#love how no one is getting those sus as fuck things on the hot rollers

[tethered-heartstrings]

As a former gas station employee I want to offer a counter argument to the gas station purchase choices. Will doesn't and would never drink 5 Hour Energy, he would instead get the normal hot coffee and maybe add a little creamer or something in there, he is not a 5 Hour Energy guy whatsoever. Jack would probably drink 5 Hour Energy though and also Diet Pepsi, maybe a Snickers. Will has most likely eaten and enjoyed gas station breakfast pizza on his way to fish in the early morning but wouldn't eat it if anyone was around to know about it. Freddie drinks Monster energy drinks and Flamin' Hot Cheetos. Abigail would get a Pop Tart and/or hot chocolate. Alana would get a cappuccino. Hannibal wouldn't even stop to piss in a gas station. I will die on this hill

I am so sorry you had to work at a gas station. I feel like it combines the worst of customer service. Gas station breakfast pizza sounds like an actual nightmare. To add, is Freddie going sugar free? She seems the type. You know, that damn blue can. Maybe the extra tall one. Does she try to be classy and get the cheetos with lime or is she straight shooting this? You are right, I forgot poptarts exist because I think I've had half of a one in my entire life and hate them. I think Alana would get a fresh cappuccino (gas stations sell those??) or ones of those cold Starbucks ones in the fridge. And you are right about Will, I just imagines 5 hour is a lot faster and he doesn't want to wait for the coffee to cool down.

[snellyboi]

Psst, hey, you! Want a Steven Universe hot take?

Words: Too damn many Summary: It’s a Steven Universe hot take about hurting connie, and how it ties into the show, the original Steven Universe, the lack of filler, and Steak Dinners. Warnings: Longe boi, a bit of a text wall but I do use paragraphs so it’s not awful I guess? A lot of talks about filler and stuff at the beginning.

ALSO I SHOULD POINT OUT this isn’t, like, some sort of SU critical circa 2017 post. I have qualms with the show, which are discussed, but overall, I think it’s pretty good stuff. Please be aware of that. I’m not gonna say it’s the worst thing on the planet because it’s not. 

UNDER THE CUT:

Before we get into the meat of the conversation, I need to tell you where I’m coming from. 

I have...strange feelings about Steven Universe.

It came out when I was starting High School, when I was bingeing cartoons like nobody’s business because peer pressure for years had made me repulse them. I didn’t care much about the deeper meanings of the show at the time, if I wanted to do deeper meanings I could go back and watch ATLA or those Rebecca Sugar episodes of Adventure Time, or OTGW. This was a bunch of magic space rocks fighting other magic space rocks! I was SO down!

Near the middle, though, and closer to the end, I guess I got a little...bored with it? I dunno what it was; well, I do now, but at the time I had no clue. it just seemed...a little over the top. I guess I had signed up for something like early Adventure Time, or the early parts of any given ATLA season. It became more of a drama than anything else, like a hundred Zuko and Iroh moments rolled into one, emotional punch after emotional punch.  

This isn’t the most sound assessment, no, and current me would be...a little annoyed at best if a show started doing this today. Sure, one could make the argument that I sound super hypocritical in retrospect, as I’m a huge fan of She-Ra and Infinity Train, but for every ‘Mermysteries’ in She-Ra there’s a ‘Roll With It’, and Infinity Train’s seasons are 5 nights long, perfect for punch after punch, but on Steven Universe? For every ‘Mirror Gem’, there was a...’Gem Harvest’. Which, sure, it was alright, but c’mon, calling an episode where we meet an entirely new character, even if only for a moment, filler, is a bit of a stretch. Filler is like ‘Always BMO Closing’ or something. And that hits the bone of the weird part here, does Steven Universe even have filler?

The whole 'no true filler’ idea is one of those things that sounds great on a show, but falls flat, because when people complain about filler, it’s complaining about bad filler, not the presence of it in general. If I get a steak and fries, and the fries are bad, I’m not complaining because they’re fries, I’m complaining because they’re bad fries. She-Ra is a good porterhouse with great fries. Infinity Train and OTGW are filet mignon with lobster tail, not really filler, but perfect in a way. Near the end, and really, for me, all the way through, Steven Universe felt more like a strip steak with no sides, just a little bit of A1. 

