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popculturebuffet · 4 years

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Toons for Our Times: The Casagrandes: Four Course Catchup

I take some time to catch up with everyone’s faviorite mexican-american family with a four course meal of shenanigans.

Mexican Makeover: The thorny issue of racial identity erasure is handled via a lot of costumes, spicy food and a second Sergio, which suprisingly isn’t my own personal hell. Then again giving rusty a brother wasn’t either so there’s a precident. Uptown Funk: Carl goes full Zach Morris, minus the white privlage, and marries Adelaide to get a free train ride, then let’s his hallucinations talk him into nearly killing everyone. At least the Leprechaun in the sandbox isn’t telling him to burn things anymore. Bo-Bo Business: Hector won’t respect Bobby’s genius new ideas so Bobby sets shop at the near by hong’s market and procedes to nearly get murdered by bunnies. Dear god Anya was right. Blunder Party: Ronnie Anne and Sid host their first event as a couple, a sleepover campout on the roof with their running crew. Adilade and Carl crash it causing their sibling and cousin to send the two on a dangerous scavenger hunt. As you do. Context for what’s going on the page image under the cut.

So yeah I originally wasn’t going to add the Casagrandes to regular coverage.... but what can I say. I had way more to talk about with the recent crop of episodes than I thought, the show often airs with loud house so it increases my coverage output and most importantly.. i’ts just damn good. While still having some kinks to work out, like forgetting to use CJ, the show is just really charming and uses i’ts premise well. So yeah when the show, at least according to the wiki, so expect full coverage of both this years halloween special and the show in full when it comes back in november... and with bobby being hypnotized into thinking he’s a cat apparently.. so yeah i’d be watching anyway, so why not go all in. .So with that out of the way we’ve got a lot of ground to cover so, Golpeteo de pitter, which is spanish for pitter patter... maybe. If google translate mangled that I apologize.

Mexican Makeover:

Like with our last bit of loud house coverage, we start with the least of the episodes first. That being said this one isn’t TERRIBLE, just a waste of a good concept and something intresting to explore. It’s also a real shame given this episode is written by Lalo Alcaraz, the writer of the comic strip La Cucaracha who works as a consultant on the show and previously wrote my favorite episode of the season, Croaked!, which we’ll be talking about soon. But he seems like a great guy, but everyone dosen’t bat a thousand. This episode centers around Rosa, whose mother Mama Lupe, and her parrot sidekick Paco, coming to visit. Paco is a recolor of sergio which actually explains a LOT honestly, as I now feel Sergio is the Quaks to Paco’s Squaks.

As in the crappy recolor who dosen’t have as many skills. As you can tell I don’t like Sergio much. He’s annoying, not very funny and only rarely has his moments and also spent one episode constnatly being obnoxious to Bobby, who as we’ve discussed and will soon discuss some more, is my boy. My precious baby boy. So bullying him is the equilvent of slapping me with a dueling glove. So yeah Paco is better than Sergio, being more laid back, less obnoxious.. and voiced by, of all people, legendary cartonist and the namesake of the parrot sergio, Sergio Aragones. I grew up with the guy in middle and high school as he frequently, and I belivie still does, work for parody magazine MAD Magazine, and while I haven’t read it also did 80′s indie comic Groo the Wanderer with Mark Evainer of Garfield and Friends Fame. The guy’s really damn funny and it was a real treat to find out he’s involved here, especailly since the namesakes for the loud pets have all sadly passed, so it’s nice at least one pet namesake between shows gets to guest star. But my fanboying aside, Rosa is worried she hasn’t been making her family Mexican enough and thus goes a bit absolutley nuts. She steals the kids clothes and replaces them with various traditional mexican outfits, which is a bit psycotic, and gives us a shot of carl’s ass when he compalins about his underwear being replaced, which...

Yes thank you wayne. I’m sure even some of the 7 year old’s watching this don’t want to see a fellow 7 year old’s butt. Stop that. There’s a reason the parent show stopped the gag of having Lincoln in his underwear all the time and it wasn’t just because only chris savino thought it was funny. It’s especially creepy given after Savino’s sexual harassment, John K’s reveal of being a pedophile and whatever Dan Schinder did they refuse to talk about to the public but has ciruclated around, you TIHNK the’yd be more congizant of not showing borderline child porn. I mean it’s one thing to have a kid in underpants for a gag it’s another to have a close up of his butt. Just stop. Stop. So the episode goes as you’d expect, Rosa keeps pushing things harder without explaining herself, including trying to force the kids to speak in spanish, feeding them extra spicy food and againt eh whole replacing their clothes thing.. which\ do look nice though and we do get that blessed image of bobby up top. The kids eventually confront Rosa who reveals she just dosent’ want to give her mom a heart attack, they go along with it with Sergio feeding ronnie anne spanish, which is nice continuity as her not knowing i’ts come up before, and everyone putting on a show.. which goes horribly wrong with super spicy food understandably not being built for a 80-100 year old woman, and while i’ts nice Bobby’s buddy par, we’ll cover their episode at some point too, shows up he also heavy metals so hard it knocks her over and destroys the painting, which yeah of course. Rosa comes clean and Lupe.. is entirely fine with it and feels that culture is more in values than in what you know about it, though she will teach them a few things because knowing where you came from is still important. Also Paco returns and.. why coudln’t both he and Lupe stay. For all my issues with the episode besides Carl’s butt shot, which we’ll get to in a second, I do really like Lupe and Paco is better than sergio in every way shape and form apart from the name. just color him read and have him smother sergio in his sleep and we’re up a better parot.

Final Thoughts for Mexican Makeover: This one was eh. I saved my thoughts on the main plot for here because it IS a topic worth talking about: loss of cultural idetntity, especailly for first or second generation, as our main kids and their parents are, kids, how to ballance the cultures, what really matters.. it’s all good, deep really senstiive topics that i’m in no way qulaified to entirley judge because i’m very much white and am not going to whitesplain topics that I have no personal experince with. But I can at least say they could’ve done MORE with this. For one thing Maria was absent, and it would’ve been REALLY intresting to get her take on it since Croaked! established she didn’t really give Ronnie Anne at the very least much of a lesson in their heritage. You can’t really BLAME HER: She works a demanding job, ended up having to raise them alone, and is tired a lot. As I said i’ts a VERY complex topic that’s created some VERY brilliant works around the subject, and while i’m not asking for “Moonlight... for Kids!” I am asking you to explore something like this. How aclimated the kids are to white culture is a topic worth exploring and could’ve been a special and while yes I know, it probably would’ve been “A Very Special Episode”..sometimes you need to tackle complex topics for kids. The Proud Family was also a screwball comedy, but it tackled the civil rights movement, xenophobia and other heavy subjects from time to time.. it also thought music piracy was the root of all evil but as I said no one bats a thousand. And it wouldn’t lack jokes as Alcaraz’s career is in satire: He knows how to write jokes about heavily charged topics and be clever about it on the freaking comics page, and given The Casagrandes like it’s sister show is basically a comic strip in animated form, he has the right format tow ork with it just ultimately becomes instead the cliche “person is coming time to hide everything we’ve been doing plot”, which has never been that good and is even worse on top of a more interesting idea. I don’t expect the show to be super deep all the time but I expect better than broaching a clearly difficult subject and not really giving it any weight.

Uptown Funk: Now we’re past the one I was eh on because I knew how it’d turn out, and somehow got even less on board as it wasted a good concept and good ideas, and to the one out of the four I was most pumped for. And of all things it was a CARL episode. I passingly mentioned last time I didn’t like Carl, and that opinon’s started to change. I’m still not a huge fan, his voice is grating and he STILL hasn’t given up on Lori seasons later after Clyde long has and the other show long regonized this was a bad idea. Buuut i’ve come to realize he has his moments, with Monster Cash, which i’ll cover very soon for Halloween Havoc, and this very episdoe which is utterly fantastic. Though part of that is also the supporting cast, who were the reason I was pumped. I talked abotu the Changs Breifly in my Operation Dad review but since Adalaide and Stanley are more promenent here and Becca will be, if not in person, in Croaked!, i’ll gladly dive into them. The Changs are the Casagrandes next door neighbors and EASILY one of the best parts of the show. A lovely interacial nuclear family, the four are all really likeable and distinct. I’ve talked about Sid before, so we’ll save more of that for in a bit. Stanley her dorky dad voiced by Kim Jeong who works as the subway conductor for Great Lakes City. He’s just a treat, in both sense of hte word, and really sweet interacting with his daughter and has a tendency to make small apperances due to Ronnie Anne and Sid riding the subway wherever they need to go. As i’ve said it’s nice to see Ken Jeong get to play a goofy, normal-ish dad and be funny without having to either play an over the top lunatic, weirdo or asshole. I love community but Chang could be a lot but this Chang is alright.. and probably dosen’t speak to his community college student brother that often for his family’s saftey. He does have Rabi Chang, his other brother over a lot though. Look if Teen Titans go can be jammed into the same multiverse as ok ko and steven universe, this show can take place in the same unvierse as community.

Becca is stan’s wife and the head zookeeper at the zoo as well as the runner of their various shows, voiced by melissa joan hart and while not around as mcuh as her husband, is still a delight and it’s a delight to have clarissa back. Also together with her husband they make one hell of a couple to get sandiwthced between.. and no shame there, and yes i’m aware they have kids, i’d be happy to help raise them. I”m no asshole.

Anyways speaking of those kids, we lastly have Adalaide, the star of this show and an adorable 6 year old and as Sid calls her “A sass bucket” which is accurate both for 6 year olds in general, and for this one, though like most kids her age she flips from being adorable to entirely blunt when warranted. She also has a Frog, named Froggy II. We’ll get into what happened to Froggy I and how she met Froggy II in October.

So yeah two of my faviorite side characters, I consider sid main, PLUS one of my other faviorites Vito in a supporting roll. What’s not to love? As for the plot Carl brushes off Adalaide, because he’s a little jerk festival, but changes his tune when he overhears Stanley offering to have Adilaide join him on the train even see the control. Carl being a fanboy for trains among many other things which I shall list now: Things Carl’s a Fanboy For: 1. Money 2. Petty Schemes 3. Zack Morris 4. The Ladies 5. AC Slater 6. Luchadores 7. Trains.

He naturally has his eyes light up like a christler buliding and given numbers 2 and 3 on the list quickly comes up with a scheme to get that train ride, since Stanely offered her a plus one. Granted he could’ve PROBABLY just asked Stanley for a ride and being the upstanding guy he is, and given Carl’s also a train nerd and stanley is their king, he would’ve said yes, but this is the same boy who thought his adult cousin’s same aged girlfriend would want to go out with him when said girlfriend lives in a house with at least 3 girls close to his age instead she could set him up with. The boy is more of a short term planner, like most schemers in fiction really, he sees the dollar signs like eddy from ed edd n eddy and has some good ideas, but not the more obvious solutions that aren’t as scheme based around him. I swear if this kid didn’t have a moral center this would be him in 50 years

I mean the only reason the boy hasn’t used sharks or explosives is because his parents and grandparents won’t’t let him.

Anyways Addie is skepteical for about 5 seconds and my one real complaint about the episode is it felt like she was genuinely skeptical, and playing him slightly with their games.. but it turns out nope she just genuinely bought it. But as smart as she is she’s also only 6, and her being adorably trusting works just as well. So they play games. They have a tea party, with carl wearing a truly glorious peacock that I guarnatee sid has worn both for playing with her sister and just to feel fancy. They then play with Froggy.. which gets uncomfotable as Adaladie forces Carl to kiss him, and then basically goes full on “NOW KISS” when it fails to turn froggy into a prince and Froggy runs because he wisely dosen’t want to make out with Carl, and is omly passable and not disturbing instead because she’s 6 and dosen’t know better. They then play chase froggy, which Carl wins but gets flies thrown at him in hte process so does he really? They get to their final game superheroes, with carly playing his faviorite el falcone.. but also being the hostage while Adalaide saves him because this is 2020, she don’t need to be no damsel in distress. And this to me is why the episode works.. Carl IS a huge jerk here, manipulating a younger child who just wants to be his friend to get a train ride he could’ve gotten just by asking her.. but he gets put through the ringer, and most of his “humilation” is stuff that isn’t that bad: Tea is alright, there’s no shame in wearing makeup or a veil, and being rescued by a woman is awesome. It’s just Carl’s own baby’s first toxic masuclinity that makes these situations minus kissing froggy uncomfortable, so it adds to it as Addy’s doing nothing wrong really and any pain on carl’s part is an accident on hers. She’s just an imaginatiee little lady and he’s jsut a jerk. But they pair well together his underserved ego with her adorablility and creativity and as we’ll see smarts. Part of the reason I was so excited is their one real scene togehter in monster cash, when Carl is throiwng everyon’es money back at them which is also the best bit of the episode and we’ll get to that when we cover it her response is a stern “Don’t you even dare” and he hands it back to her because you don’t mess with Addy.

Addy then brings up pretend marriage and while Carl has his first , and probably not last, panic attack over comitment he does realilze this can be used and gets his train ride over it, with the two taking Froggy along as their baby. But being Carl, he’s not ready for marriage to a strong judge on the supreme court who makes him change the diapers and humilaties him in public, whcih i’d be more upset about if again he didn’t deserve it. We also have VITO! Local itallian, the Mercado’s best customer and Hector’s only friend. He also has his two winer dogs with him which.. yes. Just yes. And they have matching hats and sweaters because Vito is the best. Hedecides to toss froggy and book it for the train car. Adalaide realizes she’s been played and is understandably pissed but sadly, needing to find her friend her husband threw, dosen’t storm into Stanley’s conductor car and throw him off the train.

Instead Carl geeks out with Stanley over the train, which means he probably is meant to marry into this family, and Stanley’s glart awards. When Stanley’s called away to deal with the frog fracas, Carl is left told not to touch anything. So the obvious happens.. Carl hallunciates a bunch of pre school level choo choos who tell him to press the button. I love .. everything about this. It’s just pure hilarity and insanity and I’m here for it and a really creative, and insane gag and a nice take on the shoulder devil trope.

Naturally Carl, being Carl, presses the big button which turns on the ac and then blasts Stan’s train mix. Which sadly isn’t just this over and over and over and over again.

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With Carl possibly banned from trains for life he naturally turns to his wife for help, who is none to happy with his bullshit, and not willing to help him because why would she? But Carl.. genuinely apologizes. It’s why I mentioned he has a moral center. Unlike say Zack morris 80% of hte time or Eddy from Ed Edd N Eddy at his worst, Carl can FEEL human emotions like guilt, and while he does need Addy’s help to not get in massive trouble, you can tell he genuinely feels bad about hurting her and is only asking because she’s his only hope and for the sake of the various passengers who if she dosen’t step in will go off the rails on a crazy train, she agrees. Turns out though Addy is pretty badass on top of being adorable, and uses Froggy II as a grappling hook, then turns out to have inherited her dad’s knowledge of trains, which was foreshadowed earlier as she said she’s gone with him a lot and was bored at his offer and won two time junior glart awards.. which given that likely includes teens and tweens, is Valeria Richards levels of acomplished. God damn kid. Kudos. Stanley gets understandably mad at carl But Addy covers for him and since she saved her dad’s awards, Carl can live.. and come back sometimes. Carl, first through his action figure then himself apologizes for being a jerk toa ddy and manipulating her.. a genuine one that shows he means it and finds she’s pretty cool. Gues this marriage CAN be saved. And so we end this episode as you’d expect.

No.. for one thing i’td be leprechaun-train monstrosity. For another the happy couple team up as superheros and thwart froggy being hit by a train , who greatfully smooches carl who, having grown, takes it in stride. Happy end

Final Thoughts: I love this one. It was funny, intresting and had carl develop as a character while fleshing addy out and giving us some great stanley stuff. It made having a jerk as the protagnist here work and made me go from begrudgingly liking carl to actuallyl iking him. while he’s pretty terrible here he suffers for most of his actions and learns from it, and he and Adelade ahve a great dynamic that we thankfully do indeed see again this very marathon. But first. IT’S BOBBY TIME.

Bo-Bo Buisness It’s my first episode starring Bobby on this blog and i’ts been TOO long and there will be more to come I promise. As i’ve made no secret of Bobby is my faviorite character here, and as you can tell that’s a tight race, and is just.. great here. The move to the city fleshed him out by giving him drive with his desire to run the mercado, franchise it, and go to buisness school to do all of it properly, while keeping his loveable sweetness, stupidity and relationship with Lori which has gone from deeply unhealthy to awwwwwwwww.

So naturally I was on board for another Bobby Bonaza, and this one like most of his eps is pretty good: This time around it focuses on Bobby’s hard work ethic and youthful energy..and it leading him AWAY from the mercado. Bobby tries setting up free wifi and a table like a cafe in the Mercado, but Hector flatly refuses and refuses anthing Bobby comes up with, citing his 30 years running the place sucessfully, while Bobby cites his less than a year of it and his book of ideas, though Hector refuses to budge. And what I like here is that while hector IS still the bad guy here, it’s not in a one dimensional “Jerk for the episode’ way this show’s sister episode tends to fall into. Or treating a character being a jerk like their the wronged party, or.. you get the idea. Point is hector has SOME points: He has run a small buisness in a huge city for 30 years, beating out gentrification, racisim, big buisness and other threats to run at thriving mercado, even with another market across the street. He also owns a sizeable apartment with room for two diffrent families, 5 adults, 6 kids, a dog and an asshole, and his wife is super for the building as a whole. He’s done MARVELOUSLY for himself and deserves to be proud and his stubborness likely comes from just how much he’s been able to acomplish while others fell around him. However.. Bobby is still sympathetic. It’s very clear working here is his dream job: His plan for his life is to expland the place into a franchise and run it himself one day, he’s the clear sucessor and Hector wont’ be around forever.. probably for a LONNNG time still, and his ghost will probably haunt the place with Rosa’s scolding him, but since ghosts can’t own property probably, someone has to take over. Bobby is his clear sucessor and his ideas aren’t bad.. poorly exceuted in this case, but not bad. As we’ll see in a bit the table idea can work, bobby just didn’t think it through and Hector could’ve HELPED HIM with it and as we’ll see most of the ideas Bobby ends up doing elsehwere are just common sense for this day and age and the one that isn’t is the one that does him in. But Hector, likely seeing any change as a threat to his bottom line and his legacy, rejects him out of hand. H’es likely scared that his protege can do BETTER, or worried that one wrong move could cost him his life’s work. I also find this ironic since a few episodes ago, though I still need to see it, Bobby himself had the same problem letting go and letting someone else control the buisness with his sister and cousins running the place while he had his anniversary with Lori. Bobby DESERVES to be given his shot.. and so when he decides to quit the mercado in a huff and take his table and his ideas with him.. you agree with him. Sure he’s leaving the family legacy.. but if Hector wont let him make it his own or appricate how much fucking work he does or love he has for the place, then what legacy is there? That got heavy. We get a great joke next as bobby makes a metaphor about the dinosaurs.. then wonders what happened to them and like me on any given day stops to google it.. and since he uses a laptop unlike me and my desktop computer or phone, and his table, he inadveratly sets up a table outside.. which fixes the problems with his idea, if by accident and impresses Mr.Hong the owner of a nearbye market who could use a fresh faced go getter like bobby and hires him right on sight and agrees to start putting his ideas in.

And the wifi table.. is a huge sucess and putting it outside gave the customers more room, so it fixes the one flaw in his plan, and serving out cafe and snacks I can’t prounounce or spell properly, bobby shows his idea WOULD have worked: instead of creating loiterers it simply gives customers like Vito, who pretty much lives at the Mercado anyway so why not, a place to sit, eat and check their email and stuff, and bobby’s a good enough salesman he can convince them to eat and given the mercado already has a customers only policy on toilets.. they could’ve just made the table purchase only, and once per hour, and their regulars would’ve lapepd it up. Hector refuses to accept this though and stews and drives sergio and carl away.. which yeah if you can out asshole Sergio, you may be the bad guy here. The two feud over dinner to their family’s confusion, and to Rosa’s annoyance and dope slaps when she spills her hard worked on food over their petty sniping but bobby’ sstar continues to rise with a music video for hongs including that bit seen above, rapping and just.. whatever the fuck that video was it was the third best rap in nick history behind that “nnnnnnick” rap and this.

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So yeah with the comeerical, Hongs has tons of customers, and Hector stews more. However things can’t be good forever, as the last 4 years have proven they can be bad for an especially long time but good? Sadly no, as Bobby gets what he always wanted: The keys to the store.. maybe not the store he wanted but still and gets to run hongs solo. Sadly though Bobby ends up fucking up, letting people bring their pets which wrecks the place, and ends up with bobby getting swarmed by an ever multiplying batch of bunnies.

As Bobby is cuddled to death, his exact words, Hector finally relents and saves the boy from literally drowning, and the two get the rabbits out.. but well with social media and all that hong knows what happen and bobby’s fired. But back at the Mercado, Hector rehires bobby, and genuinely apologizes. I do feel it comes a bit quick.. but I guess after your grandson almost got bunnied to death, you rethink your life choices. Bobby admits he was in over his head while Hector genuinely admits Bobby has good ideas and he was being a stubborn jackass and decides he can use them after all. Starting with the commerical where the two perform a nice mexican song, the whole family adorably dresses up like various mercado items as seen at the veyr top and we also get this.

Yes, yes to all of this. And we’re out.. for a moment then back in but you get it.

