#Besides the blatantly obvious/shoved in my face

[cookie-nom-nom]

oh nooo ep 35 utterly rekindled my Emberose flame. Anyway it works so well as a messy polycule, just really adds this extra layer to the dynamic. These boys have no communication! Half their mental health tips to each other is suppression! Such a fantastic ‘it’s Complicated’ ship. Emerich is so clearly desperate for approval. He wants to be appreciated and shows how much he cares by his inventions. But that often means he withdraws from them to work on a project. It’s a gift, he’s doing it for them, but he also just gets sucked in. And then there’s the periods where nobody sees him for days, locked in his workroom. And eventually Beef busts down the door and finds a sleep deprived mess ignoring hunger and injuries and exhaustion because he wants to get this project right for them. Because that is how he shows he cares. Fumbling, awkward words of affection too of course, he’s blunt on it albeit often coming off strange. He seems pretty free with hugs, occasionally a kiss if he remembers, though obviously he’s some type of ace. But for the most part Emerich goes for dragging his special interest to them and excitedly showing it off. He’ll ramble about other things that catch his interest too, old sports movies, SciFi tiktoks of water skiing feats, but mostly it’s the inventions he designs specifically with his partners in mind. It’s his way of showing love, and hoping to be given gratitude and acknowledgment in return. Emerich calls them partners in that vague way where nobody can tell if he means in the romantic or professional sense. Montrose calls them associates though. Not even friends. He’ll retain his air of smug separation no matter what, refusing to ever close the emotional distance, like he doesn’t quite give weight to the other’s feelings. He flirts, sure, often even. But it’s almost in that way bards do, pure dripping charisma, where you can’t tell how genuine it is. Emerich doesn’t clock it half the time, but when he does turns pink and tries to flirt back disastrously. Which is why Montrose does it; because it’s amusing. Beef tends to reciprocate in a more grounded, genuine way, but sometimes he’s just irked by how insincere it comes off. Random bursts of short arguments aren’t uncommon given the different ways they define their relationship. Because the mask never comes off even when they’re literally making out. Maybe it can’t. Montrose is eight layers of act so deep not he even knows his true self. But he does care, even if he refuses to acknowledge it. He tells himself his worry is pure pragmatism since they’re his associates. Frankly none of us know what’s going on in his head, but at the very least he doesn’t seem to treat reality as anything more than a game or a roleplay. Montrose maintains that suave detachment, acting like it’s a one night stand even though they’ve been living together for years.

Beef doesn’t. He makes his affections clear, upfront. Not that he’s the only one who’s willing to be emotionally vulnerable; Beef clearly has trust issues and suppresses his trauma. But simultaneously, he’s upfront with the fact he thinks they’re in a relationship. He cares openly and deeply. They’re both so reckless in a way that drives Beef insane with worry. Montrose just throws himself into risky situations, and Emerich never takes care of himself. And Beef wants to take that hit for them, his first instinct is to protect, and so often he feels guilty. Which he suppresses. And frankly he’s irritated by it, that they’re putting themselves and him through that pain. He’s tired of having to carry Emerich to their bed just to wake in the middle of the night and find him gone, the glow of the workstation seeping beneath the door. He’s tired of Montrose never dropping his literal or metaphorical mask, never admitting if he really cares or not, catching his hand whenever Beef tries to gently peel away the mask and force them to be truly face to face. Beef is the emotional glue that holds it all together and it’s exhausting sometimes. He wants to be clear in his affections and intentions, but Montrose refuses to admit anything and Emerich keeps withdrawing. He wants to call them his significant others but feels like he can’t because of how the other two treat the relationship. 

It’s just…complicated

[frostluvrs]

Idk but to me Ricky and nini always seemed a little forced. I really appreciate the subtlety of hsmtmts! Like Jets feelings for Kourtney are noticeable when you rewatch and same with Maddox and Ash. Hsmtmts has always thrives on a mix between subtlety and blatantly showing the audience, like the duet with Ej and Gina as Hans and Anna pretty blatantly showed they weren’t gonna work out. It made it hard to find nini and Ricky interesting when everything about them was always shoved in there somehow, like every confessional and every scene they would just describe how they were feeling and what was happening in this very unnatural way that people do not do.

But Ricky and Gina showed off Tims mix of subtlety and showing instead of telling the audience. We don’t hear about Ricky’s feelings THAT much but we can SEE his totally hopeless pining (side note Joshua basset put his whole SOUL into that unrequited longing) and not to be mean (even though it’s totally fair game at this point) it just makes the portwell and rini shippers look not very clever at this point. At the very least they should be able to admit that rina was gonna happen at some point but pretending to not see it AT ALL, makes them look either blind or just petty.

i agree they always seemed forced! i enjoy rina madlyn and jetney for the same reasons you listed. even with redlyn they showed why their relationship worked instead of JUST telling us. for portwell and rini the only time they showed us something about their relationship instead of telling us is showing they didn’t work.

i think a large part of the problem is all of their development was off screen and so was their first relationship besides the s1 flashback. there’s definitely a way to show exes to lover’s relationship and/or a relationship that has history pre show and make it interesting but for rini that just didn’t happen. they just simply tell us they had this loving relationship and that they know each other so well but they don’t show it all. if anything it seemed like they didn’t know each other well. and that’s funny considering they shoehorned in them being childhood best friends. which is still funny to me because they don’t feel like childhood best friends at all. it’s very similar to dawson and joey where they’re telling us they’re best friends and are each others person when the only evidence of them on screen (tho they attempted with dawson and joey but failed in my opinion) is the characters saying it. we don’t actually get to see their bond ☠️☠️. it’s one of my biggest problems with the best friends to lovers trope in general despite me loving it - the fact half the time the ships with it don’t actually feel like they’ve known each other for that long or have history.

with rini it’s funny to me because going with the idea they’re childhood friends to me they just feel like that relationship that only got together because everyone expected them to. like i don’t think we even actually know why ricky and nini liked each other besides ricky holding onto her for comfort 😭😭

i actually said before (here x) that i think one of the reasons some people don’t get rina is because it’s not being told to you it’s being SHOWN to you and they called rina forced in s3 bc their relationship became fully text in s3 instead of subtext (even though s1 and esp s2 was obvious enough but i digress). portwell and rini was in your face from the beginning they started to both of them ending but their stans missed the fact they would eventually break up bc the show was SHOWING you instead of telling you the reasons they would eventually not work out (besides in s2b for rini and s3 for portwell where the underlying reasons their relationships would fail started becoming obvious …. in which then their stans said it’s forced ….)

your second paragraph !!!! i said the same thing here. i just don’t understand how they can see them having no closure and the rina relationship just constantly being put on hold instead of being put to rest and think nothing was ever going to happen or get addressed. sure i started to think rina was never happening but not because it made sense that their story is over. i just thought the writers were bad at writing 😭😭 but like i said in the post they refused to see them as romantic in s1 and then said it was one sided in s2 and that the flashback was closure and ricky never liked her and then one sided on ricky’s end in s3 and now say s3 and their feelings don’t make sense …. they want to talk about bad writing so much but leaving rina open and never closing their book would have been the bad writing.

[gumnut-logic]

Dear Mr Tracy (Part 5, Bit 2)

Sweetapple | Part 1 | Part 2 | Part 3 | Part 4 - Bit 1, Bit 2, Bit 3 | Part 5 - Bit 1, Bit 2

@flyboytracy​​​​​​, @amistrio​​​​​​ and @onereyofstarlight​​​​​​​  you asked for it, so you get to suffer more :D

Many thanks to @onereyofstarlight​ for the rushed read through on this and to @greywake​ for tackling my crazy yesterday. Thank you for all your amazing support. And of course, to everyone cheering me on, couldn’t do this without you guys ::hugs you all to bits::

I hope you enjoy this bit.

-o-o-o-

The inquisition eventually culminated in a toast to Alex which had him flushing even redder and attempting to hide under the table.

Even Virgil smiled at that.

Food was ordered and served. Alex went for the fish and chips and obligatory salad. He had to admit that it was the best fish and chips he had ever had and yes, he was coming back here on his next road trip to examine more items on the menu.

Because this wasn’t some big fancy restaurant full of rich people. It was just a niche pub in a small town with bloody good food that the average joe could afford.

The fact the Tracys could probably eat anywhere on the planet and chose this joint as one of their favs spoke more than any advertisement could.

Which led to the obvious question of why O’Malley’s wasn’t using the Tracys as a way to fame. But considering the personal service and the trust that seemed to be bouncing around the room, the O’Malley family were probably just decent folk.

Alex wasn’t immune to tabloid exposure, both online and offline. The Tracys were big news wherever they went. But sitting here watching the family talk around the table - Alan inhaling a burger and then ordering a second one and consuming that one equally as fast; Gordon attempting to steal Kayo’s drink to improve it and nearly losing fingers in the process, only to attempt to steal it again moments later with the same result; Mr Tracy talking quietly with Mr Jeff Tracy beside him.

Virgil Tracy staring at his father with a worried frown. There were bags under Virgil’s eyes that blatantly screamed the man needed sleep.

In fact, Virgil wasn’t talking much at all and kept eyeing his father across the table. Every now and again the two eldest brothers would swap frowns and Virgil would go back to staring at his meal.

Because for all the deliciousness served up to them, Virgil didn’t appear to be very hungry.

Alex gulped his down using the theory that if his mouth was full of food, he couldn’t say anything further to embarrass himself.

So the meal carried on with very little in the way of conversation until Gordon decided to poke the bear a little more.

“So, Alex, parents and siblings?”

“You’re determined, aren’t you.” It wasn’t a question.

Gordon held up his hands in apparent innocence. “Hey, I just know what it is like to be surrounded by scary people. And Virgil is pretty terrifying at the moment.”

Alex had the distinct impression that Gordon had no trouble staring death in the face.

And Virgil was doing a great impression of a grim reaper. Wow, those eyebrows were deadly.

Gordon just grinned. “So, Alex, give us the goss. Mom, Dad, bros or sisses?”

“Mum, and two older sisters.” He shoved the last of his salad in his mouth. “Dad died a few years back.”

The room froze. Gordon’s mouth was hanging open. “I’m sorry to hear that.”

Alex shrugged. “It’s okay.”

Again with the impression there were unsaid words bouncing around the room and Alex was suddenly aware that this was a family that had lost both their mother and their father until recently.

Jeff Tracy’s eyes were on him again.

Those frickin’ eyes could read his bloody soul.

“Really, it’s okay.” And he could really do without talking about it right now.

It was Virgil’s deep voice that broke the silence. “Your mom?”

“A doctor in Napier.”

“That’s just south of Māhia.”

“Yeah, I drive down there sometimes. It has been great being so close. Extra bonus for the transfer, thank you.”

Gordon was poking at his phone. He frowned and stared over at Alex. “Your mom is ‘Doctor Lolly Sweetapple’?”

“Yeah. So?”

“Ignore him.” Virgil literally growled at his brother before turning polite interest to Alex. “What’s her speciality?”

“General practice. Mum is one of those old-fashioned country doctor types.” He eyed Gordon. “And she will give you a lollypop if you are good.”

Scott, beyond Virgil, snorted.

That earned him a glare from Gordon. “You can’t talk. Virg had to buy out a lollypop factory just to get you to vaccinate.”

As if that was a trigger point, and it apparently was, the table erupted in protest. Accusations of ‘How do you know that?!’ and ‘Virgil? What the hell?’ and, of course, ‘Gordon!’ bounced around the room.

Alex shrunk back and concentrated on finishing his meal. It really was nice fish, and the chips were cooked perfectly. He pondered what might be on the dessert menu…

“Boys!” It was sharp and instigated an immediate silence. Jeff Tracy was wielding his eyebrows. No guesses where his sons got them from. “We have guests.”

Alex glanced in the direction of Tia. She had a smile on her lips not unlike Kayo next to her. What did they know that he didn’t? Either way, the rest of the family looked appropriately abashed and Alex couldn’t help but grin a little himself.

This was actually quite familiar. His family was smaller, but just as boisterous, if not more. Debates over the dinner table were not uncommon and there was that time that Holly threw her mashed potato at Miranda. Mum had not been impressed at the resultant food fight, but she had joined in, so she couldn’t speak.

He could remember his Dad, before he got sick, sitting in the corner with broccoli in his hair laughing his ass off.

So it was a fond grin, if anything.

Gordon held up both hands. “I’m just saying that my big bro, my wingman, my personal tank, my ever-supportive rock, bought out a confectionery business just so he could guarantee that Scott’s favourite lollipop would still be made. I don’t know about you, but I find that incredibly endearing.” And he shone heart eyes at Virgil complete with a two-handed heart against his chest.

Virgil eyed him, grunted and went back to poking at his meal.

Scott frowned worriedly in his direction.

And Alex’s heart sank, his smile vanishing. Virgil was so obviously not himself. Alex was now wondering why his brothers had dragged him out here.

Out of curiosity, Alex pulled out his phone and activated his Thunderbird Tracker app and scrolled beyond the fans screaming that Thunderbird Two was currently in Whitianga, to the last official callout he could locate.

There were three in the last forty-eight hours, two of which had completely slipped Alex’s attention. The first seemed to be some kind of aircraft accident, another involved some people stranded in the Arctic, and the final one, a mere ten hours ago was a landslide in Ecuador.

It was no wonder the man looked buggered.

Yet here he was.

Alex never knew what to do in these situations. He saw someone clearly in need, wanted to help, but didn’t know them well enough. Plus most of his family was here. Why weren’t they doing anything?

But then they were. Gordon was chatting along happily about a pelican, something about it poking Virgil while he was asleep on a pool lounge?

It was obvious he was trying to lighten the party because now both Mr Tracys were staring worriedly at Virgil.

Alan was frowning at Scott.

Kayo was eyeing Alex thinking hard enough he could see the chemical reactions behind her eyes.

Virgil took one look at Scott, darted a glance at his father, and was suddenly rising from the table. His napkin landed gently beside his plate.

“Please excuse me.”

And Virgil Tracy walked out the door.

-o-o-o-

 Next

[yelenabelovasbxtch]

Make-Up Sex

Dom!Valkyrie x Fem!reader

a/n: Hi everyone! I felt like I haven't written a really spicy story in a while so here's something fun and also new...if you saw one of my previous posts, I am now also taking Valkyrie requests! So...enjoy the first of I'm sure many to come. Also am I the only one who’s been literally THIRSTING so bad for her? I’m sure I’m not lmao but DAMN is she FINE😩😫

LMK IF YOU WANT TO BE ADDED TO MY VALKYRIE TAGLIST!

Summary: Story takes place in New Asgard (TLAT SPOILER FREE!) you and V get into a fight and I'd say it has a very happy ending.

Warnings: SMUT!, 18+ only, fingering, eating out, strap, a lot of filth.

Word Count: 2264 Words

Request: (Anon) dom!valkyrie x fem!reader with absolute filthy smut. Like they have a fight about something they don't even remember anymore and they make it up with aggressive sex.

“You’re fucking kidding me right V?” You snap at her after what seemed like hours of you two fighting over the same thing again and again.

“Love, seriously it is nothing. Jane only has eyes for Thor, it’s very obvious.”

“That’s not my point. You can’t just be blatantly flirting with her when we’re together.”

“Y/N, you need to stop being so anxious, there’s nothing to be worried about.”

“How am I supposed to believe that even for a minute if you can’t stop fucking looking at her? Yeah,” You scoff, “ I see your eyes wandering up and down her body every time she walks into the room. The stupid fucking smirk that comes across your face with it too.”

Valkyrie rolls her eyes at you as she pours out a generous glass of scotch for herself.

“Look, I’m not “eye fucking” anyone.” She says as her hands draw overly dramatic air quotes. “I’m just doing it to mess with Thor, the same way he did to me when the two of us started dating.”

A confused look crossed your face. “What’re you even talking about?”

“Really.” Valkyrie says with a smug look. 

You raise your eyebrows in her direction with a slight shoulder shrug. 

“All he did was hit on you when I first brought you home. It took me months to get him to stop, I’m just playing around now…getting my revenge.” She says with a cocky wink. 

You just roll your eyes and turn around heading for the door.

“Wait! Where you going?” She runs up behind you, grabbing your shoulder

“Fuck off V. I can’t do this right now.” “Y/N, love, it’s just for jokes.”

“Was it really a fucking joke when you told her how hot she looked today? As if I don’t realize how hot she looks, much better than I do every day. Was it really a joke when you talk to her about how you’d treat her better than Thor can? That shit hurts Val. I’m sorry but I can’t do this right now.”

“Shut up.”

“Excuse me?”

“You heard me, shut up. Don’t ever tell me anyone is hotter than my girlfriend ever again.”

“You’re THE ONE WHO SAID IT.”

“I never EVER said she was hotter than you. I gave her a small compliment, besides that’s not the point nobody is fucking hotter than you. You are the most drop-dead GORGEOUS woman I’ve ever met and trust me I’ve travelled the nine realms, I should know.”

What she did had you enraged but all the words coming out of her mouth just made you fall that much more for her.

You could feel your heart pounding out of your chest as your eyes scan her face, not sure where they should land after hearing what she just said. As your gaze settles on her lips you push yourself into her, crashing your lips into hers in one swift motion. As your tongues fight for dominance, your knee is slowly grinding against her, making her squirm underneath you. You feel Valkyrie’s breath hitch as you smirk into your kiss. You feel her hands grab you, quickly turning both your bodies so you’re shoved against the wall as she looks down at you with a smile. Her one hand has a forceful grip around your neck, slowing down your breathing. 

“Awe look at you princess. You’re so cute when you think you’re the one in control.”

A small gulp pushes itself down your throat that she felt pass by her tight grip. Your eyes were locked on hers for a moment as you feared what was going to happen next. 

Valkyrie’s hand releases you as her mouth starts leaving a trail of kisses down your neck. Some of them were more bites than kisses, leaving dark purple marks all over you. 

“I’m gonna fucking ruin you gorgeous.” She growled into your ear. You felt your knees weaken at her words and a pathetic whine escapes your lips. 

Valkyrie takes a small bite of your lower lobe as she pulls away, looking at you again, admiring you and thinking of all the things she was about to do to you. 

Your eyes trail down to Val’s pants as a noticeable bulge catches your eye…she was packing.

Before your eyebrows had the chance to even raise, you felt her hand come under your chin and pull your face up to lock eyes with her. “Uh uh uh princess, not yet. Be patient my love, there are lots of things I want to do to you first.”

She knew how much it bothered you when she calls you princess and yet she will continue to do it just to ensure you were frustrated. 

Valkyrie’s hands trailed down your body, eventually hooking a finger into the waistband of your pants pulling you away from the wall and over to her thrown. 

“Strip.” She says as her eyes attempt to undress you before you got the chance.

“Sit.” She towered over you as you sat on her throne, vulnerable to anyone who could walk into the room at any moment. 

“You’ve been bad beautiful,” V says as her arms cross and one eyebrow raises at you. 

“How many times do we have to do this until you realize there’s no need to be jealous of anyone else?” Valkyrie gets down on her knees and starts leaving kisses along the outside of your thighs.

Feeling a little cocky you look at her and regretfully opened your mouth, “already on your knees for me your majesty?”

A head tilt followed by a low chuckle, V immediately gets up yanking you off the chair so quickly you nearly fell over. If it wasn’t for her pulling you back towards her and wrapping her other arm around your waist you would be laying on the floor. Your chests pressed up against one another, the cold of her armour touching your bare skin, sending shivers down your back. 

