter with a thin sheet of paper in his hands. He walked slowly up to Emily and handed her the note.

“I am very sorry, mam, but your fiancé was killed this morning. The messenger told me that your fiancé’s unit was advancing towards a German position and was suddenly cut down by machine gun fire.”

Emily dropped the note to the floor, frozen in pure shock. Her eyes were opened wide, and she remembered everything that had happened that night at the dance.

Edwin’s coat, covered in mud, his hands stained with the soil of some field in France. “Did the messenger state his name?” She barely whispered, already frightfully aware of the reply.

“Yes,” the clerk replied as he glanced back towards his ledger, “it was delivered to us by a Corporal Edwin Hessel.”

Emily felt her knees grew weak as a surge of both sorrow and happiness flooded through her young body. Edwin had stayed true to his promise. Nothing had stopped him from returning home on her birthday that night. Not the Huns, not the generals, not even death.

That kiss...that strange, mysterious, magical kiss in 1918, would always remain special to my great grandmother for years to come. It took her a long time to get pass the death of her first fiancé, Corporal Edwin Hessel of the 90th “Tough Ombres” Infantry Division at the Battle of St. Mihiel in the September of 1918.

Years later, in 1924, with the support of her friend Amber Lawrence, and blessings from family members of both hers and Edwin Hessel; Emily Dale married a rancher from Menard, Texas named William Shackleford. She became my great grandmother two years later when she gave birth to my grandmother, and the story of Corporal Edwin Hessel has become a family legend.

In the parlor of my parent’s house today, there’s an old roll-top desk that my great grandfather made back during the Depression. Sitting upon it are a number of pictures of he and Emily together, but ontop of the desk is a solitary photograph of just her...smiling so beautifully, her eyes so alive with joy and love.

Right next to Emily’s photo is a telegraph. It’s brown with age, despite being framed in glass, and dated September 21st, 1918. It’s a standard Western Union letterhead, it’s sorrowful words stamped upon it in deep black letters, and addressed to Ms. Emily Dale of Apartment 45, President’s Square Lofts and Apartments, Fort Worth, Texas.

I’ve read the same sad message my whole life now, always fascinated by how much this one thin sheet of paper changed our family forever. Sometimes though, late at night or right about twilight, I’ve glanced at the telegraph and would swear that I’ve seen the reflection of a young man’s face on the glass. His eyes are friendly, a crooked West Texas grin spread across his lips, and thick waves of dirty blonde hair spill across the top of his head.

Yet, every time I turn to look around me, I’m the only one there...but the air around me is suddenly cool. Like the wintery breath of some exhale of an invisible being.

submitted by /u/MajorBatarang [link] [comments] source https://www.reddit.com/r/shortscarystories/comments/cw0u3h/the_last_dance/ via Blogger https://ift.tt/2Pdmws2

[marcusssanderson]

50 Steve Jobs Quotes about Innovation, Marketing, and Time

Looking for thought provoking and inspirational Steve Jobs quotes about success, life and entrepreneurship?

Who is Steve Jobs?

There’s a lot to say about Steve Jobs: controversial, visionary, perfectionist, inventor, genius, and the list goes on. Most of us fell in love with Steve Jobs through the Apple Inc. brand and its innovative products. His never give up attitude is what made me a fan of his.

Jobs went head to head against computer giant IBM when Apple was just a newcomer in the industry. In 1985, he was ousted out of his own company that he co-founded. A decade later, Jobs returned to turn a struggling business into the world’s most innovative – and wealthiest – company.

The Steve Jobs quotes below remind us how inspiring he was and how he didn’t hesitate to take big risks. He bounced back from defeat time and again to become more successful than before. Although many of his methods were unconventional, he knew how to lead others to achieve the “impossible”.

Below are 50+ quotes from Steve Jobs that will inspire you to take risks, think big, and have passion for what you do. These Steve Jobs quotes come from the works of Walter Isaacson, interviews, his famous Stanford University speech, and the Think Different commercial.

Famous Steve Jobs Quotes on Time

1.) “Your time is limited, so don’t waste it living someone else’s life.” – Steve Jobs

2.) “I always thought of myself as a Humanities person as a kid, but I liked electronics…Then I read something that one of my heroes, Edwin Land of Polaroid, said about the importance of people who could stand at the intersection of humanities and sciences, and I decided that’s what I wanted to do.” – Steve Jobs by Walter Isaacson

3.) “My favorite things in life don’t cost any money. It’s really clear that the most precious resource we all have is time.” –Steve Jobs, Playboy, February, 1985

4.) “When you first start off trying to solve a problem, the first solutions you come up with are very complex, and most people stop there. But if you keep going, and live with the problem and peel more layers of the onion off, you can oftentimes arrive at some very elegant and simple solutions. Most people just don’t put in the time or energy to get there. We believe that customers are smart, and want objects which are well thought through.” –Steve Jobs, Newsweek, October 14, 2006

5.) “The only way to do great work is to love what you do.” – Steve Jobs

6.) “Sometimes when you innovate, you make mistakes. It is best to admit them quickly, and get on with improving your other innovations.” – I, Steve: Steve Jobs in His Own Words, 2001

7.) “We don’t get a chance to do that many things and everyone should be really excellent. Because this is our life. Life is brief, and then you die, you know? And we’ve all chosen to do this with our lives. So it better be damn good. It better be worth it.” – Fortune, March, 2008

8.) “That’s been one of my mantras — focus and simplicity. Simple can be harder than complex; you have to work hard to get your thinking clean to make it simple.” – Steve Jobs

9.) “I’m convinced that about half of what separates the successful entrepreneurs from the non-successful ones is pure perseverance. It is so hard. You put so much of your life into this thing. There are such rough moments in time that I think most people give up. I don’t blame them. It’s really tough and it consumes your life. If you’ve got a family and you’re in the early days of a company, I can’t imagine how one could do it. I’m sure it’s been done but it’s rough. It’s pretty much an 18-hour day job, seven days a week for a while. Unless you have a lot of passion about this, you’re not going to survive.” – Steve Jobs, Smithsonian Institution Oral History Interview, April 20, 1995

10.) “Quality is much better than quantity. One home run is much better than two doubles.” –Steve Jobs, Bloomberg BusinessWeek, February 5, 2006

11.) “I think if you do something and it turns out pretty good, then you should go do something else wonderful, not dwell on it for too long. Just figure out what’s next.” – Steve Jobs