Final Thoughts for Bo Bo Buisness: While not the best Bobby episode, that would be the one that introduces Par and again i’ll get to that one, this one is still pretty good. While I do feel Hector turns around a bit quick, otherwise it’s funny enough and has enough character stuff with bobbby, even if i’ts mostly just from knowing him in this series to work out. I”m not ANTI-nonsense episodes, I just don’t want them there when ther’es clearly a way heavier issue your steping around. This wasn’t the BEST the series has done comedy wise but it was fun enough. Alright one more...

Blunder Party:

And we end on another pretty good one. And oddly for this show it’s the only Ronnie Anne focused one of the four. Usually she’s dead center but it seems the series is getting comfortable enough, much like it’s parent show, to ease out of focusing on just one character as the viewpoint and letting the others breathe. Still this was a good un and let’s talk about it.

It’s Party Time and Ronnie and Sid are having a sleepover on the roof. Their first party of a couple.. i’m so proud of by baby gays.. or gabies as I call them. I mean.. yes i’m not subtle with my shipping but they act less like close friends and more like two tiny lebisan awww factories. Anywho the whole crew’s here, which as with a lot of things this episode let’s talk about them: Casey, Nikki and Sameeer were introduced in a loud house I haven’t seen and naturally carried over to the show proper, showing up when Lincoln visted in an episode I will defintely cover at some point, and accepting Ronnie Anne wasn’t a born city kid. They have neat designs, are nicely diverse, and while lthey do need some fleshing out, given that like Lincoln’s own friend team squad they show up in a good chunk of ronnie anne episodes, we got time for that so we’re good. There’s also new addition Laird, the school’s own screech powers, and your standard awkward dork whose not that great. So yes even this group has a waste of a character, though he’s not AS bad as rusty or useless as Liam, just feeling a bit less essentail than Ronnie Anne’s running crew, who match her general vibne, and Sid whose her soulmate.

But as the pizza arrives via Sergio, because he has to be useful at least once, our heroes soon find the party crashed by Great Lakes City’s newest power couple: Carl and Adelaide! Looking like their fucking team rocket. Seriously I had other options for this episode, including bobby sliding around on his back comically, so it says something just how great that iamge is and how fucking gloriously smug yet awesome they look.

The two want to join and even outdo the big kids at stretcing and flinging pizza, but as many little siblings like myself know all too well, the big siblings don’t want you there. I can’t count the number of times I wanted to hang with my brothers friends, but he refused frome lementary all the way up to high school. It was maddening. SO I sympathize with them, but i’ve grown tor ealize grown up kids want to have their own time and fun so I sympathize with both parties: Carl and Addy just want pizza and games and to hang with the big kids and Ronnie Anne and Sid just want to host a party as a couple without watching their siblings.

However Carl forces a compromise.. by using his special mood.. whining loudly and summoning Rosa.. whos eriously just.. teleports behind the kids. I thought only Lucy could do that in this unvierse. Respect.

Rosa however is resonable. While she dosen’t want the kids to be excluded, and it’s understandable and nice of her: The kids just wan’t to feel included and Rosa is resonable enough to say they will have to leave eventually wehn it’s time for bed. A fair compromise. Also i’d wonder why Adelaide is here but I assume the Chang Parents had her come over there, which Rosa being the lovely person she is agreed to. I didn’t get into her above but I do like Rosa a lot as a character as she’s a resonable authority figure.. but liable to slip into her own foibles, and is kind and loving with her family if strong and strict when she needs to lower the boom. Mostly on Hector who i’m amazed survived last episode and getting his own grandson to leave in one piece.

But yeah I mean I can only imagine what’s going on there...

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Also sex obviously, but since I obviously can’t and won’t show you that, have this video to jodeci’s freak n you instead and let your imagination fill the blanks if you want.

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I will use this song any time I can. Anyway, Sid being the peach she is tries to convince Ronnie anne all is not lost. Earlier she used a metaphor saying how they had all the perfect ingredents like a smore, and now adds pizzza.. which ot be fair a pizza smore, but using bagles or something sounds great, but pizza on a smore sounds like my own personal hell.. though Sid likes it so i’ll let it live.. for now. That’s also why Sergio is alive. FOr now.

But even sid has a limit and the power couple soon break those: An attempted scary ghost story session goes bad as they break poor sameer by predicting eveyr story he has even the one the poor kid wings, and he and his prehinsile hair are sad. Cheer up kid at least you can probably go live on Krakoa at some point. Free health care, free housing, living on a giant paradise. Good stuff.

The two then ruin an attempted dance party, which unlike the above which was just bad timing, this time their just obnoxious as addy wnats to ballet, and Carl wants to... put it to his butt whle playing fart noises. Okay for starters.

Secondly if he wanted to do that he could’ve got a cd of Nickleback cheaper and no one would’ve noticed.. then again they might of thought the poor boy had Dihera. Somehow this isn’t the last draw. Nikki, being a real one, holds a gross drink contest which carl spits out on the crowd.. which really WHAT DID YOU ALL EXPECT. This is how those things end. WIth spit up and fury.

Anyways enough is enough, so our ambigiously gay duo hatch a plan and send the little kids on a scavanger hunt. So while the Ronnie’s Running Crew have fun, and spot bobby and his best buddy par and bobby flop on some mangos and slide around on mango juice all episode as a result, the dream team work on getting that list done. From getting one of Hector’s nosehairs to Mr. Nakamura’s faviorite sweatervest (which takes a while) , to Carlota’s diary they do it with flair. Of note is the two having to steal Sergio’s crackes.. and nearly getting murdeered by the parot who seriously looks like he’s about to skin a child.. thankfully when HE does a shining by crashing through the door, he just gets stuck so no child murder tonight. Horay! Well until Carlota finds out her diary missing then this happens.

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But things get dire when the kids think they see the smaller kids get stuck in par’s truck. Thankfully bobby knows where his best friend is at all times, because he’s consdierate and knows where he’s headed next, and the kids end up following him, while Sameer stays behind to distract with his hair puppets since Rosa wants to little ones to go to bed.

Sid and Ronnie anne and co head to the dump , shenagins insue and they think they lost their sibling and cousin.. only to find them, the two having gotten a mango that looks like Vito and won.. and Sid and Ronnie apologizing and admitting their scam. In a nice bit though while Carl gets upset, Addy quickly points out they DID ruin their fun, and crash the party, and Carl begrudingly admits he’s wrong. Again, keep them married show. Carl needs Addy to keep him honest and Addy needs carl to hide the bodies of her enmies. They make a good pair, just like their big sis and cousin.

Anyways, Ronnie Anne and Sid ask to have the kids for just a bit longer to repair them and again this is why I repsect Rosa. She finds out the kids disobeyed her or at least found a loophole but isn’t mad and gets both sides learned from it. Our kidlets get a giant ass smore for their heroic efforrts, Nikki returns Carlota’s diary in secret to avoid their deaths while Sergio is arrested for attempted murder of two minors. A good night all around. Bobby joins in to close out, which isn’t met with any resitance because who dosen’t love bobby, while Hector wakes up to the vito mango and wonders what happened to him.. okay apparently Vito’s been turned into a non-sapient piece of fruit before and I want details show. Final Thoughts Finally: A pretty good one. Carly and Adleadie continue to prove to a hell of a combo, whie the proven dream team of Sid and Ronnie Anne work well off their younger counterparts. It overall leads to a fun episode with lots of great gags.. and also bobby sliding around on his back comically like he’s a goddamn roomba and I am hear for it. Just overally really good stuff and a really fun plot. This really feels like stife of the party done right. Both sides screw up but make up instead of one just getting their way because protaganist. And overall this batch of episodes was really damn good and I look forward to watching the series reguarlly from now on. Until then, just one more day then this blog gets all spooky! SO stay tuned, stay safe and go team venture! Play us out nickleback! WAIT WHY DID i SAY THAT NO NO NO NO NOOOOOOO

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astxrwar · 5 years

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Sucker Punch (Steve Rogers x Reader)

Summary: Post-Avengers, pre-CA:TWS AU. Steve gets a babysitter, defines his own feelings, finds love.

LINK TO AO3 (in case of tumblr formatting errors) HERE

Word Count: 11k+ (oof)

Rating: M

Warnings: Very minor unintentional sexism. nonlinear narrative. ambiguous ending.

It’s probably worth prefacing this entire catastrophe by saying Steve Rogers is a fucking feminist.

A really, obnoxiously radical feminist. So that’s not what this whole disaster is about.

Like-- there’s the surface stuff, right, just the basic I’m-not-a-dick-to-women-because-I-have-morals stuff, but it’s more than that. He’s an advocate for equal pay and he speaks out against rape culture and toxic masculinity and knows the nuances of harmful gender stereotypes literally inside and out. He’s loud about it. He’s a poster boy for at least three different equality movements, he makes a regular habit of getting into extremely volatile arguments with Stark over his shitty objectification of every girl who can fog up a mirror, and he completely disregarded the vague threats to his public image or whatever to personally attend the Women’s March in January despite the supposed “bad press”.

He’s still fucking old, though. And, yeah, it was a little odd coming out of cold storage and realizing literally everything had changed, it took him a while to get used to fast food and shopping malls and color television and just New York in general, but--

It was remarkably easy to adjust to a generation that at least somewhat believed in gender equality.

So, knowing that--

He cannot fucking believe himself.

Basically what happens is he gets home to the small apartment he shares with (Name) and he sees her going out in a crop top and those stupid high-waisted shorts and a ridiculously fucking red lipstick and he just--

He says it before he even has a chance to think.

“ You’re going out dressed like that?”

She turns to him with a vaguely hurt expression masked by anger and slowly, slowly raises one eyebrow.

“What?”

And--

Yeah.

It’s not like he’s trying to control her or anything, and he’s a firm believer in people being able to wear whatever the hell they want, so it’s not that either. It’s a lot of things, but it sure the fuck isn’t sexism. It isn’t . If it was, that would be easier, he thinks, because there’s a fucking cure for that, right?

What it actually is--

It’s just that they’ve been living together for the last six months and while he was initially convinced he’d get used to her walking around in a towel after her showers and working out in their living room in a sports bra and ridiculously tiny shorts and sleeping in nothing but an oversized t-shirt, the truth is that it’s actually been a literal fucking century since he’d last slept with anyone and she’s beautiful and it messes him up. If that isn’t bad enough, there’s more, because it’s not just that he thinks she’s pretty, because that would be too easy. He has her coffee order memorized. He knows what fucking ice cream to buy her at the supermarket when she’s in a shitty mood, knows her favorite restaurant, knows exactly what she loves and hates about eighty to eighty-five percent of the TV shows available on netflix. Sometimes he’ll say something that she thinks is funny (which is often) and she’ll huff out a breathless half-second of laughter and smile at him and all he can think is that she’s like the fucking sun.

It’s a little more than just an attraction, is what he’s saying. He’s fucking jealous, is what he’s saying.

Which is his fault. Entirely. Steve knows this. She’s, what, twenty? And he’s obviously old enough and mature enough and good enough to know better.

He totally isn’t, though.

So (Name) goes around doing whatever the hell it is kids do these days and Steve sits at home in his room and tries desperately to convince himself that he’s not ridiculously, terribly attracted to her.

And it works, for a little while, but then it doesn’t.

(Before)

Steve’s back in his newly-repaired apartment after the fiasco that was the battle of New York for less than two weeks when a girl he’s never met before shows up at his doorstep with a neatly-packed suitcase and two overstuffed carry-on bags. When he opens the door he spends several long seconds kind of just staring at her and wondering whether or not he’s hallucinating. She pushes past him through the doorway without waiting for him to snap out of it.

She basically admits straight up that she’s there as a favor to Fury to keep an eye on him-- in exchange for paying the crazy fucking inflated rent on his apartment, he’s been assigned what basically amounts to a babysitter, she explains, looking at least slightly apologetic. She’s there to get him back on his feet in a world that’s changed so much in the time he’d been gone, make sure he lives up to standard now that he’s operating once again under the keen and frankly invasive eye of the general public. It’s not like he can argue with any of it, or turn her away, because SHIELD’s paying his fucking rent, so he just resolves to roll with it to the best of his ability. It should be insulting-- he’s a grown man, after all-- but it really isn’t. It should be something that he examines in any amount of detail, but he doesn’t. For reasons.

The information takes a while to process. Expectedly. When everything starts making sense and stops feeling like some sort of bizarre fever dream, Steve realizes he doesn’t even know her name.

“Hi,” he says, a little blankly, as she tosses her bags onto what he figures isn’t technically the guest bedroom anymore. “I- uh. Should introduce myself. I’m Steve. Steve Rogers.”

She turns to him and fixes him with a strangely searching look. “I know who you are,” she says, cocking her head to the side like she’s in on some joke that he doesn’t understand.

(She’d managed to get the wireless working within ten minutes of being there. There’s probably a lot of things about her that he doesn’t understand.)

“I’m (Name),” she replies, after a minute, turning back to where she’d been unpacking her suitcase, arranging clothes and books and DVDs into neat piles on the quilted bedspread. “How much do you know about Star Wars?”

Steve blinks. Opens his mouth like he’s going to say something but doesn’t, mostly because he doesn’t know what to say. People-- they don’t talk to him like this, not anymore. Like he’s normal. It’s either hero worship or they’re walking on eggshells around him, except for Tony, in which case he’s basically just treated like a commodity or a particularly fascinating zoo animal which-- isn’t better.

“Absolutely nothing,” he answers, baffled.

The grin she shoots him this time is secretive and vaguely conspiratory.

“Awesome.”

Steve would be lying if he said it wasn’t easier with her around.

She fits into his life-- or, she fits into the modern-day caricature of the life he barely has-- so perfectly that it seems, for a moment, as though she’s meant to be there. The change is immediate-- is bafflingly, confoundingly easy-- and he finds that he likes it.

Think of me as, like, basically a guide dog, she had said over breakfast the next morning, words coming out slurred through a yawn. He hadn’t known what the fuck she was talking about, obviously, and when he’d said as much, her laughter had been immediate, sunshine-bright and infectious. He found himself laughing, too, even if he wasn’t quite sure what she found so funny.

So, yeah.

He likes this. Likes her.

And a part of him-- a small, logical, cold part of him-- recognizes this for what it is; a sudden, senseless, stupid attachment to the only person who’d treated him like a human being with normal human emotions since he’d been pulled out of the ice.

He decides, in the face of losing the only anchor to this new, strange world that he’s been able to find, that he’ll deal with that later.

So--

The first thing she does is make him a list.

Music, movies, food, history-- everything. The first week she’s with him is spent almost exclusively in front of the television to the point where he actually has to beg her to let him leave the house-- not because the movies are boring, he quickly explains, not wanting to hurt her feelings and having thoroughly enjoyed Jurassic Park, but because his muscles were literally going to atrophy if he didn’t get some form of exercise.

So they go to the grocery store.

Which--

Wasn’t exactly what he had in mind.

Whole Foods, as it turns out, is an adventure in of itself-- so is the task of avoiding any untoward attention because, as (Name) so gleefully informs him, he’s famous. And she-- isn’t.

“Lucky,” he says, grabbing a package of chocolate cookies off of the shelf and examining them-- the weirdest thing out of all of this was the abundance of so much plastic, he decides, setting the box carefully back where he’d found it.

“I wouldn’t necessarily call it luck,” she quips, tossing a bag of pretzels into her cart. “I keep a low profile for a reason.”

Steve tries to focus on something other than the fact that his head is spinning and fails miserably. There are three different brands of identical boxes of dried tropical fruit taking up a large portion of one of the shelves and that, in of itself is completely fucking mindblowing.

“You doing okay, Rogers?” She asks.

“What the hell does non-GMO mean?” he asks, gesturing helplessly.

Her nose twitches. Her mouth quirks.

She bursts out laughing, and all Steve can do is stand there, bemused, and wonder how one person can physically radiate so much genuine happiness.

“This,” she says, gesturing at him with whatever grocery item she happened to have in hand, “This is why we were doing the movies first. Trying to ease you into it, you know? Can’t have your heart giving out from shock.”

Steve grins, a little sheepish, and runs his fingers through his hair. “Yeah, well. I didn’t think it would be--” he starts, and then finds himself falling silent, not quite sure how to put words to the feeling lodged somewhere at the base of his throat, pressed against his voice box-- because it’s not nostalgia, not quite. It’s certainly not a longing for the past, where people died a lot more often and war was everywhere, always, and most of the population couldn’t even fucking vote, because the present is better in so many ways, but--

But Bucky, he thinks, and Peggy, and the Howling Commandos, and the life that he’d had and fought for and loved, as imperfect as it was--

It’s gone. Everything’s gone.

He comes back to reality when the girl smacks him on the side of the head with a bag of-- some frozen vegetable. Peas?

“Earth to Cap,” she says, when he finds his way back to the present, “Are you still with me?” And when he looks down at her she’s got this crooked little smile tugging at the corners of her mouth and it hits him hard because that’s the same smile Bucky used to give him, months and years and decades ago. Cocky, sharp and quick, like he was just a few steps ahead of Steve, always. That same smile-- it suits her, he decides.

Maybe everything’s not gone, then, he thinks. Just-- different.

“Yeah,” he says, finding himself smiling back at her without making the conscious decision to do so. “I”m here.”

There’s a marked, tangible difference in his mood after that-- if he can notice it, with his documented inability to process his own emotions, he would bet good money that she notices it, too. He relaxes. Lets some invisible, unidentifiable guard down. He stops worrying about all of it-- about what he’s missed and what he has to learn and what other people might think of him now that everything’s so different-- and he just lets himself enjoy being alive.

They buy enormous slices of pizza from the food court and eat them in a booth side-by-side watching Brooklyn 99 on her Iphone, and she giggles when he smears tomato sauce across his mouth and he snorts as he watches Andy Samberg make a dick out of himself on full-color, crystal-clear modern television, and--

It’s nice.

It’s new.

He could get used to this.

When they get back to the apartment, they have enormous reusable grocery bags stuffed full of every type of food imaginable, plus two half-melted Slurpees-- basically ice and syrup, he learns-- that leak condensation onto the rug and the yellowed linoleum kitchen floor.

“Okay, so now we have to figure out where to put it all,” (Name) says, hopping up onto the countertop.

“That might be tough. Limited cabinet space.”

She raises an eyebrow. Her mouth is stained blue from the syrup and he’d be lying if he said he hadn’t noticed. “Yeah? You up for it, Cap?”

Steve chuckles. “Sure thing.”

Two weeks pass without incident. No calls from SHIELD, no ominous voicemails from Natasha, no barrage of unread 3 AM text messages from a drunk and bored Stark.

Predictably, that doesn’t last.

He’s at the gym at 5:30 in the morning when Fury finds him.

(Name) had teased him about it, the fact that he goes to bed at 10 and wakes up at 5-- that’s so fucking early, she’d whined, sitting on the countertop clutching her third cup of coffee, still half-asleep even though it was nearly noon. Steve had raised an eyebrow and muttered something about kids these days and felt so illogically proud of himself at the way she giggled at him, swinging her legs back-and-forth from her spot on the counter.

It’s a habit he hadn’t been able to shake, though-- something he likes even more, now, because it’s the closest he’ll get to ever really feeling alone in a city as big and as crowded as New York. It was like this before, always moving, the sprawling stretch of urban landscape buzzing with energy, even at night, and as the size of the city doubled, tripled, quadrupled, so did that frantic sense of movement, a need to keep pressing forward, always always always --

It gets so bad that Steve can barely breathe, sometimes. It reminds him of before the serum when his lungs wouldn’t work quite right and the air would feel like poison, grating against his windpipe. It’s not as bad in the early morning, in the moments where only a fraction of the population is awake, and sometimes he can close his eyes and imagine that he’s back home-- really home.

“Brooklyn’s changed,” Steve says quietly, wistfully, aware that Fury is standing in the doorway-- it has to be him, nobody else would be so quiet-- and not bothering to turn to check. His senses are good enough that he doesn’t need to. In front of him, the tired, faded leather punching bag sways back and forth from where it’s chained up to the ceiling-- Steve lets his eyes focus on the letters sewn into the fabric, faded and bleached away as they are from years and years of use. Fogwell’s gym-- he can’t remember if it had existed before he left New York the first time. Can’t remember a lot about what was there before, to be honest. It all blends together so seamlessly, the memories blurry through a fog of nostalgia.

He takes a swing at the punching bag, just one, putting barely any weight behind it and watching it lurch back as far as it can go, the rusty chains creaking precariously with the strain.

“Not much of a challenge, is it?” Fury says, injecting a level of nonchalance into his speech that makes Steve bristle at just how fake it sounds, the words coming out stilted and wary.

Don’t talk to me like I’m fucking crazy, he wants to say. “That’s not the point,” he says instead, picking at the gauze around his knuckles. He’s not sure why he bothered to even wrap his hands in the first place. It’s not like he’d end up getting hurt. “I just need something to do.”

Fury moves closer, into his peripheral-- the man even stands like he’s in the military, Steve thinks wryly, with his hands clasped behind his back and his shoulders straight like he’s not afraid of anything. There’s a flip side to that-- he’s always on edge, always tense, it’s visible in the way he holds himself, in the way he moves, in the paranoia tick-tick-ticking at the muscles in his jaw.

Steve recognizes it. He feels it too, sometimes.

“You’re just going through the motions, then,” Fury says-- and it’s not a question. Every word is measured, careful, like there’s some implicit meaning behind each and every one of them.

“Why does talking to you always feel like a test?” Steve replies instead of answering, mouth twitching into a frown.

Fury steps closer. Steve unwraps the gauze from his fingers, resolutely not looking at him.

“How are you and (Name) getting along?” he asks lightly, cocking an eyebrow.

The sudden change of subject would have baffled him, if it were anybody else. With Fury, though-- there’s an undercurrent to what he’s saying, a reason for everything, and he gets the real message without him having to say it out loud.

