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creativenicocorner · 3 years

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Slides a ⭐ for a star person :p

Holy shit it took over a year and I barely remember which fanfic ask this is about...I think it's like a director's cut one? REGARDLESS! I do remember the star was to like talk about whatever - and while looking for a WIP I came across an attempt to answer this WITHIN a wip? Past Nico what were you thinking?!

I do know this was written sometime before Ch15 of Terpsichore came out, because there were a few references? But I rephrased the wording a bit.

Forgive me for using this as an excuse to just babble on about how I choose the music titles for chapter sections in Terpsichore, but also, I'm not entirely sorry haha Without further Ado! Here’s hoping this rambling makes sense haha!!

⭐ AN ANSWER!（♥￫ｏ￩♥）

So it’s taken me a long time to figure out how I wanted to answer this. For a while I was going to ramble about M*A*S*H how it was a rather formative show for me growing up, especially in its anti-war message as well as how it feels like a comedy played in a minor key. There was even going to be a link to a video essay on the show, and then I was going to hint at a want to write a series following the changelings in a pre-show context in the sort of vibe M*A*S*H gave.

But it got lost, and weighty…and…idk, I can’t seem to stick to a lot of things these days? I don’t know.

But there’s always been in me the want to attempt to explain why I choose the music pieces I choose to title the sections in each chapter. Cause despite the little message at the bottom of the first chapter and the last chapter talking about motifs leitmotifs…writing prose is nothing like composing music.

And not only that I’m sure less than half of the people reading the fic will listen along with the playlist. Which is 100000% fine! I anticipate it even!

Because at best, those sectional pieces serve less as soundtrack more like a silent movie’s musical medley.

Because it’s the written word, and I’m not Andrew Hussie ldgj though the day I find out how to put a little ‘play button’ to listen to music during a fic, I might do that. But at this point in time Hell No haha.

Despite this, there is a process behind my music selections.

There is a difference between what I consider ‘corpse de ballet’/ ‘ensemble’ sections, and ‘leads’ / ‘duet’ sections.

Or what my poor readers go through as ‘a shit ton of prospective shifts’ and two prospectives at best, at the same time. I don’t know why I’m such a fan of bouncing between perspectives so much that you probably feel seasick. I always consider it a miracle anyone understands what the heck is going on dfjglk The answer is probably because I like third person omniscient writing, and am a sucker for situational/character irony. But I’m also a grammar school drop out haha and don’t actually know the rules of writing by heart? I’m just a fool with a bunch of vibes and a dictionary doing their best lol.

[ stressed coffee sip ] Fake it til you make it baby

But yeah! Enough borderline weird self deprecating! Let’s talk music!!

So! Usually when writing a section I try and think about who are the central characters in the section, and or what is the theme/emotion I’m trying to call on. Is there a motif, or a reference I can play on musically? An idea or concept I can echo or even enhance? Will it be a specific genera of music tied to a character because that character embodies and or is known for a specific genera (example: Nomura and Opera- more on that at during ACTII )

Once I answer those questions, I’m able to narrow down my music choices. Which, again, acts more like a book of suggested musical medley orchestras and musicians would purchase during the silent movie era as like a cheat sheet of what they could play during a specific scene.

So…for instance, for a character like Barbara Lake I wouldn’t use video game music -or maybe I could…but it would only be in terms of perhaps referencing her son.- who I would have a higher chance at choosing to select a video game music piece for (hang on to your butts ACT II Zelda soundtrack).

In the fic I’ve built the idea that in order to explain Barbara’s ability to paint, that she not only took classes but was part of the production team in putting on a play, mainly in set design painting props. Which opens me to a world of musical options when it comes to Barbara’s character. Especially when certain musicals hold songs that can be really fitting to her character later on. An example of this can be seen in ch3 “Aquarius”, and ch14 “Julia”.

Ch3 is Barbara’s big planned picnic date. The first date she and Walter go on after she ingested the binding spell. The two of them coming together, but also the magic of which awakening something magical inside.

And Ch14 in which the binding spell is broken, but also whatever was holding Barbara’s potential to reaching towards that magical something inside her is also broken. And in a sort of my own attempt at written diegesis between the narrative and the song selections in the sections, the lyrics to Aquarius is written out as Barbara depends into the water. In which it is no longer the dawning of Aquarius, Aquarius is starting to take center stage. Their cue is played.

That would be my example on a very character driven musical choice.

Not only that, but it is at Ch3 where Walter is influenced more and more to Barbara’s appreciation to musicals, so much so that it begins to influence his own array of music pieces. His dreams no longer dialogue from movies he fell asleep to, but sometimes full on reproductions of staged musicals and plays. An example of this can be seen in Ch11 On the Right Track from Pippin the Musical - which oof I could go into a full dissertation on in regards to changelings/Pippin and The Pale Lady/Leading Player.

Not only that, but due to influence from Barbara’s love we get the moment of Walter’s ‘I want’ section piece in the form of Ch9 “Corner of the Sky” (aka Pippin’s I want song as well). The moment before this happened there was the interaction with Angor AND Otto AND the repercussions of Angor attacking the school. It is clear to these characters that Strickler is not giving his all in killing Jim, and perhaps never tried to give his all. Something that Otto proclaims as Strickler making excuses, and Strickler insists is tact.

Then there is the situational character driven choice.

I’m going to continue to use Barbara as an example here, and say that THIS can be seen in Ch2 “No. 9 – Finale Andante” and ch12 “Le Lac Des Cygnes Introduction: Moderato Assai”

Both of these music pieces come from Swan Lake. The reasoning behind the choice is probably asinine in thought process (Barbara Lake, Swan Lake), but also thought out in the sense of the following:

In Season3 of Trollhunters Morgana, in order to attempt to reacquire her shadow staff from Strickler (“The Exorcism of Clair Nuñez), transforms herself to take Barbara Lake’s physical form.

IN THE BALLET SWAN LAKE The wizard Von Rothbart, in order to obtain what they want, transforms (granted someone else) Odile to look like the hero Odette in order to trick the prince into proclaiming this imposter Odile as their one true love. In which Odile is the mirror to Odette, and while looking similar (in fact typically the ballerina who performs as Oddette would also perform as Odile) are opposites in spirit.

And, at least in Terpsichore, what near primordial eldritch force can rival that of the Eldritch Queen that we know from cannon will inevitably impersonate Barbara Lake?

But wait, there’s more.

In chapter 2 the piece used in section 2 is the end of ACTI from Swan Lake. The music hints not only the arrival of Odette, but also her inevitable tragedy. What is written in this section, briefly at that cause we watched how the scene plays out in the show, you don’t need me writing that back at you, but I digress- What is WRITTEN in this section is Barbara sipping the enchanted tea that binds herself to Waltolomew Strickler. Something that you, the viewer and fan will know ends in tragedy, as do I the writer and also fan knows will end in tragedy. The only people out of the loop here are the poor poor characters.

And then the revolving door of bad situations that is ch12 happens, and we return to Swan Lake with “Le Lac Des Cygnes Introduction” In which Barbara is introduced to Jim Lake’s Trollhunting world, finally. But wait! There’s EVEN more.

Because not only is Barbara introduced to Jim’s Trollhunting world, Barbara begins to allow herself an introduction to that weird magical more that’s inside her via dream. And YOU/WE the reader/writer/audience, are introduced to the strange figure Giselle is talking to on the beach of Lake Superior…who…well, you’ve probably already have an idea as to who that figure is ;)c

There are also moments when I just select a song piece because I think it fits Thematially well - ch11’s “Powerhouse” section. Aka the music that plays in Looney Tunes whenever an assembly line montage occurs - to which in that section Jim Draal and Walter are putting together the booby-traps to thwart Angor Rot (as well as try to reassemble some sort of emotional connection between them). Or it could be a reference to a meme I really enjoyed, example Ch12’s “Roundabout” aka the music piece known vernacularly as “The Jojo Meme” but also like…meme aside it’s really good and fits and just lkfgjkgsdj I have a lot of feels about Roundabout and I won’t apologize for it haha

And yet, something I pride myself in, is that you don’t need to know all of this to enjoy the story. It isn’t necessary to listen to the Swan Lake pieces or even the Musicals, or even the Jojo Meme. Because, if I did my job right, those echoes ought to be in the writing. The pieces to the section have always been optional. Just little markings in a booklet to be given to you the reader/composer as a suggestion and you can choose to play those pieces along to the silent film, or boot up a ragtime. And that’s the power you have. And that’s equally as wonderful!

#Nico Responds #feather-dancer #Terpsichore #Tales of Arcadia #Trollhunters #Stricklake

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braver-stronger-smarter · 4 years

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Good Omens - Over the Garden Wall (OTGW) AU

Hello all! This excerpt was inspired by @penbwl‘s lovely post found here! I plan to do a full chapter for each episode as a fun little side project when my current WIPs are wearing me down and I need a quick break. This isn’t the whole chapter, just the first part to introduce Aziraphale, Warlock, and Crowley.

I absolutely love this show and when I saw a lovely drawing for this AU pop up on my dash, I just knew I had to write it. I hope you all enjoy this sneak peek. First chapter should be up on my Ao3 page by the end of the week.

Thank you again to penbwl for coming up with this brilliant idea and allowing me to take a stab at it. I’m having a load of fun so far :)

Excerpt below:

The forest was dark. Much darker than it ought to be, and quiet too. Shouldn’t forests have birds singing high up in the branches? Or cute little critters scuttling about in the underbrush, foraging of nuts and berries and the like? The darkness seemed to imply that it was nighttime. Would that not suggest the presence of at least an owl or two hiding in the dense treetops?

There was nothing. Not a single sound except for the crunch of dead leaves beneath his feet and that of the boy walking beside him.

Warlock. The child’s name was Warlock. An adventurous boy of six who had a love for asking the most ridiculous questions and a predisposition to not do as he was told. It was for this very reason the pair had found themselves in this predicament, he was sure of it.

He was...a pause. A glance. What was their predicament, exactly? Alone, in an unfamiliar forest? How did they get here? What had been the events leading up to this? Why was he so certain this boy was the driving force behind it all?

Yes. The boy, Warlock. This boy was named Warlock. And he was Aziraphale. Simple gardener for the estate and sometimes caretaker for the child as well, when his parents were too busy to mind him themselves. Which was often, now that he stopped to think about it.

“...Bartholomew, Curtis, Razzle Dazzle, Mr. McStiggins, Pete, Steve. But I think the very worst name for this frog is - ”

Aziraphale’s hand shot out reflexively, nearly slapping the child in his face and stopping them both in their tracks. The silence drifted in like a dense fog and Aziraphale found himself straining to catch a glimpse of anything that might seem familiar. Anything that might clue him in on which direction to go.

“Wait,” he chastised as a faint noise echoed at the edge of his hearing. Was that a bird taking off in the sky? The wind rustling through the thick foliage? “Wait a second, Warlock.” He paused, looking down at the boy beside him, dressed in his olive overalls and long-sleeved white shirt. His normally unruly dark hair was mostly hidden from view, with only the ends sticking out from underneath an old silver teapot that was, for some reason, perched securely on the child’s head. “Where are we?”

“In the woods,” the boy responded, shifting the frog he was carrying from one arm to the other. Aziraphale blinked. Where had Warlock gotten a frog? He didn’t remember the child stopping to pick one up. And why was this one so big? It was unlike any frog he had ever seen before, and yet, that was certainly what it was. There could be no denying it. A frog, bigger than his outstretched hand, lay dangling from Warlock’s arms like it hadn’t a care in the world. How very strange.

“Yes, my dear, I can see that,” the gardener replied, glancing around them one more time. There was something about this place. He couldn’t quite put his finger on what it was, but it made Aziraphale think that nothing in the world could be better right now than to curl up in his cottage, surrounded by his many books and nestled under a warm blanket, with a nice mug of fresh cocoa. “I meant, what are we doing out here?”

“We’re walking home,” Warlock stated so matter-of-factly that Aziraphale would have laughed were he not currently so unsettled by this bizarre situation they had found themselves in.

Looking around once more, Aziraphale reached down to take the child’s hand in his, a sense of dread slowly starting to creep in. thunder rumbled in the distance and the man suddenly had a certain feeling that they shouldn’t be here. “Warlock, dear.” He paused, not sure if he should continue. Aziraphale didn’t want to scare the child, but he needed to make the boy understand that this was no laughing matter. “I think we may have gotten a bit turned around.”

What to do, what to do? A frown made its way onto the gardeners face. What was one supposed to do in situations like this? He turned to look behind them, images of a familiar children’s tale filling his mind. Two small children wandering through a wood just like this one, leaving a trail of breadcrumbs behind as they marched toward their doom.

“We should have left a trail…” the man muttered to himself. Beside him, Warlock shifted, tugging his hand from Aziraphale’s grasp as he reached into his pockets.

“Don’t worry!” The small, yet boisterous voice declared as he tossed a fist full of candy at the path behind them. “I can leave a trail of candy. From my pants! See?”

Once again, Aziraphale felt the temptation to laugh, and once again, he stifled it. No reason to let his guard down now. Not until they were safely back at the Dowling Estate.

A dull thud sounded nearby and Aziraphale nearly leapt with fright. He spun around, peering in the direction of the noise, trying to ignore how his heart was currently trying to climb up and out of his throat. “Did you hear that?” he asked, hoping Warlock might say that he hadn’t and it had all been in the gardener’s mind.

“Yeah,” Warlock nodded his head in affirmation and Aziraphale once again took him by the hand and slowly moved them forward, keeping them mostly hidden behind the large trunk of a nearby tree.

There, just on the other side of the treeline, stood a man. He was dressed head to toe in black, pants tucked down into his boots, a rather tall hat atop his head. From here, Aziraphale couldn’t make out most of his features. The forest was dark, and the only light nearby was coming from a single lamp resting on the ground by his feet.

