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dioko · 3 years

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NOT JUST ANYONE.

izuku midoriya x gn! reader

Word Count -> ~ 1810

Genre -> oneshot, fluff

Content -> mildly suggestive (spice rating is 1.5/5), drunk reader, swearing, college au! characters, older reader and younger deku | please lemme know if i missed anything!

Summary -> You really did believe a certain Izuku Midoriya had his nose buried in his textbooks 24/7. Your first impression of him had led you to pin him as a downright nerd - boring and young and nowhere near your type.

a/n -> 1. idk about the cover page i jus thought deku looked cool there and the oneshot title is eh 2. this was in my drafts for a long, LONG time and today i finally got it to the point where i didn't hate it. enjoyy <333

Once, you really did believe a certain Izuku Midoriya had his nose buried in his textbooks 24/7. Your first impression of him had led you to pin him down as a nerd - boring, and young and nowhere near your type.

Boy, were you wrong.

The first time you’d met him, he’d smiled at you with such bright, green eyes, it was almost impossible not to smile back.

“Hello, l/n y/n, s’nice to finally meet you! I’m Midoriya Izuku!” He'd very obviously sunken his voice an octave lower, and whether that was on purpose or not, it was still cute. Still innocent, still pure.

Not attractive, whatsoever.

“Yeah,” you'd turned your attention back to your work,“it’s nice to meet you too.”

After that, your ever-so-impatient brother had rushed him into his room, and Midoriya had obliged - not before shooting you one last glance. In hindsight, there might’ve been something just a teeny bit darker that had resided in Midoriya's lively eyes.

Then, weeks passed.

Was it just you, or did college students grow really, really fast?

As he left your brother's work room for the millionth time that month, you found yourself noticing how different he looked compared to when you’d first met him. Now, when Izuku waved a (large, my god) hand at you, he looked taller, broader… older.

“See you," he chirped to his friend, bringing you back to the reality where he was most definitely not older than you.

Wake up, you're practically a senior citizen, you’d chided yourself, there’s no way he’s mature enough for you. Then, another side of you, presumably the devil that sat on your shoulder, tried to argue. You’re not much older, it said, he’s practically the same age as you.

“Oh wait- there was something I had to ask you, l/n-”

“S’fine, you can call me y/n, ‘Zuku.” you didn’t intend to call him something so intimate, the words just.... absent-mindedly slipped out your mouth.

Oopsies daisies!

“Oh! I - I can? Um… ah,” you watched, mildly entertained by the way he tripped up his words, all from a nickname, “we’re all going out tonight, and I was wondering if you wanted to come-”

“Who’s we?”

“Er- me, and… and your brother! And a few others!”

“Oh?” You couldn’t let yourself smile, not yet.

“It’ll be fun!” He sputtered, “a lot of um, a lot of… um, drinking?” It sounded more like a question than a persuasive statement.

You blinked. “Yeah sure, that sound’s good. I didn’t take you for someone who drank.”

“I don’t?”

“Then why are you going?”

“I thought it would be a good way to spend time with y- my friends.”

“Ah, your friends.”

“Yup,” he squeaked.

“Okay then!” You smacked him playfully on his arm - his large, extremely toned, t-shirt-stretching arm - and jolted him out of his fear, “I’ll see you then, ‘Zuku!”

Izuku Midoriya had a surprising number of friends.

He had, in a gentlemanly fashion, offered to walk with you to the bar (though your brother was there too) and when you stepped in, you were taken aback by the several people at your table.

Your guts told you to sit beside the angry one - he looked… fun.

“Who the fuck is this?” The blond talked like you weren’t there.

“Kacchan,” another blond - with a black streak in his hair - chided, “be nice to the pretty birdie!” Was he drunk already?

“Yeah, Kacchan,” you smirked, “respect your elders.”

The first blond just about exploded on the spot.

“Watch your mouth,” he seethed at you.

“Hot,” you muttered, unaware of evergreen eyes that couldn’t seem to peel themselves off your lips; your soft, pink, kissable lips.

“What the fuck?” Kacchan flinched back.

“Sorry,” you grinned, “I meant ‘little snot’.”

“Yeah? I’ll show you little sn-”

Four flirtatious advances from three of Izuku’s friends, two hours and 1 mental breakdown later, you were finally ready to go home - everyone was, really - but where was your brother?”

“Deku,” he’d hissed at the greenette, “I’m not going back to the apartment today, can you take-” he gestured towards you, slumped over a pile of food, “- that thing back to the apartment?”

Izuku opened his mouth, about to ask why he couldn’t but immediately shut up again when he realized it was more time he had to spend with you. “Yeah, no problem.”

“Don’t try anything.”

“Wasn’t gonna!” Awkwardly, Izuku scooched his way past Sero and Uraraka, trying to find a place to put his hands so he could lift you off the table. Luckily, he didn’t have to.

“Ah, ‘Zuku!” You gave him a cheeky grin, “you’re friends are so…” you watched Bakugou, “... cute. Have a drink!” It was almost laughable how quickly you changed from topic to topic. Almost. The only non-laughable part was that Bakugou seemed to be a recurring theme.

Izuku pursed his lips, “no, you’re drunk. One of us has to be clear-minded enough to take you home.”

“You’re so smart! Good boy,” you ruffled his hair with a sticky hand, and your rapid strokes fell to a halt when you realized how soft his green hair was. “Wow,” you whispered, “I love your hair. Lemme smell it-”

“NO, no. We’re going home.”

“We?” A smirk played on your lips.

“I didn’t mean it like that,” you frowned when he didn’t stutter - he didn’t even go red. Izuku’s entire demeanor had changed; there was no nervous little college guy right now trying to talk to you, there was a friend (haha) genuinely trying to get you home safely. “Now c’mon, can you walk?”

You stood up and skipped a few steps. “Yup.”

“So, Izuku,” you didn’t bother to hide the fact that you were (very greedily) squeezing his biceps, “gotta girlfriend?”

“N-no.”

“... a boyfriend?”

“Nope,” he popped the ‘p’, and pulled you onto the wall-side of the sidewalk when a car drove by.

“Any significant other...ss?” You added the plural, just in case.

“No,” he smiled slyly at you, “why? Are you interested?”

You’d known him for months, but this was the first time he’d said something so forward, enough to make your cheeks flare so hot they felt cold.

“No way,” you spoke like it was obvious, and then quickly checked to make sure he didn’t look hurt. “Hey! Why do you look so amused?”

“M’not,” he turned his head, so you couldn’t see the smile.

“You are. Why?”

“Ah, I can’t say. We’re here,” he punched in the apartment code. “You should get ready for bed.”

There was a small, comfortable pause before drunk-you decided to ignore his advice and speak again. “So, do ya like anyone?”

“I like a lot of people,” Izuku smirked.

Smirked.

“N-no,” you played with the hem of your sweater, “I meant, do you like-like anyone?”

“Hm,” he thought for a second, “that’s a secret.”

“C’mon ‘Zuku! You can trust me!”

“I know that - gimme your coat,” he set it onto a nearby couch and began to flick on random lights, “I still can’t say it, though.”

“Why not?”

“Y/n,” you froze. He’d called you by your first name before, why did it feel so weird now?

“Yes?”

“I’m taking you to your bedroom.”

“You… you are?”

“You’ve got to sleep.”

Oh. Boringggg.

“I don’t wanna,” you hissed, flopping onto your bed anyways. He took a seat at the foot of it.

“Do you… do you ever remember anything once you're sober again?”

“Nope!” You knew you should’ve lied, but you didn’t, “m’friends say I don’t remember a single thing the next morning.”

He chuckled a little bit, almost in disbelief at you. “That’s not something you can just tell anyone.”

“I know, but you’re not just ‘anyone’.”

“I feel like I’m talking to a child.”

“I’m older than you.”

“Yeah,” he laughed, “it’s kinda hot.”

“What?” Did you mishear? “How do you know what hot means?”

“Y/n! I’m not that young!” He laughed, “sheesh, that hurts.”

“Hurts?”

“Yeah,” he smiled coolly. After all, you weren’t going to remember this conversation.

“”Why does it hurt?”

“... No reason, don’t worry,” he laughs again, for the third time in a row, but it feels dry to you, and empty, too.

“So who do you like?” You chirped again, completely disregarding his ‘I’m pretty sure I just got brother-zoned’ ideology.

“I told you, that’s a secret…” then, he bit his lip, “... but you won’t remember anyways, right?”

“Yep!”

“Then... I like you.”

“Who?” You smiled.

“You.”

“Oh, I like you, too.”

“I like-like you.”

“I like-like you, too.”

“You’re drunk,” he smiled sadly, “sleep.”

“I want fruit.”

“Now? You want me to go get you fruit?”

“Please?”

You inhaled the bucket of raspberries, “anyways, I really do like you. You’re so small and cute.”

“I’m small?”

“No, you’re built like a tank,” you giggled. Sober-you would have called drunk-you an airhead, “I think you’re sexy as hell.”

“Yeah?”

You leaned closer to him. You were sure he could smell alcohol and sugar on your breath, but you didn’t care. “Yeah.”

“Then can I tell you something else?”

“Sure!”

“Kacchan annoys me so much,” he wiped off the juice that dribbled down your chin with his thumb, and you made the mistake of leaning into his touch, “especially when he flirts with you.”

“When’s he ever flirted with me?”

“Tonight,” Izuku pulled back, and you (embarrassingly) fell forward. “I didn’t like it.”

“Were you jealous?”

“Yes,” he admitted, and quite shamelessly - but only because you weren’t sober.

“Aw, don’t be jealous,” you cooed at him, and then randomly, “you remind me of bunnies!”

“That’s cute,” his voice was hoarse, “then, can you promise me something, bunny?”

You flushed hot. “That - that’s not what I meant, I meant you’re my bunny.”

“Sure,” he nodded along.

You shuffled yourself a little closer to him. This wasn’t the Midoriya Izuku you’d come to know, who was he? Why was he so different from the twitchy student who cared so much about his grades?

“What did you want me to promise?” It was a good idea to change the topic, you thought, for his sake, not your own. Definitely.

“Promise me you won’t let Kacchan get so close to you anymore,” he played with your fingers, “you can do that, right? You... can be a good bunny for me?”

“Mhm,” you couldn't refuse when he put it like that.

“Go to bed now, it’s late.”

“On one condition.”

“And what’s that?”

“Kiss me.”

Izuku paused. His eyes were on your lips, that was for sure, but he showed no sign of moving closer. “M’not gonna do that when you're drunk.”

You frowned.

“I’ll sit with you ‘till you're asleep. I’m not… touching you, though.”

“Manly,” you murmured.

“Human decency,” he corrected.

The greenette pulled your covers above your waist and moved to the desk chair in your room, “good night, y/n.”

It was a shame this would all be forgotten, and the two of you would be back to square one by morning.

a/n -> yes the nickname has everything to do with my URL and so what

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fangirlwriting-stories · 3 years

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A Kind Of Understanding

Summary: Remus' decision to babysit a kid for a couple nights to earn some extra cash ends up getting him in over his head when the kid tells him something the parents didn't mention.

In all fairness, Roman had told him he was probably getting in over his head. Remus was the idiot who didn’t believe him.

He just needed money. If he was actually going to be able to afford all the spray paints he wanted for his new art project by the roller rink, he was going to need a lot more money than he had. Curse him and his ambitious ideas.

Remus considered himself lucky when he quickly found a family willing to pay 60 bucks a night to watch their eight year old kid. Roman took one look at the offer and said he was definitely going to be dealing with a brat.

“Why else would they pay so much?” he asked, giving the flyer a suspicious look.

“So? I need, like, two hundred bucks to get the kind and amount of spray paint I need. I’d only have to watch the bratty kid for four nights and I’d be good. I can set her up in front of a movie she really likes, make her some mac and cheese for dinner, and it’ll be all good.”

“I think you’re underestimating kids, Re. You have met Patton and Logan, right?”

Patton and Logan were Virgil’s little brothers, and Remus honestly wasn’t sure why he was bringing them up, because they were both absolute sweethearts. Sure, Logan could sometimes get a chip on his shoulder about being too old for a babysitter, and Patton could be a bit of a crybaby sometimes, but otherwise Remus never minded when Virgil brought his friends along for a hangout. Especially when Patton teased Roman about liking Virgil, and Remus got to watch him go bright red with embarrassment.

Well okay, granted, Logan had been much more insufferable when he was Patton’s age. But Patton was still a sweetheart.

“I’m telling you, I’ve got this,” he said, waving Roman’s concerns off. “It’s just one little girl, anyway. How hard could it be?”

This was the attitude Remus took with him when going to the Ekans house the following night. The parents sent him the address, and the mom was waiting outside.

“Hi, Mrs. Ekans,” Remus said, putting on his ‘I am talking to an adult that I respect’ voice. “I’m Remus.”

“Yes, hello dear,” she said. “I was so happy to get your call. It can be rather hard to find a babysitter to deal with Janice, what with how she can get with all her silly fantasies.”

Remus tipped his head in confusion. “Silly fantasies?”

“Oh, I’m sure she’ll tell you all about it. You don’t need to indulge her, dear, we’ve told her many times that no one who watches her will be doing so. But anyway, here’s ten dollars for a tip, we ordered a pizza, the delivery man should be here any minute, so you won’t have to worry about dinner.”

“Thanks,” Remus said, taking the money and putting it in his pocket to grab when the delivery person showed up.

The door opened behind the two of them and a man came out, adjusting a tie. Behind him, a girl in a sparkly pink dress stood in the doorway, who could only be Janice.

“Oh, good,” the man said when he noticed Remus. “Janice, your babysitter’s here, be good for him, okay?” He turned to Remus. “Bedtime is at 8, pizza’s on the way, otherwise you should be good to go.”

“Thanks,” Remus said again, heading past him and into the house. They both waved at Janice as they left, who notably did not wave back.

As soon as the car drove off, Remus shut the door and turned to face Janice. “Well, sweetheart—” he started.

“First of all,” Janice snapped, sounding so furious that it took Remus aback. He had barely even said anything yet. “I have rules.”

Remus raised an eyebrow. “Isn’t that kind of my job?”

“No!” Janice screamed, stamping her foot. “You are here for me, that means I’m the boss! First of all, don’t ever call me sweetheart. And I am going into my room to change into my real clothes, and you aren’t going to stop me!”

Remus’ brow furrowed. “What’s wrong with the clothes you have on now?” he asked.

“Dresses are for girls,” Janice snapped, voice filled with way more vitriol than Remus expected. “I’m a boy. And you are not going to take away the only chance I get to wear my real clothes!” And, like that decided that, he turned and stormed away towards the back of the house and where his room no doubt was.

Remus looked after the kid, blinking for a second as he tried to process everything that had just happened. So that’s what Mrs. Ekans meant by silly fantasies.

Well, fuck, he was way out of his depth with shit like this.

The kid came out of the hallway a couple minutes later wearing a t-shirt and shorts. And while the t-shirt was still bright pink, he at least looked a little more comfortable than he had in a dress.

“Okay, J— kid,” Remus said. “So let me see if I’ve got this right. You say you’re a boy?”

“Yes,” the kid snapped. “And you don’t get to say otherwise, you got it?”

“Hey, understood,” Remus said, holding his hands up. “Can I just ask a question?”

The kid narrowed his eyes and crossed his arms. “What?”

“Do you want me to still use the name your parents gave me, or do you want me to call you something else?”

The kid seemed to grow even more suspicious at that question. “Mom didn’t tell you not to indulge my silly fantasies?”

“Doesn’t seem to me like there’s anything silly about it,” Remus said with a shrug. “I was just wondering if you had a different name picked out.”

The kid’s eyes widened slightly, though not enough to stop looking suspicious. “You can do that?”

“Of course you can,” Remus said, taking a couple steps forward and kneeling down in front of the kid. “I have a friend named Virgil who changed his name. He used to be called Jacob, but he hated that name. He thought it was boring.”

“He was right,” the kid said instantly. Remus laughed.

The kid seemed to think for a minute. “I don’t know,” he said finally. “I didn’t know you could do that.”

“Do you want me to use the name your parents gave me, then?”

“No,” the kid snapped instantly, looking angry again.

“Okay. Got it. For now, I’ll just call you kid. How’s that?”

The kid seemed to consider that for a minute, then nodded. “Okay.”

Remus smiled. “Okay. So your parents said that a pizza delivery person should be here soon. Do you want to watch a movie while we eat?”

“No,” the kid snapped. “Movies are stupid.”

Remus blinked. “Okay. What do you want to do while we eat?”

“I want to sit in silence and do nothing!” the kid snapped.

Remus blinked again. “Uh, I’m not so sure that would be very fun.”

“You’re not fun anyway!” the kid screamed.

Remus was honestly a little offended. How dare this child say he wasn’t fun? He could be super fun! Before he could reply to correct this wildly false statement, the doorbell rang.

Remus stood up and headed over to the door, and opened it to see, as expected, the pizza delivery person.

“Thanks,” Remus said, taking the pizza and pulling out the ten dollar bill Mrs. Ekans had left him. He handed it to the delivery person, who thanked him and headed back towards the car parked out front. Remus shut the door and carried the pizza over to the table, and the kid came over after him and grabbed one of the plates that had been left out on the counter.

“Give me two pieces,” he said, holding the plate out to Remus.

“Let’s start with one,” Remus said, taking the plate.

“No!” the kid snapped. “I want two!”

“Kid, I’m gonna start you with one,” Remus said, taking a piece of pizza and putting it on the plate.

“No!” the kid snapped again. “I want two pieces! I’m hungry, are you trying to tell me I shouldn’t eat until I’m full? That can have harmful consequences!”

Remus took a deep breath. “I am going to start you with one. If you want another piece after you finish that one, I will happily give you one.”

“I want two right now!” the kid screamed, stamping his foot.

Remus squeezed his eyes shut. “Nope,” he said, handing the kid the plate.

The kid narrowed his eyes, and Remus had a second to wonder if eight year olds still threw temper tantrums, when instead the kid shot Remus a glare that could kill and stomped into the other room and sat down on the couch.

Remus took a piece of pizza and put it on the plate. This was about as bad as it was going to get, right?

…

“Kid, you need to go to bed,” Remus said, leaning against the door frame, looking at the kid who was sitting resolutely and reading through a book.

“Why should I? Bedtime is a social construct.”

“Oh my god,” Remus groaned, looking up at the ceiling. This had been a recurring theme for most of the night. The kid’s father was apparently a philosophy nerd, and the kid listened in on a lot of his conversations about the subject with his wife, and had turned that into a belief that all of society was a construct and he could do whatever he wanted. He was brilliant for an eight year old. And it was as annoying as all fuck.

“Look,” Remus said. “If you go to bed now, next time I come, I’ll bring you a surprise.”

“What kind of surprise?” the kid asked, narrowing his eyes. “How could any surprise you give me be worth it?”

“Well, if you don’t go to bed now, you’ll never know,” Remus pointed out.

The kid seemed to know exactly what Remus was doing with that, but he also finally put the book aside and laid his head down on his pillow. Remus flicked off the lights and shut the door, and finally let out a breath.

He made his way back out to the living room, put the remaining pizza in the fridge, and then collapsed on the couch.