This is the test.

“Fine,” Steve answers, moving around Fury and towards the bench in the corner, tucking the neatly-rolled gauze bandage back into the outer pocket of his gym bag. “But you could have asked her that.”

He’s annoyed, he realizes suddenly, and he knows why-- he’s forgotten, apparently, that she’s basically a glorified listening device disguised as a clever, funny, too-smart-too-nice-too- pretty twenty-something that pretends to be his friend. She’s in Fury’s pocket, and even though she’d been upfront with him about that since the very beginning, it hadn’t really registered.

(Except, he thinks, it had registered, and he’d refused to deal with it, and now life was coming back to fuck him up for being a fucking idiot.)

“But I’m asking you, ” Fury says, expression insistently searching. Steve says nothing, nothing, nothing, lets the silence drag on until he finally caves and offers at least a little bit of an explanation.

“She likes you,” he admits, with a casual almost-shrug. “She’s not exactly inclined to be completely honest with me. Told me to, uh-- leave you the fuck alone , if i’m remembering correctly.”

Steve blinks. He opens his mouth to say something but can’t find the words, doesn’t even know what he would have said in the first place, because he had been expecting--

Well.

Not that.

He drops his gym bag back down onto the bench with a full-body sigh and something that could have been a huff of laughter. “Yeah, that sounds like her,” he says. “She’s-- she’s okay. I like her.”

Fury gives him that look-- an analyzing, almost dissecting stare, like he’s trying to see through him, into the very core of him, picking him apart like a lab specimen beneath the lens of a high-powered microscope.

“Things don’t change, Captain,” he says, finally, cryptic as fucking always. “ People change. The game-- the bells and whistles, all that shit stays the same.”

Steve grinds his teeth, inhales sharply through his nose, and grits out, “What the fuck does that mean?”

Fury, for his part, doesn’t react other than to fix him with a benign, empty smile. “Brooklyn hasn’t changed a bit. You have, and that might not be a bad thing.”

Steve-- doesn’t fucking know what to say to that, at all, so he just says nothing. He hoists up his gym bag again and leverages it over his shoulder and brushes past Fury, towards the door, his earlier frustration replaced with a hollow sort of confusion.

“I didn’t send her to spy on you,” Fury calls after him, even though he makes no attempt to stop him from leaving. “She thought you might need a friend. I trusted her on that. Don’t prove me wrong.” That-- as simple and small and insignificant as it is-- that’s enough to break through the carefully-constructed wall of indifference he’s built up, and he stops, brought to a standstill for all of a fraction of a second. His mouth quirks up at the corners, and maybe it’s not a smile, not completely, but it’s-- close.

She likes you.

(Steve refuses to examine why that even matters to him at all.)

When he gets back to the apartment, she’s awake, standing in a too-big t-shirt and gym shorts next to the coffee machine. The day’s newspaper is spread out on the faux-marble kitchen island-- there’s a grainy, black-and-white photo of the two of them from the day at the food court spread across page five, gossip-column style. She’s seen it, obviously, but when she turns to him, clutching a stupid little Captain America mug that she’d bought as a joke in both hands, there’s no perceptible difference in her body language.

“Morning,” she greets, voice raspy, heavy and thick with sleep.

“I saw Fury today,” Steve says, in lieu of a greeting.

Her reaction is both immediate and inconspicuous; the slightest shift in posture, a twitch of the mouth betraying her sudden alertness, fingers curling just a little tighter around the handle of her coffee mug.

People forget, he muses to himself, that before he was big and strong and respected, that his saving grace was that he was smarter than the general population. When he was just Steve Rogers, nothing else, he was clever. Still is, really, but most people-- people like Stark, people like Banner, like Fury, sometimes, too-- they don’t see that. They just see Captain America, somebody whose only defining skill is following orders.

People forget, more importantly, that Steve Rogers and Captain America are not the same person.

When the girl looks at him, really looks at him, Steve gets the feeling that maybe she might be able to tell the difference.

“To be honest,” she says carefully, “I’m surprised he’s left you alone this long.”

Steve moves around the kitchen island, closer to her. “You said you work for him.” He doesn’t explicitly ask the question, no, but it still lingers in the air, the implication heavy and thick like steam, like city smog.

She understands, of course, and her eyes flash just a little as she looks up at him, a flickering, brief rush of some unidentifiable emotion. “I’m not S.H.I.E.L.D.,” she says, pausing for a second like she’s gathering her thoughts. “I’m-- well, I am, but not like you. I’m not a soldier, I don’t even have a permit to carry, I’m just--”

“Damage control,” he supplies, folding his arms.

“ No,” she replies, a frown tugging at the corners of her mouth. “I’m--” She sighs, then, and sets the mug down on the counter with a soft click of ceramic against stone tile. The silence is soft, uncertain, before she speaks again. “I’m not a spy, is what I’m saying. I’m like-- I’m just here to make sure you’re okay.”

Steve shakes his head. “So Fury thinks I’m a basket case, then,” he says, anger bleeding into the words, making his tone curt and sharper than he’d intended.

“ No, ” she says, again, and he’s almost surprised by the amount of conviction in her voice, though he probably shouldn’t have been. “Fury wanted to put somebody across the hall and not tell you shit while they watched your every move. I just-- you’re a human being, like fucking anybody else, and you’ve just come to fucking eighty years in the future and you’re probably lost and probably confused and you-- and I thought--”

She looks at him, then, looks through him, and it feels like she sees past the bulky shell of what he’s become and into his core, where he’s still small and scrawny and not sure of anything.

“I thought you probably just needed a friend,” she says, voice suddenly too soft. It’s a perfect, uncanny echo of what Fury had told him earlier, and that’s enough to cement his belief. She gives a small, helpless shrug, and Steve-- Steve can feel the anxiety melt off of him, can feel it evaporate, and suddenly he’s wondering why he was so worried in the first place.

His gut is usually right about things-- especially right about people-- but he had to be sure.

“Fury said the same thing,” he admits, quietly, “About you; he said you wanted me to have a friend.”

She fixes him with a frustrated glare, which, he thinks, he probably deserves at least a little bit.

“And you didn’t believe him? I bought you fucking pizza, Rogers, honestly-- and it was with my own money, too, what else could I--”

“Would you have? Believed him, I mean?”

The silence is sudden, and when she opens her mouth to answer him there’s a hesitancy to it-- to her-- that he guesses isn’t normal for her. He isn’t sure, though. It’s not like he knows her, not that well, to be analyzing her actions the way he is.

(He wants to, though, wants to know her, wants to figure her out, but he won’t say that out loud. Ever. )

“No,” she says, after a while, “No, I probably wouldn’t have.”

Steve doesn’t say anything, just lets the words hang there in the odd, abrupt awkwardness that permeates the kitchen-- an awkwardness that they’d somehow missed, sidestepped completely, since the moment she’d set foot in the apartment. She turns away, towards her rapidly-cooling cup of coffee, and Steve swallows around a pang of something that might be fear somewhere in his throat, considering that maybe he and his petulant, ex-military paranoia had fucked something up, caused some invisible, irreparable damage to the tentative friendship he’d sort of come to rely on.

“So,” he says, softly, and his words are molasses-thick and sticking to his mouth like he’s nineteen again, gangly and awkward, playing catch-up to Bucky and his incredible ability to charm everybody he meets. He isn’t good at this. “I’ve never been to the Empire State Building.”

And it’s--

It’s a stupid thing to say, and he knows it’s stupid, just like he knows it’s not an apology, not really, not officially, but--

It i s , in a way, and the atmosphere immediately depolarizes, and when she turns to him she isn’t smiling, but her eyes are bright again.

“Well, I have,” she drawls, drumming her nails against the countertop. She takes a sip of her coffee, eyeing him over the rim of the cup-- and it’s a challenge, he realizes, the way that she’s looking at him.

He can do that, Steve thinks. He can handle a challenge.

“Do you want to show me, then, or should I go by myself?” he says, trying his very very best to keep a smile from stretching across his face, shy and self-deprecating and just the tiniest bit awkward. He isn’t good at this, by any means, but he’s trying, which should count for something.

“I guess, ” she replies, like he’s just ruined her entire day, like even talking to him is a chore, but when she turns around from dumping the rest of her coffee into the sink, she’s smiling, too.

It was a lie.

He’s been to the Empire State Building before-- he fucking grew up in Brooklyn, of course he’s been.

He wonders if she could tell.

He wonders why he even lied in the first place.

He wonders a lot of things, actually, standing up there in the cold, dizzy with altitude sickness, staring out at the expanse of the city sprawled beneath them, expanding out for miles and miles in either direction, past where he could see, past where the skyline and the horizon dissolve together into an unidentifiable blur.

It’s windy, that day, and Steve runs a good few degrees warmer than the average human, and it’s this distant, slightly clinical perspective that he uses to rationalize the way that she leans into him, away from the edge of the viewing platform, shoulders tucked into themselves like she’s trying to make herself smaller.

“It’s beautiful,” she says wistfully.

Steve looks at her. She’s shivering slightly from the chill, washed-out in the bright white spring sunlight, the wind swirling her hair up and around her face like a halo.

“Yeah,” he says absently. “Yeah, it is.”

It’s kind of a downwards-spiral from there.

They go to the Met and to Ellis Island and to the Central Park Zoo, and he purposely avoids telling her that he’s already seen half of the sights in New York just because he really, genuinely enjoys doing things like this. He likes having a friend again. The media attention is suffocating, at first, but he quickly gets used to seeing their faces plastered across drugstore magazines and stops being phased by the rumors circulating about them, and eventually the drama dies down.

They’re not together. It’s not like that. It’s simultaneously much simpler and much more complicated. She always finds his jokes funny and he always finds her competitive streak endearing and they operate as if they’re two parts of a whole, different but still the same in all the ways that matter. It was what Fury wanted, he rationalizes— for them to be a team.

It doesn’t make things any easier.

(It actually kind of makes it worse.)

“I’m surprised you two have been getting along for this long.”

Fury finds him for the second time in the little coffee shop beneath their shared apartment, while (Name) is conveniently off doing something else; it had been an orchestrated, completely non-accidental series of events, and Steve knows this, but he’s decided to pretend it doesn’t bother him.

“You’re not exactly the friendly type, Rogers,” Fury remarks, voice taking on a prodding, vaguely cynical tone.

She’s in his pocket, he reminds himself, and she’s my friend because she needs to be.

Thinking of it like that, from a tactical, emotionless standpoint-- is almost enough to stop him from feeling sick at the reminder.

“Yeah,” Steve answers, stalling, sipping carefully at his too-hot cinnamon swirl latte.

He hadn’t been quite sure what to get the first time he’d came here, had found himself staring at the menu and feeling helplessly overwhelmed-- because, honestly, it’s just coffee, why did it have to be so complicated-- and it had been (Name) who had swooped in to his proverbial rescue. If Steve were being honest, he hadn’t really cared for it, not before, but there was something about the way she’d looked at him, her expression expectant and vaguely hopeful-- something that made him want to like it, want to like everything that she liked, for no reason other than the fact that she liked it.

Which-- yeah, okay, it’s stupid, but it’s harmless. He’s always been a people-pleaser, and he just wants a friend, and--

And he’s absolutely a bullshit fucking liar, and he knows that.

Fury raises an eyebrow at him over the tiny little french-style patio table they’re seated at. He has the newspaper in front of him, lifted up just enough to cover the bottom half of his face from view. It’s like he’s waiting for Steve to say something, and for the life of him he can’t even begin to fathom what that might be.

The silence drags on, awkward and oppressive.

“Look.” Fury’s voice takes on an exasperated edge. “I’m trusting you. I’m giving you the benefit of the doubt, so I’m going to need you to cut me a little slack, here. Give me something to work with.”

Steve frowns. He sips at his coffee, staring at the syrup-stained patio table, measuring his next words carefully. “I’m fine,” he says, after a minute. “I just--”

“Just what?”

Whatever he’s thinking-- whatever he’s feeling, right then, is complicated, murky, something he can’t really even begin to articulate to himself; much less to Fury, who’s fixed him with that stare again. He considers, for a second, that he might want to measure his next words carefully, before realizing that it hardly matters, anyway; he has nothing to say.

“I don’t know,” he says, because it’s the truth, and then softly, helplessly, because he can’t for the life of him think of anything else to fill the silence and because Fury’s leveraging him with that one-eyebrow-raised look like he’s expecting something deeper, something more-- “I like her.”

Steve has said that already. Steve knows that he’s said that already. There is a reason he’d told Fury in the very beginning that out of all the shitty ideas he’d come up with to help him cope that therapy or anything involving him spilling his guts to anyone on any sort of regular or semi-regular basis wouldn’t work. Steve isn’t really all that in touch with his own emotions on a good day, never mind a day when he’s being stared down by, at best, a shaky acquaintance, who is currently trying to decide whether he belongs in a court-ordered group treatment program or in a literal, honest-to-god psychiatric hospital.

Fury isn’t really a shrink, not in that sense, but Steve assumes the feeling must be the same.

Oddly enough, for once since he’d arrived Fury isn’t looking at him like he’s waiting for him to elaborate. No, instead he adopts an expression that seems almost curious, as if Steve had just told him something incredibly interesting, maybe even important. Which-- it wasn’t. He hadn’t.

“What?” he blurts out, immediately wincing at the amount of vague, not-quite-undirected irritation lacing the word.

“Nothing.” Fury sets the newspaper down. His mouth, now visible, is quirked up at both corners; a shrewd, contemplative semblance of a smile. “I told you. I haven’t known you to make friends easily.”

Steve bites down on the inside of his cheek, and doesn’t answer. He wonders, not for the first time, if there's something to this that he's missing. Some-- ulterior motive. Some neatly-kept secret that both Fury and (Name) must be in on, something to explain the way Fury's looking at him, like he knows something about him that Steve, for whatever reason, isn't aware of.

Whatever it is-- he can't crack it.

Steve takes the final sip of his coffee, and crumples the empty cup in his hand.

“Look. I know you don’t have any clue what modern music is, but if I see another fucking vinyl record in this apartment, I’m going to lose my mind,” (Name) says, grinning a little wildly. “Everyone else might think you’re a hipster, Mr. Captain America, but I know the truth-- you’re fucking old.”

They’re sprawled across Steve’s neatly-made four-poster-- he couldn’t quite shake the military training, apparently--with both the windows flung open in the sticky June heat and the overhead ceiling fan squeaking as it turns round-and-round above them. The AC is broken. Unfamiliar music plays from a bulky, out-of-date CD player precariously balanced on his dresser.

“Please tell me you know this song,” she says, poking him in the side hard enough to make him jolt and squirm away from her, much to her pleasure. (It had taken her about three days since moving in to find out that he’s ticklish, and Steve’s regretted letting her get away with that particular piece of information ever since.)

Steve squints his eyes, watching the blades of the fan above them spin until he’s nearly dizzy from it. Distantly he registers the opening piano notes, and the sharp cutting through the fog of the room-- it’s familiar, yes, but not enough that he immediately recognizes it.

“Oh!” he says suddenly. “ Piano Man. You've played me this before, right?"

"Yeah. Billy Joel," she says. "The better side of '70s music, if all Stark's AC/DC shit isn't your style."

Steve huffs out a laugh, staring up at the ceiling. "It's really not."

She sits up on her elbows and looks over at him, smiling like what he's just said was actually funny, and Steve feels the muscles in his chest sort of tighten or something because the strap of her tank top is sliding down her arm and her skin is glossy in the humid, oppressive summer air and it’s making it hard for him to focus on much else. She makes some scathing remark that he doesn’t really pay attention to— something about how much of a hipster he’d become, with his newfound music knowledge and genuine interest in cashmere sweaters and Steve, not being able to deny any of it, grins sheepishly.

She collapses back onto the bed beside him as the chorus of the song swells through his bedroom, and she starts to sing the lyrics, loud and mostly off-key, voice catching and cracking as she laughs-- her tone is strange, difficult to interpret, but when she looks at him she’s grinning and her expression is playful.

Steve finds himself echoing her, at the parts he knows, not entirely willing to admit that he’s actually kind of proud of himself for being able to remember the words at all. He hadn't had a reason or even any real desire to sing, not since he came out of the ice, hadn't had any real desire to pursue anything other than the next mission, hadn't been encouraged by Fury or Stark or really anyone to be anything more than a walking, talking poster boy-- and to do something like this feels like an act of defiance. His voice, when he hears it, is soft, scratchy, not quite used to being used, but it still feels good-- like he's releasing some pressure inside of himself that had built up without his knowledge, and he feels a sort of weightlessness come with it. Not happiness, he doesn't think, not quite, but-- close. So, so close.

She keeps singing long past the point where he fades out, loud and happy and so at ease with herself and with everything that Steve thinks he’d be content just sitting there and watching her forever , half immobilized by laughter, eyes glinting in the lone beam of sunlight creeping through the blinds.

The song ends, eventually, because it has to, and when it does she pushes herself up off the bed and moves towards the CD player. She has her back turned towards him, thumbing through the stack of burned CDs-- none of which, she had gleefully informed him, had she acquired legally.

"All right," she announces, sliding one into the player and skipping into somewhere in the middle of the playlist. "Throwback."

The CD skips once, twice, slurring the first few notes of the song together into a sort of grating blur of noise before really starting to play. It's a piano melody, like the last song, but it's less intricate, more pop-music-y, if that's even, like, a measurable thing--

Steve blinks, lurching upwards into a sitting position. "I know this song."

She raises an eyebrow at him. "You do?"

"Elvis. Can't Help Falling in Love. " he shrugs, idly scratching at the back of his head. "I was on Youtube. Listening to some of the old music they used to play at those dances Buck used to drag me to." He smiles, mostly to himself, looking down at the floor. "It was in one of the playlists. It sort of-- it reminds me of before."

There's a short, intimate silence, interrupted only by the soft crooning of lyrics in the background. When Steve looks up, (Name) is studying him with a strange expression on her face-- not pity, no, but a sort of empathetic sadness that she usually tries to hide whenever the conversation takes a turn like this. The look lasts for a handful of seconds, before she flips her hair over her shoulder and puts one hand on her hip and says, mostly disbelieving, "He took you to-- what? Rogers, you know how to dance ?"

That--

Isn't where he'd expected the conversation to go.

"Um-- I--" he starts, and then stops, shrugging as nonchalantly as he can manage despite what he can only assume is a furious blush spreading rapidly across his face. "I mean, I can, but I never really-- I'm not--"

"Not what?"

"Not-- yknow-- good at it."

She looks at him, expression flatly disbelieving.

"Listen," he says, grinning and good-natured, the words spilling out before he really has the time or even the inclination to examine the repercussions of what he's about to say. "I can show you, if you don't believe me."

"I most definitely do not believe you," she says, striding forward with a little crooked half-smile and an odd brightness in her eyes that he's never seen before and oh, he thinks, bordering on frantic as she closes the distance between them, he really, really, really hadn't given this any amount of forethought at all. She's suddenly standing very close to him-- closer than she's ever been on purpose, he thinks, closer than anybody's been in a while, months, at least--

He swallows around a sudden burst of nervous energy and reminds himself sternly that he's Captain fucking America, he's fought Nazis and HYDRA soldiers and been in countless situations that fit the description of literally life or death and that this, of all things, didn't even technically qualify as something he should be allowed to worry about. He can teach his friend how to dance. This is fine. He's fine.

"Okay." Steve clears his throat. "Okay," he says again, trying to at least sound like he knows what he's doing. Because he does. Technically. "Give me your hand."

She does. It's softer, smaller in his own, and he wonders for a second if she feels this same sort of tenseness that's wracking his body right now, a buzzing energy thrumming through his veins and heightening his senses and skyrocketing his blood pressure, god--

"And, um," he continues, voice dropping into a much lower, much softer register. "Your other hand on my shoulder."

That brings her somehow even closer to him, and Steve wonders somewhere in the still-functional part of his brain if she can hear his heartbeat thump-thump-thumping against his ribs or the way his breathing has suddenly, inexplicably turned unsteady and shallow, like he's been sucker-punched and had the breath knocked right out of him. Somewhere in the back of his mind he realizes that the song must have started over, but then again, he can't be entirely sure-- he's not good at multitasking even when he isn't feeling a weird combination of off-balance and kind of feverish, and he's feeling very much both of those things right now.

He hadn't been kidding when he said he wasn't actually good at this, as he starts to lead, movements slow and slightly off-beat-- In fact, he thought he had made that pretty much perfectly clear, but she still snickers when he bumps his hip against the unreasonably sharp corner of his bedside table.

"Don't laugh at me," he says, relaxing, trying to force any amount of sternness into the words and coming up short. "I'm doing my best here."

That doesn't seem to help, really, just makes her dissolve into another fit of giggles, has her leaning into him as he leads them in tight, stilted steps around the cramped space between his bed and the wall.

"I've seen you fight, though," she says, still laughing as he tries and fails to have any amount of dexterity. "You're-- I wouldn't say graceful, because that's, like, definitely a stretch, but you're not this bad--"

"I'm sorry, d'you think ballroom dancing is the same as getting into a fist-fight? Because one of them is definitely easier than the other."

"Yeah, I can tell."

He grins, pinching her side gently, enough to make her giggle and jolt away from it. "Now you know why I couldn't get a date," he quips, feeling vaguely giddy at the sight of her answering smile.

Steve spins them around the bedroom, twirling her beneath his arm a little haphazardly; it doesn't matter at this point if he's any good at this, because they're having fun. In a spur of bravery dips her over his knee like Bucky had taught him to nearly a century ago-- and God, he'd be proud if he could see him now, he thinks, chuckling at the way she lets out a breathless squeak and clings to his upper bicep in an effort to maintain her balance.

