#dry sarcasm in high resolution

[fannedandflawless]

SnapeOS

no bright interface. only shadows and results

runs silently in the background judging all input

refuses connection requests unless intellectually qualified

firewall: legendary

reboot required? never. he remembers everything.

[the-right-thyme]

In the Shadow of Family- Chapter 2

https://href.li/?https://archiveofourown.org/works/49807084/chapters/125930776#workskin

Characters: Sebastian Sallow, Ominis Gaunt, Garreth Weasley, Player Character 

Warnings: Mild swear

Relationships: Friendships

Summary: Sebastian attempts to cheer up his friend after the dreadful events he most definitely didn’t witness. It goes well. Until it doesn’t.

Chapter Two: Meridies

‘Do you want another cup of tea?’ Sebastian Sallow proffered the delicate willow-patterned teapot to his best friend, steam still gently curling from the spout. Charmed to stay warm, of course.

‘No thank you, twelve’s my limit.’ Came his friends' reply, the merest hint of sarcasm slipping through, as he placed the saucer down next to himself, angle slightly uneven on the ground, the cup perched precariously, its contents reduced to dregs. 

Sebastian wondered if reading Ominis’ tea leaf fortune to him would cheer him up. Probably not. He’d probably end seeing a grim, or worse, extra charms homework in their near future. That wasn’t going to help cheer anyone up, except perhaps Natty.

Sebastian knew he had been overly chirpy all morning, jittery and fidgety, trying his best to act as if he hadn’t witnessed… well, best not to dwell on it. He was trying his hardest to act how he normally did, impromptu tea party by the lake aside. 

He'd had to practically drag Ominis across the castle and grounds, deep from his reverie in their dormitory room when it became apparent he wasn’t going to join him in the Great Hall for lunch. It had seemed to work; with each emptying cup, he had seemed more at peace, more himself. Tea had always seemed to cure Ominis’ many ailments; if only Anne were the same.

Although twelve was an exaggeration, five, if that, at the most. For someone who liked to repeatedly declare how much Sebastian’s embellishment of the truth irked him, he sure was good at doing it himself. Something about a pot and a kettle jumped to his mind.

Sebastian watched as he stretched his arms high above his head, before laying back on the slightly worn, but dry, blanket he had thankfully remembered to bring last minute. From this angle of the lake, all that could be heard was the waters edge gently lapping nearby. It was calming; he could almost imagine falling asleep despite the surprisingly warm midday October sun beating down on them.

‘So? How did it go, this morning?’ Sebastian couldn’t help but ask, hoping Ominis would pick up on his desperate tone and share, so he wouldn’t have to keep the oblivious friend act up all day. It seemed to work, he pitched himself up slightly, leaning back on bent elbows, chin resting heavily on his chest. 

‘It went…well. As well as any sort of meeting with my father can go.’

‘What happened?’

Ominis flopped back, supine again, speaking to the sky. ‘Sebastian, I appreciate your concern, really, but, not right now. Please.’ 

Sebastian watched his friend’s chest slowly rise and fall for a few seconds before hatching a new plan. He stood, hands plucking a rock from the ground, considered it before taking a slight run up and flinging it in a swinging overhead throw that launched the rock in a high arch, to a loud plop in the glittering blue waters, audible even from the shore.

‘Hear that? Nearly reached the other side.’

Ominis let out a snort and a ghost of a smile. Pushed himself up again, until he was sat upright.

‘Saying so doesn’t make it so.’

‘Your turn. Just throw it, give it all you got. Like this.’ Sebastian bent down, picked another from the shore, and with a curdled, exaggerated yell, threw it into the lake with another loud plop.

Sebastian sighed at the motionless figure, and folded a particularly streamlined rock into Ominis’ limp hand.

‘Here, it’s great reliever of stress, I promise; or are you going to sulk all afternoon instead?’

‘I’m going to sulk.’ Came his voice, resolute.

‘Ok well I’m going to throw rocks and scream at the unfairness of life.’

Ominis sniffed, his thumb rubbing over the smooth surface. 

‘So undignified.’ He murmured, almost to himself, failing to hide the quirk of his lips.

‘C’mon, your turn.' Sebastian tugged on Ominis’ shirt cuffs as he stood, suddenly pliant, ushering him forward slightly by a few shuffling steps, until the lake ever so gently lapped at his boots.

With a small huff, he held his arm out and let the rock fall gracefully from his fingertips with a slight underhand motion. It clattered noisily against the rocks directly below, water splashing his socks. Much to his apparent distaste.

‘Sebastian, I’m getting soaked.’

He couldn’t have held his laugh back if he’d been given all the galleons in gringotts.

‘You really are the most dramatic dandy, you know that?’

He was given a sniff in response, watched as he folded his arms, sat firmly back down, cross legged on the grass. Sebastian let out a frustrated cry to the sky.

‘You’re the stubborinst person I know.’

‘No I’m not,’ Ominis’ lips quirked, ‘I’m the most stubborn.’

‘And you’re the annoyingist.’

‘Grammar is just something that happens to other people isn’t it, Sebastian.’ Ominis said with a weary sigh, sounding almost like himself again.

‘Alright Professor Gaunt don’t let your giant head break your neck when you get down off your high horse’

‘Now you’re being facetious.’

‘You sound like my great Aunt Hester.’

‘She sounds like the most sensible, charming member of your family. Please introduce us.’

‘She’s dead.’

Ominis shrugged, ‘Probably still smarter than you.’

‘Don’t think I wont hit you.’

‘Don’t think I wont hit back, I’ve been told I’ve got a mean right hook.’

‘By who?’ Sebastian snorted, ‘unfortunately for you, I can see your arms. I’ve met grindylow with more definition.’ He poked Ominis’ bicep, dodging the swatting hand that followed it. 

‘C’mon, back up.’ Sebastian leant over him, placed his legs either side of Ominis’ knees, pulling his arms taught as he tried to drag him up, leaning back with all his weight. He didn’t budge.

‘How are you suddenly so heavy, there’s nothing of you!’

‘It’s the bulging arms.’

‘Fine!’ Sebastian threw his arms in the air in defeat, collapsing next to Ominis, who at least had the decency to look sheepish. His face turned thoughtful.

‘You’know, I think I’d like to do that.’

Sebastian blinked dumbly, back tracking on their conversation, trying to pick the thread Ominis was following.

‘Boxing?’ He racked his brain further, ‘Horse riding?’

Ominis gave him an annoyed glare, eyes briefly skating over his own.

‘Don’t be ridiculous. No.’ His voice went soft, sad. ‘A professor. I’ve thought about it, quite a lot actually. Maybe, after Hogwarts-’

‘A-a professor?’ Sebastian couldn’t help but splutter. Ominis flushed, clearly mis-interpreting. ‘Stupid childish fantasy I kn-’

‘Ominis.’ Sebastian took his friends shoulders in both hands, forcing his attention. ‘You’d be great at it. Honestly, I’d say you were born for it the way you like bossing me and Anne around.’ He let his hands drop, Ominis’ lips quirking as he attempted to fight the smile that was obviously threatening.

‘Really?’ So hopeful.

‘COMPADRES’ Came a familiar voice, breaking the moment. Sebastian twisted to the direction of the shout. The chipper, upbeat voice of Gryffindors’ golden fifth year, Garreth Weasley and- 

Oh dear, Sebastian thought, his eyes closing with chagrin. Clearly a clothing factory had exploded all over the new student, and they had simply decided to run with it because there was no way someone would choose their current ensemble. Where did someone even find an honest-to-Merlin cape these days?

They sauntered over, Garreth nodding to Sebastian in greeting first before turning to his friend with a friendly ‘Ominis.’ 

He took in their rug, forgotten teacups and still-steaming teapot; raised an eyebrow at Sebastian.

‘What’re you guys up to?’

‘The twelve uses of Horklump juice homework.’ Sebastian said with a flourish of his right hand, licking the nib of an imaginary quill and writing great swirling letters in the air in front of him. Garreth eyed him with amused confusion.

‘You Slytherin lot are an odd bunch, aren’t you. Well, don’t forget number thirteen, makes a delightfully potent additive to firewhisky. Not that I would know, of course.’ He gave Sebastian a conspiratorial wink before pulling his knapsack higher on his shoulder.

‘And you?’ Sebastian motioned to both of them with a sweep of his hand.

‘Billywig stings.’ He gestured with his chin to the bag dangling behind his back, ‘Top secret mission, mind, wish I could tell you more but, Godric’s the word eh?’ He tapped the side of his nose. ‘Specially if you see my Aunt.’ he gave a quick, shifty-eyed look around, as though a certain head of house was waiting to pounce on them from behind one of the nearby trees. 'She's been extra nosy as of late.'

Sebastian felt himself give a whole body shudder as a sudden whisp of a breeze drifted from over the lake. In his haste to drag Ominis away, he had completely forgotten his school cloak. His shirt wasn’t the warmest, not for October.

‘Sebastian, you must be cold, here,’ Garreth’s partner-in-crime looped the particularly ugly scarf they had decided to don that day round his neck, ‘keep it, I have plenty.’ And indeed, they had already produced a second, somehow more grotesquely patterned scarf, from Merlin-knew-where, winding it around their neck with a flourish. The scarf, now his scarf he thought idly, was made from a sort of murky green velvet material, interwoven with a wool so thick and scratchy, he wasn’t sure if it was actually straw or not, and, worst of all, it had actual tassels. It was over the top, even by wizard standards. Hideous.

‘Uhm, thanks.’ he said weakly, not wanting to offend them by declining, not after everything they had done for him. With a satisfied nod, the two co-conspirators gave their goodbyes and trudged off, their conversation carried off in the wind.

‘Do you think I should lose the scarf?’ Sebastian asked, amused, once they were out of earshot, adjusting it, trying to find the best way to get it to sit just right without its itchy surface digging into the more sensitive parts of his neck, wondering if he could get away with obscure fashion choices the same way his new friend seemed to. Ominis reached out, fingers clasping around the garment, rubbing the material between his fingertips, tracing the swirling pattern. He considered.

‘I think you should burn it,’ Ominis said solemnly, ’Because if you lose it, you mind find it again.’

He playfully slapped the side of his head, scuffing the neatly combed hair.

‘You’re not as innocuous as people think you are, Gaunt.’

‘And you’re not as dashing.’

‘Oh? And you are?’

Ominis shrugged, ‘I have no idea. But I know a fashion disaster when I feel one.’

Sebastian threw the offending item at Ominis’ head, watched him fight a grin, something shifting in his chest. Now or never.

‘You know, when you said it went well? When you said well, did you mean shite?'

‘Something like that.’ Ominis said distantly, sounding far off again, smile fading. ‘Father is most displeased with me not running around hexing muggle-borns, or declaring my blood status, as if it matters, at every opportunity, it would seem.’

‘Your family really are a delight.’

‘What was it my Aunt Noctua used say about familial love and war? One involves a lot of physical and psychological pain, and the other is war.’ Sebastian felt a laugh bubble up, in spite of himself. A companionable silence followed, broken by Ominis clearing his throat.

‘Father wishes me to be married, the year after next.’

‘No. Really? Whoever to?’ Sebastian tried to aim for surprised, but not too much, hoped it didn’t sound as comically punch-and-judy out loud as it did in his head.

‘She’s called Lucilin Black. I’ve met her once before, a few years ago at a sort of-’ He wrinkled his nose in disgust, ‘Pure-blood social gathering. Her mother introduced us,’ he paused, ‘she’s fond of torturing animals.’ He said mildly, as if commenting on her favourite book, or pastry.

‘She sounds like a delight.’

‘Quite.’

Sebastian pushed on. ‘And?’ 

A few beats of questioning silence hung in the air. Sebastian pushed on. He’d get to the main point soon enough if he skirted around it long enough.

‘You’re really going to marry a Black?’

‘I most certainly am not.’ Came the affronted reply, as if even merely suggesting the fact was offensive to him. 

‘But think, the headmaster could be your father-in-law, now there’s a sobering thought.’

‘That’s-’ He blinked blankly in Sebastian direction, ‘That’s not how it works, she’s not his-’ Sebastian ignored him, feeling like he was on a roll, back into the flow of their easy banter.

‘Put in a good word for me, won’t you? I’m going to need all the help I can get if I’m going to pass my Beasts O.W.L this year, Howin has got it in for me I’m sure.’

Ominis sniffed, fiddling with a hem on his robe, in a way he never usually did. ‘I’m just like him.’

‘Who…Professor Black?’ Sebastian asked dumbly, reeling from the sudden change in topic, but knowing they were inching closer.

‘No-my father. I’ve heard people say I’m the spit of him. I think Marvolo hates me for it, he idolises father you know.’

‘Just because you look like him,’ Sebastian paused, ‘-if that is indeed true-’ he added hastily, ‘you, of all people, should know, you’re only like him in all the ways that don’t matter. Besides.’ Sebastian let himself snort unattractively, trying to break the tension. ‘You definitely don’t want to look like the lumbering troll Marvolo does now.’

Sebastian snapped his mouth shut audibly, realised his mistake as the words left his mouth too late.

‘How did you know Marvolo was -?’ Ominis was far too perceptive for his own good.

Sebastian felt himself splutter, ‘I-I saw them heading back, with the Headmaster-’

‘No, no you didn’t. Don’t lie to me. You were there, weren’t you! You saw-’ He let out an extended huff, stood up, started pacing, hands flourishing wildly in the air, too angry for words. 

‘After I explicitly said-’

Not wanting to see the complicated change of expressions on Ominis’ face, Sebastian closed his eyes as the tirade continued.

‘… you know what? I’m not even surprised anymore. You have a remarkable lack of self awareness, Sebastian, into others’ personal-agency.’ His voice sharp.

Something rustled by his side, he peeked, saw Ominis fumbling as he located his wand, refusing to even acknowledge him as he turned and bumped their knees in his haste. Sebastian watched with a sinking feeling in his stomach as he stomped away as quickly as he could, back towards the castle, disappearing round the back of the tree line. 

There was suddenly a noticeable wind, blowing in from across the lake, now more murky that it had appeared only moments before. 

Sebastian shivered.

[luveline]

radio cure | steve harrington

an unhappy you meets steve harrington and his merry band of dorks. he shows you that some things are worth sticking around for.

5k words, fem!reader she/her used, tw mentioned/implied suicidal ideation please don’t read if that’s going to have a negative impact on you (no graphic imagery. but reader is passively suicidal and dealing with the other factors of that), robin steve + eddie chaotic trio, friends to lovers, multipart, swearing, friendly teasing, sarcasm, artist!steve, 90s au

.•° ✿ °•.

You're twenty two when you decide to kill yourself.

It's a warm day. The sun shines like a flower bud unfurling, a faint hint of golden yellow masked by cloud cover. You're savouring the brief moment of blessed cool as you walk around Lover's Lake, your ipod in one hand, headphones around your neck.

The flowing pants you're wearing help mitigate the heat around your legs, an itching, slick thing. Warmth feels like oil on your skin. You tip your head back and smell the grass, the lake water, the dry mud under your feet. You're thinking it's as nice a day as you're going to get this week, and you're forlorn, because it doesn't make one drop of difference.

You look up at the blue sky, squinting against the light, and you think it to yourself resolutely. This is going to be my last year. When your savings run out you're giving up.

It doesn't feel conclusive. It doesn't feel scary. It's just a decision.

You walk over dry grass until you reach the short pier on the leftmost side of the lake and sit down. You pull your headphones over your ears and bite your lip when the music isn't loud enough. The dock is rough. You're uncomfortable immediately. You want to go home, but you pull out your little craft sketchbook made of yellow paper and a pencil you've sharpened with a pen knife, staring out across the lake for something to strike you. A duck. A goose. Anything at all.

The thing is, you don't want to draw. You aren't some master, though you try, and you aren't a natural talent… You try sometimes. Nothing seems right. Most people have a style, charm, but you could draw a picture perfect copy of the day in front of you and still feel the lack; you have no idea what it is that makes other people's art beautiful, and that's the problem.

It doesn't matter. You put the sketchbook away. You have nobody to impress but yourself, and besides — you're not the first person in the world to feel uninspired. Thousands of people must feel it everyday, and they aren't throwing any pity parties. You peel off your cardigan, ball it up, and lay down with the fabric behind your head. You can hear the soft pant of a dog across the way, the happy chattering of a Frisbee game. Under the dock, little bodies thwack the planks, tiny green frogs that occasionally hop in the grass nearby.

You press your arm against your stomach and you fall asleep not long after that, your ipod playing music a few feet away.

—

Steve Harrington doesn't know why he stops to look at you. You're just a girl enjoying the summer sun, and he doesn't mean to be a creep. But you've left your stuff laying in small hills around you and your body's lax. You're asleep.

He kneels down next to you. Enough room to swing away if you try to stab him for perving. He isn't perving, he reasons. He wants to check if you're okay.

He tilts his ear toward you and holds his breath.

You're snoring.

Good, he thinks, crawling back to the far side of the dock, at least two feet between you. You're sleeping.

He sits down, knees up, hands between his thighs, and looks out across the lake. The sun shines high as the clouds shift to reveal it in full force, a burning yolk. It kisses every bit of green foliage it can find, dappled sunlight everywhere he looks. Steve is out today to draw whatever beauty he can find, and the light across the water riding the rippled waves of ducklings and brave human swimmers seems nice enough. He peers out of the corner of his eye at you, deems you still sleeping, and takes the pocket sized sketchbook out of his denim jeans.

His pencil is a stub folded between the pages. He lays down graphite in big sweeping lines, more focused on the impressions of shape than the specifics. It's hard to see a coloured world in black and white values. Steve isn't great — he's been drawing for two years now, and that feels like both a lifetime and a flicker. Every day he learns something new about making art, and every day he looks back and feels embarrassed at what he made before. The start of his sketchbooks make him cringe. This one is a mixture of pride and tepid reluctance.

Being bad at something is a stepping stone at getting better. Not every drawing he makes is good, but hopefully it's teaching his brain to be better. He doesn't know what he believes about art but he likes to draw, and he has gotten better.

The point isn't in being good, he'd told Robin. I just need something to do. Before I go crazy doing nothing. 

He draws the lake. He loves the way it comes into being. Ten minutes can turn grey splotches into trees, and bluegrass, and the heat rising off of the water. He draws a duck when it swims really close, though he has to abandon it when it swims away, leaving a half formed lovecraftian creature to haunt the page. He draws the dock, and his shoes, and your shoes, and your hand curled weakly next to your ipod. He draws your wrist, though he stops quickly.

He looks at your sleeping face.

Steve thinks you don't look like anyone he's ever seen before. He notes your lashes, your brows, and your nose. The sun emphasises the fine hairs across your cheek, and the texture beneath them.

He wants to draw your face, but he thinks drawing your hand and your shoes might have been too much without permission. He lets you sleep for a while, and then when he realises the heat is making him dizzy, he can't leave you there to bake.

He rips a sheet of paper out of his sketchbook and shoves the small book back into his pocket. The dock groans as he stands, and he casts a shadow over your face and upper torso.

"Hey," he says.

You flinch awake.

"Don't panic," he says, which is something a pervert might say, so he amends, "don't freak out, I'm just worried you're gonna cook your brains. I didn't want you to get sick."

You sit up. You look kinda cooked already, blinking and disoriented.

"You okay?"

You don't look up. "Yeah, I'm okay. Thank you for waking me up."

"Yeah, sure. Here."

He holds out the drawing of your hand. He doesn't think it's good, doesn't want you to see it, but he already did it. Giving it to you will ease his guilty conscience.

It's unlike Steve to bail, but he bails. Your fingers are barely brushing the paper when he's wiping his palms on his thighs and stepping away.

"Bye," he says, uncertain. "Try not to fall asleep again!"

—

It's not so weird. Sure, he'd made your fingers skinnier than they really are, and he made your shoelaces look like spaghetti, but they're good drawings.

You're trying to read a book in the corner of Benny's when he finds you a second time. He hovers, and you're not cool, you aren't, you're working with what you've got. Not many people skills.

“Hi,” he says.

"They were good drawings," you say, in lieu of your own hello, thumbing at the pages of your book all full of jumpy nerves.

"Thank you, I'm… new to it. My best friend, she's– she's actually nicer than she should be about them, I can't lie. I was going to say she thinks I should be banned from picking up a pencil, because I wanted to make you laugh, but. She's nice when it matters."

You can't keep looking down, it wouldn't be polite. You dog ear your paperback and let it lie against the tabletop, greasy to touch but you doubt it'll make a difference. The book is old and had cost you 50 cents at Mr. and Mrs. Wheeler's yard sale.

He's tall. Hair falls around his face and curls gently against his cheeks, a sandy brown. He's wearing a hat. He hadn't been wearing one the day he'd given you his drawings, but you can understand why he needs it. The sun is an inescapable force: sun stroke has half the town down for the count. The whole reason that you're in Benny's is because it's air-conditioned and shady.

"Do you want to come and eat with me and my friends?"

You say no automatically. "No, that's okay. I don't wanna," —you don't know what to say, so your voice hikes up awkwardly— "impose."

"You don't have to, but if you want to, you're not imposing." He twists at the waist and nods to a booth across the room, where a boy and girl sit. When they see you seeing them they look away. "Sorry, they're dorks. There's usually more of us, but Jon's in work and Nancy's in Emerson, so…" He seizes up.

You wonder why people are so afraid of being awkward. It terrifies you, to think one day you'll fuck up and be awkward and the other person will remember it and laugh, but looking at him now, you can't see why it matters. It actually makes you feel better, knowing he's worried too.

"I only brought enough for the milkshake," you say.

"I'll get you something."

"That's– no, that's okay."

He hesitates. "You'd be doing me a favour. I love them, really, but I can't stand it when they're together, they bully me."

It would probably be worse to reject his offer and sit here lonely while they laugh and talk. You'll worry they're talking about you.

"Okay," you mumble, picking up your book and your milkshake.

He grins at you and you follow him through the diner. It's not busy today, but there's still feet to fall over and backpack straps to tread on, so you watch the floor.

"My name is Steve, by the way."

You tell him your own name, which brings another quick smile to his face. He slows as he approaches the booth of his friends and beckons for you to slide into the empty side before following you in.

"Guys, this is– Eddie, what the fuck is that? We said no gross shit at the table."

"This, my friend," Eddie says, words rolling around his mouth grandly, "is a monster."

It's a little man made of coffee stirrers, sporks, and chewing gum seams. It's kind of gross, but it's cute. Grossly cute and cutely gross.

"We're about to eat."

"You're stepping on his artistic licence," says the girl, her voice distinctly pretty and a tiny bit hoarse.

"Disgusting," Steve says.

You shift on the leather chair underneath you and anxiety pulses in the bottom of your stomach. They're ignoring you, but not really. Both have lifted their eyes to look at you, and, in sync, they smile. The girl's smile is startling, lip gloss lips and white teeth. Eddie's is softer, less happy and more reassuring.

"I'm Eddie," Eddie says, though you'd figured it out. "That's Robin. Do you think my monster is gross in the gross way or gross in the sick way?"

"He's cute," you admit to thinking. "But the gum…"

"I didn't have any glue."

"Steve told us about his drawings. If he's holding you hostage right now, blink three times, okay?" Robin jokes.

Eddie and Robin lean their shoulders together and start a bit where they count your blinks. There's murmurings about shelters and how they can definitely throat punch Steve hard enough to make him mute. You're stunned at being the object of a joke and don't know how to react, feeling like you've been whacked and now there's cartoon birds flying around your head and they can all see them.

Steve grabs the menus out of the rack and slaps one down in front of everybody. "Alright, team. You know the drill. Last person to choose what they want has to buy drinks." He spares you a glance. "Except you. She's on me because hostages don't pay for themselves."

"I would make such a pretty hostage," Eddie says.

He is pretty, in fairness. Dark curls thick with baby hairs frizzed up in the summer heat frame a pale face. He has big brown eyes.

“And talented,” Robin adds, poking the gum man until he falls flat on his face. The head pops off and Eddie shrieks, not loudly but with a passionate upset about him that makes you laugh.

Steve leans over. “Please choose quickly so I don’t have to pay for Robin's lemonade addiction. No pressure.”

“I’ll just have what you have.”

“With a coke?”

“Sure.”

“Robin?” he asks.

“I want a cheeseburger with a lemonade and then, if you will, another lemonade.”

She dumps her menu in Eddie’s lap, who looks up from his decapitated figure with a look of defeat.

“Wh- hey, she cheated. She hurt my dude.”

“Rules are rules.”

Eddie sulks and accepts everybody’s money. He slinks up to the window like an annoyed cat. After he’s placed the order, he looks back to the table and flips the bird covertly.

“So, how old are you?” Robin asks.

“Twenty two.”

“How’s that?” she asks sympathetically.

“Robin.” Steve chides. “She’s twenty so she thinks she’s a baby.”

“I am a baby. This is my first year not being a teen, which means it’s my first year as an adult. I’m one.”

“We have this argument a lot,” Steve says, though not with any bravado. Simple explanation, his voice soft and warm. “When being an adult actually begins. It’s not the adult part that even matters, it’s the not having rules that fucks people up. Look at Eddie. He’s been out of school for a year and he’s been arrested three times.”

You frown, not because his getting arrested would bother you (depending on the charge), but because you’re surprised, and surprise is quick to appear as anger on your face. His shirt and rockstar rings, his nice smile, his gum man — you’d assumed he was a huge nerd. His arrests are a surprise.

“What for?” you ask, before you can remind yourself that invasive questions are rude.

“Once for indecent exposure– completely accidental. Once for trespassing, and the last time was because he chained himself to a tree outside of Tawny’s bar. They weren’t cutting the tree down,” Steve says. “He, and I quote, wanted to see what all the fuss was about.”

“Don’t give away my RAP sheet when I’m not here,” Eddie says, placing a tray of drinks on the table carefully. Three cokes and two lemonades.

“It’s not a RAP sheet if you don’t actually get in trouble. They let him off ‘cause they know his uncle. And also ‘cause it’s Hawkins.” Robin slides her slice of lemon between her teeth, shepherding her two lemonades as far away from everybody as she can, looking extremely hedgy. “I’s a bitch sheet.”

Eddie feigns for her second lemon slice and snickers when Robin defends it, elbowing him hard in the ribs.

“I paid for it!” he says through laughs.

Your hands start to shake. You hide them under the lip of the table but it’s no use. Soon your legs are shaking, your arms, all of you. They’re minute tremors, both invisible and impossible to ignore. You glue a smile to your face and try to calm down. You’re overwhelmed and you don’t know why — this isn’t a new feeling. You are not the first person to feel this feeling.

Then why does it feel like it?