The thudding noise they had heard, it turns out, was the sound of the man’s axe, whacking repeatedly into the fallen tree in front of him. He was humming a soft tune to himself as he gathered the finely chopped pieces, kneeling down to ensure he gathered up every last bit. Aziraphale’s eyes drifted over the scene, trying to gather any bit of information he might have missed. Other than the sticky shadows of what looked to be sap upon the fallen tree, there appeared to be nothing of use here.

“We should ask him for help,” Warlock announced with all the innocence of a child that had not yet been taught to be hesitant around strangers. His frog croaked in what sounded like agreement and Aziraphale shot it a glare before realizing how ridiculous an action that was.

“No,” he cautioned his young charge, eyes returning to the strange man once more. “We should not ask him for help.”

“But - “

“Shush,” Aziraphale snapped, feeling immediately guilty at how harsh he sounded. He didn’t want to scare Warlock, or make him cry, but the longer they lingered here, the more nervous Aziraphale became. What they needed to do was stop wasting time and find their way back to someplace familiar. A street with cars or a neighborhood, perhaps, where they could borrow a telephone and call for help.

“You shush,” Warlock argued, tugging his hand free to bring a single finger to his lips like he’d seen his mother do a thousand times before.

“No,” Aziraphale was almost at his wit’s end. “You shush.”

The boy glowered, but there was a teasing glint in his dark brown eyes. “You shush.”

As the pair argued, the light around them grew dimmer and dimmer. By the time Aziraphale looked up to take stock of their situation, the woodsman was walking away, the light from his lamp slowly disappearing behind the trees up ahead until it was over the hill and out of sight, leaving them in darkness once more.

“Ah,” Aziraphale sighed, feeling that all-too-familiar uneasiness return to his stomach. His gaze lingered on the space where the man had been. “Perhaps we should have asked him for help.”

“Maybe I can help you.”

The voice, sounding from behind them, was soft and low. Not deep, like a bass, but warm and gentle, and just a bit sultry. Aziraphale turned and saw, to his absolute horror, a serpent, nearly seven feet long with inky black scales and a red underbelly staring at them from a nearby tree. He’d managed to climb his way up to the branches level with the top of Aziraphale’s head and was gazing over at the pair of them with bright amber eyes.

“I mean,” the serpent continued, never once averting his gaze, “you two are lost, aren’t you?”

Aziraphale gasped, reaching up a hand to slap himself in the face, now certain that this was a dream. Some kind of twisted nightmare he’d found himself in - one that he desperately needed to wake up from. When the action did not banish the snake or the darkness or the wood at all, he spluttered, hoping some sort of answer might be provided. “What in the world is going on here?”

“Well,” Warlock piped up, clearly tickled that someone had thought to ask him. “You’re slapping yourself, and I’m answering your question, and - “

Aziraphale heaved out a heavy sigh. Now was really not the time. “No, Warlock, dear boy. This isn’t real. A snake’s brain isn’t big enough for cognizant speech,” he explained, forgetting for a moment that the six-year-old wouldn’t have the slightest idea what that meant.

Before he could amend his statement, the serpent’s head drifted closer. “Excussssse me? What was that?”

Blue eyes widened. “I mean - “ boy, had he gotten himself into a puzzle. “I’m just trying to say that you’re, well, you’re abnormal, is all. Out of the ordinary, as it were. Completely unexpected, and rather a bit alarming and - “ Goodness, he was rambling now, wasn’t he? Aziraphale had a tendency to do that when he was nervous.

“Good heavens, Aziraphale,” the man muttered, breaking eye contact for the first time. “Stop talking to it.”

“It?” He had never heard a snake, or any animal for that matter, sound so offended in his entire life. “I beg your pardon?”

Aziraphale’s eyes flashed back up to the luminous yellow orbs. “Uh - well, the thing is - “

Suddenly, the sharp snap of a twig sounded behind them. Aziraphale whirled around, his heart leaping from his chest when he realized Warlock had wandered several paces off to examine a slow moving turtle that he had decided to balance a piece of candy upon. There, standing before them, was the woodsman. Brown eyes wide, shadows etched into the deepest crevices of his face. “What are you doing here?” he demanded, voice thundering in the space around them, sending Aziraphale scrambling to bring Warlock back by his side, despite the boy’s protests to remain with his new friend. “Explain yourselves!”

“Aaaaand that’sss my cue,” the snake hissed, coiling up on himself as he disappeared out of the light and into the treetops, his striking golden eyes, the only part remaining visible. For a moment, the luminous orbs lingered, casting a final wink in Aziraphale’s direction before disappearing completely into the darkness “Ciao.”

#good omens #Ineffable Husbands #Aziraphale #crowley #serpent crowley #warlock #over the garden wall #otgw #good omens otgw au #penbwl #good omens fic #wip

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craftygamerwolf · 4 years

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Well, I finally got around to collecting my stuff from Uni this week, which means I can get on and finish a few of my WIPs. The first of which has already been completed!

I bought this hedgehog latch hook kit from Hobbycraft last year. The last time I did latch hooking was in Year 6, so I was really excited to complete another project. Latch hooking does take forever, but it’s very therapeutic and produces some stunning results! I’m really pleased with this, but I don’t think I’ll be doing another one any time soon...

In other crafty news, my Sophie’s Universe blanket is progressing nicely! I got to the end of Part 3 this week, and I’m really pleased with how it looks so far. It’s introduced me to some new stitches too; crab stitch took a little bit of time to get the hang of but it turned out alright in the end!

Games wise I haven’t really been up to much. I haven’t been on Animal Crossing in a couple of days so I really ought to go and see my islanders, and I currently can’t play on Ring Fit as my hoop happens to be at the back of the conservatory, which is currently FULL of my stuff from Uni. Yeah, I have a lot of stuff... I’m excited by the new Story of Seasons game and Paper Mario, but I don’t think I’ll be getting hold of them for quite a while.

In the spare time between gaming and crafting, I’ve been having a lot of fun learning HTML and CSS coding. It feels good to be doing something constructive during all this time away from Uni, although I really ought to think about doing some Maths...

NightWolf

#craft #crochet #latch hook #sophie's universe #hedgehog

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themalhambird · 4 years

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Six Sentence Sunday

Tagged by @verecunda . Thank you!! I think the idea is to share six sentences from your WIPs? And for once, I actually have WIPs that are actually being written to share….

From : Tom Bertram verses the Supercilious Sermon-makers (Mansfield Park. Canon Follow-on/mild parody. A Working Title, unless I can’t think of anything better- which lbr is highly likely because my naming skills are. Not Great.)

The Grants were to remain in Bath until a situation away from Mansfield could be obtained for Doctor Grant as, it was agreed, nobody so wholly connected with the Crawford Scandal could remain within the Parish, let online preach there, and keep their head held high and as Edmund already had his hands full with making a sermon a week at Thornton Lacy, consoling his father, and endeavouring to raise the spirits of his convalescing brother (ensuring that they were not raised too high, however, lest Tom recover his old ways as well as his old health and all Edmund’s efforts at improving his brother’s mind these last months be for naught) he did not feel quite equal to taking on the church at Mansfield as well for, he had said to his father and written to Doctor Grant, he had only been ordained for a few months. It would be expedient if another member of the clergy could be persuaded to take over Doctor Grant’s affairs for a month or so and show Edmund the ropes at the same time. Doctor Grant wrote, therefore, to an acquaintance of his, a clergyman by the name of Collins who was stationed in Kent, and having related the entirety of the Rushworth Affair in full asked Mr. Collins if he might be able to lay his hands on a surplus curate who might be willing to be shipped up to Northampton in order to fill the gap at Mansfield. Mr. Collins replied with the declaration that he would come to Mansfield himself- for he had related the whole of Doctor Grant’s communication to his noble Patroness, the Lady Catherine de Bourgh, and Lady Catherine, having already been informed to no small degree of the misfortunes plaguing the Bertram Family through the gossip in the papers, had been rather seized by the notion that it would be a stupendous act of Christian Charity to sacrifice her favourite clergyman and send him forth like a missionary to such a desert of morality as there appeared to her to be in the environs of Mansfield Park. Moreover Mr. Collins had irritated her of late, for several reasons, but chiefly because he had failed to secure the hand in marriage of his cousin Elizabeth Bennet and therefore prevent that lady from accepting a most advantageous offer of matrimony from Lady Catherine’s own nephew, an alliance the Lady Catherine had most explicitly forbidden from taking place.

From: The Thing Without A Title Yet Where Maria is Pregnant and the Dates Mean It’s Rushworth’s Baby; For Some Reason This Is Tom’s Problem. (Mansfield Park. Canon Follow on. I named a grumpy butler Crabbily because again. Naming Skills.)

“Really?” Mrs Rushworth sets her cup down on the saucer with a light chinking of china, her eyebrows raising. “Is not he supposed to be dying?” The precarious health of her firstborn had been Lady Bertram’s excuse for not receiving visitors for weeks even before news of her daughter’s scandal broke- not that her ladyship needed an excuse to be inactive; it was common knowledge that she stirred for nothing but her dinner. Crabbily’s lips pursed. “He is well enough to come here and ask for the master, ma’am. Shall I send him- away?” to the devil, his tone implied.

From: Miss Norris. (Mansfield Park. Based on anghraine’s post about the AU Austen posits in-text , where Mrs Norris is Fanny’s mother. Very, Very, VERY W.I.P. Don’t like the style. Have about four variations of this and would quite like to set them all on fire, but it was sharing this or it was sharing the rule 63!Tom Bertram fic and Tom’s already on here twice.)

The late Reverend Mr. Norris’ widow would not have considered his death much of a loss, were it not for the fact that he had, through his profession, provided her with a house and a not inconsiderable portion of the nine hundred pounds or so a year with which she ran it. That being the case, however, Mr Norris’ passing- without having the decency to wait even until the eldest of his nine children at least was of an age to be comfortably and, more important profitably, ensconced in a profession of his own that might allow him to step forward and fill the breach- was a very great inconvenience to Mrs. Norris. “For how,” she complained to her eldest daughter as they sat together in the parlour, a pile of mending between them, “I am to manage nine of you on only six hundred a year, I am sure I do not know. It was a struggle enough with only nine hundred, and then there was no rent to consider.” Miss Norris’ needle flew along a fraying seam without pause. “My uncle,” she began, but her mother interrupted her. “Oh! Sir Thomas will be generous enough I dare say- and so he ought to be considering the long years of devoted service your father gave to him…

A Flower of Chivalry (Richard II & Anne of Bohemia AU, Title so provisional it ought to come with a dozen pages of terms and conditions. @shredsandpatches you know that when I’ve finished the slowburn au in like a million years, it’s gonna take me another million to name it, right?)

Anne’s breath catches in her throat. There’s a young man who looks to be about her own age waiting to greet her, and she wonders if the Prince himself has come to great her. She suddenly has a great deal more courage for England, if he has- not just because of Henry’s gesture in coming to meet her, rather than waiting for her to be brought to him- but because her future husband is gorgeous. Tall and slender, clear skinned and with a bright, welcoming smile. He has reddish blonde hair that curls just beneath his chin and Anne is struck by a sudden longing to reach out and tuck it behind is ear. She’s so caught up in the thought that she almost misses Sir Simon Burley introduce him as “Richard Plantagenet, Duke of Chester and the nephew of his grace King John II.”

tagging @shredsandpatches @skeleton-richard @maplelantern @nuingiliath absolutely no pressure though!

#my fic #mansfield park #richard ii #long post #what is this- someone tags me in a game and i remember to complete it? A Miracle.

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eiirisworkshop · 4 years

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Gay Gender Bent Disney Princes Fic

For Good Intentions WIP Fest, details of which can be found @goodintentionswipfest

Way back in high school, a friend and I had this grand plan to co-write a crossover fic of all the Disney Princesses, except they’re gender bent to be Princes, all ending up at the same party.

That was almost a decade ago, and the story never got written, and I honestly never picking it up again. All I have is a handful of half-written scenes and notes.

If anybody wants to take the idea and run with it, you are more than welcome to.

***

“Son, I beg of you, consider it. You are the prince, you have a duty to the kingdom to carry on the family line.”

Charles sighed and leaned against the window. “I know, Father., but I've told you I have no interest in marriage.”

“Is there not a single princess or countessa that's caught your eye?”

“None, Father.”

“Any lady of the court at all?”

Charles sighed again. “Not in any court I've ever attended.”

“Really, we must find you a bride.”

“In all honesty, I highly doubt that's possible.”

The king huffed and paced a bit. “What do you say to this, my boy: we hold a ball, invite all the ladies in the land, from abroad even, so that you may choose a bride from among them?”

Charles considered it a moment. “We would have to invite other men as well so the ladies won't be wanting for dance partners the whole night. I can only dance with one at a time, after all.”

“That is true.”

“Alright then. Let's have a ball.”

The king paced some more. “Perhaps we ought to have it last a few days, make it a festival, so you'll have time to dance with more of them.”

Charles put his knuckles to his lips. “How about three days?”

“Very well, I'll have it announced for the first of June.”

As the king left the room, Charles grinned to himself.

The palace was quite a spectacle the first night of the festival, decorated in flowing banners of silken blue and gold and white, the ballroom bright with the light of a dozen glittering chandeliers, the garden a glow with a thousand candles in silver lanterns hung on posts. A parade of carriages of every size and shape stood in the courtyard with their horses—roans and chestnuts, Arabians and paints—pawing at the cobblestones. From the carriages flowed a throng of ladies in exquisite dresses and men in dapper suits. The girls giggled among themselves while the boys, for the most part, looked profoundly bored—not counting the ones slyly eying the plunging necklines on some of the ladies' gowns. A trumpet sounded and the guests assembled in the grand ballroom. Charles struggled to bite back a yawn as every last single noblewoman from leagues around was presented to him by one of the manservants.