" Rogers," she gasps, affronted. "I'm going to fall."

"No, you won't," he replies, with what must be a truly, pathetically dorky grin spreading across his face as he pulls her back upright, hand settled more comfortably against the curve of her waist. "I've got you."

And--

She smiles again, and this smile isn't really like anything he's ever seen from her before. It's softer, gentler , intimate in a way that he figures wasn't entirely intentional. Something about it makes him feel almost the same way he used to when he was a teenager, trying to talk to girls, still gangly and awkward-- but she isn't like any of the girls he's ever known, Steve thinks. She's nothing like anyone. And he's certainly nothing like he was back then, and even the familiar pressure at the back of his throat that might have been some sort of emotion or might just be his rapidly-beating heart has changed from what it used to be, shifted into something less like teen insecurity, something sweeter and softer--

Somewhere in the background, Elvis is still crooning, the lyrics fading in and out of his realm of awareness. It feels like a fever dream, kind of. Not quite real.

He thinks, unbidden, of what Fury had said-- things don't change, Captain, people change-- and he thinks about how he's changed, and how he's changed for the better, and then, as he's looking at her, a lot of things suddenly start to make sense. He thinks about the day in the coffee shop. He thinks about how he'd told Fury, offhand, three tiny, insignificant words-- I like her-- and he thinks about how Fury had looked at him like he'd just confessed something important, meaningful in a way that he hadn't really been able to understand just yet.

I like her.

Oh , he thinks, the thought oddly devoid of any real emotion, followed by, I'm an idiot.

(Name) is still looking at him, watching him have this sort of-- epiphany-slash- crisis, her expression terrifyingly open, the remnants of her earlier laughter still tugging at the corners of her mouth and her cheeks flushed from the oppressive, sticky summer heat. She'd worn makeup earlier that day, and had made a half-hearted attempt to take it off; there's faint black-purple smudges of mascara beneath her eyes, and she looks the same as she always does. She looks beautiful. And the way that Steve must be looking at her-- the way that he's always looked at her-- isn't the way that friends look at each other, he realizes.

God, he wants to kiss her.

He's taken aback, actually, by the sheer intensity of how much he wants to kiss her, because he doesn't think he's ever felt like this before. Has he? He wouldn't know, anyways-- he's not good at this. Having emotions. Wanting things.

He doesn't kiss her. Not then, as they sway back and forth across the small scuffed area of hardwood floor in the tiny corner of his bedroom, because that would ruin something, Steve can tell, his intuition is screaming that it would drive some sort of irreparable wedge into their current relationship which is fine just the way it is, thank you.

But he still wonders, in spite of himself, as the song comes to an end, the final notes tapering off into silence-- he wonders what it would feel like to just lean in, lean down, drag his thumb across the line of her jaw and tilt her head up, he wonders how soft her lips would be and what she would taste like and--

Oh, God, Steve thinks, nerves alight with a tremulous combination of indecision and longing, I'm going to fucking kiss her, aren't I?

The song ends, the last note ringing out, and then the song skips back to the beginning again and the CD player makes the most annoying noise he's ever heard--

And then it doesn't really matter what he was going to do, anyway.

" Fuck," (Name) says. She moves towards the dresser, and Steve takes a deep, shaky breath while she's facing away from him. His mouth is curiously dry. His heart feels like it's fluttering. Skipping. Under any other circumstance, he would usually see that as a cause for concern.

She pulls the CD out of the player, wiping the glossy sides down with the edge of her tank top. "Fucking piece of shit."

Steve opens his mouth to say something, but comes up short. It's not like there isn't an abundance of things he could say, but he figures at this point it's wiser to just stay silent.

I'm an idiot , he thinks, again, this time with feeling.

"Okay," (Name) says, thumbing through the stack of CDs again. "90's music bops, no question. Sound good?"

Steve sits down at the edge of his bed, outwardly calm despite the frantic lurch of confusion-- of icy, crippling uncertainty-- tugging at his stomach.

"Yeah," he croaks, voice raspy and cracking enough that he has to clear his throat and start over. "Yeah. Sounds good."

Fuck.

(Now)

So--

It’s worth prefacing this entire catastrophe by saying Steve Rogers is a fucking feminist.

It's also probably worth prefacing this entire catastrophe by establishing that, prior to only a few days ago, Steve had been blissfully unaware of the fact that he had-- what the fuck did people say now?-- caught feelings. Or whatever. So it's not like he was trying to be a dick, or trying to be controlling, or like, judgmental at all, but--

But nothing, he reminds himself sternly, because regardless of intent, it was still rude. And bad. And--

"Fuck," he says, out loud, finding himself completely unequipped to deal with the situation.

He needs to apologize. Probably. He should have as soon as she got home, if he's being honest with himself, but he didn't, he just kept sitting there at the edge of his bed, staring out the smudged glass of the window against the far wall until the sliver of sky visible through the buildings turned dark.

Steve's avoiding this. He's avoiding her. He's trying, a little desperately, to talk himself out of the suicide mission that his conscience seems to be hell-bent on, but he's--

Not succeeding.

Steve takes a deep breath. He kicks himself, again, for being such a fucking dumbass in the first place, and then before he can lose the nerve he crosses the hallway to her room and knocks on the door.

A beat passes, and then two, and Steve shifts his weight from one foot to the other, runs his tongue over his teeth, cracks the knuckles on his left hand one-by-one in an attempt to relieve some of the tension in his body. He's nervous, restless, and it's almost a relief when she finally opens the door, her expression shifting from affronted to indignant to just.. confused, which he thinks is a fairly accurate summary of the situation at hand.

A muscle in her jaw twitches. "Rogers," she deadpans. "What?"

She's changed out of the crop top and into a large, formless, heather-gray t-shirt that comes down to just midway down her thigh, covers everything but the very edge of her shorts; she's taken her makeup off, too, but her mouth is still stained red from the lipstick. It had looked good on her. Everything looks good on her, and he's also pretty sure that nothing would look good on her, too--

He clears his throat.

"I, um," he starts, voice quiet. "I'm sorry, about-- today. What I said. I was being an asshole."

She doesn't say anything to that, but-- and maybe he's imagining it-- her expression seems to soften, just a little. Wordlessly, she turns on her heel and moves back into the darkness of her bedroom, leaving the door open behind her. Steve decides to interpret this as an invitation as opposed to any other alternative where she might actually just be retreating from his idiocy, and follows her.

He's been in the guest bedroom a handful of times, but not often enough that it's a familiar space to him. She's command-stripped a string of dollar store christmas lights onto the wall above her bed, the soft fairy-tale glow twinkling out across the ceiling. The cheap set of dresser drawers are locked halfway-open and bursting with clothes, the vanity is scattered with makeup samples, a fairly impressive array of skincare products and one unopened pack of phone chargers, tucked into the space between a half-used candle and an old jewelry box. It's messy, but not gross- messy, just kind of-- chaotic.

(Name) sits down at the edge of her bed. It's not made-- because apparently that's not something people do in this day and age anymore, Steve thinks, with the barest traces of a smile-- but the sheets and blankets are sort of all pushed-up at the foot of the bed, out of the way. She folds her legs up underneath herself and fixes him with a flat, unreadable stare.

"Were you on a date?" he blurts out, and then winces, following it immediately with, "Sorry. You don't-- you don't have to tell me that, I didn't mean-- it's none of my business."

She, to her credit, doesn't flip out. She just sort of sits there, blinks, looks at him for a long moment before replying, "Is that what this is about?"

"I'm sorry," he says, again, because if he doesn't finish saying what he needs to say now, he'll never say it, and he knows this, he'll lose the courage and it'll just stay buried underneath his skin like a perpetually-growing bruise, and he'd keep doing stupid, obnoxious shit in the name of his underdeveloped feelings, and she-- doesn't deserve that.

"I didn't-- I just needed to apologize," he says, staring kind of too-hard at the smudge of pink nail-polish on the edge of the dresser-top, the sheen bright and faintly glittery against the faded, dull pinewood. "I wasn't trying to be-- to be mean, or controlling, or anything like that, I just--"

His mouth is moving faster than his brain is.

This is going to go downhill very quickly, he realizes.

"I just really like you," he confesses, "I really like you a lot. And I didn't even realize until a few days ago but, you know, today, I was jealous, I think, which-- It's not an excuse, and I know that, and I'm still sorry, but I thought I should tell you, at least--"

"Rogers--"

"Either way, though, what I said was completely out of line, it doesn't matter how I feel about-- about you, or about anything, really, because that was still really shitty of me, and I know that--"

" Rogers --"

"And if you wanted to tell Fury that this isn't working out I'm not gonna be mad , of course not, I mean-- you're allowed, you don't have to-- to deal with me being, you know, attracted to you at all, because that's not your job, and I get it , and--"

"Could you shut the fuck up for a second--"

"I just don't want you to think that I'm trying to force you into a situation that's going to be uncomfortable for you, you know? I didn't-- you're not-- my feelings aren't your responsibility and I didn't want you to think that I was just gonna-- I don't know, take it out on you or whatever for turning me down-- If i was to ask, though, which I'm not." He flushes, words coming to a stuttering, stumbling halt. "I'm not asking you out. That's not-- that's not what this is."

The silence that follows lasts for a very long time. Too long. If this were still the 1940s, or if she was anybody else, when she takes a step forward he might have actually been a little bit afraid that she might slap him.

(He's not.)

(He is, a little bit, in the part of his brain that still tries to reconcile the Peggy he remembers with the person who'd shot a fully loaded gun at his head. He's terrifyingly bad with women, apparently.)

She doesn't do anything, though. She just sort of looks at him, and shakes her head, and then says, "Steve, I like you a lot, all right, but-- you don't have to be such a good person literally all the fucking time."

And--

He's about three seconds away from formulating a response to that, which would probably be something along the hopelessly confused lines of what does that even mean, because being a good person is usually a good thing, when he realizes that she used his name. His actual name. It's the first time she's ever called him Steve, instead of Rogers, or Captain, if she really wants to get under his skin.

Steve figures it's that combination that distracts him enough to not really notice what's happening, not until--

Well.

Their eyes catch, for a split second-- she's much closer to him than he'd thought she was-- and when she moves, she moves slowly, reaches for his wrist and tugs him towards her, the flat of her palm traveling up his forearm. She's never touched him like this before, not with this kind of intent; there had been fleeting moments before this where their hands had brushed or she'd leaned into him for a fluttering half-second, but nothing this deliberate.

What the fuck is going on? He thinks, followed by: Am I dreaming?

"You're allowed to want things," she says, and he wonders half-heartedly if she really expects him to remember or even understand half of the bullshit philosophical stuff she's currently waxing to him, because he really, really can't, not when she's so close, not when his stomach feels like it's tying itself into literal, physical knots. "You know that, right?"

"Like what?" he says, not quite understanding what she's trying to say. That's nothing new, though.

"Anything."

Steve swallows, hoping that he's interpreting this correctly.

"Okay,' he says, trying to ignore how desperately hoarse his voice sounds. "I want--"

He wants a lot of things, he realizes; he wants a lot of things, to a lot of different degrees, but what he wants right this immediate moment is mostly just--

"I want you to kiss me," he whispers, feeling way, way, way less stupid than he probably should. "Am I allowed to want that?"

It's not really a confession to her, because he gets the feeling that she already knew, but it's still better, he thinks, to have finally said it out loud.

"Yes, Steve, you're allowed to want that," she says, vaguely exasperated, the corners of her mouth twitching into an almost-smile, and then--

And then she kisses him, and his brain shuts off. Short-circuits. Grinds to a screeching, shuddering halt, the world narrowing down with a pinpoint precision until the only thing that he's really aware of is her, everything else in the background fading out into a monotonous blur.

He pulls back. He makes a sound-- a soft, shaky exhale of a breath he hadn't realized he'd been holding.

"You like me?" he says, bewildered.

She blinks. Opens her mouth, but says nothing for a long moment. "Are you dumb?"

"Apparently," he replies, and then he kisses her again. Just to be sure, he tells himself, just to be certain-- and she huffs out what might have been a laugh against his cheek and pulls him closer by the collar of his shirt, presses her lips a little more firmly to his. And this-- this is fine, he tells himself, he can get used to this, the way he can't quite hide a full-body shiver at the feeling of her nails dragging lightly against his scalp, the soft sound he murmurs into her mouth when she twists her fingers into his hair--

The thing is, he can't really remember the last time he's been this close to somebody-- let alone a girl-- but it's not like anything's changed, it's not like he doesn't still know how everything works, it's not like he's forgotten how to do this. He has one arm around her waist, pulling her as close as she'll let him, has one hand cupping the curve of her jaw, the pad of his thumb sweeping across the curve of her cheekbone, and when he bites down on her bottom lip she makes this sound that he wouldn't mind hearing over and over and over again, forever.

He still knows what he's doing, is the point-- he still knows how to kiss a girl like it's the last thing he'll ever get the chance to do. Steve kisses her and she seems to melt from it, her body curving and melding against the hard lines of his own like she was fucking made to be there.

"Okay," she says, breathless. "Is this all you want, then? It's not the 40s, the whole abstinence-until-marriage deal isn't really a thing anymore--"

The answering chuckle that rumbles out from the base of his throat is warm and self-assured in a way that he'd almost forgotten he was capable of. He has his mouth on her neck now, right above her collarbone, and the scrape of his teeth against the skin there makes her pulse skip and speed up enough that he can feel it, her heartbeat pounding in her throat like a bass drum as whatever she'd been saying dissolves into a hitched intake of breath.

“Wasn't really a thing back then, either, sweetheart," he replies, "Dunno how much you know about it, but-- the Army wasn't exactly known to be the height of wholesome catholic upbringing--"

"Do not give me a history lesson," she retorts, and then she's got her hand up underneath his shirt, cool and soft against his stomach, thumbing over his belt buckle and whatever snarky bullshit he'd been saying dies in the back of his throat. Fuck, he's hard. He hadn't been paying attention to it, had been too focused on her and on processing the fact that his thirst-crush-thing (or whatever it's called now) also apparently liked him in any capacity, but--

Jesus Christ.

Steve kisses her again, harder this time, with more intent, urges her backwards until the edge of the bed hits the backs of her knees and instead of, like, taking any amount of time to discuss how, exactly, the semantics of this interaction were going to occur, he just-- lifts her up off the ground. She makes a sound halfway between a gasp and a shriek, arms locking around his neck and her legs around his waist and her expression, when he bothers to stop kissing her long enough to look, is torn halfway between indignation and something that he immediately recognizes as arousal, only because he knows it's echoed in his own expression, too.

"I'm going to fall," she says, a breathless, halfhearted reiteration of what she'd said the night they'd danced together.

"No, you won't," Steve replies, the words coming out low and syrupy-sweet. "I've got you, sweetheart. I could keep you like this the whole night, if that's what you want-- it's not hard."

He watches her swallow around her next words with a cheeky sort of satisfaction.

"Awful big talk there, Cap," she says, but there's no weight behind it, not as she maneuvers herself around in his arms to slip her shirt off over her head and brings him into another kiss, this one faster, rougher, needier , the warmth of her bare skin bleeding in through the thin cotton fabric of his t-shirt.

He sets her down on the bed, moves away just long enough to yank his own shirt up and off, discarding it somewhere on the floor along with the mess of sheets and blankets he'd knocked to the ground. The way she's looking at him, kneeling above her, fumbling with the belt on his shorts-- it's nothing like any girl's ever looked at him before. She sees through him-- sees past him-- wants more, he reasons, than just his body or the ability to say that she'd slept with Captain America.

That's good.

He trusts that. Trusts her, more importantly.

Her shorts come off, tossed somewhere to the left of him, and Steve takes a minute to just-- look at her, pupils blown out all wide and dark, the dim, pale glow from the string of christmas lights above her bed illuminating the gentle curves of her body, making her look softer. Gentler. Like she belongs on some sort of pinup magazine, like when he was in the Army.

"You're beautiful," he whispers, making sure to kiss her before she has a chance to tell him to shut up. He takes the open space between her legs, resting his weight on his forearms on either side of her head; his dick is pressed right up against the inside of her thigh and she lets out this little trembling sigh at the pressure, angling her hips up more, trying to center the friction--

"Steve," she whispers, shaky and breathless, nails digging into his biceps almost enough to hurt, ten tiny pinpricks of bittersweet pressure. His breathing is ragged. The muscles in his arms and his back are tight, taut, with anticipation, and when he actually finally moves it makes her gasp and shiver as his cock slides inside--

"Fuck," he grits out, pressing an open-mouthed kiss to the base of her throat, and when he moves she moves with him, arches up into his body, rocks against the gentle rhythm of his thrusts. He drops his head onto her shoulder and she presses her nose into the crook of his neck, says something against his sweat-slick skin that might have been his name, might have just been her panting oh my god as she drags her nails down the tense, rippling muscles of his back--

She tightens around him, and Steve groans, the sound ragged and ripped from somewhere in the back of his throat. He holds his weight on one forearm, trails one hand down to where their bodies are joined, runs the pad of his thumb over her clit and is rewarded with an almost immediately with her mouth parting around a breathless, needy moan.

"Yeah?" he whispers, mostly breathless, partially in awe, "You close?"

She nods, wordless, dragging him into a kiss-- this one is different than the others, more desperate, with teeth and tongue and an acute, frantic sense of longing, and he kisses her back with that same passion, any sound he makes dissolving into her open, waiting mouth--

"Steve," she gasps, head falling back onto the pillows and her mouth falling open, just a little, just enough to let out a breathy, wordless moan--

And then she comes, and Steve makes sure that he gets to see her, then and she's beautiful just like he knew she would be, and she's tight and hot and wet around his cock and his own orgasm is wrenched from him so powerfully that his head swims and all of his coherent thoughts go fuzzy and white like radio static--

"Steve," she says again, softer-- when his brain refocuses, her arms are still around him. She doesn't seem to have any intention of letting go, either.

And he's--

He's fine with that, to be honest.

Fury finds him the next week, alone.

"She trusts you to go grocery shopping on your own now, does she?"

Steve looks up from where he's inspecting the labels of two identical-looking brands of gelato. To be completely fair, he'd gotten at least a third of the way down the list before getting fucking lost , which is better than last time, so he figures that counts for something.

"How are you?" Fury says, walking closer.

Steve shrugs. He drops one of the cartons of gelato into the cart-- 50/50 chance it's the right one, he tells himself. "I'm--" he starts, and then pauses. Considers it, for a second, before replying-- the words are odd to say out loud. Even now.

"I'm happy."

Maybe he's imagining it, but out of the corner of his eye it almost looks like Fury is smiling, up until he drops a thick manilla folder directly on top of his shopping list. Steve stares at it, watching what little happiness he'd been able to covet dissolve-- disintegrate-- at the sight of the thick black print across the top.

SHIELD AUTHORIZED PERSONNEL ONLY.

"I have a mission for you."

#steve rogers x reader #captain america x reader #captain america imagine #steve rogers imagine #steve rogers reader insert #captain america reader insert #captain america #CA:TWS #the avengers #steve rogers #natasha romanoff #nick fury #marvel imagine #marvel reader insert #marvel x reader #IM ALIVE GUYES

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killjoysserenade · 5 years

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Since yall asked for it...

Here is the start of my many one shots about Grizz and Sam.

The One Where Grizz Needs Allie's Help (PT. 1)

“Allie?”a voice said. Allie looked up from her desk to see Grizz leaning up against the doorframe of her new mayor office, hands in his jacket pockets. It had been two years since they arrived in New Ham. A year since Campbell and Lexie were put into power. Six months since the truth came out and Allie had been reelected. Everything was doing great. Allie and .Grizz and SAm were going strong, even after all the shit that they’ve been through. Becca and her baby were happy and healthy, and with Grizz and Sam, they made the greatest family unit. Everything was great.

”Hey Grizz! Is today the weekly crops check-in?” Allie said, setting down whatever work she had been looking over at the time. “No. It's actually something else.” Grizz said, taking a step into the room and sitting down in front of Allie. “Is something wrong?” Allie says, a look of concern plastered on her face. Grizz notices. “No no no! Everything is fine.” He says. Allie lets out the breath that she didn't realize she had been holding in and a wave of relief rushes over her.

“Good. Then what's up?” She asks. “I need some advice.” “Advice on what?” “Well, Sam and I’s 2 year anniversary is coming up and I want to do something special.” Allie’s eyes light up. “Grizz, are you going to propose to Sam?” Grizz smiles and nods his head. Allie gets up a hug the hell out of Grizz. “Holy hell Grizz! This is huge! What are you going to do? Do you have a ring?” “That's why I need your help. Normally I’m so good at this whole romantic gestures thing but I’m completely stumped with this all. I’m not prepared and need your help” “Grizz, you know I’d love to, but I’ve got a city to run.” “Come on! Just three hours out, tops.Thats all I need.” Allie mills it over. Three hours wouldn’t be too bad. “Alright.But three hours only!” She sighs and gives Grizz a small smile. Grizz has helped her so much the last few years, the least she could do was help him with this.

If you would like to read this in a book format, this post is on Wattpad!

https://www.wattpad.com/736116078-grizz-and-sam-one-shots-the-one-where-grizz-needs

#the society #the society netflix #grizz visser #sam eliot #sam x grizz #killjoysoneshots

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gold-from-straw · 5 years

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Frozen Heart - ch2

Tony makes an appearance! I’m going to tag anyone who liked/reblogged last time, if you’d rather I stopped, please lmk! And if you’d like me to tag you in the next chapter, please leave a <3 or a reblog!