Sometimes, everything gets so scary so quickly, and you sit there wondering why it isn’t scary for everybody else, and you wonder why they can’t see it on your face how scared you are, and they must see it? They must know you’re fucked.

You’re shot with thoughts. These people, you could be friends. All you have to do is make a good impression. But how should you go about that? How do you talk? What do you say?

“I draw too,” you say, hands clamped between your knees.

Steve’s eyebrows do this little dance. It’s adorable, and it makes you want to be his friend most of all.

“You do?”

“I do. I’m not good, I mean. I used to be better. I’m out of practice.”

“I draw,” Eddie says.

“Yeah?”

He nods. “Jonathan, too. God, you should see his shit. And he’s an even better photographer. But I draw shitty zine comics. And Robin does the typesetting for me.”

“Oh, wow,” you say genuinely.

“Nancy writes,” Robin says. “So we’re, like, a jerk circle of artists. She’s good, too.”

“She’s good,” Eddie imitates fondly. “I bet she is. Robin’s gonna be a great writer as well, once she gets all these private Nancy lessons.”

Steve puts a hand up and Eddie promptly shuts up. He takes a big, sheepish slurp of coke and you feel like you’ve said something wrong though you barely said anything at all, sipping at your own coke.

“What are you reading?” Robin asks.

You slide the book toward her so she can see for herself. “The Sea, The Sea,” you tell her. “It’s about, uh,” —you’ve only managed to read the first thirty pages, and that’s after reading the first ten five times straight— “this guy named Charles, he’s unique. He’s uh, annoying.”

“You know, Nancy used to have a book that looked just like that,” Steve says.

You laugh weakly. “It must be popular. I got it at a yard sale.”

“Can I open it?” Robin asks.

“Of course. It’s already pretty beat up, I don’t think there’s anything you could do—“

Robin opens the book with one hand, thumb and pinky fingertip pressed to either side, and tries to take a sip of her drink without looking, tipping her glass of lemonade straight into the pages of The Sea, The Sea. What doesn’t get soaked up by your book rushes down the length of the table and into her lap.

Steve reaches across the table to grab up the glass, but the damage is already done. Your lips part. Eddie gawps, throwing a hand over his slack-jawed face.

“I’m so sorry. I’m so sorry,” she says, looking at you with wide eyes. “I have the worst case of butterfingers ever, I’m sorry.”

It’s as if she can’t believe she did it. You fluster when you realise they’re all waiting for your reaction.

“It’s okay!” you say, as loud as you’ve ever spoken in public.

“You can be mad,” Steve assures you.

“No, it was an accident. I’m not mad, it cost fifty cents, and it was totally garbage anyway. I’m really not mad.”

Eddie stuffs napkins under the table and Robin shivers uncontrollably, dishing ice cubes from her lap and the seat. Steve, laughing now, says, “God dammit, Robs,” sounding like she might be the most golden person on the planet.

—

Steve works his hat over your hair the best that he can. “There. Now you won’t die from heat stroke.”

You bring both hands to the hat to encourage it down onto your head. “Steve,” you say, sounding unsure on how to continue.

“It’s on loan.”

You nod and look out over the lake, where Eddie stands at the edge of the dock. "It's getting way too fucking cold for this," he complains, in swim shorts and a shirt, gazing in distrust at the lake’s shimmering surface.

Lake is kind. It is technically a lake, but also technically a really, very pathetic lake that feeds from a pathetic tributary. If you stationed Steve on one side and you the other, he would strain to hear you talking. Likely infected with brain eating amoeba or tadpoles or leeches. Slimy things. It’s less disgusting than Lover’s Lake, a condom cesspit, so that’s a plus.

You aren’t looking any more eager about jumping in than you had been, thighs naked and kissed by the hem of an oversized, black t-shirt. It’s wrinkled. Steve kind of loves it.

"Just jump in, you big babies," Robin says.

She'd already jumped in, screamed at the cold, and now languishes in the chest height water in front of the small fishing dock with a smug smile on her face. "Not you," she says to you. Steve rolls his eyes.

You shake your head, hair slipping out of the hat. You sigh as you pull it off and readjust the sizing band.

"I guess I am being a baby,” you say to him quietly. “The sun’s been out all day, how cold can it be?” You’re not feeling confident. It seeps into your voice, to which Steve lends a placating smile.

"Really fucking cold."

"Eddie, shut up. Y/N, it's fine. You'll like it."

“I really don’t think she’ll like it.”

Steve doesn’t either, but he wants you to feel included, and less tense. Distract you from whatever it is that’s giving you such a big case of the frownies, and prove he and his friends aren’t just book-ruining hooligans.

Eddie finally jumps in over Robin’s head, disappearing into the not quite blue water with a cut-off curse. He appears again a few seconds later, black hair slicked to his face, neck and shoulders, wiping the water from his eyes as he splutters and giggles boyishly.

“Shit, Stevie,” he says. “Not that cold after all.”

“You don’t have to jump in, you can just ease off the dock, if that’s better,” Steve says.

“Frogspawn,” you murmur.

Steve does a bunch of flexing, throws in a jumping jack for good measure. “Alright,” he says, holding out his hand. “Let’s go.”

You shake your head gently.

Steve doesn’t wanna embarrass you further, or insist when you really don’t want to, so he nods and smiles and takes a running jump into the lake. Robin and Eddie both swear and dart away as his body collides with the surface of the water, and he sinks like a well-practised stone to near enough the lake bed, feet gracing slippery pond weed and things he’d rather not think about. The air shatters out of his lungs and the water, despite the summer sun, is cold. It feels amazing — he hadn’t realised how warm he was until the temperature abruptly shifted.

He rushes back up to the surface and shakes his hair out like a dog, water running down his face and shoulders in fast thick rivulets. He peels his eyes open and turns to find you still hesitating on the dock. Robin splashes at Steve in retaliation for his hair splatters and Eddie laughs evilly as he joins in.

“Come on!” he begs you. “I told you, they bully me! I need back up!”

You toss his hat on the dock. The jump you take into the lake is timid but enough to miss the frogspawn and not break your legs, a cold splash of water and you’re there. Luckily, your presence has Robin and Eddie both stopping in their cruel tracks, and you don’t have to save Steve after all.

Your happy laughter is stunning.

"It's so cold!" you squeal, water in your eyelashes.

Eddie takes one of your hands and together the four of your tread into deeper water.

"Now that all who can be present are present," he says, falling into his dungeon master drawl, "it's time we commence the The Tournament. Swimmers, take your stations."

Everyone falls into line. You don't know what you're falling into line for, raising your timid voice to ask, "What's the game?"

"The game is me and you dunk the ever-loving out of dumb and dumber," he says.

"Hey, what?" Robin asks. "How come you get her? She's a total wild card, she might win the game all by herself."

"Or she might really suck. We don't know, and so in the interest of fairness, I propose she swims with me." Eddie's wet sleeve sticks to your skin as he nudges you. "But you don't suck, do you?"

"Um…"

"Attagirl. On your marks, get set, go!"

You spend an hour like that. Steve and Co, they're stupid, but they aren't stupid stupid. The Tournament is a series of chasing and dunking (stupid but fun) wherein you get to throw yourself on the shoulders of the person you're chasing and submerge them (stupid again). You can't hold them down, though, they aren't trying to drown one another. Much.

The sun regretfully starts to set. If it's anything like the last few days, that means it's likely near 10PM, and they're all working tomorrow.

"Do you have work tomorrow?" Steve asks in concern, after he's heaved himself up onto one of the huge stones on the opposite side of the lake.

Cattails obscure you from view on your own stone. Across the lake, your possessions lay thankfully unscathed on the dock. Robin sits as close as she can to Steve on his rock, kicking water at Eddie every time he tries to approach.

"You fucking rat," he fumes, mouth full of lake water.

"I'm not really working right now,” you say.

"Do you need a job?" Eddie asks. "They're hiring— Harrington, restrain your creature! They're hiring at the Palace Arcade, aren't they?"

Steve nods voraciously. "Yeah! Hey, we can get you an interview no problem, they probably won't even ask you that many questions. I mean, Keith worked there."

"Don't be mean about Keith," Robin says, though she doesn't really like him. He thinks it's akin to defending your deadbeat older brother.

"I don't know, I think even a couple of questions might be too many," you worry.

"How come?"

You pull the fluff off of a cat tail, and it explodes in your hands. Steve yanks one down to do the same, watching the fibres float across the lake's disturbed surface with a cool breeze. Robin shivers beside him, sensitive to the cold in her wet clothes, the adrenaline of swimming and almost but not really dying wearing off.

"I'm bad at stuff like that."

"I don't think anyone's good at interviews at our age," Eddie says, nose wrinkled as cat tail floats toward him. "We're, like, babies."

"I always feel like I'm really old," you confess. You look down at your naked knees. "Like I wasted all the good years already."

"What, school?"

"And the four years since," you say.

Steve gets it, in a way. His high school years sucked, and he'd maybe thought he'd get out of Hawkins on a track or swim scholarship, basketball — anything. But he's here still, and at first that hadn't been what he wanted. Sure, he'd expected it, but in different ways.

Steve pushes back the cattails to see you clearly. "I didn't even get any real good years until just now," he says, as kindly as he can.

"I failed senior year twice," Eddie speaks up, "I kinda thought I was wasting my life too, but if I didn't, I wouldn't even know Robin, and she's, like, my best friend."

He throws his hands over his face before Steve can kick a huge wave of lake water into his eyes. "Get your own," Steve fumes. He's not really mad.

"Yeah, these are the good years," Robin says, "probably. I never had guys fighting over me in high school." She laughs and tucks her wet hair behind her ears, her freckled cheeks pale in the oranging light of the sunset.

You hold your hands out for Eddie and he finally climbs onto one of the rocks. From this side of the lake, you can watch the sun set behind the silhouettes of Hawkins town a half mile away. It dips slowly down, meandering almost, a pearl sinking through layers of raspberry pink and orange and, as Steve holds his breath, that sudden flash of electric green.

"I'm blind," Eddie mumbles, falling back into the rocks and grass.

"Shit, that was cool." Robin stands up and stretches. "I'm so cold I'm gonna die right here. Steve, do you still have a blanket in your car?"

Steve looks over at you again. You look shell-shocked, not quite awed. He doesn't know what emotion you're feeling, only that you're feeling it, eyes wide and set across the lake at the darkened sky, lights from the buildings like stars shimmering in your pupils.

He stands up and offers his hand to you. When you take it, he pulls you up without hesitation, not a flicker of doubt or an ounce of struggle.

"I'll get you that interview," he says, questioning, soft. If you want it. 

Your fingers linger in his palm.

"Yeah, okay. Thank you."

"Come on!" Robin says, taking your other hand and tugging without apology, barefoot over the asphalt path surrounding the lake. "Before the gnats come out."

"We might see fireflies if we stick around," Eddie says.

They bicker. Steve lets go of your hand and you and Robin walk just ahead, your head bobbing between his two arguing friends like you're watching a quickfire tennis match.

You turn to the side and hide a smile. Steve sees it, and he figures it's a start.

"Munson," he hollers, "how about you stay and watch the fireflies and you tell us all about it? Me and the girls aren't gonna freeze out here so you can get back in touch with nature."

It's a bad joke, but it works. "Fuck you, Harrington. The ladies wanna see the lightning bugs, don't you?"

"I can't remember the last time I saw them," you say.

"Then we have to stay," Eddie says smugly.

You all crowd the back of Steve's car, the heaters on but not doing a lot, the blanket stretched over Robin's shoulders. She tucks it behind your back, and you all look out to the night and scout for bugs.

"There," you whisper, pointing.

Green dots of light rise from the dry grass like tiny lanterns, a handful at a time.

"Jonathan's gonna be sad he missed this," Robin murmurs.

You try to count them all. Four voices whispering bets into the night air, though the real number isn't possible to calculate. "Winner gets a new paperback on Robin," Eddie jokes, swiftly quietened by a barrage of elbows to his side.

They let you win.

[anakinisvaderisanakin]

Even Stars Burn Out

As he enters the Jedi temple, reinvigorated by a new, unspeakable purpose - Anakin Skywalker feels nothing.

There are no thoughts in regards to the countless lives he is about to snuff out in his mind. There are no feelings of remorse or hesitation in his heart. He has already decided, he has already weighed the lives of his former fellow Jedi against Padmé’s. It was never a contest, there was never any question as to whose life mattered more. Anakin keeps his lightsaber in his hand, his loyal 501st battalion have his back. Order 66 is nigh, the termination of each and every Jedi the rule which he must obey.

Do the Jedi deserve such a grim fate? Anakin thinks being part of the order, a constitution that has molded and used him for years, is crueller.

Do they deserve to die? Anakin thinks death will bring relief, as the misled become one with the Force.

He strikes down the first meager padawan, and still he feels nothing. No guilt, no remorse. Only anger.

His rage burns red hot, his hatred thrumming like the rhythm of a drum within his chest. The pounding of his heart is the only beat he follows, as he strikes down another familiar face. And another. And another. Until the faces all blend into one, until blaster fire and the buzz of clashing plasma blades overpower his senses.

They fall. They all fall.

Anakin is powerful, he has always been powerful. Talented, the Force syphoned within his very cells so much more than that of his peers. He has less training, yet he outmatches each and every one of them. Master Cin Drallig proves to be some competition, but even he must fall at the swipe of Anakin’s blue saber.

Master Jurokk stands no chance.

Shaak Ti is caught meditating, unaware of the one time hero of the Republic coming to end her life. Anakin stabs her in the back, and she slumps limp to the side as her light burns out. Anakin keeps no count, he has no idea how many bright eyed young men and women he has struck down. They seem to him like spider-roaches; like an endless flood of vermin pouring from each and every entrance like spider-roaches from a damp crack in the wall. He deals with them with the same dissociation, with the same emotional dissonance. His master's words echo in his head; his praise and his promises. The Sith Lord will aid Anakin in his crusade to save Padmé, and Anakin is desperate.

The hall seems serene, a clean slate save for the heaps of fresh bodies stacked along the ornate stone floors. Their hollow eyes stare at Anakin, locked in horror and what he feels might be accusatory glares. They will judge him, and he accepts that fate. Their thoughts of him matter little.

Anakin closes his eyes, senses further life forms. Senses Force signatures that are unstable; some weak, some fluctuating. Some reeking of fear and confusion. Youthful. He knows what must be done.

Only now, does Anakin take a moment to weigh his options. Only now, for a brief second in which clarity finds him, does he stutter. The moment passes, almost as casually brushed aside as if the doubt was naught but thin air. He ascends the grand stairway, makes a well aimed leap to the second suspended level. The pale, tear stricken faces of the hidden younglings greet him as he enters the juvenile training hall. They have hidden behind the scarce furniture provided. Anakin senses their terror, and he tries to relish it. He takes a deep breath, steadies his trembling hands.

Do these children deserve to die? Anakin knows they will be hunted relentlessly by the clones, and by his master, should they be left alive. Him killing them is a blessing, it's a mercy that he will take such pity on them.

Sors Bandeam approaches, the blonde boy barely even a toddler. He speaks, but Anakin hears none of it. He shuts out the hushed whispers and murmurs, and acts. He thinks of Padmé, of the child she is carrying. He tries not to picture the face of his daughter or son in the place of the younglings' as he strikes them down. Padmé must live, nothing else matters. These younglings would have grown to develop the same traitorous, poisonous views as the Jedi council. They are merely the next generation. His master asked him to spare none, and Anakin obeys. He will always obey.

When it is done, he doesn’t linger. He doesn’t dwell upon his heinous crime. He exits the chamber, leaving the children as they lie. Helpless, hapless, innocent and forever suspended in time. They shall never age, they shall never reach adolescence. They have found peace.

When Anakin exits the smoldering Jedi temple, there are no survivors. Thick black smoke billows out of the giant construction, his trusty platoon of clone troopers left behind to guard the tattered remains of what was once Anakin’s home away from home.

Bodies litter the exterior stairway. Anakin steps over them with little reverence. He smells only the ashy, pungent stench of death and embers.

He thinks he can sense Padmé’s distress from afar. Something in him tells him to go to her; to reassure her, to feed her any lies necessary in order to soothe her pain and fear. She is distraught, as he comes to her. He is disheveled, still numb and empty and hollow inside. He thinks only of her, as he kisses her lips and strokes her cheek, and offers her what he hopes is an affectionate smile. She is unconvinced, fretful, and he cannot stop her wandering thoughts. He tries, he explains what little he can. He has further duties, his master expects him to follow through with his mission. He can’t stay, despite her pleas.

The flight to Mustafar is quiet, solemn, and stifling. Anakin blocks out his barrading thoughts, thinking only of Padmé’s beautiful but sad face. He thinks of her swollen belly, thinks of the baby kicking as he presses his palm to its curve. He does this for her, for their child. For them. Only them. Only her. He lands, resolute. The separatists must fall, like Count Dooku before them. The war must end, a new era is about to dawn.

The heat of the lava planet is pressing, sweat pouring down Anakin’s furrowed brow. His reception party is confused, and he smirks at them. He quips, voice dry with sarcasm as he adds two more lives to his conscience. He is focused, clear headed and determined. His strides are fast, and the Neimoidian viceroy Nute Gunray of the Trading Federation appears bemusingly shocked as Anakin interrupts the meeting. Whatever his master promised Gunray was a lie, and the viceroy realizes this. Anakin hates Gunray, he hates the Trading Federation, he hates everything they stand for. That unbridled hatred feeds his rage, and steers his saber.

If Anakin felt nothing killing his fellow Jedi, he feels even less slaughtering the ring leaders of the faction he has spent years of his life battling. War has changed him, desensitized him and he slices through their hideous bodies like butter. Like paper, they rip and tear and break. Gunray pleads for his life, and if Anakin were a cruller man he might have relished in it. Instead, he finishes the job.

An eerie silence once more overpowers him, as he reports to his master. The now Emperor Palpatine praises him, but the compliments ring hollow. They are meaningless, and Anakin knows this. He accepts this as par for the course. His master has never been honest, and deep down, Anakin has always known this.

Still, the solitude is claustrophobic. The walls seem to be closing in.

Anakin finds himself desperate to move anywhere at all. He paces the room, avoids making eye contact with the dead as they glower at him - mocking him, just as the fallen Jedi had. The balcony suspended sixty feet above the rivers of scalding lava below becomes his refuge. He fixes his eyes upon the mesmerizing molten rock; yellows, browns, reds and oranges capturing his attention. The river twists and warps into random shapes and patterns, and its roar seems to bring to mind cries of agony and misery.

Anakin shakes his head, the anger dissipating bit by bit. In its wake, there is pain. Clawing at his insides, clutching at his heart. Padmé must live, he thinks. Nothing else matters. But Anakin knows he can never go back. The moment he agreed to aid his master's vicious scheme, he was lost. The stricken faces of the younglings flash before his eyes; little Sors' big blue eyes full of admiration. Expecting to be saved, to be taken away and kept safe by one of the biggest heroes of the Republic. Instead, his frail body now lies cold and lonely lightyears away.

What might Padmé think, if she knew?

What might Padmé say, if he ever told her?

Anakin’s hands tremble, and he wraps his arms around himself to still their treachery. The Sith yellow of his eyes, a sickly hue that had overtaken them as he allowed darkness to engulf his being, fades. It is the last time it will ever fade.

Pale blue eyes regard the lava river, even as they are clouded with tears. Anakin thinks of his mother. He thinks of her kindness, her love, and her demise. He thinks of how heavy her withered body felt in his arms as he brought it home, thinks of how he failed her. He will not fail Padmé. He will not bury Padmé.

There is guilt now.

Guilt so raw, so blunt, so immense that it tears Anakin’s heart in two. He feels conflicted. He feels lost. He feels alone, and afraid, and disgusted. He feels hurt, and used, and enraged. He feels small, and helpless. He feels powerful, and untouchable. He weeps, and he allows himself to mourn the Jedi. He weeps for them, and for himself.

Cin Drallig.

Shaak Ti.

Jurokk.

Sors Beam.

Anakin will forget them, eventually. Their features will fade, as his memories disappear into oblivion. Only Padmé remains a beacon of hope, only Padmé can save him now. Anakin cries, and he sheds a piece of himself with each scalding tear. He cries, and he willfully suppresses the disappointed, horrified faces that comes to mind.

Mother.

Qui-Gon.

Yoda.

Windu.

Ahsoka.

Obi-Wan.

Padmé.

Anakin dries his tears, holds his head high. There is no use in weeping over what has been done. His future lies ahead, bright and open wide. He forces himself to believe in this mantra, forces himself to discard rationality and reason. What else can he do?

Then he loses everything.

He loses the battle. He loses his limbs. He loses his sight, his hearing, his voice, his soul. He loses Padmé.

And for what? What was his sacrifice all for?

Master was right, it is ironic. Anakin never betrayed the Jedi for Padmé. He did it for himself, and he loathes himself for it. Anakin is alone, locked in a prison of his own making. Anakin is but scraps of the man he used to be; a traitor, a coward and a monster. He suppresses himself, relying solely upon his hatred. There is an endless supply of that, now. He is despicable, and thus, there will forever be a steady stream of loathing to feed off of. He needs no one, he deserves no one.

Does Anakin deserve such a fate? Yes, his brain whispers. He deserves all of this, and more.

Does Anakin deserve to die? No, the same voice concludes. Death would be relief, a sweet blissful slumber to save him from his demons. He deserves no such relief, he must be punished and tormented.

Anakin killed Padmé, and this is his reward. He knows this. He accepts this. Anakin burns in his own flame, he has flown too close to the sun. He has snuffed it out by his own hand, and all he is left with is an endless night. All his fears have been realized. All his dreams have been crushed. He has done it himself.

Anakin feels nothing. He is a husk of a man, more cybernetics than living flesh. He has no autonomy left, he lives only to serve his master. He locks away his past, refuses to look at it, refuses to sifle through it. It brings only agony and suffering. He refuses to retread his steps, to reconsider his choices. If he did, the guilt would eat him alive. If he did, he would succumb to his own unbearable, irrefutable remorse.

Anakin Skywalker is consumed by regret. In his heart, he knows this.

Anakin Skywalker deserves no less.

***

You can probably tell I was very much inspired by Matthew Stover’s writing style in the RotS novelization, though much less poetic. I had fun however, and it was nice exploring a different style. Hope you enjoy it too! It’s an addition to The Mask of Death  series on Ao3, link below.

https://archiveofourown.org/works/24049894/navigate

[candy-and-writing]

My Resolutions

Synopsis: You and Steve have a strained relationship. He takes it upon himself to fix that

Pairing: Steve Rogers x Reader, slight Bucky Barnes x Reader

Warnings: Dark! Steve Rogers, NON-CON, fingering (female receiving), oral (female receiving), slight breeding kink if you squint

I am NOT responsible for your media content consumption. This work is not intended for those under the age of 18 due to explicit sexual content and/or dark themes. By reading this work you agree that you are at least 18 years of age. I do not consent to have my work posted on any third party app or website; if you are seeing this work anywhere other than tumblr and archiveofourown, it has been reposted without my permission.

Tony Stark's New Year's party was extravagant. Men in expensive suits and black ties, women wearing elegant party gowns and jewelry with more diamonds than a Tiffany's store. Chandeliers hung from the high ceiling, the lights soft and bright, matching the ambiance of the orchestra. Long, white-clothed tables lined the walls, covered in overpriced shrimp and finger foods, a large chocolate fountain that stood entirely too high next to various fruits and other snacks. Servers walked around the ballroom carrying trays of champagne and little plates of desserts, though most guests already held a cocktail or glass from the bar.

You stood next to Natasha as she conversed with Clint and Wanda, something about Budapest? You were too busy gawking at the lavish scene around you. The Avengers cleaned up nice, the boys wearing expensive tuxes and black bow ties while Natasha, you, and Wanda had gone dress shopping. Nat looked stunning in her long black dress, thin straps that crossed along her back and her short red hair pinned to the side. Wanda wore a dark red dress that had a high neckline and sleeves that passed her elbows, styling her hair in a messily beautiful high ponytail and dark makeup.

You wore a silky sapphire blue gown, the neckline low and cut to show much more cleavage than you were comfortable with, the thin straps were the only thing to cover your back. The skirt of your gown was loose and flowy around your legs, stopping at your toes. Your hair was curled down around your shoulders, dangling earrings tickling your jawline. Your makeup was simple, eyeliner and some fake eyelashes Natasha helped you out with and some red lipstick. To your surprise, it contrasted beautifully with your dress.

You left Natasha to navigate your way through the crowd, wanting to reach the bar. Once there, you ordered a cocktail and sat down, sighing. You picked at your painted fingernails, twisting a ring around your finger.

"Hey, doll." 

You looked up to find Bucky leaning against the bar, smiling at you. You smiled back. The bartender handed you your drink, you thanked him before taking a hefty sip.

"Hey."

"Having fun?"

You shrugged, stirring your straw in your drink. "Parties make me anxious, there's always too much that could happen when nothing ever does. All these strangers—does Tony even know all these people?"

Bucky sat beside you, sighing like your dad does when he goes to sit down and watch the football game. "Sounds fair, given what we do for a living. You have a right to be paranoid."

"I'm not paranoid," you glared. "I'm being cautious."

Bucky chuckled, ordering a double whiskey before looking back at you. "You wanna join Steve and I? Get your mind off things?"

You sighed, playing with your straw for a moment before nodding. "Yeah."

He guided you to the middle of the room, dodging past people until he found Steve and Sam. Sam greeted you with a nod and a smile, looking you up and down quickly before he met your eyes. Steve gave you a tense nod, quickly continuing his conversation with Sam. You scoffed before taking a drink, feeling stupid for thinking Steve would greet you at all. He's had such a stick up his ass the last few months, barely acknowledging you and only talking to you when he had to, but he was more than happy to ignore you. You've caught him glaring at you from the other side of the room multiple times, like your presence itself just annoyed him. You had no idea what you did to piss the supersoldier off, but you've learned to just stay out of his way.

Although you would admit, with his long hair, short beard, and his tight tux, he looked ruggedly handsome. He was a stark contrast to the man he once was when you first joined. He would at least talk to you then.

You shook your head, taking a sip of your cocktail. You had no idea why it bothered you so much—he didn't like you and you didn't like him, you just couldn't understand why. He was nice, kind to everyone else, to complete strangers, so why did he look at you like you were a bug he squashed on his shoe? And it wasn't like you actually hated him, despite your nonexisting conversations and the spiteful glares, you were quite fond of the super-soldier.

One cocktail turned into two, then three, then two more glasses of champagne when you spotted a server walking near you. Bucky was too busy conversing with Steve and Sam about his days back in the 107th to notice your tipsy daze, laughing as Sam made a snarky remark about his old age.