Isn’t this post about Connie, SUF, and how that all works? 

Yes, it is. We’re getting there. 

Steven Universe Future has been all emotional roller coasters the whole way through, seemingly. I’ll be honest, I’m not as into it as I was into Steven Universe, for a few reasons. Mostly, it expands on that no filler problem, big time. Nothing feels like it can be out of place, there’s even an episode titled the ‘Very Special Episode’, a slang term used in TV to talk about stuff like stranger danger specials, or the Golden Girls tackling the issue of gay marriage, etc. With the tense build of Steven’s mental health issues, I honestly wouldn’t have it any other way. Whether I like it or not, it’s doing what it needs to do, and I’ll acknowledge that it does exactly what it sets out to accomplish. 

So in Steven Universe, the main conflict is Steven and his past, and trying to convince people that no matter who someone is, they can be redeemed. It’s not a space war epic like I thought it would be (I used to be angry about that, but, just like the show said, people change, and now I have different qualms with it) but it does really well with that. So what is the conflict in SUF?

Steven has lost his raison d’etre. 

He’s going through that most existential of crises; “I’m at the top of the mountain, now what?” 

NOW WE FINALLY GET TO THE HOT TAKE!

The reason I brought up any of what I just did is to link it back to this heinous, outright stupid idea that Steven would just, like, I dunno, choke slam Connie or whatever you sick monsters wanna see. 

All of this No Filler, Everything is important stuff told us a lot about the characters. After all, it’s hard not to have character development in a show environment like that. Steven was shown as someone who genuinely cared, a lot, about everyone around him. He almost over-empathizes, to the point where he’s able to see the good in a bunch of arguably fascist space rocks voiced by former broadway divas. As much as I dislike the show for only ever being weighty and never having any ‘true filler’ or whatever, the reason it did that makes stylistic sense; Steven has no filler in his life. He’s way too empathetic. He cried when he found out that Snakes don’t have arms, for christ’s sake!

As annoying as it felt watching it, it’s an unfortunate reality that some people are forced to live their lives that way, empathizing with anyone and everyone they meet, and it hurts, and when you fix all the problems people had, but they suddenly leave? 

That fucking hurts. And that’s how I think we ended up here. 

That’s also why I think he’s not gonna hit Connie. At least, not purposefully. 

Steven has pretty openly expressed feelings for Connie before, and while we haven’t seen a romance line yet, it’s pretty obvious it’s slated to at some point. 

Now, if Steven can empathize with Space Stalin™, he can empathize with a girl he’s had a crush on for years at this point for going away to seek higher education. Sure, these pink outbursts are getting to him, as recent leaks may have shown, but I doubt that hurting Connie would crop up. It goes against a lot of the show’s themes of community and healing. But most of all? 

It’s just crappy writing. 

The show has had its fair share of clunkers in my opinion, as every show longer than 2 seasons is bound to have. Remember that episode where Nanefua runs for mayor? Or how about the one with Lars and the Off Color gems where they’re there for a grand total, of, like...the opening? 

None of those were terrible episodes though, just...forgettable. It’s not as if Steven just pulls out a chain gun and starts blasting in one of them. That would be stupid, and garbage, and a copout to generate ratings. Punching Connie would be like killing Brian on Family Guy; no weight, just shock. Flash in the pan. A bomb going off with no warning, no suspense. A jump scare. 

And that’s why I talked about the whole No Filler thing, and how it annoys me to no end, but how it’s necessary and worth while!

No one would ever have spent this whole time building up Steven as an over empathizer with an Atlas personality just to have him punch someone whose been his love interest since 2013. 

We would never spend an entire show cycle building someone up as caring too much about the people around him for his fatal flaw to be punching his girlfriend. The no filler thing was a noble, brave idea, that in my opinion fell over. But damn, did it do great things for the characters on the show, even if it sacrificed pacing. 

It should come as no surprise by now that the no filler thing, to me, is a bit of a stretch. Of course there was filler; sure, lore gets expanded, but when it’s not expanded well it just feels like the writers aren’t quite sure what to do (hmm, maybe they’d be better at filler if they’d written some beforehand...). 

But it portrayed the lead amazingly well, giving us a world through his eyes, and set up an amazing story about someone who cared too much about a world that was starting to care less and less about him. Setting us up for an amazing show, whether I want to watch it that often, or not. 

