#we’re really scraping the bottom of the barrel here
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varreblogger · 2 months ago
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*sees him applying deodorant* please stop baby… for me? 🥺
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The Grumps’ Danganronpa V3 playthrough is shaping up to be their best Dangan playthrough solely because Arin gave Kokichi the voice of Sonic the Hedgehog.
Also, now that I’m rewatching the story, I’m actually surprised by the level of thought that was put into this. Now I’m not saying the story is good, none of the writing in this series is great, but I do appreciate the commitment to the game’s theme of franchise stagnation.
Everyone knows by now that the twist is that the main villain is the Danganronpa franchise itself, that the franchise got so big that the world has become obsessed with it. We’re now 53 seasons into this Danganronpa show, hence why the game is called V3 (V = 5). So I like how the game feels like the writers had run out of ideas and are just putting whatever crap they can come up with out there, hoping the fanbase likes it. I mean…a robot high schooler? 5 Monokumas instead of 1? Even the ultimate talents feel like they’re scraping at the bottom of the barrel, such as Maki being a child caregiver, Kokichi being a supreme leader, Himiko being a mage, Kiyo being an anthropologist, and Gonta being an entomologist.
It’s giving, “we used up all the good ideas already, so let’s just use whatever we can find in the dictionary as a talent.”
There’s also some other nice touches that help give off the feeling that this is a franchise that is stagnating. Kaede makes a weird lewd comment out of nowhere and Shuichi points out how weird the comment was by saying she sounded like a perverted old man. Knowing how perverted the dialogue is in the Danganronpa franchise, the scene gives off the feeling that the writers are just recycling the scripts. The Monokubs literally talk about flubbing their lines. But the biggest point that I didn’t catch the first time around is that the characters don’t have any idea why they’re even there. At least in the first two games, the reason was that they’re going to school. Here, they don’t even have a reason why they’re gathered together. It’s like the writers couldn’t come up with a reason and said, “Ah, fuck it, who cares, let’s just get to the killing game.”
It really gives off the feeling that you’re watching a franchise that’s several seasons in and the writers don’t know what they’re doing anymore. Which honestly works since that’s LITERALLY the twist.
So…could it be that V3 might actually be the best written Dangan game? Hmm…
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scumgristle · 27 days ago
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from 1-800-HOT-DUCK
Cursed media corrupts the feed. For a second, something leaks out like a raw wound in the 200mph section of rotten dot com. Like Christine Chubbuck, the TV news anchor who went live on-air in 1974. After going through the motions of the daily news, she quickly said the words: “In keeping with Channel 40’s policy of bringing you the latest in blood and guts…” And then she pulled a gun from under her desk and shot herself in the head. Coworkers thought it was special effects at first and laughed it off until the blood pumped too hard onto the floor of the station. Her final critique of the spectacle was the broadcast itself. It left the coppery aftertaste of agency in the mouth of a system that commodified violence. The tape is supposedly lost, confiscated by police because it’s, well, nasty. But you don’t need to see it to feel it. You already know what it means.
When media fails to perform its assigned role, it occupies the cursed airways. It doesn’t absorb you into the machine. Instead, it spits you out like afterbirth. Grieving the loss of reality becomes visible; it refuses to be contained within the frame, rupturing into an experience close to the bone. Media that says what it’s not supposed to say is the nightmare of civilized society. It gives us back what the spectacle took, which is proximity to the real. It is the deep ache for a state of existence that is gone forever, overwritten by the algorithm and branding. That grief is wildly alive and sentient, tucked in the corners of the screen. It wants nothing more than for you to bear witness while you search for love, community, the natural world, anything real. Anything. We’re often unaware of what is real, save for fleeting moments of horror and recognition that we’ve strayed too far away from the tracks.
I run an archive of work sourced from the internet, often scraped from the bottom of some really disturbing digital barrels. Some media feels wrong in the room, like it brought something with it. I’ve watched files so unclean that I’ve had to open the windows and rosemary my whole house after.
Magnetic media remembers. I don’t know if ghosts live in machines, but I know the shape of grief does. Like a white sheet floating in the dark. Every playback is a small haunting, placed onto the tongue of the passive consumer like a sacrament by something that wants us to remember. A Sophia of syndication.
When I watch old files, passed through too many rounds of digital decay, especially the ones worn down by love, grief, and desperation, I’m not moved by nostalgia. I long for contact and memory in a time when disconnect and erasure drives sales. Cursed media, haunted commercials, suicide-ridden kids’ shows brush against something raw and necessary. They wear their damage openly. Under harsh lights, in forgotten aspect ratios, pixels lost like a stop sign in a suburban town, they show you your own hurt, and the generational legacy of trauma and longing that we have to reckon with or it will return. Like a recurring nightmare.
We are lonelier than ever. Caught in an endless doom scroll, drowned in curated intimacy. Loneliness has become the product, the platform, and the spectacle. Cursed media looks you dead in the eyes, watching you back.
The things we forget are still here, and they want you to know: We were alone. Just like you. Witnessing. - Chrissy Mare Jones
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fcmh · 4 months ago
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would they slut drop
we’re really scraping the bottom of the barrel here gang. #normalhiatus
levi: yes. in the right context, though - it’s have to be at a party/club or whatever and done with the intent to vibe and/or get someone in his clutches.
alder: yes 100%. you would ask alder “hey can you slut drop” as in “do you know how” and they would bust it down in the middle of the dorm hallway, pop back up and go “haha, why did you ask?”
ryan: ryan would slut drop to punctuate sentences
kelsie: at the very least, certainly for the mission. she strikes me as someone who has slut dropped in her wild lesbian life
shay: i think shay 3 or 4 drinks in could slut drop. people have advocated for “he would for the sake of the mission” but here’s my fanfiction. shay goes “no. no. no. no fucking way” repeatedly until someone else goes “but for the sake of the mission” and he goes “:| hrggkkrgsgh okay FINE” and then does it and levi sneers at him and goes “you have issues.” and shay thinks really hard about strangling him with his bare hands
don: too repressed. i think if don presented himself as a sexual object at all in public the shame would burn him into ash from the inside out. however i do feel like he also has Issues that if it were for the sake of the mission he would do it and then lie awake with shame that night
claire: too repressed rn. give her a couple years and 100ccs of chappel roan and she’ll be dropping it with the best of them tho
anna: i think she would give it her best shot but i don’t think she’s built for it
shamsiel: her body is not physically capable of slut dropping. she is doing squats.
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restforthe-burdenedsoul · 2 years ago
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Company B chose another candidate. I wish jobs would tell you why. Company A has been radio silent. I didn’t reach out this week because I was really confident that I was moving forward to the second interview (and third discussion). I made it to #3 with company A but I’m feeling not so confident.
I Interviewed for another agency yesterday and they want to move forward into the second interview and will give me a call when they have their panel confirmed. This is the lowest paying job I’ve found.
At this point it feels like I’m just interviewing to Interview. I am definitely feeling discouraged. I was really excited to be Interviewing for jobs that paid well. But here I am again scraping the bottom of the barrel.
I’m trying to stay positive. But we’re barely making bills and M has no choice but to continue to work overtime.
I do feel a little regretful for leaving the hospital…I genuinely thought I’d have a job by this point. At the same time, I can’t imagine how I’d be handling things if I was still there. A whole month has passed. I was barely making it through each day.
I am worried.
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sevenworldtales · 2 months ago
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The Badass: Adaptation
“We have a perimeter on the facility” S-TAC squad leader Jack Bunter said into his comms mic. “We’re gonna get this son of a bitch.”
---
Dr. Herbert Sadoff was finishing up a routine day in the lab, when he heard a window break, and then a faint hissing sound. He saw a thick smoke filling the far corner of the large facility.
He heard another window break then another. He looked around in terror.
Had his assistant gone home for the day? He couldn’t remember. “Martin, are you still here?” He shouted.
The hissing grew louder, until a crescendo of broken glass and shouting broke out over it.
As Dr. Sadoff began to cower in fear, six heavily armed and armored commandos swooped into the lab on belay gear, shouting things like “go go go!”, “watch my six!”, And “cover the door, clear the area”.
Dr. Sadoff was in the fetal position near a lab table when he felt a strong hand on his shoulder.
Agent Jack Bunter grabbed the scientist by the shoulder and pulled him up to eye level as the smoke dissipated.
Off in the hallway, Dr. Sadoff heard one off the soldiers yell "Clear!"
Agent Bunter was clutching the scrawny man of science by the collar.
“Where are the rest of those kids, Herr Doctor?” Agent Bunter said.
“What kids? I don’t know any-“ Dr. Sadoff started.
“Don’t give me that you filthy kraut.” Said Agent Bunter as he punched the scientist in the chest.
Dr. Sadoff doubled over in pain. “I swear… I have no idea… what you’re talking about. I am not even German.”
“Yeah sure whatever.” Said Agent Bunter “Our people will get it out of you. I’m not sure how, not my department.” He pulled the doctor back up to standing to cuff him.
“Twenty years they’ve been looking for you, Hausman” Bunter said.
*Hausman?* Sadoff hadn’t heard that name in half a lifetime. *Could he mean the kids from the A.D.A.P.T. program?*
“I am not Hausman. I was his assistant. Has there been a development in his case?” Sadoff asked.
“A development?” Bunter questioned. “Yeah you could say so. One of your test subjects died in a car crash yesterday. Your sick idea actually worked.”
“It did?” Sadoff’s heart soared. He held a lot of guilt from the old days, but his biggest regret was professional, not ethical. He was sure the gene modifications would take hold eventually, and they did.
“It sure did you sick fuck.” Bunter replied, dragging Sadoff out of the lab. “You have got to be one of the most evil, dangerous scientists I have ever met.”
“Really?” Again, Sadoff felt a strange mix of guilt and flattery. It had been years since he had been an ‘evil’ scientist, but hearing the large, scruffy, imposing military assault commando call him “dangerous” gave him a momentary sense of having led a meaningful life of research.
“Yeah, what is it?” Bunter said, looking off into the distance. For a moment, Sadoff was confused. He soon realized that Bunter was now talking into his comms earpiece.
“Really?” Bunter said. “Yeah! He’s probably the most dangerous scientist on the planet. We’ll take the chopper there now.”
There was a pause, and Bunter began to slow down.
“Who? This guy?” Bunter spoke into the earpiece but gestured to Sadoff, looking away.
“Oh no he’s a nobody. We were scraping the bottom of the barrel here.Yeah. Yeah. He gave a few kids the ‘fainting goat’ gene. Yeah they faint when they hear a sudden and loud noise. Yeah. Oh I know. So stupid Oh yeah definitely. Definitely still evil…. But yeah, really dumb also. Just… yeah. Yeah. So dumb.”
There was a long pause. They had come to a stop, and Bunter had been pacing as Sadoff stood nearby, bound. The scientist began to slowly try to slip away, when Bunter, still on the phone, tripped him, and bound his feet together.
“Yeah, I’m just gonna leave him. He’s not a threat to anyone.” Bunter said. “We’ll be there in 20 minutes.” He tapped his ear, switching channels. “Alright boys, pack up the toys, we’re wheels up in three.”
Another long pause as Bunter leaned his head, listening to the comms mic.
“Really? For twenty bucks? You’re on!” He tapped his ear again, and began walking towards the exit, but stopped at Sadoff, who was prone, and unable to move.
Sadoff felt a warmth on his back and heard the sound of a liquid splashing onto fabric. Bunter’s blunt assessment of him as a “nobody” was more painful than being pissed on. That being said, the urine was more uncomfortable to sit in than the feelings of inadequacy.
The commando zipped up and walked away. Sadoff thought he was alone and began to move, when a leg kicked him in the ribs. “Bye bye goat boy” one of the commandos said as they walked by.
He heard the chopper leave. He began to move, trying to get up to standing, and maybe change clothes.
He realized that not only were his arms and feet bound, but his feet were bound to a lab table.
Two-inch thick steel table legs bolted into the concrete floor.
His assistant Martin would be back in the morning, he knew.
---
“What a great day for the good guys am I right?” Bunter said to his team. They had just apprehended one of the most notorious evil scientists on the planet, Dr Jacob Alcazar, responsible for manufacturing bio weapons to be used against civilian populations, and creating viruses meant to target entire continents at a time.
“Hey what about, uh what’s his name? Sad sack?” One of the other commandos asked Bunter.
“Sadoff?” Bunter asked. “He was small time. This guy may be super evil,” he gestured to the unconscious prisoner, “ but did you see his lab? It was fucking cool. At least he’s not a fucking loser”.
---
In the sixteen hours Sadoff spent on the floor, bound, in pain, itchy, dehydrated, and covered in piss, he couldn’t help but crack a grin.
The experiment had worked. They had created the fainting children. Phase 2 was ready to be deployed.
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koasinag · 2 years ago
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Has Our Society Lost Its Vision of What It Means to Be Human?
New Post has been published on https://koasinag.com/has-our-society-lost-its-vision-of-what-it-means-to-be-human/
Has Our Society Lost Its Vision of What It Means to Be Human?
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Has Our Society Lost Its Vision of What It Means to Be Human?
September 08, 2023
by:
Andrew T. Walker
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Core Institutions
If the principles of the natural law in social conservatism teach us anything, it’s that society has to have some baseline moral consensus for society to have any long-term vision for perpetuating itself. Sadly, right now we are staring down the secular abyss in our society. When we’re looking at these core social conservative institutions that society needs to thrive, we’re seeing tremendous damage being done to them.
When we look at abortion on demand, 60+ million Americans have been killed through abortion. When we’re looking at the redefinition of marriage, the fact that we don’t even have a common consensus on what marriage is anymore or what constitutes the natural family. I think that’s extremely problematic and destabilizing. And then I think when you look at the question of What is a man? or What is a woman? around the transgender issue, this conflict is demonstrating—to go back to use the term from C. S. Lewis’ The Abolition of Man—we really have begun to scrape at the bottom of the barrel, as far as our attempts to abolish ourselves, or to undo ourselves, whether through abortion or by not even being able to identify what a man or a woman is, and then being unable to appropriately channel our understandings of procreation into marriage, and that being the exclusive definition of marriage.
Different Moral Universes
There are a whole lot of other issues we could say here that are indicative of this, but I think it’s very clear that, increasingly, Americans and individuals living in Western society are not just living with different worldviews. I like to say that we’re living in different moral universes. When I use this language of moral universes, it means that I think, increasingly in the West and here in America, we’re occupying entirely different moral universes. These moral universes are irreconcilable. They’re impenetrable. We are unable to reason together on even the most basic essentials necessary for the common good. That is something to grieve and to despair over.
It’s also a call for us, as Christians, to love our neighbor by sharing the truth with our neighbor about how our neighbor has been made. As Christians, we talk a lot about loving our neighbor, and we rightfully should. One of the ways we have to do that is to set the conditions in our society for our neighbor to thrive. Obviously, our neighbor may not believe that our understanding of their best interest is actually in their best interest, but that’s where we have to be able to have that space for continued dialogue and pleading with them—Even if you disagree with us, we really are for you in our belief of seeking your good.
Andrew T. Walker is the editor of Social Conservatism for the Common Good: A Protestant Engagement with Robert P. George.
Andrew T. Walker (PhD, The Southern Baptist Theological Seminary) is associate professor of Christian Ethics at the Southern Baptist Theological Seminary and an associate dean in the School of Theology. He serves as the executive director of the Carl F. H. Henry Institute for Evangelical Engagement and as managing editor of WORLD Opinions. He is a fellow with the Ethics and Public Policy Center and the author or editor of several books on Christian ethics and public theology. He resides with his wife and three daughters in Louisville, Kentucky.
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crowlore · 2 years ago
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we’re really scraping the bottom of the content barrel over here i was rinsing out the coffee pot when my boyfriend pipes up with “gung ho guns but they work retail”
he did not elaborate.
