#like just sixty or more frames shoved into one image

[dinitride-art]

So, either I’ve become a master at animating people kissing (can barely even draw it) or something sketchy’s going on here. Oh, I can see where I fucked some of this up- I can see where I fucked some of this up- Jesus fucking christ.

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[iceeckos12]

time travel snippet

little time travel au oneshot. season 5 jon travels back in time to season 1. from the perspectives of tim, martin, and sasha. 3.5k.

i dont think i need to tag anything, but please let me know otherwise.

Tim wakes up that morning, and it’s just like any other day.

Well—no, okay, that’s a bit misleading. Today is his first day working as an archival assistant, so he’s one part nervous, one part that breathless, exhilarated feeling you only get when you’re about to do something unfamiliar that may or may not redefine your life for the foreseeable future. When he says “it’s just like any other day”, he means that he wakes up, and he’s a normal person doing normal people things like eating a healthy breakfast and going to work.

(So, no. In short, he doesn’t realize that today is the day when It happens, that big, life-changing event that you think will Never Happen To You.)

He gets out of bed, stumbles into the bathroom. Washes his face of whatever residue that’d built up during the night, tries to scrape away the evidence of his nightmares, smiles big and bright at the mirror to see how successful his efforts were. He’s betrayed by the traitorous bags beneath his eyes, but that’s okay. Sasha taught him how to wield concealer as a shield whenever his past wore down his armor.

He shoots twin finger guns into his reflection, making soft pew, pew! noises that are almost too-loud in the hush of the bathroom. Then he turns on his heel and walks away, sauntering and humming along with the chorus of Dolly Parton’s 9 to 5.

He gets to the Institute twenty minutes before he’s supposed to—not because he’s trying to impress his boss or whatever (he and Jon have known each other long enough that there’s no point). It’s just, Jon will probably want to make some sort of game-plan before the actual workday starts. 

The poor man had been relieved to an almost comical degree when Tim had said yes, I’ll come with you to the Archives. It’s painfully obvious how out-of-his-depth Jon is with the whole “Head Archivist” thing. Tim’s honestly baffled as to why Elias had singled him out for the position in the first place, considering his lack of qualifications.

But, whatever. It’s fine! Tim and Sasha will be there to help him—although the third assistant is a bit of a problem, considering that they know absolutely nothing about him. There’s no guarantee that this Martin Blackwood won’t report inadequacies or mistakes back to Elias. If that’s the case, Tim and Sasha will have to be Jon’s safety net, which is partially why Tim is hoping to talk to Jon before anyone else gets there.

He also wants to talk to Jon because he just knows the man is probably working himself up over all of this. Maybe reassurances won’t do away with the source of anxiety entirely, but at least it’ll remind Jon that he’s not alone, and that he can count on Tim and Sasha.

As expected, when Tim gets there he can see a sliver of light pouring out from the cracked door of the Head Archivist’s office. He selects a desk and sets his bag on top of it, noting a set of strange gouges in the fake wood with a raised eyebrow, and then an internal shrug. The Institute issued laptop is near the far edge of his desk, and his collection of pictures are strategically placed so that he can see them all clearly.

His eyes linger over the image of him, his mother, and his brother. Their smiles are almost perfect replicas of each other, like someone took a mold of one of their faces and recreated it twice over.

Briefly, he closes his eyes. Then he shakes himself, releases a slow, steadying breath, and goes to check on Jon.

Tim’s not sure what he’s expecting to see when he goes into Jon’s office.

(That’s misleading too, though. He’s not sure if Jon will be visibly calm or upset, if he’ll be on his laptop, if he’ll be picking at the skin around his fingernails, as he so often does when he’s stressed. He is expecting Jon as he is and always has been—a twenty-some year old going on sixty, who wraps his gruff, grumpy demeanor about himself to protect the soft, vulnerable core he likes to pretend doesn’t exist.)

He comes up to the door, and the soft rectangle of light that emanates from beneath the door paints the tips of his shoes gold. “Jon?” he calls softly, rapping his knuckles against the frame. There’s a soft rustling noise—papers maybe? but no audible response, so he shrugs and pushes the door open. “I’m coming in.”

Tim steps inside, a quip instinctively readying itself on his tongue—but then his gaze lands on Jon, and he freezes dead in his tracks.

Even years later, he still vividly, viscerally remembers the moment he saw Danny standing on the stage underneath the Royal Opera House, the way he’d looked...not quite right. The wrongness had been subtle, so much so that it had been unnoticeable upon first glance, upon second glance. The longer Tim had looked though, the more obvious it had become, exposing all the little faults in that almost-perfect recreation of his brother.

Looking at Jon now, it’s the first and only thing he can think of. Because—yes, there’s the long, silver-streaked black hair, there’s the rich brown eyes, there’s the pair of spectacles that make him look far older than he actually is. But that’s where the similarities between the Jon he knows and this Jon end.

Jon’s always been a small man, but his feigned haughtiness makes him seem much bigger than he actually is. Except—except this Jon looks smaller somehow, his shoulders curved protectively inward, like he’s trying to present less of a target. And there’s something about his face, too—his expression is too sharp, too much—

But the worst of it is his eyes. There’s something very wrong with his eyes.

Who the fuck are you, and what have you done with Jon? He doesn’t say it out loud though, just keeps staring at Jon, a heady mix of terror and horror making any sort of reaction impossible.

After a moment Jon’s lips thin, contorted by some distant cousin of displeasure, and he rises to his feet. Tim stumbles instinctively backward, his breath escaping him in a sharp gasp that’s immediately swallowed up by the apathetic stacks of books and papers surrounding them. He’s struck by the fact that if he dies here, it’s unlikely anyone will notice; he’ll become just another set of marks gouged into the desk, willed away with an uneasy shrug.

Jon freezes, lips parting subtly, as though he were about to speak. Tim feels his breath catch in his chest, unable to shake himself out of the clouded stupor his mind has fallen into.

In the end, Jon says nothing. Just releases a long, slow breath of air and sits back down, pushing his chair close to his desk. The motion looks heavy, tired, as though it takes far more energy than it should.

“You—you should go,” Jon rasps, and there’s something off about his voice too, though Tim can’t put his finger on why. He can’t cobble together enough of a train of thought to make sense of any of this, all he can think of is that clown ripping Danny apart—

He stumbles out of Jon’s office, sits down at his desk. Stares down at the cheap, fake wood, at the gouges that have marred the otherwise pristine surface. Puts his head in his hands, and tries to will his heart to stop pounding in his chest.

-0-

Martin’s heard things about Jonathan Sims.

He’s not usually the type to pay attention or encourage gossip, as the vivid memories of his classmates tittering cruelly whenever he walked by still leaves a sour taste in his mouth.The problem with the Institute is that the employees get bored pretty easily. Though most would consider academic research into the esoteric and the paranormal to be fairly interesting, it’s still academic research. And the subject content can get to be a bit...repetitive. There’s only so many gruesome statements you can read without thinking, oh great, more meat.

So the employees gossip a lot, and while Martin usually tries to keep his head down and avoid it, it’s difficult not to overhear some things. And from what little he’s heard, he’s...a bit concerned. Rude and unsociable has frequently been mentioned, as have arrogant and unnecessarily finicky, and worst of all, a bit of a stuck-up know-it-all.

Normally he tries not to put too much stock in office gossip—he’s well aware that the grapevine tends to exaggerate one’s most undesirable traits—but if any of it is true, then he might just be in trouble. It was hard enough being a library employee when his boss wasn’t even paying attention most of the time. If Jon is as exacting as they say, it might be enough to expose the fact that Martin has no idea what the fuck he’s doing. And if that happens, then he might get fired, and he can’t get fired, he needs this job, he can barely keep up with his mum’s medical bills as it is—

Calm down, Martin tells himself firmly, pressing his hand against his sternum, as though that will be enough to quell the rising panic. It’s only your first day. Maybe he’s nice, and we’ll actually be good friends.

(With his luck? Yeah, right.)

The Institute looms in the distance, growing closer with every terrified, grudging footstep. A shiver runs up his spine at the sight of its imposing presence, a dark, ugly blot of a building against the backdrop of the iron grey clouds.

If there’s one thing he’s good at though, it’s keeping his head down and muddling through until he’s able to figure out what is actually expected of him. He can twist and fold himself into whatever role they need him to fill, as he has done so many times in the past. Not easily perhaps, but he has always managed. The alternative is untenable, after all.

So he takes a deep breath, and shoves his panic down as deep as possible. Lifts his head and forces a smile onto his face, like a good attitude will be enough to protect him from his boss’s wrath.

He could really do with a cup of tea.

Martin trudges down the stairs, giving the blank walls, the old-fashioned carpet, a dubious look as he does. The Archives themselves are as he remembers it—he’s been down here a couple of times when Gertrude made a request for something specific, but—

He pauses when he notices a man sitting at one of the desks, his face buried in his hands. His shoulders aren’t shaking and his breathing is even, so Martin doesn’t think that he’s crying? He’s just….sitting there, his stillness so perfect it’s almost inhuman.

“Hello?” Martin calls softly, cautiously, shifting his weight to the balls of his feet.

The man looks up, revealing a very handsome face and brown eyes so dark they may as well be black. His cheeks are dry but his eyes are bright and a little wild, and his mouth is pressed into a small, tight line. He doesn’t speak, just keeps watching, blinking dazedly in Martin’s direction. Martin gets the feeling that this person isn’t entirely there at the moment, like a house in which every room is lit, but there are no people inside.

He swallows and shifts nervously back and forth, trying to decide whether or not to call for some backup. Eventually he sets his bag on the floor and shuffles a bit closer. “Um—are you—is everything okay?”

The man blinks rapidly, some semblance of awareness creeping back into his gaze. He shakes his head slowly, pushes his short, gelled hair back from his head. His hands are trembling. “I’m...yeah, I’m fine. It’s—everything’s, it’s…”

But then his gaze lands on something over Martin’s shoulder, and all the color drains out of his face, his mouth shutting with a painful sounding click. Martin quickly spins around, searching for whatever could’ve scared him so much—

There’s someone standing in the doorway of Gertrude’s office.

There are so many things that one normally takes in upon first meeting another person: their hair, their skin color, all the little wrinkles and marks that give you the briefest insight into their life. Martin looks at posture first, tends to check if a person is intentionally looming, or if they’re making themself smaller.

But all Martin can see are the eyes.

There’s—two of them he thinks, but two is such an arbitrary number when the thing you’re applying it to doesn’t ascribe to human values (he’s not sure how he knows that—how does he know that—?). That horrible, terrible gaze is an unerring arrow, all-encompassing, all-consuming, piercing the deepest corners of his mind. It hurts in some distant, nebulous way he’s not even sure he comprehends—

Then he blinks, and the sheer terror, that feeling of the horrible, violating exposure of everything that he is, abruptly snuffs out. What’s left is just a person, wispy and small, his slight frame fairly drowning in a chunky, cable-knit jumper. He’s leaning against his doorframe, his eyes—two big brown ones, rich and unfathomably sad and more than that, human—drinking Martin in, his lips parted in a soundless gasp.

“Um—” Martin glances over his shoulder, and almost leaps out of his skin when a land falls heavily on his shoulder. The man who’d been sitting in the chair is standing just behind him, a strained but polite smile on his face.

“Hi Jon,” the man says, an undercurrent of a warning in his voice.

Martin glances between the two, his confusion growing with every passing moment. This is not what he was expecting when he first came into work today, and the uncertainty makes him feel strange and off-kilter.

The person in the door swallows once, twice, then straightens, one hand still gripping the doorframe like it’s the only thing keeping him upright. When he speaks, his voice is soft, tentative, a little ragged around the edges. “Tim. It’s, um...it’s good to see you.”

“Martin Blackwood, was it?” Tim continues, injecting a bit of cheer into his voice. It takes Martin a moment to realize that he’s being addressed, and he shoots Jon—this is Jonathan Sims?—an uncertain look before nodding slowly. “We’re happy to have you on the team.”

“O-Oh?” Martin squeaks, then grits his teeth and bodily forces his voice back into its normal range. “I’m—um, I’m happy to be here?”

“Good,” Tim says through a grin that looks more like a grimace, giving Martin’s shoulder a friendly pat. The look he shoots Jon is a dark, mistrustful thing. The look Jon gives him back is fragile, vulnerable, that winds the tension in Tim’s shoulders so tight it has to be painful.

Jon’s gaze flickers to Martin, just for a second—and then he disappears into his office, leaving the door cracked behind him.

Tim and Martin stand there for a second, staring at the door. Tim’s still tense as a bowstring, and his grip on Martin’s shoulder is almost uncomfortable. The air in the Archives feels stuffy and too warm, and there’s a strange prickling sensation on the back of Martin’s neck, like he’s being subjected to close scrutiny.

Then Tim sighs and lets go of Martin’s shoulder, a little of the tension bleeding out of him, and without it he looks small, deflated. He goes back to his desk and sits down, booting up his laptop without a word of explanation to Martin.

Martin stares at the back of Tim’s head for a moment, a number of questions clamoring around in his brain—what the fuck was that? What’s wrong with Jon? Why are you so obviously suspicious of him?—but the words won’t come. Breaking the silence feels...sacrilegious, somehow. Every breath of air sticks against the back of his throat.

In the end, he doesn’t say anything either, just sits at his desk and takes out his Institute-issued laptop. Stares blankly at the screen as the machine slowly, laboriously, comes to life.

-0-

Sasha’s not entirely sure how to interpret the tense atmosphere that has descended over the Archives.

The first day she’d arrived a couple of minutes before she was supposed to, prepared to follow Jon’s direction and help him adjust as best she could. (Her feelings about Jon’s promotion...didn’t matter. She didn’t like it, but it wasn’t his fault that Elias was an old-fashioned misogynist.)

But when she’d come down the stairs, Tim and the assistant she didn’t know, Martin, had been seated quietly at their desks. They’d both had the same distant, shell-shocked look on their faces, like they’d received some shattering, horrible news. Sasha had sent Tim a confused look, but he either hadn’t noticed it, or hadn’t wanted to explain.

She hadn’t even seen Jon that first day, just received a polite email asking her to start organizing the statements according to the system which he’d devised.

It’s been almost three days, and nothing has changed. Oh sure, they’ve all started organizing the statements as directed. Tim cracks jokes, Martin tiptoes around them and makes copious amounts of tea. That strange tension that makes the hair on the back of her neck stand up, like the world is holding its breath in anticipation, hasn’t faded though. And while she doesn’t know Martin all that well, she knows that something’s still up with Tim. He seems more subdued than usual, keeps sending uncomfortable looks in the direction of Jon’s office—

—which hasn’t been open since that first day. She hasn’t seen Jon at all either, no matter how early she arrives or how late she stays. The only proof she has that he’s still alive is the polite email she periodically receives, detailing some specific task that he wants for them to do.

Even then, his emails are...odd. She’s not sure how she can tell, but they feel...awkward? Stilted? Like he’s only half-aware of what he’s typing, or like he’s only asking them to do things because he feels like he should, not because he has any actual goal in mind.

Normally she’d be frustrated by this, would complain bitterly to Tim about Elias passing over her for someone who obviously doesn’t properly appreciate the position they’ve been given—except that she knows Jon. He’d made a point to explain the situation to her himself, an apologetic twist tucked into the corner of his mouth. More than that, he’d asked her to follow him to the archives, saying that he wanted the two people he trusted most, her and Tim, to come with him.

He respects her too much not to take this job seriously.

The strangeness of the archives is only emphasized by Jon’s complete and utter lack of presence within it, but she doesn’t—she doesn’t buy that. She doesn’t believe that he’d just suddenly decide not to do the job he’d been so anxious to excel at. 

More damning than anything is Tim’s complete, utter silence regarding Jon’s strange behavior, but whatever he knows about it, he isn’t saying anything. Martin is willing to talk, but he seems to be as lost as she is.

“I—that first day, Jon…” Martin shrugs, shooting a nervous glance toward the door leading to the archives. He’s been spending a lot of time hovering in the break room making tea, not that she can blame him. “He—I mean obviously I don’t know him very well, but he seemed...upset?”

“Upset,” Sasha repeats dubiously.

Martin lets out an exhausted sigh and turns away, waving a dismissive hand. “Look, I’m not entirely sure how to explain it. He just—okay, so, bear with me for a second, but he reminded me of this guy who used to live in my neighborhood.”

Sasha backs off, folding her arms and leaning against the counter. “Okay?”

“There was this little old couple that used to live in my neighborhood. They were—they were really sweet! The husband used to give candy to us younger kids. But um—sometimes you’d see him sitting in the rocking chair on his porch, and it was like...he wasn’t entirely there? Like, he’d just sit there for hours, rocking and staring at nothing. That’s—that’s what Jon’s expression reminded me of.”

Martin gets more animated the more he talks, Sasha notes; his hands move in broad, sweeping gestures, his expression twisting into an expression of extreme concentration. The moment he finishes he deflates again, tucking his hands into his armpits self-consciously, a hedgehog curling protectively in on itself.

“So, yeah,” he finishes eloquently.

“Huh,” Sasha says thoughtfully.

She gets back to her desk. Looks over at Tim, who’s studiously working through a box of statements, his mouth set in a neutral, concentrated frown. Takes a deep breath, letting the taste of dust and old papers sit heavy on her tongue.

Then she opens her laptop and starts looking through the catalog of cursed items that are currently being held in Artifact Storage.

(She doesn’t think that she’ll find anything, but—but just in case.)

-0-

They all get the call the next Monday morning: Elias Bouchard was found dead in his office.

[something-fanfiction-ie]

Page Numbers

Pairing: Spencer Reid x Reader

Warnings: Detailed descriptions of crime scenes, mentions of rape and sexual assault, murder. Just getting into the angst guys...

A/N: So I decided after like two people responded (thank you guys) to split the second part into two because it was so ridiculously long. You guys don’t even want to know how much I had to cut off this to end this at a place I felt comfortable. Rest assured, you’ll probably get the next part tomorrow. Remember to like, comment, reblog, message me, send me asks, and just do anything to feed my constant need for praise and attention from strangers. As always, thank you so much! I love you all and I hope you enjoy!

___

[Part One]

“I can never figure out if I like local cases more because I get to sleep in my own bed every night we work the case, or if they make me more uncomfortable because they’re so close to home.”

Rossi glanced at Morgan, who cast his eyes to the review mirror as he spoke. Reid sat in the back, a little smile playing at the corners of his lips as he read something on his phone.

The youngest member of the BAU team had been uncharacteristically chipper over the last three weeks, constantly taking calls or responding to texts. Even when he started to ramble about something no one was really interested in listening to, the topics were about things that were of a happier nature. Things like a single grain of rice having five times more DNA than an entire human being has in their whole body, or that the term ‘nerd’ first showed up in print in the book, If I Ran the Zoo, by Dr. Seuss published in 1951.

He shoved the cell back into his pocket, looking up into Morgan’s eyes in the mirror. He knew that they knew that something was up, but he didn’t want to say anything until it got a little more serious. And it was rapidly going that way. Spencer had spent nearly every second of his free time with you, doing things like getting coffee or going back to the bookstore that just so happened to be forty minutes out of his way.

In fact, just last week you had come over to his house to have dinner and watch a movie. You begged him to watch The Princess Bride instead of some very obscure French movie that no normal person would actually own.

“I love all the new and intelligent things you show me, Spencer, but I want to show you a new and slightly less intelligent thing. Let me rub off on you for a change.”

You quoted the entire thing, your lips silently moving with every word spoken during the movie. Afterward, you confessed that you had read the book even more than you’d seen the movie and could probably quote it just as easily. He picked up a copy from the library this morning before coming into work. While he hadn’t had the chance to read it yet, or either of your own published works, he was determined to finish it before he saw you again.

It was only 493 pages, so it shouldn’t take him that long.

“What?” He blinked, his brows dipping dangerously close to those impossibly long lashes of his. Morgan looked back to the road, his own amusement twitching at his cheeks.

The car bumped over a dip in the road just before they pulled into the already packed driveway of the crime scene. Rossi shut the car off and Morgan pulled his sunglasses on before getting out of the car, but not without a teasing comment.

“Get your head in the game long enough to solve this case and you can go back to whatever has had your attention these last couple of weeks. Okay, kid?” The blush that colored his cheeks was the same shade as when he realized you were staring at him in awe that first time you met.

Inside, the mood of teasing and distractedness changed. Everyone focused while crime scene techs circled the room taking pictures and gathering every bit of tangible evidence they could possibly find.

The first victim, or by the looks of things, the last victim, was a male in his early to mid-forties. His salt and pepper hair was combed back and styled, his beard perfectly trimmed. Even in death his clothes were unrumpled, only the pool of blood-soaked into his khaki pants and maroon shirt ruined the look of an otherwise very put-together man.

He was slouched in a wooden chair pulled into the living room from the dining room table, his hands bound behind his back with three blue zip ties, his ankles bound to the legs of the chair exactly the same way.

“The victim is forty-four year old, Joseph Kyle. He’s a lawyer with Kyle & Anderson. Cause of death appears to be two gunshot wounds to the chest.”

The next victim was a woman. She wasn’t as put together as her husband, laying in a pool of her own blood on the kitchen floor. Bruises and cuts littered her arms and legs, massive handprints still marred the skin around her biceps. It went without asking that she had been sexually assaulted, her underwear hanging on the knob of a drawer and her skirt bunched around the top of her thighs.