Let’s face it, it may not be my favorite meal, but sometimes you just can’t beat a strip steak with a little bit of A1.

[tisfan]

Holiday Spending

All I Buy For Christmas - Renting in the New Year - Will you Steal My Valentine - Up for (Mardi) Grabs - Hopping Down the Money Trail - (In) Memorial Day Sale - (Folding) Paper Anniversary - (Financial) Independence Day - Back to School (Fundraiser) - Fruit of our Labors 

A/N: Contains unbelievable amounts of sap. Sorry.

Chapter 12: (Giving) Thanks

“Yaaaaaaasha!” Nat was yelling as she pounded up the stairs and into the little flat. For someone who was a dancer and supposedly graceful, Nat often sounded like a herd of very small brontosauruses. “Yaaaaaaasha!”

She stopped dead two steps into the living room, scowling. “You’re not Yasha.”

Tony laughed, cynical. “How observant of you, dear sister.”

“You’re not my brother-in-law yet,” Nat said, hands on her hips. “Where’s Yasha?”

Tony flipped the channel on the television. Oh, look, something with a gun fight. Flip. Something with a man forcing a woman into a kiss to shut her up. Flip. More gun fighting. Flip. Tony sighed. It’d be nice to watch some television some time without feeling like he was being personally attacked in high definition. Oh, cooking show. That might be okay.

“He went out to get some take-away,” Tony said.  

And Tony was doing his best not to panic about everything. It’d been a bad day for both of them, starting out with a stupid argument about whose turn it was to do the dishes (for the record, it was Bucky’s turn and Tony was feeling both petty and guilty about feeling petty) and then they’d attempted to have some make-up sex that had gone terribly wrong when they discovered someone (Tony that time) had left half a bottle of juice on the bed and it spilled, soaking the comforter and sheets with orange juice. They’d had to put sexy times on hold to wash the linens, and by the time they were done with that, neither of them were in the mood to do more than try to be decent human beings another day.

Logically, Tony knew that Bucky wasn’t going to leave him over stupid fights. Logically, he knew the people on the television weren’t going to shoot him, either. Didn’t help with the stupid brain.

And the more stupid things happened, the snappier and uglier and prone to picking a fight Tony got until Bucky had grabbed his smokes and headed out to get dinner, rather than dealing with Tony and his attitude any longer. Tony wasn’t going to admit that his first reaction to that was “and stay out.”

“Hmph,” Nat said, flouncing into the kitchen. She pulled the vodka bottle out from under the sink. “I hope he brings enough for me. We have a celebration, tonight.”

“Do we?”

“Yes, mister pouty-pout face,” Nat said. She poured two shots and handed him one. “Drink with me.”

(more below the cut, or read the whole thing at A03)

“What are we celebrating?” A little good news might help get Tony and Bucky out of their funk.

“Wait,” Nat said. She knocked back the shot and licked the droplets from the side of her glass. “I will not tell you first. Yasha would be cross with me.”

“We could form a team,” Tony said, a touch bitter. He drank down the vodka she poured for him. “People that your brother is pissed with.”

Nat gave him a sharp look, refilled the shot glasses. “You are arguing?”

Tony shrugged. “It’s not even important, you know. Just…”

“The pain of a dozen blisters,” Nat said.

God, Tony hoped not; he’d seen Nat’s feet after some of her bad rehearsals, nights where the director made them do it again, and again, and again and she would drag herself home, feet bleeding and heels red and raw.

“I’m not that bad,” Tony protested.

“You are not,” Nat agreed. She poured them more shots.

“Just feel… shitty,” Tony admitted. “That I’m pissed at him about stupid shit.”

“Make a gratitude list,” Nat said. “My therapist tells me to do this every day, but that is ridiculous. If I must make a list every night, it becomes work, and I am not grateful for the things I have and love, I resent making the damn list. But sometimes, especially when I am feeling out of sorts, I sit down and make the list.”

“Coffee,” Tony said. That was easy.

“No, no,” Nat said. “We will make a written list.”

“You expect me to write after you dumped four shots of vodka into me?”

Nat’s look was so flat it could have served as a level. “Yes.”