And if you’d prefer to read on AO3 from the beginning, here you go!

Tony threw a handful of dried blueberries in his mouth and spun around on his chair, trying not to stave off the impending depression for just a little longer. Finishing a project was fantastic. Best feeling in the world. For like, five minutes? And then the boredom set in, and when the boredom set in, the depression was only a heartbeat behind. If Tony wasn’t actively doing something, he was not a happy bunny.

Then again, when he was actively doing something, he got super anxious, because he hadn’t finished yet, and it didn’t count as an achievement unless he’d finished it. Fucking goblin brain.

“JARVIS, bring up the list of unfinished projects, would you?”

“Of course Sir,” said JARVIS briskly, a file opening on the holo-viewer. “There’s a set of body armour you started for SHIELD.”

“Eh, archive that. In fact, archive anything I started for those bastards, they lost their TV privileges when they injected me with chemicals without my consent and tasered a man with a heart condition.”

“Thank you, Sir.” JARVIS made several files disappear with an obnoxious trashing noise. Tony smirked. JARVIS pulled up another file. “There’s also a prosthesis for--”

Tony was already shaking his head. “Nah, I replaced it with something better, remember? That neural transmitter implant which connects to a prosthesis so the kid doesn’t have to get used to a new one every time they grow out of a leg? Archive that as well.”

There were only three projects left. Tony felt a hollow fear start up under his arc reactor and rubbed his solar plexus, biting his lip. How had he let it get this bad? Was he losing his creativity? Was he going to have to… god forbid, be idle?

Something bleeped and Tony jumped, springing to the readout in the corner of the room. Behind him, JARVIS closed the holo-viewer and brought up a map in response to Tony’s touch. “What’s going on here? Solar flares?”

“NASA hasn’t got any solar flares of this significance predicted for the next four weeks, sir.”

Tony frowned at the map, replaying the readings of the last five minutes, but his heart was jumping with glee. The endorphins played a refrain of something new something new on his pulse and he grinned as he localised the readings to the New Mexico desert, not far from a little town called Puente Antigo. “Hey, JARV? Ready the mark XII, would you? I think we need a little break from the city.”

As the repulsors whined to slow his descent, Tony turned his head in all directions, gathering as much data as he could. It was obvious where the anomaly had been centred; a vast circle spread across the dirt, a little bit streaked to the south, as if a meteor had crashed at a steep angle. But the crater itself was like nothing he’d ever seen, a complex runic pattern burned into the ground and then overlayed with… “JARVIS, are those frost patterns?”

“Yes, Sir, the frost appears to have originated from the centre of the crater.” JARVIS marked the point on the heads-up display. “Perhaps you should talk to the people to the left of the crater, judging by the equipment they’re getting out of their van they seem to be conducting some sort of research on the crater.”

Tony’s eyebrows raised. “I’m always ready to talk science to new people,” he said, wheeling low and banking hard. “Except anti-vaxxers, if I wanted to be burned as a witch I’d have invented time travel by now.”

He landed gently and flipped his faceplate up. One of the women already had her phone out to video him, quietly muttering “holy shit, holy shit, it’s Tony freaking Stark,” under her breath. The other woman was tugging at her hair and having a nerdgasm at the patterns branded into the earth, and Tony knew immediately he was going to get along great with these girls. The older guy, maybe not. He looked at Tony as if he was a direct threat to the safety and wellbeing of all of them, which, while probably true, he didn’t need to be quite so obvious about it. Rude.

“Room for a little one?” Tony asked with his favourite media smile.

“Holy shit holy shit it’s Tony freaking Stark!”

“Yeah, hi,” he said, stepping out of the suit and waving at the girl in the glasses.

The other girl looked up at last, big brown eyes wide, as if she’d genuinely missed the noise of his approach. “Huh? Where did you come from?”

He jerked his thumb behind himself at the suit. “New York.”

She stared. “Holy shit, Tony Stark.”

“Yeah. Hope you don’t mind me butting in.”

She looked slightly pained. “Uh. Yeah, sure.”

“I mean, you’re on lead, of course,” he added quickly and watched her face light up again. “First come, first served.”

“Oh my God, really? I mean, you’re not gonna just… call seniority?” she said.

“I can’t call seniority, I don’t know you,” he shrugged.

“Oh, Dr Jane Foster, astrophysicist. This is Dr Erik Selvig, also astrophysics, and my assistant Darcy Lewis.”

“‘Sup,” said Darcy, apparently over her star-struck moment.

“Tony Stark,” he said again, pointing to himself. “No Doctor, so you definitely take seniority. What are we looking at?”

She turned back to the crater, her focus sharpening instantly. “I’ve been working on the spontaneous formation of Einstein-Rosen bridges for the last three years of my life - to the detriment of my entire career. The readings we picked up from here were literally off the chart, the frequencies alone were exactly the same as those the Fermi picks up from distant pulsars! But then we got here fifteen minutes ago, and it got weird.”

Tony followed her over to a rickety machine and looked at the readout over her shoulder. The screen flickered and she smacked it, hard. Tony winced and put his twitchy fingers behind his back. Not my machine, not my machine, no touchy!

Jane made a triumphant noise and pointed to the values as she scrolled up. “My array system here is picking up trace gamma radiation congruent with the kind of energy output of an atomic bomb, but it seems to have been entirely concentrated in this one small area, with no ill effects beyond the scorching of the soil here. And these symbols!” She turned, her hair flaring out and hitting herself in the face. “I mean, I’m loath to call them symbols, because that implies some sort of meaning, and obviously we have to be careful not to anthropomorphise, but it’s hard to deny, they look a hell of a lot like writing, don’t they?”

Darcy rolled her eyes. “Yeah, and there was the actual alien, too?”

Tony turned towards her. “There was an alien?”

“Supposed alien,” Erik said, helping Jane with another machine that looked like it’d fall apart in a stiff breeze. These guys needed some engineering lessons, that was for sure. “I’d wager he was one of those crop circle guys, just… diversifying or something.”

“He was blue, Erik,” Darcy insisted. “And he had horns!”

“Amazing what they can do with prosthetics and makeup these days,” Erik shrugged.

“Yeah, but Erik,” Darcy whined. “He froze the ground!”

Erik shook his head, but the machine slipped and Jane yelped, and his attention shifted off them. “He froze the ground?” Tony asked, turning towards Darcy.

“Yeah, dude, like he was in the middle of the crater, having some sort of a panic attack or something. Jane ran towards him asking if he’d seen what caused the anomaly, because she’s a total dumbass and didn’t, like, notice he was blue or something? I dunno. Anyway, he looked at her like she was some sort of dangerous creature, held his hand out and frosted up half the crater, and then disappeared.” She shrugged. “I got a photo, but it’s really blurry, I won’t even bother putting it on Facebook.”

“Do you mind sending it to me anyway?” he asked. “I can see if JARVIS can clear it up a bit.”

“Yeah, let’s do that CSI bullshit,” she said, holding out her phone to him.

He came around beside her instead of taking it, putting his shades on and activating JARVIS in the lenses. “Oh, yeah, that’s a shitty photo.”

“I know, right?” she said cheerfully.

The snap was shaky and grainy, like she’d pressed the button before she’d got the phone in place. JARVIS reduced the noise and adjusted for motion, and slowly a clearer version began to resolve itself in Tony’s display. “Woah,” he muttered.

“What? What?”

“JARVIS, bluetooth it to her.”

“Holy shit, I’m gonna need your image software,” she yelped as the photo appeared on her screen.

The man - or whatever he was - had his hands thrown out in front of him. He was crouched over, like he’d just picked himself up off the ground, or like he’d been startled, and silvery threads poured from his blue fingers. His face was mostly hidden, but Tony could make out a snarl.

“He was just standing up when we arrived,” Darcy said, zooming into the cleaned-up photo. “Jane started yelling at him, saying he should get out of there, he was messing up the data, and he turned around - that’s when we saw he was all blue, with those horns. He freaked out, iced the place up and disappeared. Pooff! Just like that.”

Tony frowned down at the phone, and then looked out at the markings on the desert floor. “JARVIS, can you send the footage we got from the air off to Dr Foster here? And maybe shift the markings to account for the trajectory, if we get rid of the parallax error we might be able to get some information from the markings.”

“Do you think he’s really an alien?” Darcy asked, pushing her glasses up her nose. “Damn, that would be so fucking funny, you know, go work for a serious scientist and end up caught up in some conspiracy theory.”

“Could be,” Tony hedged. “I mean, just because we haven’t seen any evidence of aliens yet doesn’t mean they don’t exist. But it’s a long shot, so yeah. We should probably wait until we have more information.”

“Boring,” she said, scrunching her nose up and poking at the screen again. “I’m calling aliens.”

A cold wind blew across both of them suddenly, and Tony shivered. “What the hell?” Tony murmured. “JARVIS, is there a storm forecast?”

“All meteorological data up until the last hour have shown between an eighty to ninety percent chance of clear skies, no disrupted weather at all. However approximately fifteen minutes ago a low pressure area appeared localised to Mount Nahokos, eight miles north of here.”

Tony frowned as the satellite imagery appeared on his sunglasses display. “Is that snow?”

“Yes, Sir. The meteorological anomaly appears to be growing, causing exponentially increasing snowfall. The intensity appears to be decreasing in the inverse square law with the distance from the epicentre.”

“You had me at inverse square law,” Tony said. “Hey, Doctors, I’m gonna go find out what’s causing snow in a New Mexico summer, I’ve sent you my phone number, come play science with me, yeah?”

Jane stood up and tucked some hair behind her ear as he stepped into the suit. “Wait, are you serious?”

“As a heart attack,” he said, tapping his arc reactor. “And I know a bit about those bitches. I’ll send a jet for you, we’ll have fun.”

The face plate closed on him and he sighed, closing his eyes. “Too clingy?” he asked.

“They should be honoured, Sir.”

“Yeah,” he said, straightening up a little. “Yeah, damn straight. Or something. OK, let’s go find the abominable snowman.”

***

Tagging!: @red--thedragon @shoot-the-smiles @tkillustration @yohanzen

@senpaiweird @fallenlux @superwhojohnlocked @saturnjuice @individual900 @schmadfoot @mikeystealth01 @timekeeper31289 @tomlinchanel @angrysockpuppetnoises @unistudentinperpetualsuffering @rabentochter @oolaan @victoriagreenleaf - again if you want me to untag you just let me know! Or just don’t like the post and I’ll leave you alone lol! <3

#frostiron #tony stark #loki/tony #My writing #Frozen Heart #frozen AU

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honeylikewords · 5 years

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Anon Asked: Ok so i’m curious: if you can, could you rank your favorite Oscar boys from least to most boyfriend material? they all seem very charming and sweet but i can’t figure out who the cream of the crop is!

First of all, THANK YOU, I L O V E making lists of my favorite things. You guys know that. Listicle formats are, like, my lifeblood. Thank you for enabling me.

Second, I’m going to rate these on MY personal scale. Now, I also should point out that “husband” and “boyfriend” mean two different things to me, and that I instinctively value “husband” material more than “boyfriend” material. The “husbands” are going to be the winners of this list, because I can see them having long-term, fulfilling, happy and mutually beneficial relationships with their partners. So, without further ado, here is my list, from LEASTboyfriend-able to MOST husband-able.

1. The Unmentionables Category.

These boys don’t even get to be part of the discussion because in their roles they are either misogynistic, evil, assaulters, or something else to prevent them from entering the race. A little villain apologism here and there is okay sometimes, but only to certain degrees, and these boys exceed it. Blue Jones, Nathan Bateman, En Sabah Nur/Apocalypse, and John, King of England all exceed my limitations. Begone, thots. You’re disqualified for the Boyfriend Campaign Race. (I do still like them as characters, though, or for Sexy Oscar Gifs, but they’re just… un-boyfriend-able!)

2. The Low Tier Boyfriends.

These boys are boyfriend-able, but come with some problems. Can we sort them out on here and make them into better boys on this blog with careful re-writes? Maybe! Are we doing that in this list? No! We’re just taking objective looks at these Oscar-boys as they stand. So, here are the low tier boyfriends.

Laurent LeClaire: He’s sexy, but he’s also, like, a murderer. And a bit of a playboy. Could we make him better on this blog? Absolutely! But, as before, we’re just looking at them as they are. So, sexy French boy or no, he’s a pretty low-ranking Oscar for the murders and the philandering.

John “Jack” Johnson: Kinda dirty, kinda rude, also a murderer, but nice to dogs and pretty darn intelligent. He’s sure somethin’. Only slightly higher on the list than Laurent simply because I liked him and he made me laugh, and he was good to a dog, so I suppose that’s a tick for him!

Bud Cooper: A bit of a sneaky boy! I like him a lot, but his trickery and sneakery place him lower on the list. Still, points for looking good in a weird mustache, and points for being clever!

3. The Middle Tier Boyfriends.

These boys are much more boyfriend-able, but still have baggage. Could you work around it? Hypothetically, sure! But we’re still just discussing canon behavior, so let’s rock and roll.

Llewyn Davis: Llewyn is shockingly low despite how much I like him, but he has a LOT of issues. Besides his inability to hold a stable job and the couch surfing, Llewyn struggles with attitude problems and relationship issues, apparently having to deal with the issue of terminated pregnancies with two women. We could certainly gloss over that for a more romanticized Llewyn on this blog, but I think it’s important to address that while he holds a place in my heart, he’s a difficult person and a little hard to love, maybe because he doesn’t know how to love others or himself yet. So, he’s higher on the list because at least he isn’t a criminal, but he’s low-ranker because of his life issues. Maybe if he sorted himself out more…

Basil Stitt: Basil’s got problems. I mean, just… a lot of problems. But I like him, and I like his scars, so I think we can work with him. Having a paranoid breakdown after sustaining an injury isn’t the worst thing that a person could do, right? We’ve all been there; scared, alone, afraid. I think, with time, Basil could really make steps in the right direction and be quite a cute boyfriend.

Shiv: Shiv’s a sweetheart. He’s doing his best in a world not inclined to allow him the freedom to do so. Sure, he’s a criminal, but he has a heart of gold and wants to make his son happy. He wants to do better. He’s kind, if misled, and a little dumb, but, hey, morosexuals stand up, ya know? He’s a cutie, even though he’s involved in some shady business. With a cleanup and a fresh start somewhere else, who knows? Maybe he could be a much better boy and end up in the husband range!

4. The High Tier Boyfriends.

Oh, now, these are some boys. These are some cute boys. Oof. Yeah. Let’s see these boys!

Rydal Keener: Poet, dancer, thinker, and sometime scam-artist, Rydal is a Grecian romance just waiting to happen. He’s not perfect, but he’s passionate, he’s sweet, and he’s doing his level best to try and get himself out of a sticky situation. He’s young; let’s find him some young love!

Standard Gabriel: Oh, Standard, how my heart beats for thee. I love Standard, and the only reason he’s lower on the list is because he’s got a lot going on in his life that makes it hard for him. Cheating wife, creepy people following him around, prison sentence sitting on his shoulders from the past; things are hard for our baby. But he’s resilient, he’s loving, and he’s loyal. And if given a new chance in a new place, I fully believe that Standard would be a great boyfriend, and, someday, a great husband.

Reeves: Sentimental, sweet, and a sumptuous songwriter, Reeves rings of a great boyfriend. He’s soft and tender, but firm when necessary, funny, relaxed, and witty. This guy has it all, and when he finds love, he hangs on tight. Ten plus years, tight, apparently; he’s still chasing the girl he had a crush on in high school! How sweet is he?! A beautiful boyfriend, no doubt.

5. Husband Tier.

These boys are the peak performance. These boys bring it. These boys aren’t just boyfriends, they’re partners, fiancés, and, one day, husbands. These are not just boys… they’re Men.

Kane: Loyal husband and dutiful soldier, Kane’s endured a lot, but still did his best to come home to his wife, even if it wasn’t “him”. Kane deserves to be a husband with a woman who will love and appreciate him as he loves and appreciates her (which I assert is NOT Lena. Lena did NOT appreciate that man). The only reason he’s lower on this list is because of the unfortunate nature of his storyline, and because he’s part-alien now. Actually, that last one isn’t that bad. He’s a cute alien. We stan.

Santiago Garcia: This man has been through so much, and I want him to be happy. He’s kind, great with kids, funny, generous, protective, and strong. I would rant and rave about him, but then this post would be a mile long. I love you, Santi. Brave boy. Husband.

Orestes: Orestes was in love with the same woman since he was a young man and advocated for her freedom and equal status in society, trusting her as his sole counsel consistently through his years as a public servant. The dude took a stone to the head for defending her. He went on stage to declare his love and play her a beautiful two-flute solo, for God’s sake! This man is husband material.

Mikael Boghosian: Actual angel. Has endured the depths of hell. Deserves all the love in the universe. My words are not enough for his goodness. Please, someone, fill this man’s life with joy and light. I am begging. This is a husband.

Abel Morales: I would fucking die for Abel Morales but he’s so good a man that he would never let me. My love for him is as boundless as the stars and twice as bright. May God’s light shine forever on his perfectly coiffed hair. Holy angel of the heating oil industry.

Miguel O’Hara: SPIDER-MAN, SPIDER-MAN, DOES WHATEVER A SPIDER CAN! FILLS MY HEART, UP WITH LOVE, AT OUR WEDDING RELEASE SOME DOVES! LOOK OUT, I LOVE YOU, SPIDER-MAN! But in all seriousness, the guy’s great. A goober, yes, but nevertheless, his fangs have pierced my heart and I am paralyzed with love for him and also venom.

Poe Dameron: I betcha all knew he’d be at the top of this list. I betcha knew. He’s… Poe Dameron, you know? What can I say that hasn’t already been said? We know he’s wonderful. He just is. He carries his mother’s ring, searching for his future spouse. This man is a husband. I love him. I will not change my mind.

6. Honorable Mention Husband.

Peter Malkin: Since Peter Malkin is based on a real person, I feel hesitant to talk about him. However, since the movie was juuuuust enough divorced from reality and his character changed juuuuustenough to call it fictionalized, I’ll include him. I love Peter Malkin. He’s a good good Jewish boy who visits his Mama for Shabbat and wears his kippah and that man is a primo husband. N*zi hunter, loving son, honorable soldier. We have chosen to stan forever. And wed, when the time is right. Mazel tov!

There are some other boys who didn’t make the list simply because I didn’t wanna go too overboard and make a too overwhelming post, but here’s my general take on the order from least to most boyfriend-able, and then husband-able. This list also shifts around depending on my mood, and the order in which some of the husbands are categorized can change from day to day. I love them all! I will not be silenced!

I hope that helps, and if anyone is curious about where a non-mentioned boy falls on the scale, lemme know and I’ll either add him or explain his spot in a separate post!

#let's hope this posts clear and clean jeeeeeeeeeeezus #non fic #messages #reference #multi

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heaartsavior · 5 years

Note

✿✂✖♒

EVERYBODY SCREAM | accepting

✿ What do you think about public call out posts?

OOF IS THIS A LOADED QUESTION. I’m…only for it if the person really truly deserves it, receipts and all. If there is factual evidence that is shown that there is in fact a problem with this person, then I will absolutely support it. Especially if I’ve seen it and experienced it for myself first hand (looking at you fucking o.w. rp community).

✂ A fandom that you feel isn’t open and accepting?

SPEAKING OF O.W. I have never felt so victimized by one singular fandom as the fucking o.verw.at.ch fandom. Getting anon hate is whatever for me, I normally don’t let it bother me. But after getting harassed for not only my portrayal, but the fact that they had the absolute gall to say I was RPing with my friends for attention? I was ready to call it quits. And I did. It was so hard to not only RP a woman in that community, but to even be remotely looked at by people to want to RP with me. You were the only person I genuinely enjoyed interacting with and I didn’t get the pleasure of RPing with Becca back then, but it was a literal hell. I don’t regret abandoning my blog because that was where I got the worst harassment I have ever received online. All because I had differing headcanons from the masses. And apparently RP’d with you. But you know, you’re my friend so I win Hündin. Seriously, there has never been a fandom that was so much of a trash heap as this one.

I loved playing as M.ercy, I was finally able to put that German Studies certificate to good use with all that I did with her! But it wasn’t worth any of the harassment I got because of how I was playing her or just even playing her period. There are a lot of names I was called and a lot of things I went through that I’ve told you about, and it had really put me off of rping on here for a while. I got seriously burned by this community and it took my love of rping as my favorite characters because of that. I’m still so scared of sharing my headcanons and my ideas due to my experiences with them.

✖ How has Tumblr RP changed since you started?

A LOT ACTUALLY. I have no idea if you saw anything on the dash earlier, but boy howdy did it bring me back to the days of people using full sized gifs to RP. I sure as hell did that on my Eleanor (Bio.shock) blog. I’ve been tumblr RPing since RO.TG came out back in 2012. My sweet baby Tooth.iana whom I miss and love so much. When I stopped rping with her it was just getting to the point where people were starting to make icons to post with their replies. And then when I came back as Vanell.ope we were using the icons with everything. Going into Bio.shock as Eleanor is when FC’s started to become a thing, and I will forever stand by the one I chose for her bc it was so fitting. But it’s also when people started using gifs for reactions and replies! After that on my old Namine blog, it was when people just started to format their posts and replies to stuff. It’s also when we were used cropped gifs that were the correct icon size for replies as well. Astri.d is where the formatting really came into play. Not only that, but it’s when promos were becoming a thing too. Also FCs were becoming a heavily used thing as well (she was another one that I was really proud of for the FC). Nowadays there’s people with pretty graphics and icons with psds and all that hullabaloo (YALL ARE REALLY TALENTED I’M SERIOUS IT’S AMAZING).