“Synthia Kyle, forty. Stay at home mom. She was stabbed sixty-one times in the abdomen, chest, and thighs.”

The last three victims were children. Each in their own rooms, each tucked into bed and shot in the head execution-style. One look around the room and anyone would know that they were happy kids, smart and well-rounded, and loved.

“James, Massey, and Devan Kyle. Seventeen, fifteen, and ten. All shot in the head.”

For all the evidence that could be seen with their eyes; the brutal attack against the mother, the cold killing of the father, and the remorseful executions of the children, it shouldn’t have been so hard to form a profile.

“And where is the number?” Reid turned his whole body away from the little boy's room, the image of him lying in bed with his eyes closed and a bullet hole in his head was enough to turn the pits of his stomach against him.

The lead detective, a slight man with inky black curls and piercing blue eyes, led them into the dining room. The number ‘302’ was smeared across a painting hanging on the wall, the blood so thickly layered over the Botecelli copy that is dripped down and over the golden frame.

“At first glance, it would appear to be a family annihilator. His primary goal being the rape and torture of Synthia Kyle, and the rest of the family simply casualties of his rage, but just like the last three crimes, there is nothing even remotely similar in victimology or the killings.” Reid’s lips skewed to the side, crossing his arms and combing over every detail.

“Alison Crane was sexually assaulted as well.” Morgan offered the information up with skepticism, aware that, besides the numbers at every crime scene, it was the only thing that could be pulled from the two. Rossi shook his head, his eyes scanning the air as he thought.

“Alison Crane was kidnapped and beaten before she was found three days later on the Chesapeake Bay. Her wrists slashed. She was staged with remorse, a-a cloth laid over her eyes and her arms crossed over her chest. That couldn’t have been done by the same unsub.” Rossi looked over at Morgan because even still, they knew that it was the same guy because cut into the top of Alison’s arm had been the number nineteen.

It had taken Reid all of two seconds to realize they were page numbers when he’d seen the piece of paper that had been pinned to the second victim’s chest. Obviously torn from a book, the triangle scrap of paper had only had the number 85 printed on it.

And just as difficult as it had been to pin down a book during the Fisher King case, it felt as if it was ten thousand times harder to find the book being used now. All they had were page numbers and murders. They’d narrowed the list to crime novels, but there were still so many books on the list that even with Reid, it would take years to sift through them all.

Garcia has been sad to watch the young doctor leave her office in disappointment when she revealed her ability to narrow down books was still no good. Not that it was her fault since the lack of a central database for every book known to man, made it very frustrating for anyone that tried to narrow down a book based only on crime scenes. And this was still given the assumption that this book was actually published and not a story the unsub had written himself.

This would be the third homicide in this case, the first one done since the FBI had been asked to assist the DCPD. The crossing of victimology and the numbers on the victims had been enough for unit chief, Hugh Lowe to pick up his phone and request for the BAU to stop this man.

Other than the book revelation, and the geographical profile that Reid had come up with, there wasn’t much progress. It had only been two weeks since the death of the first victim and now their unsub’s body count had gone from two to seven.

A young woman kidnapped outside her dorm in Georgetown, held hostage, beaten, and raped for three days, then staged at the Chesapeake Bay with her wrists slashed and clean clothes on.

An older man was beaten in his home while his wife is away on business overseas, killed with a tire iron to the back of his head, stripped of his clothes, which sat folded beside his splayed out body, his ring finger cut off. His wedding ring had been on the clothes beside him but they couldn’t find the finger.

And now a family of five.

It was frustrating, to say the least, each agent so annoyed by the case that none of them spoke on the ride back to the BAU.

“So I don’t have the book, mon ami, but I do have a possible connection in victimology and a shortlist of possible suspects, or at the very least persons of interest,” Garcia said excitedly when all three glowering men came through the clear doors of the BAU. They each lifted their heads and eyebrows with piqued curiosity.

“My link is Georgetown. Alison was going there for a major in political science, Mr. Walters had been a chemistry teacher there before the death of his first wife ten years ago, and I just found out that our newest victims, Synthia and Joseph, met there in the spring of ‘88 as a senior and a freshman.” Garcia had to admit that their minds were quick to gather the information, turning it over in the cogs that constantly spin inside their brains, but her mind was faster.

“Did you-“

“Cross-reference Georgetown alumni with a list of crime novelists? And then cross-reference that list with people who lived in Spence’s comfort zone? ‘How did you know to do that Garcia?’ you may ask. Because I’m a genius. Quick, boys, follow me.” Her heels click in rapid succession as she leads the men into her office of computers, colorful do-dads, and pictures. When she takes a seat, Morgan leans directly over her shoulder, Reid standing just behind her, and Rossi stands just to the side of him.

The list that pops up is only four names, the tension that has been in all of their shoulders relaxes a little at the first stride in the case that they’ve made sense they started working it. Reid’s shoulders tense up again when he notices a familiar name that sits at the bottom of the list.

“This one, click on it.” He points to the line at the end and watches as Garcia moves her mouse over to the area he was pointing to and clicks to reveal a face he knows too well.

You smile back at him in your freshman year Georgetown photo, a set of bangs cut that you don’t have anymore. In the picture you seem impossibly young, your eyes full of excitement, although he knows that you aren’t that much younger than he is. Even still, for some reason, he half expects your smile to be missing teeth you seem so young.

“(Y/N) (Y/L/N), graduated from Georgetown in 2000 with a master's in criminology. She’s published two crime novels in the last two years. She doesn’t have too much of an eventful life; she isn’t married, has no children, pays all of her bills on time, has no detectable significant other. Mom is a detective with the Atlanta PD, Dad walked out before she was born, no siblings, nothing more than a couple speeding tickets against her.” Rossi pulls one of his hands from his folded arms, pointing at the picture with squinted eyes.

“I met her last year, very briefly, at a publishing party. We couldn’t have talked for more than ten seconds, but she seemed like a good kid. You think she’s our unsub?” Everyone looks to Reid, his expression is stone cold and unreadable.

Garcia almost wishes she hadn’t made the connection in the first place as she watches the muscle in his jaw tick, his eyes flying across the screen several times before he turned away from the group’s prying eyes. Nerves of a whole other kind had exploded inside him, forcing his hands to open and close like fluttering butterfly wings at his sides.

“I’m not sure. Just call her in for questioning.” He wants to say he doesn’t think it’s you, mostly because he doesn’t want it to be you. The thought that he could have invited a serial killer of this magnitude into his life, into the life of his team, it makes him even more nauseated than he had been earlier standing in the middle of a messy crime scene.

But when he runs to the library and finds both copies of your books, flipping to pages nineteen, eighty-five, and three hundred and two, he almost cries. On each page reads a word for word, detailed description of every murder that had happened in this case so far. The first girl even had the same name as the first victim.

By the time you make it to the BAU and you are escorted to the interrogation room, he’s read both books cover to cover. He keeps telling himself that there’s a chance you weren’t doing this, that you weren’t the killer, but it’s so hard to believe when you were the mind behind every murder.

As he looks at you from behind the one-way window pane, a mixture of anger and, strangely, hope has begun to swirl around his chest.

“You sure you don’t want to come in with me?” Prentiss says, looking back at the doctor as she reaches for the door. Spencer shakes his head, lips pursed and heart racing. He couldn’t go in their unbiased, willing to accept that you could be the unsub he’d been chasing for the last two weeks.

“Hi, I’m SSA Emily Prentiss with the BAU, nice to meet you, (Y/N).” She stretches her hand across the table and you return in kind, your shy smile stabbing into Reid’s heart like a knife.

“I’d like to say it is nice to meet you too, but I wish it were under other circumstances.” The chair across from you screeches on the floor as Emily pulls it out to sit in. She absentmindedly flicks her slick black hair over her shoulder before laying the files in front of her.

“Unfortunately, I’m always under circumstances like these, working at the BAU.”

“‘Bad guys don’t take days off,’ that’s what my mom used to say,” You glance at the file on the table, chewing the inside of your cheek like you were trying to keep yourself from saying anything more, “I was told I was needed to give my opinion on a case? Although, I’m not sure how I could be of much help. I just write.”

Spencer watches you push a piece of your hair behind your ear with a small chuckle, glancing at the window like you could see him behind it.

“You’re a published author of two books, not just any writer.” Prentiss is relaxed, letting the case file sit between you like a hook dangling between a fish and a fisherman. You keep looking down at it, curiosity eating away at your nerves the way it used to when your mother came home with a new case.

“Tell that to my mom, she’s still holding out on me joining law enforcement.” It’s a joke, but every profiler watching reads into it. It isn’t hard to fit it into a working profile, the unsub feels unappreciated in her skills as an author with the apparent disapproval her mother has over her career. To both appease her mother and stake her claim as a serious author, the unsub is killing the same way she’s written in her books.

“Why didn’t you? Join law enforcement, I mean. You’re obviously very intelligent, you had a masters from Georgetown at just seventeen, and you seem to have a pretty good grasp on the politics and procedures of law enforcement careers.” For just a moment, you consider the question and your answer to it, but Spencer can see the exact moment that it clicks in your mind on what exactly is going on.

Your entire body language changes; your shoulders curling in toward your body, the chewing of your cheek intensifying, your hands pulling back from their relaxed position on the table and tangling themselves into your lap.

“I’m not here as a possible expert witness, am I, Agent Prentiss?”

Emily responds by opening the file, at last, pushing the pictures of the crime scenes across the table for you to have a look at. Seven pictures splay out in front of you and it doesn’t take you long to register the familiarity behind them all. You have to swallow the bile in your mouth before you speak again.

“I’m a suspect.”

“You’re the only suspect.”

[i-will-physically-fight-you]

A Singular Cog in the Machine Chapter 3

Chapter Title: Soul and Emotion

Summary: "It was pure logic when it came down to it. Why allow harm befall the others if Logan could stop it? Surely, it was much more beneficial for only one to be harmed than for all to undergo excruciating pain and misery. A broken cog is more easily replaced than if the whole machine fell apart.“

Logan adheres to the belief that needs of the many far outweigh the needs of the one, the latter being himself. Or in other words, Logan tries to sacrifice himself for the sake of the others. Fortunately for Logan, they won’t let him get away with that.

Chapter Word-Count: 2k

Pairings: platonic lamp

Warnings: Injuries, Referenced Torture, Crying, Misunderstandings, Angst With a Happy Ending

Chapter 1 | Chapter 2 | End       AO3 LINK

As promised, here comes the comfort! I want to give a quick shout-out to both @delimeful and @today-only-happens-once as their own sci-fi aus helped inspire me to finish what I started with this one heh <3

-

Logan woke up alone for the first time in a long while. Approximately sixty-six cycles, five hours, thirty-two minutes, four, five, six seconds ago. 

‘Internal Clock program is running functionally,’ Logan thought as he closed his eyes, running a quick diagnosis scan. It was not...completely optimal. Parts of his code had been ravaged, leaving him vulnerable and exposed. His biological body still suffered grievous breaches. His artificial eyes were damaged, only working at 70% efficiency. 

This made viewing things from a distance rather difficult. However, it was clear enough to recognize he was not in his own quarters. Rather, he was still in the ship’s common recreation area. The “living room” as Virgil referred to it. 

He laid on the couch, swaddled in soft blankets and cushioned with a plethora of pillows. Both he expected came from Patton’s hoard in his quarters. He was almost surprised not to see a stuffed animal in the crook of his arm. The television was on, the volume lowered to only a pleasant murmur could be heard. Images of animals flashed onto the screen. A nature documentary, one that Logan had previously found to be captivatingly informative.

 “--we’ll take care of you, we’ll watch all your favorite nature documentaries, how does that sound?”

Patton had said that, he recalled. But when? He tried locating the source of the memory file. Except--

ERROR MEMORY FILE CORRUPTED.

He dug a bit deeper, finding more and more memory files in a similar disarray. He’d known this problem was occurring. But that didn’t explain the chill that swept through his body just then. A fever perhaps? No, his body temperatures remained at their normal regulated levels.

Before he could contemplate this further, his ears picked up on noises in the distance. Too far away to make it out from his position. There was a simple solution to his quandary. The ship computer. Or Odysseus as Roman insisted on calling it. He could request an audio transcript. 

Pinging...pinging...pinging…

He couldn’t reach the ship computer. That was not optimal. His only option was to investigate the noises himself.

Logic dictated he was wounded. He should remain on the couch unless absolutely necessary. He remained put, concentrating on the television. The urge to find the source of the noises would not go away. It festered, growing rapidly like a disease until he could not withstand it any longer. 

Standing up from the couch proved far more difficult than he anticipated. His torso flared in pain, his legs shaky and unstable. He gripped the side of the couch, breathing in deeply. His vision spun, distorted and decorated with bright spots of light. It took a moment for it to completely clear.

He looked down the corridor, the distance stretching into oblivion. No, that was a falsehood. It was only ten meters long. However, in his current physical state it might as well be a thousand meters.

It didn’t cause his pressing curiosity to fade in the slightest. He took a step forward, his foot stinging like pins and needles to quote an idiom of Virgil’s. He didn’t collapse. Granted, he heavily leaned onto the couch for support. He took another step forward and then another.

 He held onto the corridor wall the whole way, a small grunt of pain leaving him. The dizziness returned, but he pushed through it. All that mattered was reaching the end of the corridor. If Logan’s memory was still accurate, it should lead to the ship galley. Perhaps the others were engaged in re-energizing through fuel consumption? 

As he drew close, the noises crystallized into recognizable speech. 

“Are you sure?” Virgil’s voice asked, pointed and edged. Someone responded, much too low for Logan to catch. He gritted his teeth, propelling himself onward at an accelerated rate. His vision frizzled and crackled, everything becoming a blobby mess of colors.

“Maybe we should--Logan!” 

An arm wrapped around his waist, hoisting him up. Logan opened his mouth to protest when a wave of nausea hit him. He quickly shut it in favor of keeping his stomach contents down. The person guided him to a chair, careful and steady. He sat there, grimacing as the nausea gradually subsided from his systems.

When he glanced up again, he met the furrowed brows of Roman, Patton and Virgil. They gathered around him, forming a semi-circle. He examined them, scrutinizing every detail. His drive whirred from the amount of tests he processed in the matter of nanoseconds. Each one proving the validity of his suspicions every single time.

“You’re real.” He croaked.

They all exchanged a glance.

“Yes, we’re here Logan, you’re safe now,” Patton confirmed, laying a hand on Logan’s shoulder. A gesture meant to be reassuring except it wasn’t reassuring at all. 

“No,” Logan shook his head, “You should--cannot---I don’t--it does not make sense!”

“Why does it not make sense?” Roman asked, dropping down on one knee. He acted odd,  more muted than usual. The way his head bowed indicated a sign of exhaustion. Logan shook this thought aside in an attempt to formulate a response.

“To quote Spock from the movie Star Trek II Wrath Of Khan, ‘The needs of the many outweigh the needs of the few, or the one,’” Logan said. Upon their blank stares, he elaborated, “A singular cog in the machine is more easily replaced than if the whole machine falls apart. As the ship engineer and navigator, my role is vital but replaceable, therefore--” 

Patton drove into Logan, embracing him firmly around his middle. The titekan’s whole frame shook as deep, guttural sobs fell erupted from him. Logan blinked, almost short-circuiting from this unexpected turn of events.

“I...do not understand.” Logan admitted. He glanced up at Roman and Virgil only to find them in similar states of malfunction. 

“You colossal intelligent idiot,” Roman murmured, his face dripping with ivory tears. He shoved his head against Logan’s shoulder, placing his arms around both him and Patton. “Did you really think we could function without you?”

‘‘Yes,’’ Logan wanted to say, but he couldn’t. The word wouldn’t come out of his clenched throat. Virgil was the only one left standing at this point. He was the captain, the system administrator. He was a much-appreciated source of reality.  Surely, despite his human emotions, he understood the logic. 

“Lo,” Virgil sighed, running his hand through his hair, “When you disappeared, we searched all over the galaxy looking for you. We looked for weeks. And after we found you, we’ve been taking care of you in shifts. You know why?”

Logan shook his head.

“Because you’re not a broken cog to us. You’re more than that--you’re a kraffing sentient being. You’re--” Virgil’s voice wobbled. He inhaled harshly, pushing on, “Dammit, you’re family, Logan. And it’s cheesy but we don’t give up on one another. Never.”

“Captain Fearless is right,” Roman said, and Patton made a rumbling sound of agreement.

“Oh,” Logan managed, swallowing, “Oh.”

He’d thought so much about the others’ and their importance to the system. He analyzed and calculated it all. He saw how removing any of their variables would be detrimental. But in all his calculations, he never considered how he himself affected the equation. 

“I did not--I made a slight miscalculation--” Logan breathed in, “I am sorry.”

“No,” Virgil said, stepping closer, “I’m sorry. It’s my fault. I should’ve told you, I assumed it was an understood thing. We could’ve rescued you sooner if I hadn’t second-guessed myself--”

“Virgil.” Logan said, the clenching feeling in his throat tightening. Wordlessly, he reached out a hand to Virgil. He wasn’t quite sure what he was attempting to convey. Fortunately Virgil seemed to understand. He leaned over and joined the entangling of limbs and bodies. 

‘A group hug,’ Logan’s dictionary program informed him, ‘an instance of three or more people embracing one another simultaneously, typically to provide support or express solidarity.’

They held onto one another for quite a while, not moving a single muscle. Great globs of tears were shed amongst them all; even Logan wasn’t immune to it. He rationalized it was his body reacting to the others’ emotional displays. It probably did not have to do with the strange, tingly warmth lit up inside his chest.

He would worry about this sensation if not for the melatonin in his system starting to take effect. He closed his eyes, a long intake of oxygen following this action. 

“Logan?” Patton sniffled.

“Yes?” 

“Th...there’s something we need to tell you about.”

Logan’s eyes fluttered open. He looked expectantly at Patton, waiting. The titekan opened his mouth to continue, but Virgil and Roman beat him to it.

“Patton, are you seriously going to tell him--”

“We should wait--”

“No,” Patton said, interrupting them both, “we can’t keep this from him. He deserves to know.”

It didn’t increase in volume, but Logan’s heart was the only thing roaring in his ears. Deserves to know? The only scenarios Logan could come up in his mind was his tests were faulty, wrong wrong wrong about this being real. It was all fake. A simulation, surely or worse; an experiment. The thousand eyes watching him behind a screen, shattering his hopes once more.

“Logan?” A soft hand touched his cheek, “you with us?”

“Yes,” Logan heard himself saying, “Yes, I’m here. Go on, Patton. What is it that you’d like to divulge?” 

“When we brought you back, I did a few medical scans, to try and see if there was any internal bleeding going on,” Patton hesitated, refusing to meet Logan’s eyes, “I found an AI chip in your brain.”

What? Impossible, his AI was supposed to be undetectable by scans--

“That disgusting buvah must’ve stuck it in you for the kriffs and giggles,” Roman growled, his scaled tail whipping with indignation. 

“As far we can tell, it doesn’t have a tracker,” Virgil said, “and removing it could be lethal.”

“Okay.” Logan said faintly. 

“Okay?” Roman repeated, squinting, “We just told you that you have a freaky AI chip in your brain and your response is, ‘okay?!’”

“Hey, lay off him, Princey,” Virgil hissed, “He’s been through a lot, you know that.”

“Well,” Logan began, “this is not how I expected to inform you all of the fact that I am an advanced artificial intelligence operating inside of a biological body.”

“What?!” Roman gaped at him. Virgil and Patton also stared at him, showing similar signs of duress. 

“I did not think it was imperative intel as it did not negatively impact my performance as neither an engineer or navigator.” Logan said. And while it was true, it was also a bit of a lie. The reality was that most people seemed to be wary of AIs. This was why he chose to clothe himself with a biological body to blend in, so to speak. All it took was working lungs and a beating heart for others to respect and listen as illogical as that may be.

“I admit, that perhaps that was another lapse of judgment on my part. I understand if knowing this...makes you uncomfortable,” Logan added, a weird twisting feeling settling in his gut. Perhaps he was ill? He could not find himself to meet their gazes. He tried not thinking about how that was a sign of nervousness. He was not nervous, after all, AIs do not get nervous.

“Freaky?” Roman let out a high-pitched laugh, “did I say freaky? I meant to say there’s a freaking fantastic AI chip in your brain.”

“I agree,” Patton chirped up, “You could almost say that he’s too cute to compute!”

Now it was Logan’s turn to gape at them. “It really does not bother any of you?”

“It’s like I said,” Virgil told him, a small smirk growing on his lips, “you’re family. We love you, AI or not.”

Logan blinked, slowly processing the others--no, his family’s words. It didn’t make sense. His systems struggled putting it in neat, quantifiable boxes. He feared trying would only result in his systems crashing. For once, however, he found it didn’t matter that didn’t need to make sense.

So his response to this was purely logical. In ways Logan refused to elaborate or share even within himself.

“I...find you all sufficient as well.”

[op-peccatori]

afternoon experiments (nsfw) | MLQC Gavin | Kinktober: October 17th

Prompts: Knifeplay || Sixty-nine || Restrained/Bondage

Gavin called. He said it’s his turn. Here’s number 4 for @alloveroliver’s Kinktober event! I hope everyone’s having a great time~ 

Fandom: Mr Love Queen’s Choice

Pairing: Reader/Gavin

Rating: 18+ 

Word count: 1000

Warnings/Tags: 69!!! smut, college au, I think they’re both virgins, oral sex

The air in the dorm room is dry on your bare skin, the late afternoon sun being the only source of light witness to your activities.