[the stepsisters are introduced]

Charles sunk in a rather unprincely manner into the corner of his thrown. His eyes wandered from the preening harlots and roved around the room, eventually settling on a petite young man with soft cornsilk hair clad in a blue and white suit stitched in gold with diamond buttons. Charles sat up with interest and motioned one of the maids over. “Who is that?” He motioned to the blond.

The maid shook her head. “I dunno, Sir. I never seen him before.”

“Huh....”

Once the presentations were finished, the dancing began.

[scenes of other couples that are already together dancing together, probably bluntly rejecting a few ladies. Maybe scenes of the not yet together couples meeting.]

Charles found himself dancing with a perfectly pleasant but completely unremarkable brunet duchess from somewhere to the south. Out of the corner of his eye, he spotted the cornsilk-haired boy he'd spotted earlier. He tactlessly excused himself from the duchess, leaving her alone and bewildered on the dance floor as he went after the boy out into the gardens. Charles caught up to the boy partway through the hedgemaze and put a hand on his shoulder. He jumped and turned, eyes wide with recognition, and bowed deeply. “Oh, Prince Charles! I—”

“No need for such formalities.” Charles smiled, took the boy's hand, and kissed it.

Asher thought he might melt. “Your Highness, I'm sorry, but shouldn't you be inside, dancing?”

“You're right, I should.” Charles grinned. “Would you accompany me?”

Asher blushed despite himself. “Really?”

“If you would.”

“Yes, yes, of course.”

Charles linked his arm with the blond boy's and walked with him back onto the dance floor.

“What?!” Anastasia clutched the front of her dress.

“Him?!” [name]'s jaw dropped open.

Charles smiled and took Asher's hands in his own. “Him. If, of course, he'll have me.”

“Of course I will.” Asher threw his arms around Charles's neck and kissed him, smiling elatedly against the prince's lips.

Asher's stepsisters stared in shock for several moments, looked to each other, clung to one another and started bawling. “This isn't fair!” “You can't do this to us!” “You're supposed to marry a lady! He's not a lady! I am!”

Charles shot the girls a cold look. “'Supposed to marry a lady' my ass. You're in no position to tell me what to do and the fact of the matter is I don't fancy so-called ladies, especially not the likes of you.”

The girl's crying redoubled and they fled to their rooms in bitchy despair.

“I enjoyed that far too much.” Asher leaned against the prince.

#fanfic #disney #disney princess #good intentions wip fest

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deitiesofduat · 5 years

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DEITIES Update 9/23/19

YEHHHHH okay who's ready for a long overdue blog update? It's been, what, 9 months now...? This probably should have been completed during June, but I've finally kicked myself to get to it now when there's more to share.

A not-so-short update of what I've been up to and how things are looking for this project -- including but not limited to: delayed progress on the main story; upcoming entries for DEITIES color tests; presenting DEITIES at the Automattic Grand Meetup; and other general updates regarding the project. This update is also filled with both photos and WIP screenshots, as a heads up!

---

PROJECT'S MAIN STORY ON HOLD… FOR NOW

It's safe to say that I've been using 2019 as something of a recovery year, after the extended job hunt and other events that happened last year. I’m finally returning to a [new] state of normalcy, but within the time I've gathered my footing, I've been chipping away at other personal projects -- one that will remain private, and some I hope to complete and share eventually.

Rest assured this hasn't diminished my interest in seeing the main story of DEITIES to fruition. But focusing on other interests has helped me adjust the way I prioritize progress on DEITIES, and also reconsider the format I want to use to share this story. I'm not sure how it's going to manifest yet -- though I have ideas and want to experiment -- but I do know that it's not something I'm ready to juggle while trying to completing these other personal projects alongside my full time work.

To help set expectations, public progress for the prelude and main story for DEITIES Project will remain limited for a bit longer. I have a "end-of-year" goal for at least one of my projects to help lighten my load, and after that I'll have a clearer head to revisit the main story and work out a timeline I can manage without burning out.

---

WIPS OF MORE UPCOMING COLOR TESTS...

While I'm making the call to hit pause for the main story, I'll still be drawing content as it comes to me for the project. Currently, the main content has been in the form of color tests for some side characters in the deity roster. That's still going on, and in fact I have quite a few that are still in progress, many which I’ve shared in my Ko-fi gallery:

Why I've gotten some midway progress on all these deities, I'll explain in the next section. But once my motivation to draw returns I'll have enough to work thru that should keep the tumblr remotely active.

---

DEITIES PROJECT FLASH TALK AT COMPANY MEET UP

So for context, about two weeks ago I went to my company's annual Grand Meetup in Orlando, FL -- and you can see my highlight stories regarding the event on my personal Instagram. Alongside all the other new hires, I was asked to give a flash talk presentation about any topic I wanted, for a maximum of 4 minutes. Literally any topic you wanted.

And well… this happened:

(All photos courtesy of my awesome co workers who did me a solid favor!)

It's not every job that gives you the opportunity to talk about personal projects regarding the Egyptian gods! With only 4 minutes to work with, I ended up introducing the room to 36 of the gods, as they appear in DEITIES Project. I had visuals for all of them too -- which was part of the reason I did some quick color test for the ones that I hadn't drawn since my Inktober runs. I'm debating on whether I'll share a PDF of the slides, but it was an overall fun experience for me to share with my colleagues and work friends.

Also as a reminder -- as I realize I don't mention this often, but my company happens to be Automattic -- i.e., the same company that's acquiring Tumblr in a couple days. I know there's a lot of mixed feelings and skepticism about this acquisition, and I'm not here to act as some PR spokeswoman. But from my own personal observations and perspectives from within, I think it's worth giving it a chance to see what happens.

Not to mention, I would not have shared my deeply personal project + nerdism for Egyptian mythology with a bunch of my professional peers, if I didn't feel encouraged and comfortable enough to do it. The work environment is a true upgrade from what I had before, and I'm in a much better place thanks to their openness to give me a chance when I applied nearly a year ago. So I'm happy to have had this opportunity, and optimistic about what's to come.

---

OTHER UPDATES

I'll keep these last ones brief as they're either minor or a bit more speculative regarding DEITIES:

- For new content, I'll continue to post on tumblr, art twitter, and my art instagram, though they may be a bit async. The DEITIES instagram remains dormant until I can motivate myself to sketch with pencil and paper again.

- I'm starting to really miss interacting with followers and answer project-related questions, but I'm also not ready to re-open the askboxes quite yet. When I have the headspace for it, I'll revisit ways to consolidate ask from it's 3 platforms (Tumblr asks, Curious Cat, and Instagram stories), and to be open to answer what I can.

- The DEITIES Spotify playlists are still being worked on gradually! And while I generally don't like to share them early, I'll make an exception and link the two I'm trying to polish next -- a Set and Osiris joint mix, and a villainy playlist for Yamm. These mixes aren't public yet, and any tracks there are subject to change, but feel free to give them a look or listen.

---

There's also a bit of spring fall cleaning + updating I ought to do around this blog, but this is about all that comes to mind that feels worth sharing. Not sure when I'll next update, but looking forward to sharing more art and content from the project soon!

#DEITIES updates #// FINALLY LMAO #music #WIP #egyptian gods #A8CGM2019 #A8CGM #// okay for the color tests; in left-to-right order: Wenut; Heqet; Wadjet; Nekhbet; Anuket; Khnum; Serqet #// I also got to Taweret and Khepri but not as happy with their progress rn; I might even redraw them for their color tests #// For those that reached the end of this update -- Yamm's mix is just eerie minor-key + villain song covers lmao that's literally it--#// I'm a bit iffy on his tracks that don't fit into either of those categories so if the sound of his mix feels jarring... yeh I know 8')#//... and yes I was listening to that mix while writing this up and was too lazy to pause it for the screenshot--

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saxonspud · 5 years

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New years resolution

is to try and finish some of my older WIP’s. One of them is so old, it didnt even make it onto the master list, or onto A03. Thats my first job.

So I bring you chapter 1 of The Outlaw and the Treasure hunter.

There are 22 Chapters in all, so I will put them on A03 and on here. Its already on Wattpad if thats your poison.

Chapter 1 - Strangers

Izzy, opened her eyes, yawned, and stretched. She glanced out the window. The sun had been up for a while now. She was surprised that her mother hadn't woken her.

She pulled back the coverlet, and swung her legs out of bed. Pausing for another stretch, only to hear her mothers voice;

"Izzy, are you up yet? I need you to go to the store."

Izzy stood up, and walked over to the wash stand.

"I'll be there in a minute," she called back.

She splashed some water on her face, it was cold. But that was good, it would wake her up a bit faster.

Izzy glanced over at the chair. She weighed up her options, should she wear the dress, or her work pants, and shirt.

She grabbed the work pants, and shirt. No doubt her mother would complain. She hated it, when she went into town, looking more like a boy, than a girl.

She quickly tied up her blonde hair, and headed downstairs.

Izzy walked into the kitchen. Her mother, looked and frowned.

"Izzy, you could at least wear a dress, when you're going into town!" she scolded.

Izzy rolled her eyes, "you know I hate wearing them, besides, its easier to ride if I'm wearing trousers." she said, as she grabbed an apple out of the fruit bowl, and bit into it.

"and I suppose that's your breakfast?" her mother smirked.

She grinned, "what do you need from the store, mama."

Her mother handed her a list. "You may as well get a bottle of whisky, as well. I'd prefer if you stayed home, whilst I'm away, and I know you like a little whisky"

Izzy looked at her mother, with a slightly shocked expression on her face.

"Oh don't play coy with me, Isabella, I know you drink whisky, when you're out with those boys," she said smiling. "I just prefer if you stay at home, whilst I'm a way. There's been a lot of strangers in town, especially in the saloon, causing trouble."

Izzy laughed, "so you think its more dangerous in the saloon, with my friends, than it is halfway up the side of a mountain, looking for treasure?"

Her mother laughed, she walked over, and put her arm around her daughters shoulder.

"You know, your daddy would be so proud of you," she said, with a hint of sadness.

Izzy wiped a stray tear, from her brown eyes. She still missed her daddy.

Her mother smiled, "are you ok, honey?"

"Sure," she replied, "just something in my eye," she said, trying to swallow the lump in her throat.

Her mother, gave her a hug. "I know, I sometimes get that in my eye too."

Izzy glanced at the box on the kitchen table. "So what are you selling this time," she asked.

Her mother smiled, "that ruby, you found up in Calibans seat, last week."

Izzy opened the box, and looked at it. Remembering the perilous hike, up the cliff face.

"How much, you reckon you'll get for it?" she asked, as she closed the box.

Her mother smiled, "oh probably three or four hundred. Depends what sort of mood he's in."

Izzy sighed, "I wish you'd take me with you, I'd like to learn that side of the business too."

Her mother frowned, "It's too dangerous, some of the people I have to deal with, they'd eat you alive. Especially those in St. Denis."

Izzy rolled her eyes, frustrated that her mother, was going all the way to St. Denis.

"I don't know why you just don't sell it to Seamus. He's a lot closer, and probably a lot safer."

"He's also a god-damn crook!" her mother, retorted. "Anyway, you stick to the maps, and finding the treasure, its what you're good at."

Izzy laughed, "Only because daddy was a great teacher."

Her mother smiled, "that he was. Now hurry up, I want you back here, before I head to the station."

Izzy grabbed her hat and put it on, tucking any loose hairs, inside. As she headed out the door, she glanced back at her mother. She worries too much, she thought.

Izzy, saddled up her horse. Well, he had been her fathers horse, but she thought of him as hers now.

"C'mon, Duke." she said, patting him on the neck, "We have to go to town. If you're a good boy, I'll buy you some oatcakes." she said, reaching into her satchel, and pulling out one of her horses favourite treats.

The horse, gently took the treat from Izzy's hand, and whinnied.

She quickly mounted, and pushed him into a trot. Heading towards Valentine, and the general store.

Arthur Morgan walked up to the bar, in the Smithfield's Saloon. He just wanted a quiet drink, for once.

The barkeep, eyed him up and down, "We don't want no trouble today, mister."

Arthur rolled his eyes, "just gimme a whisky," he huffed, "and you won't get none."

The barkeep passed him a drink, it was quiet this morning, so chances were, there wouldn't be any trouble, but he decided to keep half an eye on the stranger, anyway. The last time he had been in here, he ended up having to replace the window.

Arthur, was on his second whisky, when a woman approached him at the bar.

"Howdy stranger," she said, as she sidled up to him, "fancy buying me a drink?"

Arthur, stared into the glass, hoping that the woman would get the hint. It appeared, she wasn't going to.

"Ain't interested," he huffed, without looking at her.

"Well there's no need to be rude," she said, indignantly as she walked away, looking for another potential customer.

Arthur tipped the rest of the whisky, down his throat, in one shot, and headed out of the saloon. It annoyed him slightly, that he couldn't even get a drink, without being pestered by some god-damn woman. It wasn't like the women in the saloon, were ever his type. Although he was beginning to wonder, if he had a type.

Izzy, hitched her horse outside the general store. She glanced up and down the main street. She scowled, as she saw one of the strangers, her mama had warned her about, coming out of the Saloon. She recognised him. He was the one, that Tommy, had thrown out the window.

She'd been in Smithfield's that night, having a drink with some of the stable boys. She wondered if that's why her mama was being a little more cautious than usual.

Anyway, a couple of nights in wouldn't do her any harm. Especially if her mama was buying her the whisky. She had a new map, to decipher, that would keep her busy.

She quickly walked into the store, best she avoid the stranger, she thought. He looked like trouble.

Arthur stared up the street, at the young woman, that had been looking at him. He smiled to himself, now, she was definitely his type. But the scowl on her face. Maybe he would introduce himself, and find out why she was scowling at him. He needed a few supplies, from the general store anyway.

Izzy smiled, as she walked into the store. "Morning Mister Foster," she said, cheerfully to the owner. "Mama wants a few supplies." she handed him the list.

Seth Foster, looked at the list. "I'll just get these together for you, Izzy. Feel free to have a browse around, see if there's anything else you want."