It was well past midnight now, the guests from the party had slowly disappeared, leaving the Avengers to finish off the eggnog and bacon-wrapped shrimp. You sat on the edge of the couch next to Wanda, nursing your third—was it your third? Or was it your fourth? No, no, definitely your third—cocktail Natasha had made you. Across from you sat Steve and Bucky; Bucky had taken his jacket off while Steve left his on, instead unknotting his bow tie. At first glance, you'd expect Bucky to be the one giving you the cold shoulder, not America's Golden Boy. But Bucky was probably your closest friend. You grumbled, taking another drink.

"Alright, let's go around the room!" Tony clapped and rubbed his hands together before pointing at Bruce. "Banner! New Year's Resolution, go!"

Bruce mumbled for a moment before sighing, saying something about finishing his big project with Dr. Cho. Clint went next, saying he wanted to be there when his daughter graduated middle school. Natasha wanted to do some volunteer work, maybe get a cat, something she could take care of.

"Cap, you're up!"

Steve sighed, holding his beer down at his lap. "Uh—"

"To get laid," Sam interjected, snickering. Bucky laughed as Steve's eyes widened.

"Seriously?" you nearly choked on your drink. "I can't believe that's one of your new year's resolutions."

Steve cleared his throat. "It's not." He gave you a dangerous glare, which you failed to see on account of you finishing off your cocktail. "I was going to say—before I was interrupted—I want to make the world a better place, this time next year I want it to be better."

You shrugged, reaching for a bottle of champagne. "Eh, whatever you say, Captain."

"What about you?" he asked, all but snarling. "What's your resolution?"

You poured yourself a glass from the bottle of some fancy Krug Blanc de Blanc champagne, it was crisp and rich and the bubbles tickled down your throat. "Don't got one," you said plainly. "I think they're dumb."

Tony 'boo'd. You stuck your tongue out at him.

"Aw, come on," Clint groaned. "Think of one thing you want to do this year."

You sighed. "Fine. I. . . I guess I don't want to die?"

"There ya go! That's the spirit!"

You chuckled, shaking your head as you sip your drink. Wanda went next—said she wanted to do something to help Sokovia since they're still rebuilding the city. Bucky said he just wanted to live his life with his friends. Corny bastard.

An hour passed, maybe more, before you started to get cold. The cool air danced along your bare back and down your spine. F.R.I.D.A.Y had started playing Christmas music and Natasha dragged you up. You protested, begging her to let you go. She had your hands in hers, swaying you back and forth until you were begrudgingly moving on your own until your hips were moving on your own accord.

Then you fell. Tripped over your dress.

Bucky stood up, rushing over to you as Natasha tried to give you her hand but you waved them off. "I'm fine, jeez, back off."

"Maybe you should lay off the drinks," Nat said.

"Yeah, how many have you had?" Bucky frowned at you.

"What are you, my mom?" you growled, reluctantly taking Bucky's hand as he pulled you up a little too fast. You clutched onto him, dizzy as you struggled to steady yourself. Suddenly, there was another pair of hands on you, rough as they held you tightly.

"I'll take care of her," Steve's voice said.

"Steve—" Bucky was interrupted.

"I said I got her." He pulled you out of Bucky's grasp, dragging you out of the room.

"Go easy on her, Cap," you heard Tony say softly, "you know this time of year is hard for her."

That made both you and Steve scowl. It is not, you thought as Steve pulled you along, your small feet struggling to keep up with his fast steps. Your head spun, dizzy as Steve stopped at a door. He shoved you in, wobbling and stumbling over your heels. You turned to him, about to tell him to watch it when you stopped. His expression was stone cold, almost feral. He stalked up to you as you shuffled back, circling until you bumped up against a table. Surprised, you looked behind you, running your hand along the dark mahogany. That wasn't your table. Looking around your surroundings, you saw that you weren't in your room at all.

"Steve," you say, your voice shaky. "Where are we?"

His snarl turned into a cold grin and he chuckled at your stupidity. "Are you that drunk or are you just that stupid?" he belittled. "Take a good guess."

You knew where you were, and his snarky remark had you biting your tongue you hold in your dry sarcasm. You rolled your eyes and tried to push past him, but he shoved you back until you hit your head, laying over the table.

"Don't roll your eyes at me," he growled, hand pressing down on your chest.

"Ow! What the fuck, Steve!"

"You wanna know what my new year's resolution really is?" Steve had pushed himself up against you, noses close to touching. You could smell the beer he had on his breath.

"Steve, seriously, this isn't funny—"

"It's you."

He forced himself in between your thighs, your dress riding up to your knees as you kicked your feet out, flailing as Steve pushed against you, pinning your wrists on either side of your head.

"Steve, stop," you begged. "Please, you're scaring me."

"Good," he huffed. "You should be, maybe it'll sober you up."

"Steve—"

"Shut up!" You flinched, turning your head away from his. "God, I am so sick of you and your little games. Playing innocent when you're walking around in your skin-tight uniform, flirting with Bucky, ignoring me. You brought this on yourself, sweetheart."

You're the one ignoring me, you jackass.

"Steve, I—" you took a deep breath, trying to play your cards right. "I never meant to make you think—"

"I don't care," Steve sneered. He let go of your wrists, his hands rubbing up along your thighs. You pushed against his chest, trying to get him off you, but he brought his hand back and slapped you across the cheek, looking at you like you were an annoying fly. You cried out, head snapping to the side as Steve pinched your inner thigh. He pushed your dress up over your hips, your black lacy thong on full display.

"Jesus," Steve breathed. "You wore this out in public? You're lucky some other man didn't try to fuck you earlier."

"Steve!" you cried, frightened. Your heart was pounding in your ears so fast you thought you were going to pass out. One of his hands went to your throat, squeezing just enough to make it hard to breathe.

"I said, 'shut up.' God, you really need a lesson in obedience."

With that, he roughly grabbed the hem of your underwear and pulled, tearing the garment in two so hard it left burn marks on your waist. You let out a strained cry, squeezing your eyes shut as tears slipped past your lashes. Your head spun in a drunken daze as Steve licked his fingers before he rubbed against your clit, causing you to jolt. You let out a strained, garbled 'no'. Steve only gripped your throat tighter.

"It's alright, sweetheart," Steve cooed, his voice suddenly softer, "I can make it feel good for you. Just relax."

You clawed at the hand wrapped around your throat, trying to tear him away, mouthing voiceless pleas.

Stop.

Please.

Steve.

"Just relax, sweetheart, it'll feel good. I promise." He continued to rub circles over your clit, softly and then harder at random intervals. You mewled, squirming in his grasp, your back arching as he dipped his finger into your channel, spreading your juices around. His now slick finger stroking your sensitive bud as you let out a strangled moan. "That's it, doll, just let yourself feel it."

He leaned down, his lips meeting yours in a conquering and controlling kiss, tongue delving into your mouth. You were helpless as his lips moved to your jaw, inserting a second finger into you. You gasped as Steve started pumping his fingers in and out of you slowly, finger fucking you until you were a whimpering mess.

"It feel good, doll?" Steve asked, lips dangerously close to yours. The pads of his fingers brushed against a certain spot inside you and you cried out, hips jolting. "You like that?"

You felt the stretch as Steve forced a third finger into you, your legs numb and heavy. Your head spun, and you thought for sure you were going to puke as he sped up, the coil in your lower belly tightening as his lips latch onto your clit. You gasped, a scream getting stuck in your lungs as he sucked on your clit in the most beautiful way.

"St—stop. . . Steve, St—Steve, please—"

A few more licks was all it took before the coil in your stomach snapped. You let out a coarse scream, the breath getting sucked out of your lungs. Your thighs shook as your back arched painfully, your pussy convulsing against Steve's fingers until you collapsed, lax on the table under Steve.

"Jesus, sweetheart." Steve pulled his fingers from your channel, causing you to whimper. "That was beautiful. You're so fucking beautiful."

His words barely reached your ears, sounding muddled and far away like you were under water. There was a loud pounding, your heartbeat ringing in your ears, strumming through your body. You didn't realize Steve had unzipped his dress pants, shuffling them down past his knees, stroking himself slowly. He let out a soft sigh, lining himself up between your legs.

Your eyes widened. "Wait—Steve, don't—!" Steve used his hand to cover your mouth, silencing you.

"It's alright, sweetheart," Steve cooed, "just relax. I'll make it feel good."

He pushed into you slowly, his thick cock stretching your walls. You screamed into his hand, legs clenching in an attempt to stop him.

"I said 'relax', doll. This is happening, just accept it, it'll feel so much better."

You closed your eyes, willing your muscles to unwind as Steve thrust into you, groaning.

"Fuck, you're tight," he growled. "I know you're not a virgin, you fucked Bucky just last week."

Your eyes flew open wide at the candor remark. You mumbled something incoherent to him against his hand, which he chuckled at.

"Oh, please, you honestly think I'm that clueless?" Steve scoffed. "The missions you two are always taking together, the incessant flirting, the sneaking around like you're a bunch of teenagers. No, I knew, and—frankly—I'm a little offended. I had to find out from Natasha?" He punctuated her name with a sharp thrust of his hips. "You must have one hell of a spell on him that he didn't come running to me after it happened. . . . How did it happen? I'm curious."

He moved his hand away from your mouth, when you didn't answer immediately he snapped his hips up into you.

"Steve—"

"Tell me," he said, pulling out slowly, just to the tip, then pushing back in inch by inch.

"Okay!" you screeched, "Okay! We—we were in Germany, a couple months back, for the human trafficking intel S.H.I.E.L.D had. The mission was a bust, they knew we were coming, they killed all the girls. One of them—ngh—she wasn't even old enough to start her period yet. Bucky took it really hard—"

"I don't care," Steve growled, bucking his hips. "Get to it.”

"He drank himself to sleep that night," you whimpered. "I had to wake him up a few hours later because he was screaming. When—when he calmed down, I tried to talk to him, but he kissed me. I—I told him we shouldn't—"

"Because you didn't want to or because he was upset—oh, fuck."

"I—" you preened. "I didn't want to do anything he would regret, when he told me there wouldn't be anything to regret, I just went with it."

"You let him fuck you," Steve corrected.

"Yeah," you forced out, even though that wasn't the truth. It had been more than that. It wasn't just a quick fuck, it was something both of you needed to get past that. You needed to forget and Bucky needed reassurance. You had let him take control that night, something he needed, while you laid back and let him be the one in control over you. You trusted him completely, and that man had pulled more orgasms from you than anyone ever could.

"Do you know why that is?" Steve whispered, his voice low. His hips kept their slow pace, his dick ever so slowly sliding in and out of your cunt. When you shook your head, he gave you a devilish smile. "It's because you're a slut. And he thought you were easy."

Steve pushed your legs up to your chest, effectively bending you in half as he fucked into you faster, his balls slapping against your skin as you screamed, hands clawing at the table below you. His cock was driving into you deeply, hitting a spot inside you that had you seeing stars. He was longer than Bucky, albeit Bucky was thicker. You bit back a moan, refusing to give Steve that kind of satisfaction.

Steve clicked his tongue. "Come on, doll, don't be like that." His hand dipped down to where your body's were conjoined, his fingers rubbing softly against your clit.

"Fuck!" you gasped, your back arching. You let out a string of moans, whining as his hand stayed stuck to your clit.

"I need you to come for me, baby, one more time. Can you do that?" His hot breath grazed against your ear. "Fuck—come on my cock, sweetheart."

You bucked your hips wildly, trying to shake him off you, the sensation all too familiar yet unwelcome. "Steve—stop, please, I can't—"

"You can, sweetheart, I know you can. Just a little bit more." He rubbed small, fast circles against your clit until you came with a scream, Steve clamping his hand over your mouth as he came, silencing your overstimulated cries.

He thrust deep into you, spilling his seed in your pussy. He groaned, held himself still for a moment, then pulled out. You whimpered, feeling his cock leave your abused channel, cum flowing freely from your cunt. Steve's cum. You never thought you could feel so disgusted.

Steve looked at where the cum was seeping out of you, scooping it up and pushing it back in with to fingers. You gasped, trying to squirm away from Steve's fingers.

"You're going to stop fucking Bucky," Steve ordered, his voice low. "Things are going to be strictly professional between you two from now on, Understand?"

Your eyes widened. You couldn't do that Bucky, he didn't deserve to be kicked to the curb like that.

"I said, 'do you understand?'"

The sharpness in his voice had you nodding, suddenly feeling like a kid trapped with the monster from under the bed.

Steve smiled. "Good."

He released your face, and you took that as your cue to get up. When you propped yourself up on your elbows, Steve pushed you back down. You gave him a quizzical look, he gave you a dark grin on return.

"You didn't think we were done, did you, sweetheart?"

[shreddedparchment]

Pseudo Princess Pt.30

A Time to Fight

05/03/2020

Pairing: King!Steve x Reader         Word Count: 5,757

Warnings: Language, intense feelings of trepidation and anxiety?

A/N: Plot heavy! I mean, if you consider battles a plot. Which I guess it is. Some fluff too. Not much. Lots of love though. Always love. If you happen to reblog, thanks so much for helping me spread my work!

TAGS ARE CLOSED!

Please DO NOT repost my stories. Reblogs are welcome!

The room is quiet save for the fire, burning in its hearth. It crackles and cricks as the wood becomes splintered and charred. Tony’s large council chamber is bathed in warmth, and yet the cold outside seems to press on the castle, crushing its occupants with despair.

A new flurry of snow falls, seen through the large arched windows. All of them are shut tight, an attempt to battle the frigid air.

Sam, Clint, Natasha, Tony, Thor, and Bruce sit. T’Challa stands nearby staring out at the guard below as it patrols the blanketed castle grounds.

They’ve been doubled since your return at Steve’s request. Tripled at Tony’s.

T’Challa is pensive as he waits, stroking his chin slowly as his mind races—miles away.

The somber atmosphere of the room is nearly choking, and Bruce finally clears his throat.

“I’m sure he’ll be okay.” He says, nodding slowly and looking to Nat who sits beside him.

He reaches out and places a hand over hers, offering warmth and reassurance.

“He’s strong, Nat.” Bruce assures her.

Nat nearly pulls her hand away, but she resists and looks to Bruce, searching his expression for the sarcasm of his reassurance.

She doesn’t find any because he is genuine in his care.

With a sigh she turns her hand over and holds his in return, squeezing it in appreciation.

“Can she help him, T’Challa?” Thor’s voice wonders, his body angled towards the silent king.

T’Challa turns, still deep in thought to look at the thunder God. He seems to realize what he asked because he drops his stroking hand to cross his chest with the other and nods.

“If anyone can figure out what is wrong with the White Wolf, it will be Shuri.” He assures the room.

“Why do you call him the White Wolf?” Clint wonders, shifting forward in his seat to rest his elbows on the table, hands clasped loosely in front of him.

T’Challa opens his mouth to speak, but Sam beats him to it. “Bucky stayed in Wakanda for a few months while he learned to get used to his new arm. He helped them with a few troubles they had while he was there. Helped them fight. They gave him the name because he was the only white man within their ranks.”

T’Challa nods, dropping his arms to rest his hands at his front.

“Correct?” Sam asks, looking at the king.

“Yes.” T’Challa agrees. “He was of great service to my kingdom. The people gave him the name. It is a symbol of honor.”

Clint looks mildly impressed, turning his gaze on Natasha who looks a little worried still.

“Sounds to me like he’s a tough man to keep down.” Clint says for her benefit.

Natasha is mildly comforted by his words, but she will feel so much better when Steve and Shuri come back.

“They’re taking their sweet time.” Tony complains, bitter that he wasn’t invited but with Shuri…well, he isn’t going to fight her on anything she needs. Even if what she needs is his absence.

“What about her Majesty?” Clint asks, worried by the state at which they’d brought you home.

Thor’s own face falls, his brow furrows as he remembers the nearly emaciated state, you’d been in. Perhaps that is an exaggeration on his part, but you’d lost too much weight for his liking. You’d look so tired and worn.

Having fainted on the way back, Steve had carried you in. Cradled lovingly against his chest but clearly limp and unresponsive.

Nat clears her throat, licking her dry pink lips as her mind is thankfully distracted—if only to be replaced with a different kind of worry.

“She’s getting better. I think it was the fright of everything that happened more than any real physical ailment that brought her to such sleep.” Nat nods, then coughs a bit as her throat goes raw, her mouth dry.

Quickly the men move, but it’s Tony who reaches the water first. He takes the pitcher as the others sit back down and pours her a glass of wine.

“Here, drink.” He orders, and he makes it clear that it’s not a request.

Nat takes the goblet and takes a sip.

“Has she woken up at all?” Bruce wonders.

“She was awake last night.” Thor sighs, leaning back. He raps the fingers of the arm he holds extended across the table, nervous energy seeping out.

“How did she seem?” Clint asks, his regret at not having met you sooner evident.

Everything he’d seen of you and heard of you from Nat and the others painted such a lovely picture. A woman without fear but with a humble outlook on life. A desire to be helpful with an iron sense of duty. Courage but not of any kind he’d ever seen before.

You aren’t a fighter or someone with great power in strength. Your own comes from somewhere deep within you. You draw from the struggles that you have suffered, or so Nat had explained.

Clint would very much like to meet you properly.

“She was tired.” Thor tells him, “But in good spirits. Worried for Barnes. Worried for Steve and the distress that Barnes’s condition gives him. But I made her laugh…so…”

As if that is enough to say you’re alright.

Nat’s face relaxes into an easy smile.

“Did you, really?” She asks Thor, almost desperate.

“Why haven’t you gone to see her?” Thor asks, his frown back in place.

Nat’s own smile fades. “I-”

But her words are silenced as the heavy birch doors of the room are pushed open by a pair of guards. Steve moves in, Shuri beside him, both immersed in deep conversation.

Their hushed voices draw everyone up in their seats, alert and curious. Natasha stands up, her hand falling out of Bruce’s gentle hold as she rests the tips of her fingers against the solid grain of the table.

Steve and Shuri come to a stop, their eyes moving to those waiting.

“Well?” Tony asks, only slightly less impatient than Natasha but with less ability to keep it within.

Steve turns to him and then hesitates, looking to Shuri.

Shuri nods, “I’m afraid that the White Wolf has been brainwashed.”

The term is strange to Tony and the others. All except for Natasha, whose face goes ghostly white.

“Brainwashed?” Clint repeats.

T’Challa, who is the only other who seems to recognize the term, steps forward.

“Are you sure, sister?” He checks, eyebrows slanted deeply.

Thor looks as confused as the others, but the wheels in his brain seem to be working fast.

“Do you mean to say that someone has taken his mind and altered it in some way?” Thor asks, looking as if he knows what they mean though he doesn’t recognize the word.

“That is exactly what I mean, Your Majesty.” Shuri nods.

“We have a different term for it, but I know what it is you speak of.” Thor says. “And it was not done by magic?”

Shuri shakes her head. “No.”

Steve sighs, placing his hands on his hips he meets Natasha’s eyes and holds them, a look of agony in each of their faces.

“He was tortured.” Nat says her voice even and unforgiving of the word she uses.

Though her eyes mist over, she doesn’t allow the rest of her to betray any sign of despair. Quickly she shuts her eyes, squeezing the tears away before she opens them once again to focus on Steve and Shuri.

“Can you help him?”

Shuri focuses on Natasha, and for too long a moment, she’s silent.

Natasha has the urge to shake her, however unladylike it may seem. Her own impatience rearing its head for attention.

“I can.” Shuri nods, her expression softening. “I will. But we will have to move him down to Tony’s laboratory.”

Nat feels her stomach unknot, then flutter nervously at the thought of not having Bucky in her rooms.

“Whatever you need.” Nat nods. Heart in her throat.

“What can we do?” Thor asks, sitting up and leaning forward to look at Steve.

“Stay close. Something tells me that things aren’t over.” Steve admits, looking somber.

He’s preoccupied of course, with you and with the baby. With Bucky and with Hydra. With his kingdom and the state it is in under Lord Coulson’s care. Though it should be fine, Hydra makes him worry for his people.

“Have you heard something?” Sam asks him, leaning forward in his seat.

“No.” Steve shakes his head. “No, I’ve not heard anything more than what we know. You say that the guard are looking for Pierce?”

He turns to Tony who stands up and wipes at his beard, tracing his chin from side to side. “Yes. Both here and in Broklin. I’ve sent the Lady Hill to help there while you and Y/N are here.”

Steve nods. “Thank you.”

It really does seem as if his mind is set at ease.

“He’s out there. I will not rest until he’s caught. This is a threat that’s loomed over my head long enough. And after what he’s done, so openly…I can’t stand by anymore.” Steve’s blood boils at the memory of you battered and bruised on the ground, fearfully curled up as Bucky advanced.

Pierce did that and it was he that would pay the price of your fear and hurt.

“I will help you. For Y/N. And for every other innocent life lost.” Thor declares, standing. He holds out his hand and his hammer flies towards him with a resound whoosh.

He catches it and shakes it once, slapping it to the palm of his hand before he’s joined by Clint, then Sam, and Bruce.

Tony sighs, leaning both hands on the table as he looks around at them all standing with their shoulders back, chins held high, resolute expressions, and passion within their eyes. All of them area ready to die for not only you, but the safety of the kingdoms.

T’Challa steps forward, adjusting the cuffs of his sleeves before pulling down on his unique silk tunic. His arms fall to his sides and he nods.

“I will also fight.” He declares, and Shuri smiles, looking around at all of them in their intimidating splendor.

“And I will do what I can, while also helping the White Wolf.” She nods once.

Steve’s gratitude spills from his face. Soft smile, taut chin, and eyes full of trust.

“You all must have really missed this damn team.” Tony snarks.

No one denies it. There’s a knock on the door.

As the other gather at the far end of the table to discuss where they may go to begin their searches for Pierce and Hydra, Tony moves to answer the door.

“Steve.” He calls, voice tight but controlled.

The sound of his upset prompts Steve to respond quickly. He moves towards the door where Tony stands with his hand on the door as if to block someone from entering. He drops it as Steve reaches him and the sight of Sharon enlightens Steve as to Tony’s displeasure.

“Sharon,” Steve begins, taking a deep breath before he grazes Tony’s shoulder with his hand to tell him that he can go.

Tony stays for a moment, almost stubbornly as if he is going to refuse to move. Sharon bites her lip, her long and golden cascading waves frame her pretty face, as she awkwardly stands before them both feeling scrutinized and unwanted.

With a sigh, Tony gives Steve a pointed look. “I’m watching you.” Then moves towards the team.

Steve drops his head, knowing he’s earned to be chastised, and nods.

“I don’t think he likes me.” Sharon whispers sheepishly and Steve can see what you meant.

There seems to be no guilt in her mind about what she did.

“He has every right to hate you, Sharon. You snuck into the bed of his daughter’s husband. You drove a rift between us, however short lived it might have been. Both you and I hurt her, and Tony will never forgive us for it. Neither will I.” Steve is ruthless with his words, unhappy with Sharon’s lack of care for you.

He turns and moves away from her, his hands held behind his back as he stops by one of the large windows to observe the horizon.

He can hear Sharon follow, but doesn’t turn to look at her, preferring to keep a new boundary set.

“I didn’t mean to harm you.” She says, and Steve can hear that it is truth. She hadn’t meant to harm him. But for you…

“But you did. She’s my wife, Sharon.” Steve says sternly, but quietly so that the others in the room can’t overhear.

“I know.” She nods. “I understand.”

“But do you respect it?” He asks, turning to look at her. “She knows that you were not genuine in your apologies. That’s why she does not trust you.”

Sharon’s face turns scarlet, her ears and neck burning with her quiet rage.

“I love her, Sharon.” Steve tells her. “I tell you this not to hurt you, but because you have been my friend all my life. I would have you remain in it. You are a part of Margaret too. The three of us were family.

“But my wife…Y/N…I would like to have you be a part of this family as well. I will have a son soon.” Steve pleads, his heart breaking for the memories he would lament if he would need to cut ties with Sharon completely.

In a way, he feels like he must. Let it all go so that he might go into his future with nothing to hold him back. But it was such a large part of his life. To say goodbye to it for good would feel like a betrayal to himself and the man he grew to become.

Sharon looks down at her feet, and Steve can see the war raging in her head. Shifting her weight from foot to foot, Sharon reaches up to stroke her golden waves.

Steve recognizes the signs, the nerves get the better of her, the way her chin stiffens as she becomes defensive.

“I cannot have you here if you will not respect my marriage, Sharon.” Steve sighs again, this time in defeat.

Heart aching for the loss of the sister he’d always thought her.

“Then I will go.” She says. “I’ll send for my carriage in the morning. I’m sorry, Steve. But you’ve been mine in my head since I realized what Margaret’s death meant for you. I can’t just give up. Not for her.”

Her face contorts, a twisted look of distaste as she mentions you.

Steve’s blood boils. Frustration for her lack of consideration. For her inability to see how this hurts him. For her clear dislike of you. Other than the fact that you are his wife, she has no reason to hate you. Perhaps that is enough?

“I’m sorry you feel that way.” Steve swallows his anger. “I hope you can come to terms with my marriage someday.”

Sharon scoffs, annoyed and hurt, before giving Steve a quick curtsy then leaving the way she came.

Steve turns his gaze back to the falling snow, jaw flexing tight, arms crossed as the sun begins to set. Tony approaches and stops beside him, hands behind his back.

“How did that go?” He asks, gentler than he had been just a few minutes ago.

“She’s leaving.” Steve admits.

“I’m sorry.” Tony nods truly aggrieved for Steve’s unhappiness.

“So am I.” Steve shakes his head. “But Y/N is more important than any need to cling to my life before I met her. And she’s so kindhearted if Sharon would just give up…I know that she’d-”

“She might.” Tony smiles. “But she might not. If there’s anything that I’ve learned about my daughter since I took her in, it’s that she’s very protective of those she loves. And if these last two weeks have taught me anything, it’s that she will go to great lengths to keep you. Safe and preferably hers.”

Steve’s face relaxes, feeling a surge of gratitude for your sacrifices to heal him. The memory of everyone’s reaction to seeing you after two weeks, however, gives him anxiety. You’d lost too much weight, the vibrancy in your complexion had dimmed and your eyes had become slightly fogged.

“I should get back to her.” He states and turns to go.

“Don’t give her a hard time, Steve. The sacrifices she makes for you are not that to her. It’ll only upset her to see you vexed.” Tony reasons.

Steve stops to turn and acknowledge his words but catches Nat’s eye as he’s turning to leave once again.

She moves to him, stopping a foot away looking nervous and guilty for some reason.

“Are you going to see her Majesty?” She asks him, shifting her weight onto her left foot as she teeters anxiously. He recognizes what she’s feeling, since he’s feeling it too.

