#and he's normally so self-assured but he fucked it up spectacularly the first go around- good job baby-

[feroluce]

When Al Haitham dreams, it's in shades of sandy blonde and red, metallic gold and feather-blue. His nightmares are colored much the same.

Kaveh leisurely strolls ahead of him, shoes leaving deep treads in the soft desert sand. He keeps a careful distance, arms length, and in return Al Haitham keeps an eye on him, the other man's back dead center in his sights.

He curses the sand in his boots and the long line of footprints he steps into, already the exact shape of the soles of his shoes.

They aren't lost. Al Haitham knows where they are. They've been here before. They are still here.

Kaveh doesn't watch their feet. His head is constantly tipped back with his eyes on the stars and their constellations (of which Al Haitham only knows two, Vultur Volans and Paradisaea). He'll walk right into a cactus like that. Al Haitham yells ahead for him to watch where he's going.

Kaveh reaches up to touch the side of his head in a strange motion, but otherwise there's no acknowledgement. They press on into the dark of night.

Something squelches beneath Al Haitham's boot.

It stops him short, pulls his attention like a magnet and as much as he wants to, he can't ignore it. He doesn't want to lose any more ground. But something won't let him move on. Al Haitham watches as red seeps into the golden sand, spills beyond the border of his bootprint until he slides his foot aside.

It's an ear.

It's a human ear, and there's a heavy earring attached, metallic gold, gems red and green, a familiar shape, a familiar shade-

Al Haitham opens his mouth to yell. Chokes. Swallows the lump in his throat as he quickly restarts his pace. Tries again.

"Hey!"

Another squelch under a hurried footstep. He doesn't stop to look. Al Haitham is pretty sure he knows what it is.

"Kaveh, hey!"

The path becomes littered, little slices and small pieces, fingertips and knuckles, Kaveh's arms once held casually behind his back now strewn along the sands. Every time Al Haitham extends his hand to him, reality warps and bends like the twisted image in a broken mirror, lines mismatched and edges jagged. Kaveh flits just beyond his grasp, fleeting fae, no longer able to hear him or to reach out to him. Al Haitham can only grit his teeth and follow.

His right foot marches forward. His left follows. His right again. His left suddenly doesn't follow, and Al Haitham is thrown off balance and pitches forward, swinging his arms outward to land on his palms and keep his face off the ground, because he's been in the desert enough times to know what a foot suddenly being stuck can mean.

Quicksand.

Al Haitham curses and swears in just about every language he knows as he tries to spread his weight as evenly as possible, stay afloat at the top of it because if he sinks, he knows he'll be done for, and shit, Kaveh.

His neck cranes uncomfortably in his search, Kaveh had only been a few feet in front of him, he can't be sunk much further, and he's in the desert much more often than Al Haitham anyway, he'll be familiar with what to do-

Kaveh stands in front of him, empty sleeves fluttering loose. Still just out of his grasp, still watching the stars. The quicksand is already up to his calves.

"Say, Al Haitham..." It's the first he's spoken this whole time. His voice resonates somewhere deeply nostalgic in Al Haitham's chest, produces a ripple that momentarily stuns his heart.

Kaveh is sinking.

Al Haitham stretches out on his belly as far as he's able, it's quickly up to his knees, Kaveh isn't even trying to redistribute his weight or pull himself out, it's at his thighs, Al Haitham sucks in a breath and yells for him, his hips, yells louder, his waist, Al Haitham's trembling fingertips can almost reach, his chest, Kaveh drops level with him, quicksand about his neck like a noose.

Kaveh's head tips back, back, impossibly far back, until it hangs, angle awkward, and he's looking right past Al Haitham with his tired smile and gouged, blinded sockets full of starlight.

"Do you believe in karma?"

The quicksand swallows him entirely and Al Haitham dives, shoves his arms deep and pushes off with the one foot he'd had left on safe ground, because he can't, he can't, it's not the same without Kaveh, not anymore, he needs him, no one else keeps him sharp, no one else challenges him like Kaveh, if he can just grab him, if he can just pull him back up-

Al Haitham thrashes, against the sands, against gravity, against the hardwood of his bedroom floor. Clumsily scrubs the back of his hand across his face to rub the grit of quicksand and sleep out of his eyes.

Sometimes he thinks he preferred it when the Akasha was still harvesting his dreams.

He pops his head out from under his weighted blanket and lays where he'd fallen out of bed for a moment, blinking blearily against the lamplight shining from his desk in the corner. Deep breaths. His consciousness shifts along the blurred line of nightmare and reality, crosses over the slow transition into wakeful awareness.

He's home, Kaveh is home. It's dark out. The house is dead silent.

He's just going to go check, he tells himself as he peels himself out of his sweat-soaked shirt and roots around for a replacement. He's already losing memories of his nightmare, the details spilling away from him like wet ink, but he knows he needs to see Kaveh. It'll feel better to do something, anything, than try to go straight back to sleep.

He's quiet when he slips out of his bedroom door, because they both keep late hours but their bedrooms are right next to each other, and Al Haitham will never hear the end of it if he wakes his roommate up.

Lights off, door shut. Nothing conclusive. He moves out to the main room.

Kaveh sits on one of those ridiculous sofas he'd ordered three of for some reason, back to him as he tucks a lock of hair behind his ear. A mostly-empty wine bottle stands tall on the table, next to the cobbled-together remains of an architectural model that's been picked and fussed over for four days straight now.

"Kaveh? What are you doing?"

This earns him an exaggerated startle, but Kaveh doesn't turn to look at him, preoccupied with whatever new sketch or blueprint he probably has in his hands. "Ohhh, nothing," he slurs cheerfully. "Just working. Just thinking."

Kaveh has always been the world's chattiest drinker. Al Haitham waits for the rest of it.

"Say, I think...I think I asked you this years ago, back then, but you never answered me." Al Haitham feels all the blood drain from his face in ominous familiarity, drip cold down the length of his spine. Kaveh sinks into the couch until he can tip his head over the back of it, looking up at him with a tired smile and exhausted eyes.

"Do you believe in karma?"

[trashmenofmarvel]

Branded - Chapter 35

Pairing: Demon!Bucky Barnes x Reader

Summary: You're off to see the wizards.

(This is a fan AU of Falling’s Just Another Way to Fly by araniaart​ . Please check out this incredible series for all of your demon Bucky needs.)

Chapter Warnings: No specifics given because they would be spoilers, but expect major angst and psychological horror.

AO3

The arrival back to your apartment was surprisingly anticlimactic. You put down Monster’s carrier and let him loose as Bucky carefully set down your bags in the bedroom. He asked if you needed help, but you insisted you were fine. You were too nervous now that you were back and needed something to distract you from thoughts of what you were going to say to Strange.

“Why don’t we worry about that in a day or two?” he said while standing awkwardly in your living room. His smile was faint, but you figured it was from the tiring drive. “I need to come up a plan anyway of what exactly we should tell him.”

“Right.” That sounded perfectly reasonable. “You heading home, then?”

“I… probably should.” Now his smile seemed strained. “But I’ll check in how you’re doing later.”

“You don’t have to. I’ll be fine, really.” It might have been silly, but you really didn’t want him to think you were the clingy type. Even if that’s what you kind of were due to magical circumstance. “Probably going to read or veg out in front of the computer. Let me know when you want to go see Strange and I’ll be ready.”

“Yeah. Will do.”

Bucky stood there, hands tucked into his pockets, stiff. You’d noticed the change as soon as you’d entered the city, like he was reverting back to his old self.

You opened your mouth to ask if he was okay and took a step forward, but Bucky was already retreating toward the front door. And before you knew it, he was gone.

Stinging pricked inside your ribcage. You hadn’t thought anything would change once you came back. You’d really thought the way Bucky had been with you at your house was going to be the new normal. Had you been naïve to think that?

No, you told yourself. Bucky was stressed about facing the wizards, and considering his history, he had every right to be. You were nervous too, and you were going to push it out of your mind and focus on something productive.

You did do some reading and tried to catch up on some shows, but your mind wandered, your nerves on edge. You nearly jerked off the couch when your phone buzzed and you slapped for it on the coffee table. It was a text from Bucky.

Hey sweetheart. How you feeling?

Your heart fluttered at the pet name, but then sank into your stomach. Was this what Bucky had meant by checking up on you? You thought he’d stop by in person. Maybe stay for dinner. Couple’s stuff.

You shoved the selfish thought away.

I’m okay, how are you? you texted back, because you were going to be the bigger person and not leave him on read, and then you tossed the phone back onto the coffee table.

When next it buzzed, you glanced at it to see Bucky had answered back that he was fine, and he was going to see Strange tomorrow, and that he wanted to do it first without you.

Your heart sank further and you didn’t respond. Realizing you were being childish, your anxiety making up problems that weren’t there, you got up to take a shower and go to bed. The multiple feedings of the day before were still affecting you, but you found it difficult to fall asleep, missing the warmth next to you so much that it physically hurt.

Could Bucky feel your pain? Or were you too far away for him to feel it? Either way, he didn’t appear on your doorstep.

The next morning you checked your phone and only found a semi-accusatory text from your mom for not letting her know you had arrived safely. Feeling like the shit daughter you were, you called her back and assured her you were alive and not dead on the side of the road somewhere.

After that, you whittled away the time with cleaning your apartment. It’d been a while and you needed it. And then you managed to capture your hobgoblin and attack him with a brush, getting all the loose fur out of his undercoat. Monster acted like a brat and tried to squirm out of your arms the whole time, but you both escaped the procedure unharmed.

You did dishes, laundry, made your bed, and even scrubbed the toilet. You were actually getting into the whole cleaning thing when your phone vibrated in your pocket. Another text from Bucky. You’d lost track of time and it was already five in the afternoon.

Strange can see us tomorrow 3pm, was all it said. You frowned.

Sounds good, you texted back, unable to think of anything better to say. When there was no follow-up text, you allowed yourself a moment of disappointment. Bucky was definitely internally freaking out at having to go see the sorcerers and be at risk for your secret to be exposed. You understood it, but you wished he would be open with you.

You’d known this relationship with Bucky would take work, but… it always came down to the bond. It forced so many constraints on you, made you both live a secret life, and was a constant reminder to Bucky of what he’d accidentally done.

For the first time, you truly resented for the mark on your arm. No, you decided, it wasn’t resentment. It was loathing.

Once you got to know Strange better, which was a strong possibility if what the Ancient One had said was true, maybe you could ask him for help. If the sorcerers could create a concoction for Bucky to drink that allowed him to no longer feed, why couldn’t they figure out a way to break the bond? There had to be something hidden in those creepy vaults of theirs besides old demonic trophies and talking skin-books.

You tried not to think about the Sanctum, or the sorcerers, or the Ancient One since that night. It filled you with a sort of anxiety that bordered on existential. You should have known those tests in Strange’s office wouldn’t be the end of it. The portal that had appeared when you were a child… the ominous things the book had told you… owning a hobgoblin… the Alp and the heigore… Bucky and the bond. It was too much to be strange, paranormal coincidences.

Something was wrong with you. You only hoped Strange could help you not open any more portals or fall into any more time-loops, and then maybe, you could break the bond too.

Your day passed uneventful and alone. You tried to be a damn adult about it and not sulk, but you only had a couple days left until New Years, and then, back to work.