"Thanks, Mister Foster." She wandered around the store, looking to see if any new stock, had been added to the shelves. She was disappointed, but not surprised, when she found nothing new.

Izzy glanced round, as the bell on the door tinkled. Signalling the door opening.

She scowled again, as she recognised the stranger.

Arthur figured, he must have met this woman before, otherwise why would she keep scowling at him.

"Mornin' ma'am" he greeted her.

Izzy turned her head, completely ignoring him. I bet he's trouble with a capital T, she thought, as she pretended to be looking at the shelves.

He was sure, if he'd met her before, he would have remembered. She was just his type. Pretty brown eyes, blonde, a little bit feisty. Plus, he could see all her curves, through the trousers she was wearing. Apart from the fact, someone needed to teach her a few manners.

"I said, Good Morning ma'am" he repeated, raising his voice slightly.

The store owner, looked across. Slightly worried, that there might be trouble.

Izzy turned around, she walked past him, purposely knocking his arm.

"Is my order ready Mister Foster," she asked, curtly.

Seth foster nodded, and handed her the supplies. "Would you like me to put this on your mothers account, Miss Pickett?"

Izzy nodded, "thank you," she said, as she headed to the door.

As she approached the door, Arthur opened it, and smiled, "ma'am."

Izzy stopped at the door, scowled at him, and left the shop.

Arthur closed the door and laughed. He turned to the store owner, "is she always like that."

The store owner frowned, "I'm guessing you don't know who that is." he said.

Arthur shrugged, "should I?"

"I thought everyone knew, that's Isabella Pickett," he hesitated, waiting for a response. When he got none, he continued. "Harvey Pickett's daughter, the famous treasure hunter."

Arthur raised his eyebrows, the name rang a bell somewhere, but he shrugged it off. He tipped his hat, to the storekeeper, and walked out the store.

Izzy, had just finished packing the supplies into her Saddle bags, as Arthur walked out the store.

As she mounted her horse, she heard someone call her name.

"Miss Pickett?"

She turned to look, as Arthur approached her horse.

"Did you're father never teach you, its rude to ignore people, that are being civil?"

Izzy glared at him, "Yes," she hissed, "and he also taught me to avoid, trouble makers!"

She was about to kick on her horse, when she realised that the stranger, had grabbed hold of the reins.

"Who the hell do you think you are, unhand my horse!"

"My name's Arthur Morgan, and I really think someone ought to teach you some manners."

"Well, Mister Morgan. I suggest that you remove your hand, from my horse, before I call the sheriff. I've seen the sort of trouble you cause, so I suggest you leave, while you still can!"

Arthur let go of the horses reins, and took a step back. Raising his hands in mock surrender he smiled. "Until we meet again, Miss Pickett."

Izzy huffed, and rode off. Not even looking behind her.

If she had, she would have realised, that Arthur, had already mounted his horse, and was following her.

#rdr2 fanfic #arthur morgan #original female character

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chanteraelle · 6 years

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Jotober - Day 21: Drain

“You are aware that I could drain the life from you as easily as the winter breeze can strip a tree bare of its leaves, mortal?”

Alfira could hear her heart whirring faster and faster, blood rushing through her body, yet unable to bring back warmth to her cold skin. Why had she not listened to the stories of the Fae Queen she had been told? The stories in which illustrious knights, resplendent in the finest armour and with the blessings of kings, went to seek her court and never came back. The stories that said she beckoned their souls out of their bodies, wound them into ribbons, and wore them around the paleness of her fingers.

Her hand came beneath Alfira’s chin, forcing her head up, and she could see that there were seven rings on her finger. All save the seventh, which was a deep crimson, were made of wispy, smoke-like tendrils of quiet hues. One for each knight. One for each soul. They had all knelt in the same place that she was now, each felt the same joyous fear that she did, each looked the Fae Queen in the eye as she did now. Her heart continued to whirr, but she was too caught in the constellations which dwelt in the depths of her eyes to notice. She was ancient, the Queen. She had been here since the beginning of the world, and she held all of that knowledge in her hand like a silver, ice-crusted chalice. Alfira could almost taste the sweetness of it on her tongue... it was intoxicating... blindingly sweet... dizzingly...

“Ryla, still up to your antics?” Alfira blinked. The finger beneath her chin had fallen away, and someone was speaking. Was it Mualira? It sounded like her. But how could it be?

“Lira, how have you been?” The Fae Queen glided over to a figure, cloaked in the green of the forest. That was definitely Mualira, with Taen and Yennel beside her. Relief washed over her body, and she would have certainly collapsed on the moss if Taen hadn’t engulfed her in an enormous hug, before stepping back sheepishly.

“I have been quiet well, thank you. You haven’t aged at all.”

Alfira could have sworn that the Fae Queen was blushing.

“Do you really think so, Lira? I was getting a little worried about the fact that I might have a few wrinkles coming.”

Mualira patted the Fae Queen reassuringly on her arm.

“Not at all - you don’t look a bit different from the day that we first met.”

Jotober Tag List: @writer-grandma and @ashesconstellation

#jotober2018 #jotober 21 #back to the fantasy WIP #here's a new character #his name is Yennel #And he literally has a silver tongue #I really ought to introduce this WIP some time #and the characters #but today is not the day i fear

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desdemonafictional · 5 years

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Rung Meets Deadlock

a WIP from the Decepticon!Rung au

this’ll probably be part of a bigger day-in-the-life fic but I’m not gonna get back around that any time soon... so here’s what I’ve got for now!

When Deadlock appears in his quarters, without fanfare or warning, Rung doesn’t seem anywhere near as nervous as he ought to be. He ought to be very nervous.

Everyone knows what Deadlock does. And although the Decepticon army’s CMO has never been formally introduced to him, Deadlock knows his reputation precedes him. Just like Rung’s reputation precedes him…

“Oh,” Rung says, as he turns on the light to find Deadlock sitting in his chair, “hello.”

It would be an understatement to say that Rung isn’t at all what Deadlock expected, after what he’s heard swirling through the grapevine. He’s small, but Deadlock was prepared for that. It’s the lack of weaponry, the lack of armor, the lack even of meaningful surgical implements or scientific kibble. If Deadlock were a less hardened mech, he might find the confidence of it frightening.

In the second between turning from the door and spotting Deadlock, Rung goes from looking visibly weary to looking cool and sturdy and patient. It’s an impressive trick. Not that Deadlock doesn’t know plenty of ‘Cons who can switch on a new face at the flip of a switch, but the fact that he’s doing it now, under these circumstances? Well that’s not a bad show.

Rung considers him for a moment. Deadlock passes the sharpening stone down the blade of his sword with a sharp, grinding note, letting the flat of it rest across his knees like a quiet promise.

Something flickers in Rung’s expression, but under the glasses, it’s nearly impossible to read. “I don’t normally take appointments in my quarters,” he says, “but if there’s something you don’t feel comfortable discussing in my office, I could make an exception.”

“You know who I am, don’t you?” Deadlock says, testing the blade edge with his thumb. He’d been reading through some of the files on Rung’s recreational datapad in the quiet before Rung’s arrival, but he set it aside a while ago. He doesn’t know how to feel about the correspondences he’s stumbled across, the ones saved deep down in the memory banks. Lord Megatron and the CMO, bantering. Discussing theater. It boggles the processor.

Rung’s expression goes a little tight. “Yes, Deadlock, I know who you are.” He comes across the room, laying down his work ‘pad on the desk as he goes. “If this is about Turmoil, believe me you’re not the first to ask, but I’m afraid there’s really nothing I can do at this point.”

Deadlock tilts his head. “Soldiers often ask you to work on their officers?”

“Work on,” Rung repeats. He frowns, like the phrasing bothers him. “Occasionally, people do ask for me to intercede with their superior officers on their behalf, yes.”

“And Megatron lets you do that?” Deadlock says, which is more or less the reason that his sword is still sitting across his lap and not inside of Rung’s spark chamber. If the things he’s heard are true, he wants to know how much of it is sanctioned. Part of him bridles from the very thought--Megatron, of all mech, would never, could never--but the rest of him is a grim pessimist, and if there’s rust rotting at the heart of the Cause, he intends to know about it.

Rung opens his mouth. For a second nothing comes out.

“Well, as much as he can, I think. I used to have more leeway. Recently I’ve been… encountering friction,” he says, after a moment. “Megatron actually offered to do something about Turmoil for me, once. Perhaps I should have taken him up on it.”

Do something about…? What’s that supposed to mean?

Rung pauses, at the edge of the berth. “I’m sorry,” he says, “I know it’s unprofessional, but I have these aches. Would you mind terribly if I…?”

Deadlock doesn’t know what he’s asking--whether he can sit down, maybe?--but ne nods anyway. He can never help but indulge a medic when they talk like that. The wear and tear medics take kind of gets his engine going.

What Rung actually does is reach behind himself and disengage his dorsal kibble. It comes away easily, leaving the flat, smooth panel of his back as if it was never there. The moment the wheel-pack hits the floor, Rung relaxes visibly.

“Sorry,” he says again. “Old injuries.”

“You’re filed as a non-combatant,” Deadlock says, narrowing his eyes. He would have prepared differently if he had known otherwise. Of course this isn’t an official visit; he hasn’t been briefed, there could be clearance above his standard clearance...

“Oh, it’s not combat,” Rung laughs, “I was taken apart by the Functionists several times, and they were more interested in the taking apart than the putting back together. I wasn’t always reassembled perfectly.”

Ahah. Deadlock leans in. “Is that where you learned the mnemosurgery?”

Rung goes still. His spark flares, deep in his chest, visible through the glass panel inset there. “I’m going to make Starscream regret his decisions with such a deep and abiding shame that he will spontaneously confess to every lie he’s ever told,” Rung says, in a voice that is cold with rage. “I thought officers would know better than to believe those rumors.”

Deadlock sits back. Rung is visibly livid, fingers rapidly tapping against the edge of the berth, glaring at something only he can see.

“Every time I walk into the medical bay now, there’s some poor spark that nearly climbs out the airlock trying to get away from me,” he vents. “I never thought I’d have to put up with fear at the sight of my face, it really is too much. Too much by half. What did I join this movement for if not to ease the friction on the ones who took the best of worse options, and now I find that my simple presence--”

He slumps, digging his fingers under his glasses to rub his optics.

“He thinks he’s helping,” Rung says to himself, the way that you mutter an old calming mantra. “He thinks he’s helping. Never mind that I never asked for his help, he only understands one kind of strength, and he thinks he’s helping.”

“Who’s that you’re muttering about?” Deadlock asks. So far nothing about this encounter has been up to his expectations and what can he say? He’s curious.

“Starscream,” Rung says, like it’s unimportant, like it’s obvious, like it isn’t Starscream, living embodiment of a knife in the back, the silver-tongued terror himself.

“Starscream doesn’t help people,” Deadlock says with a sharp laugh. “Except himself, obviously.”

“I suppose he’d like us to think that,” Rung says, not sounding particularly amused. “He started this whole-” Rung waves a hand, “-shadow play rumor. That I’m some kind of mad scientist routinely bending people’s processors to… I don’t know what, people usually fill in that part themselves based on whatever frightens them most. I wouldn’t know how to execute a mnemosurgery if my life depended on it.”

“Uhuh,” Deadlock says. He smiles, indulgently, but doesn’t relax. Everybody knows the old saying: never trust a person with their needles in your neck.

“I don’t know what to do about this,” Rung sighs. Then he stops, and he looks up sharply. The point of his gaze is like the wicked tip of a paring knife. “Did you come to me,” he says, “to have someone shadow played?”

Deadlock could probably just kill him now and swing by the commissary for a bit of a job-well-done reward, but something about the way Rung looks through him--looks into him--has him almost breathless. He feels something in the strut of his spine, in the edge of his spark.

“I was sent to have someone taken care of,” he says, playing vague and uninterested even as his sensor net tingles.

“Well I can’t help you,” Rung says, sharply.

“Is it a money thing?” Deadlock asks. He wants to see what it’ll take to make the CMO break his pretty, professional facade. “Money ain’t an issue for me.”

“It’s not money,” Rung retorts. There’s a distinctly icy chill in his bearing now, in the set of his slim shoulders. “I can’t, and even if I could, I wouldn’t. Money is not the issue.”

“Now don’t act like you’re so above it all,” Deadlock tells him. “We all know what almost happened to Megatron. Shrinks like you signed off on shadowplay all the time, even before.”

Rung rubs the seams of his faceplate, a grimace distorting his mouth. “Personality adjustments, you mean,” he says. “Yes, we did sign off on those, didn’t we.”

Rung draws his hand back from his face and stares at it. The fingertips where the wicked needles would emerge are at the moment only blunt and dull.

“It was supposed to be controlled. Ethical. There were complicated, nearly byzantine steps--red tape a mile long--countless hoops you had to jump through in order to even think of ordering the procedure. You needed two medical professionals to sign off on it, you needed next-of-kin consent, you needed stacks of evaluations and trials and affidavits... We had no idea at the time--I had no idea--how easy it would be to simply walk up to a surgeon and then walk away, no one the wiser…”

“You don’t gotta convince me, Doc. I’m just here to do a job.”

The truth is, though, that Rung’s act is pretty good. Not too over the top, not too woe is me. Just the right amount of bitterness and self-reproach. Deadlock wouldn’t be surprised if there’s even some truth to it.

“Believe it or not,” Rung says, rubbing his fingers together, “PA was invented to help people. We were supposed to be healers. Mainly people with suicidal code glitches--involuntary prompt recurrences, intrusive thoughts, anxiety feedback loops--that sort of thing. And then it was approved for hallucinatory syndromes. And then for violent offenders. And then for anti-social personalities… and then you turn around and every empurata sentence has a PA order attached to it, and you don’t know where the line broke but it’s somewhere long behind you, and you can’t do anything but…”

He drops his hand.