“Will you come?” He asks, and she nods eagerly.

He offers her his arm and she rushes forward to take it, wrapping her own around his elbow and allows him to pull her in close to his side.

It isn’t until they’re alone, walking along the hallway to your bedroom that Nat finds her voice again.

“Steve…” She begins, quiet.

“It’s not your fault, Nat.” He tells her, cutting her off before she can begin her spiel. “Nor mine. Nor anyone’s but Pierce.”

“But I left her alone. I swore to protect her.” She grieves.

“She wasn’t alone.” Steve shakes his head. “She was with me. And she’s here now. A little battered, but she’s fine. And the baby is fine, or so Agatha says. I don’t think I’ll be content until he’s here with us. Crying in my arms.”

The dynamic shifts and it’s Nat comforting Steve now as he stops just outside your door to let all his worry spill here where you can’t see.

“If I’d been faster, or if I’d had the sense to keep myself shielded properly then maybe I wouldn’t have been injured and she wouldn’t have had to bear so much of-”

“I thought it wasn’t either of our faults? Do you lie, my King?” Nat teases, giving him a half smile because Nat knows that it’s easier to tell others it isn’t their fault than believe it yourself.

For Steve, it must be even harder.

Steve drops his head, letting it hang as he inhales, then exhales slowly. His shoulders rise and fall, and Nat takes her arm back to give his shoulder a gentle pat.

“Can it not be my fault alone?” He asks, looking at Nat with those storm blues.

“No.” She whispers at him, shaking her head. “If we are to blame one, let us blame everyone. None of us were prepared for what would happen should one of our own turn. We had no contingencies for if and when we were to be separated. If we must blame someone, let us blame ourselves as a unit. We failed her.”

Nat swallows hard, trying to ignore the ache in her chest and the pit in her stomach.

“We failed both of them.” She whispers, voice breaking just a bit.

Steve reaches down to take her hand and she smiles at him in gratitude.

“Bucky will be alright, Nat. He’s a fighter. Always has been.” Steve promises her.

“Just as her majesty is.” Nat agrees. “Come on, let’s go in. What if she’s been waiting?”

“Agatha said she wouldn’t be up for a few days.” Steve reaches out and opens the door, watching as Peter rises on full alert.

His eyes are red and puffy, his nose raw from rubbing his snot away. The form fitting charcoal tunic and the black trousers he wears remind Steve of his own mourning garb. And with his grief-stricken expression, Steve’s mind goes into panic and he releases Nat.

Pushing forward he passes Peter quickly, eyes watering as his lip begins to shake.

“Steve?” Peter asks, confused by the rush.

Nat follows, moving just as quickly. Her heart racing with fear as she sees Peter’s inquisitive face.

Steve moves to your bed, feeling cold despite the roaring fire filling the room with heat. He drops onto the bed, seated before reaching for your hand.

With a breath of relief at the warm touch of your skin, he presses the inside of your wrist to his cheek and feels the pulse of blood through vein. He shuts his eyes, almost angry with Peter for his sobbing.

He turns to him, face contorted with annoyance. “Why were you crying when we came in?”

Peter sniffs, wipes his nose once more with the back of his hand, and then looks at the floor.

“Tell me.” Steve insists, waiting with your hand pressed to his cheek as you sleep on.

Because you’re perfect. Just as he’d left you. Sleeping soundly, still thinner than he’d like, but only just. You hadn’t been so bad after all, but out there in the midst of all the danger, you’d looked so much worse to his eyes.

Nat moves to your other side, her head cocked to the side as she takes a long look at your face. She reaches out, touching your cheek. Tracing your ear, she caresses it. She too relishes in the feeling of your warm skin.

“She’ll want a bath when she wakes.” Nat tells no one. She makes note in her mind to go out and find you some fresh peonies. She’ll pay anything to get them for you. She’ll have some new oils sent for. “I’ll have them bring her some jams. She loves her jams.”

With a sweep of her skirts, Nat is gone. Off to get you whatever you might need when you wake.

Steve watches her go, saddened by the guilt that she carries knowing that it isn’t her fault. Still, he carries that guilt himself, doubled as you are carrying his son.

Peter’s shifting from foot to foot brings his gaze back to him, and Steve renews his frown.

“I was…” Peter sniffs again and shrugs his shoulders. A nervous move that makes Steve worry. “…I should have been with her. During the procession.”

Steve doesn’t know how his heart can break anymore today. But watching his friends love you and wish they’d done more to keep you safe also fills him with such a gratitude. Only your goodness could bring about this much care.

“Peter, nothing was supposed to happen. It is not your fault that you were not beside her. I was there. And that was supposed to be enough. How could we have known that Pierce would use someone we trusted against us?” Steve gets up and moves to stand before Peter, his hand finding his shoulder to hold and give him a small shake.

“So, it was Pierce? He was behind the attack?” Peter’s normally pleasant face contorts with passing rage. His red rimmed eyes give you a glance.

“Her Majesty says that she saw Pierce speaking to Bucky before the procession began and then disappeared a moment later. For now, until he wakes up to confirm, it’s all we have to go on. But Pierce is the head of Hydra. Rumlow was among those fighting against us in the procession and he’s Pierce’s right hand. He would not have done anything without his command.

“And it was Hydra who’d had the opportunity to plant something in Bucky’s mind.” Steve explains.

“What? Do you mean like, mind conditioning? Brainwashing?” Peter asks, brow furrowed as he thinks quickly and tries to put all the pieces together.

“You’ve heard the term?” Steve asks, head tilting to the side lightly.

“In my studies. Before you allowed me to be a part of the team, King Stark had me read up on all the sciences and strange incidents that have plagued the world. The practice of brainwashing was mentioned a few times. Never in great detail, but it’s there.” Peter sighs, shaking his head as he attempts to understand what it must feel like to be taken over.

“Poor Bucky.” Peter’s sorrow is kind and Steve appreciates his compassion. “I’ll never leave her again.”

Peter turns a deeply resolute frown to Steve, and it melts a bit of Steve’s anxiety to think that Peter is so willing to throw himself into protecting you.

“As much as I’d love for you to be at her side always, I do need you out with the others for the time being.”

“Why? What has happened?”

“Nothing.” Steve shakes his head, turning to move back to your side.

He sits beside you, taking your hand again to stroke your fingers.

“That is, nothing new. Pierce has showed his hand and our priority is to find him. I’m expecting a letter from Lord Coulson tomorrow to see if Pierce has responded to his summons. I don’t think he will, but we had to try.

“And until Pierce is found, Y/N and my child will never truly be safe. If we can catch him quickly, then we can ensure her safety more quickly.” Steve meets Peter’s determined gaze and watches as Peter moves to quickly caress your free hand.

“I’ll leave now.” He says and turns to leave.

“Wait, Peter.” Steve rises, looking to you before leading Peter out into the hallway.

“What is it, your Majesty?”

“Can you wait until tomorrow morning?” Steve begins, looking a little shy or nervous? “I’ve…her Majesty is not fond of the Lady Carter being here. I’ve asked her to go home.”

Peter’s shoulders relax and he even smiles a little. “It’s honorable for you to stand by your wife despite the relationship that you have shared with Lady Carter in the past.”

Steve groans. “I don’t feel honorable. I feel like a fool. I don’t want to hurt Sharon, but I will not hurt Y/N. After everything I’ve done to her already, she deserves to be first in my life.

“And if Sharon would simply abandon her desires then it would be easier to keep them both in my life but—well, it doesn’t matter. I’d like Sharon to have some protection on her way home. I don’t want her doing anything reckless and I can’t take any chances with Pierce.

“He knows who is important to me and with Y/N out of reach, he might try his hand at someone a little more accessible.”

Peter’s nod is slow, thinking through something before he agrees. “Very well. I will do as you ask. I shall stay here the night.”

“No.” Steve interrupts. “No, Peter. Get some rest. You’ve been searching for us for two weeks straight and have hardly gotten any sleep since we’ve been back. Go get some sleep. I’ll be here and I’m sure Natasha will be back soon. Bucky will be with Shuri in Tony’s dungeons so…she can’t be with him.”

Peter looks reluctant but as it is his king’s orders, he nods. “As you wish, your Majesty. Good night. If you need anything, please call for me.”

“Of course.” Steve nods, a soft smile offered at the young man before he sends him off with a push to his shoulders.

Steve waits until Peter is out of sight before he goes back into the room. He shuts the doors securely then makes his way back to your bedside. He places one hand on your belly, stroking it gently as his child moves within.

Your face is unmoving, fast asleep. Induced by Agatha and her herbs. You’d needed the rest.

“I’m sorry, my flower.” Steve whispers, feeling cursed that he seems to only be a cause of distress for you.

“Sorry for what?” Agatha asks, voice creaky with age as she moves to the other side of the bed. “About time that boy left. He’s been on edge since you two went missing.”

“Will you be staying in here with her?” Steve asks, curious of the old woman as she places a small pouch on the bed beside you and pulls from it a few vials of different colored liquids.

She removes the stopper and pulls out a small glass tube which she then holds over your lips.

“Open her mouth, if you will, your Majesty.” She orders.

Steve gets to his feet and leans over you, pulling your chin down carefully until your lips are parted.

Agatha drops two drops of the first liquid into your mouth, then three of the second. Two of the third. One of the fourth.

“What are you giving her?” Steve wonders.

“Tonics.” Agatha says simply. “To help her heal faster. She’s been overstressed. That’s why she has lost weight.”

“She deserves better.” Steve laments.

“Oh?” Agatha laughs amused by his words for some reason. “And are you the one to decide what it is she deserves?”

Steve doesn’t understand her strange moods and simply looks at your pretty face, wishing he could cradle it close. Only that would fill the hole in his chest. He doesn’t like you unconscious like this. You don’t look like you’re sleeping. You look ill.

“Why did you marry her then?” Agatha continues to chuckle as she checks spots along your arm where some of your bruising seems to have gotten a little worse.

“I had to save my Kingdom.” Steve shakes his head. “I should have married her for love.”

“Oh, don’t be so romantic.” Agatha frowns. “You must accept your beginnings if you are to build a proper life with your wife. So, you were a bit of an asshole when you first married her? Big deal. Many husbands remain so for many years after they’ve married.

“Some begin as sweet as honey only to turn as sour as lemons after a few years. Count yourself lucky that you have learned from the mistakes you’ve made and stop trying to make up for them.” Agatha chastises.

“But I want her to know that I’m sorry.” Steve argues.

“Do you think she doesn’t know it? Have you given her any reason to think that you do not mean it?” She squints at him, urging a confession and for a fleeting moment, Steve panics as if he might really have done something and he can’t remember.

But no. Steve hasn’t done anything to risk the loss of your trust again

“N-no.” He shakes his head. “She knows I love her.”

“Then stop whining and live for your future. Stop living to make up for the past.” Agatha shoves her vials back into her small leather pouch and draws it closed before moving for the door again. “She’ll wake some time tomorrow. Naturally. No way to know when.”

“What will she need when she wakes?” Steve asks, getting up to follow the woman out.

“Oh, food. Water. A bath. Patience. She may be a little out of sorts for a few hours. Just talk to her and keep her focused on you and the child. Do not speak about what happened, or anything related to it until she is fully recovered.

“Remember, stress is her enemy right now. If you want your child to live, treat her as you would a fragile crystal goblet.” Agatha instructs.

“Thank you, Grandmother.” Steve says, using the term you do.

“Don’t thank me.” Agatha says. “Just do better.”

For a while, Steve watches you sleep. He drifts in and out of his own slumber until he decides to stand to keep awake.

Natasha finds him staring out the window as the blizzard outside begins to worsen. Dark skies absent of stars.

“I’ve got a few guards outside.” She tells Steve’s back, moving to stand beside him. “You can sleep with her. If something happens, they’ll sound the alarm. You don’t have to stay up, Steve.”

Steve doesn’t answer for a few minutes, simply looking at her to acknowledge her words before he goes back to watching the falling snow.

Natasha stands there with him in silence, waiting patiently for him to finish his thinking.

“I think we might need help this time.” Steve finally says, rewarding Nat’s patience.

“What did you have in mind? We already have the Wakandans here.”

“There’s a man in the Western kingdoms. I’m not sure where he is exactly but he was imprisoned for stealing from the rich to give to the poor.” Steve explains.

“Sounds like our type of people.” Nat agrees.

“He’s married. He and his wife have…unique abilities that might be useful for the fight to come.” Steve says. “They may be able to get to places that we simply cannot.”

“Do you really think things will get bad enough that we’ll have another battle? Like the one before the peace?” Nat wonders, emerald eyes full of worry.

“He won’t give up this time.” Steve nods. “If I didn’t have Y/N and our child I wouldn’t be as terrified as I am. I want it over. I want her safe. Both of them. Can’t you feel it? It’s like the world is holding its breath. Or maybe that’s just me?”

Nat shakes her head, wrapping her arms around herself as if the cold outside has somehow penetrated the castle walls and begun to eat at the warmth in your room.

“I feel it.” She nods. “Something’s coming. I just…How can we be ready for it? With James in the state that he’s in and her Majesty…?”

Natasha can very much understand the fear that is currently taking hold in Steve’s heart.

“I feel like we should send her away. Far away.” Steve says, but Natasha can see that he won’t.

“She wouldn’t go.” She tells him, helping him make sense of keeping you here. She knows he wouldn’t be able to stand being away from you.

Steve scoffs, his first laugh since the two of you were returned.

“No.” He agrees. “She wouldn’t. She’s so stubborn.”

Natasha smiles, her heart feeling lighter at the fondness he clearly has for you. The love that’s there. She can’t remember the last time before you that he looked so happy. Even with Margaret, something was always just a little off.

Steve’s smile slips away, deep though replacing the lighthearted expression.

“I think it’s time we reached out to Fury.”

Natasha looks for his gaze but he’s too busy watching the snow fall, his arms crossing over his chest as he resolves in this decision.

“You want me to find him.” Natasha realizes, and how can she blame him? She knew him best.

[danifics18]

↪ 5:47 P.M. (M)  ↩

Tags: Mature//Brat!Reader//Dom!Jongho//manhandling//cunnilingus//

Word Count : 1959

    General Masterlist    Ateez Masterlist

Notes: This is my first actual smut like this, and I really don’t know how to write smut all that well, but I tried my best ❤️ 

You always knew that the other members would joke about you and your boyfriend’s sex life. About how they were surprised that you were still able to walk fine after a long and loud night. About how you never had any bruises, marks, or anything besides the occasional (very well hidden) hickey. You both knew the only reason his hyungs would tease and joke so much was because it was very obvious that your relationship still held up as something innocent, and as well as, the other members seem to love seeing how embarrassed you both would get after hearing a raunchy comment or two. Although, some of their jokes did confuse you because of how genuine they would sound. It seemed like they expected Jongho to be more aggressive and rough with at least some of the sexual aspects of your relationship, and you could never understand why. 

  Of course, you knew that Jongho had his apple breaking party trick, you knew that he was considered the strongest member of Ateez, but you also knew that he was very self conscious about how he used his strength on you. In your everyday life, he was an absolute gentleman. He would tease you with his sarcasm and dry humor, of course, but physically he was soft. And in the bedroom, he was even softer. He treated you like a fragile doll, and even though you loved it, you could tell he held himself back a little bit. It perplexed you that he seemed as if he was holding himself back, yet every time you asked him about it, he would give out a small laugh and say that you were looking into it a bit much.

  So who better to go to than the main people who would joke about your sex life? Jung Wooyoung and Jeong Yunho. The entire conversation was full of hidden side glances of unspoken conversations and huffed laughs as they helped you make a game plan to un-soften your sweet boyfriend. You were glad you had went to them for help, you knew Jongho went to his hyungs for all types of advice, and you didn’t have a single doubt in your head that he’d went to them for sex advice at one point or another. The advice they gave you was thankfully more than enough to give you a nice game plan, and with that, all you had to worry about was how everything would play out.

And that’s how you got lead to where you are now.

  A day starting off with wearing a pretty dress that shows just enough cleavage when you bend the right way, and that is flowy at the bottom and stops at mid thigh. And when you noticed his lingering glances, you decided to bump it up a notch to lightly grabbing his face to give him a heated kiss and, walking away with a smirk on your face, before he could put his arms around you. And that was the mission of the day- to take the teasing just a little bit further, at least enough to get a physical reaction.

 By the end of the day, you two were at home, him in the shower, you on the couch. The plan hadn’t worked the way you hoped it would’ve. After you guys had walked through the door, you walked up behind Jongho, wrapped your arms around his middle, and gave him light kisses on the neck. As your kisses got harder and progressed towards his weak spots, your hands also started going down from his abdomen to the top of his belt buckle. It was at that moment he ripped himself away from you, only to turn around and say he was going to take a shower, and sped off with red ears.

  To say you felt bad was an understatement. Sitting on the couch, you wondered if maybe you’d pushed him too far, seeing that you weren’t the type to tease each other like that. Of course, you’d both talked about the vanilla sexual aspects you both liked and disliked, and you’d both agreed to tell each other immediately if either one of you got even the slightest bit uncomfortable. And today, he hadn’t said a thing. If you “accidentally” grazed his covered dick by bending over, he would just turn his head away. When you grabbed his hand during lunch and put it high enough on your thigh that you knew he had to have felt the edge of your lacy panties, he just softly patted your inner thigh and gave you the absolute sweetest smile. When you’d whispered about how good he looked, and how much you’d wanted him, to his ear, he would just laugh as if you’d told him a funny joke.

  And now you were left here on the couch with a pout on your face and an uncomfortable heat in your core. As you got up with a huff to go change into some different clothes, you got a plan. If he couldn’t take the sign that you wanted him, then you’d just take care of yourself. Easy enough, right?

  You hurried on over to your bedroom, making sure the shower was still going as you passed by, stripping your dress and bra off to throw in the hamper. Clad in just underwear, you dig through your underwear drawer to the back where you had an old friend of yours. You pull out the blue vibrator, checked to make sure the batteries were still in and working, and laid down in the middle of the bed with your legs bent and open.

  As you turned the vibe on it’s lowest setting, you closed your eyes while you let it graze your nipples enough to make you let out a sigh. You let it continue to run down your body until it reached the top of your underwear. It was at that point, you decided you didn’t want to tease yourself today, seeing that you’d been needy for quite a while. So you tore your underwear down and off of your legs and got to work with the low vibe.

  The entire time you had your eyes squeezed shut in pleasure, with little whines and moans coming out every once in a while. As you got close to your climax, you started grinding your hips up until the vibrator hit your clit at a new angle, and that’s what sent you over the edge. While you were coming down your high, with legs shaking and uneven breaths, you finally decided to open your eyes and saw the eyes of your loving boyfriend leaning against the door frame, lower waist wrapped in a towel that did nothing to hide his obvious hard on . Just as you were about to say something he walked over and beat you to it.

“Baby, what is this? You were being a teasing brat all day, and you still decided to get yourself off?” Jongho exclaimed with a cocked eyebrow,” You know, I was going to get you off myself, but if you’ve already got that covered, then I guess I’ll go find some other way to keep me busy.”

Immediately, the fire in your stomach was back and hotter than before, and you begged him to help you get off again because you really want him. All he responded with was a playful “Alright” before he settled himself in between your legs, with his arms around your thighs. As he licked your slit he would squeeze your thighs enough for you to feel a slight throb and you let out a moan at the thought of marks being left tomorrow. Seeing that you were still sensitive from you first orgasm, it wasn’t too long until you were on the edge of cumming again, and your thighs shook under his hands. Once Jongho noticed your shaking thighs and convulsing stomach, he looked you in the eyes while he latched his lips around your clit and sucked hard. The coil in your stomach snapped and you moaned Jongho’s name while trying to squeeze your legs together.

As you were starting to come down from your high, you whined to get your boyfriend’s attention- which he ignored- so you started to push at his head to get him off of your clit. That was when he finally lifted his head and spoke, “You wanted me to help get you off, so that’s what I’m doing. You acted like a needy brat today, so I’m going to show you what you were asking for. I’ll let you know when I’m done eating your pussy.” And with that he dove his head back down to lap at you again.

You couldn’t help but to get even more turned on while seeing him with your juices shining on his face, but you were still extremely sensitive now, so you were trying to pull your legs away so you could have a little more of a breather. And that’s when he finally snapped. He got up off his stomach, leaned back on his heels, and yanked you up by your thighs. From this position, your weight was all the way on your shoulders, legs spread and pulled down by gravity, and Jongho’s tongue fucking your hole while smacking the back of your thighs with his hand. 

  To distract yourself from cumming again so soon, you decided to help Jongho, who was using your back as leverage to grind himself into. As he saw you situate yourself a little bit so you could reach his length easier, Jongho yanked his towel off and threw it to the side of the bed, and picked your hips up a bit more so you could reach your hand behind you more comfortably. And so you reached your spit-coated hand back and started jerking him to the match the same pace he ate you out at. The look on Jongho’s face as he tongue fucked you was absolutely ferocious, but you loved it. As his long muscle poked your inner sensitive spot, your resolute quickly crumbled as you came while moaning his name.

  As your senses came back to you, you were finally put down and out of your boyfriend’s tight grip. As Jongho moved to sit on the edge of the bed to grab the discarded towel, you quickly moved to the ground and in between his legs. You weren’t paying attention if he had said anything, seeing that you had a goal in mind, but you did here the yelp he let out when you wrapped your lips around his length, your tongue flicking the spongy head of his shaft. As you got more into sucking him off, you relaxed your throat more and more to help take him back deeper. As you reached your hand up to play with his balls, he quickly gathered your hair up into a messy ponytail, subtly thrusting himself into your warm mouth more and more. You noticed his thick cock was starting to throb in your mouth, so you quickly pressed your face as close to his pelvic bone as you could, and swallowed hard. With a loud groan from your boyfriend, he came, his thick fluid being swallowed by you as quickly as it came out.

  As you leaned back on your heels, you looked up to him and gave him the sweetest smile you could muster up. Sweat dripping down the side of his face, he smiled back you you and gave you a kiss on your forehead and then on your lips. As Jongho got up, he invited you to take another shower with him, and you spent the rest of the night watching movies and cuddling each other. 

[thepixiepaige]

Shes still got another 2-3k in her I think but here, have the first couple thousand words because I can't sleep.

Tw: misaligned kink, huge misunderstandings,bruises/marking, rough sex,

Pairings: reki/langa, adam/langa, (and soon adam/langa/reki wheneverI can get my tippy typers on board again u.u)

⛓❄⛓

Langas voice went low, smoothed over, and languid around a single syllable as soon as Reki's hands touched his throat, tipped his head up, and held him there with hard, calloused fingers.

 "Oh."

Reki flailed back, pulling his hand away in a flourish of motion, "Oh?! Shit, are you okay? Did I hurt you? I'm sorry I got kind of carried away. "

 Langa grabbed for his fingers, placed them against his throat again almost eagerly. "No! It was good. I... I liked it."

 When Reki's eyes snapped to his face, Langa could almost feel his uncertainty. He shifted his hips up against Reki encouragingly, working a shocked and bashful huff from his lips.

 Reki made a noise like he was drowning and met the motion eagerly. His fingers on Langa's throat stayed gentle.

 "Reki please," Langas voice, high and sharp, begged through their shared gasps. Settled, bone dry and cutting, against Reki's heart.

 He jerked his hands away again, fit them tight around the subtle arch of Langa's waist instead and fucked into him harder. The sound of skin and wailed gasps, the burn of Langa's fingers as he gripped at Reki's wrists and held felt like an apology.

 ⛓❄⛓

 "Would you be upset? If I saw Adam."

 Reiki’s fingers slipped on the truck he was tightening, sending the bolt, the wrench, and the entire board flying even as he shot out clumsy limbs to try stopping them all. “Upset? What? No. Of course not. Why would I be upset? Should I be upset?”

 Langa’s smiles were always a sight to behold. And this one was no different, small, and hidden behind the lock of hair that fell in front of his face as he ducked his head. When he looked back up the smile was still there but it was tinged with something more… heated. Steely.

 “I want to try some of the things you can’t do, Reki. It’s not that I don’t love you. Not that I don’t think you wouldn’t try. But I don’t think that’s fair to you. I don’t want to hurt you but I- I just want to know what it’s like. I think he could do that for me. With me.”

 Reki felt his heart break and mend and stutter all within the span of a minute.

 “Oh?” he said and then followed it with another, softer. “Oh.” He swallowed as he bent to pick up the fallen board and set it back to rights. “Yeah, of course. It’s been years, Langa. I’m not scared of that old asshole anymore. He doesn’t upset me. Of course you can see Adam.”

 Langa’s face lit up and Reki knew he’d done something Good. When he leaned in to kiss him Reki laughed, warm and bright, relieved by the touch he hadn’t known he’d been doubting. He brought his hand up to run gentle fingers through Langa’s faded blue hair. He pulled the taller man down to him, kissed the place where his hair was growing in dark at the roots. 

 “Thank you. Thank you. God, I love you.”

 ⛓❄⛓

 It started with a single day in an another wise innocuous week. The first of the month and a Saturday. Reki knew it by the fact that he had a showcase to work. One of the rare sort where he had to be a professional and talk numbers and couldn’t have Langa by his side so they could goof off and demo the new builds. 

 “I’m gonna see Adam today,” Langa whispered into his shoulder, pressing kisses into the side of Reki’s throat as he tried to shave in the foggy bathroom mirror. Reki angled his head to the side with a hesitant expression that he schooled fast, a skip in his heart that he ignored. 

 “Yeah, have fun with that,” he taunted, sarcasm dripping from his teeth as he tried to run the razor down his cheek without taking his entire face off. Langa’s eyes met him in the mirror. Watched his face as Langa slipped his hands beneath the towel wrapped around Reki’s hips and out of sight. 

Reki dropped the razor into the sink with a groan like satin, gripped the edge of the basin, and held on.

 He came home after Reki did, limping, and favoring one of his sides as he moved but his smile was huge and the relaxation in his frame was obvious in the way he poured himself onto the couch and into Reki’s lap. Reki snorted, cupped his palm over Langa’s shoulder, and kneaded at the knotted muscle beneath. 

 “Jesus, what did he do? Throw you into moving traffic?”

 Langa’s voice was soft and warm, “Something like that.”

 “Did you have fun?”

 “Yeah. Fuck, yeah.”

 Reki chewed on his words for a few seconds, worrying his bottom lip between his teeth, “I’m glad.”

 Langa snorted then.

 “No really, I’m happy you’re enjoying yourself, you ass.” Reki pressed with the heel of his hand into the shoulder he had been massaging, feeling Langa’s entire body go taut with something that didn’t quite look like pain. He slid his hand around under Langa’s chin and tipped his head up. “I am, like, a nice person sometimes. Even about him.”