“What did you just say to me, darling?”

You knew better than to open your mouth again but was it ever fun to challenge Valkyrie’s dominance over you. You just knew that she would punish you for whatever you said or did if it was anything but obeying her every word. 

“Down.” She says putting her hand on your shoulder, pushing you down to your knees. Val’s hands were occupied with her belt buckle as you looked up at her with innocent eyes and concern for what was going to happen next. 

“How about, we put that pretty little mouth of yours to work so it doesn’t get you in any more trouble hmm?” She says with a smirk as her hand takes a fist full of your hair, slowly lowering your lips down onto her strap. Your breathing slows as you take in less air with her not letting go of you. “Look at me princess while you suck my cock.”

Your eyes dart up to her face as your lips start to go numb from the motion and friction against the silicone. Valkyrie continues to make your head bob up and down as her hand pulls your hair and uses it to push you further down on her cock. 

“Have you learned your lesson yet love?” She says loosening her grip on you and slowly caressing your cheek with your mouth still full of her dick. 

Maintaining the same eye contact, you slowly nod your head at her as a smirk comes across her face. 

“Come,” she says, offering her hand out to you to pull you off the ground. 

“Since you were such a good girl, taking all of daddy’s cock, you get to sit and enjoy me doing something for you now.” She says gesturing towards the throne again as you take your seat. 

Valkyrie spreads your legs and without wasting time allows her fingers to run up your folds which to nobody’s surprise were soaked. “Someone’s quite excited.” She says with a smirk. You were about to roll your eyes at her when the shudder of pleasure shot up your body at the feeling of one of her fingers entering you. Your mouth opened to let out a moan that didn’t want to come out as your head flew backwards, eyes closed as your body filled with pure ecstasy. 

“F-fuck V.” You groaned out as another one of her fingers entered into you. 

Val was slowly increasing the speed of her fingers as her tongue found its rightful place drawing circles on your clit causing you to squirm under her touch. Valkyrie can’t help but smile when she looks up at you, seeing how pretty you look with your eyes shut and head thrown back trying to swallow the moans she’s creating. 

With all the teasing and tension between the two of you, it makes sense how quickly you were ready to cum. Your hips started bucking up and down on her mouth. 

“V— I think I’m getting close.” 

You feel Valkyrie insert a third finger and her arm starts pumping in and out of you as fast as she can as her tongue draws figure eights on your clit. Your hips are bucking into the air as you cum all over her face, pushing her fingers deeper inside of you. 

Everytime she makes you cum she has the most devilish smile on her face. Once you came down from your high, you felt her lips on yours again. 

“Do you like how you taste princess?” She whispers into your kiss. 

Fuck you nearly melted right then and there. 

You nodded in response to her question as you pulled away from her face. 

“I’m not quite done with you yet, love.” She says, pulling away and offering her hand to help you up. As you stand, you almost topple over from how weak your legs felt post-orgasm. Valkyrie chuckles watching you struggle to stand. 

“Allow me.” She says as you wrap your arms around her neck and jump up to wrap your legs around her waist. She carried you over to the wall, backing you up against it as she slowly lowered you down onto her strap, giving you enough time to adjust. 

You let out a loud moan when her tip entered you as your pussy stretched to take her full length. Fuck was this hot. She has done many…many things to you before but holding you up, fucking you against a wall? That’s new. 

Valkyrie watched your face as you moaned in pleasure from her cock slowly going in and out of you. Your pussy soaked her cock as she continued to pound into you. Small whimpers falling from your lips only made her thrust into you faster. Her head would lean into the crevice of your neck, panting as she pounded you. 

You could feel yourself nearing the edge again just from her movement, your clit was pulsating, begging to be touched. 

“Val, I think I’m going to cum again.” You mumble. 

“Not yet princess.” She replies. 

A groan falls from your mouth at the sudden absence of her dick. Valkyrie lightly lets your legs fall to the ground and brings you over to the conference table, pushing on your upper back, forcing you to bend over it. She grabs one of your thighs, pulling it up so your knee is resting on the table top. You feel her lick a strip up and down your pussy followed by the tip of her cock slowly teasing your entrance. The small bit of attention your clit got for her mouth was almost enough to push you over the edge but you knew there would be consequences if you came after she told you not to. 

After a few seconds of your folds being teased, you feel her push into you, taking all 8 inches at once you let out a loud groan. Val held down your leg for leverage as she pounded your pussy, you could hear how wet you were with every thrust into you. 

“V— please. I am so close, I don’t know how much longer I can hold it for.” You say clenching yourself around her cock. You feel her bring a hand down onto your ass cheek as you wince in pain. 

No response as she continues to increase her pace at which she’s thrusting into you. 

Her thrusts are getting sloppy and breathing is shallow. “You ready to cum for me princess?” 

“Yes, daddy, please let me cum for you.”

“Cum for me, gorgeous.” 

Finally, you release all over her cock, as your hands try to grab onto the mahogany table she had you bent over. You screaming her name as her thrusts slow down and your legs stop shaking. 

Valkyrie slowly pulls her length out of you and before you had the energy to lift yourself up and turn around to look at her, she already had her pants up and her belt being done up. It didn’t even look like she just fucked the hell out of you but holy shit did you look ruined. She just looks at you with a smirk as you try to fix your hair and compose yourself as you scan the room for where your clothing ended up. 

“Did you learn your lesson princess?” She asks with a smirk. “Or will I have to teach it again later tonight?” 

Her cocky attitude always worked on you and only the gods knew you were ready to run your mouth again later once you could walk straight.

-- The End --

Some tags just for notis: @jeyramarie @flosbelova @bridgecitybrad @justthis-stuff @chloe7076 @ailenepuff @3xbyrn320 @thorya22 @ravenclawbitch426 @mellowladyangel @wandanatvoid @amcg0605-blog @kassies-take @yelenaswife1996 @wandanatchick @yelenaslyubov

[silv3rswirls]

Another member confesses to their s/o

Anon asks: Can I request a bts reaction where you're dating them, but another member drunkenly tells you they have a crush on you

Note: I changed things up a little, as not all the members are drunk in their parts, hopefully, you don’t mind!

Warnings: Drinking, slight angst

♡Seokjin♡

You celebrated Bangtan’s recent success with their new album with the rest of the group at their dorm. It was small, nothing too wild but some of the members had been drinking; Jungkook being one of them. You had been hanging out with him and Jin for the majority of the party, but at some point, Jungkook had disappeared and Jin excused himself to the restroom just now, so you found yourself standing alone as you waited.

The other members weren’t around. Yoongi and Jimin had turned in for the night and Taehyung wasn’t in sight. You could hear Namjoon and Hoseok talking in the kitchen, but other than that you were sitting alone on your phone. You had been happy to look up and see Jungkook making his way back to where you were sitting on the sofa. You smiled as he plopped down beside you, ready to ask him where he had gone, but you were stunned to silence when he took hold of your shoulders and kissed you. You could taste the alcohol on his lips as his hand moved to hold the side of your face. It was clear the youngest wasn’t in his right state of mind, so you calmly tried to push him away. You’d talk to him about it in the morning when he was sober, but at the moment he didn’t seem to want to let go. His grip on you grew just a bit too tight for you to wiggle from.

Luckily Jin returned just in time. “Jungkook?” He asked, shock clear in his tone as he rushed up to you. “What’s wrong with you!” He shouted, shoving his bandmate back and taking your hand. “What the hell do you think you’re doing?”

“It’s fine Jin, he’s drunk. We can talk about it tomorrow.”

“No, I like you” Jungkook pressed, his voice a tad slurred. “I really like you Y/n, I have since the day I met you.”

Jin’s face had turned red in anger and part embarrassment to have his member and friend confessing so blatantly to his girlfriend. He had been the one to introduce you to Jungkook after you began dating. Had Jungkook held his feelings for you for that long? Jin was ready to start yelling again, but Namjoon had stepped in to take Jungkook away.

♡Yoongi♡

Yoongi had always known Jimin had a small crush on you. It was obvious, to him at least. He chose not to say anything though, believing Jimin's little puppy crush would fade with some time, and up until this moment, Yoongi thought it had.

Yoongi had been looking for you in the new hybe building, it was your first time visiting his new studio in the building so it was only natural you got turned around like so many others when they first moved in. Yoongi left to find you, knowing exactly where you were with your puzzled description. He rounded the corner to find you waiting, Jimin standing in front of you blocking Yoongi’s view. Something about Jimin's hushed voice made Yoongi a bit nervous and as he walked up to the two of you he felt his stomach drop.

“I’ve known for a long time that I like you...I just need to get these feelings off my chest or I’ll-” “You think this is funny Jimin?” Yoongi asked, having calmly placed a hand on the younger’s shoulder and pulled him away. “You think it’s right to confess to my girlfriend?”

Jimin merely watched you and Yoongi with wide eyes. “I just-”

Yoongi shook his head, he had never wanted to have to confront him on this. He had hoped Jimin would drift away from you, especially when you were always at Yoongi’s side; affectionate and loving. For now, Yoongi sent Jimin away. To his dismay and anger, he would have to talk to him about this later.

♡Hoseok♡

You had been sitting with Yoongi in his studio when it happened. Your’s and Hoseok’s third anniversary was coming and you had wanted to do something extra special and meaningful. So, you turned to Yoongi for help writing and composing a song for him. You had thought it a cute idea, personal and special and Yoongi had been happy to help you. But now, the song was done and ready to be given to Hoseok that weekend. After all your hard work you and Yoongi had decided to celebrate a little, just with a few drinks. Yoongi wasn’t drunk, maybe a little buzzed but you were still sober as the two of you sat and talked away the evening.

“I should get going, it’s getting late.” You smiled and began to collect your things, while Yoongi watched you. “Thanks again for helping, I know it’ll mean a lot to-”

“Don’t” Yoongi spoke up, sitting up and moving closer to you.

“Don’t what?” Your brow furrowed in confusion, even more so when you felt Yoongi’s hand rest on your thigh.

“I’ve known you for a long time before you and Hoseok even got together.” He began, voice a little heavy from the drinks. “I’ve always liked you” he murmured, eyes half-lidded as he moved in closer for a kiss. Immediately you stopped him, pressed a hand to his chest, and stood up.

“Yoongi...no Hoseok’s your friend, you can’t- I need to go.” You had swallowed the lump in your throat and finished grabbing your things, hurrying to get home.

You told Hoseok right away, feeling it wrong not to. He had gotten angry, especially knowing that Yoongi had done this after helping you with your anniversary gift to him. He stewed in his silent frustration all night, confronting Yoongi the next day.

“I trust you with her, how could you try something?” He asks, not ready for any of Yoongi’s excuses or apologies.

♡Namjoon♡

You had come down with a cold and Namjoon was too busy to stay and look after you, so he asked Jin to check up on you now and again until he got back. Jin was happy to, acting as an attentive and caring friend for both of you. He makes you soup and keeps track of when you were supposed to take your medicine. Fetched water and extra blankets when you needed them, he even stuck around to talk and watch a movie when you lamented your sadness over Namjoon not being able to be with you.

Something about it had tugged Jin’s heartstrings in a different way. Jin had always liked you, thought you were cute and sweet, but obviously never allowed himself to cross any lines. You were Namjoon’s, not his.

But right now Namjoon wasn’t here and Jin struggled to think straight.

“Hey” Jin smiled, voice soft as he brushed your hair away to feel your hot forehead. “Still running a fever.” He frowned. You only hummed weakly, arms wrapped around a pillow as you tried to ignore the headache and hate feeling.

“I wish Namjoon was here” you pouted, Jin was great and ever so attentive, but nothing beat the presence of your boyfriend.

“He should be,” Jin muttered if you were his partner he wouldn’t think twice about staying home when you were in such a state. He got you a cool washcloth, returning to find you asleep, the covers kicked away as you restlessly slept. Jin could help the fond smile on his face as he tucked you back in. Before leaving, he pressed a kiss to your forehead, the reality that he had really done that didn’t set in until he turned to find Namjoon in the doorway, a stuffed bear and your favorite takeout in hand.

Namjoon’s lips pressed to a line as he tried to contain his outrage. “We’ll talk about this later.” He states, voice icy and he ushers Jin away and takes his place at your beside. Jin can only hang his head in shame as he leaves.

♡Jimin♡

When Jimin found Taehyung and you locked in a kiss, his temper had gotten the best of him. He shouted and yelled at Taehyung, who had quietly admitted to being the reason behind the kiss. You had no part of it, Taehyung had just acted on his impulses. “I just couldn’t help it, I really like-”

“What do you think you’re doing with my partner Taehyung? They’re with me. You’re supposed to be my friend, how can you just kiss them?” Jimin’s seething, one of his closest friends had just made a move on his partner. “I don’t want to hear it!” He snaps when Taehyung tries to reason with him, “Get out of here!”

Jimin’s angry at him for a long time. One of his best friends had betrayed his trust and confessed to you, how could he not be angry? He avoids Taehyung as much as he can, not speaking with him for the time being. Taehyung is earnest in his apology to you and to Jimin but accepts that Jimin needs his time.

There’s a deep rift between the two of them.

♡Taehyung♡

It broke your heart when Hoseok casually let it slip that he had been harboring feelings for you. You stood mouth agape and unsure of what to say, especially when Taehyung was just in the other room. “Hobi...I appreciate it, but I’m with Taehyung.” You wore a deep frown, while Hoseok was still trying to recover from letting his secret slip.

“No, I need to be the one apologizing...I don’t know what came over me. I’ve just felt so strongly for you-”

“You heard her. She’s with me, she doesn’t want you.” Taehyung was frowning deeply, eyes hard as he glared at Hoseok. You could see the anger from Taehyung clear as day, but it was also easy to spot the hurt behind his eyes.

“Taehyung-”

“Leave us alone!” He snaps, turning to you instead. You both let Hoseok go, everyone clearly needing time to think about what had just happened.

“Tae,” you murmured, “he didn’t mean it.” “He did.” Taehyung argued, “I know he did, it’s so easy to tell he’s in love with you.” You stay quiet, but spend the evening comforting your hurt boyfriend.

♡Jungkook♡

It was late and things were getting a bit too wild. Everyone was having fun, drinking, and talking the night away. Jungkook had been occupied with Jimin and Taehyung, while you and Namjoon had hit it off for the night. You were both drunk, giggling and talking your time away. At some point, Namjoon’s hand had found yours and the drunken flirting began. You had giggled and gone back and forth with the leader of Bagntan, too far gone to really think clearly.

Unfortunately, Jungkook had been looking for you when he heard Namjoon tell you how beautiful you were and how much he had always liked you. As if Jungkook didn’t exist, it didn't even cross his mind as Namjoon leaned in to leave a quick kiss on your lips. You had hesitated even in your drunk state, but as quickly as the kiss happened you both forgot about it, going back to playful banter and laughs.

Jungkook didn’t say anything to Namjoon until that morning when the leader came to him to confess and apologize for doing it. He accepted it and when you did the same he accepted yours as well. However; he couldn’t quite get how comfortable and well the two of you had meshed that night. He’s scared to admit it to even himself, but he’s worried that Namjoon might’ve stolen your heart that night.

[the-only-ace]

Can you do a TaeminxReader where both the reader and Taemin are on The Knowing brothers and Heechul continuously flirts with the reader.

hello there~ i honestly don’t know if you still remember requesting this but here you go! i am so sorry for answering after such a long loooong hiatus. also, i am not really familiar with all the segments for the knowing brothers so i apologize in advance if some of them do not make sense. hope you still enjoy it nevertheless!

taemin scenario: just add jealousy

pairing: taemin x reader

word count: 2.3k

summary: taemin and reader have been liking each other for quite a while now and promoting as a duo together makes their relationship even more complicated. maybe a sprinkle of jealousy would finally ignite the sparks between them.

warnings: none

send in your requests here!

taemin plopped down on a seat and loosened the black necktie he was wearing for the knowing brothers recording. he reached over the table to grab a new bottle of water and contently chugged down its contents. the shoot just wrapped up and the cold drink was refreshing especially after participating in a lot of the activities today. he already spent more than a decade doing variety shows but this one made him extra tired. maybe it comes with age? who was he kidding, twenty-seven is not yet considered as old. he can perform and dance for hours and gladly do it again the next day. comparing to that, a tv show guesting should be a piece of cake but why does he feel more than relief to wrap it up earlier than expected.

with a long heavy sigh, taemin tilted his head backward and close his eyes. he knows exactly the reason why he feels exhausted and also annoyed. it was because of his certain senior called kim heechul. 

a frown quickly formed across his forehead as the events a while ago replayed on his mind.

exhibit a:

“with your great chemistry on stage, fans keep on speculating if something is going on between you two. is there something we should know?” heechul asked as the cast talks about your debut single.

honestly, you were not that surprised with the question since it was quite a buzz across social media already. the other members of your girl group practically shoved their phones to your face whenever they saw comments regarding your performance. of course, their loud teasing comes next as if they were a package deal of some sort–which you don’t remember purchasing at all.

“no, we’re both just good friends.” you answered confidently with a chuckle. “i think my chemistry with taemin only comes from how much effort and passion we have put in our every performance. seeing such reactions from our audience makes both of us happy since it means that we did something great up there on stage.”

taemin was nodding silently beside you like a cute little puppy dog as he listened to your answer. he was quite proud of how well you handled the question on your own.

“so does that mean you’re still single?” the super junior member continued to ask.

“um… yeah, pretty much.” you laughed as you nod.

“then i can ask you out?” well, that one caught you off guard.

“hey, isn’t that a bit inappropriate?” taemin can’t help but interrupt your conversation.

“why is that?” the older guy snapped back and sounded a bit offended.

“because…” okay, taemin did not really think this through but thanks to his variety show experience, he was able to blurt out an entertaining response. “aren’t you a bit too old for her? wouldn’t that put you to… i don’t know, jail?” the comment earned laughs and more insults from the other members.

“look here, mister! she’s of legal age so what do you mean jail?” heechul stood up from his seat and started to point his index finger towards his junior.  "also, don’t you guys think it’s up to y/n to decide?“ he directed his look to you and raised an eyebrow. “so, what do think?” he tried to pull off a flirty look.

“well, they do say age doesn’t matter in love.” you shrugged as you went with the flow.

taemin knew that you’re also good on variety shows especially on how open you are to any situations that were thrown in your way. you always have the best responses and reactions. that is why people from the industry love to invite you over to shoot an episode with them. however, he kind of hoped that you have let go of the idea of flirting back.

exhibit b:

heechul pulled out the empty chair beside him and patted it, indicating for you to sit beside him. you removed the black backpack you were wearing and placed it on top of the desk as you gladly sat down next to him.

“so where should i take you for our first date?” his sudden proposal caused you to scoff and let out an amused laugh.

“well… i do love eating expensive steak in a fancy restaurant where i can wear a beautiful dress that you bought while thinking of me.” you teased with a sweet smile.

“isn’t that too much for a high school student?” he mumbled to himself before reaching out to brush the stray hair on your forehead. “okay, oppa will do it for you.”

you placed both of your hands underneath your cheeks and looked at him cutely. “thank you, oppa!”

“oppa? more like samchon if you ask me.” taemin looked back from his seat in front of you two.

“alright, what the hell is your problem today? did i do something wrong?” heechul replied incredulously with his eyes wide.

