#And there could be character cameos but not anywhere close to the camera so they are vague figures in the background

[livingmeatloaf]

There is only one way to make a truly wonderful Avatar adaptation, not matter how bad it turns out to be:

A professionally shot, full length stage production of the Ember Island Players' Fire Nation propaganda version of the events

[sicnna]

look !! it’s sienna de vries !! she’s my favorite a-list actress with 78.6M followers, even though she’s only twenty-one. i heard she can be mercurial and jaded, but i think she’s captivating and conscientous. when i first saw her, i could’ve sworn she was ester expósito, but i’m sure she’s heard that before.

BASIC INFO.

FULL NAME: sienna  de  vries  .

BIRTHDAY: september  27 ,  1998  .

ZODIAC: libra . 

NICKNAMES: si  ,  blondie  ,  short stack  .

HEIGHT/WEIGHT: 5′4  , 104 lbs.

TATTOOS:  a  simple  crescent  moon  on  her  shoulder  .

BASIC STYLE:  usually  consists  of  v  soft  ,  feminine &  parisian  pieces  ,  intermixed  with  more  glamoured  looks  for  events  &  work  .

USUAL EXPRESSION:  typically  smiling  ,  or  wearing  a  detached  ,  far  off  look  .

TRAITS: +captivating  ,  +conscientous  ,  -mercurial  ,  -jaded  .

FEARS:  disappointing  others  ,  failure  ,  but  also  not  the  hugest  fan  of  heights  .

AESTHETIC:  breezy  sundresses  ,   delicate jewelry  ,  stacks  of  unread  scripts  ,  whirlwind  getaways  ,  enjoying  a  glass  of  wine  while  trying  out  a  new  recipes  ,  french  cafes ,  slow  kisses  along  collarbones  ,  bright  camera  flashes  ,   seeing  your  bed  after a long  day  .

TRIGGERS:  super  brief  mentions  of  cancer  &  loss  of  a  loved  one  .

BACKGROUND & PERSONALITY.

LUNA BETANCORT &  SILAS DE VRIES WELCOME A  BABY GIRL !  ....   it  was  all  the  headlines  had  read  the  week  after  september  27  ,  1998  when  sienna  was  born  to  the  a-list  power  couple   (  an  actress  and  a  major  league  baseball  player  ,  respectively  )  .

sienna  was  born  in  the  limelight  ,  but  has  been  acting  since  the  tender  age  of  three  .  her  first  role  was  a  small  cameo  in  one  of  her  mother’s  feature  films  and even  though  she  didn’t  understand  it  all  at  that  age  ,  she  was  in  awe  of  it  . 

so  she   grew  up  on  film  sets  .  at  age  four  she  began  a  stint  in  a  long  running  sitcom  and  even  had  a  beloved  character  catch  phrase  (  which  i’m  still  working  out  but  rn  we’re  stealing  ‘  you  got  it  dude  ’  from  full  house  )  . 

during  the  middle  of  her  stint  on  the  sitcom  ,  sienna’s  sight  had  shifted  to  movies  ...  it was  around  this  time  her  mom  had  first  started  getting  sick  and  sienna  was  channeling  that  energy  into  her  parts  .  people  started  thinking  of  her  as  this  young  ,  little  acting  prodigy  (  reminiscent  of  a  young  dakota  fanning  )  and  couldn’t  fathom  how  someone  so  sweet  &  timid  could  just  switch  into  these  darker  roles  after  barely  reading  a  script  ,  let  alone  cry  on  cue  .  she  earned  her   first   sag  award  at  the  age  of  8  .

when  the  sitcom’s  run  had  ended  ,  sienna  was  now  free  to  start  acting  in  more  movies  ,  her  talent  allowing  her  to  star  in  movie’s  along  some  serious  hollywood  actors  and  heavyweights  .  the  young  girl  was  smart  and  far  beyond  her  years  ,  soaking  every  bit  of  it  in  .  it  paid  off  a  few  years  later  when  she  won  her  first  oscar  for  best  supporting  actress  at  the  age  of  11  ,  becoming  the  third  youngest  in  any  category  to  do  so  .  she  was  nominated  for  best  actress  8  years  later  and  while  she  won  several  words  that  season ,  people  were  v  surprised  about  her  losing  out  at  the  oscars  .  that  time  ,  though  ,  was  incredibly  bittersweet  .  she’d  lost  her  mom  to  breast  cancer  in  the  years  prior  and  she  definitely  brought  the  room  to  tears  when  she  got  choked  up  during  an  acceptance  speech  talking  about  how  it’d  been  such  a  shared  love  between  the  two  and  how  she  just  wanted  to  make  her  proud.  

ummm  just  finished  playing  katniss  everdeen  in  the  hunger  games  ( jlaw whomst ?? )  and  she  has  a  movie  coming  out  in  september  that  people are  speculating  will  finally  cinch  her  that  first  oscar  win  .

super  dedicated  to  anything  she  throws  herself  into  .  people  like  to think  she’s  some  sort  of  diva  bc  of  her  impressive  catalog  of  roles  and  how  long  she’s  been  in  the  public  eye  but  she’s  probably  the  farthest  from  it  ??  she’s  enjoyable  to  work  with  and  has  this  sort  of  magnetic  thing  about  her  that  effectively  draws  people  in  and  just  ...  good  energy  .

if  you  haven’t  sensed  it  yet  she  tends  to  overwork  herself  and  is  often  super  tired  bc  of  how  thin  she  spreads  herself  with  projects  and  wanting  to  please  her  fans  .

still  ,  its  rare  not  to  see  a  smile  on  her  face  .  she’s  a  media  darling  and  definitely  has  that  golden  girl  sort  of  vibe  going  on  .  

it’s  not  surprise  that  she  can’t  go  anywhere  without  paparazzi  being  quick  to  find  out  and  its  definitely something that frustrates her ??  she’s  never  had  a  normal  life  and  as  much  as  she  thinks  about  all  the  things  she’s  missed  out  on  ,  she  also  doesn’t  know  anything else ??  she  feels  selfish  for  thinking  this  way  and  for  wanting  something  different  and  quieter  for  herself  ,  esp  when  so  many  other  people  aren’t  lucky  enough  to  have  a  voice  and  platform  ,  but  she  does  and  she  esp  hates  that  success  in  her  world  is  measured  by  the  amount  of  publicity  or  roles  she  gets  .  because  then  where  does  happiness  factor  in  ?  still  ,  she  loves  what  she  does  .

as  i  sort  of  mentioned  above  ,  she  is  v  conscientious  about  her  celebrity and  how  she  presents  herself  .  she’s  involved  with  a  bunch  of  different  causes  ,  v  philanthropic  and  all  about  giving  back  .  v  passionate  about  animals  ,  especially  elephants  !  she  does  a  lot  work  with  them  and  sanctuaries  after  a  movie  role  she   had  a  couple  years  back  and  wanting  to  learn  more  .

loves  to  cook  and  just  have  quiet  time  with  friends  in  between  busy  schedules  .  she’s  incredible  loyal  and  considerate  with  friendships  ,  but  can  be  very  short  and  maybe  even  a  bit  petty  when  she’s  hurt  .

ummmm  libra  sun ,  sagittarius  moon  ,  &  cancer  rising  !  

probably a hufflepuff lbr 

and  i  was  just  talking  about  this  yesterday  so  i’ll  add  that  si’s  love  language  is  physical  touch  with  quality  time  being  a  v  v  close  second  and  i  think  that  speaks  volumes  about  the  kind  of  person  she  is  /  her  values  ??  she’s  just  v  affectionate   and  intimate  moments  away  from  the  camera  when  her  agent  isn’t  blowing  up  her  phone  and  she  can  just  connect  with  someone  else  are  some  of  her  favorite  .  

man   idk  i’ll  maybe  add  more  here  later  but  this  is  a  lot  already  .  i  just  love  her  and  hope  you  will  to  !

WANTED CONNECTIONS:

any  &  all kinds of  friends ,  former co-stars  (  bonus  points for  anyone she was on the sitcom with  )  .

a roommate:  as  requested  here  !

fake  friend:  someone  who  simply  just  wants  to  be  her  friend  and  be  seen  with  her  for  clout  !

industry rival:   sienna  and  your  muse  bump  heads  every  time  they’re  in  close  proximity  of  one  another  .  whether  it  was  because  of  that  time  they  sold  sienna  out  for  a  story  ,  a  party  snub  ,  or  that  one  time  one  wore  it  better  ,  no  one  really  knows  what   it  was  that  started  sienna  and  muse’s  dislike  for  the  other  .  but  the  media  thrives  off  of  the  rumors  of  the  feud  .  (  fellow  a-lister  or  b-lister  preferably  !!  )

friend for the camera: being  friends  with  your  muse  is  one  of  sienna’s  most  exhausting  acting  jobs  to  date  .  they’re  often  seen  hanging  out  at  events  or  talking  about  each  other  in  interviews  like  they’re  great  friends  ,  when  really  it  couldn’t  be  further  from  the  truth  .  behind  the  scenes  these  are  two  people  who  simply  cannot  stand  each  other  .  they’re  thorns  in  each  other’s side  and  often  bring  the  other’s  blood  to  a  boil  when  the  cameras  aren’t  turned  their  way  .  is  the  good  publicity  really  worth  this  headache  of  a  contracted  friendship  ?

the up & comer:  while  your  muse  may  be  just  starting  out  in  hollywood  ,  sienna’s found  herself  taking  a  quick  liking  to  them  ,  and  is  often  there  to  lend  encouragement   or  advice  on  how  to  navigate  fame  .

the almost: sienna  and  your  muse  maybe  v  recently  dated  and  both  had  pretty high  hopes  for  the  relationship  .  they  were  really  into  each  other  but  one  thing  after  another  happened  .  they  fought  a  lot  ,  their  busy  careers  left  them  with  conflicting  schedules  ,  and  soon  enough  what  started  off  as  a  genuine  connection   became  a  much  too  publicized  relationship  .  after  one  fight  in  particular  ,  they  mutually  decided  the  relationship  was  no  longer  going  anywhere  and  they  broke  it  off  . 

[aphrodaisyacs]

Summary:

After the stunt they pulled at the party, Tony has taken to referring to Loki and Steve as “clone boyfriends”, a nickname which rapidly morphed into an inside joke amongst the Avengers. It’s all fun and games until it gets overheard by a clueless reporter- now the public believes that Steve and Loki are genuinely an item.

Chaos ensues.

Or: The one where Steve and Loki get mistaken for a couple, but they go along with it to make homophobes mad.

Rating: Teen And Up Audiences Archive Warning: No Archive Warnings Apply Categories: M/M Fandom: The Avengers (Marvel Movies) Relationships: Loki/Steve Rogers, Steve Rogers & Sam Wilson, Steve Rogers & Natasha Romanov, James “Bucky” Barnes & Steve Rogers, implied past En Dwi Gast | Grandmaster/Loki Characters: Steve Rogers, Loki (Marvel), Natasha Romanov (Marvel), Clint Barton, Tony Stark, Thor (Marvel), Sam Wilson (Marvel), James “Bucky” Barnes, Wanda Maximoff, Vision (Marvel), Brunnhilde | Valkyrie (Marvel), Peter Parker Additional Tags: Crack, Humor, Post-Thor: Ragnarok (2017), Infinity War is still cancelled, Fake/Pretend Relationship, Homophobia, Bisexual Steve Rogers, Genderbending, News Media, Social Media, Attempted mass shooting, Jotunn Loki (Marvel), Brief cameo by Tr*mp

(Reposting this on tumblr because I fucked up the first time round)

The sequel to this fic, and things make more sense if you read that one first.

Full chapter below:

It’s been months since Steve had last set foot in New Asgard. Already, the place looks so different- more like an actual town. It’s the one-year anniversary of the Asgardians’ arrival and settlement on Earth, and Thor had decided to celebrate their progress by throwing a festival. The Avengers were invited, though only about half of them took up on the offer- the rest remained in New York to hold the fort, so to speak. And due to the nature of the event, government officials from all over the world have also been invited.

Shortly after arriving, Steve and his friends split up to do their own thing; Tony had made a beeline towards the food stalls, Clint went off to try all the games and activities available, leaving Steve and Natasha to stroll aimlessly together in the bustle of the crowd, avoiding reporters as much as possible and stopping whenever something caught their eye.

Steve is sipping on a sample of Asgardian mead when he suddenly feels his phone vibrate. He fumbles for it, while feeling all too aware of Natasha’s curious gaze on him.

He raises his eyebrows when he sees that it’s a message from Loki.

Steve opens the single attached image and sure enough, it’s an extremely unflattering picture of himself mid-blink, cropped from what appears to be an interview directly following the Battle of New York.

Steve rolls his eyes.

Me [11:42am]

Seriously, where do you keep finding these? I swear you’re gonna run out someday.

A few seconds later, his phone chimes again.

Loki [11:42am]

I won’t :)

Steve shakes his head, but he can’t help the amusement tugging at the corners of his lips.

Me [11:43am]

Btw we’ve been here for a while now but I still haven’t seen you. Where are you?

Loki [11:43am]

I know

Don’t worry, you’ll see me soon :)

“Who are you texting? Your clone boyfriend?”

Steve sighs and looks up to meet Natasha’s deceptively innocent expression.

It’s all Tony’s fault- he was the one who started throwing that nickname around after the party. The teasing only intensified when Loki had somehow acquired Steve’s number and started messaging him with it. It had taken Steve an embarrassing length of time to realise that Tony was just being Tony, and he wasn’t actually accusing Steve of secretly dating Loki.

At first Natasha and Clint were extremely wary of their former enemy’s attempts to contact Steve, but they slowly withdrew their caution when it turned out that Loki’s messages mostly only consisted of unflattering still images of Steve and miscellaneous petty complaining.

“I’m so mad at myself right now,” Clint had said, a month after Loki first messaged Steve. “That guy mind-controlled me. And yet I’m finding it hard to stay pissed at him because he’s just so fucking hilarious. ”

Because Steve’s life is a cosmic joke, Natasha and Clint both picked up Tony’s stupid nickname, and one by one the other Avengers started using the stupid nickname too, the traitors. It even managed to spread all the way to Norway; Bruce and Thor found it hilarious. Loki, for his part, seems to find the nickname rather childish and beneath him. So like Steve, he mostly ignored it.

Despite Loki’s cryptic message, Steve doesn’t manage to see him anywhere for awhile yet. Instead, he and Natasha stumble across the archery competition, where they join the crowd to cheer for Clint until he wins. The three of them then wind up in a nalebinding workshop, and they all attempt to knit their own little patches of cloth. It isn’t as hard as Steve had expected, and he leaves the tent feeling pretty proud of the thumb-sized square he had made.

Around mid-afternoon, it becomes apparent that many of the festival attendees are congregating in the direction of the main stage. Out of curiosity and for a lack of anything better to do, they follow the crowd, and arrive just in time to see the curtains rise on a performance titled “Ragnarok”.

“Oh hey! There you guys are.”

Steve turns around to see Tony stride over with his hands in his pockets, followed unexpectedly by Brunnhilde, who waves at them.

“Hey,” grins Clint. “Where’s Bruce and Thor?”

Brunnhilde jerks her chin up at the stage.

“They’re going to be up there soon.”

Sure enough, a blonde man with a huge hammer strides into view, red cape billowing behind him. The people around them start cheering and whooping, but Tony adjusts his sunglasses and squints at the stage.

“He’s got the whole getup going, but surely that’s not our resident God of Thunder?”

Brunnhilde takes a swig from her bottle and lets out a bark of laughter.

“Oh, not him. He’s just an actor. Thor’s also in the play, just not as himself.”

“Who is he, then?” Steve asks.

She gives a lazy smile.

“Oh, you’ll see.”

Steve has to admit, the play is rather impressive for a stage production. Asgardian technology is truly a wonder, and miles ahead of anything they have on Earth when it comes to stage effects. He watches in awe as the old man on the stage, playing the previous King of Asgard, is replaced by Loki in a shower of light. But it barely takes two seconds for him to realise that the Loki on stage is also just an actor.

Just as Steve is beginning to wonder about the whereabouts of the real Loki, Thor and Loki’s secret evil sister suddenly appears in a burst of green light. Her entrance is marked by her completely shattering Thor’s hammer with one hand.

“Kneel before your queen!” she orders, sweeping her arm out and dispersing the remnants of the prop across the stage in a dramatic flourish.

Scattered gasps can be heard throughout the audience, but Steve finds his attention drawn to the woman on stage for different reasons- something about her just feels unexpectedly familiar…

“Hey is it just me or does she look exactly like Wanda, but with black hair?” Clint mutters.

Brunnhilde nearly chokes on her beer.

“That-” she coughs. “That’s Loki. In his female form.”

“What.”

Brunnhilde is laughing so hard at their shocked reactions that they get shushed by nearby members of the crowd. She was the only one amongst them who had any idea that Loki could even do that, though Steve supposes that it’s rather obvious in hindsight. He already knows from firsthand experience that Loki can shift into an exact copy of another person, so changing genders isn’t that much of a stretch.

Loki seems to be having a lot of fun playing the role of the villain, if the way he (she?) is hamming it up is any indication. They watch him dramatically banish Actor Thor and Loki to a new setting called Sakaar, then skewer all of the soldiers on the stage with blades pulled from seemingly nowhere.

When Sakaar’s ruler, the Grandmaster, is first introduced, the first thing he does is snatch off Actor Thor’s blonde wig and shove him into the gladiator arena. That is when Bruce enters the stage, covered head to toe in green body paint.

“I had to help him with that,” Brunnhilde comments absently.

Natasha whistles lowly. “That’s a lot of paint. How long did it take?”

“Oh, probably a minute. Took much longer to dry though.”

“Woah,” Tony says. “How?”

Brunnhilde shrugs.

“I pushed him into the tub of paint.”

Steve finds himself thoroughly enjoying the play, even some of the more absurd and over the top elements. At certain points he even finds himself wondering just how far the “based on a true story” label has been stretched, but considering the insanity of his own life, who’s he to judge?

He almost forgets that Thor is also supposed to be in the play, until the final act where Actor Thor and Loki decide to instigate Ragnarok in order to defeat their sister. It takes Steve a while to realise that underneath the makeup and costume, the fire demon gleefully destroying the cardboard recreation of Asgard is actually played by Thor. The play ends with a battle between Thor-as-Surtur and Loki-as-Hela, and Steve has never seen a group of people applaud the destruction of their own home so enthusiastically when the curtains finally close.

As the audience begins to disperse, Brunnhilde leads the Avengers to the backstage area. They arrive to find Bruce and Thor being interviewed by some reporters, but before they are forced to awkwardly stand around and wait until they get noticed and dragged into the interview as well, Loki shows up.

“Well, if it isn’t my favourite heroes,” he drawls. He’s already changed back into his normal appearance. “How did you like the performance?”

“I enjoyed it,” Steve admits with a smile. “Is that what your sister actually looked like?”

“Of course not,” Loki scoffs. “I don’t think any of the Asgardians are ready to see her likeness again so soon. That was just my preferred female form.”

“Did you look anything alike, then?”

“No. We’re not even related.” There’s a hint of mirth dancing in his green eyes. “I’m adopted, remember?”

Before Steve can reply, he’s interrupted by Thor.

“Friends! It’s been a while!” Thor grins. His enthusiasm to see them again is matched only by the volume of his voice.

“Aww man, you just interrupted the reunion between the clone boyfriends,” Tony jokingly whines. “It was getting sweet!”

Thor laughs.

“Sorry about that.” He turns around to where Bruce is still gathering his things. “Banner! We can finally show them the weapons demonstrations now.”

“I’m coming, I’m coming! I just need to wash all this off first,” Bruce calls back, gesturing at his still-green appearance.

“Sure, big guy,” Brunnhilde says, giving his arm a pat. “We’ll wait for you outside.”

They all shuffle out the exit, completely oblivious to the bewildered glances exchanged between the reporters and cameramen who had witnessed the entire exchange.

The next day, on the morning of their flight back to New York, Steve wakes up to a very ominous text from Sam.