12.) “The greatest thing is when you do put your heart and soul into something over an extended period of time, and it is worth it.” – Steve Jobs

13.) “It’s really hard to design products by focus groups. A lot of times, people don’t know what they want until you show it to them.” – Steve Jobs

14.) “Being the richest man in the cemetery doesn’t matter to me … Going to bed at night saying we’ve done something wonderful. That’s what matters to me.” – Steve Jobs

15.) “When you grow up you tend to get told the world is the way it is and…to live your life inside the world. Try not to bash into the walls too much. Try to have a nice family, have fun, save a little money. That’s a very limited life. Life can be much broader once you discover one simple fact: Everything around you that you call life was made up by people that were no smarter than you and you can change it, you can influence it, you can build your own things that other people can use. Once you learn that, you’ll never be the same again.” –Steve Jobs, Interview with Santa Clara Valley Historical Association, 1994

Best Steve Jobs Quotes from about Innovation

16.) “We are inventing the future,” [Jobs told a job applicant]. “Think about surfing on the front edge of a wave. It’s really exhilarating. Now think about dog-paddling at the tail end of that wave. It wouldn’t be anywhere near as much fun. Come down here and make a dent in the universe.” – Steve Jobs by Walter Isaacson

17.) “Be a yardstick of quality. Some people aren’t used to an environment where excellence is expected.” – Steve Jobs

18.) “You can’t connect the dots looking forward; you can only connect them looking backward. So you have to trust that the dots will somehow connect in your future. You have to trust in something — your gut, destiny, life, karma, whatever. This approach has never let me down, and it has made all the difference in my life.” –Steve Jobs, Stanford University Commencement Speech, 2005

19.) “Getting fired from Apple was the best thing that could have ever happened to me. The heaviness of being successful was replaced by the lightness of being a beginner again. It freed me to enter one of the most creative periods of my life.” –Steve Jobs, Stanford University Commencement Speech, 2005

20.) “Innovation distinguishes between a leader and a follower.” – Steve Jobs

21.) “I had no idea what I wanted to do with my life and no idea how college was going to help me figure it out. And here I was spending all of the money my parents had saved their entire life. So I decided to drop out and trust that it would all work out okay…

The minute I dropped out I [began] dropping in on the [classes] that looked interesting… I learned about serif and sans serif typefaces, about varying the amount of space between different letter combinations, about what makes great typography great. It was beautiful, historical, artistically subtle in a way that science can’t capture, and I found it fascinating.” – Steve Jobs by Walter Isaacson

22.) “My model for business is The Beatles. They were four guys who kept each other’s kind of negative tendencies in check. They balanced each other, and the total was greater than the sum of the parts. That’s how I see business: Great things in business are never done by one person, they’re done by a team of people.” –Steve Jobs, CBS: 60 Minutes, 2008

23.) “My self-identity does not revolve around being a businessman, though I recognize that is what I do. I think of myself more as a person who builds neat things. I like building neat things. I like making tools that are useful to people. I like working with very bright people.

I like interacting in the world of ideas, though somehow those ideas have to be tied to some physical reality. One of the things I like the most is dropping a new idea on a bunch of incredibly smart and talented people and then letting them work it out themselves. I like all of that very, very much.” –Steve Jobs, Esquire, December, 1986

24.) “Don’t let the noise of other’s’ opinions drown out your own inner voice.” –Steve Jobs, Stanford University Commencement Speech, 2005

25.) “When you’re a carpenter making a beautiful chest of drawers, you’re not going to use a piece of plywood on the back, even though it faces the wall and nobody will see it. You’ll know it’s there, so you’re going to use a beautiful piece of wood on the back. For you to sleep well at night, the aesthetic, the quality, has to be carried all the way through.” –Steve Jobs, Playboy, February, 1985

26.) “Your work is going to fill a large part of your life, and the only way to be truly satisfied is to do what you believe is great work. And the only way to do great work is to love what you do. If you haven’t found it yet, keep looking. Don’t settle. As with all matters of the heart, you’ll know when you find it.” –Steve Jobs, Stanford University Commencement Speech, 2005

27.) “Even if we lose our money, we’ll have a company,” Jobs told Steve Wozniak early on, in the mid-1970s. “For once in our lives, we’ll have a company.” – Steve Jobs by Walter Isaacson

28.) “I don’t really care about being right, I just care about success. You’ll find a lot of people that will tell you I had a very strong opinion, and they presented evidence to the contrary and five minutes later I changed my mind. I don’t mind being wrong, and I’ll admit that I’m wrong a lot. It doesn’t really matter to me too much. What matters to me is that we do the right thing.” – Steve Jobs: The Lost Interview, 2012

29.) “You think, well, focusing is saying yes. No, focusing is about saying no. Focusing is about saying no. And you’ve got to say no, no, no. When you say no, you piss off people.” – Steve Jobs

30.) “Details matter, it’s worth waiting to get it right.” – Steve Jobs

Famous Steve Jobs Quotes about Marketing

31.) “Picasso had a saying – ‘good artists copy, great artists steal‘ – and we have always been shameless about stealing great ideas.” – Steve Job by Walter Isaacson

32.) “Creativity is just connecting things. When you ask creative people how they did something, they feel a little guilty because they didn’t really do it, they just saw something. It seemed obvious to them after a while.” – 1Steve Jobs, Wired, February, 1996

33.) “Remembering that you are going to die is the best way I know to avoid the trap of thinking you have something to lose. You are already naked. There is no reason not to follow your heart.” – Steve Jobs

34.) “I’m as proud of many of the things we haven’t done as the things we have done. Innovation is saying no to a thousand things.” –Steve Jobs, World Wide Developers Conference, May 1997

35.) “Bottom line is, I didn’t return to Apple to make a fortune. I’ve been very lucky in my life and already have one. When I was 25, my net worth was $100 million or so. I decided then that I wasn’t going to let it ruin my life. There’s no way you could ever spend it all, and I don’t view wealth as something that validates my intelligence.” – Words of Wisdom: Steve Jobs

36.) “I’ve always been attracted to the more revolutionary changes. I don’t know why. Because they’re harder. They’re much more stressful emotionally. And you usually go through a period where everybody tells you that you’ve completely failed.” – Steve Jobs

37.) “Things don’t have to change the world to be important.” – Steve Jobs

38.) “I had no idea what I wanted to do with my life and no idea how college was going to help me figure it out…And here I was spending all of the money my parents had saved their entire life. So I decided to drop out and trust that it would all work out OK. It was pretty scary at the time, but looking back it was one of the best decisions I ever made.” –Steve Jobs, Stanford University Commencement Speech, 2005