“he’s just probably jealous. he wants some steak too.” you playfully stuck your tongue out before pushing taemin’s head so he would look in front once again.

exhibit c:

all of you are now playing the whisper challenge and it was yours and heechul’s turn. he was the one guessing and you were the one mouthing out the words. both of you are going at it for a while now and it makes you a bit frustrated on the inside. you can feel the sore throat creeping in as you blatantly repeated the same phrase over and over. he’s great at a lot of games but this one is definitely 100-percent not his forte.

“ah… ah ah, i know it now!” he finally said confidently with his right first up in the air. “i love you…”

his answer made you cover your face and burst out into fits of laughter before waving your hands in front of you indicating that he guessed the phrase wrong.

“i love you!” he repeated with more conviction.

“no, that’s not the word!” you shook your head while giggling.

“yeah, i know that’s not the word. i just want to say it to you.” he nodded before giving you finger hearts which you immediately reciprocate.

both of you are playfully flirting for most of the recording but this one got to be the cheesiness lines you heard today. 

taemin was pulled out from his train of thoughts when he heard you snickering loudly from across the room and his head hastily snapped in your direction. there you were, wearing a high school uniform that matches his and he was not going to lie, he was stunned when he saw you wearing it the first time this morning. you look bright and youthful with the red checkered bow around your neck. your high-waisted skirt emphasizes your curves. your pair of black thigh-high socks were the perfect length to make your legs look longer. your hair was pulled up on a half ponytail which he doesn’t usually see on you so it was a sight for him to remember. there was a soft blush on your cheeks and across the bridge of your nose. the gloss on your lips was also mesmerizing as it catches the light every time you speak. that didn’t help at all given the fact that he often caught himself staring at your lips too much lately.

seeing you made him think that if you both met as high school students, he would have undeniably confessed to you in an empty classroom after class. he chuckled at the thought. he was not quite sure if you would have liked him back in high school since he was not confident in himself back then.

his daydreaming was cut short when he realized who you were talking to. it was none other than the kim heechul. he can’t help but observe as the two of you conversed animatedly with each other. he knew that heechul was a funny guy but he’s not that hilarous for you to laugh that hard. while listening to whatever story he has been conjuring, you were pulling your hair up in a quick messy bun since the studio was quite hot with all the lights around. 

what happened next almost made taemin fell down from his seat. a scowl immediately appeared on his face as he watched heechul casually wiping the sweat on your nape with his handkerchief. not that taemin was counting but that was the 9th time he flirted with you today and not to mention that it was already after the show.

he bitterly watched as you both bid your goodbyes and now you were walking towards him. he cleared his throat and took another gulp from his water bottle.

“what’s with the long face?” you asked in fluent english as you sat down on the desk in front of him.

“what?” he looked up with a confused face.

“i thought you were taking english classes?” you mocked him–this time in korean. you nonchalantly reach out for his drink and took a sip.

you and taemin knew each other for quite a while now, almost 4 years to be exact. you were on friendly terms with him even before debuting as a duo but after spending these past few months preparing together, you have gotten much closer with him. too close that it became complicated for both of you. it was quite obvious that you two were acting more than friends but no one clearly expressed their feelings yet. the tension between you and him when you were alone became heavier and heavier as the days went by. you always have this urge to bring up the situation you two are in but everytime you were about to speak out, taemin would suddenly open up a conversation about a whole different topic.

“so what were you and heechul-hyung talking about a while ago?” yep, lee taemin always has awful timing.

“he just wanted to make sure that he didn’t make me feel uncomfortable during the recording a while ago.” you shrugged.

“oh, how sweet of him.” taemin scoffed and straighten up from his seat. “he even has to wipe your sweat for you.” he muttured under his breath.

“what was that?” you already heard what he said but it was too faint and you just wanted to make sure.

“nothing.” of course he would deny it. what did you expect?

“so… are you like jealous of heechul or something?” you were only joking, well half-joking. you used this opportunity to slowly open up the topic and to finally know where do you stand in his life.

he held your gaze for a few seconds before crossing his arms across his chest. you were not fully prepared for his serious stare and for what he said next. “and what if i am?”

“huh?” your dumbfounded voice was a couple of notes higher than usual.

“i said,” he leaned forward and looked up to you under his lashes. “what if i am jealous?”

you sat there frozen. you helplessly stared back at his eyes and looked for any signs that he was just fooling around. except it was clear as day, he meant what he said. you always have waited for this. you imagined all the possible scenarios. you even prepared what you would say once this was brought up but why were you speechless now? why do you feel all clammy and nervous? why can’t you calm down your frantic heartbeats?

you took a deep breath and forced yourself to bring back the confidence you once had. “then why don’t you ask me out already so you don’t have to feel threatened with every guy out there.”

“you know what?” he stood up and suddenly he was now towering over you. his scent wrapped all around you and it made you overheat even more. “i might just do that.”

“then i might just say yes.” you crossed your arms and hoped that it can disguise your slight shaking. whether it was from excitement or not, you do not know anymore. everything was happening so fast that you were not sure if you were comprehending them properly. you felt light-headed as you waited in silence.

“so we’re doing this?” his low voice broke the stillness.

“yes!” you responded a little too enthusiastically for your liking. you’re a mess right now, you ain’t denying that.

taemin chuckled softly before discreetly slipping his fingers under yours. 

oh, god. you felt a shock and then a shiver from his touch. it was not like it was your first time to have skin-to-skin contact but this one was quite different. you can feel the tension slowly rising along with the heat on your cheeks. you can feel the frustrations that were build up every time you wanted to touch him in a not-so-friendly manner. you were willing to bet your life that he was currently feeling the same as you when you witnessed his eyes dilate and darken.

“look, as much as i want to make out with you right now. we can’t.” he took a step back and put his hands in the pockets of his black slacks.

you felt both relief and disappointment when he widened the distance between you two. you can now catch a breather at last.

“i mean we can’t… here.” he suggestively added before turning away. “i’ll be waiting in my dressing room.”

there goes your breath again. 

it took you a minute to recover after hearing his inviting words. you looked around while you fan your warm face with your hands as if it helped with cooling yourself off. you closed your eyes and relaxed yourself for who knows how many times already. you then hopped down the desk and made your way to the place you can’t wait to go to.

if this was what jealousy does to taemin, you absolutely cannot wait to see more of it.

[sweetest-honeybee]

Down to Dust

Chapter 1

Fic Summary: Grian will have to keep the dragon egg secure for the Watchers. But, they’re not the only ones who want it. On a completely unrelated note, Mumbo will have to deal with a version of himself thats only amplified by his No Killing mindset.

Chapter Summary: Grian’s getting tired of Scar’s shit and Mumbo thinks he’s a responsible adult.

Word Count: 1392

TW: None

Note: TEGG doesn’t exist in this fic

Enjoy!

———————

This was the third time this week that Scar managed to find Grian’s hiding spot for the dragon egg. Grian was sure that he couldn’t have possibly found it behind one of the sheep in his farm and yet, here the two builders were, one with a proud smirk on his face and the other glaring with a somewhat playful disdain. They stood in the center of Grian’s base interior, the avian cradling the egg in his arms.

“Someday I’m going to hide this egg a thousand blocks away in the ocean,” he said. “I bet you’ll waste your time then.” This was only met with a snort.

“Hey, I might. You never know,” Scar shrugged. “You never let anyone near it, it only makes it more fun!”

Grian rolled his eyes, biting back a smile at the other’s blatant ignorance. “I never let you near it. Besides, it's a fruitless attempt for me at this point.” He turned and rested the egg on a nearby anvil. “If I don’t let anyone near it, it’s because you told them to touch it in the first place.”

Scar raised a finger to say something but clamped his mouth shut with a reddening face. “Mumbo wanted to touch it,” he opted to retort.

The other didn’t reply, only facing his friend with a raised brow and crossed arms.

“Okay maybe I talked him into it but that’s not the point.”

Only now did Grian break into a grin. “Well, I hope you look forward to never seeing this egg again.” He tapped at the top of the shell. “It’s too special to lose.”

“Yeah I bet it is after it took five minutes to kill the dragon,” Scar laughed. “You’ve never told anyone why it’s so special, though. I’m curious.”

“That’s for me to know,” he jabbed a finger at Scar ,”and for you to never find out.”

“Ah, but I will.” Scar pulled his sleeve to check his watch. “But, my time here is done. I’ve got wagons to build.” With a tip of his hat, he exited the base.

Grian watched as the door shut behind him. “Talk about time management,” he mused.

With that, he sighed and swiveled his gaze to the egg. Under the later afternoon beams, it was a beautiful thing. Its contents, however...The avian shook his head. For now, it was a peaceful souvenir from his battle. Although, it wouldn’t be his to keep. Not for hundreds and thousands of years. It belonged to a much more powerful family of beings.

And so Scar needed to keep his hands off of it.

Despite this, however, Grian hardly minded the shenanigans. He wasn’t exactly praised by the egg’s owners; really, he lacked a more...optimistic relationship with them. Having his rank and abilities revoked by the Watchers was almost as bad as being disregarded by them as a Player entirely. He shuddered at the thought but followed Scar’s choice to leave the building; he wondered what his neighbors were up to. Although, he probably shouldn’t have left the egg so exposed should Scar try to touch it again.

He rolled his eyes to himself, then looked around. Scar, like he mentioned, was stringing together small wagons. Grian cringed at how much copper the man used in his builds- not because of distaste but that he could hardly imagine himself spending so much time grinding for the stuff. He glanced at his roof.

Well, maybe he could.

His gaze then rested on Pearl’s and Impulse’s bases, then Mumbo’s. It was strangely quiet this afternoon. He’d hardly seen any of the three since the day before. Mumbo moreso, but the other two not so much. Curious, he made his way across the field. Only then did Mumbo’s head pop out of a hole by his surface farm did Grian notice that anyone except Scar was out there at all.

Grian stopped and watched as his mustached friend pulled himself out of the hole. Unsurprisingly, he was covered in patches of mud and dust starting at the tips of his fingers. As he noticed that Grian was there, he waved.

“Hey!” Mumbo greeted happily. He stood and dusted himself off in a useless effort to look somewhat presentable. “Sorry about the mess, I’ve been fixing some things in the potato farm.”

“I thought that usually didn’t involve rolling in the dirt,” the avian chuckled. “I’m trying to keep Scar off of the egg.” Mumbo raised a brow. “No, it didn’t work.”

“Huh, I thought he’d never find it in the sheep pen.”

Grian scoffed. “You’d think.”

“You could hide it in someone else’s base. Or better yet, in his own base,” Mumbo suggested.

The avian contemplated the idea, rubbing at the back of his neck. “I can’t really let it go anywhere else.”

“You can’t or you won’t? I can babysit the egg.”

At that, Grian laughed a single ‘HA’ at the proposal. “I’d rather have Scar just take it,” he replied. “No offense. It’s a magical egg, you couldn’t handle it.”

The redstoner gaped with offense despite Grian’s comment. “I think I’d be great at it!”

“Right, right,” the other sneered, but couldn’t help but to giggle at the thought. Eventually, he calmed himself. “Anyways, I’ve got work to do. I suggest a bath for you as well.” Grian looked Mumbo up and down. “You need it.” With that, he rocketed himself away with a salute.

Mumbo stared in disbelief, then turned to Grian’s house. He’d be a great babysitter for the egg! Grian was only just trying to insult his obvious responsibility. Seeing as Grian couldn’t keep the egg away from anyone, it wasn’t like he was much better at the task. Besides, he couldn’t kill the dragon, so what better way to obtain a dragon egg than through showing Grian just how responsible he was with it.

With that thought, the redstoner looked around. Nobody other than Scar, who was busy building, was around. So, he more or less stealthily creeped his way into Grian’s base. If anything he probably looked like a long legged spider. Mumbo expected the dragon egg to be hidden once more but much to his surprise, it was blatantly out in the open. He almost face palmed for Grian’s sake. It was too easy. He hastily plucked the egg from its place and shoved it into his inventory. Hopefully, Scar wouldn’t find it odd for Mumbo to have been there should he notice anything weird.

Mumbo left quickly and already began conjuring plans for a vault. Knowing Grian, it hardly needed to be in any way complex. Where to put it, however, was the question plaguing his mind. He really didn’t have a lot of space to work with. But, the underground potato farm should work just fine. Behind the backdrop was a perfect area. So, he did just that. Within hours, the vault was done and dusted. In it, a quartz interior with a pillar topped with a purple pillow. Mumbo looked around, admiring his work. He then turned to the pillar and pulled the egg from his inventory. He placed it on the pillow carefully, almost as if he wanted the egg itself to be comfortable. With a pat to the top of the egg, he left the vault.

It’s been a while since he last saw Grian. The builder should’ve returned to his base by now and saw that the egg was missing. Mumbo supposed that Grian was simply hanging out with their neighbors. He ascended the ladder, still covered in layers of soil that fell from the wrinkles in his now stained white undershirt. The redstoner peeked his head out of the hole. The sky was dark and littered with stars. Zombies groaned and skeletons' bones clacked blocks away.

Ah, Grian might’ve been sleeping.

He sat on the edge of the hole, legs still dangling inside, and checked his watch. It was late and tremendously so. How long had he been under the ground for? He raked his fingers through his hair. Well, time to sleep then. He made his way to the van and after he did, he looked out once more before sliding the door shut. Tucking himself into bed, he drifted into a peaceful slumber. The thought of the stolen egg hardly left any thoughts on his mind.

[starshipsofstarlord]

hi!! first of all, congrats on 2k!! that's super amazing & you totally deserve it!! also, for the 2k followers blurb event, could you maybe write an allison x lydia x reader platonic-best-friends-type-thing? if not that's totally okay. congrats again!! :)

thankyou sm hun!!!! This is the first blurb that I’ve gotten and I’m so excited, here ya go hun, please enjoy xxxx

Car Ride

Pairings | bestfriend!Lydia x reader, bestfriend!Allisonxreader, bestfriend!Lydia x Allison

Warnings | mentions of sex, mentions of allison x scott breakup, mentions of death, tiny smudge of angst

Quick link to my masterlist, if you’re interested in reading more of my crap 😬

Seated in the back of Lydia’s Toyota, you fiddled with your phone, as Allison took shotgun, and the owner of the car herself was behind the wheel, gripping it firmly with her manicured hands. Her fingertips tapped against the wheel, as she waited at the stoplight.

“Are you sure that I can’t like, I don’t know, jump out of this car, and avoid this triple date that has the possibility of turning into a teenage orgy, and like hang out with Isaac or something? He told me he has this new trick in lacrosse and I want to watch.”

Lydia tutted at you from the front, shaking her strawberry blonde head at your naivety. “Honey, he is not wanting to show you his lacrosse skills. I’d be worried if the moves he was hinting at happened on that field, more so if the rest of the team were around. Now that would be an orgy.”

“Ew.” Allison laughed. It felt strange, a good strange, to have the hunter back after summer break. After her mother died, she had left, breaking up with Scott, which now gave Lydia the perfect opportunity to set the brunette up with a random guy from school. Of course, she had to drag you into it too though. “No orgies thank you.” She wrinkled her nose adorably, making you lightly laugh at her.

“Isaac was not hitting on me Lyds, everyone like him has a thing for Erica, or had. I don’t know where she is now, but I’m sure she has a whole flock of werewolves chasing her blonde tail.” Crossing your arms, you allowed your cellular device to drop on your lap, as you leant back in the seat.

“Pack.” Lydia corrected you, making the girl in the seat beside her quirk a brow at her correction. “A mass of werewolves is called a pack. I even read that sometimes, werewolves try to be discreet to their flirting, other times, in Isaac’s case, not so much.”

“Well that wasn’t a page from the library.” You rolled your eyes at her, turning your face to glance out the window, fumbling back as you saw a sight that made you jump. Stiles was waving, unexpectedly in your sights as you gulped, trying to ignore him.

“Hey.” A yell hollered out of the Jeep’s window, as he began to bark profusely towards the three of you. Scott tried to calm him down, but instead, Lydia put her foot on the gas, avoiding them simply by driving off.

“Back to topic, I don’t need a damned book to tell me what’s obvious. Like it’s blatantly obvious that neither one of you want to go on this date, but me, being the good friend that I am, are forcing the pair of you to venture out of your comfort zones.”

“Good and forcing don’t really work that well in a sentence.” You bit politely back, watching as she huffed back at you, sending you a sly wink through the rear view mirror.

“Technically it was a reflection of how, in the past, have made me fight a werewolf, and my ex who ended up being a snake, literally.” She shrugged, pouting as Allison changed the station on the radio.

The road grew dark, the only thing briefly illuminating the road being the head lights of the car. There was a feeling of dread churning in your stomach, as your eyes nervously flickered back and forth ahead. You weren’t sure why but- holy cow.

No, that was the wrong noun. Holy deer! It’s antlers splintered through the wind screen, evoking shrill noises out of each of you, and hurriedly, you escaped the confines of the car. “Are you alright?” Scott and Stiles appeared, revealing that they had been purposely travelling down the same road as you all.

But that didn’t matter, not as you were revelled in shock. Not just by the occurrence, but by the deluding sense of feeling prior. Things were overall weird, and.. supernatural, how did you know that you weren’t the same?

“It just came out of nowhere- I.” Allison stumbled over her words to Scott. And stiles was practically all over Lydia, gushing about her safety, leaving you to hold your arms to enclose yourself in some kind of contact.

A small smile made its way onto your face as you watched Lydia lightly shove Stiles away, and walked towards you, embracing you. Soon Allison joined, calming and soothing your nerves, as you half clung to them.

“I guess we’re not going to be going on that date?” You asked hopefully, amusing the pair of them as Lydia brushed your hair back, relaxing you. Allison removed her jacket, hanging it over your arms, watching contently as you held it tighter around yourself.

Without them, your life would be ordinary... maybe. Without them, you’d have no safe guard nor feeling of acceptance. The dead deer laid upon the hood of Toyota, you could practice feel it staring holes into you, despite its eyes being directed away from you.

“I’m gonna have to call a tow.” Lydia annoyedly mumbled against your head, bringing her phone out, the screen lighting up to reveal nothing more than a picture of you three. You were wrapped in each other’s arms, grand smiles upon all your faces, taken before the summer.

During the holiday, it was clear something had been missing, and here she was, beside you. You tugged the brunette closer, not missing how she tried to secretly glance at her ex, not that you minded. There was history there, but there was to one day be history with you three two, and a future, if you all remained alive...

But for now, this moment would last, forever in your mind. It would be one thing that got you through everything else that had yet to come, even if you were freezing cold, with your legs shaking from wearing that dress that Lydia had persuaded her into.

[masterofmunson]

look after you (3)

TFATWS Bucky Barnes x Fem!Reader

Summary:  Sam asks you to join him and Bucky on a mission in Madripoor. When you get injured, Bucky feels the need to remind you more than once that he’s supposed to look after you now that Steve’s gone.

Warnings: sexual themes, language, typical marvel violence, blood, death, murder, just to be sure that i cover all the basis this is 18+. minors dni

Word Count: 5.1k+

Author’s Note: Hello!!!! I am really sorry that this part took me forever to post. The last month has kicked my ass but now everything’s a little calmer. As always, enjoy and tell me what you think! Comments, reblogs, and asks are encouraged and greatly appreciated.

When you return to Latvia nearly a day later, you’re more than eager to get back on your feet. Despite the overwhelming feeling of exhaustion running through your body, you’re glad to be back at it with Bucky and Sam. You’re somewhat rested, and you take the opportunity to visit one of the refugee camps to see if you could find any information on Donya Madani. 

