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shinobicyrus · 6 years

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The Not-Date

A belated birthday gift for my good friend @homebeccer. I probably failed attempting three different fics until finally ended up doing one that’s pretty much a continuation of last year’s fic with her OC Phuong. Happy Birthday Becs!

Tucker waffled for three days trying to think of someplace for Phuong and him to have lunch.

The Nasty Burger always worked when he hung out with Danny and Sam- but Phuong was someone her barely knew. The idea of taking her to some trashy burger joint that had been demolished and rebuilt more times than there were Spider-Man reboots just felt...juvenile.

Not that any of his other options were any better. Restaurants were too formal, and a more casual cafe just screamed “lunch date.” Which is not what this was. At all.

He’d done his best to be as clear as could be on that. Anything resembling a date was so beyond Tucker’s ability to handle. The last thing he needed was to send mixed signals with the wrong lunch setting.

(Hell, the last thing anybody needed was prolonged exposure to the smoldering, irradiated wreck that was Tucker’s Foley love life.)

Which still left him with...absolutely no idea where they should go.

God, all this drama over Lunch. There was no word in English or Esperanto that could accurately express just how painfully pathetic Tucker was being, right now. Maybe the Germans had a word for it. This seemed like something they’d have covered.

Nah, screw that. Confidence was the name of the game. He’s totally got this. He fights ghosts on a semi-weekly basis, has gone through inter-dimension portals, hacked a robot-ghost assassin, and briefly ruled a whole kingdom as a power-crazed tyrannical ghost-pharaoh...

Actually...scratch that last one. No need to revisit that. Teenager stuff, everyone goes through that phase.

The point was, Tucker was a grown man with a tech job, an apartment, alimony payments, and goddamn time travel experience. He could handle a totally platonic lunch with a minimum of panic texts to Valerie. Sure, Ms. Hunts Her Prospective Love Interests may be in the eternal four-way-tie of scariest ladies he knows, but at least she’s safer than the alternative. There was desperate, and then there was desperate.

Sam would have broken his feeble protests on the not-date status of the lunch on the peak of a single raised eyebrow while balancing little James on her hip. Danielle would insist on being his wingman, Jazz would be a post-doc shark smelling ‘unresolved issues’ in the water, and Danny-

Danny would try to be supportive.

Valerie listened to his plight with the same patient silence she probably used for lying in wait with an ecto-rifle and suggested a practical, easy solution.

The answer was, of course, Meatheads. Which Tucker of all people should have figured out sooner- because Meatheads. You ordered at the register, but after you sat down and they brought the food to your table. Perfect middle ground.

Yeah, Tucker was counting this as a win. The bar was set ludicrously low.

He goes early because it was easier than sitting in his apartment refreshing traffic conditions on his phone trying to math-out arrival times and debate how early is early before it’s back into descriptive German adjectives levels of pathetic again. Ordered some fries to settle the nervous queasiness, which didn’t really help because cajun seasoning is delicious but the very opposite of calming.

He didn’t think anything much over Phuong being five minutes late. She was new in town, and even with GPS going to new places was a hassle.

By the time she was fifteen minutes late he was guzzling his second ill-advised mixed fountain drink abomination and jittering his leg, constantly looking from his phone to the door as though she could slip in between the ticks of seconds. Jeez, get a grip, Foley. So she was fashionably late. Watch, she was going step through that day any second and you’re gonna feel like such fixating tool Vlad will probably swoop in and sue you for copyright infringement.

Twenty minutes he- he doesn’t even know. She’d text if she was running late, right? Even if she’d come to her senses and the ‘OMG You Saved My Life From A Ghost’ gratitude finally wore off she’d still...like...tell him.

She didn’t come off as someone who would bail without warning. All that time in her apartment, Tucker thought he’d gotten a pretty good indication what kind of person she was. Witty but hiding it behind that poker face. Tough too- most people would be screeching and next to useless when that ecto-heap of a ghost crawled out of her sink. Tucker had plenty of experience with tough, kickass women, but hers was an...ordinary, down to earth strength. The kind you built for yourself by hand, brick by brick.

Sturdy. Decent. If she had something to say, she’d say it properly to Tucker’s face.

Half and hour late and no word. Checking his phone for the umpteenth time revealed it’d been a fully thirty-three seconds since he last checked. The couple a few tables behind him chatted quietly in a language that wasn’t English. Re-reading the last text conversation with her; they’d said 1:00, right? Yeah, and it was definitely today.

God, he was such a self-absorbed idiot. Phuong wouldn’t just blow him off- not without good reason. Plenty of perfectly normal reasons; in Amity, plenty of not-so-normal ones, too. Maybe he should call? Or send a text to see if she was okay? Then again, one text would probably lead another and then Phuong would quickly get an alarming amount of babbling text spam in her phone.

No, he should still send one. Just one. He typed up a quick, casual message that he immediately deleted, re-wrote to satisfy a criteria he couldn’t even be sure of, and by the time he had wasted yet another five minutes weighing tone (casual but maybe it’s too casual like he doesn’t care I mean the last one was waaaaay too desperate like wow stalker much?) and almost didn’t notice when Phuong barreled through the front door.

She was panting like a marathon runner. Clothes wrinkled, hair wild and windblown. Tuck stared dumbly at her, so she was the one who spotted him and immediately made a beeline for his table, practically collapsing into the opposite chair and still breathing hard.

“I’m...” she gasped out, wiping a sheen of sweat on her forehead. “Am so sorry. There was a- I don’t even know.” She gestured wildly, flailing and failing to charade it. “I was just. Walking. Here. On time. And there was this...this noise. And then this thing- person. I...I knew her, but. No, there was an...explosion first?”

Tucker spied the rest of the tables in his periphery. They were getting a few looks, but besides the sudden hushed indecipherable chatter from the two behind them, it would take more than a slightly disheveled woman to grab someone’s attention in Amity.

“That...would explain the uh...you know you have a bit of glass in your hair?” Tucker reached over and carefully plucked a glimmering little chunk of marble-sized glass and wrapped it carefully in his napkin.

She felt around her abused-looking hair. ”Crap! Is there any more?” She looked down at her the state of her shirt. “Shit, I look like a mess.”

Tucker slid his pop over to her. “Here, take a drink of this and just...breathe a little.”

She obediently took the cup, popped off the lid and guzzled straight from it rather than the straw. Tucker watched with almost morbid fascination while she keep chugging, throat working steadily, until she finally slammed it back down on the table like something much stiffer. An echo of leftover, half-melted ice settled hollowly. “I hate soda,” she said.

Blasphemy. Tucker had concocted - nay, perfected- that mixed drink formula himself, and the Illinoisan in him demanded she call it pop, dammit. Still, priories. “That’s fine. Let the hate flow through you. Feel better?”

She was surprised by the belch she replied with, looked sheepish, and nodded instead.

“So.” Tucker folded his hands on the tabletop. ”Explosion?”

Phuong’s brow furrowed, like she was trying to remember something but second-guessed herself. “I...I think Ember McLain tried to kill me.”

“Ah.”

The caffeine seemed to have righted her head. She narrowed her eyes at him, suspicious. “You don’t seem even a little surprised.”

“I mean, I’m a little more informed than most because of the Fentons- but yeah, we were kind of due for an Ember tantrum. She has this on-again/off-again thing with another ghost and when they go off-again, she tends to go off.”

“Like blowing up a hipster record store some people minding their own business might be walking past?”

“She’s pretty much the reason you won’t find a Hot Topic in city limits.” Seeing his opportunity, Tucker propped up his hands under his chin and grinned at her. “That doesn’t explain how you recognized her, though.”

“I...refuse to answer that questions on the grounds that it might incriminate me.”

“I didn’t know Ember’s albums were popular outside of Amity.”

“She was a world phenomenon- everybody knows her name!” Phuong burst out with what Tucker suspected was a lingering residue of musical thrall that had probably been implanted there since she was a teenager. Damn, talk about getting music stuck in your head.

“I’m only surprised you were into something so...mainstream.”

“So I’m not as picky with my music as I am with my movies. No one goes around singing lines from Hitchcock movies because they get stuck in your head.”

“Well, at least you survived an assassination attempt from your teenage-rebellion phase.”

“Only because some...some...super hero, I guess? He was literally wearing this black spandex.”

Years of training kept the grin off Tucker’s face. “Snow white hair? Glowing green eyes?”

“Yeah, that was the guy.”

“Congrats, you just got your first rescue from Danny Phantom. You’re practically an Amity...ite? Amityvill...ian? What would that be?”

Right there, Phuong looked like she had officially reached the tail end of her suspension of disbelief. “Danny...Phantom? You can’t be serious. What is he, some ghost superhero?”

“Pretty much. Keeps most of the meaner ghosts from getting too out of hand. Blowing up a shop was a little more extreme than usual- most the time it’s some floating boxes and a ‘Bewaaare’! Y’know. Wednesday stuff.”

By this point, Phuong’s fingers were carding through her already frazzled hair. “Of course there’s a ghost superhero. Why wouldn’t there be a ghost superhero. I find one nice apartment over the border with decent rent and now I’m getting blown up and there’s superheroes.” She looked up him, eyes screaming for sanity. “Please tell me he’s the only one. That’s there’s not like...a pack of super-friends or something I need to be on the lookout for.”

Their neighbors’ indecipherable conversation had picked up again- which Tucker found distracting. It was weird too- he couldn’t understand it, but he could almost swear he had heard it before. Japanese? Korean? Hindi? No...

Wait.

“Well, there’s...a couple,” he admitted, trying not to enjoy the bang as Phuong’s head met the table. “There’s the Red Huntress- she flies around on a rocket board in this red and black armor. Usually stays out of the limelight- not nearly as active in the media as Danny Phantom. Then there’s...well. I guess who could call her Phantom’s side-kick. Invisobelle.”

Two tables behind, a chair scraping and some muffled words. Tucker kept his face schooled.

“Invisobelle.” Phuong sighed. “That’s just awful.”

He shrugged. “Like I said, she’s just Phantom’s sidekick. Not nearly as popular or as active as him.”

Before Phuong could say anything else, her very discontented stomach gurgled a noisy protest.

“I,” she announced, “am so hungry I would murder the cow myself if it was faster, and I don’t care how many calories it is or what my mom would say about it because I have goddamn earned it.” She cocked her thumb back towards the line at the register. “I’m going to go up to order. Have you eaten yet?”

He tried not to sound guilty. “Just some fries?”

“Okay, tell me what you want and I’ll do it for the both of us. And I’m paying. Don’t think I haven’t forgotten.”

“I know better than to argue with you about it,” Tucker said.

“Good man.”

After she left with both of their orders, Tucker waited until she was well out of earshot before standing up and approaching the couple two tables behind theirs.

They both stiffened at his approach. One of them hunched behind an open copy of the Amity Park Angle that was three days old.

Dammit, he freaking knew he was hearing ghost-speak.

Danielle, as incognito as she could manage in aviators and a My Little Pony(TM) beanie gasped unconvincingly.

“Whoooaa, Tucker? You’re here too? No waaaayy! Only in small towns, huh?”

“Yeah, I’m completely buying this.” He pulled down the newspaper to uncover Wulf wearing a baseball cap over his flattened ears and sporting a pair of novelty shades that would be comically large on anyone but a literal giant wolfman’s long nose.

“Uh...Amiko Tuck! Kio surprizo!”

“Already tried that one, dude,” Elle warned him in a sotto whisper.

A distant, out-of-body perspective yanked him violently from solid ground so he could examine the situation from above just to confirm that yes, this really was his life and was something he had no choice but to deal with. An ache bloomed behind Tucker’s eyes- the start of a bad headache like his brain was punishing him for putting it through this. Fair enough. Taking off his glasses let Tucker both massage the pain out of his temples and make it much easier to not look at them.

“You two. Can turn. Invisible.” He hissed through the pain. “Why the hell-”

“They won’t let you buy food here if you’re not visible.” Danielle explained. “Company policy.”

Wulf picked up a large burger from a tray already littered with the wrappers of past conquest and munched on it demonstratively, like Tucker was still buying the cover story.

“And what, no one minded having a giant wolf-ghost-man just...hanging around the restaurant?”

Wulf swallowed the last of his burger and shrugged. “Ĝi estas Amity.”

Danielle nodded. “Yeah, nobody minded. Wulfy-Wulf even got a few phone numbers. He’s a total player.”

Tucker’s head canted, straining to process this new information. Wulf titled down his gunglasses and winked.

“I. Well. Okay then. That’s just brings up a whole lot of other questions I’m not sure I want answers to.”

“Estas la oreloj,” Wulf tipped his cap like an old-timey gentleman and wiggled his ears, suspiciously similar to how a puppy might. “Ĉiuj amas la orelojn.”

“No. Stop that. No making me wanna pet you instead of yelling at the both you properly about violating my privacy like this.”

“We’re not spying on you, Tuck!” Danielle insisted. “We came here to be supportive!”

“Jee, ni estas ĉi tie por vi, Amiko Tucker.”

“Oh. You were here to support me. While hiding behind last week’s Angle.”

Dani hid her cringe behind an awkward smile. “We were here for you in spirit?”

Wulf chortled. “Heh. Spirit.”

“I am so unfriending Valerie for this, the traitor.”

“Aw come on, Tuck it’s not like- we just wanted to make sure you were okay!”

“I know you two don’t get why-” Tucker cut off what he was going to say, breathed, and tried again. “I get it, I do, but I’m just having lunch with a friend, okay? I’m allowed to have those, aren’t I?”

“Well yeah, it’s just-” Danielle sent an appealing look Wulf’s way. “It hasn’t even been a year since you and-”

“Ni ne diras ŝian nomon,” Wulf growled.

Danielle rolled her eyes. “Fine. Since you and Voldemistress finishing signing the paperwork.”

“Elle, I get it. Trust me, I do. I am nowhere near ready to even start thinking about dating. Phuong’s a- look she’s pretty cool, and she’s new here, so she needs a friend to give her the Amity Survival Training. This is absolutely not a-”

“Tucker?” Phuong asked behind him.

“Dankon pro la averto, Wulf,” Tucker hissed, and turned around. His face burned under her scrutiny. “Uh...hey Phuong! You’re back. You wouldn’t believe who else had the idea to eat here today? Small towns, right?”

“Oh sure, he can do it,” Danielle grumbled.

Phuong, looking as though she hadn’t even heard him, was gaping past Tucker at Wulf. “Who...are your...friends?” The last word she said with skepticism.

Tucker spoke up quickly to cut off Dani. “Oh. Right. Uh...Phuong, this is Danielle- she’s the cousin of my best buddy Danny, and...this is my very good friend-”

“Wulf,” he stood up to his full height and took off his hat in a way that reminded Tucker of old movies, when gentlemen stood up when a lady was present. “Estas plezuro renkonti vin. Ajna amiko de Tucker estas amiko mia.”

He held out his hand...paw. Sans the claws, thank God. Phuong looked down at the massive furry hand. Looked up at the enormous, wide-shouldered wolf-man that had at least a foot on her, and accepted the handshake like it had challenged her. “Nice to meet you,” she said. Her hand was pitifully small in Wulf’s palm, but he shook it gently.

Tucker clapped his hands together. “Greeeaaat, everyone’s introduced so glad hey didn’t you say you two had to rush, Elle?”

“Huh?” Dani was hard to read with those stupid aviators, but thank God she decided to not be a little troll for once. “Oh yeah. Come on, Wulf. I forgot we had to the do that thing in that place that wasn’t here.”

“Eh? Oh! Jee, tre okupata. Ni vere devas rapidi-”

“You don’t have lay it on that thick Team Jacob she can’t even understand you.”

Plastering on a big smile, Danielle hooked her arm into Wulf’s. “It was nice meeting you Phuong.”

“Likewise. Maybe I’ll see you two around.”

Peeking over her sunglasses, she leered at Tucker. “I’m sure you will.”

“Good-bye, Danielle.”

Snickering, Danielle pulled Wulf along with alarming ease, considering their size difference. In his free paw, he held up a few scraps of paper and napkins with scribbled numbers on them. “Kio pri-”

“Dude, not now. Lot’s of things have changed in the dating scene since you’ve been alive. There’s like...a rule about not calling people right away.”

“Oh. Mi ne havas telefonon.”

“Yeah, there you go. Like phones, that’s a big one.”

Phuong waited until they were out the door. “Well they were...interesting. Wulf, especially.”

Tucker scratched the back of his head. “Yeah he. Uh. Definitely makes an impression.”

“Oh, I definitely got a few of those,” Phuong pursed her lips, chewing on a thought. “How long-”

“Since I was fourteen.”

“You two must be very close, then.”

“About as close as two guys that have saved each others’ lives get. Or...un-lives, depending on who you mean.”

“Lot of that seems to be going around,” Phuong noted with a conspiratorial little smile. Like it was their in-joke. Tucker smiled back.

A server came up bearing a tray of burgers. “A bacon-ranch half-pounder with a side of fries?”

“Oh thank God,” Phuong seized her tray and sat back down at the table.

The server looked around the surrounding tables. “Uh...what happened to the-”

“He left, sorry.” Tucker said.

“Aw dammit. I mean,” blushing, the server hastily shoved the tray with Tucker’s food at him. “Enjoy.” And scampered.

Phuong was already tearing into her burger with gusto. Tucker, taken aback, lingered over his food. She noticed him watching her, and asked with a full mouth. “Wahf?”

“Nothing. Glad I picked the right place.”

“Thowwy-” She swalloed. “Sorry again I was so late. I would have called but whatever weird guitar blasts Ember was doing cracked my phone. I swear I’m not usually this bad.”

“Trust me, happens to everyone eventually.”

“While we’re on the subject,” Phuong pointed a fry in Tucker’s direction. “Any other major Amity hazards I should know about? Because at this point, I’m pretty much numb to ridiculous bullshit, so you might as well give it to me all at once.”

“It’s...quite the list,” Tucker warned her.

“I just had a literal blast from my black-leather past that almost gave me tinnitus. I can handle it.” She opened up her arms like she was inviting a hit. “Come on, what else is there? Are dragons real too? Vampires? Wizards? Government conspiracies? Is this whole town sitting on top of a portal to hell, or something?”

Tucker didn’t answer for a long moment- mostly internally debating whether Clockwork could technically count as a wizard.

“I don’t like how quiet you’re being.” Phuong said.

“How about this? You eat, I’ll talk.”

“So do you usually go out to lunch with chaperones, or was that a one-time thing?”

They walked side-by-side down the sidewalk, parting for any fellow pedestrian going the other way. Offering to walk her home was only right, after having a literal scare from a raging dead rockstar on the rebound.

They’d been walking in amiable silence- so the question caught him off guard. “Relax,” she said. “I thought it was kind of sweet.”

“Sweet?”

“Well, I’m guessing by how much you were trying not to look embarrassed while you were introducing them that their being there wasn’t your idea.”

“No, it was definitely not.”

“Thought introducing me to your ghost-friend was a bit too soon?”

“More like either of them. Danielle had a...weird upbringing and Wulf is...”

“Very loyal, seems like. And nice. At least...I think he was being nice? I paid attention in enough Spanish classes to get the gist of it.”

“I’m actually kind of impressed,” Tucker said. “You dealt with the whole three hundred pounds of fur and claws way quicker than...well...anyone not in our immediate friend circle or non-furries.”

“What can I say? I’m learning to roll with the Amity Weirdness. After getting caught in the middle of a Rocky Horror Show street fight, the giant shaggy dog-man was pretty...tame.”

The emphasis at the end there. Tucker shook his head in mock disappointment. “I saw what you did there, and you should be ashamed of yourself. Also, he’s technically a giant shaggy wolf-man. He’s very sensitive about it.”

“I’ll keep that in mind. And good side-stepping the topic, by the way. I almost didn’t notice.”

“Doing my best.” He shrugged away another rise of heat in his cheeks. It would be so easy for her to just ask, a few well-target words and Tucker knew he would unravel right in front of her. It felt too much like his feet dangling over a precipice- a feeling he was disturbingly familiar with thanks to a best bro who could fly.

“I won’t ask about her.” Phuong reassured him, and Tucker could almost feel the phantom hand pressing down on his chest east. “But if your friends’ reaction to you going out to lunch with someone is to adorably fail at the covert part of a stakeout...”

“I didn’t take the divorce very well,” Tucker admitted. Understatement of the century. Take a nerd’s natural self-worth issues and throw in the colossal failure of a marriage crashing and burning, and of course clashing with someone who knew you well enough to say just the right things that would stick long after she left.

Phuong nodded to herself. “Y’know, if you ever want to talk about it with someone who wasn’t involved, even if you want to just vent-”

“I make it a rule to never talk about exes on a d-” Tucker stopped himself, wincing.

Of course Phuong noticed. “Never discuss exes on a what, Mr. Foley?” Her smile was just the right kind of smugly teasing, and- aw hell, this lady was so, so dangerous. “I thought this was just a nice, simple lunch between friends?”

“I-it is! I-I just. See, what I meant to say was-”

“And friends,” Phuong went on, as though she didn’t hear his pitiful stammering. “Are practically honor-bound to listen to another friend go on about bad exes and shitty breakups.

“And I,” she pointed at herself, “have had some truly awful exes. Seriously, you would’t believe.”

Oh, he could probably guess. “Bigots?”

“Just the three. I got pretty good at filtering out them out, especially the ones with a fetish. You?”

“Just two. Well...three, counting the homophobe. She thought our two month relationship would somehow trump a few years of friendship with Danielle and her girlfriend.”

Phuong snapped her fingers. “I knew it.” At Tucker’s questioning look, she said: “The aviators.”

“Ha. And that was her trying to be subtle.”

“Morbidly curious what she looks like going all-out, now.”

“She will probably hit on you just to see your reaction.”

“Being irresistible to all sexes is truly a curse,” Phuong replied smoothly. “Okay, my turn: stalkers?”

“Do hauntings count?”

Without skipping a beat: “Depends on what base you go to.”

Tucker choked. “What?”

“Well? Did I stutter? Come on, Foley, out with the dirty details. Was it like that unnecessary Ghost Buster’s scene with Dan Aykroyd?”

“...just second base. But I would like to state for the record that she looked way more alive when she was luring me in before the scary kill-murder banshee mode.”

“No judgments. I’ve dated my share of cold fish.” That poker-face delivery was so deadpan, Tucker couldn’t stop himself from laughing. “I take it you made it through scary kill-murder banshee mode unscathed or am I talking to a meat-loving ghost right now?”