Best Steve Jobs Quotes about Tech and Life

39.) “Technology is nothing. What’s important is that you have faith in people, that they’re basically good and smart, and if you give them tools, they’ll do wonderful things with them.” – Rolling Stone, June 16, 1994

40.) “No one wants to die. Even people who want to go to heaven don’t want to die to get there. And yet death is the destination we all share. No one has ever escaped it. And that is as it should be, because death is very likely the single best invention of life.” – Steve Jobs

41.) “Design is not just what it looks like and feels like. Design is how it works.” –Steve Jobs, New York Times Magazine, Nov. 30, 2003

42.) “You can’t just ask customers what they want and then try to give that to them. By the time you get it built, they’ll want something new.” –Steve Jobs, Inc. Magazine, April 1, 1989

43.) “Innovation has nothing to do with how many R&D dollars you have. When Apple came up with the Mac, IBM was spending at least 100 times more on R&D. It’s not about money. It’s about the people you have, how you’re led, and how much you get it.” –Steve Jobs, Fortune, November, 1998

44.) “Sometimes life hits you in the head with a brick. Don’t lose faith.”  – Stanford University Commencement Speech, 2005

45.) “You should never start a company with the goal of getting rich. Your goal should be making something you believe in and making a company that will last.” – Steve Jobs by Walter Isaacson

46.) “Innovation comes from people meeting up in the hallways or calling each other at 10:30 at night with a new idea, or because they realized something that shoots holes in how we’ve been thinking about a problem. It’s ad hoc meetings of six people called by someone who thinks he has figured out the coolest new thing ever and who wants to know what other people think of his idea.” – Steve Jobs

47.) “If you just sit and observe, you will see how restless your mind is. If you try to calm it, it only makes it worse, but over time it does calm, and when it does, there’s room to hear more subtle things – that’s when your intuition starts to blossom and you start to see things more clearly and be in the present more. Your mind just slows down, and you see a tremendous expanse in the moment. You see so much more than you could see before. It’s a discipline; you have to practice it.” – Steve Jobs by Walter Isaacson

48.) “You’ve got to start with the customer experience and work back toward the technology – not the other way around.” –Steve Jobs, World Wide Developers Conference, May 1997

49.) “Your time is limited, so don’t waste it living someone else’s life. Don’t be trapped by dogma — which is living with the results of other people’s thinking. Don’t let the noise of others’ opinions drown out your own inner voice. And most important, have the courage to follow your heart and intuition. They somehow already know what you truly want to become. Everything else is secondary.” –Steve Jobs, Stanford University Commencement Speech, 2005

50.) “Here’s to the crazy ones, the misfits, the rebels, the troublemakers, the round pegs in the square holes. The ones who see things differently; they’re not fond of rules. You can quote them, disagree with them, glorify or vilify them, but the only thing you can’t do is ignore them because they change things.

They push the human race forward, and while some may see them as the crazy ones, we see genius, because the ones who are crazy enough to think that they can change the world, are the ones who do.” –Steve Jobs, Think Different – Apple Advertisement, 1997

Were you inspired by these Steve Jobs quotes?

It is not hard to understand why Steve Jobs is admired by millions. His passion for perfection helped him to become one of the greatest innovative minds of all time. His will to do the impossible fueled all who followed him and made his doubters become believers.

Anytime you feel discouraged by this roller coaster ride that we call life; I ask you to think about these quotes from Steve Jobs – his passion, and his will to take big risk despite others calling him crazy.

Which of these Steve Jobs quotes was your favorite? Do you have any other inspirational quotes to add? Let us know in the comment section below.

The post 50 Steve Jobs Quotes about Innovation, Marketing, and Time appeared first on Everyday Power.

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The Guy Who Wrote ‘A Christmas Carol’ Was A Total Monster

We don’t want to alarm you, but some of your favorite creators are/were really shitty human beings. Worse, the shittiest are often the very same ones dedicated to making the most wholesome, life-affirming art. That brings us to Charles Dickens, who wrote a bunch of classics, including the tale every single one of you will watch at least partially over the holidays: A Christmas Carol.

Sonar Entertainment, Walt Disney Pictures, Paramount PicturesLook, there are 867 versions of this thing. It’s going to happen.

The story has been credited with both revitalizing Christmas as an important holiday (for a while it was closer in relevance to Arbor Day) and popularizing certain Christmas traditions, like carols and getting together with your family to eat so much food that the limits of the human body are tested. It delivers a timeless, touching message about the importance of family and goodwill toward your fellow human being … a message that Dickens completely failed to follow in his own life.

Dickens Was A Monster To His Wife … Who Always Refused To Stoop To His Level

For starters, Dickens’ attitude toward family was far closer to Scrooge’s, except instead of being fueled by greed, he was just a horny old bastard. His ability to market orphans as adorable made him the 19th century version of a rock star, and like a rock star, he dumped his aging wife for an 18-year-old and didn’t give a shit who knew it. Yeah, it’s one thing to end a marriage; it’s quite another to make your hatred of your spouse as public as humanly possible, which is exactly what Dickens did.

Read Next

Seasonal Reminder: The Santa Clause Movies Are Insane

Back in 1836, a then-unknown Dickens married Catherine Hogarth. By all accounts, it was a pleasant enough marriage (hell, it resulted in ten goddamned children). Then Catherine got fat. This was apparently an unforgivable sin in the Dickens household, where the ability to push out ten kids must surely mean you can at least do a couple of push-ups right after. So he went and got himself a mistress, actress Ellen Ternan. Now, cheating on your wife because she got old and overweight is bad, but what happened next truly exposed Dickens as a douche on the level of any evil orphanage destroyer in his books.

Ellen Ternan, Herbert WatkinsA Tale Of Two Garbage People

Once his affair was made public in 1858, Dickens went on the warpath, slandering his estranged wife in newspaper after newspaper and letter after letter. According to him, Catherine was a “donkey,” an “unloving and unloved mother,” not his intellectual equal, and entirely to blame for saddling him with so many noisy-ass children. What, was he banging her under the influence of hypnosis? Note that his annoyance over so many kids didn’t stop him from claiming custody of nine of them, with only the oldest, Charles Jr., being financially independent enough to flip his father the finger and stay with his mom.