Sam [1:13am]

Call me when you’re awake. Get the others too, if they’re up.

Natasha is the only other one awake in their lodge, nursing a fresh cup of coffee in the kitchen. Her expression tightens when Steve shows her Sam’s message.

They huddle around the kitchen table and he puts Sam on speaker.

Sam picks up after the first ring.

“What happened?” Steve says.

“Well good morning to you I guess. Who else am I talking to?”

“Just me,” replies Natasha. “Tony’s probably still in his room and Clint’s not getting up until he’s gone through all of his alarms. What’s the emergency?”

“Weeell…” Sam begins. “This isn’t exactly the type of emergency that we usually deal with. But long story short, some reporter overheard one of you guys refer to Steve and Loki as boyfriends, and. Well.”

Steve blinks. He runs through his memories of yesterday, and groans when he remembers what Tony said backstage after the play. Next to him, Natasha begins furiously typing away at her phone.

“Oh god,” Steve mutters. Sam makes a sympathetic noise.

Natasha exhales loudly.

Before Steve can ask, she shoves the results of her Google search at him:

‘Clone Boyfriends’: Captain America secretly dating former enemy Loki

CNN

Avengers accidentally reveal that Captain America and Loki are dating

Vox

National icon defiled? Captain America turns out to be gay

Fox News

Captain America has a boyfriend, according to Avengers

USA TODAY

Captain America revealed to be in gay relationship

New York Times

“Oh god, ” Steve repeats.

“Yup. I know you don’t go on your social media accounts that often but I think you should avoid them for a bit.”

Steves rubs a hand over his face. Maybe if he presses against his nose firmly enough then he’ll be able to suffocate himself to death and he won’t have to deal with any of this.

“How likely is it to go away if I just ignore it?” Steve asks, voice muffled by his palm.

He’s half-joking, but he immediately feels Natasha’s incredulous gaze on him. Sam’s snort of laughter can be heard on the other end of the line.

“You’re kidding me, right? Look, I’m not that familiar with the media circus but even I know that’s not going to work.”

Steve lets out a hysterical bark of laughter.

“Really? But people have always speculated on whether I was dating Peggy or Bucky. Or both. And if the tabloids are to be believed then every single one of the Avengers have dated each other at least once. What makes this any different?”

“The difference,” Natasha says, “is that they were just that- speculations. So no one took them too seriously. But this time, from the public��s point of view, there’s actual evidence- an inside source. Namely, Tony. And Thor too, I guess, for not disputing it.”

“But that doesn’t-” Steve begins to protest.

“I know,” Sam sighs. “But that’s not how the public sees it. And now all the news outlets are talking about it.”

Going rogue again is starting to sound unreasonably appealing. Steve’s done it before, so it can’t be as bad the second time round, right?

“Alright,” Natasha says. “We’ll call a meeting once we arrive back at the base.”

Steve sighs.

“Yeah, let’s do that.”

Tony chooses that moment to shuffle into the kitchen with a loud yawn.

“What’s this? You guys having a secret meeting while I was still in bed? Rude.”

“Have you checked the news yet?” Natasha asks instead.

“News always comes after coffee,” Tony declares while fiddling with the coffee machine. “Why? We don’t need to suit up or anything do we?”

“Nope,” Sam replies. “You can worry about it later when you come back. You need to leave soon for your flight anyway, right?”

“Uh…” Steve glances at the clock next to the fridge. “Yeah. Talk to you soon.”

The call ends, and Tony does indeed check the news after the first sip of his coffee.

Which he promptly sprays back into the mug.

Steve wrinkles his nose at the droplet which landed on his elbow.

“Ho- holy shit,” Tony chokes. “I can’t fucking believe this.”

He tries to say more, but he’s laughing so hard that nothing else comes out coherent.

Steve sighs and turns to Natasha. Predictably, she’s no help at all.

“As much fun as this is,” she says, eyes twinkling, “I have an ass to kick out of bed right now.”

She gets up and leaves, and Steve suspects that she probably meant what she said literally.

Since Tony is still bursting into fits of giggles every time he so much as glances in Steve’s direction, Steve is left to process his situation by himself.

He absently fiddles with his phone, and he finds himself opening up his message history with Loki. He knows that he has to say something to him- a heads up, at the very least. But after five minutes of typing and erasing the same thing, he simply settles for attaching a link to one of the articles that Natasha had pulled up earlier.

Out of morbid curiosity, Steve reads the articles- including the comments- while waiting at the airport. He finds it bizarre how most people seem more hung up over the idea of him being in a relationship with another man than the fact that it’s with Former Public Enemy Number 1. It’s disappointing, but not unexpected. But it could’ve been worse, he supposes; back in the 40s, even the slightest suspicion that Steve is also attracted to men would’ve meant dealing with a lot more than just having his non-existent love life aired to the world for other people’s entertainment.

The second, slightly more sensible but equally vocal group consists of the people who are still doubting the authenticity of Loki’s status as a reformed criminal. These are the people who are using the scandal as an opportunity to revive the debate on whether the punishment the Asgardian had gotten upon returning to Earth was anything more than a slap on the wrist. After all, could being confined to New Asgard even count as a punishment?

But there was also another surprising group to emerge out of this mess; feeling emboldened by the news that their hero is also part of the LGBT+ community, there has been a wave of people coming out on social media. It’s the only good thing to come out of this mess so far, and Steve genuinely feels bad when he thinks about how disappointed they’ll be when they find out that this was all just a misunderstanding.

It is only after they touch back down on New York that Steve finally receives Loki’s reply.

Loki [3:35am]

Oh my

I didn’t realise we were courting

Why didn’t you tell me?

Me [11:56am]

The reporters overheard Tony’s stupid nickname

And then they got stuck on the “boyfriend” part in “clone boyfriends”

Why

Loki [12:01pm]

The world begins to starve when you don’t feed it a regular dose of scandals

What are you going to do about it? Are you even going to do anything about it?

Me [12:02pm]

I have to. I don’t know what it’ll be yet but we’re holding a meeting with everyone once we get back to HQ.

Will you, Thor and Bruce be free in the next hour or so?

Loki [12:02pm]

You know we can always just go along with it ;)

I’ll ask Thor, but we should be.

Bucky welcomes Steve back with a light punch on the shoulder.

“Twenty four hours,” his best friend deadpans.

“Shut up,” Steve groans, swatting his arm away. “It’s not even my fault this time.”

“Is that a new record?” Sam asks with a grin.

“Nope. That one’s gotta be the time when I went to get ice-cream, then turned around to see him get shoved at a trash can. So maybe ten minutes.”

Steve feels heat rise in his cheeks.

“That never happened!” he tries to protest, but Sam’s howling laughter drowns out his words.

Inside, Wanda and Vision are already seated in the meeting room while Rhodey is setting up the holographic call to New Asgard.

“This has got to be the weirdest reason we’ve held a meeting, ever,” Rhodey mutters as they wait for the call to connect. When it finally does, the holographic forms of Thor, Bruce and Loki flicker into view.

“Before we start,” Steve says, addressing them directly, “has Loki told you guys why we’re having this meeting?”

“Oh, yeah,” Thor replies. “Can’t you just tell everyone the truth?”

Sam sighs.

“That’s definitely an option, but we also need to account for the fact that there are already people trying to get Steve to give up the shield.” At Thor’s miffed expression, he quickly adds, “Because they don’t like the idea of him dating a guy.”

If anything, Thor looks even more confused, and just the slightest bit indignant. Bucky snorts.

“Yeah, right. He’s more likely to repaint the shield rainbow.”

Bruce frowns.

“That bad? Already?”

“Yep- bad enough that even our good ol’ President’s commented on it, apparently,” Clint suddenly pipes up, finally looking up from his phone.

All at once, everyone else except Thor and Loki groans. Thor looks bewildered at their synchronised dismay, while Loki’s eyebrows lift in barely concealed amusement.

“And what did this President of yours say?” Loki asks, in a tone a tad too light to be genuine.

Tony looks up at the ceiling.

“FRIDAY?”

FRIDAY obediently pulls up the clip, and Steve almost groans again out of instinct the moment he sees the President’s face.

“The fake news media has gone too far this time. Now they’re slandering Captain America and making stuff up!”

There’s a brief pause as the audience in the footage erupts with agreement. Meanwhile, nearly everyone in the meeting is exchanging shocked looks.

“Am I hearing correctly or is he actually right for once?” Vision muses.

“I know a lot of gay people and I think it’s great, but I’m a traditionalist man. And Captain America is a true American man who’s done a lot for this great country. He stands for the traditional values of America, not the nonsense that the fake news media has been saying about him. They should be ashamed of themselves, for defiling our national icon like that.”

The clip ends there, and the room stays silent as everyone processes what they just heard.

Rhodey shakes his head.

“Yeah, nevermind.”

Steve finds it unsurprising that the President falls under the group of people who are stuck on the idea of Captain America dating another man. Though he’d honestly expected a little more outrage regarding it being Loki, a former enemy responsible for the dozens of deaths in New York. There’s nothing particularly unexpected about the President and his supporters having skewed priorities, but for some reason this is the reaction which sets off the truest, deepest part of him- the scrappy kid who tried to fight against the unfairness of the world even when all he had were his bare fists.

The anger swirling in Steve’s stomach is beginning to make him feel nauseous.

Across from him, Tony sighs heavily and runs a hand through his hair.

“I’m sorry. This is all kind of my fault. Look, let me lend you my PR team for this- they have experience dealing with me, so this should be a piece of cake for them.”

Steve furrows his brows.

“What would they need from me then?”

“Eh, nothing too complicated- I think they’ll just get you to make a public statement and apologise for the misunderstanding. Just y’know, explain that the whole clone boyfriends thing is just a joke amongst friends that got misunderstood by a third party, how you and Loki are definitely not dating, but you fully support the LGBT+ community.”

Steve bites his lip as he considers the option. It’s fairly reasonable, he supposes.

But it doesn’t feel enough.

“Is… there something else you can also say?” Wanda speaks up reluctantly. “Because at the moment it feels like we’re admitting that the President is right, and…” She trails off and bites her lip, looking visibly uncomfortable.

“Yeah it does, doesn’t it,” Rhodey sighs.

While everyone else begins murmuring suggestions, Steve is silently contemplating his situation. It’s just as Wanda said- it may sound petty, but the last thing Steve wants to do is admit that the President and his ilk are technically right, albeit for the wrong reasons. He’s seen the way the President and his Administration have abused their power, time and time again, taking away what little the LGBT+ community have gained. He’s seen that amidst all the hatred and scepticism at his mistaken relationship with Loki, there is a visible part of the community which is cautiously delighted at the news that someone they look up to is one of them.

Tony’s solution… it isn’t bad, but it feels too close to admitting defeat for Steve’s comfort. He wants to do something that will tell the President and his supporters to fuck off and stop using Captain America as an anti-gay symbol. Steve has never put much thought into his own sexuality, partly because he never thought he’d live past 30 and also because he knew how unattractive he was as a partner, being so sickly and small. But he knows how important it is to many people, especially those in the LGBT+ community. And he wants them to know, unambiguously, that he’s on their side.

Steve glances at Loki’s direction to see what he’s thinking, but the other man merely looks back at him with a curious gaze. Loki doesn’t seem emotionally invested enough in the situation to really contribute anything, and Steve gets the feeling that he’s waiting for Steve’s decision.

He sighs.

What else can he even do?

He absently spins his phone between his fingers, but then drops it in surprise when he accidentally unlocks it. It opens up to his latest messages with Loki.

Me [12:02pm]

I have to. I don’t know what it’ll be yet but we’re holding a meeting with everyone once we get back to HQ.

Will you, Thor and Bruce be free in the next hour or so?

Loki [12:02pm]

You know we can always just go along with it ;)

I’ll ask Thor, but we should be.

Steve blinks at his screen.

Huh.

“Hey, Loki?” he suddenly says, gaining the attention of everyone in the room. “Remember the plan you suggested before the meeting started? Do you still want to go through with it?”

Loki looks a bit startled at being addressed out of the blue, but he quickly recovers and tilts his head questioningly.

Thor narrows his eyes.

“What plan?”

Loki’s eyes finally light up with recognition. A mischievous smile snakes through his lips.

“Of course. I would be more than happy to.”

Tony looks back and forth between them suspiciously.

“No, I’m not liking the look of this. Seriously, what plan?”

“We’re going to go along with it,” Steve says, his resolve hardening with every word. “We’re going to pretend to date in public.”

Stunned silence descends upon the entire room.

“Please tell me you’re joking,” Bucky finally says.

“I’m not.”

“But-” Bruce looks like he’s at a loss for words. “Why?”

“Because I can’t let people like him, ” Steve jabs a finger at the air where the President’s face was mere moments ago. “Use Captain America as a symbol against a community that’s already been ostracised over and over again for no good reason.”

“And you can’t do that with a public statement?” Natasha asks with an unreadable expression.

Steve shakes his head.

“It won’t be enough. Not for people like him.”

“Steve, no, look-” Bucky looks physically pained. “I know how you get when the President’s involved. We’re postponing this meeting to tomorrow because you’re not thinking straight right now.”

“That’s what she said,” Clint mutters, then winces when Natasha kicks him under the table.

Steve clenches his jaw stubbornly.

“I know exactly what I’m doing.”

“Alright, fine,” Sam says. “Say that you do go through with this plan. What exactly are you hoping to get out of it?”

Loki gives Steve a very unsubtle once-over.

“I think that’s quite obvious,” Loki smiles, prompting an appalled look from his brother.

While Steve isn’t in the mood for the usual light hearted teasing, he can’t help but roll his eyes in response.

“If I pretend to date Loki,” he says to everyone else, “then things will continue the way they are- people will no longer get to use Captain America to further their homophobic rhetoric. This may or may not make things better for the LGBT+ community, but it will definitely send a stronger message than a public statement telling the truth.”

“And you don’t care about the damage that it will do to your public image,” Natasha says, making it more of a statement than a question.

“This isn’t just about my reputation- Captain America’s reputation- anymore. I just-” Steve sighs. “I’ve been looking at some of the reactions to the news. At first I was angry at how the misinformation got viral, but then I saw how it led to so many people coming out- they felt like they were able to because their hero did. And I can’t just take that away from them.”

There’s a brief moment of thoughtful silence, until Tony speaks up.

“I know this is slightly off-topic, but it’s kind of important- are you gay, Steve?”

“Tony,” Rhodey says sharply, but Tony quickly holds his hands up in surrender.

“It is important. Because I think that before you go and pretend to be in a gay relationship- such a public one, no less- you should at least have an idea of whether you’re gay or not.”

Steve bites lip and turns his gaze down to the table in front of him.

“I don’t know,” he admits. Now that he thinks about it, he remembers quite a few instances where he’d found his gaze lingering on some men a little too long to be considered polite. But he also knows that what he felt for Peggy was real; he knows that if he had made it home when the war ended, he would’ve felt like the luckiest man alive to marry her, settle down and raise a family with her.

Steve isn’t sure what this means, but it doesn’t matter.

“Loki and I are friends anyway,” he continues, and boy does it feel strange to hear those words out loud, even after all these months. “So I don’t think it’s going to matter. We’re just going to go with it for now, but once people stop paying attention to the relationship we can quietly break up.”

The Avengers reluctantly agree to the plan, and the meeting ends shortly after that. Steve can’t quite believe that he’s going to be faking a relationship with Loki, of all people. But he supposes it’s fitting that if he’s going to fool the whole world, then he’s doing it with the help of the God of Mischief himself.

Belatedly, it hits Steve what it really means, for him to pretend that he and Loki are together. In a relationship.

He has no idea what he’s doing.

The only experience he has under his belt are all the double dates that Bucky had dragged him into, and the almost-not-really thing that he had with Peggy. And look at how well those have turned out.

His inner crisis gets interrupted by a knock on his door.

“Hey.”

Steve looks up from his book he’s long been distracted from to see Natasha leaning against his doorway.

“Hey yourself.” Despite how drained he feels, he can’t help but smile at her presence.

Natasha takes that as the invitation it is to sit next to him on the bed.

Steve sighs and puts his book away.

“You’re not trying to talk me out of it, are you?”

Natasha lets out a disbelieving huff.

“Give me a little more credit. You know I know you better than that. I’m here to tell you a few things before you actually do anything.”

She looks at him, and Steve has to pause at the intensity of her expression.

“You need to remember that this isn’t a mission. No one’s lives are at stake, so you don’t have to do anything you don’t want to, even as part of the charade.”

Steve frowns.

“Nat, I don’t think Loki-”

“This isn’t about Loki,” she interrupts. “This is about you and what you’re comfortable with. I’m just saying- all couples are different. Take Wanda and Vision, for example; those two only go as far as hand-holding in public. So if you don’t feel comfortable with certain types of PDA then you need to remember that you don’t have to do it.”

“I…” Steve begins, then swallows. Her concern makes something warm blossom in his chest. “Thanks.”

The corners of Natasha’s lips twitch upwards.

“I just hope for your sake that he’s a better kisser than you are.”

“Hey!”

Me [4:11pm]

Since people think we’re dating, they’re gonna ask how we got together

What’s our cover story?

Loki [4:17pm]

The best lies are the ones closest to the truth

We can just tell them that we began our correspondence after one of the Avengers’ gatherings

Me [4:19pm]

Yeah that works

Can I also expand upon that and say that it’s a long-distance relationship (which is why we haven’t been seen together in public yet)?

Loki [4:19pm]

Of course, Captain

Me [4:20pm]

I’m pretty it’ll make more sense to call me Steve at this point

Loki [4:20pm]

As you wish, darling :)

For their plan to work at all, they need to, at the very least, be seen together in public.

Tony reluctantly asks Pepper to extend Loki a last-minute official invitation to the upcoming Maria Stark Foundation Charity Ball. Bruce too, since Loki isn’t legally allowed to leave New Asgard without being accompanied by an Avenger, and Thor is too busy to take a break again so soon. The charity ball is familiar territory for Steve (and Loki too, given his royal background), so it’ll be a good start for them to debut as a couple.

Steve is still on social media blackout, but in the days leading up the ball, Sam has helpfully informed him that the hashtag #LetCaptainAmericaBeGay has been trending on Twitter for three days already. When Steve brings this up to Loki in their messages, he simply receives a “Guess what else is trending” and a link to the #Stoki posts on Tumblr in return. It’s… eye-opening, he supposes, in the same way that watching a car pile up happen in real time is.

(He will never admit that he’s lost an hour of his life scrolling through that page)

It’s kind of strange how nothing really changes between them. But then again, it’s not as if Steve’s unexpected friendship with Loki isn’t strange to begin with. The other Avengers still don’t know what to make of it (with the unsurprising exceptions of Thor and Bruce), as is usually the case when it comes to anything Loki-related these days.

The day of the ball finally arrives, exactly one week after The Scandal. Steve has to admit, Loki looks good, in his dark and expensive-looking three-piece suit. Loki too, takes the time to pause and admire Steve’s appearance when he sees him.

“Hello, darling,” Loki half-sings in a mocking yet deadpan manner. “Did you miss me?”

This gets a genuine huff of laughter from Steve. It’s quite obvious that Loki is just messing around, but they’re already attracting the attention of nearby strangers who are trying and failing to pretend that they aren’t eavesdropping.

“Of course, love,” Steve replies in a matching tone. He doesn’t even manage to keep a straight face while saying that, but he can feel the shocked gazes swivelling in their direction.

God, this is already simultaneously way more fun  and nerve-wracking than he had expected it to be.

The first part of the night isn’t so bad, but that’s mainly because they are seated at a table with the other Avengers and Pepper. Steve manages to distract himself from the stares by paying more attention to the conversations with his friends and the plate of food in front of him.

But in between the deliveries of each part of the meal, people are getting out of their seats and socialising, so unfortunately that’s what they have to do as well. Steve and Loki stick together throughout most of it, only occasionally breaking off to talk to their own friends.