“Don’t joke about that- they exist.” Tucker warned her. “And nah, nothing hurt permanently except my pride. Phantom showed up and saved my dumb ass.”

“Hmm. That’s two I owe him, now. Might need to start running a tally.”

“Good luck. He’s saved this town more times than I can count, and you are talking to an obsessive nerd here.”

“Have you ever thought about leaving?” Phuong asked him suddenly. “You said it yourself- this town is dangerous. Haven’t you ever thought you could just...move away? Get out of the spooky warzone and live a nice normal life?”

“Sure. My parent’s argued about it a lot when I was younger. They might still move away when Dad retires, but I...” He looked up at the city. The billboards for Mayor Masters’ re-election campaign, the ‘BEWARE’ posters warning about spectral overshadowing, the cackling ecto-pusses swimming past in the sky. “My other family is here. Danny and Sam, my godson, Danielle, Valerie- that’s her girlfriend, Wulf. I know I don’t matter that much. When you get right down to it, they could get along just fine without me.

“But...I’m not sure I could get along very fine without them.”

“I think,” Phuong touched the side of his arm. “You are forgetting that two of those people on that list were so worried about you getting yourself hurt again they put on hilariously terrible disguises and waited over an hour at a Meatheads...just to make sure you were okay.”

Tucker stopped walking. “Oh. I. Guess they did do that. Huh.”

Phuong waited a few heartbeats to let Tucker process this new revelation that his friends cared, and gave his arm a squeeze before letting go. "Does that mean there’s a chance we can have another lunch next week? I still feel bad about making you wait so long.”

“Really, it’s fine. I’m just glad you got through your first real ghost fight unhurt and not running for the hills.”

“Thanks, I think I- wait. That ghost in my apartment doesn’t count as a real ghost fight?”

“Nah, that was just pest control. It doesn’t get serious until the ghosts name themselves and start monologuing. But I wouldn’t object to an encore lunch. And no chaperones next time- honest.”

“Great. A week should give me time to replace my phone,” she took it out, thicker, older, but still serviceable if it wasn’t for the giant crack in its screen. “There wouldn’t happen to be ghost-attack insurance I can get on my next model, is there?”

Tucker’s mouth jumped ahead without his consent. “I can fix that.”

“You. Really?”

“Yeah, for sure. May I?” She handed the phone to him, to examine. “Oh yeah, I’ve seen way worse than this. Just replace the screen, check to make sure none of the guts got jostled, an Ember-class screen protector; easy fix.”

“How much?”

“You just fed a bored tech geek with a project, consider it already paid for.”

“You’re...” She shook her head in disbelief. “Amazing. How soon can you-”

“Tomorrow afternoon, at the earliest. I can deliver it to your place, if you’d rather not wait.”

“You already know where I live, and I am a phone-addicted millennial getting psychosomatic hives from cell-separation. The sooner the better.”

“Consider it done,” Tucker pocketed it. “Tomorrow, then.”

“It’s a date.”

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thefanficmonster · 3 years

Text

Just Another One

Sequel to: ‘A Little Bit Of Honesty’

Corpse Husband x Actress!Reader (Female)

Warnings: Angst, Heartbreak, Mention of bad past relationships, Swearing

Genre: Angst, Romance, RPF (Real Person Fic)

Summary: They keep proving each other right in the most wrong ways possible. They each want to be guarded even if that means the other will be hurt. Maybe that’s what they want - to hurt one another because they’ve already hurt each other once before.

Requested by the lovely readers who enjoyed the previous fic ‘A Little Bit Of Honesty’. Sorry for the large time gap between the posting of the two fics but I still hope you guys will take the time to read it and if so I hope you enjoy it! Love you all with all my heart, Vy ❤

When you go out of your way to avoid leaving the house your options of entertainment are severely limited and you can’t blame anyone or anything but yourself for it. Today, I wouldn’t have gone out of my apartment even if I was one of those people who frequent the outdoors seeing as how the sky is trying to flood the Earth with all this nonstop rain. It does set a mood for a perfect night in but when you spend all your nights in doing the same thing over and over again, the atmosphere is practically meaningless. And so I ‘ve decided to resort to channel surfing as though I’ll find something interesting on TV that I haven’t yet seen on one of my social media timelines.

I pass several cooking channels on my journey, making a mental note of their individual numbers in case I don’t stumble across anything capable of better distracting me from my boredom and loneliness that’s slowly starting to creep in. I pass by a few movie channels showing teenage romcoms as if to celebrate the start of summer so you can imagine how quickly I moved on from those. Then come the celebrity channels which can often get a laugh out of me because of how pathetic and unbelievably ridiculous they are. And so, I stick around one where there’s a broadcast on a movie showing that’s happening tonight in LA. Oddly enough, despite my anxiety, going to a movie showing has always been on my list of things I’d want to do. This can be considered living vicariously or rubbing salt into the wound that I’ll probably never go because my anxiety and fear of being recognized is too severe. Either way I stick around to watch it.

And man do I regret it now looking at several different angels of a couple of actors entering the venue where they are to be photographed and asked questions by the mob of paparazzi that’s gathered due to the massive event. That in and of itself doesn’t sound - and really isn’t - so bad. However, it’s important to note that the actress in this duo is Y/N. Y/N L/N. My Y/N....shit, sorry, I mean my FRIEND Y/N, her arm linked with whatever-the-fuck-his-name-is who is holding an umbrella above the both of them, shielding them from the downpour of rain that is also taking place in LA apparently.

“The two were seen entering the venue earlier this evening, looking particularly cozy in each other’s presence if I do say so myself. The rain probably worked nicely in their favor.“ The first reporter says, her teasing tone of voice sending chills of anger down my spine as I glare at the screen, hands balled in fists, jaw clenched - all my body’s instinctive reactions to what is being shown to me. I know I technically have no right to behave or feel this way, in fact I should be fucking happy for Y/N and her successful career and the progress in her love life. But damn it how can I?! I was so damn close to kissing this girl! I was so fucking close to falling in another trap, tripping and landing in the embrace of another liar and user, another girl who switches partners more often than shoes. How could I’ve been so reckless to get so close to her even platonically? How did we become close enough for me to 1) show her my face; 2) start inviting her over to my apartment regularly; and how didn’t I notice the kind of messed up person she was all that time.

She was all sweet and flirting and shit a week or so ago and now she’s doing the exact same thing with him! The cameras are capturing them perfectly: every laugh, every exchange of a knowing look or nod, ever smack to his arm when he tells a joke. But what bothers me most is the many times he’s wrapped his arm around her to pull her closer. Not just for pictures, but just because the fucker felt like it! And Y/N doesn’t seem to mind it at all.

“They have been the talk of the town recently, so while they could just be adding fuel to the fire, they could also have been caught by the flame and ‘caught feelings’ as they say. Regardless these two are a view we’d like to see more often.“ The other reporter says and that’s the final straw.

In one swift motion I turn the TV off and throw the remote across the room. It hits the wall and falls to the ground in several pieces, broken by the force of the impact. Just like I am broken by the force of the impact of these news. I don’t know which is worse: the fact that I fell for her and almost let her know it; the fact that she’s just another member of the club I don’t want anywhere near my life; or the fact that I can’t believe it.

Yeah that’s right - one foolish part of me refuses to believe that’s she’d do such a thing. I think that’s the same part which is still in awe of her so you can bet I ignore that part the majority of the time.

She is just another one. Not the one. Having been hurt before doesn’t mean she won’t hurt me or anyone else she’s gonna be with. Hurt people hurt people.

And damn has she hurt me, probably without knowing a damn thing. How selfish can you be, Y/N? How selfish can you really get? And how much am I going to allow you to hurt me?

* * *

“Thank you so much, Andrew. I would’ve died on the spot of anxiety if I was on my own.“ I say to my best friend who is currently sitting next to me on a park bench, in a tux, eating a cheeseburger. I too am still in my gown and am also gorging on a cheeseburger of my own.

“Don’t mention it. Us anxious people need to stick together.“ He bumps his shoulder against mine, stealing a small genuine smile from me, “Plus I couldn’t not come with you. You know how much I like a good rumor.“

I scoff, “Of course you do, but then again there was no need to add to what the media has already made a whole-ass ship out of.” I roll my eyes and take another bite. My appetite hasn’t been in its best condition so I’m only eating this under Andrew’s orders. I have no idea how people can ship us romantically, he’s the definition of an older - and very bossy - brother to me. I wish I could tell each and every single one of those girls who hate me because I’ve ‘stolen their man’ that I’d most likely be their sister in law rather than man snatcher, seeing as how my relationship with Andrew is so sibling-like.

That’s because we’re too alike, no one gets that. People play the ‘opposites attract’ car more often than I consider rational. But then again when they see a couple like Andrew and I - who are basically the same person in different bodies - they suddenly think we’re super compatible. Trust me, we’re not. And everyone who’s been on set with us will tell you the same.

“What can I say...“ he shrugs, smirking at me, “I like the fun. I bet Becca doesn’t though.“

I can’t help but huff. Andrew is the only one I’ve ever openly expressed my frustrations with Rebecca to. He was super helpful on the subject, seeing as how he can relate - many partners of his have tried to use him, some of which even succeeded. He’s more than qualified to school me on the topic but it turned more into sharing bad experiences. One of which was that instance back at Corpse’s apartment.

“And neither does Corpse I suppose.“ As though he’s read my mind, he pokes the hurt spot, pouring salt in the wound causing me to visibly cringe as though the pain was physical - because it was, I felt it in my chest and in my gut, a sharp stab of guilt and regret.

Why did I let it come to that? Why did I let us get so close? How did I not think of the consequences?

“I don’t care if he does or doesn’t.“ My hand automatically reaches for the pocket of the jeans I’m not even wearing in search of a cigarette. Not that I’d be able to light one even if I had them on me - Andrew would smack it out of my hand before I could even take a single puff.

He has the audacity to laugh, “You’re such a bad liar, Y/N.”

That’s all he needs to say really - that’s enough to make me feel seen and understood. Though that’s not always a good thing. I often times wish he couldn’t read me so well. Better said: I wish I didn’t let myself be so readable, you know. I’m just glad he’s the one who sees me because if it were anyone else they’d use this vulnerability of mine against me. I’m well aware that it’s a weakness, a really inconvenient one, but damn it I can’t get rid of it. I feel like I’ll be less human if I lose it. Everyone’s allowed to be vulnerable, some just are lucky enough to choose who they’ll be vulnerable around. I’m lucky enough to to have a choice, not so lucky in the people I choose to trust. Guess that’s not a luck thing, it’s just my inability to decipher whether a person is worth all the pain and torture of coming clean to them or not. So far many people have burnt me but two stick out in particular - Becca and Corpse. Corpse especially, which is the odd thing considering he hasn’t even wronged me in any way. At least not yet.

“Your phone’s vibrating.“ Andrew says, pulling me out of my overflowing head when he hands me my phone which I handed to him because of my dress’ lack of pockets.

“Thanks.“ I mutter through a sigh as I take it from him, checking the notification I’ve gotten.

My stomach drops: it’s a message from Corpse.

“Hey I saw you are in LA but we have a stream tomorrow, will you still be participating?“

Before I can reply, he sends me another message.

“I know you’re probably very busy but we get the most viewership on the streams when you’re in them so....“

I’ve probably been staring at my phone screen for longer than I thought since Andrew felt the need to make sure I was still breathing: “Hey, you ok? You look terribly pale.” I can barely hear him let alone reply. I can’t hear my own thoughts to know what to reply to him. “Y/N, you’re scaring me.”

I’m scaring myself too, Andrew. I’m scared too. I’m scared of how broken my picker has become. I almost kissed this guy! I almost entrusted all my thoughts, hopes, wishes and goals to him! What the fuck was I thinking?! Well, at least I know what he was thinking about - viewership. Likes, subs, views, publicity. The more eyes on the stream the better for him and everyone else. I genuinely want to applaud him, no one has been so direct about using me before. I was in a relationship with Becca for almost a year before I accidentally found out what she had been doing the whole time. No one’s ever smacked me in the face with this much honesty. It’s bittersweet really.

I want to laugh, I want to cry, slap myself across the face, slap him...I want to do so much, but all I can do now is sit in silence and think of how I could be so stupid.

He’s just another one, how did I not see that? How do I never see it until it’s too late? Why is one part of me still screaming: ‘He didn’t mean it like that!’

AND WHY THE FUCK DO I WANT TO BELIEVE IT?

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writing-in-april · 3 years

Text

Spooks

Raymond Wadsworth X Female Reader

Summary: Raymond starts sticking his nose where it doesn’t belong at the next haunting he’s investigating.

A/N: Hey heyyy- here’s my second fic for my 30 fics in 30 days for April 2021!!! I had this spur of the moment idea in the middle of the night and ended up writing a pretty long fic for it (at least long for me lol) I had a lot of fun writing it and really liked the idea- I hope you all enjoy it too! Drop something in my ask box here if you’d like!! I’m always looking for feedback and my requests are open as well! Thanks for reading!!!

Warnings: 18+, Ghosts & poltergeists, Smut, Sub Raymond, Unprotected sex, Sex in a car, Slight cum play

Main Masterlist Word count: 3.2k

Your job description wasn’t an easy one to describe, you could say Mulder and Scully would be the most accurate equivalent. Though as with all tv shows it was portrayed with a set of rose tinted glasses, giving a filter to any realities you faced on the job.

You and your department preferred to call yourselves spooks, truthfully only because the pun was funny. In reality your 8 person department were called agents just like the rest of the FBI, you guys were just more secretive than the others.

Most of the time you ended up getting handed the short straw when getting new cases as you were still the newest on the team, despite being there for several years already. Unlike most professionals in law enforcement you did not have a partner, it only slowed you down. Every place that you were scheduled to decontaminate was an in and out procedure streamlined for effectiveness, adding another body to be hyper vigilant about was a hassle. You operated alone.

Any type of paranormal phenomena that you could think of was thrown in front of you. In your opinion the cases you had the most fun on were the ones that dealt with aliens, though some ghosts could be fun on occasion. The most recent case I had to deal with was a nasty poltergeist, the worst type of ghost. They always wreaked the most havoc on whatever house or place they occupied.

The family in this house had moved out a while ago, the request to decontaminate the home had been sitting on one of your supervisors for a while. It was an old house, built around the late 1800s. Old enough that it had a bunch of unnecessary rooms, like the parlor room that you found yourself trapped in.

And, you weren’t on your own either. Trapped with you was a man with fluffy brown hair flying in any direction, his eyes a darker shade of brown that were filled with fear- yet also curiosity. He was wearing a blue romper, it looked good on him, from what you had seen while you were frantic. But, you highly doubted that it would be effective clothes for a paranormal investigation, maybe he had just stumbled across this place out of curiosity. Either that or he was the type of an inexperienced investigator who had probably had one encounter with a ghost. It did not change that he was cute though.

“I’m a paranormal investigator- uhh technically a supernatural detective! My name’s Raymond! Who are you?!” He sputtered out, ranting probably to try to push aside his fear. You were standing side by side holding the double doors of the entrance to the parlor room, pushing them down to prevent the poltergeist from ramming it down and attacking us.

“Not important!” You snapped back at him, throwing a glare at him. Even if it wasn’t such a tense situation, you weren’t supposed to give away your identity or your job description to just anyone.

With another gasping breath he asked another question, even though you hadn’t answered his first inquiry, “I came with a girl, her name’s Becca- did you see her?”

This one you would bother to answer as he was quite obviously worried about the well being of his companion, “I may have seen her speed away in a red car after she was thrown out of the house. Was that your car she took?”

Not that you really cared all that much, but if he had been stripped of his transportation by his partner you’d have to take him in your own car. Not that you really wanted to, you still would have to help him even though he was seriously hindering your decontamination. “No, I came in my own car.” He answered which made you breathe a sigh of relief, you wouldn’t have to deal with another issue after you escaped, “I don’t blame her honestly, if I could leave I would.”

You were about to answer when your pressure on the doors wasn’t enough, making you both stumble forward. When you stumbled forward your keys, along with your badge, fell out of your pocket. Your badge flipped open front and center to reveal your name, plus the exact agency you worked for in a bold logo.

“You’re an FBI agent?!” You could not confirm or deny what he had asked, you were firmly focused on scrambling to get your things and avoid the ghost that was now throwing furniture at the two of you.

When Raymond finally took notice of the being that was pelting heavy objects around you, a ghostly shape in the form of a woman with a tortured look on her face, he screamed bloody murder. It was not unlike that of a scooby doo cartoon, him obviously resembling Shaggy almost perfectly. If only he had a dog to jump into his arms before he comically zoomed away while remarking “zoinks!”

His frazzled response to the ghosts giving a rather mediocre jump scare made you wonder whether he had the credentials to back up his job title as a paranormal investigator- or as he called it a supernatural detective. You racked your brain to try and recall anytime you had seen a Raymond or a Becca on the long lists of people that were being monitored for potential involvement, coming up with nothing. Well, maybe they were new, as his reaction seemed to indicate.

Your own reaction was stoic as usual, your nerves no longer jumped and your heart no longer quickened to the visage of a ghost trying to spook you. It was in no doubt for some arcane reason probably linked to revenge towards people that no longer existed. One would normally say don’t assume anything about people, that it might offend them to assume, but dead people in your view also had dead opinions- plus relying on precedent was usually a good option when a ghost might be trying to kill you. Despite the absence of fear from you there would be no call out of “Let’s split up gang!” either. It was you mostly not wanting to explain to your employer how you lost a citizen in the middle of this place and- besides that you couldn’t deny that you didn’t want him to die no matter how much undeniable extra trouble he was causing.

“Let’s go.” Your voice was firm, no discernible room for argument or questions.

Raymond somehow found a way to wriggle in to asking yet another question, “Where are we going?”

You yanked his hand out of the room that you think might’ve been a parlor room back in it’s day. You shouldn’t have bothered to answer as it would breed more questions from him, you already gave away too much about who you are and what you do. Any extra questions you answer from him was just creating a bigger breach in your security. Yet you found yourself justifying an answer, his eyes that were probably pulled into an adorable curious look laced with fear bored into the back of your skull as you dragged him out of the room and to the nearest exit. It was only a harmless question, it didn’t even have a satisfying answer, “Anywhere but here!”

Weaving my way through the house that was better characterized as a maze was hard to navigate through. At every turn some sort of iteration of the poltergeist tried to capture us, to pull us into death with it.

The two of us did eventually find the front door, only to find that we could not pull it open, the handle was stuck.

“Step back!” You shouted at Raymond to get him to move out of the way while you prepared to kick the door down. He skittered over to be right behind you, looking over his shoulder in paranoia. You used your right foot to kick the door, using all the leg strength you could muster. After three kicks, the door burst open, letting you both free.

Scurrying quickly to your government given work vehicle, looking back for a second to make sure that Raymond was following you. You couldn’t let a civilian die here, no matter how much of a nuisance he was, and he was cute of course.

Pulling out the last resort from the trunk of your car, gasoline, you then shoved a container of it to your unexpected companion.

“Cover as much of the house as you can!” He made no argument with your plan, running right behind you back up to the house to cover it all in gasoline. Once you had both covered it as much as possible you made sure Raymond was standing back before you lit your lighter and chucked it into the wood wet with the accelerant.

As soon as you could confirm with your eyes that the house had sparked with fire, you grabbed Raymond’s arm again to drag him to your car, not even caring about the one he had come here in. You basically threw yourself into the driver's seat, starting to drive away immediately after Raymond had sat down, before he had even shut the side door.

Adrenaline was coursing through your veins, causing your heart to pound hard enough that it felt like it could burst out of your chest. It was not unusual in your field of work, to feel death brush right by you.

“My car?!” Raymond screamed, his body turned so he was looking out of your back window.

“Sorry no time to go back! The U.S government will reimburse you for that- maybe…” You said quickly, while trying to step harder down on the gas pedal to speed away.

The house behind you was burning so bright from you could hear the crackling from the house turning to ash. You imagined that the flames and smoke were big enough to be seen for miles, considering how much accelerant you poured on it. So much for being subtle, your boss was definitely going to chew you out for that.

When you had gained a sufficient enough distance away from the flames you pulled off into a parking lot adjacent to a park. Pulling into the parking space fast you then hit the brakes hard, jostling you two a bit.

Taking a deep breath you slumped forward to rest your head on your steering wheel, just for a moment of relaxation.

“You know burning it down won’t necessarily get rid of it.” You only grunted in response to his matter of fact statement. Your lack of response seemed to make him even more anxious, tapping his fingers on any surface that was around him to preoccupy his mind while you took your breather. He tried to fill the silence that was making him uncomfortable, “So what do you actually do?”

You sighed deeply against the steering wheel one last time, then leaning off of it to sit back in the seat. You decided that you might as well give him a small morsel of information that may satiate his curiosity, “That’s highly classified, but you could probably figure it out.”

His insistence to bring up what your job is was making your insides twist with anxiety. You were already dreading what would happen when you got back to the office. It would be a lot of paperwork to explain everything that happened, plus you’d have to submit an application on behalf of Raymond to get his car reimbursed.

The adrenaline that had spiked in your veins born out of fear was still present. It was overwhelming, and you felt the need to use it for something different than wallowing in your fear.

You redirected your gaze to fixate on Raymond, who could surely help you redirect your adrenaline. He was an attractive man, who’s personality did help make him even more desirable. Even though he was a pain in your ass, he was a cute and funny one.

His own eyes were fixated on yours as well, with a different look than what you had seen earlier. His eyes were deepened with lust, not fear, though there was still an ounce of curiosity in them- probably still wondering who exactly I was.

Grabbing the hairs at the back of his neck you then pulled him forward to crush your lips onto his. He reciprocated immediately, though did not try to challenge your dominance over the kiss. He let you slip your tongue into his mouth, exploring him with diligence.

You wanted him closer to you, feeling every inch of him. So you swung your legs over his lap as best you could with the space you had to straddle him. When you did so you barely let his lips come off your own, too greedy to let them separate from yours.

A thought however was nagging you in the back of your head as you continued to melt yourself into the kiss, he had mentioned a companion that he had been worried about earlier. You did not want to step on any toes, nor endorse any type of cheating. You separated your lips from his own, even though you wanted nothing more than to envelop him in another kiss.

“This ok with you?” Your words were said right into his lips, mingling your breath with his, “You’re not with that Becca girl are you?”

“Not anymore- and yes I’m totally ok with this.” He confirmed before surging up to meet his lips with your own again. You wasted no time in starting to grind your hips onto his cock that was swiftly growing underneath his shorts. Just from grinding you could feel how large he was, even through a couple of layers.