When you enter the camp, you try your best to keep a low profile. You don’t draw attention to yourselves and try not to ruffle any feathers. 

“We should split up, cover more ground,” Zemo stated. 

Bucky glares at him, shaking his head. “No. Absolutely not. You’ll just take off.”

You press a hand against Bucky’s shoulder. He looks over at you and you smile gently at him. “I’ll go with him,” you said. 

His blue eyes stare into yours. It makes your heart race and your knees weak. Warmth spreads across your entire body. He doesn’t say anything. He doesn’t need to. He knows you’re more than capable of taking care of yourself and keeping a watchful eye on Zemo. It’s why he doesn’t argue. 

The four of you split in two and you and Zemo begin walking in the opposite direction. You’re on high alert, watching the refugees carefully. They don’t seem too concerned with your presence and avoid you entirely when you speak and attempt to approach them about Donya Madani. Although you tried connecting with them in the native language, no one wanted to talk. 

You’re silent for the most part, taking in your surroundings. You walk past a makeshift classroom and the teacher and his students hurry away from you. This wasn’t what you hoped and wasn't successful. It started to piss you off. 

“Have you and Sergeant Barnes been together for long?” Zemo asked, breaking the silence between the two of you. 

Your brows pinch together and you stop in your tracks. Zemo turns to look at you expectantly. You take a careful breath. The last thing you need is for Zemo to get under your skin in a place where no one trusted you and away from Sam and Bucky. You begin walking again and Zemo falls into step beside you. 

“Not that it’s any of your business,” you justified with a calm tone to your voice, “but we’re not together.”

You feel Zemo’s smirk beside you as he looks over at you. You grit your teeth and squeeze the inside of your palms harshly. You can’t react. You have to lay low. Do not cause a scene. Don’t bring unwarranted attention. Do not stand out. 

“But you care deeply for one another, correct?”

That much was obvious. You’ve always cared for each other. At the beginning it was because of Steve. Anyone Steve loved and cared for, by extension, you did too. It was also how you felt towards Sam when you were introduced to one another. 

But something changed along the way. You sought each other out. You relied on him as he did with you. You’d grown incredibly close prior to the blip, and if it hadn’t happened, maybe things would be different. Bucky would always be there to help Sam, regardless of the indifference he shows towards him. You’re tired of fighting. It’s all you’ve ever done. You can’t do it anymore. 

Bucky feels the need to repent and right his wrongs even though he was tortured and brainwashed to commit such heinous acts. He won’t stop fighting. He needs to help, to protect, to be good for the world. It’s all he’s ever wanted and it had been taken from him for so long. 

You nod in reply. You say nothing else. You weren’t about to spill your secrets to the man that brought Bucky incredible pain. He is not your friend and you don’t owe him anything. 

Thankfully, Zemo says nothing and you eventually regroup in the courtyard of the camp. You’d come up with nothing valuable and neither had Sam and Bucky. You would be leaving empty handed. 

You watch Zemo approach a young girl as you stand beside Bucky. You feel his gaze against the side of your face. You don’t say anything. You’re still reeling from your conversation with Zemo. 

Your heart beat picks up and the stress you feel gathers on your shoulders. Bucky whispers your name and this time you turn to look at him. 

“Are you alright?” he asked. 

No, you wanted to say. He made your mind a jumbled mess. You couldn’t think clearly with him so close to you. He makes your body tingle with want and desire. You wanted James Buchanan Barnes to ruin you completely, if only for a night, consequences be damned. 

You swallow the lump in your throat and push down the desire in your chest. The corners of your mouth twitch upwards in a soft smile. You nod, looking back over as Zemo rejoins the group. 

“I’m fine,” you said with as much conviction as you could muster and take a step away from him. 

Lie, you hissed to yourself. You’ve never lied so blatantly to Bucky before. It made your chest ache painfully. 

What could you say? You make me feel like a fool. No one’s made me feel like a fool, not even Steve. But you didn’t want Steve. You didn’t desire him the way you do Bucky, dare you say loved him in the way you think you love Bucky. 

Your mind races with imagination. The feeling of his hands on your waist. His lips pressed against the junction of your neck and shoulder. The contrast between his warm, calloused right hand and the coolness of his metal arm trailing along your body and pulling your clothes off. 

You needed to get away from him, and fast. You can barely breathe with him beside you. 

You’re the first to leave the camp and Sam, Bucky, and Zemo trail after you as they bicker at one another. Yet again, Zemo was one step ahead and holding the information hostage. 

As you make your way back to the townhouse, you freeze in the middle of the street. The uniform is unmistakable. You’d seen it on posters, on television, and even on public buses. John Walker, the man you had no desire to meet, was approaching you with his buddy right beside him. 

His voice thunders in the street, causing locals to stop what they’re doing to look at the new Captain America. He stops in front of you and looks you up and down. Just as you were sizing him up, he was doing the same to you. 

“Is this the reason why you won’t return any of my messages? You’re too busy slumming it with Wilson and Barnes, as well as a known terrorist? I thought you knew better.” Walker asked. 

You roll your eyes and cross your arms over your chest. “I’m on vacation,” you said like it’s the most obvious thing in the world. “Just so happens that Sam and Bucky are in town at the same time I am. Crazy coincidence, right?”

“Watch your mouth, Walker,” Bucky growled at the man. 

John’s eyes narrow as he stares at you, ignoring Bucky completely. You’re being childish and petty but you don’t care. Walker is an asshole. His eyes challenge yours, but you square your shoulders and stare him down. He doesn’t scare you. You don’t answer to him. 

“We’ll take it from here. Zemo is coming with us.” 

“No, he’s not,” Sam said. “We have somewhere to be and Zemo is the only one who can take us there. This is the only time that we may be able to reason with Karli, she lost the person closest to her.”

You resume your trek up the street and the boys fall close behind you. Bucky’s quick to join your side and Walker runs ahead to stop you from moving any further. His gaze flickers between you, Sam, and Bucky. You roll your eyes and let out a scoff. 

“You’re really going to let your partner do this, Bucky?” Walker asked him, looking between the two men. 

Bucky and Walker bicker back and forth and you and Zemo slip between them when you notice the same girl he had spoken to earlier. You follow her quietly through a back door and slip inside the building. You watch Sam disappear around the corner and you lean against a metal beam in the boiler room. You pick at your nails and ignore Walker pacing the length of the room, looking over at Bucky every now and then as he guards the door. 

Walker huffs impatiently and takes a step towards the door. You stand up and Bucky shoves Walker back. You swallow the lump in your throat as the two men stare at one another. At the mention of the serum in Bucky’s veins, rage runs through you. He didn’t ask to be the Winter Soldier. He didn’t ask for the serum. The serum had taken so much from him. It’s not something that he’s proud of. 

“Don’t you dare say that,” you hissed at him, shoving him away from Bucky. You were so close to clocking him in the jaw. “You have no idea how much he has lost because of the serum.”

There’s a glint in his eyes and he looks between you and Bucky. “What are you, his guard dog?”

“I can say the same thing about Lemar.”

“We’ve waited around long enough. It’s time to go.”

He shoves himself past Bucky and Lemar does the same. You and Bucky run after them into the main room where Karli and Sam are. Her brown eyes widen in panic and betrayal as she looks from Sam back to John. Sam attempts to reason with her again and you run straight between them in an attempt to block John’s attack. 

Karli’s super strength sends you and Sam flying into the nearby table and she takes off. Bucky runs after her and you scramble to your feet. You split off from Sam and back track into the boiler room. The handcuffs are empty and you curse loudly before racing down a flight of stairs. Your heart feels as if it’s beating out of your chest and the adrenaline rushes through you. The ache in your shoulder is the least of your concerns as you creep up to the basement door. 

With a gun in one hand, you reach for the handle and twist the knob. It doesn’t budge under the pressure of your hand as you attempt to jiggle it open. The sound of gunfire rings through your ears on the other side of the door. You point the gun on the lock and fire until there’s a hole in the door. You shove your body against the door and it caves under your weight. 

With your gun raised, you climb down the steps before relenting at the sight of Zemo unconscious on the floor with John looming over him. You tuck your gun in the back of your jeans and look over the room. Shattered glass vials are all over the floor and you glance at Walker suspiciously. 

“What happened?” you asked. 

“Zemo shot Karli and destroyed the vials that contained the serum,” he answered before turning his back on you and climbing up the stairs. 

Sam and Bucky join you several minutes later. You stare up at them against a cold metal crate beside the unconscious Baron. Bucky crouches in front of you and looks at you carefully. 

“You okay? What happened?” he asked. 

You nod your head and tell them what supposedly happened while you were attempting to get to Zemo and John Walker before anything worse happened. It made you feel uneasy and you have a gut feeling that Walker was lying to you.

“Do you believe him?” Sam questioned, looking over at Zemo.

You shook your head. You run a hand through your hair and let out a sigh. “No. I don’t trust him. Something about the way he looked at the broken vials makes me nervous. I don’t think he was telling me the whole truth.”

Silence falls between the three of you before Sam speaks again. “Let’s get out of here. We’ll regroup back at the house.”

You nod and get back on your feet. Sam and Bucky pull Zemo from the floor and drag him out of the basement out of the camp to the main street. You return to the house and Zemo is placed on the nearest couch. Bucky disappears out the door once more and you join Sam at the kitchen counter. You fish around the liquor cabinet and pour two glasses of whiskey for you and Sam. 

You take the time to shake off the stress and anxiety in your shoulders and enjoy the brief silence covering the room. 

It doesn’t last long, and soon Zemo begins to stir back into consciousness. He groans loudly and grasps at his head. Sam wordlessly grabs an ice pack from the fridge and hands both the pack and the glass of whiskey over to him. 

You sit down in one of the loveseats and kick your feet up on the coffee table. Within seconds, Zemo starts spewing his self righteous bullshit. 

“Jesus Christ, do you ever shut up?” you snapped, downing the rest of your whiskey.

Sam smiles and a low chuckle from Zemo fills the room. You sigh softly and ignore him once more. Bucky returns several minutes later and practically rips off his leather jacket. It makes your cheeks flush and you watch him pour himself his own drink into a glass. 

“There’s something wrong about Walker,” he said with a huff. 

“You don’t say,” Sam replied with a smirk.

“Well, I know a crazy when I see one, because I am crazy.” He takes a sip of his whiskey.

You bark out a laugh and Sam does the same. “Can’t argue with that.”

There’s a beat of silence that falls over the room and Bucky sighs deeply. “You shouldn’t have given him the shield.”

You jump to your feet and step between the two men. Your hand presses against his chest. “You know he didn’t give the shield to him, Bucky.”

A flash of hurt and anger appears across his face. You had never been on the receiving end of his hurt and anger before. It makes your chest ache as you look at him. He takes a step away from you and glares. Your heart leaps inside your throat and you attempt to reach for him again. He pushes your hand away. He had never rejected you so blatantly before. 

“How can you say that? After all that Steve’s done for you and you’re so casual and flippant about the shield! How dare you!” he yelled at you, his voice thundering off the walls and into your ears. It makes you wince and you’re fighting back tears. 

“He’s gone!” you shouted back. “Why should I care about something that was left behind by someone who abandoned me!”

His eyes darken as he stares at you. He shakes his head in disbelief and a bitter laugh leaves his throat. “Sam should have never asked you to come.”

“Yeah, maybe you’re right, but I won’t abandon Sam the way that Steve abandoned me. I’m willing to sacrifice what needs to be done, even if it makes me unhappy. I’m not a coward. I don’t want to be here more than you do,” you hissed, your body filling with rage. “I’m more than happy to leave.”

“Good! Then go!”

“Fine!”

Just as you’re about to gather your things and storm out of the house, the doors burst open and John and Lemar storm inside. He points to Zemo and says, “He’s coming with us. Hand him over.”

Sam and John argue with one another and you step away from Bucky. You’re pissed and hurt and you have no energy to join their bitching contest. You cross your arms over your chest and just seconds pass before the Dora Milaje walk through the doors. 

You watch with a smug smirk as Walker reaches a hand out to Ayo. You hold your breath as he places a hand on her shoulder. A split second passes and John and Lemar are both getting their asses kicked. You stand out of the way and gleam as they struggle against the Dora Milaje. One of the spears slices through the air and pins the shield against the kitchen table. 

“Looking strong, John!” Bucky exclaimed. 

If you weren’t pissed at him, you would’ve laughed. Sam says his name disapprovingly and Bucky rolls his eyes as he attempts to stop Ayo from doing anymore damage. Sam soon follows suit and you sigh before joining them. 

You had spent several long months training alongside the Dora Milaje when you were on the run after the Accords. They had helped you perfect your technique and made you an ever better fighter. You block the jabs of the spear with the outside of your forearms and quickly side step out of the way as one of the women aims at your gut.

With all things considered, you were fairing far better than both Sam and Bucky combined, and you hadn’t been keeping up with your training regiment. 

Another spear nearly sideswipes your face and your reflexes take over as you spin out of the way. You’re growing tired and out of breath, and they still haven't been able to get you to yield. 

Soon you were overpowered and you fell on your back with a loud crash. The wind is knocked out of you and you see stars at the corners of your eyes. Your head turns towards the bathroom doors and you can see an outline of a sewage drain. Zemo had escaped in the middle of the fight. 

John and Lemar are the first to leave, followed by the Dora Milaje. Bucky lends a hand down to you and you slap it away. You could be petty and angry too. You pretend not to notice the flash of hurt and surprise on his face as he adjusts to his metal arm again with a roll of his shoulder. 

“You okay?” Sam asked you. 

You grunt in response. “Fine.”

“Let’s go.”

You leave the house and trail behind Sam and Bucky as you walk down a number of streets with no particular destination. You’re silent and fuming as you listen to Sam talk on the phone. He stops up ahead and glances down at his phone. 

“That was Sarah. Karli threatened my nephews. She wants to meet and said for me to come alone,” Sam said, staring at the coordinates on the screen. 

“We’re coming with you,” Bucky said. There was no room for discussion and Sam didn’t argue. 

You’re nearly out of breath when you arrive at the correct coordinates. You attempt to control your breathing as you creep up the stairs with Sam in front and Bucky behind. Sam yells for Karli and she steps in front of one of the white pillars. You stand beside Bucky just far enough that it doesn’t make it seem like you’re a threat. Her eyes flicker over to the two of you before returning to look back at Sam. 

You shift nervously on your feet and the sound of Sharon’s voice rings through your ears. She had found John. Karli takes off and it takes a split second for Bucky to run after her. You cling to Sam and he takes off in the air. 

“Brace yourself!” Sam shouted at you. 

You cling to his back and use his shoulder for cover as he breaks through the glass ceiling. You shake off your legs and Sam squeezes your arm reassuringly. 

Suddenly a body flies through the closest door and hits the wall with a crack. To your own horror, John walks up to the man, a man that has super soldier strength, like it’s nothing. It scares the shit out of you as you watch with wide eyes as Walker bends a steel pipe in half before sending the Flag Smasher to the ground once more.

You glance over at Sam and he’s just staring at John. “What did you do?”

You both know that you didn’t need him to answer to come to the right conclusion. Somehow John had managed to snag a vial of the serum. You were right back at the memorial. Something was wrong and it had been John all along. He had knocked out Zemo and stole the last vial before it could be destroyed. 

You feel a sense of responsibility for it. If you had reacted quicker than you did down in the basement, maybe then Walker wouldn’t actually have the serum running through him. You could’ve stopped him and you didn’t, and it was all because of a locked door. You could hold your own against John without the serum, but now that he has it and he’s always so full of rage, you don’t know if you would be able to. He had the strength to kill you. 

You follow the two men in a daze in an attempt to find Lemar. Everything was quiet and still. It sends you on edge. You step into an empty workshop. Tables are flipped on their sides, chairs everywhere, and scraps of paper and wood litter the floor. 

Sam pushes you out of the way as a Flag Smasher jumps from the overhead balcony straight towards you. You stumble slightly before regaining your bearings and joining the fight. Your body screams in protest but you push through it. With every kick and punch finding its intended target, you’ve lived to see another second. 

One of them kicks you in the backside, cornering you with another partner. The force of the kick nearly knocks the breath out of you. You shake it off and dodge a stab to the face. You quickly disarm the knife from your opponent and use their surprise to your advantage. 

You may not have super serum in your blood, but you put up one hell of a fight. You easily avoided and stepped away as your attacker spins in the air. You wait for an opening and kick your leg up high, sending them backwards. You throw the knife down just inches from their head as a warning.

As you turn on your back, you quickly stumble as another opponent reaches to stab you. Bucky comes barreling in with an iron fist and the man goes flying and crashes into a nearby table. You have a split second to react as Bucky drags you back on your feet. 

You don’t know how much longer you’d be able to fight, especially defensively. If any of the Flag Smashers noticed that you were favoring your left side more than your right, they would use it to their advantage and kill you. Your right shoulder throbs and you taste blood and sweat on your tongue. 

You spin on your heels as you watch Karli barrel towards you, nearly taking your head off. You were tired, but you were still fast on your feet. 

It feels like it happens in slow motion. Lemar miraculously appears and throws Karli off balance. For a brief moment, he was holding his own. 

Until he wasn’t. 

Karli punches him with so much force that the sound of the pillar cracking underneath his weight vibrates through your ears. Everything stops, even Karli and her followers stare at the man pinned against the pillar. A number of sounds and voices fill your ears as you watch John crouch beside his partner to try and find a pulse. He shakes his head but nothing happens. There’s no response. 

Lemar’s gone. Lemar is dead. 

Sam nearly drags you with him as John jumps out of the building at the closest window. Your legs burn, screaming for rest as you run alongside Bucky and Sam through the building towards the growing sounds of screaming in the courtyard. 

Bucky stops you and grabs your hand, squeezing it tightly. There was nothing you could do but watch as John publicly executed someone with the shield. A shield that used to mean so much to the world was now and forever tainted. It’s legacy is gone. 

The civilians that had gathered starred in complete awe with their phones out as they witnessed Captain America slaughter a man that wasn’t responsible for Lemar’s death. 

He just stares off into the crowd, breathing hard and heavy as the blood from his victim stains the shield. He takes off, running away from the crowd, presumably to get away from Sam and Bucky. 

You take a step, intending to run after him, but Sam stops you. “We’ll get him later. Right now we need to talk to the police and paramedics. If the countless videos aren’t enough proof of what John did was wrong, our statements will.”

You nod but don’t say anything as exhaustion takes over. Your knees buckle and Bucky nearly carries you to the nearest ambulance. A blanket is wrapped around you and you’re given a bottle of water. Bucky leans against the ambulance door and your eyes watch another team of paramedics take care of the body underneath the statue. 

He’s placed on to a stretcher and a cloth is draped over his body to give the illusion of privacy, even in death, despite the number of people that watch.

A police officer approaches the ambulance you’re sitting in and asks if you’re ready to give a statement. You nod as you gulp down your water. You tell the officer everything that happened that led to the tragic event that followed just several minutes earlier. You leave out any mentions of the serum. The US government would find out soon enough. 

The officer thanks you for your time as another one approaches to take Bucky’s official statement. His is nearly identical to yours, apart from the times that you had split up and separated over the last two hours. He’s gruff and fuming and his arms are crossed over his chest. If you weren’t still angry at him, you would tease him, but now wasn’t the time. The officer thanks him again before scurrying off.