The Avengers may not trust Loki, but the general public trusts him even less. For almost every starstruck look that Steve receives, Loki gets a wary glance at best and a distrustful glare at worst. The polite ones make an effort to congratulate them on their “relationship”, but when they actually launch into small talk with Steve, they completely ignore Loki as if he isn’t there. Loki doesn’t appear phased by the not-so-subtle unfriendliness, but it still rubs Steve the wrong way. And the worst thing is, Steve knows that they’re probably not even doing it on purpose. After all, the same thing constantly happened to him whenever he was with Bucky, back before the serum.

Steve understands where they’re coming from, he really does- and he really isn’t expecting everyone to to simply drop their grudges and welcome Loki with open arms- but it keeps happening, again and again.

Steve thinks he’s doing a decent job of hiding his thinning patience, but unsurprisingly, it doesn’t escape Loki’s notice.

“You can at least afford to pretend you’re enjoying my company,” Loki jokes when they’re back in their own seats, dessert in front of them.

Steve blinks.

“Oh no, sorry, it’s just-” He makes a vague gesture in the direction of everyone else. “They keep ignoring you. Or acting like you’re just going to attack them when their backs are turned. Which is really rude and unfair to you.” He pauses. “It sounds kind of stupid when I say it out loud, doesn’t it.”

Loki’s bright green eyes glimmer with an unreadable emotion.

“I suppose it does,” he murmurs, almost distractedly, while stabbing his fork into a slice of lemon tart.

Steve manages to keep his cool, even when a particularly pushy reporter corners him for an interview once dessert is finished. She ignores Loki (yet again), but this time he chooses to exit with the excuse of refilling their glasses. Steve is left to indulge her questions, which seem reasonable enough at first.

“So,” she says, after the polite warm-up questions. “You are dating Loki?”

Steve’s polite smile tightens.

“Yes.” Despite the number of times he’s said it already tonight, the lie still feels foreign on his tongue.

“I- How-” She lets out a nervous peal of laughter. “How did that even happen? I mean, I don’t have anything against gay people or anything, but… surely it doesn’t make sense for Captain America of all people to be gay?”

Steve feels a small frown slip into his expression.

“…What do you mean?”

“It’s just that you like women- everyone who knows their history knows how important Margaret Carter was to you. And you came from a time where that kind of thing was frowned upon, and you wouldn’t be able to join the army if you were gay. And yet you’re probably the best soldier in all of American history.”

“I…” Why do they always like bringing up Peggy whenever they want to stick their nose into his love-life? “You flatter me. And just because it was frowned upon doesn’t mean that gay people didn’t exist.”

“But you’re not actually one of them, are you? Because so many children look up to you and it would be such a shame if their hero turned out to be someone with a lifestyle that isn’t so family-friendly.”

What.

The night has been wearing at him, and there are about ten different ways Steve wants to respond to her nonsense, but he was raised better than that.

He is left with no choice but to silently seethe, but Loki chooses that moment to return with two full glasses.

Loki raises an eyebrow at the visibly tense atmosphere as he hands one of them to Steve.

“Is everything alright?”

Steve purses his lips as he takes the glass. He gives a quick glance to the reporter, who is wearing a pinched expression at Loki’s interruption. Or maybe his presence. Whatever.

Steve turns his gaze back to Loki. An idea forms in his mind.

“Yes. Of course. Thank you.” He mentally apologises as he looks into those green eyes, which gaze back at him curiously.

Then he hooks an arm around Loki’s neck and tugs him down for a kiss.

He remembers to tilt his head at the last moment, but that doesn’t stop their lips from colliding messily. Their teeth clash and Steve accidentally bites onto Loki’s lower lip, inciting a small, surprised noise.

The kiss is too rushed, too unprepared, and it only lasts just long enough for everyone to register what’s happening.

Then Steve pulls away, heart pounding in his ears as he takes in Loki’s stunned expression.

He turns back to the gaping reporter.

“Sorry to cut this short, but I have to go now. Duty calls.”

He grabs Loki by the wrist and they make a hasty exit. Surprisingly no one follows them, but it does nothing to lessen the thundering of Steve’s heart. He can’t even bring himself to look Loki in the eye again until they reach a secluded area just outside the venue.

“I’m so sorry,” is the first thing Steve says. He winces and runs a hand through his hair nervously. “I shouldn’t have done that without asking you.”

But Loki only laughs.

“Oh no, don’t worry about it. How could I object to being kissed by a man as fine as you?”

Steve feels his cheeks heat up, but he refuses to let the teasing distract him.

“I’m serious. I should’ve at least asked you. It’s been a long night and I got angry at what she said, but that doesn’t excuse what I did. I’m sorry.”

Loki tilts his head consideringly.

“As I’ve said, don’t worry about it. It’s something that I’m far from opposed to,” he smirks. “And besides, the reactions you garnered were possibly the best form of entertainment I’ve had in the past week. It was amusing to see how closely humans are capable of resembling fish.”

Now that his anger-turned-mortification has worn off, Steve supposes that the gaping fish look the reporter had was actually pretty funny. He’s even starting to look forward to reading whatever article she’ll write after this.

The moment is broken when Sam finds them.

“There you are! I didn’t see what you did but suddenly there were rumours everywhere and then you guys had run off.”

Steve and Loki exchange amused looks.

“What kind of rumours?” Loki asks innocently. Sam takes one look at him and just shakes his head, refusing to even dignify that with an answer.

“Come back inside,” Sam says instead. “The speeches have started already but you should be able to sneak back in. After the last speech they’re opening up the dancefloor, and, well, I’m pretty sure I’m not exaggerating when I’m saying that everyone’s expecting the two of you to dance together.”

The words sink in, and Steve feels an oncoming wave of uncertainty.

Dancing brings up many memories for him, particularly those from before the ice- memories of his missed chance with Peggy, memories of the double dates with Bucky. The last time he had even danced, he kept stepping on his poor date’s feet. But with the serum now, his balance and coordination have most likely improved. It still doesn’t make the idea of dancing any more appealing though.

“I’m afraid that’s not possible,” Loki says, sending a pondering glance in Steve’s direction. “Our previous kiss has ignited our carnal desires, and we are currently having a passionate tryst behind the bushes. We are too preoccupied to return inside.”

He says all of this with a completely straight face. Sam’s eyebrows have long disappeared into his hairline, and Steve can’t help it- he bursts into laughter, laughing so hard that he doubles over. By the time he manages to straighten himself, he sneaks a quick glance at Loki. Even after all that, the only crack in the other man’s serious facade is the twinkling laughter in his bright green eyes.

Steve can’t help but smile as well.

He feels better after laughing- much calmer than he was before, at least. He’ll listen to the remainder of the speeches, and when the time comes for dancing, then… well, he’s been told that dancing is much more different now, less coordinated and partner-focused than he’s used to. He can probably get by with sheer instinct and going with the flow.

“No, it’s okay,” Steve finally tells Sam. “I’ll do it.”

“Are you sure?” Sam asks, still looking sceptical.

“Yeah.” Steve falters, then looks at Loki. “Unless you don’t…?”

“No, I’m fine,” Loki replies. Then he raises an inquisitive eyebrow. “Were you nervous about dancing?”

Steve sighs. Was he really that obvious?

Loki lets out a huff of laughter, but it doesn’t sound mocking at all.

“Don’t worry, Steve. Just follow my lead and we’ll be fine.”

“And if I step on your toes?” Steve half-teases.

Loki gives him a mock-offended look.

“You won’t.”

Sam looks between them with a thoughtful frown, but he shakes his head.

“Alright then, let’s go back inside.”

[Video: Hand-held recording of Steve and Loki dancing together in a semi-crowded dance floor. They are both smiling and laughing]

Liked by tonystark and 329,200 others

brucebanner Honored to be attending the #MSFCharityBall2018

Show all comments…

perrygp

I don’t think people realize how important this video is. It’s just Captain America dancing and having fun with his boyfriend, but I can’t tell you how much this would’ve meant to me in my teen years, when everyone treated gayness as something weird to be laughed at. And the people who are objecting to said boyfriend being Loki are missing the point.

usernametakenmyass

We’re living in the weirdest timeline

peterparker2001

hOLY SHIT theyre actually dating??? It wasn’t jsut celebrity gossip?? WHAT

bluecarpa3

what…? why? i liked captain america better when he was straight :/

veloucity

Did captain america already forget that this guy killed hundreds of people in new york or

r0ss_r1

I remember writing an essay for history in high school arguing that Captain America isn’t straight, and my teacher said it was well-written but she failed it because it was “factually incorrect”. And now it turns out I was right all along. SUCK ON THAT, MRS CHAPWELL.

female_presentingnips

I can’t believe I’m saying this but they actually look kinda cute together? Wtf?

2deraa

I was holding out on hope that the rumors weren’t true but I guess I’m not a Captain America fan anymore

tarax0x

I hate the internet. Their dancing, which somehow means they must be gay. They used to be enemies but now their just friends! Homosexuality is lustful, sexual attractions, while friendship is something so much more pure.

“Wait wait wait I thought the clone boyfriend thing was just a nickname I didn’t know you were actually dating.”

Steve and Bucky freeze in the middle of their sparring session. Bucky makes a face at the interruption while Steve blinks at Peter, who looks back with wide eyes.

“Uh, no, we’re not, actually.”

“Oh. Okay.” Peter looks slightly relieved, though no less confused. “Good- I was right then. See, I honestly thought that you guys weren’t telling me something about that party like it was one of those ‘what happens in Vegas, stays in Vegas’ type of things, which I missed because it was on the same day as Ned’s birthday-”

“No, Loki and I are not dating,” Steve interrupts before Peter can hyperventilate. “But we are pretending to.”

“Uh.” Peter looks like he has no idea how to react. “Sorry, what? ”

And so Steve and Bucky give the poor kid a crash course on The Scandal and what led up to it, as well as Steve’s genius plan (as quoted by Bucky with a generous helping of sarcasm). By the end of it, Peter hums thoughtfully.

“I mean yeah,” Peter finally says. “I think your plan’s working, anyhow. If you look at that video post of you dancing on Dr Banner’s instagram, the comments are a complete mess. And I’m pretty sure there’s already about a hundred articles written about it.”

Steve is still on social media blackout and Bucky only ever uses the internet for Skype, Spotify, animal videos, cooking tutorials and online shopping, so this is news to both of them.

“What post?”

And so that’s how Steve ends up spending the next ten minutes scrolling through a landmine of Instagram comments on Peter’s phone with Bucky reading over his shoulder.

“This is why I don’t do social media,” Bucky mutters, and Steve has to agree. Truth be told, a petty part of Steve is revelling in the homophobic anger of some of the comments. But there are also certain comments- especially the ones thanking him for being inspiring- which remind him of why he’s doing this fake relationship thing with Loki in the first place.

“Has Loki left already?” Peter suddenly asks.

“No,” Steve answers. “He and Bruce are still here, but they’re leaving tomorrow morning.”

“Ohhhh,” Peter says, nodding slowly. “Is it because you’re planning to go on a fake date soon or something?”

“Uh, no, they just wanted some room to breathe before going back to Norway.”

“But you totally should! You and Loki are trending right now, so if you go out say, tonight, then you’ll be getting a lot of attention. It’ll help your plan!”

Steve flips the idea over in his head, which isn’t too bad, actually.

He glances at the clock in the room. 2:35pm. A bit too late for lunch.

“I guess I can ask him out for dinner,” he muses out loud.

Me [2:35pm]

Do you have anything planned tonight?

If not, we can go out on a fake date for the public

Peter says we’re trending on social media right now, so maybe we should take advantage of it

Loki [2:37pm]

Not particularly

And of course, darling :)

Shall it be dinner at 7 then?

Me [2:37pm]

Sounds like a plan

With Bucky and Peter’s help, Steve attempts to pick out the most decent restaurant possible for such a last-minute booking on a Saturday. In the end, with Loki’s approval, they settle on a fairly classy seafood place with pretty good reviews.

That would’ve been the end of it, if it weren’t for the nagging feeling at the back of Steve’s mind that something is missing.

“Should I get flowers…?” he mutters out loud. At Bucky’s raised eyebrows, he quickly adds, “Because it’s the proper thing to do on dates- even fake ones, isn’t it?”

“Well I guess, yeah,” Bucky reluctantly agrees. “Figures you’d wanna go all-out on even your fake relationships, huh.”

Steve shrugs.

“Gotta do things properly, or they’re not worth doing at all.”

Peter perks up.

“Are you getting flowers, then? Because I know a place.”

Around a month ago, a rowdy group of primary school kids had run past a florist, knocking over several displays and then continuing their sprint out of fear when the poor owner had yelled out after them. Spider-Man, who had witnessed all of this, stopped to help clean up the mess, and from that moment on the florist adored the young superhero so much that she made a habit of giving him something for free every time he swung by.

After the three of them stepped through the cramped entrance, the florist had readily extended her friendliness to Steve when Spider-Man introduced him as the “friend who needs help”. She didn’t even seem to mind Bucky standing silently off to the side and staring intently at the rows of bright flowers. She wasn’t a particularly nosy, woman, but she did give Steve a knowing look when he admitted that the flowers are for a first date.

Steve stares at the mixed bouquet sitting on his coffee table while he lets Bucky adjust his tie for him. He’s wearing his second suit, which is practically identical to the one he wore yesterday except it’s charcoal grey rather than navy. He remembers how at first he had thought Tony was being excessive when the billionaire had insisted that it was important to own at least two suits. But now, five years later, Steve is grateful that he had begrudgingly listened.

He feels Bucky pat down the non-existent wrinkles on his shoulder pads, and he closes his eyes against the familiarity of the gesture, trying not to let it dredge up memories from a previous lifetime.

Bucky suddenly pauses.

“Have I done this before?”

Steve lets out a breath he didn’t know he had been holding.

“Yeah.” Seeing Bucky’s slight frown, he tentatively adds, “Are you remembering something?”

Bucky doesn’t answer for a few moments, but then he finally says, “I set you up on a date with Mildred’s friend. Patricia.”

“Yeah,” Steve repeats, slowly. “And within an hour she left me and they both became your dates.”

Bucky’s frown deepens. “She didn’t deserve you, Steve.”

Steve smiles. He feels something sad and warm twist in his chest.

“You said the exact same thing too, that night when we came home.”

“Oh.” Bucky goes over to the flowers on the coffee table, and gently picks them up. He stares at them in silence for a few moments, before he says, “I don’t know if Loki deserves you either.”

“Buck, you know we’re not actually-” Steve begins, but Bucky silences him with a disgruntled glare.

“Just don’t do anything more stupid than usual,” his best friend says, shoving the bouquet at Steve. “And no, that wasn’t a challenge.”

“Hey!”

Bucky rolls his eyes, but he’s smiling too.

“Good luck, Steve.”

Steve is bolstered by the not-pep talk from his best friend, up until he finds out from FRIDAY that Loki is currently with Wanda and Vision in Wanda’s room. His steps become more uncertain after that, but they slow to a complete stop when he reaches Wanda’s door frame. He isn’t sure what he expected to find, but it isn’t this- Loki and Vision are sitting cross-legged on the floor with a chessboard between them, while Wanda’s nestled on her beanbag, practising guitar behind them. It’s an unexpectedly peaceful scene; they look like they’re simply enjoying each other’s company.

Steve supposes it makes sense. After all, out of all the Avengers, Wanda and Vision are the ones who have the least amount of reason to hold a personal grudge against Loki. For some reason he cannot explain, Steve finds himself happy at the thought of Loki befriending more of the Avengers in his own time.

“I wasn’t aware that there’s an invisible barrier preventing you from entering,” Loki muses without looking up. Wanda laughs, pausing in her playing.

“Well it’s certainly not my fault if there is,” she says. “You can come in, you know.”

Steve awkwardly adjusts his hold on the bouquet, keeping it out of sight. The movement catches Vision’s attention.

“What are you hiding?” he asks with a curious tilt of his head.

“Uh, nothing, no, I’m fine thanks. Just-” Steve internally cringes. Why is he so bad at this? “Loki. I’ll meet you outside whenever you’re ready.”

He looks at Loki, who is actually rather well-dressed for someone who’s been lounging around indoors all day. In fact now that he thinks about it, Steve doesn’t think he’s ever seen the other man dressed in anything other than Asgardian armour and expensive-looking suits.

Loki looks back at him with slightly furrowed brows, then sighs down at the board.

“Wanda? Could you please win on my behalf?”

“Yeah, I guess,” she says as she puts her guitar down. “I’ll see you sometime.”

“Yeah,” Vision agrees. “We’re finishing this next time.”

Loki gives them both a lazy wave in response as he follows Steve out.

“You do realise we’re going to be ridiculously early if we leave-” Loki begins, but he suddenly cuts himself off.

Steve nervously follows the wide-eyed gaze to the flowers he’s holding. He clears his throat.

“Um, yeah. I know that we’re only pretending to date but I figured that I should still do it properly. And I don’t know about Asgardian culture, but on Earth, giving your date flowers is something we do. I wasn’t sure what you liked, so I ended up getting you a bit of everything. So, um, here.”

He holds out the mixed bouquet, which Loki accepts seemingly on auto-pilot. Loki is still speechless, and Steve watches anxiously as the other man stares at the flowers in his hands as if he isn’t quite sure whether they’re real or not. When Loki finally looks back up at him, Steve feels his breath catch at the intensity in his eyes- sea green, swirling with a mix of emotions.

But the spell is broken by the smile that graces Loki’s lips, which feels less genuine.

“Thank you, darling. You sure know the way to one’s heart.”

Steve isn’t sure what to make of Loki’s odd reaction, but he figures it can’t be too bad, if the way the other man carefully handles the bouquet back to his guest room is any indication.

Steve does his best to pretend that he doesn’t notice stares and whispers directed at their corner of the restaurant. Loki’s doing a much better job at ignoring them; he’s currently gazing intently out of the giant glass windows, though he looks more curious than impressed at the night view of the city outside.

“You liking the view?” Steve asks for the lack of anything better to say.

Loki lightly scoffs.

“Let’s just say it’s… different to the cities of other planets. But I’ve also noticed how practically every city on Earth is identical.” He absently swirls the water in his glass. “Funny, considering how much you insist that you’re different from each other.”

Steve wrinkles his nose.

“It’s actually a bit more complicated than that. How much of Earth’s history do you know?”

“Not as much as I’d like to, unfortunately. Before New Asgard, I’d only taught myself as much as I needed to know depending on whatever business I had at the time.”

Steve looks at Loki curiously.

“Oh? And what did your business with Earth usually involve?”

“Nothing in particular,” Loki says. “I merely used it as a place, amongst several other realms, for retreat on occasions where I felt the need to have some space to myself. And before you ask- no, I did not use the Bifrost. It’s fast, but hardly a discreet method of travel.”

Steve hums.

“I guess that explains how you’ve picked up on our technology here a lot quicker than Thor did.”

Loki rolls his eyes.

“Thor is a stubborn fool who likes sticking with his own way of doing things,” he scoffs, but there’s a hint of fondness to it. “In all honesty, I hadn’t actually come down here in over a hundred years, at least until several years ago. And I’m sure you don’t me to tell you that a lot has changed since then.”

Steve stares at Loki in surprise.

“Oh. Wow. Sometimes I feel like there’s still a lot of things I haven’t figured out yet about my phone, but you seem to know what you’re doing. It’s like you grew up with it.”

“Why, thank you,” Loki smiles. “Though to be fair, I do have an unfair advantage- for one, I’ve already familiarised myself with the technologies from a range of different realms. And for another, well…” He trails off, watching Steve carefully. “Let’s just say that I had the help of two humans well-versed in the area.”

Steve matches his gaze evenly. He’d seen this coming, and it’s honestly a surprise that they haven’t touched upon this topic already.

“Have you spoken to either Clint or Dr Selvig since you came back?”

“No,” Loki answers simply. “I haven’t seen any of Thor’s scientist friends, and considering that he’s broken up with Jane, I think it’s unlikely that I will. And as for Clint, well…” The smile that stretches across his face is entirely artificial. “We’ve been content to avoid each other.”

Steve sighs. He’d expected as much.

Their waiter chooses that moment to take their orders, something which reminds them that they’ve barely even glanced at the menu since they sat down.

Steve internally winces at the prices, but when he looks up at Loki, he sees the other man frowning as well.