“Children are exhausting,” he said to no one.

By the time the kid’s parents got back Remus was ready to go home and sleep for a week and a half. But that was a feeling that faded as soon as Mr. Ekans walked through the door and opened his mouth.

“How was she?” he asked, putting the car keys on a hook by the wall. “She didn’t give you too much trouble, did she?”

Remus had to fight to keep from grinding his teeth. “Fine,” he said, keeping his voice as pleasant as he could. “The flyer said I should come back Saturday next, right?”

“Yes,” Mrs. Ekans said, pulling out her wallet and thumbing out the sixty dollars in cash. She handed it over, and Remus took it. “I’m glad things went well. Janice has been known to drive away a few sitters in the past.”

I can’t imagine why.

Remus got out of the house as quickly as he could. He had some thinking to do, and he wasn’t going to do it in front of a couple of transphobic pieces of shit.

…

By the time Saturday arrived Remus had a battle plan. Roman had been amused when Remus had described the first night as “frustrating,” but had been surprised when Remus had been determined to go back. Remus left out most of the details that weren’t his to share, though he imagined Roman must have figured something was up when he spent most of the week researching boy names and hairstyles.

When he got to the Ekans house next time, the kid looked surprised to see him, and Remus couldn’t say he blamed him. He tried to smile and nod whenever possible, as hopefully it would get the kid’s parents out the door faster. The second they left Remus took off the backpack he’d brought and moved over to sit on the couch. “Hey, kid, c’mere.”

“No. Why?”

“I’ve got something for ya. I promised you a surprise if you went to bed, didn’t I?”

“Yeah, but I turned the lamp on again as soon as you left the room.”

Remus sighed. “Of course you did. Come here anyway.”

The kid looked curious, and given that it was one of the few times he hadn’t been glaring at him, Remus would take it as a good sign.

“So I did some research these past couple days,” Remus said, starting with the notebook. “And I found some names you might like.”

“Wait, what?” the kid sat on the couch and took the notebook from him. “What do you mean you looked at names for me?”

“Well, you said you didn’t know what you wanted your name to be. I don’t really want to call you ‘kid’ forever. If you don’t like any of these we can keep looking, though.”

The kid turned and stared at him. “But I was mean to you.”

“You’re the kid I’m babysitting,” Remus said, smirking at him. “I think I can take it. Besides, what does that have to do with your name?”

“Why are you being nice to me if I was mean to you?”

“Being nice and basic human decency are two different things. You can be the snottiest kid in the world, that doesn’t mean I’m going to start treating you like a girl.”

The kid’s eyes widened. “Really?”

“Really. You say you’re a boy, I believe you, and I’ll treat you as such, okay?”

To Remus’ surprise, the kid’s eyes welled up with tears.

“Oh shit, don’t cry. Hang on—”

The kid threw himself at Remus’ and buried his head in his side. Remus awkwardly patted him on the back and waited until the kid stopped crying, after which he pulled back and wiped at his eyes, still sniffling. “Mommy always says I shouldn’t make people indulge me,” he whispered.

“I’m not indulging anything,” Remus said. “This is what you said you want, and it should be respected. If you change your mind later, that’s fine too. But even if you do, I’m not going to treat you in any way that makes you miserable in the meantime.”

The kid sniffed again and wiped at his eyes. He looked like he didn’t know what to say, which was fair.

After a moment, he picked up the notebook and started looking at the names, sometimes pointing at one he didn’t know and asking Remus to read it. He stopped at one on page three.

“You just wrote Janice,” he said. “I thought you said I didn’t have to use that name.”

“J-a-n-u-s is a masculine spelling,” Remus said. “I just figured if you liked the way your name sounded but didn’t like that it was associated with being a girl, that was an option.”

The kid looked at it for a while longer. “You could use this one around my parents,” he said.

“Technically, yes,” Remus said.

The kid turned and looked at him. “Where does Janus come from?”

“It’s the name of a Roman god,” Remus said. “He’s the god of doors, gates, and beginnings. He has two faces.”

The kid started to grin. “I could be named after a god?”

“If that’s what you want.”

He started nodding. “I like that. I like that a lot. And it could be like lying to my parents. They’re forcing me to lie to everyone else, but this way I get to lie to them.”

Remus started to smile too. “Yeah? You think that’s the one?”

“Definitely. And besides, if I don’t like later it I can change it again, right?”

“Of course you can.”

Janus beamed at him. “Yeah. That’s the one.”

“Awesome,” Remus said, leaning over and ruffling his hair. “Now, onto the second manner of business.”

“There’s more?”

“Yep.” Remus reached into his bag and pulled out a hairbrush and ponytail holders. “So I’m not going to cut your hair without your parent’s permission or I’d get fired. But I have a couple ways I can deal with your hair as it is right now if you want to.”

Janus nodded quickly, and turned around so Remus could get to his hair more easily, “So we could put it up in a bun so it’s out of your face, or I could move the curls further behind your head so it looks more like a style than just you having longer curly hair.”

“What would a style look like?” Janus asked.

“Alright, give me a sec,” Remus said. He grabbed the bobby pins he’d borrowed from his mother and used them to tuck Janus’ curls further behind his head. He turned Janus around after a moment and brushed some of the curls across his forehead so they looked more like bangs.

“Alright,” he said, sitting back. “Here, check that out.” He pulled out the mirror he brought with him, and handed it to Janus.

His eyes widened as he looked in it. “Woah. You did this with my hair?”

“Mm-hmm,” Remus said. “You like it?”

Janus grinned at him again and nodded. Then his gaze turned curious. “Why are you doing all this?”

“I already told you—”

“No, I mean… Mommy says boys and girls can’t change who they are. She says I’m a girl no matter what I do.”

“Bah,” Remus said, waving the concept away. “Gender is a social construct.”

Janus snorted.

“You laugh, but it’s true. Have you ever heard the term ‘transgender’ before?”

Janus shook his head.

“It’s a term people can use to describe themselves when their gender doesn’t match the one they were born as. Plenty of people describe themselves that way. I’m friends with a couple on the internet.”

Janus looked fascinated, and almost painfully hopeful. “Not just me?”

“Definitely not just you.”

Janus sat back, seeming to take a minute to process that. “Can you show me?” he asked, looking back up at Remus.

And so they spent most of the day on Remus’ phone looking at transgender people and stories and definitions. Remus made sure to steer clear of any discourse or transphobia. Janus had enough to deal with already without having to learn about that on a broad scale yet.

By the time Janus’ parents texted Remus saying they were on their way back, they’d been there for hours.

“Okay,” Remus said, setting the phone aside. “I should probably take your hair down now.”

Janus sighed, even though he seemed to have expected that. “Okay,” he mumbled.

“We can put it back up next time I come, okay?” Remus said.

Janus nodded. “Yeah, we fucking better.”

Remus coughed in surprise. “Wha— where did you learn that word?”

Janus grinned at him. “You’ll never fucking know.”

Remus laughed despite himself. Okay, so maybe this kid wasn’t so terrible.

…

Things went smoother for the last two times Remus had signed up to babysit him. Janus had so obviously needed some kind of positive role model, because the second Remus reassured him that he believed him and would treat him as a boy, Janus got loads easier to handle. At the end of the third time Remus babysat for him, Janus looking at him very seriously and told him that he was clearly one of those rare smart adults.

“Well, technically I’m a teenager,” Remus admitted.

Janus nodded. “Oh. That explains it.”

Remus blinked at him. Well, this kid was definitely going to turn into even more of a nightmare as he got older.

Roman seemed more than a little surprised that Remus hit it off with the kid so well, and when Remus eventually mentioned it to Virgil, he got the same result. But Remus would just shrug and say something generic along the lines of “We just clicked, I guess.”

He found himself actually looking forward to the last time he was supposed to babysit, which unfortunately came with a realization that this would be the last time he babysat for Janus. The time passed much too quickly, and Remus, at the end of the night, was not looking forward to leaving.

So for once, an interaction from Janus’ parents brought a positive consequence.

“You just make Janice so happy,” Mrs. Ekans said. “And that’s not really something that happens with her very often.”

I can’t imagine why.

“I know this wasn’t supposed to be a long term thing, but if you would be willing to become her regular babysitter, we’ll pay you eighty a night instead of sixty.”

Well, Remus probably would have agreed even without the pay raise, especially after he noticed Janus watching hopefully from the hallway, but the extra twenty a night didn’t hurt either. In the end, after what was basically the opposite of a long and hard decision, Remus agreed, and was now going to spend his Saturdays (and many week nights) watching a kid that he was quickly growing to care for.

Janus plopped himself down on the couch next to Remus a second after he showed up next time, with his lip wobbling and sniffling in a way that immediately made Remus nervous.

“Hey, what’s wrong?” he asked.

“Do you only like me because my parents pay you?” Janus asked.

“What? Of course not, I love hanging out with you,” Remus said, relieved he was actually telling the truth.

Janus brightened immediately. “Cool! So if we’re actually friends does that mean you can take me out for ice cream?”

Remus blinked at him for a couple seconds, trying to figure out how in the hell he just got played by an eight year old. Regardless, they ended up at an ice cream parlor that day.

There came times Virgil had to watch his little brothers too, and Virgil must have told them about Janus, because one day Virgil texted him asking if they could maybe set up a playdate with the little girl he babysat. Remus winced, but said he’d bring it up next time he was there.

“Their names are Patton and Logan,” he said to Janus, who was looking up at him over the the drawing he was making. He’d become insistent on drawing better than Remus ever since he’d shown him one of his pieces. “They’re Virgil’s little brothers. They want to meet you.”

Janus bit his lip. “Do I have to pretend to be a girl around them?”

“Kid, that is entirely up to you,” Remus said. “I haven’t told them yet because you haven’t given me permission. I can tell you they won’t mind, if you’re worried about that.”

Janus gave that a moment of thought. “Okay. You can tell them I’m a boy. If you’re really sure they won’t mind.”

“I’m sure.”

Janus nodded. “Okay. Can they not come here though?”

“I don’t think we picked a place to go yet. But we could go to a park, or possibly Virgil's house. We’d have to run it by everyone’s parents.”

“Ugh. Well that’s not gonna work out then,” Janus said, turning back to his drawing. “My parents never want me to do anything that makes me happy.”

Remus felt his heart crack at that. He didn’t know how to explain to the kid the difference between his parents being transphobic and his parents never wanting him to be happy. He supposed the end result was the same either way. But Remus couldn’t imagine them having an issue with Janus meeting some other kids. He was apparently pretty lonely.

“Give it a chance,” he said eventually. “They could surprise you.”

Janus gave him a look of such doubt that Remus considered, not for the first time, murdering Janus’ parents and hiding their transphobic asses out in the shed.

Luckily, Remus was at least right in Janus’ parents wanting him to meet new kids. And he was of course also right about none of his friends having a problem with Janus being trans, although they seemed sad for the kid when they learned what his parents were like. Good. Remus would have lost respect for them if they didn’t.

They ended up meeting over at Virgil’s house, which was good, because Remus had a sneaking suspicion Janus’ parents would not have approved of Patton, and his love for all things pink and/or sparkly. They walked through the front door and saw Virgil and Roman sitting on the couch chatting as Logan was doing a puzzle nearby. Patton was sitting next to him, coloring in a coloring book and wearing a bright pink sparkly dress similar to the one Remus had met Janus in. Janus’ eyes got really big when he saw Patton, and he hid behind Remus’ leg.

“I thought you said Patton was a boy,” he whispered.

“He is,” Remus replied. “Patton likes wearing pink sparkly dresses, but that doesn’t make him any less of a boy.”

Virgil glanced up and waved. “Hey, Remus. Guys, Remus and Janus are here.”

Patton and Logan both glanced up, and then Patton hopped up and ran across the room. “Hi!” he said, sticking out his hand. “I’m Patton! Virgil says you’re eight just like me!”

Janus slowly stepped out from behind Remus’ leg and shook Patton’s hand. “Hi,” he said. “I’m Janus. J-a-n-u-s. It’s the boy spelling. Because I’m a boy.”

Patton grinned at him. “Yeah, Remus told us! I think that’s really cool! Do you want to come color with me?”

It was clear Janus didn’t know quite what to do with that, but he nodded anyway, and Patton took his hand and dragged him over to where he’d been coloring. Remus noted Logan saying hi as he did so, and including a note about how he was ten and too old for a babysitter. Remus walked over to sit on the couch next to Virgil and Roman.

“That went about like I’d expected,” he said, nodding at Patton.

Virgil snorted. “Yeah, pretty much,” he agreed, leaning back and ending up partly against Roman. Remus would have to tease him about how bright red his face got later.

Overall, the afternoon was a success. Janus and Patton got along very well, and they made a deal that next time, Janus would bring a sparkly dress and trade it for some of Patton’s more boyish clothes. Janus talked the whole drive home about how much he liked Patton.

“Even though he could be a little less bouncy,” Janus said. “He’s kind of a lot.”

“I get that,” Remus said. “Patton is a really excitable kid. He’ll mellow out the longer you know him.”

Janus nodded. “Good,” he said, and Remus laughed.

Just like Remus had expected, Janus’ parents were glad to see him happy from hanging out with other kids. Which unfortunately also meant they likely had no idea what had actually been happening at the playdate. It was definitely worth it, though. Janus gave Remus a hug, a beaming smile, and said he would see him on Saturday, before running off to his room still smiling.

Remus texted Virgil that they would have to do so again sometime soon.

…

Remus arrived on time Saturday, but Mr. and Mrs. Ekans were already rushing out the door, barely having time to hand Remus money for dinner, and saying something about getting something to cheer Janus up before they ran out their car and drove off.

Remus blinked as he watched them drive off, before processing the fact that they’d said something about cheering Janus up. He headed inside, looking around and hoping to find him.

“Janus?” he called, but no one responded. He started looking around the living room and found no one, there wasn’t anyone in the kitchen, not even the cabinets, and Remus checked in all their usual hide and seek places, but didn’t find anything.

“Janus?” he called, sticking his head into his room. There still wasn’t anyone obviously in there, but just as Remus was about to leave he heard sniffing that sounded like it was coming from under the bed.

He shut the door quietly behind him and pulled up the blankets, and there was Janus, curled into a ball.

“Kiddo?” he asked quietly.

“Adults are stupid,” Janus said. “They don’t understand anything.”

“As a seventeen year old I wholeheartedly agree,” Remus said, trying to get a chuckle or a smile, but not succeeding. “Are we talking about something specific?”

“They just don’t understand,” Janus said, tucking his head into his knees. “No matter how many times I explain it to them they don’t get it. I don’t want to be a girl, Remus. I mean, am I just explaining it wrong? If I explain it enough times they have to understand, right?” He sniffed. “I just have to explain it a few more times, right?”

“Oh, kiddo,” Remus murmured, reaching a hand under the bed. Janus grabbed it and let Remus help him out before burying his head in his chest.

“I thought they were supposed to love me,” Janus whispered. “Isn’t that what parents are supposed to do?”

“They do love you,” Remus tried to reassure, because he’d seen some proof of that. He’d seen the way they smiled when they saw Janus happy. They’d thanked him so many times, saying they were unsure of how he did it.

“No. They love J-a-n-i-c-e. They love the little girl they think they have. But that’s not who I am.” Janus looked up at him, tears pouring down his face. “Remus, why do they hate who I am?”

Remus didn’t have any good reply to that. He just gently pulled Janus back to his chest and rubbed his back. He wasn’t surprised when that just made Janus cry harder, but he didn’t know what else to do.

Janus pulled back and looked up at him after a second. “Remus?”

“Yeah?”

“Would you still like me if I was a girl?”

Remus had no idea what that question entailed. He nodded.

“And you like me even though I’m not?”

“Of course I do.”

“What if—” Janus sniffed. “What if I end up liking boys too or something? That would be even harder to explain.”

“I like boys,” Remus said instantly.

Janus sniffed again. “You do?”

Remus nodded. “Kid, you know what my mom said when I asked her about this stuff?”

“What?”

“She said love should never be conditional.”

“What does conditional mean?”

“It means, Janus,” Remus said, shifting so Janus could sit more comfortably on his lap. “That you could be trans, cis, gay, straight, a weird half snake man who wears a really stupid hat—”

Janus finally laughed a little at that.

“And if you ask me that question, the answer will always be ‘I love you,’ over and over.”

Janus blinked a couple times. “You mean you like me?”

“Nope. I mean I love you, kid. No matter what.”

Janus’ eyes got big, and tears welled up in them again. “Over and over?”

“Over and over,” Remus agreed.

Janus sniffed again, and leaned his head into Remus’ chest again. Remus wrapped his arms around him. “I am so sorry your parents can’t see what an amazing kid you are just as you are,” he murmured.

“Yeah,” Janus said. “They just don’t understand. They’re stupid adults. Adults don’t understand anything.”

Remus held Janus tighter. “Yeah,” he agreed. “Adults don’t understand anything.”

…

Over the next couple months, Janus and Patton ended up trading half their wardrobe. Janus often had a monster truck or dinosaur shirt on within ten minutes of Remus coming over, though he would admit to Remus that those weren’t really his favorite. He said he liked the one with the cartoon snake on it. Remus spent the day going over shirts with more realistic snakes on them that Janus liked. In the end they purchased a couple that Remus said he would keep at his house for days that Janus came over there.

They also spent quite a few days at the park with Patton and Logan, sometimes with Virgil, sometimes with Virgil’s mom or dad. They felt bad about Janus’ situation too, and Remus could tell they wished they could be doing more. But Janus wasn’t being abused or neglected, and transphobic parents weren’t a legal reason that someone could be removed from a home. Remus was really doing about all he could for him. At least it seemed to be making Janus happier than he was. Sometimes, Janus told Remus everything he would do once he was too old for his parents to stop him. Fifteen, he said. When he was fifteen he would get a haircut. And Remus would come, right?

Remus would consider for a moment that he’d probably be in college at that point, but he couldn’t imagine leaving this kid to deal with his parents alone, no matter how old they both got, so the conversation always ended with Remus promising that he’d be there when Janus got his first real haircut at fifteen.

There were, of course, things to teach Janus about how to rebel against all of society, though the kid already had an excellent head start with all the philosophy he knew. Remus took him spray painting one time, and Janus sprayed all of curse words he knew on the wall. Remus couldn’t be prouder. They’d shoplifted together a couple times too. Remus made sure Janus understood that you couldn’t shoplift from a small business that would actually get hurt by it. Only big chains like Walmart. And no stealing in a way that would hurt the employees. Janus seemed to accept all of this easily. “It’s about eating the rich,” he said, nodding firmly. “Not hurting people who are already struggling.”

“You’ve got it,” Remus said with a proud smile.

But one of his favorite parts of being with Janus, after he spent one time at the park with Roman and Virgil, was how easily the kid picked up on how in love the two were.

“We have to do something about it,” Janus insisted. “They’re wasting time! They don’t have mean parents to worry about, why are they wasting time being scared?”

“I ask them that question all the damn time,” Remus said with a smirk.

“Okay,” Janus said, biting his lip as he started thinking. “We’re gonna come up with a plan.”

“Oh, are we? What are we doing?”

“I don’t know yet. Come help me.”