He moved his hands to the button of your pants when you moved your lips to start nipping and sucking on his neck and jaw. You tried to kick off the articles of clothing on your lower half, panties included, without removing your lips from him. Unfortunately you had to do so because of the amount of space. You cursed under your breath, wishing that the government had paid to give you a larger vehicle.

You were already slick with arousal, also aided by sticking your fingers into his mouth to get them sufficiently wet. He bobbed his head up and down on them eagerly until you were satisfied. Removing them from his mouth you ran them up and down along your slit, getting you even more wet.

You guided his length to your entrance, not sinking down immediately. You undulated your hips so his length was coated with your arousal as well. When he bucked his hips in impatience you just pushed them down back into the seat. Then you leaned down to whisper into the shell of his ear to be patient- he’d get what he wanted.

“Fuck me.” Was all Raymond could muster up to whimper when you sunk down onto his cock, his head falling back to hit the headrest. You wasted no time in starting a fast pace, bouncing up and down on him with vigor. Raymond grabbed onto your hips when he couldn’t find anything else to hold onto, digging his fingers into your hips hard enough to leave bruises.

His large cock bumped up against your cervix in the most pleasurable way possible as you swivel your hips over him. Your own head tilted back, your mouth opened wide to let out a loud moan when his cock hit a particularly pleasurable spot inside you. You also felt the need to hold onto something as your release began to build inside you, getting ready to snap. So you grabbed onto the best thing you could find, running your hands through his hair and pulling on his strands.

One of his hands then moved to toy with your clit,his movements were a bit fumbled, but it swiftly made your orgasm start to crest. You were almost disappointed about how quickly this was going to be over, you however couldn’t deny that it felt amazing even with the frantic pace. In the back of your mind you couldn’t help but imagine all the other things you could do to Raymond if you were given the chance.

You fell apart above him, your eyes rolling back into your head. The adrenaline still coursed through your veins, and it felt good to have it redirected to a pleasurable experience instead of fear. You kept yourself impaled on his cock for a bit after your orgasm had finished, relishing at the feeling of him inside you.

Slipping out of him was a little bit awkward because of how cramped the space was. Once his cock slipped out of you, both of you groaning at the loss of him inside of you, you wrapped your hand around his length. You started to pump him slowly in your hands, taking your time compared to earlier. Your adrenaline had abated a bit and now you wanted to see how long you could drag this out, in case you never got the chance to again.

However, It still didn’t take much movement from your hands for him to get close, he was already close to the edge from being inside you. His hips bucked up into your hands a bit before he begged, “C-can you put- your hands- around my throat?”

“Should’ve known you’d be into that.” You snarked back a bit in response to his plea. Your tone had no sympathy for him, making him obviously think that you weren’t going to oblige him by the look in his eyes. That look of pure desperation in his eyes, with his kiss swollen lips, and his curls disheveled made you buckle. He groaned loudly when you put your free hand around his neck. You only applied a small amount of pressure, but that was all Raymond needed for him to cum all over your hand.

Once you had helped him ride out his own orgasm you removed your hand from his neck and his cock. You did need to clean up the hand that was covered in his thick ropes of cum, so you brought it up to your mouth to lick it clean.

“Fuck me…” Echoing his previous words, this time with an even bigger whimper. After you had cleaned yourself and him up enough to be decent you flung yourself back to sit in the driver’s seat again.

Raymond was silent for a minute, which seemed odd if you were going off of what little experience you had with him so far. Though maybe he was still going through his post orgasm relaxation just as you were. He then broke the silence, by asking the same question again, even though you had wanted to answer it just about 30 minutes ago. You’d bet money on the reason that he kept asking, being that each time that you answered you gave him a small hint, “Will you tell me now what you actually do?”

“Maybe- if you get to know me better.” You turned the key to start the engine again then asking with another hint as to what your job was, “Consider this your lucky day, you’ve got a spook as your chauffeur. Now, where next Raymond?”

—-

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mldrgrl · 3 years

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His’n

by: mldrgrl Rating: PG Summary: A Hanella Twitter prompt, of sorts. Hank introducing Stella as his wife. https://twitter.com/hole4gillian/status/1411255101990203392?s=21

The whole Zoom appearance thing was getting to be old hat, so when Hank was asked to appear live and in person at the reopening of an independent book store he frequented, he jumped at the opportunity. He missed reading to people that actually existed and weren’t just little boxes on a screen. He missed that instant feedback and energy that only a live audience could provide. He missed being the center of attention.

The appearance was on a Tuesday evening. He asked Stella to go, but she had a late class that night. He asked Becca to come, but Ziggy had a puppy training session. He wasn’t terribly disappointed. It was a rare occurrence to have any of his family at an event and he was fine with it.

Hank was greeted by the owner and manager of Read This, a man named Philip, who he considered to be a step above an acquaintance, but not quite a friend. They had a relationship built upon reciprocity. Hank was a regular customer, even name dropped the store a few times in interviews to give it a boost, and Philip always stocked his books and made sure signed copies were on display.

The event space in the store was just a small stage at the back, barely large enough to fit two chairs comfortably, and an assortment of mismatched folding chairs scattered in front of it. The bookstacks were at angles, pointed towards the stage in a vee formation like an arrow down the aisle. Hank had done a few signings there in the past and they always felt more like intimate gatherings than events.

Philip kicked off the appearance with a short speech thanking everyone for coming out and for supporting the store over the years. He kept it short and simple and then gave Hank the floor to a round of applause. Hank stepped up onto the stage and gave Philip a quick hug before he sat down. All the seats out in the audience were full - all fifteen or twenty of them. He took a passing glance at the crowd as he unfolded the pages he’d brought with him that had been tucked into his back pocket.

“Any of you motherfuckers blog about this later and call me an old man for what I’m about to do, fuck you in advance,” he said, taking out the reading glasses he had hooked to the collar of his shirt that had recently become a necessity.

Everyone laughed. Someone woo-hooed from the audience and Hank dropped his chin to look over the rim of his glasses.

“Philip said I could read whatever the hell I wanted,” Hank said. “So I’m going to read an excerpt from a new novel I’ve got coming out in a few months called Alone Together. A couple things you should know going in, the novel follows the story of Miranda and Scott, a married couple who are on the verge of calling it quits after fifteen years when the pandemic hits and forces them hunker down together when they’d really rather be anywhere else. This bit I’m about to read is about half-way in, when Scott is starting to reflect on what exactly went wrong and when.”

Hank paused to smooth his pages again. When he looked up, he straightened his shoulders in surprise. He saw Stella, leaning against one of the bookstacks with a mild smile on her face. She was in her work clothes, a white silk blouse and fawn colored pencil skirt and tan heels. She had a tan blazer over her arm and her briefcase in hand as well. He took a subtle glance at his watch as he adjusted his pages. Her night class should have only started a half an hour ago.

“Uh,” Hank started and then hid a grin behind his fist as he cleared his throat. “Scott watched his wife at her computer from across the room. She had her headset on and she was laughing. He couldn’t actually remember the last time he’d heard her laugh. It occurred to him that he’d forgotten what it sounded like.”

It took about fifteen minutes for Hank to read the full excerpt. He was momentarily distracted when he saw Becca walking down the aisle. She went straight to Stella, gave her a hug, and then turned towards the stage with Stella’s arm across her shoulders. The surprise of having both his wife and daughter there for him almost made him cry.

When he finished, the audience clapped, and Philip came back onto the stage to moderate audience questions. All the questions were the same variations of questions he had been asked his entire career. He could answer them in his sleep. While he was droning on about his routine and writing habits, he saw Becca tip her head back, whisper something in Stella’s ear, and then duck out from under her arm and walk away. He hoped she wasn’t leaving without saying goodbye.

“Gentleman in the green shirt,” Philip said.

“You said earlier that you were inspired by the pandemic, so I have to ask, how much is fiction and how much is reality?”

“Are you asking me if I based it off my own life?” Hank asked. “Well, first of all, I want to make a broad statement about writing in general. That whole ‘write what you know’ garbage that people, mainly professors, let’s be honest, try to instill into you, is bullshit. Do you think Bram Stoker was a vampire? Do you think Thoms Harris was a cannibal? And believe me, I’m not saying that writers don’t cull from their real life when they’re putting words to paper, but there always seems to be this assumption that if you’re writing a modern story, set in a modern world, that somehow that must be your life and your voice.

“Unlike Scott, I am happily married to the most beautiful, intelligent, way out of my league woman and I would never forget, not even for a hot second, that I am the luckiest bastard alive. We started off the pandemic in very close quarters and when I was trying to think about what I might be interested in writing next, it occurred to me that I could very well be in a miserable position if my life was different. But, it’s not my life that I was imagining when I finally sat down to write. It was two people who were at odds with each other and how would they respond to this?

“I’ll say this, though, and then I’ll get off my high horse on the subject. There is one thing in the story that I gave to Scott that belongs to me. I even read from that passage tonight, and I’ll read it again.”

Hank put his glasses back on and flipped through his pages until he found the paragraph he wanted. He glanced up and out to where Stella was before he re-read the lines.

“He could recall in stunning detail the moment he knew he was in love with her. It wasn’t a romantic moment. They weren’t out on a date. It wasn’t during or after sex, when he was naturally euphoric. It was on a hot summer morning in August when the air conditioner had gone out overnight and they’d both slept poorly and were pissed off at the world. He watched her angrily brushing her teeth with her pink cheeks and dark circles under her eyes and in his exhaustion and anger he wished for a moment that she wasn’t there, but then he had a flash of his life without her and suddenly he felt a swelling in his chest that stole his breath. He never wanted to envision a life without her again, not for a minute.”

Hank stared at the page for a few beats before he finally took off his glasses again and looked up. He first looked for the man that had asked the question and then he turned his gaze to Stella.

“The fictional situation was different,” he said. “But, the feeling was the same.”

Stella gave him a subtle smile and her lips puckered very briefly. His own lips twitched in response and he finally cut his eyes away. He took a few more questions and then Philip thanked him for his time and invited anyone that wanted to stay to have a book signed to wait for a few minutes as they set up the table.

As people began to talk amongst themselves, Hank left the stage to go to Stella. She was chatting with Becca, who had returned with two cups of coffee from the cafe next door.

“Hey,” Hank said, sliding his arm around Stella’s waist and squeezing her hip.

Stella put a hand on Hank’s face and her thumb briefly circled his mouth. She didn’t say anything, but her eyes held his in a warm gaze. She tilted her chin up at him and he leaned down and kissed her cheek.

“Daughter,” he said, turning to Becca while still holding onto Stella. He put his hand on the top of her head and kissed the part in her hair.

“Father.”

“I’m glad you came.”

“We thought we would take you to dinner,” Stella said. “When you’re finished.”

“I would love that.”

Philip came up from behind Hank and said his name. “We’re ready for you,” Philip said.

“Philip, this is my wife, Stella Gibson. And my daughter, Rebecca Moody.”

“Lovely to meet you,” Philip said to Stella and then nodded to Becca. “We sold out of the hardcover of your last book. Please, let me know if you’d ever like to do a signing.”

“Sure,” Becca said.

“You’d have to put twice as many chairs out,” Hank said. He could tell Becca wanted to roll her eyes at him so bad.

“Go do your thing,” Stella said, putting her hand over Hank’s on her hip. She rubbed her thumb over his and he captured it and pinned it down for a moment. He nodded and then kissed her cheek again.

“Love you,” he whispered into her ear.

“I see what you mean,” Philip said, walking Hank back to the stage where a folding table was set up. “She is out of your league.”

“Right?” Hank said with a laugh. “And she married me. Unfuckingbelievable.”

The End

#i wrote this #hanella #hank moody #stella gibson #marrieds #the fall #californication

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toomanyrobins · 3 years

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a little birdie told me pt. 8

Summary: Y/N “Birdie” Parker left New York and her family three years ago in the middle of the night. Now, a call for help to her best friend brings her back into the fold of the Three Families and their “business”

Pairing: Steve Rogers x Parker!Reader

Content warning: physical abuse, miscarriage, cursing, mentions of forced marriage, sex, mentions of alcohol and inebriation

Word Count: 2k

Notes: Thank you for the patience this part week! Hope that this part makes up for the wait! 💛

Series masterlist // next part As the party reached its head, Y/N offered to take Jamie up to the room. She still didn’t love crowds and especially didn’t love so many strangers touching her. Steve had tried to convince her to stay, but when he saw the anxious look in her eyes, he nodded in understanding and thanked her for her help. A feeling of relief washed over her as the door clicked shut and she could kick off her heels. The first thing she did was put Jamie into his pajamas and change out of her dress. She dug around her bag for the nightie she packed, but there was a chill in the air so she grabbed one of Steve’s sweatshirts to put on top. Jamie was still wired from all of the excitement, so she decided to lay down on the couch in the sitting room and put on a movie. Y/N traced her fingers along his back, letting her mind wander to Steve. Eventually, Jamie started to settle and they both were dozing on the couch, the movie playing in the background. She was half asleep when the door of Steve’s hotel room banged open, making her jump. She immediately checked on the baby, but he continued to sleep like a log. She sat up slowly and looked at the men leaning against Steve for support, “Are you guys drunk?”

Bucky’s eyes were practically crossed, “No…”

“Really?” she quirked an eyebrow, “Then say the alphabet backwards.”

Bucky and Sam all shared a look. There was silence for a second and then the latter spoke, “What the hell is the last letter of the alphabet?”

Y/N laughed under her breath “Yeah, okay. Thank you, Sam, I think that answered my question.” She was trying not to show her amusement at the situation as Steve was holding the two men up. “Boys, go to my room and sleep it off. Steve, I’ll stay and help take care of Jamie for the night.” The blond nodded and walked into the bedroom.

Bucky sidled up beside her and kissed her forehead, “Thanks Birdie. You’re the best. I can see why the punk never shuts up about you.” Y/N’s cheeks grew warm.

“God, Barnes, you do not know how to keep a secret. Nearly revealing that Steve’s got a thing for Birdie. Get your shit together.” Sam slapped the brunet upside the head and the two men stumbled off to the adjoining room, leaving Y/N to absorb the information that was just drunkenly revealed to her.

She shook her head, that could be dealt with at a later date. Y/N put the sleeping Jamie into his crab and walked into the bedroom. Steve was starfished on the bed, his eyes shut. “You have got to shower. You smell like you’re wearing the entire contents of a keg.”

“Bucky spilled his beer on me. I’m so tired, sweetheart.”

She forced him off of the bed. “You can sleep after you shower.” He grumbled, but started undressing. She squeaked, turning around, and stayed that way until she heard the shower turn on. In an attempt to keep herself distracted, she went back out into the sitting room to check on Jamie and make sure the drunk duo wouldn’t bother him. Thankfully, all three of them were both already passed out. She snapped a quick photo and sent it to Becca to let her know that her fiance was safe and sound before going back into the bedroom.

When Steve came out of the bathroom, he found Y/N sitting on the bed. He was only wearing a towel and she couldn’t tear her gaze away from him. He leaned against the door, just admiring her. He traced up her legs to where his hoodie brushed her thighs. He had seen a peek of lace when she’d leaned over and knew saw was wearing something underneath. When his eyes finally met hers, she tilted her head, “You okay, Stevie?”

“Yeah, just thinking.”

“That’s a dangerous thing to be doing at 2 in the morning. What’s wrong?”

He weighed his options and the drinks he had had earlier boosted his confidence, “I should’ve kissed you when I noticed we had mistletoe above us earlier.”

Y/N squeaked, “What?”

“When we were dancing, we spun under mistletoe and I should’ve kissed you.”

“It is probably bad luck to ignore the Christmas Spirit.” As soon as the words left her mouth, Steve was across the room and kissing her. He peeled his sweatshirt off of her, Y/N threading her hands through his damp hair before it hit the floor. She pushed him gently so that he was sitting on the bed. One leg was thrown over so that she was straddling him, the towel the only thing between them. Y/N pulled back and looked down at him. His eyes were blown, looking at her like she was the only other person in the world. He flipped them over, towel falling off, so that she laying on the bed, her nightie bunching up to reveal that she was bare underneath. They both moaned as he touched her, feeling how wet she was for him, “Nothing underneath, sweetheart?”

“I haven’t been wearing any all night.” His eyes darkened at that and he tore the flimsy dress off of her, “Steve!”

“I’ll buy you a new one.” In a split second, he was back on her. His mouth traveled over her, leaving marks down her neck and chest. Her wrists were captured in one of his hands, leaving her completely exposed. Y/N keened underneath him as his teeth grazed over her nipple. She ground her hips up against him, looking for any friction she could get. His hand tangled into her hair and all she could focus on was how addictive he was. This moment had been a long time coming and neither ever wanted it to stop. Both were scared that this moment would end and inescapable awkwardness would settle in.

Heat grew from Y/N’s core, as Steve returned his attention to her neck. Her whole body was tingling, as she felt his muscular frame over hers and his arms trapping her in place. He was claiming her, sucking and biting marks all over her chest. She wrapped her legs around his waist, pulling him close and rolled her hips against him. “Fuck, sweetheart. Touch me.” Y/N slid her hands down and ran her nails over his abdomen. She felt his abs contract underneath her fingers. She pulled her hand away as he bit a spot on her neck and she arched against him. Steve smiled down at her, “Good girl.” She sucked in a breath and he smirked knowingly at her. All rational thought was replaced with the need for the other to touch them. She felt the heat of his mouth against her and his rough hands on her thighs. Steve held her legs apart and knelt down. “Are you going to keep being a good girl for me, Birdie?”

“Yes,” she sobbed, “Please, just touch me.”

“I am touching you, sweetheart.”

“Dammit, Stevie. I’ll do anything, just make me cum.”

“Anything, huh? I’m going to have to remember that.” Y/N whimpered and he finally gave her what she needed. She tangled her hand on his hair, as the other gripped the pillow above her. Steve’s teasing fingers made her cry out, as he continued his assault on her clit. He felt her fluttering around him and couldn’t wait to be inside of her any longer, “Are you sure, Birdie?”

“God, stop teasing and fuck me.” He kissed Y/N once more, before filling her completely. He slammed into her, then pulling almost completely out before claiming her again. She had never felt so full before, back arching as she called out his name. Steve buried his head against her neck, the room filled with their moans. She spread her legs and held tightly to his shoulders, as he pounded into her. The change in angle meant he was hitting that perfect spot and Y/N felt herself getting close. She slipped her hand down to rub her clit and clenched around Steve, her toes curling. He thrust a few more times before burying himself inside her completely.

The room was silent, except for them trying to catch their breaths and their heart rates to slow. Once he was slightly more clear-headed, Steve rolled them over so that she was laying on his chest. Neither spoke as Y/N lazily traced over one of the tattoos on his chest, eventually lulling them both into sleep.

The next morning, Jamie’s crying woke the sleeping pair. Steve groaned and buried his head into the pillows. Y/N rolled out of his grip, “Go back to sleep, I got him.” She pulled on a pair of leggings from her bag and Steve’s sweatshirt off the floor. She ignored the soreness between her legs as she padded into the sitting room and picked Jamie up. She settled him down and called for room service.

She played with the baby until the breakfast arrived and sent Becca a text inviting her to join for breakfast in the room. Y/N was in her own little world thinking about Steve and their night. Jamie had just started to have his bottle when a high-pitched shriek came from the adjoining room. She nearly jumped out of her skin when Bucky ripped the door open. “Sam, what the hell! I am not my sister!” Y/N choked on her laughter as the three men came out to stand in the living room, a mix of confusion and disgust on their faces.

When Steve had tumbled out, his hair was pointing in all directions and he had just a towel around him. Y/N could barely answer him when he asked what had happened because of how hard she was laughing, “Bucky is learning how Sam wakes his sister up in the morning apparently.”

“We never speak of this again!” The brunet pointed a threatening finger, “God, my head hurts!”

“I’m surprised you can stand up straight with how much you had to drink last night. I’ve got room service waiting for you if you’re hungry..”

“You are a goddess!” Sam exclaimed and rushed for the caffeine. Steve went to walk back into the room and get changed, when the dark-skinned man choked on his drink. “Well your back is telling me what you got up to last night, Rogers.” Raised red lines were all over his back where Y/N had clung to him the night before. He didn’t even try to look ashamed as he flashed them a grin and walked away. She, however, was embarrassed and Bucky took Jamie from her so that she could let Becca into the suite. He refused to meet his sister’s eyes and the others couldn’t stop giggling at the situation.

When they told the youngest Barnes what had happened, including the scratch marks on Steve’s back, she grinned, “Oh, so mommy and daddy finally got together.” Hearing herself referred to as Jamie’s mother made Y/N sick to her stomach. Suddenly, the realization of what last night could mean sent chills down her spine. Every uncertainty and fear from before she came home was flooding back and Y/N knew she had to get out of there.

“I just remembered that I need to go,” Y/N grabbed her bag and bolted out of the room.

Steve called after her, but she was in her own head. He whirled back around to look at his friends, “What the hell just happened?”