Creating that whole “White Christmas” thing helped keep Dickens in the public’s good graces, but so did Catherine’s outright refusal to rebut. She never reacted to Dickens’ abuse and never rebuffed his public letters, or even spoke to a journalist. Literally her only comeback came on her deathbed in 1879, when she handed over a collection of letters Dickens wrote to her, with the plain request: “Give these to the British Museum, that the world may know he loved me once.”

John Jabez Edwin MayalGoddammit, who let all these chopped onions and dust mites into the room all of a sudden?

Ebenezer Scrooge Was Based On A Real Guy, Who Was Not A Penny-Pinching Grump

So A Christmas Carol is more of a “Do as I say, not as I do” morality tale. But hey, there’s no shortage of hypocritical creatives in the world. What takes Dickens to the next level is the fact that one of his most famous characters is inspired by some random nobody who in no way deserved to be immortalized as a miserly penny-pincher. In 1841, Dickens was due to give a talk in Edinburgh and needed to kill some time beforehand. So he decided to walk through a graveyard, because the Victorians never got around to inventing non-creepy ways to have fun (we’ll come back to that in a moment). While this may seem like the setup to his lesser-known work Attack Of The Zombie Scotsmen, that night’s stroll in fact led to the creation of Ebenezer Scrooge.

As Dickens walked through what we assume was a thick Scottish fog, he saw the gravestone for a guy named Ebenezer Lennox Scroggie. The grave identified him as a “meal man,” a reference to the fact that he sold cornmeal. But due to a combination of the gloom and Dickens’ own mild dyslexia, he mistook the words for “mean man.” Which, damn, talk about a rough way to be remembered.

Metro-Goldwyn-MayerThat’s really the type of awful thing you’d have to save for someone who, like, we don’t know, ruined their wife’s life because she got fat.

Dickens was struck by a memorial that he thought would have “shriveled” Scroggie’s soul by having to take “such a terrible thing to eternity.” Two years later, he released his story about a man whose legacy of stinginess would haunt him from beyond the grave, and thanks to Dickens, it’s now about as popular to name your kids Ebenezer as it is to call them Adolf.

Ironically, the real Scroggie was a wild and promiscuous party animal who got in trouble with the Church of Scotland for both knocking up a servant out of wedlock (supposedly in a graveyard, because it seems that’s where Scottish people liked to hang out back then) and interrupting the General Assembly of the church by grabbing a countess’ ass. Had Dickens known Scroggie’s real-life story, it’s possible A Christmas Carol would be a whiskey-fueled porno about a man who visits the Christmases of his various illegitimate children and probably fails to learn a lesson about appropriate behavior.

Walt Disney PicturesNote: We would absolutely watch an adaptation of that starring Michael Caine and the Muppets.

As it is, one of the most famous literary characters in history came about because one of the greatest writers in history couldn’t read a four-letter word. But that’s not even the creepiest way we can associate Dickens with the dead …

Dickens Had A Creepy Thing For Corpses

Dickens was really into visiting the Paris public morgue and looking at dead bodies for the sheer hell of it. He would just go and stare at them, contemplating all the little aspects that went into the vacant expression of a deceased person. He didn’t do this to ruminate about the existence of the human soul, or to lament the tragic passing of another victim of society’s injustices; he simply liked looking at dead folk, in the same way that other people like looking at trains or exotic dancers. We can’t even say he was researching some book, because he never really touched the subject in his fiction.

In reality, not even Dickens knew what this morbid obsession was about. “I am dragged by an invisible force into the Morgue,” he once wrote, possibly sporting a major boner. One time he forced his friend Maclise to come with him to the morgue, and then called him a pussy when the corpses made him upset (but with fancier words). Another time, he witnessed an execution by guillotine in Rome and stuck around to examine the body, describing the “apparent annihilation of the neck.” We’d have to check, but we’re reasonably sure that this sentence doesn’t appear anywhere in A Christmas Carol.

Speaking of which, his addiction to death was such that he even went to the morgue on Christmas day. Think about it, that’s how Charles Dickens spent his holidays: gawking at rotting corpses.

Fred Barnard“To-day? Why, it’s Christmas day.” “Excellent! A new batch of suicides!”

A Christmas Carol worked because it put a human face on the holiday and reminded people about the importance of enjoying life and loving one another. And that message was given to us by a man who abandoned his own family to go bone a teenager and was more interested in spending Christmas with the dead than the living. Life is complicated, kids.

The information in this article first appeared in 5 Beloved Celebrities Everyone Forgets Did Terrible Things, 6 Famous Authors Who Were Nothing Like You Expect, and 5 Random Coincidences That Invented Modern Pop Culture!

We’d like to stand by all our previous statements that Scrooge McDuck is the best Scrooge.

If you loved this article and want more content like this, support our site with a visit to our Contribution Page. Please and thank you.

Read more: http://www.cracked.com/article_25379_the-guy-who-wrote-a-christmas-carol-was-total-monster.html

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Inside the Cleveland Indians clubhouse during their historic 22 game win streak

The Indians do all these things and more, but what they do not do, except under the duress of direct questioning, is talk about the streak, at least while it’s happening.

“The mindset really isn’t on the winning streak,” Greg Allen says.

“We’re not wrapped up in it,” Kluber says.

“We’re not talking about it as much as you guys are,” Cody Allen says.

Everyone else certainly talks about it. Some analysts call it the most dominant stretch of baseball ever played. Led by Edwin Encarnacion and Carlos Santana, Cleveland hits more home runs than its opponents score runs. Kluber and Carlos Carrasco lead the pitching staff to an ERA under 2.00. Their run differential across the 22 wins is greater than their run differential for all of last season — and that team won the pennant.

They sweep the Orioles and the Tigers.

They steadfastly say they aren’t that concerned with the record.

“We haven’t talked about it at all,” Kluber says.

“We’re playing good baseball,” outfielder Jay Bruce says.

Ballplayers are always concerned about anything that might upset the delicate equilibrium they have constructed one routine day after another. Only the rare team can be like the 2017 Indians; nearly every other team would let the streak consume them, including last year’s Indians. One of the players quotes a former Cleveland coach, Scott Radinsky, who pitched in the big leagues and fronted an underground but important punk band, a kind of free spirit who allows a clubhouse to function, to balance the prima donnas and the insane.

He always said he wanted to play with the kind of men he could lose with.

The same idea applies to winning.

“Success will mess with you,” Bauer says. “Sometimes you get, ‘I can skip this because I’m good.’ It takes a lot of mental discipline to stick with it regardless of outcome.”