Back to work. After everything that had happened, how could you manage that? And then there was Davin. You hadn’t bothered to text or call him, and here you were, pouting because Bucky was no longer at your side 24/7 when you couldn’t even bother to make sure your friend was doing okay.

You called Davin that night—he sounded surprised but pleased to hear from you—and after talking to him for a good half hour in which you both made sure the other was done fine, you went to bed feeling marginally better. Things were going to be fine with Bucky. Most likely, he was being distant because he had to focus on what he was going to tell Strange. That’s all it was, and you wouldn’t allow your anxious thoughts to conjure up any other paranoid scenario.

***

The next day brought a fresh wave of anxiety and nerves. You were going to have to look the head honcho wizard in the face and very carefully tell him information he needed to know, while hiding life-ruining information he didn’t.

No matter what you tried to do, cleaning, reading, napping, your mind continued to return to Bucky’s memories. The cold bunker and the frowning soldier speaking Russian. The visceral agony of Bucky’s starvation as he scoured New York’s dark streets to feed.

And of course, the red dunes. You wouldn’t forget that nightmare as long as you lived, but as you’d told Bucky, those memories were fading like a dream. Perhaps that was for the best. Being trapped in memories without a body for forty years would drive anyone insane.

At 2 PM, your phone buzzed and your heart leapt in your throat. You expected a text from Bucky saying he was at your apartment, but instead...

177A Bleecker Street.

That was it. An address. You put it into Google Maps and the app informed you that there was a 177 Bleecker Street, but it was a normal looking apartment building above a shop in Greenwich Village.

Are you sure this is the right place? you texted back.

Yes. Take a cab. They don’t really do parking.

You stared at your phone, not really sure how to feel, before sending back a text that said, Okay. See you there.

From your place it would have been much cheaper to take the subway and walk from the stop, but the crowded platforms and packed train compartments sent you into an anxiety attack more often than not. So you pulled up the taxi app, pinged for a driver, and went out to wait by the curb, trying not to stew in your feelings and focus on what you were going to tell Strange.

All you could think about after the cab picked you up was how fucked you were if you said the wrong thing. How fucked you and Bucky were. How were you supposed to be around the wizards and ensure they never discovered the demon sigil or the bond? It was an impossible task, and you wished you could have talked to Bucky about it beforehand.

Why hadn’t he come to you before going to see Strange? Weren’t you supposed to brainstorm and come up with a plan together? You were flying blind over unfamiliar territory, and you were afraid it was only a matter of time before you crashed spectacularly.

A half hour later, you were stepping out of the cab and onto the sidewalk, peering up at the red brick building in front of you. It was as unassuming as the rest of the apartments on the block.

You frowned and took a step forward, and that’s when everything changed. The building shimmered in front of you, and not just that one—each apartment building to the side as well. Not unlike Bucky’s guise, the illusion collapsed in a mirage, and a handsome, ancient building stood in front of you, looking very much like the home of a bunch of wizards.

You cast a conspicuous glance around, but no one else seemed to notice the change, the crowd of people flowing around you without interruption.

Taking a deep breath, you clutched your bag tighter and walked up the steps to the massive front door and knocked.

You expected to wait but the door opened almost immediately, revealing a grand interior. Not seeing anyone, you stepped forward, jumping as the tall door swung shut behind you.

“Uh… hello?” you called out. Your words slightly echoed back, and you clutched your bag tighter in your hands.

“You’re early. Your appointment with Doctor Strange isn’t until 3:14.”

You jumped for the second time. The wizard who addressed you was unfamiliar but dressed in the same elegant yet simple robes Wong wore.

“Oh, um.” You didn’t know what else to say. What kind of appointment time was 3:14?

“You may wait in here.” He gestured towards a sitting room off to the side. It had the same dark paneled walls and wood parquet and green marble flooring. The furniture was cherry wood and red velvet upholstery, and the lighting was warm and comforting. If Strange took too long, they would come back to find you sleeping, without a doubt.

“Thanks,” you said, attempting to smile at the man but he was already gone. Like, not just walking out the door gone, he’d literally popped out of existence. You sighed and sat down on one of the couches, pulling out your phone so you’d have something to do and not fall asleep.

No signal. How does someone not have a cell signal in the middle of New York?

“Ugh.” Nap it was, then.

You lifted one leg up onto the couch, letting your shoe dangle off the edge because you weren’t raised in a barn, and you leaned your head against the couch back. You wondered where Bucky was, not difficult when he was never far from your thoughts, but you couldn’t text him and just had to wait.

Inevitably, surrounded by plush furniture, golden lighting, and a room temperature that was a little too warm for December, your eyelids drifted shut and your bunched muscles loosened.

Bright, fierce agony cut across your chest. You sat up, clutching at your shirt as you struggled to breathe.

The pain slammed into you again and you gave a breathless cry, hunched over and heart beating wildly.

It hurt. It hurt so fucking bad. Were you having a heart attack? Were you dying?

A third round of torture constricted your chest, and along with the utter certainty that it wasn’t your pain you were experiencing.

They’re hurting Bucky!

You sprang from the couch, bag falling off your shoulder and left forgotten as you ran into the foyer. The pain still bloomed in your chest, but you sensed something in your mind. A golden string on fire, connecting you to the source of your distress.

You would find Bucky at the end of it. He was close. He was close and they were killing him!

No other thoughts passed through your mind except to get to Bucky. You didn’t hesitate to race up the ancient staircase, turning and twisting down hallways you didn’t know. You continued to climb, to the top of the building, and you knew where you were heading.

You didn’t see anyone, the mansion strangely empty until you burst into the anteroom before Strange’s office. Wong and another wizard stepped forward to block your way.

“You cannot go in there.” Wong put a hand on your shoulder. “Strange is currently in a meeting—“

Rage erupted inside you like a well of poison, and you turned and bit the hand touching you.

The wizards shouted, tried to restrain you, but you were screaming, fighting, clawing to be free.

Get to Bucky! you silently screamed, over and over. He’s dying!

Wong managed to get his hand free and was nursing it, the other man conjuring fiery orange ropes, but you were too quick. You head-butted the second wizard and slammed him aside with your shoulder, bolting forward to shove open the doors.

Your mind created a gruesome scenario: you would find Bucky strapped to a table, or maybe a chair, being tortured mercilessly.

Instead, you found Strange and Bucky standing, facing each other. Strange had a hand hovering over Bucky’s shoulder, glowing symbols inches away from the scarred pentagram.

Hands grabbed you from behind, but you had already stopped moving. You blinked rapidly, confusion replacing the rage that had consumed you.

Strange watched you with an unreadable look. Bucky’s expression had fallen.

“I’m sorry, Sergeant,” Strange said, his voice oddly quiet. “But it is as I feared.”

“She bit me,” Wong grumbled from over your shoulder.

“We’re lucky she didn’t do worse,” Strange told him. “One who gets between a demon master and their human slave often suffers severe injuries, or even death.”

You were panting, arms and legs shaking with fatigue now that the startling anger had receded.

What… what was going on?

Your eyes finally found Bucky, standing there unharmed and unrestrained. For all intents and purposes, perfectly fine. The realization hit you hard.

“You told them?” Your words came out hurt. Betrayed. Bucky’s wince confirmed it. “Why? Why would you do that?”

Bucky said nothing, and the air was heavy with an uncomfortable silence until Strange spoke.

“I’ll give you two a moment. Come, Wong. Let me see that hand of yours.”

As Strange walked around you, you followed his gaze and gave Wong an apologetic wince. You would have to properly apologize to him later. You’d never bitten anyone in your life, and yet, you’d acted like a rabid dog.

As if sensing your thoughts, once Strange had closed the doors to his office, Bucky softly said, “It wasn’t your fault. You couldn’t control it.”

You couldn’t meet his gaze, so instead you angrily wiped at your stinging eyes and turned away.

“I knew it.” You sniffled. “I knew you were hiding something. Ever since we got back, you’ve been distant—What the fuck, Bucky?”

Now you did look up, the anger making a quick return. God, it felt like your emotions were on a yo-yo.

Bucky didn’t rise to your challenge. If anything, he looked more defeated.

“You were right. About what you said before.” He took a step forward and you took an automatic step back. Hurt flashed across his face, but before you could apologize, he turned away. “You said there must be something more going on with you, and after…after what happened when I showed you my memories, I decided to finally stop being a coward and tell Strange about the bond.”

Bucky paused for a moment, collecting himself as he approached Strange’s desk and pressed his palms against it, leaning against it with his head bowed. He didn’t look at you as you moved closer to him.

“I should have gone to him a long time ago, but I was selfish. Even when I admitted the truth, I was still selfish. I assured him we were being careful. That you and I were staying in close contact so there weren’t any more close calls with the bond’s demands to feed. He told me I was a goddamn idiot and that I was putting you in far more danger than I realized.”

Bucky blew out a heavy breath, voice dropping until it was little more than a rasp.

“He was right. I didn’t realize the power the bond held until he activated the mark. Tricked it into thinking I was dying. He said a slave would always come to their master when in danger. The slave would come to protect their master at all costs.”

“Bucky…” you said softly. “I don’t…”

“What did you feel?” Bucky suddenly asked, looking over his shoulder to meet your eye. There was a haunted look in them, like he hadn’t slept the entire time you’d been back. “When you were out there, trying to get past Wong and Sabin?”

“I…”

“Like you would do anything to get to me, right? That you would do anything to save me?”

You said nothing, folding your arms across your chest and hugging yourself.

“You were willing to do anything for me. Weren’t you.”

You didn’t know what to say. How could you explain to him that you’d been willing to rip your heart out of your own chest if it meant he was safe and alive? That you would die on the spot if it meant protecting him?

But it was much worse than that. You’d also been willing to kill Wong and the other wizard if it meant getting to Bucky. You would have killed Strange, too. You would have dragged a knife into the chest of anyone who got in the way.

You would have gladly killed your own mother. Your sister. Her entire family, even her baby—

You covered your face with your hands in an attempt to block out the intrusive thoughts, and to hide your bone-deep horror.

“Oh, my God. Oh, my God,” you choked out. You were two seconds away from having a full-blown panic attack, but Bucky wrapped you in his arms and pulled you to his chest. The comfort of his embrace, the warm roughness of his hand stroking your hair, the way you missed him the last two days…

It was tainted. All of it. Never before had you doubted your own feelings, but now, it was all you could think about. How much of it was you? How much was the bond?

“I feel sick,” you groaned against his shoulder. “Like I’m going to throw up. I don’t think I will, but I want to.”

“I know.” Bucky sounded so tired, so devastatingly sad. Now it hurt in a different way, and you wanted to cry along with getting sick.

“What happens now?” You moved away from his shoulder to look up at him. His eyes were red-rimmed, but at least they met yours. “What do we do?”

Instead of answering immediately, Bucky raised his hand and stroked his thumb across your cheekbone. You leaned into his palm, a sinking feeling settling in your stomach. This was wrong. Terribly wrong. He was looking at you as if he was trying to… to remember you, memorize you.

Panic gripped your throat tight.

“Bucky?”

“I don’t know.” He ran his tongue over his dry lips. He was nervous. “But… I can take a guess.”

“Bucky.” You gripped his jacket with sudden, terrified strength. His expression saddened.