Nat fetched notepads and ridiculously colored gel pens -- Tony’s was brilliant emerald green, hers was eggplant purple -- and an old-fashioned hour glass, the kind that actually had sand in it. Tony hadn’t seen anything like it in… well, maybe even ever, except on television and Nat actually slapped his hand when he tried to inspect it.

“Make your list.”

Nat’s ridiculousness Coffee Waking up before the alarm goes off and being able to go back to sleep Bucky loves me

A small wince there, because Tony hadn’t exactly been loveable recently, but he supposed that was what unconditionally meant. I still love him, even when I’m mad.

loving Bucky Believing both of those things are true The money

Another flinch, because he also felt guilty about the Stark fortune; he hadn’t done anything to earn it except being born to the right parents. And having those same parents die unexpectedly. Because of the fucking money. He resented it even as he was grateful for the comfort it provided, for the fact that he didn’t have to worry. That he could pay Bucky’s hospital bills. All the things that the money could purchase, without consideration for all the things the money was. He made a mental note to get with his accountants and look at the current charity donations. Surely there were things he could do to even the score a little bit.

The ability to make other people’s lives easier

People, yes, he had some people in his life that he was grateful for. Rhodey Pepper Jan Bruce

Tony made a note to call them all and get together for a lunch or dinner or something. He’d been neglecting his friendships. He wasn’t quite sure why, maybe something to do with Jan’s party and not wanting to look at his friends and remember that they’d seen him in the aftermath and fucking resenting that they’d seen him that way. You won’t get past it unless you deal with it.

He was grateful for his mom, much as he missed her.

Mom teaching me to play piano. The times she took me to the ballet.

Maria had loved the ballet; she was thrilled when she found out that Bucky’s sister was a dancer. They’d gone to the Nutcracker every year until Tony went off to college, and even then, she’d asked him every year if he wanted to go. He nursed a small regret that he’d said no last year, too eager to avoid questions about his lack of significant other. On the other hand, that had lead him to grabbing Bucky’s advertisement.

Bucky’s ridiculousness Bucky’s patience Bucky’s terrible bedhead

That had given him a bright spurt, first thing in the morning, on so many days. Bucky’s hair was shoulder length, thick and silky-soft, prone to curling up if it was humid or drizzly, and after sleeping on it, the whole thing had a mind and life of its own. Tony was almost convinced that Bucky’s hair was what lead to tales of the medusa with her crown of snakes.

Bubblewrap

Tony was prone to abusing his Amazon Now account and the last batch of stuff he needed without bothering to get the fuck off the sofa had come wrapped in yards of it. Tony’d put the widget aside without even playing with it, just so he could snap a few dozen air pockets.

Doughnuts. Grapes. Peppermint frappuccinos. Good beer. Bad vodka. Really terrible marshmallow flavored vodka. Cold pizza for breakfast. Bucky’s tomato soup out of a mug when I’m not feeling well.

Cheese.

Cheese whiz.

Stop judging me from across the living room Nat, I can feel the judgement here.

Roller skates.

Bucky’s kisses. Blow jobs. Sleepy morning sex.   

There were a lot of other sex things to be grateful for, but he wasn’t sure if he and Nat were going to be exchanging lists, and Nat had made it perfectly clear that while she didn’t care that her brother was having sex, she really didn’t want to hear about it (or hear it) in any great detail.

Metallica. AC/DC. Black Sabbath.

Baby Metal.

Guilty pleasure that, and he was sure there were hundreds of hard-core metal fans that were going to come for his head-banging card for admitting it, but the Japanese jpop/heavy metal group were weirdly… cute, for lack of a better word. Like shiny, sparkly vampires, he couldn’t help but love it, even if people with sense, taste, and dignity thought they were awful.

Tony thought dignity was over-rated anyway.

Bucky’s eyes. The way he looks at me The way he looks at kitten videos The fact that he shares stupid kitten videos with me Because he knows I won’t look at them on my own

Bucky. Bucky Bucky Bucky Bucky.

November was a good time to take a cool down walk.

First, it was cool -- cold, even. Walking angrily while bundled up in sweatshirts and a hoodie and a coat and a scarf, with gloves and hands shoved in your pockets was oddly satisfying.

Sweat formed and dried against Bucky’s throat, keeping him mostly comfortable. His chest ached as he dragged in cold air and expelled it in a puff of steamy condensation. Like being a dragon.