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rax-writes · 4 years ago
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Fandom:  MCU Pairing:  Baron Helmut Zemo x Reader Warnings:  Sexual intercourse with a female-identifying person with a vagina + a bit of sugar daddy Zemo vibes at the end Notes:  Y’all... don’t judge me. I have a power kink, and Marvel did me dirty by randomly deciding that Zemo is fifthly rich royalty. And my girl @henrysmorgan​ did me even dirtier by actively encouraging my attraction to this fucker. So, blame Marvel, and blame her. // This is kind of really fucking long, and I didn’t edit it much, because I wanted to get it posted before episode 4, in case that episode flips the script. So, potentially some editing issues, and slightly rushed writing. Hopefully it’s alright, but please let me know if I screwed up anywhere. // Lots and lots of TFAWS ep. 3 spoilers
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When Bucky texted you to ask that you meet him in some dusty, old, abandoned-looking car garage, you certainly didn’t know what to expect. All you knew was that an old friend needed your help, so you intended to be there.
It had been a few months since you’d last seen him, and even longer since you’d participated in any sort of mission, but you suspected that was what you were walking into. Being exposed to the Mind Stone had granted you the power of telepathy, which meant that SHIELD was quite keen on persuading you to work for them. They trained you in martial arts and hand-to-hand combat, and you went on miscellaneous missions a handful of times. They put in a lot of effort to convince you that it was your moral obligation as an “enhanced individual” to help them with these missions, but you ultimately decided that that simply wasn’t the kind of life you wanted. Instead, after the Blip, you began working a desk job for SHIELD, which is when you crossed paths with Bucky, helping him with paperwork associated with his pardon, and the two of you formed a friendship. But SHIELD kept trying to coerce you to get back into the field, constantly badgering you about it and making it clear that you weren’t wanted if all you were doing was paperwork.
The truth is, you weren’t cut out to be a superhero, and you had no desire to be. It didn’t help that your entire country had been reduced to rubble several years prior, leaving you with a bottomless pit of homelessness in your heart. So, you left SHIELD, and started a life in Berlin, where you were content to live out your days as the owner of a small bakery, residing in the small apartment above your shop.
That is, until Bucky Barnes dragged you into a particularly sticky situation, with a certain Baron Helmut Zemo.
You knew that helping Bucky and Sam would throw a colossal wrench in the life you’d created for yourself in Berlin, but after they explained the situation with the super soldiers, coupled with Bucky’s puppy dog eyes, you found yourself refraining from storming out of the building the second you saw Helmut fucking Zemo.
“We need you to keep an eye on him. You don’t have to tap into his mind 24/7, we just want a heads up if he’s going to screw us over,” Bucky explained.
"Look, we really need him. We’re obviously scraping the bottom of the barrel here, otherwise he'd still be in that cell. And neither of us want to be packing a criminal around like a rich bitch's chihuahua, so we need you here to make sure we're not gonna get bit," Sam explained.
"Fine. But you both owe me," you relented, and they both took sighs of relief. You glanced at Zemo, locking eyes with him for several tense moments. He gave you a polite smile, giving off the impression that he had nothing to hide – which he didn't, as his thoughts showed his intentions were pure at the moment. "We're good for now. He just genuinely wants the opportunity to take down these new super soldiers."
Sam and Bucky nodded, visibly releasing tension from their shoulders as they moved to head out, now reassured that Zemo was truly on their side. Meanwhile, Zemo eyed you with curiosity and awe, murmuring, "Fascinating."
The four of you walked on the landing strip toward a private jet, owned by Zemo.
"So all this time you've been rich?"
"I was a Baron, Sam. My family was royalty before your friends destroyed my country," Zemo explained, before glancing at you with a small smile. "But you knew that already."
"Wait, how did she know that?" Sam asked, then turned to you. "How did you know that?"
"I am Sokovian myself. I was certainly not royalty, but I lived there for my entire life, until it was destroyed," you explained, stopping outside the jet as Zemo greeted the elderly butler, Oeznik, in your native language. It made you smile to yourself; it had been years since you'd heard it spoken. Zemo shot you a grin when he noticed, and when you took a peek into his mind, you saw that he understood exactly how you felt.
As the butler handed Zemo a flute of champagne after you all boarded the jet, the Baron smiled politely as Oeznik stated, “Apologies if that's a little warm. The fridge is out, but I will see if there is some good food in the galley.”
Zemo glanced as you sat across from him, then in Sokovian, Zemo told Oeznik, "Another flute for the lady, please. And if the food does not pass the smell test, give it to the gentlemen."
"It's good to have you back, sir!"
As the man retreated to the cockpit, also in Sokovian, you noted, "You are a mischievous man, even more so than in your infamously criminal ways."
"You will find that there is more to me than meets the eye, angel," he responded coolly, the Sokovian language rolling off his tongue like honey. Before you could respond, admittedly enjoying speaking Sokovian, Sam grew tired of everyone speaking a language he couldn't understand.
"Why don't you tell us about where we're going?"
After a tense exchange between Bucky and Zemo, followed by a discussion about Marvin Gaye, Zemo finally got to the point: Madripoor. You exhaled slowly, resting your forehead in your palm in exasperation.
“You couldn’t have invited me on a mission to Cancun? Or Paris? Why must it be Madripoor?” you asked Bucky, who shot you a tight-lipped, pitying smile, silently apologizing for what he was dragging you into.
“What’s up with Madripoor? You guys talk about it like it’s Skull Island.”
“It’s an island nation in the Indonesian archipelago. It was a pirate sanctuary back in the 1800s,” Bucky explained.
“And upon seeing it, you would see that times there haven’t changed one bit since then,” you added.
“It’s kept its lawless ways. But we cannot exactly walk in as ourselves. James, you will have to become someone you claim is gone,” Zemo said.
You frowned as you caught a glimpse of Bucky’s thoughts as he went silent. Fear. Anxiety. Disdain. Apprehension. You reached across to rest your hand on his shoulder and give it a reassuring squeeze. He shot you a small smile, then looked out the window.
Upon landing in Madripoor, one of Zemo’s contacts met you on the landing strip with a new wardrobe for you, Bucky, and Sam, and Zemo explained that each outfit was per his instruction, carefully chosen to fit the role each of you would be playing in Madripoor. One by one, you took the covered clothes hanger to the bathroom of the jet and changed. Bucky was first, stepping out in some sort of leather number, looking eerily similar to the Winter Soldier you’d seen in photos. Sam was next, donning a three-piece suit of burgundy and gold. He looked sharp, although he was immediately complaining about how ostentatious it was. And finally, you stepped into the room and closed the door behind you, unzipping the covering on the hanger and revealing your “carefully chosen” outfit.
“Ich werde dir im Schlaf die Eier abreißen, Zemo!”
Bucky choked on his water and Zemo chuckled under his breath, while Sam looked between the two in confusion.
“I don’t know what she said, but she sounded pissed,” he observed, eyeing Zemo suspiciously.
“She informed me that she intends to remove my testicles in my sleep.”
“And why is that?”
“Perhaps because he’s chosen to parade me around Madripoor like a cheap whore,” you said angrily, stepping out of the bathroom with your hands on your hips, glaring at Zemo.
“That dress is by Armani Prive, and your shoes are Louboutins – far from ‘cheap.’ And you do not look like a whore, the dress is merely more revealing than what you are used to,” Zemo argued, standing and walking over to survey your outfit. He seemed to be enjoying what he saw, judging from the way his eyes raked up and down your body, but you didn’t dare check his thoughts to confirm or deny it.
If you were honest with yourself, he was right. It was a very nice dress; plum purple, matching the color of Zemo’s turtleneck, with long, fitted sleeves, all of it made of the softest silk you had ever touched. It was fitted at the top but flowy from the hips down, with a low balconette-style neckline, showing more of your chest than you were accustomed to, although you pulled it off quite nicely. It ended just above your knees, which was fine, as you sometimes wore skirts of that length. Overall, the luxury of it and the low-cut neckline ensured that you were out of your comfort zone, but you looked stunning – and expensive, despite your spite-fueled initial claim.
“I thought the color would look nice on you, and I was right. And I knew that the flow of the fabric at the bottom would allow for this,” Zemo said, his hand gingerly trailing from your waist to your thigh, where he pulled up the hem of your dress slightly to reveal the edge of the Glock strapped into your thigh holster. He smirked as his suspicion was confirmed. He knew you’d find a way to arm yourself, regardless of what you wore.
In hindsight, the way Zemo touched your side and lifted your skirt was all far more intimate than you should have allowed, and yet… you couldn’t deny the way your breath caught in your throat when he touched you, or how his close proximity made your body temperature rise, as he gazed down at you with those intense brown eyes.
Christ, you needed to get laid. Soon. Before you further entertained the idea of jumping the bones of a highly wanted criminal.
“Touch me like that again, and I will kill you where you stand,” you informed him sternly, and Zemo immediately took a step backwards, looking apologetic. From the corner of your eye, you saw both Sam and Bucky visibly relax, tension leaving their shoulders. You had read their thoughts briefly, and they were both wondering why the hell you were so calm about getting cozy with Zemo. The absolute last thing you wanted was for them to know that you were, in fact, inexplicably drawn to being that close to the Baron.
As the four of you walked along a bridge in Madripoor, Sam was quick to resume his complaining.
“We have to do something about this. I’m the only one who looks like a pimp.”
“Only an American would assume a fashion-forward Black man looks like a pimp. You look exactly like the man you’re supposed to be playing. The sophisticated, charming African rake named Conrad Mack, aka the Smiling Tiger.”
“He even has a bad nickname,” Sam grumbled, then looked at the phone Zemo handed him. “Hell, he does look like me, though.”
“And who am I supposed to be?” you inquired, glancing down at your clothing to see if you could guess who you were meant to be portraying. An heiress or socialite, perhaps.
“My fiancée,” Zemo answered simply, the faintest smile on his lips.
You barked out a crude laugh, “Oh, I think not.”
“There is no one involved with Madripoor who looks like you. And it is rare that there are newcomers to the island, especially not in the place we’re going. Pretending you are someone random would raise concerns about the intentions of your presence; you would be perceived as a potential threat, which would jeopardize our mission. It is far easier to simply pretend we are engaged, I assure you.”
You hesitated a moment, before arguing, “No one will believe that we are engaged.”
Zemo pulled something from the inside pocket of his jacket, took your left hand, and slipped it onto your ring finger. It was a solitaire diamond ring; not large enough to be gaudy, but enough to catch anyone’s eye.
“They will if you play your part well,” he told you, then addressed the rest of your party when he added, “No matter what happens, we have to stay in character. Our lives depend on it. There is no margin for error.”
The four of you reached a sleek black car, and climbed in, you in the back between Sam and Bucky. The ride to Low Town was tense and silent, as each of you mentally prepared for what lay ahead. When you arrived, Zemo offered you his hand as you exited the car, and the pointed look in his eyes told you that it was time to begin playing your part. You took his hand, and as you began walking into the heart of Low Town, he laced his fingers with yours. As the crowd drew near, Zemo wrapped his arm around your shoulders, gloved fingers brushing against the exposed skin of your shoulder. After reading his mind, you realized that it was both for the sake of protecting you, and showing possessiveness to make it believable that you were his girl – and because he simply enjoyed having your body close, although you suspected that he’d rather you have not known that.
Despite the fact that you had been on a few missions for SHIELD, you were not exactly incapable of fear; you did not possess nerves of steel. All of the missions you’d been on were low-profile, and you were mostly just there for the sake of gathering information from those reluctant to share it. Sure, you’d been in danger before, you’d had to fight your way out of several sticky situations, but this… this was different. You were in the crime capital of the world, a lawless place filled to the brim with crooks, thieves, and murderers. More than likely, any given person around could slit your throat and never bat an eye or give you a second thought. Swallowing your own pride in the face of fear prompted you to return Zemo’s gesture, wrapping your arm around his waist and sticking close to him, which earned a smile from the man.
When you arrived at your destination, Zemo approached the bar and leaned against it confidently on one arm, the other still wrapped firmly around your shoulders.
“Hello, gentleman,” the bartender greeted, before his eyes fell on you. “Who’s your new lady friend, Baron?”
“My fiancée,” Zemo answered, then turned to you and ran his finger along your jawline, as you looked at him in adoration. “Isn’t she lovely?”
“Very,” the bartender acknowledged, then turned to Sam. “Wasn’t expecting you, Smiling Tiger.”
“His plans changed. We have business to do with Selby,” Zemo responded.
The bartender made ‘Smiling Tiger’ his usual drink, which apparently consisted of… something he cut out of a snake, and dropped in a shot glass with a bit of liquor. You shared a look with Bucky before he turned away to survey the room, and when you read his thoughts, you found that you both desperately wanted to laugh out loud at Sam’s ‘short end of the stick’ situation, but didn’t want to risk everyone’s lives for the sake of a chuckle. You returned your attention to Zemo, opting to sell the whole “fiancée” thing a bit more by turning into him and tracing patterns on his chest as you gazed at him affectionately, while the bartender handed you and Zemo each a shot glass of your own – sans snake organs, thankfully. You both downed yours, while Sam understandably struggled a bit more with his, but still managed it.
A random man approached Zemo then, and as Zemo turned to face him, he protectively moved you behind him a bit.
“I got word from on high. You ain’t welcome here.”
“I have no business with the Power Broker, but if he insists, he can either come and talk to me…” Zemo countered, gesturing toward Bucky, who looked menacing as he pretended to be the Winter Soldier. “Or bring Selby for a chat.”
After a weary look in Bucky’s direction, the man walked away, and Zemo turned back around to face the bar, this time keeping you in between him in the bar, in case someone were to come up behind him – which they did a few moments later.
“Winter Soldier… attack,” Zemo commanded in Russian, as a different man came up and laid a hand on Zemo’s shoulder. With a pained look in his eye that quickly shifted to cold determination, Bucky grabbed the man’s hand with his vibranium arm, twisting it as he removed it from Zemo’s shoulder. Zemo took a step away from the bar to allow you room to turn and observe as Bucky beat the absolute shit out of various challengers. Zemo wrapped an arm around your waist, pulling you close to him as he noted, “Didn’t take much for him to fall back into form.”
The unmistakable sound of numerous guns cocking drew your attention away from the altercation, and Zemo gently pushed you behind him as he surveyed the room to note all the weapons drawn. Sam grabbed Bucky’s bionic arm to stop him, but Zemo whispered, “Stay in character or the whole bar turns on us.”
“Well done, soldier,” Zemo then said to Bucky in Russian, signaling for the ‘Winter Soldier’ to stop.
“Selby will see you now,” the bartender interjected, and Bucky released his grip on the random man’s throat.
“Thank you,” Zemo responded, walking off to find Selby, grabbing your hand to guide you, but not before you spared a sorrowful glance at Bucky as your friends followed closely behind.
As Zemo took a seat on a couch across from Selby, you sat close to him, crossing your legs gracefully as you leaned into him, your arm wrapped around his as he clasped his hands in his lap authoritatively. You watched his exchange with Selby in silence, as did Sam – and Bucky, of course, considering he was pretending to be the Winter Soldier.
“By the way, I thought you were rotting away in a German prison,” Selby told Zemo, then smiled as she looked you up and down, before her eyes found the diamond ring. “And not engaged – to a woman far out of your league, I might add.”
“People like us always find a way, don’t we?” Zemo answered calmly, then looked over at you, staring into your eyes with warmth and adoration, and you smiled lovingly at him. “My beautiful fiancée was a guard at the prison. We fell in love over the years, and she helped me escape. Anyway, I’m sure you have already figured out what I’m here for.”