“I made a deal with the Ancient One when I first came here. The deal was, I would be able to live as a free man, so long as I never hurt an innocent person again.”

“Bucky—“

“I broke that promise.”

You shook your head, refusing to believe what he said.

“I broke that oath.”

“You didn’t mean to!”

“It doesn’t matter. The result is the same.” He swallowed and cupped your cheek in his hand. “I didn’t just feed, I bonded you to me. I took away your choices. There’s no possible way I keep my freedom after that. And frankly, I don’t deserve to.”

“No!” You tried to shove him away, but Bucky didn’t let you go, and you didn’t budge an inch. “No, fuck that! You don’t get to just give up after—after all of that! Everything we’ve been through!”

Bucky met your anger with sorrowful calm. You wanted to lash out even worse.

“So, what, you’re just going to let them kill you?” you growled. “Banish you back to that fucking nightmare?”

“I don’t know what Strange is going to do,” Bucky said softly. “But he will do whatever is necessary to break the bond so you can be free.”

Your angry grip on his jacket immediately weakened, the strength slowly drained out of you.

“And what about you?” You fought to control the trembling of your hands. “You’re a victim too. Why are you being punished? Why won’t they help you?”

“I’m sure Strange will try, but you are the priority.”

“Why?”

“Because you’re in more danger than I am,” he insisted. “Your life force is more compromised, which, I don’t know what that means but it didn’t sound good when Strange said it.”

“I don’t care.” You glared up at him. “I don’t care.”

“And that’s the problem.” He returned your hostile look with one of careful calm.

You hated it. Why wouldn’t he get mad? Why didn’t he get angry at the injustice that had been done to him? When would he stop being so fucking selfless and think of himself for once?

But that wasn’t who Bucky was. Your shoulders slumped forward at the realization that you’d already lost.

“How much does he know?” You stepped out of Bucky’s arms, feeling brittle, as if you should shatter if you stayed there any longer. He let you go, and the lack of contact was immediately awful.

“Everything,” he said softly. “Or at least, everything that matters.”

You nodded, hugging yourself again as you stared at the rug. It was faded and looked old. It had probably been here when this had been the Ancient One’s office. Bucky still didn’t know about that conversation, which meant Strange didn’t either.

It was an impossible hope, but it was something.

“I want to talk to him.” You looked up at him. “I want to talk to Strange.”

Bucky said your name with a defeated sigh, but you shook your head.

“Maybe I can convince him not to break the bond. He doesn’t know the whole story.”

“What do you mean?”

You hesitated, digging your nails into your arm.

“I… in the memories, I might have… spoken to the Ancient One.”

You weren’t sure what reaction you were expecting, but it certainly wasn’t for Bucky to stride forward and grab your shoulders almost hard enough to hurt.

“What? What did she say?”

“That I should talk to Strange.” You blinked up at him, startled. “And that I was stuck in some kind of-of time loop? And that there would be a decision to be made, but it would be wrong, and—“

“A time-loop?” His mouth opened, and for the first time, he seemed genuinely angry. “Why didn’t you tell me you’d talked to her?”

“I-I didn’t know if I was supposed to!” You squirmed in Bucky’s grasp, but he didn’t let you go. “We didn’t speak for long—“

“When? What memory was it?”

You stuttered, heart hammering as you said, “It-it was on the rooftop, in the garden. You were trying to guise your feet, but you were frustrated. She knew I was there and she-she spoke to me.”

Bucky’s eyes drifted over your shoulder and grew distant.

“She… she was distracted that day. She’d never been distracted before.”

You opened your mouth, and the door to the office opened abruptly. Bucky dropped his hands from your shoulders, but the troubled frown lingered as he turned toward Strange. The wizard looked at you both with the reluctance of someone carrying bad news.

“I think I have a solution, or at least, one that will work for the time being. Temporary, but effective.”

“All right,” Bucky said. “I’m listening.”

Strange glanced briefly in your direction.

“The cryostasis chamber.”

Bucky sucked in a breath, but you only frowned, not understanding.

“It’s still in storage,” Strange continued. “We kept everything from the Siberian laboratory, including a means to keep you contained should it become necessary. I would say this warrants it. I calculate with the sealing glyphs in place, it should cut off the bond as well.”

Glyphs. A laboratory. Siberia.

All at once, you remembered it. Positioned behind Bucky as he writhed, screaming in the chair. A large stone cylinder with glyphs carved into it, open and spilling out steam as if it had just held something cold.

It was where HYDRA had stored the Winter Soldier.

This time when you lunged at Strange, the rage was entirely your own.

Bucky grabbed you around the waist and hauled you back just before your outstretched fingers could tear into Strange.

“You bastard!” you screamed, fighting to break free of Bucky’s steel grip. “You’re no better than they are!”

Strange hadn’t moved an inch, but his cape faintly rustled.

“It seems you two have more to talk about,” he said in a low voice. “Sergeant, you may take her to one of the guest rooms until she calms down.”

“Thank you,” Bucky said through gritted teeth, hoisting you off your feet as you squirmed.

“I don’t need to calm down!” You twisted so you could meet Strange’s eye, teeth bared as you snarled, “You’re making the wrong choice!”

Your accusations were met with silence and you eventually gave up the struggle as Bucky half-carried, half-dragged you away from Strange’s office.

“He’s making a mistake,” you cried, holding onto Bucky weakly as your world slowly fell apart. “They can’t do this… they can’t…”

“I’m sorry, sweetheart.”

Those soft words were the most devastating thing you’d ever heard. You remained silent, unable to speak, as Bucky led you through the halls that would soon become his tomb.

Next Chapter

[not-close-to-straight]

Wedding Night (SWS #73)

This is frankly ridiculous, just Horny Boys trying to keep it together long enough to get married, hilariously terrible smexy times whilst destroying a honeymoon suite, sass and snark and random sweetness and obligatory Spideypool bullshit.... all that good stuff. 

Enjoy!

SUNDAYS WITH SPIDEYPOOL MASTERLIST HERE

**********************

It had been Peter’s idea. 

“I dunno.” he said with that sheepish sort of shrug that told Wade he’d actually put a lot of thought into the idea. “I just think since nothing else about our relationship was done the traditional way--” 

“--What, swapping blow jobs for the first time while you were hanging upside down isn’t traditional??”

“--not even a little bit. Anyway, since nothing else has been done the traditional way, maybe we could do this the traditional way.” he raised his eyebrows hopefully. “Not sleeping together till the wedding night could make it really special. We could both wear white and do the rose petal and candle thing-- it could be really sweet.” 

“We did the rose petal thing literally last week.” 

“Babe.” Peter barely refrained from rolling his eyes. “You crashed through the window of a flower shop while chasing a bad guy and then we had highly illegal sex on the ruined flowers while waiting for the cops. That doesn’t count.”

“Okay fine.” Wade leaned in and smecked a kiss to his cheek. “Fine, if that’s what you want, that’s what we’ll do.” 

“Are you sure?” Peter looked wonderfully shy and Wade kissed him again just because he was fucking cute. “I promise I’ll make it up to you on our wedding night.” 

“Baby boy.” Wade managed to be serious for a minute. “In thirty days, I get to officially, legally promise to love you for the rest of my life. You won’t have to make anything up to me that night, just knowing you’re mine is going to be more than enough.” 

“I love you.” Peter tackled him into a long kiss. “You’re amazing. I know this is a stupid request, but you’re amazing for saying yes. Thank you.” 

“Ain’t no thang, sweet cheeks.” Wade assured him, hugging him tight. “I’m an adult and I have buckets of self control. I can definitely last a month without sex to make sure our first night as husbands is special.” 

“You have the self control of a two year old.” Peter informed him drily and Wade scoffed in mock outrage. “I bet you’ll be so horny by wedding day, you’ll be humping my leg as the pastor’s talking.” 

“Bold of you to assume I’d stop at just humping your leg.” 

“WADE!” 

******************

It had been Peter’s idea and Wade had happily agreed, but thirty days later standing on the stage in front of their friends and family and listening to the preacher say something smarmy and stupid about love--

“Your ass looks so good in that suit, I’m gonna pulverise it when we get out of here.” Wade promised under his breath and Peter tugged at his own bow tie and wet his lips and whispered back, “Not if I get you up against the wall and fuck the shit outta you in that dress first. Who gave you the right to wear something that gorgeous? You look incredible.” 

“Oh god, not as incredible as you do.” Wade muttered. “Did you buy the suit? Cos you’re not gonna get your money back on the rental. I’m gonna fuckin’ wreck that thing.” 

“Are you wearing underwear?” Peter’s eyes dropped to the waist line of Wade’s rather slinky dress, searching for the tell tale line of a thong or maybe even the texture of some lace. “Hm?” 

“Spanx shapewear.” Wade admitted in a hushed voice. “Had to get some compression for the lil merc since boners aren’t exactly church material. What about you? Underwear?” 

“Nope.” Peter shifted anxiously on his feet, glancing at his watch. “Want you so bad I’m about two seconds from making a mess in my pants.” 

“Hnnngh.” Wade bit at his palm to keep from groaning and the preacher stopped and sent him a concerned look. 

“Mr. Wilson? Everything alright?” 

“Mind your business preacher!” Wade snapped, and then when more than a few people in the congregation gasped-- “I mean, please continue? I uh--boy howdy, just excited to be married. Bound in holy matrimony and all that. Yay for marriage.” 

Someone in the audience-- probably Gwen because she’d been drinking with Peter before the ceremony-- did one of those ugly snort laughs that set off quite a few titters and the preacher cleared his throat and went back to speaking. 

“The bonds of holy matrimony are not to be taken lightly, not to be forgotten in times of strife, not to be-” 

“M’not gonna take you lightly.” Peter whispered and Wade cast his eyes towards heaven and muttered, “If there is a god, let’s work on speeding things up, huh? Not gonna make it through the rest of this ceremony. Why the hell did we decide on a church wedding?” 

“Traditional and decent.” Peter was starting to look flushed. “Remember? Wearing white and waiting till our wedding day, getting blessed by a preacher man? You thought it was a good idea.” 

“Yeah, but that was thirty days ago after I’d recently had sex! I would agree to anything after an orgasm, you knew that and took advantage! It’s practically a crime!” 

“A crime huh?” Peter glanced at his watch again. “You gonna make sure I pay for that tonight? Only seems fair.”

“You bad boy, we are in a church!” Wade checked that the preacher was still lost in some Bible verse about love being patient--which seemed fairly hilarious considering their current conversation- and leaned in closer, “But I am definitely tying you on the bed and spanking you until your ass is--” 

“Wade.” Peter muffled a strangled sound with his hand. “Gonna come in my pants. I swear.”

“Jesus--” Wade swore and the pastor stopped mid sentence, mouth falling open. 

“Sorry about that.” Wade apologized. “But you have got to hurry up. Vows. Now. Say the thing. Now.” 

“Uhhh...alright. The um-- Peter and Wade have prepared their own vows and would apparently like to recite them now?” The preacher stepped back a few steps and motioned for them to continue. 

“Pete.” Wade pulled the ring from a pocket he’d had sewn into the bust of his dress and in the audience, Gwen snort laughed again. “Pete, I’ve wanted you since the first time I saw you power squat on the roof of a building and I fell in love with you approximately 3.7 seconds later. You put up with my terrible jokes and honestly horrifying sense of humour and my wonderful fashion choices and even though it took us a whole year to actually start dating, the first time you really saw me, you smiled and kissed me and I--” 

Wade’s voice caught and Peter’s eyes went very very soft. 