“I’m sorry,” he says, optics flickering as if they had been rebooted, and then he puts on a smile. “I find my regrets catching up with me more and more these days. Who is it you wanted help with? Maybe this is a problem that can be solved with mediation. I can’t promise you I’ll have much political clout, but I’m a fairly good problem solver.”

Deadlock watches him, tracking every motion, every micro-expression. This really isn’t what he was ready for. Polished? Posh? sure. Eloquent, light-fingered? Yes. The quiet nightmare, Megatron’s pet abomination, a medic gone so thoroughly rotten that his very touch corrupted? Deadlock had been more than ready to put an end to that--

The mech in front of him is visibly weary, sore and soldiering on, old in a way that is almost disorientingly palpable.

“You and the boss, huh,” Deadlock says, his processor still whirring. “Always wondered what was up with that. Everybody knows he’s got a thing about needles.”

“Are you speculating about my personal life?” Rung says, with some measure of exhausted humor.

It’s not exactly unknown that Megatron and the CMO have a personal understanding of some sort or another. The medics all seem to know something about it, especially here on the flagship, and Deadlock spends a lot of time in the medbay, laying the sweetness on whoever happens to be on shift that day.

That’s the other thing that made Deadlock hesitate, when he got the order. See, he hangs out with a lot of medics. He’s got a type, what can he say? He’s a sucker for a flash of medical red and a boxy chassis. And the medics around here? They talk about Rung like he single-handedly wrangled Luna 1. Most places Deadlock goes, the staff warm up to him fast. He likes them, and they like the security of having someone strong and scary around to back them up when front-liners start throwing their weight around. It’s a no-brainer. Symbiosis.

Here on the flag-ship, the medics carry themselves differently. They don’t exactly tell him no, around here, but he thinks--given the way Rung has said a couple times that his influence is on the wane--maybe there was a time not that long ago that they would have. You know what Rung will say, he hears them remarking to each other; Rung won’t like that, Rung won’t be having with this, wait until Rung hears about this--

And, more quietly, more softly: has anyone brought him his--no, I’ll take it, I want to check on how he’s--well he’s always doing it to us, I think it’s plenty fair--

It’s not that medics are always good judges of character. They put up with him, for one thing. Bad people can be convenient, even useful. The indiscriminate fear of prey can lead to all sorts of ugly compromises. But there’s a way people talk about the monster they know, and it’s not the way they talk about Rung.

Familiarity prickles on the back of Deadlock’s neck.

#transformers #maccadam #rung #banners from the turrets

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chrysalispen · 5 years

Text

kissing prompt: ‘a kiss meant to seduce’

not answering these in any particular order but tbh i’m trying to get these nero/WoL wips out the door so have another prompt response. more or less a lead-in to this fic i wrote which i don’t hate quite enough to take down.

not explicit, but probably a T/M rating on AO3 for mention of dirty talk etc.

=============================================================

All told, no one had seemed to be in an agreeable mood on the way down to the Find from the Crystal Tower courtyard, or after they'd arrived. Cid's expression had been positively thunderous, blue eyes dark with his agitation, and the overall feeling from the other Ironworks engineers on site ran the gamut between confusion and suspicious resignation.

Well. Almost no one. Their sudden interloper seemed quite cheerful about the entire circumstance, as though all of this were going exactly the way he had wanted and they were all just cogs in some machine he'd set in motion.

That idea was absurd, of course; Nero tol Scaeva couldn't have had much more of an inkling of what was behind those doors than anyone else here, surely. But the calm, self-assured way he moved told her he did know something, and more to the point, that he had some plan in mind for it once they’d bypassed all the security for him.

That alone was more than enough to make her wary.

She glanced from side to side, looking for Cid, but he appeared to have quit the Find in a fit of pique (not that she particularly blamed him). The other engineers were just as busy, and G'raha was animatedly chattering to Unei and Doga who were both attempting to answer his flood of questions as best as they could manage.

Everyone seemed to have quite forgotten her presence now that her ability to brute-force the doors to the Labyrinth open was no longer necessary. She wished she could feel even slightly surprised, but that was what she was here for, she supposed. The muscle, the good luck charm.

With a sigh, Aurelia approached Rammbroes' study pavilion and lifted the tent flaps, letting herself inside. If the scholar or one of his fellows -- or better yet, Cid -- was there, she could talk with them, feel out if there was anything that they ought to be concerned about before venturing into the tower should Nero's timely appearance be subterfuge for something sinister...? But the tent was---

---the tent was not empty, as it had appeared from the outside. A familiar figure turned towards the sound of her entrance, a leather-bound book clasped in one hand.

She immediately reached for her weapon, snapping, "What are you--"

Nero tol Scaeva lifted his hands in a conciliatory gesture.

"Before you cut me down in cold blood, the journal is mine own. I was attempting to compare my notes with that of your associates here."

Aurelia's eyes narrowed but the tribunus only stared back, a look that was both coaxing and challenging at the same time, as if waiting to see what she would do. Finally she relented, tucking her staff back over her shoulder. While it was obvious he'd come in here by himself to rummage through papers, it seemed that he hadn't been here much longer than she had. So it wasn't as though he had had sufficient opportunity to do anything.

Nothing she could prove at the moment, anyroad.

"And the tomestones? I can't imagine you'd want to leave those behind without having a look for yourself."

"They're welcome to them," Nero said with a dismissive shrug.

She blinked. “That was... not the answer I expected.”

"Personal experience from the Ultima Project. The majority of those tomestones will be naught more than particularly expensive paperweights; what useful data exists on them has quite likely been eroded due to time and exposure. As counterintuitive as it may seem, their decision to keep written documentation of the dig may be the wiser course of action." His pale blue eyes had not tracked away from her face the entire time he had spoken. The gaze he’d leveled upon her was sharp, scrutinizing, intense, and this time she didn't have the benefit of his magitek armor to hide that interest from her sight.

Not that he was bothering to hide it in any way. What game was he playing...?

She broke eye contact, feeling ill at ease as she glanced at the entrance to Rammbroes' tent. She'd backed up against a nearby worktable; heavy and sturdy, it sat just below her waist, at hip height. Perfectly appropriate for a roegadyn sitting down to pen missives or peruse dusty old texts or review Allagan tomestones.

Nero was smiling but he still hadn't said anything, and that made her uncomfortable enough to finally break the silence between them with a defensive "What?"

"Any particular reason you happen to be blushing?"

"Wh- I'm not blushing."

"Yes, you are."

"No, I'm not."

The right corner of his lips tugged slightly upwards, just enough to reveal a flash of canine. She chewed on her lower lip, grasping at the table for a sense of purchase and trying not to think about things she... really should not be thinking about. Really shouldn't. Like how in the seven hells a man was born with a mouth like that. It was- it was unfair.

His answering chuckle made her realize, much to her chagrin, that she had spoken aloud.

He braced his hands against the table's surface and leaned his weight back against it, slotting himself in the open space at her side. Unconsciously, Aurelia shifted herself to put a few ilms of space between them, trying not to think about the difference in height that was somehow far more noticeable now. Nero tol Scaeva was damnably tall; she was average height for a Garlean woman and still barely came up to his shoulders when they stood side by side, let alone in a position like this.

"To that end I've a question for you, eikon-slayer,” he continued smoothly, “if you would be so kind as to indulge me."

"About...?"

"I find it passing strange that a woman who can slay gods without blinking should find my presence in any way disconcerting. An artifact of your upbringing, I assume?" He was baiting her, she knew; the tone of his question was decidedly mocking. But that smile-- that had turned into something speculative and dark. Combined with the intensity of his stare, it set alight a strange, pressurized heat in the pit of her stomach. "Does Garlond elicit this reaction?"

"Cid? Hardly." Aurelia wrenched her gaze away from the movements of his lips to stare over his shoulder at the tent opening. Scholars and Ironworks engineers were passing to and fro just outside; she could see the shadows they cast upon the tarpaulin. "Cid also doesn't stand two ilms away from my face and stare me right in the eyes like he's about to devour me, so take that as you will, I suppose."

" 'Devour' you? What an interesting turn of phrase. Although I must admit you make a salient point. I cannot imagine that you are embarrassed by the slightest of his attentions as you are mine."

Was... was he trying to do what she suspected he was doing? The idea seemed laughable on its face -- Eorzea had no shortage of beautiful women, so who on earth would find her appealing? -- but the problem she currently faced was that it was actually working, damn him. It didn’t help that it had been... she couldn't remember how long since anyone had taken any sort of prurient interest in her, now that she thought about it.

Assuming of course that she wasn't just overthinking this and he wasn't putting her wind up for fun. Either way, she had to put an end to this now before it escalated any further.

"Unfortunately for you, I am not interested.” Calm, collected, and to the point. Yes, she thought; very well done.

She'd hoped that her bluntness would deter him, but that smile only widened, the maw of a hunting predator about to strike.

"Something tells me you are perhaps not being forthright with me." His tongue clicked against the roof of his mouth. "Shame on you, hero."

"I mean it. I am not interested," she repeated, this time with more resolve. "After what you did in the Prae-"

"Ah, you're concerned that I might turn on you all like a rabid dog, as it were. Worry for Garlond? Thinking I might sabotage his precious Ironworks or somesuch?"

"Not---no, none of those things, not as such, but to say I trust you would be a stretch. Not a word in all these weeks and suddenly you turn up, unannounced, as thought naught had transpired?"

"Your concern is unwarranted. Merely do I find myself with a plethora of free time in the wake of my sudden discharge from military service.”

“You-,” she began, but he was not finished.

“Lest you labor beneath the assumption that I intend you any sort of bodily harm, for a long while before we were... shall we say ‘formally introduced’, I had this recurring dream about you, me, and an interrogation chair-" At the wide flare of her eyes, he paused, only to grin at her: "...Now that, eikon-slayer, is a very interested look."

She tried to scoff at him, but it came out as a short, sharp, nervous bark.

"What look? I didn't give you any look."

"You most certainly did."

"You're reading intent where none exists-"

"Am I? Couple that with the fact you're mortified by the slightest hint of insinuation on my part and it's quite telling."

"Scaeva, I was in the legions myself once. Do you seriously think I'd not been exposed to the odd bit of barracks chatter?" She scowled at him. "I'm a chirurgeon by trade. I think I know enough of the human condition not to be easily embarrassed by such things."

There it was--the look she'd seen him pass Cid every time he was wont to needle the man in the space of a single conversation, coupled with the upwards arch of one eyebrow. She’d not realized how aggravating it was to be on the receiving end of that look until this moment, now that she was the subject of Nero's condescension.

"I'd wager that what you believe passes for 'barracks chatter' is overwhelmingly tame. You've not heard the half of it, I assure you. Even the worst among the rank and file will behave themselves around a skirt, especially if the lady in question is a pureblood."

"Perhaps if the lady had seen no military service. I imagine there is precious little they could say that would shock me."

He pushed himself upright and turned to face her, bracing his hands on either side and giving her precious little in the way of an escape route.

“I am very willing to test your hypothesis."

"I'm sure you are.” She kept her voice steady with some considerable effort. His mouth now lingered but a bare hairsbreadth apart from her own, and trying not to think about that fact was only causing her to hyperfocus on it.

"No time like the present,” he said, “and I am a man of science. Call it professional curiosity, if you like. May I?"

He'd called her bluff, and after her own assertion she felt she had little choice but to accept the consequences. At last Aurelia nodded, stiffly, trying to ignore the faintly triumphant curl to his answering smile.

His hand cupped her jaw, warm and callused fingertips trailing the shell of her ear, palm just barely cradling the soft skin over her throat. If he wished he could close his grip and tighten it, squeeze until she had no air to breathe- but the Echo would have warned her of any killing intent. Although it gave her no indication of any danger from him, it took a conscious effort not to bolt under his arm and flee the tent. Tension thrummed through her frame like a live wire.

Nero leaned inward until they were cheek to cheek. Her breath hitched for the briefest of moments when she felt the light scrape of stubble and caught his scent: some kind of aftershave perhaps, a bit stringent but not unpleasant, and the heat in her belly clenched tight. Lips lingered at her ear and she could feel the tribunus' warm breath fanning very lightly across her skin.

Then he began to speak.

Sotto voce, in their native Garlean tongue. A soft, soporific rumble, breath just slightly uneven- and not the mildly suggestive banter or off-color jokes she’d expected but a soldier's words of coupling, rough and lascivious and filthy.

All of it aimed at her.

Her grip on the table tightened as she willed herself to remain still through the impulse to slap him or shove him away in shocked mortification, as he well knew a proper young lady of gentle birth would have been expected to do. He knew, too; could sense her dismay, how much it cost her just to maintain some semblance of composure, and he wasn't fooled by it.

He was laughing at her, the bastard: she could hear the soft, breathy chuckles woven through his unending stream of vulgarities. Her face felt as though he had set it afire and she knew she was probably bright red right down to the roots of her hair---and then she felt the press of his mouth, a light kiss along the juncture of her jaw just beneath the earlobe.

A hot shudder of anticipation warped its way down her spine.

"So the eikon-slayer is undone by a bit of bawdy talk after all." He had not moved his lips away from her skin before speaking. She could feel the heat of his breath against her, warm and velvet and damp and gods, he was practically purring in her ear- "It would appear your theory has been disproven, hero."

She found herself unable to respond, mouth feeling suddenly very dry, swallowing with some effort. The clicking sound her throat made in her ears as she did was so, so loud.

And before she had quite managed to gather her wits again, Nero tol Scaeva straightened his posture and backed away from her position against the table with a mocking bow before tucking the journal in his coat pocket and strolling towards the tent flap. Turning his back on her, quite deliberately, and making his exit.

As though the entire exchange had never occurred.

She let out the exhalation she hadn't realized she was holding, sagging back against the sturdy oak surface of Rammbroes’ makeshift writing desk and attempting to ease her breathing into something resembling an even pace. He'd left her rattled and flustered and... burning. There was a deep, aching knot of tension that had formed in the base of her belly, one that would not fade quickly.