“This can’t possibly be edible,” Loki says, gesturing at his copy of the menu. Steve looks at where he’s pointing, then feels a surge of amusement.

“Crab? It’s a staple of most seafood restaurants. You haven’t had it before?”

“I was expecting fish. This is a giant spider.”

“It’s not,” Steve laughs. “It’s good, I promise. Want to try it?”

Fifteen minutes later Steve is struggling to keep a straight face as he watches Loki attempting to get to the meat under the shell with nothing but his cutlery and the crab cracker.

“You know you can use your hands right?” Steve says mildly, hiding his smile behind his fist.

“I can do this,” Loki replies through gritted teeth. Unsurprisingly, he does manage it, after much manoeuvring. He eyes Steve smugly when the latter cleans his hands with the provided wet wipes, prompting Steve to roll his eyes in response.

They pretend not to notice the paparazzi trailing after them when they leave the restaurant. But halfway down the busy streets, Loki catches Steve’s eye with a mischievous smirk before slipping his hand into Steve’s.

Steve does his best not to tense up in surprise. It doesn’t help that Loki’s hand is cold, though it isn’t particularly surprising, considering how cool the night is. Steve gives Loki’s hand a gentle squeeze, hoping the transfer some of his own warmth. He feels some of the warmth travel to his chest as he watches Loki’s smirk soften in response.

A block away from where Steve had parked the car, they are suddenly interrupted by a sharp bang.

Loki hisses and clutches at his upper arm, and Steve immediately springs into action. For a split second he reaches for his shield, and he internally curses when he realises of course he doesn’t have it. He faintly registers light travelling up Loki’s body in his peripheral vision as he quickly dives and knocks several bystanders out of the way, just in time for more shots to be fired in their direction.

Steve braces for the impact of the bullets, but he watches with bated breath as they smack harmlessly against a force field which shimmers into view.

He looks up.

Loki’s black suit has been completely replaced by his Asgardian armour sans his horned headgear. His green cape billows behind him, and for a brief moment, Steve is struck by how heroic he looks.

But Steve can thank Loki for saving his life later- right now, he has a shooter to take down.

The crowd is beginning to truly panic, and Steve does his best to direct as many people to the direction of Loki’s giant force field as possible while he scans the direction the bullets had come from. It doesn’t take long for him to spot the pale, gangly young man clutching at a rifle. The shooter appears to be hesitating at Loki’s appearance, and Steve takes the opportunity to slip into the terrified crowd, unnoticed. Steve keeps an eye on the shooter the whole time, so he immediately notices when the the young man makes the frenzied split-second decision to fire several more shots in Loki’s direction.

Steve feels his heart drop and his ears are drowned out by the screams of the people around him. He doesn’t manage to see if any of the bullets had hit anyone or not, but he grits his teeth and continues making his way towards the shooter.

He has to trust Loki to take care of it.

Steve catches the shooter completely off-guard when he comes in out of seemingly-nowhere and knocks the rifle out of the young man’s hands, kicking him back and grabbing the weapon from him in one fell swoop. Once the guy realises that he’s been stopped by Captain America himself, he goes down without a fight. But just as a precaution, Loki strides over and freezes the man’s hands together in makeshift handcuffs with some ice spell.

Steve watches in fascination as the cold blue light spreads from Loki’s fingers, forming the ice seemingly from thin air. He isn’t sure if it’s a trick of light, but for a split second he swears that the skin of Loki’s hands turned blue.

Now that they’re waiting for the police to arrive, Steve turns to Loki.

“Let me see your arm.”

Loki crosses them both over his chest defensively.

“It barely grazed me. I’ll be fine. My armour and magic deflected the rest of it.” He pauses, then narrows his eyes at Steve. “What about you? You charged at him while you were unarmed. What were you thinking?”

Steve is taken aback at the sheer anger and worry in the other man’s tone. It even reminds him a little bit of Bucky, and he can’t help but laugh.

“I’m fine, I’m fine. I know how to fight without my shield.”

Loki huffs in annoyance but doesn’t pursue any further, because the police arrive. The shooter gets arrested and Steve does most of the talking to the officers. It doesn’t escape his notice that while they seem in awe at his presence, they keep eyeing Loki warily. It reminds Steve a little too much of the charity ball, which already feels like a distant memory, with everything that’s happened.

By the time Steve and Loki are free to go, the area has been taped off and a huge crowd has gathered on the outskirts of the crime scene.

Steve sighs. Now that the adrenaline has faded, he just wants to go back to the compound. This wasn’t how he had wanted his fake date night to end, but he doesn’t feel up for doing anything else.

He suddenly feels a light tug on his wrist.

Steve looks questioningly up at Loki, but the other man has his eyes on the crowd. Steve follows his gaze.

There’s excitement and curiosity buzzing around the gathered people, and there’s even a noticeable number of them holding out their phones in Steve and Loki’s direction.

Steve feels Loki lean in conspiratorially.

“They’re all watching us now. Shall we do something with their attention?”

Loki’s whisper makes the skin on Steve’s neck tingle. He barely manages to suppress the involuntary shudder.

He swallows.

“Yeah,” Steve whispers back.

The corners of Loki’s lips quirk upwards as he gives one final glance in the direction of the crowd.

“How about a kiss then? One for the cameras?”

Steve licks his lips nervously, but he nods determinedly.

This time their lips meet slower. Carefully, but not hesitantly. Loki’s hand gently cups Steve’s jaw, while his other arm is looped around Steve’s waist, pressing their bodies close together. Steve leans into the touch and his arms around Loki’s neck tighten, deepening the kiss. Steve faintly registers a surge of noise in the background. But then he feels Loki sigh softly against his lips, and the little remains of concentration left vanish completely.

Then Loki pulls back, and Steve feels an unexpected wave of disappointment, though they are still close enough that their noses almost touch. He’s left feeling dazed and breathless, and his insides don’t feel entirely solid, like they might collapse under the heavy pounding of his heart.

It makes Steve feel a little better to see Loki looking equally stunned. They’re still pressed together, and Steve can feel Loki’s chest lightly heaving through the shared contact. He looks into Loki’s eyes- dark green, nearly the shade of a forest. Molten with heat, and so many other emotions that Steve currently lacks the brainpower to decipher.

Steve catches himself staring, and quickly turns away. He does his best to ignore the sudden pang at the loss of contact, and takes in their surroundings. His eyes settle on the crowd a few meters away, and reality abruptly crashes around him.

Right. That was why they were kissing in the first place.

He clears his throat.

“I think we should try heading back now.”

Captain America and Loki prevent a mass shooting in upstate New York

The Washington Post

Captain America kisses boyfriend after foiling an attempted shooting

Vox

Captain America proves that he no longer deserves his title

Daily Wire

There are zero casualties in last night’s shooting- and it’s all thanks to Loki

BuzzFeed News

Here’s what #Stoki means for the LGBT community

The Independent

Rumors that last night’s shooter was Spider-Man’s civilian identity

Daily Bugle

The Avengers’ reactions can be summed up as “Really, Steve? Really?” Which is frankly unfair, because the kiss wasn’t even Steve’s idea. Though he can’t exactly complain about resulting public responses it had garnered (in fact, come the next morning they find an unsigned note amongst the pile of mail, consisting of nothing but a succinct “Are you fucking kidding me” in what looks suspiciously like Fury’s handwriting). That’s what Steve has chosen to focus on, instead of the way his insides begin to feel strange whenever he even thinks about the kiss. He’s blaming that on the fact that he has kissed too few people in his life.

But despite everything, Steve still feels a genuine pang of… something when Loki and Bruce return to Norway. Something which, of course, his friends take notice of.

“So I’m guessing he is a better kisser than you,” Natasha says, because she likes making him suffer.

“Are you sure you’re not actually dating?” Tony teases, which Steve resolutely ignores.

The others are nice enough not to actually say anything about it, though at one point Bucky does tell him he’s acting like a lovesick teenager (which he isn’t, okay).

Sam sends him an article with the headline “Florida Man Accidentally Burns Home Down After Lighting Captain America Merch On Fire In Protest Of Hero’s Relationship With Loki”. Steve forwards the article to Loki, then prints it out and sticks it on his wall next to his sketches.

Steve and Loki continue to regularly text each other. Loki still likes to start conversations by sending unflattering photos of Steve, and Steve is beginning to wonder if there’s a website dedicated to photos of him looking as ugly as humanly possible, be it mid-blink, mid-sneeze, or appearing double-chinned from an awkward angle. But of course, there’s always the possibility that Loki himself was the one who found the stills by pausing footage at the right moment. At this point, Steve isn’t sure which one would be better. But he still makes sure to send back funny and/or interesting videos and images that he finds online.

Neither of them have really talked about the kiss, outside of the context of how the general populace has reacted. Which is to be expected, because that’s the whole point of why they’re doing this. Yet Steve can’t help but feel that it’s something like a spectre, hovering unspoken between them.

Their plan finally bears fruit when, as time passes, the public begins to treat their “relationship” as they would any other celebrity couple. In fact, in his most recent interview, Steve even gets asked about what it’s like to date a former enemy, and also what it’s like to be in a long distance relationship.

Life is good, though Steve sometimes catches himself longing to see Loki again.

Which he does- almost three months later, after he nearly dies.

The first thing that Steve registers is how sore and stiff he feels. The second thing he notices is that he’s sleeping on something soft.

Really soft.

“Don’t worry, only three days have passed.”

Steve blinks blearily, then stiffens when his brain finally registers who the voice belongs to.

He tries to sit up, but two strong arms push him down again.

“Please don’t,” Loki says, an expression which almost resembles genuine concern flits across his features. “You’ll undo all of Eir’s hard work.”

Deliriously, Steve thinks that Loki looks like an angel, and he nearly drops the glass of water that the other man hands him.

As Steve sips on the glass, he tries to remember what happened.

He’s supposed to be in Sweden. With Bucky and Clint. They were on a mission investigating the rumours of Chitauri tech being circulated underground in Stockholm. It was a bit of an overkill for the three of them to go, but it was more of a matter of safety just in case things go terribly wrong.

Which it did.

After having their operations discovered, the dealers started a shootout at the base.  In the midst of the chaos Steve got hit point blank in the stomach by one of their weapons. The last thing he remembers, before completely blacking out from the pain, was an explosion which felt like it had burned him alive.

“Where’s Bucky and Clint?” Steve finally asks.

“Bruce finally managed to convince them to get some proper sleep a few hours ago.” Loki pauses, levelling Steve with a serious stare. “You’re quite fortunate that you were so close to New Asgard. If you were treated in one of your ordinary hospitals, your chances for survival would’ve been rather… slim.”

A brief flash of pain flickers through Loki’s eyes- teal, under this lighting- as the last word quietly drops from his lips.

Steve swallows down the rising guilt.

“Oh.”

He averts his gaze, and he uses it as an opportunity to glance around the room he’s in. He’s currently lying on one side of a king sized bed, under cream-coloured silk sheets. Aside from his now-empty glass, there’s a small stack of books and a lamp on the bedside table. Pale daylight is peeking through dark curtains, which seem to be hiding a large window. In the wall opposite the bed is an unlit fireplace, and there’s a wall length cupboard next to the door. It’s sparsely decorated, but it still feels strangely cosy for a recovery room.

“Where exactly am I?”

“You are currently resting in my bed. You’re welcome, by the way- if my sources are correct then it is possibly the best surface you’ve slept on in the past weeks.”

Steve stiffens.

“Wait- this is your bed? Then what about-”

“You were only moved here this morning,” Loki interrupts him. “Eir predicted that you would wake up some time today, and our medical facilities are still rather small and understaffed. So being the generous and considerate lover that I am…” Loki’s lips twist into an amused smile, and he spreads his hands out. “I offered my own living quarters as a place for your recovery.”

Steve attempts to protest that he doesn’t want to impose, but Loki shuts that down quickly with “You almost died, you idiot.” After that Steve begrudgingly acquiesces, especially when he has to suppress at wince at how sore his abdomen feels as he sits up.

Steve is able to walk around without too much difficulty, so Loki leaves him to eat in the kitchen while he leaves the house to go somewhere else. After taking one bite of an apple, Steve suddenly realises how hungry he is, and he devours the rest in less than a minute.

Loki isn’t gone for long, as he returns with Bucky and Clint in tow while Steve is almost finished with his second apple.

Clint visibly perks up when he sees Steve alive and whole, though he still remains alert of his surroundings. Bucky’s expression is about as rigid as his shoulders, but after staring at Steve for a few tense seconds, it all drains out of him and he mournfully mutters that he’d thought he had lost Steve.

Steve feels his heart clench seeing Bucky so distraught. After all, he knows exactly what it feels like to think that you’ve lost your best friend forever when you were supposed to be on a mission together.

Eventually they get around to discussing the disastrous mission in Stockholm. It was technically a success as they did break up the alien weapons trading ring, destroying every trace of it to boot. Bucky and Clint didn’t get out of the warehouse shootout unscathed either, but they were nowhere near as horrible as Steve was.

Throughout it all, Steve notices that Loki is lingering silently, as far away from them as the small space of the kitchen would allow. He finds it slightly odd that Bucky and especially Clint don’t seem to mind Loki listening in on classified information of their mission, but Steve supposes that somewhere along the process of him getting sent to New Asgard for emergency medical treatment, Loki must’ve gotten ahold of the details anyway.

“Oh and by the way, Steve,” Clint says. “Bucky and I are heading back to the compound first thing tomorrow.”

Steve frowns, but Bucky interrupts him before he can say anything.

“Yeah, we’re leaving you. Think of it as a vacation or something. God knows you need a break from trying to get yourself killed.”

Steve glances at Loki, who doesn’t seem surprised by the news at all. He thinks back to his earlier conversation with Loki, and it suddenly clicks. So he’s staying over at Loki’s for the next couple of days; they must’ve discussed it before he had woken up, then.

“And you’re okay with Loki watching over me?” Steve asks Clint sceptically.

“Hell no,” Clint says immediately. “But I’m trusting Thor and Bruce to step in before he does anything. And if that doesn’t work…” Clint glares at Loki. “I’m turning you into my personal pincushion.”

“Well that doesn’t sound very pleasant,” Loki says drily, prompting Clint to childishly flip him off.

Bucky appears only slightly less adverse to the arrangement, but he still gives Steve a careful hug before he and Clint leave.

Steve is surprised, to say the least, when it turns out that Loki lives in a modest-looking cottage which looks no different to the others in the neighbourhood; Loki must’ve used magic to make everything much bigger on the inside. Aside from the living room, kitchen, bathroom and laundry room, the cottage has two bedrooms, though one of them has been completely repurposed into a personal library/study space. When they get back to Loki’s room, Loki admits that when he first heard about the label of “king” beds, he had thought it meant that the bed would be befitting for a king.

“It’s acceptable, I suppose,” Loki shrugs, which Steve responds to with a playful roll of his eyes. Typical.

It also happens to be the only bed in the entire cottage. Loki absolutely refuses to let Steve sleep on the couch, but he also thinks it’s beneath him to sleep there when the bed is perfectly capable of fitting both of them.

“I suppose I’ll look forward to waking up to your beautiful face, then,” Loki says with a playful wink. Steve ignores the teasing like he usually does, except this time it’s accompanied by a light fluttering in his chest.

(He ignores that too)

Truth be told, Steve doesn’t mind- after all, he’s not one to get touchy over bed-sharing. Back when he was living with Bucky in their apartment in Brooklyn, there were times when they couldn’t afford consistent heating in winter. Thus, in order to prevent Steve from getting sick from the cold, they often shared a bed to share warmth. Steve’s also lost count of the number of times he had shared beds with Sam and Natasha (or even both at the same time, if the bed was big enough) while they were on the run. In the end, bed-sharing is just a pragmatic thing that he does with people he trusts.

It kind of begs the question of whether Loki is someone he trusts. A year ago the answer would’ve been a definite “no”. But that was before he’d actually gotten to know his former enemy as a person. A petty, snarky yet insightful person, with a ridiculous sense of humour. Now, after over half a year of being friends with Loki, and especially after that incident following their fake date, Steve thinks the answer might be “yes”. He knows most of his friends would disagree, but he does trust Loki.

Steve sits half-tucked into his side of the bed, trying his best to answer his mountain of unread messages. He assures all of his worried friends that he’s fine but he’s going to stay in New Asgard for a few more days, though he’s almost certain that they would’ve gotten that information already from Bucky and Clint.

Steve doesn’t get any immediate replies, so he idly scrolls through the news to see what the public is told about the incident in Stockholm. Somehow that leads him to discover that news of his presence in New Asgard has somehow gotten out, which led to his “relationship” with Loki being brought into the limelight again.

Steve is watching a clip of some Fox News anchors debating with a “historian” on how “Loki the god of evil has brainwashed Captain America and we need to rescue the poor Captain from his clutches” when Loki strides into the room in his nightclothes while toweling his damp hair. Loki raises an eyebrow at Steve as he listens in on the newsclip, but Steve doesn’t say anything until several moments after the video ends.

“Oh my god,” Steve finally manages, after his brain finally processes the sheer amount of bullshit that he had just been forced to listen to.

“You called?” Loki grins, tossing his towel aside. Steve groans.

“I know a lot of people still hate you for New York, but-” he gestures at his phone, at a loss for words. “What the fuck. ”

Loki bursts into laughter.

“No need to be so angry on my behalf, Steve,” he says, climbing onto the bed. “I actually quite like their version of the truth.”

Then Steve blinks as he watches Loki abruptly rearrange himself into a mocking parody of a seductive pose.

“Yes, I have indeed seduced the good Captain to the dark side,” Loki smirks, lowering his lashes. “And I definitely have plans to do so for every other hero that Earth has to offer.”

Steve swallows. To distract himself from his elevated heartbeat, he throws a pillow in Loki’s direction.

The ensuing pillow fight lasts for over an hour.

It doesn’t surprise Steve when, in the middle of his lunch meetup with Thor, the topic of Loki comes up.

“How have things with Loki been?”

“Pretty good, actually,” Steve answers honestly. Loki has actually been a rather gracious host, though he does get a bit ridiculous whenever he gets under the impression that Steve is overexerting himself.

“Good, that’s good,” Thor says, but there’s a slight furrow between his brows.

Steve frowns.

“Is something wrong?”

“Oh, no,” Thor quickly denies. “It’s just that- it’s not that I don’t trust you or anything- because I do, you’re a great man, one of the most honourable I’ve had the luck to meet and fight with in my lifetime-”

“Thor…” Steve tries to interrupt, but his friend goes on.

“-but I think I should tell you that if you hurt my brother, then he’s not one for forgiveness.”

Steve stares at him.

“What.”

“He’s more likely to retaliate,” Thor clarifies, as if that was the part Steve should’ve been confused about. “See, when we were on Sakaar, Loki had this weird thing going on with the Grandmaster.”

Steve nearly chokes on his own spit.

“What.”

“Yeah,” Thor agrees, as if he is imparting some particularly juicy bit of gossip and not telling Steve something he never ever wanted to know. “The Grandmaster was a strange, but horrible man, but Loki only went anywhere near him because of his power. In the end, Loki betrayed him, stole his best ships and there was also a revolution involved. I’m not sure what exactly happened, but I’m pretty sure the Grandmaster is no longer the ruler of Sakaar.”

What the fuck.

“Um, okay?” Steve finally says, weakly. “Why are you telling me this?”

But the only answer he receives is a pat on the arm.

“You’re a good man, Captain. I’d hate to see Loki ruin your life.”

What the fuck.

Cold creeps into the air inside his lungs, seeps into his skin, turning his bones into ice. The air around him thickens, until he drowns in it, chokes in it-

Steve’s eyes snap open and he gasps for air.

It takes several heartbeats for him to realise that he’s in Loki’s room, and not the flooded cockpit of the Valkyrie. It is still completely dark, and a quick glance at the time tells him it’s a quarter to four.

An involuntary shiver suddenly wracks through his body, and that’s when Steve realises that the cold didn’t vanish with his dreams.

In fact, it seems to be coming from beneath the covers.