All he needed was claws and the ability to fly away from his problems for a while.

Which just got him feeling weirdly guilty because there were so many people who would commit murder (not funny, brain) to have the kinds of problems that Bucky had. Smokin’ hot boyfriend who was smart, funny, and rich? What was there to complain about?

The fucking dishes and who left their trash around the house?

Like, what even was that?

Of course, Tony’s desire to throw money at problems was a bit annoying. Bucky’d taken the phone away from him at one point in the middle of calling a plumber for a loose flap in the tank that had taken Bucky all of fifteen minutes to fix.

Except Bucky could kinda see Tony’s point.

The kind of money Tony had, the kind he made just existing, it seemed a little silly to waste his time putting in new toilet guts and saving a hundred dollars on a plumber fee. Bucky wasn’t even sure why they still lived in Bucky’s tiny, overcrowded flat. Tony’d never even brought it up, but after seeing where Tony had grown up, it was strange that Tony didn’t seem stifled in his place.

Didn’t really make Bucky feel better about the situation. It was a little easier, back when he was bodyguarding for Tony, but that had gone over like a lead balloon. Epic fail.

Bucky didn’t like feeling useless. It bent back to the times when his father had yelled at him about dreaming his life away. The military had gone and shattered that dreamy boy, left him with a man who needed work to have worth.

It wasn’t fair to take it out on Tony, though. Bucky’s ego problems were his own damn problems. He shouldn’t need Tony to prop up his self-esteem, or worse, trying to make Tony feel small so that Bucky could feel better.

That wasn’t the man he wanted to be.

Of course, he didn’t know who he was. He hadn’t been Sergeant Barnes since an IED had tried to erase half of him from existence.

He’d been a bouncer, a bodyguard. He defined himself by what he did, and now that he wasn’t doing anything, he didn’t know who he was.

Tony, at least, had school, and eventually he’d have a company to run. He had court dates and therapy visits.

Bucky had four walls and an inferiority complex.

Fuck.

What… what the hell did he do now?

“Hey, man,” someone said, and Bucky jerked to a stop. People didn’t usually talk to him, especially when he was walking with his resting bitchface on. “Spare a dollar?”

Bucky blinked, suddenly aware of how cold it was. Looked down at the man sitting in the lee side of a staircase. Hard to tell how thin he was, bundled up in a bunch of discards. His face was covered in a thin beard, but he smiled when Bucky actually made eye contact. It was a harsh sort of smile, the guy had a face like a brick wall.

“Yeah,” Bucky said. He dug into his back pocket for his wallet. He didn’t have anything smaller than a twenty in there. What the hell. Bucky thumbed out three of them. Twisted into a squat. Handed them over.

The guy had a young man’s face but old-man hands, the knuckles swollen and bent, fingers red and peeling.

“Thank you,” he said.

“You’re welcome. I’m Bucky, it’s nice to meet you. Cold out here, today, yeah?”

“Oh, man, yeah,” the man said. “Name’s Frank Castle. An’ it’s one of those days, man. Fallish wind is blowin, and it finds the hole in your pants, blows straight up the crack of your ass, don’t it just?”

Bucky couldn’t help a rueful smile at that, pretty damn good description, really. “When was the last time you had a warm bed?”

Frank shrugged a shoulder. “What, man, you writin’ a book?” Bucky couldn’t imagine how bad things had to be to sit on a street and beg for cash, what people probably said and thought and knowing that no way in hell it was ever going to be enough. Little booze to cut the chill, let you forget about that empty feeling in your stomach.

“No,” Bucky said, honestly, “just… come into some money recently and I want to help.”

Frank gave him a sharp glance. “Havin’ a crisis of conscience man, wanna pay back karma by doing a good deed. Fuck off, dude.”

“The room’s no less warm if I’m getting feelgood points out of it,” Bucky pointed out. His father had never held any traction with beggars and homeless before. Bucky’d given a dollar to a wino one day and his dad had yelled at him about it. You feed a homeless guy, give him shelter, and what happens? Well, you just have to feed him again tomorrow. You got extra money, put it someplace where it’ll do some good, kiddo.  

Frank tipped his head. “Yeah, truth.”

“Come on, then,” Bucky said, offering a hand up. “I’ll buy you dinner and get you a room for the night.”