And she suspected that like as not, he’d only done it to prove a point, namely that his wits were malms beyond hers and her victory in the Praetorium had been but a simple fluke, a stroke of blind luck.

Small wonder Cid's hackles had been raised by his mere presence. Hells take him, the man was utterly insufferable.

After some time had passed (and the heat in her cheeks had faded), she slipped out of Rammbroes' "study" and saddled her chocobo. She had to talk to Cid about this, she decided, regardless of how sour his mood might be. Someone was going to have to keep an eye on Nero once they set foot in the tower, and given everyone else’s relative importance in the grand scheme of things, it might as well be her; she could endure his baiting so long as she made sure they had an understanding.

Aurelia didn’t see any sign of him on her way out of the camp. Doubtlessly he’d gone in search of someone or something else to act as his temporary source of entertainment until the expedition into the Tower was underway, she thought. She could not well decide if she was disappointed or relieved.

But if he planned to behave this way the entire time, it was going to be a very, very long expedition indeed.

#nero/wol #nero tol scaeva/warrior of light #another wip bites the dust #i'll leave what he actually said to your imaginations #stupid sexy garleans

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dictionarywrites · 6 years

Text

Brought To Justice: Chapter 3

Odin gives Loki a choice when he is brought back to Asgard: imprisonment, or execution. When Loki chooses the latter, Odin increases his punishment twofold, and Loki is sent back to Midgard in order to repay his debt. Bound by his own magic and forced to obey whatever order Steve Rogers lays out for him, Loki is forced to attempt a redemption he neither wants nor deserves.

Ao3 link. Steve Rogers/Loki. Slowburn. 18k. Rated M. WIP.

Send requests. Tip jar.

When one is an immortal, the passage time becomes somewhat immaterial. Every day that passes is scarcely an afterthought, a vague understanding that once more, the sun has risen and the sun has sunk beneath the distant horizon, and that another page of Loki’s meticulously kept diary has been filled from margin to margin.

The days on Midgard are shorter than those on Asgard – the planet is small, much smaller than Asgard, and there are only twenty-four hours to the day. It is somewhat frustrating, he must admit, trying to accustom to such short hours, particularly when the Avengers demand such time of him to train (and what a joke this “training” is), and when he has so much to learn, so much to try to learn, to take in.

May 6th, 2014

The Allspeak cannot teach Loki that which he does not already know, and there are thousands of non-familiar concepts, inventions, oddities of this strange little realm, and brands, and names!

“Lift it? What do you mean?” Loki asks, staring at the object before him. A long, steel pole rests upon a custom-made stand, with large weights on each side. There are three weights on each side, labelled 15kg, and Rogers crosses his arms over his chest. Loki moves toward it, tilting his head as he examines the object.

“You just lift it: lie down on your back and— Jesus!” Loki gently brings the rod from its moorings, feeling its weight over his palm. “That’s really that easy for you?”

“Why shouldn’t it be? I weigh three times as much as this.”

“Loki, you’re holding two hundred pounds in one hand. That’s not meant to be easy. Are you using magic?”

“No,” Loki answers. Rogers lets out a laugh, turns away from him, and puts his face in his hands.

May 7th, 2012

“Just try one,” Stark says, and Loki looks up from the packet in his hand.

“Do you want to know how many artificial colouring agents this contains?”

“I most certainly do not,” Stark replies.

“I’m not going to eat that.” Stark sighs, and he puts one of the gummy worms in his mouth.

“Fair enough,” Stark relents, and he snatches the packet back.

May 8th, 2012

“Don’t fucking touch me!”

“I won’t have to touch you if you’ll just stay still, Mr Barton,” Loki retorts, and Barton scrambles away from him, his arm dribbling blood, and Loki puts his left hand up in the air, freezing Barton bodily in his place. Struggle as he might, Barton cannot move so much as a muscle, except to breathe and let out gasping sounds of fear, and Loki lets out a trail of seiðr, healing the wound Barton had sustained when his bowstring had snapped.

Loki releases him, then, and Barton lunges at him, his bloody hand going for Loki’s throat – when he tries to squeeze, he finds the marble column of Loki’s throat will not so much as dimple. He lacks the strength.

“You can’t fucking do that,” Barton snaps.

“What, heal your wounds? I believe you’ll find that I can and, in fact, am bound to.” Clint smacks him across the face, his palm coming hard against the side of Loki’s cheek, and Loki doesn’t feel the need to pretend it hurts. It hurts Barton, though, and he lets out a short, soft sound of pain. Loki’s seiðr comes across the bruised flesh like water, and Clint hisses out a sound as he stalks away from Loki.

May 9th, 2012

“You like cats?” The cat butts against Loki’s cheek, its whiskers brushing over his cheeks and lips, and Loki smiles, softly, rubbing against the young feline’s softly vibrating gullet. Banner is watching him as if Loki is some sort of strange museum exhibit, and Loki glances from him back to the cat.

“My mother keeps cats,” Loki replies. “They’re so small on this planet.”

“How big are they on Asgard?”

“Bigger than you.” Bruce smiles, apparently forgetting for a moment that he oughtn’t smile at Loki.

“Really?”

“No. But bigger than her. Twice her size, perhaps,” Loki answers, and then he stands, walking beside the other man away from the alleyway.

May 10th, 2012

“Who’s this?” Petroyvek says, and Romanov turns to look at Loki. Loki, who has shoulder-length, red hair and pale pink skin, plump lips, and eyes of sapphire blue.

“Intern,” Romanov replies, and Loki breaks the hand of the “goon” that reaches for him.

May 11th, 2012

“You got mail, princess,” Stark says, and he passes an envelope into his hand. Loki stares at it, stares at the handwriting on the front of the envelope, looping to just say Loki. The back of the envelope shines with the golden gilt of the royal seal.

It turs to ashes in his hands, and Stark seems too scared to question him about it.

May 12th, 2012

Loki lies on his back, feeling the cool stone of the tower’s roof beneath his shoulders. He wears a loose button-up shirt, plain trousers, and he stares up at the stars above him. It makes him sick, to look at them.

They’re all wrong.

May 13th, 2012

“You want one?” Barton asks as he hands a ten-dollar bill to the man at the “hot dog” stand. Loki frowns, tilting his head to the side, and shakes his head.

May 14th, 2012

“What are the rules?” Loki asks, and Banner comes to stand a little closer to him, until Banner’s shoulder is brushing against Loki’s elbow. Has he truly forgotten what Loki is so soon? Truly come to trust him so very easily?

“They have to shoot for the basket with a trick-shot,” Banner explains. Rogers bounces the basketball off of a nearby rubbish bin, and it sails easily up into the air, dropping down into the net as Barton groans his frustration. “That means that the ball isn’t just going clean into the net, but they’re bouncing it off something or getting it in by a longshot.”

“Why it called Horse?” Banner opens his mouth, then closes it.

“I don’t know,” Banner says. “Five letters, I guess.”

May 15th, 2012

“What’re you reading?” Sergeant Rhodes asks, and Loki glances up at him.

“The New Testament,” Loki replies. Rhodes stares at him, blinking once. Twice.

“Good read?” he asks.

“I don’t understand why this is presented as one volume. Many of the gospels are repeated several times over, between the individual books. He was undoubtedly an eloquent speaker, regardless of his upbringing, but—”

“Who?” Rhodes asks.

“Christ.” Rhodes stares at Loki, for a long few moments, and then turns on his heel and walks away. Frowning, Loki turns back to the text.

May 16th, 2012

“You just gonna wear a new face every day, now?” Romanov asks him.

“Don’t you get tired of wearing the same one?” Loki asks. Romanov lets out a sound that is almost a laugh – it would be, were it not quite so derisive.

May 17th, 2012

“That’s Lucky,” Barton says.

“It’s a dog. How lucky can it be?” Loki replies evenly as he reads a Wikipedia article about bullet rounds. The article is badly parsed. Loki ought edit it. The dog pads forward, and it lays its head gently upon Loki’s knee, looking up at him with soulful brown eyes. Loki pats its head, gently, and it leaves him – mercifully – alone.

May 18th, 2012

“And now, downward dog…” the woman’s voice is low and soothing, and Loki examines the position on screen for a moment before carefully bringing himself into the position. Many of the poses are perhaps a little basic for his liking, so used as he is to performing his own stretching exercises and contortions, but he should rather begin with these poses and keep up with the instructions when he focuses on a more advanced video.

“You’re gonna become a yoga mom, huh?”

“What connotations does that label come with?” Loki replies, and he stands, examining the pose on the screen before adjusting it slightly, putting his leg over his head instead of at a triangular angle, and he hears Stark whistle.

“Jesus. You’re lucky Clint’s one of us, or he’d be getting you to join the circus.”

“I’m too pretty for the circus,” Loki replies mildly, and Stark laughs.

“Yeah, Pepper said the same thing,” he replies, and Loki flicks the video off, turning to look at the other man. “But with more indignation.” Loki smiles, wanly.

“I see,” he says.

May 19th, 2012

Loki speaks to nobody that day. He finds himself assailed by one of his melancholies, and he spends the entirety of the day in the confines of his quarters, sitting in the corner of the room, his back against the wall.

Another letter from Asgard, unread, rests upon his writing desk, and he doesn’t dare look at it.

May 20th, 2012

Loki lies back in the cold bath, letting out a short hiss of pain. His skin is red and covered in stretches of rash and pained, raised bumps, his ankles and neck swollen more than they should be. When the door bursts open, Loki is far from surprised, and he looks up at Rogers from within the bathwater.

Rogers stares into the depths of the water, his gaze running over Loki’s usually white flesh.

“What the Hell happened?”

“Doctor Banner asked me to join me for a swim in the basement pool. He thought I might be able to shave a few minutes from his lap time.”

“And?”

“I haven’t been swimming for months – I dived into the pool.”

“And?” Rogers presses, and Loki sighs, looking down at his patchy body. Even his face is marked with red spots and painful strips of skin, and he feels like stewing in his water as a bilgesnipe in swamp.

“It would seem I had an allergic reaction,” Loki replies. “Ms Potts forwarded me the list of the cleaning supplies used in the pool, and I would guess it’s the potassium peroxymonosulfate. It’s an oxidizing agent introduced to pools to balance against the amount of chlorine.”

“I thought you were an alien,” Rogers says.

“Aliens have allergies,” Loki replies. “Do you think I lack an immune system as well?” Rogers crosses his arms over his chest, taking a step forward, and his gaze flits downward, stopping between Loki’s legs. His blond brows furrow, and Loki says, for a second time, “Alien.”

“Thor doesn’t look like that,” Rogers murmurs. “And Thor has hair.” If Loki felt nervous about this particular situation, perhaps he would press his thighs together and hide the shape of his organs, but the pain is too widespread to move with such a hurry, and Rogers doesn’t seem the type to become so hung up on such minor details.

“Thor and I are different species,” Loki points out. “As I believe I’ve told you before.”

“That hurt?”

“Terribly.” Loki sighs, softly, and tries to dip himself lower into the water. It becomes cloudy with ice, and Loki relaxes slightly in the freezing press of it against his skin. “My apologies. I ought have tested the waters first.”

“Don’t apologize,” Rogers says, and then he turns to go.

May 21st, 2012

“You ever try some, Loki? Long-pig?” Rhodes asks, and Loki looks across the table at him. Loki had been somewhat nervous about settling at the table with the marks and redness still visible on his face and neck, on the backs of his hands, but no one has mentioned it. If anything, everyone is being almost kind.

“My advice would be not to ask questions you don’t want the answers to,” Loki replies quietly. Rhodes stares at him, then grins, leaning across the table.

“You haven’t,” he says. “You haven’t!”

“You oughtn’t look so excited,” Loki says. “From your perspective, this is cannibalism.”

“How long ago was it? What, a thousand years ago? Two thousand?”

“You can’t just drop out a hint you’ve eaten people and not spill the beans,” Barton jumps in, pushing his sickly-sweet cake aside, and Loki looks around at all of them. Even Rogers looks rather curious, and Loki wonders why he had so overestimated the human capacity for disgust amongst these strange little creatures.

“Human flesh was overly rich and fatty in Nippur, two thousand years ago. I certainly wouldn’t recommend it now.”

“Nippur?” Romanov repeats. “What, in Iraq?”

“It wasn’t called Iraq back then,” Loki murmurs, and then he sets his knife and fork down. “I was young, impulsive. I had learned new spells that very week, and my mind was electrified by the magic within me, driving me nearly feral.”

“So you ate him?” Stark asks, and Loki exhales.

“He was a soothsayer. He told me I should convert.”

“What to?” Banner asks.

“I never found out,” Loki replies, mildly. “I devoured his heart from his chest and roasted his tongue on a spit.”

“Gross,” Barton says. “You eat tongue?” Loki puts his face in his hands, and when the laugh sounds from the around the table, he feels neither small, nor pathetic. The laughter is good-natured, and warm, and Loki feels – for a second – as if he is at home.

May 22nd, 2012

“Good morning, Colonel Fury – I suppose you’re here to see Captain Rogers,” Loki says. “How are you?”

“Shut the fuck up,” Fury retorts as he sails past Loki, and Loki shrugs his shoulders, returning to his book.

May 23rd, 2012

“You wanna come?” Barton asks. Loki glances up from the laptop on the table before him, staring at the other man, and he slowly moves to stand. “What? We’re going to the movies.” Loki takes a few steps forward, examining Barton carefully, and despite how close Loki comes to him, despite how much Barton should fear him, he does not flinch away. He looks up at Loki, his expression a mask of perplexity.

“Your habit of burying trauma in humour and friendly ribaldry is toxic to you,” Loki says, very quietly. Barton leans back, his eyes widening slightly. “Go to the cinema with Ms Romanov, Mr Barton. Put this behind you.”

“What, you think you’re too good to be friends with me?”

“Mr Barton,” Loki says, emphatically. “It is precisely the opposite.” Barton walks away from him, and Loki slowly shakes his head.