Sam reappears and adjusts the gear on his arms before shaking his arms. “There’s a ping on Walker’s location. He’s at some abandoned warehouse in a wooded area in the outskirts of the city.”

You nod and slip the blanket off your back. Your exhaustion could wait. You jump from the ambulance and Bucky rests a hand on your shoulder. You quickly brush it off. 

“You better think long and hard before you open your mouth, Barnes. If it’s anything other than “you’re coming with us,” keep it to yourself,” you snapped at him. 

He stares at you with wide eyes and parted lips, and does exactly as you asked. He says nothing. 

You walk in silence towards the outskirts of the city to John’s location. Your muscles burn with each step and you’re struggling to breathe, but you push through it. You have to for Sam and Bucky’s sake. 

You hold your breath as you enter the warehouse. John’s back faces you and Sam throws an arm out in front of you to stop you from getting any closer. He turns to look at the three of you and you rock back on your heels. 

“You don’t want to do this,” John said. His voice is casual and condescending. 

Bucky rolls his shoulders. “Yeah, we do.”

The shield flies through the air just inches from your head. You double back as Bucky and Sam tag team against Walker. 

Your eyes widen in horror at the sight and sound of Bucky crashing into one of the electrical beams. He remains still and it sends you into a panic. You’d never seen him like that before. 

You run straight towards Walker. You use your weight and momentum to leap up and choke him with your thighs, a move Natasha had taught you all those years ago. His fingers dig into the tops of your thighs with all his strength. Your own hands are too busy scratching and squeezing at his throat. 

Walker throws his back into a steel pole and it makes you lose your grip on him. The force of the impact sends you crumbling to the ground. Now it hurts to breathe. 

You land with a loud crash. You’re in a daze and can barely see straight. Black specks and stars cover the corners of your eyes as you fight off unconsciousness. 

John stands above you, his arm pulled back with the shield in hand. He was going to kill you, just like he did to the Flag Smasher, and there’s nothing you could do to stop him. 

You’re too weak and injured to fight. You’re on the brink of physical exhaustion. You can’t mask the pain any longer. You’re going to die before you have the chance to tell Bucky how you feel. 

You throw your hands up, a futile attempt to stop the shield from blowing your brains out. 

Sam knocks John off balance just as the shield moves towards your head. Sam uses the strength of his wings and jet pack to kick John in the stomach while Bucky knocks him from behind. For the first time, John’s on the floor. 

Sam and Bucky use all their combined strength to rip the shield from Walker’s grasp. There’s a loud crack that fills your ears and he howls in pain as his hand loosens around the shield. 

He swings at Bucky with his uninjured arm and Bucky punches him right in the face. This time John doesn’t get up and Bucky grabs the shield and tosses it beside Sam’s head as he lays on the floor near you. Several silent seconds pass as the three of you catch your breath and attempt to regain your bearings. 

Bucky crouches in front of you and gingerly threads his fingers through the hair at the back of your head. You’re not bleeding anywhere on the top of your head. 

Although you couldn’t see straight, you know his deep blue eyes find yours. Your head spins and you feel like you’re about to puke. 

“The shield,” you slurred, “did you get it?”

His soft laughter fills your ears. He wipes away the blood collecting under his nose. “Yes.”

You hum in approval and your vision begins to clear up. You blink rapidly and Bucky carefully wraps an arm around your waist, pulling you to your feet. 

Yes, you were still mad at him, but the way he held you against his side as you walked out of the warehouse made your stomach flip. It nearly makes you forget about your argument just hours earlier.

[jxsatlas]

𝐓𝐇𝐄 𝐖𝐇𝐈𝐓𝐄 𝐏𝐀𝐋𝐀𝐃𝐈𝐍 ⇢ keith kogane, ch. 2

keith kogane x gn! reader – previous, next

DISCLAIMER! this story does not originally belong to me, the author is @MaddieWolf37 on Wattpad. i have simply received permission to rewrite and continue her story. go and check out her profile for the original version!

SYNOPSIS! a story in which you are thrown into the middle of an intergalactic space war and have the undesirable weight of being a symbol of peace dropped on your shoulders. but maybe if you look past the constant danger and endless fighting, there's some good to being a paladin of voltron.

MATURE CONTENT! swearing, violence, gore, war, graphic descriptions, mentions of self-harm

The roof..? you think to yourself as you watch Pidge disappear through the stairwell. The three of you give it a moment before following him up. Your footsteps will echo loudly in the enclosed stairwell, and you have a hunch that it won't be good if Pidge hears you at this point.

So you try to climb the stairs as quietly as possible, but you still make some noise. It's hard not to when there's three of you.

You reach the top and Lance opens the door leading to the roof slowly. Pidge sits close to the edge of the roof, surrounded by various types of tech. His figure is silhouetted by the glow of the screens.

Lance shoves his hands in his pockets and sneaks up to Pidge, who doesn't hear your brother's approach because of the bulky green headphones he wears.

You and Hunk walk out onto the roof. You shiver slightly from the breeze, wishing you had put on some longer pants.

Lance grabs Pidge's headphones and pulls them off of his ears. "You come here to rock out?" Lance asks, causing Pidge to jump five feet into the air. He relaxes when he realises it's just you three.

"Oh, hey guys," he says.

"Hello," you say and give him a friendly wave.

Lance looks over the tech. "Hey, where'd you get this stuff? It doesn't look like Garrison tech," he asks, furrowing his brows.

Pidge smirks. "I built it," he says with pride.

Hunk's interest is piqued. He steps closer and starts looking over all the things Pidge has laying around him. Although Pidge has to smack Hunk's hands away a couple of times to keep him from touching his stuff.

"With this, I can scan all the way to the edge of the solar system," Pidge explains.

"All the way to Kerberos?" you ask with a smile as you join Hunk, your eyes sparkling with curiosity and awe.

Pidge hangs his head a little and grumbles at the mention of Pluto's moon.

Lance irks. "You go ballistic every time that's brought up! What's your deal?" he asks in an annoyed tone, but Pidge is hesitant to answer. "Look, we can't have any secrets between us if we wanna bond as a team," Lance says as he puts his hand on his hip.

Pidge looks down at his hands in his lap for a moment, letting Lance's words settle in. He sighs and looks up at the three of you. "Fine. I'll tell you."

He looks back at the objects laying around him and picks up a small notepad. You can't see what's scribbled all over the page as he holds it close to his chest.

"The world as you know it is about to change," Pidge says ominously, looking back at us. "The Kerberos Mission wasn't lost due to some crew malfunction. So, I've been scanning the solar system and picked up alien radio chatter."

"Aliens?" your eyes widen.

"Wait, aliens? Like the little green dudes? Or something bigger and meaner? Like Predator?" Hunk questions with fear, but Pidge only shrugs. This makes him uneasier.

Lance, however, isn't bothered at all by the mention of extraterrestrial life. "Okay, so you're insane," he insults.

"I'm serious," Pidge says sharply, glaring at your brother. "They've been repeating one word, Voltron," he says as he holds up the notepad.

Scribbled on the page with various coloured pencils looks to be something straight out of a Transformers movie. The word Voltron is messily written in big letters above it.

"What is it?" you question, taking the notepad from Pidge's hands. You stare at it. "It looks like a warrior or something."

"It's a superweapon," Pidge answers, "And the aliens are crazier about it more than I have ever heard," Pidge says, turning back to his tech.

"How crazy?" you ask.

The school alarms start to blare the moment the words leave my mouth. A voice crackles over the loudspeakers placed throughout the campus.

"Attention students!" the voice says. You all pause and listen, wondering silently if this has something to do with what Pidge was talking about. "This is not a drill."

You swallow. For some reason, the coincidental emergency announcement makes you uneasy. You grab onto your brother's sleeve in hope of a bit of comfort.

"We are on lockdown," the voice informs. "Security situation Zulu Niner. All students are to remain in barracks until further notice."

The voice repeats the announcement a couple of times, making you feel worse. Whatever it is must be serious.

Hunk stammers, pointing to something in the sky. "Is- Is that a meteor?" he asks wearily. "A really, really big meteor?"

You look up to see a giant bright ball falling towards the earth. Your heart climbs up to your throat and a worried expression takes over your face. Are those the aliens Pidge has been talking about?

Pidge grabs a pair of binoculars he had sitting next to him, using them to look up at the object burning up in the atmosphere.

"It's a ship!" Pidge exclaims.

Lance reaches over and snatches the binoculars from Pidge, taking a look for himself. "Holy crow! That is not one of ours!" he says.

"No, it's one of theirs," Pidge says with awe.

You watch it shoot across the sky, crashing down to the earth in the far distance with a loud boom, a trail of smoke behind it. For a moment, you just stare, trying to process what just happened.

Is this real? Or is it just some dream?

Lance jumps up excitedly. "We have to check out that ship!" he shouts, grabbing your wrist and dragging you to the stairwell. Pidge quickly packs his tech into his backpack and him and Hunk race after the two of us.

"Is that your idea of team bonding?" you ask.

"Yeah!" Lance chirps happily, racing down the stairs with you, Hunk, and Pidge trying to keep up with him.

﹋﹋﹋﹋﹋﹋﹋﹋﹋﹋﹋﹋﹋﹋﹋﹋﹋﹋﹋﹋﹋

The four of you are now perched upon a ledge not too far off from the crash site. The Garrison had beat you to it and were guarding the area heavily. They have the ship loaded up on a large, flatbed truck and a big, science tent set up off to the side. Scientists and high-ranking Garrison officers walk in and out of the said tent and you wonder what they have in there.

Did they find something? An alien? A strange artifact?

Pidge types away furiously on his laptop while Lance surveys the area with a pair of binoculars. You and Hunk sit back, tired and not really wanting to be there. Your head rests on his shoulder and you start to nod. The boredom you feel from the lack of interesting events is getting to you.

How long have you been there exactly?

"Hey," Pidge says, looking back at you and Hunk. You jolt out of your half-asleep state and sit up. "They set up a camera inside and I managed to hack into it and pull up the feed."

You stand up and stretch, yawning as well, and walk over to Pidge. You plop down beside him as he adjusts his position so you can all see his computer screen.

Your eyes widen when you register what you're seeing on the feed. A human man is strapped down to a metal table, his eyes darting around frantically as he struggles against the metal restraints.

He looks extremely familiar and his name is on the tip of your tongue, but you can't quite make out what it is.

A couple more scientists walk into the tent, joining the one that's already in there. They start to prepare a few things, and now that he has an audience, the man starts to shout a few things.

"Shiro, calm down," one of the scientists says, walking over to the man and placing his hand on his shoulder. "We just have to keep you quarantined until we run some tests on you."

"Shiro?" You say under your breath, the identity of the man now clicking in your brain. He was the pilot on the Kerberos mission. Him and his crew were pronounced dead about a year ago. But obviously, that isn't the case, and Pidge knew that for some unknown reason. Shiro is alive. Are his crewmates alive as well?

"Do you know how long you were gone?" a scientist asks.

"I don't know! Months? Maybe years?" Shiro answers frantically. "But we don't have time! Aliens are coming, they're probably on their way right now! They'll destroy us! We have to find Voltron!"

The four of you share a look of shock at the mention of the superweapon, wondering how Shiro knows about it.

"Sir, take a look at this," a scientist says and gestures to Shiro's right arm. "It appears his arm was replaced with a cyborg prosthetic."

The other scientist nods. "Alright. Put him under until we know what that thing can do."

Shiro jerks his body, pulling against the metal restraints at those words. "No! No! Don't put me under! There's no time!"

You watch with wide eyes as the scientists inject an anaesthetic into Shiro, not heeding a single word that comes out of his mouth. You definitely would, seeing how blatantly obvious it is that Shiro was captured by aliens.

"They didn't ask about the rest of his crew," Pidge says, a frown tugging down at his lips.

Lance furrows his brows. "They aren't even listening to him! That guy's a legend," he says.

"We have to get him out," Pidge says.

"Wait, weren't we just watching the feed because we couldn't get in?" You say, raising a brow at the others. "Plus, the place is heavily guarded. It's a miracle we haven't been spotted yet."

"True, but now we're properly motivated," Lance says and holds his chin in his hand. "We can come up with a plan."

Silence only gets a second to settle before Pidge perks up. "Oh! Maybe we can get some hazmat suits and dress up like scientists and sneak in!"

"That could work," You say with a shrug, "But I don't think they have spare suits just lying around in the open desert."

Pidge shrugs. "It's an option."

"Maybe we could tunnel in?" Lance suggests.

"That'll take time we don't have," you say with a roll of your eyes.

"I have an idea!" Hunk announces and you look at him. "Why don't we head back, dress up like chefs, sneak into the commissary, and have a late-night snack?"

"Food does sound appealing," You say and place your hand on your stomach. It's been a few hours since you have eaten dinner and you can feel a minor hunger.

Lance shakes his head. "No, what we need is a distraction–"

You scream when large explosions go off in the not-so-far distance. The loud, booming noise hurts your ears and you slap your hands over them, hoping to muffle it out. You squeeze your eyes shut out of fear.

When it's quiet, you peek through one eye to make sure everything's okay before opening both. Your hands fall to your lap as Hunk starts to panic.

"Were those the aliens? Are they coming for us?" he asks wearily.

"No. That was a distraction," Pidge says and points to something kicking up dust. "For him!"

Pulling up on a red, hoverbike beside a boulder near the tent is another person. Almost immediately you recognise the dark mullet and red jacket, and your brother seems to as well.

"Oh no," Lance growls and jumps up to his feet. "He is not beating me in there!" he says as he slides down the steep side of the small cliff.

Your brother runs towards the tent.

"Who's he?" Pidge asks, shoving his stuff into his bag once again to chase after Lance.

"Keith!" Lance shouts.

"Are you sure?" Hunk asks, following after him.

"Oh, I'd recognise that mullet anywhere!"

You roll your eyes and chase after Lance.

You know Keith as well. He was one of your classmates until he dropped out halfway through the school year.

He was top of the fighter pilot class with you just under him. You always got a score a few points less than his, and secretly strove to surpass him.

You were actually on pretty good terms with him though, seeing as your instructors liked to pair you up for team activities. The two of you were more promising than the rest when working together, so it made sense.

As you run towards the tent, you wonder what he's been up to. And if he even remembers you.

[softhourtxt]

needed silence | beomgyu

× pairing: choi beomgyu x reader × genre: angst but,,, happy ending / enemies to lovers au × warnings: swearing, bad habits (smoking, alcohol) × word count: 1,5k × a/n: yes, this is me revising an old fic from my old blog where i originally wrote this for a bts member... hope you still enjoy ~

➳ 

“you know what? no one wants you here. in fact no one fucking likes you.”

he looked taken a back by your sudden burst of confidence. he was too used to you ignoring him that you had managed to catch him off guard. he raised his eyebrows at you.

“tsk. is this the alcohol talking? you too scared to speak without the help of a couple margaritas?”

this is what you were used to hearing from him. you did something unexpected, but he was still using the same old tricks. in all honesty, it gave you the upper hand.

“maybe it’s because i’m too nice when i’m sober. i’m done with that. get out of my sight.”

your friends who were beside you are either sending him dirty looks or hollering at your remarks. it was them in the first place who encouraged you to drink up and have him hear what you’ve been wanting to let out all this time. and because of the ultimate provocation you finally agreed. it was about time you said something harsh back.

with your drunken friends backing you up, beomgyu decided it was better for him to back off. so with a chuckle and a shake of his head, he turned on his heel and exited through the back door. you had won. for the first time in your life it was beomgyu who was the first to walk out. you had more than clearly won, but why did you still not feel satisfied?

instead of going to find your brother who had initially invited him to the party, beomgyu went outside alone. he had been waiting for the day you’d snap and call him out on his bullshit, but never in a million years did he think it would happen so soon. and most importantly, never in a million years would he have thought he’d feel so hurt.

ever since the two of you met you had been bickering. in a way it should have been expected. after all, you were his best friends sister, you were never meant to be close. as time passed the bickering soon turned into arguing, hurt and tears.

of course the two of you avoided any contact with each other whenever your brother soobin was around as not to concern him. how would the two of you even have explained your situation to him? “hyung, every time i see your sister we end up shouting at each other until the other one leaves to go cry somewhere, but it’s fine we tolerate each other for you~” and the worst thing being, it was you who usually left first.

you never cried in front of beomgyu, but he knew. he had seen the tear stains on your cheeks when you’d come to the kitchen to grab a glass of water while him and your brother were sipping coffee at the table. he felt terrible, of course. he had promised himself countless of times to try and act nicer around you, but ended up breaking that promise every single time that he saw you. you just knew how to press his buttons and voila, the beast inside of him was out. so yes, it was about damn time you said something harsh back.

after a couple minutes of sitting on the porch step, beomgyu stood up, leaned his back against soobin’s pick up truck and watched as his exhale came out in a fog against the cold air. he shoved his hand in the pocket of his leather jacket and brought out a pack of cigarettes, taking one out and placing it between his lips. just as he lit up the cigarette, the volume of the music coming from inside the house was turned louder. it seemed like you were finally celebrating your victory in establishing dominance over him. you were happy now that he was out, beomgyu thought.

as beomgyu took his first big inhale of the toxin he felt his tense muscles relax a bit. the cold air was already nibbling at his skin and he slightly shivered at the uncomfortable sensation. just then the door in front of him swung open a little too harsh and hit the wall beside it with a loud thump, the person stumbling out obviously not meaning to use so much force.

“shit.” you mumbled as you drunkenly examined the wall for possible damage. beomgyu didn’t say anything, just watched in amusement and waited for you to notice him standing there. and you did.

“oh. you’re still here.” your face dropped to the floor when your eyes finally focused on him.

beomgyu took the cigarette from his mouth between his fingers and blew out the smoke. “yeah. didn’t expect you to come here.”

surprisingly, you gave him a weak smile then swayed your way over to lean against the truck as well, right beside him.

“well, i’m not really a big fan of crowds and loud spaces. i came for some fresh air.”

beomgyu huffed at you when you took in a dramatic breath of air.

for a few seconds the two of you stood there in silence. it felt like words didn’t need to be exchanged and maybe it was better that way. maybe silence is what your relationship needed.

after a while you turned to look at him and came to notice he was smoking. beomgyu felt your gaze burning the side of his head so he turned to see what you were staring at. you gestured towards his cigarette and beomgyu furrowed his brows.

“can i have one?” you casually proposed. he was taken a back, but dug out another cigarette nevertheless, offering it to you. you gingerly took the toxin from him and placed it between your lips just like he had done mere minutes ago. he then took out his lighter as you were already leaning closer for him to light up.

“thanks.”

beomgyu nodded back in acknowledgement. “i didn’t know you smoked.”

“only when i’ve been drinking.” you were quick to point out. “that’s why you didn’t know.” you grinned at him. beomgyu found your smile a surprisingly pleasant sight, something he didn’t see too often.

“beomgyu?” you suddenly initiated conversation.

“hmm?”

“why are you always such an asshole towards me?”

it must have been the nth time that night that you caught him off guard. not knowing the reason himself, beomgyu blatantly shrugged and cast his eyes down. “i don’t know.”

“is there something wrong with me? is there something you don’t like about me?”

it was obvious your confidence to ask such questions was due to the alcohol in your system. maybe you had been dying to ask these questions from him, beomgyu thought.

“no. there’s nothing wrong with you.”

you looked at him quizzically, trying to understand his seeming hatred towards you. “there’s something wrong with me.” he continued.