The conversation went relatively smoothly after that, until Sam’s goddamn phone rang and screwed the entire operation. In the blink of an eye, Selby was shot dead, you had shot two of the guards with the gun strapped to your thigh, and Sam and Bucky had each knocked out one, before Zemo suggested sneaking out of the bar as best you could, without any weapons. You secured your gun back in its holster, not missing the way Zemo watched as you hiked your dress up to do so, before making a break for it with the three of them.
Once you were on the streets of Madripoor, bounty hunters began to come out of the woodwork, and when they began shooting at you, Zemo abruptly grabbed your hand and ran down a nearby alleyway. As you were running, the heel of your stiletto caught on a grate, and you’d have fallen flat on your face if Zemo hadn’t caught you.
“Are you alright?” he asked hurriedly, his arms wrapped tightly around your waist as he supported you, before standing you back onto your feet. You nodded, and he glanced over your shoulder as he noticed a few men looking down the alley. “Forgive me.”
You were about to ask what he was talking about, but then Zemo abruptly grabbed you by the backs of your thighs and lifted you up, pinned you against the wall behind you, and kissed you.
The men at the end of the alleyway muttered something about “freaks who do it in public,” then their footsteps faded as they walked off, clearly thinking the two of you were some overly horny couple, not two of the people with an insane bounty on their heads. But you were barely paying them any attention, a bit preoccupied with the fact that Zemo was fucking kissing you, and much to your chagrin, you really fucking liked it.
Once there were no more voices and no more footsteps, Zemo broke the kiss and sat you down. The two of you stared at each other for a moment, before you heard more gunshots, and you broke into a run in the direction Bucky and Sam had gone, desperate to find your friends, and no time to process what the hell just happened.
As soon as you caught up with them, the two bounty hunters nearby were shot dead, and the four of you turned to see Sharon Carter emerging from the shadows.
An hour later, you found yourself in her swanky home in High Town, in a change of clothes, since the brick wall Zemo had held you up against ripped the back of your silk dress. You lied to Sam and Bucky, saying that it happened because you fell while running in your heels, and thankfully, they believed you. Sharon commanded the four of you to lay low and enjoy the party, which Sam and Bucky left her living room to go do, entrusting you with ‘Zemo watch.’
It seemed as though he was merely nursing his brandy in lieu of abandoning it for the party prior to finishing it off, but his eyes were on you most of the time. You didn't necessarily believe he could be plotting to overpower you and run off, but there is always that possibility, so you delved into his mind to check.
Expecting to find thoughts of strategy about how to defeat the super soldiers or travel plans, or even plots to escape you, Bucky, and Sam, you were astounded to find nothing but thoughts of you.
The way it felt to kiss you in that alleyway, and how he had monetarily debated just staying there, having his way with you against the brick wall before Sam and Bucky could locate you. The dress from the bar, and how it rested on your thighs, revealing just enough to have his mouth watering without being revealing to the point of immodesty. The way your necklace currently rested against your bare collarbone, and how desperately he craved to litter the area with love bites. The delicate skin of your throat, thinking of how it would look with his hand wrapped around it, just enough to cut off a bit of air but not enough harm you. How alluring your voice is, and how much he'd like to know what it would sound like to hear you scream his name. The softness and warmness of your skin when he had his arm around you in the bar, and when he held your hand as you fled the scene, and he wondered how soft and warm you were elsewhere.
"Your thoughts are filthy."
He bristled immediately, sitting straighter in his seat and eyes going slightly wide, either forgetting you can read minds or not realizing you'd be doing it right then. It only took a moment for him to regain his composure, before he took one long, last drink of his brandy and set the glass on the table in front of him. He turned his whole body to the side to face you, as you sat on the opposite end of the couch, wearing a small, somewhat mischievous smile.
"I suppose there is no sense in denying it, is there?"
"What game are you playing, Zemo?" you snapped. He was rattling you. As much as you hated to admit it, he was. For the entirety of the time you'd been around him, this wanted criminal had been flustering you, and goddammit it, you wanted to know if it was accidental, or for nefarious purposes. He could be using it as a tactic to throw you off your game, so that he could get away when it was just the two of you – like right now.
"There is no game, Liebling," he stated softly and sincerely, sensing your discomfort. Slowly, he scooted closer to you on the couch, so that the arm he had laid across the back of it was now behind you, as he stared intently into your eyes. "Merely the natural response of a man who has been widowed and then locked in a prison cell, and therefore has not known the touch of a woman in many years, sitting next to a woman of absolute ethereal beauty."
You said nothing, merely stared at him, sizing him up to see if he was toying with you or telling the truth. Zemo sensed your lack of belief in his words.
"If you doubt my true intentions, you are welcome to delve as deep into my mind as you'd like to find the truth."
In all honesty, you'd have done that already if you weren't trying to avoid being even more flustered by his thoughts about you – but you couldn't tell him that. So, you did as he bade you, and searched his mind to find any shred of malevolence towards you, but you came out empty-handed. Zemo genuinely just wanted you, craved you, like a starved man sitting in front of an endless buffet. He watched you carefully as you came to this conclusion, and although you said nothing further, he knew that you had found what you needed to know.
"Just say the word, and I will never approach the topic again, as well as attempt to quiet my thoughts about you. But if there is any part of you... deep inside you," Zemo paused, eyes grazing you up and down purposefully, before continuing, "that has any interest in being with me... I will do anything to bring that to fruition."
The ball was in your court now. You could tell him to get bent and never speak to you like this again… or you could get your rocks off, and maybe even get something more in return.
"Such as?"
"Name it, Schätzchen. Anything you want. A car, a mansion, jewels – say it and it's yours, if you will be mine," Zemo proposed earnestly, licking his lips quickly as he looked at you, visibly thrilled that he was getting somewhere with you.
You weren't the type to accept gifts from men you barely know, but… this was Zemo. A man who had done a great many terrible things, which soothed your guilty conscience. So, you said the first thing that came to mind.
"A car," you blurted out, then explained, "Mine broke down a week ago, and it's beyond repair, so… a car."
"Tell me the make and model of your preference and I'll have it delivered to your home within a week's time," Zemo said calmly, then brushed a lock of hair away from your face, before allowing his fingers to trail delicately along your cheek and jawline. "Is that all, Kätzchen?"
"No. One more thing," you replied, then looked at him sternly. "You must agree to never speak of this to Bucky or Sam."
"You have my word," he assured you, smiling in amusement.
"Then I'm yours."
Zemo's smile faded slowly, and he merely stared at you for a split second, before cupping your face in his hands and pulled you into a searing kiss, full of ferocity and sheer desperation. It shouldn't have been this easy, to kiss a man who's done such terrible things – yet here you were, melting into his embrace, allowing him to pull you into his lap and straddle him, your hands resting on his shoulders and gripping the black fabric of his turtleneck. His hands laid flat against your back as he kissed you in this new position, slowly gliding down, down your sides and to your hips. He kissed you in a way that was feverish and fast and hungry, as his fingers dug into your skin, holding you firmly against him as if he were fearful that this was all a dream and you'd disappear at any moment. Upon taking a peek into his mind, you realized that was actually exactly what he was thinking. Additionally, he mentally spoke to you directly, somehow knowing you were reading his thoughts at that moment.
"Tell me if I do anything that you do not like, and know that you have absolute freedom to end this at any given moment."
You pulled away slightly to nod in confirmation that you received his message, before resuming the kiss. Mind hazy and instincts taking over, you found yourself tugging his bottom lip between your teeth, earning a low groan from Zemo. One of his hands darted upwards to grab a fistful of your hair, right against your scalp at the base of your neck, and he pulled on it harshly, causing you to let out a wonton moan. He then laid that hand flat against the back of your neck, holding your lips firmly against his as he kissed you with even more fervor, and the other vacated its position on your hip to slide slowly up your torso, until he began palming your beast through your shirt. You moaned softly against his lips, but not as loudly as a moment ago.
Zemo wanted more, needed more; he longed to hear you loud and desperate. So he delved that hand at your neck back into your hair, gripping it tightly once more, and used it to pull your head backwards a bit, so that he could have better access to your neck. The action itself, and the tightness of his grip, earned an embarrassingly loud moan to escape your lips, and you felt him smile against your skin. He moved his hand to the middle of your back, supporting you as you leaned back a bit to grant him better access. As he littered your neck and décolletage with kisses, you felt him pull the neckline of your blouse down a little, then felt the sharp pain of a bite on your chest, above your breast. When you looked at him with narrowed eyes, he wore a cocky little grin.
"You should not be surprised, Liebling. I know you saw that I've been wanting to do that all day when you read my mind," he noted. "Wear a high neckline tomorrow, it will be fine."
Before you could respond, Zemo pulled you flush against his chest with that hand behind your back, and into another heated kiss. You wrapped your arms around his shoulders, and without thinking, you ground your hips down on the bulge resting against your core beneath your skirt. He groaned, both hands flying to your hips to push them down again, guiding them as you repeated the action. It only took a minute or two of this before Zemo had enough, abruptly grabbing you by the throat and throwing you down onto the couch beside him. He then loomed over you, one hand propping himself up and the other applying slight pressure to your throat, gazing at you with admiration in those searing eyes, pupils blown wide from lust. You looked right back at him, pupils undoubtedly dilated as well, eyes half-lidded, panting a little, and hair a bit of a mess.
"You are an absolute vision," Zemo praised softly, to which you smiled, then he released his grip on your neck to lean down and kiss you again. That only lasted a moment, before he broke the kiss to pull your blouse up and over your head, tossing it carelessly to the side. Your bra joined it shortly after, then he moved to your skirt, fussing with the zipper for a moment, but it seemed to be caught on something, as it wouldn't budge. Before you could interject and state that you'd get the zipper yourself, Zemo ripped the seam apart with his hands, before tearing the article from your body and tossing it like he had with the blouse. A gasp escaped you, but you had no time to think much about his actions, before he was pulling off your panties and bra as well, dropping them somewhere beside the couch.
He was then looming over you again, kissing you breathless as he rested on one elbow while the other hand toyed with your nipple, his knee coming up to rest between your legs as he laid between your body and the back of the couch. You tangled your fingers in Zemo's hair, moaning against his lips as you sought friction against his leg. He smiled softly against your lips, before your hands wandered, finding the hem of his shirt and tugging it off of him. You had just managed to get his belt off before his hand left your breast, trailing downwards across your torso as he moved his knee further away from you, before delving between your hips and expertly locating your clit.
No longer capable of focusing on ridding Zemo of his clothes, your hands gripped his shoulders, and he hissed deliciously as your nails dug into his skin when he began rubbing small, methodical circles on your clit. Small moans fell from your lips as he watched the way your mouth hung open slightly, face relaxed and eyes closed as you enjoyed his work. But again, he wanted more, needed more. Still observing you, he delved his middle and ring fingers into your core, causing you to let out a loud gasp that faded into a long, low moan. Zemo smiled to himself. That was the reaction he was dying for.
He kissed you senseless, drinking in your moans and gasps of pleasure like wine, his free hand cradling the back of your head as your arms wrapped around his neck. It didn't take Zemo long to find that sweet spot, deep inside you – as he'd subtly alluded to earlier – that longed for his attention the most.
You couldn't help but moan loudly and cry out, "Fuck! Baron!" Zemo growled low in your ear, clearly a fan of your usage of his title as he picked up the pace, fucking you with his fingers with expert precision and speed, sending you hurtling over the edge with a string of curses in both Sokovian and English. By the time he removed his fingers from you and stood, you were seeing stars, breathing heavily as you laid flat against the couch. When your dazed gaze found him, he was naked from the waist down, and was just finishing rolling a condom over his length. You had no idea where he got it from, but you were way beyond giving a shit at this point. Zemo then rejoined you on the couch, roughly spreading your legs apart as he kneeled between them, looking at you with a primal, deep hunger in his eyes.
"You are certain that you want this?"
"Yes, please – fuck," you cut yourself off as he began rubbing your clit again.
"Yes please, what?" His voice was low, teasing, as he continued his work below. "I want to hear you say it again, Kätzchen."
"Yes, please, Baron."
"Good girl."
Zemo took your leg and rested your calf on his shoulder, before easing himself into you, agonizingly slow. You watched through half-lidded eyes as his brows furrowed together, his jaw went slack, and his eyes squeezed shut as he bottomed out. He was silent, but you very much preferred it when he was a bit vocal. So, you flexed your muscles down there, and he groaned, letting his forehead fall against your shoulder.
"Do not do that if you want this to last long," Zemo suggested through clenched teeth. You smiled to yourself, then said the magic word that you knew would get him going.
"Yes, Baron."
He growled again, right in your ear, then sat more upright to begin a harsh, quick pace of thrusting. His hips collided with your body each time, causing a delicious sort of pain, and he leaned down to lock you in a messy, deep kiss.
A few minutes later, Zemo moved your other calf to his shoulder as well, and the new position enabled him to get delectably deep inside you. You raked your nails down his chest, watching as a shudder ran down his spine, all the while releasing small, breathless moans and whimpers. When he opened his eyes again to gaze down at you, he licked his lips before delving both hands under your head and into your hair, and forcefully gripped two fitfuls of it at the base of your skull. The moan that tore its way from your throat was animalistic, as your nails dug into his forearms as you desperately gripped them from their positions on either side of your head. Just then, he hit a spot deep inside of you, and that familiar, tight coil in your lower belly began to form.
"Fuck! Right there, Baron, please, right there!"
"As you wish, Schätzchen."
Zemo began to thrust even faster, careful to maintain the same angle as he released his grip on your hair and leaned up a bit, so that he could resume rubbing your clit. Moans began to fall from your lips practically endlessly, and somehow, you still needed more. More, more, more. You took his free hand and laid it on your neck, and he instinctively wrapped his fingers around your throat, careful to apply pressure on the sides but not the front, as to avoid harming you. When he opened his eyes once again and looked down at you, he couldn't stop the moan that escaped him.
"You will be the death of me, mein Engel," Zemo whispered, seemingly more to himself. All you could do was moan in response.
"Baron, I'm going to – fuck – I'm —"
"Yes, come for me, Kätzchen. I want to feel you."
That was all the encouragement it took. Well, that plus how perfectly he was rubbing your bundle of nerves, and how his pace nor angle had faltered once since you had requested exactly that. You came undone again, legs shaking as your nails clawed at his shoulder blades, earning a series of groans from him. As you came down from your high, Zemo's hips began to falter, enthralled by the waterfall you had become, soaking the base of his cock as your walls squeezed around him. His hand at your wet heat abruptly moved to grip your hip, at the same moment his hand around your throat clutched at your hair again, and he met his end with a loud, gruff moan as he spoke a mantra of nonsensical praises and your name.
Zemo rested on his arms on either side of your head, and he let your legs fall to the sides of him, breathing hard against your neck as he occasionally peppered kisses there. He remained inside you for a few moments, savoring the feeling, before you chose to have a bit of extra fun by flexing your lower muscles and squeezing yourself around him again. With a sharp intake of breath, he pulled out of you, shooting you a glare.
In Sokovian, he murmured, "You are a naughty little thing."
"You adore it."
"That I do," Zemo conceded, then stood and walked off to the restroom. You heard the tap run, and a few moments later, he returned with a glass of water for you, sitting beside your feet on the couch and resting his heels on the coffee table. He was exceptionally handsome like this; still catching his breath, sweat glistening on his forehead and chest, a content look upon his face. You spent a minute or two admiring him, before he looked over to you, and a smile blossomed on his lips.
"I cannot thank you enough for that. I must admit, I spent countless nights alone in my cell, dreaming about getting to touch a woman like that again. Especially considering the fall of our country, I never could have imagined I would be lucky enough to lay with a stunning, intelligent Sokovian woman."
"In the spirit of confessions, it's been a while for me, too. My last boyfriend was about two years ago. And I'm not the one-night-stand type. So, do with that what you will," you stated, earning a small chuckle from Zemo. You sat up so that you were sitting beside him, instead of laying down, as you continued. "I fantasized about it a lot myself, but I never even dared to think my next time would be as good as this was."