The Indians say the streak brings lightness and air to the room. But they refuse to chase it, or revel in it, or pretend that it has its own meaning or value, other than getting them back to the postseason, where they came up one run short a year ago.

A streak brings attention and pressure, which continue to exist after the spark that creates it is extinguished. So they’ve spent six months in present tense, taking cues from their manager, who conducts 22 postgame news conferences while sidestepping and tap-dancing and refusing to say the streak carries any significance. “That’s why Tito is so good at what he does,” Allen says after a win, as Pitt and Penn State play on a television near his locker. “Regardless of if we won 10 in a row or lost eight in a row, he’s the same guy.”

As the son of a major leaguer, Terry Francona (far right) grew up in stadiums and feels most at ease among players. Rick Osentoski/USA TODAY Sports

Down the hall, Francona sits in his office behind a huge framed picture of himself as a child, in the Indians dugout with his dad. He is, perhaps more than anyone else in the game, a creation of this weird, subterranean clubhouse world. “I’m probably more comfortable here than I am anywhere,” he says, gesturing around at the concrete walls. “I think I have an advantage because I grew up here.”

Some of his earliest memories are from clubhouses.

His father, the original Tito Francona, played for nine teams, including six seasons with Cleveland. Young Terry once walked across a field before a game to shake Ted Williams’ hand. “Mr. Williams,” he said, “I’m Mr. Francona’s son, and he wanted me to come over and say hello.”

Williams grinned at the boy.

“Well, you are a great-looking kid!” he replied. “Now I want to know one thing, young man. Can you hit?”

Francona saw how his father’s friends treated each other and the game, and every lesson he got about how a man behaved was taught by ballplayers. His humor, his ethics, his personal code — all shaped inside a stadium. As an 11-year-old, Francona got to go with his dad on a three-city road trip, through Minnesota, Chicago and Kansas City, riding the planes and buses, hearing the dirty jokes and lining his pockets with free clubhouse candy. His mom sent him off with combed hair and a sport coat and got back a road-busted mess of a kid, who loved every minute.

“It was probably the 10 funnest days of my life,” Francona says during the streak.

“Success will mess with you. Sometimes you get, ‘I can skip this because I’m good.’ It takes a lot of mental discipline to stick with it regardless of outcome.”

– Trevor Bauer

So he’s been happy these past weeks, not because he’s managing a team into the history books but because he’s been at a baseball stadium. Sitting in his office, which was exactly 68 degrees, he brings up something his old boss Theo Epstein once said about him. “He loves the game,” Epstein told Boston Globe baseball writer Dan Shaughnessy. “He physically loves the clubhouse. Emotionally, I think he loves to let go of the outside world. Some people compartmentalize the job. Tito compartmentalizes the real world and throws himself into the clubhouse. He loves every aspect of the clubhouse.”

Francona smiles at the insight.

“I remember when I read that,” Francona says. “I was like, damn. I obviously know Theo was smart, but if I was going to be candid, that’s pretty damned close. To me, this is probably my real world. I admit that.”

The clubhouse cost him a marriage and his health, and he can’t count the nights he’s spent on a couch in a stadium, curled up beneath a blanket, alone. In his office in Cleveland, there’s a red and blue Indians-colored afghan that clearly looks as if it’s for more than decoration. Most days, he gets to his office early, not because he’s a hard worker, he says, but because he feels at home. Watching a stadium wake up makes him happy. Sitting in an empty cathedral like Fenway or Wrigley calms him; the present and past combine, the things he sees and the things he remembers washing over him together. He liked the way the boards creaked at the old Yankee Stadium because Babe Ruth probably heard that same noise. Even now, he enjoys hotel lobbies, because he’d hang out there when visiting his dad on the road, giving his old man space to sleep in and get ready for the game.

He will, when asked, cop to at least one superstition.

There’s a friend, whom he has nicknamed Gray Cloud, who’s always brought bad luck.

“I will not talk to him,” Francona says. “He is text only. He’s cost me one job, he’s not getting in the way again.”

Simplicity is the primary goal when he’s constructing his existence. In Boston, he even spent most seasons living in a hotel. For Francona, every day is the same, down to the number of water bottles he lines up in the dugout, and the hourlong swim he takes and the cribbage game he organizes. “I have a car here that I use about three times a year,” he says. “I got a little moped. I take it everywhere downtown. I know all the police. It’s Cleveland. After games, I’ll go down the one-way and they’re like, ‘Hey, good game.'”

He points out his office door.

“It’s parked right here in the hallway.”

He played 10 seasons in the big leagues and jokes to his players about what a lousy career he had. But he played through severe injury and pain, a grinder who understands the hopes all players bring with them into the clubhouse. He understands doubt and fear and ego and swagger, and what internal problem each of those things is an attempt to solve. During the streak, as more reporters arrive every day in the small interview room to talk about the streak, he’s more interested in finding out why the Browns released Pro Bowler Joe Haden, refusing to engage in record-chasing narratives, talking about how a season is fluid and how only today exists. He smiles and sighs when people keep asking questions, as if they think he’s spinning them and not living by the codes he internalized as a boy.

Winning brings pressure, but Corey Kluber was at his robotic best during the streak. Michael F. McElroy for ESPN

The streak will mean nothing come October. A year ago, the Indians took 14 in a row, rolling through opponents, and they still came up a game short in the World Series. That Game 7 loss influenced many things about this season, including the 22 games the team just won. Kipnis, the clubhouse monk in charge of Jobu, took the World Series loss harder than most.

“A lot of things got smashed,” he says.

He pauses a beat.

“I was one of them.”

In the ninth inning of Game 7, he launched a ball down the right-field line that just went foul. Standing in front of his locker, he says he’s watched that replay a lot. “Fraction of an inch,” he says, then demonstrating with his hand the slight bat angle that would have changed their lives. His hand doesn’t seem to move at all. It’s a tiny difference. “The following month you’re at home in your boxers eating pizza,” he says, “and you’re watching Rizzo and Bryant on late-night television and on SNL and you’re like, the fork in the road.”

When baseball people look at the Indians, other than wondering what kind of analytics the team uses to help its pitchers scout opponents, that is what they talk about. How did the team not let last year’s close call derail this season before it even began?

That’s Francona.