“I promise to always be around.” Wade cleared his throat and slid the ring onto Peter’s finger. “I promise to remember your favorite foods and be there to bandage you up when you get hurt and to always have extra blankets because somehow you’re always cold. I’m gonna love you forever Pete, way past what’s considered normal and probably in some very weird ways and I can’t promise we won’t fight but I can promise to never walk away ever.” 

Peter was starting to tear up now and with the rampant horniness forgotten for at least a minute, Wade leaned down and pushed their foreheads together to finish, “You love me on days I don’t even love myself and that’s more than I ever even hoped for and for that-- for that you get all of me, Pete. Heart and soul and my past and my present and all my futures and every second of every day for the next thousand years because I didn’t know I wanted any of that until I met you.” 

“Oh.” Peter closed his eyes and squeezed at Wade’s hand. “Oh my god, babe--” 

“Your turn.” Wade looked close to tears too, but he still cracked a smile. “Say the thing, do the vows. Let’s get this show on the road.” 

“Alright well.” Peter got Wade’s ring from his pocket and fit it onto Wade’s finger, brushing gently over the scarred skin as he went. “My vows aren’t that long or that pretty but here goes.” 

He took a deep breath and said simply, “I didn’t understand soulmates until I met you, Wade. You’re all the things I didn’t know were missing from my life and from my heart and now that I know what it’s like to be whole, I’ll never be able to take it back. I’ll never want to take it back. You’re my everything and you say you want me for every second of every day for the next thousand years, but I’ve got news for you, Merc.” he bent and kissed Wade’s palm and then his knuckles, lingering over the shine of the ring. “A thousand years isn’t long enough. Forever isn’t long enough for how long I want to love you.”

“Well shit.” A hankie from the bosom of Wade’s dress and this time not even Gwen laughed. She was too busy wiping away sudden tears with everyone else in the room. “How’d you upstage me using less words? That ain’t right, you’re not supposed to upstage the bride on his wedding day! I didn’t wear a neckline this low to be shown up by a brat in a suit.” 

“My bad.” Peter grinned and pressed another kiss to Wade’s palm, this one decidedly less chaste than the first. “I don’t know what I was thinking. Add it to the list of things I have to make up to you tonight.” 

“It’s a long list, baby boy.” Wade’s eyes sparked in a challenge. “You up for it?” 

“You have no idea the things I’m up for.” Peter retorted, and just that fast the ceremony was derailing spectacularly and the preacher had to scramble to get it back on track. . 

“Well then.” Determined to at least finish the wedding on a positive, appropriate note, the preacher cleared his throat and stepped in between the couple before they did something awful like start stripping right then and there. “Now that Peter and Wade have exchanged vows and rings, witnessed by friends and family and in the presence of the Holy Spirit--” 

“Have you seen our honeymoon suite?” Wade whispered, completely ignoring whatever else the preacher said. “Is it big?” 

“It’s huge.” Peter confirmed in a matching whisper. “I’ve already got it all set up for us. Rose petals, candles, champagne. I can’t wait to get you up there.” 

“You gonna carry me across the thresh hold like a blushing bride?” Wade waggled his non existent eyebrows. “I get all sorts of wet for those muscles, who knows what I might do to show my appreciation.” 

“Oh god.” Peter was starting to look distinctly uncomfortable again. “Wade, I--” 

“--for the first time, Mr. and Mr. Parker-Wilson! Peter, please kiss your--”

The preacher had to backpedal out of the way, most likely fearing for his very life when Peter yanked Wade close for a bruising kiss, bending the merc back until the mid thigh high slit of the gown fell open and exposed a whole lotta leg.

“WHOOOOOO!!!” Gwen jumped from her chair and hollered, “GET SOME PETE! YEAH!” 

“Gwen, for the love of--” MJ yanked the blonde down into the pew and hissed at her to behave, but in a room full of assorted super heros and friends of Wade, Gwen’s behavior wasn’t really even the most shocking and after a moment, MJ relented and started cat calling too. 

“We have better things to do than hang out and eat cake.” Peter breathed against Wade’s mouth and his husband nodded quickly. “What say I get us out of here?” 

“Either you do it or I’m gonna throw some dynamite at the wall and create a door that way.” Wade suggested. “And I feel like the preacher will send us straight to hell for that sorta thing so---” 

No one at all was surprised when Wade and Peter didn’t show up for the reception. 

******************

******************

“Oh so hey this is nice.” Wade had barely got the door to their suite closed before Peter was shoving him up against it, crushing their mouths together and hitching Wade’s leg up around his waist. “Mmmph, yep, nice suite, you did a good job picking out--” 

Rrrrrrrrrrip! The material of his gown ripped clear to Wade’s waist and Peter wasted no time getting his hands beneath the dress to find the line of-- “Wait, seriously, you’re wearing Spanx?” 

“Hey.” Wade batted his eyelashes teasingly. “A guys gotta look his best, right? This dress was so tight you could see the dimples on my ass, shapewear was a must.” 

“You look gorgeous.” Peter murmured over another kiss. “M’sorry if I didn’t tell you before but you look gorgeous, babe. I’m so glad you decided to wear a dress, so glad you knew I’d love it. I about lost my mind when I saw you coming down the aisle in this thing.” 

“Well that’s nice and all, but you should be doing something more interesting than complimenting me right now.” Wade informed him and Peter grinned, curling his hands in the shapewear and shredding it apart. “Oh fuck me, why is it so hot when you tear things?” 

“It’s the size kink thing.” Peter was laughing as he finally got the underwear off of Wade, smoothing his hands over the lean hips and eyeing the near obscene bulge beneath the white fabric greedily. “You like that I look like a twink but am still stronger than you.” 

“Yep. I heard no lies there.” Wade’s head thunked back against the door when Peter stroked him through the dress, coaxing more and more wet from the tip to stain the silky material. “Oh fuck-fuck-fuck Pete, don’t make me wait any longer, my balls are so blue they’re gonna fall off. I swear to god, just gonna fall right off, hurry up.” 

“Are they your something blue?” Peter snarked and Wade retorted, “If I wasn’t so hard up right now, I’d bite you for that.” 

“Babe, I’m so hard up right now, you biting me might actually get me off.” Peter laughed, and then, “You haven’t even been jerking off? Promise? Thirty days?” 

“I’ve been wearing underwear in the shower so I wouldn’t be tempted!” Wade blurted. “But if you don’t do something quick I’m just gonna blow my load right here and collapse into an orgasm coma so maybe you should--” 

“Jesus Christ, are you wearing a plug?” Peter almost choked when he reached low and felt the silicone base of one of their wider plugs. “Oh my god Wade.” 

“Oh yeah, the Spanx was also to keep that in place.” Wade panted through the sentence as Peter started to wriggle the plug out. “I didn’t want you to waste time by being all sweet and careful opening me up--” 

“--oh yeah, god forbid I take my time with you so you don’t tear.” Peter snorted. “What was I thinking?” 

“-- I figured this way you could just fuck me--” 

“--holy shit babe, it’s so big! You’ve been wearing this all day--?!” 

“--Pete! Hurry up and get it OWWWWWT!” Wade shrieked when the plug came all the way free. “Alright, well now there’s room for you in there so why don’t you hop to it and--” 

“Wade.” It was unreal how sexy it was for Peter to lift Wade so easily, holding him against the door with just one hand while the other fingers fit deep inside him to be sure he really was ready, Peter never willing to rush this sort of thing even if he was practically desperate. “Wade, I love you. I do. My husband. I love you so much.” 

“That’s very sweet.” Wade leaned in and kissed him. “And I love you too and later we can talk about how much I love being called husband. But if you don’t do something with that dick of yours right now, I’m going to cut it off and take it with me for alimony when I divorce your ass for failure to perform, you understand?” 

“That was the least sexy thing I’ve ever heard.” Peter was laughing out loud as he undid the zipper of his suit pants, pushing them down only far enough to get his cock out. “Take my dick for alimony? What the fuck, babe?” 

“It’s the only part of you I’d need.” Wade said blandly and Peter was still laughing when he thrust in hard. “Oh fuck--oh--oh--oh yes.” Wade actually went limp for a minute in Peter’s arms, the itch of being empty soothed for just a minute by having Peter inside him. “Baby boy, not to sound all cutesy and romantic or anything, but I fucking missed you.” 

“I missed you too.” Peter was breathing hard, pushing their foreheads together and holding onto Wade tight enough to leave bruises. “Holy fuck I missed you babe. How did I go thirty days without this?” 

“I dunno, it was a terrible idea on your part but hey, you know what would be really hot?” 

“What’s that?” Peter withdrew a little and rocked back in, almost biting his tongue off when Wade clenched around him. “Shit, easy does it babe. I know for a fact you’ll never let me live it down if I only last ten seconds.” 

“Superhero refractory periods are a beautiful blessed thing.” Wade teased, and then, “We should break a table, right? If we break this door we’re gonna end up bare assed and floppy dicked out in the hall but a table...?” 

“Want me to fuck you through a table?” Peter latched onto Wade’s neck and worried a deep bruise onto the rough skin, groaning when Wade’s cock jumped against his stomach, leaking milky white between their bodies. “Yeah? I thought wedding night sex was supposed to be tender and slow.” 

Wade outright cackled over the thought of anything tonight being ‘tender and slow’ and he was still cackling when Peter carried him over to the table and laid him down hard enough to crack one of the legs. 

“Like this?” Peter swept the length of the dress aside so it didn’t get caught on anything and pulled away just to snap his hips forward and bury himself as deep as he could in Wade. “Want me to fuck you like this? Right here in your pretty dress?” 

“Pete!” Wade made a high pitched, hilarious noise and came hard enough to make his back arch, apparently needing nothing more than a dick in him and a tiny amount of dirty talk to push him through a mind blanking orgasm. 

“Oh my god.” Peter bent nearly double to get his mouth around Wade’s cock in time to catch the last few spurts, moaning at the taste of his husband on his tongue. “Babe what the hell, I didn’t even get a chance to fuck you yet!” 

“Okay but in my defense--” Wade threw an arm over his eyes and gasped through the words as Peter kept licking at him, fucking him in slow, leisurely strokes. “In my defense? Thirty days for you is like...is like thirty months in Deadpool years. I’ve been as celibate as a month for like, a millennium. Don’t act like you’re surprised. I needed you, Pete. Needed you and needed you inside me, you probably could have just kissed me for a while and I would have come. I love you and you have no idea what you do to me--”

“Oh oh oh shitshitshit--” Peter was suddenly shouting, hips jerking and eyes rolling back and Wade’s mouth fell open at the unmistakable feeling of Peter coming inside him. 

“Pete.” 

“Sorry sorry sorry.” Peter collapsed boneless against him. “Sorry, I-I--” 

“I was literally mid sentence.” 

“I’m sorry! You aren’t the only one that’s been celibate as a monk!” 

“I wasn’t even dirty talking! At least I came cos you were being sexy! I was trying to be sweet and tell you I loved you and--” Wade stopped when Peter whined a little and thrust again weakly. “--whoa-ho-ho is that a sweet talk kink I’m seeing right now? Couldn’t handle me talking soft to you, hubby?” 