Zemo smiled, a mix of pride and joy, then his smile softened as he leaned toward you, brushing a lock of hair away from your face. "This doesn't have to be our last time, you know. I would be honored to have you as often as you'd allow me to. And I assure you, I would make it worth your while. I will give you whichever vehicles your heart desires, more jewelry than you know what to do with, take you to the most beautiful places in the world, dine at only the finest restaurants – and above all, treat you like my queen. Take care of me, and I will take care of you, Liebling."
You allowed your curiosity to get the better of you, as usual when you feared that someone was lying to you. You searched his mind for any fraction of false pretenses, but there were none. The man simply found you intoxicating, and would do whatever it takes to keep drinking you in.
The arrangement wouldn't exactly be an easy one, nor would it be all that wise – nor morally correct, in all honesty. But he was undeniably sexy, and the danger and reprehensibility of it all made it that much more alluring. And besides all that – the way his power and wealth turned you on, how good he was capable of making you feel – most Sokovians were dead, and you missed home. Getting to speak your native tongue with him, chat about your country – it made you feel at home with him.
But you wouldn't give Zemo the satisfaction of agreeing to him that quickly.
“We'll see.”
—————
Part Two
1K notes · View notes
five-rivers · 4 years ago
Note
I wonder how Danny phantom would've been like if Danny's friends were ghosts like Sydney and he befriended Sam and Tucker later on.
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“I’m just saying,” said Danny, “that they should have something better to do with their time than harass me.”
“Ain’t that a bite,” said Sydney, morosely.  “It’s the same here.”
Danny groaned and tilted his head back to clang against the side of his locker.  Somehow, knowing that the bullying situation was the same in the afterlife as it was in his current life wasn’t terribly encouraging.  
Sydney was even still trapped in a high school. It was like there was no way out, no matter what.
Wait. Maybe that was it.
"Maybe," said Danny, testing the waters, "we should try to get out more."
"What do you mean?" asked Sydney.
"Well, I mean, I'm not going to have any luck making friends while I'm victim number one here, and I think that if the guys on your end were going to have a change of heart, they would have done it already. I mean, it's been fifty years, dude."
"Don't remind me."
"Okay, but that's why we should get out. Look in other places for friends!"
"That's not going to stop the bullies," said Sydney, dubiously.
"No, but it might make us feel better. And, if we go together, worst thing that could happen is that we just hang out with each other, then go home. Or back to school."
Sydney made a face. "I can't exactly go places with you, Danny. Your town isn't exactly welcoming to my kind."
"That's why we're going to do this in the Ghost Zone! I'm way too much of a freak to make human friends."
"I'm not sure that's a good idea..."
"I'll go as Phantom. What's the worst that could happen?"
.
"I changed my mind. This is a terrible idea."
"Hey, I had to trade three packs of soda just to get the location!"
"Yeah, and I bought you those sodas," said Danny.
He took a deep, steadying breath. This was just a techno-blasting ghost nightclub. Nothing really scary, like, for example, a school cafeteria.
"You're right. We can do this."
.
It soon became apparent that they had either vastly overestimated what two introverted nerds could take, or vastly underestimated the ghost nightclub. Either way, Sydney had been breathing into a paper bag behind the building for the last ten minutes, and Danny wasn't much better. Both of them were studiously avoiding looking at the biker couple making out a few yards down the wall.
Then the back door slammed open, and an almost human-looking girl with blue hair and stage makeup strode out. "Which of you losers can play an instrument?"
"I can play the piano," said Sydney.
"Theremin," said Danny.
"Wow, you really are a loser. What about you two?" she asked, turning to the couple.
"Drums," said the boy, scratching his ear.
"Guitar," said the girl. She crossed her arms. "What for?"
"My band was tagged by Walker, and I'm up in thirty minutes." Her face went hard. "The show will go on, even if I have to scrape the bottom of the barrel. A theremin. Unbelievable. Come on." She swept back into the nightclub.
Danny made to follow, but Sydney caught his wrist. "Should we really do this?" he asked, whispering.
"It isn't as if we have anything better to do. Let's go!"
.
Danny and Sydney sat on the side of the island that housed the nightclub, their feet swinging above the abyss below. They were, to put it lightly, rather stunned.
"What was that?" asked Sydney.
"It was..." Danny considered his words, "an experience."
"What am I wearing?"
"I... don't know, actually. I think that might have been a tie? Maybe? It's very punk."
"I have only the very vaguest of conceptions of what that means."
"It's cool? I don't know. But! We accomplished our goal for tonight, so we can count this in the win column."
"We did?"
"Yeah! We made friends!"
"We did?" asked Sydney, looking at Danny like he'd grown a second head (which he'd only done once, thank you very much).
"We played in a band with them," said Danny, solemnly. "That makes us friends."
"Huh. I guess you're right."
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a-simple-imagine · 3 years ago
Text
Define a crush
Synopsis: you want to define your relationship with hermione but you’re not too sure about your feelings 
Pairing: Hermione Granger x fem!reader
Words: 1.6k+
PREV //
You weren't mad at her in the first place but you can tell she feels bad that you feel. You don't know why, it's not like if she had been there you wouldn't have. It was an accident. Why everyone seemed to think they needed to protect you was beyond you. You're a Hufflepuff, not someone made of glass. You're sat down at the black lake with Hermione. Head rested on her shoulder as she reads her book out loud. She was trying to help you study but her soft voice mixed with the warm air had you practically falling asleep.
"You're supposed to be paying attention,"
"I am," you urge. You'd sit up a little straighter but ever since your accident you'd been feeling a little rough.
"No your not," Hermione states, slapping her book shut.
"I am,"
"Then what did I just tell you about?" You hum softly in thought but honestly, you had no clue.
"Owls?"
"Not even close." she sighed softly. "I'm telling you about aurors during the giant wars."
"Since when were we learning about the giant wars?"
"Exactly my point. You need to start paying attention."
"Can we take a break then?"
"What do you need a break for? You weren't listening anyway." You chuckle softly. "Do you want to go back inside?"
"No" you snuggle against her. "I like it out here. It's peaceful and in theory, I'm learning."
"I was just thinking maybe this was too much for you. I could take you back to your dorm."
"I'm fine. The nurse said I should be back to normal within the week."
"Your friends over there,"
"Which one?" You ask.
"Malfoy." You open your eyes, pulling away from granger to spy Draco, Pansy and Blasie heading your way. As much as you loved him, now was not the time.
"Are you stalking me Draco?"
"You wish." He hits back. "Just happened to be passing by. You two look buddy buddy out here, something you're not telling us?"
"I wish... we're just studying for History of Magic."
"I guess some witches need all the help they can get but this is scraping the bottom of the barrel."
"I can't tell if you're insulting me or her,"
"Both," His friends snicker. "You coming by later?"
"Don't I always."
"See you later then." He looks to the other girl. "Granger." A firm nod before walking away.
"Always?" That was the first thing she asked.
"Huh?"
"What did you mean by Don't I always?"
"Oh," you smile. "I always try and visit the Slytherin common room."
"Why?"
"To see Draco of course. Let's just say my fellow Hufflepuff aren't too fond of letting him into ours so I have to make the trip to his."
"You really go out of your way for this boy."
"Same could be said about you for Harry or Ron, speaking of which," you start. "Is it true that you like Ron?"
"He is my friend, everyone knows that."
"No I mean... you like Ron."
"Where did you get that idea?" She wonders.
"Ginny Weasley." You shrug. "Although I don't think she's the only one who thinks it.
"That's absurd." She expresses.
"You do spend a lot of time together and you are very close, no one would judge."
"I don't have a thing for Ronald," She huffs.
"Harry then?" You wonder. "A lot of girls have a thing for the chosen one."
"No- stop it," She's embarrassed. "Do you have a thing for Draco? You spend a lot of time with him."
You shrug. "Not that I know of I don't quite understand how you know when you have a crush. People think we're dating though which is fine."
"I couldn't really tell you," She shrugs. "It's just a feeling. How do you know when you're happy or sad."
"But there are indicators for those. When you're sad for example and you cry."
"You're quite right. Crushes are less obvious but I feel like if you had one you'd know about it."
If you had one you'd know about it? How though? What is it supposed to feel like? It seemed rather illogical. And it played on your mind. Even as you sat with Draco in the Slytherin common room, listening to him complain about one class or another.
"Have you ever had a crush, Draco?" You interrupt.
"What?"
"Have you ever had a crush? Like on a person?"
He shrugs. "Why do you ask?"
"I was talking about it with Hermione and I'm trying to figure out how people know when they have a crush on someone."
"Do you have a crush on someone?"
"I don't know. How can I know if I don't know how I'm supposed to feel when I have a crush?"
"...what?" His brows furrow and you sigh.
"I think I might like Hermione," you express softly, looking to Draco.
"What makes you think that?"
"I dunno but she thinks I like you and I'm very confused."
Draco just chuckles to himself. "I don't know what to tell you, but. You're gonna have to figure that out for yourself."
"Fair," you nod. "I'm pretty sure you don't have feelings so I don't know why I asked you."
"Haha," You chuckle to yourself.
"What would you do if I liked you,"
He shrugs. "Deal with it,"
"Wow, thanks. Really feeling the love here."
"You just said you like Granger." He hugged. "Who, by the way, your parents are going to hate. They may tolerate a friendship but dating a mudblood is a different story."
"Don't talk about her that way," you insist. "Just because she's muggle-born doesn't make her any less of a witch."
"Tell that to our parents,"
He was right. You knew he was. You didn't know where your feelings stood but your parents would never approve of Hermione. She's not of pure blood. That was very clear on that fact. They've always pushed you towards Draco. There is no true way t define a crush, if there was surely Hermione would have told you. She knows practically everything. Sitting at a table in ??? You sip on a butterbeer as you watch Hermione speak. Maybe you did like Hermione? Perhaps this was what it was supposed to feel like; to find the magic in the smallest of moments. To notice the sparkle in her eyes or the gentlest curve of her smile. Love was a foreign concept outside the context of friendship and family but you looked at her in a way, you've never seen Draco and they were both your best friends.
You're sat in the common room late one evening. Everyone else is either in bed or completely wrapped up in their own thing. "I think I've figured it out,"
"Figured what out?" Hermione wonders.
"How it feels to have a crush. I think I finally understand."
"Oh," she seemed surprised. "And how did you figure it out?"
"I spoke to Draco about it," you shrug.
"So you do have a crush on Malfoy?"
"No," You shake your head. "I don't think so. He's my friend and always will be. I just got advice from him."
"Hard to imagine Malfoy giving you good advice."
You chuckle a little. "He can be useful every once in a while,"
"So-"
"Let me just talk for a second before I lose my nerve okay?" You ask. Hermione nods. "I've been thinking about what a crush is a lot. It's a weird subject since it's like this invisible force that makes no sense but I figured out that it's supposed to feel different," you look away from her. "It's hard to explain but I think I may like you."
"Oh-"
"Please don't freak out. I considered not telling you but since we talked about it I thought I may as well come clean." You shrug. "It's okay if you don't like me that way of course- I would totally understand. I didn't mean to make things weird."
"You ramble a lot when you're nervous," She insists quietly. You nod a little.
"I'm sorry,"
"Don't be," Hermione insisted. "It's not like it's voluntary."
You both fall silent.
"Why do you think you like me?"
"I compared the way I feel around Draco and other friends, to the way I feel about you. You're the only one who makes me feel... I don't know a good word... extraordinary? I'm not good at describing feelings."
"You're a strange little Hufflepuff," Hermione chuckles. "What did Draco say when you told him?"
"He mentioned that my parents wouldn't like you,"
"Because I'm a girl or?"
"Because you're not from a pureblood family." You shrug. "Maybe the girl thing too though I don't know. That's never really been brought up but I don't know."
"Anyway, it doesn't matter. I just wanted to tell you straight up, now I'm going to bed because I have an early class tomorrow. And Snape will have my head if I fall asleep again."
"You don't want to know how I feel?"
"What do you mean?" Your brows furrow a little.
"We just talked about you. Don't you want to know how I feel about you or my findings?"
"I just assumed everything was the same with you- maybe you thought it was weird."
"I gathered you thought that I thought it was weird."
"So what then?"
"I've known I liked you since you fell off your broom during quidditch- well that at least confirmed it more than that was the start of it," Hermione admits. "Maybe it was just the adrenaline but I like you too. I'm sure of it but I need you to be sure too. Even if it takes a little while to figure out, we can do that together."
You gently smile. "Okay. We'll figure it out together."
// NEXT
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twilightofthe · 3 years ago
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Hey y’all!  
Just figured I should say hi to some of y’all since I realize I haven’t been the most talkative on here as of late
Here’s why.
I am fighting Star Wars fandom burnout so hard.  So, so hard.
This media meant more to me than any media ever had for a long, long long time.  It still holds this near and dear spot to me in my heart.  But now it’s just like, losing the magic, losing the love, losing the passion, and I am 1000% blaming it on Disney and its need to fuck the skeleton of every dead horse they drag back out of the grave.
Basically it’s like, there’s too much content?  And yeah some of it is content that I LIKE, like.  I’ve been begging for more Rebels content since it ended over four years ago and now we’re finally getting the return of at least Sabine Hera and Ezra!  We’re getting a Cassian show and I LOVED Cassian in Rogue One and never dreamed I’d get more content of him!  We had an Obi Wan and Anakin show with baby Skytwins. WE HAD AN OBI WAN AND ANAKIN SHOW WITH BABY SKYTWINS.  Like, if you had offered me any of this stuff back in like, 2017, I would have lost my goddamn mind, I would have been ecstatic, the Obi Wan show alone would have made me have a heart attack and die of excitement alone and haunt the shit out of the show as a ghost so I didn’t miss a single millisecond of it.
But now I’m just like.  Recoiling from all of Disney’s new planned release announcements?  Like I’m looking at all of these ideas and I’m just sighing wearily over the Mando S3 trailer and grunting cynically at the Tales of the Jedi like “hmm whose characterization are they going to fuck up this time” and Andor is so close and I’m scraping the bottom of my barrel to try and find the joy to watch it and rolling my eyes at Ezra casting rumors like “ok yeah sure but it’s in the fucking Ahsoka show they won’t do him justice anyway” and I hate it so much, because this is Star Wars, and I love Star Wars so, so much!
Like this is my universe with my favorite disaster blorbos and the creative worlddbuilding and the magic that I fell in love with, and not being able to find excitement in that is breaking my heart???
Like, I don’t know, it just feels like it’s getting too big for me?  Like they’re adding on more and more to the story and I’m struggling to keep up and none of it is even mattering to me anymore because they’re just going to dump more on top of me before I can even breathe.
Quite literally drowning in content.
I love chocolate cake, it’s like Disney heard me say I love chocolate cake and now they just keep force-feeding me more and more and more chocolate cake even when I’m full, even when I need time to digest, even when while I still love chocolate cake, maybe I’d prefer some vanilla ice cream instead, no they just keep shoveling it in and my stomach is going to rupture.
And it doesn’t make sense and I feel like a bad fan or someone who doesn’t care enough, because I’m seeing OTHER people in the fandom who have been around for just as long as me or longer and they’re still going strong!  They’re still having fun!  They’re not letting the circumstances cramp their genuine, shining joy for the characters and stories they love, and I want that.  I’m jealous of them that I can’t do that, and feeling guilty as shit that I’m being like, disloyal or something, or I never really loved it all that much if I could get so tired so easily?
I’m not going anywhere, y’all, I promise.  I’ll be right here and I’ll be excited to watch and reblog for Andor and Tales of the Jedi and Visions volume 2.
But I might be a bit quieter because I’m fighting not to lose something I’ve loved so much for so long.  I need to find that love again.