 “You are a very nice person, Reki. It’s one of the things I love about you.”

 Reki kissed him soft and then kissed him harder. Langa went liquid beneath him, rolling to his back and hissing in pain even as he tried to snake himself up for more contact.

 “God, what did y’all do?” Reki laughed.

 Langa pulled back, eyes focused and searching as he pushed Reki’s hair back from his face. 

 “Do you wanna know?”

 Reki thought about it. Remembered months of being jealous and bitter and mean over Adam’s focus on Langa. Over Langa’s returned interest. Remembered the fights and bloody knuckles when the two of them had finally had enough of trying to force too much emotion into wild, reckless, competition. Remembered the days of Langa forcing the two of them to sit down and actually talk it out and smooth things over into an antagonistic truce. 

 The resolution they eventually reached had taken even longer than Adam and Cherry’s had. But Reki got the feeling they’d done a lot more of their, "working it out" with their dicks out, though. He’d rather be forced to endure another month of Adam trying to force-feed him concrete than take part in that.

 And now, years later, that truce still held. Adam had even been at the housewarming party when Langa and Reki had finally decided that paying rent on two apartments was ridiculous when neither of them was ever alone in their own place for more than a few hours at a time.

 “Nah, y’all can have your thing. Just- don’t get hurt too badly, yeah?”

 ⛓❄⛓

 Langa did get hurt. Regularly.

 Watching him strip down in the washroom at the end of another day, one where he knew Langa had spent at least an hour or two at Adam’s, Reki was confronted with the darkening spread of newly forming bruises up the side of his partner’s thighs, cresting high onto his hip and over the curve of one side of his ass. The skin was flushed red, tight, and broken open in a few spots and-

 “Holy shit is that from Adam’s fucking board?!” 

 Langa turned, looking over his shoulder and pressing his long fingers into the forming crossbar shape of the crucifix skateboard Ainosuke had used in their final beef so many years before. “Yeah, kind of-” he breathed, voice low.

 Reki reached out to run his fingers over the mark before laying his palm, cool and comforting in comparison, over the whole of the wretched bruise already blooming. “I didn’t even realize he still had that thing. What the hell are y’all doing?”

 Langa grimaced, pressed into Reki’s palm, “It’s a lot to explain. You could... come. If you wanted.” His expression was nervous, vulnerable, as he watched Reki’s face.

 “Pffft. Trust me, I want nothing to do with whatever adrenaline junkie wild shit y’all get up to. I’m gonna keep my ass firmly planted in a design chair and just… stay out of it.”

 He reached around Langa to start the bath, letting the water warm before nudging the Canadian into it. “Let me wash your hair?”

 “Yeah. Please.”

 The next time it was a nasty cut on the top of his ankle, scraped skin bordering a gash that wrapped itself from the front of his leg almost entirely around to his achilles. It was stitched in one spot toward the center. Neat little sutures that were bathed in antiseptic but kept open to the air. His wrists were bruised as well, shocking and dark against his pale skin.

 “Langa, what the fuck!?”

 Reki shoved a set of chopsticks into his mouth to free his hands up to shove the pot he was stirring off the burner and shut it off. He spat them out unceremoniously and made his way into the entryway in a flurry of grasping arms and spinning limbs.

 “I’m okay, I’m okay. I’m good, Reki. Look at me.” Langa held his frantic partner's face in his hands. “I’m fine.”

 “What happened?”

 “I panicked a little. But it’s alright. Tadashi took me to the emergency room and I got stitched up in no time. Right as rain.”

 Reki’s expression went stormy, “Tadashi took you?”

 Langa turned his hands, fit his fingers over Reki’s mouth. “Not because Adam didn’t want to. It’s complicated. He felt bad about it, I promise. It’s okay, Reki. It was just an accident.”

 Reki believed him, kissed his fingertips where they still rested over his lips, and huffed out a frustrated noise. “I don’t want you getting hurt, Langa. This is the same shit as before and I want you fucking -”

 Langa’s laugh was bright and unexpected, still rare in its verbosity. “No, I can promise you this is nothing like before. Trust me.”

 Later that night Reki’s fingers worked fast over the touch screen of his phone;

[Text to Adam:] hurt him like that again and they wont be able to find all your pieces

[Text from Adam:] Don’t be jealous, Third Wheel. It’s a shitty look on you.

 ⛓❄⛓

 Reki did trust Langa. He trusted him with everything he had, with everything he was. And Langa was happy. For all of his bruises and pains and cuts, he came home from his visits every week or so sated and loose-limbed in a way that Reki could only remember having seen on him under street lights, stretched out and panting after landing tricks that felt impossible beneath the watchful eyes of the stars.

 That must have been why, when Langa came home with what was very clearly not a skateboarding injury, Reki saw red, blood boiling hot and livid with a rage that ached all through.

 “He’s fucking you? You’re letting him. Fuck. You.”

 Reki had his hands fisted in the collar of Langa’s shirt, had him pulled down to his face in a vice-like grip that threatened to tear the fabric at its seams. Beneath the stretched opening was a bruise in the shape of teeth, skin so close to broken it looked almost black at the spots Reki could almost see Adam’s teeth sinking.

 Langa looked confused, his eyes searching across Reki’s face for something. His words were careful, hushed, and so so quiet. 

 “Reki we… you said this was okay.”

 “What the hell are you talking about?”

 Langa wrapped his hands around Reki’s wrists, turned his head to press his lips to Reki’s palm only to have them wrenched from his clothing as quickly as they’d been put there.

“Don’t fuckin’ touch me. I don’t know how to handle this right now I-” he scanned the room, brushed his hair back from his face, spun, and took a few hard steps away. “Stay here. I just- I need space for a minute.”

 He had his hands on the deck of one of the boards they kept lined up and neat by the door before Langa had fully dropped his hands. He wasn’t sure if the click of the door or the sound of his knees hitting the floor was louder.

 It was hours before Reki was home, the street lights flickering out with the rising of the sun as he shut the door quietly behind himself. He toed his shoes off and found Langa tear sodden but still awake, wrapped into himself in the corner of the couch.

 “Reki-”

 The redhead held up a scraped palm, condensed it into a single finger. “We need coffee. But then we’re gonna talk.”

 Langa nodded, scrubbed the heels of his hands over his eyes, and nodded somehow harder. When Reki turned to make his way into the kitchen he paused and waited, watched over his shoulder as Langa unfolded himself from the couch and climbed to his feet. When they stood together in the doorway Reki reached out scarred and calloused fingers to the place they both knew a bite lay blooming beneath layers of mindfully chosen fabric. 

 “I want you to tell me everything”

 ⛓❄⛓

[spicycreativity]

Soft-Shoe Shuffle - Ch 10

Chapter: 10/12 Additional Notes: See Ch 1 for more information. Read on AO3 under "WizardGlick." Any formatting/italics errors are holdovers from AO3 that I was too lazy to fix. Chapter Content Warnings: N/A; ask to tag Excerpt: "I'm the scary one," Remus muttered in Janus' ear. "Not you. So don't ever scare me like that again, okay?" Janus considered the humor-to-consequences ratio of falling limp in Remus' arms and decided it wouldn't be worth it. "I won't."

If it all falls down, falls down, falls down

I can warm a crowd, I can make them shout

I can juggle verbs, adverbs, and nouns

I can make them dance 'til they all fall down

Janus woke up exhausted, which really wasn't fair considering the amount that he'd been sleeping lately.

Someone was stroking his hair, which was nice. Probably Remus. Remus wouldn't care that Janus' hair was stiff with dried sweat and that he hadn't brushed his teeth in who even knew how many days.

He shifted and nuzzled Remus' thigh.

Realization dawned slowly. Remus' nails were longer than this, Remus didn't smell like this, Remus had never sat still like this.

Janus couldn't even bring himself to be embarrassed at the mix-up. He was too tired and sore to really care who was petting his hair like this.

Except that it was probably Patton.

Subconsciously, Janus pulled the teddy bear closer to his chest. It had to be subconscious, because he would never cuddle a stuffed toy on purpose.

Janus opened his eyes.

Patton withdrew his hand like he'd been burned. "I'm sorry," he said, cheeks coloring. "Did I wake you up?"

Janus shook his head. His skin still tingled where Patton had touched him and he wanted it back so badly , but he didn't know how to ask.

"Remus made me promise I'd go get him next time you woke up. Well. Logan made me promise. Remus threatened me. Anyway!" Patton was already halfway to the door.

He was gone before Janus found his voice. "Don't go," Janus whispered to the air.

A moment later, Remus came barreling in with Logan in hot pursuit. Then came Virgil, then Patton again, and finally Roman.

Logan lunged forward to try to catch the back of Remus' shirt, but he was just a split second too late. Janus braced for impact, but Remus only fell on his knees by the bedside and pulled Janus into a tight hug.

"Awww," Patton cooed from the doorway.

"I'm the scary one," Remus muttered in Janus' ear. "Not you. So don't ever scare me like that again, okay?"

Janus considered the humor-to-consequences ratio of falling limp in Remus' arms and decided it wouldn't be worth it. "I won't."

Remus pulled back and made a lewd hand gesture. "Scout's honor?"

Janus manipulated Remus' fingers into the correct position and held his own hand up as well. "Scout's honor."

Remus nodded in apparent satisfaction, so Janus grabbed his shoulder and used it to haul himself upright. Virgil and Patton fidgeted by his desk while Roman leaned against the doorway and Logan hovered behind Remus.

"Well," Janus said, trying to sound better than he felt. "As you can see, I've died. Virgil will handle my estate, so please direct your concerns to him."

"Like I want all your pretentious steampunk crap," Virgil mumbled, looking around at the leather and brass and hardwood.

"It's art deco," Janus and Logan said at the same time, albeit with very different intonation.

Janus squinted at Logan, who seemed to take this as his cue to speak. "You need to eat something."

"Like a dick!" Remus crowed.

Janus sighed, expecting an uproar, but nothing more dramatic than general collective eye-rolling and awkward throat-clearing occurred in response.

Logan carried on, "Something light like chicken broth or dry toast." He cocked an eyebrow, indicating that this was a question.

"Goodness, however shall I choose," Janus said, trying and failing to keep the venom out of his voice. He did better on stage than he did under a microscope, yet here everyone was, studying him. It was all he could do not to squirm.

Patton's voice echoed in his ears suddenly:

He never asks for anything, he just talks around it until you figure it out on your own.

"Could you…" Janus balled both hands into fists. "I want…" He squeezed his eyes shut and expelled a breath through his nose."I just love that you're all in here staring at me. It's not awkward at all. " He fixed his gaze on the ceiling, only just managing to hold back a frustrated curse. Another failure. Another reason for the others to go back to hating him.

"Oh, gosh!" Patton said, but he didn't sound hurt or angry. "We're sorry; it's probably overwhelming to have us all in here at once, huh?"

Janus nodded, not trusting himself to speak. The feeling had grown uncomfortably familiar as of late.

"We'll let Logan look you over," Patton said. He shuffled out of the room after Roman, waving for Virgil to follow him.

Remus winked and wiggled his tongue at Janus. "Have fun playing doctor." He bounded out and shut the door behind him.

"So," Janus said, fidgeting with one of the teddy bear's ears. "He and Roman can stand to be in the same room as each other now?"

"It helps that they were both quite worried about you," Logan said. A pause. "As was I." He preoccupied himself clearing off a space on Janus' nightstand, willing a plate of dry toast into existence, then methodically taking the cap off a bottle of Gatorade and inserting a white bendy straw.

"Plastic straws are killing the sea turtles, you know," Janus said.

Logan looked at him, puzzled. "Rest assured, this one will not and indeed, cannot find its way into the water supply." A moment later he said, "Oh. You were making a joke."

"It's polite to laugh."

"Please excuse my rudeness, then."

Janus smiled. "I think Remus likes you," he said to cut the tension.

Logan tilted his head at the nightstand. "Why?"

Janus took the hint and began pulling the crust off a piece of toast. "I just have a feeling."

"Hm." Logan thinned his lips, but did not press the issue.

"Logan?"

"Yes?"

"What happened? When I was…"

"Incapacitated?"

"Sure."

Logan pushed up his glasses. "You were in a state of delirium for approximately five days. What is the last thing you remember?"

"Clearly? I had a conversation with Patton about… certain choices I had made in regards to Roman." Logan raised an eyebrow but did not interrupt. "It gets hazy after that. You and Patton were in my room, I think. And… I'm not totally sure this happened, but I seem to recall trying to apologize to Roman."

Logan nodded. "You did. Then you fainted in his room, and the ensuing chaos actually led to the temporary resolution of several interpersonal conflicts we had been experiencing."

"Just according to plan," Janus said, steepling his fingers. Logan didn't laugh. "Another joke."

"Please eat your toast."

"Alright, alright." Janus finished picking the crust off one slice and took a hesitant bite.

"Good." Logan nodded in approval. "To further answer your question, Remus has enacted a truce with Patton, Roman, and Virgil. Which essentially means that he agreed to 'tone down' his more distracting behaviors and the others would refrain from, ah…" Logan checked his note cards. "'Getting their strawberry-flavored edible panties in a twist'."

Janus nearly choked on his toast and made a hasty grab for the Gatorade. "How sweet."

"Yes, the sugar content of Blue Cherry Gatorade is regrettably rather high-- Oh. Yes, I suppose it was rather nice of everyone. Virgil also ceased his self-isolation for the sake of seeing you and talked a little about his feelings, as did Roman."

"Hmph." Janus shoved the rest of the toast in his mouth so he wouldn't have to talk. It had been his goal to fix everything, but not quite like this. Not at all like this, actually. He had become another piece on the chessboard, and not even a powerful piece like the queen. No, he was more like a bishop, moving laterally to move forward. And now he had no idea how to get what he wanted.

"Interestingly," Logan said. "I believe it was your involuntary display of vulnerability that led the others to treat each other more gently.

"I get it, I'm the hero," Janus said sourly. Hooray, he'd solved Patton's problems by running around like an idiot. How impressive.

"I was… I was trying to make you feel better."

Janus smiled despite himself. "Thank you. Really."

"Something is bothering you," Logan said. "I can't tell what it is. I had thought you might feel embarrassed, but you are handling matters very calmly, despite the fact that you have a tendency to raise your voice and lash out when agitated or threatened. This leads me to believe you are experiencing a different negative emotion, but I cannot identify what it is or why." Logan paused and cleared his throat, his eyes downcast. "This bothers me because you are my friend."

"I couldn't possibly be tired," Janus snapped, realizing a split second later he'd inadvertently proven Logan's point. "Oh."

Janus sighed and flicked over his metaphorical king, albeit in his own way. "I'm not thinking about all the ways a relationship with Patton could go horribly wrong."

"But you have a relationship with Patton--" Logan's eyes widened. "I see. Are you concerned that your feelings are unrequited?"

"Well, that and the opposite."

"I don't follow."

"Virgil told me that if I break Patton's heart, he'll break me . Literally."

"You're afraid of Virgil ?"

Janus ran his fingers over his temple and took in a breath while he waited for Logan to put the pieces together.

"You're afraid you'll hurt Patton."

"I'm not exactly known for my communication skills."

"Have you tried speaking sincerely instead of hiding your intentions with sarcasm?"

"No , the thought has never crossed my mind."

Logan smiled. "It was a joke."

Janus didn't hiss at him.

Logan continued, "I do think you should try to be honest with Patton."

"Easier said than done."

"But it can be done."

"I'll...think about it." Janus waved a hand to dismiss the topic.

[keanu-fics]

Bad Attitude

A John Wick fic

So I wrote a 3k word fic instead of a 2k word essay due on Monday.

Just violence in this one. You work at a bar and start meeting John during your smoke breaks, not knowing who he is.

It was late night and you were having a smoke outside a bar. The same shitty bar that you worked at and would not finish your shift for another couple hours. You were leaning against a dirty wall of the bar, feeling its coolness through the thin fabric of your uniform. Your work top was white, and you were secretly hoping it would get so filthy, that the men inside the bar would stop hitting on you and slapping your ass. The taste of the cigarettes was not enjoyable for you, but it was the only way you could get an extra break during your shifts. How unfair was it that you could get special treatment just for being a smoker?

You looked up while blowing out smoke and could see stars through the tiny space between the tall buildings of New York City. You used to stargaze when you were younger, living in a countryside, studying to be a doctor, hoping for a better tomorrow. The sound of footsteps drew you away from your reminiscing. You could see a tall figure dressed in a black suit walking away from the Continental Hotel, that was across the street from your bar. Anyone who stays at a hotel like that, would never drink at a place like this.

You did not know much about the Continental. There were rumours about it, but you did not believe them. The man was now closer and definitely walking towards you. His suit fit him perfectly and you could tell that he was someone who would spend his evening drinking expensive Scotch, not the watered-down piss you sold. You looked away as he was only a few feet away now, not wanting him to know you had been staring at him.

The man stopped nearby where you were smoking and from the corner of your eye, you could see him reach into his pocket and pull out a pack of smokes. He took one out and you could feel his stare.

“You have light?” he asked you.

You glanced in his direction, “No.” you said abruptly and looked away again. You had your lighter on you, but you were not going to play his game. He was probably looking for a one-night stand. These rich guys were always into weird shit.

The man only smiled to himself and reached back into his pocket, took out a lighter and went ahead to light his cigarette. “John.” he mumbled, with the cigarette between his lips.

“Pleasure.” you said with a piercing sarcasm, took one last drag of your cigarette and flicked it on the ground that was already littered with cigarette butts.

“You are a real delight.” he pointed out.

What was his problem? You were not here to exchange snarky one-liners. “I get that a lot.” you gave him one last glance before going back inside the bar.

The rest of your shift was as dehumanising as it usually gets. Drunk regulars demanding your attention, some drunk women demanding free drinks because it was apparently one of their birthdays. A glass being thrown across the bar and a bar fight about to erupt, but the two men were all talk, no fists.

Your manager left it all for you to clean up once everyone was gone. You knew he would try to get away with not paying you the overtime, but Derek was a coward and you would deal with him tomorrow. It took you a good half an hour to get everything sorted and up to the low standards of the bar. The floor was always covered in spilled drinks and broken glass.

Since then you have seen John more frequently during your shifts. He would always show up during your smoke breaks. Sometimes he would already be waiting outside, smoking, and you had a feeling that he had been waiting. You would always exchange about two sentences worth and never acknowledge him more than necessary.

After about two weeks of his very random appearances, you felt you were almost looking forward to seeing him every evening. You would occasionally smile at him, but still not talking much, liking the silence between you two. But then one night your smoke break was over and he did not show up. You took one more break, smoking two cigarettes in a row just to buy yourself more time, but still no John. It was the same for the next week. He would not show up again.

Another night, after you had finished your close you were walking home while texting a guy you met yesterday, even though you were positive he only wanted sex. And what the hell, you have not been with anyone in almost a year. You smiled when he offered for you to come over and watch your favourite horror film, but the invitation was immediately followed by a dick pic. You were about to block the guy, when you heard low grunting from further ahead. You looked up, ready to dial 911 if it turned out to be a pervert.

It was John. He was limping and holding his side with his hand. He was looking down at the pavement and had to stop for a moment and lean against a fence for support. He looked like he was in agony.

“John.” you whispered to yourself. You stuffed your phone in your pocket and ran towards him. “John, John, hey.” you spoke to him softly, grabbing him under his armpits, preventing him from sliding onto the ground. “You’re okay.” You were now trying to pull him to his feet.

He either recognised your voice, because there was no way he could see out of his swollen eye, or he was willing to trust anyone right now to get him help. He grabbed your arm firmly and stood up with your help.

“Do you want me to take you to the hospital?”

“No!” he said resolutely, and you were not going to waste time arguing. You did not know what kind of trouble he got himself into, but questions later.

“Okay, c’mon.” you groaned as you were supporting his body weight, starting to make some steady progress towards your apartment.

You got him up the stairs by a pure miracle you thought, but he must have had so much more fight in him despite his current state. You opened the front door to your tiny flat, that consisted of a living room practically inside your kitchen, with a large old couch and no TV. You helped him onto the couch and he practically sank into it with a heavy sigh of relief.

“Okay, okay…” you were mumbling to yourself as you locked the door behind you. You ran into the bathroom where you kept a first aid kit and brought it to the living room. You could not see anything through John’s dark clothing, you only saw pools of blood soaked into his clothes and getting rubbed off on your couch. You loosened his tie and moved it to the side and started unbuttoning his black vest and shirt. Immediately you could see more blood. You did not want to move him before inspecting the injuries, so you cut the fabric off and saw what looked like a bullet hole. “Shit, John.” you mumbled, knowing how much this would hurt getting stitched up.

“I still don’t know your name.” he croaked, chuckling to himself. You thought he was close to passing out, so the question took you aback.

“Y/N.” you answered.

“Thank you.” he said, smiling.

You rolled your eyes and grabbed a bottle of alcohol.

“I’m sorry John.” you mumbled, before starting treating the wound. You cleaned it to make sure the bullet was not still in his body, but of course it was. His screams were loud, and he was slipping in and out of consciousness while you were working on getting the bullet out and stitching him up. After you had bandaged him, you carefully undressed him, looking for any more wounds, but he seemed alright.

He seemed delirious, but you helped him up on his feet again and dragged him to your bed. You tucked him in and were so exhausted yourself, you quickly fell asleep on the couch.

 In the morning you woke up first. You have not slept much but you felt high on adrenaline. You peaked in through the bedroom door to make sure John was okay. You never shut the curtains last night, so a pool of morning light was illuminating John’s face. Only then you realised how beautiful he really was. His beard perfectly framing his face, his expression soft now that he was sleeping. You had no idea who he has pissed off or who he was in a gun fight with but somehow, he still looked innocent, even caked in dried blood.

You quietly closed the bedroom door behind you and went to make yourself some coffee and toast. John was still asleep by lunch time and you decided he must wake up soon, so you started cooking and squeezing fresh orange juice just for him.

When everything was ready, you heard noises from your bedroom and soon after John came out. He was wearing his bloodied suit, but since his shirt was cut into pieces from you attending to his first aid yesterday, he was wearing his black jacket over a naked torso.

John was standing in the middle of your small living room/kitchen, staring you down. “Y/N.” he said, his eye looking so much better than yesterday.

You could not believe he remembered your name. You were sure the physical pain from yesterday would cause him to block out most of last night.

He looked around your place, seeing his dried blood on your couch. The coach was so old and a disgusting shade of green, some blood stains were not going to make it look any worse. He spotted his shoes next to the couch and practically dove for them.

“So much for thanks.” You lashed out, eyeing him angrily.

“I’m so sorry, Y/N, I owe you my life, but I have to run.” He made his way across the room, standing in front of you, cupping your cheek. “I’ll be back later.”

He said softly and suddenly he was out the front door.