But with the fun, there’s always the bad. Unfortunately, there was a rise in elitism with various rp communities (*kicks ov.erw.atch into the nine pits of satan’s bullocks with the dra.gon a.ge rp community*). There was a period where it was just too hard to have fun with certain fandoms and it was very disheartening. People either wouldn’t rp with you if you didn’t format your posts a certain way, or if you had a certain FC for a particular character. It was terrible and I’m so glad to see that we’re past it now.

♒ Thoughts on the fandom you’re currently rping in?

I’ve always loved the kh.rp community! I’ve been in it before and it never let me down, I met so many people here that I love and adore talking with. Especially now that there’s a messaging system (back when I just had my Nami blog we had to either do skype or just plain ol’ private inbox messages). This community has not only been kind to each other muses, but to duplicates. One of my fondest memories for rping has always been the Namine Apocalypse (Namiocalypse if you will) where all of us Nami muns just banded together for some great crack and comedy. Shout out to anyone who was around for that.

#kiibearer #♡ come on let’s go an play . ask #WOW THIS GOT LONG #thanks for reigniting my hatred #//cursing

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saint-yaint · 5 years

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Petrichor Chapter 7: All In An Evening

"Oi Dervish, the hell Bev and Grissy went?" Oracle comes up to Dervish putting her head on the much taller woman's shoulder. Adjusting her white faux-fur boa she scans the room and her eyes perked up as she landed on Roman walking up to Dean talking to him. Clutching to Dervish's shoulder she looks up and starts to speak. "Hey-"

Dervish looked at the men her pale blue eyes locked on them, she straightened her sky blue hair her smooth Persian accent mirroring the beauty of their surroundings. "Rollins is not there with them. We move in to approach them, Beverley's absence is accounted for Eileen called upon her, but Griselda is gone and I am concerned that Rollins got in contact with her again." Looking down at her shorter counterpart she whispered."Let's introduce ourselves shall we."

Dervish glides through crowd her blush gown sways as her lengthy legs make her leagues ahead of Oracle whose shorter legs scampered to catch up the resistance of her vinyl dress hinders her more. Dervish slows and comes to a halt and began to introduce herself. "Hello I hope you enjoying yourselves, I am Xandria Avery." She looks over her shoulder as Oracle finally meets up with the three human pillars before her, quietly catching her breath Dervish took the initiative. "And this is Christie Warren, she is modelling as well as doing DJ work. You two look quite new to the scene, so introducing ourselves seemed appropriate.

Roman initially taken aback by Dervish's presence she stood to toe and eye to eye with him. A tall strong woman certainly not phased and Roman can't read her, which is highly concerning meaning she is another mystery in the looming uncertainty the future brings. He stares at the shorter woman too she waved when seeing Roman analyzing her, then turning her attention to Dean. "I am Reigns and this is Jon Moxley, nice to meet you."

"For some newbies ya' clean up quite nice." Oracle finally having enough breath to speak, her posture now proper actually standing like a model should. "So ya'll's like tech dudes, investors? Guys like you don't come here just to be seen or look at the looks like most people who come." This especially directed at Dean she tucked some loose hair behind her ears and put her hands in her hips with the crinkle of her vinyl dress not too far behind."Well hmm."

Dean saunters a bit to close the the gap in the group. "Well we are in finance actually lil' missy and we are actually here to enjoy the fashions even though some are a bit, ahem, avant garde." Looking her up and down confused pointing. "You're wearing a plastic dress and a fishnet top underneath. Ain't you hot it's breezy outside but nowhere near cold at all."

"I'm just fine actually Jon also this is a 100% recycle and biodegradable pinafore dress from Atelier Monsoon, and I'm wearing a bodysuit underneath not a top." She gets a bit more cocky. "If ya'll're going to hang 'ere ya gonna learn about style types and designers. Ya'll got looks a lot of them but you gotta have the knowledge so you won't get clowned out 'ere." Oracle got in Dean's face grabbed his tie and adjusted it. "Was ya' lookin' like this all night. Bein' cute distracts most people doesn't it eh?"

Dervish looks Roman straight in the eye softly smiling. "Yes, it certainly does." Then putting her hand on Oracle's shoulder pulling her away from Dean. "But such distractions lead can lead to calamity." She hears a familiar pair of steps coming close and looks over her shoulder. "Ah you looks so good my babies!"

Thierry and Gossamer come behind the two women, hugging them and patting them on the back Dean rolls his eyes and curses under his breath. Roman braces himself to hold back any fighting parties. "Hey y'all sweethearts miss me?" a hoarse, raspy voice inquired. All six people turn around do see a heavily tattooed dark skin woman with highlighter hair in a crop top and shorts holding out her arms. Gossamer and Oracle run to her hugging her. "Aye aye aye don't fucking squeeze so hard eh! Yul! 'Dria get over here and hug me, don't treat your sis like a customer!" The aforementioned duo went to hug her aiding the formation a intense huddle. They speak among themselves catching up and flagging a waiter for drinks.

The hugging commenced, Dean and Roman processing being abandoned by their two rivals and two admirers. "Dean well looks like Miss Warren has a crush on you and she is friends with the guy that wants to kick your ass,nice going playboy."

Dean cuts his eye at Roman, waving his finger in his face. "You can't say shit about me when you had a woman stare you in the eye like she was going to make you her's. That's way more that what Warren was doing, are you telling me you could not feel the sexual tension at all?"

"Avery was not doing any of that"Dean was floored and threw is arms up."Honestly I couldn't get a read on her so I don't really know what the fuck she was doing."

"She was undressing you with her eyes that's what the fuck she was doing, and if you couldn't see that she might've done outmatched you in the mindfuckery department." Dean shrugged

Roman took a sip of his drink."Dean shut it and stay alert they Avery is coming back over."

"My apologizes for just leaving so suddenly. I am going to be hanging out with my friends so good night to you both." She sticks her hand in her small purse and hand Roman a card. "This is for you, a parting gift. Well enjoy your first fashion week you two hope to see you again." She turns around and goes back the oddly unique group of people who later leaves the building

"As I said before she wants you." Dean snatches the card from Roman. "Well her room number is 1240. 'Hopefully this will allow me to see you soon', well can you analyze and decipher what the hell this mean smartypants?"

Dean's sneering finally breaks Roman. "Fine Dean I guess you're right. Give me back the damn card."

Dean taunts Roman with the card. "You're going to see Avery? You should."

The card returned to Roman and he looked at it. "Fine I will see her, but I am keeping my guard up we are still working you know."

"Well Sheena I didn't expect you to actually be here." Dervish crosses her arms as the group goes outside.

"Well I didn't expect to be here either but Lena suggested it, sounded like boss lady needs as many hands as possible." Sheena fluffs her neon hair and takes off her glasses.

Gossamer get's in front of Sheena and examines her face closely. "Your eye, what happened?"

"Babe I know. I had to get the replacement ok, it works well it just looks fucking weird. I rather be odd eyed than half blind." Sheena relented.

"Long as you are ok, I don't care what you look like." Gossamer put his arm around Sheena's neck and began walking. "Well Oracle, did the chief tell you Thierry almost whoop your boy's ass?"

"Goss you really gonna bring that up huh?"Thierry called the cars so they can head back to the hotel."He wouldn't put his hands on me anyway he fucking know better that's not including I'll fuck him up."

"My boy?" Oracle looks confused and scratched her head "Who in the hell is my boy Goss?" Her confusion amplified.

"Dean girl Dean, that's who's your boy!" Sheena playfully hits Oracle's arm. "You up there feeling on the damn man but you can't even remember him! Sad thing he looks like your type too, I'm surprised." Sheena's laughed

"Oh him! Well he cute or whatever but I'm working." Oracle pointed at Thierry. "Are the rides anywhere near? We need to speak to Bev and Kiwi, more importantly my feet hurt and my tits are sweaty, I need to bathe."

"Well the rides are pulling up now and another thing never ever tell me about your swampy tits ok? I really don't need to know that shit." Thierry opened the car door."Well Sirens your chariot awaits." Oracle sent him several obscene gestures getting in the car.

Oracle gets in followed by Dervish who pulls the door closed."Thierry are you three coming straight to the hotel or going to take a detour?" Dervish quickly asked.

"Lena is meeting us at her brother's place, then we head on to the hotel. While I was making rounds I saw Veronique Donnadieu and Jimena Marroquin, so I think one of our people is here early."

"Angela's sister and mother? Why the hell would they be here?" Dervish became concerned. "Knowing Marroquin she maybe trying to something. Well thanks for the information it will be relayed."

"Talk to you later." Thierry gives the driver a signal to leave and the Sirens pull off from the curbside. He turns to get in a large black suv with his two friends. "So with Lena here means the Knights are back huh?"

"Well T it sure seems like it. What was you and D talking about back there?" Gossamer faces Thierry closing the door behind him, the truck taking off quickly after.

"Well I told her that Donnadieu and Marroquin are here, meaning Kallo has to be too. So we need to see if they are meeting earlier than intended." Thierry huffed.

Sheena in between the perked up at the news. "Alright that's fucking awesome!"

"What?" Gossamer was bewildered by Sheena's answer."It's not good we will have too many unknowns."

"Babe, it is great! Them coming early will give us a head start, because Saldana and Hernandez will be here in the morning." Sheena grabs the two men's hands. "So we have a head start." The ride

"What? Head start? I'm guessing Lana,Lena, and you found some info, nice." Thierry nodded off as the tiredness sets in.

Gossamer wide awake looks at her. "Ok that changes things but getting a head isn't bad but still why do we need one?"

"Aye we here you two. Thierry wakey wakey! We getting out."Sheena shakes Thierry and points out the window.The trio pull in front of an small apartment building surrounded by low lit bars, people drunk people and their more sober friends aiding them through the streets. Thierry sluggishly tumbles out the truck walking to the front of the building. Sheena jumps out followed by Gossamer.

She leads going up front stairs and taking out her phone. "Lena, baby doll we here could you buzz us up."

"Okie dokie, it's apartment 14C, shoot a text so I can let you in." The line goes dead immediately after.

Gossamer opens the door looking around, kicks aside a pair of shoes left in the hallway approaches the elevator door holding it open for Sheena and Thierry. "What floor babe?"

"Fourteenth floor doll." Sheena presses the '14' button and the elevator shoots up. "I found the info about the Carlos' and Leon's plane schedule but Lena must'e found something big if she needs us to come here."

"Hmm Lena rarely does that she just give info when she gets it. Why is this time so different?" Gossamer holds Sheena's hand. "Thierry you know Lena better than we do so what is your take on it."

Thierry looked over rubbing his eyes. "We might have more trouble heading our way, she hates giving bad news over the phone."

The couple looked at Thierry's stern, tired face devoid of any motion or emotion. A sharp 'ding' cut through the silence, elevator doors sliding open. "Ladies first Sheena." Thierry stepped aside letting her go.

The two men follow her down the hall, just shuffling stopping when Sheena pulls her phone out as she waits in front of a door. The door opens and Lena stood there in her beige snuggie, looking down both ends of the hallway waving in the trio. "Glad you three made it. Sit down please, I will get some food for you out the kitchen." Lena skips to the fridge getting jam, almond milk and butter.

Sheena gets to the kitchen reaching for the bread and peanut butter. "You wanna me to help make toast?" Lena looks up and nods happily, plugging up the little Easy Bake oven that hid in the cabinet. "So Lena how much shit is coming our way?" Putting bread in the toaster oven, grabbing a bottle of water.

"Well my brother went back to Nice, so he no longer lives here." Lena got paper plates and was applying jam and butter to the freshly made toast.

Sheena takes the plates putting them on the dinner table. "Oh the brother that wanted you to work with him?"

"Yep the very same, but I found out who he worked for." Lena grabbed more plates and toast making peanut butter & jelly sandwiches. "He works for Interpol. He wanted me there as a white hat hacker."

Thierry got up quickly going to the dinner table. "What? Interpol?"

"Yeah, and well obviously we are not really not fans of them." Lena brings the sandwiches and milk wedged in her elbow to the table. "Gossamer come over here with us!"

The well worn Ikea couch creaks as Gossamer gets up. "Alright I'm moving" Finally sitting and pulling up to the table. "So your bro works for Interpol." Grabbing a piece of toast biting into it. "I am guessing you found some shit out."

"Don't talk with your mouth full!" Sheena points at him with a glare. "So Lena is he on the right track?"

"He is. My brother basically oversees the movements of various field ops it's a tad bit technically involved but not by much. So knowing he was moving I did a remote hack and that there are four agents coming here in two days time."

Thierry swallowed his toast and grabbed more. "So the Hounds called in backup? Hmm well then, guessing Sheena was right about us having a head start. So how do we take advantage of this?"

Lena left the table went in the bedroom and brought out two heavy suitcases. The group turned and watched Lena lift up Rheinmetall MG 3. "Well we just get them before they get us! Fortune has gave us a way and we must take it."

Gossamer, Sheena, and Thierry stood up joining Lena, the four people took a deep breath beginning to chant. "Non nobis, Domine, non nobis, sed Nomini tuo da gloriam!"

*"Non nobis, Domine, non nobis, sed Nomini tuo da gloriam" translates to " Not unto us, O Lord, not unto us, but unto thy Name give glory"

@adriennegabriella @superrezzy00 @writinglionqueen

#petrichor #my fic #wwe fic #seth rollins #roman reigns #dean ambrose

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chaosd1 · 6 years

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You know, when I reblogged that, it was mostly to showcase an issue that’s been present for YEARS, but keeps cropping up every now and then because most of Channel Awesome’s fans still think it’s 2010. If I had a Patreon dollar for every person who asked me something about “____ DOESN’T WORK THAT WAY!” despite that not being a thing I’ve done for over half a decade, I would probably not have to worry about paying off that damaged tire, or any future repairs to my car and/or PC. Long story short, they aren’t very good at letting things go.

I know people who want me to share my story are hoping for the same level of juicy gossip or levels of hypocrisy or betrayal that have accompanied so many of these other stories but I’m sorry to say it’s not quite that interesting, or even remotely “gotcha” in any sense of the word. If anything it’s more a reveal of how the company feels about its low-tier producers, and symptomatic of the larger issue that they clearly DON’T want anyone but the Chicago crew, or anyone that’s possibly bringing in their own audience. Remember when JonTron and PBG posted on Blistered Thumbs? I’m pretty sure they’re still kicking themselves over that one. As a bit of background, I always wanted to be on the CA site in some form, and by the time I had a show to offer up, I was already pretty close friends with a lot of the producers. In fact, it was Julien (Sad Panda) who decided to post up one of my videos in his schedule slot as a way to offer me a test spot. It was well recieved enough, but video games were almost always relegated to BT at the point, so off I went.

Despite being the more “respected” site by some audiences, all snafu’s aside, I felt that Channel Awesome treated Blistered Thumbs producers as second class citizens. Posting on there was like the Wild West. You put up whatever you wanted, whenever you wanted, and as often as you wanted, and hoped someone with a show that consisted of a three-hour long livestream split up into 15 minute increments wouldn’t end up pushing your video off the main page slider within the next few hours. It was very much for that reason I pursued some means to get myself listed on the main site by cleaning up the YEARS worth of spam and reported comments. After bringing it to the right people, I was permitted to post videos on the main site as well. It went well enough... for a while.

Once BT was shut down, a few of my friends (specifically MegaGWolf) were unceremoniously let go without an ounce of communication. (Most everyone on BT who wasn’t brought on to the CA “merger” had to find out via friends, as Michaud didn’t directly inform them.) Despite the promise of rebranding and stronger promotion, the BT audience didn’t really follow over to CA as the site didn’t really fit their desires, and the core CA audience was basically “NC, Linkara,and that’s it.” Views tanked and it was around the time I decided to move over to Youtube as the Blip waters were already pretty troubled.

At some point I started doing relatively well on Youtube, to the point CA felt like an annoying afterthought. I had to make special titlecards for CA as they had a ridiculous format I’d purposefully ignore later on just to see if they were paying attention. For example, the images were all supposed to be JPGS, though I always made them PNG, and since they were hotlinking them from my site anyway, WHY DID IT FUCKING MATTER?! It most felt like this ridiculous push for control and a power play that no one bothered to enforce anyway. Each time we scheduled we had to provide a link, a title, and a link to a special made titlecard. Did you have a special instruction or link you wanted to include when posting on CA? Good fucking luck they would ever include it, or spell half that shit correctly. Hell after a while, I figured it was pretty non-coincidental that after changing the title format from “MMO Grinder: Name of Game” to “Name of Game - ChaosD1,” views coming from CA were barely a percentile of the overall views I’d get from every other source. It wasn’t worth making them a stupid special title card and hopping onto a painfully broken scheduling site (a site that, by the way was designed for Sporting Events, and was so filled with non-updated dead links I occasionally would troll them by posting my category as “Blistered Thumbs” and “The Inebriati” both still available in the category dropdown menu. I’ll bet you they are still there to this day.

My issue didn’t come about until a sudden rule change. A rule I didn’t really have an issue with until the market started dying down, and my constant crushing depression over winter and my wife’s illness kicked in. Basically, “Post one video a month, or you’re stricken from the site.” later on that was changed to TWO videos per month and my show was almost always a ONCE per month deal. Seemed a bit suspect and draconian. There were people who didn’t post videos for several MONTHS that were still listed on the site, but they suspiciously had pretty strong followings elsewhere. Still I figured some form of warning or amnesty would take place to some extent. So in April of 2017 it was a pretty shitty month. Most of it was spent working on Eternal Crusade which was such a miserable slog none of us felt like doing much of anything else, there were no games to Sidequest for the suddenly required 2nd video per month, and I was pretty sure I was going to get some flak for it.Keep this in mind, I was WELL AWARE of the risk I was taking by not posting a second video, despite me rather often saying my show was monthly at the most. I figured they might know this, I’d get a warning, and that’d be the end of it. However, I was able to get out Eternal Crusade at the very end of April, but didn’t get around to posting it on the schedule until May 1st. May 1st rolls around, I check the site for any feedback and comments, and notice the video isn’t posted at all.... and I can’t access the scheduler anymore. One day late of posting consistently for 5 fucking years, and I’m locked out of the site like I stole a laptop from the studio. So I hopped on Twitter. Partially to express dismay, and partially because... I noticed I didn’t really have an audience on Channel Awesome anymore. I asked this very specific question and joked with some of the replies, most of whom confirmed my suspicion. They really only watched me on my site or my YT channel.

Still in talking with the CA chat in Skype, (I’d be on that Producer’s chat more often if I didn’t basically swear off Skype after Discord included screenshare. The producers and former producers really should make a Discord channel already.) they informed me that they’d probably reverse their decision if I just contacted Greg. While I didn’t think it was likely worth the effort, I figured I would anyway. Maybe pipe dreams of being included in an anniversary special some day. I just couldn’t wait to be the guy sitting slightly out of camera range in every shot with the one exception of getting to say “What should we do now, Critic?” for my first and only line in the movie. So I contacted Greg. It went a little something like this (for the Skype uninitiated, my words in Blue, Greg’s in grey):

So yeah, always fun to have to wait several days for a sentencing to the crime of being a day late on a post.

Of course, I cropped out the rest of the image, because the response without any contact in-between immediately afterward was this:

Yes I was being a sarcast there. I’m a sarcast... but when I’m last told “we’ll go through everything” and that is immediately followed up by “Sorry I took so long to get back, but... get lost scrub” I’m probably going to be a bit miffed about it. Of course this is CA and you can’t talk bad about them... or post something on Twitter they presume is talking bad about them, as this was the response to my sarcastic reply:

So yeah, Greg not quite understanding the concept of linear time (again I posted the tweet BEFORE I sent him the Skype message, not after) apparently you can’t even ask your audience where they still watch your videos most. They take it as a personal insult, like I didn’t enough appreciate those generous table scraps us low-tier producers had to fight over.

All things considered though, I knew the risk of not posting a second video in that month, and I valued my sanity over tossing out content for the sake of a suddenly imposed deadline. Could I have contacted Greg? Yeah, I suppose so, but why should I even have to? To be only a day late and have everything stricken without warning, like a robot looked over the feed and said “Well a month has passed, and there was only one so fired lel” without considering why, or even checking in on the employee in question, is the kind of corporate "numbers-only” bullshit that I swore off retail for. It’s fitting so many people in charge of Channel Awesome used to work at Circuit City is all I’m saying.

So that’s it. Nothing major, something I basically brought on myself, but still a fairly telling story of how you’d be treated as a content producer on that site.

And to all the current and remaining producers that aren’t showing up to the studio every day, or have a sizable enough audience to make a dent if you were to leave... they don’t WANT you there. They do not care about you. You are a liability. The very second they have a logical-to-them reason to cut your ass from the site, they will. Why put yourself through all that stress for a job that makes demands of you, without even paying you, promoting you, or benefiting you in any way? You know they don’t care about that site now that they are where they are with their YouTube channel. (Currently there are two producers that haven’t posted since December, that are still listed on the site. I must have been a special exception, or maybe it doesn’t matter if you don’t have a video as long as you keep telling them you don’t.) You’re white noise to them. Stay or go. As much as you think it might, it probably won’t make a difference to you...

...but it definitely won’t make a difference to them.

#channelawesome

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imagination-of-a-melted-bitch · 6 years

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The Weekend {Byun Baekhyun}

Requests Open || Smut Game 1 || Smut Game 2 || Smut Game 3 || Smut Game 4 || Smut Game 5 || BTS Masterlist || GOT7 Masterlist || Monsta X Masterlist

Prompt: Song

Pairing: Baekhyun x Reader

Word Counts:

Warning: Infidelitiy, hook-ups,

**First song fic I’ve ever done so if it’s not set to the cliche format...sorry!**

“How you want me when you got a girl?”