“We’re the worst at this.” Peter moaned and Wade cracked up all over again. “We’ve been in the honeymoon suite for seven minutes! It cost me fifteen hundred dollars and we’re already done in seven minutes!” 

“Aw baby boy.” Wade combed his fingers through Peter’s hair. “It’s okay. Super dick, remember? We’ll be up and at ‘em again in like five minutes tops.” 

“Okay, but if anyone asks?” Peter raised his eyebrows. “I ravished you for hours.” 

“Of course you did.” Wade soothed. “And if anyone asks you, remember I played hard to get and blushed when you tenderly undressed me and exposed my innocence.” 

“Your innocence.” Peter’s shoulders shook through a chuckle. “Oh my god.” 

“Oh hey, you really did the rose petal and candle thing, huh?” Wade propped himself up on his elbows and looked around the suite. “It’s pretty Pete, thank you.” 

“I had every intention of cherishing the hell out of you on that big bed.” Peter informed him. “The candles are scented and I misted the sheets with like, glitter spray so we’ll be all reflecty and shiny in the low lights. There’s a box of chocolates in the bathroom cos I thought we could get all sexy in the bathtub...” he trailed off with a wistful smile. “Sorry.” 

“Hey hey hey.” Wade cupped Peter’s jaw and lay a very sweet kiss on his lips. “Baby we got all night for this sort of thing. We got the first one out of the way so now we’ll be able to take our time. Don’t worry about it, we’ll get to the bed and your scented candles, definitely sexy times in the bathtub. I’ve got a dozen ways I wanna be with you tonight, alright?” 

“Alright.” Peter kissed him back and then eased out from between his knees with a grimace. “I should’ve worn a condom. “

“Why, so you would have lasted a whole minute instead of forty nine seconds?” Wade challenged, making a show of crossing one leg over the other and adjusting his dress. “I doubt the eleven seconds would have made a difference.” 

“Yeah, you’re probably right.” Peter didn’t even have the decency to blush, only blew Wade a kiss and started yanking off the rest of his clothes. “Good thing I bought this suit, huh? No way we’re gonna get the deposit back on--” 

“What in the fucknuckles is that?” Wade jumped off the table and gasped out loud when he saw what Peter was wearing high on his thigh. “Is that-- is that a garter belt?” 

“Oh.” Peter snapped the elastic band at his leg teasingly. “You like it?” 

“Is that-- how did you find a Deadpool themed garter belt?” Wade hitched his dress up to his knees and knelt down to get a closer look. “Oh my god, it’s a mix of Spidey and Deadpool masks? PETE!” 

“I had it specially made.” Peter’s eyes widened when Wade leaned in and mouthed a wet kiss onto the satin. “Figured it could be our--our-- um figured it could be our something...new....”

“Baby boy.” Wade wrenched his husband around so his face was level with Peter’s cock, smiling over the noise Peter made before hooking his fingers in the garter belt and using it to yank them closer together. “It’s gorgeous. Want you wearing this and your wedding ring and nothing else, you got it?” 

“Yep yep yep.” the suit jacket and shirt split apart in one quick yank and Peter kicked out of his pants too. “How’s this?” 

“Almost perfect.” Wade got back to his feet and sauntered over towards the end table, retrieving a bottle of champagne and holding it up suggestively. “I’d really really like to lick some of this off you, husband.”

“Oh.” Peter’s knees went weak. “Oh yes.”  

“You ready for another round?” 

“Always.” 

“Holla for some super dick. Assume the position baby boy, face down and ass up cos that’s the way I like to--” 

“Wade.” Peter put his hand up to stop him. “I can’t tell you how badly I want you to lick champagne off literally every inch of me right now, but if you say ‘face down, ass up, cos that’s the I like to--’ and then make that stupid Goofy laugh noise you did last time you said that? I will tell everyone you weren’t a virgin on our wedding night. That’s not how the line from the song goes and you know it.” 

“No!” Wade’s eyes went very wide. “You wouldn’t dare sully my reputation like that just cos I said ‘hyuck’.”

“I swear.” 

“Fine.” Wade stared down at his white dress mournfully, then ripped it right off and chucked it aside. “Eh you know what, no one thinks I’m a virgin. Face down, ass up baby boy. That’s the way I like to--” 

“Wade---” 

“HYUCK!”

“WADE!” 

********************

********************

The next morning Wade and Peter stood waiting by reception while the front desk attendant read through the list of damages in their room. 

“A broken table?” she asked and Peter grimaced. “Bed frame cracked and champagne bottle spilled on floor?” 

“The hyucking got a little out of control.” Wade offered and Peter hissed, “I will kill you, I swear.” 

“Bathroom flooded--” 

“We forgot about the bath and left it running while eating cake.” 

“--and body shaped frosting smears on the couch?” 

“....it was good cake.” 

“Oh my.” she cleared her throat awkwardly. “Well obviously the five hundred dollar security deposit won’t cover these damages--” 

“Here.” Wade handed her over a credit card. “Just put it on that and don’t worry about it. We got a little carried away but it was a really good night.” He hooked his arm around Peter and kissed him sweetly. “Only gonna get married once, you know?”

“I love you, husband.” Peter stood on his toes and kissed him back. “So much.” 

“I love you too.” Wade turned back to the attendant. “Extend our apologies to the hotel manager but tell him we couldn’t really help ourselves.” 

“You couldn’t really help yourselves?” 

“Oh come on.” Wade winked at her. “You know virgins are on their wedding night, right?” 

“Wade, for the love of--” 

**********************

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[whumpbby]

How would omega Jason handle being courted by Dick? Would he be incredibly wary and shy? Or would he be somewhat disinterested/violently opposed and then slowly warms up when he realizes Dick is being serious when he says that he wants to stay?

Hm, that depends on the situation and the background. If Jay is in the black-sheep position, he’d probably not want to bother with the additional stress of getting it on with daddy’s golden boy... if he felt daring and vindictive, he’d maybe chance it to piss off Bruce, even risking breaking Dick’s heart... 

It also depends on how he sees his status. Is it something he’s ashamed of? Trying to hide? Is proud about? 

I’m more partial to the idea that, while being an omega isn’t frowned upon, Jay is one that’s incredibly awkward - big and violent, introverted and ridden with insecurities and hangups. Getting into a relationship would be stressful enough for him, but now he has to account for losing control in heat (and control is something he’s desperate to have a grip on) and submitting to an alpha (something he absolutely loathes to think about) and trusting someone to stay by him and support him (something his family is spectacularly failing at so far)... 

And it’s Dick fucking Grayson, mister perfect, universally beloved and cherished, and Jason’s self-worth is somewhere around his shins at the best of times, so of course Dick is either not serious or it’s a short infatuation that will end as soon as he realizes what Jason is and how hard it is to love him (as I said, Jason is self-aware of his flaws and pretty disillusioned). So, just like Bruce’s sporadic shows of ‘love’ and ‘forgiveness’ this will end the moment Jason does something Dick doesn't approve of. 

And Dick has to face the fact that he has to pass not only the standard omega measurement of being a ‘worthy mate’, but also find a way to punch through layers upon layers of defensive mechanisms and decide for himself what he really wants out of that relationship. Because this isn’t a normal mate he just has to woo and impress, this is a scared animal he has to coax out of hiding first. 

Now that I went all angsty and sad, I will take a moment to say that, if we throw the trauma away and go with a happier scenario: 

Jason will be hard to impress. Initially uninterested and bulletproof when it comes to seduction (partly due to disinterest, partly due to being dumb in that aspect of life;), Dick will have to reverse his usual strategy of a self-assured alpha and somehow make Jason come to him. Present himself as bait (get hurt a couple times, show some weakness, make it look like he needs help), coax instinctive responses out of that stunted omega core wrapped in defensiveness (come Jay, I can’t cook, feed me, wrap my shoulder, I can’t reach, please hug me I need comfortTT), then pounce before Jay realises what’s happening (wait, have you been...) and repel all his arguments with mind-blowing sex. 

It’s super effective.    

[unfolded73]

The Swans in the Evening (1/1)

Summary: Killian and Emma have a rough night with their new baby. ~2500 words. Rated Teen.

Wow, I can’t remember the last time I was nervous to post a fic, but I am straight-up nervous to post this -- it is intensely personal, this little fic. Thanks to @j-philly-b for giving it a read through, and to my older kid, I guess, for being a difficult infant. The title is from “She Moved Through the Fair,” because of course it is. Warning for moderately graphic descriptions of breastfeeding, which I found strangely intimate to write for someone who writes so much smut.

Oh and P.S., I’m sticking with the name Maureen. It’s my CS kid name for good or ill.

“Little one, why won’t you sleep? Or eat? Or fucking anything but fucking cry?” Emma whispered, her soothing tone of voice belying the content of her words. She paced the same circle in the nursery for at least the hundredth time, and in her sleep-deprived state, she imagined herself wearing a hole through the wood and the two of them plummeting down, landing in a shower of plaster onto the living room rug on the floor below.

Turning back toward the door, she saw Killian standing in the hallway in his pajamas, squinting against the the lamplight of the room, one side of his hair sticking straight up from the way he’d been sleeping on it. “Do you need help, love?”

She didn’t want to need help. Killian was working at the sheriff’s station tomorrow; he had taken over all of her duties for the next several weeks, and he needed to sleep. She had to handle this herself.

“She won’t stop crying,” Emma said, her voice pitiful to her own ears. “I can’t get her to nurse. She just…” As if to punctuate that point, the five-week-old took a breath and let out an extra loud wail. Emma continued to bounce the baby in her arms, not that it was doing any good.

“Let me try,” Killian said, coming toward them.

“You have to sleep, babe.”

“I’m not going to be able to sleep anyway, knowing you’re struggling.” His lips quirked up in a half-smile. “Also, she’s very loud.”

“Shit, I’m sorry, I’ll take her downstairs—”

“Swan, let me try.” He put his hand on the baby’s back and the stump of his left arm pressed against Emma’s back. “Heaven knows you’ve done the same for me quite a number of times.”

“That doesn’t count, that’s just me shoving a boob in her mouth. Which isn’t working now, so…”

“Go lie down for a little while and let me take her.” His voice was so kind and so soothing, and somehow it made Emma both want to cry and to punch him really hard in the face.

“Fine,” she muttered, handing the baby over. Killian tucked her expertly into the crook of his arm. Maureen stopped crying for a few seconds, as if adjusting to her suddenly new perspective on the world, but soon was back to her very loud, full-throated cries.

“Go lie down,” Killian said again. “Let the bad cop have a word alone with this perpetrator.”

Emma tried not to laugh and failed, her bark of amusement raw with the tears that lurked just below the surface. “Please, you’re the good cop; I’m the bad cop.”

“Be that as it may,” he said, shooing her out of the room.

Emma went, slinking down the hall and into their bedroom. She started to close the door to muffle the noise but decided to leave it open a crack, perhaps to punish herself. She didn’t deserve to sleep while Killian was up with the baby, not when she’d bailed on him so spectacularly.

Collapsing on the bed, Emma covered her head with a pillow, pressing it against her ear. Her breasts throbbed, overfilled with the milk that her daughter had refused. That and the sound of Maureen’s cries served as the syncopated drum beat of her failure.