They spent the rest of that afternoon coming up with their plan, and planned to enact it that Saturday. They ended up at the ice cream parlor along with Patton and Logan, who were also in on the plan. Janus was there with Roman and Remus, and Patton and Logan were there with Virgil. The two in question were not aware that the other group was there. So, after a couple minutes, Janus loudly remarked to Roman that Patton was there, and could they go say hi.

“You know,” Janus said before Roman could reply. “I’m going to marry Patton one day.”

Roman smiled, his heart no doubt melting in the same way that Remus’ had when Janus had first told him this. “Are you?” Roman asked, taking a bite of his ice cream.

Janus nodded. “And he can wear a wedding dress, because he likes wearing dresses, and I can wear the tuxedo because I don’t like dresses, and you and Virgil can be the best men because it would be cool to have another married couple as the best men.”

Roman started coughing, and Remus patted him casually on the back as he struggled to stop turning bright red. “What— Virgil and I aren’t married!” Roman exclaimed.

Janus gasped. “What? Why not? When are you going to propose?”

“I— Janus, we’re not dating,” Roman said, turning more into a tomato by the second.

“What?” Janus said, sounding for all the life of him like he was heartbroken. “You have to ask him out then!”

“Janus—”

“Roman, it could mess up Patton and I’s whole wedding! You’re gonna mess up our wedding?” His lip wobbled in a way Remus could tell was fake three months ago, but Roman was clearly not there yet.

“I— look, kiddo, I do like Virgil, but—”

“Then go on! Time’s ticking, you have to get married before Patton and I do!” Janus called, jumping up and pulling Roman up out of his chair. “Go on, go on, go on!”

Roman was left with not much of a choice at that point, and he headed over towards the booth across the parlor, where an equally red-faced Virgil had appeared to have been having a similar conversation. Remus and Janus both followed him over. There was no way they were missing this.

Virgil stood up quickly when Roman got there, and they both started stammering something that was barely coherent, but in the end, Roman managed to get out something about dinner on Friday, and Virgil managed to nod.

All of the kids, and Remus cause what the hell, started to cheer.

“Look at that, we finally got your heads out of your asses!” Remus called, slapping Roman on the back, who smacked him on the arm right back.

“You all planned this, didn’t you?” Virgil asked, looking too embarrassed to be angry, though Remus had no doubt that would come later.

“Maybe,” Remus said, sliding into the booth after Janus, who was now sitting next to Patton.

“We correctly deduced you would never do anything yourselves,” Logan said with a smile from Patton's other side.

“Janus and I are still getting married one day though,” Patton said, completely seriously.

“Yes,” Janus said, nodding along. “And you two will be our best men.”

“Okay, slow down,” Roman said. “That’s taking things a little fast.”

“I think they figured they’d make up for all the time you two wasted,” Remus said with a grin.

“I’m going to kill you later,” Roman said.

“No, please, think of my children,” Remus said.

“What children?”

“Me!” Janus exclaimed, throwing his hands in the air. Remus laughed and pulled him to his side, giving him a noogie.

As the conversation started to head back into a normal direction, Janus nudged Remus in the side. Remus glanced over.

“Sorry I made the children joke,” Janus said quietly.

“Oh, don’t be sorry. It’s true is what it is,” Remus said, ruffling his hair again. “I have adopted you. You can never get rid of me.”

Janus started smiling. “Promise?”

“Promise,” Remus said. “You know why?”

“‘Cause you love me over and over?”

“Because I love you over and over,” Remus said, giving Janus a quick side hug. “You nailed it, my little man.”

“Little man,” Janus said quietly, though he was still smiling really big, and Remus smiled back. “Little man. Yeah.”

#sanders sides #remus sanders #janus sanders #trans janus #transphobia #misgendering #tw misgendering #deadnaming #tw deadnaming #babysitting

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merry-melody · 2 years

Text

from ‘imagining the worst: stephen king and the representation of women’

It, A Sexual Fantasy by Karen Thoens

Smells of dirt and wet and long-gone vegetables would merge into one unmistakable ineluctable smell, the smell of the monster, the apotheosis of all monsters. It was the smell of something for which he had no name... . A creature which would eat anything but which was especially hungry for boymeat. Stephen King It (7)

It, Stephen King’s epic gender fantasy, commemorates the androcentric world order of the 1950s. Nostalgia, a wistful yearning for past glory, validates the pursuit of male mastery over a menacing female sexuality. Rooted in half forgotten memories of childhood conquests, It exploits male longing for lost hierarchical power structures, a hunger for the authority of master narratives.

Interwoven within the narrative, the myth of female ascendance is symbolically supported by twenty-seven year cycles of bloody violence, cycles that correlate with female menstrual patterns. In 1958, the novel’s heroes, social outcasts united in a ritual male bonding ceremony, unearth the evil that spawns the violence. Their childhood adventures remain unnoticed, forgotten even by themselves, until the cycle of terror recurs.

In the summer of 1958, during the last reign of It, seven children attacked and wounded the monster. Brought together by their status as “Losers” and as victims of the bullying tyranny of Henry Bowers, Belch Huggins, and Victor Criss, each of them was marked in a physical, identifiable sense as an outsider in the social hierarchy of the 1950s. Bill Denbrough, unofficial leader of the group and brother of the first victim, was marked by his stutter; Ben Hanscom, by his obesity; Eddie Kaspbrak, by his asthma and his hovering mother; Richie Tozier, by the glasses he wore and his “trashmouth” (318); Mike Hanlon, by his race; Stan Uris, physically marked as a fastidious bird watcher, less obviously marked but clearly recognized in the closed world of Derry as Jewish; and Beverly Marsh, by the marker indicating the greatest difference, being female. Intentionally united by a power beyond their comprehension, they heroically battled the monster and vowed to return if It resurfaced. In 1984, the terror returns.

Hanlon, who had in the interim become the town librarian, compiled a history of Derry’s violent anomalies. It, the Loser’s name for the monster, awakened and stalked Derry every twenty-seven years, give or take a year; its reign marked by gory murders. The victims, usually children, were frequently bloodied and mutilated. In 1958, the first victim was six-year-old George Denbrough, whose arm was ripped from his body. In 1984, it was Adrian Mellon, a gay man, beaten and thrown off a bridge by the current generation of Derry bullies. It was waiting under the bridge to feast on him.

This change in victims, from a young, innocent child to a gay man, is a signifier of social change, indicating deterioration in a place already inhabited by evil. Mellon, like his boyfriend Hagarty, is marked and judged by voices carefully distanced from the author. Presented in opposition to violent homophobic voices, reasonable statements of male heterosexist privilege attain a central position. The graffiti in Bassey Park, “STICK NAILS IN EYES OF ALL FAGOTS (FOR GOD)!” and the violence of the queer bashers toward Mellon locate the statements of the investigating officers centrally, marginalizing the victim’s voice (29). To Officer Gardener, a fair, decent man, Hagarty is a subspecies: “This man—if you want to call him a man—was wearing lipstick and satin pants so tight you could almost read the wrinkles in his cock” (17). Pronouncing social judgment on Hagarty and his dead companion, Adrian Mellon, Gardner’ concludes that, “he was, after all, just a queer” (17).

The positioning in the narrative of the 1985 murder of Adrian Mellon immediately after that of little Georgie Denbrough serves to graphically illustrate social change read as deterioration. References to AIDS’ and to Mellon as a “little queer,” “fruit,” “a fucking faggot,” a “bum puncher,” position sexuality as defined in contemporary terms in opposition to nostalgic versions of clearly defined sex roles. Linking male homosexuality with being female, and by oppositional definition less than male, Hagarty and Mellon are belittled for their resemblance to females: “Garton saw the two of them, Mellon and Hagarty, mincing along with their arms about each other’s waists and giggling like a couple of girls. At first he actually thought they were a couple of girls” (21). The subtext of It links male homosexuality to female sexuality in a hierarchical structure privileging the heterosexual male.

In 1958, there was no recognizable gay community in Derry; the Falcon, a gay bar, opened in 1973. In 1977, the clientele shifted to gay men, a fact that the owner, Elmer Cutrie, failed to notice until 1981. As did the Black Spot, the Negro nightclub that burned down during the reign of It in 1930, the existence of the Falcon marked a change in the social order in Derry, a reflection of a change in America, a change that was also, perhaps, not noticed at first. In the world of It, change is frightening. Resistance to a confusing, demanding present is evidenced by a glorification of a simpler past.

In It, the past is not irretrievable. As Eddie Kaspbrak travels north toward Derry in 1985, he remembers the summer of 1958: “Not going north. Because it’s not a train; it’s a time machine. Not north; back. Back in time” (102). According to Stephen King, It represents an attempt to “reenter the world of childhood” (Magistrale, 5). He describes the return to childhood by the adult as the completion of a wheel. Intended as journey backward in time, according to King, this quest has the power to heal: “The idea is to go back and confront your childhood, in a sense relive it if you can, so that you can be whole” (Winter, 185). King proposes recapturing a “mythic power” that connects childhood to adult imagination (Magistrale, 5). This mythic power derives from the strategies used by Stephen King as a nostalgic writer.

In Nostalgia and Sexual Difference, Janice Doane and Devon Hodges examine nostalgia as a “rhetorical practice” (3), which they define as “a retreat to the past in the face of what a number of writers—most of them male— perceive to be the degeneracy of American culture brought about by the rise of feminist authority” (xiii). Nostalgic writers describe reality as a “system of oppositions that is at the same time a system of dominance and subordination” (8). These oppositions are hierarchical by nature: “[O]ne term is degraded, the other is exalted” (9). Past and present become oppositions in which past is privileged. In the male/female opposition, male is the privileged term.’

“Nostalgic writers are entrapped by the illusion that their strategy of opposition creates: their mythic pasts become real” (9).

Analyzing modern male texts, Ellen Friedman notes a yearning for the influence of the master narratives evidenced in “the profoundly nostalgic conviction that the past has explanatory or redemptive powers” (241). She proposes that this notion is revealed in “the futile desire to stop time or to understand, recoup or recreate the past, summoning it into the present” (241).

Nostalgia forms the subtext of It, in which the past wields power over the present, merging inseparably with it at some points. The overwhelming celebration of the past—its music, lost youth and innocence—combines with the fear of a monster that lurks in the past, a monster that has not been vanquished, a female monster. It resists the forces that have propelled society into the present, seeking out the glory days of the past, hoping to reestablish the lost paternal order. King uses Bruce Springstein’s lyrics to suggest a connection between lost youth and women, a significant theme of It. “Glory days . . . gone in the wink of a young girl’s eye” (63). For Stephen King, change is unpredictable, uncomfortable, undesirable. “Our lesson for today, boys and girls, is the more things change, the more things change. Whoever said the more things change the more things stay the same was obviously suffering severe mental retardation” (1003). The Losers travel back in time to their own childhoods, but, as adults,

they all remain childless, symbolically castrated. It is not about childhood, it is about longing for the past, going back and finding that it is still inhabited by the same demons. In It, Stephen King’s focus is clearly “frozen in the oedipal backward glance” (Friedman, 241). Stephen King’s glance is revisionary; however, his authorial power allows him mastery over the bullies of his youth and over the ravages of time.

In “Creative Writers and Daydreaming,” Freud describes fantasies as wish-fulfilling day dreams that are ambitious, erotic, or a combination of both. “A strong experience in the present awakens in the creative writer a memory of an earlier experience (usually belonging to his childhood) from which there now proceeds a wish which finds its fulfillment in the creative work” (Freud, 655).

For King, It satisfies both ambitious and erotic fantasies. Bill, the horror fiction writer, goes back in time to champion King’s childhood memories, rescuing “the Losers” from identification as intimidated victims and outcasts to those who dared to challenge evil incarnate. King re-creates the past and summons it into the present.’ Significantly, Bill, an obvious substitute for the author, relives his youthful triumph only to surpass it, potent wish fulfillment for a middle aged author who must himself be experiencing the effects of time and age.

Within the nostalgic framework of It, mothers play a significant role. In “Women, Danger, and Death: The Perversion of the Female Principle in Stephen King’s Fiction,” Gail Burns and Melinda Kanner note that “Female reproductive potential, sexuality and death are forged by King in a manner that invariably locks his female characters into particular sexually defined roles’ (160). Observing that King links female sexuality with death rather than life, Burns and Kanner conclude, “Women who do manage to give birth generally fail their children in the most fundamental ways” (161). This maternal failure is evident in It; the members of the Losers’ Club are losers in many cases because of their mothers. Even the relatively benign mothers in It function as limiting and controlling agents in relation to their male children.

Mothers and Monsters

When six-year-old Georgie Denbrough went out to play in the rain with the newspaper boat his brother Bill had helped him make, the terror began again. Something lurking in the sewer lured Georgie over, grabbed him and ripped off his arm. While little Georgie was being murdered, his mother was inside, playing Fiir Elise on the piano. The piano playing, significant due to the frequency of references to it, is linked forever in Bill’s memory to his brother’s death. Their mother, a former Juilliard piano student, detested rock and roll: “She didn’t merely dislike it; she abominated it” (9). Rock and roll signifies the 1950s era to King in a deeply nostalgic way; it is significant that Bill’s mother along with several other of the Losers’ mothers opposes it. Restrictions placed upon rock and roll music exemplify the limits imposed upon the boys by their mothers. Bill’s mother is symbolically linked with rigid, formal classical music. Her piano playing implies a negligent participation in her son’s murder.

Before Georgie’s death, Bill and George are careful not to disturb their mother. Even so, she stops long enough to scold George from her seat at the piano for slamming a door. Then, when the piano stops again, the brothers are “listening for the piano bench to scrape back, listening for their mother’s impatient footsteps,” but she resumes playing (10). As they work on the boat, Bill warns George that if he gets any paraffin on the blanket “Mom’II kill you,” and if he doesn’t put everything away, “Mom’ll have a bird” (11). Never portrayed as nurturing, their mother is at best distant and restrictive, possibly negligent and perhaps worse.

At the age of three, Bill was “knocked into the side of a building” by a car (10). According to Bill’s mother, the accident, which left him unconscious for seven hours, caused his stutter. “George sometimes got the feeling that his dad—and Bill himself—was not so sure” (10). What did they think caused the stutter? An ambiguous link exists between Bill’s mother and the stutter that marked him as a Loser. Both Bill and George Denbrough were involved in life-threatening situations as young children, one of which was fatal. King’s strategy of insistent repetition emphasizes their mother’s piano playing on the day George was killed. This repetition shifts the interpretation from “he was killed while she played the piano,” to “he was killed because she played the piano.”

Locating the stutter/car accident story in the middle of this chapter tends to substantiate charges of careless mothering that King is careful never to utter. Their mother bears the burden of guilt for pursuing her own interests and, by implication, neglecting her children without ever being explicitly accused.

Eddie Kaspbrak’s weakness is his asthma; this physical infirmity marks Eddie for membership in the Losers’ club. Mr. Keene, the druggist, tells Eddie that his aspirator contains a placebo. The druggist insists that Eddie does not have asthma and that Sonia, Eddie’s mother, is the real problem: “Your mother is determined you are ill” (776). Eddie’s throat tightens. He knows it isn’t in his head; he isn’t crazy: “Your asthma is the result of a nervous tightening of the diaphragm that is ordered by your mind . . . or your mother” (777).

The dynamics of their relationship becomes evident later, in the clash over Eddie’s friends. Eddie, aware of his mother’s manipulation of him, explains to his friends: “She had a way, a way of working on a guy” (766). Sonia feels uncertain, almost fearful when Eddie confronts her about sending his friends away. Picturing herself as a self-sacrificing, devoted mother, she refuses to acknowledge other motives. Eddie sees through her: “You’re not going to steal my friends just because you’re scared of being alone” (797). Sonia, adept in the use of emotional weapons, rationalizes her control of Eddie by calling it protection: “She felt safer in her tears. Usually when she cried Eddie cried, too. A low weapon, some might say but were there really any low weapons when it came to protecting her son?” (797). The emotional turmoil concerning the Losers continues until Eddie proposes a compromise; he will not question his asthma if she doesn’t interfere with his friends. As Sonia carefully hugs Eddie sealing their agreement, she thinks, “What mother would kill her son with love?” (802). Emotionally devouring Eddie, Sonia’s mothering creates an invalid.

Sonia’s carnivorous love synthesizes the mother/monster, monster/mother opposition. During his stay at the hospital as he was slipping out of consciousness, Eddie confuses Sonia Kaspbrak and the monster. He thinks he has told the nurse, “She’s not the leper, please don’t think that, she’s only eating me because she loves me” (790). The leper, the form of It that appears to Eddie, represents his maternally induced asthma. In a dream, when Sonia chases his friends away, Eddie sees the monster in many of its forms; the last form is his own mother: “But just before the clown washed out completely, he saw the most terrible thing of all: his ma’s face” (792). In It, mothers are often monsters.

Sonia Kaspbrak consumes Eddie as It devours children. Sonia Kaspbrak is a widow. Arlene Hanscom is a single mother: “[R]aising a boy by herself had put a mark on her” (183). Like the Kaspbraks, the Hanscoms are portrayed by feeding imagery. Whereas Sonia feeds on Eddie emotionally, Arlene overfeeds Ben physically: “[W]hen there were leftovers from supper she would often bring them to him while he was watching TV and he would eat them, although some dim part of him hated himself for doing so” (185). Ben could not bring himself to acknowledge his mother’s ulterior motives. “Ben’s deeper thoughts—suspected her motives in this constant feeding. Was it just love? Could it be anything else? Surely not” (186).

Embarrassed by his size, Ben wore baggy sweatshirts to hide his body when he was in fifth grade in Derry. His mother spoke of his size euphemistically. “She never called him ‘fat,’ she called him ‘big’” (185).’ Later, he recalls, when he was in high school, he was changing after gym when the other guys “fat paddled” him, chasing him and slapping his naked body. This incident led to his determination to diet. His greatest obstacle was his mother: “And nights when I went home and would only eat half of the stuff on my plate my mother would burst into tears and say that I was starving myself, killing myself, and that I didn’t love her anymore, that I didn’t care how hard she worked for me” (496).

Being fat made Ben a Loser; like Eddie Kaspbrak, Ben’s physical problem originates with his mother. Like Sonia Kaspbrak, Arlene Hanscom engulfs her son within a dangerous devouring motherhood.

In response to the murders in Derry, Ben’s mother gives him a new Timex watch and tells him to be home by six o’clock every night during the summer. She warns him that if he is late she’ll call the police and report him missing immediately. Emphasizing the need for caution, Arlene explains that she understands how boys like to spend their time. During their conversation, Ben realizes that his mother doesn’t know that he has no friends: “If she didn’t know he had no friends, she probably didn’t know anywhere near as much about his boyhood as she thought she did” (184). Ben is touched by the concern that the Timex signifies because “She could be hard, his mama. She could be a boss” (185). Ben’s mother is unaware of the essential facts of his life, assuming friendships where there are none.