Loki makes a pained noise and shifts in his sleep, and that’s all Steve needs before he throws off the blankets and turns on the bedside lamp.

The movement jars Loki awake, but Steve’s jaw drops when he sees him in the light.

Loki’s skin is completely blue. Steve has no idea what this means, but now that he’s concentrating, he can feel that the source of the cold is actually Loki himself.

Loki looks frantic and disoriented, as if he had just woken up from a nightmare. But the moment his eyes- red, blood red- land on the blue of his hands, a fresh wave of panic sweeps through him.

“Loki-” Steve begins as calmly as he can, but Loki flinches and throws himself off the bed.

“Loki-!”

“Don’t touch me!” Loki suddenly yells, as he spins on the floor to face Steve like a cornered animal.

Steve takes in a steadying breath. He doesn’t move, even though the muscles in his arms and legs are practically twitching from the effort.

“Don’t… touch me…” Loki repeats, weakly. He’s kneeling on the floor now, hunched over his shaking hands.

It kills Steve to do so, but he manages to remain seated on the bed. He watches, more fascinated than what is probably appropriate given the situation, as the blue slowly begins to recede from Loki’s skin. Loki still doesn’t move even when his usual, pale colour is fully restored, but Steve begins to make his way to the other man, until he is crouching right next to him.

“Are you okay now?” he asks softly.

“I… I’m sorry.” Loki still doesn’t look up. “Go back to bed, you need your rest. I’ll leave.”

“No Loki, look-” Steve sighs and runs a hand through his hair. “You don’t have to tell me what your nightmare was about. You don’t even have to tell me why you suddenly turned blue. It’s just… I had a nightmare too. And I’m going to the kitchen to get some water. Will you come with me?”

Loki hesitates for a moment, but then he nods.

They sit together in complete silence in the kitchen for what feels an eternity, before Steve finally speaks up.

“I don’t think I’ve had that nightmare in years.” In his peripheral vision he notices that he catches Loki’s attention. “The plane. Crashing it into the ice.” Steve smiles wryly. “Most people assume that I got knocked out by the impact. But I was awake for the whole thing. When the cockpit flooded… my arms and legs were broken from the crash, but I could already feel them knitting together even as I was running out of oxygen.

“I don’t know what got to me first- the cold, or the lack of air.”

It feels weird, but also strangely relieving to tell this to Loki. The only other person he’d ever mentioned this to was the therapist that SHIELD provided him after he’d first woken up. The therapist had nodded in understanding even though Steve could see her thinly-veiled horror, but Loki is merely looking at him with alert and assessing eyes. A far cry from the wild look he’d sported earlier.

“I’m sorry,” Loki finally says. “I must’ve been the cause of that. My Jotunn form… the cold…”

“Jotunn?” Steve asks, latching onto the unfamiliar term.

Loki doesn’t say anything for a moment, but then he sighs.

“Well as you know, I’m adopted,” he begins with a humourless smile. “Jotunn. Not Asgardian. What you saw just then is my true form, if you will. A monstrous, hideous creature of the cold- even the touch of our skin gives our enemies ice burn.”

Steve frowns.

“But you’re not monstrous or hideous,” he says.

Loki stares at him, then laughs, a tad hysterically.

“You would say that about someone who made you relive your own nightmares? Someone who attempted to enslave your race? Or did our little game of pretend make you forget that already?”

“It was an accident,” Steve says. “If it makes you feel better, I broke a bedside table once because of a nightmare. And as for New York…” Steve sighs, and looks Loki in the eye. “I don’t know if I’ll ever be able to forgive that. But in case I haven’t made it obvious enough, I’m trying to move on from it. And I know that you’re definitely trying to move on from it too. I think that’s what matters for now.

“And besides,” Steve tries to smile. “I don’t think it’s possible for you to look hideous.”

Loki narrows his eyes.

“Steve,” he says warningly, but Steve only laughs.

“Oh, so you’re the only one allowed to compliment me on my appearance?” Loki’s pinched expression prompts the edges of Steve’s lips to quirk upwards in amusement, and he adds, “I honestly don’t think you looked bad- just different. But just as beautiful as you usually do.”

Steve nearly slaps himself when the last part accidentally slips out. He fervently prays for himself to spontaneously develop the ability to vanish from existence when Loki stares at him with wide eyes. But just before Steve can backtrack, give an excuse, anything, Loki clears his throat.

“And what exactly do you mean by that?” Loki’s expression is carefully blank, and Steve feels his heart pounding so fast he’s surprised he hasn’t passed out yet.

This is so stupid. He hasn’t even had the time to really think about the… feelings he’s been having for the other man.

And yet-

“I want to stop pretending,” Steve suddenly blurts out, and god damn it, what is wrong with him?

Loki goes completely expressionless.

“What.”

Steve licks his lips nervously, but he refuses to avert his gaze.

“I want to stop pretending because I want it to be real,” he ploughs on, because that’s his only option now. “I… I don’t think I’ve been pretending, to be honest. At least not for a while.”

Shock and surprise flood Loki’s face and he stares at Steve as if he’s seeing him for the first time.

“Steve…” he begins, but he trails off, still struck speechless.

“I’m sorry if that’s not what you want,” Steve quickly says. “We can forget this conversation ever happened.”

“Don’t be ridiculous,” Loki scoffs before surging forward and capturing his lips in a kiss.

Steve tries to put all of his feelings- the unstoppable urge to smile or laugh when he sees Loki do the same, the way his heartbeat accelerates in his presence, and the pure ecstasy that this is happening, this is real- into the kiss. It seems to work, because he feels Loki smile against his lips in response.

They break off briefly, but Steve runs his hand down Loki’s hair and grabs a fistful of it, using the grip to tug him down again. Loki follows without complaint, even moaning into Steve’s mouth in response.

They continue kissing, again and again, until the darkness outside bleeds away into dawn.

“You know,” Steve says, as the commercial break begins. “I think Thor tried to give me the shovel talk.”

Loki shifts on the couch next to him to stare at him incredulously.

“Shovel talk?”

“The ‘If you hurt him, I’ll hurt you’ talk.” Steve pauses. “Except I think he was trying to tell me that if I hurt you, then you’d ruin my life.”

“You Midgardians and your strange ways with words,” Loki mutters, almost fondly. “Thor is unbelievable, so of course he did that. What else did he say?”

“Uh.” Steve suddenly regrets bringing this up at all. “He mentioned the Grandmaster?”

The colour abruptly drains from Loki’s face. He grabs the nearest cushion and promptly buries his face into it.

“For fuck’s sake, Thor. ”

[hollandorks]

The Montreal Problem

Chapter 2

Summary: The reader has big plans to spend a month in Montreal with her boyfriend. The problem? He breaks up with her just as her flight is leaving. Now she’s going to be stuck in an unfamiliar city for a month with no place to stay. That is, until an unexpected hero offers her a solution.

Chapter 1 Chapter 2 Chapter 3 Chapter 4 Chapter 5 Chapter 6 Chapter 7Chapter 8 Chapter 9 Epilogue 1 Epilogue 2 The London Problem

Word count: 1901

Author’s Note: Yay chapter 2! I’ve gotten so many responses/ notes on the first chapter, it’s insane! This chapter was originally going to be two chapters, but I’ve decided to condense the chapters I’ve written into longer chapters. Hopefully I’ll be able to update every few days. And I’m basing the timeline in the story after stuff the boys actually did, but I am aware that it’s not exact. It’s fiction, after all. Anyways, hope you guys enjoy! 

Y/N–Your Name

B/F/N–Boyfriend’s Name

The world was falling out from under you again. Just as it had when you first saw the texts on your phone.

“Wha--Where? What? I just met you, you could--”

“I know, I know,” he interrupted. His face fell slightly. You honestly felt bad for bursting his bubble. “Just hear me out, love. You need a place to stay. My friend--” You noticed his eyes flicker to your screen. “--he has a house in Montreal for the next few months. There’s an extra bedroom.”

“You want me...to stay in Montreal with you and your friend? But I don’t know you.” This was insane. You couldn’t stay in a house with strangers. Not even ones moved to acts of charity out of pity for you.

“I know, I get it, it sounds crazy. But you actually probably know my friend really well.”

Your mind was swimming. “I do?” Your first thought was that Harrison knew your now-ex, but that was impossible.

“Yeah.” He gestured towards your screen. You glanced at it, still confused. Harrison waited expectantly for you to get it.

“Who’s your friend?” you asked with a raised eyebrow.

Harrison shook his head and hid a smile. “Spider-Man.”

You blinked slowly at him. Was he crazy?

Then it clicked. His friend was Spider-Man. Tom Holland.

Your mouth opened slightly in surprise.

You stammered for a full thirty seconds before you managed to ask, “You want me to stay in Tom Holland’s house for a month?” Your voice had become shrill. You immediately lowered your voice. “I--why? I don’t know if--” You swallowed. A different sort of shaking took over your hands. Nerves.

Harrison smiled gently. He reached over and patted your arm. “You need a place to stay. I have one. No strings attached. Tom and I--and his brothers Sam and Harry--will be working most days anyways. We’ll stay out of your hair. You can sightsee, make the most of your trip despite the circumstances. Tom’s already said it’s alright.”

“Tom’s here?” you asked incredulously. You looked around like the celebrity would appear from under the seat. You also didn’t miss the mention of two brothers--four roommates, instead of two. You didn’t know if you could, or should, do this.

Harrison laughed. “Yeah, up in first class, the div. Somehow I got stuck back here while he gets pampered up there.”

You felt sure that you were going into shock. Your ears were ringing. Your head felt hollow. Though you were sitting down, you felt for sure you were sinking.

Harrison must have seen the expression on your face. He hurriedly said, “Take the flight to think it over. Or, if we get separated in the airport, I can give you my number so you can reach me if you change your mind...or can’t find anywhere else to stay.” He rubbed the back of his neck with one hand, peering at you from underneath his long lashes.

You somehow managed to nod and pass him your phone. He gave it back to you and settled in with a pair of bulky, noise-cancelling headphones, promptly falling asleep.

You closed your own eyes, but knew you wouldn’t be able to sleep.

Despite all of the ways this could go wrong, you knew what your answer would be. How could you say no? You had been looking forward to this trip for months. Now you could see your plans changing, morphing into something not as wonderful as you had hoped, but something that still had potential.

You were going to live with four strangers, all boys, for a month. And all you could think about was when you were going to meet Spider-Man. You knew it was stupid for you to assume they were trustworthy just because it was Spider-Man. But Harrison was being so kind. He really wanted to help, you could tell.

You plugged in your headphones and decided to play the movie. You might as well get to know your potential new roommate a little.

As you watched you kept thinking to yourself, Am I really going to do this? You arrived at the same conclusion every single time, however. You knew it was a bit reckless to move into a house with four boys you barely knew, but you didn’t really have any other choice. If B/F/N had actually talked to you the day before your flight, as he’d intended, you could have cancelled your tickets for a fee. But now...now that you’d used one of the tickets, it was too late. You had no money and no place to stay. Harrison had offered you a way out of this mess, and you knew you should take it.

To make yourself feel better about potentially living with a bunch of young boys for a month, you resolved to do two things. The first was that you would call your now-ex as soon as you landed on the off chance he would feel bad and get back together with you or change your ticket or buy you a hotel room.

The second thing you decided to do was get to know the boy sitting next to you whenever he woke up. The boy who had been kind enough to offer you a place to stay. The boy who was really, really cute.

Harrison woke up as the credits for Spider-Man finished and Captain America came on the screen. You snorted at what the character was saying.

“Hey,” Harrison murmured, voice rough from sleep. He gave you a soft smile. “Enjoy the movie?”

“Yeah, it was really, really great. It was my first time seeing it, actually.”

He seemed surprised. “Really? It’s been out for months.”

You shrugged. “I’ve been...busy.”

“Better late than never,” he said.

You reached forward and turned off the screen. You knew you still had a couple of hours left on the flight and resolved to make the best of it.

“So, you guys are...working in Montreal?” you finally asked.

Harrison stretched his long legs, shirt creeping up over the top of his sweatpants, revealing a strip of tanned skin. You averted your eyes, but not before you noticed that he had abs. “Yeah, Tom’s working on this film called Chaos Walking. It’s a book series. And I’m technically his assistant, so I go to set with him pretty much every day, let him boss me around.” He grinned. “Harry, his brother, is working with the camera crew. He wants to be a director, you know? And Sam’s just visiting.”

“That sounds cool,” you said. You winced internally at your awkwardness. “Where are you guys flying from?”

“London,” he said. “Tom surprised his mum for her birthday. I was visiting my family while he was with them. Just for a few days.”

“That’s sweet. Are they all up in first class with--with Tom?” you asked.

Harrison rolled his eyes. “Unfortunately. They’re all having a nice laugh that somehow I got kicked back to business on our last flight.”

“Oh, so you’re too good for business class?” you teased. You flushed immediately, but Harrison laughed.

“Oh, yeah, it’s absolutely horrible back here. I can’t live in such squalor.” He made a dramatic face and then laughed again.

His smile was infectious. You were smiling big, especially the more you two talked. Harrison told you about his cameo in the Spider-Man movie, about traveling the world with his best friends, about how much he wished he could bring his dog along. You told him about graduating early, about your plans for a career, about how you’d never been out of the country before. He teased you for being a cat person. He made you laugh and accidentally snort into the Coke you had ordered. He also never mentioned his offer again. You appreciated that he wasn’t pressuring you.

Before you knew it, the seatbelt sign was lighting up and the stewardesses were coming around to make sure all of the trays were stowed away. The nervousness you’d successfully kept at bay came back in full force.

As the plane touched down and rolled towards the gate, you hurriedly took your phone off of airplane mode. But there were no new messages or missed calls from B/F/N.

You sighed. When you looked up, Harrison was watching. He looked almost nervous.

“Listen...if you--if you want to stay with us, we’re having a car pick us up. You can meet us out past security. And, ah, there’ll probably be a good bit of paparazzi for Tom.” He rubbed the back of his neck again. People began unbuckling and gathering their things. In just moments, the doors would open, and you would have to make a firm decision about what to do now that you were actually in Montreal. “Just let me know, alright love? You’ve got my number. I’ll make sure we don’t leave without you.”

All you could manage was a nod. Harrison gathered his things and shouldered his way towards the door. Towards his friends. You grabbed your two bags and pulled out your phone. With trembling fingers, you called B/FN. You were suddenly grateful you’d pressured your parents about an international plan. They had conceded and paid for a month’s plan for your phone.

Relief poured through you when he finally answered. You had been afraid, for a moment, that he was going to completely ignore you.

“I’ve just landed,” you told him before he could say anything. “And my tickets are nonrefundable and I was supposed to stay with you and--” You swallowed tears as you walked up the jetway and into the airport.

“I know, Y/N, I’m sorry. But what do you want me to do about it?” His voice sounded tired. Impatient. Like you were an unruly child.

“What do I want you to do about it?” you half-shouted, emotions getting the best of you for a moment. You glanced around, embarrassed, and lowered your voice. “I want you to reconsider. I thought--I thought we were happy.”

“We were,” he said. You tried to ignore the way he emphasized the were. You glanced at the signs, eyes skipping over the French words to find the English.

A thought occurred to you. “Are you...here? At the airport?”

“No,” he said shortly. That had been part of the plan, for him to pick you up. But not anymore.

For some reason, that drove it home. Your breath left in a whoosh. “Oh. I...I don’t have anywhere to stay, B/F/N. I spent all my money coming here.”

“I’m sorry. I can’t--There’s nothing I can do. You’ll have to call your parents.” He paused. Sighed. “Listen, I have to go.”

And before you could say anything else, before you could beg him to think about what he was doing, he hung up.

You were stopped in the middle of the terminal, people surging around you. You stared ahead through eyes blurry with tears. You set your jaw and opened your text messages.

I’m coming, you typed. You hit send before you could change your mind and call your parents.

The response came almost immediately from Harrison with where to meet them after collecting your luggage. He promised again not to leave you behind. He was the unexpected solution to your Montreal problem.

You set off with a mixture of hope and grief warring in your chest.

Tag-list

@beardedsteveslut @smilesfromabove @fandomscombine @yoinkspiderling @twentychemicalpanics 

[moreracquetball]

Youtuber AU Headcanons

(Lowkey inspired by a post by @whizzerbrowne who brought the idea to my attention and it has since dominated my brain). Let’s just get started:

(This got way too long, yikes. I had to include a read more line)

~ Three Youtubers: Jason, Cordelia, and Whizzer.

Jason

Type: He’s one of those younger, newer youtubers. He started when he was nine, and he talked frankly about stuff like divorce (bc his parents were going through a divorce at the time) and being an introvert and being autistic and being Jewish and dealing with a difficult relationship with his parents. He has trouble really talking to people so it was like really easy to just sit in front of a camera and start talking at them. Side note: this was totally Mendel’s idea as a therapy exercise that actually worked, okay? And (as we’ve seen in the musical), Jason has this raw honesty and wit to him that is very funny and real to watch. As he’s gotten older, he’s started talking about other things - like not such heavy topics. He talks about the things that he’s hyperfixated on (baseball, chess, the emoji movie, etc), and though his content is pretty erratic and all over the place, people just love his commentary and he’s amassed millions of followers in just a few years??

He also vlogs /a lot/, which is how his audience got to know Trina, Mendel, and Marvin.

Trina - Everyone literally adores her. She is v nervous and awkward in her cameos in Jason’s videos, but she is also very honest and vocal about her opinions and calls herself the Cool Mom even though Jason’s like “Mom, you don’t let me stay up past ten even when it’s not a school night” and Trina’s just “A Cool Mom can’t still care about your healthy and well-being??”

Mendel - As a one-off, Jason asked his followers to submit questions to Mendel the Psychiatrist for a collab idea with his stepdad, and his pieces of advice were kinda off the wall and funny and it quickly became a series and one of Jason’s most popular series ever. Some people are convinced Mendel is just playing a character so Jason has to be like “no he is actually like this. You have to believe me.” Also: Mendel gets a snapchat that everyone follows. He uploads grainy pictures of like trees and makes puns and constantly spams his story with pictures of Trina with captions like “look at how pretty she is” and “how did i get so lucky” and “rare photo of an actual goddess.” 

Marvin - Tbh, the audience’s reaction to Marvin is a little more mixed, esp at first. Jason had talked a lot about his difficult relationship with Marvin and his “Draw My Life” video did stir up some contempt for Marvin’s selfishness. But like, over the years and through small snippets of cameos, it is generally believed that Marvin has changed and grown up a lot and is like an amazing (but dorky) dad. His cameos in Jason’s videos are the best bc it shows how eerily alike those two are and at one point Marvin briefly talks about internalized homophobia and toxic masculinity and hints at the stuff that he is’t proud of, and everyone - no matter their outward opinion of him - has like a little crush on him. Also, the videos with Marvin and Mendel both?? Their petty arguing gets like millions of hits every time.

Jason also totally does all the trend/tag videos but also has like that sarcastic, almost ironic vibe at first but he ends up really sincerely liking it. 

Jason also does like monologues of his thoughts and opinions while also doing mini skits in between and he is iconic and a jack of all trades really.

He is very articulate and seems so mature but like any hate whatsoever does get to him a lot. He’s learned how to deal with his self-doubt and ignoring the trolls better than he had when he first started, but every once in awhile it still gets to him.

Also??? Remember that Roast Yourself Challenge trend??? Jason did that, and it was on the top page for like a solid week. He went too hard and too real.

Cordelia

Type: Totally like Hannah Hart’s Drunk Kitchen, are you even kidding me?? That it totally Cordelia. She drinks and talks about current events and makes really bad food puns and it is Everything. She also branches out after awhile and starts doing like satirical how-to videos. Lowkey once she tried to make a wry, parody version of a beauty vlogger how-to and she ended up having so much fun with it and her after make-up looked ballin, so she starts doing make-up tutorials, too.

She’s also very very proudly gay and out. Like, her username is literally lesbiancaterer. But she still gets like comments on her videos saying “are you straight?” or “her boyfriend must be a lucky guy” and it just makes her go “????? How could I ever make this clearer?” (once, in a collab with Marvin, one comment said “ahh, her and her bf are such #relationship goals” which then launched a very satirical, very deadpan boyfriend tag video with her and Marvin that made it abundantly clear just how fucking gay those two are).