Y/N had rushed out and called an Uber back to her parent’s house. She snuck up to her room, hoping that everyone was still at the Ivory. Essentials were thrown into a duffle and stored in the back of her closet, nearly a carbon copy of what had happened 4 years earlier. That damned holiday party seemed to always lead to her running.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

@founding-fuck-bois

@animegirlgeeky

@inlovewiththefictionalcharacters

@directorsnarrative

@marvelofwitch

@hollandstanevans

#avengers au #avengers imagine #steve rogers imagine #steve rogers x reader #toomanyrobins #mafia au #mafia!avengers #mafia!steve #mob!au #mob!avengers #mob!steve #steve rogers #steve rogers au #avengers #avengers x reader #captain america #captain america imagine #captain america x reader #mafia!steve rogers

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pinkievie · 4 years

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100 Questions I have about the final season of The 100

1. What was the point of the time dilation other than to give us Hope’s character?

2. Why did Dyoza, Octavia and Gabriel keep seeing the spiral image in the last season?

3. Why did Russell and Jordan also see the spiral images but not Murphy?

4. What did Murphy see when he was under the toxin?

5. Is there really a Hell?

6. What are the spiral images?

7. Are they a symbol of immortality from the higher beings?

8. Why was Jordan the only one to have glimpsed transcendence during his psychosis?

9. Why did Echo and Hope cut their hair?

10. Was it just a point of personal preference or because it helped them pass as disciples?

11. Why was Dev, a disciple, happy to help Hope infiltrate Bardo?

12. Why was Orlando seemingly more religious than Dev?

13. Why was the Anomaly from Sanctum under water on Skyring?

14. Why was the underwater Anomaly on Skywring always open?

15. Why did the temporal flare last season cause Octavia’s arm to age?

16. How did the Anomaly heal Octavia’s arm?

17. What was the point of Gabriel, Echo and Hope living on Skyring for 5 years?

18. How did Sheidheda’s spirit move from Madi to Russell?

19. Why were none of the other commanders in Russell’s body?

20. How did Sheidheda die originally?

21. What happened to Sheidheda to make him so violent and power hungry?

22. When Bellamy prayed on Etherea, how did he see and speak to Cadogan?

23. Why did the higher beings show themselves to Bellamy in particular?

24. After Bellamy prayed, how did the storm pass?

25. Was it the higher beings that calmed the storm, and why?

26. What do the eggs hatch into on Etherea?

27. When did Cadogon make his journey on Etherea?

28. If Cadogan knew the flame was on Earth, why didn’t he ever go back to find it?

29. What did Becca see when she was with the higher beings that made her so frightened?

30. If Cadogan loved Callie so much, why didn’t he go searching for her whilst she was alive?

31. What is the significance of Niylah telling Echo that her mother was Azgedakru?

32. Why didn’t Indra kill Sheidheda when she had the chance so he couldn’t be captured and used by the disciples?

33. Why was Clarke happy to shoot Madi when she found her paralysed?

34. Why didn’t Clarke, Octavia and Levitt attempt to take Madi away from Bardo to stop any further attempts to harm and use her brain?

35. Why did Clarke just leave Madi alone, paralysed and defenceless, whilst she went off to get revenge?

36. Why did the gang decide to cause a distraction so they could infiltrate Bardo and kill Cadogan even though Gaia had already explained that killing Cadogan wouldn’t stop fate, and that another disciple would simply take his place?

37. How did Sheidheda sneak into the final battle without being seen?

38. Why didn’t the pier change into something familiar for Clarke after she shot Cadogan, just like how Callie turned into Lexa?

39. When Clarke failed the test, why didn’t the higher beings wipe out the human race, like, straight away?

40. If the higher beings judge one member in place of the whole species, and Clarke failed, why did they change their mind by observing the rest of the human race?

41. Why did the higher beings allow the human race to transcend, when Raven only asked for them to have “more time” to do better?

42. Who are the higher beings and where did they originate from?

43. Are the higher beings aliens or gods?

44. Are the higher beings simultaneously everywhere?

45. When people transcend, do they also become the higher beings, and are they everywhere?

46. When people transcend, do they all have one mind?

47. As part of the higher beings, can the rest of the human race think and feel for themselves?

48. Can the transcended human race experience love and happiness?

49. Does the transcended human race have free will?

50. Do the transcended all have the power and knowledge that the higher beings have?

51. What do the Bardoans look like?

52. Why did the Bardoans fail the final test?

53. What qualities are the higher beings judging during the test?

54. What aspects does a species have to have in order to transcend?

55. Why do the higher beings use Gen-9 to crystallize species’?

56. Why do the higher beings annihilate entire species’, instead of just denying them transcendence and allowing them to live?

57. What do the higher beings actually want and what is their end goal?

58. If Earth is green and habitable again, why did everyone travel 75 light years to Sanctum?

59. Why didn’t everyone just go into cryosleep for 75 years above Earth and wait?

60. Why didn’t anyone acknowledge that Monty was wrong to believe Earth would never be habitable again?

61. Why did Clarke shoot Bellamy in the heart?

62. Why was Emori not shown more clearly in the final scene?

63. If transcendence is a choice, why didn’t Emori, Levitt and Echo return to their mortally wounded bodies?

64. Did the higher beings magically heal and revive the three of them just as a favour?

65. During their time as transcended, did the three of them have that power to mend their bodies?

66. Why didn’t Emori return from transcendence into her mind drive which was in Murphy’s body?

67. Did Gabriel and Josephine transcend if their mind drives hadn’t been destroyed?

68. Would Gabriel have been happy to live forever, considering his motto “death is life”?

69. Why did the higher beings remove the group’s ability to procreate?

70. How do the higher beings even have the power to do that?

71. Is Murphy and Emori really okay with not ever having children, especially as they helped so many children in Sanctum?

72. Is Indra, Niylah and Miller okay with never seeing the rest of Wonkru again?

73. Is Raven okay with living her life without finding someone, settling down and having children?

74. Doesn’t Gaia, Niylah, Miller and Jackson want to have children too?

75. Is Octavia and Levitt okay with not having children?

76. Is Jordan and Hope okay with not having children?

77. What would happen if any of these couples on Earth broke up or fell out of love, as some of them have only known each other for a few months?

78. Are the people left on Earth not gonna get bored of each other?

79. Why didn’t they collectively acknowledge that Bellamy was right and that Clarke was wrong to kill him?

80. Why didn’t they have a memorial or funeral for Bellamy?

81. If the moral of the show is that “there is more to life than just surviving”, why did the majority of the human race decide to become one with immortal beings?

82. Why did Madi choose transcendence over being with Picasso and potentially being with her other friends on Sanctum again?

83. Did Clarke’s friends choose not to transcend just because they didn’t want Clarke to be alone, even though it’s her own fault she couldn’t transcend?

84. How has Raven still got that orange puffer jacket?

85. Why was the Anomaly and the higher beings only introduced last season?

86. Why does transcendence sound a lot like the City of Light?

87. Why did everyone want to destroy the City of Light when ALIE was trying to convert everyone, but so happy with transcending?

88. Why did no one acknowledge how similar the higher beings were to ALIE?

89. Were Clarke’s friends really the only members of the entire human race that wanted to live mortal lives?

90. Was there no one else in Wonkru, Bardo or Sanctum who wanted their old lives back?

91. Why did no one stick up for Bellamy?

92. What was the point of having Bellamy “die”, come back and then to actually die alone and with all his friends hating him?

93. Why couldn’t Bellamy die protecting his friends, or being a hero?

94. Can Bellamy’s friends at least acknowledge the sacrifices he made for them?

95. Why did Clarke realise in Season 6 that she shouldn’t have chosen Madi over Bellamy, asked Bellamy for forgiveness, and then still made the same mistake and chose Madi over Bellamy in Season 7?

96. Why was everyone so against giving Cadogan the flame, when they didn’t need to fight in the war, and they didn’t believe in transcendence anyway?

97. Why couldn’t Bellamy have just survived the bullet wound with help from Bardo’s technology, and reunite with his friends in the end as a hero?

98. Why was Bellamy not even mentioned in the final scene?

99. Was that final scene overlaid with the scene of Clarke drawing on the floor of her cell from Season 1 a hint that this was all in her imagination?

100. Why is Jason Rothenberg incapable or re-writing an ending to his own show that makes sense, compliments the overarching theme of the series, progresses the characters, AND does not compromise the health and wellbeing of his cast and crew? 🤷‍♀️

#the 100 #the hundred #spoilers #the 100 spoilers #the 100 season 7 #the cw #jason rothenberg #my stuff

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5-seconds-of-bucky · 4 years

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Letters To A Boy Who’ll Never Read Them

A/N: Kinda inspired by To All the Boys I’ve Loved Before. Anyone who knows me will see how much I projected on this but oh well. Also, this is the longest fic I’ve ever written! (Which is kinda sad I guess but oh well)

Summery: The letters to Peter were never supposed to leave that box

Word count: 2.6k+

Warnings: I like half proof read this so probably some typos

Peter Parker was a boy you liked to admire from afar. You’ve gone to school with him for the past three years and were yet to feel the courage to talk to him. The first time you laid eyes on the curly haired boy, you were a goner. Everything about him was perfect to you, even if he was considered a nerd by most others. You liked to imagine that he felt the same towards you, but you were sure he never took a second to register your face among the hundreds at Midtown.

And maybe you owed that to how perfectly average you were. Sure, you were fairly smart, but so was everyone else at the school. You were pretty enough, but it wasn’t something that set you apart from everyone else. You blended into a crowd like a chameleon on a green wall.

Your one special talent, if it could even be called that, was your writing. Your teachers always commented on the eloquence of your essays and your friends liked to ask you to come up with witty captions from their Instagram posts. You were even on a competitive writing team.

Writing was the one thing that set you apart, but it was something that went unnoticed by the majority.

Unbeknownst to you, Peter Parker was very aware of your presence in a room. Your “average” beauty was more than average to him. He wasn’t sure how long he’d known that he liked you, but he guessed that it started around the first time he read one of your essays. Your way with words was something he would never stop admiring. He was a science kid, through and through but he could see your passion for writing even in the simple essay you had to write about symbolism in Lord of the Flies.

He wanted to talk to you and ask you just how you did it, but there was always something holding him back. You were either hanging out with your small group of friends and he didn’t want to interrupt or you were studying quietly in the library and he was sure you wanted to be alone. He never seemed to have the courage to talk to you and he wasn’t entirely sure why.

So he never approached you. In the three years he had known your face he never spoke a word to it. Every class that you had together never required a group project and assigned seats that were never next to each other. Sometimes, it felt like fate was keeping you apart.

You kept a container under your bed. There wasn’t anything that special about it originally. You put some stickers on there when you were a little younger. There was no reason in particular that you did it, you just had some stickers and wanted to put them to use. You ended up sticking it under the bed eventually and left it there for a while.

There was a day when you got sick of keeping your crush at bay. It wasn’t all that long after you “met” Peter. Who knew that staring at the back of someone’s head could make you like them so much?

So you did the thing you knew best; write.

You wrote him a letter. A letter you hoped he would never read because it was too embarrassing for him to see.

Dear Peter,

How does one tell you they love you? Perhaps I could tell you in this letter, but a letter alone could not capture the raging feelings I have for you. The butterflies I feel when you walk in a room, the sense of calmness I feel when I see you smile, the giddiness when you shoot your hand up to answer a question. Not a day goes by that I fear I won’t see that smile again. But that doesn’t come close to the fear that you’ll never see me. For I am little more than another face in the crowd. I’m average and you are anything but. I wish this letter could make you see me, but I doubt anything really can. I hope this is a letter you’ll never read, but fate has ways of changing the things we want. Maybe, some day, you can be mine.

With love,

The girl I wished you’d see

You read the letter once over and weren’t sure what to do with it. You obviously couldn’t give it to Peter but you didn’t want to get rid of it.

Your eyes caught sight of the container under your bed and you grabbed it, folding the note and putting it in there. You placed the container back under the bed and worked on more homework, hoping that somehow, the letter would rid you of your feelings.

Over time, the container accumulated more letters. From little notes to full length letters describing how you felt, they never left that container. You even wrote “Dear Peter” in sharpie on the side. There were things you hoped you could mention in the hallway as you passed him and things you could only hope he would never know.

From

Dear Peter,

Your smile makes me happier than One Direction.

Dear Peter,

Sometimes, I fear that you’ll realize that you’re too smart and kind for the people at Midtown to treat you like they do and that you’ll leave. Sometimes, I wish I could be the one to make it better.

You never told anyone about the container. It was something you felt was too personal to share. Even if your friends knew all about your crush on Peter, you weren’t sure you trusted them with the things you wrote to him.

“Alright, I’m gonna get changed,” you said to your friend, Becca, as you grabbed your pajamas and headed to the bathroom across the hallway. The two of you were having a sleepover and you didn’t want to be in jeans while you watched movies.

Becca twisted the ring on her finger as she waited for you when it accidentally came out of her grasp and rolled under your bed.

“Oops,” she said to herself as she kneeled on the ground to get it. She swiped her hand under the bed before she found it, curiosity striking when she felt the box it was resting against. She looked down and was met with the container, the “Dear Peter” in your handwriting facing her.

“What’s this?” She pulled the container out enough to see the folded letters sitting in it. She pulled one out and read part of it.

Dear Peter,

I love you. There, I said it. Well, wrote it, I guess. But that’s as bold as I can be right now. I’m still the girl you’ve never seen; the girl you’ll never see.

The sounds of your footsteps interrupted her reading and she quickly put the letter back, shoving the container under your bed.

“What are you doing?” You asked, seeing her kneeling on the ground.

“Oh, my ring dropped.”

You smiled. “You need to stop dropping that thing, my gosh, Becca.”

“I know, I know,” she chuckled.

Later that night, when you were asleep, Becca took some of the letters and shoved them in her bag. There were tons of notes in there. Surely, you wouldn’t notice if five of them were gone. Maybe she could get these to Peter. It wasn’t the nicest thing to do behind you back, but she was sick of hearing you swoon over the boy. Just because you were oblivious to the yearning looks Peter gave didn’t mean she didn’t see them.

The next Monday at school, Becca didn’t hang out at your locker for long, claiming that she needed to go to the bathroom before class. While you went to class early, she pushed the letters in through the crack of Peter’s locker. All she could do now is hope that Peter knew what to do next and that you wouldn’t kill her.

“Dude, did you even read the chapter last night?” Peter asked Ned as they walked to his locker.

“Of course not. Why do you think I’m asking you about it now?”

Peter scoffed as he put the combination to his locker in. “What if everything I just old you wasn’t true?”

“You would never-”

Ned was cut off by a few pieces of folded paper flying out of Peter’s locker. Peter picked one up, reading the short message written in small handwriting.

Dear Peter,

Your eyes are like the midnight sky. Dark and mysterious yet beautiful.

“What is that?” Ned asked, reading it before Peter could move it out of eyesight.

“I don’t know. Maybe someone’s putting notes in people’s lockers or something.”

“Then why do you have four others in there?” Peter closed his locker, leaving the rest of the notes in there.

“Aren’t you going to read them? What if Y/N finally confessed her love to you?”

Peter rolled his eyes. “She is not in love with me. And I’ll read them later.”

Little did Peter know that Ned was right. As he read the notes later, he couldn’t help but wonder what led you to put such personal and deep notes in there.

Dear Peter,

It’s me again. I know I’ve written a million notes for you, but I don’t know what else to do. I am helplessly and completely head over heels for you. You and your cute sweaters, your genius brain, that little smile you get when you know all the answers to a test. I’ll probably be stuck writing letters to you ‘till the day I die, but oh well. You are the sun and I am a small blade of grass in the middle of a field. You are the ocean and I am one of the thousands of fish. You are you and I am just me. Maybe one day I’ll gain the courage to tell you that to your face, but until then, I remain the little fish in the big pond.

Sincerely,

The little fish,

Y/N

Dear Peter,

Yeah, you’re Peter Parker and I’m Y/F/N Y/L/N but what if you were Peter Pan and I was Wendy Darling? (That sucked, I’m sorry but not really)

Love,

Someone who wishes they were your darling

He couldn’t believe his eyes. He had been dreaming about you for years and all of a sudden you just threw some love letters in his locker?

Of course, it could be fake. It was a little elaborate to be fake though. Ned couldn’t write like that and nobody else knew about his crush on you. Maybe it was an actual dream come true.

“Hey, Y/N!” Peter called when he saw you standing at your locker the next day. He didn’t know what you were doing there since it was a lunch period but it didn’t matter. He walked towards you quickly, one of the letters subtly stuck to his side.

You gave him a confused look. He knew who you were? Since when?

“Hey, I uh . . . I got your letter.”

“What letter? I never gave you a letter.” You closed your locker and turned to face him fully, arms crossed as you leaned onto it.

“Well this letter says it’s from you. Unless there’s another Y/F/N Y/L/N in this school I don’t know about.” He held the letter up and your eyes widened. You snatched it out of his hands and scanned over the message. Yup, it was definitely yours.

Dear Peter,

I love you. There, I said it. Well, wrote it, I guess. But that’s as bold as I can be right now. I’m still the girl you’ve never seen; the girl you’ll never see. I keep telling myself that if I can confess these stupid feelings behind the pen, then I can do it in person too. But that day hasn’t come yet. I guess it’s like liquid courage but with ink. Ink courage? That’s weird.

That wasn’t even the end of it. There was a lot more on the page, things that even if you were to tell him how you felt, you would never want him to know. And you were absolutely mortified.

“How did you get this?”

“I don’t know. I was in my locker the other day. There were like four others with it.”

“Four?” You stared at him like you had just seen a ghost.

“Yeah four. This was the deepest though.” He had a shy smile, but you couldn’t even look at him.

“You were never supposed to see this.” You leaned your head on the locker and brought a hand up to cover your face. “I don’t know how it made it to you.” You’ve never told anyone about the box of letters.

“Well-”

“I’m so sorry you had to read that, Peter. It must be so weird. You don’t even know me. I’m really really sorry. You were never supposed to read it.”

You looked like you were about to burst into tears in the middle of the hallway. Thank goodness nobody else was around to witness it.

“Hey, no. It’s okay. I thought it was really sweet.” He placed a hand on your shoulder, rubbing it softly. He didn’t want to make you uncomfortable but he had an urge to comfort you somehow.

“You don’t think it’s weird that some girl you’ve never talked to is writing love letters to you?” You finally let your hand fall and glanced up at him quickly, reverting your eyes to the ground when he made eye contact.

“No, it’s really cute actually. Just because we’ve never talked doesn’t mean I don’t know who you are.” He looked sincere, but that did little to relax fear and embarrassment swirling inside of you.

“You know, Y/N, I’ve always thought you were cute too.”

Your head snapped up quickly, banging on the locker and causing you to grimace.

“You okay?” He immediately stepped closer and took your head in his hands, checking to make sure you hadn’t really hurt yourself.

Warmth spread through your body like a fire. The feeling of his hands was a little more comforting than you cared to admit. “Yeah, it’s just a locker. I’m a little tougher than that,” you laughed softly.

“Just making sure.” He smiled sheepishly and pulled his hands away.

You stood there, staring awkwardly staring at each other's shoes until you spoke up.

“So can we agree to just forget about this and never speak of it again?”

“Only if you will go on a date with me.”

Your head shot up and you hit it on the locker again. Peter laughed and you sighed as you took a step away from it.

“I really need to stay away from lockers apparently.” Peter smiled a little wider and you swore your whole word was on fire. “But yeah, I’d really like to go on a date with you,” you said shyly, scratching your neck as a surge of nerves pulsed through your body. Peter Parker actually just asked you on a date.

“I’ll make sure to go somewhere without lockers.”

“Oh, how considerate of you.”

“We should probably get to lunch.”

“I’ll walk you there.”

“To the cafeteria?”

“Where else? Unless you want me to follow two steps behind you like some creepy stalker.”

“No, no, that’s okay. I guess you can walk me.”

“What a privilege.”

“It is actually. You get to walk with the Y/F/N Y/L/N.”

“True, true.” You both turned and walked in the direction of the cafeteria, smiles on your faces.

“Happen to have any more of those letters?”

“Oh you have no idea.”

Please reblog and leave some feedback! :)

#Peter Parker #Peter Parker fic #Peter Parker fanfiction #Peter Parker imagine #Peter Parker one shots #Peter Parker x reader #Peter Parker x Y/N #Peter Parker fluff #Peter Parker MCU #Boyfriend!Peter #Boyfriend!Peter Parker #My writing #Anna writes

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utterlyinevitable · 4 years

Note

can do an ethan x mc request for Gimme those eyes, it's easy to forgive - hopeless halsey

this song is so underrated. thank you so much for requesting!!!

Hopeless

Word Count: 2.3k Warning: angst, few curse words, adult themes Summary: This takes place around Chapter 1 in OHSY after Ethan comes back from the stupid Amazon. There’s mentions of MC x Raf and Ethan x Harper.

A/N: The end bits were supposed to be smut but everything I wrote was so damn cringe 😔 . Someone teach me how to write smut pls and thanks.

________________________________________

Ethan Ramsey was in the cafeteria speaking with Harper, the two attendings grabbing a hot meal for a late-night dinner. They spoke like two old friends, happily and without complications.

Becca watched from her position at the condiment station as he intimately placed his hand on Harper’s lower back and offered to pay for her food. It was a small gesture, but to Becca it was everything. Becca would never have the privilege of these simple moments with him ever again. He made that as clear as a summer’s day during her first shift as a diagnostics fellow a couple mornings ago after his miraculous return from the Amazon by telling her “there is no us”.

The distance. The complications; everything he rattled off as reasons to stop, meant nothing to her. Every time he pushes her away she keeps crawling back like a moth to a flame, never really learning her lesson all the same. Why can’t she stay away from him?

How can he go about his life - doesn’t he feel anything anymore?

To be just colleagues - strictly professional as he put it - how could anything between them be that simple ever again? They’ve seen each other naked. They’ve carried and soothed the burden of the others’ vulnerabilities. Ethan and Rebecca were never simply colleagues. From the moment Ethan Ramsey let himself sign her textbook that first day of intern year they were doomed to be something more.

Her feet stuck to the floor and her eyes transfixed on Harper, Becca couldn’t understand whether she was jealous that she could have him in every way while Becca could never. Or if it was due to the unencumbered attention he could dote on her. Possibly it was a bit of both.

During their time together, Ethan made it unambiguous to Becca that the last two years of the notable attendings’ friendship Harper was his boss and that meant they couldn’t continue their on-off relationship. It’s the same rationale he was using with Becca now, except she and he never actually were together just a few fleeting moments here and there. Aside from those little tidbits of information he never talked about his past with the surgeon. For all Becca knew, now that they were both heads of departments and on the same professional level, they could continue whatever it was they were previously doing. Ethan could easily fall back into the familiar convenience of being with Harper Emery.

He makes staying apart look too easy.

He’s still functioning. He can be in the same room as Becca without his skin crawling. He can continue on with his life as if their intimacy and sleepless nights together had never happened. He makes moving on and being simply colleagues look painlessly uncomplicated.

“Bec, you there?” a muffled voice spoke into her ear.

She was on the phone. In her gripping trance she didn’t realize they were still speaking. Becca came downstairs to grab a sandwich and catch a nap in the on-call room before her date with Rafael in two hours. That’s when she caught the attendings cozily waiting next to one another.

Shaking her head to bring her back from her trance she shakily breathed, “Yeah, can I call you back in 5?”

“Yea sure. Just wanted to let you know I can’t hang out tonight.”

In under five minutes her heart seemed to break twice. “Oh, okay.”

“I’m on call,” there was a trained reassurance in his voice that was meant to soothe her. It didn’t work, but she wouldn’t let him know that. Becca needed his distraction more than ever now, alas work got in the way.

Work always gets in the way.

“That’s okay, Raf. Talk later.”