Setting limits on Ben with the watch and the curfew, Ben’s mother assumes that she has protected him. Did she really imagine that being home by six was sufficient protection from a murderer? Was warning Ben to come home early and go places accompanied by his friends a serious defense? Arlene Hanscom, like the other Losers’ mothers, acts to set limits for her son but remains essentially uninvolved with him. Ben, astute enough to question her motives, struggles with ambivalent feelings for his mother. “Ben Hanscom would not have dared to hate his mama” (185). The chasm in their communication causes Ben’s silence regarding the murders in Derry: “‘the thing which he hadn’t quite been able to tell his mother’’ (208). The protection that the watch signifies is undermined by her disinterest in his life.

Richie Tozier’s flaw, the mark of the Loser, is wearing glasses. Richie’s mother’s association with his glasses is established when a bully pushes Richie into the gutter breaking his glasses: “[H]is mother was furious with him about it, lending very little credence to Richie’s explanations” (662). His mother’s anger over the broken glasses compounded by her lack of sympathy over Richie’s pounding by a bigger boy wounds Richie less than the knowledge that she didn’t believe his story. “This failure to make his mother understand hurt much worse than being slammed into the gutter” (662). Conjuring up pictures of Richie’s father working late, she suggests Richie’s guilt in incurring the cost to replace the glasses. “You think about it... . Her voice was curt and final—worse, it was near tears” (663). Her lack of compassion and manipulation of Rich with guilt mark her as a mediocre mother, but even more deadly, at least in Stephen King’s hierarchy, she didn’t approve of rock and roll: “Like Bill Denbrough’s mother, she was death on rock and roll” (582). Still, to the other Losers, Richie’s parents seemed the most normal. When the Losers werelooking for an adult to confide in, they asked Richie about his parents. Although Richie rated them as okay, he knew “‘they’d never believe something like this” (663). His mother’s inability to believe Richie about the glasses isolates him and the other losers in dealing with It.

Stan Uris, who encountered It as the corpses of drowned children in the Standpipe, believed in an orderly universe, a universe of natural laws. “God had given the earth a final tilt on its axis... . He had done that and He then had said, in effect: ‘Okay, if you can figure out the tilt you can figure out any damn thing you choose’” (429). Stan signifies nostalgia for those reliable master narratives, a past you could trust, the Great Chain of Being, a hierarchy in which God was on top and God was male. Before going out that night, the night he almost died, the night that preordained his suicidal death twenty-seven years later, “His mother made him promise to keep the hood of his slicker up,” certainly a valid precaution when there are murderers about (418). Stan is an outcast in Derry because he is Jewish. Marginalized even in the novel, he commits suicide, rather than return to Derry with the others to face It again.

Like Ben Hanscom’s mother, Mike’s mother rationalizes that Derry is safe until dinner time, so when Mike was late for dinner one day, she was angry, “she had been nearly hysterical. She took after him with a dishrag, whopping him with it. Don’t you ever scare me like that!” (274). Mike was surprised that his father didn’t intervene and control her “wildcat anger” (274). But, now Mike knew his limits, his mother had made them clear: “Home before dark. Yes ma’am, right-o” (274). Mike’s father, Will Hanlon is the benign patriarch in It, suggesting places for Mike to visit, telling him about the past. When Mike Hanlon eventually recovers and writes Derry’s history, he is searching for a master narrative, the events that led into his father’s story. Mike is an outcast in Derry because he is black, and Beverly Marsh is even on the margin within the Losers Club: She is the only girl.

When Al Marsh beat Beverly, he justified it as his duty as a parent to correct her behavior. “Daughters, Al Marsh said, need more correction than sons. He had no sons, and she felt vaguely as if that might be partly her fault as well” (398). Elfrida Marsh routinely dismissed her husband’s physical abuse of Beverly. “Did you get your dad angry at you last night, Bevvie?” Then, voicing her true concern, she asked “Bevvie, does he ever touch you?” (403). Aware of an incestuous undercurrent to Al’s violence, Elfrida Marsh neither confronted him nor protected Beverly. Warning Beverly to be home before dark, her mother implies concern about Beverly’s safety, masking her crucial failure to protect Beverly at home.Beverly’s mother’s failure was the inability to control her father. In It, mothers limit and control their sons. Limits were justified by male behaviors that were labeled risky. Richie’s mother forbade him to ride double on Bill’s bike, but even safety conscious Eddie recognized that life cannot be lived risk free. “Some stuff has to be done even if there is a risk. That’s the first important thing I ever found out I didn’t find out from my mother” (723). Some mothers in It are monstrous; others are negligent, distracted, incapable. Burns and Kanner conclude that in King’s fiction “Mothers fail their children, witness their abuse, and stand helpless to prevent their deaths” (Burns and Kanner, 171). The failure of the mothers in It is so basic, they mirror the monsters their children combat.

Gender Myths

Victimized by her father’s battering, Beverly Marsh substantiates myths about violence against women. Her father’s rage is fueled by incestuous desire for her as Beverly’s visit with It in the guise of the witch from Hansel and Gretel confirms. “I beat you because I wanted to FUCK you, Bevvie, that’s all I wanted to do” (572). Surviving her father, Beverly intentionally chooses men like him for lovers, men who hit women. Tom Rogan recognizes this in Beverly from the start, he knows that she wants to be hurt, “And it might even be possible that some antelopes—and some women—want to be brought down” (105). Testing his theory, Tom smashes Bey across the face noting her reaction with interest. “Then the pain. Then the (nostalgia) look of a memory . . . of some memory” (108). He tells her he hit her for smoking in front of him. As a stunned Bev struggles to absorb the blow, her reaction—tearful and hurt, confirms his initial evaluation of her. “She was trying to find a tone, an adult rhythm of speech, and failing. He had regressed her. He was in this car with a child” (108). Before it was over, he intended to humiliate her, to make her apologize to him. Her eyes seemed to plead with him to stop, but he knew to persist “because that was not the bottom of her wanting, and both of them knew it” (109). Tom Rogan had established himself in Beverly Marsh’s life.

This episode plays to myths about abused women, confirming that they intentionally choose violent men and stay with them, implying that the battering is really the victim’s fault. She wants it. This unfortunate stereotype degrades the only female character who could have been noble. Significantly, though Beverly has the same kind of financial success as the other adult Losers, she is the only one who remains emotionally battered as an adult.King does not present Tom Rogan as a model of male behavior. Tom’s drinking and Beverly’s ultimate violent resistance to the beatings do not serve to excuse his behavior, only to amplify it. Even his childhood is no excuse. Tom came from a violent family where he was the victim of an abusive mother: “Tom, you been bad! his mother had sometimes said—well, ‘sometimes’ wasmaybe not such a good word; maybe ‘often’ would have been a better one. You come here, Tommy! I got to give you a whuppin” (112). When his father, Ralph Rogan killed himself with a lye and gin cocktail, Tom was burdened with the care of the other three children and frequently beaten. “His life as a child had been punctuated by whuppins” (112). He decided that it was “Better to be the whupper than the whupped” (112). Describing Bev’s feelings toward Tom, King corroborates myths that support violence: “But that did not preclude her fear of him. . . her hate of him . . and her contempt of herself for choosing him for dim reasons buried in the times that should be over” (118, 119). When Tom used the belt on Beverly, she knew that she wanted it: “[W]hat hurt worse was knowing that part of her craved the hurt. Craved the humiliation” (120). As Beverly searches her motives for marrying Tom, she wonders: “Why would a person go back into the nightmare of her own accord?” (930). She acknowledges her guilt to Bill admitting: “He hits and he hurts. I married him because . . . because my father always worried about me, I guess. .. . And as long as someone was worrying about me I’d be safe. More than safe. Real’ (929). She wanted to be beaten, it made her feel loved. In this statement, Beverly accepts the blame for her own victimization, supporting an unfortunate stereotype of battered women.

Tom Rogan, the batterer, meanwhile, performs the same function that the homophobic bullies serve in the Adrian Mellon incident. Tom’s extreme cruelty, his manipulation of Beverly, becomes a border marker, centering and elevating the other men in the novel.

The battering serves another nostalgic function. It warns women that other women cannot, or will not, protect them from male aggression. After the fight that precedes her trip to Derry, Beverly goes to her friend Kay McCall for help. King, again distancing himself from applying the label, carefully marks Kay as feminist when Tom refers to her as “that titsy women’s-lib bitch” (111).

Later, Kay withstands a battering by Tom until he threatens to cut up her face. Terrified by the threat of mutilation, Kay tells Tom where Beverly has gone. Not only does the “women’s-lib bitch” fail Beverly as a protector, she betrays her when threatened with loss of her own beauty. Kay’s failure, significant in terms of the nostalgic world view of male/female, dominance/submission, serves to warn women that other women are not to be trusted.

Blood and Sex

Beverly Marsh first experienced It as blood gurgling out of the drain in the bathroom, splashing up around the room, blood that her father did not see. Beverly’s impending puberty, the blood, the bathroom, and Al’s anger masking his barely controlled incestuous desire are conveyed in sexually laden imagery.

The evening ends with Beverly listening as her parents “did their sex-act thing” (399). When Al questioned Bev about her scream, she lied: “There was a spider. A big fat black spider. It . . . it crawled out of the drain” (397). Ironically, instinctively, Beverly knew what It really was, the form beneath the disguises; because Beverly is female, she knows what the boys must risk their lives to uncover and confront. It is about sexuality, bloody female sexuality, female sexuality as imagined by a male.

Woman as Object

In It, Beverly is Stephen King’s ideal woman; as a child her courage facing the monster and surviving her father’s abuse suggests that she will mature into a self-reliant, assured woman. Disappointingly, her marriage to Tom Rogan—his battering, her masochism—describe a different Beverly. When Beverly comes home to Derry, she is a woman who needs to be rescued. In Stephen King’s nostalgic gender scenario, a strong male must save the beautiful but frightened female from the dangers of the world and threats posed by aggressive, perverted men.* Bill, the successful horror novel writer (read as Stephen King), chivalrously emerges from his male quest/adventure plot to rescue the damsel in distress. In King’s outrageous erotic fantasy, he modestly describes Beverly’s sexual response to Bill: “She became aware that this wasn’t going to be just a come; it was going to be a tactical nuke. She became a little afraid” (931).

In an interview with Tony Magistrale, Stephen King describes Beverly as “the symbolic conduit between adulthood and childhood for the boys in the Losers’ Club. It’s a role that women have played again and again in the lives of boys: the symbolic advent of manhood through the act of sex” (6). In his objectification of woman, female sexuality functions as a male rite of passage.

The subtext of It is sexual. The pronoun it—genderless, vague— vacillates as a significator but remains sex-linked throughout the novel. It can be read as sexual intercourse. Stephen King describes it: “[S]ex must be some unrealized undefined monster; they refer to the act as It. Would you do It, do your sister and her boyfriend do It, do your mom and dad still do IT, and how they never intend to do It’ (1085). It can also be read as repulsive female sexuality, the genesis of all depravity, the wickedness that turns innocent boys into men, forcing them to abandon bicycles named Silver with baseball cards flipping innocently across the spokes, to become bound to mundane, compromising jobs, to grow old and fat and bald and die. Sexual maturity is the evil these misfit boys fear, flee, and surmount for the first time in their secret sexual initiation by Beverly. This initial sexual experience for each of them coincides with end of the groups’ first encounter with It and is followed by protracted amnesia.

Monsters and Heroes

It could be sexual intercourse. It could be repulsive female sexuality. But, mostly, It is actually She. It, the monster, is not really androgynous, a point raised at the beginning of the novel when George looked into the sewer and saw Pennywise the Dancing Clown, the principal manifestation of It. George was reminded of “Clarabell, who talked by honking his (or was it her?—-George was never really sure of the gender) horn” (13). The question of the clown’s gender was restated by Richie when Mike described Its appearance at the parade on Main Street “‘But then he turned around and waved to me again and I knew it was him. It was the same man.’ ‘He’s not a man,’ Richie said” (712). As a clown using greasepaint to disguise its identity, and in Its other shapes, It exploits a female characteristic, the ability to alter appearance, to change outfits, to use makeup; It has an aptitude for becoming unclear and ambiguous rather than concrete and definable.

Sexual mutilations with a phallic focus are clearly the work of IT/HER.

When they found the crew of lumberjacks who were snowed in during the winter of 1979: “All nine hacked to pieces. Heads rolled . . . not to mention arms ...a foot or two... and a man’s penis had been nailed to one wall of the cabin” (157). And in 1931, the corpse of the flood victim had a sexual flavor. “The fish had eaten this unfortunate gentleman’s eyes, three of his fingers, his penis and most of his left foot” (4).

It. Evil. Unfathomable evil. Mutating, hiding anywhere, everywhere. It could be anyone. It could be your mother. And, the really frightening suggestion in this novel, It is your mother. It, nameless terror. It is bloody, filthy, horrible. It lurks in dark, wet underground caverns. In hidden, secret places. The boy-men heroes have returned to Derry to face IT again, HER, the bitch, the force that is really responsible for their lost youth.

Female sexual imagery intensifies as Its essence is stalked in the sewers under Derry. “The tunnel progressed steadily downward, and that smell—that low, wild stench—grew steadily stronger” (1028). In Stephen King’s creation myth, the ultimate evil is repulsive, spiderlike; significantly, It is a pregnant female. “It’s always been here, since the beginning of time . . . since before there were men anywhere” (763). As the origin of evil on earth, the egg-bearing female spider must be conquered, her evil spawn destroyed to prevent unthinkable consequences. To destroy the ultimate female evil, Bill must symbolically rape and dominate her:

It lunged clumsily forward, trying to bite him, and instead of retreating, Bill drove forward, using not just his fists now but his whole body, making himself into a torpedo. He ran into Its gut like a sprinting fullback who lowers his shoulders and simply drives straight ahead. For a moment he felt Its stinking flesh simply give, as if it would rebound and send him flying. With an inarticulate scream he drove harder, pushing forward and upward with his legs, digging at it with his hands. And he broke through; was inundated with Its hot fluids. They ran across his face, in his ears. he snuffed them up his nose in thin squirming streams. He was in the black again, up to his shoulders in Its convulsing body. And in his clogged ears he could hear a sound like the steady whack—WHACK—whack— WHACK of a big bass drum, the one that leads the parade when the circus comes to town with its compliment of freaks and strutting capering clowns. . . He plunged his hands into It, ripping tearing, parting, seeking the source of the sound; rupturing organs, his slimed fingers opening and closing. . .Whack—W HACK—whack—W HACK— . . .Yes! Try this you bitch! TRY THIS ONE OUT! DO YOU LIKE IT? DO YOU LOVE IT? Bill felt Its body clench around him suddenly, like a fist in a slick glove. Then everything loosened .. . At the same time he began pulling back, his consciousness leaving him. (1093-94)

It, the noble quest to rid the world of evil, is the playing out of oedipal male fantasies, sexual intercourse with the monster/mother. Significantly, the final battle with It/Her, is clearly a sexual attack. In “The Laugh of the Medusa,” Héléne Cixous locates patriarchal definitions of sexuality: “Men still have everything to say about their sexuality, and everything to write. For what they have said so far stems, for the most part, from the opposition activity/passivity, from the power relation between a fantasized obligatory virility meant to invade, to colonize, and the consequential phantasm of woman as a ‘dark continent’ to penetrate and to ‘pacify’” (1091). In the final battle with It/Her, she is indeed a “dark continent” to be “penetrated” and “pacified.” For Stephen King, female sexuality remains terrifying, an evil to be subdued, kept in its rightful place.

Burns and Kanner locate female sexuality in the King canon: “Menstruation, mothering, and female sexual desire function as bad omens, prescient clues that something will soon be badly awry” (160).

The Denouement—Back to the Past

Bill survived the odyssey into the depths of sinister, powerful female sexuality and emerged victorious, reborn. Unfortunately, Audra, his wife, is now catatonic. Bill, of course, rescues her too. He knows exactly what to do. Bill pulls a relic of his youth out of a convenient garage, his old bike, and proves that pure male courage can fix anything, even “a corpse-like wife.” She recovers fully due entirely to Bill’s courageous, dangerous bike ride; she is happily terrified. All is well. We know this because of Bill’s “huge and cheerful erection” (1137).

It is a feast of unfettered male fantasy. The hero subdues the greatest evil in the universe, which is, of course, a potent, fecund, sexual female. Cixous identifies repressive trends in this nostalgic form of male writing as precluding the possibility of change:

I mean it when I speak of male writing. I maintain unequivocally that there is such a thing as marked writing; that, until now, far more extensively and repressively than is ever suspected or admitted, writing that has been run by a libidinal and cultural—hence political, typically masculine—economy; that this is a locus where the repression of women has been perpetuated, over and over, more or less consciously, and in a manner that’s frightening since its often hidden or adorned with the mystifying charms of fiction; that this locus has grossly exaggerated all the signs of sexual opposition (and not sexual difference), where woman has never Her turn to speak—this being all the more serious and unpardonable in that writing is precisely the very possibility of change, the space that can serve as a springboard for subversive thought, the precursory movement of a transformation of social and cultural structures. (1092—93)

The world order at the culmination of King’s epic gender myth is nostalgic. The patriarchal hierarchy is restored; pliant, submissive females dedicate themselves to their men, who alone possess the secrets of the universe.

NOTES

1. Describing Adrian Mellon’s sobbing boyfriend, Gardener could not feel empathy, a strategy that distances, centers, and privileges “normal” male sexuality in comparison to marginalized “queer” sexuality. “Harold Gardener recognized the reality of Don Hagarty’s grief and pain, and at the same time found it impossible to take seriously” (17).

2. Thomaston, angry over the murder, hopes for the conviction of Garton, Dubay, and Unwin. “I’m going to put them in the slam my friend, and if I hear they got their puckery little assholes cored down there at Thomaston, I’m gonna send them cards saying I hope whoever did it had AIDS” (38). Later, Richie Tozier, in an irreverent spoof, tells a joke as the character Kinky Briefcase, Sexual Accountant: “I had a fellow come in the other day who wanted to know what the worst thing was about getting AIDS . . . I told him right away—trying to explain to your mother how you picked it up from a Haitian girl” (61). King, again careful to distance himself from a judgmental position, uses references to AIDS and homosexuality as a physical marker of difference. In the implied opposition of heterosexual/homosexual, homosexual is clearly the degraded term. The first victim of the 1985 spree is a marker for social deterioration that has occurred since 958.

3. Boutillier, police officer investigating the murder accuses Chris Unwin: “You threw the little queer into the Canal” (18). Webby Garton describes Adrian Mellon as a “fucking faggot” when interrogated by the police. (21). Officer Machen tells the bullies “about the bumpunchers I’m neutral” (23). Boutillier arguing for suppression of evidence about the clown figure, offers his inferred opinion of gay men: “The guy was a fruit, but he wasn’t hurting anyone” (38).

4. According to Doane and Hodges: “‘Oppositions tend to operate on a hierarchical rather than an equal basis: one term is degraded, the other exalted. Opposition is a power game. The opposition male/female, to give another example crucial to our analysis, is also typically hierarchical. The disparaged term ‘female’ helps preserve the value and integrity of the privileged term, ‘male’” (9).

5. As noted in Ellen Friedman’s article.

6. Fiir Elise is specifically mentioned four times, George’s mother’s piano playing, three more—a total of seven references in thirteen pages.