May 24th, 2012

“Do a hundred more,” Rogers says. Loki is partway to his feet when Rogers gives the order, and Loki sighs, dropping down onto his palms once again and beginning the round of push-ups once again. “What did you tell him?”

“I told him he should stop attempting to be my friend,” Loki says. “He oughtn’t forget what this is.” Rogers’ foot rests against Loki’s shoulder, and he begins to place his weight upon Loki’s back, pressing down with some of his inhuman strength, and the push-ups become marginally more difficult.

“This is your redemption, Loki. Get your head out of your ass and take it.” A shiver runs down Loki’s spine, and he bites it down, focusing on the burn in his arms, the ache in his palms.

May 25th, 2012

“Pietro Maximoff,” the man says, and when he puts out his hand, Loki takes it. “This is my sister, Wanda.”

“Put your magic away,” she says, and Loki gives a small bow of his head, his expression apologetic. His seiðr is normally stretched about him, tendrils comfortably taking in that which can be felt upon the air – enough, for example, to realize that neither twin is as young as they seem to be, to realize that they are older than they seem. She puts out her hand, and Loki takes it, leaning and pressing a kiss to the backs of her fingers, which are a beautiful brown. “You think I’ll be charmed by this?”

“Of course not,” Loki murmurs, and he looks between the two of them, feeling a soft smile come to his face. “But I know royalty when I see it.” Her brown eyes widen, and immediately her brother steps in, his fists clenched at his sides, and Loki reaches for his hand as well, holding it tightly. His blood runs so fast beneath his skin that Loki can feel it like the thrum of a livewire, and Loki looks between the both of them.

“You look like—”

“My father, yes, I know,” Maximoff mutters. So these are two of the children of the mighty Magneto – a king in his own right, Loki thinks, or he would be. Loki can feel the twist and tingle of reality-bending magic around Wanda’s energy, clinging to her skin like stardust. Loki will only have to use their forenames: it is so complicated with twins.

“Joaquin Phoenix,” Loki replies. “Tony Stark had me watch a film that starred him.”

“I don’t watch TV,” he says, lowly. “Nor film.”

“I don’t care for it,” Loki admits. Wanda pulls her hand away, but Pietro doesn’t: he lets his hand remain in Loki’s grip, and Loki leans, brushing his lips across his fingers too. If it shocks him, it doesn’t show on the other man’s face.

“Should I leave you two alone?” Wanda asks, and Loki smiles.

“If he wants you to.” Pietro withdraws his hand, squinting slightly at Loki, and Loki cannot help the way he grins.

May 26th, 2012

“You got another letter,” Tony says. “You want me to give it to you, or are you just gonna burn it again?” Loki hesitates, looking at the envelope in Tony’s hand, and then he takes it, opening up the envelope and looking at the paper within. Fragments of the wax seal cling to his fingernails, but he barely notices as he looks at the two pages, one written in his mother’s careful script, the other in his brother’s ugly scrawl.

He looks between the two of them, feeling his heart pound in his chest.

“You expected three letters?”

“No,” Loki answers. “But I hoped.”

May 27th, 2012

Dearest brother,

Dear Thor,

Thor,

Dearest Thor,

The nib of Loki’s pen crumples beneath the press of Loki’s hand to the page, and Loki sets it aside, then begins reading the Wikipedia article on the previous iterations of the Avengers Initiative. The Maximoffs have been involved before, back in the seventies, and Loki runs his hand through his hair as he reads through the page before him.

Dear Loki, reads the letter open upon Loki’s table, and Loki cannot help the way his gaze is drawn to it. Loki had sent his reply to his mother yesterday, but Thor’s… Brother, pray, know first of all that I forgive you, whole-heartedly, and with all the love I have to hand. Do not doubt that I adore you, even now: I miss you with every day that passes, and I wish only to forge our bond anew.

Loki closes his laptop, closes his eyes, and tips his head toward the ceiling.

“Loki! Am I teaching you how to make this masala or not?” comes a call from down the hall – Rhodes is in the kitchen, waiting for him, and Loki is desperately glad for the distraction.

May 28th, 2012

“Hard, isn’t it?” Maximoff asks across the table.

“What?” Loki asks.

“Having to be a hero when you know you’re not one.” Loki smiles.

“There are similarities between our situations, of course. For example, we both have blue eyes and prominent noses.” Maximoff laughs. There’s something uncanny about the way he moves, perhaps because he is naturally inclined to moving so very fast, because he is slowing himself down for Loki’s benefit, as he does everyone else.

“Pass the salad,” Romanov says, and Loki does.

“You aren’t an Avenger,” Loki murmurs. “You still have a contract with the X-Factor, do you not?”

“You aren’t an Avenger either,” Maximoff replies. “Yet.” Loki smiles.

“No. I’m not.”

May 29th, 2012

Dearest Thor,

I regret my haste in avoiding the first letters yourself and Mother sent to me: I hope you know I did not mean to be uncaring, or unfeeling. I was driven by fear alone, unable to bear glancing at the parchments I thought would condemn me ever more than I already am condemned… And I was wrong to doubt you.

The events of New York, I would tell you— They were not entirely within my control. I would not ask you sympathize with me, for I still made the choice to attack your Avengers, still laid out a plan that would harm your few friends on Earth.

I am safe, brother, and I am well. Captain Rogers treats me well, although he has no obligation to do so, and I feel almost comfortable in my position here. I am not a hero at my core: it does not come naturally to me to be self-sacrificing, to be as you are. And yet my very magic binds me in my bones, makes me become accustomed to my situation in a way I would not without it.

I have always struggled, as you know, in search of happiness. I have seen Angrboða go before me to Hel; I have felt my children taken from me; I have parted ways with Sigyn, after the death of our two boys. I feel ever adrift on a vast ocean, unsinking, with no shore in sight.

Let me be as you are. Let me try.

With all my love, Your brother in bond if not blood, Loki

-----✪-✪-✪-Ⓐ -✪-✪-✪-----

Steve stands in the middle of Central Park, sunglasses balanced on his nose to protect from the glare of the sun. It isn’t as warm as it looks, but Steve just wears a light t-shirt and a pair of shorts, already having done his morning jog. Once again, the young black guy – another soldier, is right in front of him, and he is approaching Steve with a smile on his face.

“Out here making me look bad again, huh?”

“I don’t need to make you look bad,” Steve replies, putting his hand out to shake, his dossier held at his side, and the soldier takes it firm in his own hand. “You do that all on your own.”

“Sam Wilson,” the soldier says, and Steve smiles.

“Steve Rogers.”

“Uh, yeah, I know. You saved New York a month ago?” Steve shrugs his shoulders, feigning a lack of care, and he and Sam then chuckle together, sharing a laugh. Steve watches as Sam pulls his water bottle up to his lips, taking a long drink before he glances at the dossier in Steve’s left hand.

“What’s that? Paperwork?”

“Something like that,” Steve says, and he turns his head. The young man that comes running toward them looks to be in his early twenties, his skin fair, his eyes a soft, sea-green. He’s running fast, and this is his fifteenth lap of the park, but he still hasn’t broken a sweat. Skidding to a stop in front of them, Steve reaches back, grabbing a bottle off the bench and passing it over – the runner takes a short sip, then reaches up, pushing his red hair out of his eyes. “You’re not sweating. Isn’t this hot weather for you?”

“I don’t sweat, Captain Rogers,” the runner replies, and Steve looks down at the folder.

“Did you write that down?”

“Why would I write that down? Is it important that I sweat?”

“Do another lap,” Steve says.

“But I—”

“Go!” Tossing the bottle back to Steve, Loki takes off, and Steve grabs a pen out of pocket, scribbling “doesn’t sweat” at the top of the page he’s on. Loki had passed the dossier onto Steve two days after he’d arrived, handwritten with a fucking index at the back, but the thing is like a damned book, and Steve has barely read halfway through it.

“Training new super soldiers?” Sam asks, his lips quirking into an easy smile, and Steve exhales slowly, shaking his head. They’d decided the day after Loki had touched back down on Earth to keep the situation secret from the public for now – better to have him appear as someone else for now, and to wait until they’d fully catalogued what the guy could or couldn’t do before they put him in the field and started selling him as a guy out for redemption.

“He’s not in the same league as super soldiers,” Steve says, and Sam laughs, clapping him on the shoulder.

“Shit,” Sam says, looking down the trail Loki had taken. “Kid’s giving you a run for your money?” This shouldn’t be part of Steve’s purview right about now. Steve should be chilling out, making a list of the stuff he still needs to learn about this modern new world – like Loki is – and he isn’t. Tony is taking over the Avengers management, and Steve… Steve has his hands full with Loki.

“You have no idea. Doesn’t even realise he’s supposed to be sweating. You know how many laps he’s done?”

“How many?”

“That’s his sixteenth.”

“Jeeze,” Sam says. “How do you—” There’s a loud, crackling bang on the air, sounding heavily on the warm breeze, and Steve’s head whips in the direction of the gunshot. Immediately, he and Sam are running toward it, Sam falling behind as Steve’s comparative speed kicks in, and Steve zones on the sound of a struggle, coming into a wooded area of Central Park and scrambling through some thick bushes.

“I told you to stick to the path!”

“You also told me I had to help people in danger!” Loki snaps back, and he bends his head, his red hair shining in the light that dapples in through the trees above their head. The girl across his lap has deep brown skin and natural hair, a ring through her nose: Loki is carefully pushing her hair aside to work on the wound on the side of her skull. Steve can see that the bullet has glanced off the side of the girl’s head, and he glances around for the shooter, listening for pounding feet.

There are none.

He kneels down beside her, and he stares as Loki weaves his magic into the flesh, rebuilding it before Steve’s eyes, building up the fragmented skull. Loki has his palm tangled in her hair, his gaze focused, but far away, and Steve just wishes he’d had the time to get to the bit in the dossier on Loki’s healing.

“She gonna be okay?”

“She’ll be fine,” Loki answers, and he taps the girl’s face, gently. She stirs, her eyes opening, and she shocks in her place, but he shushes her in a very soft, low voice. “I’m so sorry for shocking you.”

“Eli had a gun, he was gonna— Shit—”

“Sit up carefully,” Loki instructs, and Steve leans back, his hands on his knees as the girl comes up into a sitting position, looking around her wildly. Behind Steve, he feels Sam’s steps come up behind him, but Steve doesn’t even need to put up a hand to stop for him to get the message.

“What happened? Where is he? He was waving this gun around, talking about… Shit, I don’t even know…” She trails off, and Steve watches the way Loki’s hand settles on her arm.

“He ran,” Loki murmurs. “What’s your name?”

“Vanessa,” she says. She’s breathing heavily, and for the first time, she turns to look at Steve. Her lips part, her eyes widening slightly.

“You fainted,” Loki murmurs quietly. “It’s an understandable reaction – when we’re given a big shock, sometimes our vagus nerve, which connects our lungs and heart to our brain, is prompted by the sudden change in blood pressure, and we lose consciousness in a fainting spell. Your lovely hair cushioned the blow quite nicely.” Despite the shock of the situation, Steve can see Vanessa’s lips twitch, and she smiles.

“You saved me. I remember— He was about to pull the trigger.”

“Just happenstance, I fear,” Loki says mildly, patting her shoulder once more. “Very lucky, too – he might have shot you.” Standing, he offers her his hand to help her up, and she lets out a short, nervous sound. “You should call someone. Your mother – a family member. You oughtn’t be alone.”

“Yeah, I, I’ll call my mom. Thanks, uh— What’s your name?”

“Hamish,” Loki says smoothly. “Have a good day, Vanessa. Stay safe.” It doesn’t look exactly like she wants to go – Steve can see the curiosity on her face, the way she wants to linger, but the way Loki suggests stuff, it comes across as… Not an imperative, but a push, at least, and Steve has to wonder if there is magic in the words themselves. Steve can see Vanessa tap a number into her phone and hold it to her ear as she keeps on walking, and Loki sits back on his heels.

“Hamish, huh?” Sam says. “What, you English?”

“Samuel, is it? Who are you, the son of Hannah?”

“Don’t get nasty with strangers,” Steve mutters under his breath, knowing Loki will hear him, and Loki closes his mouth shut, crossing his arms over his chest. “And don’t use the Bible to do it, people will think you’re some crazy church guy.”

“Nah, my mom was called Deborah. I’m the son of Paul, though,” Sam says, not seeming too offended, and he puts his hand out to shake. Loki takes it, politely. “Guy ran off?”

“No,” Loki replies, and he glances to Steve, asking silent permission. Praying Loki isn’t going to show them a body, Steve nods his head. Loki takes a few more steps away from them, reaching into some thick hawthorn bushes, and he drags out the guy inside. Eli, a white boy with a California tan, is out cold, and in pulling him out from the bushes, Loki has caught his forehead on the hawthorn – a thin trickle of blood is coming away from his brow. Loki frowns, reaching down to heal it, but Steve catches his arm, giving a slow shake of his head.

“We’ll take him to the station,” Steve says, and Loki reaches into the bushes, using a handkerchief to hold the gun.

“Glock,” Loki says.

“Very good,” Steve says, then looks at Loki expectantly, arching his eyebrows. Loki looks between Steve and Sam once again, and Steve says, “It’s fine. Tell me what it is.”

“It’s a fourth-generation Glock 17. Magazine capacity of 17, and it’s a semi-automatic handgun, popular with law enforcement… No serial number: it’s been scratched off.”

“What rounds does it take?” Sam asks.

“9 by 19mm rounds – Parabellum. One of the most popular rounds in the world, actually, particularly for military use – it was designed by Georg Luger in 1902 and the name actually derives from the Latin: si vas pacem, para bellum: if you seek peace, prepare for war. I was just reading last night—” Christ, the man takes in information like a sponge. Tony had shown him Wikipedia in the first week he was here, and the guy just takes in page after page of information – seemingly to memorise it.