“What are you talking about?” you yelled after him, later turning your freshly squeezed juice into a screwdriver.

 ~~~~~

Being a woman, you had plenty of experience getting rid of blood from fabric, but the dried blood on your bed sheets was now so old, it would not come off. You left the old sheets out to dry and took a nap before work.

At work you did not take a smoke break. You did not want to in case you ran into John. The way he just ran away like that, after you had saved his life. Who does that?

Your shift was coming to and end and your hands were trembling with how desperately you wanted a cigarette. You kept telling yourself you were not an addict, you only smoked for that extra work break. But apparently your body was getting hooked on nicotine.

You took a tray of beers to a group of older guys, who were rowdy and extremely inappropriate with you, but they were also regulars so you had to behave yourself. After excusing yourself and tightly hugging the tray against your chest, probably in a subconscious attempt to hide yourself behind it, you could see one of the guys getting ready to smack your ass. You squinted your eyes, but the slap never came. You turned around and saw John, holding the guy by his wrist, looking absolutely ballistic.

“What the fuck do you think you’re doing?” John hissed at the guy and you saw all of his other bald friends immediately stand up. They were angered and John was not letting go of the guy’s hand. “Apologise.”

“I don’t think that will be necessary.” One of the guys snapped back at John, cracking his knuckles. John let go of the first guy’s hand and clenched his fists.

Derek was standing behind the bar, pretending to be busy, but once he saw what was going on in his bar, he ran over to the group. “Hey, hey, fellas, you will take this outside!” he commanded, smirking at John who was not a regular here and would probably get killed out there with all these guys jumping him.

The group nodded, leaving their drinks at the table, heading outside to beat the shit out of John. You grabbed John’s hand, stopping him. “John, please don’t.” you pleaded. He certainly looked like someone who could take care of himself, but not against six other men.

He cupped your check with his other hand, a familiar gesture from earlier. You then watched him walk out the door, your heart breaking.

“Y/N, you got customers to serve.” Derek snarled at you and you considered his words for a moment.

You looked up at him, anger in your eyes, throwing your apron at his feet. “You know what, Derek, fuck you.” You did not know if you were quitting or if you would come back tomorrow, begging for your job back, but all you could feel right now was anger. “I will be back for my tips later.” You exclaimed, heading outside. Not that you ever got a lot of tips.

You made it outside quickly and you were ready to throw yourself between John and those assholes, knowing you might get hit, but they would not beat up a girl.

Instead you walked into a bunch of guys groaning on the ground, the rest running away drunkenly. John was standing in front of you, not another scratch on him, apart from the yesterday’s cuts and bruises. You were looking at John in shock, unsure of what had happened.

“They fight sloppy.” Was all he said before fixing a crease on his suit. “You finished your shift?” he asked and as you nodded, he put his arm around your waist, deciding to take you somewhere nicer for a drink.

[piipedreams]

47 + Sharon plus anyone! Your choice!

(it’s shillam again bc i’m weak n i love them. pls send all ur love to @artificialmeggie for checking through this for me too pls. also i’m on mobile bc i’m on holiday so sorry if this is horribly formatted)

for the prompt: “no one needs to know”

“FUCK!” Sharon exclaims, lashing blindly at her altar before storming to the other side of the room, her enraged stomps drowning out the sound of things tumbling over. She thinks about giving up entirely and throwing herself into the hammock Aquaria had insisted on erecting only to never use, but the combination of her current lack of luck and her lack of faith in her daughter’s carpentry skills convince her otherwise. Thus, she resigns herself to lying face-down on the wooden floor, booting the ground with the toe of her scuffed Dr Martens just for good measure.

“And you wonder where I get my dramatic streak from…” drawls an all-too-familiar and all-too-frustrating voice. Sharon’s daughter Aquaria is perched like a princess upon Sharon’s king-size bed, lounging back against a plethora of throw pillows and lazily waving a hand in the air supposedly to dry her nails. Sharon loves the little nightmare, she really does, but she’s not in the mood, knows that she’ll snap if she opens her mouth to respond and doesn’t want to put that on her. Luckily, Aquaria knows her all too well, not even giving her a chance to retaliate.

“Oh, and be careful with the altar. If you kick a candle over and set the place on fire I’m not taking the blame like I did when you burnt dinner last year. We’re both too old for that now, it’d be embarrassing.”

Aquaria is ten.

Sharon still doesn’t dignify her words with a coherent response, letting out a long, low groan just to remind her daughter of her current suffering and torment. She hears the sound almost immediately echoed from the bed, is unsure whether she’s being mocked or watching her daughter become herself and is unable to discern which option she’d hate more.

Lifting her head, she watches Aquaria flounce off the bed and flick her long, blonde hair over her shoulder with purpose, tiny heels clacking as she makes her way across the room, pausing to reassemble Sharon’s altar with what Sharon just knows is a hidden eye-roll. The little brat.

“Fine,” she announces in a sharp, impatient tone, as though Sharon had just made a decision or request she wasn’t aware of. As well as her flair for the dramatics, it seemed the kid had also inherited Sharon’s general distaste and impatience regarding other people. She was so proud. “If you’re not gonna talk to me, I’ll go and fetch somebody else for you to rant to.” And with those words she struts out of the room, her little wedge heels clicking against the wooden floors and her hair bouncing behind her, completely ignorant as Sharon calls out half-arsed protestations in an attempt to change her mind, get her to stay instead.

“Well don’t you look fucking pathetic?”

“No. Not you.” The smugness of the voice she hears, clearly revelling in the sight of Sharon, collapsed and defeated at her feet, kills any trust she had in her daughter. Because she could not have made a worse call than fucking Willam if she was really trying to provide her with any modicum of emotional support. When people told her having a kid would be the catalyst of her long impending breakdown, she’d never imagined this would be how. The little traitor.

The sound of stilettos, almost definitely red bottoms, grows louder and a pang of dread blossoms in her heart as she hears the woman approach, flippant and sarcastic in all the worst ways as she exclaims “Wow, okay. I thought we were friends!”

Sharon doesn’t have fucking time for her and her dumb games. “You thought wrong.”

Apparently Willam doesn’t have time for her either though, because her snickering suddenly stops, toes digging under Sharon’s side and then lifting as though trying to push her up, obviously to no avail.

“Get up.”

Sharon tries to ignore the way such a demand makes her jaw clench and muscles tighten somewhat.

“No,” she groans in response, long and whiny, determined to be as difficult for Willam as possible, to wield all her brattish and stubborn parts like a weapon and prolong the experience as much as she possibly can. It’s probably petty, definitely antagonistic, but she’s still frustrated and maybe Aquaria is smarter than she’d thought because she’d provided her mother with the greatest outlet - someone to wind up.

She relishes in the aggravated sigh she gets in return. “Get off the fucking floor and into that fucking hammock.”

The bite of the demand, the scratchy growl underlying in Willam’s voice as she speaks so plainly and apathetically, as though Sharon is nothing more than a mild inconvenience that won’t behave does something to Sharon. It’s the indifference of her voice, the way it essentially yells that she knows exactly what to do with Sharon, how to deal with her and why and that she has no doubt she’ll execute this control flawlessly causes a stir inside the woman, her teeth grinding ever so slightly and an involuntary shiver wracking her which seems to be the final straw.

Willam stamps her glitter Louboutins against the ground with enough force to snap the flimsy kitten heels in half, centimetres from Sharon’s head, her ankle brushing the outermost wisps of her hair in the movement and Sharon tries to ignore her body once again, biting back a whimper she knows would be pathetically high and embarrassingly needy as heat pools in her stomach. She mutters a resolute “fuck!” all hard vowels and spiked fricatives, finding comfort in the knowledge that Willam is just enough of a dumb blonde not to understand the true target of her exclamation.

Body protesting, she hauls herself to her feet and plods obediently over to the mesh hammock that hangs low in the corner of the room. Despite her best efforts, she has to admit that perhaps Willam did have a somewhat decent idea, collapsing into the fabric after feeling the pull of temptation deep in her stomach and letting out a small, audible groan at the way her body is so graciously welcomed. Her muscles relax, the brain fog and electric anger causing her current storm-like state beginning to ebb away as she closes her eyes, lies back and just breathes, deep, heavy, slow, and full, like she has all the time and all the oxygen in the world to enjoy. For just a moment, she forgets her not-quite-friend is even there, losing herself in the onslaught of sensations and sinking into her own, private, relaxed little haven of a world. Hell, for a moment she almost considers thanking Willam, a notion that leaves her head almost as immediately as it crosses it, the thought broken apart entirely by the interruption of none other than the woman of the hour herself.

“Cute.” In spite of their differences, Sharon has always found great pride in being the only one smart enough to be able to decipher Willam’s different tones and meanings, always picking up on a fake comment, sarcasm and every tiny emotion bitten back behind polite, uncharacteristic words. But when she says that one, tiny little word, Sharon is lost completely, unable to recognise whether it’s her own intrusive and self-absorbed thoughts causing her to detect a chink in Willam’s armour of sarcasm, some modicum of genuine emotion and belief behind the comment. Once again, however, she reminds herself that this is not the time nor place and pushes every thought stemming from it to be suffocated in a dark, faraway corner in her mind. She traps every branch within the area and blocks it up, pressing a label onto the jar of thoughts declaring it for a rainy day. She starts to miss her pre-Willam irritation as the woman clears her throat and continues. “...Anyway. Budge over.”

Still on autopilot, her body made of clay that moulds itself to Willam’s words, she finds herself obliging before she’s even really processed the words or what they imply, body shuffling closer to the window. With just a half-second of hesitation, Willam gracelessly kicks off her heels and plops herself right next to Sharon, a little off-centre so the hammock swings slightly as her shoulder collides with Sharon’s chest, grappling helplessly for an anchor to the rocking fabric and finding it, unfortunately, in Sharon’s t-shirt, her fingers clinging so tightly to the neckline that the tips dig into the soft flesh of her tits. A small part of Sharon - a wayward thought that had just about escaped the rainy day trap - secretly hopes that Willam has pressed hard enough to leave little marks in her skin, a visual reminder of her touch, the collision of her body with Sharon’s.

As the choppy movements of the hammock slow and eventually still, Willam begins to maneuver herself into a more comfortable position, rolling onto her front and overlapping the leg closest to her with her own. Her grip on Sharon’s top remains tight, her body seemingly trying to accommodate that one point of contact in the most convenient and comfortable way, resting her head atop and then above Sharon’s shoulder when the former doesn’t work out, face tilted towards her so that her breath bats softly against Sharon’s cheek and the slight bulge of her small chest pressed against Sharon’s left arm, rendering it dead and absolutely useless. Not that Sharon minds. Not that Sharon’s not going to pretend she does mind.

“Uh…. Will?” she asks cautiously, humiliated by the way her voice cracks ever so slightly, how overall delicate and gentle it sounds. Willam bumps against her in acknowledgement. Every part of her body that has the luxury of feeling Willam’s burns, the originally warm feeling growing more scalding and deadly the more she thinks about and accepts it. So she tries to amp it up a bit, this time almost obnoxiously loud and abrupt as she asks, “What the fuck are you doing?”

“Cuddling you.” She halts for a moment as though that’s it, a horrendously obvious and yet cryptic answer, smirking at Sharon’s disapproving frown. Apparently, the expression was yet another step too far, and the stirring in her stomach starts up once again, this time the heat a result of a chemical reaction as lust and fear mingle together in the most addictive of ways as Willam’s face hardens, eyes stony and cold, her whole demeanour, despite being wrapped around Sharon, clearly indicating her aggravation. When she speaks, it’s snappy and abrupt again, the Willam that Sharon knows and therefore knows how to deal with - a no-nonsense bitch with a heart layered with stone and gold that knows exactly what she’s doing and why, and that it’s not really any of your business, thank you very much.

“Fine!” she snaps, eyes rolling so hard it’s a wonder she doesn’t do herself permanent damage. “I tried to be nice about it!” Sharon isn’t sure whether to believe that, the push and pull between them being so off and inconsistent all day that she’s actually never felt more on edge around Willam yet somehow never felt more comfortable around her either. She’s not so sure how nice that really is. “Like it or not, you’re a repressed little dyke who’s throwing her toys out her pram like a fucking toddler because she needs a hug and she’s touch starved by other woman. I’m trying to deliver.”

This time, the heat that had been pooling in her stomach doesn’t burn her or frighten her, instead spreading through her body as an almighty warmth, accomplices to the warm arms that wrap around her as Willam finishes speaking. It’s horrifyingly difficult not to react, as always with Willam, for an entirely different reason. Because Sharon has always prided herself on understanding Willam and the emotions and messages underlying in her words, and this one is clear as day - Willam cares. She notices, knows Sharon even if neither of them like the thought of that, and cares enough to want to help even when she knows she’s going to get nothing good out of it️. Sharon had wondered why of all people Aquaria had approached Willam, but the painstaking tenderness of her words and her touch leaves her wondering whether Aquaria even asked her at all, a thought far too exhilarating for her to continue thinking. Nevertheless, she makes a mental note to thank her daughter when she eventually returns, considering that maybe the new sewing machine she’d been begging for isn’t too expensive after all. Her head spins as she bites back a grin, trying to return to her permanently antagonistic state and diffuse the tension between them so thick, palpable and tangible it feels like a weapon.

“This is still too weird.” Her tone is so unconvincing, so wobbly and quiet and indirect she doesn’t even believe herself. Willam snickers.

“Well suck it up, bitch, I’m not here to ruin your image! No one needs to know Emo Goddess 666 needs a good hug sometimes.” She shuffles closer, every bitchy and humorous facade long gone from her expression. The thought of such vulnerability and trust between them threatens to swallow Sharon whole. Willam winks, nosing at Sharon’s chin as the arm clutching Sharon’s shirt finally releases the garment and rests lazily over the woman’s waist, a warm, protective anchor against all the shit she’s thought all day, week, year. “Or that she gets them.”

This time Sharon hums, too content and heavy-lidded to try and muster up a response. In another universe, she corrects Willam, reminds her that she’s goth, not emo, biting her lip and squeezing her thighs together as Willam tells her to shut the fuck up before she makes her. In this universe, however, Willam accepts the hum as a sign of Sharon’s begrudging complacency and trust, the sparks of hope that signify a new beginning almost visible were it not for how deeply she’d buried her face into the crook of Sharon’s neck at this point, the two of them entangled as though they belong this way. And maybe they do, so Willam pushes her luck, it seems.

“Hey, how about a kiss too?”

[marmolady]

Home, Sweet Home

Book/Series: Endless Summer

Main Pairings: Estela x MC/Taylor (f)

Summary: Post-ending. This follows on directly from my fic ‘Broken Chains’, but should be easily enough to ‘get’ without reading it first. Estela is returning home to her tio in San Trobida at last, bringing Taylor and Jake along with her. For Taylor, it is the beginning of a search for belonging outside of the only world she’s ever known.

Warnings: Coarse language

Word Count: 6345

Reviews and reblogs are hugely appreciated!

Tagging: @brightpinkpeppercorn @sceptilemasterr @bbaba-yagaa@edgydepressedchoicesthot @endlesssummerfan@blightarts @princessstellaris @acidsugar0 @taramitch96

Taylor jiggled her leg erratically, glancing as she did between the aeroplane window and Estela.

“You don’t have to be so nervous…” Estela leaned in to kiss her. “He’s gonna like you.  Just… don’t expect it overnight.”

Groaning, Taylor slumped deeper into her chair. “He’s gonna grill me to death.”

“Yup.”

She buried her head in her hands as Jake laughed beside her.

“You’re doomed, Princess…”

“Get off her, cabron; it’s you who’s gonna have to work for it. You’re not half as likeable.”

“Ouch.”

The pilot -not Jake, the competent one flying the plane- announced the beginning of their descent, and all at once, Taylor was not the only one with apprehension showing in her face.

“Hey…” she urged, taking Estela’s hand in her own. “Don’t look so worried; it’s not as if we’ve got that idiot flying us this time.”

“Wait- is this what I’ve got to look forward to? You two takin’ shots at me all day?”

Taylor smirked; poking fun at Jake was good for settling her own butterflies. “That and watching us make out… yeah. That’s pretty much what you’ve signed up for, Top Gun. Get used to it.”

Estela was quiet. She was excited to see her tio again, to see her home again, but it meant returning to an existence that belonged to someone who was no longer her. Would that closed-off, fatally single-minded person creep back up on her, taking her over and send her back into a hell of furious despair? Where did this new, healed Estela fit into the world she’d left behind? There was so much her tio didn’t know… so much she’d have to tell him…

A warm breath against her cheek, a fluttering kiss, and Estela was pulled from her thoughts.

“It’s… gonna be weird,” said Taylor gently, “but, like the best kind of weird. Which by now, I’m pretty sure is our specialty.” Putting on a brave face, she told herself resolutely that after everything she’d been through with Estela, going home should hardly constitute a challenge at all. They were going to be just fine.  

After a smooth landing that prompted another round of mocking Jake’s flying skills, the trio had to contend with passport checks; the part that Taylor- who’d been zapped into existence out of thin air- had been dreading. It seemed, however, that Vaanu was just as skilled at whipping up official documents as they were creating people, and she was nodded through security without a second glance. The trio finally emerged into the dingy, crowded airport with bags in tow, Jake trailing a few steps behind the two women who held hands for mutual support. As she spotted a grey-haired man waiting next to the barrier, Taylor let Estela’s hand go, and gave her a gentle nudge in the right direction.

Estela’s eyes met with those of the tall, grey-haired man, her beloved tio. Her breath caught in her throat. “Tio…” She lurched forward and let herself be captured in his arms, held with a loving intensity beyond anything she’d ever felt from him. It was as though he was back from the dead… and even as she felt those strong arms around her, she could barely accept that it was real.

“Oh, mija…” Nicolas took her face in his hands and stared at her, disbelieving, before kissing her on the forehead.

She cried, euphoric. After all this time, after all the worry she’d put him through, she was back home. “I can’t believe it’s you… I… I’m sorry.”

“My Estelita, you are home now.”

Hanging back beside Jake, Taylor had to dry her eyes. She’d risked everything for this moment, and it was worth it. Still, the nervousness that shook her body had reached fever pitch. With no relatives of her own, she needed Nicolas’ acceptance on a deep level. She felt Jake clap her on the shoulder.

“Come on, Princess, making friends with people is like your superpower. You won over Katniss in just a few days… and she was in full creepy loner mode. You’ll just knock him out with your magical friendship beams. Gotta put a patent on those, by the way.”

“That’s helping. Really,” Taylor responded, her voice dripping with sarcasm. It was true that she had an effortless way of getting along with people, but this wasn’t just people. This was her best shot at a family that she could always return home to.

Estela took her tio’s hand and led him to where Taylor and Jake waited for her. “I need you to meet someone…”

Seeing the tears in her wife’s eyes, Taylor’s first instinct was to reach out and hold her, but she instead mouthed a quick, “Are you okay?”. A tiny nod and a kiss to the side of her face gave her all the reassurance she needed.

“Tio, this is Taylor, my… my wife.” Estela’s face flushed with happiness and pride as she looked to the woman who made her heart soar. “Taylor, I’d like you to meet Tio Nicolas.”

Taylor could barely think over the sound of her heart pounding in her ears, but she collected herself enough to offer her hand and receive in return a firm handshake. “It means a lot to meet you at last,” she said, hoping her voice didn’t sound as shaky as it felt to her. “I know Estela loves and admires you so much.”

Scrutiny was clear in Nicolas’ eyes, but he nonetheless greeted her warmly. “It is clear you’ve made quite an impression yourself.”

Drawn into Estela’s arms, her safe place, Taylor immediately felt surer of herself. “We’ve been through a lot together,” she said simply.

Nicolas offered her a nod of acknowledgement before glancing to Jake, who’d held back a little. “So, you brought the pilot home?”

“She wore me down,” Jake said, and he held out his hand. This guy seemed all right; he had a definite no-nonsense air about him, which was hardly a surprise.

“Tio- Jake, Jake- Tio Nicolas.”

His eyes narrowed as he took Jake’s hand, but Nicolas shook it politely. “Dios, you can’t let her do that. Once you show that you’re weak, the upper hand is gone forever.”

“Ha. Don’ I know it.”

  In Nicolas’ car, a rust-bitten four-wheel-drive that had clearly seen better days, Taylor perched on the back seat with Jake, feeling it rocking ominously beneath her. She pulled at the seatbelt, but it wouldn’t come.

“Sorry, it’s a bit unstable,” said Estela, “but the two of you sitting on it should be enough weight to keep the back from collapsing.”

They drove out through the city, and with the windows down, their senses were assaulted by car horns blaring, the dirty scents of a developing urban landscape, the muggy air. It was an overload, so starkly different from anything Taylor had ever known. She took this new world in with wide eyes. It was bustling and busy, and beautiful, yet there was an undercurrent of danger; walls built high, windows barred, barbed wire atop every fence. There appeared to be no rules on the roads, with cars pulling in front of one another whenever the drivers saw fit. The loud honking of petulant road-users seemed never-ending.

Estela looked back to Taylor. “Are you okay?”

“I’m great… it’s amazing!”

“It’s home.”

The streets soon became less crowded, the roads quieter. Rainforest had been cleared for farmland, but Taylor saw glimpses of forest that reminded her of the tropics of La Huerta. They turned in to a sprawling compound, defended by armed guards and sharp wires overhanging the tall fences.

“Most people live in one of these,” Estela was saying. “It’s safer if you know who’s around. Even in here everyone is on their guard; when the war was going on, you never knew who you could trust.”

Nicolas nodded. “It is better now. Within the communities there is a sense of building something together. It is fragile, yes, but we have survived the worst.”

Jake was also taking in the surroundings with great curiosity. It had been hard to know what to expect- only rarely had he flown passengers to San Trobida, for most tourists were warned off. Warzones were not alien to him, but he’d not experienced the recovery that came afterwards.

A little while later, they pulled up near the beach, having opted for some fresh air after having been cooped up in the aeroplane. Home, Taylor and Jake had been told, was just a short walk away. A long day of travel, of harrowing goodbyes and new beginnings had taken its toll, and the three Catalysts were wrecked. The wind off the rough sea was wonderfully refreshing as they sat upon the sand, shoulder to shoulder.

Before Estela could truly relax, though, there were conversations that needed to be had.

“You don’t mind if I leave you for a little while?” She searched Taylor’s eyes, but she appeared to be taking everything in her stride. Her incredible Taylor… always rolling with whatever life threw her way.

“What-? No! No, of course not.” Taylor pulled her in for a delicate kiss and gave her an affirming squeeze. “There’s so much you’ve got to say to him; you need space to do that. I’m sure I’ll survive.”

Estela smiled appreciatively, and then rummaged in her pockets, pulling out a crinkled San Trobidan note. “Take this. If you keep walking to the river, there’ll be a place selling ice creams. Or I think there will be… it’s honestly been a while. But you should be able to find something if you’re hungry, okay? We’ll meet you both up that way when we’re done.”

“Cold desserts on a beautiful beach? Now I know I’ll somehow soldier on in your absence.” Taylor winked and tugged Estela back to her, just for a few moments more. Her expression became thoughtful, serious, and she saw it reflected in her lover’s eyes. “Take a deep breath…”

Letting Taylor guide her, Estela exhaled slowly. All that she had to tell her tio… it was not sunshine and rainbows. The devastation she’d felt when she discovered that it was a trusted friend who had mercilessly slaughtered her mother- Nicolas’ sister; she wished she could spare him the same heartbreak. She wished she could spare herself the pain of reliving it. And she had questions… had he known who her father was all along, or was it a secret even from him? If he didn’t know… would the revelation forever warp her in his eyes? The thought of what she’d been created from made Estela want to vomit. She couldn’t expect him to love her the same knowing whose blood coursed through her veins. And even beyond all that, how could she begin to explain Taylor?

Taylor cradled her wife’s face in her hands, stroking loose hair from her fearful eyes with gentle fingers. “…Estela…” she whispered. “I’m with you, my starlight. You’re strong enough for this.”

Though her eyes were determined, Estela’s breath shuddered as she reluctantly pulled away, wobbling slightly getting up on her feet. “Taylor… thank you. I’ll see you real soon. You’re good, cabron?”

“I can see a hammock, and a bar. I’m set.” He stood up and stretched, groaning dramatically, before giving her a playful shove which meant, his eye catching hers. It was something Jake had dreaded himself; the hard part of reuniting with family. As much as he desperately wished to go home, he couldn’t help but be silently glad he wasn’t the one having those conversations. Without saying another word, he knew she got the message; he was there for her.

Leaving their companions behind, uncle and niece walked side by side along the beach until they settled on a rocky outcrop, the foamy sea lapping at their feet.

Estela played with her hair. Where to even begin? “I guess this is easiest if I just go from when we landed on the island? I’ll get to the things that are important, but there’s so much… and you should know everything.”

“Whatever is comfortable,” said Nicolas, kindly. It was clear that his niece was happier within herself than she had been when he’d last seen her face, but knowing her purpose for going to La Huerta, that some of what she would recount would be difficult to share seemed inevitable. “In your own good time.”

“Right.” She bit her lip before beginning. “So, as we came in to land, we hit this storm…”

And she talked him through the eventful first weeks of her time on La Huerta; the deserted resort, her search for Rourke, the nature of the work being conducted on the island… and then the revelations that had brought her to her knees… the details of her mother’s murder… the truth about her own identity.

“…I just… I don’t understand why she didn’t tell me. My whole life, I thought she’d always be honest with me, that she could tell me everything. Didn’t I have a right to know I was…” Her voice cracked. “…his.” Hearing it out loud, Estela hunched up on herself, ashamed. “Did you… know?”

Nicolas grasped her shoulder tight and shook his head. “I didn’t know.” He stared out to sea, hurting for his niece. “I would not have kept it from you if I did. Your mom told me that you were unplanned and that the father was not interested; I didn’t need to know more than that. I’m sorry, mija.”

Unable to look at him, to see the disgust in her that would surely be on his face, Estela stared at her own hands as they wrung with anxiety.

“Estelita,” Nicolas’ hold on her shoulder became almost painful in his desperation to reassure her. “It has never mattered who your father was. You are you, not anything else. Look at me!”

Flinching, Estela’s gaze nervously darted to her tio’s face. There was no revulsion there… none at all. Her eyes closed as he stroked her cheek, smearing away the tear that ran down it.

“My little star. I could not be more proud of you. I love you.” He kissed her forehead. “No more tears.”

“I love you too. I’ve missed you so damn much.” Estela wiped her eyes with the back of her hand, and slowly breathed out the tension that had built up in her body.

Nicolas gave a quiet and affectionate laugh. “I missed you. In your absence, I have gotten far too accustomed to winning arguments. It is almost tiresome.”

She hugged him. Despite the blood she carried within her like some festering disease, he saw her no differently. Deep down she’d known he would love her the same, but some fears had no care for reason. How could she have ever doubted?

“Tell me about your esposa. The mysterious lady from the crystals. I see that when you look at her, your face is like sunshine.”

Estela’s cheeks flushed pink. This was a side to her that her tio had never seen, and it felt strange -yet liberating- to share it with him.

“She was always… different. I’d got so used to everyone being fearful of me, it sorta threw me off when she wasn’t… like at all. She was just curious. From that first night on La Huerta, Taylor… just seemed to care about me, wanting nothing in return but my friendship. Not needing any explanations for what I was on the island for, she wanted to help.” She gave a dry laugh. “I don’t even remember the last time someone genuinely wanted to be my friend. Maybe when I was, what, six? Anyhow, my gut told me I could trust her. And I had, uh, feelings for her, and it freaked me the hell out…”

“Ah, our Estelita with her first crush… I wish I could have seen you trying to flirt…” Nicolas teased, earning a jab in the arm.

“Shut up! And I did not try to flirt. I actually did everything I could to avoid that; I couldn’t be distracted. But then I had to rescue her from a hangar about to explode, and then the dumbass went and got bitten by a snake and I was sucking on her neck and…”

Nicolas roared with laughter, while Estela’s face turned flaming red. She slapped him over the head several times.

“Tio!”

“I’m sorry, I’m sorry! It just sounds like your worst nightmare.” He wiped tears from his eyes.