7. “(sometimes amplified to ‘big for his age’)” (185).

8. These men include A! Marsh, the battering father whose violence masks incestuous desire and Tom Rogan whose sadistic control ranges from emotional manipulation to premeditated violence that ends in hot sex.

WORKS CITED

Burns, Gail E., and Melinda Kanner. “Women, Danger and Death: The Perversion of The Female Principle in Stephen King’s Fiction.” Sexual Politics and Popular Culture. Edited by Diane Raymond. Bowling Green: Bowling Green State University Popular Press, 1990, 158-171.

Cixous, Héléne. “The Laugh of the Medusa.” The Critical Tradition. Classic Texts and Contemporary Trends. Edited by David H. Richter. New York: St. Martin’s, 1989, 1090-1102.

Doane, Janice, and Devon Hodges. Nostalgia and Sexual Difference: The Resistance to Contemporary Feminism. New York: Methuen, 1987.

Freud, Sigmund. “Creative Writers and Daydreaming.” The Critical Tradition. Classic Texts and Contemporary Trends. Edited by David H. Richter. New York: St. Martin’s, 1989, 651-55.

Friedman, Ellen G. “Where Are the Missing Contents? (Post)Modernism, Gender, and the Canon.” PMLA 108 (1993): 240-52.

King, Stephen. It. New York: Viking, 1986.

Magistrale, Tony. Stephen King The Second Decade, “Danse Macabre” to “The Dark Half.” New York: Twayne, 1992.

Winter, Douglas E. Stephen King: The Art of Darkness. New York: Signet, 1986.

#stephen king #meta #feminism #it #karen thoens

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kxrapika-zxldyck · 3 years

Text

Crying x and x Comfort- A KilluGon hurt/comfort fic

"Kite is... already dead." Those four words echoed through Gon's head, warping and distorting themselves until they were virtually unintelligible.

After a few seconds of trying to process the magnitude of Pitou's words, their meaning finally sunk in. Kite was gone. Gon couldn't save him. He had failed. The minuscule spark of hope left inside him disappeared instantly.

Pitou let Kite fall over, boneless, in front of the distressed boy. Gon gasped, taking a shaky breath as he tried to take in the scene in front of him. He felt his stomach lurch. He tried to speak, but only a strangled gasp came out. His throat was closing up, and his mouth felt dry.

Pitou observed the agonized boy carefully. If he made any sudden movements, it would be likely that he'd die.

Gon's eyes, usually beaming from excitement and charisma, had become grim. An ominous veil of grief and anguish had fallen over them.

"His soul is no longer there... He cannot be healed."

Tears started welling up in the young boy's eyes and he collapsed, his legs no longer able to support the weight of the anguish coursing through his battered body.

At the moment, Gon's mind could easily be compared to a whirling windstorm. Feelings of sadness, despair, and grief all took their place inside of him.

Slowly looking up, Gon could make out Pitou, intensely focused on healing the rest of his arm. The Royal Guard needed to be at full power if he was to defeat the emotionally conflicted threat that lay before him.

Suddenly, the emotions coursing through him dissipated and were replaced with a strong feeling of disbelief and confusion.

"Why are you healing your arm?" Gon heard himself say.

"Turn Kite back to normal!" He pleaded desperately.

A sinister expression appeared on Pitou's face. Gon had obviously not understood the severity of the situation. He was too entangled in his own grief.

"Please, after you finish what you're doing, bring Kite back..." he whispered, his voice raspy and filled with melancholy.

Gon clutched his chest, his heartbreak too severe to handle.

"Kite is... dead and it's my fault..." he murmured, still in disbelief.

"Kite is dead and it's my fault..."

"KITE IS DEAD AND IT'S MY FAULT!"

_____

"GON!"

The distressed boy shot up, gasping for air.

His eyes frantically darted around, trying to make sense of his surroundings.

He suddenly felt a warm hand on his trembling arm.

"Gon! What's wrong? Are you okay?!" Gon hastily jerked his head in the direction of the familiar voice.

Killua.

His eyebrows were furrowed, and he had a concerned expression plastered on his face. Gon's breathing gradually started to slow down.

"Hey Killua... Did I have another nightmare?"

"Yeah, and I think it was a bad one too; you were hyperventilating and whimpering in your sleep."

"Oh... Sorry." Gon muttered, feeling bad because of the disturbance.

He felt Killua's slender fingers gently graze his cheeks.

"You were crying."

The pale boy carefully wiped the trail of tears off of Gon's face.

"Wanna talk about it?"

_____

"It's the same nightmares as usual, about the fight with Pitou two years ago."

Killua sighed softly. He wished that there was a way to forget. He wished that Gon didn't have to feel this way.

Gon continued, anxiously entwining his fingers around the thin sheets on his bed.

"I could've saved Kite. It was my fault. Maybe if I would've been more strategic..."

Killua couldn't stand listening to Gon tear himself apart any longer.

"Gon, stop. You sound insane. This was Pitou's fault. We tried to save Kite; we really did. His fate was in no way your doing." Killua said, slightly twisting the truth, but if it could make Gon feel better, he was willing to do it.

Despite his cold and rough exterior, Killua really did know how to comfort Gon in times like this.

Unfortunately, this did not prevent Gon's tears, as they once again quickly trickled down his rosy cheeks.

"I wish he was still alive." Gon whispered, his voice cracking with emotion.

His tone of voice made Killua's heart feel like it was being shattered into a million pieces. He slowly placed his hands onto Gon's shoulders and pulled him into a tight embrace.

_____

Killua's body, held closely against his own, was a pleasant feeling, Gon decided. He carefully wrapped his arms around the other boy's neck, entwining his fingers in Killua's dishevelled hair.

"I know, me too." Killua answered softly, resting his chin on the crook of Gon's neck.

The two boys sat there, listening to each other's rapid heartbeats, absorbing body heat. Gon's tremulous breaths became slower, and eventually started to return back to normal. He could feel Killua's fluffy hair tickling his skin, making him crack a faint smile.

"Hey Gon, wanna go on a walk to clear your mind?"

Gon sighed, taking a deep breath.

"Sure."

Nights on Whale Island were especially mild and pleasant this time of year. Gon felt the gentle ocean breeze caress his face as he stepped outside. He inhaled deeply and glanced over to where Killua was standing.

Killua Zoldyck.

The boy that he had spent the last three years of his life with. His accomplice. His travel partner.

His best friend.

"What are you looking at, dummy?"

Gon was seized from his daydreams, looking up to Killua's face, which appeared to be twisted in confusion.

"Oh, nothing. I'm just... really glad you're here with me, Killua."

Gon saw a faint blush appear on Killua's cheeks. The flustered boy quickly looked away.

"You can't just say things like that!"

Gon smiled softly, slowly tearing his eyes off of Killua's reddened face.

"Let's go."

_____

"Where are you taking me, Gon?"

Killua was being led through the forest, trying to keep up with Gon, who was swiftly darting past trees with a determined look on his face.

"Wait and see."

After a few minutes of desperately trying to match Gon's superhuman speed and agility, the two boys finally made it to a clearing in the forest. There was a small beach on the other side, hidden from the main area of the island.

Gon gestured to Killua, urging him to sit down.

_____

The two boys were laying with their backs to the sand, heads tilted towards the star-speckled sky.

"Aunt Mito used to take me here whenever I got upset. She said the ocean waves were like a lullaby, and listening to the gentle sway of the waves would coax me back to sleep."

"Hey Gon..." Killua said, dismissing the other boy's previous statement "... I get them too."

Gon shifted slightly, facing Killua, a curious look on his face.

"... The nightmares, I mean."

Gon silently urged the other boy to continue.

"Mine are usually about my assassin training. I have this recurring dream about being forced to kill innocent bystanders for the approval of my parents. My big brother Illumi is always behind me, manipulating me, no- controlling me with his needles."

"Those nightmares are the worst. They're the ones that leave me gasping for air, panicked and unaware that I've woken up. Yeah, they can be traumatizing, but you need to remember that the nightmares aren't real. They're just bits of memories from the past that have come back to haunt you."

"The thing is, we've already experienced different versions our nightmares. We were brave enough to surpass them in real life. The unpleasant memories stored in our subconcious don't mean anything anymore. What's in the past is in the past."

Killua paused, not bothering to examine the expression on Gon's face.

"Obviously, it sucks. Sometimes I wish we could've just had a normal life together, without the pain and wounds. But because of it, we are strong. We've trained, fought, gained, and lost way more than anyone of our age, hell, more than most adults. That's what makes us who we are today."

Gon's vision started getting blurry from the amount of tears welling up in his eyes.

"So you shouldn't be worried about the nightmares anymore, Gon. I'll always be there to protect you."

Gon inhaled shakily, processing the last part of Killua's speech.

"Killua..."

The pale-faced teen finally looked over to where Gon was laying. His eyes widened at the intensity of emotions written on the other boy's face.

"Thank you, Killua."

_____

And so, the two boys watched the sunrise from the ocean, together. Gon knew he would cherish this moment forever. The view was picturesque.

The morning sun was reflected off of Killua's pasty white skin, his eyes glowing with astonishment at the mix of colours and hues painted across the ombre sky.

Gon could stare into his vivid blue eyes forever.

Killua rolled onto his side, facing his friend. Soft smiles crept onto both of their faces.

In that moment, they both realized how lucky they were to have each other.

~♡~

#killua zoldyck #gon freecss #killua #gon #hurt/comfort #fanfic #fic #fanfiction #gonkillu #killugon #freedyck #hxh #hunter x hunter #gay #angst #hxh angst #anime

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stydiaeverafter · 4 years

Text

Summary: Sidney's POV while dancing with Charlotte in London.

A/N: First and foremost, thank you so much for the positive response to my last Sanditon fic; it meant the world to me! While I'm writing more for The Sea is Bound to Us, because that story may be multiple chapters, I thought it would be fun to write Sidney's inner dialogue from 1x06 when he asked Charlotte to dance. That scene was breathtaking, and you could recognize them falling deeper in love with one another. I wanted to capture that. Enjoy!

Read on ao3

I carry the sun in a golden cup.

The moon in a silver bag. - W.B. Yeats

***

The evening had begun most predictable, as the ballroom rose in sound. Glasses were clinking as if bells were ringing, laughter drifting around in harmony, and twinkling chandeliers illuminating dancing formations.

Most balls in the excellent society of London often followed in suit. Sidney accepted it by now; this had been his livelihood for as long as he could recall. And yet, he had always observed them trivial and dull. Nothing innovative became of them. Instead, it was repetitive and tiring.

Nevertheless, that was not how this evening played to be. The reason for the shift? Miss Charlotte Heywood.

Sidney couldn't recollect when it had happen, as it surprised him to astonishment, but the truth of the matter was that he was in the process of developing strong feelings for Miss Heywood.

He had sworn love into the fiery depths of hell long ago after Eliza had shredded his youthful heart into pieces.

Afterward, Sidney had then wandered a path into the darkness, not giving a damn about anyone, especially himself.

But in her approach, Charlotte had managed to modify that particular mindset. She had appeared innocently and naive into Sanditon.

However, as Sidney gazed upon her now, Charlotte was transformed into a golden goddess standing with Babington. Then again, perhaps she always was, and it was his blindness that had hidden the revelation apart from him.

Sidney's feelings for Charlotte had wedged their way into what he thought was a dead beating heart from the moment he'd met her. She had stunned him with her assumptions and even her recurring accusations.

Miss Heywood was spirited, and Sidney felt drawn to her company, even though it had initially bothered him.

He had savored being in charge of outcomes, and yet Charlotte made him feel powerless. It was unnerving.

Sidney conveniently had sent her away when she had shown her faults, but it had been to no avail. And even when her actions had angered Sidney, his heart still beat for her; yearning to see her beautiful face once more.

Over time, he realized they weren't flaws of Miss Heywood. They were strengths of an immeasurable steady heart.

Sidney began to admire what she persisted for, even when Charlotte had him all wrong. But how had he shown her any different? He had acted as nothing but a brute towards her.

Even at his worst, Charlotte hadn't given up on locating Georgiana, which had restored his faith within her. The one that had sparked his attention in the beginning.

If only he could now prove himself to her.

Charlotte had brought that need to the surface as she continued to speak her mind about truths on what she assumed him to be.

Sidney didn't want to appear unfeeling, especially in Charlotte's presence. He recognized he had work to do from shifting from the man who had belittled her and accused her untrustworthy. Sidney had apologized with meaning and purpose; he couldn't comprehend it to be enough, though.

When Charlotte had mentioned she had not been in the mood to be sociable, Sidney worried about her good nature. Miss Heywood was always the life of the party, and he was afraid that light had dimmed within her. Of course, it had all been in result of Georgiana, not his previous actions towards her.

If he perceived one thing, it was that Charlotte's heart was unique and made of gold.

Affirming a fib that his brother had sent him up to ask if she'd reconsidered attending the ball, Sidney's goal had been to arouse her spirits once more. And if he were honest, the truth was that Sidney wanted her there, by his side once more. They were a good team, which not only jarred him but likewise pleased him.

When Charlotte had ultimately agreed and had gone for a fitting for a dress, he couldn't help but feel happiness course through his body. Sidney hadn't felt joy like this in a long time, and he was eager to present Miss Heywood with the knowledge that he was improving because of her. He wanted to show her he could be something other than a monster that seemed heartless.

Sidney had agreed to himself to be kind and respectful, and yet he also desired to see her laugh and smile, for it took his breath away every time she did. Their banter fueled him in a way nothing else would, and he simply couldn't grasp his fill.

His pleasant thoughts had all but vanished the moment Miss Charlotte Heywood had taken those first few steps down the stairs. Instead, his heart had begun to pound relentlessly inside his chest, and Sidney realized how deep in he was.

The falling for her had already happened long ago—this was the result, he could only assume, of being in love.

Charlotte was beyond beautiful, and he had been at a loss of words as she walked towards him with a soft smile upon her miraculous face. The golden dress illuminated her face in a glow that warmed her eyes; they were inviting him in. She was elegant and still the woman he grew attached to.

Sidney had never witnessed such beauty.

Miss Heywood was worthy of everything she desired and more—would someone such as he be good enough company to her excellence?

Those had been his thoughts as she had stood within range. She inquired if she would do. How could she possibly wonder such a question? Sidney didn't have the courage yet to proclaim his inner thoughts of observation; all he could do was add, "It'll do very well."

Charlotte had taken his hand, and enlightenment bestowed upon his heart.

Once again, she had been innocent and quiet as they had entered the ball. Charlotte had eagerly glanced around the room in awe, not fully aware everyone in the room was noticing her. Instinctively, Sidney had shifted closer to her, grasping her gloved hand on his arm a bit tighter. He hadn't even been surprised by his annoyance at Crowe's compliment towards her—Charlotte was a spellbinding creature. The comment that bothered him was that his friend was astounded that it was Miss Heywood.

What a fool.

As Tom and the others left them, he made no move to let her out of his sight. He lingered next to her asking if she was pleased to be there. Her response wasn't a surprise, but his reaction to not fitting into this setting was.

Sidney realized he was an outlier and preferred it that way. He also perceived a recognition that Charlotte was as well.

They could be outcasts together.

As they had roamed the room together, she finally declared she wished to go, with his permission. He jested her slightly, not wanting her to leave him. Charlotte, with her strength wavering, doubted herself.

At that moment, Sidney confessed to the woman who had touched his heart, was not too much of anything. Charlotte was perfect to him. And for a man who had early on assumed her responses to be frivolous, had apprehended that he now adored them.

Sidney had aspired to expose even more when his brother, on his neverending mission for Sanditon, drew him apart from his shiny golden anchor.

So here he was in the present moment, attempting to listen to Lord Willand muttering on and holding Charlotte within his gaze. Abruptly, however, she had wandered away from his friend to leave the room. Unfortunately, he couldn't take his leave just yet; as his heart was with Charlotte, he couldn't leave his brother behind.

Finally, when he could make his courageous escape, he caught her gentle voice from a tranquil room. Sidney couldn't quite capture the words, as there was another unfamiliar voice with her. The one remark he did obtain was, "...an affliction. Like the measles."

At first, as he walked into the room, he didn't notice the elegant woman sitting down on the bench. Sidney only saw Charlotte's bewildered and slightly flustered expression.

"Ah, there you are. I was beginning to think you'd made your escape," Sidney stated with a grin feeling relieved Charlotte hadn't left.

"Might I presume you are Mr. Sidney Parker?" The woman asked with a welcoming smile.

Could they have been discussing him?

He nodded in her direction as she added, "We were just discussing you." So they had been speaking of him. But how exactly? Curiosity was suddenly seizing the better of him. The last notion she had said was the measles; unfortunately, that didn't reflect well in his favor.

What about him, he continued to wonder to himself as Charlotte shifted back-and-forth, blushing a beautiful rosy pink. She left him breathless with her beauty; he just had to partake in an intimate moment with her. "Right, well, um, I was wondering if Miss Heywood would like to dance—if I'm not interrupting, that is?"

"Not in the least," the woman replied.

Charlotte, usually full of words, looked startled. Could the fact that he wanted to dance with her come as such confusion to her? Evidently so.

Nevertheless, he offered his hand, which to his delight, she took.

As they made their way back to the ballroom, Charlotte finally broke the silence, "You did not have to ask me, you know, out of politeness."

"It is what people do at dances, is it not—dance?" He commented with an anxious facade, adding, "Unless you'd rather not?"

"No, it is only, there are so many other ladies here that you could ask," Charlotte responded sheepishly.

The answer to his internal question caused him dismay. Miss Heywood truly believed he did not value her company. Sidney yearned to show her otherwise.

"But I don't want to dance with them." It was a truthful statement, after all. To him, she was the only woman in the room.

Charlotte didn't inquire further, but the expression of astonishment he had seen momentarily appeared back onto her beautiful face.

As Sidney put out his hand, he noticed she seemed bashful towards him anew, even after everything they had just been through in recovering Georgiana. However, he felt similarly.

They'd danced before, and he had been intrigued but not quite as mesmerized yet; now, he was. This sequence in their story felt distinctive...special even.

The music started, and their bodies moved on their own accord. It was the most natural movement Sidney had ever experienced.

Charlotte smelled sweet like a flower and fresh like the morning rain. Sidney wanted to close his eyes to take the sense in, but alas, her gaze captured him lovingly.

He couldn't look away. All Sidney could do was relish in each detail. To the way, her curls pinned upon her head, to the way she parted her rosy lips slightly to catch her breath. He realized he, too, had been holding his own.

The more they moved and swayed, following the rhythm of not only the dance but their bond, Sidney knew they saw each other in a different light.

It had already progressed for him since he'd first met her, but the way she was gazing at him right now...well, he craved to embrace her tightly into his arms and never let go.

The desire to kiss her was becoming exceedingly overwhelming with each passing step, mostly when her strong hands softly grazed over his hips.

Sidney knew his thoughts weren't proper, but he didn't mind in the slightest. All that existed was this moment, with Charlotte in his arms.

As he twirled her around, he saw a smile appear on her face for the first time all evening.

Sidney knew he was in love.

Although he had cast the mere thought of marriage to the sea, Sidney aspired to spend the rest of his life, making Charlotte smile in that manner.