Being with Rafael Aveiro should have been easy. He was sweet and caring and knew just how to put a smile on her face. He had a supporting family and knew the secrets of this city that only long term locals would know. His embrace was warm and comforting, his kiss was a breath of fresh air. He was the type of boy she should be in love with.

Becca shoved her phone deep into her scrub pocket and removed herself from the sticky position. She scoured the facility floor for an empty room to call hers for the next few hours. If she couldn’t see Raf she might as well distract herself with more cases.

In the abandoned on-call room she felt alone inside, so profoundly alone. She hadn’t felt this low since the day she learned He was leaving. If her current affair can’t comfort her at her every beck and call, what’s she supposed to do now?

Laying on her back and staring up at the metal supports of the empty bunk above, Becca angrily bit into her cucumber sandwich. She replayed the entire cafeteria spectacle over and over again, dissecting every subtle movement she managed to capture.

He’s known Harper forever. They have more in common…

The look of Ethan’s content stature and the way his shoulders rounded as he stood with Harper eats away at her. Sadness moved straight to maddened annoyance. All Becca has wanted to do since she learned of his leaving is punch him. Yell at him. Hold him closer than physically possible and beg him not to leave her again.

Why am I doing this to myself?

She knows why and it hurts like hell.

The truth is she can’t stop thinking about him. She can’t find a moment of peace in this whole damn hospital without thinking of him. Ethan is Edenbrook. And when she closes her eyes at night it’s his baby blues that haunt her - that same passionately ravenous stare the man had all those nights ago that made her feel like she was the only woman in the world who could satisfy him.

This secret has been killing her. The secret she’s been keeping guarded under lock and key, a secret she can’t utter out loud. Her lips and tongue can’t comprehend the weight of those words.

Becca sighed deeply into the abyss of the somber room.

She hated who she had become in just two lonesome months. She wasn’t as confident anymore - everything she has ever known has been challenged and not in the flourishing way she preferred. He made her this way. Desperate for him and hopelessly in… infatuated. Everything was Ethan’s fault. If he wasn’t him then she wouldn’t be feeling this way. If he didn’t bring her into his secret case and take a keen interest in her person as her mentor, then she could have skated through residency as the bright eyed and hopeful girl she once was.

She tightly closed her eyes and groaned as the forbidden words infiltrated her mind.

I love him still.

No. Stop it. You can’t feel this way. It’s just goddamn infatuation.

Logically her mind trailed down another path, trying so desperately to diagnose their situation.

If this godforsaken feeling won’t quit there must be something here. I can’t be the only one to feel it.

Right?

This happened so quickly and died all too soon - is it all in my head? Did I make us up?

Before she knew it the door to the on-call room banged shut behind her and she was on her way to his office. Was he still here?

Of course he was. Ethan never went home these days but she didn’t need to know that. The moment he got back to his apartment - no matter how many times he scheduled a deep cleaner while he was away - every surface reminded him of Rebecca. His bed was missing the petite indent her body left behind, the left side now cold and firmly abandoned. His couch and bar cart called him back to all the conversations they had and every bit of sweet courage they indulged in. His kitchen held all the memories of cases they solved over takeout late into the endless nights. In his master bathroom the walk-in shower brought his mind back to the last place he encouraged her to fall apart in his apartment. Lastly and most bitterly, every window overlooking the restless city mocked him of the most alluring of views he vowed to never cherish again.

Knock.

The dark wooden door to Ethan’s office was locked but she noticed the faint dull light of his lamp under the crack in the door.

He’s there. The thought shocked her slightly and she tried to backtrack. He’s probably asleep.

Knock.

She faintly knocked one last time in blind courage, not really wanting to disturb him. She’s been on the receiving side of his tirades multiple times. Her eyes widened as her mind caught up with her body. This is a futile effort - what do I expect to get from this? What am I doing?

Becca’s left foot pointed down the hall, encouraging her to flee before she caused any more strain on their already fragile relationship.

Mid-turn her right ear caught the sound of shuffling and the lock clicked open. Ethan’s groggy form peering into the fluorescent hall and down at her.

“Rookie?”

It’d been months since she last heard that name. And something flared up deep inside her.

When his bright blue eyes met hers anything and everything she planned to say vanished. All Becca could do was forgive those innocent and befuddled orbs of his. She made the mistake of looking into his eyes - One look and she fell deeper into the endless depths of Ethan Ramsey. Without thinking she forcefully pushed him past the threshold and in one swift movement captured his agape lips between hers. She hoped sleep held onto him so he wouldn’t push her away.

She was wrong. So wrong.

He was wide awake. His eyes wide and lips hungry.

Ethan’s left arm wrapped itself securely around her waist while his right reached past her to slam the door closed, dutifully locking it without letting her go for even a second.

In their small sanctuary he was pulling her closer, his free hand now tangling itself in her hair. Becca’s impatient hands ran along his partially undone dress shirt, noticeably wrinkled from his nap on the couch. She then trailed them down to his chest to the hem, savoring the feeling of the taut muscles underneath, where she noted he wasn’t wearing a belt. Ethan’s hands followed suit and pushed her pristine white coat away. He was carefully caressing her forearm before leveraging one hand on her neck and the other securely on her waist, kneading the fabric from her skirt so that his fingers can dance along the small of her back uninhibited.

He was kissing her back. And temporarily Becca felt hope. For a fraction of an hour she held onto the thought that he wanted them to be together too.

Their hands and mouths were exploring one another in a craze. They were a drug to one another and neither could imagine the symptoms of withdrawal could be this strong.

Ethan lifted her top and discarded it haphazardly, exposing her bralette - the nude and black lace complimented her skin in ways he never dreamed a piece of fabric could have such an effect. He was transfixed for a moment. Her effortless beauty was invariably captivating. Although he’s seen her like this before his astute mind never could quite capture her full essence.

Does he still think he’s better off without me? Becca thought as she watched him ogle her.

She moved closer to pepper sultry kisses along his neck. Her body was pressed flush against his, save for her groin which she purposefully kept a vengeful two centimetres away.

Ethan’s eyes rolled back at her ministrations. With heavy breaths he spoke, “What are you doing to me, Becca?”

Between kisses she muttered, “I can’t help it. You make me this way. I’m hopeless...” -ly in love with you.

“But reliably so.”

The truth is Ethan wanted her just as badly. However he knows full well she’d be better off without him. He’s selfish and rude - an unwelcoming presence to the outside world. Except for Becca - for Rebecca Lao he’d be anything she wanted.

He took her by the chin moving her back up to meet his lonely lips. Right now he didn’t want to think about the past or what awaits them on the other side of the office door. Right now he’s going to let himself - let them - be happy.

Ethan dragged her across the scratchy hospital carpet and over to the aged sofa he spent many solo nights on. Becca responded to his eagerness by straddling him and unbuttoning the rest of his shirt further, letting Ethan come into full view. The electricity that coursed through her veins when their skin touched was like nothing she had ever experienced with anyone else. It was erotic. It was vibrant. It was certainty.

It has and will always be you.

Things change overtime, whether encouraged to or not. No one knows that better than Ethan Ramsey, especially with the unprecedented presence Becca has had on his life. Maybe, just maybe if they gave it enough time they would fall back into pace. This brief moment has been the highlight of the last two months - a regretful reminder that he had thrown this all away.

They’ve spent too much time apart. And tonight he’ll take her anyway that he can. Tonight it’ll be the two of them snuggled up on the couch of his office post-rapture.

Ethan lay across the couch with Becca curled up next to him, the nude and vulnerable pair tried to regulate their breaths after ruining one another in the best possible way. Ethan pressed a lingering kiss to the clammy edge of her forehead, smiling to himself when he noticed the light brown baby hairs began to curl with their heat. He shifted to hold her just a bit tighter. Ethan never wanted to return back to their incompatible reality.

And then there was a determined knock at the door.

“Ethan? I know you’re in there,” Harper’s voice called.

________________________________________

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#open heart #open heart fanfic #choices open heart #ethan x mc #ethan ramsey #ethan ramsey x mc #requests #choices fanfic #choices oph2 #ohsy #oph #oph2 #oph ff #ff #rafael aveiro #harper emery

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barnesandco · 3 years

Text

Dance of the Sugar Plum Fairy (12/14)

Story Masterlist

The plum seller at the farmer’s market saves Bucky from being captured for the attack at Vienna that he didn’t commit, but is she really all that she appears to be, or are ulterior motives involved?

This is an entry for @star-spangled-bingo 2020. Word count: 1374. Square filled: “I’m turning into you. It’s like a horrible dream.”

Pairing: Bucky Barnes x Reader

Warnings: Cryostasis, some anxiety about the future. Overall, less angsty than the last few chapters lol.

A/N: It’s finally lightening up lmao sorry for putting everyone through all that angst. There are still two more chapters left!

The room is white, clean, and well-lit, and doctors and nurses move about with practised, calm movements. A scene like this, with the location changed to a slightly darker area, might have thrown Bucky into a panic just months prior, but here, he is calm, looking at the woman who brought him to Wakanda in one piece as she talks.

“You sure you want to do this? I bet we could figure something else out,” she is saying, wringing her hands, standing impatiently in front of him. He begins to shake his head but she is already continuing: “We could go into hiding again. You don’t need to go into cryo.”

Bucky smiles up at her. “I wish that was true, honey,” he tells her, the endearment slipping out of his mouth easily. They have been in Wakanda for over a month now, the distinct lack of imminent danger facilitating a warm friendship, one that Bucky is relishing in. He has, slowly, started to reacquaint himself with Steve as well, but, as she is the one who has been on this journey with him, she is the person he is most comfortable around.

Tilting her head, she looks at him with melancholy eyes, sad but hopeful, trying not to let the sorrow seep through. These are the moments when Bucky wishes he didn’t know her quite so well, so he can’t read her like a book. “I’ll visit,” she says, putting on a braver face.

“And watch me while I’m asleep? You creep,” he teases, although he appreciates the thought.

“Like you didn’t do the same when I was down with a GSW,” she scoffs, and Bucky senses a blush rise on his face.

Recovering quickly, he says, “Touché.”

For a while, they consider each other and the room. Princess Shuri is operating a panel that controls the cryostasis chamber set up in the middle of the room. In the hallway overlooking the labratory, T’Challa is leaving Steve after what seems to be a serious conversation to enter and talk to his sister. Steve’s eyes are fixed on where Bucky sits.

She clocks this, and remarks, “Alright, Steve is starting to look impatient. I think he’s getting jealous.”

“Who wouldn’t be jealous of anyone who has the pleasure of my company,” Bucky says, not missing an opportunity to make her laugh, and she does; releases the stress of worrying about Bucky in a chuckle that makes Bucky smile so wide his face aches.

“Don’t make me glad you’re entering a coma,” she teases back. The frown lines have been coming and going in the past few weeks, and they’re absent now, but smile lines crinkle at the corner of her eyes when she grins at him.

He has learnt that she enjoys grinning when she isn’t in life-threatening situations. In the time since she has recovered from her injury, and in between the times Bucky has been planning going back into cryo, he has taken pleasure in relearning her.

He knows that this slice of bliss cannot last forever. Wakanda is a bubble, but only physically. News is constantly filtering in and the United States are not happy about Bucky’s presence in Wakanda, or about the refuge granted to those who failed to comply with the Accords. Bucky has not been able to sit in on all that many intelligence briefings, but the general knowledge is that the Accords themselves are failing to provide accountability, especially considering that half of the known individuals they apply to are refusing to obey them by either operating under their jurisdiction or retiring completely.

Steve has gone out on a few missions since he brought Bucky to Wakanda. Enough of them to inform the world that he is still working, even if no longer under the title of Captain America. America itself has found another thing to divide itself over; are the Accords right or are they not, is Bucky Barnes the longest standing POW who deserves rehabilitation and a hero’s welcome or should he be extradited for crimes of murder and treason?

The woman in front of him has been reassuring him that he is the former. A good man who bad things have happened to, and he’s still trying to convince himself that he deserves this treatment, and people’s help, but it’s hard to believe it. It’s hard to believe that someone as good as her can stand up for him, can have so much faith in him. She’s a good person. A kind woman, he thinks, looking up at her, studying her features with the intent to memorize them. “I’ll miss you,” he says, drawing his eyes over the shape of her eyes, their glistening hue.

“See you soon, Bucky,” she says, leaning down, and kissing his cheek. With a wave, she walks away.

Steve takes her place. “You two are getting along well.” Bucky rolls his eyes, shuffles uncomfortably.

“Shut up, Rogers,” he responds. The lack of the weight of his left arm has left him disbalanced, otherwise he would have stood up to be at eye level with his old friend. That phrase has taken some getting used to, but he’s adjusting.

“I’ll shut up when you talk to her. She’s a keeper, Buck,” Steve tells Bucky, as if he doesn’t already know that. Bucky regrets being readable enough that Steve knows how he feels about her. Steve on his own isn’t so bad, but get him and Wilson in a room together, and they’re all wiggling eyebrows and hidden smirks, while Bucky either sputters or pretends he knows what he is doing with the kind of charm he can scarcely recall.

He has vague memories of victory curls and red lips, dance halls and clicking heels, skirts swishing and small giggles behind small hands. None of those women made butterflies take off in his stomach the way she does.

“I used to be good at talking to ladies, didn’t I?” Bucky says, thinking of the lines he’d drop with winks to punctuate every sentence, honey sweet and charm heavy.

Steve, nods, putting his hands in his pockets, his eyes going somewhere very far away. “And I was the worst,” he reminisces.

“Well then, I’m turning into you. It’s like a horrible dream,” Bucky says, now intentionally pulling forth the same words from a decade ago, in a London bar about to head out for war again. Agent Carter in her red dress, her eyes fixed on Steve, the first time Bucky realized how little Steve needed him now.

Steve must see the memory travelling through Bucky’s mind, because he reminds Bucky that he is still needed. “I’ll miss you, Buck.”

Bucky doesn’t want him to, so he looks at Steve with an open smile, preparing to bid farewell with another joke. “Don’t be too happy about it. I won’t be gone for long.”

“I’m countin’ on it,” Steve replies. They look at each other for a moment more, and then Princess Shuri is approaching the examination table Bucky is sitting on. There is a tablet in her hands, and she has goggles over her eyes, and she has reassured Bucky that this procedure will be nothing like the last.

He trusts her. She’s an intelligent woman, reminds him of Becca and her dreams to go to the moon, and with that association, there is a sharp ache of grief that always comes with recollections of family members he has lost without knowing, but Bucky concentrates on what he does have. Right now, he has a team of people willing to help.

“Are you ready, Sergeant Barnes?” The princess asks, and Bucky stands, steadying himself with his right hand on the edge of the table behind him, until he is stable enough to stand on his own, and Steve is no longer looking like he wants to offer his arm.

“Yes, Your Highness,” he says to Princess Shuri, and she turns, beginning to guide him to the cryostasis chamber. As he is strapped in, he breathes slow and deep, and just as the glass starts to fog up, he opens his eyes one last time to see his friend waving goodbye. Her eyes are shining, and she is smiling, so Bucky smiles, too.

#SSB2020 #ayesha writes #bucky barnes #bucky barnes x reader #bucky barnes fluff #bucky barnes angst #bucky barnes x y/n #bucky barnes x you #bucky barnes fanfiction #mcu #marvel #avengers

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starbuckie · 4 years

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Some Quarantine Lovin’ Chapter Six: When Can I See You Again?

Marvel Highschool!AU

Pairing: Bucky x Reader

Warnings: Obscene amounts of fluff, kissing, swearing, kinda a lot of angst

Description: Bucky Barnes is absolutely, no doubt about it, in love with Y/N L/N. He’s loved her since the day he laid eyes on her in the third grade. He loved her when he had his own girlfriend, and when he was barely friends with her for a whole summer. And of course, in his freshman year, they are now stuck together. In a house. During a worldwide quarantine. This should be fun.

Words: 3,555 words

A/N: We are almost at the end! Jeez, I can’t believe it. Anyways, I don’t have a lot to say, but the little story about Sam missing his final is definitely based off the time in freshman year of highschool when @transparentfestivaltiger came to class late and had to retake her final, which I still bully her about to this day. As always, thank you to my dearest Geena for being my sassy beta, and y’all need to check out her writing(@transparentfestivaltiger). MAKE SURE Y’ALL ARE STAYING SAFE AND SOCIALLY DISTANCING AND WEAR YOUR GODDAMN MASKS PLEASE! enjoy this chapter, loves <3

George Barnes’ funeral took place nine days after his death. It was a small affair consisting of just Y/N’s family, a few of Mr. Barnes’ work friends, the Rogers’ family, and, of course, Bucky and Becca. Bucky gave a small speech, one written about his father’s life and what he had accomplished, but he didn’t speak one word about what events had taken place inside of his family’s house. There was nothing else he had to say about his dad, no words of endearment or love. George was buried at Evergreen Cemetery, and as his father was lowered into the ground, Bucky was finally able to let go of the burden he had felt all his life.

After they finished the ceremony, none of his father’s friends hung around, due to the ongoing quarantine. Steve’s family stayed, saying they had to talk to Y/N’s parents about something. “Hey, guys.” Steve said. “It’s been a long time, hasn’t it?”

Bucky sniffled, most of the tears dry on his face and nodded. “Yeah, it has been, pal.”

Y/N stood by his side, baby pink mask covering her face, holding baby Becca. The fifteen-year-old girl couldn’t even imagine how this all felt to the baby. Would she even remember this? She could barely even talk, still letting out little baby gurgles at one year old. As the two boys talked, six feet apart, of course, Y/N wondered what would happen to the Barnes’ siblings. Bucky was only fifteen, he only had a job during the summer, and he needed a legal guardian. He and Becca couldn’t live by themselves yet. Would they go to an orphanage? Or be taken to a family far away? She couldn’t stand that thought. Y/N knew it wasn’t her choice, but she couldn’t help but be a little bit selfish. They needed to be with a family who loved them, who cherished them, and most importantly, that they loved back. “Y/N?”

Bucky’s voice made the girl snap out of her thoughts, and Becca giggled happily and made grabby hands towards her older brother. Y/N envied her innocence. “Hey, Buck,” she said. “Stevie! I haven’t seen you in so long.”

Steve smiled, from what she could tell, under his mask and waved to her. “Yeah, I can’t believe it’s been almost two months. We all need to hang out soon.”

Y/N and Bucky shared looks with each other. Especially because they lived in New York, Y/N’s parents were more conscious than ever of having them going out and hanging around other people. “I can ask my mom and dad, but if we all stay apart I’m sure they’ll agree.” Steve and Bucky nodded together in agreement. “How have you been doing, Steve?”

Sighing, the blonde-haired boy ran a hand through his cropped hair, which had miraculously managed to look the same as the last time she saw him in person. “You know, just been reading and painting a whole lot. Oh, I drew this portrait of Nat! I’ll send it to you.” A few moments after he looked through his phone, Y/N heard her own alert with a message. She readjusted the baby onto her hip, and opening the message, she gasped. Steve had managed to capture Natasha perfectly from a photo she had posted on her Instagram. It was absolutely beautiful, with her red hair looking like a fiery haze and green eyes sparkling. “Jesus, Steve, this is absolutely amazing, it’s so realistic.”

“Let me see, doll.” She handed him the phone and saw his blue eyes widen in awe. “Steve, you really outdid yourself on this one.” His face heated up at the couple’s words. “Aw, you got a little crush, Stevie?” After receiving no response, Bucky pointed at his friend accusingly. “Holy crap, you do!” Steve only managed to nod his head before ducking down in embarrassment.

At this point, Y/N didn’t know what to do. It wasn’t her place to say, but she also didn’t want Steve to get hurt. Natasha had told her and Wanda earlier in the seventh grade that she liked girls, and the two couldn’t be any more proud of their friend. While Wanda did ask Tasha occasionally when she was going to tell the rest of the group, she had a good reason not to. Her parents, while they were kind to her, were closed off to many modern values. Natasha’s mom stayed at home and has taught the red-haired girl that one day she would do the same and take care of her husband and their babies. She felt trapped, and her two best friends completely understood that she wasn’t ready to come out yet.

“How long have you liked her, Steve?” Y/N asked, genuinely curious.

“I think it was when I met you two in third grade, around when Bucky first started crushing on you.” Now that was new information to Y/N. Whipping around her head to look at her boyfriend, she squinted her eyes at Bucky, who seemed to be so very interested in the dirt. Deciding that she would tease him about it later, she turned back to Steve.

“That’s… nice.” Y/N didn’t mean to sound so rude, but it was extremely awkward for her and she didn’t know what else to say. Both of the boys stared at her weirdly for her strange response, and she could feel their eyes burning through her. She felt guilty for not telling Steve before he got hurt, but Natasha needed her, and she was loyal to her. Luckily Steve’s parents had finished talking to the L/N’s so it was time for all three kids to go. “Bye, Stevie, we’ll see you soon, I hope.”

“We can ask the rest of the gang when we work with them. Maybe when we’re out of school and classes are done.” Steve suggested. Bucky took Becca from Y/N’s hold and wrapped an arm around his girlfriend’s waist.

“I’ll talk to you soon, Steve.” The three said their goodbyes, and with a last wave, Steve walked back to his family.

“Are you okay, baby?” Y/N asked. Bucky let out a breath and shut his eyes. The last few tears fell and raced down his face, and with that, Bucky knew he would be okay. He had no clue what was to become of him and his sister, but for now, he was safe and had his girlfriend who loved him very, very much. And that was all he needed for now.

“Yeah,” Bucky let out a small smile, “I really am.” Y/N leaned her head on his shoulder and the two stood in silence, watching over the grassy field.

The lawyer called two days after that. Bucky’s dad had left him in the will, seeming as if there was no one else in their family alive to have the belongings except for those in Romania, who probably had no clue the Barnes siblings even existed. Bucky had to sit in a conference Zoom call with Mr. and Mrs. L/N, his father’s lawyer, and for some odd reason, the Rogers’ parents and their lawyer as well. Y/N sat outside the room, ear to the door, trying to hear what they were all saying, but was sent to her room after her mom opened the door and she fell down.

“Fine then, be that way, mom.” She mumbled on her way to the room. Y/N was trying to be productive while waiting for her boyfriend to return, using this free time to finish her homework for the week, though it was only a Monday. They didn’t have finals, but that just added more to the piles upon piles of homework they were already receiving. Apparently the teachers believed the students had so much more free time, they would be able to finish three packets of Physics in one night. Bullshit.