Gavin’s arm is tight around your waist as he crushes you against him, his kisses messy and hurried, his hair ruffled from your fingers tugging at it. You straddle your boyfriend eagerly, your hand fanning across his chest, stroking the contracted muscles of his abdomen. Your assignments have been shoved aside in favour of your favourite subjects, a sock on the doorknob warning Minor away. 

You roll your hips into his, the stiff line of his cock rubbing against your clothed entrance feeling heavenly. You feel warm from the rush of desire, the feeling of wanting another person this badly still new to you. 

He groans into your mouth, his hips thrusting frantically against you before he pulls away to help you slip off your cotton dress. You throw his shirt somewhere behind you, your fingers working on pulling down the waistband of his sweats as he sucks bruise after bruise down your neck and chest. His sweats are quick to be peeled off and you smile as he fumbles with the clasp of your cotton bra for a few seconds before he succeeds. You’re left in your simple white panties, taken by the sight of Gavin in pawprint boxers.

The raw hunger and awe on his face have you blushing hard, something shy squeezing your heart at the tenderness sparkling in his eyes.

The arch of your mouth fades when he mouths at the curve of your breast, lips wrapping around a taut nipple while he gropes at the other one. Your back arches as he alternates between using his tongue and sucking gently, pulling you closer. You mewl and wrap an arm around him, hands wandering the length of his back, tensing when his cock brushes against you. Gavin kisses up the slender slope of your neck, brushing his lips against yours reassuringly, soothing your silent worries away. You nip at his mouth playfully, taking pleasure in the smile you feel against your lips.

“___, if you’d like to, I want to try something new,” he murmurs into your skin, hissing when you rub yourself against him lightly, just a delicate movement leaving him struggling with the tethers of his self-control.

“What is it?” Your voice is soft, but you’re curious about what he has in mind. You've mostly stuck to making out and some heavy petting until now, neither of you wanting to rush into something you're not ready for. You can’t quite muster up the courage to tell him how often you think about taking him inside you, letting him rock himself to completion, the two of you joined in the most primal union.

You suck in a breath when his finger slides the thin cloth aside and traces your slit before he pops it in his mouth, and shifts to lie on his back. Your eyes fall on his cock, weeping and hard, as he pulls your hands into his and tugs until you’re facing the length of his body. Your knees brace against his shoulders, his face between your thighs. He smiles up at you, wetting his lips once, the way he does every time you bring him something you’ve cooked. 

“There, that’s...that’s perfect. Is this okay?” he says, and you’re struck by the image you two make. His breath on your skin, his gaze hungry and encouraging as his hands knead the flesh of your thighs. Even as you nod, for a second, you’re overcome by worries. You’re not unfamiliar with Gavin’s body, but this isn’t something you’ve ever done before. And what if you crush his head or something? "___?"

Your boyfriend seems to read your mind as you worry, and in a move to distract you, he parts the curtain of your panties and latches onto your sex, tongue flicking against your clit as you fall forward with a cry, burning jolts of arousal curling up your spine. Your hands frame his hips as his tongue slips between your folds, and your eyes squeeze shut.

“I love the way you taste,” he groans, and you strain your ears to hear him. “I could bury myself here forever.” A little known fact about Gavin: he blurts really sweet yet filthy things out when things start heating up. He uses his words to muddle your thoughts as well as he uses his body to obliterate them completely. “Relax, sweetheart. Use my mouth. I want you to.” 

You’re nearly overwhelmed by his assault, trembling as Gavin pulls your hips into his face and then his teeth nip at the plump flesh of your ass. “You know what to do, Princess?” You’re prepared when he licks into you again, pulling his boxers down his thighs with unsteady hands. Your fingers reach for and wrap around the base of his tumid shaft, sliding up and down slowly, curiosity mixing with the batter of desire. You rock your cunt into his mouth and mouth at the tip of his cock like it’s your favourite popsicle. 

You feel his answering growl throughout your body, his lips sucking at you with aggression that would scare you if it didn’t turn you on so much. Lowering yourself onto your elbows, you bob your head and flatten your tongue against his length like you’ve read about, always looking for ways to please the man tonguing your cunt.

“Faster, faster. You’re perfect, so perfect,” he rasps. You follow his wishes and quicken the slide of your mouth, your cheeks hollowed out and his cock brushing the back of your throat. It’s hard to coordinate your movements with Gavin lapping at you without pause, his hand having joined his mouth and finger rubbing tight circles around your clit. You’re close, you realize faintly, as you circle your hips. Fiery pleasure licks at your spine, beckoning you closer and closer. "Come on my tongue, baby." Mouth forming a little O, you grind down into his mouth urgently and it only takes a few seconds before the wave rushes through your veins. A cry out of your mouth, a flash behind your lids and liquid fire in your body before it fades, leaving you trembling in the wake, barely managing to stay upright. 

You take a moment to lean your head on his hip, shuddering through the aftershocks, before you’re back at it with renewed vigour.

You waste no time and jerk him furiously as he licks you clean, eager to see him fall apart, to hear the sweet sounds leave his throat. Gavin’s hips buck up with seemingly no rhythm nor reason and you get your wish when he falls back with a choked cry, his shaft throbbing in your mouth and filling it until you have to pull away, his seed dribbling down your chin and more spattering on your cheeks. 

You got your prize.

There’s a short pause before you crawl forward and Gavin pulls you onto his lap, the innocent act unbelievably intimate with the two of you completely bare. “Ah, fuck. I’m so...sorry about the mess.” Your cheeks bulge and you study him as he smiles down at you, eyes bright and cheeks adorably flushed, almost angelic. His lips shine with the mark of your pleasure. He reaches back for tissues and offers them to you, and you make sure he looks you in the eye as you brace yourself, and swallow.

Gavin stares at you blankly as you smack your lips delicately, before nodding in approval. “That’s doable.” And you shriek as he tackles you, pinning you to the mattress as he buries his flaming face in your hair. You can't help but giggle at the expression you can only catch a glimpse of before he hides it, the lust hiding behind the shyness. 

There’s a timid knock at the door. “Um, guys? I really need my notes!” 

[shreddedparchment]

Of Two Minds Pt.07

You’re Getting Better

06/22/2019

Pairing: Bucky x Reader x Steve          Word Count: 7003

Masterpost          Warnings: blood, violence, angst, fluff

A/N: Let me know what you think. What was your favorite part? I know mine! I hope you like it. One more chapter and this one’s over. If you happen to reblog, thanks so much for helping me spread my work. xoxo

You feel movement beside you. Your bed dips. Then rises. Then you feel warm fingers around your cold clammy hand.

Opening your eyes, you look towards the warmth and see Bucky with your smaller hand held in his large ones. Metal and flesh; ice and fire.

The sensation is nice. You like the way it feels to have him hold your hand. Especially his right. His heat is welcome against the frost in your veins.

He’s not looking at you. He’s got the sides of his hands pressed against his forehead as he mumbles something that sounds like a prayer, but you’ve never known Bucky to be religious.

Desperate times maybe? Wait…why is he desperate?

You open your mouth, but you can’t speak just yet. Your throat feels raw and sore and you realize that you’ve got something in it. You choke around it, the thing stuck in it.

Bucky’s head whips up and he stands, tense and rigid.

He’s yelling. Yelling loud but you can’t hear him. It’s muffled. Like he’s underwater.

Maybe you are? Is it a snorkel in your mouth? No.

Stupid. Snorkels go up and out of the water. Not down throats.

Bucky runs around your bed and you watch as he steps out through the open door of your hospital room?

You can hear a muted beeping now. Why are you in a hospital?

Why is Bucky so far away? You want him back beside you. Holding your hand.

You want him.

You might not know where you are or why you’re here, but you know that you love him and being near him is the only thing that will make you feel better.

The sounds of ragged breathing and gagging as you continue to choke around the tube in your mouth gets louder. Or maybe your hearing is clearing up?

Why can’t you think straight? You used to be good at making deductions.

Bucky races back to you, his hands—ice and fire again—cup the sides of your face.

He’s talking. Mouthing something that you can’t hear. His eyes are flushed with panic and his face is pale with fear. His beautiful once-pink lips are pale too. Chapped. Can his lips get chapped?

A hand surprises you as it reaches for his lips, fingers pressed to the peeling skin of his mouth.

You freeze, not recognizing the frail digits.

It takes a second, but you realize they’re yours. Your fingers. You move them again, still choking, eyes crying, and massage the torn skin.

Bucky stills too, looking down towards your fingers before reaching for them to place his own warm ones over them.

He suddenly turns away from you and you hear more muffled shouts.

An angel brightens up your room. Blonde, with storm blue eyes, pink lips—perfectly hydrated. He’s holding a large bottle of water and he shoves it into Bucky’s chest hard.

They argue. For several seconds they argue but then the blonde angel turns towards you and the name echoes in your head like a hymn.

Steve. The voice in your head coos. Steeeeeve.

And it’s his voice that you hear finally. Still muffled. Still distant. But you hear it.

“I’m here, hon.” He whispers, reaching for your forearm as Bucky slips away from you and around the end of your bed to your other side. “I’m here.”

You flood with love for him. You’re so happy to see him. Then you look at Bucky and he’s chugging the water down fast. He throws the bottle onto the seat he’d been sitting in then rushes to your side and this time when he cups your face, you can hear him.

“Calm down, baby. Cho’s on her way. You’ll be okay. Can you breathe for me?” He asks, then breathes in like he wants you to.

It’s long, slow, and deep.

Like when he makes love to me. You think chaotically.

You breathe like him and the gagging and choking stops. Tears continue to stream down along your cheeks but they’re not from the pipe anymore.

You’re crying because Steve and Bucky are here, and your heart understands something that you don’t yet.

Steve called you hon? Why?

You don’t get to linger on the thought as a tall Korean woman with beautiful dark hair pulled up into a sleek and professional updo sweeps into the room and your boys—wait, my boys?—move out of the way for her.

It doesn’t take long for her to pull the tube from your mouth and when it’s free you swallow.

“Water?” She asks, knowing just how your throat will feel.

You nod slowly as she checks your heartrate and then the monitor you’re attached to.

“I’ll get it!” Bucky says.

“I’ll get it!” Steve says.

They both spring from the room leaving you alone with Dr. Cho. Her name comes to you now and you remember her patching you up on multiple occasions. This is when you also remember that you’re on the compound.

That’s the only place that looks like this.

“You’ve got quite the devoted following.” She says with a smile.

“I do?” You ask, uncertain, looking away from the doorway where they just disappeared and up at the beautiful woman.

She nods. “Would you like to sit up?”

“Yes.” You make to sit up but Dr. Cho—Helen…you call her Helen—places her hand on your shoulder and pushes you down. “Don’t sit up. You’re still very weak, Y/N. Here.”

She reaches down to the side of your bed and presses a button that makes the top half of the bed fold upwards.

As your weight is suddenly shifted, you do feel your body shift weakly with the shift of gravity.

“What happened?” You ask Helen. She keeps the button pressed until you’re sitting up at sixty degrees.

Her smile waivers and slowly she sits herself down beside you.

“You don’t remember?” She asks, curious and appraising.

“No.” You croak. You swallow hard, thick—where’s your water?

“Here.” Bucky’s voice suddenly rings in from the doorway.

You lean around Helen to look at him. To really look at him. You’re desperate to get your eyes on him.

He’s beautiful, chapped lips aside. He’s got his dark hair pulled back into a high bun, strands of his dark hair falling around and framing his handsome face. Scruffy jaw with a beard that must have taken him a week or longer to grow. His steel blue eyes are bright with excitement and his previously pale face is now rosy. His cheeks stretch and apple as he sees you looking for him.

“I’ve got it, baby. I’ve got your water.” He says proudly and quickly hurries around to the right side of your bed again.

He holds a cup out for you, carefully holding the yellow bendy straw towards your lips so that you can take a drink.

It takes you a second to do what he wants because you’re smiling too. You feel as if you haven’t seen him in days.

No…weeks.

Your chest warms at the sight of him.

With your lips closed around the straw, you drink, and your attention is suddenly pulled to your ailing body.

Never in your life have you been this thirsty.

Wait…that’s not true.

Your mind is filled with the smell of sea salt, humid rooms made of bolted steels in shades of black and red. The taste of rust and the hot rush of blood in your mouth. There’s the startling feeling of violation that courses through your limbs and you pull back from the cup to stare at Bucky with fear and confusion.

You’re not afraid of Bucky but you’re terrified suddenly.

“Why-?” You stutter, the word catching in your throat.

“What?” Bucky asks, suddenly worried. He puts the cup aside to sit on the edge of your bed and take your hand. “What’s the matter?”

You blink hard, urging your brain to pull at the violent thread.

The image of a wet steel deck rushing up to meet your face makes you gasp, and you remember a disgusting crack and the shooting of sharp pain in your right leg.

You pull your blanket up to look at the bright pink cast on your leg.

“How-?” You begin but Helen gets up and takes hold of your chin.

She tilts your head back, pulling a small flashlight out of her pocket to point at your eyes. She checks your pupils then reaches up to feel underneath your hair and against your skull.

“What’s wrong with her?” Bucky asks Helen.

“Wrong?!” Steve’s booming voice echoes from the open doorway and you lean around Helen again, yanking your chin from her grip to get a look at Steve too.

You’re so happy to see him. More than you thought you’d be. There’s something extra there that you’re not sure you understand completely.

A yearning. You want him. You want him to hold you and kiss you. You miss it. As if you’ve felt it before.

Steve rushes up towards you and he’s wearing clean jeans, a thick plain off-white t-shirt that clings to his wide chest and shoulders pleasantly. His hair is neatly combed, straw blonde, and you can smell the citrus of his shampoo from here. Oranges and lemons.

The smell is tart, compared to Bucky’s musk but you love it all the same.

Unlike Bucky, Steve looks like he’s been taking care of himself. He’s clean shaven, smells clean-good. Not just good because it’s his smell. And he looks healthy as a horse.

You look at Bucky as Steve moves to take up a spot behind him, staring at you with intense storm blue eyes. He reaches out and places his right hand on your cast while his left holds onto a cup just like Bucky’s but inside you can see flashes of green.

Grapes!

You hear a rattle too. They’re on ice.

“She’s having some trouble with her memory.” Helen says.

“What kind of trouble?” Bucky asks, worried with that little pucker between his eyes.

You watch him, taking in his ragged appearance.

Although Steve is dressed casually, he’s kept himself well. Bucky on the other hand is wearing a pair of dark sweats. They’re wrinkled around his hips and bottom like he’s been sitting in them a long time. His t-shirt, dark gray, has a few stains around the neck.

His cheeks are a little sallow, his lips chapped as you noticed before, and his hair is slightly oily.

He hasn’t been taking care of himself.

Your mind flashes back to Steve shoving a bottle of water into Bucky’s chest angrily and you realize that Steve had been getting mad at him for neglecting himself.

You reach out and as your hand trails down the center of Bucky’s chest, searching for a hold on him as your worry builds, he takes your fingers with his and holds them on the bed.

He’s too focused on Helen to pay you any mind at the moment. Still, the gesture is one of affection and for some reason you find it much more relieving than you remember.

“Y/N?” Helen says and you tear your eyes away from Bucky to look at her. “What’s the last thing you clearly remember? The last full memory?”

You think, blinking as you look back to Bucky. Your boyfriend. So much more, really, but that word sums it up well.

You smile at him, happy and bright, then as your eyes wander up over his shoulder to meet Steve’s you shoot forward through an array of painful memories.

Steve wakes up sweating in bed beside you and you look to comfort him and you both take comfort in each other. He ruts against you and you kiss him hard, the yearning from earlier doubling.

Then you’re telling Bucky that you love Steve. Then Bucky’s hitting him. Then you’re in Steve’s arms, fast asleep. You hear Bucky say he doesn’t care about you and your heart breaks. He makes love to you to prove he was lying but then he pushes you away again at the meeting.

Aaron! You remember Aaron.

Then you and Steve are together by the lake. Bucky sees. He pushes you away one final time.

You, Bucky, and Steve aren’t talking. Bucky leaves you. You fight hard. You’re not good enough. You hit your head.

With that memory filling your head, you reach up with your left hand to touch the back of your head and notice for the first time that it’s wrapped up in gauze.

“I-I hit my head.” You realize.

“Yes.” Helen says. “Is that the last thing you remember?”

“I-I don’t know.” You whisper, confused.

“It’s okay, baby.” Bucky assures you.

“Don’t worry, Y/N. You’re doing so good. You’re getting better. That’s all that matters.” Steve hurries to say and moves around Bucky to come stand by your head.

He places his arm around your shoulders, and you feel as if you can finally breathe.

“We-” You begin but stop. Terrified. They both seem to have forgotten that you’d been fighting.

“What, Y/N” Bucky asks, leaning closer, pulling your hand back up to his chest.

Why isn’t he saying anything about Steve and his arm?

“We were fighting?” You remind them, asking too because maybe you’d dreamt that.

Bucky looks up at Steve and they exchange a loaded look before he brings those steel blues back to you. With a smile, he reaches up to cup your cheek. Cool metal against your still clammy skin.

“It’s okay, baby. We’re alright now.” He promises

There is no lie in his words, and you look up at Steve for confirmation as his hand curls around to cup your other cheek. As Bucky drops his hand back down to hold yours, Steve’s left thumb traces loving circles against your left cheekbone.

He’s staring down at you. Smiling softly.

You’re so confused.

“Bucky?” You ask, utterly befuddled.

“I’ll give you three a few minutes but then I have to come in and check your stitches, okay? And you need more rest.” She’s stern but still sweet.

“Does she have to rest right away?” Bucky asks, a melancholy longing painting his voice blue.

“Buck, she’s awake. That’s enough, right?” Steve says, gently.

Bucky meets his eyes and though he clenches his jaw, he nods once before giving you a small tight smile.

Yes. He must be thinking.

The fact that you’re awake is enough. For now.

The way Steve says it, he’s really saying, at least she’s awake and not being fed through a tube.

“I’ll be back.” Helen repeats then gives your shoulder a gentle squeeze before leaving you, Bucky, and Steve to talk.

Bucky has never known happiness like this. The moment he felt you stir his heart began to thrum wildly.

Then you were coughing and choking, and he couldn’t help the anger that surged through him. You were awake and you were struggling. Coughing. Crying. Hurting.

He’d called for Steve, desperate for help and Steve had called for Helen then raced to the room as fast as he could.

Bucky has been grateful for Steve’s presence over the past few days. Though the twerp can be annoying with his fussing, Bucky knows now as he stares into your outrageously gorgeous worried expression that he should have taken better care of himself while you slept.

He can see the small quake in your eyes as you stroke his arm.

“You look so tired.” You fuss over him.

Bucky's heart swells. His beautiful girl is so concerned about him even when she’s laying in bed, malnourished and broken.

“I’m okay.” He promises but your brow crinkles as lay your head back against your propped up pillow.

Steve's thumb is still tracing circles along your cheekbone and it gives Bucky comfort to know that someone else’s world stopped turning when you passed out on that ship.

Steve had made sure to keep himself healthy though.

Bucky smiles a little more widely as he remembers Steve’s nagging.

You’re being an idiot. When she wakes up, you’re going to make her worry. She needs to be relaxed, Buck.

Bucky had only brooded in silence, holding your hand, kissing your knuckles.

Steve had sat on your other side, stroking your bandaged head and cheek. Kissing your shoulder and cheeks when he couldn’t help himself.

Now that you’re finally awake, talking, smiling, worrying Bucky doesn’t know how he’s going to break away from you to clean up.

When can you go back upstairs? He wants you in his bed, asleep. With him.

“What happened?” You ask, voice curious and unsure. “I remember falling. Breaking my leg. Then you.”

You reach up to touch Bucky’s cheek and he leans into your hand, grateful for your consciousness. You’re still so lifeless though. Cold.

“You came for me.” You gush and Bucky’s heart constricts painfully.

Had you doubted he would? Had he been so harsh with you that you’d actually thought that you could get taken and he wouldn’t tear the world apart looking for you?

He looks up at Steve who is also morose. Stunned by this fact, Bucky cups the hand you’re holding on his cheek and presses it firmly against him, desperate to convey his true feelings.

“I will always come for you, Y/N. You are my life.” And when your eyes water and you begin to cry, the tiny elated smile that curves your lips breaks his heart.

You’d seriously thought he didn’t want you. Love you. That he wouldn’t come for you. Had you thought that about Steve?

He’ll ask you later.

No. It doesn’t matter.

He hurt you. He needs to make it right.

“Really?” You ask him, tearing small chunks of his heart out with your words. “You’re not mad at me anymore?”

“Someone took you from me, Y/N.” He has to stop to swallow because it’s hard to push past the lump in his throat. “You could shoot out my knee-caps and I wouldn’t be angry at you right now.”

You laugh.

His heart is a-flame. His bones are jelly. His stomach is in flutters. He scoots closer, burying his face into your stomach as he wraps his arms around your waist and holds you.

Your laugh makes it all worth it for him and when your hands sift through his greasy, dirty, disgusting hair, he squeezes you tighter.

You chuckle again. Happy. You’re laughing because you’re just so happy. Bucky will always try to make you this happy. From this day until the day that he dies.