Imagining life with her by his side, sharing moments with loved ones and in solidarity, surrounded by their future children, nearly brought tears to his eyes. It had been a hidden dream of his for years, one he thought he'd packed up properly.

Sidney noticed the other men spinning their partners, but he was frozen in time. The song was closing, but this moment had transformed him for good; Charlotte Heywood had undone him entirely with what he thought to be dependable.

Grasping one more gaze upon that sweet face, Sidney exhaled deeply. As Charlotte pulled away slightly, Sidney was already pondering on how he could get her alone with him this night.

He swallowed and was about to ask if she'd take a walk with him when Sidney felt eyes following him from afar. Unable to relinquish the sense, Sidney quickly thanked Charlotte and felt a chill run down his spine. It wasn't one of comfort, more perturbed as if a whirlwind was reaching for him.

As he looked up, searching for the cause, he saw her.

Sidney halted, becoming nonplussed, for there she stood opposite the room, unmasked and beautiful as ever. He was whisked backward into his past as Eliza smiled at him. As Sidney perceived the moment, the sonances in the room faded away.

Fate, apparently, was not through with him just yet.

However, as he politely excused himself from Charlotte, the woman who confounded him in every way imaginable, Sidney had an unsettling feeling he was about to head in the wrong direction.

#sanditon #sidlotte #sanditon fic #sidlotte fic #sidney x charlotte #sidney parker #charlotte heywood #my fic #sanditon 1x06

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genderneutralking · 3 years

Text

Supernatural but with The Magnus archives vibes!!!

+There could straight up be The Magnus Institute, but maybe a Supernatural equivalent? The Men Of Letters?

+ 1974 John Wichester, freshly married, living the happy suburban life

One day someone delivers (two men with cockney accents? Becon and Hope Delivery?) A load of boxes. When asked they say its his inheritance from his father. But John never knew his father. Didn't even know he died. But before he can ask more the men drive away.

After determining there arent any explosives inside does he stow away the boxes in the attic and puts them out of his mind? Does he not tell Mary, and years later completely forgotten, they burn? And what if one box survives somehow and inside John finds tapes? They talk of monsters and demons. Of burning people with a touch. Recorded by head archivist of The Men of Letters Henry Winchester. It's crazy and impossible but he's lived the impossible. And at the bottom of the box theres a journal....

+Or maybe not.

Maybe ventually he decides to open the boxes. Inside the boxes there are... cassette tapes. Loads and loads of tapes. And they talk of impossibe things, crazy things. All recorded by some "Men Of Letters." So what if the (MAG 7) "piper of death" sounds uncomfortably like his own experience in the Marines? The mind can play tricks.

He shows Mary, to share the bizarre 'inheritance' but she lashes out, screaming about how they should destroy the tapes, and theyre bad news. And seriously? Theyre a little weird (a lot weird) but no need to overreact sweetheart, whats up with you? And maybe johns a little more defensive than reasonable, but its not like the stories are real, right? Mary storms out of the house, like she aways does during arguments, and john hides the tapes. He can't destory them, but they dont talk about them again.

But sometimes when the coldness of the other side of the matress becomes too much, or when he dreams of dying in Mary's arms, he takes one out. He listens, and its not soothing, but in the dark, he can forget his own problems a little.

Decades later Sam and Dean find an old garage, filled with cursed objects and trinkets and Deans first shotgun, Sams trophy. In the corner theres a box, singed along the edges, filled with cassette tapes.

+Or maybe he investigates further, because Mary is hiding something and its related to the tapes, and he has weird dreams sometimes, of someone named Michael. What does he uncover? Does Mary survive because of his knowledge? Is there a family in an Impala driving around with two young children, runing from demons of the past and trying to unravel what has happened to their lives?

+John is Jack Barnabas. (MAG 67)

+A group of people find eachother on a forum or something. Maybe they've all had weird family history. Or something happened to them that noone can explain.

The point is that they started (or revived) an institution, that collects tales of the supernatural. Maybe its just a small rented basement, but theres an old tape recorder, and its good enough.

People find them, because they actually put their stuff on the internet, and its the only semi-official/legal place that awknowliges the existence of the supernatural. Maybe they even drive around and collect the statements in person.

+Do they eventually get contacted by hunters? What happens then?

+Lisa voice "theres something missing from my mind"

+ The Archivist eventually starts to notice recurring characters in thess strories. 'Hunters' they call themselves. Insted of The Magnus Archives mystery being [spoilers] they slowly unravel basically the canon of supernatural.

+maybe they visit the roadhouse

+ Stories of two men, always different names, sometimes brothers, sometimes lovers or partners, but always the same description. Plaid shirts, guns, a Chevy Impala.

+Michael Crew is Michael the Archangel, possesing Adam Miligan?

+With angels and demons being real there has to be a shit ton of cults right? Angels and demons possesing people are a lot more scary (think michael talking to jon the first time) and people notice.

+Sasha gets possed by an angel or a demon

+ 'sectioned' police officers and nurses bc cmon they surely notice the fangs and shit.

+maybe Charlie joins them and they get involved into the winchester mess, or charlie tries to hide the winchester stories!

It really could go a lot of ways.

#supernatural #spn prompts #i thought of this in the shower and i had to write it down

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marvelatthehottotties · 4 years

Text

Steven Grant Rogers - Chapter 1

Warnings: Mentions of sex, alcohol use, bit of angst, bit of fluff.

Masterpost Prologue

Co-authored by @keliza

Masterpost

He was long and lanky. He’d been slow to grow right up until our senior year of high school. Junior year he’d left for the summer and in just three short months it seemed like he’d sprouted right up into the 6’2” bean pole.

You’d always liked Steve. Most girls gravitated towards Bucky, the well off, naturally charming mechanic that Steve was connected at the hip with. Not you.

It was always Steve, with his gentle blue eyes and his kind smile. Just once you wanted to know what it felt like to hold his hand or how he’d kiss.

You always imagined he kissed like John Thorton at the end of North and South. How many times had you fantasized that he brushed his hand over your skin and breath a little breath to blow away your insecurities like he had with his sketchbook.

You’d glanced once to see what he drew. Mostly doodles, but once, you’d seen a face. One that broke your heart. Ms. Carter. Your senior lit teacher. He drew her in such a lovely way there was no doubt to his affections for her. And how could you ever compete with someone as fierce and intelligent as Ms. Peggy Carter.

You tended to shy away from him for the most part. Usually too worried about being a nuisance to really try to hold a conversation with him. You were honestly surprised to go see him go to school. He came from a poor family, you knew his mother was sick. It made your heart ache to watch him go through what you did.

Then it happened.

Sarah Rogers passed away and he was devastated. So was Bucky if you were being completely honest. He and Steve were like brothers, and towards the end of high school he lived with them, right around the time his dad cut him off. You put everything aside. You went to Bucky and asked if there was anything you could do to help. You did a fundraiser to help raise money for her funeral, they didn’t have health insurance, let alone life insurance. Steve tried to deny the help at first but he slowly opened up.

Somehow you ended up even more in love with Steve than before. It wasn’t hard. Bucky teased you in private about your crush on the little dork who never backed down from a fight. Now here you were, about ready to finish up your senior year with your two best friends. Ready to graduate, to flee the nest.

The music was so loud in the backyard it was hard to hear right next to the speaker. But thankfully you didn’t have to stay by the speaker. You saw the blond hair that you’d spot from anywhere. The hair your eyes always searched for. It was habitual now.

You break into a grin at seeing him. He smiles back. His gentle, amused smile that says he’s feeling a bit mischievous tonight. It’s so distracting you aren’t prepared to be lifted off your feet. Letting out a squeal of terror, you kick your feet. “BUCKY! PUT ME DOWN!”

“Down you say?”

“Don’t you dare!” You meet Steve’s eyes just as you leave Bucky’s arms. Time slows as you see the grin break out of Steve’s face. You inhale as fast as this slowed time allows you to. The water is warm when you hit it. No guarantee it would be when you climb out. Of course, there was nothing like seeing that twinkle in his eye.

Time stayed slow under that water. Bubbles surged around you, when it cleared you gazed about the pool. Red solo cups had sunk to the bottom of the pool. There was a pretty pink bra near the bottom as well. A few glow stick bracelets shined from the bottom as well and legs kicked about. A couple guys were wrestling near the other side.

Why was water always so comforting? You wonder idly, listening to the dull noise of music filter through the water. It was so soft and quiet.

You just wanted to stay down here, to float. It sounds morbid.

When the blond appeared above the ripples of the water, you forgot about the water and pushed off the bottom of the pool, surging up to break the surface of the pool. “You’re an accomplice, you know?” You hum to him. He chuckles at you, hands stuffed in the pockets of the pants he couldn’t fill out yet.

“That only counts if I knew about it beforehand,” he replies. You shoot Bucky a hard look, but not too hard. You could never mask your true feelings to them. Instead you just soften into a grin and giggle.

“You’re dead, Barnes.” He smiles as Steve holds out a hand to help you out of the water.

“Sure, sure.”

“Been here long?” Steve asks you.

“About ten minutes. Thankfully I left my phone in my car.”

“I tried to call you,” he replies, with a shrug. “Explains why you didn’t answer.”

Wringing out your hair, “To repent, you gotta get me a drink, Buck.”

“Haven’t gotten one yet?” Bucky asks.

“Nah, was waiting for my body guards so I could feel extra special.”

“Oh, in that case, I’ll get the princess a drink.” He gives a dramatic bow and then turns to head inside to where the jungle juice lay. Leaving you with Steve.

“To the balcony?” You ask.

“Sounds good.”

There was an ease about being with Steve, one that wasn’t there before. He made things easier. Made things better. There was no doubt that you loved Steve, even if he wasn’t for you. How you longed to be his muse like Ms. Carter was. He was like dawn on a winter morning, long awaited. He was warm sunshine melting the snow. He was a necessity. You’d prayed so many nights that you could be good enough for him, but you weren’t sure. God could be so cruel.

Soon, you both had made your ways onto the balcony. Exactly where you always went when Tony Stark threw parties at his parents house. He’d moved across the country after high school to go to school at MIT. A smart kid, he’d gone from quiet, like he couldn’t bother with anyone, to a cocky asshole. His parties were statement pieces. Tradition in our little town. There wasn’t much to do besides parties around here. Steve wasn’t a big fan, you knew.

He’d much rather be at home, drawing memories of his mother. A heart breaking experience for you. This at least got him out. Once he even participated in one of those games. Bucky had talked him into playing the game with cards. Where you have to pass the card by lips alone. It had been Bucky’s plan to get Steve to kiss you.

It had not worked.

He’d hoped you’d both finally be able to admit feelings. But it hadn’t worked. Steve ended up locking lips with another girl. Not just once. The girl had spent the night kissing Steve exactly how you’d imagined to kiss, delicate, savory. His hands, brushing hair from her cheeks like she was a flower. At some point you couldn’t take it anymore. You shuffled away, looking for some relief from the awful pain of seeing someone else on him.

You found it, alright.

Clawing at some strangers back, hiding your tears and regretting the next never ending weeks. Hating that those hands weren’t Steve’s. The guy, who’s name you didn’t care enough to get didn’t have soft blonde hair, his hands were too soft. He didn’t smell like him. The whole thing took way too long to recover from. It took almost six months for you to even meet Steve’s eyes like you used too.

Now, you both pretended nothing happened. It had been erased like a nightmare fading after waking.

But dreams still came. You never expected to be Steve’s number one. His number two, maybe his number. When you fell in love with him, a little spot of necrosis began on your heart. It expanded every time you gave yourself hope to be more. You’d settle to dream of him.

There was a recurring one that hurt more than anything else ever had, only because they were so real, you’d forget they weren’t. Waking up to his skin under your fingertips, he’d smile, gentle, free. His fingers black from charcoals, he’d drawn you sleeping, loving the morning light coming through the window.

You’d once told Bucky you hoped one day you could break away, and love someone else. “One day, I’ll love someone more than him,” you promised. Alas, it wasn’t anytime soon.

“You cold?” Steve asks. As you shiver on the balcony.

“Hm? Oh, no,” you dismiss. “I’ll be fine.”

“Here, I’ll get you a blanket, I’m sure the Starks won’t mind.”

“Ah, thanks,” you reply and glance out at the party below. A familiar prickle rose in your gut. Something unsettling. You lean against the edge and ponder. It didn’t seem more than a moment before a voice tore you back, but not completely. There was something, almost like being underwater.

“Sorry, I took so long.” You frown at Steve, throwing a blanket over your trembling shoulder. You weren’t cold though.

“You were only gone a few seconds.” Steve chuckles.

“I suppose. I was gone for almost five minutes.” You shake your head at him, or yourself, you’re not certain. “Maybe you zoned out again,” he suggests.

You didn’t want to worry him, but it happened frequently. “Yeah, probably.”

“Where do you go when that happens?”

“I… There’s this feeling sometimes.” Steve frowns deeper. “It’s almost like the air gets stale… like… I feel like a ghost, Steve. Like I’m not living anymore and I’m just… stuck, just reliving the same moments over and over,” you breathe. “It’s not good or bad or numb… just like I get stuck in these little moments, you know?” Steve doesn’t reply, but he also doesn’t look at you like you’re crazy either.

“Well, you’re not a ghost, (Y/N). You’re alive. More alive than anyone I’ve ever met.” You meet his gaze. You take a moment and nod, reassured for another moment that all was well.

“Steve?” You ask.

“Yeah?”

“Is it too much to ask you not to leave me, I don’t care if this is dream. But when you get famous for your art, don’t forget about me, okay?”

“A dream?” He repeats. “Why would you ever want to dream about me,” he jokes.

“I’m serious, Steve.” You say, turning and fluttering a hand toward his chest. You hesitate, afraid if you touch him he would crumble into a thousand, thousand butterflies and float away to be gone forever. But when you lay a hand, he doesn’t crumble away like your dreams, instead you stroke the fabric of his collar under your fingertips.

“I would never leave you,” he leans down when you avoid his eyes. Making you meet his eyes, a tiny smile stretching on his handsome face. “‘Till the end of the line, right?”

“Right,” you breathe, like a relief. And suddenly your eyes are holding each other’s and it’s endless. Like one of those moments only you feel very much alive. He’s very close. If you pushed up onto your toes, your lips would meet. Would he want you too?

You could smell him. He smelled like clean sheets and his paints. Like the craft store.

“I got drin- Oh…” Both of you snap your heads. Bucky looked disappointed.

Both you and Steve shifted away from each other quickly, a coolness rising. Dosing us and sending us toward Bucky. The dark haired beauty presses his lips together like he was uncomfortable and heaves a sigh as the both of us took the drinks.

“This is gonna be a long night,” he sighs into his drink as I shuffle over to the patio furniture with them.

@tomisbaeholland

#steve x reader #steve x y/n #steve x you #steve rogers #steve rodgers imagine #avengers #avengers au #the avengers #college au

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chris-evans-indian-fanfic · 4 years

Text

Across Seven Seas

Chapter 12

Description: This fanfiction series is set in the year 2022, after the horrid COVID-19 has finally come to an end. In this fanfiction, Chris Evans holidays with his family in India and meets Meera Shankar. The story explores their rollercoaster journey and raises a question, whether two people, from two contrasting backgrounds and cultures, can build their future together?

Series Masterlist

Chapter 13

Main Masterlist

This series is Chris Evans x OFC with Chris Evans' family and friends having recurring appearances. Please find below a lot of Original Characters-

Meera Shankar - The female lead

Meera's Mother

Poppy - Meera's maternal grandmother

Rohan - Meera's elder brother who is 6 years older than her.

Ankur - Concierge of the Hotel Maple-Fawn in Mussoorie

Warning: Curse words, beginning of rape, alcohol consumption, angst

This is a work of fiction. The names of the hotels and companies have been changed to avoid copyright issues. Meera Shankar and her family is based on the author and her kin. No offense is intended.

I don’t consent to have any of my work published or featured on any third party app, website or translated. If you are seeing this fanfiction anywhere but tumblr, it has been reposted without my permission. In that case, please do share the link and let me know.

...

Chapter 12

Meera rang the doorbell of the Evans suite. Situated on the top floor of the hotel, the passage way to the suite was lined with ornate arches, marble statues and impeccable sophisticated lighting. The entire decor screamed opulence in capital letters. It also made her feel uncomfortably out of place.

Scott opened the door and let her in. He welcomed her to take a seat in the living room of the suite, along with Lisa, Chris, Shanna and Carly. "Did all of you see the news?" Meera asked as she took a seat, wincing a little. "Yeah we did. We just wanted to ask a few questions. Thank you for coming up here even though you are exhausted. It means a lot," said Scott.

Meera brushed him off, "It's okay. I will try my best to put your mind at ease." She looked around at their silent faces. They looked a little nervous and Meera soon realised why. She was sitting in her usual position, legs wide apart, back slightly bent, forearms resting on her knees with her palms meeting in the middle. While she felt comfortable in this position, her Mother had always reminded her that women sat with their legs closed and not like mobsters planning to threaten people.

"Umm... Yeah so… I mean…" Scott struggled, clearly hesitant.

Meera chuckled under her breath, "Why don't I start with the obvious questions. You can ask me later on if I miss out on anything." Scott nodded.

"So first of all, why did I not take any credit for the fight? Simple. I wanted to protect my family, especially my brother. He works with a cruise ship in the US and," she sighed, "stuff like this will make it harder for him to renew his visa."

Meera looked at Chris, "You gave your honest statement to the police officer. It was I who translated it and signed the false statement. So… So please be assured, you will not get into any legal trouble." She removed her phone from her bomber jacket, "I have a voice recording of your original statement. I can give it to you right now if you want. So that just in case, in the future, if this matter ever comes to light, you will have proof to back you up."

The 5 looked considerably relieved now. Scott gave her his email ID where she could send the recording. Once she did, she deleted the sent email and his email ID from her contact list in front of them.

"Now for the next question, how and when did I manage to plan all this? I spoke with Inspector Rima when she came to arrest those 3 gentlemen. I explained to her that since you were US citizens, you were planning to file a complaint with your embassy and would see to it that this matter received international coverage. She understood that her police force would be insulted and she would definitely get suspended. So," Meera sighed again, only this time pain visibly flashed across her face, "she agreed to take the credit and include you guys in the report as just tourists."

"From whatever little I know, there were 26 members in the gang and all of them have been caught. So you guys are all safe. Plus, the hotel is…," she groaned a little with pain, "is providing us with increased security. Nobody can enter our respective floors without avoiding the hotel guards. So yes, you can stay here for the remainder of your trip," she ended.

She looked around at them with a small smile, "Any questions?"

"I do," said Shanna slowly, "Why did you not use your knife to fight those guys? I mean they had knives too right? You were lucky only your sweater was torn."

Meera nodded, "I was incredibly lucky today. The fight could have gone sideways very fast. I didn't use the knife because…" she paused again, running fingers on her forehead, "Aah... because it would have further complicated the crime scene. See you can easily explain punches and kicks as self-defence to the police, but when a knife or any other weapon gets involved, it comes close to the murder-territory. I figured if… if I could distract them with my laughter and insults, I could take them on one-by-one."