Baekhyun watched you from across the room, his arm slung over his girlfriend’s small shoulders. She was going on about something, something he really didn’t give an honest shit about. He drawled his tongue over his bottom lip, eyes moving down your form. You were everything his girlfriend wasn’t, he was all about body positivity and all but his girlfriend reminded him of plank from that child’s show Ed, Edd n Eddy whilst you were filled out in all the right places. A few weeks ago, he never would’ve thought he’d be attracted to a foreigner, well that was until he saw you. You were as the Americans said ‘thick’. You were currently wearing a red long sleeve crop top with a black skirt that came down to your knees, usually, he’d frown at skirts that long but you had pulled it up just enough to show a sliver of skin between the bottom hem of the shirt and the hem of the skirt. He hummed in an appreciation at the look. Your smile was perfect and your laugh floated toward him and he wished it were him making you laugh. Speaking of smiles all Baekhyun could really think about was your lips wrapped around his cock and he knew he shouldn’t have such thoughts while his girlfriend was beside him but with her endless rambling he couldn’t help but imagine her lips wrapped around his cock too, whatever it took to get her to shut up. “Baek! Baek!” Snapped his girlfriend, literally snapping her fingers in his face. He growled under his breath and pushed her hand from in front of his face, having to look away from you.

“Yes?” He sighed and she pouted, crossing her arms.

“Did you even hear anything I said?” He heard it but did he listen, no.

“Yes, yes of course.” He weakly smiles, weakly kissing her, she places her hand on the back of his neck trying to deepen the kiss but Baekhyun purses his lips, pulling away. She whines, and Baekhyun rolls his eyes looking back in your direction to find that you were gone. Fuck. He thought. His mind rolling back to the thought of you somewhere in the club on your knees sucking his cock.

“Gettin' all in your love,”

You don't exactly remember how it happened or what was said but the last clear thought you had was being pushed against your bedroom door, lips hurriedly finding yours again after having lost them in the process of pulling your shirt over your head. Baekhyun smirked against your mouth, his tongue pushing against the seam of your closed lips. You part your lips with a soft gasp, eager to feel his tongue in your mouth. Your fingers pulled at the collar of his black button up, and you whine into his mouth, ripping the shirt down the middle. You smile at the sound of the buttons hitting the floor. You push the shirt off his shoulders, pulling away from the hot kiss to connect your lips to a random patch of skin along his jawline. He moans at the feeling of your lips against his skin, his hands skimming over the sides of your body, pulling you into him. You place wet, hot, open-mouthed kisses along his jawline. His hands pull at your skirt, deciding to pull it over your head as well. You break away from his to let him do it, revealing your white laced panty set to him. His waggles his brows and you chuckle placing a hand on his chest, pushing him a little, his shoulders jerking. He gets the memo and backs toward the bed. You place a hand on his shoulder and push him down, he sits on the bed. His eyes are hungry and darkened by lust. You smile down at him, your stomach flipping at the way he looks like he's ready to ravish you, his tongue flicking over his lips. It was a feeling you've been needing.

“I don't care long as you're here by 10:30. No later than, drop them drawers. Give me what I want.”

You sighed, looking at your phone, it was 10:42 and Baekhyun had texted you half an hour ago, asking if it were okay for him to come over. You were still laughing at the audacity of the question, that boy knew the routine, here, at your house on the weekends by 10:30 which is why you were confused by his lateness. You were snapped out of your thoughts by a loud knock on the door. You jumped up, excitedly rushing to the door, fixing your hair before opening the door. You put on a bored expression, softly smiling when he rushes into your apartment, he wasn't afraid to appear too eager. "You're late," you tsk at him, clicking your tongue in disapproval. Baekhyun sighs, running his fingers through his hair. You close the door, locking it, "Why are you late?" It was so unusual he was usually always on time. He could hear the slight worry in your voice, and he bound toward your, picking you up into his arms. You wrap your legs around his waist, giggling at the abrupt affection.

"That bitch wanted to throw every question in the book at me, guess it's cause she found these." He tilts his hand to the side, revealing his bruised neck. You squeak, apologizing. He shrugs, sitting down on your couch. You straddle his waist, teasingly dragging your barely covered over his bulge. "I love it when you mark me," Baekhyun smiles, settling back against the couch, his hands moving to settle on your hips. "The feeling of your mouth, hot, against my skin." He bites the tip of his tongue, his eyes falling down to where you were rubbing yourself against him and when they come back up to meet yours, your knees buckle.

"Fuck," Baekhyun chuckles, loving how you tried to put up a dominant front only to crumble with a simple look.

"What do you want princess?" Baekhyun softly whispers, beginning to aid you in moving your hips along his.

"You," You mewl, feeling your panties stick to your slick core, and you could feel yourself getting wetter second by second.

"What were you waiting for princess?" You bite the tip of your tongue, eyes gleaming as you look down at him.

"Your cock,"

"You're like 9 to 5, I'm the weekend. Make him lose his mind every weekend."

"Baek," You hummed, wrapping your arms around his waist. "You're so tense," You turn him around, standing on your tip toes, placing your lips against his, softly smiling into the kiss. "Let me help you relax." You push him against the counter, hand trailing down his body, groping his bulge. "I hate that she stresses you out so much." You pull at his belt, loosening it around his hips, before dropping to your knees. Baekhyun can't help but moan at the sight of you dropping everything to help him relieve his stress. Your fingers hook in his briefs, pulling them down his legs as well. His cock springs to attention and you giggle, wrapping your fingers around his cock. You lean in, tongue flicking across his leaking slit, collecting the salty extractions. You take his tip into your mouth without second thought, eagerly sucking on him like a lollipop. Baekhyun grasped the edge of the counter, bucking his hips into your mouth, eyes fluttering closed at the feeling of you gagging around him.

"Fuck!" He whimpered, grabbing the back of your head, guiding you on and off his cock. "That feels so good, so fucking good." You swallow around him, wanting to completely take his mind off of his girlfriend. He scratches his nails against your scalp in appreciation, letting you know you were doing exactly what you had intended to do. You slack your jaw and let him set his own pace. You run your tongue along the underside of his cock, eyes fluttering shut as you lose yourself in the way his cock feels on your tongue. You slip your hand in-between your thighs and he shakes his head no, "Not yet baby, Imma take care of you after you take care of me..." It took him a minute or two to get the words out, the occasional moan and whimper slipping from his swollen lips. "How pissed do you think she'd be if I sent her this picture?" Baekhyun chuckled, looking over at his phone on the counter, "God I want to send her this picture so bad," He picked up his phone, his mind racking over the possible outcomes to when he finally realized he didn't care. He opened his phone, opened their messages and took the picture of you swallowing his cock. He sent it to her with the attachment, 'no one can do it better than she can,'

"Monday and I'll be at your door. Ready to take her place. Ready to give you, what you've been missin' on weekdays."

You knocked on the door, biting your lip as you looked around. Bakehyun had texted you about an hour ago, asking you to meet him at his house at the current time. You were confused by the request seeing as the two of you usually met at your apartment but had no obligations. The door is hastily swung open, revealing the angry face of Baekhyun's now ex-girlfriend. You're shocked to see her and she can tell by your 'o' face. "So you're the famous Y/N?" You didn't know what else to say so you just shrugged, slowly nodding. "The girl that's been sleeping with my man?" You continue to slowly nod, not expecting to feel this bad, finally facing her. "Well congratulations, you've won a dickhead. Bye!" She carries on, a couple bags in her hands, she was being kicked out.

"Baekhyun?" You call out, stepping into the apartment. He turned the corner with a bright smile on his face.

"Hi," You point back to the door,

"Hi. What the hell was that?" Baekhyun clasps his hands together, eyes gleaming with hope.

"I broke up with her and kicked her out, there's someone else I want and I'm tired of living the double life." He bounds across the living room, wrapping his arms around your waist. He lifts you into the air, spinning you around. You can't help but mirror his smile but at the same time, your mind begins to flood with questions.

"Well, I'd love to be yours and all but how do I know you won't find a girl for the weekends? Find another me, well girl like me because let's be real, there's no other me." Baekhyun rolls his eyes at your rambling and grabs the back of yoyr neck pressing his lips against yours.

"Like you said, there's no other girl like you and I only want you..." You smile, but roll your eyes at the cheesiness,

"Fine then, I'll be yours." You smile, planting another kiss to his awaiting lips.

I was going to make her say no but I don’t do angsty endings soooooo miss me with that shit.

#boy group writers net #thewritersnetwork #kpopwritingnet #kpocwriters #kreativenetwork #byun baekhyun #byun baekhyun smut #byun baekhyun scenario #byun bakhyun scenarios #byun baekhyun fanfic #byun baekhyun fanfiction

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fanfic-scribbles · 6 years

Text

Bright Side

A/N: I had intended to do a Chuck/Reader this week buuuut this kind of took over instead. So have a fluffy Gabriel & Reader thing. I probably should have saved it for later because the format is similar to the ‘13 Kisses’ but ¯\_(ツ)_/¯ Also to note, I’m categorizing this as Gabriel & Reader friendship but I tried to make it kind of ambiguous, so it could be a romantic relationship? Maybe? I hope you enjoy it nonetheless.

Summary: Gabriel is feeling a bit down. Reader tries to help.

Quick facts: Friendship fic – Gabriel & Reader – Nondescript Reader

Warnings: Bad, bad, bad jokes and pick up lines. I apologize for none of it.

Words: 2423

Something is wrong with Gabriel.

Not constantly snacking is strange but excusable. Since the great Soda Disaster of four months ago, Sam has been insistent in nagging Gabe not to eat or drink in the library anymore. Of course the nagging only works about eighty percent of the time (Sam is impressive in this regard; you would have put money on the average being much, much lower), but he’s not addicted to anything. Gabe showing up without a candy bar or lollipop isn’t a cue to sound the alarm for the next apocalypse. However, three weeks without smugly eating a cake while Sam glares at him the entire time?

That’s another thing– Gabe’s around a lot lately. He did promise to help look through some of the books written in nigh-illegible foreign languages and he had seemed genuinely interested in some of them. But now when he comes around there’s no joking, no laughing, no gumming up the works with whatever joke he has in mind. No jokes at all, really; it’s all serious and business and Sam seems perfectly content and that sets a buzzer off if nothing does.

The last straw came yesterday. You had bought a pie and hid it until Gabe had showed up. After a little while of quiet, boring research (well, for Sam and Gabe, as you and Dean have your own computers and what Sam doesn’t know can’t hurt you) you excused yourself, went to get the pie and ice cream, and came back with it to offer it as a break. Sam gave you a very predictable stink-eye that you had utterly ignored and Dean slammed his laptop shut in anticipation. Gabe hadn’t moved. When you offered him some Dean had whimpere– er, made a manly noise of discontent, but Gabe had just looked at the dessert, said, “No thanks,” and gone back to whatever he was reading.

Dean, Sam, and you had stared at him for a long time. Dean’s bite had even fallen off his fork and he whipped his head at you. Dean and Gabe got along surprisingly well after some initial unease and they seemed to love almost nothing as much as giving each other crap. Denying something sweet and good and also giving up the chance to annoy Dean?

Something is wrong with Gabriel.

And you’re going to find out what.

You’ve waited a couple of days for the opportunity and now that you see Cas walking down the hall, alone, you take a chance. “I need to talk to you,” you tell the befuddled angel before you pull him by the sleeve into an unused room and shut the door.

He says your name with measured confusion and you have to smile a little. “It’s nothing that bad it’s just…is anything super bad going on in Heaven?”

Cas blinks. “No.”

“Any big problems cropping up on earth that we should know about?”

“No,” Cas says firmly and squints at you. “Why?”

“Then what’s up with Gabriel?”

“Ah.” He loses the suspicious stare and looks more tired than anything. “You’ve noticed it as well.”

“Has he said anything to you?” They’re not super close but they get each other more than any of the other angels can, and they spend quite a bit of time together as a result. If anybody but you knows, it’ll be Cas.

“No, but I have asked. You can guess what the answer was.”

Yeesh. “Well I hope it’s nicer that what I imagine it was,” you say. Gabe deals with feelings by avoiding the topic or getting prickly about it. ‘Prickly’ for an archangel carries a lot more weight than for humans. This brings up a problem though– is there an actual problem or is it just the part of Gabe that is very much like a human, worrying, or just caught in a bad state of mind?

Cas’s eyes crinkle with concern. “Are you going to try to talk to him about it?”

“Maybe he doesn’t have to talk about it,” you say.

“What does that–” Cas tilts his head to one side. “What are you planning?”

You pat his shoulder. “Don’t worry about it.”

Conversely, he looks as worried as he can. “I find those words as reassuring from you as I would find them from Gabriel. So to say, not at all.”

You smile brightly in return.

~Several days later~

“Seriously, what are you going to do with all that candy?”

“It’s my candy, I bought it, I can gorge on it if I want. Now leave me alone.”

Dean huffs and turns back to face the dark road, muttering, “Touchy, touchy,” like he hasn’t been hassling you on and off for hours since the last pit stop you made at a gas station. You roll your eyes over to Sam, who shrugs and puts his hands up like he doesn’t want to get anywhere near this…argument? Annoyance? Whatever. Coward.

Later that night you’re in your own room, absently trying to do research on the case when the sound of wings rushes by your ear. You stiffen instinctively but you glance back at Gabe with a smile. He’s leaning against the headboard and he looks at you, waggling his eyebrows, but there’s no smile, no humor to it. He looks tired.

“I got some snacks,” you say and take a few packages from the side table, tossing them at him. “Have at.”

Gabe frowns at the first candy bar and he raises an eyebrow at you. “I thought you didn’t like these?”

“They’re fine, just not my favorite.” You shrug and try to keep reading while also keeping tabs on Gabe.

He looks through the candy, looks at you, and sets it aside. Well, he didn’t give it back to you. You’re going to call that a win.

~A week later~

It’s an interminable day in the library. Sam had caught you giving hearts to cat pictures and confiscated your laptop. Dean had smirked at you, somehow fooling Proctor Winchester when he had walked behind him. So here you are, with a book written in faded pencil and strict instructions to glean what you can from it. It is the dictionary definition of boring. It is so boring that you can’t even tell if it’s useful or not; your eyes keep diving to the side.

When you glance at Gabe he’s zoning out. You smirk and decide Sam’s Wrath is worth this next bit.

“Hey Gabe?” you say and wait for his attention to be on you. “Did you know that circling vultures are a dead giveaway?”

It’s a weak attempt at a joke, but Gabe blinks and he looks a little less dead to the world. Dean mutters something under his breath but you ignore him, focusing on the angel. “Hey, did I ever tell you about that time I had a hunt lead me to a henhouse? It was full of poultry-geists.”

Sam’s bitchface is so epic you can feel it. Dean chokes on “seriously?!” and Gabe’s face hints at a smile. A smile. Well, an almost-smile. That’s all you need.

“You know why Rowena doesn’t like to go to the desert? Because then she’d be a sand-witch.”

The smile grows and Dean groans. Sam grits out your name.

“Did you know a banshee’s favorite dessert is ice scream?”

“(y/n).” Sam sounds desperate.

“I found out recently that monsters really love this one play about a tragic romance. It’s called ‘Romeo and Ghoul-iet.’”

Dean slams his laptop shut. “I’m out,” he says and stalks towards the kitchen.

“Do you know why ghosts don't like parties? They have no body to dance with.”

Sam says your name more intensely. Gabe is trying valiantly to clamp down on his smile. He is failing.

“There was a picket line in hell recently. I heard it was a real demon-stration.”

Sam lets his head fall to the table, drawing out your name in a long, pained way that, combined with your truly awful/awesome jokes, makes you collapse in on yourself with laughter. When you gain enough control to look up, Gabe’s smile is big enough to show teeth.

Phase two: success.

~A week later~

Gabe is fiddling with the label on his beer bottle. He’s more alert these days, and he even joked with Dean earlier tonight. Right now, though, he seems to be back in his head, stuck in something that makes him frown.

So you sidle closer in the booth seat you share, stealing his attention and a half-cocked smirk. It’s better than nothing, and you smile back. “Can you put your arm around my waist? I wanna be able to tell my friends I’ve been touched by an angel.”

Gabe and Dean both snort. It’s a good thing Sam isn’t here– food and puns are now banned from the library with equal vehemence. “You gonna ask me if it hurt when I fell from heaven?” Gabe drawls sarcastically and takes a swig of his drink.

“No, but I do wanna know– are you Australian? Because you meet all of my koala-fications.”

“Hey, you can’t do that when you know the person!” Dean says, like you’ve offended his rules when it comes to terrible pick-up lines. But you figure you can do whatever you want. And you’re going to.

You take a drink of your own beer and steel yourself. This one requires total concentration so you exude it as much as you can. You pin Gabe with your most intense bedroom eyes, lean in, and say in as low and seductive a voice as you can manage, “…Are you a banana? Because I find you a-peeling.”

Gabe stares at you. And stares. And then his shoulders shake and when Dean bursts out into loud, loud laughter you have to follow. Gabe manages to keep his laughter in but it takes all his effort and you and Dean are close enough to drunk that your amusement eggs each other on and you don’t worry about it so much.

~A week later~

“Watch out for–”

Sam doesn’t get the warning out before you slip down the hill into blood and mud and shifter goo and ugh you are covered in bits and pieces of the latest hunt and all you can do is stare up at the brothers and angels and wonder why God has so thoroughly forsaken you.

Except, not, because you hear a sound you haven’t heard in what feels like forever. Gabe is laughing at you. True, full, gut-busting laughter. The sound makes you happier than you should be, swimming in corpse bits. Normally his utter amusement at your misery would be annoying, but you’ll give him a pass. This one time. The ones not getting a pass though? Sam (smiling), Dean (laughing), and even Castiel (smiling).

“You– did you hear that noise you made?!” Dean says through his laughter and Gabe and him actually double over and put their hands on each others’ backs. You roll your eyes and manage to stand.

“I’m sure it was incredibly dignified,” you say with a snobbish air.

“Where does ‘shrieking four year old’ fall on the scale of dignity?”

For that you pick up a clump of mud and whatever and hurl it at Dean. He yelps and jumps back. Gabe is too busy laughing at him to notice you picking up another handful and it hits his chest with a very satisfying ‘splat!’ He looks down at the mass clinging to him. “Ew.” He picks something out and studies it. “I think that’s a finger.” He blinks and smiles at you suddenly, mischief in his eyes.

“Oh no,” you say, moving carefully away. “Gabriel don’t you d–” You let out a ‘very dignified’ shout when he throws it at you and you barely dodge in time.

“Hey, guys? Screaming and playing with body parts is not exactly how I want to get arrested,” Sam says.

“Spoil sport,” Gabe says and raises his hand, ready to snap. “I got it.”

In the flick of his fingers you’re in a cozy-looking room set up similar to your motel room, clean and dry and uninjured, and Gabe is your only company. “Where are we?” you ask.

“Your room, with a few divine upgrades,” Gabe says.

“Sam and Dean?”

“With Cas, in their own room.”

“The, uh…‘crime scene’?”

“Like nothing was ever there,” he says and strides over to you. You and he have done this Q & A enough times that it’s almost routine by now. You sit down on the bed and Gabe sits next to you. He presents you with a cupcake and not eating since this morning makes the monstrous load of sugar look immensely appealing.

“Say, did you hear about the love affair between sugar and cream?” Gabe winks at you. “It was icing on the cake.”

You laugh and unwrap the side to take a bite. However Gabe puts a hand between it and your mouth, leans in and says, “Actually, you shouldn’t eat that. You’re sweet enough as it is.”

Luckily his joke is without intent and he moves back, amused, and allows you to bite into it. He looks at you like he can’t quite figure you out, but there’s a fondness there. “You’ve been trying to cheer me up.”

You work through your bite and think about what you want to say. You can’t chew long enough, though; the cupcake is so delectable it melts in your mouth and you end up having to speak without thinking long enough. “Sort of? I mean…”

You sigh, wipe your face, and set down your treat so you can give Gabriel all of your attention. “I know you’re more than candy and jokes,” you say. “But I also know those are some of the things you enjoy, and you enjoy them with abandon when you feel good. I…I didn’t really know how to say ‘you look bummed’ without maybe upsetting you, so I wanted to show you that I knew. That I could tell you were sad and I wished I could help. That’s all.”

He stares at you. His smile, when it comes, is small, but warm. “I don’t deserve you,” he says.

“Very few people do,” you say nonchalantly, but you’re sure your smile gives you away. “But I guess I can make an exception for someone that gets me a cupcake that good.”

He laughs, genuinely, without malice or hurt or irony, and that’s a sound you feel you can get used to.

#gabriel x reader #gabriel x you #Supernatural fanfic #spn fanfic #supernatural fanfiction #gabriel spn #gabriel supernatural #friendship #friendship fic #comfort #comfort fic #fluff

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deadinsidedressage · 6 years

Text

Anonymous Barn Drama #29

The Worst USPC Show Jump Rally, Literally Ever: Part 3

Can You Hold a USPC Record for Worst Horse Management Score Ever?