Charotte first got introduced very very early in her videos bc once during a drunk kitchen, Cordelia cut her finger with a knife and called for her girlfriend and Charlotte went into complete Doctor Mode and started treating her immediately. Cordelia is a little tipsy at that point and starts blatantly flirting with her and calling her “my doctor” and that video’s comment section is just keysmashing and the phrase “my doctor.”

Cordelia does not try to hide her relationship in any way. She and Charlotte have done all those cute couples tags and Charlotte is the star of Cordelia’s social media and vlogs. Now they are #relationship goals.

Cordelia actually got into Youtube bc of Jason and everyone was like lowkey shocked when it turned out that these two popular but different youtubers knew each other and cameo in one another’s videos a lot and Cordelia is like “he is literally my godson, guys. Ofc I’m gonna be around him and support him.”

Whizzer

Type: Ohhh boy!! Whizzer is def the kind of youtuber that has been around on the platform since circa 2007 - are you even gonna try to fight me on that??? He is a fashion channel (also has like a series of the youtube version of fashion police) but also like a major storytime channel bc he’s been around and tells the craziest but realest stories of all time. He is also quickly considered The Gay Icon^tm of Youtube.

He is definitely one of the biggest youtubers on the platform but he also lowkey feels too old to still be on here and has that like Shane Dawson kinda feel of like keeping it real about youtube drama and rebranding himself and learning from stupid old videos when he was still like a shit 20-something that was lowkey problematic. 

He stans so hard for Britney Spears and Carly Rae Jepsen and he got Carly in one of his collabs and he could not stop smiling and fangirling and he is literally all of us.

He is very, very vocal and honest about his sexuality and sexual history. He has a lot of Body and Sex Positivity videos and speaks very bluntly about the importance of self-esteem and body image and safe sex.

(One of his most popular videos is the one with him candidly speaking about having HIV and he talks about his mistake with unsafe sex and all the terrible stigmas around the topic. He talks about how it’s both a physical and emotional struggle, and he also talks about treatment and awareness and prevention and seeking emotional help to combat depression).

He arranges a collab with Jason bc they are alike in that they always speak candidly about issues and struggles and have like the exact same sense of dry, almost scathing humor. Whizzer meets Marvin bc Marvin is like “Jason, there is no way you’re meeting a strange man who you met over the internet. I am definitely going to be the one that goes with you.”

(Awkward moment when Marvin and Jason get to Whizzer’s apartment, and Marvin and Whizzer’s profiles light up with one another from one of those websites like Grindr). Whizzer has like lowkey commented on Jason’s videos before with lewd comments about his hot dad, but like this is so not what Whizzer had been expecting?? Yeah, at the end of Whizzer and Jason’s collab video, Whizzer puts like a small blooper reel and it’s him continually flirting with Jason’s dad (who’s behind the camera) and the Internet suddenly has a new fave ship.

(Marvin and Whizzer totally messaged each other and hooked up like the next day).

But like, they keep the budding relationship very underwraps bc they both really don’t want it to affect Jason’s channel and neither really think at first that their whole arrangement will go anywhere close to serious because Whizzer has never been in love or had a steady boyfriend and Marvin cannot hold a relationship either even after his divorce.

But of course they fall in love, and of course the internet knows something’s up. Whizzer keeps vaguing on Twitter about the new man in his life with weird tweets like “I can’t believe I’m deliberately sleeping with a man who UNIRONICALLY knows every word to Allstar” and “get you a man who always sends that courtesy ‘thank you.’ text after you send him a dick pic.” And when Whizzer vlogs, he always makes sure to keep the camera trained on himself but you can see that his eyes are always looking away as he’s like smiling at someone who does not want to be on camera. Also, Jason’s weekend vlogs have cameos of Whizzer in them now.

They mess up when in one of aforementioned Jason’s vlogs, there’s a grainy clip of Marvin and Whizzer in the background and Marvin kisses Whizzer’s cheek. The internet loses their minds

(After nine/ten months of dating, Whizzer and Marvin abruptly break up and neither really acknowledges it. However, weeks after their break up, Whizzer decides to make a story-time video about this fucking asshole boyfriend that broke up with him over a chess game. He wanted it to be like both petty but also very funny because that is such a ridiculous story, but like when he’s editing it, he notices himself being like on the verge of tears in some parts and being overly bitter and tense, and he never uploads it and he realizes that he isn’t over Marvin like he had said he was).

(However, Whizzer does end up making a story-time video later about how Jason’s baseball game brought him and Marvin back together).

After they get back together, they’ve worked out their issues and are couples goals now and they do not hide their relationship and Marvin makes cameos in both Whizzer and Jason’s videos/younows and it is incredible.

Through Jason and Marvin, Whizzer and Cordelia meet and they become best friends. They collab all the time and they complain about queer struggles and they talk about their relationships and get drunk on camera and be weird, loud idiots and those videos get tons of views.

And Whizzer gets candid about how he’s always felt like alone in the world and hasn’t really had the opportunity to rely on anyone but himself but through Jason and Marvin, he meets Cordelia and Charlotte and Mendel and Trina, and even though they might not get along all the time and some people are closer to other people, they’re all his family and he never thought that he’d really have one that close before. It’s one of his most vulnerable videos.

The most successful videos on all three’s channels are the collabs of the three of them together: Jason and Cordelia and Whizzer. And they become like one of those Youtube cliques that collab all the time and tweet about each other’s videos constantly and always hang out with one another at all the events like Vidcon and Playlist Live. 

[pluckyredhead]

Daredevil 101: Fall from Grace

And we’re back! It’s time for the death of Matt Murdock (again). Also, a lot of 90s-style grimacing. Most importantly, ELEKTRA RETURNS!

Content Warning: Some extremely racist (specifically, anti-black) imagery behind the cut.

When we last left our hero, he had returned to New York, regained his memory, and patched things up with Foggy. And aw, they’re being so cute:

YOU GUYS FOGGY MADE A MODEL OF THE OFFICE SO THAT MATT COULD FEEL WHERE EVERYTHING WOULD GO. AND JUST LOOK AT THEM CUDDLING OVER THAT SIGN. I’M CAN’T.

Now up there I mentioned 90s-style grimacing, and I just...I feel like if you’re not familiar with the aesthetic of comics in the 90s nothing can really prepare you, but basically, picture a lot of veins and teeth, flowing hair, everyone wearing armor and wielding two swords and six guns, POUCHES, and very questionable anatomy. This cover is a pretty good example:

No, I cannot explain anything that’s happening here. Just accept that the next few posts are gonna look like this until we round the horn into the late 90s. We’ll get through this. It’ll be okay.

(That art, by the way, is by Scott McDaniel, who is responsible for most of this post. The writer is still D. G. Chichester.)

Despite that cover there’s not a lot of Frank in here, but I do have something behind the cut for the Fratt fans:

That’s real gay, Frank.

In between fellatio metaphors with Frank, reestablishing Nelson and Murdock, and trying to patch things up with Karen, Matt also tries to protect a Haitian immigrant from a convoluted protection racket and winds up tangling with a “voodoo priestess” villainess named Calypso. Here’s where that content warning comes in:

Like honestly what the actual fuck. I don’t even have words for this bullshit.

Anyway, that’s obviously Calypso on the bottom. At the top is Hellspawn, a doppelganger of Matt created during Infinity War? I literally just had to look this up because large parts of Chichester’s run are incomprehensible and I honestly had no idea where he came from - I thought Calypso created him, but apparently not. Anyway, it’s during this plotline that Hellspawn encounters and becomes obsessed with Matt.

I’m skipping a lot here but I want to get into the meatier plot as opposed to the more episodic storylines, so we’re going to scoot ahead to “Fall from Grace,” which is what I used for the name of this post because it’s the most major event here. Again, this story falls under the category of “unnecessarily complicated Chichester nonsense riddled with cameos, crossovers, and incomprehensible McDaniel-scribbled fight scenes” and I’m not going to get into the details of it because...like. It’s such nonsense. Even the simplified version I’m about to share with you is going to make no sense. (I don’t hate Chichester, who I think writes a really interesting Karen, but his character stuff is much better than his confusing plots.)

SO. The plot revolves around a defunct, shady government program wherein they created a chemical called About Face that altered people’s appearances, put it in glass balls, and sent telepaths out to secretly drop the balls in heavily populated areas, where they would break and...change people’s faces??? It makes NO SENSE. One of the balls never broke, and the guy who broke it - a telepath named Eddie - ran away, horribly traumatized by his experience with the government, and has hidden as a street person for the past few decades.

Now it’s become clear to multiple interested parties that there’s one remaining ball of About Face somewhere in the subway system, and they’re all after Eddie to find out where it is. Matt discovers this and steps in to protect him:

What’s Eddie running from? Oh, just Hellspawn, and also maybe how veiny Matt’s chest is:

I’m concerned about your neck, Matthew.

While all this is going on, the Bugle is temporarily shut down because of *handwave* plot stuff, idk, but Ben freaks out because all of his in-progress articles are on the Bugle computers, which he now can’t access. He asks a Bugle intern named Sara to help him out:

omg those references

Unfortunately for Ben - and Matt - when Ben’s not looking, Sara stumbles across an unpublished article that Ben has idiotically saved to the Bugle server: the one he wrote about Matt being Daredevil, before he decided not to publish it. Oops!

Meanwhile, as we saw above, Matt’s classic suit has taken quite a beating, so he decides that he needs a tougher look:

Parts of it or armored, or the whole thing is, or something? Armor was very on-trend in the 90s. Anyway this is not a good sign, any time Matt is in black and it’s not Charlie Cox in skintight army surplus you know the story is going downhill.

Matt is so busy with Eddie and the virus and his new threads that he’s neglecting his day job, and Foggy has gotten tired of the same old patterns:

I find this page fascinating, because this arc is the only time it’s implied that Foggy knows Matt is Daredevil before, uh, Foggy officially finds out Matt is Daredevil. (And it’s made clear when that happens that he had no suspicion beforehand, so this aspect is dropped.) But also, Matt is being SUCH a dick here! “I’m responsible for more important things that you don’t know about”? If Foggy didn’t do your paperwork you wouldn’t be able to pay for that fancy armor, bucko. And you can’t lie to Foggy and then blame him for not knowing the truth.

Anyway I just love Foggy’s “Don’t forget your CANE” and Matt storming out and knocking a wastebasket over with his cane all “HOW DARE YOU I AM SUPER BLIND,” even if it never went anywhere. (Though Foggy does go talk to Karen after this and ask her to talk to Matt about...the other aspects of his life that he and Matt don’t talk about. So Karen gets involved in this dancing around the subject too.)

Meanwhile...*sigh* So. Okay. Remember how I said there were a bunch of people after the About Face virus? Well, they include government agents, bounty hunters, Hellspawn, A VAMPIRE, and the Hand. (The Chaste is bopping around here too, trying to stop the Hand.) The Hand sends an elite sect called the Snakeroot after About Face, plus these two:

This is sleazebag former SHIELD agent John Garrett, and Elektra’s “dark essence” Erynys. Garrett kind of explains their deal up there, but the short version is: after killing Elektra off in Daredevil, Miller still wanted to write her, so he did a miniseries called Elektra: Assassin. I’m not a fan of it, despite stunning art from Bill Sienkiewicz. We’ll see this next time, when I cover the Man Without Fear miniseries, but basically the more Miller wrote Elektra, the more he wrote her as sort of this fascinating, dangerous fetish object instead of as a person. Even though she’s ostensibly the star, Assassin is narrated by Garrett and is told through the lens of his fixation on her. It’s pretty gross.

Anyway, Elektra’s trying to stop a demon called the Beast from installing one of its pawns as president of the US (insert political commentary here), so she uses the psychic powers she occasionally has to get Garrett to help her. The story ends with her victorious and Garrett mostly cyborg parts, but now, during the Fall from Grace arc, the Hand is able to use the traces of Elektra left in Garrett’s mind from her possession of him to create Erynys, a separate being who embodies all that is dark and evil in Elektra. She wants About Face, which will enable her to be a full human being and not just an offshoot of Elektra.

Understandably, she’s a pretty upsetting figure for Matt to run across, especially since he thinks the REAL Elektra is still dead. (She’s not, as the reader knows.)

And that’s not the only bad news for Matt, because Bugle intern Sara has taken the story that Matt is Daredevil and gone to the tabloids:

Matt’s teeth are so dismayed!

Obviously Matt’s friends all see this story too, and Karen for one is not about to let it stand:

I LOVE NINETIES KAREN!!! She is so tired of men and their ridiculousness, she has shit to do and papers to throw! And again, Foggy’s still carefully talking around the whole thing, which I still find fascinating - but in the clinch, he’ll always be here to save Matt from himself.

Matt, meanwhile, has another shock waiting for him:

It’s Elektra! Bald Elektra! How very Sinead O’Connor.

(If you’ve forgotten, the Hand attempted to resurrect Elektra after she was killed by Bullseye and Matt was able to purify her soul with the power of his love (hence her white costumer), but thought the resurrection itself failed. She’s basically been meditating on a mountain ever since.)

While Elektra fills Matt in on where she’s been, Ben and Foggy team up to save Matt’s secret:

Sara basically ignores Foggy and his restraining order and barges past him and Ben with a camera crew to find...an ordinary apartment, filled with the kind of accommodations a blind man might need, like foam bumpers on the sharp edges of furniture and a Braille subway map. Humiliated, she departs.

Meanwhile, Matt and Elektra are still catching up as they try to keep anyone else from getting to About Face before they do:

If you can look away from Elektra’s weird seamless naked plank-butt there, basically she’s upset because she was finally at peace meditating up on that mountain (and also when she was dead) and now she has to, like, be alive and deal with the forces of evil and confront her own evil nature and UGH. Matt is not threatening to punch her there but reminding her of how much she loves punching??? Sure.

Despite all this embracing, Matt goes straight to Karen and tells her that Elektra’s back, but he knows who he really wants to be with:

WHEEZE! WHEEZE AGAINST EACH OTHER’S CHINS!!! No, seriously, despite the crappy art and the tiresome love triangle and the hilarious childishness of that crayon heart drawing, this is close to the healthiest Matt and Karen have ever been and I’m happy for them. I love their late 90s dynamic.

With Karen thoroughly kissed, Matt suits up again and heads back into the fray. (It’s important to note here that Karen doesn’t know a) about Matt’s new costume or b) about Ben and Foggy’s successful dismantling of the “Matt is Daredevil” story.) They finally find the About Face virus, and Hellspawn tries to take it to make himself...a real boy, I guess? A real demon boy? Idk.

Hellspawn uses the About Face, but Erynys kills him before he can do anything with it - and then Elektra kills her before she can use the About Face, thus reabsorbing Erynys’s evil into herself. Or something. THIS COMIC IS A MESS.

The weirdest aspect, though, is that in death, Hellspawn’s About Faced corpse turns to...Matt Murdock. He is an absolute spitting image of a dead Matt, which gives Matt an idea. Remember, Matt doesn’t know that his secret identity is a secret again, and as long as it’s out there, the people he cares about are in danger. Plus, like, Matt Murdock’s life is really hard and stuff?

So he bundles up the Mattcorpse and dumps it off at a police station or something, and Matt Murdock is declared 100% Dead and Probably Not Daredevil. Giving this story something of a downer ending:

If I’m not mistaken, this is the third time Matt has faked his death, counting Mike Murdock and that time he crashed a plane with a Matt dummy in it. MATT. WHY IS THIS A THING FOR YOU.

Anyway, tune in next time for a detour into the Frank Miller/John Romita, Jr. miniseries Daredevil: Man Without Fear, followed by Black Armor Matt making more bad decisions!

[shadowreigned]

perfect.

CHARACTERS: Nixon Henderson and Aspen Blake; and a brief cameo of Deacon Blue LOCATION: Manhattan, New York WARNINGS: Lots and lots and lots of fluff and soul-crushing adorableness WORD COUNT: 4,457 words

It had taken months.

However long, Nixon wasn’t sure, but it’d been months. Day after day, Nixon would drag his ass out of bed and press a kiss to Aspen’s sleeping frame, snap a photo on his phone and set it as his background, and head out for the gym. It was empty at three in the morning, so Nixon thrived — he enjoyed the comforts of knowing he could struggle without others watching him. When he came back from the gym he showered, dressed in casual clothing, and slipped noiselessly from his shared apartment.

That was where the lines blurred for the unmeasurable amount of days — on most days, Nixon was in the office, managing the business Aspen had purchased for him as a birthday present and on others, he stole Deacon and escaped to an empty warehouse on the outskirts of Manhattan. Once Aspen installed cameras in his building out of safety for his boyfriend, the sneaking out grew trickier, but Nixon had been planning this since December. A few cameras weren’t going to change his mind.

Really, despite the few road blocks, everything was perfect. It was exactly what Nixon had wanted. So far, everything had gone according to plan.

It might’ve taken months, but Nixon is finally where he wants to be. His spirits feel different, lifted, and the spark in his eyes that only used to appear once in a blue moon now burns bright on a daily basis. He buzzes with excitement. There’s nothing that’s going to get in the way of ruining his day.

It starts a little different than normal. Nixon and Aspen’s morning routine blends seamlessly together. It’s one of the rare days that Aspen wakes early, though Nixon is far from complaining. They kiss as they shower together. Nixon dresses for work before he helps Aspen with his tie. He has some important meeting today, and while Nixon would love to join him and be his personal guidance, he’s got his own stuff to worry about at the shop that he can’t sweep under the rug. He presses a kiss to Aspen’s lips for good luck, pats his ass for even more, and heads out the door with a cheerful I love you.

It should be another day at work. At least, half of it is. He spends four hours tattooing a client, a couple odd thirty minutes piercing some eager teenagers, and another sorting files in his office. When he’s finished with that, he gathers his stuff and slips sunglasses on his head. He sends Deacon a smile as he lingers around the receptionist desk, gaze alive as he watches him doodle on a piece of paper. If he wasn’t the boss of him, Deacon probably would’ve been yelled at by now.

“How are you feeling?” Deacon asks, looking up from the paper. Nixon doesn’t need to ask that he’s drawing Sasha, his Russian rocker boyfriend. Since Nixon introduced them, they’ve been all over each other in the softest of ways. He thinks it’s adorable — and honestly, refreshing — that Deacon has placed his affections on someone other than him.

The last thing he wants is for Aspen to attack Deacon over a few flirty (and totally unreciprocated) comments. He’s done so for less.

Deacon asks again and this time he gives his friend a raise of his brows. Nixon shifts on his feet. It’s not common for him to be nervous in public like this. He rubs the back of his neck as he tries to think of a good answer to Deacon’s question. Anxious doesn’t quite best describe how he feels, so he settles with a shrug of his shoulders and hums out instead.

“I don’t know,” he says truthfully. “I… I hope it goes well. I mean, I know it’s going to be great, but I’m still… nervous. What if something goes wrong?”

“It’s going to be fine, Nix. You’ve prepped for months. You don’t have anything to be nervous for. How many times have we gone over it?” Too many times. Deacon smiles. They both know the answer to that. He checks the clock before he looks up at Nixon and nods his head towards the door. “It’s 12:30. You don’t want to be late.”

Nixon continues to rock on his feet despite the well-wishes. He needs to get home so he can change. “Yeah… Yeah, I know. Thanks, Blue-Skadoo.” They share a knowing look before Nixon announces his absence for the rest of the day to his employees. His walk towards his apartment is a quiet, contemplative one.

It nears four o'clock when Aspen twists the knob to their apartment. Nixon runs his fingers through his dry hair and shakes off the weird feeling of wearing a shower cap. He stands with a towel around his waist, and Aspen catches him as he walks into their bedroom, fingers quick to loosen the buttons on his shirt.

“Hey,” Nix greets, feeling his heart jump in his throat. Aspen has an incredible power to render him weak in a matter of seconds, and it never fails no matter how often they’re around each other. His boyfriend’s gaze lingers on the trail of hair that disappears beneath the towel, his defined abs, the v-line that he loves to compliment. When Aspen snaps his gaze back up, Nixon blushes.