At some point in the two hours on the call, Becca started to whine so Y/N played with her and watched cartoons on her iPad, while also discovering her interest in “Little Einsteins” on Disney+. “Becca, do you know what song this is?” Of course Becca wouldn't recognize it, but the sweet melody of Mozart reminded the teenager of sitting on the wooden floor of the Barnes’ home as a fourth-grader, and watching in amazement as Bucky’s mother’s fingers drifted across the keys. “Your mama used to play this all the time for me and your big brother when we were younger.” The baby simply just stared at her, bright blue eyes filled with curiosity. Becca didn’t remember her mother, as she had died while giving birth. “She was an amazing person, your mama.” Y/N scooped up the little girl in her arms and cradled her to her chest, regaling stories of Mrs. Barnes. She didn’t even notice until later, but tears had started to trace down her cheeks as she brought back memories.

Suddenly, the door creaked open and Bucky popped his head inside the room, a quiet, but happy smile on his face. “Was that the time in sixth grade when we made that slip and slide in my backyard and got my ma all soaked?” Y/N nodded and chuckled wetly. Bucky, still grinning, walked over to the bed and caressed his girlfriend’s face with his thumbs. “Why are you crying, baby?”

Placing Becca down gently next to her, she slipped into Bucky’s embrace. His hands massaged her shoulders gently, and she could hear his heart beating softly in his chest. “I’m sorry, James, I’m just thinking about your ma too much. She was an absolutely beautiful person.”

“She really was, doll. I miss her a whole damn lot.” Bucky sighed happily and let his chin rest on her head. “But, I’ve got you here with me now, and I’ve got adults who decided to adopt me and Becca who love us, so I’ve got to say that I’m done dwelling on the past and ready for a very happy future.” At the mention of new parents, Y/N’s heart dropped and she snapped her head up to look at him. He was smiling brightly now, and she could not figure out why.

“You’re being adopted?” Y/N asked. She honestly couldn’t tell if her voice was shaking or not, but by the way he rubbed her back more soothingly, she assumed she was. “Are they nice?”

Bucky chuckled at the question, and nodded his head. “They’re very nice, Y/N. I know them personally.” Had her parents adopted him? Well, she was happy that he was in a family that loved him to pieces, but that would mean that she was currently dating her step-brother, which was a slightly disturbing thought to her.

“My parents?” She asked softly.

He shook his head and grinned. “You may now call me James Buchanan Barnes-Rogers.” Y/N’s jaw dropped.

“Are you joking? You and Becca were adopted by Steve’s mom and dad?” Y/N could barely believe it.

“I kid you not, doll, I am now a Rogers.” With a squeal, she pushed forward and kissed him, forcing him to fall on his back on the bed. After a few moments, they both sat up, tears in their eyes. “Okay, I was kidding about the Rogers thing though, me and Bec are keeping our last names, but Steve and I are now legally brothers.”

“That’s why they were talking to my parents for so long the other day?” Y/N inquired. “How is this going to work in quarantine though? Oh, does Steve know? He’s going to be so excited, the two of you are best friends!”

Chuckling at her excitement and endless questions, he cut her off with a chaste, yet nonetheless sweet kiss. “Sarah and Joseph already had a talk with him before we spoke to the lawyers, so I’m going to call him soon. We’ve decided that I’ll stay here for the rest of the quarantine just to stay safe because you know his dad goes out at night to the firm. But we’re selling the house, and all of the money is going to me and Bec’s college funds. That’s pretty much all I know, I was zoning out for most of it.”

Rolling her eyes playfully, Y/N teased, ”Of course you were.” They leaned back together, her head resting on his chest as he ran a hand through her hair. “You’re going to be so happy, James.” Bucky closed his eyes and smiled in peaceful bliss, for what seemed like the first time in forever.

Classes continued that week like normal, as no one else knew about Bucky’s father. That was fine with him, he didn’t need everybody else’s sympathy and there was no need to make it a big deal. It was nearing the end of the year and the exhaustion was continuously catching up to all the students, causing them to fall asleep during their classes and procrastinate on homework. Coffee was inhaled in unhealthy amounts, endless gum wrappers surrounding the wastebasket where Y/N had missed when she and Bucky studied in her room. It was nice to have a regular, scheduled week in contrast to the past one. Well, at least it was normal until Saturday night when two bright headlights shone in through the living room window. Y/N and Bucky weren’t really watching the movie; they had their legs tangled on the couch as they made out, so they didn’t notice Ria’s car pulling into the driveway outside.

“So this is what I get to come home to?” Ria boomed from the doorway. “Two horny-ass teenagers making out on the couch? That’s just fantastic.” Both Bucky and Y/N shot up from their laying down position and stared at the older L/N sibling with wide eyes and kiss-swollen lips. “Jeez, calm down, you both look like you’ve seen a ghost.”

Y/N leaped off the couch with absolutely zero grace, and grabbed her sister in a hug. “Oh shit,” she instantly said, “I probably shouldn’t be doing that.”

Ria laughed at her younger sister and ruffled her hair. “Nah, it’s okay, I tested negative, remember?” Y/N had a faint memory of it and nodded, leaning back into her sister for another hug. “Hey, Buck, how are you doing, kid? I’m sorry about your old man.”

“I’m doing okay, Ria, just trying to make it through the rest of this year.” She pulled him into a tight hug and the last part of his sentence was muffled in her hoodie. “I thought you were staying with your boyfriend, what happened?”

“Well, I found out the bastard had cheated on me a few months ago so I dumped his ass, packed up my things, and drove back here.” Bucky and Y/N hummed at her story, knowing that she bounced back from breakups quickly. Ria had had many, many relationships in her twenty years of being alive, and driving four hours back home in a furious haze was one of the least crazy things she had done in the aftermath of a breakup.

“Do you wanna watch ‘Legally Blonde’ with us, Ria?” Y/N asked her sister.

Ria let out a snort and squeezed the two teenagers’ shoulders. “Not if you’re making out like that I don’t. Plus, I gotta check in with mom and dad, I didn’t tell them I was coming. I’ll catch you guys later though.” With that, she picked up her suitcase and left the room. Bucky and Y/N looked at each other and then busted out laughing.

“I don’t care what your sister says, I will make out with you as much as I damn well please.” Bucky said, smirking.

Y/N grinned before bringing Bucky’s face right before hers and licking her lips. “You won’t be hearing any objections from me.” He laughed as she connected their lips again, moving back towards the couch until he was seated, the movie long, long forgotten.

Quarantine was horrible, but with Bucky and her older sister there with her, it made it much more bearable. Now there were three students staying in the house, all doing classes, which made it slightly frustrating and stressful, but she tried to not let it affect her. In the last few remaining weeks of school, Y/N and Bucky worked hard, making sure they had all their assignments turned in and studying for their “quizzes” (aka finals) that would determine the grade they got for the year. It was nearly impossible to fail this semester, the only good thing that came out of the pandemic, but both of them were good students who still actually did the work. Finally, school finished and summer began.

It really changed nothing besides the fact that they were now bored even more often. Y/N wanted to do the Chloe Ting challenge as she had seen on YouTube, but after three days she gave up in exhaustion and forced Bucky to do yoga with her instead, which he ended up enjoying a lot. He and Y/N were bummed out that they wouldn’t be able to continue their extracurriculars, baseball and the play, for that year, but hopefully, the pandemic would end in time for their sophomore year. FaceTime calls between the group became longer just like the days, sometimes stretching to seven or eight hours. They spent a month trying to convince their parents to let them hang out, with promises of social distancing and masks. After much pestering, they were all finally allowed to meet up for Steve’s fifteenth birthday.

Bucky and Y/N walked hand in hand to the Brooklyn Bridge Park. Y/N had gotten Steve a new set of acrylic paints and a set of charcoal pencils, and Bucky had gotten him a baseball signed by the Yankees that he had kept since he met them in a bar with his dad the year before. “Where do you think they are? Sam said he was coming late.” Bucky said.

Y/N snorted. “The dumbass probably slept in like he did the day of his oral Spanish test.” Both of them quietly chuckled at that until they saw the familiar shock of red curly hair gesturing wildly at them. “And there’s Ms. Natasha Romanoff. HEY GUYS!”

Steve, Wanda, and Natasha all turned around to the couple and though they were all wearing masks, Bucky knew they were smiling underneath. Y/N let go of his hand and ran towards her friends at an alarming speed. “I’ve missed you guys so fucking much- oh shit.” Her foot got caught in the grass, sending her tumbling to the ground. “Oomph.” Natasha rolled her eyes, knowing her friend’s clumsy self, and Bucky once again came to her rescue as her knight in shining armor.

“You okay, baby?” He asked.

“Never been better.” She quickly pecked his cheek, and connecting their hands again, they walked over to their friends. “Happy birthday, Stevie! You’re officially a grandpa now.” She and Bucky placed their presents on the picnic table and sat in the circle their friends had made, six feet apart obviously.

“Thanks, Y/N, it’s great to see you and Buck again.” Bucky sat next to Steve, and the two of them made conversation as Y/N turned to Wanda and Natasha.

“Ugh, you and Bucky are so cute it makes me want to puke.” Natasha jabbed playfully. “You make all us single people feel bad.”

“I can’t tell if that was a compliment or an insult, but I’ll take it either way.” Y/N grinned. “But Nat, I need to tell you something; Steve has a crush on you.” Natasha just sighed.

“I know he does, so I’m actually planning on telling the whole group tomorrow. Steve’ll be able to get over it, he’s also been texting Peggy Carter in our class.” Wanda nodded her head in agreement.

“I’m really proud of you, Tasha,” Wanda whispered, “We all are.”

“Thank you, Wands.” The redhead took a deep breath and let it go. “Thank you, both, for being so supportive of me these past two years, but I think I’m ready to come out. I’m not going to let anything stop me from being who I am, or loving who I want to love.”

“We are so, so proud of you, Tasha.” Y/N said. “Damn your parents if they don’t accept you.” Natasha chuckled, a tear falling out of her eye. “I really want to give you a hug right now but I can’t, goddamn it.”

“HEY LOSERS, DID YOU MISS ME?” Sam yelled. A loud groan escaped Bucky, causing chuckles to rise from the rest of the group. “Happy birthday, o wise one, you’re the last one of us to turn fifteen.” He placed his bag on the table and came to sit on the ground.

“How’ve you been, Sam?” Wanda asked. And just like that, they were back. Maybe it was just for a few hours, but at least in that time they could forget what was going on in the real world. Sitting in the grass, eating their lunches, laughs filling the warm summer air, Y/N and Bucky were content with just being there.

TAGLIST

@transparentfestivaltiger @barnesjamcs @kitkatd7 @adorkably

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girlobsessed21 · 4 years

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My thoughts on The 100 7x05

Hey, guys,

Sorry for not doing any comments on the last two episodes. I’ve been a little busy and I struggled to connect to the show, so it hindered my enjoyment, but it’s all better now. Liked episode 4 and 5 was even better, jampacked with info and it answered a lot of questions.

Welcome to Bardo

Badass Octavia is da bomb (people don’t say that anymore, right?). When she was captured in episode two, I thought she had lost her fighting spirit, but it’s back, bitches. Well, until she runs into an invisible wall trying to escape. She’s captured and transported to M-cap (whatever that means). Then we get a welcome little flashback to Lincoln but it’s obvious that Bellamy would be the hand reaching out. He’s her rock, like she’s expressed many times.

Unlike John Murphy who is not quite a friend, or family and definitely not a lover. Introducing so many new characters in the final season of a show is never a good idea, because this is the time to wrap up all the stories of the existing ones, but come on, who cannot love Levitt. Even when he first meets Octavia, he doesn’t want to hurt her. Jason, you better not harm one hair on this precious little puppy’s head!

As he binges The 100 through Octavia’s eyes, he starts rooting for her, and he actually gives a damn, unlike most people on this show. He understands her strengths and weaknesses and he makes her see it too. “You’re a warrior to be sure, but your heart is pure.” Wow, what an honest and beautiful line. (Scroll down for my shipping comments.)

So is O and Hope’s fleeting little reunion. It’s amazing to experience this deep loving side of Octavia after her darkness. She’s truly one of the most diverse and developed characters on the series. Now Hope and her resilience is quickly making it to the top as well.

While Hope is trying to send her back home, we learn that memory loss is due to the time dilation. One quick note on this, it’s not linear, there’s no easy equation to calculate it unless you’re Stephen Hawking or Einstein. I don’t think it’s constant either. 10 years on Skyring = 11 days on Bardo = a few minutes on Sanctum. In the current time, 5 years on Skyring = 1 day on Sanctum = 7 days on Bardo. So, it’s clear that the planets are moving, and other factors are playing into the phenomenon. It’s more important to understand the time relative to each planet.

Levitt was the one who tattooed Hope’s code onto O’s back, also the one who planted the note into Hope’s arm. Indeed the kind of man you want on the inside, he even accepts a blow to the face as thank you.

Sheep-ish?

Thirty minutes on the clock and the trio gets led to a congregation to praise the shepherd. I never thought it was Anders, I do, however think it might be Cadogan. The Bordoan’s built the underground forest because they destroyed their planet. Ugh, what’s new? The shepherd herded his sheep from earth to Bardo via the stone. Cadogan and his second dawn cult?

Back to Clarke. So, after last episode I thought ‘the key to winning the last war’ line was an artifice for luring Clarke to disciples, but now it’s clearly true. They’ve located the key and they will win the last war. Levitt was interested in Clarke surviving the City of Light with the flame in her head, they probably assume she still has it. Cadogan burned Becca alive. Could it be because of the flame? Is this all because of that damn little chip that can’t seem to die?

Bellamy is not dead, I repeat, Bellamy is not dead! I believe that memory could be staged or implanted for a reason. Also, there’s no body, he jumped through the bridge. In the promo photos, he wears a ring but his actions towards Octavia seem a little cold and generic. On first watch, I thought it was bad acting but if he was programmed to do this, it makes sense.

Note the sequence of events. Octavia returned 7 days ago and was asked to talk her brother down, but we don’t see the actual scene. Instead we’re shown a memory. They could have implanted it to make her vulnerable and perhaps more susceptible to the procedure. I don’t know, but this theory could lead to Robot-sheep!Bellamy on Nakara, where he’ll encounter Clarke and the gang.

I have to be honest, I really don’t like this character arc for Bellamy. It’s unoriginal and a mime of Peeta’s storyline in Mockingjay. Sorry, but so far it feels like the writers were so over the show, they just wanted to get it done. And that attitude really bleeds into one’s creative concepts. I could be completely wrong, in fact, I hope I am.

Echo spins a Finn

My word, I lost the love of my life once, but I sure didn’t kill anyone. When Echo received that vision of Roan, I was hoping for some progression on her individual arc, they’ve made me care about her, and now we get the opposite. Why? One thing I have to admit, a killer performance from Tasya Teles! No pun intended.

Look, this show hasn’t explored Bellamy and Echo’s relationship enough to make her murder believable. It was the exact same thing with Finn. I wasn’t invested in Finn and Clarke’s connection, so his actions of killing a grounder tribe was more repulsive than understandable. Sure, Echo loves Bellamy and her sole purpose is to save him, but I’ve never truly witnessed their love for each other. They had one or two intimate scenes which cannot compel a deed like this. And in the process, she screwed Hope and Diyoza.

Anyway, I don’t think there’s any coming back from it. She murdered an innocent person in cold blood. That’s sure to open a door to the dark side. Just look at Octavia after killing Pike and her actions were justified by jus drein jus daun.

Say Sanctum three times slowly and it sounds like… Sanctum

Blind faith

Look, I’m just gonna come out and say this song is getting old. Every episode featuring Sanctum is the exact same thing with different lines. Can we please move on from it, already? Yes, we know the COG want Russel dead, and the adjusters will go to extreme lengths to free Russel and the prisoners are background noise.

I did appreciate Nelson stepping in to try and save the girl, though. Still doesn’t save the fact that it’s repetitive. The Sanctum plotline is really struggling to take shape and I hope it happens soon. Dramatic eyeroll.

At least in the drought of a desert, you can always count on Murphy. “…I say we live and let die.” Typical cockroach line, right, but it’s ironic when he’s the one to step up, even if it is for Emori. Under the magnifying glass it’s the exact same plot as episode 1 and 3. He hesitates to take action, and eventually becomes the hero.

I mean, he saved that poor kid from being burned alive. Can you imagine sacrificing your own child in such a horrific away? Cults are beyond whacked, and, unfortunately, it’s reality that cult members are so blinded by their faith that they do not see rhyme or reason.

How did Murphy fail that test? I didn’t. When Trey named the four pillars, I thought, isn’t rejoice one of them? Surely, a cockroach would have smelled that trap a mile away.

Indra the great

Can we just give a massive round of applause to Adina Porter!!! That powerhouse walk vibrates strength and majesty, damn, she should be a false god, I wouldn’t dare threaten her with or without an army.

Three little words was all it took for her to recognize evil. “There’s a spider on your shoulder.” Smooth. Too bad she can’t kill him. Why not, how many of the faithful are left to cause an uproar? Wonkru doesn’t know it’s Sheidheda, they won’t care, the COG will fall in line and the prisoners will be happy as long as they get their compound. Sorry, I don’t get it and I don’t understand why she doesn’t tell anyone. Someone please explain?

Granted, JR Bourne as Russel is way better, but I still don’t understand his actions. I hope they explore and explain him more, because he still feels flat unless he knows something of this final war. I’m hoping these two storylines align soon since it’s really driving a wedge between me and my love for the show.

Shipwreck

I’ll start with the easy stuff, Murphy, Emori and the perfect dress gets a heart eye emoji from me. They are so damn cute this season, can they please live happily ever after in the palace?

Octabriel vs Levittavia

Now, I enjoy Levitt fangirling over Octavia. I feel like he has a deep sense of her through her memories. If I have to root for an underdeveloped relationship, it will have to be one where the characters share thoughts and experiences even if it is through a sick, sci-fi procedure.

On the other hand, Gabriel and Octavia have immense chemistry, two seconds of them together bends my mouth into an “Aah, cute” pout. This will also add some approval and representation for mixed racial relationships.

I really don’t mind either way as long as they make me care through showing and not telling.

Bellarke

So, if my theory is correct, and Bellamy does end up on Nakara, Bellarke will encounter each other quite soon. Bellamy won’t be himself though, but he might pretend to be Bellamy to win Clarke’s co-operation. Is there hope for Bellarke yet?

Echo is now trotting a dangerous path and Bellamy might be pledged to a cause, so I doubt there will be a happy ending for Becho. Since 7x01 I’ve been thinking that the writers might want to develop something between Clarke and Gaia but if they are separated, is there enough time? Guess we’ll see.

This monster of a review is finally done… If you read through everything, you deserve a gold star! Let me know what you think, till we meet again…

#The 100 #the100 7x05 #the100 season 7 #octavia blake #levitt the 100 #hope diyoza #bellamy blake #echo #john murphy #indra kom trikru #gabriel #bellarke #sheidheda

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travllingbunny · 4 years

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The 100: 7x08 Anaconda

The mini-rewatch of season 7 that @jeanie205 and me did during this mini-hiatus is finished, and with that, I’m going to finally post my reviews of 7x08 and 7x09, hopefully before the show returns.

I’m tempted to start talking about the opening scene without any introduction, just like the episode itself started with no “Previously on” and no cold open (the latter, I believe, for the first time since season 1, when the show still did not have any opening titles).. but I’m going to still say a few general things before going into details under the cut.

When it was first announced that an episode of The 100′s final season would be the backdoor pilot for a prequel show, that info was met with a lot of hostility (to the effect of “why waste a full episode on new characters instead of those we know”), which didn’t surprise me much. What did surprise me was that people mostly seemed to expect the episode to be 100% set in the past and unrelated to anything from season 7 - which, as far as I know, is not how backdoor pilots normally work, they still have to fit within the season they’re a part of. The structure of the episode is more in line with what I expected - while most of the episode is set in the past, the framing device is a scene of Clarke confronting Bill Cadogan in the Stone Room on Bardo, and the long flashback is both setting up a possible prequel, and revealing things relevant to the plot of season 7. The biggest connecting points are the Anomaly Stone on Earth, the importance of the Flame for Cadogan and the Disciples, and Cadogan himself, who is clearly not going to be a character in the prequel except possibly in flashbacks, but who is one of the main antagonists of season 7. The episode works as a backdoor pilot but is also interesting as a part of the backstory of The 100.

I really enjoyed the episode - and as it turns out, I enjoyed it even more on rewatch, when I could stop and soak in all the new info and details - and I hope the prequel does picked up, as it has a lot of potential to be interesting, though there is one big concern I have about it. More about that at the end of this post under “Prequel speculation”.

So no Previously on this time (unsurprisingly), no cold open - and we get a brand new version of the opening titles - since this episode technically fully takes place on Bardo, these opening titles start with the Bardo Stone Room and end with another shot of the Stone Room we haven’t seen before in the OT, one with the Stone. The Stone Room is where they begin and end, just like the episode itself. And just like Clarke and the rest of her group have been stuck in this Stone Room for 4 episodes.

But I actually don’t mind it in this episode. At least Clarke is in the focus of these few minutes we spend in the present, and I really like these few minutes. We start with an expanded version of Clarke's response to the news of Bellamy's "death", with slow motion, distorted angles and close-ups of Clarke’s face showing shock and grief and numbness (and I’m going to post another screenshot of that, because I want to savor the moments when the show focuses on characters’ grief before going back to the action - and not just the type of grief that results in going off the rails and murdering people.) We also see Raven on the verge of tears, and Miller choking a little - the other two people who have been Bellamy’s friends for a long time. Clarke being Clarke, she picks herself up the moment she sees someone else in pain (Raven) and focuses on honoring Bellamy’s memory, just as Bellamy did in 4x13 when he believed Clarke was dead, and tells Raven they need to save Octavia and Echo: “We do this for him. We do this for our family” - acknowledging that saving them is something of particular importance as they were people important to Bellamy, and also including them in the “family”, as the term these people use to describe their group and the bonds that have formed over time. (Family is bond closer and less close than friendship. You can be someone’s friend and their family, but you can also be a part of someone’s family without necessarily having developed a friendship with that person, due to the overall bonds and loyalty.)

Then we get the first meeting between Clarke and probably the season’s main antagonist, Bill Cadogan, who comes to another wrong conclusion when he thinks she recognized him because she has the Flame (and, he hopes, Callie’s memories), when it's actually from a video Jaha showed her.

Gabriel has another moment where he helps Clarke (as when he covered for her in 5x13) and silently communicates with her to let her know that the Disciples believe she still has the Flame, so she could keep up that pretense. These two work well as a team.