Interspersed among the cries, she could hear Killian singing. She’d hardly ever heard him sing before the baby was born, save for that one time she’d caught him teaching bawdy sea shanties to Henry. Now he sang all the time, lullabies that he’d admitted to surprise that he even remembered. The sound of his voice, lilting and clear, made the tears she’d been holding back finally start to flow.

The pediatrician assured her that Maureen was healthy in every possible way, that she was eating well and gaining weight and that everything was normal. Right now though, at two in the morning, Emma felt like things were anything but normal. Her body felt all wrong, like her hormones were completely out of whack. Clearly her baby knew it too, otherwise, she wouldn’t cry so inconsolably for someone to come save her from such a complete failure of a mother.

She was so wrapped up in her own self-recriminations and misery that it took a minute for Emma to realize that gradually, a calm began to settle over the house. The baby’s cries slowed and slowed and finally stopped, leaving only Killian’s singing. Emma felt her shoulders relax for the first time in hours. She lay still and breathed and listened to the sound of her husband’s voice. After a few more minutes the singing stopped too, and then she heard shuffling footsteps approach the door.

“Emma?” Killian whispered softly, testing if she was awake.

“Yeah?”

“Now that she’s calmed down, would you try again to feed her? She’s rooting against my chest to no avail.”

Emma snorted, rolling over. “There’s a pirate’s chest joke there, but I’m too tired to come up with it.” She beckoned to him. “Bring her here.”

Killian put Maureen in the middle of the bed and sat down gingerly as Emma positioned herself on her side with the baby facing her. She rucked up her t-shirt, shifting herself and the baby into place. It was harder to get her to latch this way and therefore it was a risk, but Emma was too tired to move or think coherently about that. After a couple of false starts, Maureen got her mouth around Emma’s nipple and latched on. A moment of pain was followed by a rush of relief as Emma’s milk let down, and she released a long sigh.

“Okay?” Killian asked, stretching out on his side of the bed, the baby between them.

“Yeah,” she breathed. “So far so good.”

Killian caressed Maureen’s tiny hand, letting her grip his finger, then kissed the baby’s head softly. “She just needed to calm down; she’d worked herself into too much of a lather to nurse.”

“I guess,” Emma said, and her voice audibly trembled. Dammit.

“Oh, love, don’t cry,” Killian said, reaching out to stroke her hair. “It’s okay.”

“I’m terrible at this,” she muttered, her hand cradling the baby’s head.

“You really aren’t.” He leaned over and kissed her forehead. “We’re just having a rough night.”

Killian’s reassurances just made her feel more upset. She didn’t want to be reassured, she thought as she watched the baby’s jaw work, felt the rhythmic pulls against her breast and tingle of milk flowing. She wanted him to confirm that while maybe she was a good sheriff and could fling magical lightning from her fingers when the situation called for it, mothering an infant was beyond her capabilities.

“Do you know what thought went through my head while she was crying?” she asked him after a while. “What?”

“I was standing there in the nursery, bouncing her and rocking her and none of it was working, and she just kept squalling and I was so tired, like deliriously tired and … for a second, I had a clear image in my head of just… dropping her on the floor. Not that I wanted to do that or would ever,” she added hastily. “But suddenly I could see myself doing it. Dropping her.” Killian continued to stroke her hair, listening and saying nothing. “I think I understand for the first time how people end up abusing babies. Not sympathizing with it — I mean, it’s awful. Monstrous. But I see now where those impulses come from.”

“You would never do that, Emma.”

“I know. But… I didn’t know this would be so hard. I love her so much, but this is really hard.” A tear dripped off the end of her nose and down onto the pillow under her head.

Killian didn’t respond to that, didn’t try to reassure her or argue with her. He just lay next to her and continued to listen.

“I’ll think to myself, why did we do this? Which is horrible; we wanted a baby for so long. How many months was I completely crushed when I got my period? And now I’m begrudging her existence? What kind of evil person am I?”

“You’re a sleep-deprived person,” Killian responded, “and your body is still recovering from a massive trauma.”

Emma glanced down at her abdomen. “Massive is right,” she said with an eye roll.

“Stop it.”

Maureen’s mouth popped off of her breast, and Emma looked down to see her daughter had dozed off. “Oh no, you don’t,” she muttered, scooping up the baby against her chest and rolling onto her back and then onto her other side. “You’re not going to leave me lopsided tonight.” Now with Maureen up against the bed rail they’d installed for this purpose, Emma worked to get her latched onto the other breast. The movement had awoken the baby enough that she soon was suckling again without any fuss.

“Will it bother you if I hold you?” Killian asked.

“No, but you should go to sleep.”

She heard him shift, and then felt the press of his firm chest against her back, his knees folding into the backs of her knees. His hand came up to rest gently on her upper arm. “Would it help if I said it will get easier?”

“No.”

He paused. “Would it help if I said that I love you more today than I’ve ever loved you?”

Emma closed her eyes against another surge of tears and nodded.

“Every day I think I can’t possibly love you any more than I already do, and then you prove me wrong.” She felt his lips press against the back of her head. “You’re a wonderful mother,” he whispered. “And a wonderful wife.”

Silence settled, and Emma listened to the suckling noises of the baby. She ran her finger down Maureen’s cheek, enjoying the softness of her skin, leaning over and inhaling that wonderful baby smell from the top of her downy head.

“I’m supposed to go in for a doctor’s appointment Friday. Can you stay with Maureen while I do that?” she asked.

“Of course. Everything all right?”

“Yeah, it’s routine. It’s that six-week checkup, remember?”

She felt him shake his head. “Sorry, I don’t.”

Emma sighed heavily. “It’s when the doctor checks to make sure everything down there is healed up, and if so she’ll give me the all-clear for sex.”

“Six weeks, right,” Killian said evenly.

Raising an eyebrow he couldn’t see, she asked, “You’re not excited?”

His chuckle rumbled against her back. “I’m a bit too tired to be excited right now, but I assure you I am hypothetically very excited.”

“I feel like I can’t remember what wanting sex feels like,” she said.

He patted her arm. “Between the nursing and the lack of sleep, I can’t say I’m surprised. There’s no rush, darling.”

“You’re going to wear out your hand.”

Killian laughed softly again. “It wouldn’t be the first time. All I mean is we don’t have to do anything you aren’t ready for.”

Maureen unlatched from her breast with an audible pop again, and Emma looked down into her sleeping face. Her jaw hung slack, a dribble of milk running from the corner of her mouth. Smiling fondly, Emma eased away from her and pulled her t-shirt down.

“Shall I take her back to her crib?”

“I don’t know if we should tempt fate.”

Killian reached over and lifted the baby’s hand, letting it drop. “I think it’s safe.” He got up and made his way around the bed, carefully scooping her into his arms. “Back in a tic.”

Emma rolled onto her back and stared at the ceiling, listening for Killian’s murmuring as he put the baby to bed. If she weren’t so exhausted, she’d get up and go watch him. She loved the gentle way he touched their daughter, his large hand dwarfing her tiny body. The way he looked at her with such softness that it would melt the hardest of hearts. And, of course, the way he sang to her.

Her thoughts drifted back to their interrupted conversation, and by the time Killian returned, crawling under the covers with a grunt and pulling her into his arms, Emma was very nearly laughing at herself. “So here’s how neurotic I am. At the same time, I don’t want you to be interested in sex because I’m not terribly interested in sex, but I also do want you to be interested in sex because I’m freaking out that you might not find me attractive any more.”

“Swan, aside from anything else, I promise I still find you very attractive.” His hand found the jut of her hip bone, and at his urging she slung her thigh over his legs, snuggling even closer.

“I’m also worried that things down there might not be… that my vagina might be… not as good.” She felt her cheeks flush, and was glad that the only light was the one in the hallway, left on for the next time one of them needed to stumble to the baby’s room. “You had a baby long before I became acquainted with that part of your anatomy, and I can assure you it is more than ‘good.’” His words slurred a little bit, sleep starting to pull him under.

“I was young then. This time, I don’t know.”

“You are bound and determined to worry when you could be sleeping, aren’t you?”

Emma kissed his chest in apology. “Sorry, I’ll shut up.”

Feeling him lift his head, Emma tilted her neck back to meet his eyes. “There are few universal truths in this world, my love, but one of them is surely that I will always find sex with you to be an earth-shattering, transcendent experience that absolutely flattens me.”

She blinked at him a few times. “Wow.”

Killian’s head dropped back onto the pillow.

“Transcendent,” Emma said.

“Aye. Now go to sleep, woman, and allow me to rest up for our eventual…”

“Transcendent, earth-shattering experience?”

He chuckled. “Aye.”

She continued to watch him as he closed his eyes and his breathing evened out. “I love you,” she whispered.

“I love you, too, Swan.”

“And I love our daughter.”

“I know you do.” He squeezed her arm comfortingly.

Emma laid her head back on her husband’s chest and closed her eyes. And in the quiet house, everyone slept.

[starringemiliaclarke]

Press/Gallery: Emilia Clarke Solo Flight

  VANITY FAIR – It may be another year before Daenerys Targaryen appears on HBO, but Emilia Clarke has wrapped up shooting for the final season of Game of Thrones and is prepared for the big screen.

  On a rainy April afternoon, Emilia Clarke enters the bright, airy Egyptian galleries of the Metropolitan Museum of Art the way so many movie-lovers before her have: quoting Billy Crystal in When Harry Met Sally. Adopting the unsourceable accent Crystal uses opposite Meg Ryan in a famously improvised scene filmed in this very room, Clarke starts stuttering, “Pah-pah-paprikash.” Our amused if bewildered guide, too young to get the reference, adds the 1989 rom-com to her list of movie recommendations from Clarke, who has already gushed about the 2017 religious drama Novitiate. Chuckling over this unlikely double feature, Clarke assures her, “You have two incredible movies coming your way.”

  One reference the guide does get: Game of Thrones, the HBO juggernaut which stars Clarke as its most unstoppable heroine, Daenerys Targaryen. In fact, the very tour we’re taking, put together by a company called Museum Hack, is based on the series, and offers a fan-friendly survey of the sometimes inscrutable displays of the Met. You don’t have to be an art historian (our guide is an aspiring actress) to understand what Greek fire, Damascus blades, heraldry, mutilated men, samurai kamon, the dragon-born St. Margaret of Antioch, and an early female pharaoh have to do with wildfire, Valyrian steel, house words, and Clarke’s world-famous alter ego.

And yet, despite her fame, Clarke has managed to spend a full half-hour in the museum sponging up our guide’s trivia without being spotted. For years, Clarke’s brown hair let her hide in plain sight, but she recently bleached it an icy Targaryen blond. So, why the invisibility? Maybe it’s her height. “We both have a thing about our stature not quite being what people expect,” says her co-star Kit Harington, who, at five feet eight, has six inches on Clarke. Maybe it’s her outfit—the gray overcoat, cream sweater, and jeans are a far cry from the cloaks and armor of Thrones. Or maybe it’s her bright, decidedly non-intimidating personality. “When I’m goofing around with my pals, I’m unrecognizable,” she says. Harington calls Clarke’s humor “naughty,” and it’s certainly true that her informal, expletive-laced banter is a far cry from Daenerys’s imperious tones. “Sometimes, if I’m in a really bad mood,” Clarke notes, “people are like, ‘Khaleesi!’ ”

  Finally, the spell of anonymity breaks, thanks to a display of competitiveness worthy of Game of Thrones. Our guide has challenged us to photograph as many birds and dragons as we can find in the paintings and sculptures on the tour, and Clarke is approaching the task with her usual effervescent zeal. Standing in the shadow of a stone Hatshepsut, one of patriarchal Egypt’s first female pharaohs, she triumphantly displays one of the winged targets she has captured on her phone. “This little birdie: Boom!” she shouts, her voice ricocheting off the stone walls. A pair of young men look over, then descend, and, in thick French accents, ask for a photo. Clarke’s triumphant grin tightens into a polite, distant smile.