She looked at Chris again. He was still wearing her sweater and cap, "That reminds me, can I please have my sweater and skull cap back?"

Chris became tongue-tied. He could feel everyone's attention on him now. Quick! Say something smart! He kept looking at Meera. He knew her body must be paining, but he saw a greater pain in her eyes. Her pink lips were slightly quivering, as if she could cry in an instant. Her eyelids were heavy with sleep. He knew she needed rest, yet here she was, reassuring his family. He wanted to hold her, hug her tight and tell her everything would be okay. But would she let him? He should have protected her today, and instead, he was a coward. Would she ever forgive him for that?

"Umm Mr Evans?" Tell her why can't you return her belongings. SPEAK YOU FUCKING MEATBALL!! His breaths started coming in rapid successions as his eyes grew wider. You are a fucking 41-year-old man, TALK!!! But the more he thought about talking, the more he shut himself.

"Oh God baby no it's okay," said Lisa, lightly rubbing his hands while Shanna and Carly started fanning him with the newspapers. "Hey do you want to sing the Little Mermaid song?" Scott suggested, kneeling in front of his brother.

Meera got up, headed to the refrigerator and brought the ice cube tray in front of Chris. "Pop one in your mouth," she suggested in a commanding tone. Chris looked at her, a little confused but still panicking.

"What are you talking abo…" Before Scott could finish his sentence, she said, "Trust me. Pop one ice cube into your brother's mouth."

Raising his eyebrows and shaking his head in disbelief, Scott still did as she instructed.

The confusion on Chris' face grew, then the cold hit him. "AFHASGHAHAGHHFA," he said with his mouth open, his panic attack now forgotten. He looked at Meera, dancing a little on his feet with the cold ice cube in his mouth. She just nodded, "Yes you can go and spit it out now."

She placed the ice tray back in the refrigerator.

When Chris came back, she asked him, "Feeling better?" He nodded, managing to say "Thanks" quietly.

"Umm why… and how?" a stunned Carly managed to ask her.

She addressed them, "There are 3 reasons why putting an ice cube in your mouth works while having a panic attack. One," she raised a finger, and immediately winced in pain, "...the idea acts as a distraction. Two, the cold shocks your system and confuses it. And three, I figured... you might not be drinking enough water, which would have caused your mouth to produce more… ummm…," Meera shook her head as if thinking, "more saliva, which would calm you down."

She stood while they took a seat. "Mr Evans," she spoke gently, "I am sorry I caused you to have a panic attack. When I asked for my stuff, I didn't mean immediately right now. You can return it tomorrow," she closed her eyes and gripped the chair as she felt a little dizzy, "I didn't mean for you to shed your clothes in front of me if that's what you thought."

"Oh no no," Chris finally found his voice, "I didn't... I didn't think that. Please take a seat, you are clearly injured. Have you seen a doctor yet?"

Meera smiled again, "No I haven't. I don't need to. I will be fine. I will take your leave now."

As she was leaving, the family thanked her once again. Lisa asked her, "Are you sure you want your sweater back? It's been torn quite horribly."

"Yes," Meera looked even more exhausted now, if that were possible. "I… I come from a family of… of…" she shook her head and again placed a few fingers on her forehead. "Ummm you know those people who… who do repair work… but of clothes… and they sew new clothes as well? What is the word? What are they called? I am sorry I am having a hard time translating things into English now."

"No don't be sorry. Did you mean a tailor?"

"Yes! Yes a tailor. I come from a family of women tailors. Yes tailors. Thank you. I will stitch it back together," Meera bid goodbye to them, thinking about her bathtub and soft bed longingly.

…

Back in Meera's room, her phone chimed again. Vikranth: 20 missed calls flashed across the screen.

…

Meera collapsed on her bed. She closed her eyes, the pain in her arms and legs increasing with each second. She groaned as her mobile buzzed. Can't I have a minute of peace? Slowly reaching out for the phone, she saw it was Rohan.

"Are you okay?" he asked on the call.

"Yes. Will order room service and go to sleep."

"What's your room number? Ma is freaking out here," Rohan sounded concerned, "Look she is worried. Don't do this to her."

"If I give her my room number then she will come down here. She will not give me an iota of space or freedom. Tell her I am in the hotel and I am safe. Explain to her all the security measures the hotel is taking. Even after that, if it doesn't help her paranoia then I cannot do anything about it. No, Rohan, YOU please understand," she interrupted her brother, "I am in pain right now. My hands and legs hurt like crazy and I cannot take any medicine. Right now, I just need my space and time to heal. I am in the hotel so she has nothing to worry about. If she still chooses to worry then I cannot help it. Good night," Meera disconnected the call.

…

2am

Meera was back on the road. 6 big, strong men headed towards her as she ran. She knew she couldn't fight all 6 at once. She tried to run fast but couldn't. Her foot got stuck in the uneven road and she fell face-first. She felt multiple hands on her, ripping her clothes apart. Rough hands turned her around, and she saw her rapists as they started devouring her body in front of her family.

She woke up trembling with shock. Her mouth was open in a silent scream as her body was covered with sweat. She felt breathless. It took her a solid minute to realise she was safe in her room. It was just a nightmare, it was just a nightmare, she tried to calm herself down. Switching on the lights, she headed towards the refrigerator, and popped an ice cube in her mouth. She was on her 3rd ice cube when she finally stopped trembling.

Reaching for her phone, she decided to watch anything to divert her mind. That's when she noticed the multiple missed calls and messages. She clicked on the notifications and saw her Mother's messages first.

I gave you my life and this is how you repay me?

I have done everything for you! Cared for you, cleaned, cooked, drove you around, was with you every step of the way and you left me all alone? No mother deserves this.

You should be ashamed of what you have done.

No parent should have a daughter like you.

Look at how your brother is supporting us in these times of crisis. And you did nothing. You didn't even ask Vikranth for help because of your ego.

You don't deserve to have anybody in your life.

I am extremely disappointed in you.

Wow, Meera thought as she held her head in her hands. She tried to cry, but maybe her body was still in shock, because no tears came to her eyes.

Nodding her head, she hugged herself and kept repeating, Okay, okay we will get through this. We are okay. We just need to freak out and cry right now. Okay, okay. Freak out and cry. We need to leave this room now. Okay.

…

Chris couldn't sleep. It was all just too much for him to process. The light snores of his brother filled the room. They had all decided to sleep in the suite after the day's events. He couldn't even think straight, let alone sleep. Deciding he needed a drink, he quietly crept out of his bed, taking the room key with him.

He headed towards the hotel's 24x7 bar, hoping to find it deserted. As soon as he entered, he saw the bar was empty, except for one chair in the corner. He couldn't see the person except for a corner of their shawl hanging from the side of the large armchair. The person was playing soft music on their phone. Chris approached the bartender, noticing the shocked and… almost repulsive look on his face as the bartender kept looking at the person in the corner. 3 bottles of different soft drinks were open in front of him but he only focused on the person, his mouth slightly open.

"Ahem," Chris slightly coughed, drawing the attention of the bartender towards him. As Chris asked for a whisky on the rocks, he swore he heard the bartender murmur "Thank God."

He turned to look at the figure in the corner. While he still couldn't see them, he saw their reflection in the floor-to-ceiling glass window. He saw Meera.

He glanced at his drink on the counter debating whether to approach her or not. He couldn't afford to have another panic attack in front of her. He had to be strong. He took two large gulps of the strong whisky, immediately regretting his action. As he coughed and sputtered, he asked for a refill.

He felt his throat and chest burn, somewhat fuelling his courage. Taking his drink, he approached her.

As Chris neared Meera, he heard the melodious song more clearly. Even though it was in Hindi, he understood the sad tune. He saw her tear-stained cheeks and stopped. There wasn't another chair besides her where he could sit and comfort her.

Maybe she needs to feel the pain. I should just leave her alone. She might not like me interrupting her… Chris thought, but he couldn't help himself. Taking another step towards her, he gingerly asked, "Meera?"

She turned her head to look at him. Squinting her eyes, she was still unable to see the person. Putting on her glasses, she spoke through tears, "Mr Evans?" her red eyes registering slight surprise.

"Do you want to talk about it? What can I do to help you?"

Meera wiped her nose with a tissue, "Please leave me alone Mr Evans. I just want to be alone," she begged.

Chris nodded, but still stood in his spot. He looked around and decided to bring another comfortable armchair near Meera's.

He dragged it and placed it right besides the sidetable where her phone and glasses were kept.

Meera looked at him in disbelief, "Mr Evans I just want to be left alone. So please! Leave!" she said, her voice breaking.

He looked at her, feeling his own emotions overwhelming, "I am not asking you to talk to me. Just think of me as another guest in this bar. I will not interfere in any way. I promise you I will stay quiet. But if you think I will leave you alone, after everything that you have done for us, for me, after what you have gone through, then you are wrong Meera. I will not leave you."

"Why do you not understand," Meera broke down further, "I need to cry, I need to feel this. This is going to get ugly. You will feel uncomfortable! Please just leave."

Chris considered her for a moment, then nodded and left. He soon returned with a stack of paper napkins and placed them on the table besides her phone and glasses. "This should get you through the next hour," he said.

She looked at him, helpless, then sunk her head in her hands, crying further. Chris settled back in his chair, his body angled towards her. He wished she would let him comfort her, but somewhere, he also understood the importance of going through this alone. God only knows how many nights he had cried himself to sleep, refusing help from his own family, all because he wanted to stay alone.

Slowly, her sobs lessened. She used the new tissue and wiped her face, discarding it in the nearby bin. As she reached for the phone, Chris placed his hand on her mobile before her. "Don't change the song." "But you don't understand the lyrics," she said, her voice still broken. "No, but I like it. Let it play on loop," Chris said kindly. She nodded and took a sip of her drink. It looked a lot like neat whisky. Chris wondered, Why was the bartender repulsed? Was it because she was crying? That asshole.

After a few more sips, she said in a quiet voice, "Our Night."

"Hmm?"

"Our Night. The name of the song is Our Night. It is about how our night is a friend of the moon, but after a long time, she has come alone. She is darkness." Meera took another deep breath, "In the song, the singer wants to switch off all the lights and talk to the darkness. She understands that the darkness is hurtful. It is crazy even, but it is still hers. She just wants to be alone with the darkness."

Meera looked ahead and started crying again. Chris just looked at her, his own eyes brimming with tears now. He knew something had happened after she had left their suite. She didn't look like the type of person who broke down easily. He would give anything to find out who or what had upset her.

He looked at her reflection in the window, his own tears trickling down his cheeks. Finally, he allowed his emotions to take over.

That night, the stars in the moonless sky smiled down at them, as two people, from two different walks of life, cried together over what had happened, completely unaware of what the future had in store for them.

(This is the song if you want to listen ⬇️)

youtube

#chris evans #chris evans fanfic #chris evans fanfiction #chrisevans #chris evans family #chris evans x india #chris evans fandom #india #chris evans x ofc #chris evans x poc!reader #chris evans x plus size reader #chris evans x oc #chris evans x original female character #chris evans imagines #chris evans imagine #scott evans

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pnmrks · 5 years

Text

Brooklyn, Brooklyn

“I and Love and You” by the Avett Brothers is the ultimate stucky anthem end of discussion

“three words that became hard to say”

ao3 or below the cut

The days since Sarah Rogers’ death seemed to drag on for weeks, if not decades. By the time the funeral had finally come and gone, Bucky was sure that Steve had aged several years. In a way, he really had.

As the realization was beginning to hit them, how alone Steve truly was, they both began to feel suffocated by the weight of it all.

Bucky spent every night he could on the Rogers’ couch, waiting for Steve to need something, anything. Though they both knew he was too stubborn to ever ask for help, Bucky wouldn’t give up.

“You don’t have to keep sleeping here, Buck.” Steve stood in the doorway between the living room and the kitchen, arms crossed and shoulders slumped. “No use wasting your time here with me before you ship out. You should be with your family.”

Bucky rolled onto his side, arms still crossed over his chest. He gave Steve a once-over.

“I am with my family.”

Steve was clearly caught off guard by the statement, but it didn’t show in much more than a slight widening of his eyes. Bucky waited for him to say something and remained unmoving on the couch. Nothing came.

“I don’t want you to be here alone, Steve. I’ll stick around as long as I can, but I can only help if you tell me what you—”

“Yeah, well, we both know that’s not going to happen,” Steve said in a huff as he pushed off the wall and moved over to the couch. He pushed Bucky’s feet aside and settled in on the opposite end, his body nearly consumed by the cushions. “I’m fine here, Buck. I just need… time, I guess.”

“That’s alright. That’s normal.” Bucky grunted as he pulled himself up and stretched out his stiff shoulders. “I’m just worried about what you’re going to do around here after I leave.”

The two friends shared a glance, a mutual understanding settling between them.

“I’ll find something,” Steve said. His eyes fell to his lap. “I’ll… figure something out. Always do.”

“Steve.”

“No, I will, Buck. You don’t have to—”

“Steve.” Bucky turned so he could face his friend full-on. “You know that’s not what I meant.”

“Yeah, well, you don’t need to worry about… that. The fighting.” Steve shook his head once and tangled his fingers together tightly. “I’m not that stupid.”

“I didn’t say that,” Bucky murmured. “I just don’t want you to fall into a slump. That’s all. Maybe you can stay with my folks until I get back, you know?”

Steve sighed heavily and ran a hand through his hair.

“Bucky, I already told you I’ll be—”

Bucky sucked in a sharp breath and shifted in his seat. He’d reached his limit of Steve’s stubborn nature this week.

“Look, we both know I’m not leaving here until we figure something out, so how about you drop the act?”

A pang of guilt immediately racked through Bucky’s entire body when he saw the change in Steve’s face. He seemed to deflate more than Bucky thought possible. It had only been four days since the kid had to see his mother put in the ground. Maybe he was nagging too much, pushing too hard.

“I’m sorry,” Bucky said. His voice was much softer as he moved down the couch and threw an arm around Steve’s shoulders. “I’m sorry, Stevie. You know, I can’t help it. I know there was some time to prepare for this but it still came way too fast and—”

“Yeah,” Steve muttered. He hadn’t moved at all, hardly even acknowledge Bucky’s touch. “Way too fast.”

“And I’m… scared for you.”

It was Bucky’s turn to pretend like he didn’t know his friend’s eyes were on him. He could almost hear Steve’s taunting voice.

Bucky Barnes, scared. I can’t believe it.

“Buck—”

“I can’t have you going and killing yourself while I’m gone.”

The words were finally out, and even Bucky was surprised that they had fallen out of his mouth. He’d been hanging onto them so tightly, biting his tongue so consistently. But now they hung in the small space that was left between him and Steve, suddenly more real than just a recurring fear that had haunted Bucky since Steve started getting rejected from the Army.

“You think I’d do that?” Steve had turned away from Bucky’s arm around his shoulders, but he turned back, his brow furrowed deeply and lips pressed in a tight line. “Buck, you think I’d do that to you?”

“Don’t—” Bucky shook his head. “Don’t do that. Don’t make it about me. It’s not… I’m worried about you.”

“It’s always about you,” Steve said quietly. He dropped his chin to his chest. “Always.”

Bucky’s heart wrenched.

“Hey…” He leaned into Steve again, tried to get some eye contact. “Hey, don’t say that, alright? You know you’re not really invisible, right? Steve.”

“That’s not what I meant,” Steve said. He shook his head and stood from the couch. “Nevermind. Forget it.”

“Hey.” Bucky reached out and grabbed Steve’s hand reflexively. “Hey, come on. What is it?”

Steve sighed and turned his hand over in Bucky’s. Neither of them shied away from the touch and a sad smile pulled at the corners of Steve’s mouth.

“It’s always about you…” Steve took a heavy breath and closed his eyes. “For me. It’s always about you, for me.”

Bucky shook his head, still trying to grasp what exactly Steve was trying to say.

“Buck…” Steve opened his eyes and pressed his lips together. “Everything I know about life, about myself, about… other stuff… it’s all because of you. It’s all… you’re just…”

“Hey, hey, hey, get over here,” Bucky said. He pulled Steve back down to the couch and wrapped both his arms around him just as he started to fall apart. “Come here, come here. I’ve got you. It’s okay.”

He rocked back and forth slowly, still trying to wrap his head around what exactly Steve was trying to say. It didn’t matter. He didn’t need to understand, not right at that moment. They still had some time before Bucky left, and they’d have all the time in the world when he got home.

“Just breathe, okay? Take a deep breath, Steve. I’ve got you,” Bucky said. He tilted his head down and rest his nose on the top of Steve’s head. Steve’s shaking shoulders relaxed a bit and Bucky could feel his breathing slow and deepen. “There you go. It’s okay. It’s okay.”

#pre serum steve #pre serum stucky #stucky #pre war stucky #pre war bucky #bucky #steve #captain america #the winter soldier #marvel #ficlet #one shot #stucky one shot #bucky barnes #steve rogers #stevebucky #wwii stucky #wwii bucky barnes

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enterprisetrampstamp · 5 years

Text

The Martinstown WIP Part 2

Part 1

This is Part 2 of what is likely to be a nice, long t’pura fic once I’ve banged it out. It’s a bizarre length and actual amount of plot by my standards, so I’m in want of comments and breaking my usual rules to post sections of it before it’s fully complete. Please, holler at your ambiguously gendered author with any #thoughts you have!

***

“For Pete's sake,” Kevin says, as T’Pring calmly sweeps the pot of assorted trinkets and other random items that they’ve been betting from the center of the table to join the rest of the pile in front of her. “Who invited the Vulcan?”

She blinks, pausing in her movements. “This is a weekly poker game.”

Kevin’s face does something complicated. “Yes, but--”

“I was not invited,” T’Pring tells him. “None of us were invited. This is a recreational activity intended to facilitate the formation of strong bonds amongst the crew; it occurs during a pre-established, recurring timeslot.”

“It’s a figure of speech,” Kevin tries, eyes roving about the table as he attempts to find a sympathetic face. (He does not. The most sympathetic among them, Cristobal, fell asleep nearly an hour earlier. A thin blanket has been draped across his shoulders, and his gentle snores undergird their conversation.)

T'Pring continues to gaze at Kevin. “I do not understand," she says.

“Except that you do.” Kevin sets his hand flat on the table, fingers spread wide and his eyebrows rising, as he attempts to keep his voice calm. “I’ve been on this ship for nearly two years, so I know you, and I know that you know what figures of speech are, and I know, and you know, that you are trying to fuck with me.”

“I am a Vulcan,” T’Pring says, managing to convey an air of vast insult without modulating her voice or altering her expression. “I do not ‘try to fuck with’ people.”

"No," Pinga agrees. Her eyes glitter with amusement, and she brushes a strand of her thick dark hair- shot through with streaks of grey- back over her shoulder. "You do not try to fuck with people."

The corner of T'Pring's mouth raises, momentarily and minutely, into a smile. She inclines her head, stating solemnly, "I accept your compliment as intended."

Laughter runs around the table.

“I’m going to cry.” Kevin runs a hand over his face, his own laughter a little fraught and helpless. “I’m--Lainey, I am, literally, I’m going to cry.”