At the beginning of the season, the team did suffer from a hangover. Kluber says the starters were slow and sluggish. Kipnis says the games didn’t seem to matter as much. Francona called a rare meeting early in the summer, feeling his team caught in the back draft of last season, not living day to day, breaking the code. The players say things turned around after that, and the winning streak is the clearest and most outward example. There are others.

Last year’s streak took on meaning and affected the clubhouse dynamic in small but real ways. If the music wasn’t on in the clubhouse, someone would say something. Winning changed the mood in the room, and by the time it ended in Toronto, that’s all they could think about.

“That’s been the most impressive thing about this streak,” Bauer says. “You come to the field and it doesn’t feel like we have a winning streak going. We had a streak last year, and the intensity ramped up and then it got to the point where it just caught up to us. This year it feels completely different.”

Bauer’s been watching Francona closely and thinks Tito’s life growing up in clubhouses, and the decades of experience in them as an adult, has built up this almost sixth sense about the subtle interpersonal dynamics some managers don’t even know exist.

“He’s in tune with how this environment works,” Bauer says. “He gets here, and something might seem off. Before anyone is even at the field, he’s aware that something is off. Or something is on. Or something is different. He doesn’t realize he’s picking it up. It’s just his sense for it. It’s flow state. It occurs to him, and he doesn’t even realize it.”

No team has won as many games in a row as the 2017 Cleveland Indians, which is not how they want this season remembered. Last October left them longing to feel that joy and stress again, and they have almost made it through a long 183 days.

The streak ending is almost a relief because now the real business can begin.

The postseason is less than a month away.

“You’re like …” Kipnis says, and then he inhales deeply, like someone stepping out into the fresh air for the first time, “… we’re back. You can see how we’re playing. The team’s been waiting for it. You see us getting close to it, and we’re almost back there again.”

Wright Thompson A senior writer for ESPN.com and ESPN The Magazine, Wright Thompson is a native of Clarksdale, Mississippi; he currently lives in Oxford, Mississippi. Previously, he worked at The Kansas City Star and the New Orleans Times-Picayune. In 2001, he graduated from the University of Missouri School of Journalism.

The post Inside the Cleveland Indians clubhouse during their historic 22 game win streak appeared first on Daily Star Sports.

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Inside the Cleveland Indians clubhouse during their historic 22 game win streak

The Indians do all these things and more, but what they do not do, except under the duress of direct questioning, is talk about the streak, at least while it’s happening.

“The mindset really isn’t on the winning streak,” Greg Allen says.

“We’re not wrapped up in it,” Kluber says.

“We’re not talking about it as much as you guys are,” Cody Allen says.

Everyone else certainly talks about it. Some analysts call it the most dominant stretch of baseball ever played. Led by Edwin Encarnacion and Carlos Santana, Cleveland hits more home runs than its opponents score runs. Kluber and Carlos Carrasco lead the pitching staff to an ERA under 2.00. Their run differential across the 22 wins is greater than their run differential for all of last season — and that team won the pennant.

They sweep the Orioles and the Tigers.

They steadfastly say they aren’t that concerned with the record.

“We haven’t talked about it at all,” Kluber says.

“We’re playing good baseball,” outfielder Jay Bruce says.

Ballplayers are always concerned about anything that might upset the delicate equilibrium they have constructed one routine day after another. Only the rare team can be like the 2017 Indians; nearly every other team would let the streak consume them, including last year’s Indians. One of the players quotes a former Cleveland coach, Scott Radinsky, who pitched in the big leagues and fronted an underground but important punk band, a kind of free spirit who allows a clubhouse to function, to balance the prima donnas and the insane.

He always said he wanted to play with the kind of men he could lose with.

The same idea applies to winning.

“Success will mess with you,” Bauer says. “Sometimes you get, ‘I can skip this because I’m good.’ It takes a lot of mental discipline to stick with it regardless of outcome.”

The Indians say the streak brings lightness and air to the room. But they refuse to chase it, or revel in it, or pretend that it has its own meaning or value, other than getting them back to the postseason, where they came up one run short a year ago.

A streak brings attention and pressure, which continue to exist after the spark that creates it is extinguished. So they’ve spent six months in present tense, taking cues from their manager, who conducts 22 postgame news conferences while sidestepping and tap-dancing and refusing to say the streak carries any significance. “That’s why Tito is so good at what he does,” Allen says after a win, as Pitt and Penn State play on a television near his locker. “Regardless of if we won 10 in a row or lost eight in a row, he’s the same guy.”

As the son of a major leaguer, Terry Francona (far right) grew up in stadiums and feels most at ease among players. Rick Osentoski/USA TODAY Sports

Down the hall, Francona sits in his office behind a huge framed picture of himself as a child, in the Indians dugout with his dad. He is, perhaps more than anyone else in the game, a creation of this weird, subterranean clubhouse world. “I’m probably more comfortable here than I am anywhere,” he says, gesturing around at the concrete walls. “I think I have an advantage because I grew up here.”

Some of his earliest memories are from clubhouses.

His father, the original Tito Francona, played for nine teams, including six seasons with Cleveland. Young Terry once walked across a field before a game to shake Ted Williams’ hand. “Mr. Williams,” he said, “I’m Mr. Francona’s son, and he wanted me to come over and say hello.”

Williams grinned at the boy.

“Well, you are a great-looking kid!” he replied. “Now I want to know one thing, young man. Can you hit?”

Francona saw how his father’s friends treated each other and the game, and every lesson he got about how a man behaved was taught by ballplayers. His humor, his ethics, his personal code — all shaped inside a stadium. As an 11-year-old, Francona got to go with his dad on a three-city road trip, through Minnesota, Chicago and Kansas City, riding the planes and buses, hearing the dirty jokes and lining his pockets with free clubhouse candy. His mom sent him off with combed hair and a sport coat and got back a road-busted mess of a kid, who loved every minute.

“It was probably the 10 funnest days of my life,” Francona says during the streak.

“Success will mess with you. Sometimes you get, ‘I can skip this because I’m good.’ It takes a lot of mental discipline to stick with it regardless of outcome.”

– Trevor Bauer

So he’s been happy these past weeks, not because he’s managing a team into the history books but because he’s been at a baseball stadium. Sitting in his office, which was exactly 68 degrees, he brings up something his old boss Theo Epstein once said about him. “He loves the game,” Epstein told Boston Globe baseball writer Dan Shaughnessy. “He physically loves the clubhouse. Emotionally, I think he loves to let go of the outside world. Some people compartmentalize the job. Tito compartmentalizes the real world and throws himself into the clubhouse. He loves every aspect of the clubhouse.”