“You’re home early.” Nix doesn’t have time to smile back with a ’no hello?’ because Aspen presses against him, suit and all, and nuzzles their noses together. While Aspen smells like cologne, Nixon smells like cinnamon. Aspen’s scent is familiar, warm, and Nixon kisses him softly, one peck to his lips and next to his nose. Aspen looks at him, concerned. “Did something happen at work?”

He’s referring to two things — the shower and leaving early. It’s been a long while since Nixon’s taken a compulsive shower to scrub himself raw of any negative feelings, but he doesn’t doubt that Aspen’s mind jumps to that conclusion. They showered that morning, and it’s only one o’clock. Nixon shakes his head. He doesn’t need Aspen to worry about him more than he already does, even if there’s nothing really wrong.

“I took a half day today. Is that okay, Mr. Blake?” His stomach flutters as he teases him, pressing a kiss to Aspen’s lips. Every time Aspen smiles, his knees grow weak. It’s a smile just for him. Nixon pushes on and nudges their noses together, playful. “I am the boss, after all.”

It gets a laugh out of Aspen. The sound fills Nixon and encases him in warmth. “No, I’m the boss of you and everyone else in this state. You have it switched.”

“I think…” Nixon hums, contemplative. “I think you like me being the boss of you. Sometimes, at least… Right?”

He watches Aspen’s gaze dance over love marks along his chest, his arms, his abs. He might not be into PDA, but he makes up for that fact in private, when he makes it his mission to leave as many coverable marks on Nixon as possible. They share a smile as Nixon feels a touch against his cheek. Nixon leans against the softness of Aspen’s palm and closes his eyes until he feels a pair of lips against his neck.

The hard part is that he wants to give in. He wants to more than anything, but he steps back and shakes his head. No. It’s a word that Nixon has a hard time saying to him. The pout on Aspen’s lips makes it that much harder.

“I want to take you somewhere.“ Nixon explains softly, cupping Aspen’s cheeks in both hands. He loves how warm his boyfriend is. Even if he complains about it all the time, he wouldn’t wish for him to drop to a normal temperature. Through all the complaints, the pushing, the whining during the middle of the summer, Aspen wouldn’t be Aspen without his heat. And, secretly, Nixon loves the heat.

Despite the explanation, Aspen pushes. His fingers toy with the towel around Nixon’s waist, and it takes all of his willpower not to react, not to press Aspen into the wall behind them and take him hard, deep, until Aspen’s screaming. Nixon blows out a shallow breath as he listens to the tease of Aspen’s tone. “You can take me on the bed… In the kitchen… In the living room… On our dining table… Right up against this wall…”

His fingers dip lower. Nixon closes his eyes and rolls his head back, hands on Aspen’s wrists to stop him. He releases his hold when Aspen focuses his full attention back up to his eyes and not the areas of his body covered by the towel. “As much as I would love to,” he sighs, a strain to his voice. “We can’t be late. Not this time.”

There’s confusion in Aspen’s gaze. Nixon smiles and presses a kiss to his lips. “Help me pick out a shirt.” It’s a distraction, and one that he knows will win Aspen over. He nips at Aspen’s bottom lip, gaze hungry but controlled. It’s a surprise that his voice is steady, but it needs to be. If he lets Aspen know he’d fuck him right then and there, they’ll never arrive to where they need to be. “I’ll make you a deal. After tonight, I’ll fuck you for as long as you want, anywhere you want, however you want. I’ll suck your thighs for hours if you want me to. Sound good, baby?”

Hook, line, and sinker. Aspen parts his lips in desire, and he nods, sucking in a sharp breath. Before he can say anything more, Nixon detaches from Aspen’s warmth and moves to their closet, pulling out two pressed shirts.

"Which one?” He asks, gentle smile on his lips. Between a red button up and black, Nixon   knows which one he’ll undoubtedly pick.

Aspen doesn’t give it a second thought. “Red.”

It symbolizes so much between them. Nixon nods, acts like he was perplexed about the choice, before he puts the black shirt back where it belongs. As Nixon pulls on briefs and a pair of slacks, Aspen leans against the wall, watching him.

“Where are we going?” He asks. Nixon shakes his head yet again. He thinks the amount of times Aspen is being told no will infuriate him, but all Aspen does is huff and pout. Nixon grins to himself. That wouldn’t happen with others. If anyone else told Aspen no, he’d have their head on a stake. He pouts further. “Why can’t you tell me?”

Nixon smiles knowingly, all too aware that Aspen hates being out of the loop, especially when it comes to him. “Top secret,” Nixon tells him while he reaches for the shirt. He slips it on easily and works on the buttons. Aspen’s pout slips as he watches him. “Any information I say could jeopardize everything, so it’s sealed tight for now.”

He knows the wheels are turning in Aspen’s head, and as much as he wants to spill about what he’s been working on for the past four months, he can’t bring himself to say it. Showing Aspen would be better, so when he’s dressed, he motions for the bathroom and points to his hair, unkempt and curly and a downright disaster. Shower caps are not his friend.

“You’re styling it?” Aspen asks as he’s handed a gel container. He hums in deep contemplation before he dips his fingers in. He works on Nixon’s hair with skilled precision, having done it a thousand times on his own hair. Nixon, on the other hand, never gels his hair. “It must be important.” He really has no idea. Aspen admires his handiwork through the mirror as he washes his hands when he’s done, and glances briefly down at his suit. “Should I change, too?”

Nixon shakes his head. “You’re perfect.” He presses a kiss of thanks to Aspen’s temple. “Let me know when you’re ready.”

It doesn’t take long. Aspen sits in the passenger seat of a dark sports car, anxiously looking out of the windows as if the place will pop up out of nowhere. Nixon can tell he doesn’t want to appear so, but the sparks that emit from his fingers are a dead giveaway. Nixon places a hand on Aspen’s thigh after he shifts. The car surges forward at the shift change, engine rumbling like a beast around them.

People stare. It’s not the first time they’ve gawked at the expensive all-black automobile, but it’s the first time that Nixon actually cares. He doesn’t want anything fucking up this day.

They’re smack in the heart of Manhattan, celebrities mingling around shops worth more than people’s yearly income, clutching designer purses and wearing designer heels. After ten more minutes, Nixon pulls into an off-street and greets the valet as he puts the car into park. Both doors are opened, Nixon steps out without struggle, and hands the keys off without a worry. He catches Aspen watching. He must not know what to think of anything — or maybe he’s sizing up the valet driver who whistles in admiration for both the car and the owner.

Nixon shakes his head, and distracts Aspen from beating the guy to a bloody pulp. They walk side by side to the back of a building. Nixon produces a key and pushes the door open like he’s done it a million times, and ignores the fact that he has.

It’s perfect.

Aspen follows him inside, and now that they’re alone, he laces their fingers together. “What’s with the key?” He nods his head towards Nixon’s front pocket as he slips the key inside. Before Nixon can get a word in, Aspen’s expression darkens. “Don’t tell me it’s top secret. This isn’t Area 51.”

He must be dying to know. Nixon smiles sweetly and pulls him close. For all you know, it could be, he wants to say, but he holds his tongue. The assumption of a fancy dinner date is clearly out the window, as their footsteps echo in the white hallway. “Be patient,” he tells Aspen. It’s hypocritical, seeing as how Nixon can barely wait for anything. He squeezes their clasped hands like it’ll appease the growing curiosity Aspen harbors. “It’ll be worth it.”

Aspen wants to ask ’will it?’ but must think twice about his words because he stays quiet. They linger by a door, Nixon’s hand on the knob. “Close your eyes.” His command is gentle. Aspen keeps his eyes open.

“Did you take me to some crazy sex dungeon?“ The question comes out calm, but Nixon can tell he’s a flurry of emotions — nervous, excited, curious. He is, too. Nixon rocks on his heels, but just barely, and catches himself before he can give away the intensity of his nerves. It doesn’t matter, really. Aspen can hear how hard his heart is beating.

No wonder he thinks it’s a sex dungeon.

"No,” Nixon laughs. He can’t tell if Aspen is disappointed or relieved. He tries again. “Close your eyes, baby.”

Aspen does as he’s told. With their hands still laced, Nixon pushes open the door and steps into the brightly lit room. They’re standing in the middle of what Nixon thinks is his biggest accomplishment. He lets go of Aspen’s hand and can measure the heavy rise and fall of his chest as anticipation prickles at his skin.

Nixon wipes a sweaty palm at his slacks, and tells Aspen to open his eyes. And then he watches the awe that fills Aspen’s face as he takes everything in.

It’s bright from the floor to ceiling windows stationed in the front, and natural sunlight pours through the tinted glass. It’s spacious. They’re stationed in an open concept room, with walls that separate the other smaller “rooms” from each other. Sleek, black tile is underneath their feet, and it shines as speckles of silver catch the sunlight. The place is beautiful yet simple, and exactly what Nixon wanted.

That isn’t what Aspen stares at.

His eyes glue to the perfectly aligned artwork along the walls, and then to the black plaques directly below them. There’s at least six paintings in this small room, and more in the others. Some are bright, some are dark, and some are an array of colors that don’t quite resemble anything at all. Aspen turns towards Nixon as he realizes the connecting factor.

“You painted these?”

It hangs in the air, thick but full of pride. Nixon shuffles nervously on his feet. He can’t stop a blush that creeps on his cheeks, his neck, and he bites on his bottom lip before he gestures to one of the plaques. He doesn’t need to answer Aspen’s question. They both know he did. “Read them.”

Aspen does. He steps to the nearest one and reluctantly tears his gaze from the piece above it. A cityscape with bright colors covers the canvas. Aspen reads it aloud, accent clinging to his tongue. “Los Angeles; 2011.” He looks at the next one. The Big Ben stares at him, bursts of red leaping from the painting. He sucks in a breath. “London; 2010.”

Nixon can’t find his voice until Aspen turns back towards him, nothing but pride on his beautiful features. He thinks he’s going to pass out from how nervous he is. “They’re paintings of my past,” he explains and points to a few of them. They travel into one of the other rooms. Some of the paintings are darker in here. “Of places I’ve been or wanted to be. People I’ve met in passing or people I love. Small things that caught my eye back when I was still a teenager.”

It feels like a lifetime ago. Aspen laces his fingers with his and waits for Nixon to fully come back to reality before he says, “This is your gallery.”

He nods. “In a few hours, this place is going to be packed with potential buyers for all of these. When we went to California, I asked my mom if she could ship some of the paintings I’d done in high school.” Aspen’s lips part in a second realization. “She kept some of them from me after I came back, scared I would destroy them. The others were put in storage. I used to hate that she hid them, but now I’m glad she did. I would’ve burned them if I’d known where they were.”

It’s hard enough admitting that on his own, let alone to the man next to him. After he came back to the States, painting didn’t exist to him. Any time he picked up a paintbrush, he’d have panic attacks. He couldn’t even fingerpaint. The canvases for those few years were destroyed each and every time, ashamed at his lack of ability to conquer his biggest nightmare. Getting rid of these paintings is like a new start for him. With all traces of his teenage life gone, Nixon can focus completely on the future.

Aspen can’t contain his smile. His eyes shine as he pulls Nixon down for a kiss. “I’m so proud of you.” He repeats it, again and again, until Nixon feels like he’s floating.

He remembers why he brought Aspen to his gallery early. Detangling himself from his boyfriend, Nixon clasps onto his hand and strokes his cheek with his other. “There’s something else.”

“More?” His tone easily tells him that he’s excited. Aspen looks around them. They’ve seen all there is to see, and his brows squish in confusion at Nixon’s statement. “Where?”

Nixon thinks his legs are going to turn to jelly as he nods again. The butterflies in his stomach are killing him, and a positive anxiety floods his chest as he leads Aspen away from the front of the gallery. He pauses at another door. Aspen stares at it, still confused. “We just came this way.”

Nixon laughs, and produces another key. “Not this way,” he says, like his hand doesn’t shake as he twists the knob and guides Aspen inside.

He flicks on a light, and stays pinned to his spot as Aspen gasps, putting a hand to his mouth. All around them are more paintings, but they’re different than the others. These have been painted recently. Without black plaques underneath them, it’s up to the onlooker’s imagination to describe what it is. For Aspen, he doesn’t need any of them.

“Nixon.” His voice is shaky — thick.

Nixon wonders if he’ll pass out first, or if Aspen will. The anxiety in his chest explodes as Aspen takes a step further into the room, dress shoes pressing against rose petals on the tile. Neither pay attention to it, too focused on the artwork in front of them.

He doesn’t need to look at his paintings to have them etched into his brain, photographic memory or not. Hyperrealistic is his specialty, and he’s made it his mission to pour detail into each and every one of them. They don’t look like paintings; they look like photographs.

Five giant canvases demand the most attention.

Between the larger canvases, sprinkles of smaller ones are spaced chronologically from the five. They capture flashes of images, of random cityscapes and unfocused faces and random objects that, otherwise, would hold no meaning to anyone else. To Aspen, they mean everything. A red string further ties all of them together, weaving over and circling and pinning to the larger pieces, starting from the first oversized canvas. From the last painting, the string continues off in a straight line until it disappears, no paintings attached to it.

Aspen turns towards the first painting.

A beach is the main image — beautiful, soft hues of blue and green, white, speckles of brown in the sand. The sun sets and showcases an incredible sunset of purples and pinks and reds. Below the sky a couple sit, blanket wrapped securely around them as they stare up at the sunset. They’re cuddled together. The smaller’s tones are darker, a great contrast to the one who holds him. The words France; 1932 are written in the sand.

Aspen looks at the second, but Nixon can’t catch his expression.

A black and white portrait, but not quite. Amidst couples who celebrate in elegant dresses and pinstriped suits, the couple at the center stand in screaming color. Her dress is emerald, pearls tight along her neckline. Blonde hair weaves to make an elaborate updo, held together by more pearls. Holding her close is a male, and even though his face is obscured as he kisses her, it’s easy to tell who the face belongs to. His hair is styled impeccably, and the suit he has on outdoes the rest of the men in the room with them. A soft glow of gold shines from their embrace. The banner along the staircase reads New York; 1955.

Nixon watches with a tight breath as Aspen moves to the third.

This painting is a little different than the others, but it’s still just as impressive. Two men hold each other in a tight embrace, red shining from the one on the left and blue shining from the one on the right. While they’re human, they’re also something a little bigger than that — the respective Virgo and Aquarius signs are displayed through their clothing, their skin, their accessories. Where the blue and red meet, purple bursts. A newspaper clutched in the Virgo’s hand is weathered and crumpled, like it’d been opened hundreds of times. The headline screams California; 1963.

The fourth.

His personal favorite. Nixon tries not to think of all the times he had to work and re-work on it as Aspen finally drops his hand from next to his mouth and wipes it on his slacks.

It’s the simplest painting in the room, but the one with most detail. A boy with dark blue eyes and raven-colored hair smiles with pink on his cheeks. He’s covered head to toe in black clothing, clunky boots on his feet. The little skin that is shown details tattoos along his neck and knuckles. The red string connecting the pictures together wraps around his pinky and ties with another tattooed pinky. The taller boy shows a similar smile and similar cheeks, only he has dimples and he doesn’t have tattoos on his face. They simply hold hands and bask in each other’s company. New York; 2016.

Nixon trembles as he studies the way Aspen’s gaze flickers from the fourth painting to the fifth. The last big canvas is faceless in black and white. A couple stands with arms around each other. The red string is wrapped heavily around them, acting like it holds them together. Around their bodies is a silk banner that they each hold up. ‘Forever yours’ in Italian is written in script on the banner, splatters of red dashed across the material of the canvas. The red is the only pop of color in the entire painting, but it stands out sharp against the crisp white and harsh black. No date or location is anywhere on the painting.

Nixon knows because he watches as Aspen searches for it.

His hands shake as his boyfriend admires the paintings in front of him again. A comfortable silence stretches and encases them in the moment. He sucks in a shaky, inaudible breath.

Nixon pulls the black box from his back pocket. He falls, slow, to one knee.

Aspen turns with tears in his eyes. His face grows red when he finds Nixon on his knee.

Nixon has the box open and ready for him. Aspen lets out a choked noise as he stares at the ring. Black. Smooth. Incredibly simple. Compared to the rest of Aspen’s gold jewelry, this ring will stand out the most.

“Aspen Blake…” Nixon swallows a lump in his throat. His voice chokes up as tears swim in his own eyes. He’s unable to look away from Aspen, even as they both tremble for the best yet to come. Aspen appears ready to scream yes! with the vigor of a thousand burning suns, but he stands immobile, speechless, blue eyes wide and shining with all the love and trust anyone could ever carry. Nixon feels his heart leap as he looks up at the love of his life. Without Aspen, Nixon doesn’t want to know where he’d be. Without Aspen, his life would be dull. Without Aspen, he’d never feel complete. Without Aspen, he wouldn’t find home. Nixon smiles and gazes up at the man who makes it easier to breathe and easier to live. Aspen is, undoubtedly, the love of his life and the man of his dreams. “Aspen Blake, will you marry me?”

[freykugel]

I finally finished Suikoden III. And it was a huge stressful labor. Not even a labor of love. More like obligation? I was on a Suikoden high because I absolutely adore the first two games. And I’m a very forgiving person because if one aspect of the game is absolutely stellar I will move mountains to complete it. But SIII felt like work. I was getting tired. I literally was watching youtube videos of other things 70% of the game. I just really wanted to see if I’d appreciate it more now than I did when I first played it.

Because when I first completed it in like... 2010? I dunno. I had plenty of time. I just needed to go in order of release. Back then it was like just a lukewarm response. Eh it was okay now I can play Suikoden V.

And replaying it now I can’t understand how people love this game.

First off, the music. The music is absolutely lackluster. It’s mildly quirky at best and obnoxiously awful at worst. I don’t understand. Miki Higashino composed a beautiful and iconic soundtrack for the first two games and gave me high expectations. And I hear the Castlevania Symphony of the Night composer did a good chunk of it? But it’s all either so forgettable, awful, or just plain unfitting. I know there are a few duds in the first two game soundtracks but it kept me pumped up. It kept me interested. It made the game move fast. BUT NOT THIS ONE. One of the worst battle themes I’ve ever heard. The life blood of JRPGs is usually in the beautiful music but NOT THIS ONE. I’ve read how people gush over Duck Village and Vinay del Zexay BG music and I’m just--... Your taste is not my taste and that’s okay but the OST does not make me want to play.

Which made it so much more slow and awkward when the music actually LOWERS THE VOLUME DURING CUTSCENES. There’s no voice acting so why the fuck are they lowering the volume?! I don’t fucking understand. It makes it quiet/silent and slow moving. At the very least keep the music BLARING I DON’T FUCKING CARE HOW AWFUL IT IS don’t soften the music because they’re talking. This infuriated me like what the hell ass kind of logic was that?

But continuing on the music train, there is so much back tracking. The majority of the game is just repetitive trekking through the same goddamn forests and towns. Like I said the random encounters and backtracking would be mildly better with a kickass battle theme. But since it’s fucking awful this is made to be an infinitely more arduous chore. I know you can’t just pick and choose location points because it would make Viki irrelevant but FUCKING HELL. My blood pressure goes up just remembering it. Oh I’m out of money I have to fight treasure bosses. Except I’m at Lake Castle and the next location I have to go to is at Mountain Pass. ALL THE WAY ACROSS THE MAP. And the Mt Pass itself is fucking long with a winding path. FUCK. Viki’s presence was waaaay to short in the game. And yeah, she can only show up in chapter 4 because you can’t just have her teleport just one perspective character and no one else. And with no Blinking Mirror you’d still have to slog your way back home. GODDAMN.

Speaking of battle music, the battle system is obnoxious too. You can tell me all about how it brings an added strategic feature to it, like you pair up your melee and magic user so that your melee fighter can tank while your magic user drops their nuke. But fuck that, what if I want to use all six magical nukes. Nope can’t do that. And like what if I wanted Aila to use her Shield Rune while the rest of the group do their SFDF Unite attack? Nope.