Steve tries not to speak.

Bucky needs this. He needs to feel you here with them. Steve had already lived through this moment when Bucky had placed you in his arms on the deck of that ship.

His desperate need to feel you close, to feel your heart beating against his, to feel the warmth—despite the fact that you’re not as warm because of your infection—of your body pressed against his; it had been sated thanks to Bucky’s understanding of Steve’s misery, at his utter failure to keep you safe.

He’d just about lost his mind several times while he and Bucky had searched for you.

It wasn’t visible. Not to the others.

While Tony scanned and scanned and searched and waited, Steve had secluded himself to a corner of the jet and wrung his hands. Fingers twitched and pulled as he stared at the floor of the jet.

Nat paced but then got an idea and contributed. She had at least been able to help and do something.

Steve felt so useless. He had been useless. All he could think about were the other options. The different paths he might have been able to take to prevent this from happening.

Lingering on what could have been instead of focusing on the task at hand wasn’t like him. He’d known it when it was happening.

Sam had lingered close by. Nervously watching Steve worry. Only Sam and Bucky could see the war waging beneath the surface. The push and pull of Steve’s mind as it contemplated and argued about his carelessness and the need to save Sam but his utter lack of responsibility leaving you alone.

For three days Steve had wallowed. He’d been inconsolable and no one tried. No one attempted to make him feel better because they all knew that there was no making him feel better.

Sam had tried to apologize but Steve had walked away from him without saying a word.

~~~~~~~~~~

Steve can hear Sam’s defeated sigh and he should want to tell him that it’s not his fault. It isn’t. Wasn’t.

But you’re still gone.

You’ve been taken from him.

You’ve been discovered as an Avenger.

That asshole jerk knows what side you’re truly on now.

What will he do to you? Torture you? Slowly? Kill you?!

Steve punches the wall of the jet as the cocktail of rage and agony bubbles up in his chest and explodes.

“That’s coming out of your paycheck.” Tony calls back to him, but he doesn’t wait for a response which is good since Steve won’t give him one.

He sits himself down in the furthest seat from the front on the left side of the jet and that’s where he sits for the next three days.

He gets up. Duh, of course he gets up. He has to. He must.

There’s no possibility of him not barreling through every single lead Tony, Nat, and Bruce find.

Sam leaves to chase one of the leads with Wanda and Vision while Thor scours the furthest most remote parts of the planet.

Everyone is looking for you so how can he just sit there? No. Steve just about loses his mind.

Every thug is Aaron and every thug is beaten to a bloody pulp.

Bucky stops him every single time.

It starts out the same every time.

They land.

Steve and Bucky race at top speed down the back ramp, tuck and roll onto the rooftop of whatever building they’re searching.

Most of them are in busy cities. New York. Paris. London. Prague. Los Angeles. This one’s in San Francisco.

Steve is the first to regain his footing—which doesn’t say much as it takes both of them mere split seconds to find their balance on their feet and rush forward—and he crashes through the rooftop door, shield first.

It clangs loudly, warning the vermin in the building that they aren’t safe. They should run.

They won’t get away.

They take the building one floor at a time. Clearing it out in minutes.

When the last thug is found, Steve doesn’t hold back. He throws his shield at the loser.

It hits his chest with a sickening crack. Ribs broken.

Steve doesn’t bother to catch it. It clatters to the floor as he grabs the thug’s shirtfront. He picks him up, flips him with one arm and then leans over the thug’s nearly crippled body and punches his face over and over and over and over and over.

There’s red on his knuckles. There’s red on the floor. There’s red all over the thug’s face.

Steve can’t even see the whites of his eyes.

He feels the brittle break of teeth underneath his fist.

He’s not even searching for information. He just wants to hurt someone.

That feeling is familiar, but it has never been this strong before. It has never consumed him like this.

He’d hated Hydra and the Nazi party, and he’d hated those bullies that picked on him as a kid. He’d hated the ones who’d taken Bucky from him and he’d wanted to eradicate them but never hurt them.

He’d never wanted to see them bleed. Not like this.

His bloodlust runs until Bucky’s pulling him back. He strong arms him away from the thug. The shirt Steve’s holding onto rips.

It’s not until Bucky pulls him away that he sees the nearly limp form on the floor. His shoulders are rising and falling hard. His hand is shaking, tight and compact. A fist.

His vision flows red with fury and he takes steps towards the broken body again, but Bucky holds out his metal forearm and pushes him back.

“Steve, stop.” Bucky says sternly.

“Ask him where she is.” Steve’s deep voice is surprisingly even.

“What if he can’t talk?” Bucky asks, and Steve suddenly realizes Bucky’s angry too. At him. For beating the thug?

Whose side is Bucky on?

Bucky must see the doubt in Steve’s face because he grabs him by his uniform and pulls him close.

He’s begging, angrily, but pleading with Steve all the same.

Steve meets his eyes and doesn’t relent.

“Don’t forget why we’re here.”

“You think I’d forget that?!”

“Then snap out of it. We don’t have time for anger.” Bucky gives him a shake.

Steve’s hands shoot up to hold his fists, pulling on them for release but Bucky doesn’t let go.

“She’s out there, Steve. I know-It’s not your fault.” Bucky’s voice shifts into strained pleading and it melts a little of Steve’s cold and calculated humor. “You hear me? I should have been there with her. We both lost her.”

Steve’s hands change from angry claws into searching grasps of comfort.

Bucky’s right and Steve can see that.

“You get one good punch. Maybe two if the guy’s big enough.” Bucky tells him. “Then you have to stop. We need them to be able to talk.”

Steve looks over Bucky’s shoulder to look at the bloody mess of a human on the floor. The guy is seriously wrecked.

“We need to find her, Buck.” Steve finally manages to mutter, turning his eyes back on his life-long friend.

“I know.” Bucky gives him another shake. A reassuring one this time. “Let’s ask this guy if he knows anything and hope you didn’t break his jaw.”

Steve keeps his word. Every time after that, he gets his one punch and then he steps back and lets Bucky ask his questions.

In the jet, he retreats again but Bucky sits with him. Together, they fume and think about you.

“I can’t not have her, Buck.” Steve says forlornly. The memory of not speaking to you before you’d been taken is replayed in his mind on a loop.

Steve also knows that the look you gave Bucky when he chose to leave you and go with Tony’s team must be playing itself on a loop in Bucky’s head.

“I’m not going to push her away anymore.” Steve admits.

“I know.” Bucky relents.

He sighs deeply, shakes his head once, and clasps his hands together before leaning forward to rest his elbows on his knees. He looks up at Steve and the only thing Steve can do is stare at his best friend.

Does that mean what he thinks it means?

“You won’t have to. I think I always knew that it would come to this. I don’t want to lose her, and I know you love her. Maybe more than I do.” Bucky shrugs. “We’ll tell her together. When we find her. Because we’re gonna get her back.”

Steve’s chest burns with new determination. It flows through him like lava, igniting his resolve. When he finds you, you’re officially going to be his girl. It won’t be some dream anymore. You’ll belong to each other. All three of you.

Bucky too. Steve loves him. Not the way he loves you but, in some ways, that love is deeper. Perhaps it doesn’t burn as bright, but it flows like magma.

“We’ll get her back.” Bucky repeats, his own tenacity burning in his tone.

“Damn straight.” Steve agrees.

~~~~~~~~~~

Bucky clings to you, his face buried into your stomach and Steve knows this is right. Bucky had been so strong, holding him up through his own meltdown, that he doesn’t want to interrupt his best friend as he feels it.

It’s so good to have you back where they can touch you. Steve can’t take his arm away from your shoulders. He has to touch you. Some part of you. Any part of you.

He needs to know you’re really here.

Steve watches you stroke Bucky’s hair until Bucky pulls back to look up at you. He hooks his hand gently around your neck and Steve watches him kiss you.

His heart swells. Watching Bucky kiss you fills him with ease. You’re really home.

Then you look up at him, at Steve, and Steve leans down, moving slow until he can press his lips against yours.

They’re chapped. Like Bucky’s, but soft, and somehow warm. Steve relishes in their softness but kisses you gently. Like a flower with its crushable petals, you’re his tulip and he needs to be careful.

Your eyes search for Bucky as Steve pulls back and the fear in your eyes is understandable.

The last time Bucky had seen the two of you exchange affection it had been more sexual than loving, though there had indeed been lots of love there too. Bucky had broken your heart by telling you that he couldn’t share you.

That he wouldn’t.

“It’s okay.” Bucky tells you, pulling your hand back up to his lips to kiss it.

“I don’t want to hurt you.” You say, voice cracking, and near tears.

Steve loves how you’re so worried about Bucky. He loves that softness underneath all that darkness that had brought you into his world.

“You’re not.” Bucky promises. “I want you to be happy, Y/N. I want Steve to be happy too. I’m happy.”

Steve finds himself searching his best friend’s face too, just like you are.

As Bucky’s eyes meet his, Bucky huffs a laugh.

“I’m serious. Both of you. But I call first night. I need to hold you.” Bucky says just to you, and Steve is so happy he agrees.

He claps Bucky’s shoulder and then gives it a squeeze. “You got it pal.”

It takes an excruciatingly long amount of time to get released from the medical bay.

Helen likes that you don’t forget things anymore, but she doesn’t like that you don’t seem to remember the two weeks where you’d been gone.

Your pneumonia got better first. Then your strength came back.

Your leg, still broken, will be the last to heal.

You had also been a little heartbroken when you realized they’d had to shave almost the entire back of your head to stitch it up.

To hear Bucky and Steve however, it hadn’t diminished your beauty one bit and they kind of liked the strange half shaved hairstyle. Because you needed to keep your hair away from your stitches, you kept I up in a messy bun anyway.

For two weeks you had all of your team members visit. Thor made you laugh with stories of his adventures while you’d been asleep and funny things he’d seen while looking for you.

Sam apologized and you scolded him for it which he was grateful for. He liked seeing you up with your usual fire, or so he’d said. Everyone came and went regularly, bringing you gifts and food and fun things to do.

It’s been two weeks since you’d woken up and you’re finally able to go upstairs.

As Steve helps you up, Bucky gathers your things, nearly bouncing on his feet with the excitement of finally having you back where you belong. His room—or so he says.

“Careful.” Steve says, arm wrapped around your waist as he gets you up.

“I’m okay, Steve. I’m a fighter.” You tell him.

“I know that, you rescued yourself for Christ’s sake. Nearly killed yourself doing it, but whatever, right?” He grumbles.

“Oh my God!” You gasp, half-laughing. “If I’d known I was going to gain two nagging boyfriends, I would have just let Aaron have me.”

It’s a joke in poor taste and both Steve and Bucky hiss at you for it.

“I’m joking!” You laugh and they seem to relax. “If you’re going to make this much fuss why not just carry me?”

You’re joking about this too, but Steve doesn’t seem to realize that because he dips and lifts you up, carrying out of the room as he holds you close to his chest.

“I was kidding!” You gasp.

“Too bad.” Steve retorts, a big grin on his beautiful pink lips.

You stare at them, still uncomfortable with showing him affection while Bucky’s around.

This is all new territory and you’re not sure when Bucky will snap. What if he changes his mind?

Ugh, but you really wanna kiss Steve’s pretty lips. They’re so…You go for it.

You wrap your arm around his neck and pull him down for a nice long chaste smooch.

He huffs, laughing as he returns your kiss.

Bucky grumbles and your heart panics until you hear what he’s grumbling about.

“Why the hell did you bring dominoes? She doesn’t even know how to play.”

Steve pulls back and kisses you once more really quick as you look around to see if Bucky’s watching and he is indeed looking at the two of you.

You lick your lips, nervous.

His jealousy is either completely gone or he’s just gotten really good at hiding it.

“I didn’t know she was going to get to come upstairs today. I brought it for us. We’ve been in there every day since she woke up. Maybe she’s tired of hearing War stories?”

“So, what? You wanted to teach her how to play dominoes?” Bucky asks, unimpressed.

“I never get tired of your war stories.” You tell them, but they’re not listening to you.

“I never got to teach her.” Steve argues.

“Dominoes, Steve?! I mean, can’t you act the age you look and not the age you actually are?”

“What’s wrong with dominoes?”

“Nothing’s wrong with it, it’s just—why not some Gin Rummy instead?” Bucky asks, hopeful.

Steve laughs. “Are you serious?”

“What’s wrong with Gin Rummy?!” Bucky asks as all three of you load the elevator.

“You just like winning.” Steve tells him.

“You just hate that I always beat you.” Bucky teases.

This is when you realize that it’s really true. It’s really happened. You are officially dating both Bucky and Steve and they’re both okay with it.

“You just wanna bore our girl.” Bucky says, bringing your attention back to their conversation.

You’ve missed part of it.

He reaches out and tucks a stray strand of hair behind your ear, balancing a bag with all the stuff you’d accumulated in your recovery room over two weeks in his metal hand.

You smile at him, heart soaring.

Our girl!

He leans in and gives you a quick peck.

They argue all the way to your shared floor. When they step out with you into the hallway, you find yourself standing in front of Steve’s door. Bucky’s room is the last one, furthest from the small living room you three share. Then your room is on the opposite side of the hall.

For several tense seconds, the three of you stare quietly at Steve’s door. You know that Steve’s probably thinking about the agreement he’d made that Bucky would get you in his room first.

You see the dilemma in his eyes, and you need to uphold his word for him if he can’t do it himself.

He’d promised. If the three of you are going to make this work, you’ll all have to do this right.

Reaching up you turn his storm blue eyes on you.

“Bucky’s room, right?” You ask, eyebrows raised high on your forehead.

Bucky’s staring at the floor, uncertain.

This is new for all of you.

“Right.” Steve says, sighing lightly while his arms tighten around you. “Right.”

He turns and moves towards the right while a surprised Bucky moves out of his way. You smile at him as you pass him.

Bucky’s door is already open and Steve moves to place you on his bed carefully.

He lays you so that your back is against Bucky’s dark wooden headboard.

“Are these new, baby?” You ask, Bucky moves inside and drops the bag he’d been carrying in the seat by his desk.

He looks up to watch you slide your hand along the light blue sheets on his bed. They’re so soft.

“Yeah. I wanted to start fresh.” He says. “Get you something soft to sleep in.”

“How is this going to work?” Steve asks, bursting the easy bubble you and Bucky had been trying to maintain.

“Do we have to talk rules right now?” You ask, even though you know there’s no getting around it.

“Hon, we gotta work this out.” Steve says.

Bucky sighs and moves to sit at the foot of the bed. “He’s right.”

You slump back against the headboard and sigh as lightly as you can.

Bucky looks at Steve and Steve looks at Bucky. You watch them both.

“Alternating nights?” Steve asks.

“Maybe later. That’ll be hard on her right now since she’s injured.” Bucky points out. “Alternating weeks?”

Steve nods.

“I get Fridays for dates. You get Saturdays.” Bucky says.

“Parties?” Steve asks. “Tony’s already planning one for her release from the med bay.”

“Together.” Bucky says, strong and sure.

“Unless one of us doesn’t want to go?” Steve asks.

“Yeah. Or one of us leaves early.”

“Don’t I get a say in this?” You ask, exasperated with both of them for planning without you.

“Of course.” Bucky says, “You get to decide the other stuff.”

“What other stuff?”

It seems that they’re both on the same page though, because Steve’s cheeks flush pink as he reaches up to scratch the back of his head.

“The…the other stuff, hon. The sex stuff.” He says, low and quiet.

“Oh.” You realize, cheeks burning.

You give Bucky a nervous glance but he’s watching you with a stoic expression.

“I mean…” You begin. “So long as I want it and you want it, any time is okay with me.”

You shrug a shoulder and move your eyes from Bucky to Steve.

You don’t know why you hadn’t thought about the fact that you can now have sex with Steve yet. It’s the final step in cementing your relationship with him as really taking it to the next level.

He’s been your best friend for so many years.

You’re suddenly very aware of how much you want him. You lick your lips. Focus.

“So, no designated nights?” Bucky asks. “I like it. No interrupting dates, though.”

“Agreed.” Steve says, shifting his yearning gaze away from you to look at Bucky. “Y/N initiates. If she’s with one of us and she…she wants to be with the other, she has to come looking for us.”

“Yes.” Bucky agrees. “But if she’s alone?”

“Anything goes.” Steve says.

What if you want them both? Or they want you at the same time? Like right now...Focus!

You don’t dare speak the thought aloud, but you do wonder.

“If something special comes up, we need to meet and talk all together. We don’t make any decisions without each other. That goes for home-life and on mission.” You tell them.

“Together.” Steve repeats.

“Together.” Bucky nods.

Finally, together.

Bucky likes the way you feel curled up against him. You’re perfect there, in his arms. Tucked into his side as you sleep soundly.

Your snore is cute, and he reaches down to trace the shape of your nose on more than one occasion.

He and Steve had spent the day keeping you company in here but when the sun had gone down, Steve had gotten to his feet and reluctantly told you goodnight.

It was awkward. Bucky keeps thinking about it.

The conversation about how the three of you would try to handle this relationship had left some big questions in his head.

The most important of course would be whether the three of you can successfully make this work.

He knows that he gives you something that Steve can’t give you and vice versa.

He’s not worried about you not loving him anymore. Instead, he’s thinking on a whole new wavelength.

What if you need what they can each give you, all at once?

He hears the small click of his door and his steel blue eyes fly to the small crack.

Bucky can see a storm blue iris, peeking in nervously.

Bucky realizes that it must be hard for Steve to be without you when he’d been by your side for so long. Plus, having recently lost you for two weeks...

The storm blue eye drinks your sleeping form in. The door opens a bit more and Bucky can see the relief flash across Steve’s face.

He must have been worried for you. How you’re doing.

Steve looks up at him finally and then freezes, caught peeping. He’s so still that Bucky almost laughs but instead he just stares right back.

That wondering filters back to the forefront of his mind and he gives you a glance. The way you’re fisting his shirt, hand curled around the fabric over his chest.

The crease between your eyes. You’re clinging to him. Your body is tense despite the soft snoring. Not completely at ease.

Bucky looks back at Steve through the three-inch crack of his door and holds out his metal hand. He curls his fingers, calling him in.

Steve stands straighter, letting his arm push the door open some more before he steps in.

“Shut the door.” Bucky tells him.

You hum, a pained moan, before you settle again.

Steve shuts the door then moves towards the bed.

Very slowly, as if he’s waiting for Bucky to send him away, he climbs in until he’s settled in on his left side, curled around your back.

Instantly, Bucky feels your body melt some more. He watches your hand relax and places his own over it.

Steve’s hand finds its way beside them and with a sigh, Bucky laces his pinky through Steve’s, pulls it closer so that his hand is halfway between your hand and his own.

Bucky stares at the three hands, his pinky still laced around Steve’s, and considers how it makes him feel to hold his best friend’s hand over their girl’s.

It doesn’t suck.

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[snarky-badger]

Prompt: Please do a continuation of this! (It’s Going Sideways)

Part 3 of ‘Moral Compass’ and ‘It’s Going Sideways’

And I’ve written this so there’s gonna be Part 4! (Honestly, what the hell am I doing to myself, haha)

This ‘series’ was started BEFORE the movie came out. All I had to go on were the trailers, so it’s movie-based, but not movie compatible. If that makes sense. ONWARDS!

And, if you like these prompts of mine, please consider buying me a coffee over on Ko-Fi!

You frowned as you stared down at the phone in your hands, Venom’s low growling from the doorway the only sound in the room.

Obviously Drake suspected that you knew were the symbiote was, which, duh, doorway. Drake was smart, very smart. Probably had a contingent of security on their way in the guise of ���keeping you safe’, not that you trusted Drake. Not one damned bit.

Thoughts whirling, you spun around. “We leave in five minutes,” you announced, seeing Venom’s opalescent eyes widen a little at the order in your voice before you closed your bedroom door in his face.

It took only two minutes for you to change into something more appropriate than your PJs. Honestly, you were still hopping into your jeans when you exited the room, rushing over to the hallway closet and pulling out the ‘bug out’ bag that you’d put together after Drake had ‘insisted’ that he post security to ‘protect you’.

It was Eddie that was standing awkwardly in the kitchen, eyes taking in your frazzled form as you tugged your sneakers on, then grabbed a black blazer off a hook, pulling it on over your tee shirt.

“You’re prepared,” he commented, blinking when you shoved the bag into his arms.

“I’ve been dealing with aliens and a megalomaniac. Of course I’m prepared,” you shot back as you went to rifle through your purse, pulling out your wallet. It got shoved into the backpack, before you pulled your phone out of your jeans and, mournfully, dropped it onto the floor and smashed your foot down onto it. You’d backed up all your photos and contacts, of course, but still, it hurt to do it.

Couldn’t take the chance that you could be tracked through it though. “Okay, let’s go.”

“What’s the plan?” Eddie frowned as he followed you out the door and over to the stairwell.

“I have nothing beyond ‘get the fuck out of dodge before Drake shows up’. Was thinking of heading to the University. Lots of people, lots of witnesses. But...”

“But there’s lots of innocent victims if Drake’s goons go gun happy. Yeah.” Eddie was silent for a moment as the two of you hurried down the steps. “The Park? It’s bigger. There’s people, yeah, but lots of hiding places too.”

“Might work.” You hit the ground floor’s stairwell door in a rush, then skid to a stop, grunting when Eddie ran into you from behind. “Shit.”