Francona smiles at the insight.

“I remember when I read that,” Francona says. “I was like, damn. I obviously know Theo was smart, but if I was going to be candid, that’s pretty damned close. To me, this is probably my real world. I admit that.”

The clubhouse cost him a marriage and his health, and he can’t count the nights he’s spent on a couch in a stadium, curled up beneath a blanket, alone. In his office in Cleveland, there’s a red and blue Indians-colored afghan that clearly looks as if it’s for more than decoration. Most days, he gets to his office early, not because he’s a hard worker, he says, but because he feels at home. Watching a stadium wake up makes him happy. Sitting in an empty cathedral like Fenway or Wrigley calms him; the present and past combine, the things he sees and the things he remembers washing over him together. He liked the way the boards creaked at the old Yankee Stadium because Babe Ruth probably heard that same noise. Even now, he enjoys hotel lobbies, because he’d hang out there when visiting his dad on the road, giving his old man space to sleep in and get ready for the game.

He will, when asked, cop to at least one superstition.

There’s a friend, whom he has nicknamed Gray Cloud, who’s always brought bad luck.

“I will not talk to him,” Francona says. “He is text only. He’s cost me one job, he’s not getting in the way again.”

Simplicity is the primary goal when he’s constructing his existence. In Boston, he even spent most seasons living in a hotel. For Francona, every day is the same, down to the number of water bottles he lines up in the dugout, and the hourlong swim he takes and the cribbage game he organizes. “I have a car here that I use about three times a year,” he says. “I got a little moped. I take it everywhere downtown. I know all the police. It’s Cleveland. After games, I’ll go down the one-way and they’re like, ‘Hey, good game.‘”

He points out his office door.

“It’s parked right here in the hallway.”

He played 10 seasons in the big leagues and jokes to his players about what a lousy career he had. But he played through severe injury and pain, a grinder who understands the hopes all players bring with them into the clubhouse. He understands doubt and fear and ego and swagger, and what internal problem each of those things is an attempt to solve. During the streak, as more reporters arrive every day in the small interview room to talk about the streak, he’s more interested in finding out why the Browns released Pro Bowler Joe Haden, refusing to engage in record-chasing narratives, talking about how a season is fluid and how only today exists. He smiles and sighs when people keep asking questions, as if they think he’s spinning them and not living by the codes he internalized as a boy.

Winning brings pressure, but Corey Kluber was at his robotic best during the streak. Michael F. McElroy for ESPN

The streak will mean nothing come October. A year ago, the Indians took 14 in a row, rolling through opponents, and they still came up a game short in the World Series. That Game 7 loss influenced many things about this season, including the 22 games the team just won. Kipnis, the clubhouse monk in charge of Jobu, took the World Series loss harder than most.

“A lot of things got smashed,” he says.

He pauses a beat.

“I was one of them.”

In the ninth inning of Game 7, he launched a ball down the right-field line that just went foul. Standing in front of his locker, he says he’s watched that replay a lot. “Fraction of an inch,” he says, then demonstrating with his hand the slight bat angle that would have changed their lives. His hand doesn’t seem to move at all. It’s a tiny difference. “The following month you’re at home in your boxers eating pizza,” he says, “and you’re watching Rizzo and Bryant on late-night television and on SNL and you’re like, the fork in the road.”

When baseball people look at the Indians, other than wondering what kind of analytics the team uses to help its pitchers scout opponents, that is what they talk about. How did the team not let last year’s close call derail this season before it even began?

That’s Francona.

At the beginning of the season, the team did suffer from a hangover. Kluber says the starters were slow and sluggish. Kipnis says the games didn’t seem to matter as much. Francona called a rare meeting early in the summer, feeling his team caught in the back draft of last season, not living day to day, breaking the code. The players say things turned around after that, and the winning streak is the clearest and most outward example. There are others.

Last year’s streak took on meaning and affected the clubhouse dynamic in small but real ways. If the music wasn’t on in the clubhouse, someone would say something. Winning changed the mood in the room, and by the time it ended in Toronto, that’s all they could think about.

“That’s been the most impressive thing about this streak,” Bauer says. “You come to the field and it doesn’t feel like we have a winning streak going. We had a streak last year, and the intensity ramped up and then it got to the point where it just caught up to us. This year it feels completely different.”

Bauer’s been watching Francona closely and thinks Tito’s life growing up in clubhouses, and the decades of experience in them as an adult, has built up this almost sixth sense about the subtle interpersonal dynamics some managers don’t even know exist.

“He’s in tune with how this environment works,” Bauer says. “He gets here, and something might seem off. Before anyone is even at the field, he’s aware that something is off. Or something is on. Or something is different. He doesn’t realize he’s picking it up. It’s just his sense for it. It’s flow state. It occurs to him, and he doesn’t even realize it.”

No team has won as many games in a row as the 2017 Cleveland Indians, which is not how they want this season remembered. Last October left them longing to feel that joy and stress again, and they have almost made it through a long 183 days.

The streak ending is almost a relief because now the real business can begin.

The postseason is less than a month away.

“You’re like …” Kipnis says, and then he inhales deeply, like someone stepping out into the fresh air for the first time, “… we’re back. You can see how we’re playing. The team’s been waiting for it. You see us getting close to it, and we’re almost back there again.”

Wright Thompson A senior writer for ESPN.com and ESPN The Magazine, Wright Thompson is a native of Clarksdale, Mississippi; he currently lives in Oxford, Mississippi. Previously, he worked at The Kansas City Star and the New Orleans Times-Picayune. In 2001, he graduated from the University of Missouri School of Journalism.

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from https://dailystarsports.com/2017/09/19/inside-the-cleveland-indians-clubhouse-during-their-historic-22-game-win-streak/ from https://dailystarsports.tumblr.com/post/165516620246

[loveflexibleteacher-blog]

The Stranger Who Changed My Life: A Short Love Story

In this true short love story, a party girl meets her match as she passes through Montana with a traveling show.

In 1983, I was traveling with a tiny theater company doing vaudeville-type shows in 
community centers and bars—anywhere we could earn $25 each plus enough gas money to get to the next small town in our ramshackle yellow bus.

As we passed through Bozeman, Montana, in early February, a heavy snow slowed us down. The radio crackled warnings about black ice and poor visibility, so we opted to impose on friends who were doing a production of Fiddler on the Roof at Montana State University. See a show, hit a few bars, sleep on a sofa: This is as close to prudence as it gets when you’re an itinerant 20-something troubadour.