  There it is: the face of Daenerys of the House Targaryen, the First of Her Name, the Unburnt, Queen of the Andals, the Rhoynar, and the First Men, Khaleesi of the Great Grass Sea, Protector of the Seven Kingdoms, Breaker of Chains and Mother of Dragons, who, over the course of seven seasons, has climbed from powerless pawn to resolute conqueror, forcing one rival after another to “bend the knee” or burn. As Daenerys has risen, so has Clarke, morphing from a struggling actress and part-time cater waiter to an international superstar and symbol of feminine fierceness. That journey is “important and inspiring—particularly now, in our climate,” says her close friend Rose Leslie, who played the wildling warrior Ygritte in early seasons of Game of Thrones. “She’s at the forefront of representing independent women.”

  We still don’t know if, as many expect, Daenerys Targaryen will win the right to rule the Seven Kingdoms of Westeros, but we can be assured that Emilia Clarke will hang up her platinum wig for good when Game of Thrones ends its eight-season run, in 2019. There’s still a lot of filming and post-production work to be done, but Clarke has already shot her character’s final on-screen moments. “It fucked me up,” she says. “Knowing that is going to be a lasting flavor in someone’s mouth of what Daenerys is . . .”

  Clarke has good reason to feel unsettled. Letting go of a culture-defining television role can be liberating, to be sure, but it can also be deflating—or worse. Jon Hamm may always be seen as Don Draper; Sarah Michelle Gellar is forever Buffy the Vampire Slayer; Jennifer Aniston will never not be Rachel. Fortunately, Clarke approaches this pivotal transition with a stubborn insistence on behaving like a normal, grounded human being. And her upcoming credits suggest that she’s greatly in demand beyond Westeros.

  This month, Clarke, a self-described “achievement junkie,” joins the rapidly expanding Star Wars universe in Solo, a highly scrutinized origin story for Harrison Ford’s Han Solo. Her well-honed gift for concealing every detail about her work—“Everything in my life is a spoiler,” she says—helped her get into character. Director Ron Howard, a Game of Thrones fan, explains that Qi’ra, Han Solo’s childhood friend turned unreliable ally, is secretive, slippery, and morally questionable—“a much different sort of a character” from Daenerys.

  If Solo becomes a major hit, it will give Clarke a rare chance to leap cleanly from one spectacularly successful genre franchise to another. But even if it doesn’t, she has no shortage of options. An active participant in Time’s Up, she has ambitious plans to write and produce her own material—and create new opportunities for other women in the industry. Discussing those issues, she begins to sound more like the fiery Daenerys. “It becomes harder to separate you from the role when you’ve been with it so long,” she admits.

  Eight years ago, Dan Weiss and David Benioff were in trouble. Their pilot for Game of Thrones, an adaptation of George R. R. Martin’s popular A Song of Ice and Fire book series, was a disaster. Along with re-shoots, the pair were looking to re-cast a few key roles, including the pivotal part of Daenerys Targaryen. Tall, willowy, and fair-haired, Tamzin Merchant, the actress originally cast as Khaleesi, was a far more conventional match for the character on the page. The second time around, Weiss and Benioff took a fresh look at the character.

  “Emilia was the only person we saw—and we saw hundreds—who could carry the full range that Daenerys required,” the pair explained in tandem via e-mail. “Young actors aren’t often asked to play a combination of Joan of Arc, Lawrence of Arabia, and Napoleon.”

  When Clarke started on the series, Daenerys was downtrodden, occasionally objectified, and stranded in a subplot that kept the character geographically distant from the main story and the actress isolated from most of her co-stars. “I was cut off from the rest of the cast,” Clarke says. Over the years, as the famously cutthroat Thrones has thinned its sprawling ensemble, Clarke has risen in the ranks, snagging the show’s flashiest, most empowering moments.

  In an era when network and streaming platforms alike are struggling to get anyone to tune in, Game of Thrones has become one of the last surviving holdovers from the must-see TV era. For a handful of weeks every year, HBO owns Sunday nights, with devotees watching live to avoid spoilers at the office Monday morning. Clearing its own very high ratings bar, Thrones commanded an average of 32.8 million viewers in its 2017 season. Its 38 wins make it the most-awarded scripted-TV series in Emmy history.

  That glaring spotlight has made Daenerys a cultural touchstone—not to mention a costume-party staple, with Madonna, Katy Perry, Khloé Kardashian, and Kristen Bell among her many famous impersonators. At a recent charity auction, Brad Pitt offered six figures to spend an evening with Clarke and Harington, only to be outbid. Last year, Daenerys finally powered into the heart of the series, earning long-awaited screen time with Harington and the rest of the surviving stars. Clarke, who has been nominated three times for best supporting actress at the Emmys, may soon be gunning for lead honors. “Everything in my life is a spoiler,” Clarke says.

  Clarke’s upbringing in the bucolic countryside an hour outside of London couldn’t be farther from the dysfunctional family dynamics that forged the orphaned Daenerys. Emilia’s mother, Jennifer, is a businesswoman who currently runs the Anima Foundation, a charity aimed at raising awareness of specialty brain-injury care, and her father, Peter, was a theatrical sound engineer who prized education above all else. “Your bookshelf should be bigger than your TV,” he liked to remind Emilia and her older brother, Bennett. “My mum, my brother, my dad, and I would sit around a table, and my happiest place was just discussing stuff,” Emilia says. “I really value intelligence. I’m one of the very fortunate few people who really likes their family. I just like hanging out with them.”

  Clarke isn’t the first woman in her family to engage in high-stakes identity juggling. Her maternal grandmother wore light makeup to disguise the fact that she was half Indian, owing to her mother’s very secret affair with a mysterious man from the colonial subcontinent. “The fact that [my grandmother] had to hide her skin color, essentially, and try desperately to fit in with everyone else must’ve been incredibly difficult,” Clarke says. “So, yeah: history of fighters.”

  Emilia’s parents saved up to send her to a pair of upper-crust boarding schools—Rye St. Antony and St. Edward’s, both in Oxford—but she never felt at home with her much wealthier classmates. “I didn’t really fit in, like everybody who ever went to school ever.” So she channeled her energy into performing. She was rejected the first time she applied to acting school, but eventually Drama Centre London claimed her from the waiting list when another student broke her leg and dropped out. There, she finally found the “artistically inclined” friends who would keep her grounded amid the circus of international fame.

  The jet-setting Clarke clings tightly to her roots even as her life and career take her ever farther from the Home Counties. For one thing, she recently got her brother a gig in the Thrones camera department. “This job can be so alienating,” she says. “You’re in a trailer by yourself. You’re in a car by yourself. You’re in a plane. You’re in a plane. You’re in a plane. That’s what success looks like if you’re an actor. Success looks like being alone.” Clarke stays sharp by devouring “nerdy” podcasts on a range of topics from politics to science. “She’s so informed,” says Rose Leslie. “She has an opinion on every topic.”

  Clarke’s father passed away in 2016 after a long battle with cancer. At the time, Emilia was in the U.S. shooting the upcoming thriller Above Suspicion and couldn’t break away to say her final good-byes. “It still sucks. Grief sucks. He doesn’t know what I’m doing now,” she says. “That’s it before I start crying.” After a couple of romances with famous men—first, Family Guy creator Seth MacFarlane, then, reportedly, actor Jai Courtney, a brief souvenir from her Terminator Genisys shoot—Clarke swore off dating actors. In fact, she hasn’t been romantically linked in some time. When Solo premiered at Cannes, in May, she had hoped to walk the red carpet with her brother, and her goal in general is to keep her relationships out of the news. “The guys that I’ve met in my life that are dicks, I voluntarily walk the fuck away from them,” she says. “That’s just bad taste. People shouldn’t know about those choices.”

  Clarke usually appears in public with various non-famous “mates” from her drama-school days. Her “perma-plus-one” is Lola Frears, daughter of director Stephen Frears. “I ain’t got me no celebrity friends,” Clarke says. “My squad? They don’t let me get away with anything. There’s not a lot of actors I relate to.” Leslie, a rare exception to Emilia’s rule, confirms that Clarke’s longtime friends keep her in check: “There would be a ticking off or a bollocking if they felt she was no longer the lovely lady that they have always known.”

  The Star Wars tradition of featuring morally upright heroines, among them Carrie Fisher’s General Leia, Daisy Ridley’s Rey, and Felicity Jones’s Jyn Erso, was part of what drew Emilia Clarke to the role of Qi’ra in Solo, but it was the chance to break the mold that really sold her. “We’re going to hit you with a character that could very easily well be a dude, because you question her motives,” she says, sitting in a back corner of the Met’s no-frills cafeteria snacking on a pear and sipping English-breakfast tea from a paper cup. “That’s really fucking exciting in the Star Wars universe, because that has never happened.”

  Before accepting the Solo role, Clarke had to ask Game of Thrones show-runners Weiss and Benioff for permission to complicate their plans for a final season by adding a demanding Star Wars filming schedule to the mix. They didn’t hesitate. “Solo felt like a great fit that would let her show off her versatility,” Weiss and Benioff explained. “Also, we figured she’d probably get to shoot a ray gun. Ray guns are something we just can’t offer, unfortunately.”

  Swapping dragons for ray guns, Emilia Clarke was eager to prove her mettle in a whole new galaxy. But that plan hit a snag when the Solo production fell spectacularly and publicly apart. “I’m not gonna lie,” Clarke says. “I struggled with Qi’ra quite a lot. I was like: ‘Y’all need to stop telling me that she’s “film noir,” because that ain’t a note.’ ” Frustrated by the lack of direction, she turned to Solo’s father-and-son screenwriters, Lawrence and Jon Kasdan, for support. Then, four and a half months into shooting, co-directors Phil Lord and Chris Miller exited the project, citing “creative differences.” Production was put on hold until they were replaced by Ron Howard, a longtime friend of franchise creator George Lucas’s. With a brand-new director and an ambitious re-shoot schedule—Clarke reluctantly agrees when I call those first months “a high-budget dress rehearsal”—Solo still had to hit its opening date, in May of the following year.

  Clarke says Howard’s arrival “saved” the movie: “All hail to [Lucasfilm president] Kathy [Kennedy] for hiring Ron.” Slipping into a mocking impression of herself, Clarke re-enacts a self-pitying therapy session with Howard over a private meal they shared before resuming production. “He even feigned enthusiasm!” she says. “I know for a fact he had that discussion with everybody. I think we all came to set feeling like his favorite. It makes for a really happy load of actors, with our egos.”