He was taller by a few inches, which allowed him to see over the top of your head and spot the black SUV that pulled up in front of the building. “Back door?”

“Yup,” was all you said as you grabbed his wrist and headed for the side entrance. “Think you can kick the door open? The Super keeps it locked.”

You’d barely gotten the last syllable out before blackness in the form of three stalks of symbiote shot out from Eddie’s torso, hitting the nearby door with enough force that the metal dented, the door shooting off it’s hinges and clattering against the opposite building’s wall.

Eddie smirked at you when you turned to look at him. “Ladies first.”

Rolling your eyes, you poked your head out into the alley to make sure it was clear, then led the way out, heading for the opposite end, away from the ominous SUV. “We need a car.”

“Told you we should have taken the bike,” Eddie grumbled to himself, and you huffed as the two of you stepped out onto the sidewalk proper. It was past the time where people were rushing to work, so it was sparsely occupied, only a few people heading to where ever they were going.

Two steps ahead, you idled over to a parked car and tried the driver’s door, frowning when you found it locked. The next two cars were the same, and Eddie gave you a look that plainly said he knew you were thinking of stealing a ride and was waffling over whether to be mad about it or not.

That look vanished when a black SUV turned the corner.

Your lucky number was ‘six’ apparently, and you grinned as you slid into the driver’s seat. Eddie frowned, but didn’t comment, merely circled the car and got into the passenger seat, his gazed locked on the SUV that was slowly approaching from behind. His expression wavered a bit when you ducked low and started to hotwire the little Sedan.

“Seriously?”

You glanced up at him. “What? I was a teenager once. Snuck out of the house a lot. Needed a ride.” You twisted some wires together, smirking when the engine rumbled to life. “Seriously, Eddie, you’re hosting an alien and we’re being hunted by wackos. This cannot the the weirdest thing you’ve ever seen.”

His lips quirked a little. “I just didn’t take you for...”

“The grand theft auto type?” You belted yourself in, then tried to drive ‘nonchalantly’, calmly pulling out of the parking spot and heading down the street.

The SUV behind you didn’t speed up, didn’t do anything but continue it’s slow drive down the street, the occupants clearly interested in the people walking on the sidewalk.

You thought, that, maybe, you and Eddie were in the clear as you neared an intersection.

You were wrong.

Something bashed into the back of the sedan, blowing out the rear window, pulling a startled shriek from you as glass imploded into the car. Eddie snarled something as Venom’s tendrils shot out of him, blackness like a living wall expanding to block the bullets that followed.

You floored it. Cleared the intersection going fifty and climbing, barely avoiding a truck. Saw something odd flitter in the side-view mirror, eyes narrowing when your brain finally put the image to a word. “Drones! They have drones!”

“Go, go, go!”

“No shit!” You swerved around a slow Mazda, clipping the bumper of a parked car as you did so. Got the little sedan up to sixty before you were forced to slow down at another intersection to avoid ploughing into a slow moving bus.

Eddie meanwhile, had one foot braced on the dashboard, left hand braced against the roof, and his right hand closed tight on the ‘oh shit’ bar of the door. His head swiveled, trying to keep track of the drones that whizzed overhead.

When he suddenly shouted “Left!”, left you went, scraping paint with a Nissan as a drone dive-bombed itself to death against the pavement where you had been seconds before. Debris and bits of asphalt peppered the car, sounding like rain against the windshield, and you reflexively ducked a little. “They explode?! What the fuck!”

“We need to get out of the city!” Eddie shouted over your semi-hysterical shriek. “Head right! If we can get to the Bridge we can--”

The rest of his sentence was drowned out by the blare of a delivery truck as it nearly t-boned the car. You shrieked a little, jerked on the steering wheel, and screeched across two lanes of traffic into the on-coming lane. Another drone exploded against the roof of the car, and you got the unwelcome view of an oncoming pickup truck’s terrified driver before you swerved back into the proper lane.

“So much for subtle, we might as well be blaring Ride of the fucking Valkyries,” you snarled as the roar of a black SUV preceded the lurch of something ramming into the rear bumper of the car.

“Just keep driving!” Eddie yelled as he rolled down the passenger window and started to climb out of it, blackness beginning to cover him.

You drove with one hand and reached out to grab his jacket with the other, cursing when the bit of material just escaped your fingers. “Get back in the fucking car you idiot!”

“JUST DRIVE, MORSEL!”

“I’m with idiots, I’m escaping with idiots,” left you in a mutter as the roof dented inwards a little from Venom’s bulk crouching atop it. Some black tendrils curled over the frames of the open windows, which was probably for the better, because the maneuver you had to do to dodge another SUV that came head-on at you would have knocked Venom off the car had he not been anchored to it.

There was a blockade of cops at the next intersection. Obviously someone had called the insanity in. You grit your teeth at the sight, then screamed ‘Hold on!’ out the driver’s side window, cranked the parking break, and did a drift into an alleyway.

The sedan’s right side scraped brick as you ploughed through garbage and  motored over someone’s bicycle. Debris and a bike wheel preceded your emergence onto the other street, people screaming as you did another sideways side onto the pavement.

Really, for a beige sedan, the little car handled rather well. Though the people that were eyeing you as you wove your way through traffic obviously thought otherwise.

Might be because it took corners like the wheels were on sideways. Might have been Venom atop the roof like a demented ornament, using a manhole cover he’d snatched off the ground like a shield to stop exploding, kamikaze, drones. Either way, people were looking at you as if you were the anti-christ come to town.

You’d started to think that you might get away. Right up until yet another black SUV slammed into the right rear panel of the car in a pit move that sent the sedan spinning.

Naturally, you screamed. Heard Venom’s roar and felt the bounce of him leaping off the car’s roof before the sedan came to a stop by side checking a parked car. You sat there, hyperventilating, hands clenched so tight on the wheel that your knuckles were white, for a long moment.

And then the air bag deployed and smacked you in the face hard enough that you saw stars.

Dimly, over the pounding of your heart in your ears and the tirade of curses in your brain, you heard the sounds of gunfire and shouting, followed by a roar and some high pitched screaming that had no business coming out of a male throat.

You fought with the airbag until it finally deflated, then looked out the rear-view mirror, eyes widening when you saw Venom grab yet another menacing black SUV by it’s front bumper and upend it, leaving it to crash onto it’s roof as he threw himself at a man dressed in black with a ‘Life Foundation’ logo on his vest that was unloading a shotgun into him.

Gritting your teeth, you revved the engine, relief welling up in you. The sedan wasn’t new enough that the engine and ignition cut out when an air bag deployed.

You threw the little car into reverse, slamming the rear bumper into the upside down SUV and sending it spinning a little. Then leaned over and screamed out the open passenger window. “Venom! Get in the fucking car!”

He turned to glare at you at the same time that two more SUVs and three police cars that were chasing them careened around the intersection behind you. He hesitated - and you hoped that Eddie was yelling at him too - before ripping off the sedan’s back door and jamming himself into the backseat.

You were now driving something that looked like it had gone three rounds in a demolition derby. Which, added to the burnt rubber that you left behind when you threw the car into drive, probably painted quite a picture for the looky-loos.

All five pursuing cars hit the upside-down SUV out of their way as they took chase, the sounds of loud engines and the blare of police sirens echoing in the cab of the sedan as you took another corner at twice the recommended speed, careening dangerously close to a parked canteen truck.

And finally, up ahead, you spotted a chance.

“Venom!”

“WHAT?”

“Up ahead, there’s some empty scaffolding on the side of the building. If I swerve close, think you can grab it and send it falling into the street behind us?”

There came a pleased rumble as the large form shifted in the backseat and leaned out of the open space where the car door used to be. “WE LIKE HOW YOU THINK, MORSEL!”

A grin that was a bit more of a snarl settled onto your face as you swerved again, bypassing a slower car and moving as close as you could to the blocked off sidewalk and the mess of scaffolding on the side of a building. Prayed to any Gods that were listening that no bystanders would get hurt as Venom leaned out some more, three thick tendrils lashing out to grab onto the supports and ripping them free.

The impact of all that metal and wood hitting the street rumbled up through the tires of the car, and you watched via the rear-view mirror as the SUVs and the cops tried to screech to a stop before ploughing into the mess blocking the road and, inevitably, each other.

Another drone exploded against the roof of the car as you sped away, a bit of sunlight now appearing from the dented and burnt roof of the car.

“He’ll never stop,” you lamented as you sped through the city. “Drake will never stop.”

“HE WILL WHEN WE RIP HIS BEATING HEART OUT OF HIS CHEST,” Venom snarled from the backseat.

And then, you had a stupid, so, incredibly, stupid, idea.

“What if we take the fight to him?”

[novantinuum]

Breaking Point (2/2)

Part of the “Smaller Than He Seems” AU, in which Ford was accidentally de-aged into a kid during his multiverse adventures, while retaining all his memories. He appears about 12 at this point.

Last one shot here.

AO3

Rating: T (for some language)

Word count: ~5000

Summary: In which an apology is given. Stan gains a bit of insight into his brother's time apart from him. Ford allows himself to be honest for once.

“Sweet Moses, stop actin’ like a damn child and just pick a pair!”

…

“Ford.”

No response.

“Ford, talk to me, please!”

He could see his brother’s small body curled up against the door in the rearview mirror. His face entirely blank, his eyes trained on some landmark of interest outside the window but bleary, unfocused. His jaw clenched.

“Ford. Sixer. Come on, listen ta’ me, please! I said I was sorry…”

The moment Stanley Pines set his car into park alongside the Shack, he heard the rear passenger door swing open and little feet storm up the steps of the gift shop into obscurity. He didn’t even have to see his brother’s no-doubt tear stained eyes to gain explicit confirmation of what he already knew. After all— while his grasp of some of the more unique quirks and intricacies about his twin had faded over forty plus years of estrangement— the one detail he knew he’d never forget was the sound of Ford crying.

Notably, the few times Stan witnessed him cry when they were kids, he actively avoided making a spectacle of his emotions. (Men like me sure as hell don’t cry, his pa had constantly chided them.) Unlike other children in their age group, Ford’s sobs always remained strained and purposefully held back, as if he were ashamed at himself for crying in the first place. From the sound of it Ford’s anger and hurt still materialized precisely the same way now. It was almost as if the clock had reversed and suddenly Stan too was twelve again, watching his twin run away in muffled tears after getting his face busted up by one of their childhood bullies.

Almost…

After all, this time it wasn't the bully Ford was running from.

“You an’ yer stupid mouth sure messed up this time,” he muttered bitterly, yanking his keys out of the ignition.

He unbuckled his seatbelt, a gnawing hollowness settling in his soul. Cloud cover smothered the sun. A hopelessly stubborn part of him wanted nothing more than to immediately chase after his brother and console him as he always did in their youth, but that desire was quickly overrun by whatever sense of reason he still possessed. He’d only make things worse if he followed now. He always did make things worse.

Guilt raged within his mind like a hurricane, uprooting insecurities and blowing old emotional wounds to the forefront of his consciousness with terrifying force. He did this to Ford. He made him cry. In his utter carelessness he jabbed at what he imagined was one of his greatest insecurities: that ultimately— even in mind and spirit— he was nothing more than the childlike appearance chance forced upon him. That all his years of experience were for naught, that somehow he’d... regressed. Stanley wrung his hands together so tightly he nearly popped his joints out of place, his mind cycling between tides of self-hatred and incomprehensible shame at the memory of watching the light of his brother’s soul eclipsed by his thoughtless comment.

Old bones creaking with trepidation, he exited the car and began to make his way towards the Shack. A few stray raindrops splattered atop his head in the seconds before he reached the covered porch. He strode into the gift shop, in search of any physical sign of his brother. However, the vending machine door was closed. Same with the entry to the house. Stan halted for a moment and listened, dimly wondering if he could pick up auditory clues as to where his brother went. As much as he’d love to avoid confronting his guilt for as long as possible, deep down he knew that this would threaten to completely overturn what little camaraderie they had left. (Because at present, the sad reality was that their relationship was riding on a thin wire no more dependable than a pathological liar in an interrogation room.) He doubted he’d forgive himself if he lost Ford all over again merely a day after getting him back.

His eyes slid with disinterest over the shelves of useless overpriced wares, focusing momentarily on the rain— now falling steadily outside— and then the keypad of the vending machine. Mind now firmly set on finding his brother, he strode towards the hidden passageway and entered the code. Miraculously, Ford hadn’t changed it.

At least, not yet.

Stan crept down the steep staircase, gently running his hand over the faint six-fingered handprint immortalized in glowing ink on the cracked stone. Despite not understanding his reasons for it, his twin was obviously drawn to this place in some manner. Yesterday evening, he had to fight to convince him to sleep anywhere except the thin cot he’d shoved in the corner of the basement lab. And early this morning Ford exiled himself downstairs long before anyone else woke up, only venturing to the main floor at, presumably, the insistence of his growling stomach. He’d bet his first dollar in sales that Ford holed away to his ‘lair’ in this instance, too.

The closer the elevator dropped to the basement however, the more tongue-tied he felt. What was one supposed to say in situations like these? Had he already made a fatal mistake, stalling for as long as he did? Or were the wounds still too fresh? How did he know that he wouldn’t bungle everything up all over again like he always seemed to do whenever he interacted with him, or that Ford would even be receptive to an apology? How long would he have to tip-toe around him, interact as if he were only fragile glass?

By the time he reached the lab, his skin felt clammy to the touch and his nerves were twisted into a steel ball. A sum of him just wanted to get this over with, like ripping the soiled dressing off of an infected wound, and yet he couldn’t deny that insidious voice within his core that desired nothing more than to run away. When had he ever improved the quality of his life by bending on his knees and groveling for forgiveness anyways? In his experience, ‘sorry’ hadn’t driven him any further than the Stanmobile running on two flats and fumes.

Besides a few computer backlights that were active and a few dull red lamps fixed around the perimeter, the lab was dark. Stanley felt the hairs on his neck prickle as he inhaled the stale air. Euugh. Despite spending years of solid time down here, he’d never gotten used to just how damn creepyFord’s sci-fi mystery basement felt. It didn’t take a genius to figure out his brother hadn’t hidden down here, however. Rather, the lab was empty and near-silent, except for the faint whir coming from one of the old IMB computer’s fans. He peaked into the portal room out of curiosity, finding much the same. Though interestingly, it appeared someone had begun to dismantle the machine.

The twisted metal frame was detached from its girders and wires, with a choice few parts cannibalized and scattered across the bedrock. So thismust have been what kept Ford so busy early this morning. Stan didn’t understand how his brother managed to disassemble this much that quickly considering his size, but leave it to him to figure out a workaround, he supposed. He couldn’t help but sulk at the sight of thirty years of his work lying in ruins, even though he knew he’d succeeded in the end.

As he turned to leave, a glint of reflected light coming from Ford’s bundled up overcoat on the desk caught his interest. Tentatively, he approached the small mangled coat. Whatever caused the light to bounce astray, it appeared metallic. Intrigue brewed within him as he captured the edge of the object with his index finger and thumb.

“Let’s see what you are,” he murmured, pulling it into the rosy glow of the safety lamp that was mounted over the entrance to the portal room. The object was a nondescript metal tin the length of his hand, with a clasp on one side. He unlatched it gently.

Inside were… photographs, mainly. A few scraps of paper with windswept notes or sketches on them. The photos were mostly polaroids, but a couple were fashioned out of a holographic material that projected the images into the air. Stan filtered through the contents, his gaze lingering with awe on a rather impressive photograph that depicted— he assumed— the night sky on an alien world. A lot of the objects inside the tin were similar, each acting as a small window into Ford’s travels: images of exotic, almost unearthly landscapes, rough sketches of creatures even stranger than those contained in his journals, a thin strip of blue dyed cloth, an elongated, pointed tooth. His hands brushed against a slip of paper covered in tallies. Written below those lines were a series of numbers ranging anywhere from fifty-five to sixty-four that had long since been scribbled out and replaced with a question mark.

The edge of Stan’s lips slumped downwards the longer he thought about what that hesitant question mark really meant. He set this piece of parchment aside to look at the next object in the tin.

To his surprise, Ford was actually pictured in the next photo— an adult Ford like he remembered, but appearing far older than he'd last seen him in 1982. In the photograph, his brother stood with his arm slung around another man’s shoulder, a wide smile on his face. His tousled hair had gone almost completely grey— peppered with silver around his ears— and deep creases lined the corners of his eyes and the contour of his cheeks. The wrinkles suited him, honestly. Made him look distinguished. Nonetheless, Stan’s heart dropped in his chest at the sight. He held the thick paper with white knuckles as the significance of this hit him. This was close to how Ford would have appeared if he hadn't been reverted into a child. Now obviously, Stan only needed to glance into the mirror to imagine what his brother would have roughly looked like at sixty two, but actually seeingthe way age settled on his face- even merely memorialized as a polaroid- was its own shock to the system.

Stanley stared at the photo for a long while, committing the image to memory. He flipped to the next photo.

His eyes blew wide. His wrists trembled as he held the last object in the tin with nothing less than reverence, than proof that perhaps he and Ford might still see eye to eye more than he initially realized. That maybe, they still had a chance to truly be brothers again.

“Oh Sixer, you old sap…” he said in a half-laugh, trying to blink away his tears.

In the tattered, faded image he held, two young boys stood proudly on a wrecked sailboat at the edge of the sea, shirtless and sunburnt.

The rain still pummeled away at the roof and walls of the Shack by the time Stan returned to the main floor. He frowned for a moment, distantly wondering if Dipper and Mabel brought anything to keep them dry while they tromped through the woods, but these fears quickly faded. They were resourceful kids. He knew they’d fare fine. He couldn’t say the same for Stanford, who hadn’t uttered a peep for the past goodness-knows-how-long.

As he quietly made his way through the hall, his eye lingered on the door of the spare room his brother slept in last night. The door was shut, but he could swear he heard something rustling inside. A hunch brewing in his gut, Stan knocked on the ornately carved wood.

“Hey, Ford?” he called softly. “You in here, buddy?”

As expected, no response.

He bit at his lip, considering his options: steel his nerves and face him while the wound was still fresh, or bide his time and risk destabilizing what little of a relationship he had with his brother all together. Inhaling steadily, he placed a solid hand on the door and pushed.

“Ford?”

He found the man in question huddling on his side against the couch cushions, his face hidden away and his legs curled tight to his chest. Both pairs of boots- shoplifted and his original- sat together on the floor, lined up perfectly side by side. Stan almost hated himself for letting his mind linger on such thoughts after what he’d said earlier, but... when juxtaposed by the size of the couch, Ford looked every bit of his apparent age. Slight. Defenseless. Perfectly childlike, like he were peering through a looking glass into the shadow of their glory days.

And yet there was a clear dissonance between the brother he remembered then and the person who wore his face now.

“I’m not in the mood for your excuses,” his brother muttered bitterly, burying his head further into the cushion.

“I- uh, I mean I’ll leave if ya’ really want me to,” he replied, scratching at the nape of his neck. “But just for the record, I didn’t come in here to make excuses, I came to—” Stanley swallowed his pride— “to apologize.”

At those words, his twin turned to glance at him with a dry, withering expression, mouth slackened and eyes hooded with distrust. “All right, cut to the chase. Which fey kingdom do you originate from and why did you replace my brother?”

The doubt of his sincerity sent a spike into his chest. “Come on,” he insisted, opening his hands. “It’s me, I swear.”

“The Stanley I know doesn’t apologize for anything,” Ford said bluntly, further narrowing his eyes.

Both brothers fell silent at this statement. Truthfully, Stan couldn’t argue with its accuracy. He took the occasion to drink in the sight of the brother’s face- to truly see him as he was in this moment- Ford’s seemingly youthful yet haunted gaze caught in Stan’s own. He tried to ignore the recognizable trail of dried tears that crossed his cheeks, or the lingering dampness of his eyes. They were messed up, the pair of them… old men with a lifetime of troubles to sort through and now on top of that, appearing generations apart. But Stan desperately wanted to make it up to him. His heart sank at the idea of his twin truly believing that his rare, vulnerable word- his apology- wasn’t sincere.

“Listen,” he began, slowly sinking to rest on the couch, adjacent to Ford. “The last thing I ever want ta’ do is hurt you. But I have ,” he said, voice wavering slightly. “And I hate seeing you like this, especially when- uh, w-when I know it’s ‘cause of me. I know it may not be worth nothin’ to you after everything I’ve done to ya’ over the years, but... I am sorry. You deserve better. I’ll try better.”

He took a breath, and he could swear the rainstorm outside paused alongside him within the span of that inhale. None of the oscillating emotions expressed in his brother’s features were anything he could easily recognize. The quirk of his lip or the incline of his brow possessed no meaning, for at this precise instant in time, Stanley simply couldn’t determine whether Ford intended to throw him out of the room, break into tears, or envelop him in a hug tighter than a person his size had any right of giving.

Instead, Ford sighed deeply, hunching over on the couch and cupping his cheeks into his hands. “I really appreciate that,” he said quietly. Then, his words bleeding into one another: “Of course, it’s not fair to say this was entirely your fault. I could have at least attempted to communicate my needs beforehand, o-or not have reacted so strongly, o-”

“Ford. Ford. Who’s sayin’ sorry here? Stop hijacking my apology, you nerd.”