After the show, well-wishers and stagehands milled behind the curtain. I hugged my coat around me, humming that “If I Were a Rich Man” riff from the show, aching for sunrise and sunset, missing my sisters. What a wonderful show that was—and is.

A heavy metal door swung open, allowing in a blast of frigid air, and clanged shut behind two men who stomped snow from their boots. One was big and bearlike in an Irish wool sweater and gaiters; the other was as tall and skinny as a chimney sweep in a peacoat.

“… but I’m just saying, it would be nice to see some serious theater,” one of them said. “Chekhov, Ibsen, anything but this musical comedy shtick.”

“Excuse me?” I huffed, hackles raised. “Anyone who doesn’t think comedy is an art form certainly hasn’t read much Shakespeare, have they?”

I informed them that I was a “professional shticktress” and went on to deliver a tart, pedantic lecture on the French neoclassics, the cultural impact of Punch and Judy as an I Love Lucy prototype, and the importance of Fiddler on the Roof as both artistic and oral history. The shrill diatribe left a puff of frozen breath in the air. I felt my snootiness showing like a stray bra strap as the sweep in the peacoat rolled his eyes and walked away.

The bear stood there for a moment, an easy smile in his brown eyes. Then he put his arms around me and whispered in my ear, “I love you.”

Edwin Fothingham/Matthew MahonI took in a deep, startled breath—winter, Irish wool, coffee, and fresh-baked bread—and then pushed away with a jittery half-joke. Something like, “Watch it. I have pepper spray.” “OK,” he said with a broad baritone laugh. “Come for a walk, then. It’ll be nice.” I shook my head. Alarm and skepticism warred with spreading, unsteady warmth behind my collarbone. “Walking around in the freezing dark with a total stranger is not nice,” I said. I tipped a glance to the well-worn gaiters. “Planning to do some cross-country skiing?”

“Riding my bike,” he said, and then added without apology, “I’m between vehicles.”

He held the heavy door open expectantly. I moved the pepper spray from my purse to my coat pocket and followed my heart out under the clear, cold stars.

“What are you reading?” I asked, because that question always opens doors of its own. I was in the habit of asking the nuns at the bus stop, a barber who paid me to scrub his floor once a week, elderly ladies and children at the park. To this day, I ask people who sit beside me on airplanes, baristas at Starbucks, exchange students standing in line with me. Over the years, “What are you reading?” has introduced me to many of my favorite books and favorite people.

The bear had a good answer: “Chesapeake. Have you read it?”

“No, but I love James Michener,” I said. “When I was 12, I fell in love with Hawaii and vowed that if I ever had a daughter, I’d name her Jerusha after the heroine.”

“Big book for a 12-year-old.”

“We didn’t have a TV. And I was a dork.”

He laughed that broad baritone laugh again. “Literature: last refuge of the tragically uncool.”

“Same could be said of bicycling in your ski gaiters.”

The conversation ranged organically from books and theater to politics and our personal histories.

Having embraced the life of an artsy party girl, I was the black sheep of my conservative Midwestern family, thoroughly enjoying my freedom and a steady diet of wild oats. He’d spent a dysfunctional childhood on the East Coast. A troubled path of drug and alcohol abuse had brought him to one of those legendary moments of clarity at which he made a hard right turn to an almost monkish existence in a tiny mountain cabin. He’d built an ascetic life that was solitary but substantive, baking bread at a local restaurant, splitting wood for his heating stove, staying out of trouble.

“That probably sounds pretty dull to you,” he said.

“Agonizingly dull, but don’t worry,” I said, and then patted his arm. “Maybe someday you’ll remember how to have fun.”

He shrugged. “Maybe someday you’ll forget.”

We talked about the things people tend to avoid when they’re trying to make a good impression: hopes subverted by mistakes, relationships sabotaged by shortcomings. My bus was leaving in the morning, and we would never see each other again, so there was no need to posture.

Fingers and chins numb with cold, we found refuge in a Four B’s Restaurant and sat across from each other in a red vinyl booth. We had enough money between us for a short stack of buckwheat pancakes. A few morning papers were delivered to the front door, and we worked our way through the crossword puzzle, coffee cups between our hands.

The sun came up, and we emerged from Four B’s to discover a warm chinook blowing in. Already the eaves were weeping, icicles thinning on trees and telephone wires. This is what Montana does in midwinter: clears off and gets bitter cold, and then suddenly it’s as warm and exhilarating as Easter morning. Don’t believe it for a minute, you tell yourself as the streets turn into trout streams, but the sheer pleasure of the feeling makes a fool of you. You forget your scarf and mittens on a hook behind the door. You know it’s still winter, but that’s just what you know; the chinook is what you believe in

The bear held my hand inside his coat pocket as we walked in silence back to the parking lot to meet my company’s bus. Before he kissed me, he asked me if I was ready. Ready for what I have no idea, but ready is how I felt. I was stricken with readiness. Humbled by it.

“I hope you have a wonderful life,” I told him.

“You too,” he replied before nodding stiffly and walking away.

The bus lumbered through the slush and labored over the mountains to a fading Highline town where we were booked to play a quaintly shabby old opera house. The guy at the box office immediately pegged me as a party girl who’d been up all night and invited me to go to the bar next door for a hair of the dog before the show, but I could not for the life of me remember why that used to sound like fun.

Later that evening, as I did my shtick out on the foot-lit stage, I heard the bear’s distinctive baritone laughter from somewhere in the audience. After the show, he was waiting for me by the door. I didn’t bother asking him how he’d gotten there. He didn’t bother asking me where I wanted to go.

I can’t endorse the idea of love at first sight, but maybe there are moments when God or fate or some cosmic sense of humor rolls its eyes at two stammering human hearts and says, “Oh, for crying out loud.” I married the bear a few months later in a meadow above his tiny cabin in the Bridger Mountains. We weren’t exempted from any of the hard work a long marriage demands, but for better or worse, in sickness and in health, that moment of unguarded, chinook-blown folly has somehow lasted 30 years.

We laugh. We read. I do dishes; he bakes bread. Every morning, we work through the daily crossword puzzle. Our daughter, Jerusha, and son, Malachi Blackstone (named after his great-grandfather and an island in Chesapeake Bay) tell us we are agonizingly dull.

We listen to their 20-something diatribes and smile.

Joni Rodgers is the author of the bestselling memoir Bald in the Land of Big Hair.