“That’s enough,” Steve says, and Loki does.

“You in the army?” Sam asks.

“Goodness no,” Loki replies, and when Steve stares at him, he amends, unconvincingly, “I’ve not the wherewithal for such hardship.”

“I’ll see you, Sam,” Steve says, and Sam presses a piece of paper into his hand – a phone number. “You picking me up?”

“Not without a little more benchwork,” Sam replies: Steve half grins, despite himself, and Sam gives him a mock salute as he heads off, and Steve can’t help but watch him go. Then, he turns his head: Loki’s lips are twisted in a sour scowl, and he stares down at the man prone on the ground before them.

“I wasn’t expecting this situation, Captain Rogers,” Loki murmurs quietly. A little apprehension shows on the pale face of Hamish Adams, and Loki adds, “She let out a sort of half-scream, but his hand had clapped over her mouth – if I hadn’t stepped in, she surely would have—”

“You don’t have to justify it,” Steve says. “You made the right call. Did he see anything?”

“No, I came up behind them. My reflexes weren’t quite fast enough, but any slower and the bullet—”

“Yeah, I get you,” Steve says. “Let’s go.”

-----✪-✪-✪-Ⓐ -✪-✪-✪-----

“Where’ve you been?” Tony asks, and Bruce sighs, slowly sinking into the mesh chair across from Tony. They’re at a Jewish deli Happy had recommended, and Tony pushes the cup of coffee waiting for Bruce across the table to him, watching the other man take the drink and take a long, slow sip. Bruce is dressed in a green shirt, and Tony is dressed in slacks and a t-shirt, his sunglasses hiding a good amount of his face from view as he leans back in the seat.

“The police station, and then Avengers Tower,” Bruce murmurs. “Steve needed to stick around and give more statements, but he wanted someone to walk Loki back to the Tower, and Clint wouldn’t do it.”

“You blame him?” Clint is avoiding Loki entirely now, barely even looking at the guy if it can be avoided, and Tony only vaguely knows what the Hell passed between them.

“No,” Bruce replies. “I was kinda apprehensive, if I’m honest.”

“What did you talk about?” Tony asks, and Bruce runs his fingers through his hair, its waves giving way under his hand. “Let me guess. He didn’t say a word.”

“No, no, he did,” Bruce says, shaking his head. “Told me the whole story. He was jogging in the park – Steve’s getting him to do laps – and as he hears this shout of surprise, some girl crying out. So he busts through the bushes, and sees this guy, her boyfriend – Eli Henderson – with a Glock in his hand, ready to shoot this poor girl’s brains out. Turns out this guy thought she was having sex with her psych professor, and was ready to kill her over it – completely unfounded, apparently – and Loki stepped in. Caught the gun out of the guy’s hand just as he was shooting, so that the bullet just grazed her instead of going right through her face, knocked Henderson out…” Bruce rubs his temples, slowly shaking his head. “I dunno. Something just doesn’t sit right with me about the whole thing.”

“What do you mean?” Tony asks, and Bruce sighs.

“Steve was glad. Excited, even – Loki stepped in and saved somebody without a thought. But Loki, God, the guy might as well be telling me about a Wiki article he read. It’s like it doesn’t matter to him at all. I’m not expecting him to be Mr Fantastic overnight, but…” Bruce trails off, and he pushes his glasses up his nose. Tony can see the calmness in him, the surprising ease with which he conducts himself – this isn’t a guy frightened of unleashing the Hulk at any second. Not right now, anyway. “I keep forgetting he’s an alien.”

“Me too,” Tony murmurs. “You think it’s ever gonna work? Him as one of us?”

“I don’t know,” Bruce says, tapping his fingers against the desk. “You and Steve are working out a whole initiative, right? Some of the local heroes… I heard you were gonna poach some of the X-Men. What, the Maximoffs aren’t enough for you?”

“We only have one of the Maximoffs, and… It’s not poaching if they come to us,” Tony replies, and Bruce grins.

“You sound like Jen,” Bruce says, and Tony gasps woundedly, putting his hand over the Arc Reactor dully shining from beneath his shirt.

“Me? Sounding like a lawyer? That’s a horrible thing to say.” Tony frowns. “Wait, no, she’s also your cousin, and that’s even worse. I don’t want to be related to you.”

“Worried you’ll turn green?”

“Worried I’ll turn nerdy.” Bruce laughs, showing all of his teeth, and Tony smiles to see him smile. “I’ll talk to him, Bruce. See… What’s up.”

-----✪-✪-✪-Ⓐ -✪-✪-✪-----

Loki sits in the corner of the common room, sitting straight-backed on a dining chair, his feet planted on the ground, his gaze on his laptop screen. It’s incredible, Tony thinks, how quickly he’s picked it up – his fingers flash across the keys as if he’s been touch-typing for years, and as he reads page after page he takes careful notes in a leather-bound diary, his pen (we’re past the quill, now, huh?) leaving curving lines over the parchment. He sits right next to the wide windows – Tony’s noticed he seems to be drawn to spaces where he can survey a lot at once, like a damned cat.

“You can have an armchair, you know,” Tony calls as he comes into the common room, his hands in his pockets, his head tilted slightly to the side. Loki looks up from the laptop, his lips parting. “Or the couch. Maybe a beanbag.”

“Beanbag,” Loki repeats, and Tony watches his fingers flash across the keys, press Enter… Loki’s face is a mask of disapproval. “That seems very undignified.”

“That’s life on Earth for ya, your highness. It’s indignity all the way to the top.”

“I’m not a prince any more, Mr Stark,” Loki replies evenly. Tony wonders if there will come a point where Loki calls any of them by their first names, or if they’re going to eternally be “Captain Rogers,” “Mr Stark” and “Doctor Banner.” He looks back to his laptop, then turns his head sidelong, his gaze settling on Tony’s face. “Have you need of me?”

“Wanted to ask how your day went,” Tony replies, mildly. “Bruce says you got into the hero business a little early.”

“Oh, that,” Loki says dismissively, and he stands from the chair, setting his laptop and his notebook aside. He wears a tight-fitting, light blue shirt that’s open at the collar, paired with black trousers that are tight at his hips and calves, and his hair is tied messily in a loose bun. Tony’ll give it to him – the guy blends into the New York Streets so easily that even with the exact same face he wore to pulverize the city a month ago, nobody notices him. “I was obeying orders.”

“You didn’t have to save that girl,” Tony says. “Didn’t have to knock the guy out so Steve could take him to the cops. Didn’t have to do any of it.”

“Fourteen days ago, Captain Rogers: if you see someone in immediate danger, and there’s not enough time to tell someone else, step in. Save them if you can. Nineteen days ago, Captain Rogers: don’t kill anybody, but knock someone peacefully out if they’re getting violent. Eight days ago, you: you’re meant to be a hero, now, Loki, and you can’t just stand by if someone’s getting hurt.” Tony stares at him, and Loki stares back.

“Well,” he says, trying to grab at something to say in response to that, “Didn’t it feel good?”

“What?”

“You saved her,” Tony says. “You saved that girl’s life. Doesn’t that make you feel good?” Loki tilts his head to the side, seeming to consider the thought. Jesus, he is alien sometimes. He’s almost robotic, the way he thinks about this simple question, but Tony isn’t gonna hold that against him.

“No,” he says. “I don’t feel anything about it. She wasn’t important.”

“Of course she was important,” Tony says, reaching out and touching the side of Loki’s arm, and Loki looks down at the touch of his hand as if Tony is poking him with a stick, but Tony powers through. “Listen, Loki, that kid is gonna live a long life, live happily, all because you didn’t let that stupid kid murder her just ‘cause he could.”

“Long life?” Loki lets out a derisive sound. He curls his lip in obvious disgust, and he crosses his arms tightly over his chest.

“Well, not by your standards, sure, but by hers,” Tony says, trying to be patient, but Loki cuts him off before he can say anything.

“No, she isn’t,” Loki retorts.

“What’s that supposed to mean?”

“Brain tumour. Occipital lobe. I would estimate a life expectancy of six months, at most.” Loki’s voice is cold, clinical, and Tony stares at him, unable to say anything at all. Loki clenches his fists at his side, setting his jaw. “What was the point of it? What’s the point of saving her if she’s going to die anyway?”

“It’s okay,” Tony says softly, and Loki’s gaze becomes fiery, his breathing heavy.

“You think I care? About that pathetic little girl, I could—”

“It’s okay,” Tony repeats, and he puts both of his hands on Loki’s shoulders, holding him tightly in place. “Calm down.”

“I am calm!” Loki growls, and Tony tightens his grip as he feels Loki’s shoulders shake, holding him in his place. Loki trembles visibly, his breaths coming fast and heavy, and he sets his jaw. “I’m going to be—” Tony is already stepping aside, and Loki’s light lunch spatters loudly into the pail he conjures from the air at large. Jesus Christ. Where’s Steve when you need him?

“You okay?” Clint asks from the doorway, and Tony gives the other guy a nix motion, shaking his head and drawing his hand over his neck, but Clint ignores him, his eagle-eyed gaze on Loki. His whole body convulses as he gags, and when he finally stops, the bucket bleeding away from his hands like a hologram deconstructing, his face is a chalky white. “What happened?”

Loki says nothing. Stares down at the carpet of the little room, and then walks away. Tony heads over to the other side of the room, closing his laptop and putting his notebook on top of it, ready to take them back into Loki’s room.

“Is he sick again?” Clint asks, and Tony shakes his head. He turns to look at Clint, pressing his lips together for a moment, and Tony reaches out, touching Clint’s shoulder. “Not more allergies?”

“You hear he saved that kid?”

“Yeah.”

“She’s dying.” Barton lets out a low sound, shaking his head, and he runs his hand through his blond hair.

“Shit, man. That’s rough. He tell her?”

“No, I don’t think so,” Tony mutters. “We’ll leave him for a while. Let him… Chill. You and him, what’s up with that?” Clint sighs.

“He says I’m prone to self-sabotage.”

“Your therapist agrees, right?”

“I don’t have a therapist.”

“You probably should, buddy.”

“I’ll go if you will,” Clint replies, and Tony laughs.

“You got me, Legolas. Let’s stay unhealthy together.” Clint puts up one first, and Tony – almost without thinking – bumps his own against it. Doesn’t play well with others, Tony’s ass.

-----✪-✪-✪-Ⓐ -✪-✪-✪-----

When Steve enters Loki’s bedroom, Loki is on the floor in front of his window, his head between his legs, his fingers interlocked against the back of his skull, palms beneath his ears. “Rhodey teach you the brace position?”

“Get out.”

“Yeah, I’ll go where I want,” Steve replies, kicking the door shut behind him. “Vanessa Pearson has a brain tumour?”

“Mmm.”

“And you want us to feel sorry for you?” Loki’s head pops up from between his knees, his pale, chalky face a mask of anger.

“What? No, I—”

“Then walk it the Hell off!” Steve says, and Loki stands, his hands clenched into fists at his sides. “You listen to me, and you listen to me now. You don’t get to decide how long people live. You get a chance to save somebody, you’re gonna take it, and you’re gonna smile about it afterwards.”

“I—”

“Smile,” Steve orders, and Steve feels his stomach turn as Loki’s lips curve into a smile, his teeth showing, his thin lips pink in the light. The smile doesn’t reach his eyes, which are full of rage, and Steve says, lowering his voice, “You aren’t a god any more, Loki. You do the job, you get it done, and that’s enough. You hear me? That’s all you can do.”

“But if it doesn’t matter—”

“Loki, it does matter,” Steve interrupts him. “Six months doesn’t mean anything to you – you have millennia behind you, and I bet you the days feel like nothing to you. But to her? To that girl? They could mean everything. You don’t kill people any more, okay? And if you have the chance to save somebody and you don’t take it, you may as well be killing them. You can stop smiling.” The expression bleeds from Loki’s face, and Loki reaches up, tracing the curve of his own lips. “I’m not gonna order you to feel good, Loki, but I could. Do you understand me?”

Loki’s smile comes back. It’s the barest ghost of an expression, and he takes a slow step forward, closing the space between the two of them, and his eyes are alight with energy.

“What?”

“I’ve suddenly found some respect for you,” Loki murmurs.

“Suddenly, huh?” Loki is too close. He’s barely an inch or two in front of Steve, now, so close that Steve can smell the subtle cologne he’s started using, so close that Steve should be able to smell the vomit on his breath, but obviously Loki has washed his mouth out. Probably did it before he lay down on the ground like this. “What do you think you’re doing?”

“Are you going to call him?” Loki asks. His eyes shift slightly as they search Steve’s face for some sort of response. “Steve?”

“You think I shouldn’t?”

“He’s certainly handsome,” Loki murmurs.

“Not what I asked.” Loki’s lips part, and he leans in, leans closer, until his lips brush against Steve’s, and Loki’s mouth is as cold as ice, coming against Steve’s own skin like he’s just chilled them on something first. Steve feels a tingle start in the base of his spine, but he keeps his expression completely impassive, looking Loki right in the face. Hesitation might not be in Loki’s nature, but it shows on his face now.

“May I?” he asks in a whisper.

“You asking me as a friend, or as your commanding officer?”

“We’re not friends,” Loki says, seemingly reflexively, and Steve begins to walk away, putting his hand on the door – he expects Loki to protest, expects him to say something else, or chase after him, grab him, even. He doesn’t.

“You’re right,” Steve says, and he closes the door behind him.

-----✪-✪-✪-Ⓐ -✪-✪-✪-----

Loki stands in his bedroom, his arms held loosely in front of his chest, his gaze focused on the door. His mouth is dryer than it ought be, and the room feels uncomfortably hot, clinging to his skin, needling at it.

Loki climbs onto his bed, and he tastes the rejection and the power Rogers had wielded over him at once. Vanessa Pearson couldn’t be further from his mind.

#steve rogers x loki #loki x steve rogers #marvel #mcu #fanfic #dictionary writes #LISTEN #this AU is killing me

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