This made his brother laugh a little, softly, but an unmistakable laugh. The sound of it touched Stan’s heart in a way he couldn’t quantify in words. Dimly, he came to the realization that this was the first laugh he’d heard out of him in over forty years. But same as the seasons changed, same as all the days Stanley’s bombastic, dramatized work persona slipped away past closing to be replaced with a long withered melancholy, so too did Ford’s brief moment of peace pass. A shadow passed over his countenance.

“I only wish I could find my place in all this,” he said in a broken whisper, pointedly avoiding eye contact.

Stan frowned, feeling the creases in his face deepen. “W- whatdya mean?”

His brother shrank into himself, pulling his knees to his chest.

“All that happened earlier only served to prove in my mind that everything’s just… wrong . It feels wrong. Changed. Put simply, I- I guess the world’s moved on without me.” Confession released to the world around him, he buried his head from sight once more, and took a deep, shaky breath to- Stan assumed- calm himself down from a cliff’s edge of emotional release.

“Oh, Sixer…” He attempted to lay a comforting hand on his brother’s shoulder, but to his disappointment Ford shrugged away from the affection entirely. “Come on, there’s gotta be some way we can fix this, right?”

“There’s no way to reverse this,” he said, voice cracking with emotion. “Trust me, I’ve tried nearly everything, but I’ve still been like this for three goddamn years."

“Three years?” Stan exclaimed, face painted with a polarized mixture of horror and remorse. “And this was when you were alone in that space sci-fi dimension?? Threatened by enough danger ‘round the clock that you were forced ta’ keep a damn gun at your hip at all times?”

Ford nodded slowly, eyes meeting his for an instant before flitting away.

He pressed his face into his calloused hands, roughly rubbing at his temples. “Sweet Moses. How the hell did you stay alive?”

“Honestly? I can’t rightly say.”

The two sat in relative silence for a while after that, allowing each other’s mere presence fill the gap their lack of words left. Outside, the storm continued- rain pouring in rivulets down the glass pane of the window. At some point, Ford had let his legs back down, allowing them to lightly swing over the side of the couch. Stan sat hunched forward, leaning on his elbows. He couldn't say for certain at this point what Ford’s opinion of him was, but in all honesty he supposed this was the vital difference between the predictable, amicable brother who existed for thirty years in his daydreams and the real item. Perhaps it was better not knowing.

Whatever the thoughts the man held towards him however, he was fairly confident that hatred was not one of them.

“Stan,” the man in question said eventually, wringing his hands together. “Can I tell you something?”

Hearing his name pass through his twin’s lips, he instantly perked up. “Yeah? What's on your mind?”

“Despite what I said yesterday, despite the anger I held towards you then, I'm really, really glad you rescued me…”

As he spoke his voice faded into obscurity, masked by a crushing sense of fear that no person bearing the childlike appearance he possessed had any right of knowing. He crossed his arms tight around himself, chin sinking into the folds of the dark maroon scarf he hadn't taken off since his return home. Fledgling tears dotted the corners of his eyes. Before those could gain any traction, he blotted them away with tightened fists. Watching this, Stan froze, worried that even the slightest movement or uttered syllable might be enough to burst the emotional dam Ford evidently wanted to remain closed.

Luckily, Ford himself chose to orient the direction of their talk once more, taking the conversational anxiety off Stan’s shoulders completely.

“It comes to my attention that I haven’t been forthright with you yet,” he said, staring at the wooden floor slats- and knowing him, likely analyzing the patterns formed by the grain to keep his mind stimulated. “About- well, about how all this came to be.” He gestured broadly at himself, at his gangly twelve year old body.

“Now, I don’t wanna force ya’ to talk about somethin’ that obviously bothers yo-”

“No. No, it’s okay... I want you to know. You deserve as much.”

“You sure?” Stan confirmed.

His twin nodded resolutely, and curled up on the couch so that he was facing him, legs crossed one over the other. His eyes peered as far up as they could reach, a clear signal that he was searching through his memories, beginning to piece together his past from the scattered recollections those neurons held.

“Not to complicate the story with superfluous detail,” Ford began, nervously clasping his hands together, “the events that lead me to this point started with… well, with the desire to construct a weapon powerful enough to eradicate an enemy who was hunting me down throughout dimensions.”

“And this enemy was, what, strong enough that your normal weapons wouldn’t do the trick?”

He gave a short, staccato nod. “Correct. Essentially, to destroy them, I needed to find a way to destabilize their very molecular makeup at a quantum level. I knew how to build it, but one of the required components could only be found in a single dimension, colloquially known by its inhabitants as the ‘Do-Over’ Dimension. And yes- where you think this is going is probably right” he said, jabbing his finger at him, and Stan knew at that moment that his attempts to conceal the fledgling dread he felt was all for naught.

Ford began gesturing with his hands as needed as he continued to explain his experiences. “You see, the problem with this dimension is that their time stream was fragmented. The very nature of time was in constant flux. Here, time could move forwards or backwards in any sequence without pattern or warning. Inhabitants might experience hours, weeks, or even entire years of their lives completely over again, all while still retaining full memory of every cycle. Even visitors to this world weren’t absolved from its effects”

“And you willingly stepped into a place like this?” Stan asked his twin quietly, brow furrowed.

“I had no choice. Like I said, this dimension was the only place I could find the specific isomer of a rare element stable enough to use in my weapon. I knew the dangers of entering far in advance… and yet I went anyways.”

“So, you made a gamble.”

“Put bluntly, yes. It was a gamble against the universe that the time stream would remain relatively stable during my visit. One that, ultimately, blew up in my face. Ironically however,” Ford continued, his eyes narrowing with deep irritance, “the Do Over Dimension hadn’t experienced a Great Rewind for centuries until the one I was caught amid.”

Stanley watched as his brother limply fell backwards, meeting the rear cushion of the couch. Frustration and bitter anger painted his face when simply recalling his story; as such, Stan couldn’t begin to imagine what it must have been like to live through such a traumatic experience. Slowly- so as to not spook him with unexpected movement- he slung his arm over the couch back.

From outside, a distant roll of thunder sounded alongside the July rainstorm.

“And I was so close to completing my mission!” he growled, shaking a tight fist that likely had little half-moon indentations in his palm where his nails were. “I had the element in hand, I was only hours away from exiting the dimension… when without any warning, time slipped about fifty years into the past, and I found myself physically reverted to the size of a eight or nine year old kid. What’s scary is that despite my misfortune, I still got lucky. For any visitors to the dimension who weren’t over fifty years of age, they would have simply perished. Ceased to exist.”

“Well damn,” Stan muttered, right hand pressed to mouth and left still lightly slung around his brother’s shoulder, resting on the seat cushion.

“Damn is right. I had a hard enough time traversing the multiverse as an adult, so to add this as a hinderance?” Ford looked up, meeting his gaze. “It was hell. Most days I barely managed to get the nutrients I needed to remain healthy in this growing body. I’m sure I’ve fallen close to malnourishment more than once. Adding onto that, physically defending myself the way I used to became a near impossibility. And thanks to the constant threat of… of the interdimensional child slave trades, I feel like I can’t trust anyone in a crowd anymore.”

Fresh teardrops prickled at the corners of his eyes as he spoke, glistening in the dim lighting of the parlor. Ambient light from outside shone through the blue and green stained glass window. It cut a clear path through the shadows cast by the rest of the room, illuminating one side of each of the brother’s faces. With a soft, sympathetic sigh, Stan let his hand drop onto Ford’s shoulder. Letting him know he was there beside him as he blinked through the tears.

“I’m sorry you had ta’ go through this.”

“It’s not your fault,” Ford said with a shrug, voice thick in that way it gets when one’s deliberately trying to hold back the full brunt of their emotions. “It’s not anyone’s fault. It’s just… time, really.”

It’s not your fault, his mind echoed his words. And inwardly, he’d love to believe that were true. He’d love to delude himself that he were entirely blameless. But as much as he wanted to take Ford’s statement to heart, all he could see was the memory that had replayed in both his nightmares and in every waking moment he spent fixing the portal, flickering through his subconscious with a frightening vivacity. The force of his hands against Ford’s chest. His terrified screams, “Stanley! Stanley please,” shredding his vocal cords in unbridled desperation. The almost sickeningly blue glow of the portal swallowing his brother whole while he, in his worthless, wounded body couldn’t do anything more than gape in abject horror.

Frankly, everything that happened to the guy on the other side was his fault, far as he was concerned. But fat luck trying to convince Ford of this. Ford, whose abject blame of the universe only served as deflection from the blame he truly placed on his own actions. Stan wasn’t an idiot. He recognized what guilt spiraling looked like.

He glanced towards his twin from the corner of his eyes, and gave his shoulder a pat. “Well I’m sorry for ya’ anyway.” Another relevant thought from earlier today entered his mind then, and he turned towards him inquisitively. “Hey, so don’t feel like ya’ gotta answer this if it’s anythin’ too uncomfy, alright? But... why were you so adamant on the townsfolk not thinkin’ I was your pa, or grandpa, or whatever?”

While it was subtle, he could visibly see the muscles in Ford’s shoulders flinch at the movement of their conversation to this topic.

“Okay, we uh, w-we can talk about something else then,” he said hastily, pulling his arm back to allow him some space. Or perhaps it was time to leave him alone entirely. “Guess I shouldn’t ‘ave brought it u-”

“It’s because you’re my last connection to the past,” Ford blurted out suddenly. “Of who I really am. I don’t- I didn’t want that perverted by having to spend every day in public living a lie. Not now. Not when I’m like this,” he said, gesturing broadly down at himself.

Stan frowned at the unclear wording in his statement. “What do you mean, ‘perverted?’”

He stared down at his six fingers, wringing them together. “Well, I uh- sometimes, these past three years… I often found myself in a place where it felt like my memory almost- I guess, like my mind wanted to forget. Over time, it became hard to remember that I’d ever had any other childhood. And now,” he said more quietly, looking for all the world as if he wanted to slip through the floorboards and away to his basement, “faced with the reality of having to grow up all over again, I- that still scares me.”

Stan nodded slowly, thinking he understood the scenario from his perspective a little more. He placed his hands firmly on either side of his twin’s shoulders, looking at him earnestly.

“Ford, no matter what we tell those townsfolk, you’re my brother. First off. You better believe I’ll remind ya’ every day for the rest of my life, if I have to. And that’s never gonna change, y’hear? It doesn’t matter to me if ya’ look like a kid, ‘cause far as I’m concerned, you’re still you. Still as nerdy and annoying of a twin bro as I remember, anyways! Hah!” he exclaimed, and gave Ford’s head a noogie, fist ruffling through his untamed brown locks.

His brother let out a giggle, pushing his hands away in protest, and for the first time the smile on his lips truly reached his eyes.

“But hey,” Stan continued, expression growing genuine again. “From now on, whatever explanation we give ta’ other people about ‘who you are?’ We’ll figure that out on your terms. I won’t force ya’ to behave a certain way in public or in private because of some perceived ‘relation.’ That fair?”

“Yeah.” Ford nodded slowly. “Yeah, that’s fair.”

“Good. You… d’ya want a hug?”

He held his arms open. To his delight Ford accepted the offer of affection without hesitation. He wrapped his smaller arms as tight around his middle as possible, and buried his face into his shoulder.

“Stanley?” he whispered.

“Yeah?”

“Thank you.”

Beyond the walls of the Shack, the rain stopped.

[thoseofgreatambition]

guardian to be

genre: supernatural, fantasy, thriller

pairings: none

wordcount: 3.5K

warnings: swearing, mentions of violence and spirits, vomit

a/n: remember that short story i’ve been talking about all semester, this is it! it’s based off of an idea for a novel i had a few years ago, and I”m so proud of the finished product! i’ve tagged my permanent tag babes, so i hope y’all like it! if you’d like to be added to the permanent tag, please let me know!

November 11, 2017 

 “Aren’t you supposed to be good at this?” Lee scowled at the woman opposite from him, as she frantically formed a line of salt around the room. “Didn’t I hire you so I didn’t end up holed up in some murder cabin being chased by demons?” 

 Ada’s hands shook so hard she couldn’t keep the salt into a line. Her hands felt numb, and for the first time in two centuries she was remembering what true fear felt like. Sure, she couldn’t die, but that didn’t mean those spirits wouldn’t kill her companion. “They’re not demons, they’re spirits. They’re hurting and confused, that’s why they came after us.” 

 She shot a look over her shoulder to see Lee standing in the middle of the room looking more and more agitated as things went on. His lower lip wobbled as his brow furrowed, and Ada watched as his eyes began to shine. Her maternal side took over, as it was prone to do. 

 “I’m sorry, Lee.” 

 Just like that, the floodgates opened. The 19 year old broke into sobs, his fists clenched so hard it hurt as he desperately tried to wipe away each tear as it came. His shoulders shook as he fought the urge to wail. Lee had always prided himself as being put together and mature, after all, being raised by a single mother would do that, but this was too much, even for him. 

 He wasn’t even done with his first year of college yet. Life wasn’t supposed to be like this. He should have been worrying about what his grade in Algebra II was, not whether or not some demons or spirits or whatever the hell you wanted to call them were going to kill him.

 This wasn’t fair! This wasn’t even his fault.

 It was his father’s fault, and why should he be blamed for what a serial killer did before he was even born?

 One Month Prior: October 11, 2017

 Lee stood in front of a rather shabby looking house, with a skeptical look on his face. He’d confided to a friend that he’d felt like he’d been followed lately, and that he could have sworn he’d seen things crawling outside of his windows at night. That friend had spoken to one of their friends, who had spoken to a friend of a friend’s friend who eventually got back to Lee with an address and a name of someone who could protect him. 

 The college freshman had scrawled it on the back of a dining hall receipt and now he wondered if this was all some sort of prank. The name Adelaide Lewis didn’t exactly seem like it would strike fear into anyone’s heart. 

 Regardless, he’d spent 40 minutes trying to find the damn place, and his morbid sense of curiosity wouldn’t let him leave without at least finding out what this was all about. 

 The pastel blue door flew open after the second knock, revealing a woman who hardly looked older than he did. A glance inside showed what seemed to be one of the ugliest home interiors Lee had ever seen. The furniture was a mix of stuffy Victorian china cabinets, beaded curtains from the 60’s, and what appeared to be shag carpeting with several Disney movie posters framed on the walls. 

 The girl seemed unassuming at best. She wasn’t the type of person that stood out when you passed them. Her features were kind but plain, with wide brown eyes and dark hair in braided pigtails. For a moment Lee wondered if she was either insane for decorating a house like this, or was living with whoever he was supposed to see. “I’m here to see an Adelaide Lewis?” 

 “Oh please, call me Ada. Come on in. Are you Lee?” 

 Reluctantly he shed his coat, and hung it on a rather antique looking coat rack. “I am, yes.”

 Lee considered himself to be good at reading people, and while he got no strange vibes from Ada, it was hard to feel comfortable. His shoes sunk into the shag carpeting, and while the floor looked clean, he was reluctant to take them off. Still, Lee did as his mother taught him to do and removed the trainers, only feeling mildly abashed by his Legend of Zelda socks. “Is this your parent’s home?” The false note of Texas politeness seemed far too obvious and inwardly he cringed. 

 Either Ada was too polite to comment or she didn’t notice. Either way, she shook her head. “No, it’s mine. I’ve lived here for about… ah, sixty years? Seventy maybe…” she looked back at him and laugh, “It’s so easy to lose track of time after a while, isn’t it? Would you like something to drink? I’ve got coffee, tea, water, sweet tea… I went to H.E.B the other day, I have some of that powdered lemonade stuff that everyone seems so fond of. “ 

 It was almost as if Lee’s brain had stopped working for a moment. “Se-seventy years? You’ve lived here for seventy years?” 

 “Yes.” 

 “You’re my age.” 

 Ada laughed once more, a melodic sound that filled up the room they were in. “Oh, is that why you’re confused? I should have explained. I’m not a human. Well, I used to be one, but I’m not anymore. I died you see, a long time ago in the 1800’s. I’m really 200 years old. I turned into a guardian angel, and now I work for hire protecting humans from immediate danger.” 

 Again, Lee froze. He only jerked into motion when a theretofore unknown cuckoo clock made itself known to him by shooting out a wooden bird next to his left ear. “Shit!” at her disapproving cluck of her tongue, he looked abashed. “Sorry. I just—A guardian angel?” 

 “Yes.” 

 “I thought you weren’t… I thought those weren’t real.” 

 Ada shrugged, “Everyone does. But you got recommended me by a friend right? Do you trust them?” 

 “More of an acquaintance really.” Or an acquaintance of an acquaintance… of an acquaintance. Lee was silent for a moment, wondering about her question. He didn’t really know, though he supposed he trusted his friend who put him in contact with the one who recommended Ada to him. “I suppose so, though.”

 “So what’s the harm? I’ll take whatever you can pay me.” 

 “You don’t even know what my problem is.” 

 “You’re a kid. You came to some sketchy house and listened to some ‘crazy lady’ tell her story just because something was really bothering you.” She gestured to his shoes that had holes near the plastic soles and the weathered hem of his jeans. “You obviously don’t have a lot of money to blow on this sort of thing, I’m not going to rob you of the next semester’s rent check. So what would you like to drink, and what’s the problem?” 

 There was a long period of silence as Lee’s brain worked in overdrive, trying to understand what in the world was going on. His tan hand fiddled with his sleeve cuff, and his brown eyebrows knit themselves together as he thought. It was like he’d stepped into some sort of strange, fantasy or sci-fi novel. Sure—he enjoyed reading those things, but to actually be in a situation like that was quite unnerving. 

 Suddenly he found himself wondering if he was having some sort of fever dream or had gone insane without noticing. Especially when what she was saying sounded good enough that he was willing to go along with it. 

 “I’d like some sweet tea, please.” Lee situated himself in an overstuffed armchair, and looked at Ada with a worried expression, wondering how to explain about his problem. “Something is following me. Or some things. There are these creatures following me around. I keep seeing the shadows out of the corner of my eyes.I hear people talking to me when I’m all alone—There were people outside of my window last night, and I live on the fifth floor!” his voice cracked as his anxiety rose and Lee massaged his throat. “I don’t know what to do.” 

 Ada handed him a glass of sweet tea and sat down across from him, taking a sip of her own glass. “Tell me about you.”

 He was silent, wondering what that had to do with anything. Eventually though due to Ada’s silent probing he finally got around to speaking. “I’m a sophomore in college. I’m nineteen, I’ll be twenty in June… I’m studying English History.” His voice trailed off, “Honestly I’m not sure what you want from me.” 

 She pointed a long finger towards a window covered with a lacy curtain, and spoke very calmly, “Is that one of the things following you?”

 Lee spun around and saw a dark silhouette outside of the window. It looked like a human, a woman, perhaps? He could almost make out her face, and her pained expression. For a short moment Lee felt sorry for her until she let out an ungodly wail of anger and began to beat on the window. 

 He jerked up from his seat, not sure what to do in his panic, and accidentally knocked over his glass of sweet tea onto the red shag carpeting. Ada was quicker to spring into action, she opened a small chest of drawers next to her chair, pulled out a white bladed knife and very calmly walked over to the window. The rest happened so quickly that Lee didn’t know what to say happened. Ada yanked open the window, grabbed the attacker by what seemed to be ethereal strands of hair and shoved the dagger into her back. Immediately the wailing stopped and the being, whatever it was seemed to disintegrate into nothing. 

 Ada looked towards him and Lee noted that there was no blood on the knife. She quirked her head and took in the sight of him, “You’ve got spirits following you. And it appears that something in you has made them rather angry.” 

 October 18, 2017

 Lee was retching in the corner, and Ada sighed just a bit as she watched him. The poor thing. This was not how someone should find out about this sort of family history. It did explain a lot about why those spirits were following him though. 

 They were standing in a rather dark corner of the Texas Lutheran University library, with quite a few old newspaper articles pulled up onto the computer. Ada stared at the screen, and felt a chill roll down her spine at the image before her.

 A man who looked just like Lee, stood in a courtroom in an orange jumpsuit. The caption ‘Serial killer sentenced to death’ was in italics underneath and described a rather horrible series of crimes. A confirmed victim count of ten, with quite a few more suspected from the man. A woman sat in the front row behind him, visibly pregnant and crying. As Ada read the article she let out a sigh. This did explain a lot. 

 As he dry heaved into a waste basket, Lee desperately tried to catch his breath. This couldn’t be happening. This was not what his mother told him. She said that his father was an old boyfriend who moved away to Germany after college. Lee hadn’t tried to pester her for more information. Why should he? He was happy with his life as it was. His mother had given him more love than he bet two parents could have given him. 

 “That article’s wrong!” 

 “Lee, it identifies your mother by name.” she scrolled through to another article, titled “Arthur ‘Artie’ Scott executed via electric chair”. “The date of his execution was almost exactly 19 years ago, Lee. It’s why they’re going after you. They’re upset and they didn’t get any closure.” 

 “But why are they going after me now!?” Lee’s voice roared out throughout the quiet space, and bounced around the walls. “I didn’t do anything!” 

 That was a fair question, but it only took a little while to find the answer. “Your father was 19 when he was executed, Lee.” 

 “Don’t call him my father!” 

 Ada ignored his outburst and continued, “They think you’re him. You’re his age, you look alike…” with a long sigh she stared at the angry young man in front of her. His world had been turned completely upside down—thankfully all of her time spent on earth had given her enough patience to handle a bit of misplaced anger. “Now we know where to start though. This won’t be too bad, I think.” 