“i really can’t understand you, choi beomgyu. i’m trying really hard, but i can’t.”

“i don’t really understand myself either. you just irritate me for some fucking reason even i can’t understand.”

you blew out the smoke from your lungs in a deep sigh and leaned your head back in frustration. after another moment of silence you decided to break it again.

“look,” you threw your cigarette to the ground and stomped on it “i need to try this one thing.”

beomgyu watched you closely as you took an intimidating step toward him. you then placed your hand on his cheek and when it seemed like he was allowing it, you leaned in and kissed his lips.

his lips felt cold against yours, even with the alcohol evident in your blood stream. you would have never in your life attempted something like this sober, but you had already confronted him once for the evening so you decided to just fuck it.

he responded to your kiss almost immediately, lips surprisingly hungry for yours as his hands wound against your waist to pull you flat against him. he tasted like mint, booze and cigarettes, a combination that only made you feel like you were on cloud nine. by now his hands were stroking your sides up and down meanwhile your thumb was caressing his cold cheek. this was the satisfaction you were craving, the ultimate victory in your battle.

sooner than the both of you would have wanted, you pulled back from the kiss, breathless. beomgyu didn’t let go of you and neither did you. and almost as intensely as your kiss was, you stared at each other in a bliss.

“what the fuck was that?” you laughed as you leaned your head against beomgyu’s chest.

“that was one hell of a “thing”, (y/n).” he chuckled back.

“what are we doing, beomgyu?” you looked up to ask him, but instead of a vocal reply, your question was answered by his lips colliding with yours.

“just shut up and let it happen.” he mumbled against your lips. you giggled, but tangled your hands in his hair nevertheless. and you couldn’t believe silence was all you needed.

[gumnut-logic]

Callisto (Part Eleven - Them)

Prologue 1. Incident - Bit 1 | Bit 2 2. Fallout - Bit 1 | Bit 2 | Bit 3 3. Voyage - Bit 1 | Bit 2 | Bit 3 4. Arrival - Bit 1 | Bit 2 5. Orientation 6. Rescue Site 7. Investigation 8. Recovery 9. Retreat 10. Capture 11. Them

Some reveal in this one, lots of worry and some discovery. John is not a happy boy.

As always, many thanks to @scribbles97​​ @janetm74​​ @vegetacide​​ and @tsarinatorment​​ for all their amazing support. you guys rock ::hugs you to bits::

Tonight is a bit of a posting night. I will be posting the last chapter of The Cane shortly as soon as I finish proofing it :D Yay, for finishing things :D Callisto is currently at 45,000 words.

In the meantime, I hope you enjoy this one.

-o-o-o-

Alan was out of his pod, screaming Scott’s name, but his brother was gone. The water as still as before.

“Alan! Status!” John’s voice was as panicked as Alan had ever heard it.

“Scott’s gone.” He dashed over to Virgil. His big brother was crumpled in a heap. In the low gravity, Scott’s shove had been enough to throw him up against the rock wall. “John, I need you.”

“FAB.”

Virgil was unconscious.

Again.

A quick scan and his vitals were good. There would be bruising ...as if his brother needed more. But there was nothing broken, thank god.

A scan of the still unconscious director proved her to be stable as well.

He shifted Virgil into a safer recovery position.

“Eos, can we scan the lake?” He eyed where his big brother had vanished.

“No. I can get no data beyond approximately ten metres below the surface. It is very frustrating.”

Alan continued to stare at the surface and its glass stillness. “Can you locate Scott?”

“John has already pinpointed the Commander. He has joined the other life form below the lake’s surface. There is no comms response from the Commander.” The AI managed to sound both worried and frustrated.

“Are there any other life signs in the area?”

“No.”

“Are you sure?”

There was a pause. “There is no life as defined by the search parameters programmed into Thunderbird Five’s sensors on the moon beyond what has already been accounted for by International Rescue and Callisto Base personnel. Did you wish me to change those parameters?”

Alan swallowed as the third dragonfly buzzed into the cave. “ I think we’re going to have to. There is something down here.”

-o-o-o-

“We can’t leave him!”

“We’re not leaving him, Alan. We need to get the director and Virgil back to base.”

“But Scott-“

“He’s alive. We will do everything we can, but first we need medical attention for Virgil and the Director and to gather more information to better understand what we are dealing with.”

Virgil groaned and dragged a hand to his face. There was an oxygen mask in all its cold and moist glory and he shoved it off.

The elastic caught in his hair.

“Virgil!”

The pounding in his head was so loud, he could barely hear above it. There were hurried footsteps and someone ...Alan, it had to be Alan...touched his arm.

“Virgil, are you with us?” John’s melodious voice appeared on his other side and echoed through his aching head.

“You gonna open your eyes for us?” Alan sounded worried.

Open his eyes? Oh, yeah. A flicker and suddenly his retinas were assailed by the red of Three’s tiny infirmary.

A sigh. What the hell had happened now?

God, his head hurt.

“Alan, get us back to Base.” John’s voice was calm and quiet but had that tone of command.

There was quiet for a moment as the infirmary walls faded in and out of focus, roiling Virgil’s stomach.

A sigh and his little brother acknowledged John with an exhaled FAB before leaving Virgil’s bedside with soft footfalls.

Hands strapped him into the bed, fingers brushing gently across the surface of his uniform before landing ever so softly on his temple. “Rest, Virgil.” His hair was brushed off his forehead, the fine grip on John’s glove catching strands. “You’re safe.”

Virgil let out a sigh and closed his eyes, willing his head to stop pounding.

Perhaps it was a sign of the severity of whatever had happened to him, that he didn’t realise there was a voice and a touch missing until he was caught in the spiral of pain-induced exhaustion.

The question of a missing big brother followed him into an uneasy sleep.

-o-o-o-

Berry for his eldest son.

It was an exchange Jeff wasn’t sure he was willing to make.

But the thought was arrested before he could consider it further, knowing that Scott would admonish him for even thinking it.

But in the depths of his soul, the father in him was screaming.

Berry was off loaded from Three and onto the gantry, quickly followed by an equally prone Virgil. His engineer son was only asleep according to John, but with Scott missing, Jeff found himself clinging to his second eldest regardless.

The automatic cams on the Dragonflies had picked up what had happened. It was blatantly obvious there was something with purpose at work, something not human, possibly sentient.

The word ‘aliens’ bounced back and forth in his head.

Virgil was returned to the spot in the infirmary he had left barely an hour ago. Gordon sitting on the bed Jeff had restricted him to, stared at his co-pilot with worried eyes. Alan, equally as worried, sat down beside his fish brother and Gords wrapped his good arm around him.

Virgil was ever so quiet.

Berry was surrounded by the Base doctors, a curtain pulled around her bed, hiding her from the rest of them.

Jeff had the urge to shove it all aside and demand answers.

John had an IR medscanner out and was scanning his brother again. He spoke up without Jeff having to ask. “He’s sleeping.” It was a repetition of the earlier diagnosis, but it was welcome anyway.

A frown and the astronaut narrowed the scanner’s beam, prodding its controls and bringing it closer to Virgil’s head.

“What is it?”

John’s voice was calm, but distracted. “Director Berrenger has some ear damage. Virgil...” Another prod of the device. “Damn.”

“What?” Jeff took a step closer.

But John stopped scanning his brother, adjusted the controls and then ran the medscanner over his own head. Frowning at the readings, he activated his wrist ‘projector and swiped the results to that display.

The two scans bobbed up side by side, close up details of Virgil and John’s auditory systems.

“Virgil has had a headache since he arrived. We thought it was related to the T-Drive. But it appears that he has been subjected to some kind ear injury.”

Gordon spoke up. “He got dizzy.”

John frowned and poked at the hologram, spinning it. The frown deepened a moment before the astronaut suddenly darted around the bed and aimed the scanner at Gordon’s head.

“What? What the hell are you doing?”

“Hold still.”

A flicker of yellow and John obviously got what he was looking for. A breath and he aimed the scanner at Alan’s head as well.

His sigh was a frustrated one. “We are all exhibiting signs of ear irritation, but Virgil’s is by far the worst. Dad?”

Jeff blinked as John waved the device over his head. His son’s glare at the scanner was almost enough to incinerate it.

John slapped his comms. “Eos, land the probe closest to the Crystal Cavern. I need physical contact with the rock. Activate mic input, scan the spectrum.”

“FAB.”

It took a few moments and Jeff found himself absently stroking Virgil’s hair.

“Contact made. Scanning...oh, my!”

“Let me hear it.” John was wired ever so tight, eyes on fire.

“Input is being received at a very high volume, but at a very high frequency far above the human ability to hear. Translating.”

The sound that emitted from John’s comms was a very loud discordant screeching. Everyone in the room clapped their hands to their ears. A nurse attending to Berry shoved aside a curtain and shouted at them, as John yelled at Eos to stop.

“What the hell is that?!” Gordon, as always, voiced what everyone was thinking.

John was already bouncing program variables over his wrist. “That is what we need to find out.”

-o-o-o-

It turned out it was the moon itself.

Jeff sat with Virgil as his son slept, unable to relax himself. Alan intermittently gnashed his teeth fretting out loud what all of them were thinking. Scott was missing and it tore at all of them.

Virgil slept on.

John could only be described as frantic. The space monitor swore a blue streak that had Jeff snapping at him at one point. The man’s response was throw up a hologram on his tablet that mapped out the sounds being emitted by Callisto.

It was like a nest of spiderweb laced around and through the rock of the Jovian satellite. Pockets of density existed in places along with patches of less. John reached up and poked a spot that was slightly different from the rest, but still drenched in lines.

“This is Callisto Base.”

“And what is that?” Jeff pointed at the fine lines darting all over the moon.

John sighed. “My guess is that we are looking at a communications network.”

Jeff’s eyes widened. “Who is communicating?”

“Unknown. There are no unaccounted life forms on this moon. Not life as we know it.”

“What about life as we don’t know it?”

“We’re working on it.”

Next question. “How did we miss it?” The moon was literally shouting loud enough to injure.

John deflated on the spot, obviously considering the lapse a failure on his part. “Sound requires matter to travel through. Thunderbird Five is not equipped to detect it unless we have something in contact with the atmosphere or a mic in play.”

“We have mics in our comms.” But Jeff knew the answer before his son supplied it.

“The frequencies are beyond usual pick up range. Far too high.”

“What about Virgil?”

John wilted. “I don’t know, Dad. Why is he affected more than the rest of us? Hell, why aren’t the colonists showing symptoms?”

Jeff frowned at that. “Why aren’t they? They’ve been here for years.”

“I can’t see how they could not be affected. We’ve only been here a short time and we are showing the effects.”

Something cold curdled in Jeff’s gut. A sudden suspicion roiled to the surface. “Leave that one to me.” He threw himself to his feet.

“Dad?” Aquamarine frowned at him.

“I’ll get some answers.”

-o-o-o-

His head was hammering both in dream and, as he rose to consciousness, in reality. “Oh god.” Virgil rolled over clutching his head and curled into a ball.

“Virgil?”

Alan? He clenched his eyes shut, hands gripping his hair.

“Virgil?” The softer more melodious voice of his older space brother. “Hold on.”

There were words not directed at him and Virgil must have faded out again because next he knew he was flat on his back and the pain had been reduced to a pale echo of itself, replaced with a light fog.

Someone was holding his hand.

“Scott?” It came out hoarse and barely there.

“Virgil, you with us?”

Alan. It was Alan. His little brother.

Rocket boy.

God, his head was sluggish.

“Alan? Where’s Scott?” He forced his eyes open and blinked against the light. Another groan and he moved on the bed, his body aching and stiff as if he had been in the same position for an eon. “What happened?”

Another slow blink and his memory landed in Crystal Cave and rescuing Director Berrenger, and then…pain and nothing.

“Ummm…Scott’s not here. Lemme get John.” There was the sound of an active comm and Alan calling for his big brother.

Huh?

“Where’s Gordon?”

“Asleep.” Alan pointed at the blue curtain beside them. “Dad had a go at him for not resting. Threatened to send him up to Five if he didn’t try to sleep.”

Oh, just fantastic. “What about you? Have you slept?” How long had Virgil been down for the count?

“I’m good. Been helping John detect aliens.”

“Aliens? What aliens?” Frowning shouldn’t hurt like this.

“Virgil, you’re awake.” John’s melodious voice was a welcome balm despite the fact it was stating the obvious.

“John.” Virgil tried to sit up, but a gentle hand halted him. A pair of aquamarine eyes telling him more than any words. “What happened? Where’s Scott?” Scott should be here. He was always here.

John sat down beside Virgil’s bed deliberately and quietly.

Oh god. “What happened?” Virgil pushed himself into a seated position despite his brother, determined to face whatever had happened…not lying down.

“Scott is okay, as far as we can tell.”

“As far as you can tell?”

John’s lips thinned and his eyes screamed apology before he activated his wrist comm and showed Virgil footage from the dragonfly cam that caught exactly what happened.

Virgil stared as his brother sacrificed himself to save him.

The expletive that fell from his lips was sharp and vulgar.

He pushed the fog in his head to one side and forced himself to focus. “I need details.” He shoved the covers off his legs.

A blink.

“And clothes.”

-o-o-o-

Jeff stared the Commander of Callisto Base down, every ounce of his height, every piece of history they held together. “What haven’t you told us?”

“Have you located Ju yet?” The shorter man set his shoulders and glared up at Jeff.

“We have discovered that there is likely another form of life on this moon. Were you aware of this?”

Graeme blinked. “Life? What?”

“My eldest son was captured by the same mechanism that likely caught your wife. My second eldest has taken ill with the effects of strong ultra-frequency sound. These sounds appear to envelope this moon. Are you trying to tell me, that with all your scientific staff and equipment, supplied by Tracy Industries, no less, you have yet to encounter this problem after inhabiting this base for over five years?” Jeff inched closer. “Think before you answer.” The threat was clear.

Graeme swallowed. “There was Jeremiah, but we thought that was an isolated case.”

“Jeremiah?”

“One of our geologists. Took ill, nausea, headaches, nothing we did helped. Are you telling me he died of exposure to sound?”

Jeff’s eyes narrowed as his heart lurched. “He died?”

Graeme’s eyes grew frantic as the dots connected. “Stroke. The doctors said it was stroke. I was going to ask you to take his body home to his family when you left.”

Jeff’s lips thinned ever so much more. “Anyone else?”

“Uh.” The man was obviously floundering and cursing himself at the same time. “There have been instances of nausea, dizziness and headache, but nothing as bad as Jeremiah. We put it down to long term low gravity and the environment. We are living on the edge of human experience out here. You know what that is like.” He stared up at Jeff. “What kind of life? Have you seen it?” A swallow. “What about Ju?”

What about, Scott? “We’re working on it. We hope to have more information once Berry wakes up.” They needed so many answers.

-o-o-o-

John glared at Virgil, but his idiot brother was as determined as any of them would be in the same situation. John dreaded what would happen when their father returned.

There was going to be hell to pay.

Virgil was given his uniform and Alan was scooted out of the closed curtained area. John refused to move and earned a glare for his efforts, but there was no way he was leaving Virgil on his own in this state, stupid determination or not.

Dad was going to kill all of them.

The rainbow of bruises across Virgil’s back as he threw off the hospital gown their father had so painstakingly helped the nurses dress him in hours earlier only served to impress on John the fact that this was ever so wrong.

“Virgil, please give yourself more time.”

“Scott doesn’t have time.”

“How do you know that?”

“He’s been kidnapped by goddamned aliens, John. I’ve seen enough sci-fi flicks to know where that leads.”

“I don’t think we need a Ripley in this case, Virgil.”

His brother yanked spacesuit onto his legs. “How do you know that? You haven’t even located the bugs yet.”

“I doubt they are bugs, Virgil.” With a sigh, he reached in and helped his brother pull his spacesuit up over his shoulders, not missing any of the multiple winces at the action. “In fact, I think they might be the crystals.”

Virgil turned to look at him. “The quartz?”

“Yes.”

“How? It reads as silicon dioxide.”

“I know. Thunderbird Five is not the USS Enterprise. We’re doing our best here.” John lowered Virgil’s red and green baldric over his shoulders, ever so gently letting it rest on what he knew were bruises.

This was madness. “You should stay in bed. You’ve been affected more than any of us. Long term exposure to ultrasound can be life threatening. Please, Virgil.”

His brother turned around, ever the rescue operative, the uniform wearing him rather than the other way around. “And what about Scott?”

“Let me, Virgil, please. We have Dad and Lee. You need rest.”

Dark eyes met his. “With Scott down, I’m in command. It is my duty to lead.”

“Virgil, this is not a military organisation and you are not a soldier.”

“No, I’m a Tracy.” With that, he threw aside the curtain and strode out.

John sighed. First Dad, and then Scott, when they found him.

Yes, there was going to be hell to pay.

-o-o-o-

The woman on the bed was an echo of the team mate he used to know. So much time had passed between them and, as it was always with time, it took as it left.

Berry’s hair was fading to white. Her skin had been kept relatively young by the lack of sun in her life. After all, it was a six to nine hundred odd million further kilometres away out here. But there was a frailness, nonetheless.

She seemed so small against the white of the pillow and bedsheets. Lacking the vivacity he knew she possessed.

“Kate?” He swallowed. She couldn’t hear him. Two broken ear drums would do that. He reached out a hand and gently nudged her shoulder.

He was relieved to see those familiar green eyes open and look up at him.

“Hey.” His voice broke just a little.

“Jeff?” Those eyes widened. And suddenly, before he could react, he was wrapped in eager arms holding him ever so tight. “Oh, Jeff. You came.”

“Could I do anything else?” But her arms were still around him. She couldn’t see his face. Couldn’t hear his words.

He found himself hugging her ever so tight back.

But he had to break it off. He needed information.

A gentle nudge and she relaxed back onto the bed, frowning up at him in worry.

Grabbing a tablet, he typed in the question and held it up for her to see. What happened?

“They caught us. The water kept us trapped. Couldn’t get out. Nga and Steve and then Chrisoula. They killed them. Trying to do something.” Her breathing elevated and for a moment there, Jeff feared he had lost her to whatever she was remembering.

He shook her shoulder gently, bringing her eyes back to him. Fingers on the tablet. Sound. They use sound.

She nodded and then closed her eyes as if in pain, a hand going to her head.

He squeezed her shoulder again. “Take it easy.”

A blink and he realised she knew he had said something but not what. He hastily tapped the words into the tablet.

She sighed as she read them, melting a little into the bed. “Where’s Ju?”

I was hoping you would be able to help us with that.

Realising what he meant, her lips thinned and her shoulders straightened a little on the bed.

“She’s still out there?”

He nodded.

“Damn.”

There’s a possibility your release was either an attempt at communication or a ruse to trap one of our operatives.

“Operatives?”

International Rescue.

“Your sons are here? To rescue us?”

That’s the plan.

She blinked a lot at that, moisture in her eyes, her lips twisting a little. “Thank you, Jeff.”

It’s what they do.

They. His own words struck home as he looked at the tablet.

A hand scratched gently at his arm, drawing his attention back to Berry.

“They kept us in a room made of water. The walls were continually moving, like a waterfall that never stopped. But with our lights we could see through it.” She blinked, eyes again focussing away from him, seeing something he couldn’t. “In the room, the floor was bare rock except for one of those crystal formations. Just one. But in the water outside, there was crystal everywhere.” She looked at him. “It’s the crystals, you know? They’re alive.”