The bulk of the episode is the flashback framed as Bill telling a story to Clarke - though we don’t actually see the flashback from his POV, and he doesn’t even appear in many of the scenes. In fact, it is almost all from Callie’s POV, and some of it from Reese’s.

And we get back to Clarke and the Stone Room in the end, with the shocking “twist” of Clarke and the Nakara group seeing Octavia, Echo and Diyoza as Disciples. Shocking for them, not for us - we know they had no choice.

Clarke saying “You killed my best friend!” has caused some pointless (but in this fandom, expected) drama, where some fans saw that as “confirmation” that Bellarke is and will remain completely ‘platonic” - even though that makes no sense. What did anyone expect her to call him? My boyfriend? He wasn’t that. The man I love? My soulmate? Someone expected her to say that to an enemy she’s never met before, in front of a bunch of her friends and other people? Very unlikely, even if he hadn’t still been Echo’s boyfriend when he “died”. Some thought “Bellamy” or “him” would have been better, but what would that mean to Cadogan? He’s never met her and knows nothing about her, and she was trying to make it clear how much Bellamy meant to her. If anything, the fact that she’s singled him out as her best friend is a big progress from their usual habit of never defining their relationship to each other - except for Clarke including Bellamy in the collective designation of her “friends” or “family”.

I love the way the Chromatics cover of Neil Young’s “Into the Black” was used in the ending montage - so I made two gifsets about the use of the song for the Cadogan family scenes, and for the scene with Clarke:

https://travllingbunny.tumblr.com/post/623186143096307712/its-better-to-burn-out-than-to-fade-away-the

https://travllingbunny.tumblr.com/post/623186346138370048/its-better-to-burn-out-than-it-is-to-rust-the

Flashback

This is our second look at the world pre-apocalypse - after the brief scene of Josephine’s memory in 6x07, where we saw Josephine and her friend in the diner. But that scene took place several years before the apocalypse (depending on how much time was needed to get from Earth to Sanctum on Eligius 3, which did not have damaged engines as Eligius 4 did after the uprising), since Josephine and her family and the rest of Mission Team Alpha were already on Sanctum 7 years before the apocalypse. And Josephine and her friend were far less interested in the current events than Callie or August, so we only got a few outside references, including the magazine covers which showed that Diyoza’s capture was the main national news, and that Becca was already very high profile and on the cover of a technology/science magazine.

This, however, is the very day of the apocalypse. In the first scene - Callie Cadogan and her friend Lucy in Callie’s and her mother’s home, after participating in a protest as parts of environmentalist group with the familiar name Tree Crew - we get lots of info about just how crappy this world was even before ALIE started a nuclear apocalypse, through various news items on TV (see this post) - and it is like 2020, only taken to the 10th degree:

natural disasters as a result of global warming (a deathly heath wave is mentioned), new diseases (Coronavirus “Russian Ankovirus” outbreak), economic inequality (one of the news is that measures aimed at poverty relief haven’t met with support in Congress), internment camps in USA, anti-government protests in the USA that end up with riot police beating up protestors, together with technological developments, such as the first orbiting hotel (I wonder if anyone was already using it - if they were, there would be more survivors in space, but it doesn’t seem this ever became a part of the Ark), or the first brain transplant. a medical development which begs some ethical questions (since I’m pretty sure that a person with a functioning brain is still alive... I cant think of several different scenarios, disturbing to various degrees).

The world’s population has risen to 11 billion - I guess that’s why ALIE thought there were “too many people” (but her reasoning was as flawed as Thanos’ - instead of killing people, how about increasing or just better redistributing resources?).

It’s also confirmed that a Wallace was the POTUS at the time, meaning that the President and the administration went to the underground bunker at Mount Weather to survive the apocalypse (after which, as we know, they did the North Korean thing where they nominally live in a republic but their leaders are really hereditary).

Callie calls the US regime at the time “fascistic”, echoing how Diyoza characterized it in season 5.

Callie,her friend Lucy and August were all members of the environmentalist group Tree Crew (who already had the same symbol we later see Trikru the clan using), apparently declared illegal or terrorist or something by the Wallace administration.

Callie and Grace Cadogan also used to be members of the Second Dawn cult, led by her father Bill, together with her brother Reese. August also used to be a member. Possibly as a child of some other members.

Becca Franko - described as “tech tycoon” and “reclusive billionaire” - had not been seen in public for a year, since she went to her Polaris space station (to work on the Flame, as we know), a year after she created the first ALIE (and quickly realized ALIE had a fatal flaw). She also owned her own network.

One other piece of info about this world: they had holograms as a means of communication.

Something that was not in the news and not known to the public: it seems that quite a few people were “in the know” about the fact that a nuclear apocalypse may happen (whether they suspected it would be ALIE, or thought there would be a nuclear war) - and even had a code word for it, “Anaconda”. Bill Cadogan was one of the people who knew it. The POTUS and his administration obviously had enough time to evacuate. It’s mentioned that a lot of people immediately started trying to get to the bunkers.

Cadogan and Becca did not personally know each other before the apocalypse, but he apparently had “friends” in many of the space stations. This explains how she knew where the real Second Dawn bunker was located. But whoever these “friends” were, they clearly did not pass on that knowledge to the future generations on the Ark, since even Jaha, who researched Second Dawn, was only able to find public info - articles, Cadogan’s biography - and didn’t even know where the decoy bunker was, let alone the real one.

The most important thing the backdoor pilot needs to do, of course, is introduce compelling, interesting characters. It did pretty well in that regard - Callie is a likable protagonist, and the fact that the antagonists - Bill and Reese Cadogan - are her father and brother, gives more emotional resonance by putting family relationships at the center. The new characters have some similarities to the main characters from The 100, but are at the same time different enough.

The comparison between Callie and Clarke is the most obvious. Oddly enough, Jason tried to draw a difference between them by saying Callie is focused on saving “everyone” rather than “her people” - which makes me scratch my head, unless he means that Callie will always remain absolutely the same through the prequel show, since Clarke also started off by wanting to save everyone - and that was her driving motive for a long time, until the plot kept putting her in situations where she had to choose between her friends and family and strangers, where the latter would often be aggressors attacking her people. What strikes me as the biggest difference i- not just between Callie and Clarke but between all these prequel characters and the main characters of The 100 - is their background and the world they have grown up in. Clarke and Callie are both “princesses” - from the privileged background, but in Clarke’s case, it’s privileged relative to the majority of other people from the Ark, like the Blakes or Raven (which meant things like, nicer living quarters, opportunity to watch recordings of old soccer matches as entertainment, probably less worry about not getting the medicine you need), but in comparison with the way the most of the viewers live... definitely not. The world Clarke was born in is a post-apocalyptic world of scarce resources and constant fight for survival, and even her happy (by those standards)’ life in that world ends a year before the Pilot, when her father is executed and she has spent a year in solitary confinement, expecting to be executed herself - before she’ and 99 teenagers are sent to Earth as “expendable”. On the other hand, Callie, Reese, August, Tristan and others grew up in a world similar to our own. There are, of course, many people in our world who also have to fight for their own day-to-day survival every day, but the Cadogans are rich, and the rest of the Second Dawn members and their families are no doubt not far off. This is Callie’s house:

Some of these middle-class and upper middle-class kids are rebellious, idealistic and optimistic and worry about the fate of the world, like Callie, Lucy and August. On the other hand, there’s Reese, whose driving motivation is to impress his father and gain his love. He’s a rich boy with daddy issues, but he’s also a victim of emotional abuse - maybe physical, too (if we take into account a cut scene showing a training session where his father injures him, under the explanation of making him tougher or whatever). Callie and Reese are only the second sibling dynamic we see explored on the show (I’m not counting Emori and Otan, since the latter appeared very shortly), and this dynamic - a sibling rivalry between a rebellious girl who is her father’s favorite even while she opposes and rejects him, and her jealous brother who wants to impress his father - is completely different from the Blakes. (It reminds me a bit of Gamora amd Nebula - and I’ve just realized this is the second time in this review I’ve referenced MCU.)

Watching this family dynamic, I was reminded of another family that paralleled and contrasted the Griffins: the Lightbournes. Particularly when Grace called Bill a narcissist with psychopathic tendencies and he was entertained by that, In the flashback in 6x02. Simone called Russell a megalomaniac - but that was really said as a cute joke, as the Lightbournes were happily married, and Simone was just as bad as Russell, and even more ruthless than him. But in both cases, we have destructive rich white guy megalomaniacs who made themselves into gods, and want to bring back their dead daughters. Daughters are both extremely intelligent, brilliant and charismatic, but completely different in personality. (The mothers, while all very different, seem all to have been medical professionals - I’m not sure about Grace, but Callie does mention learning how to stitch a wound from her.) Callie sees that her father is an a-hole and rejects his values, and is an idealist and altruist who wants to do the right thing and save people (while Josephine was a selfish narcissist). Her mother Grace is somewhere in between, as she also left Second Dawn and doesn’t fully agree with Bill - but will often go along with him, and tries to keep peace between the other family members, and thinks their family needs to “set an example”. With the Griffins, we had an idealistic, altruistic father and a daughter with similar characteristics, who adored him and misses him after losing him, and a mother who was similarly concerned with helping others, and the conflicts between them were about how to go about these solutions. With the Lightbourne, we had the evil version of the Griffins, and the Cadogans have a more complicated dynamic. Callie is more comparable to Clarke, and Bill to Russell.

But one aspect in which Bill Cadogan is much worse than Russell is - where Russell loved his family, maybe a bit too much, considering what he did to bring them back, Bill loves himself and his “savior” role more than anything. Maybe his love for Callie comes close - and I get the impression that one of the main reasons he loves her is because he respects her and she challenges him - but it is still not his main motive. He is ready to punish his ex-wife for disobeying him by leaving her to die. Reese is an a-hole, but it’s hard not to feel sorry for him when he thinks for a moment that his father is worried for him (when Bill runs up to Reese, who's injured) but Bill immediately shows that all he cares about is getting the Flame, so he can get the final code for the Anomaly.

Another issue is, of course, that Callie, Reese and Grace are POC, but I don’t know if race - or sexuality, or gender - will ever be raised as an issue on the prequel show itself - or if the world pre-apocalypse and right after it is supposed to be as post-race, post-sexuality, post-gender as the current timeline of The 100 is. On The 100, for instance, Thelonius and Wells Jaha being black or Clarke being bisexual or a woman, were not issues that affected their status - only class issues existed; if the pre-apocalypse society was different, then the show could explore Callie, Reese and Grace being very privileged in terms of class and status in SD as Cadogan’s family, and lack of privilege in other respects.

I’m not sure I fully buy the way Callie easily goes along with her mother and leaves her best friend to die. It seems to go against the rest of her characterization. But maybe it shows that she still wasn’t a full-blown rebel at this point, in spite of participating in the protests against the government and in spite of rebelling against her father - maybe she still wasn’t able to really rebel against her mother, too.

Interesting line - as Callie stitches Lucy's injuries, Lucy says: "I don't want to be scarred for life" - which may be foreshadowing for Callie being scarred and haunted by the fact she left Lucy to die? Unless Lucy turns out to somehow be alive - but worse for wear. Which would again haunt Callie, too.

I guess Callie’s failure to at least try harder is supposed to be what drives her to try and save other people, after she learns that there was still room and resources for almost 100 more people in the bunker - and when she sees August fighting tooth and nail to save his girlfriend, when she is barred from the bunker because she’s not “Level 12″. August is clearly a character the show is setting us up to like - these scenes are reminiscent of Bellamy fighting to open the door for his sister, and his name evokes the Blakes (Octavia was named after Octavian August’s sister)..

(Sidenote: Callie mentions a high suicide rate (20 suicides in the last 6 months, twice as many attempts) - and this is something that would realistically happen in such a dire situation. It’s a bit unrealistic that it apparently never happened with Wonkru.)

The SciFi plot points relevant to the overall plot make an appearance when we see the Anomaly Stone on Earth, which Bill found in Machu Picchu and brought to the bunker (and we get an explanation why he didn’t use it right after the apocalypse but spent two years in the bunker instead - he didn’t know how to activate it - not being able to find the last two symbols)... and when, two years later, Becca Franko arrives from Polaris in her pod, as we saw in 3x07, with Nightblood as the cure against radiation she’s about to offer everyone, and the Flame in her head.

A few words about how I feel about Becca. While she is here positioned in opposition to Bill Cadogan - who is definitely a megalomaniac a-hole and a villain - I can’t see her as a pure unambiguous and unproblematic good guy we should stan, as Callie stans her. For starters, Becca is also a megalomaniac - she calls her second AI “the Flame”, comparing herself to Prometheus! (But she makes me think of Dr Frankenstein, and the full title of Mary Shelley’s novel was Frankenstein or the Modern Prometheus.) She is, of course, as a genius scientist, a lot more capable and competent than Cadogan,but she also has a huge savior complex (only she is focused on the idea of her AI being the savior, rather than herself), and is also another big capitalist - a “tech tycoon” who owns her own space station and her own network (and was so powerful and politically relevant that the Chinese and the Russian space station were refusing to join the rest of the stations until the US station destroyed Polaris - Becca was apparently seen as a rival strong enough to challenge the US government?). She worked for a big corporation (Eligius) which colonized other planets and used people - prisoners - as “expendable” work force that can be left to die if necessary. And knowing that she had Nightblood developed more than 7 years before the apocalypse, and that she was worried about what ALIE could do - I wonder why she didn’t offer Nightblood as the solution for a potential apocalypse before it happened, rather than isolating herself on Polaris to work on the Flame. That was one questionable decision - another one was putting the people on Polaris in danger and letting them die, so she could get the Flame to Earth. I could be more understanding of this decision if I could embrace the idea of the Flame as more important than anything, the one thing needed to save the world, as Becca believed it was. But her idea of a sole savior who will help everyone after being enhanced through an AI is something I find pretty questionable and a bit disturbing in general. To be fair the Flame definitely did fulfill its role once and help a person with a good mind use it to save the world - Clarke in season 3. But that was one time, to save the world from ALIE. This, however, doesn’t really justify passing the Flame on and on and giving people political power with it - even without knowing how distorted her initial idea would become in the Grounder society, surely anyone can see the potential for tyranny there? And Becca was aware that 1) the Flame could also make a bad person become even worse and powerful (as it has with Sheidheda) and 2) someone like Bill could use it to destroy the world, according to Becca herself. Seems like a way too big a risk to take.

There are apparently 744 different Anomaly symbols, which means an “infinite” number of combinations, according to Becca (err, not really; it’s a really, really huge number, but it’s not “infinite”, which bugged me a little, since I wouldn’t expect a scientist, especially one who uses the Infinity symbol as her logo, to use the word “infinity” as an exaggeration).

Becca manages to activate the Stone, not because of any scientific knowledge she has, but because the Flame, apparently, gives her enhanced hearing - allowing her to hear the sounds of the Stone, where each sound stands for a symbol. (Dogs can apparently also hear those rather unpleasant sounds.) Everything in this episode makes it clear that it is the Flame itself that Bill needs to find the code, it's always been about that. (Him thinking Callie is in there is just a bonus - emotional connection.) The Flame had no one's memories/spirit in this episode before Becca died, and Becca made it clear to Callie that it’s all about the Flame itself. If the Disciples knew Clarke didn’t have the Flame anymore, they wouldn’t need Madi or Sheidheda - it’s not about the memories, not even Becca’s., it’s that piece of plastic that's buried on Sanctum, if it can still work. (Or maybe they need Picasso :p.)

The most mysterious moment and the biggest question of the episode is - where (when?) did Becca go and what did she see when she activated the Stone the second time and when she and Callie saw the white light coming from the Anomaly? This is different from the green light we see when the Anomaly takes you to other planets. The white light is probably connected to transcendence and/or the Judgment Day that Becca said she saw - which Cadogan, with his typical arrogance, believes he is ready for. but Becca believes no one is.

"It wasn't to open the bridge to another world, it was to remake this one" - this line would make me think that our protagonists are meant to rebuild the Earth - but at this point, I find it hard to see how this could happen over in just 7 episodes, with how the current storylines are going. So maybe they’ll focus on rebuilding Sanctum, after all.

For opposing Bill’s plans, Becca is locked up for 5 days, tied to a pipe (geez!) and, guessing what’s about to happen, she explains the Flame to Callie and tells her to take it and never allow Cadogan to have it, as she believes he could destroy the world with it. (Another often asked question was how the Flame survived Becca’s burning - we learn that it can and that it’s programmed to save itself.)

Becca is burned by Second Dawn Disciples led by Reese Cadogan, presumably at his dad’s orders. Which maybe was supposed to evoke the popular idea of “burning a witch”, but the historical fact that burning at the stake was the traditional punishment for heresy fits even better. There’s been speculation that the memory we saw in 5x10 was his - but that’s incorrect: Madi experienced that memory, she felt being burned, screamed and yelled what Becca was yelling, and we saw it from her POV - the Second Dawn members that were around her and herself reflected in their helmets.

Another memory we saw from Madi, the one we saw her draw in 7x09 (and which I initially mistook seems to be a memory of Becca or other people going into the Anomaly) seems to actually be a memory of the moment when Becca first interacted with the Anomaly Stone and talked about it with the other people in the room - Bill, Grace, Callie and Reese. In other words, every one of the Flame memories from this period may be Becca’s - we have no evidence that would help us learn who else took the Flame after her death. It could be any of the characters who stayed on Earth - Bill is the only one who definitely has never gotten his hands on it.

Retcons and Easter Eggs

I’ve always thought that the world-building, especially when it comes to the Grounder society and culture, was the weakest part of the show. Jason obviously followed some of the common tropes of post-apocalyptic fiction when it comes to the portrayal of Grounders, but didn’t think things through - and at some point, probably realized and/or heard/read all the criticism of the show and thought: “This really doesn’t make any sense”, came up with the Second Dawn backstory, and eventually came up with this expanded backstory, which gives many new explanations. Even though we still don’t have the answer to the biggest question: how a society made of bunch of modern people, survivors, could deteriorate into a tribal society with a medieval level of technological development and lack of knowledge about science and the past culture and history - over a few decades. I guess we need to see the prequel for that, but there are some ideas how it could have happened. I liked most of the retcons in this episode, such as:

Trigedaslang was devised by Callie as a child. The idea of a new language developing naturally over less than 100 years never made sense. (The “it’s a pidgin” explanation never worked either - as Trig apparently developed without the influence of any other language or necessity to communicate with people who don’t speak English. It’s just distorted/changed English.) The only reasonable explanation was always that it was an artificial language - we just didn’t know when it was made.

Finally we get an explanation about the fact that Grounders originated from the Second Dawn survivors and were influenced by their mottoes (”From the ashes, we will rise”), but at the same time, worship Becca as “Pramheda” and make their leaders take the Flame - in spite of the fact that Cadogan and Becca were rivals and that the latter was burned by the Second Dawn members.

The fact that two factions already exist - Callie’s (adores Becca, wants to save as many people as possible by using Nightblood, clearly trusts in science) and Reese’s (Second Dawn true believer, burned Becca, needs the Flame for other purposes) may start to explain how things started going wrong and the society fractured.

Speaking of which, the Conclave seems to have originated from Reese Cadogan’s obsession with the fights his father made him have with him and his sister, and his dumbass idea of using a duel to determine who gets the Flame. This is a better explanation than “it is after an apocalypse, so they just started having death tournaments for reasons”. Callie, on the other hand, is much more pragmatic and doesn’t seem to care much about tournaments as a way to prove oneself - because she doesn’t need to, so she does the Indiana Jones/Harrison Ford thing and just pulls the gun and shoots him in the shoulder. One of my favorite moments in this episode.

“Tree Crew” gets the award as the least expected and funniest new piece of info/retcon, though that begs the question of how the other clans got their names. I’ve joked that Ice Nation were a group of ice hockey fans... but for all I know, maybe that’s true! :D Or maybe the “Trikru” name was later misinterpreted as something to do with living in the woods, so the other clans started having names like “Boat people” or “Shallow Valley people”.

August made up the term Nightblood.

"You must choose wisely" comes from something Becca said to Callie, about choosing the person to give the Flame to. Too bad that later Commanders didn’t know it meant “find the most qualified person” and instead got the weird idea that it meant making a bunch of kids fight each other and that one of them winning somehow means the dead Commander’s spirit “chose” their successor.

One thing that definitely makes a lot more sense now is the Grounder’s bizarre fashion sense, I can easily see a bunch of 21st century upper middle class/rich teenagers thinking it would be super cool to wear warpaint, tattoos and dreadlocks (even if you’re as white as the original Sheidheda), and some later Commander going: “I want to wear a crown! No, you know what would be cool? That thing Indian women wear on their foreheads? You know that thing? I could wear that!”

Easter Egg: Callie was reading Ovid’s “Metamorphosis” at home just before the news of the nuclear apocalypse came - the same book that Niylah gave as a gift to Octavia not long after they went into the bunker (5x02). And maybe it is literally the same book - they sure weren’t printing any new books and someone had to bring that book initially to the Second Dawn bunker during the first apocalypse. In 5x02, it was symbolic of Octavia’s transformation into Blodreina. Here, it may be symbolic of Callie becoming a leader, or the transformation of the entire society.

But some other retcons don’t work well:

The Flame’s abilities have been retconed so many times, but this is the first time we learn that it enhances the Commanders’ senses - which is a big plot point, as it allowed Becca to hear the sounds of the Stone. We have never heard about that before or seen any indication that Lexa or S5/6 Madi had any enhanced sight or Matt Murdock-like super-hearing.

So why was Becca called the Commander aka Heda? I don’t mean the fact that she was never one - Callie could have decided to call her the first Commander as an homage. But why that term? The flashback in 3x07 made it look like it was because Becca was wearing a suit with the word “Commander” (because she took the actual Commander’s suit before she left Polaris) - but since everyone knew who she was, why would that make them start calling her Commander?

Prequel speculation

There’s a lot of reasons why I’d like to see the prequel picked up. Firstly, because Callie is a likable and charismatic protagonist. Reese could be an interesting antagonist as he is her brother - and while he has been a grade A a-hole so far, there’s room there for character development, especially with his relationship with his sister, backstory of abuse by their father and the probability that he’ll understand at some point that he won’t be able to get the Flame to his dad even if he gets it. There’s also the fact that their mother will need saving at the start of the new show (if it gets picked up), and certainly a lot of other possibilities for family drama. And we’d probably also see Callie change and be faced with difficult and morally ambiguous situations that test her, much as we’ve seen with Clarke over the seasons.