 “Oh you don’t think it’ll be ‘that bad’? We just found out my—“ he sputtered, as he tried and failed to make the word ‘dad’ leave his mouth. “He’s a serial killer. How is that ‘not bad’ Ada? In what world does that mean ‘not bad’!?” 

 “We just have to wait for a little while longer, let some more time pass so they realize you aren’t him. We’ll find someplace safe, and hide out.” 

When Lee seemed to falter, as if she was saying something that couldn’t be achieved, Ada frowned, “What is it?” 

 “I can’t leave.” 

 “Why?” 

 “Midterms.” 

November 11, 2017 

 Now here they were. 

 Trapped, with no way out. 

 “I can’t believe I let you take me here!” Lee’s voice cracked with rage. Perhaps this was misplaced anger, but dammit, if he was about to die then he didn’t think it should matter. “This was supposed to be a safe place! We should have stayed near everyone else!” 

 “That wouldn’t have worked, Lee. We’d have put everyone else in danger and they’d have found us even sooner.” She looked at him with a frown, and watched as he shook and trembled while trying to hold back his emotions. “Lee I’m sorry. I need you to stay calm.” 

 “I thought you could protect me! What the hell kind of guardian angel can’t protect someone?” 

Ada flinched as Lee’s words hit fairly close to home, “Lee.” 

 “No really! A guardian angel for hire? What in the hell was I thinking? You’re just some crazy chick aren’t you?” 

 “No!” Ada raised her voice for the first time that Lee knew her, breaking the calm and motherly demeanor he’d come to know. “I was a guardian angel! I was!” 

 The silence that fell between them was heavy, as Lee processed her words. “Was?” when she blanched and set down the salt, Lee continued to stare at her, “You were a guardian angel? Past tense? As in, you’re not a guardian angel anymore?” 

 “I lost my wings.” 

 He shook his head a bit in confusion, “What does that mean?” 

 “You become a guardian angel by dying protecting someone else. I died protecting my son and became his… but when he passed away naturally, a long time later I was assigned to new people.” She hesitated, and only continued to speak when Lee looked at her imploringly. “I wasn’t good with them. I did what I did with my son and encouraged them to follow their dreams and what they wanted to do, but—“ 

 “But what?” 

 “That didn’t work out well. They kept making bad choices. They got hurt. They wound up dying. Eventually I got in trouble and was sent down like this, on probation. I’ve got to save one hundred people to become a guardian angel again. You’re my hundredth.”

 It took a little while, but Lee felt his surprise turn to anger once more, as he shouted at Ada, “Why didn’t you tell me that?!” 

 “I knew it would scare you off. I can handle this though! I’ve handled trackings like this before—it’s textbook!” 

 “You screwed up so bad that you got fired as a guardian angel! You really think you’re good enough to keep me safe?” Lee gestured to the cabin walls, where they could hear the echoes of the damned outside. “This is your fault! This is your fault! I’m going to die because of you!” 

 Ada flinched just a bit, wondering how exactly to recover from this. There was only one real way to recover from this. “You’re not going to die.” 

 It was impossible to kill an angel, even one on probation, but not for those who were also ethereal beings. 

 “Oh really, I’m not going to die? How are you going to save me Ada? You going to do the same sort of job that you did with all your other clients?” 

 She took a deep breath, he was young and angry. Rightfully so. It wasn’t right to lash out back at him. “I’m going to distract them while you grab the car and get out of here. Take my knife, and my bag it’s got lots of things in there to protect you. Holy water, loads of salt to ward off spirits. Go and hide somewhere safe, and wait it out for as long as you can. They’re already decreasing in numbers as they realize you aren’t your dad. I give it another week.” 

She grabbed a shotgun off of the wall and loaded several odd looking bullets in them. For a moment, Lee was distracted enough to forget his anger. “How are you going to distract them?” Lee had never been a hunter, nor had he ever really seen a gun up close, but those didn’t appear to be normal bullets. “What are you putting in there?” 

 The real answer was blessed silver buckshot, something that would cover a large range and inflict lots of damage. However, it wouldn’t kill them. At least not all of them. “They’re special bullets that can kill the spirits.” 

 “You’ve got enough in there for them?” 

 She did not, but one of the few things Ada had learned on this earth during her short time as a mother was that at times, it was best to lie for the comfort of others. 

 “Of course. Hide out, I’ll come and find you, and if I can’t find you in a week then go back to normal. It’ll be over by then alright?” 

 Something felt wrong to Lee. He couldn’t put his finger on it but something about all of this felt off. It was enough to completely wash away his anger. “You’ll be alright then? You’ll come and find me?” Even if he’d been angry at Ada, it was hard to go through a month of this with someone and not become their friend. “You won’t get hurt?” 

 Without hesitation, Ada smiled and lied to his face. “Of course I’ll be alright. Don’t worry.”

 There wasn’t enough buckshot, and she was sending him off with everything else in her arsenal. 

 It was impossible to explain to Lee why she’d failed so many times, an impossible thing to explain to anyone who hadn’t been a mother. But Ada had followed everyone before she’d gone on probation from birth to death, and they’d all become her children in her eyes. Perhaps this made her a bad mother, but as the world around them quickly changed she’d had trouble keeping up with what was safe for them and what was dangerous.

 All she’d ever done was try to guide them to make the right decisions, and she’d seemed to fail at that. 

 Things had gone better since she’d gone on probation, but right now Lee was a scared kid, someone who needed comfort and to be protected. Just like her son had been two centuries ago.

 “Now go on Lee to the garage and get in the car. Open the door, the salt line that’s down will still keep them out until you drive over it. When you hear me shoot, drive out and get as far away as you can, okay? Just keep driving.” 

 “Ada…” 

 “Go, now.” Her voice sounded a great deal like Lee’s mother when she’d decided on something and Lee no longer had a choice in the matter. He stared at her for a moment before nodding and walking to the garage. 

 Ada waited until she heard the car start up and the garage door open. She felt cold. Her hands were trembling. However, she’d died before, and while this time there was no promise of an afterlife, Ada allowed an overwhelming sense of peace to wash over her. She had failed plenty of times in her many years. This time though, she would succeed. 

 With that thought in mind, Ada swung open the door to the cabin, kicked a hole in the line of salt and fired a shot straight into the chest of one of the spirits in front of her. 

 Before the mob descended she could see Lee drive off into the distance. 

 Yes, she’d done her job this time.

PERMANENT TAG LIST

@vanityasvoriaclover​ @whyarentyoulaughingj​ @fainting-fancy​ @hermione-who​ @rexster10​ @oh-the-snowinthemoonlight​

[sonofhistory]

Dedicated to @gettallmadge and gifted to @asexualtallmadge

American History RPF 18th Century CE RPF

Nathan Hale (1755-1776)/Benjamin Tallmadge

Benjamin Tallmadge, Nathan Hale, Reverend Benjamin Tallmadge, Susannah Smith Tallmadge (1729-1768), William Tallmadge (1752-1776), Other Character Tags to Be Added

Lost Love, Family, Domestic Bliss, Memories, Separate Childhoods, Childhood, Growing Up, Death, Period-Typical Homophobia, Religion, Other Additional Tags to Be Added

Part of the Halemadge || Pythias & Damon series 

Word Count Thus Far: 1,344 Chapter 1/?

____________________

February 17th, 1835

Litchfield, Connecticut

_____________________

         Perhaps the universe carved them from marble or the perfect stone. The softest rose petals and the sweetest rays of sunshine. The purest shades of sky and fatal tinctures of the seas. Oh how the roses wilted when the sun went away. In time, all those fragile pieces slipped into place and the forest seemed brighter in those days. Those years of youth compose themselves in his mind every so often and he’ll dry his eyes with the cuff of his sleeve. He recollected how that boy would always be inside of him, even as the brown of his eyes shone the reflection of the harbor and cut across the horizon. He remembers those days before he met him and how different it would all be if he’d never met the boy with sunshine hair and a heart of stirling gold. Now he sits in his chair and rubs wrinkled fingers across his eyelids.

         When the temptation becomes too insistent, he’ll rest his aching bones onto the settling mattress and slip his hands into the top drawer in his dresser. He’ll feel for the tearing box with his eager, hungry fingertips and a pang of anxiety would ripple through abdomen before his nails catch on the material of the wearing box frame. He would pause, breath catching in his throat and he grasped calmly for it, tugging it out of its place and onto his lap.

         How delicate he was as his trembling palms held the box like a child, removing the top of the box off and setting down on the covers. Dust was coating the pads of his fingers before he would peer into the box. There they lay, the only thing that survived of his lover’s soul and it was in the way it seemed to drip onto the paper among the swirling, faded ink. The parchment was retracting into a rusted honey at coarse edges, a few aged rips. He swallowed before proceeding. The hesitation embraced him over and the phrases swam in his eyes; he swore the letters twinkled up at him in the twilight room. So tame he was as he surged forward through blinding hesitation and tears beginning to brim his iris. He lifted the pages up on his blurring vision and he could never imagine that sunshine boy ever growing old. How desperately tired he was of feeling the soil beneath his feet while the one he loved floated in the atmosphere above; he failed to ever reach his outstretched arms.

         He blinked, clearing his eyes, Friend Tallmadge, it commenced and a smile leaned heavily on the verge of his cheeks. He could almost hear his soothing breath on the fibers of his hair as if the ghost of him was glaring over his shoulder to read along side him. He did not look back, he felt his presence every instant the box was stripped. Ever yours, Pythias, those were what his pen had composed in closure--he rubbed a finger to his brow and sighed in thought--sixty years ago. The phantom skeleton of his penmanship brushed over the spiraling letters and the spine of all words. There was every poem and there was very salvaged verse. He gave permission for his eyes to close softly, sinking farther into the mattress and breathing in another wisp of air. For it was all he had left of the boy he once knew, there he was among the letters seeming still to breathe through the dying pages.

         There that boy was, smiling so radiantly as not even the entire galaxy could replicate. The shades of their love shifted before his skull and scarlet mingling so purely with some hue of merigold. He revived his voice in his head, even as the memories faded and the dreams became just fragments of before, he’ll still remember that voice and the way it used to harmonize him. He wished to press that voice like a flower and place it among his verses in the little crumbling box. That boy was gone and seemed only to exist in legacies and song. Not a person would know how intimate their touches were and not a single being would discover just how well he recollected the pattern of his heartbeat and breath. It never came as waves do, for it was always all at once and every day. That boy plucked such a fatal chord in him and for that he would never recover as time ticks by and the years became dull fragments of what they were before. It seemed so dismal to wrap him up in linen and tuck him away in safety to the deepest part of his drawer where he could never be seen.

         Perhaps, this time he can keep him safe.

         The boy lives no more and only among sheets of parchment and ink. But, he lives on every particle of his skin and every fragment of his thoughts. He would never let those pieces escape. Hands trembling, the old man rose those sheets to his heart, resisting the anger that fostered in his fists, keeping away urges to crumple it all. His love never got to grow old and he wondered sometimes if those lapis eyes would’ve ever faded with age or if his beauty would live on; this did not seem to matter, however often is crossed his mind. His intake was shaky and he held those raveling writings to his chest as if he was attempting to hold onto the memory of him and soak him in through the things he said in the past. He felt a hand on his thigh and lips on his jaw; he traced his chin and was exasperated that he could not sense perfectly just how he felt against his skin.

         It almost was like he lived a different life when he was there. Even when he caught those sapphire eyes for the first time, he still does remember how something inside him pulsated and he knew it was not the first time he had ever felt him. His ribs began to ache, and he wiped a tear from his cheek, the words were settled back into the box and the colors scrambled to slip back in as he placed the top back where it belonged. The box was shoved to the back of his drawer where it resided and he retracted his hand, focus on hiatus before shutting the drawer. He sunk onto the bed and the scent of rose petals faded from the air. He laid back onto the bed and rested his head against the pillow as the memories of him were exhausting. The elderly man brushed his fingers over the empty side of the bed and he scarcely never imaged him appearing there and climbing from one of his dreams.

         His heart longed to let go and he grew in farther impatience at the thought of lacing fingers once again with him, pressing his palms across his neck, twisting ankles around his waist, laying his ear on that chest and listening to the trailing beat of his heart during as he did so long ago. He mused over his children, his wife and his mind drew him back. How grown they all were now. A pang of emotion fluttered in his stomach; no, for now, Benjamin Tallmadge clings to the pieces of Nathan Hale and holds them tight against his heart so that if his ghost truly lives in those sentences his lover might hear his longing and sense his pain.

         Ben’s eyes began to close, oh, but for now, I cannot have you tonight. The universe had truly carved them from marble, but Nathan was not there now to illuminate the darker parts of his soul. Ben checks the time and counts exactly how much time he has left, truthfully he counts every galaxy, and writes his own metaphors across the skies; but in all his time here, Ben had never seen stars as bright as Nathan’s eyes.

[tuckerfuckingdidit]

get rec’d! (august 2017)

*arrives 20 minutes to midnight wearing sunglasses and drinking a frappe*

good god, is august really here already?? alright, you guys waited all day for this, so get in, losers. we’re going for pure indulgence. @rvbficwars

this month’s rec is washlina themed!! july was a Rough Time to be a freelancer fan, but these folks made it a hell of a lot easier, and for that i am grateful. :D

fic

swiftly, sharply, by @illumynare - rule #1 of rec club: it’s my party, and i will rec fills for my own prompts if i want to!!!! here’s the thing: lumi extrapolated the be-all, end-all dynamic for these two from wash’s perspective from like 70 words of tags i wrote in april. that is talent, and i will fight anyone who says otherwise. wash is so full of tender affection for carolina that i can hardly stand it. his love is coated in acceptance, and it’s perfect. just go read it before i end up spoiling metaphors. (so good!!!)

stars and circuits by @zalia - rule #2 of rec club: still my party. because i am Spoiled, “stars and circuits” was also written for me. i’m still not over how suddenly it existed, but the content, okay. i love blunt carolina. i love her dropping the bomb because beating around the bush just isn’t a thing she can do, but i also love the comfortable silence and idle chatter that exists before and after. it’s just really fucking cute, okay. they’re settled and comfortable and happy.

sixty-two hours by @autisticblueteam - note that this is platonic, but damn if it isn’t still awesome. blue’s carolina cares a fuck ton about wash, and it always, always shows. the structure of this post is gorgeous, and it honestly does a better job of expressing how endless being trapped down there must have felt better than the show did, whoops. i hear every word wash says, and it hurts me. good job, blue. c:

art

artesstr’s kiss - do you ever just. i fucking. look. there are some things you need to know about me to understand why this image has pushed me off a cliff a good 7 times in the week it has existed. the first is that i spent a long time adamant that carolina was the same height as, if not taller than wash, but this image sold me on smolalina. the second is i don’t typical like kisses being the central focus of artwork!! it has to Tell me something, and this embrace communicates so much. they are in their own universe, scars and all, safe from anything that could ever fuck with them, and i’m just gonna have to leave it at that or i’ll be here for an hour and rec day will be over. (*takes deep breath* *SCREAMS WORDLESSLY* SO GOOD!!!!)

@ueeyasu​‘s fantasy au - SPEAKING OF GOOD KISSES. this is a great one that snuck in right on the last day of july, and i am sooo happy i get to include it here. the coloring in the background is superb; half of the atmosphere you get just from the environment. Good Shit. the little details put into their armor are fantastic, and i love that all of her gear is more ornate than his. it just feels Right. a+ end to the month, great stuff from ueeyasu, as usual :) @briggstheseeker has a reblog with tags full of things i didn’t even catch. 11/10.

bonus round: tuckinglina!

@randomdraggon​’s animation - look, if i’m ever not yelling about this, assume i am dead. that commission feel™ when something turns out 100x better than you expected is like crack cocaine. first of all, body language win. second, the idle movements are fantastic. at no point does anyone stand around and do nothing; i think wash reacting to carolina being shoved into him is my favorite touch. all of the characterization here is perfect from the first frame (little tucker’s arms akimbo!!). carolina launching tucker off-screen like he’s a fucking member of team rocket is just. gold.

july 2017 recs

[storytimewithtara-blog]

Redecorating

Kevin headed to the living room, desperate to catch the highlights from the games missed today. There were only so many days in a row he could stand being out of the loop with the guys at the office. He saw Marie shifting the TV farther to the left on the entertainment stand. She angled the TV to face the majority of the room, but this gave his leather recliner an awful position. There would be a horrible sun glare all day and Marie's mother's reading lamp would do the same all night.

“Babe, what are you doing?” he asked, hoping it was simply a bit of random cleaning.

“Just need a few more inches of space for the painting I bought today,” she said as she stepped back to get a full view of the TV's position. Marie seemed happy with it. She must have been ignoring the obvious cons this had for his chair and moved to line up the canvas to the wall.

“Does it have to go there?”

“Why not?

“Don't you think it throws off the room a bit?” He thought that was something he'd heard drifting out from the home renovation shows Sadie watched any time she was in the living room, which was most of the time.

Kevin had taken the opportunity of her taking a shower to claim the space, for awhile at least. Once she came down, Sadie would settle into her chair quietly and take up knitting while casually mentioning how sports moved too fast and made her dizzy. He'd be able to ignore the clipping sounds of needles and occasional sighs until the highlights were over. Then he would stand, smile, and ask what channel Sadie would like. She'd fuss and say he could watch whatever he wanted, but after one more insistence on his part a show would quickly come to mind. The phrase started with “Well, I suppose” and ended “if you really don't mind, Kevin”. Every time. He'd taken to mouthing the words as she spoke when he was turned away from her to change the channel.

Marie dropped the canvas back to the floor. “You don't like it. I thought you would like it.”

The painting was possibly a city sidewalk lined with streetlamps, New York City or such. Everything looked sort of melted, maybe it was raining. There had been rain on their trip to New York, they had huddling under an umbrella from the restaurant to the theater for their show. That's what the content side of him saw anyway. The grouchy side saw a night on fire, burning away the structure and beauty of the city life. Kevin didn't understand the painting either way, but that did not mean he hated it. This wasn't about the painting.

“Babe, it's great. I just don't think it fits there. Why mess up the TV? It would fit on the back wall.”

“I finally hung some of our pictures back there. Mom finally decided on a few that weren't too distracting.”

He could hear in her voice that he should have noticed the frames on the wall. Most of those had been on the bedroom floor. Kevin turned to the second recliner that was pulled back to sit more snugly in the corner of the room and saw their smiling faces from the Virgin Islands, Eiffel Tower, and a couple different European churches. If the chair were in its original space, there would have been room for pictures and painting alike, but Sadie like the view out the bay window back there. The reading lamp that would put a glare in the center of his TV was to the chair's right and a bag of yarn and a half finished hat were on its left.

“Why can't she do that upstairs?” he asked for what was the twentieth time since Sadie had arrived.

“She likes to knit while she watches TV.”

“There is a TV in her room.” He knew she used it, at night he could hear reruns of I Love Lucy coming from her room because Sadie turned the volume up for her hearing and then fall asleep with the TV on. Kevin was often pulled out of a light sleep by a particularly loud laugh track.

“I'm not just going to shut her into one room, Kevin. She wants to be around us,” Marie said.

“How about next to the corner stand,” he said flinging a hand out to the opposite back corner of the room.

“The painting doesn't fit with Mom's figures.”

Marie looked over the Precious Moments that lined the shelves. Dozens of doe eyed boys and girls frozen in romantic scenes or lifetime highlights. He spotted a couple kissing on a bench, a young girl holding a drawing, a newlywed couple that was stamped with their wedding date, and an angel boy stamped with the date of her father's passing. That one creeped him out the most. There seemed to be one for anything notable Marie had done in her life. Few of their own belongings remained on the shelves: a bottle of sand from Mexico, another with ash from Pompeii, and a new book on Spain that Marie had been talking about reading for weeks. There was no point in researching a trip they couldn't set a date for. Marie wouldn't leave Sadie alone and Sadie didn't find Spain all that appealing. Kevin almost laughed at the image of a frustrated Sadie arguing in slow English to a market salesman over what was a lemon and what was a lime. Was there a Precious Moment for culture shock?

“And why can't those go in her room?” Kevin asked.

“Spreading out her things makes this feel more like home for her, which it is. Keeping it all locked in a room would be mean.”

Marie was counting the figures with a subtle tap of her finger on her arm, to see if Sadie had added any more. They had started on just one shelf and slowly infected the rest of the stand.

Kevin thought of the bookcases shoved into their bedroom. Both had been crowded with books, but now held a cluster of decorative items that had lost their positions. One item was the Day of the Dead mask that once hung in the kitchen, after Sadie had been shocked into prayer three days in a row the mask was taken down and hidden away. Large prints of Bible verses replaced their photographs of Mardi Gras, those pictures now laid flat on top of books.

“How about our bedroom?” he asked.

“I want people to see it, Kevin. I can't just drag people into our room. Especially the way it looks now.”

The room Sadie claimed upstairs had been a sort of office/den space for them. Her arrival not only moved the bookshelves to their room, but the small desk they had shared. Laptops rested precariously on nightstands, waiting for the morning Kevin or Marie caught the corner as they rolled out of bed. The loveseat and chair were squished into what had been a small workout room downstairs, but now was the Sadie overflow room. This room now held boxes of home décor she hadn't yet been able to force on their walls, boxes of picture albums and scrapbooks, and Kevin had spied boxes of Marie's school papers as they'd moved it all in.