“It wasn’t my worst nightmare, but it shook me up. So, uh, we were preparing for the attack by the native people and stuff um… happened… between us.” She hastily cleared her throat as her face blushed even brighter. “And then I got it in my head… what I felt with her scared me, but it just might be, you know, worth it, if we could face the world together. I told her everything, and she should have freaked, she should have run away, but that wasn’t who she was… she wanted to be on my side. I wanted to be on hers. After that… I was with the other students, part of their group, and it was just the beginning…”

  “You know what’s weird?” Taylor was asking as she strolled along the unfamiliar beach.

Jake gave her a look. He’d known enough weird by now that it barely even registered. “Since this all started, better off askin’ what’s not weird.”

“Well, I guess that’s kind of it. There are people around. I don’t know them, and they’re not blue or green. It’s like… the real world. It’s just bizarre.” She glanced back the way they’d came. “I hope Estela’s all right; this talk’s got to be heavy.”

“Startin’ to sound like a broken record there, Princess. She’s fine. I’m sure she’ll put in a good word for you an’ all. C’mon, ice cream and a cold beer!”

The vendor huts along the beach reminded Taylor strongly of Colonnade Cove… then she remembered Estela commenting on the same. The thought made her smile to herself. Unlike Gurgi, these vendors had a well-developed sense of hospitality, with hammocks set up to entice beachgoers to stay and relax. When Taylor sank into one, tied up between two trees and hanging close enough to Jake’s that they could annoy one another with pokes and prods, she wondered how she’d ever find the energy to climb out again. As she licked her ice cream, she watched a group of children playing in the river that Estela had pointed out. Connecting a fast-moving flow into the choppy sea, the effect was a foaming watery playground that tugged the squealing kids off their feet with every step. The waters surrounding La Huerta had always been so placid -at least once Cetus was no longer around to influence things; San Trobida had a contrasting fierceness in its nature.

When she at last spotted Estela and Nicolas walking up to the beach, Taylor almost fell out of her hammock and ran, ignoring Jake’s laughing at her. Immediately swept up into Estela’s arms, she felt relief. Her wife’s eyes were red from the inevitable crying, but she seemed bright… happy.

“You missed me, then?”

“You left me with Jake. He convinced some guy to lend him his guitar… my ears are crying. Besides, I always miss you.”

Nicolas shook his head, laughing at them. “Dios! Not even an hour and we’ve got a Romeo and Juliet routine… Do you want some real food, or do you want to keep gazing into one another’s eyes?”

While Nicolas went to order an evening meal to share, Taylor and Estela headed to the shady trees overlooking the river, where Jake was waiting for them.

Estela could feel her wife waiting for her to speak.

“It was okay,” she said, “… I’m okay.” She leaned in for a kiss, and took Taylor’s hand in her own. “He knows about you. That you came from the prism energy that Mom was studying. I think I told him just about everything.” She saw the question in her eyes, the one that she would not push. “Tio didn’t know about Rourke. It was just… just Mom’s secret.”

Taylor stroked her cheek. “You look lighter in your face.”

“Now I’m not half expecting him to reject me, yeah. It was so stupid, but I needed to hear it from him that it didn’t change anything.”

“Anyone would be out of their mind not to love you to pieces…”

Estela rolled her eyes, but smiled. “Taylor… you’re so soft. They’re gonna eat you alive out here,” she joked.

“Rude. I have kicked your butt on more than one occasion…”

“…Shhhh! You don’t have to shout about it!” Estela laughed and went in for another kiss to shut her up, savouring the taste of Taylor’s slightly wind-chapped lips. When she reluctantly came away, she pressed her forehead against her love’s. “You’re not too overwhelmed by everything? It must be a shock to your system. It’s a shock to mine and I’ve lived here almost all my life…”

“I’m good, honest. It feels like a dream, and I think I’ll be absolutely wiped out by the time I get to bed, but it’s exciting. I can’t believe I’m here with you.” Taylor beamed, seeing pure happiness reflected in her wife’s face.

“I can’t believe it either.” Estela looked out onto her home, so much more beautiful for the time she’d spent away, and for the woman who now sat beside her. She exhaled, content. “All right, I’m gonna go get some drinks. Share a milkshake with me? The best in San Trobida.”

“That is not even a question. Thanks, love.”

“What about you? Don’t think I haven’t seen you eyeing up Tio’s rum.”

Jake rolled over and stretched out, falling onto his feet from the hammock. “Pretty sure a milkshake ain’t gonna cut it. Let’s see what ya’ve got that’s stronger.”

Taylor was soon joined by Nicolas, who sat upon a rock with his flask of rum, and met her eye with a scrutinising look.

“Hey, uh… thanks for dinner,” she said. “I didn’t even realise we haven’t eaten properly since breakfast.” Apparently, that gaze- the one that felt as though your soul was being stared right through- was a family trait. “Estela went to get drinks with Jake...” Her voice trailed off, and she tried not to wither under pressure.

Nicolas’ voice was sharp when he spoke. “She thinks a lot of you. That doesn’t happen very often. I need to hear it from you… what are your intentions with her?”

Taylor sat up straight, looking him dead in the eye. Forthcoming and direct to the point was the only approach to take; even if her stomach churned. This, she imagined, must be what going for a job interview was like… if the potential employer was a man capable of slicing her into pieces with a sword.

“Estela is… my world,” she said. “I want us to build a life together, side-by-side. I want to give her the future she deserves.”

“But what do you know of the future? You’ve never known anything else; I know what you are. What happens when you get out there in the world, and realise life would be easier without the baggage? You’re not trapped on the island any longer… you could walk away from her at any time.”

The questions rang like accusations, and Taylor felt herself get her back up, more than defensive… angry.

“I know she’s got baggage. I’ve got fucking baggage- I get it. But I know how damned privileged I am that she trusts me with every single part of her. That did not happen overnight- I earned that. And I will not hear an insinuation that I could ever, ever sacrifice her faith in me. When I say Estela means everything to me, I mean that she’s the first thing I think about when I wake up and the last thing before I go to sleep; I mean that she could offer me the slightest glance and it would be enough to give me the courage to fight an army; I mean that seeing her hurt is like a physical pain. Her heart is safe with me. Always.”

For several excruciatingly long moments, Nicolas held Taylor’s gaze in silence. Slowly, a crooked smile played on his mouth. “Well, you have a backbone to stand up for yourself, that’s something.”

“Do you think I’d be married to Estela if I didn’t? I’m nobody’s shrinking violet.”

The silver-haired man chuckled, but his sharp eyes retained the shadows of suspicion. “You’ll forgive me for being wary. My trust is not something I give easily.” He studied her, curious. She spoke with passion, and with the stories Estela had told him, it was hard to doubt that her word was true. To see his niece so happy… at peace within herself after all this time… he wanted to believe in this person who’d shown her the way. More than anything, he wanted this to be real, for the niece he’d so desperately tried to protect all her life.

“I understand,” Taylor said steadily, thankful that her outburst hadn’t backfired. “It’s been a long time that you’ve been the only person in her corner. After everything that’s happened… I guess I’d be protective too. I just hope you’ll see what she means to me.” She offered her hand, biting back her nerves. When Nicolas took it, a glint in his eye, she almost gave an outward sigh of relief. Of course, Estela was right; this wouldn’t happen instantly, but she now had faith that in time, it would fall into place. Acceptance. They were, after all, family now.

“I am looking forward to knowing you, mi sobrina en la ley.”

“Tio! No puedes interrogarla en cuanto me doy la vuelta!”

Nicolas just laughed as Estela stormed over, her eyes flashing dangerously. “Niña, ella está bien! We were just talking; my heart breaks that you don’t trust your old tio… Can I not get to know Esposita? She is my niece now, no?”

Seeing that Taylor was unruffled, the blazing fire left Estela’s eyes as quickly as it had come. The fact that her tio was already speaking of Taylor with a term of endearment was encouraging. She hmphed. “Maybe I’m a little protective…” She handed her wife an enormous milkshake, and realised that she too was laughing at her. “Hey! What’s your problem?”

“You can’t exactly jump on your tio for being excessively protective when you’re doing the same damn thing… and don’t you glower at me!”

Estela grumbled under her breath. “Might be a family trait.” Joking aside, that Taylor was not going to put up with nonsense from Nicolas would serve her well. He did not suffer fools, and he needed to know that she wouldn’t either. She felt her nuzzle close.

“You were right- this milkshake is amazing!”

Nicolas held out his rum to them. “Just a little… then it will be perfección.”

The sun slowly set on the San Trobidan beach, and the refreshing winds turned biting. Waiting for their dinner, the three friends barely felt it. In the shallows, Jake had been roped into sparring with Nicolas, who was providing ongoing critique on his performance as they jousted with heavy sticks, all set to the sound of giggling from the two tipsy women who watched them from the shore.

“Laugh it up, Katniss!” he yelled back to Estela over the wind, “You’ll get your turn. Much as I hate to be the one to tell your tio how sloppy you got…”

“Sloppy?”

“Ya heard right.”

“Coming from you? If ‘all over the place’ is a technique, you mastered it long ago, cara de pito!”

Jake sniggered, but had to re-focus quickly to avoid being clocked in the kneecaps. “My Spanish ain’t up to much, but I’m guessin’ that wasn’t friendly.”

“Ha! Friendly, it was not. But if you are so easily distracted, perhaps you are worthy of such a taunt.”

“Culo peludo!”

“That was not complimentary either, my friend. I am sorry- my sobrina, she has the manners of a burra.” Nicolas turned slightly to call out to her, easily keeping his opponent at bay as he did. Jake’s style was fast and furious, and that meant that he was now tiring. “Where did we go so wrong, Estelita?”

Shoulder to shoulder, Taylor and Estela shared their slightly boozy milkshake, holding one another close, and warm with mirth. Rhythmic beats pulsed out from the nearby stalls, and the air was filled with chatter as families gathered for dinner. It was… chaotically idyllic. And then, they’d kiss, and all else would fade into the background.

Then was the food. A steaming platter of tamales shared between four filled a rumbling void, all but inhaled the second it was set down upon the sand. Taylor tucked in gratefully, sitting almost on Estela’s lap, and gazed out to the stars that began to pepper the darkening sky. She wondered after the rest of her friends… they felt so far away. But here she was, full and contented, a breath away from her Estela, and with Jake coming along with them for the ride. A fresh start. Taylor felt herself slipping, leaning in just to remain upright. Still recovering from losing the alien part of herself, she tired easily, and the day had been long and eventful.

“…Taylor… carińa, you’re ready to go home?”

She nodded and reached up to stroke Estela’s face. “Are you?”

Estela’s smile was endlessly affectionate. “Ready as I’ll ever be. Come on, mi amor.”

  The house was small and plain, but backed onto a quiet and secluded stretch of beach just a short walk from where they’d left the car. As they approached, Taylor’s hand was grasped by Estela’s, prompting a supportive squeeze.

Nicolas pushed the door open. “Home, sweet home.”

It was just as Taylor had seen in the vision Vaanu had given Estela; simple but welcoming, hints of the lives lived there in pictures on the wall, books piled on shelves.

“Princess!” Jake hissed, tugging at her hair to get her attention. “Baby Katniss at two-o’clock!”

Taylor had to hold in a squeal as she spotted a photograph on the window ledge. A tiny Estela, surely less than two years old, reaching up for whoever it was who’d taken the picture. “Oh, sweet lord,” she said quietly, automatically reaching out to hug Estela’s arm. “I think my ovaries just exploded…”

“Yes, I was a baby once. Can we move on?”

Nicolas smirked. “Oh, Estelita… you don’t want to break out the baby album? All these years, your frowny old face never changes…”

Ignoring the taunt, Estela showed Jake to the spare room. Tentatively, she pushed the door, feeling her heart drumming violently against her ribs. It had been years since anyone had slept in that room. “So, uh, you can sleep here,” she said. “We’ve kept all the personal stuff safe out the way, so you can make yourself comfortable without worrying about disturbing anything.”

Jake made to step forward but hesitated. “Are you sure this is okay? I don’t mind the couch if this is uncomfortable for you. Honest, it would not bother me at all.”

Estela met her friend’s eyes, appreciating his deep care for her. “I invited you here because I want you here. You’re practically family; you sleep in a proper room.”

She let Jake pull her into a hug, lingering and heartfelt, before letting him settle in. Then there was Taylor’s hand on her arm.

“Estela, are you all right?”

“Fine. I swear, I’m fine.” She pressed a sweet kiss to Taylor’s lips. “I’ll just say goodnight to Tio, then we’ll go to bed, okay?”

A short while later, Taylor followed Estela into a small, boxy room, a single bed in the corner, and a distinct feeling of being untouched for quite some time.

“This is us…” Estela said, putting down their bags beside the bed. “…I know Jake’s is bigger, but I can’t sleep in that room. It’s….” She heaved a sigh. “You get it, right?”

With a kiss to her wife’s shoulder, Taylor wrapped her arms around her waist from behind, and buried her face in her hair. “Of course, love. If this is home for you, it’s home for me. It’s nice and cosy in here… just enough room for us.”

Stripping down to their underwear, the two women crashed out on the bed, lying side by side in the tight space. Exhaustion had crept up on Estela. The past day… everything that had happened, it was almost too much to process. It didn’t seem possible that the other Catalysts were now countless miles away, making their own way home. And that just outside her window was the San Trobida she’d said goodbye to when her mission for revenge took her to Hartfeld. Everything felt so… normal. All that she’d seen since she’d left… the end of the world, for crying out loud… it seemed to have left no mark. She lay on her bed, and it was as though she’d never been away, but for Taylor right beside her, stirring her senses without so much as a word or a touch. And yet, this new piece fit into the puzzle, creating a picture so beautiful.

Taylor struggled to keep her eyes open, even in her desperation to drink in every detail of this place, a place from a recollection or a wish, her love’s memories brought to life before her. The sheets were thin and worn, the mattress slightly hard. It was by no means the luxury Taylor had become accustomed to. But tucked up in that small room, she could feel Estela all around her, in the scent that lingered on every piece of fabric, in the select precious photos that adorned the nightstand and dresser, in the hard edges that belied the endlessly comforting warmth within. So far removed from the familiarity of La Huerta, she felt at home.

Estela noticed Taylor’s weary eyes land on the framed photograph nearest to the bed. One that tugged painfully at her heartstrings.

“That was just before she left,” she murmured. “Maybe… the day before? I kept it by my bed so it was the first thing I saw in the morning- not that I needed a reminder of what was taken from me, but to make sure I woke up fighting.” She sighed, sadly. “Tio used to take a lot of pictures of us. After this one it stopped. I didn’t feel anything worth looking back and remembering, and I don’t think he did either.”

Taylor took her hand and squeezed. The Estela in the photograph was not unlike the one she knew so well, but clearly younger, and with no long scar over her eye. Beneath the smile was something like apprehension, dread for the separation to come. Olivia Montoya was so like her daughter, perhaps lacking the same quiet fierceness, but there was great inner strength shining through her dark eyes.

“I wish I could have known her, to have her see me as a daughter,” she said wistfully.

“She really would have loved you. Everything you’ve done… giving yourself completely to care for the people you love… she’d be proud to have you as family.” Estela studied Taylor’s earnest face, now just an inch from her own. There was little she wouldn’t give to have just a single day with her as part of the family they should have had. She could imagine conversations; her mother would, of course, have been fascinated with Taylor, born as she was of the energy source she’d been dedicated to studying. For her part, Taylor would have relentlessly asked about Estela’s childhood, seeking the stories that only a mother would hold onto. It wasn’t to be, and the pain could never completely fade. What she had, though, what she saw in those sweet eyes, was a promise of happiness that grief could not temper. She drew her in, slowly brushing her lips against her Taylor’s, taking her time to let the soft caress grow deeper, harder, until the emotion behind it was too all-consuming to allow her to carry on. “I love you, Taylor…” she breathed.

“And I love you.”

Estela reached for Taylor’s phone on the nightstand. She played with it in her hands and felt her cheeks flush, self-conscious. “We should take a picture. I…uh… I want to… to live a life worth remembering… like before. To collect the memories again.

“So… right here, right now? Lying on your bed in our underwear? Not that you don’t look cute as heck…”

“Right now…” Estela rolled her hips so that she was pressed even closer to her wife. “With you, here, I’m… happy. In a way I don’t want to forget.”

“Yeah? I don’t want to forget this feeling either. Gimme that- you might be skilled when it’s life-or-death, but you can’t take a selfie for shit.”

Settling down to sleep, the two lovers removed what little clothing remained between them and snuggled close. Estela surrounded Taylor like a full-body shield; she was hers, and protected always. As Taylor’s eyelids grew ever heavier, she took a moment to glance at the photograph on her phone before giving in to slumber. She’d caught the moment she’d planted a kiss on Estela’s eye, having aimed for her cheek and missed as she fidgeted in front of the camera. Estela’s face was scrunched up with laughter; she honestly looked as though she hadn’t a care in the world. The image brought a fond smile to Taylor’s face. She closed her eyes and let herself be lulled to sleep by the feel of Estela’s chest rising and falling against her back, the rhythm of her heart, the gentle heat that radiated off her scarred skin. If these were the memories she’d build her new life from, she need never look forward with trepidation again. Her star… her Estela… she’d follow her anywhere.

[themattress]

Subject: Tetsuya Nomura’s KH3 Release Day Remarks

I’m sorry, I just had to react to this.

Nomura: KH3 is, if I had to say, "the story of taking down Master Xehanort." As such, it is the conclusion of the Dark Seeker Chronicle, and serves as an emphatic piece of punctuation to the series. Many mysteries are resolved.  

“An emphatic piece of punctuation to the series? God, Nomura literally talks as pretentiously as he titles games! 

Also, the way Master Xehanort was finally taken down sure was satisfying, and the series’ narrative is truly left with almost no mysteries whatsoever afterward! (That’s sarcasm, btw.)

Nomura: It has a few special qualities, but to put it simply it's the "power to return hearts in abnormal states to what they were originally." It can "open that which is closed, and recover hearts from within." In KH3D, they opened a portal… or type of entryway to the sleeping realm, and visited each world. That was partially training in order to gain the "power of awakening."

LOL, Nomura is describing it directly and yet it still confuses the Hell out of me. It’s one of the clearest proofs as to how vague and hollow most of his concepts truly are at heart.

Nomura: It would be defined as resurrecting him as an independent individual with his own body. In KH2, it seemed as though Roxas returning inside Sora was the resolution to the whole thing. But after that, in KH3D, Sora came into contact with Roxas' heart and memories, and tells him that they are different and that Roxas deserves to be his own person. Sora thinks it is necessary to bring Roxas back because Roxas has his own heart, because there's someone waiting for him (Axel), and because now he wants his help as a Guardian of Light.

“It seemed as though Roxas returning inside Sora was the resolution to the whole thing” because it fucking WAS the resolution to the whole thing!  You only decided it wasn’t because Roxas became mind-bogglingly popular and the series could profit off of his return the way that his fans demanded it (since they insisted it was so “unfair” that he just has to exist within Sora). Back when KH2 ended, Roxas didn’t have his own heart, Axel wasn’t alive, and “Guardian of Light” wasn’t a thing. Nomura only changed all that for the most mercenary of reasons, even at the expense of what was portrayed in KH2.

Nomura: Of course it will continue. KH3 is the conclusion of the Dark Seeker Chronicle, but it is not the conclusion of the KH series - including KH Union Cross. As for future ideas, I think you will find your imaginations ignited if you watch the epilogue (releasing Jan 26) and secret movie (releasing Jan 31) which shall cast a fortune for the future.

Well, I’ve seen the epilogue. My imagination wasn’t ignited - I got a headache. I am NOT kidding around here, I quite literally developed a headache after watching that epilogue and thinking about its ramifications. I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again - I am not sticking with this series any longer, and I suspect that I’ll be far from the only one. All of its story flaws have only gotten worse with KH3, to the point of bad self-parody. It’s not fun, it’s frustrating.

But by far, THIS exchange in the interview is the most illuminating of them all:

Nomura: When it comes to the scenario, including the script, in the end I write everything myself. I haven't made this public before, but after KH2 generally everything was written by me, especially KH 358/2 Days.

--I see. I had thought that you assemble the plot, and then the script and other small details were assigned to someone else.

Nomura: That is how it was in the beginning. However, ever since KH2, roughly speaking I will create the outline of the scenario myself, and then (Masaru) Oka will take that and create a springboard scenario, including dialogue, that takes into consideration requests from the level design team. Then after that, I write the final manuscript myself. That's the general flow. Other staff have worked on the scenario in the past, but the KH series lore is complicated, and when lots of people are involved it gets hard to keep everyone updated on it all. In the end, I'm the one with the best grasp on it, so that's why we ended up with the style we have today.

--But, you haven't been credited with "Scenario" in the end credits in any of the titles so far.

Nomura: I get credited with "Story," so I guess it doesn't need to be said. Plus, I've been in the industry for a long time. I worried that if people were to go into things with the preconceived notion that "Tetsuya Nomura wrote this," it get in the way of their play, so I didn't make it clear. But the series is 17 years old now, and the fact that "an old dude is writing it" is simply the truth (dry laugh). I wrote this game myself too. I wrote all the text: not just the scenario, I even decide the item names myself.

This. Explains. SO MUCH.

The writing of the original KH trilogy was a much more collaborative process. But in KH2, Nomura’s base story (which was made in conjunction with Masaru Oka and his event team) got so big in scope and overwrought with detail that the script writer, Kazushige Nojima, who had barely worked on the original KH, had a difficult time working with it and ended up producing a scenario with some very glaring, obvious flaws. Nomura then came to the wrong conclusion and thus the wrong solution: excising Nojima except for as an uncredited consultant (it’s said later in the interview that Nojima wrote the Scala Ad Caelum event / ending for KH3 as a favor to Nomura), making Oka the scenario writer since he has a firmer “grasp” on the KH series lore, and then being the one to pen the final draft himself to ensure that his complicated lore is “kept updated”. I’ve mentioned before that the writing process for the series was monopolized by Nomura and Oka, but now I finally have outright admittance of that from Nomura himself, as well as the motivation behind this decision.

The right course of action should have been to find someone like, say, Daisuke Watanabe and keep him on board - someone who not only is a great scenario writer who understands Nomura’s ideas but who can also challenge Nomura on those ideas, add his own unique contributions to the story if he thinks they’re needed, and make sure that it’s accessible and of high quality. That’s what we needed, not clueless guys like Nojima or yes-men like Oka.

Nomura, you suck. Go to the Realm of Darkness, and don’t come back!

[cogentranting]

Oliver Queen as a Slytherin: A Character Study

When asked what Hogwarts house I believed Oliver Queen to be in I very adamantly declared him to be Slytherin. I was asked to explain my reasoning and (with the editing and co-authorship of @emeraldoliverqueen) I wrote this absurdly long exploration of Oliver and his character as a Slytherin. (These are my own thoughts and interpretations- I’m not trying to fight anyone; you’re free to imagine him/write him in whatever house you prefer)

These are the traits that the Harry Potter wiki listed for Slytherin: Resourcefulness. Cunning. Ambition. Determination. Self-Preservation. Fraternity. Cleverness.  And if those don't describe Oliver I don't know what does.

Resourcefulness- the ability to find quick and clever ways to overcome difficulties.

He made a bow from materials found entirely within his hotel room. He rigged together a booby trap in the middle of a jungle. He devises weapons on the fly. He may have come back to his city and have billions of dollars at his disposal to help him on his quest, but his origins are on a deserted island where his resourcefulness sustained him.  

Cunning- skill in achieving one's ends by deceit (aka lying)

He came up with a plot to get himself arrested so that he could have someone else pose as him in order to throw the police off his trail. He dug up information and used it to blackmail Amanda Waller. He came up with a ploy to destroy the League of Assassins from the inside. He planned the ruse to get Sara Slade and himself onto the Amazo. Plans and strategies are his strong suit. Here we could also include, Oliver’s impressive skill at lying (he manages to convince virtually everyone that he is something he’s not for years. And he beat a lie detector test.).

Ambition-  a strong desire to do or to achieve something, typically requiring determination and hard work; desire and determination to achieve success.

admittedly not one of his more notable traits in that he doesn’t really seek success for it’s own sake. However, he is the mayor, was a CEO, was high-ranking Bratva member, was the head of the League of Assassins and also has a zeal he puts into perfecting different skills. So there is some element of ambition present in those things, because he rises to the top of everything he does. And of course, there is the incredibly ambitious endeavor that is Oliver’s crusade- the sheer size of the tasks he sets for himself speaks of his ambition. The idea that he would hold himself accountable for saving a city, and punish himself for failing (running away after the Undertaking) indicates his ambition.  

Determination- the process of establishing something exactly, typically by calculation or research.; firmness of purpose; resoluteness

His name is Oliver Stubborn Queen. Stephen Amell described stubbornness as Oliver’s superpower. Oliver’s sheer force of will is what propels him through most of his experiences. His determination is part of why he’s so able to resist torture (Oliver NEVER breaks under torture- except with Prometheus, but that was on a special psychological level and didn’t involve endangering anyone else). It’s why he’s able to endure so much. It’s why he is able to achieve such skill and physical fitness. It’s why he butts heads with literally everyone. And it’s why he is able to accomplish so much more than anyone thinks he’s capable of. Also think of his dedication to the list and his evolving crusade.Think of how absolutely impossible it is to dissuade Oliver from this course he has set for himself, either through arguments (Diggle, on multiple occasions but the Claybourne incident in particular) or through harm to him (Oliver going out to chase down the Count while still being affected by Vertigo). Once Oliver has set himself a purpose he does not back down.

Self Preservation- the protection of oneself from harm or death

This one is unusual because it’s very present, but it’s also paired with self-loathing and suicidal tendencies. However, this only makes his sense of self preservation even more evident. Because it’s undeniable that Oliver fights hard to survive- in his ten years there were countless times when he could have given up, or should have died and he kept going and made it out. Oliver’s inclination of self preservation is so strong that for ten years it has managed to overcome those suicidal thoughts even in the face of the number of impossible situations he’s been in. Consider the fact that he survived his five years through sheer force of will. A few specific moments stand out: Oliver breaks his own hand to get free and stop Slade from killing him when they first meet; Tatsu claims that his “will to live” is what saved him on the mountaintop;  digging the bullet out of his own stomach; undergoing a week of torture and then still stabbing Kovar in the hand and trying to fight his way out; his suspicious nature, especially in instances such as when he finds the guy in the cave claiming to be shipwrecked and chooses to leave him, and with Andy.

Fraternity- the state or feeling of friendship and mutual support within a group.

The list of Oliver's "brothers": Tommy, Diggle, Anatoly, Slade, if you want to take Barry on to that even though he's never verbally identified Barry that way. Oliver loves his bromance. In fact, Oliver is all about family. From his mile-high prioritization of Moira and Thea, to the found families he creates everywhere he goes (the island, hong kong, team arrow etc.).  That sense of brotherhood and that form of love is something Oliver can’t go long without, and that’s why he almost always has at least one close friend he refers to as his brother.  

Cleverness- the quality of being clever; ingenuity or shrewdness.

Arrow has a pretty common mystery element and puts a lot of focus on Oliver’s detective skill- piecing together clues, discerning motives, tracking people down. His sense of humor, when he shows it, is sort of clever dry sarcasm. He has an extraordinary skill with languages. Tactics are his specialty. He’s good at figuring out how machines work (fixing the plane radio). He rigged a computer system to help him when he worked solo. Oliver’s extremely intelligent and most of that veers toward the clever and cunning classifications.

Slytherin is also associated with tradition and family names. Oliver is from Old money- an established family name with wealth and power (btw, Thea, Moira and Robert are ALL Slytherin- it’s why Merlyn relates to them more than to Tommy, who is decidedly NOT a Slytherin). His idea of honoring the dead is also a somewhat tradition oriented mindset. His choice of weapons (bows and arrows and swords) could also be considered traditionalist.

The Slytherin wiki page also talks about how they make strong leaders, and that is something I strongly associate with Oliver. (I’ve talked about it before, here)