Several other things mentioned by Jason in his interviews sound quite exciting:

Lost-style flashbacks to the characters’ lives pre-apocalypse: I’d love this. It would present a contrast before and after the apocalypse, and flesh out characters, and let us learn more about things like, what the Battle of San Francisco was, which wars was Diyoza in, more about Diyoza’s role as a freedom fighter/terrorist... can we get more Diyoza backstory?

the possibility of seeing the origins of the Ark and ancestors of our main characters like Clarke, Bellamy and Octavia (and we know we would see the ancestors of these characters, Jason mentioned that - the guy clearly does know what the fandom likes and wants), immediately doubled my interest. I just hope there’s a good idea how to do that without 1) the two stories looking completely disconnected (it seems this won’t be the case as Jason mentioned that Callie’s people will have to go to space to make more Nightblood and this will allow crossovers) and 2) with a good explanation how the people on the Ark, 97 years later, did not know about the survivors on the ground, about the Earth being survivable, or about the Nightblood, which had been used by Eligius years before. The line "Dad had friends on more than one space station. They already know we're here" also begs for an explanation.

on the ground, we’ll see Callie and co. looking for more survivors (after all, there were more bunkers and other shelters) and offering them Nightblood as a “cure” - which could lead to a lot of interesting situations (and potentially pretty current commentary, if there are people who refuse it)... On the other hand, this could also lead to some more moral dilemmas when they run out of the Nightblood shots (they have 2,000 at the moment, and again, Jason has indicated that they will run out of NB and will have to create more).

Some of the big questions include - who becomes the actual first Commander? How does the society develop from there? When and how is the Anomaly Stone deactivated on Earth, and where is it now? How does Becca’s knowledge eventually get lost? We’ve heard it’s because the data got corrupted/deteriorated over time, but it’s a little too convenient that even Madi still had Becca’s memories, but the scientific and technological all other knowledge was gone during the following 95 years.

I have some ideas how it could go. A lot of people (including, obviously, Bill himself in-universe) wonder if Callie became a Commander and would like to see her be the first Commander. But Callie is the first Flamekeeper, and I don’t see her going “I’m the best and most qualified person, I should have it”. This doesn’t preclude the possibility - she may finally take it for similar reasons Clarke did in season 3, because she has to in order to do something important and there are no other candidates around. But that would be too optimistic an option. Maybe Reese manages to get his hands on the Flame, but Callie or August or someone from her faction manages to disconnect the Stone so he wouldn’t be able to get it to Bill? Or maybe someone else - say, Tristan, who so far can be summed up as “that while guy a-hole who hangs out with Reese” - managed to get his hands on it and then make himself Commander? If people like Tristan or Reese become the Commander, that would work better in terms of explaining how things went so wrong with the Grounder society.

There have been speculations if these characters are ancestors of this or that character we know. Maybe Tristan is an ancestor of this Tristan from season 1 (the guy who was sent to ‘slaughter’ the 100 and was killed by Kane in 2x01)? People are often named after their grandparents, sometimes even after their parents, or celebrated ancestors - names can get passed on like that, and Tristan isn’t exactly the most common name. Or, if Tristan manages to become a Commander - that would make it a popular name.

In any case, the prequel needs to provide a convincing explanation how the society of these survivors and their descendants went from what we see in this episode to the Grounder society we know. But this is my big concern about the prequel - and it’s the problem that many prequels have: however they get there, we know how things turn out; we know it all somehow goes wrong, and that not only will the antagonist fail in their initial goal (getting the Flame to Bill), but the protagonist, Callie, will ultimately fail in her attempts to create a better society. Instead, the Grounder society will descend into tribalism, worship of violence, and constant wars between a bunch of clans, the Flame won’t be given to the person chosen as most qualified but will be fought over by a bunch of children selected on the basis of “special blood” (as Nightblood becomes rarer over time) and forced to kill each other, and most of Becca’s knowledge will be forgotten, as Grounders become technologically underdeveloped and unable to really defend themselves from the Mountain Men, who will learn about them in a few decades and start using them as blood supply.

On the other hand, knowing that the protagonists will fail and that everything will go wrong is often the case with prequels (e.g. regardless of their quality, Star Wars prequels were certainly watched by many people), or, for that matter, with some period dramas (e.g. Babylon Berlin, which I love - set in the Weimar Republic, which means that we know all the time while watching the show that things will go horribly wrong on the level of the society). Sometimes that sense of doom doesn’t turn me off as viewer and actually makes the story more compelling in a way. But that would certainly be a difference from The 100 - no matter how dark, we can still hope things will turn out well and a good solution will be found. Or maybe everything will go even worse. We don’t know how things turn out with the humanity in general. In this prequel, we would know.

Body count for this episode: in the present day, no one. in the flashbacks... over 10 billion people.

Rating: 9/10

#the 100 #the 100 7x08 #anaconda #the 100 backdoor pilot #the 100 prequel #callie cadogan #calliope cadogan #clarke griffin #bill cadogan #becca franko #reese cadogan #grace cadogan #becca pramheda #the anomaly

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lightcomingthroughthedarkness · 4 years

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hey, would you mind sharing what kind of spoilers for the new season are already out there (other than clarke/gaia apparently) that the previous anon mentionend? or do you have a link where i can look them up myself? i personally do not plan on watching, but for some dumb reason i still get really upset when i hear about stuff that is happening on this show, so i'd like to prepare myself.

This is basically what I got but please don't @ me if I get some of it wrong. I don't have the screenshots right now. And don't get all pissy with me about spoilers. If you don't want to see them, then don't look here. Episode 7x02 to 7x04 below the cut.

7x02:

Clarke and Bellamy are not in this episode.

We see flashbacks of Octavia and what happened to her in the anomaly. That scene under water, is Octavia swimming up to the surface and arriving at a new planet. Diyoza is already there and is in labor. When Octavia arrived, Diyoza had already been there for 3 months. Octavia helps her give birth to Hope and it's a call back to Bellamy helping Aurora give birth to Octavia.

Octavia, Diyoza and Hope spend 10 years on this planet called Sky Ring (because of a wormhole close by, time moves faster there than it does on Sanctum) Octavia is at that point older than Bellamy was when she went into the anomaly. Octavia tries to get back to Bellamy for 6 years but after disagreements with Diyoza (we see in the trailer) she sort of gives up after a while. Octavia writes Bellamy a letter, telling him that she now understands everything he did for her (as she has helped raise Hope), how she wishes that he is happy etc. Octavia tells Hope about her people, the same way Clarke did with Madi. Octavia promises Hope that she will bring "Clarke, Madi and Bellamy" to Hope (when Octavia tries to leave one of those times) and Hope asks "and Murphy?" And Octavia says "and Murphy".

This planet is also some sort of prison planet that is controlled by the people that control the anomaly. So at some point something happens that separates Octavia, Hope and Diyoza. Hope grows up on Sky Ring but we do not know what happened to Diyoza and Octavia after the second time she disappears in the anomaly. Most likely captured. Hope saw Octavia in 7x01 and that was a memory from their 10 years together that Hope can't remember.

Hope, Echo and Gabriel arrive at the same planet in "current" time. They spend a long time on the Sky Ring. Echo is desperate to save Bellamy but they can't get out. Turns out, there are two prisoners on the planet at different times and they start to make plans to escape and find Bellamy. They find out Bellamy was taken by some people called "the disciples" lead by a man named Anders. Echo also finds the letter Octavia left for Bellamy but Hope rips it away from her because she doesn't want Echo to touch Octavia's things.

Basically the episode is Octavia flashbacks and Hope, Echo and Gabriel arriving and trying to find out where they are.

7x03:

Bellamy is still missing.

Sanctum stuff. Clarke and Gaia under the tree as we see in the trailer, Clarke holding Abby's ring. Clarke says she has nothing left from her parents. Gaia says that's not true, you are here. Clarke then buries the ring and Gaia buries the flame. Gaia says "your fight is over" and Clarke says "may we meet again". Indra joins them, they have to deal with Sanctum.

Most of Clarke's one on one scenes are with Gaia in 7x03 and 7x04.

Murphy and Emori are staying in the palace. At some point Raven walks in on them and Murphy jokes about that happening for 6 years now, since they were on the Ring together. Murphy and Emori need to keep pretending to be Primes. Raven needs Emori's help with the reactors on Sanctum because there has been some problems and if they explode everyone will die. (We see that man, James die in the trailer). Basically they all need to fix it.

Tension in Sanctum between all these different groups. Wonkru are angry and want Madi to lead them, not only getting information from Gaia or Indra. Indra goes to get Madi, Clarke and Gaia stop her. Gaia tells Wonkru she destroyed the Flame. Wonkru are now angry and basically go back to their original "krus".

Raven is fed up with Wonkru and turns to Eligius to help with the problem (Eligius are trying to take over Sanctum). Then Raven, Emori and Murphy work on the reactor thing, Emori has to get in and fix shit, she has little time to do that. Murphy and Raven are stressed and when things go bad Raven yells at her to "get out of there" (trailer). Emori and Murphy get radiation sickness. Raven does not. Because of the radiation, Eligius are not safe and some of them die. Raven finds herself in Clarke's shoes so to speak, people dying in her "care". Murphy says something about welcoming Raven to "the grey world". One who dies is Hatch, his wife Nikki is not happy and attacks Raven. Raven thinks she deserves it for causing their deaths.

Clarke is still dealing with Russell, to kill him or not. She and Gaia sit on the porch, talking (trailer). Finally after their talk, Clarke decides not to kill Russell because things will get worse if she kills him.

7x04:

We see young Hope living alone after Octavia and Diyoza disappeared. She has learned to take care of herself. The anomaly comes back and she runs towards it. People come out of the anomaly. They are prisoners sent to Sky Ring to atone for their sins. Hope fights back but then later becomes friends with one prisoner. Hope learns how to fight from him so she can fight back the next time the anomaly comes back. At the time, Hope is 10 years old. Hope grows up and the anomaly comes back. The prisoner, her friend helps her so she can get into the anomaly but by doing so, he dies for her.

Back to Echo, Hope and Gabriel in their time on Sky Ring. The prisoners have some sort of chip/memory thing in them. It goes back to Becca and pre-end of the world stuff. If you access the memory chip thingy, you get information from people. Even if they die and have that thing in them, you can still get information. That's how the anomaly people find out stuff about people.

Back on Sanctum. One of the people Echo killed in 7x01 is found in the woods and brought to Clarke. Jordan then tells Clarke there are people (the disciples) on Sanctum and have asked for Clarke. Clarke goes to meet with them (trailer) but first she wants someone to take a look at the suit they have found. So Clarke goes to Raven. Clarke and Raven have a moment because Raven is upset and feels responsible for Eligius members dying. Clarke helps her process her choices and what that does to them to have to make tough calls.

Clarke goes to meet the people who called for her. It's Anders. Anders says that they are the disciples and need Clarke's help. Anders' - and the disciples' leader believe Clarke is "the key to win the last great war the human race will ever fight. You should know time moves much faster where your friends are, every second counts"

Clarke goes back to Raven who is working on the suit and finds out the anomaly is a wormhole. Raven asks "Bellamy, Octavia and Echo, where are they?"

Back to Echo, Hope and Gabriel. Still stuck on Sky Ring. It's been years. We find out Octavia told Hope greek myths (flashback), like Bellamy did to Octavia when she was a child. Echo is trying to trick the prisoner Orlando so they can get out of there and use the anomaly to get to Bellamy. They find out information about the face tattoos and what it means. Apparently it depends on what level you are as a disciples. Then there's something about the prisoners coming to Sky Ring having some sort of faith or religion. Gabriel talks to Orlando when he sees him praying. They talk about truth, belief faith etc. After a while Orlando and Gabriel, Echo and Hope make a deal to help one another out so they can go through the anomaly when it comes. But only if Echo, Hope and Gabriel promise not to kill the Orlando's family (the disciples) when they come through the anomaly.

Echo has now spent 5 years with these people and she promises that she won't hurt Orlando's people when they arrive. During this time, Echo and Hope have cut their hair, trained to fight and Orlando marks Echo and Hope on their faces with the anomaly signs so they can blend in and get through and around the anomaly. Echo is seen as a loyal person, even to the people she's spent 5 years with on Sky Ring. Then Orlando's "prison time" is up and his people come through the anomaly. Echo has tied Orlando, waiting for what will happen when the people come through. Echo had promised that she would let them live if they got help to get through the anomaly. Echo being Echo kills them all and Hope and Gabriel are shocked. (call back to when Finn killed those grounders in s2). Orlando who has helped them all these years and believed Echo, is horrified and cries when he sees what she has done (man gagged and crying in the trailer). Echo walks up to Orlando, tied and gagged, Hope and Gabriel yell at Echo not to kill him. Echo leaves Orlando with a knife to basically fend for himself. Maybe because she spent 5 years with him 🤷🏻‍♀️. Echo tells Hope and Gabriel that Orlando can't be trusted not to ruin their plan when they get to Bardo because they (Echo, Hope and Gabriel) are not Orlando's people. Hope and Gabriel don't argue and they don't help Orlando. Hope, Echo, Gabriel then leave in the anomaly that has arrived and their goal is Bardo, to get to Bellamy and it is also where Octavia and Diyoza might be. It has now been 5 years since Echo last saw Bellamy. We do not know how time moves for Bellamy.

Clarke and Raven find out there's information about Clarke in the suit they found. The disciples somehow know Clarke is called "Wanheda" because it says so on the suit/helmet. Clarke goes back to Anders and asks to see her friends. Anders tells Clarke they are no longer on "Penance" the real name for Sky Ring and that the prisoner there (Orlando) was betrayed so he killed himself. Clarke, believing Bellamy is there, says that she doesn't believe her friends would betray anyone. Anders does not tell Clarke that Bellamy was not there. Anders says he has proof. Orlando left a note. Clarke says she won't say anything until she gets proof that her friends are alive. Anders says they don't have to give Clarke proof, they already have a machine that taps into people's memories so they already know things about Clarke's friends and Clarke. Who are they getting all these memories from? Octavia? Bellamy? Diyoza? We don't know.

Clarke tells Anders she won't go with him and that she has friends with her. Anders says he also has friends with him, invisible like in 7x01, they appear. Apparently they can go into "ghost mode" like putting an Iphone on silence, lol. Then Jordan comes up, Clarke gets angry that he is there but turns out he is a distraction. Ander's friends are shot. Then Raven appears with her suit in ghost mode. Raven is yet again forced to kill people. She is upset. But they go to the anomaly stone (trailer). They don't know where it goes, what happens there etc. When they start to walk into the anomaly stone, Gaia tells Clarke she will stay behind with Madi. Raven, Clarke, Niylah, Miller and Jordan go (jump team). Gaia climbs up from the anomaly stone cave but is attacked by a disciples person in ghost mode. When Gaia wakes up, the disciple person is taking the anomaly stone offline (whatever that means) and she tries to fight them again but she is pulled through the anonaly and disappears. The anomaly stone collapses.

The jump team arrive at a snowy and windy planet. There is nothing there. They don't know how to survive or how fast time moves there. And they have no idea how to find another anomaly stone so they are stuck there. Episode ends.

#the 100 #the 100 season 7 #the 100 spoilers #ask answered

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goodgodbean · 4 years

Text

East To West - Calum Hood

Hey guys! This is part twoooo!! So excited for this series! Just know that I took creative liberty with the boys in this - i don’t own their brand and i don’t personally know them. I hope you guys enjoy angsty Calum!

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Masterlist

Part 1 + Part 3

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Part 2. Neptune

Becca stood behind the door to her room, clicking the lock into place. The phone call had scooped out all of her internal organs and had left her hollow. On shaky legs she walks to a shelf on the side of her room and lifts a ceramic box to the top shelf. The box is white, hand painted with flowers with their latin names. She opens the lid on the hinge and sifts through the letters and cards inside the box, until she feels the felt bottom and the picture that sat at the bottom of the stack.

Two years ago, Becca was lost in her own mind. She drifted across oceans of loneliness while surrounded by people. She had paid a psychic 30 dollars to draw her soulmate. When she got the copy in the mail, she laughed. The face was plastered everywhere in the United States at that time, Calum Hood. He is from the band Five Seconds Of Summer who had just released their 3rd studio album, Youngblood.

She kept the picture though. The artist had somehow captured a love and hollow loneliness on his face and in his eyes, something that looked just as how she was feeling.

Becca unfolded the picture for the first time in 6 months. He still took her breath away.

He has a picture of her too, at least according to Benny.

He hired a Private Investigator to find her.

He’s trying to find her.

She sat down on her bed, holding the creased paper. What was he doing now?

Los Angeles parties and clubs are more about who was going home with who at the end of the night. Not that Calum was exactly looking to go home with anybody. Not that anybody else caught that message. Girls hit on him, ones that knew who he was and some that just knew he was remotely somebody. Some girls sat a couple seats away and tried to not look too interested in him, but interesting enough for him to approach them. It didn’t work.

Calum’s friends are all desperately in love and only had eyes for their significant other’s. Out of the band, Calum was the only one that wasn’t dating or in love. It never stopped girls and guys from hitting on his bandmates. Then, when they couldn’t get anywhere with his bandmates they would move onto Calum. Like he was some second-class member. The thought rubbed harshly against his brain.

Calum kept his eyes down on his alcohol. Every time he looked at another woman he thought of the drawing. Every time he closed his eyes he was haunted by her. A shadow of the picture would appear behind his eyelids, and look at him. He wanted to rip his heart out every time he saw the drawing. To know that he might have been let on a wild goose chase, but this women, this drawing, left him with so much want every time. It wasn't just how beautiful she was that he wanted.

He wanted the little moments with somebody - with her - that his bandmates would talk and sing about. That those songs from every artist were about. The free fall of love, the drop of your stomach when you realize just how in deep you were. The rise of breath when you realize that they love you back. He wanted all the little moments too, to learn her quirks and mannerisms, what she likes and hates. The little fights and the big ones that slam doors, but end up in slow sweet kisses and apologies. He wanted the happy moments at restaurants where you can’t take your eyes off of each other and laughing so hard that milk comes out of your nose. The want settles in the pit of his stomach like a rock.

But, the private investigator would find her. He had to find her.

“Earth to Calum?” A hand clapped on Calum’s shoulder. Calum’s eyes snapped to the hand, his head slowly following and lifting.

“Yes?” His voice sounded unfinished, as if he needed that sandpaper to smooth it down.

“We’re gonna take off - you alright?” Ashton asks, but his eyes are barley looking at Calum. His eyes are trailing his girl who is hugging the rest of the group goodbye and giggling at a girl’s comment.

Calum, in that moment, wanted to shout what had happened. What insanity he had done, but he sews his mouth closed. A nod would suffice.

Ashton seemed to accept that answer and he left, an arm around the waist of his girl, tucking her into his chest. She giggled and allowed herself to be pulled closer. Calum’s eyes are on the door long after they leave.

The rest of his friends trickle out in the the coming hour, all clapping a hand on Calum’s shoulder and wishing him a good night. He didn’t even bother to sit with them tonight. It would be like releasing a guppy into the ocean. His words would be quickly talked over and eaten by some bigger shark. Like Luke.

Calum shouldn’t have a problem with Luke. Hell, Calum isn’t sure that Luke knows that he has a problem with Luke. Sometimes when Luke talks, or does something and everybody cheers and loves him… Calum just wishes that was him. It was an insane jealousy that pumps through his veins like sickly green blood vessels.

It wasn’t just the social acceptance that Luke had, it was his charisma. He is just so magnetic, that everybody's eyes just trail to him. He had it when they were children even, thats why he was the frontman. Nobody could take his eyes off him anyways.

God damn, did Calum want to be magnetic like Luke. He wanted to be able to control a crowd while whispering. Or even Michael, who could stand silent on a stage and they would cheer desperately for him. Or maybe Ashton, who doesn’t have a fraction of Luke’s magnetic energy, but enough confidence to balance it out.

Calum wished to be anybody but himself most days. He wished he could muster up enough courage around his bandmates to even ask for more singing roles, but he couldn’t and they all went to Luke. It seemed like everything went to Luke sometimes.

He couldn’t quite pinpoint when it started, but Calum resented his bandmates. It was a gradual thing, where every small snub had made him quieter and quieter. They didn’t really ever mean for it to snub him, but it all left it’s mark on him. Somehow every time they talked to him, it felt more like an insult than any concern.

Calum left money on the bar - probably too much - and leaves. His car is parked in the lot off the side of the building, but Calum walks the other way. The truth was that his secret escape was only a couple blocks away.

He doesn’t remember the exact moment he decided to rent his own get-a-way in the the city that he hates. He could fly to Australia if he really wanted to, to get to his real home, but it seemed like too much hassle. So he slinks through downtown LA in his grey zip up hoodie and thick jeans.

The doorman, who was payed off for discretion, nods to Calum as he enters. Calum sometimes wonders what would happen if he took the chance and didn’t pay people off often. He also wonders what it would be like to not have to pay people off to begin with. If he could just live in his little getaway all the time. If he never joined the band.

These were dangerous thoughts that only made the noose around his neck tighten. They only made him feel more alone and stuck. It only made him feel like a wild animal, caged as an attraction.

Calum unlocks his door and enters his little apartment. Exposed brick lines one wall, and potted plants lines the adjacent windowsill and the space below it. The ivy had been growing since the last time Calum had been here, crawling onto the brick wall and over the old golden couch that Calum bought second hand. The previous owner had broken one of the couch’s stubby legs, (and superglued it back on) the cushions had sunken in, and the material had faded to a mustard color. The TV shoved into the corner was the old-style with it’s back jutting out. The TV sat on a wonky dark wood table, that was probably a coffee table since it had light rings on it from wet glasses. A couple frames were sitting on coffee tables, inside them were pictures of his family - nothing referring to Calum’s famous lifestyle. Posters from Calum’s old room in Australia were hung on the walls a little crooked. They were such a bitch to put up alone that he never bothered to straighten them. As far as anybody knew, the posters were thrown out by Calum years ago when his parents moved.

Calum dropped his keys into the ceramic dish by the front door - his sister had made it when they were young and gifted it to him as a joke when she was cleaning out her old room. That, as far as most know was also thrown out by Calum. It just didn’t fit into his supposed lifestyle.

He goes for the water jug next to water his plants that have been neglected for the past few days. Little does he know that this world, the world that he wishes he could live in, is a mirror to Becca’s world, just under 3,000 miles away.

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