“You can’t cry; you already bet your handkerchief.” Lainey snickers as he groans, leaning forward to thunk his forehead lightly against the table. She reaches out to pat his shoulder, and where it should be sympathetic, instead it is mildly condescending.

Such is the way of younger siblings, or so T'Pring has been led to assume.

She finishes collecting her winnings. It all means little to her, of course, but most of it means little to any of them, and what items may be missed by their original owners usually find their way back to them before the end of the night. The collection of material goods is not the point of this activity--regardless of whether or not T'Pring excels at it.

“I shall provide you the opportunity to win it back,” she tells Kevin magnanimously, picking the handkerchief out to toss into the center of the table as the ante.

The rest of the table follows suit; Lainey selects a battery to add to the pot, then reaches across her brother to grab a piece of candy from his pile. Elina adds a pack of saltine crackers, and Pinga- who has been playing for Cristobal since she herself ran out of items a couple of hands earlier- raids his pockets for the little slip of fabric he uses to clean his glasses, before ruffling his hair fondly and adjusting the blanket about his shoulders.

"How motherly," Elina teases, the words warm and taunting in her thick Georgian accent, and Pinga doesn't even look over at her.

"Bite me, grease monkey."

Cristobal snuffles in his sleep.

"Whatever," Kevin says, voice muffled. "Thanks, T'Pring. You're a real mensch."

She tilts her head slightly in agreement. "It is only logical, as I have no need of a handkerchief."

"Naturally."

T'Pring glances up as the door slides, silently, open on the far end of the kitchen. Their captain pauses on the threshold; not in need of their service but simply to observe, and so she returns her attention to the human bonding ritual of mild teasing and humiliation.

"Yes," she says. "It is in fact natural that Vulcans do not cry."

(This is not, strictly, an accurate statement; Vulcans are capable of tears, although they are rarely shed due to the obdurate cultural norms requiring mastery of their emotional expressions. But T'Pring has become fluent in the human usage of hyperbole for humorous purposes, as well as a great many other things which would scandalize even the most progressive members of her homeworld's society.)

(If only there were more of her people left to be scandalized.)

Kevin makes a noise which can only be classified as "pathetic", and groans out, "Please stop."

"Take pity on him, beta," Fatima says, one hip propped against the doorframe and her arms crossed over her chest. "He's too delicate for your sledgehammer of a sense of humor."

"Is that an order, Captain?" T'Pring asks calmly, as she collects the cards. It is her turn to deal. She considers employing sleight of hand in order to provide Kevin the necessary cards to regain his handkerchief, but it has been approximately 4.786 Terran years since she was last able to effectively avert suspicion by calling upon her species' reputation for integrity, and Elina is remarkably observant for a human.

Of course--

The ability to cheat is why they use a physical deck of cards, as opposed to the holo-capabilities of the glass table upon which they currently play. She meets Elina's warm hazel eyes across the table, a smirk hiding somewhere in the darkness of her own, and shuffles the deck with a sharp, crisp noise.

Fatima does not smile, but there is something in the twist of her lips that implies amusement. "Consider it a firm suggestion," she says, her tone dry.

"Very well." T'Pring turns her shoulders away from the table to face her, one slanted eyebrow rising slightly. "Do you wish to join us?"

"Hm." The captain pushes away from the door, shoving up the sleeves of her shirt and squinting as she moves to lean over the table. "Is there anything worth winning left?" she asks, poking at the modest pile of objects next to Lainey's elbow.

"Is there ever anything worth winning?" Elina holds up a primitive- and cheap- ink pen from her own pile. "I have no paper to use this on."

"Because the washers you brought are so much more practical," Pinga mutters.

"Don't be rude, bebia."

"I'll show you rude, tiguaq--"

Fatima clicks her tongue. "Behave," she admonishes, even as her hand sneaks out for a piece of chocolate out of T'Pring's winnings.

T'Pring, quick as a snake, smacks her hand away. "Behave," she echoes.

Despite the gloves- thin, dark purple leather- which she has long adopted as a method of protecting the crew from the brunt of her telepathy and vice versa, she catches the barest glimpse of her captain's playful shock and ire.

"Insubordination," Fatima says, with a side-eyed glare as she rubs her stinging knuckles. "I could have you court martialed."

"Given that we both have no brig, and that I am the member of this crew most often called upon to serve the role of a security officer--" T'Pring shuffles the cards with another crisp crack-- "I believe your Terran phrase is, 'I should like to see you try.'"

Fatima sighs. "You were so sweet when we met."

T'Pring pauses in her movements to stare at her. "I was not," she says, her blank face once more conveying an air of grave insult.

"No," Elina agrees. "She's always been a prideful twat; she used to just hide it behind Vulcan stoicism and words that none of us could understand."

"Now I am a strong independent woman who openly speaks her mind," T'Pring says, in a tone that could almost pass for dry.

Lainey shoves her glass in the air, cheering, "L'Chaim!"

T'Pring raises that piece of chocolate between her index and middle fingers, a glitter of amusement somewhere deep in those dark eyes, and agrees: "L'Chaim."

#t'pring #t'pura #femslash #the latter two being where this is going anyway #for now it's a lot of exposition to set up the ship #and her crew #basically... it's kelvin timeline star trek with a firefly conceit by way of an original series star trek vibe #it is the best of every world. or like... that's the goal anyway #anyway let me lay out the questions I have about this section if anyone wants to offer their feedback:#am I throwing too many people at you too quickly?#does it feel just entirely out of character for t'pring or are you getting the sense that she's been on this ship with these people for long #enough for this to make sense?#I'm playing fast and loose with her characterization since there is SO little in canon--one TOS ep and then obviously she isn't even #officially acknowledged in AOS yet #imo I've got a good story built for who she is and why BUT I'm very open to commentary if it's not coming across well #and more broadly--is the style coming across well? it's been a while since I wrote extensively in present tense #and it gives it a particular vibe that I'm trying to balance against my need for constant dumb jokes #speaking of dumb jokes #pinga looking at cristobal: aw :') isn't he so cute :')#I'm gonna rob him :')

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lifeofresulullah · 6 years

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PROPHET MUHAMMAD: The Life of The Prophet Muhammad: The Battle of Khandaq and Afterwards

The Expedition of Sons of Qurayza (Part.3)

Judgment

Sa’d b. Muadh expressed his judgment as follows:

“I decided that the males who reached the age of puberty would be killed, that their goods would be distributed among Muslims and their women and children would be held as captives.”

The Prophet congratulated Sa’d on making this decision and said, “You have made a decision that is in accordance with what God ordered over the seven skies.”

Indeed, the judgment Sa’d b. Muadh made about Sons of Qurayza Jews was in accordance with the judgment of the Shariah of Hazrat Moses. This judgment is stated in the Old Testament as follows:

“When you march up to attack a city, make its people an offer of peace. If they accept and open their gates, all the people in it shall be subject to forced labor and shall work for you. If they refuse to make peace and they engage you in battle, lay siege to that city. When the Lord your God delivers it into your hand, put to the sword all the men in it. As for the women, the children, the livestock and everything else in the city, you may take these as plunder for yourselves. And you may use the plunder the Lord your God gives you from your enemies. This is how you are to treat all the cities that are at a distance from you and do not belong to the nations nearby.”

Sons of Qurayza Jews had to agree with the punishment they were given in accordance with the judgment in the Torah.

Upon the order of the Prophet, the hands of all of the males that reached the age of puberty were tied. Their goods were gathered in a place. The tied males, their goods and sheep were taken to Madinah. The booty was put in a house. The sheep were left to graze. Then, one-fifth of the booty was left to the Treasure. The remaining booty was shared among the mujahids.

As a necessity of the judgment, the males were killed. A woman called Nubata, who had martyred a Companion by throwing a stone at him from the castle during the siege, was also killed.

Meanwhile, a few Jews were forgiven. They had done some favors for Muslims beforehand. The Companions that they had helped asked the Messenger of God to forgive them and he forgave them.

Thus, the neighborhoods around Madinah were cleared of harmful elements. The Messenger of God and Muslims lived in peace and tranquility, without any wars for a long time after this incident.

SOME OTHER IMPORTANT INCIDENTS DURING THE 5TH YEAR OF THE MIGRATION

Muzaynas Embrace Islam

A delegate of ten people from the tribe of Muzayna, who were living near Madinah, came to Madinah and embraced Islam in the presence of the Messenger of God.

The leader of the delegates was Huzai b. Abdi Nuhm.

After becoming a Muslim and paying allegiance to the Prophet, Huzai returned to his homeland and asked his tribe to embrace Islam. Muzaynas said, “We will obey what you say” and embraced Islam; they sent a group of delegates to Madinah.

In the 5th year of The Migration, in the month of Rajab, about four hundred people from the Mudar clan of Muzaynas came to Madinah to become Muslims. The Messenger of God regarded them as muhajirs though they lived in their own land and said, “You are muhajirs no matter where you live. You deserved the honor of being a muhajir. Go back to your land.”

Upon the order of the Prophet, Muzaynas returned to their homeland.

Salman al-Farisi is Freed from Slavery

Salman al-Farisi was a slave of a Jew.

Once, the Messenger of God called him and said to him, “O Salman! Bargain with your master and agree on a price to be freed from slavery.”

When Salman talked to his master, his master said, “I will free you if you plant three hundred date saplings and give me forty uqiyyas (1600 dirhams) of gold.”

Thereupon, Salman went to the presence of the Messenger of God and told him what his master had said.

The Prophet said to his Companions, “Help your brother.”

Upon this order, the Companions collected three hundred date saplings among themselves.

When the date saplings were collected, the Prophet said, “O Salman! Go and dig holes for these saplings! When you finish digging holes, come and tell me. I will plant them.”

When Salman dug the holes with the help of the Companions, he informed the Prophet about it.

The Messenger of God planted all of the saplings himself except one. All of the saplings yielded dates that year except the one that he did not plant. The Prophet removed it and planted it again; later, it yielded dates, too.

Thus, Salman paid his debt regarding the date saplings to his master, who was one of Sons of Qurayza Jews.

Salman had paid his debt regarding the date saplings; now he had to pay his debt regarding gold.

Salman narrates how he paid his debt of gold as follows:

“The Messenger of God (pbuh) brought a lump of gold as big as a chicken egg. He summoned me and gave it to me saying, ‘O Salman! Take this and pay your debt with it.’

I said, ‘O Messenger of God! I cannot pay my debt with this small lump of gold’

He held the lump of gold and spread his spit on it and said, ‘Take this! God will pay your debt with it.’

Sa’d b. Muadh from Ansar Dies

Sa’d b. Muadh was one of the most virtuous people of Ansar.

He had become a Muslim when Mus’ab b. Umayr came to Madinah upon the order of the Messenger of God in order to teach the Quran. When Sons of Ashhal heard that he became a Muslim, all of them, male and female, embraced Islam that day.

This valiant and self-sacrificing Companion had been wounded by an arrow during the Battle of Khandaq and a vein of his arm had been cut. His wound was serious and painful.

When this valiant Companion was wounded, the Messenger of God allocated a place for him in the tent of Rufayda, an Ansar woman who was looking after the wounded soldiers for the sake of God.

A short while after he made the decision about Sons of Qurayza, his wound recurred again and he died when he was thirty-seven years old in the 5th year of the Migration as a martyr.

The Messenger of God and Muslims were very distressed by the death of Sa’d. The Prophet said, “Due to the death of Sa’d b. Muadh, the High Throne shook; seventy thousand angels joined his funeral.” The Prophet himself led his janazah prayer.

Mughira b. Shu’ba Becomes a Muslim

Mughira b. Shu’ba was one of the four masterminds of Arabs. He was very skilled at settling great problems. He was a majestic and hefty man.

He became a Muslim in the same years as the Battle of Khandaq took place and came to Madinah as a muhajir.

Earthquake and Lunar Eclipse in Madinah

In the 5th year of the Migration, an earthquake happened in Madinah.

Thereupon, the Messenger of God said, “Your Lord probably wants you to transform into a state that He likes. Then, ask for his consent.”

This statement of the Messenger of God shows that there is a relationship between the earth and the acts of those living on the earth and that the earth moves and quakes based on the revelation and order of God.

In the 5th year of the Migration, in the month of Jumada al-Akhir, there was a lunar eclipse.

The Messenger of God led the prayer of khusuf (lunar eclipse) until the eclipse ended.

It is sunnah to perform kusuf and khusuf (solar and lunar eclipse) prayers. The ruku (bowing down) and sajdahs (prostrations) are carried out in the same way as supererogatory prayers. Adhan and iqamah are not called out for those prayers.

However, for the khusuf prayer, the muezzin calls out “as-Salatu Jamiatun [Gather for the prayer]”.

The Messenger of God stated the following in a sermon:

“The sun and the moon do not eclipse because of the death or birth of someone from the people but they are two signs that show the power and majesty of God. When you see them, stand up and pray!”

The people in the Era of Jahiliyya had the following superstition: “The sun and the moon eclipse for a notable person in the world.”

With his holy words quoted above, the Prophet changed this wrong belief of the people of Jahiliyya and stated that the solar and lunar eclipses were times of prayer. He stated that people should be busy with worshipping God at those times not with useless things.

It should not be forgotten that the reason and result of worshipping and prayer originate from the order and consent of God; its benefit occurs in the hereafter. If a person prays and worships with the intention of a worldly benefit, that prayer will become invalid. Therefore, when the sun or the moon eclipse, one should not pray so that the eclipse will end. On the contrary, the times of solar and lunar eclipses should be regarded as times of kusuf and khusuf prayers; one should perform prayers in order to attain the consent and pleasure of God.

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basicsofislam · 6 years

Text

PROPHET MUHAMMAD (PBUH)’s BIOGRAPHY :The Expedition of Sons of Qurayza.Part3

Judgment

Sa’d b. Muadh expressed his judgment as follows:

“I decided that the males who reached the age of puberty would be killed, that their goods would be distributed among Muslims and their women and children would be held as captives.”

The Prophet congratulated Sa’d on making this decision and said, “You have made a decision that is in accordance with what God ordered over the seven skies.”[ Ibn Hisham, ibid, Vol. 3, p. 251; Ibn Sa’d, ibid, Vol. 3, p. 426; Tabari, Tarikh, Vol. 3, p. 56 ]

Indeed, the judgment Sa’d b. Muadh made about Sons of Qurayza Jews was in accordance with the judgment of the Shariah of Hazrat Moses. This judgment is stated in the Old Testament as follows:

Sons of Qurayza Jews had to agree with the punishment they were given in accordance with the judgment in the Torah.

As a necessity of the judgment, the males were killed. A woman called Nubata, who had martyred a Companion by throwing a stone at him from the castle during the siege, was also killed.

Meanwhile, a few Jews were forgiven. They had done some favors for Muslims beforehand. The Companions that they had helped asked the Messenger of God to forgive them and he forgave them.

Thus, the neighborhoods around Madinah were cleared of harmful elements. The Messenger of God and Muslims lived in peace and tranquility, without any wars for a long time after this incident.

SOME OTHER IMPORTANT INCIDENTS DURING THE 5TH YEAR OF THE MIGRATION Muzaynas Embrace Islam

A delegate of ten people from the tribe of Muzayna, who were living near Madinah, came to Madinah and embraced Islam in the presence of the Messenger of God.

The leader of the delegates was Huzai b. Abdi Nuhm.

Upon the order of the Prophet, Muzaynas returned to their homeland.[ Ibn Sa’d, Tabaqat, Vol. 1, p. 291-292. ]

Salman al-Farisi is Freed from Slavery

Salman al-Farisi was a slave of a Jew.

Once, the Messenger of God called him and said to him, “O Salman! Bargain with your master and agree on a price to be freed from slavery.”

When Salman talked to his master, his master said, “I will free you if you plant three hundred date saplings and give me forty uqiyyas (1600 dirhams) of gold.”

Thereupon, Salman went to the presence of the Messenger of God and told him what his master had said.

The Prophet said to his Companions, “Help your brother.”

Upon this order, the Companions collected three hundred date saplings among themselves.

When the date saplings were collected, the Prophet said, “O Salman! Go and dig holes for these saplings! When you finish digging holes, come and tell me. I will plant them.”

When Salman dug the holes with the help of the Companions, he informed the Prophet about it.

Thus, Salman paid his debt regarding the date saplings to his master, who was one of Sons of Qurayza Jews.

Salman had paid his debt regarding the date saplings; now he had to pay his debt regarding gold.

Salman narrates how he paid his debt of gold as follows:

“The Messenger of God (pbuh) brought a lump of gold as big as a chicken egg. He summoned me and gave it to me saying, ‘O Salman! Take this and pay your debt with it.’

I said, ‘O Messenger of God! I cannot pay my debt with this small lump of gold’

He held the lump of gold and spread his spit on it and said, ‘Take this! God will pay your debt with it.’

Thereupon, I took pieces from it, weighed them and gave them to my master. After I gave him forty uqiyyas(1600 dirhams) of gold, the lump of gold that was as big as a chicken egg still had the same weight. It remained to me.”[ Ibn Hisham, ibid, Vol. 1, p. 235; Ibn Sa’d, ibid, Vol. 1, p. 185; Qadi Iyad, ash-Shifa, Vol. 1, p. 277-278. ]

Sa’d b. Muadh from Ansar Dies

Sa’d b. Muadh was one of the most virtuous people of Ansar.

This valiant and self-sacrificing Companion had been wounded by an arrow during the Battle of Khandaq and a vein of his arm had been cut. His wound was serious and painful.

When this valiant Companion was wounded, the Messenger of God allocated a place for him in the tent of Rufayda, an Ansar woman who was looking after the wounded soldiers for the sake of God.

A short while after he made the decision about Sons of Qurayza, his wound recurred again and he died when he was thirty-seven years old in the 5th year of the Migration as a martyr.

Mughira b. Shu’ba Becomes a Muslim

Mughira b. Shu’ba was one of the four masterminds of Arabs. He was very skilled at settling great problems. He was a majestic and hefty man.

He became a Muslim in the same years as the Battle of Khandaq took place and came to Madinah as a muhajir.

Earthquake and Lunar Eclipse in Madinah

In the 5th year of the Migration, an earthquake happened in Madinah.

Thereupon, the Messenger of God said, “Your Lord probably wants you to transform into a state that He likes. Then, ask for his consent.”[ Ibn Athir, Usdu’l-Ghaba, Vol. 1, p. 22. ]

In the 5th year of the Migration, in the month of Jumada al-Akhir, there was a lunar eclipse.

The Messenger of God led the prayer of khusuf (lunar eclipse) until the eclipse ended.[ Halabi, Insanu’l-Uyun, Vol. 2, p. 628 ]

However, for the khusuf prayer, the muezzin calls out “as-Salatu Jamiatun [Gather for the prayer]”.

The Messenger of God stated the following in a sermon:

“The sun and the moon do not eclipse because of the death or birth of someone from the people but they are two signs that show the power and majesty of God. When you see them, stand up and pray!”[ Bukhari, Sahih, Vol. 2, p. 23-24; Muslim, Sahih, Vol. 3, p. 28-36. ]

The people in the Era of Jahiliyya had the following superstition: “The sun and the moon eclipse for a notable person in the world.”

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stydiaeverafter · 4 years

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