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roanniom · 4 years ago
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The Night That Follows
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Poe Dameron x Reader
Word Count: 8,000~ 
Summary: While celebrating a successful mission, you and Poe accidently ingest a mysterious beverage that makes it hard to resist one another, helping you forget the stress that weighs you down and the friendship that you’ve been holding between you two as a shield. 
Note: This is my first ever non-ADCU fic and it is dedicated to the ever lovely and supportive @paper-n-ashes who urged me to get out of my comfort zone and cheered me on.  
Warnings: NSFW, dirty talk, alcohol consumption, sex pollen, drugged drink (it’s drugged with the sex pollen by a 3rd party and not with malicious intent but it still might be triggering), masturbation (f/m), PIV sex, unprotected sex, war-related angst 
When people talk about war, they often discuss the paralyzing fear, the numbing depression. Hopelessness that spreads through your veins like cold water as you face immeasurable odds and stare death in the face day after day. And you can attest to these feelings. You experience them with each dawn that breaks, muddy in the sky regardless of the atmosphere shrouding whatever planet you find yourself waking on each morning. Your life is transient, full of ships and bases and camps. The constants are the clothes on your back, the friends in your squadron (those who survive), and the x-wing you hop in each time danger calls.
The other constant is the part of war that people do not discuss. The rush of adrenaline every time you make it out of a tough scrape. Adrenaline that burns your veins, evaporating the icy hopelessness that had flooded you up until the minute your boots hit turf and your jellied knees catch up to the reality that you are still very much alive. The euphoria that crackles in your brain when you spy your best mate zooming down from above, finally landing and throwing themselves into your arms in the hug you never thought you’d experience again after their coms had gone down in a fire fight. The absolute debauchery of a night of celebration after such a fire fight. Because nobody needs to live quite as much as those who may die.
Which is how you find yourself here, on this non-descript jungle planet, the name of which you didn’t catch during your descent because honestly there have been so many jungle planets and they have all become little more than coordinates on a screen to you at this point. You and your squad have been set up with a mini-festival by the resistance-sympathizing locals as a thank you for your recent decimation of their First Order oppressors. The operation had been pretty seamless, thanks in no small part to the excellent teamwork between you and a one Poe Dameron.
Your flying today had rivaled some of his best, which is certainly saying something since Poe prides himself on being the best pilot in the resistance. You certainly gave him a run for his money, outflying TIE fighters and swiveling shuttle cannons in a perfectly choreographed tandem maneuver wherein the two of you manipulated your assailants to ultimately destroy themselves.
As you knock back a burning shot of the local alcoholic beverage, the liquid tingling and warming you all the way down, you search the triumphant crowd for the cocky pilot who had helped you set the stage for this celebration. You wouldn’t dwell on the earlier events of the day much more tonight. Wouldn’t think much of the comrades you’d lost in the struggle. That was an ache that would throb back to life tomorrow. Tonight, the priority is living.
It is then that you lock eyes with Poe Dameron through the throngs of semi-drunken revelers. His handsome face splits into a wide, cocky grin, so you adopt an exasperated smirk in response as he pushes his way towards you. Such is the game you play. A dance, if you will. Poe plays the role of the self-assured, overly confident golden boy while you, his long suffering partner, humble him with your good-natured criticism and ever rolling eyes.
“Alright there, Sweets?” Poe practically drawls as he reaches you, the nickname both a term of endearment and a teasing reference to the sweet tooth that keeps you hoarding candies of all kinds in your bunk, much to Poe’s own benefit. You beam up at him and upend your little glass to demonstrate its emptiness.
“On my way there, Fly Boy.”
“Looks like you’re falling behind, rookie. Like you did on that triple barrel twist today.”
You throw a punch that lands a little too lightly on his shoulder to produce the grunt and showy flail that he graces you with.
“First of all, you’re not allowed to call me rookie anymore. Your dumb ass might need to be constantly reassured that you’re ‘best pilot in the resistance,’ but by now I am, at worst, second best.” Your gut warms and you’re not sure if it’s the drink or Poe’s deep, full-bodied laugh in response. “And second of all, we don’t talk about the day if we make it to the night.”
Poe almost seems to sober at your words, a phrase of his tossed back at him. The smile remains, though, and he tosses an arm around you before dragging you over to the table that’s been set up with refreshments.
“Right you are, Sweets,” Poe agrees quietly. Louder now and injecting you two into the crowd surrounding the cluster of bottles, he continues, “as for you being second best pilot, I’d rather let the squad decide before you go getting a head too big to fit in your helmet.”
This receives a laugh from the crowd as well as another smattering of slaps thrown towards Poe’s chest.
“Dameron, we all know you already have your own helmet custom made so you can stuff that massive ego in there,” your friend Myrna.
“And those curls,” you add, reaching up and ruffling your hand through his hair in that way that always makes his nose scrunch up in mock anger.
“If you must know, there’s something else they also have to custom make me…” Poe says, grabbing your wrist and forcing your hand to slide down his chest towards the bottom of his flight suit zipper and wiggling his eyebrows. You shriek and yank your hand away.
“In your dreams, Dameron.” Poe leans down toward you so that his face is close enough for you to feel his breath fan across your cheeks.
“Or perhaps in yours?”
Suddenly a small, wrinkled face appears between you. It’s an elderly female member of the local alien race and she’s beaming up at you, holding two steaming mugs and smiling around a garbled statement in a language you don’t recognize.
“Oh I’m sorry, I’m not sure I…” you interrupt her, glancing awkwardly between her massive eyes and Poe’s confused ones.
“I might be able to translate!” Myrna cries out, stumbling forward with a newly refilled glass in her hand.
“You sure that’s not just the liquor talking?” Poe asks with a chuckle. Myrna waves him off and kneels unsteadily to listen to the old woman. More garbled speech issues forward as the woman gestures between you and Poe with her mugs. Myrna nods several times and gives little hums of agreement and affirmation. You and Poe trade glances of amusement during the interaction, but you have to look away when the upturned corner of Poe’s mouth begins to distract you.
“Alright alright,” Myrna pipes up. You turn back in time to see Myrna standing back up to her full height, now holding the two mugs, while the woman waddles back into the crowd.
“What’s the deal?” Poe asks, slinging his arm back around your shoulders. You resist the knee jerk actions that come to mind, both to slap his touch away and to lean into it, standing rigid instead.
“She said these are for you,” Myrna says, pushing the steaming mugs into your hands and Poe’s.
“Did she say why?” You peer at the milky, opalescent contents curiously. Myrna has already moved on, however, turning back to the pilot she’d been hanging on before you and Poe had approached. You look to Poe but he shrugs.
“I don’t know, something about you guys deserving it.” Myrna waves her hand dismissively, obviously ready to get back to her own evening. You look up at Poe, unsure, but he’s nodding and smiling.
“Hear that, Sweets? Seems like word travels fast that we’re the top two pilots,” Poe says cheekily, clinking his mug to yours before throwing back his head and downing its contents in one gulp. Your insides ignite at his acknowledgment, as well as the bob of his adam’s apple, but your eyes still flit warily to your beverage.
“We don’t even know what it is and you’re drinking it?”
“Honey, I’m pretty sure that liquor we were taking shots of earlier was actually jet fuel, I don’t think we need to be too worried about this.” Poe smacks his lips and runs his finger around the inside of the mug. “And besides, it’s really kriffing good.”
Watching the way his cheeks hollow out as he sucks the last dregs of his drink from his finger makes a heat boil in the pit of the stomach. You decide you actually are quite thirsty, and since your curiosity is stronger than your apprehension, you knock the liquid back yourself.
“Atta girl!” Poe cheers you on, nudging you. The drink is sweet and thick on your tongue like a melted version of the ice cream you’d tasted once, many years ago. You can still remember the creamy texture, very much worth the credits paid to the traveling vendor who’d brought it to your village during the hottest summer of your childhood. As you swallow this liquid down, however, its cold temperature changes into a burn, similar to alcohol, though smoother than any liquor you’d ever had.
“Good, right?” Poe asks, eyebrows raised. You nod and lick your lips, sure that you’re imagining things when Poe’s eyes flicker down to your darting tongue.
“That was actually pretty good,” you concede with a grin.
“So what have we learned tonight?” Poe prompts, grabbing your mug from your hands and placing it next to his on a nearby table. You shake your head.
“Your cockiness extends to believing locals on a miniscule planet find you special?”
“The correct answer was ‘always give things a chance,’ Sweets, but you can continue being closeminded if you want,” Poe responds with a chuckle. He stuffs his hands in his pockets and makes to walk away.
“Fine!” You reach out and grab his arm before he can leave. When he rounds back on you with a wide smile you roll your eyes and refuse eye contact. “And just so you know, I’m a lot more open minded than you think, Dameron.”
“Is that so, rookie?” You bristle but as the glee raises in his eyes at your reaction you do your best to tamp it down.
“I’m…flexible,” you say, your grin begrudging. A hubbub breaks out beyond you in the crowd as the makeshift band that had assembled to play party music transitions to a particularly festive song, causing both you and Poe to watch as people begin forming an impromptu dance floor. When Poe turns back at you and raises his eyebrows, expectant, you throw up your hands defensively.
“No. Don’t look at me like that, Fly Boy,” you’re quick to say, but Poe’s even quicker, having already grabbed you by the hand and pulled you to him. Your body collides with his and his other hand finds the dip of your waist.
“Oh I’m sorry, what was that I just heard someone say about being open minded?” Poe asks. In a sudden fluid motion he dips you, bending you over so that your back is parallel to the ground and his face hovers over yours. “Being flexible?”
You let him pull you back up and steady yourself with a hand on his chest to catch your balance, dizzy now, most likely from the suddenness of the motion. You’re about to toss back a witty retort, possibly something that will knock him down a few pegs, but then you catch the glint in his eye and a smile spreads across your lips unbidden.
“You get one dance, Dameron.”
~*~
One dance turned into many, as it turns out. The band, upon realizing their audience’s appetite for raucous music, had begun a steady rotation of upbeat tunes. The dance floor had expanded, spilling out of its original confines in the center of the town square and into the concession areas on the perimeter. Resistance members danced and drank, their bodies jumping and moving to the beat in one chaotic mass of excess energy and euphoria. Bodies writhe against one another in all directions as people seek out friction that can confirm to them that they did indeed survive the day’s trials.
You’re experiencing friction of your own in your little portion of the dance floor. Where things had started out innocently – energetic bouncing to the beat and moving in unison – the tone had long changed. At this point Poe is behind you, arms slung dangerously low on your hips to hold you against him, hands pressed right above your pelvis. The feeling of his chest pressing against your back, his hips bracketing your ass – you’ve lost yourself in the sensations. The rhythm of the music shakes through your muscles but instead of tense and tired, they’re loose and buzzing.
Though truth be told, they aren’t the only thing buzzing. The proximity of Poe’s hands to your lower body feels charged like a magnet. Without thinking you press your hands over the backs of his, encouraging pressure on your lower abdomen. You swear you hear Poe growl behind you has his hands pull you further to him, but it could also be the roar of the crowd. Your hips move in sync, your ass grinding against him in time with the music. Escapism in its purest form is what you’re experiencing in Poe’s arms, held against Poe’s body, matching Poe’s motions. It’s heady and distracting and everything you could ask for to make living feel like living, especially in the aftermath of a day centered on death. You’re content to let this moment last as long as the universe allows.
That is until you realize that the increasing beat you’d thought was a shift in the music is actually the rapid crescendo of your own heartbeat.
Swallowing you find your throat is thick, saliva pooling in your mouth inexplicably. You take a deep breath and allow your mind to reel. How long had you been feeling like this? Why hadn’t you noticed these feelings coming on?
One of the large hands at your hip begins sliding up along the plane of your side and you get your answer. The weight of his touch lights your skin on fire as it drags up and across your collar bone. Your breath feels ragged, rattling around in lungs that can’t seem to take in oxygen no matter how high your chest rises and falls. Poe’s hand lingers on your throat for a second so you swallow again, with even less luck than before. His hand reaches up to grip your jaw which he uses to turn your head back toward him.
Oh.
Poe continues to move behind you, his motions controlling you both on the floor, but his face is strained. Sweat dots his temples, gleaming in his curls, and his teeth seem gritted, making his jaw set at a striking angle. His eyes pin you down, however, and they keep your attention as you gaze back, wide-eyed.
“You okay, rookie?” Poe’s voice is deeper than normal, huskier. The way it reverberates through your body makes a rumbling bubble up deep inside your chest. The beginnings of a moan, perhaps? You’re quick to gasp a response before such a sound has a chance to make its way into the air between you.
“I’m…feeling quite strange.”
The hand still at your waist tightens its grip while the other rejoins on the opposite side. You have to gasp again to keep from moaning. Suddenly you’re being maneuvered forward, Poe’s guidance weaving you through the crowd with ease despite the congested revelry.
Neither of you see the way Myrna is watching you both with a knowing smirk from her place draped around her own handsome pilot beau. Or the way the little old woman who’d gifted you the beverage hovers on the outskirts of the dance floor, a proud look on her wrinkled face as she eyes your retreating figures.
~*~
You’re not really able to follow where Poe is directing you, mainly because of how the imprint of his hands on your body seems to be searing into your skin through your flight suit. While your accelerated heart rate was the thing you had been most worried about, now you are equally worried about the dull ache that has seated itself in the pit of your stomach. You bite down hard on your lip to keep the moan from spilling out, the one you’ve been suppressing since the moment you became conscious to your current discomfort.
When Poe’s stride finally slows to a stop only then are you able to take in your surroundings. Blinking, you’re surprised to find that you’re now outside of the town, far from the lights and bustle of the party, walking into the silent clearing that contains the squadron’s parked aircrafts.
“Why are we all the way out here?” you ask, unsettled by how deep your voice sounds in the darkness.
“Needed to get away from the crowd.” You’re even more unsettled by how breathless Poe’s voice is as he says his first words since the dance floor. So unsettled that you turn in his arms so you can finally take in his disheveled appearance fully.
“Are you okay?”
“I don’t know, it’s the weirdest thing. One minute everything was fine and the next…”
“You can’t catch your breath,” you finish for him and he nods gravely. Both of your chests are practically heaving, pressing into each other with each exhale. When you become aware of this, it also brings awareness of the way his chest pressed up against yours is also adding pressure to your nipples. Since when were your nipples hard? The night is balmy, a cool breeze barely able to disturb the moist warmth that settles in the jungle terrain. You feel sweat begin to collect on the back of your neck and your hairline, much like the sweat causing Poe to shine a bit in the moonlight. And yet your nipples are hard and a shudder runs through your body, nerve endings clearly ten steps ahead of you, taking in some experience to which you’d yet to catch up.
“Wait a minute, look at me,” Poe suddenly orders, his fingers wrapping around your chin to lift your face toward his. You freeze as he stares down at you, eyes widening at whatever he sees.
“What is it?” you ask, voice urgent, almost frightened.
“Your pupils are wide as planets,” he mutters, distracted fingers drawing up the side of your jaw to press to the pulse point at your throat. “Your heartbeat is out of control.”
“I haven’t been able to calm down,” you say, nodding but getting more worried by the second. “Why can’t I calm down? Are you feeling the same way?”
Poe’s mouth presses into a hard line and he turns away abruptly, head tilting down.
“Oh fuck.”
“What?” You try to pull him back toward you but he doesn’t budge.
“I think…we’ve been drugged.”
Your blood runs cold and a hand flies to cover your mouth. You’d known tonight was too good to be true. Your mind races, making connections out of thin air, trying to place when and where you could have possibly come in close enough proximity to First Order agents to be compromised.
“But what – how – what can we do? What is it? Is it deadly?” You’re cut off by a sound issuing from Poe’s now curved body. You wonder at first if it’s a sob, which makes sense because you’re about ready to cry yourself. But then you realize it’s a chuckle.