Well... buckle in kids, we’ve come so far but we still have a ways to go to the end of this story. It’s the morning of the last day of competition, all 7 children end up arriving an HOUR after they were supposed to. Which meant 3 people had to feed/clean for 8 stalls (not impossible, but not the point of the Rally format). However, this was almost a blessing because when the 3 of us upper level girls arrive we’re greeted with “chalk art” all over our aisleway (big indoor barn, like 6 aisles with a breezeway bisecting it in half horizontally). Now by art I mean: chalk dicks ejaculating chalk cum with hairy chalk balls, “whores” written all over the place, “fuck you *club name*” all over the place, and other equally inappropriate messages and... “artwork” for children to see. We send the SM off to the Rally office to alert them of what apparently happened overnight. When she comes back... we learn that upon revealing this our SM is told “Oh yeah, the HM team saw that and we docked both your teams 20 points for ‘poor sportsmanship’.” AT WHICH POINT my wonderful 17 y.o. SM is FUCKING LIVID and explains the best she can that A) We did not do the chalk B) If we did the chalk WHY WOULD WE SAY BAD THINGS ABOUT OURSELVES and C) We are going to raise hell if you penalize US for the chalk. They reverse their ‘poor sportsmanship’ bad points and act like they have their thumbs up their ass when our SM suggests who may have done it. You see, the 3 of us immediately knew who did it. We had had a girl over the summer who was kicked out of our club who was approximately the same age as us. Why was she kicked out? Abusive riding. Abusive riding that the 3 of us had specifically complained about because she was in our lesson group trying to beat a horse with a tendon injury over 3′3 with a WESTERN shank bit and rowels on. The club she had since moved to also happened to be composed about 70% of girls who’d previously been in our club, but ended up splitting our club over accusations made about our then trainer. So, it was basically a revenge thing and we knew she did it. The faces she was tossing us as we had to dump bucket after bucket of water into our aisle to wash it away told us everything we needed to know. Anyway, we clean it up the best we can, there were still faint outlines, and the kids show up JUST in time for the official morning Rally meeting. Yet... there’s a shift in the air. You can see it in the eyes of the children that we have no hope of controlling them. The one non-semi-infant SM had just barely maintained control over them yesterday. We can tell that today we have no hope. Almost immediately post official morning Rally meeting (sets official time and tell you supposedly helpful things, usually a waste of an hour), we’ve lost control. Rather than help clean stalls again and double triple check all the tack is clean, etc. the children decide to take all the extra water buckets, some twine and go out behind the barn on the concrete and construct for themselves a “jump course”. Watching them all barely miss tripping themselves on the twine, I couldn’t help but wish one of them would crack their skulls open. They proceed to do this and other child shenanigans (running down the barn screaming, you know the usual) up until mere minutes before they have to LEAVE for their rides. As this nonsense is going on, the HM team makes about three passes vaguely near us and decide to hit us with a -20 for “poor sportsmanship” every single time they see the kids fucking off. The head HM judge even approaches us about how the kids are misbehaving. Broken and dead inside, we explain we can’t stop them. There has been a coup d’etat. The inmates are running the asylum. We’re given a “talking to” and informed that we’re going to keep racking up these “poor sportsmanship” no-no points unless we can get the kids to behave. Fine, whatever. We don’t give a fuck. We literally cannot stop them. They will not listen. They will not help. They will not do anything a decent human child should do. Again, myself and the other upper level rider have to leave to do our rides before any of the kids. We wish our SM a swift and clean death as she’s left alone tacking up 6 ponies and 7 demonic children run cackling down the barn aisle trying to beat each other with their crops. I had a clean round and a fantastic jump off. The other upper level rider’s horse crashed through a crossrail as he spooked at his own fart. All the children are disqualified for, again, being at MINIMUM 90 seconds over optimum time. The rest of the day is fucking hell. Children beating each other, children screaming, children probably throwing their own feces like the fucking hellspawn monkeys they are. We decide to start packing up before the awards ceremony, something we could get in trouble for. At one point a child starts savagely kicking me in the shins and I threaten to bind her, gag her, hide her under one of the stable blankets and leave her locked in the feed stall. I was at my wit’s end about 24 hours ago anyway. We just do not care anymore and we want to go home, far, far, far, far away from these imps. Awards ceremony begins and... for some inane fucking reason these children think they’re going to get first place. I think it had to do with the entitlement and having a trainer who probably wipes their ass for them and pays off judges at hunter shows to give them the blue. Anyway, due to the number of teams they split into two “divisions” so that people would be placed out of 16 instead out of 36. Both our teams get 16th place in our respective “divisions”. All 7 monsters break into ugly crying and proceed to cry, whine, and demand they deserve better as placings 15-1 are awarded. This is in front of... everyone who ever existed by the way. All the adults who came, all the judges, all the other people competing... and here are the 7 brats associated with my club just bawling. (Btw, my team technically had a better score than the other team since I had 3 nice rounds. Really a shame that I had a great individual showing and was drug down to Hell by these goblins). Anyway, everyone’s released to go home (it’s about 8pm at this point) and adults are allowed back into the barns to help since the competition is over. WHICH OF COURSE is the point when the coach (remember, I hate him and it’s mutual) decides to corner the 3 of us older teenagers and DEMAND to know how we could “let” those SMBs leave for formals BACKWARDS. WERE WE TOO STUPID TO KNOW HOW TO PUT THEM ON? Actually buckoo, we fucking know how to put them on BUT YOUR STUDENT IS A GODDAMN FUCKING INVALID WHO SHOULDN’T BE RIDING IN THEM IF SHE CAN’T PUT THEM ON HER GODDAMN SELF BECAUSE DO YOU REALLY EXPECT ONE PERSON TO TACK 6 CHILDREN ALL WITH THEIR FORMALS LITERALLY ABOUT 3 MINUTES APART FROM ONE ANOTHER.We had no idea they couldn’t tack their own horses. Normally giving kids an HOUR before their formal to get ready is enough, but you know when you’re herding cats and trying to sell tickets to a flea circus... well very impossible situation. He then wanted to know why I didn’t tell him about the start/finish line. Well, I did...so?? Eventually we break away from him, load our horses and leave. Of course we heard about this at next week’s unmounted meeting and “breakdown” of the Rally. In which we learned we were clearly awful people who tormented their children and caused them to have the worst showing experience of their life.

So, that was my end of involvement with that club. I soon after left for another one.

#anonymous barn drama #horsblr #horseblr #horses #eventing #dressage #jumping #hunter #jumpers #barrels #barrel racing #western gaming #western #western riding #western pleasure

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somethingfoe · 5 years

Photo

You’re SPECIAL (FO4): Puppet Masters

Hello fellow deviants, still brony/MLP fans, Fallout Fans, and Fallout AND MLP fans, this is my final entry into revisiting the 'You're SPECIAL' series that were immensely popular for me back in 2015. What with Fallout 76 being a absolute trainwreck that can't get itself out of more and more bullshit, and Bethesda's arrogance and naivety getting the best of them, I hold no interest in continuing anything related to Fallout or MLP beyond this at this point. I merely continued making these when Fallout 76 did come out, and wanted to make a variant of the classics that mimics the attribution of points from Fallout 4, which is a far cry from the conventional RPG style of Fallout 3 and even 1 and 2. There is no fucking chance in hell that I'm going to do any kind of variant in regards to 76, as I don't even want to put my hands on such a wretched product. Anyhow...

This You're SPECIAL is a particularly interesting deviation from the format of both the classic and revised versions of my You're SPECIALS. For starters, I'm pitting up a good guy against a bad guy for a change, where I would either pit two good guys or two bad guys against one another. From Fallout:Equestria, we have Watcher, or otherwise known as Spike grown up, who with the use of spritebots, tries to lead Littlepip as well as other 'good ponies' to gather up the elements of harmony. while this has good intentions, most of that info is kept under the tablecloth as Spike is incredibly reclusive as a result of him being a fully grown dragon, a rarity in the post apocalypse. For Project Horizons, we have The Legate, the known leader of the Remnants, a zebra clan that still acts under the presumption that the great war is still ongoing and seeks to continue that as The Legate has lived for almost as long as Spike has. The Legate is also a puppet master in that he's exploiting both the means of Cognitum and Steel Rain to suit his own ends, meaning to take both of them down when their backs where turned but also used Blackjack's own interests in shutting both of them down to expedite that. As a result, both of these characters, whatever you may think of them, have their own nefarious goals in mind, bad or good.

A second deviation that I made in the process of making this You're SPECIAL is that I changed the number of how many points would be based on SPECIALS between the characters. Since I was making them based on the perks available rather than the other way around, I had to add more perk points to some of The Legate's stats so he could get the primary perks that focus on his playstyle. As a result, I had to add a completely new graphic to explain that these two don't distribute the same number of perk points to their BASE Specials, and realistically, they wouldn't. I decided that they would sit in the middle with being level 70, stronger than the sidekicks and malevolent relics, but weaker than the main protagonists in terms of level. To summarize the playstyles for both, The Watcher is a heavy hitter who uses technology, sporting high strength and high intelligence to capitalize on using power armor mainly. The Legate is a stealth based, melee based attacker who uses VATS to it's full potential. But more on the explanations soon.

Of Course, seeing that I haven't actually explained how I determined their SPECIAL stats, I'll explain them on top of explaining the perks I chose for them. The Watcher 'vector' was awkwardly cropped from a 'trading card' by

RinMitzuki

(although I think the actual vector came from

Hawk9mm

and/or

Noxxi-the-Noxxian

so I'm not sure who to credit exactly), to the point that I had to go for a 'background shadow' effect rather than the stroke gradience that I normally do, and The Legate vector came from

Vector-Brony

, the usual foil I go for the most quality vectors. It was fucking bitch to even find a vector for a grown up Spike and/or Watcher, so this was really the best I could find. Anyway, here comes another huge flood of text. Better hope you have a few hours to look at it!

STRENGTH

Watcher (10)

With Watcher being a fully grown dragon, even Spike doesn't even know his own strengths. Beyond size and stature, with heavy scales and muscles naturally toned from his very being, Watcher is the strongest of the bunch and very few could beat him.

The Legate (8)

While The Legate is a battleborne zebra fighter and a loyal devout of Fallen Caesar, even a pony sized anthro can't quite take the whole brunt of a giant ship or vessel like Watcher can. The Legate has internal strength, that isn't to be denied, but that doesn't knack external strength.

Pain Train

Watcher (3)

- The closest resemblance to being a big, lumbering meat of a creature is the equivalent of running through anything in power armor, so the Pain Train perk fits best for what Spike is currently. so go with a power armor build, lean HEAVY on it, because that's basically what this character is: A wrecking ball.

Rooted

The Legate (2)

- The Legate knows how to keep his stance and posture on key, letting the enemy come to him to gain the advantage, so the Rooted perk works best, as well as it being a melee-specific perk.

Basher

Watcher (2)

- While Watcher isn't more known for his weapon use and rather his fire breathing and heavy claws, you can apply the basher perk to any big weapon like the Gauss Rifle or the Fat Man as the closest resemblance of a sweeping claw strike. Better yet, just use a Super Sledge and get the same effect!

Strong Back

Watcher (5)

- A giant Dragon is a recipe for opportunities to be one giant carrier vessel. Very little burdens Watcher, so he's keen on helping out Blackjack and/or Littlepip if he can leave his stay, with very little complaint.

Blacksmith

The Legate (4)

- The Legate knows how to make some pretty dope armor for himself and his entourage, donning a very intimidating Deathclaw skull as his trophy and visage to hide who he truly is. On top of that is his seldom used melee weapons, as his own fists (or hooves) are a weapon of destruction.

Iron Fist

The Legate (5)

- Being a master of Fallen Caesar that even Xenith can't beat, The Legate has had 200 years to master it's technique and defeat any opponent hand-to-hand.

PERCEPTION

Watcher (7)

Having a whole slew of hacked spritebots to quietly watch the most moral of those to gather up for his own interests, in spite of Watcher's isolation, he has at least a general idea of everything around them, even if he can't witness every detail personally.

The Legate (6)

While The Legate does have perception in regards to his desires and goals in mind, The Legate is still astutely paranoid of the Stars like the rest of the Zebras are and loathes Blackjack, the 'Maiden of the Stars' as a result of this. Whether this paranoia is propaganda of his own making or he's genuinely afraid, the point of the matter is that The Legate is a bit more daft when it comes to observation outside of his own ego.

Refractor

Watcher (3)

- Being a magical, mythical being with huge, broad scales gives Spike a natural affinity against any sort of plasma or energy based weapons. Seeing that most of the enclave come back scared shitless or turned to ash, most don't try to cross Watcher as a result of how futile their own weapons are against him.

The Legate (2)

- While The Legate is mostly flesh and bone, his weird healing talisman also gives him some natural defense against most ballistic weapons, even though he'd likely dodge them before they would hit.

Awareness

Watcher (2)

- Watcher's little spritebots gives him some preconception of enemies and or friends before they even know who he is, as he can spectate at will at anytime with any particular spritebot.

ENDURANCE

Watcher (6)

While Watcher does have hard scales and a overall large form, Watcher also hasn't been able to get out of a cave that is roughly the same size of him, and has been mostly grounded without having the regiment of working out or dieting beyond eating any gemstones he can scrape.

The Legate (8)

The Legate is hard-boiled, basically immortal, and has a talisman in his skull helmet that also gives him a lot of life regeneration, similarly to Rampage in a way. While it doesn't make him regrow his own mortal coil like Rampage can, he has been a lot to earn the resilience and vigilance of your typical Zebra.

Cannibal

The Legate (2)

- While it may be unconventional for me to put this on here for The Legate, The Legate actually draws life from other people in order to get power for his particular Talisman, which works as some sort of Enervation similar to what lingers in Hoofington. In a roundabout way, he's a 'soul cannibal' by this technicality. Not entirely crazed for food like with Rampage, but nevertheless.

Adamantium Skeleton

The Legate (3)

- The Legate's power talisman gives him a hardier soul and body, and what with his longing age and youthful appearance, The Legate can take a lot of abuse with little recourse.

Rad Resistant

Watcher (2)

- Again, what with being a Dragon, Watcher is naturally resistant to it. Not to mention that Watcher is one of few who actually avoided the radiation spread in the final moments of The Great War, so he is also pure. This also goes in line with you running a Power Armor build, which has natural rad resistance.

Lifegiver

Watcher (3)

- A big, hardy Dragon, even a recluse one, will have a huge lifepool and can take heavy ballistics like they are thumb tacks. Very little can actually even hurt Watcher, which is fortunate given his reluctance to leave.

The Legate (2)

- while The Legate has had a hardy life leading his remnant army, again his talisman does not make him invincible, and there is a certain threshold to what amount of limbs he can lose.

Toughness

Watcher (5)

- Thick skin, heavy scales, large, foreboding body, Watcher is the toughest there can possibly be. His own digestive system can break down fucking gemstones, for crying out loud? How isn't that TOUGH?!

The Legate (2)

- Again, The Legate is exceptionally strong and durable, but he just can't quite compare to being a literal adult grown dragon. And without his talisman, he's a old haggard zebra.

CHARISMA

Watcher (3)

Extremely reclusive, standoffish, and keeping details close to his heart, Watcher typically off puts most he tries to converse with by usually destroying or dismissing his spritebots. Even Littlepip was a bit distraught by the unusual stalking of one near Ponyville.

The Legate (6)

The Legate is considerably more charismatic than Watcher, although only to the discretion of other dissident Zebras who are still burned by the great war in one way or another. His attire is also especially off putting and intimidating to strangers, so he only plays to his base mainly.

Local Leader

The Legate (2)

- The Legate would at least have points in this attribute, if he's been able to lead a fanatical group of remnants still convinced the war is still going on.

Lone Wanderer

Watcher (2)

- In spite of Watcher's desire to bond the elements of harmony to undo the aftermath of the war, Watcher is so paranoid of anyone knowing of the secret that he is incapable of leaving or trusting anybody to know about it, as a result he's mostly alone in a lonely cave.

Lady Killer

The Legate (2)

- I did mention his intimidating presence, but I guess it sort of turns on some ladies? I mean, Blackjack was fantasizing, albeit briefly, about getting it on with the legate? Then again, she wants to get it on with almost everybody, so that's an aside. maybe there's a charm to being an all powerful badass who's absolutely in control of their own destiny.

Cap Collector

Watcher (3)

- In order to maintain some of the running costs of his secret experiment, he has to do some rudimentary deals with drones and/or couriers in order to get some parts in order, so of course he needs some caps to keep his technology going.

INTELLIGENCE

Watcher (9)

Being stuck in a generator that could promote the rebirth of the entire world of Equestria does tend to lead one to investigate very inscrutably for almost 200 years, and that made Watcher a savant when it comes to tech, small and large. Making it his goal in life to gather the elements of Harmony like he would Celestia in a attempt to repair the damage of The Great War.

The Legate (2)

Absolutely paranoid, schizophrenic, and only ideally interested in tech in pursuit of his own goals, The Legate is the bane to the Brotherhood of Steel in almost every way.

Nuclear Physicist

Watcher (2)

- Watcher nearly masters Nuclear Physicist simultaneously for making fusion cores last longer, and primarily that his fire breath counts as 'radiation damage' in the game, for some reason. It probably helps that Watcher has taken all the precious time to figure out how to make his 'garden of elements' even work.

Robo Expert

Watcher (3)

- It takes some finesse to hack spritebots from a distance in order to communicate to the wasteland, but Watcher managed to do it. His rigging of the machine in his cave also gives him some pointers with programming knowledge.

SCIENCE!

Watcher (3)

- Again, Watcher knows his way around a computer, in spite of his strange shape and size. It also helps that he used to be around someone who had nothing but books for him to read!

Hacker

Watcher (2)

- It's a redundant point, but Watcher knows how to run a computer. At least with the only one he's been able to even work with, considering how big his giant fangs are.

Medic

The Legate (2)

- The only thing with The Legate that even remotely falls on the intelligence is the medic perk, as he and his zebra remnants use rudimentary medicine like herbs and bandages to heal wounds. Not that it would matter to The Legate, what with his natural healing ability.

AGILITY

Watcher (5)

a big, lumbering Dragon isn't going to be the most elegant thing when it comes to stealth or movement. But still, a flying dragon does sport some amount of movement, seeing as Watcher's wingspan can make him fly nearly as fast as most Pegasus Vertibirds.

The Legate (10)

Swift, smooth, quick, and prudent, The Legate is as evasive as he is omnipresent. A master of Fallen Caesar, even Xenith is sweating trying to fight him in unarmed combat and in finesse.

Gun Fu

The Legate (2)

- While this perk would be more fitting with weapons, Gun Fu can also be used as melee as it's a VATS-based perk. The Legate is in tune with his multiple enemies and can track each one with the greatest finesse.

Blitz

The Legate (2)

- Combining well with the Gun Fu perk is the Blitz perk, as it's extremely difficult to keep your distance from The Legate, much less even run away. Even far ranged attackers have trouble avoiding him.

Ninja

The Legate (3)

- From under, over, or from beyond, The Legate strikes without hesitation and without any mercy whatsoever. This goes extremely well with his melee attacks tracking from one to the next, as well as his closing the distance.

Moving Target

The Legate (3)

- The Legate is not intimidated from any sort of firearms or artillery, as he can easily dodge and avoid most of them without even a scruff on his mane.

Action Boy

The Legate & Watcher (3)

- the only perk where both actually match, which is a far cry from the massive perks that The Legate has in comparison to Watcher. Watcher needs the action boy perk to compensate for his flying (AKA Power Armor Jetpack usage), and The Legate to continue his melee onslaught.

Sneak

The Legate (2)

- The Legate usually likes to make his presence known, but he is keen on sneaking on some enemies, often to cause political division without being caught red-handed.

Commando

Watcher (3)

- Obstensibly, being a power armor user with a jetpack would likely lead you to using more two-handed weapons than most. Seeing that it's the CLOSEST possible way to be a 'dragon', I'd expect Watcher to use both of his claws like a giant maul similarly to it.

LUCK

Watcher (3)

Being withheld the ability to save the Mane Six simply because he was in hibernation must be quite infuriating with Spike, on top of the unofficial responsibility of keeping his cave secret from the Enclave who are constantly searching for him and what he's hiding. As a result, Watcher isn't quite so fortunate to be in his situation, even with his large size and demeanor.

The Legate (8)

With the Legate being handed most of what he got on a silver spoon, while still backstabbing those who cared for him all the while to perpetuate a ongoing war, with a mass of fanatics who blindly follow his beliefs and the idea of the war still going to this day, The Legate is lucky that nobody tried to backstab HIM up to this point. At least, until Lancer came into the picture.

Grim Reaper's Sprint

The Legate (2)

- The Legate draws power from his enemies and his own allies, and with The Legate's innate melee and unarmed abilities, he's banking on all the best perks of Melee combined with VATS.

Crit Banker

The Legate (3)

- The Legate is a surgeon in that he can calculate every weakness in his enemies, emotional or physical. He'll use it against them, obstensibly giving him the ability to bank on critting someone.

Better Crits

The Legate (2)

- And The Legate doesn't let up on his critical strikes, making them burn and seethe so that he can vanquish his opponents more swiftly.

Bloody Mess

Watcher (4)

- About as subtle as a baseball bat with a grenade swung on someone's head, Watcher, when he does have to fight, will often burn and scorch anything that gets in his way, often accidentally teleporting them as a result of his fire breath being a sort of portal to Celestia's domain.

Scrounger

Watcher (3)

- Vicariously through the spritebots, Watcher accrues a lot of Old-War tech similarly to the Brotherhood of Steel (another reason that they too share a interest in him) in order to help rebuild and get his 'garden of elements' working again as intended.

Whew, that is it! Absolutely it! No more You're SPECIALS as far as I'm concerned, this little mini project has been shelved! Again, new photo run coming by tomorrow on top of me still featuring the one I did nearly a month ago! Hopefully this was worth the wait as always!

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