-o-o-o-

TBC

[archersgaymerblog]

(throwaway because i'm shy) it's so disheartening to see all the blogs that i used to trust a lot just... ignore the blatantly obvious crypt0f4sh in the fandom or just dismiss it as "random discourse", because it's not just random discourse, hell, even going by the notes of that one post you can see how blatantly obvious it is that they're mutuals with proud racists. i don't understand why people are suddenly are given sympathy like "think of the anons that could be sent to that person!" like, they want me dead! why would i care about them! there's no "both sides" to this argument, and i'm not "lacking in critical thinking" for being afraid to be myself in the fandom and seeing the obvious f4sh for what they are. it just... sucks man. it sucks so much. i'm sorry to vent in your inbox, but you're the only one out of a few of my followed blogs that was outward about this sorta stuff without being super dismissive and feeling like they were siding with the racists or staying quiet because they agreed. i think i'm just paranoid, but i don't know, at this point the silence is really alarming to me...

Hiya friend. I hope you don’t mind me posting this publicly, but it’s legit because I feel the exact same fuckin way hhh. Hell, I’m sorry I was the only fuckin one you were following saying shit about all this. I do get where maybe folks are uncomfortable about reblogging callout posts n shit but like you said, just leads to this paranoia. And frankly there should be a difference in response between “Hey this callout is literally just fictional content” vs “HEY THIS CALLOUT IS VERY REAL AND REFLECTIVE OF WHAT THEY BELIEVE” which I think that first is what turns folks off from callouts in general but. Still gotta take the real, legitimate ones seriously yea?????

Hell, ya wanna know something? When I first made my edited pinned and mentioned there was a fash trying to lay low in the fandom and to message me so I can let folks know? Know how many messages I got? Fuckin two. Only two whole people cared enough about a cryptofash to actually reach out. Bless those two folks, but genuinely the fact that I only got two fuckin messages was disheartening as all fuck. Hell I think that’s why I reblogged the callout in the end, usually they make me really uncomfortable, but if people weren’t willing to put in the work privately, might as well shove it in their fuckin faces.

I’ve been very angry and upset about all this. I’ve long since blocked the fash and their open supporters, but knowing they probably have people in the fandom just quietly supporting them and their defenders… hell I haven’t lost a lotta followers, but there hasn’t been a net gain on my end!! Which again just. God fucking damnit.

That to say, considering I’ve been pretty active in legion spaces… idk where people are with all of this. Maybe 2 or 3 people, but besides that, nothing. So, while I’ll probably be posting art still, think I won’t be as super active over here regarding legion content. Just cus, like you said, fuckin paranoia baby. So if the posts are slowing down, well now ya know. I literally do not know if yall care enough about me and other marginalized people to feel safe sharing yalls shit.

And again friend, I’m really sorry this has been so fucking disheartening. I completely get it, I wish it wasn’t. I’m not great at bein a comfort or talkin to folks, but I hope you know that it’s not just me n you, there are other people who give a shit, and none of us are “lacking in critical thinking.” God I could go on another tangent about that - BUT been kinda dragged on so. Fuck fashys and bigots forever, and if no one else bothers to say it, I love you as you are. And I hope one day we don’t gotta worry about this kinda shit in what should be spaces where we should feel safe.

[angeli-marco-writes]

⋆⋅☆⋅⋆  Tom Holland - Just Friends?  ⋆⋅☆⋅⋆

A/N - posting for the first time in forever, this time with a Tom Holland imagine that’s already been on my wattpad for a loooong time. Go check that out though, angeli.marco because I have whole ass collections on there rather than just the odd few one shots. 

Warnings - drinking, very light mentions of drugs, swearing. Also its like 5k words so it’s long as well.

Summary - you and tom have been best friends for a long time and inseparable for just as long. The boys welcome you as one of their own, and you’re basically a part of the family. That’s your main issue, because when you begin to harbour feelings for your best friend, you’re not sure if he feels the same.

YOU AND TOM HAVE AN INTENSE FRIENDSHIP, there’s no denying it. In fact, the intensity worries his family, it all happened so fast.

The two of you met about a year and a half ago at your local supermarket. You were just going shopping for some food as you moved to London, and you saw Tom there. You recognised him, but you of course didn’t want to be a bother, so you began to hyperventilate in the bread aisle, thinking you were alone, just when Tom poked his head around the corner. 

“You okay, Miss? You sound like you’re dying.” Those were his very first words to you, and you couldn’t even look him in the eye when responding.

“I-I’m fine, tha-thanks Mr Holland.” Could you have been any more awkward? 

However, Tom, thankfully, found it endearing, and to this day he still does. A day hasn’t gone by for the last 18 months that the two of you haven’t spent together. Within a week of meeting, you were on first name terms with all of his family and friends, and every second of your lives are spent in each other’s company, simply platonic though - at least for him.

He spends his time with you on pranks, swiftly followed by an apology cupcake (never handmade, at least not by him), and in the evening, he hauls you up to the roof of your apartment building or a spot on his house to get drunk and look at the sky. It’s what you love about him, he incorporates everything the both of you enjoy into your daily lives and it creates this brilliant, inescapable routine of happiness and hangovers, and almost every morning that you wake up with him on the other side of his bed or yours, only to find him half hanging off it, you feel this intense happiness in your chest. That feeling is immediately shut down when you realise that to Tom, you’ll be nothing more than his friend. And in a few months, your whirlwind friendship will be over and he’ll be a stranger to you, a big star you stalk on Instagram, he’ll never be your Tom.

Today, you’d planned to go over to his house as soon as you woke up after spending one of your only ever nights apart, since his parents were out with Paddy, meaning it would only be you two and the boys, whom you also got on well with. He left his door unlocked when he knew you were coming over, something else that confused you, and why would he want you over whilst his parents were absent? Yes, he’s a 23 year old actor, but he’s still a mummy’s boy. You trusted that nothing would happen even though you secretly hoped it would.

On your walk to his house, you text him and get a reply almost immediately, though not what you expect.

YOU - Nearly there :)

TOM - I nicked his phone baby, see you at the door. Harry x

You smile in spite of yourself, shutting your phone off and shoving it in your back pocket with the elegance of a hippo, stumbling over his drive before you even reach his front door. You take a heavy sigh while gathering your dignity, looking up at the house. In the attic, Harrison’s sitting in the window seat, his head in his hands while holding his phone between his shoulder and his ear, another fight in paradise apparently, Sam is in the front room, Tom’s in his bedroom (more precisely in his wardrobe), and Harry is nowhere to be seen. That can only mean trouble.

You open the door and kick your shoes off in the porch, closing the front door as you cautiously open the second, only to be tackled and restrained. Your hands are held behind your back with a strong arm winding around your waist and hot breath fanning your ear.

“Surrender your sweets, baby, or I’ll text your mum from Tom’s phone.” Chirps a voice, cracking a little because you know he’s trying to keep a straight face. How does he always know?

“My back right pocket, be careful or Tom will kill you for laying a hand on me.” You say, and the smirk in your voice is obvious. Within seconds, you’re freed but pulled to the ground by a laughing Harry, laughing so hard his cheeks are a magnificent red and his breathing laboured. “Lovely to see you too Harry.” You say, passing him the packet of skittles that you always carry with you. He takes them gratuitously and stands up first, pulling you up off the floor much to the disappointment of a scowling onlooking Sam, and you race up the stairs to Tom's room. 

“Knock knock,” Upon entering, a childish grin is all over your face.

“Did you get my phone off Harry on my way up here?” Tom asks solemnly, not moving from his position virtually inside his man-sized wardrobe. You flop down on his bed which just happens to be far more comfortable than your own, and sigh.

“No, Harry threatened me with it but he loves me enough to hand it over if you want me to get it.” You grin, your eyes glued to him, but he just doesn’t move. “You okay?” You ask and he nods.

“Yeah course baby, why wouldn’t I be?”

There’s something up that you can’t place, so to snap him into action you mention something guaranteed to get Tom riled up. “Your brother trapped me on my way in, if I hadn't made him laugh he would’ve been grabbing my arse to get hold of my sweets.”

Tom spins on his heel, leaping onto the bed beside you. He starts to trace a calloused finger down your face and neck, only stopping at the neckline of your jumper. “He didn’t hurt you, did he?”

A lump forms in your throat. His touch electrifies your body, making your mind go lax, but you can’t be complacent. You’re just friends, right?

“Of course he didn’t. Now what are we doing today?” You roll off the side of the bed and away from Tom, folding your arms secretively across your chest. You look out the window at the houses across the street, watching cars go by and seeing the leaves flying in the gusts of wind that come every so often, London really can be pretty.

Tom stands up and follows you, his eyebrows knitted together in concern. He places a hand on your shoulder and tilts your chin up to meet his eyes. “Did Harry hurt you? Tell me, please.”

You smile sadly, shaking your head. “He didn’t, he never would, I promise, I just don’t feel great today,” This ends up being the wrong thing to say, because Tom proceeds to place his hand on your forehead and then the sides of your neck, followed by a chaste kiss to your head which makes your whole body feel weightless. His lips are so soft.

“You haven’t got a temperature, maybe Sam’s lunch will make you feel better.”

For the next two hours, the two of you sit a little too much of a respectable distance apart on the sofa while watching your favourite show, LOST. You don’t talk much, but you find his baby brown eyes looking at you and his mouth gaping like a fish every so often, making a fiery blush heat your face and neck. Harry decides to sit in the empty space between the two of you, shortly followed by Harrison who sits on the arm of the sofa with his arm around your shoulders, only leaving when called to help with the lunch by Sam.

“Harry, can you piss off please?” Tom says after a string of continually failing attempts to push his brother from the sofa space between the two of you.

“Why, so you can sit with your girlfriend?” Harry teases, once again making the wrong choice with an already aggravated Tom. The pair leap to their feet, neither wearing slippers, and start legging it around the house.

You can hear the painful thuds of the pair no doubt slamming into walls and leaving dents, the harsh skids of the tiled floor when their socks fall down their heels, the shrieks and yells of disdain between the brothers, and finally the crash, crack and groan sequence of them piled on the floor, with Harrison entangled in them - you can tell from his posh sounding squeak of despair.

Begrudgingly, you stand up and leave the comfort and warmth of your sofa crease and make your way to the kitchen where Sam is blatantly ignoring the existence of his brothers and their imbecility. 

“Smells good Sam, sorry about them, it’s my fault.” You say absently, crouching down to untangle the pile of tangled limbs.

“Yeah,” Sam responds with a snort, “it is your fault, they keep fighting because they’ve fallen so madly in love with you and can’t decide who should have you.”

His words make you stop dead in your movements and cause an eerie silence to settle over everyone. For a solid, lengthy minute that feels like an hour, no one moves or speaks or breathes, and you’ve never been so confused in your life. Slowly, you stop trying to help the boys and you stand up.

“I- um, he was joking baby.” Tom stammers, watching you stand up to leave. What is it with that nickname making you feel things? 

“Yeah, slip of the tongue love.” Sam adds, leaning over the stove to catch your hand on your way out. You turn to face him, only to have him shoot you an apologetic glance.

“Yeah, whatever. I’ll be upstairs, come find me when you’ve grown up.” You say finally, closing the kitchen door on your way out.

As soon as you’re securely in Tom’s room, you clasp your hands together and release a long held groan of desperation, sliding down the back of the door. Circumstance is killing you, why can’t life just be simple? You look around Tom’s room at all of the framed pictures of the two of you hung from his walls, propped up on his window sill, and a special one in a heart on his bedside locker. Since you met, he’s been your one and only. You haven’t even thought about another boy, well, man. What Sam said has to have been a coincidence, Harry can’t like you, or so you tell yourself. It’d be far easier to date Harry than Tom, but it'd ruin your friendship with them both. You let out another groan and sprawl yourself out on Tom's bed. It’s so familiar to you - the duvet, the mattress, the smell that can only be described as Tom, your makeup stains on the pillows, just everything, including a dress of yours in the wardrobe in case you need to get ready at his house. 

Your eyes flutter closed and your mind spirals back to the day you met. Even then you were surprised at how laid back he was, until it came to his brothers.

──⭒─⭑─⭒──

You look all around your new apartment for a snack, but there’s nothing. Literally nothing except for frozen rice. With a disgruntled moan, you grab your coat and walk down the five flights of stairs to get out of your new building, and walk in the cold London weather and wind to the nearest supermarket. You look inside before entering, and it thankfully seems to be relatively empty, so you shrug off your hood and go inside, only to be met with the sight of your favourite actor, the gorgeous new Spider-Man, Tom Holland. You suffer an internal debate of whether to talk to him or not, and decide against it when your lungs and mind decide to conspire against you.

You quickly run into the bread aisle and think of anything possible to calm you down, but your lungs still don’t want to work, causing your every breath to come out as a laboured whistle. You begin to browse the loaves in an attempt at normality - wholemeal to white, rolls to wraps, but your overdriven brain won’t stop reminding you that your celebrity crush is literally feet away, scrap that, about one foot now since he’s come around the corner.

“You okay, Miss? You sound like you’re dying.” he says to you half jokingly, smiling crookedly at you.

“I-I’m fine, tha-thanks Mr Holland.” you stammer back, immediately face palming and turning away from him, but he’s just laughing at you. “I was hyperventilating because I saw you, even more suave and gorgeous in person.” You say as an attempt to recover, and he seems flattered.

“A fan then. Nice to meet you, now let's shop because this place closes early on Sundays. '' he laughs and swoops up your basket that you’d forgotten about and left strewn across the aisle. 

You follow wherever he walks, watching the way his calves tense when he leans up to the top shelves, the way his arse clenches when he’s deep in thought, the way he smiles at you like a newly rehomed puppy whenever you compliment him or try to be humorous.

Towards the end of your shop, you haul him to the alcohol aisle and pile spirits and mixers into your basket by the gallon. “Game recognises game. Wanna get pissed and watch the stars?” He asks, examining a strawberry vodka that you threw into your basket that just so happened to be mainly alcohol with only a couple of essential food items.

You’re more astounded and taken aback than you can ever remember being, but with one look at his beautiful face you agree with a little too much fervour, subsequently knocking your hair free from its bun and making Tom laugh again. You get the urge to elbow him but withhold in order to preserve this new friendship. While you pay, Tom texts his brother who parks outside and collects the shopping from Tom, but not without warning you that he can be a little tactile. You brush him off with a smile and lead Tom back to your apartment.

He insists on carrying all of your shopping bags into your building and convinces you to take the lift up to your flat, wherein you dump everything but three bottles of alcohol before he’s dragging you up the roof and unscrewing a bottle of echo before you even have the door open.

He collapses through the door and out into the fresh air, taking your hand in order for you to follow suit, though a little more gracefully. He passes you the wine and finds a dry piece of roof, upon which he places his jacket down and crashes onto it.

“How come you’re not treating me like a celebrity?” He asks, pulling you down to sit beside him. You think for a moment and eventually shrug, your eyes trailing back to the sky.

“Because you don’t act like a celebrity I suppose.” You respond, taking another swig from the dreadful bottle of wine. “You act like a normal guy, doing grocery shopping, helping me shop, bringing a minging fan such as myself back to my flat and insisting on drinking with me. You act like a nicer version of every other lad our age.”

He leans over you, engulfing you in a hug and grabbing for the vodka and coke. “I think we’re going to be very good friends.”

The next morning, you find the two of you hungover and fully dressed on top of your bed, glass liqueur and wine bottles decorating your floor. All you remember is going shopping, meeting Tom, and getting incredibly drunk while stargazing. Too drunk to viably do anything besides sleep and throw up, the latter of which you hope to god did not happen.

Tom stirs soon after and just hugs your stomach while groaning and rubbing his head, complaining that he’s never going to drink again - which you know will last approximately twelve hours.

You proceed to eat a make-do breakfast, followed by a heavy dose of paracetamol before Tom walks you to his house. He helps you up the step and just shouts, “this is my new best friend, we’ll be in my room!” 

You see his family's scepticism from down the hall, but Tom doesn’t seem bothered about them or calling you his new best friend, and that's how it all begins.

──⭒─⭑─⭒──

“Lunch!” Comes Sam’s voice from outside the door, snapping you out of your reverie, followed by a click and some footsteps. He sits down beside you on the bed, stroking your hair. He doesn’t need to ask if you’re okay or not, he’s just exceptional at reading people, and he really genuinely cares about everyone. He sits you up and hands you a plate with the kindest smile. You don’t need to tell him how you feel, he can tell that you’re confused and tired and in love with his brother - that happened fast.

“They’re locked in the dining room with Harrison. Honestly, forget about them, my brothers are complete dickheads.” He says, sliding you a plate.

“Trust me, I know. They’re worse than that, I think that's why I love you and your family so much.” You sigh deeply, a tear forming in your eye as you rest your head against Sam’s shoulder and he wraps his spare arm around you. He’s a friend to you, one that isn’t messing with your feelings.

A rap on the door breaks your and Sam's discussion, and Tom enters with his back hunched and frowning. “Hug?” Is all he says. Maybe it's best if you don’t discuss it and go back to normal with both your Tom and Harry, maybe the intensity will die down and you’ll be able to go five minutes without each other.

“Hug.” You say, clambering your way off Tom’s bed and subsequently melting into his grip. He hugs you tighter than ever before, borderline crushing your shoulders and temporarily preventing you from breathing, but hearing the steady thrum of his heartbeat inside his chest is enough, feeling his chest and arm muscles tense and release around you makes you forget what this was all about, it just makes you crave his smell to be all over you, makes you crave his kisses on every inch of your body and not just your cheeks; being this close to him makes you crave the parts of him that you’ve been denied, flaws included.

“I’m gonna leave before something worse starts, catch you downstairs baby.” Sam says, collecting your plates and leaving you chuckling into Tom's chest, still reluctant to let go of him, and he seemed to feel the same. You tilt your head up a little so you’re at the perfect angle to examine every feature of Tom’s face - everything from a tiny part of his face that he missed while shaving, the twinkles of his eyes, his decidedly haywire eyebrows. You lose track of the time that you remain in his grip, but it feels right, with this being quite probably the longest you’ve gone without speaking and your first form of disagreement.

“I love you baby.” He murmurs, squeezing you momentarily tighter before holding you at arm's length. Baby, the nickname that all the Hollands and Harrison insist on calling you, but it ignites a raging fire of longing in your veins whenever Tom says it, especially when it follows those three words.

“You too, T” You reply with a faint hint of sadness tugging at your heart, so you jump up when his back is turned and scruff his hair. “Piggyback please.”

Tom proceeds to give you a purposefully bumpy piggyback down the stairs and out to his garden, where the other three are huddled suspiciously close around a collection of golf clubs. You climb down from Tom’s back and glance up at the winter sunshine, making Tom look borderline ethereal with his smile illuminated by Sol, Norse Goddess of sunlight. He looks perfect, and that's what kills you, you wouldn’t deserve that level of perfection anyway.

You waste the afternoon away by playing back garden golf with a twist, if you miss three shots in a row then you take a shot, it does not end well. The boys swiftly get too competitive and have to drink, leaving you the only sober one between four tipsy lads in their early twenties, and their level of intoxication makes it easier for you to continually beat them.

Early evening comes by, and Harrison seems on edge, making him run upstairs to the attic to answer a phone call, no doubt from his girlfriend. The four of you watch him from the garden - his sighs turn to yells, and his yells soon turn to crying into a pillow.