“I wouldn’t say deadly. Just exceedingly inconvenient.”
“So you know what it is then?” you prompt, tugging at his shoulder some more to try and see his face. “Tell me!”
“Well for starters I’m pretty sure it was that drink the old woman gave us.”
Fuck.
Of course. What was the one suspicious thing you’d ingested all day? The fact that you hadn’t thought about it sooner makes you want to kick yourself, but you press on instead, anxious to have the matter dealt with.
“What does it do?” You hate the tremor that colors your voice. At that Poe finally turns around and you take him in all at once, trying to assess what he could have been hiding. His tall, wide-legged stance makes it easy to notice after a few seconds. As your gaze moves lower on his body you finally see the massive tent forming below the zipper line of his flight suit.
Without even being able to mentally process what you’re looking at your body responds immediately. A rush of warmth and wetness floods the apex of your thighs and the moan that you’d so far been able to hold in finally makes it way out of your throat. Poe’s eyes, which had recently gone hooded, widen in response to the lewd sound. You clap a hand over your mouth and snap your eyes back up to his face, away from the rigid shape that had made the muscles inside you contract wantonly around nothing.
“It’s made from a plant that’s meant to accelerate sex drive,” Poe says matter-of-factly.
You almost don’t hear him because your eyes have already slid back down his body, feasting on the sight of his impressive bulge. You’d heard stories of Poe’s sexual prowess, many from the man’s own loud mouth. You knew he’d satisfied many members of the Resistance, male and female alike. But you had never truly let yourself consider what he’d be like. What he’d look like. What he’d feel like…
“Why would she possibly give that to us of all people?” You feel like you’re going to cry. The feelings coursing through your body are overwhelming.
“Maybe she went around spiking many people at the party. Maybe she just thought you and I would look hot together? You can’t blame her for that one.” Poe winks at you and it diffuses some of your angst. You let out a tense laugh and shake your head.
“How do we make it stop?” you force yourself to ask, just as you force yourself yet again to look back up in his eyes. Poe averts his own, a sheepish look overtaking his face. When he doesn’t answer you step forward and grab his arm in alarm, trying not to consider the way his bicep bulges under his sleeve. “Poe?!”
“We have to…take care of it.”
You’re launching yourself away from him before he can finish the sentence. You probably knew the answer before you’d even asked the question, but his words still sent electricity through your spine.
“We can’t. That’s…that’s crazy – you’re crazy, Dameron!”
“Hey, you think I like this? Standing here like an idiot with my dick so hard I can barely see straight?”
The sexual nature of his words, spoken so plainly and without euphemism for the first time, makes a new wave of wetness pool between your legs against your will.
“Don’t….talk about it,” you say through gritted teeth, closing your eyes in an attempt to center yourself.
“What? Don’t talk about my aching cock?” he asks, almost as a challenge. He’s frustrated now, egged on by your attitude.
“Stop it.”
“Are you about to tell me you aren’t wet right now?”
You turn your back on him in a childish and fruitless attempt at blocking out his words. When you don’t reply you hear his footsteps as he approaches from behind.
“If we’re both having the same reaction, and I’m certain we are, then I’d imagine you’re practically dripping right now.”
His words would have made your eyes cross if you didn’t have them shut so tightly. A hand molds around your hip while the other grasps at the side of your neck, both working in tandem to pull your back flush against his front. The impact, though gentle, knocks the wind out of you. Or whatever wind had been in you in the first place. His lips are at your ear then and you melt into his touch.
“If we take care of this together we’ll go back to normal.”
“…back to normal?” you ask, simply repeating and not really aware of your words.
“Exactly.”
“I…I don’t know.” Poe’s hardened length is pressing into your ass now, insistent and firm behind you. The hand on your hip migrates lower to pull you against him. A swivel of his hips causes your own to follow the momentum, gyrating in their own right.
“We can be quick,” Poe coos, his voice vibrating over your earlobe where his lips are making contact with your skin. Another low chuckle sounds. “Or I can take my time if you want. Either way, I can promise you’ll enjoy it.”
There’s your cocky Fly Boy.
You wrench yourself from his grasp and take a few steadying steps away before gaining the wherewithal to turn back and face him once more. He looks supremely disappointed, arms still outstretched in the place where you had just been.
“Does this really have to be a…team effort?” you ask, face screwed up with discomfort. Poe runs a hand through his hair and casts a distracted glance about your surroundings.
“I mean I guess theoretically one could take care of themselves – ”
“Great!” you cut him off and stalk around to the other side of his x-wing. Of course he’d brought you to his ship. You look around for your own but when you can’t find it you plop yourself down on the ground.
“Are you kriffing serious?” comes Poe’s angry voice behind you as he stomps over. “We could bang this out and feel better but you’re just going to – ”
“Oh ‘bang’ this out? Real nice, Dameron.”
“You know what I mean.” You can practically hear his eye roll.
“The other side,” you say simply, lowering the zipper on your flight suit. When you don’t hear the sound of his retreating footsteps, however, you pause. “Stay on the other side of the ship, Dameron.”
He grumbles but does as you say. When you finally hear the sound of him throwing himself to the ground, you lift the tab of your zipper again. However, the loud and sudden ziiiip indicating that he’s yanked open his own garment seems ring out then in the clearing and you’re inundated with mental images of what that must look like. Poe sprawled on the ground with his flight suit open and askew. You imagine the expanse of his chest, the way the muscle would ripple in the shadows of the jungle. You’d seen him without a shirt before, the arms of his flight suit tied at his waist as he reclined beneath his x-wing making repairs. Covered in sweat and grease. The memory and the subsequent lurid thoughts have you dipping your hand down into the small opening you’ve made in your clothes, not fully comfortable enough to expose yourself entirely to the elements. When you reach the place between your thighs you have to swallow the gasp that bursts forth at the realization that Poe had been right. You’re not just wet. You’re dripping.
“Fuck.”
You think you say it quietly but a chuckle from the other side of the ship proves otherwise.
“Need any help over there?”
You ignore him and try to focus in on your own body, closing your eyes. You allow a hand to ghost over your breast as you ease a finger through your folds. You feel the insistent thrumming of your pulse even down below and your breath is shallow in your chest. The images dancing behind your eyelids show you flashes, glimpses of things you try to banish from your mind. The angle of Poe’s jaw. His faint, ever present stubble. The arch of his eyebrow. The curve of his smirk. His ass in those pants.
“Sweets…”
Poe’s voice interrupts a whimper you hadn’t even realized you were releasing.
“Poe.” Your voice is small and it cracks around his name. Your muscles are contracting but nothing you do eases the sensation. It just continues building within you. “It hurts.”
“Just come over here. I don’t even have to touch you. Just let me help you through it.”
You ponder the darkness before you, the way it envelops the other aircrafts in this makeshift parking zone. You hear a shick shick shick behind you and your cunt aches. Completely in response to the siren call of Poe Dameron’s building pleasure. You’re immediately intensely jealous. Jealous of the way that, you assumed, he was having more luck getting himself off than you were, despite the fingers inside you right now. Jealous of the way his voice didn’t crack when he beckoned you over.
But most of all jealous of the fact that he’s the one currently touching his hard cock. Not you.
You will yourself to stand up, pulling your hand out of your flight suit but not bothering to zip it back up. On jelly legs you make your way to the other side of the ship. The far side, facing away from the town square and the distant glow of the party you’ve now forgotten.
As you round the edge of the x-wing you bite your lip at the sight before you. Poe is indeed sprawled out with his suit zipped all the way down. His thick member protrudes from the bottom of the opening, a fist moving up and down rapidly, pulling from root to flushed tip in skilled motions. However the eyes that gaze up at you from under his unruly mop of curly hair are not doused with pleasure and satisfaction as you’d imagined. Instead he looks pained, almost agonized. At the sight of you he sits up a bit and does his best to give you a reassuring smile though it comes out as more of a grimace.
“Fuck, you’re beautiful, rookie.”
“That’s the drink talking,” you dismiss, despite the way your stomach swoops as you move to settle yourself down next to him, careful not to make contact. “And you know I hate you calling me rookie.”
“I’ll call you anything you want, baby, as long as you start touching yourself.”
Your cunt pulses at his words so suddenly that you almost double over. Your breathing, already ragged, speeds up as you feel the overwhelming urge to have something deep inside you. Dropping your hand into the opening in your suit you halt, however, watching Poe warily in your peripheral vision. He catches you looking and reluctantly stills the hand moving on member.
“Would sitting back to back help?” he sighs. You nod, scrambling over so that your back is to his.
This is better. This is much better, you think as you dip your hand back between your legs and into the waiting slick. You drag a finger in tight circles over your clit and do your best to calm the racing thoughts that flit back to images of Poe’s body.
The body that is currently pressed to yours, though not at all in the manner you would prefer.
Poe grunts then, making you lose your rhythm.
“This isn’t the first time I’ve wanted you, you know.”
You cut your answering gasp off at the source, not daring to make a sound lest it interrupt this information that you desperately needed to here. He interprets your silence correctly and continues.
“I’ve thought about you. When I’m in the cockpit on my way to some distant planet. When not even hyper speed can get me there quick enough before thoughts of you creep in.” He almost sounds mad, but you get it. The emotions coursing through your body along with the hormones are driving you wild and you don’t know how to feel.
“What…what are the thoughts about?” you can’t help but ask.
“I’d love to say it’s your smile or your brains or something sweet like that. And I do think about those things too, don’t get me wrong,” he says on a hoarse chuckle. “But it’s mainly your body.”
You slip a third finger inside your cunt as he says this, his words and the feeling mixing to cause you to let out an unchecked moan. You feel Poe’s body shudder against you.
“Shit Sweets you’re killing me.” You feel him tense as his hand begins moving faster. “I think about how you look poured into that flight suit. The way your tits and ass jiggle when you hop into your x-wing – fuck.” Another shudder wracks through his body and you can’t take it anymore. The way you’re touching yourself isn’t the way you usually do it. Not in those rare moments where you’ve got the sleeping quarters to yourself and you’re able to get yourself off in your bunk to images of a chiseled jawline, a clothed bulge, rippling muscles, soft, curly hair…
You abruptly pitch yourself forward to balance yourself on your knees and one hand while the remaining hand redoubles its efforts between your legs. The shift in position ends your physical contact with Poe and he swivels to see.
“What are you – ”
“Don’t turn around,” you gasp out. Your new angle works in your favor as your swollen clit becomes more sensitive, pulled down by gravity so that every swipe of your finger becomes more potent. “But for the love of gods, don’t stop talking.”
Poe is taken aback by your sudden forwardness, but he doesn’t let it faze him for long. Instead you hear his renewed efforts at jerking off as the sound of skin swiping across skin, made smoother by spit and precum, gets louder behind you.
“What do you want me to talk about? How much I wish it was your tight little pussy I was fucking instead of my fist?”
The whimper you release at that statement is unlike any sound you’ve ever made and it only spurs Poe on.
“And I just know you’re tight. I know it. And wet too, just like I guessed you were. I can hear it, baby,” he practically growls and you become intensely away of the slick, creamy sounds coming from the rapid in and out, in and out rhythm of your fingers delving into your cunt. “You’re dripping, aren’t you?”
“Yes.” You close your eyes and hear his words and wish the fingers inside you were harder, thicker, him.
“You wish it was my cock inside you, I know you do. You don’t want to admit it but you wish I was pounding into you, making you feel good. Making the ache go away.”
Your answering whine confirms his beliefs and he lets out a triumphant grunt.
“Fuck, baby. I want it, too. Bury myself deep inside of you and fuck you till that drink wears off and you’re still screaming for me, that’s how good it would be.”
“Oh gods.”
“Tell me who you’re wet for.”
“Y-you.” It comes out small. You’re shocked that you even say it, especially with how much you’ve been fighting all of this. You want it. You want it in your bones and in your blood and in your tight, spasming cunt. But you also want Poe’s friendship. Want him to tousle your hair on the way to the hanger. Want him to keep sending you funny messages over your data pad, constantly trying to outdo your own silly riddles and jokes. Want to tease him and eat dinner with him in the mess hall and slap him when he says something stupid and yell at him when he does something dangerous and cry when he doesn’t come back on time from a mission…
A sob finds its way out of your body, sandwiched between two moans. You’re not sure Poe even heard it until his voice reaches your ears again, this time gentler.
“Sweets? Is this working for you?”
You take a shuddering breath before answering.
“No.”
You practically hear Poe slump in defeat, the rhythm of his hand on his length slowing down. You bite your lip before continuing.
“Take me, Poe.”
“What?” Poe whirls around so fast you feel the air woosh over you as he disturbs it. You jump to your feet, still facing away from him and yank your flight suit over your shoulders and down your body, stepping out so it pools on the ground. He watches as you get back down on your hands and knees before him in your underwear, ass in the air, waiting for him to catch up.
“I need you, Poe. Just…just please get inside me,” you say, reaching back to pull the damp fabric of your panties aside, exposing your glistening, swollen folds for him to see.
You don’t have to ask him a third time. He’s on you so fast that you’re confused by his motions. It takes a few seconds before you realize that he’s taken your discarded flight suit and stretched it out on the ground, positioning you over it so that your hands and knees are protected from the dirt. The sweetness of this considerate action is offset by the way his fingers dig harshly into your hips, maneuvering your ass so that it lines up with his pelvis. You tilt forward, aided by pressure on your lower back which raises your click cunt to the level of his cock.  
“I’m going to make you feel so good – ”
“No more words, Dameron. Just shut up and get your cock inside – FUCK.” He spears you mid-sentence and you immediately fall down onto your elbows. Your ass still in the air, held in place by his hard grip, receives a smack and you cry out, feeling no pain. Only pleasure as the sting ripples through you and into your clenching cunt. He feels it deep inside you and groans.
“Maybe you’re the one who needs to shut up, baby.” His words issue forth from gritted teeth. “Always fucking teasing me with that fucking mouth.” His hips rut into yours, taking up an unforgiving pace, while the rest of his body folds over yours so his chest pressed flush to your back. One hand closes tightly around your chin, wrenching up your head and dragging a finger over your bottom lip which has grown plump from biting. “This beautiful, bossy fucking mouth. Always telling me off, telling me what to do.”
Your tongue darts out to meet his skin and his other fingers caress your chin in response. It’s a stark contrast to the almost feral way he is still clutching your hip and driving into you over and over.
There’s almost no resistance. You’re tight, cunt clutching onto his throbbing cock in an effort to keep him buried inside, but you’re wetter than you’ve ever been and it’s making his thrusts effortless. You assume it’s a side effect of the drink. But in some part of your brain you can’t believe that a plant could possibly make a man’s cock feel as good as Poe’s does right now inside you. How a plant could cause you to feel pleasure that is not simply rooted in the way his hand drags down from your jaw to wrench your breasts out of the cups of your bra. How a plant could in any way magnify the surely already intoxicating feeling of Poe’s mouth working at the side of your neck, the curve of your shoulder.
“This working, baby? This doing it?” Poe checks in then, not relenting in his thrusts. Never relenting. “You’re squeezing me, so I know your little pussy likes it.”
A shuddering gasp kicks through you before you can answer his question and he laughs. The vibrations go straight from his cock to your clit and you whimper some more.
“Your sounds. I want to record these little sounds you’re making and play them back when I’m flying. Have you fill the space in my x-wing till I can’t take it any more.” Poe presses a kiss to the back of your shoulder, nipping and then laving the skin over with his tongue. “I’m going to hear these sounds in my dreams.”
“It’s…just…the drink,” you practically hiccup, barely able to form thoughts from the way your body has focused all energy, all recognitions of nerve endings to the space between your thighs. Poe slaps your ass again and you keen.
“Just listen to yourself, baby. No drink is making you sound this hot. That’s all you, Sweets.”