  Howard recalls that dinner a bit differently. The former child star of The Andy Griffith Show saw in Clarke “the kind of pragmatism and a can-do spirit that often comes from people who have cut their teeth doing television.”

  “I know some of how tough it was for her,” Harington says. “But she’s pretty tough as well.”

  Clarke wasn’t privy to everything that led up to the director swap, but she wasn’t entirely surprised, either. “When it comes to that amount of money, you’re almost waiting for that to happen. Money fucks us all up, doesn’t it? There’s so much pressure. Han Solo is a really beloved character. This is a really important movie for the franchise as a whole. It’s a shit ton of money. A shit ton of people. A shit ton of expectations.”

  Solo wasn’t the first troubled blockbuster to test Clarke’s resilience. If anything, the production of 2015’s Terminator Genisys was more chaotic. She watched frequent Thrones director Alan Taylor get “eaten and chewed up on Terminator. He was not the director I remembered. He didn’t have a good time. No one had a good time.” When the film underperformed at the box office, she was “relieved” to not have to return for any sequels. News of the rocky production traveled, and Clarke says the crew on the famously disastrous Fantastic Four, which was filming nearby, even had jackets made that read, AT LEAST WE’RE NOT ON TERMINATOR. “Just to give you a summary,” she says, laughing.

  Rumors spreading between film sets is one thing, but the Solo tumult was covered exhaustively in the trades and on fan sites, adding another layer of pressure to an already pressurized project. “I hope we did it good, then, because people have all this gossip,” Clarke says. “I don’t want people to go, ‘That’s the bit where it all went wrong. That’s the bit, I know it.’ I just really hope that people have a good time, that it’s good, and, you know, selfishly, that I’m not shit and that people don’t write reviews going, ‘Oh my God, that’s, like, the worst acting I’ve ever seen in my life. Wow. How did they give her the part?’ ”

  For all her anxieties about how her performance will go over, Clarke and I are both energized by the Solo footage we’ve seen. Clarke’s easy chemistry with Donald Glover, who plays fan favorite Lando Calrissian, is evident from their very first on-screen meeting. And though her shifting allegiances mean she has to play a range of emotions opposite Alden Ehrenreich’s Han Solo, she endows every twist with an undercurrent of romantic possibility. Tonally closer to the Indiana Jones movies than to, say, Rogue One, Solo marks the franchise’s return to lighthearted, fast-paced capers.

  Clarke—who spends most Thrones battles on the backs of her C.G.I. dragons—was eager to jump into the fray with some hand-to-hand combat. “She had to deal with quite a large sword and some pretty elaborate fight choreography, and she made it look easy,” Ehrenreich says. With all the re-shoots and reconfigured plotting, she also had to fight to keep some of her favorite moments in. “That is going to be badass as fuck,” she told the filmmakers of a showstopping Qi’ra moment that made the cut. “Don’t forget your audience.”

  Long before they shared a scene together, Clarke and Harington had become friends thanks to their time on the Game of Thrones promotional circuit. It was through Harington that Clarke met Rose Leslie. An adept mimic, Clarke impersonates a “smitten” Harington mooning over his on-screen lover and future real-life fiancée in the early days of the show: “There’s the best human in the world. She’s called Rose.”

  Clarke has a teasing relationship with Harington. “I’ll tell him, ‘Kit, stop being a dick—stop being so grumpy.’ Like I would with my brother.” And as the two transition in these final seasons from real-life friends to partners in TV’s biggest romance (albeit one complicated by incest), the ribbing has only increased. “If you’ve known someone for six years, and they’re best friends with your girlfriend, and you’re best friends with them,” Harington says, “there is something unnatural and strange about doing a love scene. We’ll end up kissing and then we’re just pissing ourselves with laughter because it’s so ridiculous.”

  “She’s goofy,” Weiss and Benioff confirm. “We have tried to let some of Emilia’s humor and light seep into Daenerys whenever possible. Who says conquerors can’t be funny?” A memorable Season Four conversation between Daenerys and her right-hand woman, Missandei, concerning a eunuch’s “pillar and stones,” for instance, is much more Clarke than Targaryen. Sadly, it’s unclear how much space there will be in the show’s climactic final season for bawdy, Clarke-ish humor. “I’m doing all this weird shit,” Clarke says. “You’ll know what I mean when you see it.”

  In the final episodes of a show with a body count as high as Game of Thrones’, Clarke never really knows when she might be filming her last moments with a member of the cast. She’s also shooting for the first time with several of the show’s top stars, including Sophie Turner and Maisie Williams, who play the formidable Stark sisters.

  Clarke is well aware that the strong women of the series are leaving some kind of imprint on the culture, but she’s saving up all her big-picture reflections on Daenerys for later: “This is going to be a Band-Aid that I’m going to rip off.” To help with that process, she started keeping a daily journal of her last season. With cell phones banned from the set due to security concerns, it’s her best hope of chronicling the final days of Daenerys. Selfies are off limits, but Clarke has asked set photographer Helen Sloan to snap the occasional behind-the-scenes photo. Both the journal and the photos, Clarke hints, may be available to the show’s fans someday.

  Clarke is unsurprisingly, and contractually, evasive when it comes to specifics of the concluding six episodes. Heavy hints in the most recent season indicate that, in addition to contending with the usual climactic end-of-the-world crises, Daenerys will also be grappling with more intimate parenthood and family issues. Here, Clarke and her on-screen alter ego may have something in common. Friends like Leslie and Harington are settling down to build their own families (“Their wedding is going to be siiiiick,” Clarke says), and an old schoolmate recently made Clarke godmother to a highly photogenic baby boy who makes regular appearances on her Instagram account. She lights up when talking about him.

  Talking about her own parents evokes other emotions. The wounds from the loss of her father are still fresh, but her mother remains an inspiration. If all goes according to plan, it’s Jennifer Clarke who will provide the map for Clarke’s very first post-Thrones steps. After the show ends, Clarke plans to re-create a road trip her mother took in 1972 to Yosemite and the redwoods of Northern California. With best friend and scriptwriter Lola Frears by her side, Clarke intends to spend part of the trip working on ideas for new projects. Her agents offered to take these ideas to “guys” with writing experience, but her answer to that was pure Daenerys: “No, I’m going to take it to me.”

  Citing Reese Witherspoon, Greta Gerwig, and other actresses turned creators as inspiration, Clarke says she wants to work with as many female filmmakers as she can. As for the conventional industry wisdom that women can’t work together without infighting? “It’s fucking bullshit. It’s so annoying.” An active member of Time’s Up, Clarke negotiated with Weiss and Benioff in 2014 to ensure she maintained parity with her male counterparts. She and four co-stars—Harington, Lena Headey (Cersei Lannister), Peter Dinklage (Tyrion Lannister), and Nikolaj Coster-Waldau (Jaime Lannister)—reportedly each landed $300,000 per episode, a dazzling figure that skyrocketed to half a million per episode for the final two seasons. “I get fucking paid the same as my guy friends,” Clarke says. “We made sure of that.”

  And while Clarke would be thrilled to have her own Lady Bird or Big Little Lies, that’s not all she’s after. She says she’s “desperate” to make documentaries and shine a light on underserved causes. “That’s the shit that gets me going personally.” Inspired by her father’s cancer ordeal, Clarke is especially passionate about the risks Brexit poses to the U.K.’s National Health Service, and she was recently named ambassador to the Royal College of Nursing. “That’s something I have in common with Dae-nerys,” she says suddenly, after several hours of explaining all the reasons she and her character are nothing alike. “I really feel for people and I want to help them. Not to sound too much like Oprah Winfrey.” She pauses, and thinks again. “Fuck that, I’m gonna sound like Oprah and I’m going to be proud of it.”

  In the midst of the twin tornadoes of Star Wars and Game of Thrones, Clarke acknowledges that most of her choices these days are “studio choices.” And if Solo is a hit, Clarke could be working for Lucasfilm for years to come. But Harington sees something else in her future: “She’s done, far more than me or most people in the cast, these very high-budget, big-hitting blockbusters. Hopefully Star Wars continues for her and she does more of them. But I think she’s an incredibly talented actor, and I would love to see her do something which is a more focused character piece, because the ones she’s done are brilliant.” Clarke’s effervescent performance in 2016’s romantic weepy Me Before You—a surprise hit at the box office—hints at what she’s capable of.

  Clarke wants to stretch herself, and explore a new-media landscape where creators no longer have to rely on large companies in order to get their projects made. “Everyone can. Get your iPhone out. Let’s do something. You know what I mean?” And with 17 million followers on Instagram, Clarke has the power to make and launch her own projects. Her recent Thrones-themed fund-raising Instagram video for the Royal College of Nursing Foundation racked up more than seven million views in just three days.

  All that takes some of the heat off Clarke as she decides how to follow up roles in two of entertainment’s biggest franchises. She doesn’t necessarily need another monster hit. She can afford to take her time, listen to herself, and do something that feels true to who she is—whoever that may be.

  The most obvious evidence of the blur between Daenerys and Clarke is the relatively new shock of blond hair on her head. “I did this, which was frigging stupid,” she says, fingering the blunt-cut ends of her bleached hair.

  When Kit Harington trimmed his famous curls in 2015, fans were led to believe his character, presumed dead, wouldn’t be returning to the show the following season. (He did.) But Clarke swears her decision to go blonde has nothing at all to do with Daenerys’s fate. “I got to a point where I said I just want to look in the mirror and see something different. So I was just like, ‘Fuck it, it’s the last season. I’m going to dye my hair blond.’ ” Clarke jokes that she immediately felt remorse and bought nine baseball caps online. “But they don’t go with your outfit, so I don’t wear them.”

  Clarke’s brown hair had always been her shield. The blond hair makes it harder to slip back into her pre-fame life. Partying with her old friends is tricky because their friends get “weird” about it, and she misses the mundane pleasures of, say, running errands for her mother. “What I get most heartbroken about is that those opportunities are almost completely gone.” Then she catches herself, and apologizes for moaning about the “champagne problems” of fame. “If I were reading this, I’d be like, ‘Cheer the fuck up, love.’ ”

  Back underneath that statue at the Met, Emilia Clarke cranes her neck up to get a closer look at the ancient pharaoh’s smooth granite face. Hatshepsut wears a false beard that allowed her to pass more easily through the male-dominated world. Our guide points out a faint piece of carved string running up the pharaoh’s jawline holding the disguise in place. Thinking about it later, Clarke, who knows a thing or two about disguises, passing, alter egos, and powerful women, shakes her head in astonishment. “That is some fascinating shit right there.”

  A towering granite Daenerys statue may never find its way into the hallowed halls of the Met, but it’s not clear Emilia Clarke wants that anyway. As we duck out of the Met a bit behind schedule, only to find that it’s raining and our sleek hired car is nowhere in sight, Clarke gamely suggests we rush out into the downpour and dive into the back of a yellow cab. Our driver doesn’t recognize Clarke, either, which puts her at ease. Unsure how to get to where we’re going, he passes his smartphone to her so she can type the hotel’s address into his G.P.S. “Don’t worry, mate,” she announces. “Your little app will get us there!” A satisfied smile plays on her face as the taxi twists, turns, and bumps along. She looks happier than she ever has riding a dragon.

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  Press/Gallery: Emilia Clarke Solo Flight was originally published on Enchanting Emilia Clarke