“Who’s turn is it?” Tom asks, and you raise your hand. You turn to take one last look at the three brothers, all with the same sad smiles and fretful eyes, and you run up all the stairs to the attic where Harrison is now just standing blankly, staring at a wall. Instead of asking or making him talk, you do what Sam did for you, just hug him.

──⭒─⭑─⭒──

You wake up in Tom’s arms after a long nap on his sofa post-golf, the other three boys asleep on the sofa beside yours. You smile at the sight, gently nudging Tom awake despite your not wanting to stir him. He looks so peaceful when he sleeps despite his snores. His eyelashes always flutter and his nose twitches while his hair creates all sorts of patterns on the pillows he lies upon.

“Let’s go to the roof, you grab the wine.” you say, watching his perfect brown eyes open and a smile instantly grace his lips upon the sight of you. 

You grab some blankets and make your way to the second floor bathroom window where you leave the window propped open for Tom. Just outside is a patch of flat roof that permits the two of you to sit or lie there, stargazing and getting drunk, you’ve even fallen asleep there once or twice, not to mention the mildly illegal substances that you’ve smuggled in.

Tom arrives minutes after you just as night is properly settling in. The stars twinkle in the sky as far as the eye can see, certain stars shining brighter than others and those are the ones that you and Tom have studied over the past year.

“Nigel’s on fire tonight!” He exclaims, pointing towards a star just south-west of Sirius. You stifle a giggle, looking at Tom who passes you a bottle of nice red wine, a rarity for the two of you. 

“It's Rigel and you know it.” You return, laying your head on his broad shoulders. He lies his head atop yours, placing kisses to your hairline. You involuntarily let out the faintest hum of agreement, turning your focus away from the longing that’s filling every pore of your body and returning it to the stars which you worship so profusely. You take a swig of wine, handing your bottle back to Tom who just places it down and turns to you.

He looks solemn, business like, this is a Tom that you’re not a fan of at all. “What Sam said earlier…” He starts, but you turn away from his gaze to trace the whole Canis Major constellation with your eyes, focusing on Sirius to will yourself away from crying. Just the thought of what Sam said being true makes you simultaneously joyful and sullen, it makes you want to reach for the stars and cry, but most of all, it just makes you sick, and you know it's not the wine talking.

“Don’t say it, Tom.” You begin. “Don’t you dare start to talk to me about that when I’ve been so painfully in love with you since the moment we met, don’t act like you can brush off what he said as a joke, because if you don’t want me then maybe Harry does.” 

You know it’s wrong to be saying all of this, so wrong, but all of a sudden, your mouth stops doing what your brain tells it to, and your heart takes over. 

“God. And for a second there I had hope as well, maybe that's the worst part. Or maybe the worst part is that we haven't been able to spend a second apart, and the only time we did was when you were too embarrassed to follow me after Sam had a slip of the tongue. You can’t blame your brothers, Tom, the same way that I can't blame the alignment of stars and planets for us never being together when it’s my fault for not being enough. But none of that even scrapes the level of longing I have for you when you kiss my cheeks, when you hug me, when we play fight, when we sleep together, when you just do something as simple as calling me baby. I can’t talk about this anymore, so leave or tell me to go, or you can stay here and we really can act like this never happened.”

Unsurprisingly, he chooses the latter, but there’s a certain rigidity and tension in his movements, made worse by the dark cloud looming over the two of you after your unladylike outburst. You want to apologise, go back in time and take it all away, but you surrender in the only way you can, you cry. Just a single tear cascading your cheek before Tom wipes it away and lays his pinky finger just over yours on the roof, pressing down a little to let you know that it's okay and he doesn’t love you any less, at least that’s how you interpret it .

You remain on the roof, unmoving, side by side, staring at the stars for what feels like hours. You finish the wine in silence, barely brushing each other’s fingers with every touch and too full of scepticism and fear to meet each other's eyes despite how much you crave getting lost in Tom’s very own chocolate rivers.

It's getting late now, really late, and no doubt the boys are all awake inside and curious as to where the two of you are hidden, no doubt assuming that you’re up to something forbidden. You dare to turn your neck and look at tom, only to see him staring at you longingly, his lips slightly parted and his cheeks tinted rosy, and that’s not just from the cold night air

You smile in spite of yourself, but it's a shy smile, one full of uncertainty, but nonetheless you take one deep breath, your eyes fluttering shut, and you turn to face him again, only to find his eyes still trained on you.

In a sudden leap of faith, you reach your arm across his body to grasp the side of his stomach and you turn him full bodily facing you. The stars reflect in his eyes, dancing around and twinkling, almost as though they’re cheering you on, so you do it. You tilt your face slightly and lean towards Tom, capturing his lips in the most intense kiss of your life. His hands grip your waist and pull you closer to him, chest to chest so that you can feel the gradual synchronisation of your racing hearts. He only has to nudge your lower lip with his tongue for half a second before he’s granted an enthused access. His tongue sweeps your mouth, dancing with your own in a fight - not of dominance, but of passion. 

Your kiss extends and passes through so many emotions and the pressure and urgency of it changes so often that it's hard to keep track. Lust switches to desperation, then do admiration and candour before returning to a long denied flame of passion, and finally, love. The way his lips massage your own is magical, the way he tastes fills your senses with a satisfaction that gets swiftly replaced with a yearning for more, the way he loves you drives you crazy and relights the longing that you feel in his arms.

His lips slow down and apply less pressure to yours, allowing the two of you to gasp for air however subtly it may be, but only for a second before he kisses you one final time, filled with nothing but a deep and unrequited adoration, until you told him, and it became true.

You stay perfectly still while gathering your bearings and breath, your nose nudging Tom’s and your clammy foreheads pressed together. You daren’t open your eyes for a while, not until his mouth gently ghosts over yours in what can be described as nothing less than an exchange of breath. Now you know what he tastes like, you never want to stop tasting him.

Before you can even open your eyes though, you hear a round of applause and cheers from down below. You look at Tom with terror etched on your every feature until he squeezes your waist a little tighter, and just that gesture screams trust me. So you do. You look down to the garden to find Tom's parents, Sam, Harry, Paddy, and Harrison all applauding the two of you - even Tessa is there, barking and howling at you.

You let another tear escape while a burning blush prickles at your cheeks and ears. You move your hand from Tom's waist to his shirt and pull him closer, one final kiss before you settle your head in his chest.

“You really love me then?” He asks incredulously, though part of you can tell that he’s joking. You nod your head and hear his heartbeat increase in his chest.

“I’m in love with you too, since the day I first laid eyes on you.” he whispers, holding you as close to him as possible. You don’t even need to look around to know that the stars are twinkling in their own form of applause for the two of you, and your instincts tell you that both Harrison and Mrs Holland are both probably crying while the others pretend to be sickened by you, but they’re secretly happy you got together.

“Not just friends?” You ask tiredly. 

“Never just friends. I love you, I promise.” You smile at his words

“I love you, T.”

[eremiss]

11. Preaching to the Choir

Mild 5.5 spoilers below the cut

Gwen frowns at her half-filled pack, mood still a bit wrinkled from the meeting earlier. 

Too wrinkled, surely.

Of course Thancred wants to get back to work. Anyone who knows him knows the first thing he intended to do once Krile’s restrictions were lifted was journey to Garlemald. He’s been chafing at his recovery and limitations practically since the moment his soul returned to his body, and recently, particularly the past week, he’s gotten more slack about hiding his discontent. Much as he likes to tease her for her restlessness, he can’t stand to sit idle any more than she can. The only person more sick of the restrictions is Alisaie.

Even so, hearing him say it aloud had inspired a familiar tug of worry. The same little tug she felt when he declared he would tail Elidibus, and every other time he’s gone off alone. The fact that Urianger will be accompanying him and he won’t be utterly alone offers a bit of comfort, though only a bit.

That he hadn’t shared his intentions with her before the meeting is nettling her a bit, too. 

He hadn’t exactly tried to hide it from her, to be fair. His discussions with Riol and the other intelligence operatives about the current goings-on in Garlemald have been growing particularly long recently, on top of devoting all his spare time to refamiliarizing himself with all of his notes and maps of Vylbrand and everything that changed during his time on the First.

Gwen heaves a sigh and shakes her head. But that’s Thancred’s way of doing things, isn’t it? And the fact he hadn’t tried to hide his preparations and intentions is something of an admission or advanced notice, in its own way.

Still, something more direct would have been nice. She hadn’t needed to tell him she was leaving to fight in Bozja, it had been obvious enough, but she had anyway. 

“That disappointed about me heading into Garlemald, are you?” Thancred’s voice drawls.

Gwen jumps, biting back a squeak of surprise. She spins back to find him closing her door behind him, a lopsided smile on his lips.

She quickly turns to check her chronometer. How long has she been standing around doing nothing? “You’re leaving already?”

“Not quite yet,” he assures amusedly. 

So he’s not here to say goodbye, then. She breathes a sigh of relief and her shoulders loosen and sink.

His smile tilts apologetically as he crosses the room, “But on that note, I’m afraid my visit is more for business than pleasure.”

She cocks her head to the side, humming curiously.

He produces a familiar pouch of cartridges from his pocket, offering it alongside a smile so charming as to be blatantly persuasive. “If you’d be so kind.”

She takes it, marveling briefly at the ridiculous knot tying it shut. Thancred volunteers no explanation, and his suspiciously passive expression gives nothing away no matter how skeptically she squints at him.

A bit of tugging and twisting later, she victoriously upends the pouch and dumps the cartridges on her desk. She fights the satisfied smirk that threatens to curl her lips at the bemused look on Thancred’s face. What’s he supposed to do when he finally does make a knot I can’t undo? Ridiculous man...

“A few things?” she prompts, turning down the edges of the pouch so it will stay open. 

He leans his hip against her desk, glancing over her half-packed bag. “I wondered if you might have a few tinctures or salves to spare.”

Gwen pauses, hand hovering above a cartridge.

“I’d like to have a few for the trip, if you’ve any to spare. I should think they’d be useful to have with us,” he adds casually.

He’s used her homemade concoctions before, but has always made due with whatever she had on-hand in her cabinet. He’s never specifically asked for his own, nevermind taken them with him on an assignment.

Cartridges momentarily forgotten, Gwen drifts over to her collection of salves, tonics, and other concoctions, taking stock of her inventory. Her hands hovered and fluttered indecisively, darting one way and then another as she tried to think of what would be useful. Thancred doesn’t offer much help idly hovering and giving a small shake of his head or nod to proffered suggestions.

They don’t talk. There’s...something in the air between them, not quite tension but not far off from it either. 

They both know there’s something to address, and neither wants to take the plunge. 

Gwen sighs inwardly, coming away with jars of bruise salve, a bitter stimulant to help ward off drowsiness, and a vial of shimmerdust. Thancred wouldn’t need the help sneaking, but Urianger might, and it never hurts to be safe.

Something tight and a little sharp presses against her chest, lingering even after a steadying breath. She’s conscientious of her tone before saying, “I would be able to give you more if I’d known you would be leaving so soon.”

Thancred sighs almost imperceptibly beside her, equally out of relief that she’d broached the subject and exasperation for how she’d gone about it.

“You knew I intended to return to the field as soon as I was able,” he says, folding his arms. “And where I’m most needed is in Garlemald, gathering information.”

“You knew I was going to Bozja, too,” Gwen replies with a frown. “But I didn’t wait to tell you myself until right before I walked out the door.”

He frowns at the floor. She has him there.

“...I don’t suppose saying ‘because I knew it would make you worry’ is an acceptable excuse,” he says with a sigh. 

Gwen offers the assorted jars, neither agreeing or disagreeing. 

“I never relish having to tell you I’m headed off into danger.”

Likewise, she thinks. She never enjoys breaking the news of her newest dangerous assignment either.

“It’s necessary. We need information from Garlemald, I need to refamiliarize myself with the terrain, and Riol and his connections are stretched about as thin as possible,” he goes on. “But I’m just preaching to the choir, aren’t I? You know all of this as well as I do.”

“That doesn’t make it any less dangerous,” she says eventually, frowning at the jars and shifting her weight on her feet.

“Which is why I have these,” he says, laying a hand on the jars she’s holding. “And Urianger, to boot.”

She hums a vaguely agreeable sound. “I suppose that does help.”

They both hesitate, unsure if the conversation is truly complete or not. Theoretically everything is resolved, but it doesn’t quite feel like it.

Thancred tries to take the proffered jars, but Gwen doesn’t let them go. His brows start to knit, a frown tugging at his lips as he peers at her face, searching for an explanation. She shuffles things around until she has a hand free, resting it over his and glancing at the floor, “It still would’ve been nice to hear it from you. Before you were setting out.”

Thancred opens his mouth, closes it, and exhales through his nose. “...Fair enough,” he agrees. “That’s something I shall endeavor to improve on in the future.” After a moment of thought he quirks a small, lopsided smile, “In my defense, you’re always so disappointed to hear that I’m setting out that it just about stops me from leaving altogether.” 

That tickles just right to get her smiling a little, a familiar heat on her cheeks and fluttering starting up in her chest. “You’re exaggerating.”

“Only a bit,” he replies earnestly, smile growing wider and tilting a little more. With both of them smiling, the lingering static in the air finally disperses, and they both breathe small sighs of relief and begin to relax. 

She finally lets him take the jars from her hands and disperse them amongst his pouches and pockets, after which he wastes no time drawing her close.

She brushes her lips against his and then presses their foreheads together, combing her fingers through his hair and trying to release some of the worry and lingering frustration that wants to keep needling at the back of her mind. “Be safe.”

“As I can be, dove,” he replies fondly, “As always.”

--------------------

Preaching to the Choir -- phrase To try to convince someone about something that they already support; to state one's opinion to those who are already most receptive to it.

When you had an idea for the prompt word, but as you get to the end you realize the prompt word doesn't suuuuper fit like you thought it would but you're committed by this point, so you just kinda...shove it in lol

I’ve been having trouble getting super deep into characters like I normally do, but otherwise I’ve been pretty satisfied with all my entries so far, this one included. Maybe I’ll go back some time and dig a bit deeper and add a bit more to this!

Shimmerdust, in one form or another, IS an actual thing in-game, but I’m having trouble remembering what it’s ACTUALLY called. I remember an item’s tooltip (80% sure it was an item for a leve) mentions something along the lines of “and this could ‘theoretically’ be used to make this dust that makes you nigh-on invisible and good and sneaking, but you’re not supposed to so don’t *cough*” with the same energy as that prohibition grape concentrate that said “Definitely DON’T put this in a bottle with yeast and forget about it for 30 days, oh no, because then you’ll have WINE and THAT’S BAD” If I ever manage to track down the exact name, I’ll update with it!

[mehrto]

Of Interrupted Drag Shows and Failed Duck Walks

Anthony J. Crowley, a Mancunian drag queen, voguing pro, knitting amateur, and mother at the House of Gaia shares a tired cigarette with a hungry, snobby tailor whose shop is only just off Savile Row, thank you, one rainy night in Soho in 2008. They run into each other over and over again until they can't help but become friends and soft and each other's most significant other and a whole load of other things too, really.

About belonging and acceptance and figuring out how to make things work at a place in your life you never really thought you'd be at.

Featuring art by @mehrto, fic by @thyra279, and a whole load of softness and snippiness.

Rated E, first chapter coming on the 30th January!

Excerpt below the line:

"Hullo, Aziraphale." Crowley's long fingers trembled as they lit a cigarette, gave away the adrenaline still coursing through his body. He stepped up to the railing at the top of the half-stairs, leant over it almost casually with the first smoky exhale. The exhaustion set in as soon as he relaxed, ageing muscles finally allowing themselves to feel the strain.

He didn't let them for long, shifting his weight from one heeled boot to the other, settling one foot between two of the balusters. If it caused one of his long legs to peek out of the dress directly at Aziraphale, well. He was an old hand at this.

The bastard barely gave his leg a glance, looking up at Crowley’s face instead with that stupidly soft smile that always seemed so entirely, beautifully out of place in the thumping base and harsh lights of the club.

"You look wonderful tonight, my dear."

He forced himself to take a luxuriously deep inhale, exhaled just as slowly. Settled into his deeper, lazier off-duty voice. "See now, angel, you're saying that as if it's not an everyday occurrence."

A bead of sweat that made its way from his hairline down his cheekbone, clinging on for dear life at his chin for a moment before giving up, dropping on to the floor between them.

If it had fucked up his makeup, his perfectly pristine skin, he would bloody kill it.

Aziraphale merely smiled, taking the first step up towards him.

The bundle of roses crinkled in their paper wrapping behind Aziraphale's back as he did - they'd have given the game away if it wasn't blatantly obvious they were there, if it wasn't the hundredth time he'd brought him some. Red roses today, Crowley noticed with surprise, taking another drag.

"You were very good out there tonight. 'Fierce', I believe one might say?"

Crowley cracked a smile, couldn't help himself. "Sure. One might."

A cloud of nearly-white curls bounced gently as he nodded at his leg, now fully out in the open. Good. Half his arse was out on display at this point.

"How's your knee holding up, my dear?"

"Oh fuck right off. M'knee's fine."

Crowley hated the concern so obvious in the lines of Aziraphale's forehead, felt a mad urge to dab them away, drown them out with a good glue and plenty of foundation. Annoy him until he lost that soft, gentle hum in his voice, until the camp, harsh bastard emerged.

Of course, he had no such luck.

"Perhaps if you were to include fewer of those – those bouncy things… are they dog walks?"

Crowley blinked at him, sniffed. "Ducks."

"Duck walks. They can't be good for your poor knee."

A shrug. "They're integral, though."

Aziraphale ascended the rest of the stairs in his urgency, flowers hopping along down his side. "But you could include more of the other elements to make up for it? More hands might be very elegant, and you are so very good at those, so expressive."

"I can't just do hands, angel, 's not my style."

Aziraphale settled right beside him, gripping the railing tight. "Anthony, you must take care of yourself, we both know you aren't twenty anymore, it's been near-on thirty years since-"

"Alright alright, why don't you shout it a little louder Aziraphale, there's a guy in the basement loo getting blown who might not've heard you," he hissed.

He put his weight back on his dodgy leg to prove a point, sneering at him – and couldn't help but wince.

Aziraphale sighed beside him. "I'm only looking out for you."

Crowley softened. "I know. I do. I know. My guardian angel, always kindness itself." He gave his angel a little shove. Aziraphale stood quite firm, unsurprisingly, gave him a withering look from the step below that any old drag queen would've been proud of.

Aziraphale's beautifully intelligent eyes grew playful little by little, looking up at him.

"I brought you flowers."

"Oh, those for me?"

"Obviously."

"Red roses, Aziraphale," he muttered in a low voice, sidling just a little closer, not quite touching. "Trying to tell me something?"

The softly curl-crowned head looked straight ahead again. Crowley watched curiously as a blush crept from his curls all the way to his unusual, handsome, slightly arrogant nose.

"…Yes." He glanced at him quickly, couldn't help but smile at his expression. "I thought perhaps, if your knee is very bad this evening…" There was a maddening trill to his voice, low and intimate too. "I might carry you to your office upstairs. Take care of you…" he trailed.

Crowley managed nothing more than to close his mouth before his dramatic lips fell open again.

"Perhaps," he continued, sotto voce, brushing up Crowley’s hot, sweaty leg with his skilled tailor's fingers, "I could show you all the wonderful things one might do with one's hands?"