The biggest thing however is that Oliver (and all the Queens) is defined by a ruthless pursuit of his goals. “whoever I am, I'm someone who will do whatever, whatever it takes to save my sister.” “he had you and he was gonna hurt you. There was no choice to make.” “To live I had to make myself more than what I was, to forge myself into a weapon.” “There's no length that I will not go to to avenge Laurel. To stop Darhk from ever hurting anyone again.” “Do you remember what you told me? It takes a monster to kill a monster.” “To do what I do, Barry, takes conviction. But more often than not is the will to do what's ugly.” “There are people in the world who deal only in extremes. And it would be naive to think that anything less than extreme measures will stop them.” What sets Oliver apart is his moral pragmatism, his willingness to cross lines, the fact that if you stand in his way he WILL destroy you. And that’s ALL Slytherin all the way.

Here’s an additional Slytherin description that seems to sum up Oliver pretty well:

Slytherins are usually ambitious, goal based learners, who can be very perfectionistic. They can be resourceful, subtle, charming, self-reliant, and adaptable. Just because they’re not loyal in the same way Gryffindors are doesn’t mean they’re not loyal people- they’re just extremely selective about who they are loyal to; which is usually a very small amount of people who they know they can trust and confide in, and they are usually extremely passionate and caring towards this small group. They also feel great deals of respect for people they feel are deserving of respect. (http://unicornachos.tumblr.com/post/46241425124/diffusing-some-hogwarts-house-stereotypes)

What about the other houses though? How does Oliver compare to their key characteristics?

Ravenclaw- Intelligence, wit, wisdom, creativity, originality, individuality, acceptance.

Oliver is certainly intelligent. I have a whole ongoing soapbox about how smart Oliver is and how it never gets acknowledged. Note that: it never gets acknowledged. That’s important. Because there is a reason Oliver isn’t often thought of as being one of the smart characters (and why characters will make comments calling him dumb “you’re very handsome but not especially bright)- Oliver doesn’t have a particular inclination toward the pursuit of knowledge or a value for intelligence/knowledge in and of itself, and those things are defining Ravenclaw qualities. It’s for this reason that Oliver never did well in school- the knowledge itself was not interesting to him. For Oliver, intelligence is a tool to achieve his ends; his intelligence is channeled into a goal- getting off the island by fixing a plane radio, using computers to steal from Adam Hunt, learning a language to survive whatever country he’s trapped in, memorizing ARGUS tactical maneuvers etc. His intelligence craves utility much more so than someone like Felicity, or Nate, or Caitlin. This pushes it away from a Ravenclaw trait more towards the Slytherin sortings of “cunning’ and “resourcefulness”. And really it all falls back under the purview of Oliver’s ‘by whatever means necessary’ mentality- sometimes “whatever it takes” is torture, sometimes it’s learning a new language in under a year. Oliver has wit- his humor is defined by snark and dryness. But the fact that it only makes rare appearances keeps it from being a defining trait of his, and indicates that it’s not of particularly high value to him. Oliver isn’t a character I would define as creative- creativity is defined by imaginativeness, which is never something highlighted in Oliver, and original ideas. Oliver has plenty of original ideas, but creativity has a strong artistic connotation, something Oliver does not demonstrate. Rather his more inventive ideas lean toward tactics and strategy, something related to resourcefulness- again, a Slytherin trait.  Likewise, originality/individuality is not something Oliver actively cultivates- he’s original and unique as a person because everyone is and he’s by no means a conformer. But rather than coming from a desire to be original or exercise his individuality, Oliver’s contrast with others comes from ambition. Acceptance can have many different definitions/connotations but Ravenclaw definitions seem to put an emphasis on accepting eccentricities. Oliver is not un-accepting… but neither is his acceptance clearly shown. While Oliver is very adaptable and will work with all sorts of people, there are a number of people whose eccentricities he meets with clearly expressed annoyance, especially when first meeting them (Cisco in 3x08, Curtis at various points but 4x17 particularly, Ray in 3x18, Kara in Legends 2x07, Barry at various points). As to Oliver’s wisdom, that’s a contentious point. Many would argue that Oliver is not wise at all, he makes terrible decisions and never learns from his mistakes. (I would not be one of those people). Others would say that Oliver has a lot of experience to offer and gives strong advice. I would argue that while Oliver’s experience has lead to him becoming much stronger at giving advice, his practicality and comfort operating in morally gray areas, as well as his extensive trauma, cost him the moral viewpoint that would be needed to truly be considered wise.

Hufflepuff- Dedication, Hard Work/Unafraid of toil, Fair play, Patience, Kindness, Tolerance, Loyalty

Dedication comes very close to Oliver’s “determination” trait so in most instances it is present, however, dedication could also be applied to relationships and there you run into the issues of Oliver’s cheating in his younger years. Oliver is also very hard-working (won’t stop until he drops from exhaustion type of hardworking). But that’s where Oliver’s Hufflepuff traits end. Hufflepuff’s value fair play- fair play doesn’t particularly interest Oliver. He’s a no holds barred fighter, his primary tools for accomplishing things are fear, intimidation and pain. He’ll sever your tendons to end a fight, physically intimidate you in an argument, keep countless secrets, torture an innocent man for the greater good, use any trick he thinks of to win. Fairness is not something Oliver considers. Hufflepuffs are patient. Oliver is patient in accomplishing a task, but not when dealing with other people. Watch the scene in 5x02 where he berates the recruits after Rene messes up. Watch him get frustrated with Barry in Flash 2x08. Even consider the way that he charges off to climb the elevator shaft in 5x20. Kindness. No. Oliver is not kind. He’s good, with a big heart and a lot of love. But that’s not the same thing. He can be kind, to the people he cares about, but in general he is not a kind person. Oliver has a temper, Oliver is very blunt, Oliver is often focused on his goal to the point of neglecting the emotional needs of others. Oliver shot three different mentees with arrows to teach them a lesson, Oliver has yelled at every single member of Team Arrow and most members of Team Flash. Oliver has gotten frustrated and made several different grown men cry. He’s not kind. Tolerance really depends on which definition. Go back and look at what I have to say about “acceptance” and adjust as necessary. And loyalty. Oliver is loyal… until he’s not. He’s loyal until he cheats on you with your sister. Or until he feels he needs to lie about something or do something alone. Or until you do something that makes him feel he can’t trust you- and his trust issues are substantial so there’s a lot that can do that. But mostly just consider that Hufflepuff is most commonly defined as being the friendly, cheerful house. And Oliver Queen is most commonly referred to as brooding, dark, and “doesn’t play well with others”. To the extent that the woman he was dating made a joke about how an alternative version of Oliver might be “agreeable”.

And Gryffindor (the one that more people probably sort him into)- Bravery/nerve/daring/courage, chivalry, recklessness/impulsivity (not listed but very commonly associated with them)

Oliver certainly does share some traits of this house-. However, Oliver isn’t actually what I would call chivalrous. Chivalry is defined by being courteous and gallant- Oliver is more often blunt, cold and pragmatic. He isn’t given to large gestures and when he is charming, it isn’t with the same nobility that chivalry implies. Secondly, though many people deny it, Oliver is not impulsive. Occasionally he acts impulsively, in times of duress or anger or fear. But in general, most of his behavior is very controlled, very calculated. He’s the planner of the Arrowverse. He’s the strategist. He’s the one who spent years planning his crusade. He’s the one who researched his team members before telling them anything. He’s the one who taught Barry to case a situation before rushing in. He’s the one who insists on having a plan before a confrontation, the one who wants all the information before deciding whether or not to trust someone. Nor would I describe Oliver as arrogant. Confident, yes. Arrogant is defined by overestimating one’s abilities. In his younger days Oliver may have been a touch arrogant. But now Oliver’s confidence is simply awareness of his oft-proven skill. Oliver knows what he’s capable of (a lot) and has confidence to match. Gryffindors are also often thought of as self-righteous, which is defined as “characterized by a certainty, especially an unfounded one, that one is totally correct or morally superior.” And Oliver is quick to praise the morality of others (whether they are deserving or not)- Thea, Laurel, Diggle, Felicity, even someone like Moira. And not just praise what a good person they are, but tell them how much better they are than him. He’ll call himself a monster, talk about being “beyond redemption”, or “broken.” He can be made to believe that he is undeserving of any kind of love, that he is poisonous to the people around him. It took years of working as a superhero before anyone could convince Oliver to see himself as a hero. Oliver is sometimes proud, it’s not unusual for him to think he’s smarter than someone else, or to think they’re naive. But most of the time he does not believe that he is a good person, let alone better than others. He’s not self-righteous.  

And Oliver is without a doubt brave (daring/courageous- Gryffindor’s trait list is a bunch of synonyms) but this trait is rarely emphasized. In its place the narrative focuses on his toughness and determination- his passion and willingness to do whatever it takes. The emphasis on his willingness to sacrifice rather than bravery in and of itself. And Bravery is rarely a trait that Oliver expresses any particular value for. It’s rare that he praises something like that. What’s more, Oliver’s bravery is not a trait unto itself. His bravery comes naturally from all that is Slytherin in him. It comes from his cunning, resourcefulness and skill which he is acutely aware of to the degree that he doesn’t have to fear anything.It comes from a passionate sense of fraternity. A loyalty to his brothers (and any family, biological or otherwise, that he claims) which supersedes everything else. And most of all it comes from his single-minded determination, ambition and ‘whatever it takes’ mindset which will not let anything stand in the way of him accomplishing his goal- not even fear. (And, unfortunately there is also an aspect where some of what might be considered bravery is actually disregard for his own life- what is there to fear when you’ve embraced pain and the possibility of death?). Oliver’s bravery is result, not a cause.

[That being said, there is a decent chance that, were he in the books, Oliver would get sorted into Gryffindor. Because there is a tendency for Harry Potter to treat bravery as a trump-card trait- it doesn’t matter how many of your other traits line up with another house, if you’re brave, you’re Gryffindor. It’s like the golden snitch of character traits- if you have it, everything else is irrelevant. And that’s something that happens in practice but in theory shouldn’t happen. It’s the tendency which turns four equally valid houses and personality types, into the Protagonist House, the Antagonist House, aaaannnnddd everybody else. And it’s a tendency that I think Rowling actively tried to counteract further down the road (hence, Newt Scamander). So I don’t accept Oliver’s bravery as overriding all his prominent Slytherin traits.]

In the end, I think that the qualities that most distinguish him from other characters (characters like Diggle, Barry, Ray, or even Felicity) are very much Slytherin traits. His key characteristics, the ones that really define him and his style of heroics, are his cunning, his determination, and his ruthless pursuit of goals. And those are all Slytherin.

Plus…. Come on guys. Green.

TL;DR-- Oliver is a Slytherin because he is cunning, resourceful, stubborn, ambitious, and always has a plan which he will be ruthless in executing.

[popkinbandit]

Letting words flow forth like a river of the damned.

I gotta say this isn't really how I envisioned kicking off a blog, I don't intend to update regularly with this kind of thing. Originally, this blog was intended to be a sort of dream journal where I could write about the literal dreams I have as I have told stories about a few of my more fun lucid/memorable dreams. I still intend on doing this at some point, only time will tell. Please, if you’re in my family, don’t bring this up to the others- no one needs to worry. Anyway, here goes...

This is a trial of my own being; something new that I feel is necessary, as for many people have not seen the side of myself with emotion other than laughter or sarcasm. A dark, dry sense of humor is often worn as a mask to hide the true face of what may be residing underneath. Many, I feel, know this to be the case, but only a few have known what runs through my mind. From the outside looking in, I have been told that I always seem happy or that I don't have any problems getting what I strive for. Lately, I have spoken with leaders in the work place that have said I speak with confidence and I am sure of myself. At times, in the right context... I feel that could be the case. However, my emotional state at times is just a downward spiral of sadness and depression. Trapped in these thoughts governed by my bitter, self-loathing tendencies and my nature of being a pessimist, I often have a difficult time getting out of this frame of mind and back to my normal self without the act. I keep the charade of happiness/indifference up not because I don't want people to know that I am sad, but for some reason in my mind I see the possible outward show of my emotion as a burden on another person to witness.

So why am I sending this out now? I assure you, it is not an outcry for attention nor do I feel especially worse than I usually do during a spell similar to the one I am having now. I do not want your pity, your attention. I do not seek your affection or words of guidance as I often see kind words in moments such as these as facade, a flimsy excuse for support no matter how sincere your statement may be. I send this because through my stubbornness, I have convinced myself your words will not help me. The shield I put up to protect myself is the same one that will keep people away. While directly, I will not allow anyone to help me, indirectly, you make a world of difference. The actual conversation may not help and I may not allow it to, but knowing the conversation can take place helps just the same. Maybe someone will find this one day, and know that in an instant, your sincerity and friendship may have been the saving grace someone or myself needed to get back to their true self.

Now, the emotion I keep bottled up leaks out at times. Some may notice my state is just a ruse and what I am thinking comes out anyway. I try not to draw attention to it, because often it will just make me feel worse when I think about it more than in passing. My shortcomings, the things that keep me circling the same thoughts even to myself seem like they shouldn't matter, but my brain does not care. I have a stable job, a family that loves me, and a small circle of friends I am glad I get to spend my life around. Still, these jabs back at the relentless thought that I will always be alone (among other dumb thoughts- this is just topic of the event/most recurring) never seem to be enough. One thing I wish for is a companion, a love, who will stick by my side and with all my selfish desire I believe that she needs to be the one to find me and there is no way I can find her on my own. People who know me also know I am very particular in who I am looking for, but I can't even say I know what my own 'type' is. When I see a woman who may be of interest to me, I put her up on a pedestal in my mind. I idealize what she is like, using anything I learn about her and take it to unrealistic standard, both believing that if she is that great- she could find anyone she wanted, and if she isn't- then maybe she isn't who I believed she was and need to step back and rethink who she could be. Well, once I do this, regardless of the outcome of my standard, I think to myself 'if she could have anyone she wanted by her side, why would she pick me?' (enter pessimism).

What I lack in human companionship, I replace with allowing myself to show all my affection to my dog. While it does help my mood to hug it out with my pet or show him the attention and love I feel for him, I am fully aware that my dog does not share the same lifespan I do. He is getting on in years and I fear in the upcoming years, he may be gone. I know when this happens, it will almost surely feel as if I am being ripped in two. In the past, the voice in my head telling me I am alone would often be quelled by the assurance that something would happen. In high school, when I began feeling this need for someone else to be involved in my life to feel like I was complete- I would tell myself, something will happen; it may not end up like in cinema or literature, but somewhere, somehow, I will approach someone or I would be approached by someone who would end up in my life and fill this newly discovered void. Well, four years of high school later, this feeling did not pass nor did I find anyone who I could consider to be my significant other. No worries, I just got into college! I am going to one of the biggest party schools in the area. No doubt something would happen on campus either on purpose or by accident that would help the fates weave someone to the same path I was on. This voice, always present, kept saying I was going to be alone forever, and up through college, I successfully held this voice at bay by barking back- “just you wait! I am bound to meet someone like myself at this place.” Well, college is over; here I am. No one. Still, the voice calls out to me- “I told you, alone.” There's only one problem, I'm done with school. Six years have come and went at this college I would find someone at only to realize that you have to be the one to make that happen. Conflict and resolution does not fall into your lap like in some story or movie, but now I have gone more than twenty years of my life and I have not learned how to begin this story I am trying to plan out that would be the rest of my life. Now I am here, and it feels like nothing changes. I am stuck in this cycle, so when you wonder why you never heard anything about my feelings until after college, the long and short of it- it never lasted. I always managed to shut up the voice by telling it I would feel complete before I got to that next step. Well, the next step is here, and I still don't know what to do.

Anyway that is enough rambling for me right now. Just know this, friend; you matter. You may never truly know how much you affect which people in your life, but believe that you are someone's reason to continue waking up and living their life the next morning.

Long days and pleasant nights.

[aslightstep]

You’ve Got the Love

Song here

“And you’re gonna be okay?” Rhodey asked for the millionth time.

“You mean you’re not tired of babysitting me?” Tony said into the phone, his voice straddling the line between teasing and razor-sharp.

“If anyone’s doing the babysitting here, it’s you,” Rhodey responded, and they both fell quiet. Tony pictured Rhodey on the other end of the line, sequestered off in some quiet corner of his mother’s house while his relatives laughed and danced in the other room. Sometimes he couldn’t bear to watch. Sometimes when they were together Tony would do the most mundane thing, like stretch up for a coffee mug on a high shelf or lean down to grab something off the floor, and when he turned back to his friend Rhodey was turning away, his hand over his mouth.

Tony, sitting in the quiet of his car as it idled in front of the empty Avengers compound, felt like he could finally understand that feeling, however superficially. New York had been on fire tonight, but he watched the people celebrate the incoming new year like a fish in a bowl. He had left the company party early, unable to stand it. Their happiness. Their easy companionship.

“Any New Years Resolutions, boss?” he asked, turning the car off. One thing at a time.

Rhodey, after a long moment, snorted derisively. “You know if either one of us make any we’ll never keep ‘em.”

“How about we keep it short term, then? Once we hang up, you put on your dancing legs and have fun with the family.”

“Yeah, okay. Only if you get out of the damn car and go inside. Go hug the bots or something, tell FRIDAY you love her.”

Tony swallowed hard. “Square deal, Rhodey-pie. Starting now?”

“See you next week, Tones.”

The call disconnected and he took the phone away from his ear. The lockscreen picture showing Iron Man, War Machine, and the Black Panther’s helmets stacked precariously on top of one another made him smile briefly, but it fell away with a sharp pang in his gut as he remembered the old version: Cap’s cowl, Thor’s winged helmet, and Iron Man’s faceplate, side by side.

That was a different phone. A different suit, a different team. 

A different year.

“Happy New Year, Stark. You made it,” he muttered bitterly to himself, then got out of the car.

The compound was dark, only a few lights on, but FRIDAY had raised the temperature at some point. He crossed through the lobby to the interior barracks, his plan of attack well-established by now: he would head straight to his room. He would not pass go, or Steve’s room, or Nat’s. He would not collect 200 hundred dollars, or make sure the kitchen was still stocked with all of Wanda and Vision’s crazy experimental crap or call a certain royal. He would go to his room. He would go to sleep. He would wake up and do it all over again.

That’s why the piece of paper on the door was particularly shocking. He stared at it for a long moment, confused by its mere existence until the familiar shape of his writing caught his eye, tangling alongside another’s, neater and more self-conscious.

It was the piece of paper he and T’Challa had passed between themselves the first time they met to discuss the Accords after the fight. The bureaucrats had shouted over each other and Tony had been nursing a headache since Siberia, so he wrote a note to T’Challa and slid it to him like they were in grade school.

‘You think they’ll even notice if we blow this popsicle stand?’

T’Challa had frowned at the note, then Tony, who had just gestured around the room with a succinct eyebrow lift. T’Challa huffed, lips quirking, and had actually written back. ‘In a fight this would be the time to launch our surprise offensive.’

‘Only if we weren’t fighting each other while we were at it. Tell me all your secrets, kitty cat.’

The paper was then filled with their hopes for the revised Accords. Now, a new note was written, in different pen.

‘The first time I truly met Tony Stark. To you, Tony.’

“Uh, FRIDAY?” Tony asked, pulled the paper down and running his fingers over the words.

“If you will proceed further into the compound, boss,” FRIDAY replied helpfully to his unanswered question.

“Is he in there? I mean of course he is, but where?” Tony asked, pulling open the door. In response, FRIDAY turned on one of the lights, revealing something on the wall.

“It’s still ten minutes to midnight, Cinderella,” she joked. “Why don’t you enjoy the ball?”

“You realize Cinderella has to run away from the prince afterwards, right?”

“Since when have you ever followed a script?”

Never, except in this case in might be a good idea. Tony hadn’t seen or heard from T’Challa in a month, and given the way they’d parted, it had made him incredibly nervous.

He’d kissed him. And T’Challa was gone the next day. 

Tony didn’t get to keep good things, he should have learned by now. It was pointless to keep trying. And yet, for T’Challa...for the chance that the kindness and humor and compassion he’d seen could even belong just a little to Tony, he’d do anything. He’d try again.

The second surprise was a picture that had grown somewhat famous over the past few months: T’Challa and Tony shaking hands amidst a sea of reporters and politicians, smiles on both their face as they finalized the first amended version of the Accords. ‘To legacy. To King T’Chaka of Wakanda.’

Three through five were pictures of the New Avengers, such as they were, in various states of exhaustion after battles. There was one that had been taken the moment after the publicity photos were finished, where Peter, T’Challa, Tony, and Vision had all sort of slumped into one huge puddle. It ended up being the front page photo instead. ‘To the battles we have won, and to those we have not fought yet,’ the note for this one read.

Next was Iron Man and Black Panther, feet entangled as they relaxed in a spider-web hammock Peter had strung up for them while they waited for an on-site debrief. ‘To the moments in between.’

Five was Rhodey’s first day back, in the truly massive War Machine they had designed together to accommodate his injury. The team had fought together better than ever that day. ‘To the Avengers,’ T’Challa wrote, and when Tony put the pictures in his coat he was surprised at how hard he was breathing, his face flushed as he was holding something back with great effort.

Six was a video message from Peter, who was at some science boot camp Tony had enrolled him in as a Christmas present. “Tony!” He said excitedly. His eyes were manic in the familiar I-have-been-in-a-lab-for-39-hours kind of way. “This is so great, I can’t believe this! I know I already thanked you, but seriously, thank you thank you thank you. I wish you were here, though; the instructors won’t let us blow anything up. I told them that Tony Stark said that explosions were the mark of true science, but for some reason they didn’t believe me. Anyway...Happy New Years, Mr. Stark. See you soon!”

Seven was a message from Vision, who had been asked to do some repair work on the International Space Station. “The men and women up here are fascinating, but I find it is the stars that are truly keeping me company. I hope you are not alone on this night, but if you are, I suggest a bit of star-gazing. Orion is supposed to be particularly bright, tonight.”

‘To good friends, old and new.’

Eight was a blanket of newspaper clippings and articles detailing his first few years as Iron Man. ‘2008 was the year that you became Iron Man. You changed the world, and despite what you may think sometimes, I believe it was for the better. To Iron Man.’

And below that:

‘To Ho Yinsen. May he be proud of what we’ve done.’

Tony closed his eyes, hoping the same thing. He remembered when he blurted out “Yinsen would have liked you,” to T’Challa one day while they were working in the shop together, T’Challa waxing poetic with stars in his eyes about bringing Wakanda closer together without cutting them off from the outside world. Tony had admired him for that. T’Challa had refused to let himself be warped by his grief or anger.

He’d never told anybody, but Yinsen was barometer by which he rated everyone he met. He knew he loved someone when he could look at them and think how much Yinsen would have liked to meet them. Sometimes that love had not be rewarded, but Tony kept to it still. And T’Challa...knowing him had so far been reward enough.

Nine through eleven were: a playbill for Cats, the first play Tony had dragged T’Challa to; the beaten up pack of playing cards they had once spent an entire night playing with one night in Berlin; and schematics they had traded back and forth, Tony’s notes both precised and filled with various machine-related innuendos that T’Challa responded to with delightfully dry sarcasm.

‘To partnerships, and belonging.’

Twelve made his heart plummet and then soar to catch somewhere in his throat. It was a tiny little picture, Iron Man sailing in the skies, but it was the familiar art style that hit him hardest.

‘Steve has told me that you two first met in 2012, in the middle of saving the world. He wanted you to have this, and I have promised him you wouldn’t destroy it. A king cannot break his promise, Tony. Be kind. To forgiveness, and to being forgiven.’

Thirteen was a status update on Barnes’ progress with BARF. ‘To kindness and intelligence, the depths of which I have never seen.’ Tony snorted. Like that didn’t come from T’Challa’s pushing, his insistence that Tony was a good man. Tony was really only ever as good as the man at his back. He wanted to keep being this good, though. He wanted the feeling he got when he looked at the positive prognosis on Barnes. He wanted the hope T’Challa gave him. 

He just wanted T’Challa, period.

And this? Maybe this meant he was wanted back. Even after a month of radio silence, maybe he could still hope.

Fourteen was a collection of cards from children all over the world that had been sent to Black Panther. The ones spread over the counter top all featured Iron Man, helping the Panther save the day, little kids and teens encouraging them to keep fighting. ‘Apparently, we have a good ‘aesthetic.’ We do look good together, I’ve always thought so. To heroism, however small, and the ripples it makes throughout the world.’

Tony stole a few of the cards, tucking them in with the pictures and Steve’s painting, and followed the lights, rounding the corner into the living room. T’Challa looked up from the last few candles he was lighting and smiled as a song began to play.

Fifteen. ‘La Vie En Rose.’ Tony felt his mouth work from grin to grimace and back again. “So my hope that you had dismissed that whole thing as a fever dream was kinda useless, huh?”

T’Challa’s smile faltered. “Tony-”

“I mean, Edith Piaf wailing away, us standing on the Eiffel Tower, and I kiss you? It’s a veritable storm of cliches. I would’ve marked it down to a dream myself.” His first instinct was always self-defense.

“Tony,” T’Challa said again, quietly, more firmly, stepping close. “I am deeply sorry. I did not mean to leave you that way. But our schedules are so hectic, and I couldn’t say what I wanted to say over the phone.”

“’Not interested’ is pretty easy to say, Pantherosity,” Tony mumbled to the ground, wanting so badly to lean into the embrace but not quite capable of letting himself. Letting himself have this. “Five syllables. Four, if you decided to mumble. Which, you don’t.” He was rambling. He was nervous.

T’Challa’s laugh rumbled in his chest. “Do you really think I would have done all this if I wasn’t interested?”

Tony finally gathered the courage to look up at him, giving in to his worse instincts, being selfish. “Okay. So tell me you love me, then.”

“I love you,” T’Challa said easily, as simple as breathing, and Tony felt his jaw drop. 

“You - you do?”

“I do. I should have called, I know, but I - I knew you might get the wrong idea, if you couldn’t see it -me- for yourself. The way I look at you. Ev-everyone has said I’m terribly obvious, but it can’t be helped. I want to be obvious. I want you to know how much I care for you. And I wanted to surprise you.”

“Consider me surprised,” Tony said dazedly. T’Challa smiled at him, dipping the pad of his thumb into the hollows of Tony’s face, as if memorizing him.

With his other hand, he reached to his neck and pulled out his necklace. There was another one now, tangled up in it, smaller and on a more delicate chain. A single vibranium claw hung from it like the world’s deadliest teardrop.

“I was also making this,” T’Challa whispered, lifting it over his head and placing it over Tony, fidgeting so it laid just so while Tony stared. Sixteen. “Be mine,” the king whispered, tugging Tony closer. 

“Turnabout fair play here?” Tony asked before their lips could touch, and T’Challa grinned. 

“I have been yours since that kiss, Tony. All you must do now is claim me.”

“10,” FRIDAY began. “9, 8. 7-”

“I can do that,” Tony said, to himself or to T’Challa or to both of them. “I can have this.” He’d lost so much, they both had, but T’Challa pressed impossibly closer he felt the pictures and paintings and letter in his jacket crunch in closer to his heart. Yeah, he’d nearly lost it all. But he’d gained more than he could have ever hoped for, too. 

“3, 2, 1! It is now 2017, gentlemen.”

Their lips touched, and fireworks exploded. Seventeen.

Happy New Year, Stark. You made it.

“Oh!” Tony said, pulling away, pleased at mournful little noise T’Challa made. “I love you, too.” T’Challa’s eyes lit up and Tony found himself laughing, pulling him back in. “Now we may proceed.”

To love, and trust, and your skin on mine. To us.