And once upon a time I actually preferred the SIII war system because it gave me much more control over the characters. Flash forward to 2017. Nope. Nooooope. I spent more than a couple days with the small free time I had level grinding my fodder characters and raising their weapon levels so they won’t DIE in battle. But Frey, if your time is precious why didn’t you just stop playing? Well it’s tied into the Luc portion of the rant so hold on a moment.

Quick point to say FUCK THE FIXED CAMERA. I kept going back to the previous room or got stuck behind obstacles while I watched ANYTHING ELSE MORE INTERESTING THAN THIS.

Okay now we get into the story portion of the rant. I get what they were trying to do. I really do. I understand splitting the perspectives in three meant there’s going to be repetitive scenes. I understand they were trying to convey the greys of war and shit. BUT IT’S SUCH A WASTE OF TIME. I have already seen this let me skip. What did it add? Nothing only that the one perspective character missed out on some context. 

I do really like Chris and Geddoe less so but he’s okay. Unfortunately Hugo is the odd duck out so to speak. His story is short, boring, and doesn’t really add more to the context. It’s just a kid doing a job, he gets chased, his bestie gets killed, sees the baddies, and canonically he gets chosen to be the Flame Champion. And me being a stickler for canon always choose him to be FC because narratively it makes more sense for Chris to receive True Water from her father and Geddoe keep his True Lightning. But Hugo. Did. Nothing. To. Deserve. It. Like Tir gets shit tossed at him from the beginning and it was awful to have. Riou was forced into a battle against his best friend. Hugo? Rrrr Ironheads and shit.

Which is sad because his mom, Lucia, is the best character ever. Best mom.

Thomas I do actually adore. His chapters were a lovely break. But it could be because they’re short.

Hugo’s FC speech was awful. As charismatic as a slice of bread. Who the fuck can he unite. Nobody. Zexens and Grasslanders and everything in between. There’s so much bad blood between them and Hugo just whips out a few trite Shounen Manga words and then BAM they’re united? Awful awful. I don’t know what Chris or Geddoe say but I can’t imagine that they’d be any better.

I mean, to be fair, in SI and SII the protagonists were silent so they couldn’t even do a speech, but at least you could sort of fill in the blanks. Plus they had a beautiful supporting cast who were strong enough to create a charged atmosphere. Especially with the likes of Viktor and Flik. Here in SIII everyone is just mildly interesting or shitty. There’s no one really who was like FUCK YEAH and truly engaged the army or the player. Just. Mild.

Also let me just say Lulu pissed me off.I know he’s a kid but Louis literally bumped into him and said, “Oh excuse me. Pardon me.” And Lulu goes off on a racist rant about FUCKING IRONHEADS. Like I know you’re a kid and you’ve been raised like this but RNGESUS PLEASE he apologized after accidentally knocking you over. 

Caesar, boy, what a useless tactician haha. Everything he told you to do was common sense. And Albert? I hate Albert too. He makes me uncomfortable in the same way Lucretia did in SV in that he’s so omniscient about everything. Like the entire game was him setting up the dominoes and in the end knocking them down. Plus the ending blurbs on Caesar like, “All your efforts were for nothing el-oh-el because your bro was always one step ahead.”

Apple what the hell ass are your cameos. 

Jimba’s reveal as Chris’ father was terrible and unexplored.

Yun’s self sacrifice for the ritual left no impact. I have no idea why she left such a mark on Chris that she’s referred to in the ending blurbs. I don’t get it.

Okay now for the elephant in the room. Luc. I’ll be honest. I think I played through this entire fucking game because the fandom is enamored with Luc. And maybe it’s because I’m fucking old but I don’t understand it at all. Yeah, he had a semi-permanent spot in my party in SI and SII because of his powerful magic and it was less likely to fail. But what the fuck happened in SIII. In the first two games he was a shit head. He’s a jerk who dropped a golem on you in the first game for funsies and only stuck around because Leknaat told him to. He’s a petulant brat who only bothered to reveal his True Wind Rune because it was piss off Sasarai. But then in SIII all of a sudden he’s a tormented thirty year old man angsting about his existence and the visions he’s supposedly seeing about absolute order and silence. So he goes off to... destroy his Rune and soul so that Hirusaak can’t get all 27? What??? Am I missing something????? Like I would find the entire plot of SIII believable if his characterizations from the first two games were anywhere near close to the one in SIII. Except it’s not? All of a sudden he slam dunked himself into his emo phase? He’s not even acting like a shit lord? Just Crawling in my skin these wounds they will not heal. I don’t get it. Even after playing the Luc extra bonus chapter. Especially after playing it. Just LET’S SPARK A WAR BETWEEN TWO COUNTRIES TRYING TO SETTLE A PEACE TREATY SO WE CAN ENTICE HARMONIA INTO INVADING AND GRAB ALL THE TRUE ELEMENTAL RUNES. I just. What. I’m having such a difficult time just wrapping my mind around this idiot plot ball. Remember the bit where he was like JOIN ME HUGO/FC. SEE THE VISIONS YOU WILL BE TORMENTED WITH AS A TRUE RUNE HOLDER. Bluuuuh. I don’t know. I just don’t.

I didn’t bother with the plays. I didn’t bother with the baths. I didn’t even bother trying to get the Golden Hammer. Which is sad because I discovered new things with the older games when I replayed them. Cook-offs? Bath toys? Wow I just zoomed past them the first time around. But I was ready to be wash my hands of SIII. It’s not for me. I don’t understand the fandom.I don’t understand the love. But you do you and if you happen to adore the game that’s cool. But that’s not where I’m at.

I might have been super forgiving and loving towards this game if it were infinitely shorter. Like, SI definitely has its problems. You can’t sprint without a Holy Rune, the inventory system was fucked, and so many characters are such bullshit (I am the Window Man I live and breath windows here let me swap them out for you.). Even SII like Nanami I love her but I also hate her what the fuck Nanami why would you fake your death and hurt your brother like that. And all those bugs I GAVE YOU TWO SPINACH SEEDS WHY DID IT DISAPPEAR. But SI was short and sweet and SII had beautiful pixel graphics and popping characters. SIII had awkward bulky graphics, terrible music, and it DRAGGED ON FOREVER. Literally over 70 hours. I wasted 70 hours of my life. I can’t get them back. I just wanted to refresh my memory of it.

This was all my fault I know. I just wanted to rant.

Let me just say one good thing was that I do really like the added skills. It added an extra layer in creating a diverse team. Also with Support Characters I get extra help from NPCs who would otherwise just rot in HQ.

Okay I’m done.

[dweemeister]

The Journey of Natty Gann (1985)

Almost a hundred years after the United States started settling its West, most of the land west of the Mississippi River remained “untamed” by humans. Today, much of the American West still has humans at the mercy of nature. Jeremy Kagan’s The Journey of Natty Gann sees a young, tomboyish girl that endures some of nature’s harshness in her long westward adventure – eventually finding peace with it and surviving. This one of the strongest films from one of the worst decades for Walt Disney Studios; yet the film is all but forgotten. In the years after Walt Disney’s death, the studio that bears his name attempted to make live-action films within the family-friendly confines that Disney himself established, yet making these newer films appeal to contemporary audiences. That tricky balancing act has continued into the present day, yet few have ever succeeded to the extent Natty Gann does.

It is 1935 in Chicago. Sol Gann (Ray Wise) lives in an aging apartment complex with his fifteen-year-old daughter Natalie Sue/“Natty” (Meredith Salenger). It seems as if he has been unemployed for some time, but soon finds a job in Washington state as a lumberjack thanks to the Works Progress Administration (WPA). The catch: he must leave on a bus for the Pacific Northwest immediately. Once he arrives home, Sol is unable to find his child anywhere. Considering his financial desperation, he leaves a note for Natty and arranges for the landlord, Connie (Lainie Kazan), to be a temporary guardian. Connie disapproves of Natty, and circumstances will force Natty to leave Chicago on her own. While traveling west on foot, by train, and automobiles, she will save and befriend a wolfdog from a dogfighting organization and meet a young man named Harry (John Cusack).

The Journey of Natty Gann marks the final on-screen appearance of dancer/singer/actor Scatman Crothers (the voice of Hong Kong Phooey, 1970′s The Aristocats, 1980′s The Shining), who appears in a brief role.

There is no denying that Natty Gann is as sentimental a movie as it sounds. It presents itself as a family film but does not see the need to sugarcoat everything: the dogfighting scene is more violent than expected, we are shown a few instances of a worried Sol calling a prevaricating Connie about his missing daughter, and Natty must fend off someone heavily implied to be a pedophile. Screenwriter Jeanne Rosenberg (1979′s The Black Stallion, 1991′s White Fang… yes, she specializes in animal movies) turns the film into part animal movie, part coming-of-age - when the film concentrates on the latter, it is at its best. This is because Natty is a street-smart Chicagoan who knows how to navigate life in a big city. But when tossed into wilderness without anyone to fall back upon, she retools her sense of resourcefulness and inner courage to suit her passing surroundings. Never despairing, a quiet go-getter by nature, always retaining some shred of optimism within but – unlike many Disney female characters – in touch with her anger, Natty is wonderfully portrayed by Salenger as one of the least Disney-esque female protagonists. It helps to have the Disney label, but The Journey of Natty Gann is an excellent film for youngsters who can take some of the film’s violence.

A sorta-first romance occurs with John Cusack’s character of Harry, but so little is made of this and so underdeveloped is their emotional connection that it seems like just another throwaway subplot in the film’s final third. Cusack, whose career was just beginning and had starred in Sixteen Candles (1984) and Better Off Dead (1985), is like a teenage Humphrey Bogart mixed with a teenage James Cagney (in his non-gangster roles) in this film – even though he does not appear in Natty Gann long, it should be of great interest to his fans.

One cannot ignore the other half of the film, as it is also a decent animal movie. Walt Disney Pictures has a long history of making live-action animal films from Old Yeller (1957) to various incarnations of The Incredible Journey (1963) and others, the studio has produced plenty in that subgenre – even if they might not be the most artistic movies ever made, there is no denying their enjoyability or emotional hold on audiences. To its credit, Natty Gann leaves its wolfdog protagonist as more of an open question, an unpredictable and fickle (like nature itself) aspect of the story that takes his time to warm up to Natty. Trust and understanding is not developed instantaneously, and the relationship between Natty and the wolfdog progresses as she comes closer to reuniting with her father. The film concentrates on Natty, not the wolfdog who never receives a proper name other than “Wolf”.

The canine actor here is a wolf-malamute named Jed. Born in 1977, Jed appeared in four films: a cameo in 1982′s The Thing, The Journey of Natty Gann, and White Fang and its 1994 sequel. His owner-trainer was Clint Rowe, who has trained animals for movies and television for more than thirty years. Ferocious though he might be at first, he wins over Natty’s and the audience’s affections as the film concludes.

From the film’s beginning in Chicago until its closing minutes, this is one of the prettiest films ever photographed with Disney. Cinematographer Dick Bush outdoes himself (1979′s Yanks, 1982′s Victor Victoria) in a setting – because of his British background – he has little experience with. The North American outdoors, as I have already waxed upon earlier, are unlike anything else in the world and often becomes a character of its own when Hollywood movies warrant it. Shot in various places along the route of the BC Rail (westward from Prince George to Vancouver) in Canada, Bush – when the action slows down – captures enormous panoramas of the forests, mountains, and waterways to trumpet the immense scope of Natty’s journey. During more intimate moments (like to emphasize the lack of space in the Chicago apartment complex Natty and Sol live out of), Bush’s camera lingers on conversations without gimmicks – and assisted by a lack of unnecessary editing by David Holden (1979′s The Warriors, 1980′s The Long Riders). And in moments of peril, the camera keeps the action within the entirety of the frame, rather than fragmenting it as it happens too often in contemporary films.

There is nothing more traumatic for a film score composer than when one has composed an entire score for an upcoming project, only to have it entirely tossed out and be replaced with another composer’s work. This trend increased in major Hollywood studios once the old Studio System disintegrated. For Natty Gann, Elmer Bernstein (1956′s The Ten Commandments, 1960′s The Magnificent Seven) submitted a score, rewrote it once, edited some of the cues after the second rejection, but ultimately was dismissed from the film. The already-established, but young, James Horner (1982′s Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan, 1989′s Glory) came in. Horner’s score recalls the works of Aaron Copland in its musical expanse – Americana music replete with optimistic woodwinds and free-flowing strings. Later in his career, Horner’s compositions for Americana would incorporate tragic motifs like in Legends of the Fall (1994), so Natty Gann represents Horner at his most adventurous and clear-eyed for a film sent in the West. Influences from Copland’s Rodeo appear in cues like “Into Town” (and would be replicated for Horner’s work in 1991′s An American Tail: Fievel Goes West). The final minutes of the film are blessed with two cues – “Farewell” and “Reunion/End Title” – which encapsulate all the emotion building to the only ending that this movie could entertain. It is excellent work from a young James Horner.

To appreciate The Journey of Natty Gann in all its scenic beauty, do not purchase the 2004 DVD/VHS release. That home media edition employs pan-and-scan – a bastardized method of video presentation meant for square televisions, but chops off chunks of the film’s imagery. For a proper letterboxed experience, all editions of Natty Gann legally streaming are presented in the correct format. This review, based on the March 29 airing on Turner Classic Movies’ (TCM) Treasures from the Disney Vault bloc, has been written on the letterboxed version.

Today, Disney is approaching a time where a majority of its live-action/hybrid films are remakes or reimaginings of its animated classics. Longtime readers will notice, thanks to TCM’s periodic bloc, has featured many live-action Disney titles from yesteryear not based on any pre-existing Disney property. Where have lower-mid and mid-budget original films like The Journey of Natty Gann gone? 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea (1954) this is not, nor is it trying to be. In that wonderful modesty, set amidst beautiful landscapes, verdant forests, and shimmering rivers, The Journey of Natty Gann – along with another film with wolves, Never Cry Wolf (1983) – is one of the best Disney films of the 1980s, and ranks comfortably in the studio’s top tier of live-action films.

My rating: 7.5/10

^ Based on my personal imdb rating. Half-points are always rounded down. My interpretation of that ratings system can be found here.

[thegleerealworld-blog]

Welcome to The Real World house, AUTUMN! We are very excited to have BRODY WESTON here at the Real World house. Don’t forget to send in your account within 24 hours and make sure to re-read the rules and check out the navigation so you know what tags to track! We can’t wait for you to join us.

BEHIND THE SCENES:

Name: Autumn. Age: 24. Timezone: EST. Activity Level: 6/10, I work looong hours during the week, so I can only get on at night, but I have free weekends so I can be around a lot on those. Previous Accounts: Removed for privacy. Triggers: Removed for privacy. Anything else?: Removed for privacy.

READY, SET, ACTION:

Character Name: Brody Weston. Date of Birth: January 17th. Sexuality: Heterosexual. Occupation: Actor. Current Location: Los Angeles, California. Three Positive Traits: Confident, Charming, Hard working. Three Negative Traits: Arrogant, Closed off, Stubborn.

Biography:

For as long as he could remember, Brody Weston always had big dreams he’d have to fight to achieve. Growing up in Missoula, Montana, he wasn’t exactly in the breeding ground for future entertainers, and the arts were the last thing on his family’s mind. His parents were supportive of him having an interest in singing and dancing and putting on a show, but never thrilled with the idea of him trying to turn it into an actual career. Most of his youth was spent the same way his father spent his; playing sports and working at the lumber yard, and the Weston’s were fine with that becoming his future. But Brody wasn’t.

Wide eyed and naive as they come, Brody was convinced he could do something more. Manual labor was fine, but it wasn’t what he wanted to do with his life, and no matter how fond he was of his family and the life they’d built for themselves, it wasn’t something he wanted. He longed for something more, and by the time he was nearing his final years of high school he had his heart set on the bright lights of New York City. If his parents knew going to his plays and paying for singing lessons would someday turn into Brody running off to the big city for a pipe dream they never would’ve done it, and it was a fact they didn’t shy away from sharing with him. They wanted him to work towards something stable, a career with some sort of certainty, and he’d never get that on Broadway.

They couldn’t give him their blessing in good conscience. His mother guilted him, crying over how upset she’d be seeing him as a starving artist and struggling to make ends meet because of some ridiculous dream he had. His father never missed an opportunity to say he was disappointed in him, that he wasn’t being the man he raised him to be, he needed a career he could support a family with, and the arts were a waste of time. But passion was his driving force, and nothing made Brody feel better than singing on a stage or connecting with a scene partner, acting and performing was his one source of happiness, and he wasn’t going to give it up so easily.

Art school wasn’t an easy move, they weren’t impressed by his athletic ability and a heartfelt essay wasn’t enough to gain admission, but he was determined. After a series of auditions and completely wiping out his bank account, Brody packed his bags; he’d finally fought his way into NYU and was eager to leave his mark on Tisch. And the rest is history. Doors flew open for him once he started studying his craft, and it was only a matter of time before he stepped into the right one. One chorus gig in a Broadway show led to another, and suddenly Brody was doing exactly what his parents thought he never could; making money doing what he loved. It wasn’t a ton, and certainly not enough to keep him from selling his soul in exchange for student loans and some other questionable ways of making money, but it was enough to give him the push to stick with it.

Things move fast in New York, and if you asked him now he wouldn’t be able to tell you exactly how it happened, it was too big of a blur. But he’d found an agent, went on every audition he could muster, and was flown out to California for chemistry reads mere months after graduation. The competition was fierce, and there was so much hype around the show he swore he’d be passed over for someone else, someone well known or with more experience. But he never let his doubt show, and tackled each audition like the role was already his and there was no one better. And there wasn’t.

Brody Weston secured his place in teen drama history playing a misunderstood bad boy with a heart of gold, making girls fall in love with the boy from the wrong side of the tracks for five seasons. He was in tween magazines every week, made cameos on other shows, he even co-hosted the Teen Choice Awards one year. But like so many stars before him, it was impossible to be seen as any other character once the show ended. Hollywood put him in a box, and they weren’t letting him out of it.

Some people think him accepting Real World’s offer is him admitting he’s washed up, and desperate for any kind of attention. The rest don’t think of him at all. It might be a risky move, and maybe he’ll be taken even less seriously after this, but Brody’s never given up on himself, and he’s not gonna start now.

Para Sample: Removed for privacy.

YOUR FIRST CONFESSIONAL:

WHY ARE YOU AUDITIONING FOR THE REAL WORLD? Being an actor playing the same character for years makes people think they know you. Which isn’t all bad, but this is an opportunity for people to see me as just Brody, and not a heartthrob on a magazine cover. It’s different, something I’ve never done before, and reality shows don’t have the bad rep they used to get ten years ago. It’s a different time, and I think this is a good move for me career wise, and something I can really have fun with. Besides, the camera loves me and my fans miss seeing me every week. I’m doing this for them.

WHAT AND WHO ARE YOU LEAVING BEHIND BACK HOME? It depends what you mean by home. If you’re talking L.A., where I’ve been living recently, not much of anything. A couple close friends and an apartment I rented six months ago to audition for pilot season. A case or two of whey protein, nothing special. Atlanta was my home before then, and it’s never an easy place to leave. I spent most of my twenties there, I made my own family and memories there, and you can’t get food like that anywhere else. But hey, that’s an actor’s life. You live where you’re filming.

WHAT DO YOU HOPE TO GAIN IN THE NEXT SIX MONTHS IN SAN FRANCISCO? A damn good story to tell. Maybe some friendships, a couple connections. I figure I’ve got more buzz here than most of the housemates, and I’m happy to spread some of my Hollywood experience around. I kinda sound like an ass saying that, don’t I? Eh, I’m used to it. It’d be nice to gain a bigger fanbase and give the ones who’ve been following me for years get a real look at what I’m like.

WHILE ON THE REAL WORLD, AMERICA IS WATCHING YOUR EVERY MOVE. WHAT’S THE FIRST THING YOU WANT TO SAY TO THE VIEWERS AT HOME? Stop waiting for the towel to drop, I’m not ready to go full frontal on television.