Kevin mentally ran through the house. He couldn't find a spot that wasn't Sadie filled, or filled to make room for Sadie, unless she wanted to just plaster the new painting to the front door. No, the echo of bells in his mind reminded him that a golden angel, that had been assumed a Christmas decoration but they were now in March, still hung from the knocker. As he gave his hair a toss, Kevin sank into his chair and watched the fading sunlight throw beams across his TV.

“She doesn't fit,” he said.

Marie tilted her head, but her eyes glanced to the figurines. “What are you talking about?”

“She doesn't fit in this house, Marie. There isn't enough room for your mother and us.”

“It is far too late to be having this conversation again.' “We never had this conversation in the first place.”

Marie's father died and she couldn't stand the thought of her mother living alone. As an only child, the only solution she'd found was for Sadie to move in with them. She'd been so upset about the passing, and so sure of the impending depression Sadie was bound for, Kevin only wanted to sooth her and never saw 'no' as an option. They'd had to struggle with Sadie on giving away her late husbands possessions, but a good amount that neither mother or daughter could part with were still stacked on top of his treadmill. Their arrangement was going on seven months and Sadie seemed to be adjusted just fine. The woman wasn't completely dependent on them, but seemed to enjoy having them at beck and call.

A flash of light cut across the room, Kevin hadn't thought about headlights also being a problem for his TV. He heard the shower turn off upstairs. There was no chance of watching his highlights now. Sadie would slip into a cheetah print pajama set and come down with towel dried hair in just a bit. Resigning to spending another night catching up on news from his twelve inch computer while his sixty-five inch TV was used for some HGTV show, Kevin pushed out of his chair. The guys at work would tell him anything he missed tomorrow.

“Put it on the wall, I don't care,” he said.

He heard the bathroom door open, a squeaky voice drifted down. Kevin couldn't make out the words, but he would put money on it being some country song about God, that was her favorite.

“Maybe, maybe it would fit by the corner stand,” Marie said.

Kevin looked between the two walls being discussed. “Might be a tight fit back there.”

Marie walked over to the stand and her fingers landed on top of a figurine, a mother and daughter picking flowers. She balanced the Precious Moment on the edge of the shelf. When Sadie's voice was cut off by the snap of her door, Marie let the figure fall. Bits of porcelain skidded across the wood floor to land at Kevin's feet.

“No,” she said, “there is much more room here now.”

[kintsugi-sheep]

Blue-Collar Friend Potatoes

The tavern was in the middle of nowhere, resting on the side of a dirt road in the valley, far off from the nearest down. The wood was worn and the ivy was a little out of control, but the warm lights shinning out from the inside, the smell of roasted meat, and the sound of laughter made it pretty clear that the place wasn’t abandoned.

I reached for my satchel and checked my book, making sure no more pages had fallen out of the hole in the bottom. Once I confirmed it, I made my way toward the tavern.

I pushed the door open and it creaked louder than I was prepared for. I was almost embarrassed when everyone turned their eyes on me, but they went back to their conversations pretty quick.

I was struck in the face by a hurricane of smells. Chickens were being cooked, almost definitely in a brick oven, stuffed with what smelled like herbs, onions, and garlic. Then again, maybe that was just my eyes feeding my nose information, picking up on the union soup a man at the bar was eating, the sweet and hearty combination of the onions and beer reaching me from halfway across the tavern. I took another step in, just in time to see a woman shove the door to the kitchen open, carrying a beautifully browned pig on a tray in one arm, carrying a platter of tall steins overflowing with golden liquid in the other.

My tongue drowned by how heavily I was salivating. I gulped it down and made my way further inside.

Some would call the ground floor cozy. I would call it small. There were stairs leading up to a balcony where more tables were set, the make of the wood similar to that on the ground floor, but clearly around two decades newer. With a full bar, eight booths on the ground, and ten booths on the balcony, I estimated the place could fit around one hundred and twenty people. If they all sat pressed shoulder-to-shoulder.

Which the customers didn’t seem to mind doing. It was an older crowd; I don’t think anyone in there was under thirty-five. The men were dressed in stained, casual clothing and the women all had well-worked hands. Everyone seemed to perform some blue-collar labor. I, being in vest and slacks, carrying my old school satchel weighed down by an oversized book, felt more than a little out of place.

I moved over to the bar, sitting as far off from the other patrons as I could, circumstantially putting as far away from the only entrance-exit I’d seen since I came in. This place had to be older; the regulations in the last township wouldn’t have allowed any restaurant to operate without at least two exits. Or at least without a bar top that wasn’t stained four shades of brown from years of spilled beer.

The waitress approached me from behind the bar. I felt myself melt a little, seeing her big eyes, small frame, and wide smile approaching. I was shaken out of that when she slapped the table in front of me. Her strong hand with its many faded scars contradicted her softer, more feminine features.

She said, “Hello there! What can I get for you?”

She was loud, probably so I could hear her over all the conversation going on. I readjusted myself and said, “Yes, I was wondering if you had potatoes?”

It got distinctly quieter and I could tell, even if they didn’t turn to look at me directly, the pair of men nearest me at the bar had stopped their conversation to listen.

The waitress laughed at my question like I was being absurd, and I felt like I was back at the university again. “Of course we have potatoes. I’d never work at a place that didn’t have potatoes.”

“I’ve never eaten at a place that didn’t have potatoes,” one of the men nearby said, more to his friend than to either me or the waitress.

“I’d never eat of a place that didn’t have them,” his friend replied, slapping his shoulder drunkenly and wheezing out a laugh.

I was probably red with embarrassment. The servants at my house didn’t prepare them when I was growing up. We lived on brussels sprouts and celery.

“Johann,” my dad would say, watching me disinterestedly roll the vegetables around on my plate as he ritualistically quartered his brussels sprouts individually, surgically dividing them leaf-by-leaf into a giant salad of boiled greens, “always remember that the vegetables you eat must be green. Green is the healthiest color for consumption, as science would tell you.”

My sisters would parrot him, scoffing at me for not being as devoted to brussels sprouts as our doctor father. And my mother would fawn over him like he was the smartest man alive.

I was pulled back to the present when a stein of beer was slammed in front of me, splintering wood from the table and striking me in the face. The waitress smiled at me.

“You were gone for a minute there, buddy.”

I had no idea. There were at least five sets of eyes on me now, looking over my clean clothes and satchel, looking at my thin frame and pince-nez.

“That’s from me,” a mouth from beneath one of the pairs of eyes said. The man looked about fifty, but with about sixty years of muscle mass on him. “We don’t get a lot of people from the city around here.”

Technically I was from a hamlet at the coast, but that wasn’t going to win me any favors with this crowd. “Well, I’m just passing through.”

“Oh yeah?” The man pulled out two cigars. I raised my hands to decline. He paused, scoffed at the idea he would’ve offered me one to begin with, and put them side-by-side in his mouth. “God a light?”

Smoothly, I pulled my pack of matched from my satchel, lit one, and held it to his cigars.

The group was impressed and the man laughed. “Macy, get this boy his potatoes.”

“You got it, chief,” the waitress said, walking to the back and shouting, “Yo, Seamus-”

The “chief” called my attention back to him. “You’re a student at a university, aren’t you?”

There wasn’t any point denying it. Everything about me gave me away. “Yes. Well, I was.”

He pulled his cigars from his mouth. “I can tell. I’d never seen someone light a smoke for someone else so fast. You must be a grade-A ass kisser, aren’t you, boy?” He gulped on his beer while his friends chuckled behind him.

“Well, it’s because of all the,” I paused, struggling against years of sanitized language to get out, “ass kissing that I had to leave.”

“Had to leave?” he asked, popping his cigars back in his mouth.

“That I left,” I corrected myself. “The ass kissing is why I left.”

“I see.” He reached in my satchel, catching me wholly off guard and pulled my book out, slamming it on the table and getting beer on the cover.

“Careful!” I said, throwing my thin arms over it.

“What is this? There’s not a title or anything.”

“It’s my cook book.” The book was bound in red leather, an image of a black pot on the cover. The leather was peeling in many places, though. And the vibrant luster of the red was faded, compared to when I’d first gotten it.

The book was also empty when I’d first gotten it, two thousand blank pages that needed to be filled by recipes I wanted to record. The entries were initially neat and orderly, a detailed image of the dish in question drawn carefully in the top corner of each new recipe.

But, as the pages went on, my actually notetaking habits, the notetaking habits that were frowned upon by my teachers, peers, and family, showed themselves. Neat descriptions gave way to scratched out sentences with addenda written vertically up the side. Drawn food were seen less frequently, as I was more concerned with eating a hot meal than capturing its appearance. Some pages had been torn from other books and stuck within the pages of certain recipes, notes of modifications to make later. Some had little sheets pasted carelessly over the middle.

The patrons were impressed as we flipped through the pages, me explaining what they were seeing. I knew they lived inland, but I was shocked that none of them had ever seen a crab before. Many of them didn’t even know that there were more than three types of fish. They weren’t interested in the wines I’d tasted, but I was surprised to learn that many of them had had mead before. I struggled to explain the differences of flavors between bison meat and bull meat. I also struggled to explain the differences between oysters, mussels, and clams.

We laughed as I told them about my disastrous experiences with bear meat. I got pats of sympathy when I told them about the time when I got my wild mushrooms mixed up and spent three days being sick from both ends. I even pulled up my shirt to show them the stab would I got when I went fishing for swordfish.

Then a plate clattered in front of me. And my nostrils flared, picking up the smell before I even turned to the plate.

These weren’t the potatoes that I’d been expecting. At the university banquets they were cloud-like, topped with things like peas or chopped pork. These, were another thing entirely.

It was two potatoes that had been cut lengthwise into slices three-quarters of an inch thick. Their traditional white interior was not a shimmering golden color, dripping with some sort of fat and covered if heart chunks of salt. Macy placed a small bowl right next to it. I recognized it immediately as cheese. Cheese that’d been melted down to a bubbly, white paste, mixed with the red specs I recognized as cayenne.

I didn’t take the time to say my prayers. I paid no mind to how hot the potato was when I scooped it into my fingers. I jabbed it into the cheese as fast as I could and brought the searing mixture to my mouth, heedless of the new cheese stain on my book.

The pain was searing, but I muscled through as best I could, burning the interior of my mouth on the salty-savory flavors within it. My stein was pushed closer to me and I snatched it up by both hands, latching my lips to the side. A few hearty gulps later and I brought it back down, sighing out in pleasure.

Everyone leaned in closer.

I said, “Amazing,” and they burst out into cheers.

 Prompt: [WP] You've been searching the world for the best fried potatoes of them all, your adventures have lead you to an unassuming dinner in the middle of an empty road, as you take the first bite you notice the locals looking at you

[analiecious]

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[caffeinated-muse]

To Be of Two Worlds

Chapter: 2

Word count: 2450

As expected I had arrived before Hank and the rest of the them. The station was mostly dark, the only illumination came from some desk lamps in the main office area. I headed to my desk and flicked the base of my lamp onto the highest brightness setting and sat down. 

"I guess it wouldn’t be a bad idea to start on the report," I sighed. "Cause lord knows Hank wont do it til the last minute."

Pulling out my laptop I started typing, standard information first; state of the scene, initial ideas, and such on. However, it became clear to me that I wasn’t quite in the right frame of mind to be doing this. Flashes and snippets of image and sound would yank me away from my desk and into different places. Back to my old apartment on a Sunday morning, coffee brewing behind me a card game laid out and light-hearted arguing; to a night tainted in blood and smoldering framework; machines and test after test; Hank practically smothering me in an embrace; but then one image struck me dumb. It was recent, that android stepping out after Hank. He had seemed stiff in the moment, as if his body wasn’t quite used to moving around also slightly unsure of how to interact with the people bustling around the area. His eyes betrayed the strict down to business attitude he tried to show, there was a softness in those brown orbs a light curiosity like that of a child. Wasn’t that what he was? Manufactured and shoved out into the world shortly after, true he had the body of a man but in mind and heart he knew no more about how the world worked than a child, knowing only what he had been told.

"Kid have a coffee you’ll need it."

"Wait what?" I spluttered, started out of my mind palace. "Ooh iced coffee! 

Thanks Gavy! I snatched the cup out of his hand and happily sipped at the straw."

"Don't call me that," Gavin hissed and turned around, running a hand through his hair. "Just the way you always you get it kid. But we should get going the rest of them should be here soon. He turned and walked in the direction of the interrogation room."

I stood up and grabbed a small purple box from my desk and after shoving it in my pocket bounced after Mr. grumpy guts Gavin Reed. 

"Do you really need to take those damn cards with you everywhere?" He scoffed and jabbed the outline of them in my jacket.

I pushed his hand away and pulled out my cards. "Yes, I do Reed. And you know exactly why." I opened the box and pulled out its contents, sixty purple sleeved pieces of cardboard and began to shuffle them by mushing segments of the deck back into the main bulk. At this Gavin groaned. "Or would you rather I stare at my phone the whole time? Cause I could totally do that."

"Can it LaChance. How the hell are you even doing that anyway? Doesn't the, you know get in the way."

"Its called a glove smart one. And what my mush shuffle? Does it bother you?"

"Yes. Yes, it does." He growled and opened the door to the interrogation room.

"Good, you know I live to bother you." I blew him a kiss and sauntered into the room setting my cards down on the table in front of the viewing window and shedding my black leather jacket to reveal a black sweater. After that I plopped my tired body into one of the two chairs behind the viewscreen. Gavin took the seat beside me looking bored as ever.

"Sup love birds ya miss me?" Hanks obnoxious mocking alerted me to his presence.

"Okay first off, eww love birds with this creep? Hell no. No offence Gav."

"Some taken."

"Can it grumpy guts wasn't talking to you. And secondly Hank, I don't miss you, I wait anxiously with baited breath for your next terrorist like strike of sarcastic vocabulating." While this was going on the deviant was led in and placed in the chair. Hank made to doff an invisible hat and stepped into the chamber with the Android in question. "It'll take a while for him to start getting anything out of it. Connor coffee run with me, I need an extra set of hands."

"Two-"

"Gav, I know how you take your fucking coffee, let's go robocop." I snapped.

Connor and I walked out and back toward the break room. The office was dark once more, my desk light having an automatic shut off. The breakroom light flickered to life as I stepped in illuminating the somewhat shabby couch pushed into the corner, I guess the whole out of sight out of mind thing was at play here. There were a few well used tall round tables with equally tall chairs that I never used. Mostly due to the fact that I wast much more than a foot taller than the damn things. And on the counter sat in all it's over used, overworked, please-retire-me glory was our ugly avocado green coffee pot. Jiggling the faulty cord, I set to work filling it with water and measuring out the coffee. 

"Lieutenant, may I ask a uh personal question?" Connor had piped up. 

"Sure, but grab me the yellow mug from the top shelf first. Mug first questions second. "

He reached up and grabbed it with ease setting it down on the counter. "I wanted to ask about the glove. Why haven’t you taken it off yet?"

"That my friend is a conversation for another time." The pot spluttered to life and the smell of our low quality purchased in bulk coffee beans filled the air. "You can ask anything you want but the arm is off limits for now. It's, touchy."

"I don't think I understand you detective. Just about everything I need to know about you is in your profile." He stood in what I could only assume was the Android equivalent of processing how to English words. The led on his Temple pulsed a vibrant yellow. "Anything extra is merely trivial."

"Ah, but Connor it if was truly trivial and unnecessary, why did you want to know about the curious case of why no one has seen my right arm bare and hand ungloved in eighteen years?" I began measuring out sugars and cream into the mugs. "Is it perhaps because you think it would help us bond? Well it won't. Only three people here in the precinct know the story behind it in full and I'd like to keep it that way."

He stood there stock still once more the led spinning from blue to yellow and then a garish red. Probably scanning my file over again. Everyone does that, thinking they can hack the system into revealing the details about that day. But the thing with that data is that it doesn't exist in the electronic system, I had Fowler stash that stuff away in paper form inside one of the lock boxes in the evidence room for that particular unresolved case. 

"Lieutenant, I need to at least know why there isn’t a report from you regarding the last time the Bloodmar case was opened. There are reports from all of the other members of the team including Lieutenant Anderson and Detective Reed." He adjusted his tie even though there was really no need for him to do that. I guess it was just a filler motion he picked up from the few humans he’d have interacted with since his activation, I doubt Kamski would have wanted such an annoyingly useless social cue programmed into an android. But then again this was Kamski, bastard does stuff just cause he can. "And we all know about Reeds unwillingness to actually file his paperwork."

"The only thing you need to know about that incident was that there was a series of mistakes, a bomb that went splode, and a metric crap ton of hospital fees that all landed on me and my tiny ass body." I hastily grabbed two of the mugs and started walking out, leaving the confused android in the break room. Hey robocop grab those mugs and head back. "You so much as allude to the Bloodmar case before the week is out I will dislocate your plastic knee are we clear?"

His led flashed yellow for a moment but then it returned to its normal blue as he followed me back to the interrogation room where Hank was just about ready to rage quit. I handed Gavin his coffee and sat down sipping mine after the other officer took his cup and we left Hanks mug off to the side. Apparently not much has happened, Hank did his usual sit there and stare at the android for a while and tried to goad it into talking. When that didn’t work he just sat there dejected before coming back in to where the rest of us were. 

"Having problems old man?" I snickered. "Want the droid to take a pop at it or shall I head in? By the way this is yours." Handing him the coffee with one hand I tapped the deck against the table.

"Let Connor have a chance at this. Hes supposed to be the deviant catcher. Let him crack the damn hunk of plastic."

Connor stepped into the room, but frankly I couldn’t care less what he did in there I doubted he could do much against the crazed android. I wasn’t disappointed with the performance we were given. 

It started out slow, with Connor staring at us for a moment from his side of the viewscreen and then casually looking through the file on the table before sitting down and attempting to talk. Connor then pulled the file in front of the suspect and began showing the photos of the crime scene. I stopped paying attention at that moment but was quickly brought back in when the file was slammed back onto the table with a loud exclamation of 28 stab wounds and threats of being disassembled and the subsequent android death. Good stuff I guess but I was getting bored just sitting there. 

"Hank, can I join the android party?" I pleaded putting on my best puppy dog eyes. "I’m getting bored sitting here."

Hank just sighed and pointed at the door and I popped up quickly to go join the android party. But Gavin had to be Gavin.

"You cant just let her go in there like that Hank! "

"Gav last I checked this case didn’t have your name on it anywhere. So, can it before I dump coffee on you." With that I placed my hand on the scanner and after the door slid open I stepped inside. "Howdy buddy whats up?" I leaned against the back wall behind Connor and flashed our resident robomurderer a wicked grin miming a head shot in his direction with finger guns.

"Lieutenant what are doing here?" Connor didn’t even turn around, just continued to give the android a death stare.

"Got bored wanted to have some fun with Mr. talkative over here." I sauntered over behind our suspect. And whispered into his ear, "Just say you killed him honey, otherwise I'll get to have even more fun taking you apart in the basement than I am watching you squirm. Or you can stay silent and I get my fun, your choice."

"He-he tortured me every day..."

"Ooh do go on, I’m listening." The android shifted slightly in his seat as if he wanted to stand. I grabbed the back of the chair and sharply tipped it back. "No moving, only talking sweetie. That is unless you want to see my lab."

"I did whatever he told me, but there was always something wrong. Then one day he took a bat and started hitting me. For the first time I felt scared. Scared he might destroy me, scared I might die, so I grabbed the knife and I stabbed him in the stomach. I felt better so I stabbed him again and again until he collapsed." The android looked down and refused to move after that.

"Whelp Hank, Connor we got what we wanted lets get out of here. Pity I don’t get a new play thing. There’s always next time I guess." Gavin and the other officer came in and attempted to relocate the android to its holding cell. However, it decided to resist this. 

As the droid jerked away from the lower officers touch I laughed at the struggle. Things were going to get good, I could feel it. And I was rewarded when after falling from the chair the android stood up the officers gun in hand, safety off and it trained on me. Connor shifted almost like he was going to jump the android but I held up my right arm in a signal to stand down. It all happened so quickly after that, I saw his finger twitch and brought my right arm into a defensive position just as he pulled the trigger. The bullet ripped part way through my arm but I felt nothing as I watched the damn android then turn the gun on itself. 

Hank swore loudly but I didn’t care I was already walking out of the room and heading toward my desk after hastily putting on my jacket and scooping up my cards. Connor however was hot on my tail and this was the last thing I needed Mr. curious robocop to be doing. 

"The fuck you want Connor?" I had made it to my desk, with my back turned to him shoving my stuff back into the backpack I carried. "I don’t have time for this."

"You've been shot Lieutenant you’re not going anywhere without an escort."

"That's not my name. and I will go wherever I damn well please!" slinging the bag onto my back and fitting the helmet back onto my face I began walking out, right arm dangling useless at my side. 

"Ember I cannot let you do this-"

"Do what? Avoid medical treatment? Watch me! No doctor would take me right now anyway." I climbed onto my motorcycle and started it up, used to only being able to use my left arm it was a breeze. "Not now not ever."

"Stand down you need help."

"I need to get home that’s what I need, not any of your damn help." And with that I sped off my arm fluttering limp at my side, leaving Connor standing befuddled in the rain.