Before you can argue further you do take a second to listen. To the way your shallow breaths mix with whimpers and whines. The gurgle in the back of your throat when his cock bounces against your cervix. He’s right. It is hot. You are hot. You reach a hand down to your clit, desperate to increase the already mind-blowing stimulation, greedy for more.
“You feel so good. You’re sosososogood,” you barely manage to slur. Despite your inability to fully speak you make the attempt because you assume that if hearing your gasps is egging him on, your words will amplify it. And amplify it they do. Poe’s hips stutter for a second before he drops down heavier on you, thrusting deeper and from a more primal place. A hand savagely kneads at one of your breasts, playing with the nipple.  
“I’ve never been this full. I can’t take it, I can’t…”
“Seems like you’re taking it pretty well, baby,” Poe coos, pressing more kisses to the side of your neck.
“I need m-more,” you gasp, realizing with urgency that the pressure in your core is finally building past the plateau of the last…hour? Half an hour? How long had this been going on? All night? It doesn’t matter because Poe’s inside you and he’s listening to you and suddenly you’re being slammed into with all the force he can muster. He expertly wrings pleasure from your body and you feel yourself careening toward a release that you can’t describe. Just out of reach and full of all the potential energy inherent in an object rocketing toward the moon only to soon plummet back to the depths.
“Poe! I…I…oh fuck…oh gods…I…”
“Go on, baby. Cum.”
“You ha- ahhhh. But you…y-you…” You’re babbling. You’re incoherent, not wanting to leave him behind in the blinding ache that comes before release. Your hands are fisting in the flight suit below you, desperate for something solid, something substantial to hold onto.
“Don’t wait for me, Sweets. Let go.”
And then his hands are closing over yours, fingers interlacing and squeezing down, pinning you to the ground with white knuckles that would hurt if you weren’t squeezing him right back, finally grounded in the way you needed.
And you’re cumming.
And cumming.
You feel every muscle in your body seize and spasm and bliss roils out through you in waves. You shake and stutter under him, feeling fresh wetness gush down around his cock as he fucks you through the feeling. You keep waiting for it to stop but it doesn’t, it only intensifies. It must be a side effect. Of the drink not the man. But when you feel yourself transcending the moment, the way your soul feels like it is literally floating above you, you use the out of body experience to take in the man who is causing this pleasure. The way he cages you in, bracing you through the storm of your orgasm, giving more and more to keep the flame burning as long as possible.
His muscles ultimately seize sometime around when your soul seems to sink back into your body and you’re one again enough with your senses that you can feel him paint your walls with sticky, hot cum. He doesn’t drop his weight on you like other men have after the completion of such exertions. Other men who had focused more on the destination than the journey, leaving you as wanting for release as you were wanting for air under the pressure of their body weight. Instead, Poe pulls you of you and flops to his back in the grass beside you. Without him holding you up you crumble down, face pressing into the fabric of your rumpled flight suit instead of the dirt, thanks to Poe.
A few minutes pass, silent except for the sound of your slowing gasps for air. When your breathing evens Poe sits up on his haunches to guide you back into your flight suit. You’re sticky from sweat and your combined cum, but you couldn’t care less with your bones liquified and your eyelids heavy. Gone is the buzzing ache, in its place a heavy sleepiness. When Poe lays you, now clothed, gingerly back down on the ground you automatically curl into him, allowing him to wrap his arms around your body.
Neither of you shares another word. You don’t have to.
Because shortly after you doze off. And for the first time in a long time your final thoughts before sleep overtakes you are not of the dread the morning will bring, but the solace you found in the night.
~*~
When you wake it’s to a dawn as grey as all the ones before it. Hazy with receding fog and with the promise of all the danger that looms ahead in the hours soon to follow. One of the planet’s suns has already breached the horizon, and you raise a hand to cover your eyes as you peer out from under the x-wing’s protective wing. Looking down you take stock.
Your flight suit is on but fully unzipped, leaving your chest and stomach entirely exposed, all the way down to your lower belly. A large hand covers one of your breasts, fingers twitching against your flesh as the man attached to it continues to dream. You follow the length of his arm to take in his body, tucked close into your own, equally unzipped, his broad torso showing through the gaping fabric. You watch Poe’s abdominal muscles contract with his inhales and exhales for a moment while you check in with your body.
The humming from last night is gone, that much is for certain. This makes you believe that the effects of the drink have worn off. You’re quick to question this hypothesis, however, when Poe stirs in his sleep and his hand squeezes down a bit on your breast. Your breath catches in your throat and fire shoots through your veins. A lingering symptom, you wonder. Or perhaps just a normal, biological reaction to sexual stimuli. You kick yourself mentally because of course it has to be the latter. It couldn’t be the third option which you won’t even allow yourself to fully consider.  
You require a shower urgently, it occurs to you suddenly. And food, a realization that coincides with a rumbling in your empty stomach. Knowing you’ll never have a good enough excuse to extricate yourself from this gorgeous man’s arms you steel your nerves and pull away. When you stand, Poe groans and allows an eye to crack open, his hand flying up to shield his eyes from the rising sun. You’re silhouetted against the dawn and he takes in your outline. The curves of you.
“Morning, Sweets,” he says, voice hoarse with sleep this time instead of sex.
“Morning, Fly Boy,” you reply simply with a small smile. You feel a buzzing in the pocket of your suit then and pull out your mini com unit, even more portable than your usual data pad. The message that blares across the screen and you relay it before Poe can reach his own device which had similarly vibrated.
“We’ve got a new mission. Briefing is in an hour and then we take off.” The information feels stilted as it leaves your lips. How can you feel so entirely, earth-shatteringly changed and yet in many ways everything is still the same. The sun still came up. The war still rages on.
You look down at Poe and his intense expression as he watches you makes you think that he’s wondering the same thing.
Your heart thumps in your chest, this time unaided by any drugged drink or the eyes or hands of a man whose existence seemed both your making and undoing. Routine is the only thing that can calm these nerves. Routine is what is required to survive war. Routine and protocol and boundaries.
You zip up your flight suit with finality.
“See you at the briefing?” you ask, though its more statement than question.
“Of course.” Poe’s response is quiet as he continues to watch you from his reclining position. You’re still above him and at a distance, a position he often associates with you.
You smile and give him a good natured salute before turning and making you way back toward the town where you know the rest of the Resistance members are already bustling about and preparing for the day.
Another day you hope you, and Poe, will be lucky enough to outlive.
~*~
Doing a smaller taglist since it’s a Poe fic and I’m not sure if everyone on my usual taglist is into it (Please let me know if you’d like to be added or removed for future work!): @paper-n-ashes @mariesackler @tlcwrites @foxilayde @mylifeisactuallyamess @sacklerscumrag @jynzandtonic @millenialcatlady @barbers-glimmerin-darlin @hopeamarsu @direnightshade @leather-flannel-liquor @fizzywoohoo @aliveandlonely @wayward-rose @safarigirlsp @emeraldsiren20 @finn-ray-nal-beads @maryforyou @maybe-your-left
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vinylspinning · 3 years ago
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Led Zeppelin: Coda (1982)
Although it brought some much needed closure to heartbroken Led Zeppelin fans (and record label accountants), roughly two years after John Bonham’s and the band’s mutual demise (and 40 years ago -- gulp!), Coda is still one of those typically patchy ‘odds and sods’ collections.
Meaning, for those of you unfamiliar with this admittedly archaic term, that it was comprised of once rejected studio outtakes and therefore lacked both the quality and cohesion of a proper studio album, let alone a greatest hits set.
That being said, even if you don’t place every last Led Zep LP on a pedestal (I certainly don’t do that with either 1976’s Presence or ‘79’s In Through the Out Door), at the end of the day, we’re still talking about the ‘Hammer of the Gods’ here!
So, of course there was lingering magic dust to Bonham’s percussive persistence on “Poor Tom” (originally recorded in 1970), Jimmy Page and John Paul Jones’ stair-climbing riffs on “Ozone Baby” (‘78), and Robert Plant’s fighting words and Page’s piss and vinegar licks on Zep’s response to punk rock, “Wearing and Tearing” (‘78).
Rather more ‘mortal’ were ‘72’s “Walter’s Walk” (actually more of a sprint), ‘78’s “Darlene” (a not quite fully committed ‘50s rocker), and the 1970 Royal Albert Hall performance of “I Can’t Quit You Baby” (which is pretty great but not exactly rare).
But I’ve got little love for either 1970’s “We’re Gonna Groove” ( it’s like “a full-body dry heave set to music -- Sweet Fancy Moses!”) or ‘76’s drum 'orchestra.’ “Bonzo’s Montreux,” which Page and Bonham assembled at that alpine town’s Mountain Studios during the latter’s lonely tax exile.
What I can’t understand (though there’s probably a logical explanation) is why Coda’s original vinyl pressing didn’t include the “Immigrant Song” single B-side, “Hey, Hey, What Can I Do” (‘70), the stunning live version of “White Summer/Black Mountain Side” (‘69), or the fantastic reimagining of Robert Johnson’s “Traveling Riverside Blues” (‘69) -- all of which were added its ‘90s CD reissues and the Zeppelin box set.
At least there was an excuse for another belated CD bonus cut, ‘68’s “Baby Come On Home,” which was lost for decades, as well as subsequent additions like ‘69’s “La La” and ‘70’s “St. Tristan’s Sword,” which were never really finished and basically scrape the bottom of the barrel.
In any case and no matter how you spin it (figuratively or literally), I think there’s little doubt that, ‘odds and sods’ or not, Coda’s far-from-perfect vinyl iteration nevertheless remains a near-essential final ‘passage’ in the Led Zeppelin oeuvre for all serious collectors.
More Led Zeppelin: Led Zeppelin, Led Zeppelin II, Led Zeppelin III, “Immigrant Song,” Led Zeppelin IV, Houses of the Holy, Physical Graffiti, Presence, The Song Remains the Same, In Through the Out Door. 
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talonwings · 4 years ago
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Who We Are - Empires SMP writing
a gift for you, empiresblr, courtesy of my now 5 hours of fWhip headcanons. feel free to kill me when you're done. (also sorry i don't yet have an AO3 i can link to, i've been on the wait list foreeevvveerrr).
CW for slight body horror, angst, and i guess suffocation kind of?
“fWhip? Hello? Are you in here?”
He heard the call--how could he not have, when the voice was hers? Still, he did not move, remaining where he slumped against the wall of the underground room. One of the redstone crystals blooming from the stone was jammed against his shoulder blade, but even the pain could not entice him to rise.
“fWhip, come out!” Gem’s voice was a mixture of frustration and concern, a tone he rarely heard from her--well, the frustration he had heard before, but the worry was new. Gem almost never fretted about anything; it was how she had kept him and Sausage so well in line up until now.
“I’m going to come down there!” The threat echoed down the passageway that separated the secret room from the unassuming shopfront above it. “I know where your lair is, it isn’t a secret! Don’t make me come down there!”
“Don’t,” fWhip rasped. “Please.”
Gem either couldn’t or didn’t hear him. “I’m giving you one minute, and then I’m coming down there whether you like it or not!”
“Please,” he tried again, but his voice would not obey him. It petered out almost as soon as it passed his lips. He licked them, swallowed, coughed, tried a third time. “Gem, please, go away.”
This time, it seemed, she did hear, for she answered, “I will not go away! Nobody’s seen you in two weeks, fWhip! We’re worried sick!”
“I’m fine,” he croaked--a lie.
“You don’t sound fine,” she retorted. “I’m coming down.”
He opened his mouth to warn her off again, but the tell-tale sound of the painting door sliding back masked whatever he might have tried to say. Seconds later, her footsteps started up, the familiar click of those heeled purple boots getting ever louder as she marched along the passageway toward his laboratory.
fWhip’s gaze darted around in a panic, searching out anyplace that would be suitable to hide. He hadn’t moved from his current spot in over twelve hours, and his limbs protested as he shoved himself violently to his feet, teetering off-balance from the unfamiliar motion. Finally, he settled on a small cranny near the back of the chamber, and limped over to it, cramming himself inside just as Gem’s footfalls indicated that she had reached the door to the lab itself. He heard her swing it open, and then her voice, much clearer now, softly called, “fWhip? Where are you?”
“Go away,” he replied, hating the stony rasp that he couldn’t seem to get rid of now. “Don’t want to see you.”
“Well, that’s just rude,” she replied. He could imagine the look on her face, and fought against the lump it brought to his throat. He wanted to apologize, to beg for her forgiveness, to throw himself into her arms.
“Didn’t ask you to come,” he croaked instead.
“No, actually, Jimmy did,” Gem replied waspishly. “Your enemy. You remember him? The one you stole his most precious possession from? He sent me a message three days ago to tell me he hadn’t seen or heard from you in over a week. Mind you, this was after I’d been questioned by Sausage, Pearl, and Shrub as to why you’ve missed the last two alliance meetings. fWhip, even your enemies are worried about you. Where have you been?”
Oh, if only you knew. His mouth twisted with a hateful, bitter little smile. “Busy.”
Gem audibly scoffed. “Right.”
“Leave, Gem.” The order tasted strange in his mouth, when he desperately wanted her to stay.
“Not until I see you.” He heard her start moving around the room, picking things up and nudging them with her feet, rearranging boxes and sliding barrels aside as she searched.
“Leave.” The cranny was small, but he squashed himself further inside anyway, stone scraping against all the places where his skin was exposed.
“Are you back there?” His stomach squeezed with terror as he heard her move toward him, squeezing between two of the suspension tubes where he had once stored specimens he was researching. “I can’t see you.”
“Please, leave, please.” If he couldn’t order her, he could at least beg her. “Gem, please, if you care about me at all, go away.”
“fWhip, I do care about you,” she said gently. “That’s why I’m here in the first place. Please come out. I just want to know you’re safe.”
He could feel his heart ripping itself in half--desperation to hide warring violently with the desire to finally be seen, even if it would cost him everything. It felt like it might burn a hole in his chest, and his hands tightened reflexively into fists as he battled himself for what seemed an eternity.
“Please, little brother,” Gem whispered.
It was as if she had caved his chest in. A sob dragged itself from his throat before he could stop it, but he finally let himself unfurl from the cranny to drape limply across the floor, gazing up at his sister’s blue-violet eyes as they widened in shock, which turned to horror, which turned to sorrow.
“Oh, fWhip…” Gem reached out a hand toward him, but hesitated, drawing her fingers back before she could reach him. “What happened?”
“You really want to know?” He had to shove back another sob with a monumental effort, watching the way her fingers trembled as she gazed at him. “Or do you want to leave, like I told you to before?”
“No, I would never,” she gasped. “Not now. Not like this.” She sat down on the floor, her violet cloak flowing behind her like a pool of silky water, and slid closer to him, although not quite close enough for their hands to touch. “Tell me what happened.”
He let his eyes drift away from hers, toward the ceiling and the red crystals dripping from its shadowy recesses. “Well, it began two weeks ago.”
Two weeks earlier…
fWhip was not a stranger to surprises, but he liked receiving them far less than he liked planning them.
It had been a long elytra flight from the undisclosed location of the Wither Rose headquarters back to his home in the Grimlands, and the multiple hours in the air were wearing on his body--even though he had been wearing his scarlet goggles for the duration, his eyeballs still ached as if the wind had been hammering them, as did his shoulder blades from the yank and drift of the elytra against his own muscles.
“Maybe next time I take a horse,” he muttered to himself as he angled in for the landing. The deepslate roofs of the Grimlands were beginning to glide by beneath him now, and he made for the circular patch of dirt at the back of the manor that was his customary landing site, his eyes trained on it until something else caught his attention.
“I am positive that was not there before…” One hand came up to tap his chin as his gaze caught on the massive outcrop of deepslate that had bloomed at the front corner of the manor gardens, studded with glinting redstone crystals. A darker shadow within the ring-shaped formation suggested there might possibly be a hole there, though how deep was indiscernible from this far above.
“If somebody has been trying to steal from me again--wait.” fWhip narrowed his eyes at the spot, investigating it more closely now, for it seemed more familiar the closer he drew. He could vaguely recall setting a circle of rocks within the closed hedges, and in their center, a red container, filled with--
“Damn! Xornoth again!” His breath huffed out harshly as he realized what had happened. First the explosion, and now this…
Veering off-course from his typical spot, he carefully glided down until he was low enough to snap the elytra closed and drop gracefully to the ground between the wide hedge rows. From down here, the deepslate ring seemed much larger than it had from the air, its jagged edges stabbing into the blue sky. He could tell now that there was, indeed, a hole at the center, exactly where he had placed the shulker-box filled with Xornoth’s corruption.
“Damn,” he whispered again. He edged closer, peering carefully at the hole as he neared in an attempt to see what might be at the bottom. It appeared to be deeper than he was tall, however, and he was forced to maneuver up to the very lip of the hole to get a good look at the bottom. Thankfully, there did seem to be a bottom, lurking maybe ten feet below the surface; the depths of the hole were quite dark, though, only dimly illuminated by patches of glimmering red crystals, and he was unable to determine much more than that.
fWhip wondered, briefly, if he ought to just ignore the hole. Common sense would seem to suggest that it was involved with Xornoth in some way, and therefore worthy of at least being avoided for the time being until he could request the help of his allies. fWhip, however, whether fortunately or not, had always been availed of a strong sense of curiosity--it was how he had developed so many of his gadgets and tools. Besides that, there was something about the depths of the small hole that seemed to call to him, and him specifically.
He glanced around, taking stock of who might be nearby in case he needed to call for help, and saw no one in the immediate vicinity. There was a groundskeeper’s cottage just on the other side of the hedge row, but he had no way of knowing whether anyone might be inside.
“Well, I suppose I’ll just have to take a chance,” he murmured. “Here goes.”
Gingerly, he sat down at the edge of the hole, dangling his legs off the side and exploring for possible footholds. It took him a minute, but his toes finally caught on a ledge, and he was able to hoist himself down and into the vertical shaft. Thankfully, the same jagged-edged property of deepslate that made it look menacing also made it excellent for climbing, and he had relatively little difficulty lowering himself the full ten or eleven feet to the bottom, where his feet landed on solid stone. Looking up, he was surprised how dim the sky seemed to be after such a short descent.
Now what? he thought to himself as he gazed around at the narrow walls on all sides. Surely I didn’t make an ass of myself climbing down here for no reason.
He had but a few seconds to wonder, as a strange hiss caught his attention, echoing from the rock walls. He couldn’t tell where it was coming from, but the small hole began rapidly to fill with a reddish mist, which, when he inhaled it, made the inside of his nose and throat burn as if he had inhaled fire. He coughed, accidentally inhaled again, and coughed more violently, and still the stuff spewed into the cavern, and he began to wonder whether this was a trap, and whether he had been an idiot for climbing down here, and whether his allies--his friends, his sister--would find his corpse rotting down here. His hands scrabbled for handholds to lever himself back up, but the mist had filled his eyes now, and it stung, forcing him blindly to his knees. He couldn’t see, couldn’t breathe, could barely think. Lights danced behind his eyelids, and his throat was a tunnel of fire, and then he was unconscious, and knew no more.
Present day…
“And the next thing I knew, I woke up. And...this.” fWhip gestured down to himself, unable to keep his mouth from curling like he had tasted something sour. “Or, well, part of it.”
“Part of it?” Gem cocked her head. “What do you mean?”
“I mean, it was just the wings at first.” He tugged at the grey-black appendages, hating that he could feel it when his fingers brushed the leathery flesh. “And to be honest, I thought they were awesome. Who hasn’t dreamed of having wings? Sure, they looked a little gargoyle-ish, but it seemed like a small price to pay for not having to use elytra anymore. And it felt like the redstone magic was helping me, maybe giving me a gift to fight against Xornoth. I thought it might be something good.”
“And then…” Gem prompted when he trailed off.
“And then...the rest started,” he whispered. “I tried to ignore it at first. I thought maybe I was hallucinating, or getting sick, because it started with just my eyes, and I felt like maybe it would go away if I just, I don’t know, pretended not to notice. But then it was my skin, and then my hands, and then...and then my face.” He turned away from her as a visible shudder made its way through him. “I look disgusting.”
“Why didn’t you call us for help?” Gem murmured.
“Because it was my fault it happened!” he growled, shaking his head. “Because I was an idiot and went down that hole and breathed in that gas, and now I’m a monster, and I have no one to blame but myself. Because I couldn’t wait for you.”
“fWhip, no!” He could see the glimmer of moisture in her eyes, and he hated himself even more for it, for making her upset. “It isn’t your fault. You didn’t know what would happen, and you’ve always been an investigator. And now you’ve had to suffer alone, and I had no idea, and…” Her voice caught. “I was so worried. I thought maybe the demon…and especially after those dreams...”
He swallowed. “I...I’m sorry. I just...I didn’t know how to face everyone like this.”
They sat in silence for a long moment, simply listening to their own breaths. Finally, Gem said, “It doesn’t look that bad, you know.”
fWhip eyed her dubiously. “Gem, I look like a gargoyle. Like some kind of…” The word demon couldn’t force itself out, but he could see she understood, for she vigorously shook her head.
“No, you don’t look anything like that,” she said. After a long pause, she quietly added, “You look like my little brother.”
He tried, but couldn’t stop the tears from sliding down his cheeks. “Thanks,” he whispered.
She reached over and finally took his hand, and he almost shouted with joy at the touch of another person; her skin was warm and soft, her delicate tiny fingers gentle as they closed around his rough, clawed ones.
“We’ll figure this out,” she promised. “Together.”
He nodded, and squeezed her hand. “Together.”
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You wrote your opinions on the Order of the Phoenix, what about the Death Eaters? That's another way of saying Lucius, Bellatrix, and anybody else. I honestly feel that we're running out of HP characters for you to write your opinion and reasoning about, so yeah~
We honestly are. When people start asking me questions about Harry’s nameless and faceless classmates I feel like we’re scraping the bottom of my barrel of Harry Potter opinions.
Though, that said, this is still a very large ask if you want me to analyze very Death Eater ever or even the Death Eaters as a whole (which is worthy of its own post).
So, we’ll compromise, and I’ll just look at the two you name dropped.
Lucius Malfoy
To me, Lucius is by far one of the more intelligent Death Eaters. He’s the guy who makes them almost look classy. I say almost, because Lucius is still a racist domestic terrorist and as the series goes on Tom gleefully drags him into being less classy by the minute (his house becomes a POW camp and housing for the dregs of society, Lucius just sobs, trying to be thankful he’s somehow still alive).
Lucius is rich, sophisticated, and is probably the most politically powerful man in the country. He has a beautiful wife he has... a son (sorry Draco, but you do not live up to your father) the guy has it all.
Which makes it very surprising that he got dragged into this mess. But you see, Lucius is paying for that tragedy we call youth.
Also, as a caveat, I’m about to headcanon hard and will not bother to get into the details of why I think x, y, or z in this post.
Ten years prior to the start of canon, Lucius is a very young man, probably very charismatic, certainly believes he’s intelligent and probably gets decent grades, but nonetheless the kind of stupid you see in men ages 15-25.
He’s likely chafing under his aging father’s strict guidance, knows he’s not going to be Lord Malfoy for years yet, wants to get out there, prove himself, and make a difference for his country. More importantly for Lucius, there’s this hip, exciting, new thing that all his cousins and friends are getting into called “The Death Eaters” (yes, I don’t believe the Knights of Walpurgis/Death Eaters 1.0 ever happened, I think it’s ridiculous that fandom and JKR does, I could go into why but not in this post). 
The Death Eaters are led by the single handedly most beautiful, charismatic, man in Britain. (Yes, I headcanon Tom’s still blindingly attractive at this stage, because it makes much more sense to me but we’re not getting into that here.) A mysterious man by the name of Voldemort, Salazar Slytherin’s long lost heir, who has come to resurrect the wizarding world’s true heritage and purge the land of the muggle stain. (Yes, I do believe that no one, not even Lucius who is later given the diary, knew who Tom really was. I believe Regulus’ had only the vaguest idea, informed mostly by Tom’s use of Kreacher to place the locket.) This is the most exciting thing to have ever happened, the rallies probably consist of rich kids drunk out of their minds and maybe even high on a little wizard cocaine, and Lucius is down for it precisely because his father says “Lucius, this is stupid, please don’t embarrass the family.” WELL LUCIUS IS GOING TO EMBARRASS THE FAMILY, DAD! WHAT ARE YOU GOING TO DO ABOUT IT?!
And for a while, it looks like Lucius made the right choice. Things are happening, they’re actually going out and killing the mudbloods! Unlike Regulus, Lucius never has that “wait a minute” moment as he realizes that Voldemort’s actually far more efficiently eliminating pureblood families and sowing dissention in what was once a unanimous force among the Wizengamot (the other pureblood lords aren’t necessarily pro muggleborn, per se, but they get a bit queasy at the thought of blowing them up or Merlin forbid actually blowing up their own public venues wizards use). 
And then October 31st, 1981 happens, and it all comes crashing down. Lucius has to desperately lie his ass off, having only the flimsiest lie to rely on, has to hand out a shit ton of bribes, and manages to squeeze his way out of being imprisoned in Azkaban. 
I’m sure Abraxas looked at his son, with his tattoo on his arm that makes him another man’s slave, at the utter destruction of the Black family, and just shook his head going, “Clean up your mess, Dumbass Son”
And Lucius does to the best of his ability. While some will always suspect him of being a Death Eater, while some know it, he’s able to climb very high in influence in their ridiculously tiny community. Granted, I do think he messed up, and could never for example run for minister given everything (if Crouch can’t rerun then Lucius certainly can’t). He also shows us that in some ways he is not above the law, he’s very afraid his house will be searched without warrant in The Chamber of Secrets, and this is in part why he dumps Tom Riddle’s diary off onto Ginny.
However, he wields total control of the Prophet, has a seat on the Wizengamot, has the ear of the current Minister, is on the Hogwarts’ Board of Governors, and has his hands in pretty much every pie he can.
I imagine during this period Lucius grows up. He brushes the indiscretions of his youth under the carpet, gleefully leaving it all behind him, and the only real friend he maintains contact with from that period is Severus, the least zealot like of all of them. (Crabbe and Goyle Sr aren’t friends, they’re minions). 
Don’t get me wrong, he’s still a racist slime bag, and I don’t think he really regrets the domestic terrorism. He just regrets nearly getting caught and putting his entire family’s security on the line. He witnessed first hand what happened to the Blacks.
And then the worst thing happens: Tom Riddle rises from the dead. He rises, impossibly, from the dead when Lucius has his own hand caught in the cookie jar.
Lucius has been living a life of luxury and influence while his great master, the man he had pledged everything to, was dead. Worse, Lucius took what was described as a treasured item to be protected at all costs, and not only threw it away but sent it to Hogwarts where it caused massive havoc and was ultimately destroyed. 
And Lucius, I imagine, no longer wants to serve a master.
But he has no choice. And so begins Lucius’ descent into misery and hell as he’s given an increasing set of impossible, horrific, tasks in punishment that involve him watching as his wife and son are put through hell.
I believe Tom holds a special place in his cold, black, passive aggressive heart for Lucius Malfoy.
First, Tom makes Lucius’ house his headquarters. Oh, Lucius, you have a very nice, very large, estate? Why don’t you host your beloved, mad, cousin, her equally mad husband and brother-in-law? Oh, Bellatrix threatened to cut off your ear? Well, she’s just so passionate! 
Second, Lucius is told to go get the prophecy. Well, this is easier said than done. He nearly succeeds but then it all turns into the world’s largest clusterfuck that ends in two notable things. First, the prophecy is lost forever, shattered. Second, the government admits that Voldemort is truly resurrected. Both of these things are very bad in Tom’s book. And the blame can easily be put on Lucius’ head.
In response to this, Draco is now given an impossible task that Draco is too stupid to realize is designed to cause him (and his family) as much misery as possible. Draco is to assassinate Dumbledore. 
Likely, Tom was already informed by Snape that Dumbledore was dying. The blackened hand was too obvious a tell coming from too obvious a source for the pair to have hid it. I think trying to hide such information would have immediately blown Snape’s cover. So, Tom knows the man is dying, and doesn’t see fit to tell Draco this.
Instead, he tells Draco, “Kill Dumbledore as soon as possible or I deliver you to Fenrir Grayback.” Draco, however, is young and stupid, so he honestly thinks he is doing this to restore the family honor, earn glory for himself and for the cause, and is expected to do this entirely by himself. As a result, when Narcissa begs Snape to aid Draco, Draco blows them both off and only accepts help from Bellatrix because HE CAN DO THIS ON HIS OWN! DRACO IS A MAN.
This, of course, doesn’t work out either. Draco doesn’t deliver the killing blow, Snape does, but Tom decides to give him a pass.
Instead he moves on to his next plan which is making the Malfoy manor his torture chamber and POW camp. Even Draco, at this point, realizes this all kind of sucks. 
And then Voldemort finally dies a second time, and I’m sure Lucius just stares numbly at his malformed corpse, wondering if it will really take this time.
So that’s Lucius for you, paying always for his mistakes, and pretending he’s just as much of a nutcase as Bellatrix to fit in.
Bellatrix LeStrange
God, compared to the novel that is Lucius’ ridiculous life, I really don’t have much to say about her because I feel like there’s not much too her.
Bellatrix reminds me a lot of the Manson family, she gives off those same vibes. Point being, I think even before Azkaban (while Azkaban certainly didn’t help), she was insane and a little too worshipful of Voldemort.
I guess I can start there, I don’t think Bellamort is a thing, at all. 
Tom may have, probably did, have sex with her before he died but afterwards? In that body? Forget about it.
That said, I’m sure Bellatrix both wanted to have sex and is convinced she did have sex to produce whatever the hell Delphi even is. It just wasn’t with Tom, and probably was Rodolphous with a Halloween mask on his face as they got a little too into role play.
And there we go, I suppose, I can’t take Bellatrix seriously. You often see her portrayed as sexy femme fatale Death Eater, the most competent of all of them, if a bit of a sadist.
Oh she might be a very good duelist but she’s... Bellatrix.
She prances around in corsets, shrieking madly, and just what part of that is supposed to be femme fatale? I literally cannot take her seriously on any level. When I even try to write her seriously, in very serious stories, I end up with lines like the following:
"My lord, if there's anything you need… Anything from me, specifically, as a woman…" 
- Bright Eyes
That was my best attempt. That was the best I could come up with. It’s still something that belongs in a comedy.
So, I don’t think Tom really corrupted her. I think without Voldemort she still probably would have been blowing up Diagon Alley, just in a much less organized manner.
Even in canon she does ridiculous things. For example, Bellatrix, frankly, could have easily avoided prison.
For weeks after the dark lord fell neither she, her husband, Barty, nor her brother-in-law were arrested. Bellatrix in grief and utter disbelief that the dark lord could ever do something so mortal as die, said “remember that other house our lord mentioned, THEY MIGHT HAVE INFORMATION, LET’S GO MURDER THE LONGBOTTOMS!” They torture and kidnap Frank, demanding he tell them where their master is, THEY KNOW HE KNOWS. He doesn’t know. They go too far and torture the man into being a vegetable. “Shit, GET THE WIFE!” They go get the wife, do the same thing, with the same results.
They now have no information on the dark lord, two well regarded aurors tortured into brain damage, and are quickly caught and brought before the court with absolutely no “I was imperiused” excuse they can give out. 
How am I supposed to take her in any way seriously?
I mean, to end your life killed in a duel with Molly Weasley. That just says it all.
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