“I ain’t gonna blow you,” Frank said, scowling.

“I’m not asking,” Bucky said. He shuddered inwardly. What a fucking world this was, that even something as simple as giving a hungry guy some food was suspicious.

Frank scorned the offered hand up and scrambled to his feet.

“Christ, you’re a big guy.”

“Don’t you forget it, neither,” Frank said. “Street people go missin’ all the time. I ain’t gonna be one of ‘em.”

Bucky nodded. He pulled out his phone, popped off a brief text to Tony to let him know he’d be a bit later than expected. Checked the map to see what food was nearby.

Chinese take-away acquired and it wasn’t too far for a Day’s Inn. He got a room for two days while Frank lurked under the staircase, aware that any hotel check-in manager wasn’t going to want a streeter in their room. Bucky cringed a bit; he knew what Frank must be thinking, must be worried about. How easy it would be for someone like Bucky to make someone like Frank vanish.

“So, what now?” Frank asked, arms crossed over his chest.

Bucky put his load of food down on the tiny table near the television. “Now nothing. You can eat. Have a shower. Get a few night’s sleep. Here’s my cell number. You can call me if you want.”

“You just doing your good deed, and poof, vanishing?”

“I ain’t gotten that far in my head yet, pal,” Bucky admitted.

“Well, whoever you killed that you need this much redemption, I hope he was an asshole,” Frank said.

“Take care of yourself, Frank,” Bucky said.

Frank was already deep in a paper container of Kung Pao chicken. “Thanksgiving came early, got it.” He gave Bucky a thumbs up and turned his attention back to more important things. Like food.

Tony wasn’t always as good with people as he thought he should be. Genius, right? He should be able to figure things out, except the one thing that he had figured out was that people didn’t make sense. They weren’t like circuits that traveled from A to B to C neatly, and they weren’t like science, where doing the exact same thing got you the exact same results.

“Biology,” one of his teachers had stressed, “is not chemistry.”

A biological system could mutate. Could randomize. Could end up being purple for absolutely no reason whatsoever, and sometimes you could track that reason down, and sometimes you just had to throw up your hands and say “magic.”

People were huge biological systems. Not just the meat and bones parts, either. He’d taken a few classes on human bio, just to round out his education a little, and just the basic studies of pharmaceutical science made his head hurt. Nothing in pharma made sense at all. Theory, where everything worked, except medication, where none of it did what it was supposed to and things that did were nonsense and should not have done that at all.

But even Tony could tell that Bucky was in a vastly improved state of mind by the time he got home. He hugged and kissed his sister and then hugged and kissed Tony with a little more heat. Apologized for the take-away being cold and needing to be microwaved, and Tony might have raised his eyebrows a little when he realized that Bucky had walked all the way to Genghis Connie’s rather than grabbing the slightly less expensive and much, much closer (if not as good, Genghis Connie’s made the best egg rolls!) No1. China.

“Well, this explains where you’ve been,” Tony said, taking his chicken and cashew out of the microwave. He was reminded, stuffing a mouthful of saucy chicken into his mouth, that Bucky paid attention. When he’d stormed out to get dinner, which was code for I need to not throw something at you right now, he hadn’t taken an order, or gotten Tony’s opinion on what to eat. But Bucky knew… he knew Tony’s preferences, had remembered them. Sure, Tony sometimes liked to wander off the beaten path and get something else -- particularly at No1, which did not do very good eggrolls, and he usually got the crab wonton there instead -- but he’d commented aside once that Connie’s did the best chicken cashew.

And after a fight, where they’d yelled at each other and gotten exasperated and had to stomp off to sulk like recalcitrant toddlers for fuck’s sake… Bucky had remembered. Had, as the phrase went, gone the extra mile (quite literally) for one of Tony’s favorites.

Tony was honest enough with himself to know that if he hadn’t been doing gratitude exercises with Nat, he might not have fucking noticed.

Bucky warmed up hot and sour soup for himself, handed his sister a packet of crunchies for her egg drop. “Yeah, I was thinking. Sorry it took me so long.” He gave Tony a long, significant look. “I’ll tell you about it later.”

Which was code for I don’t want to talk in front of my sister. Which was understandable. Having an audience for those kind of conversations was awkward at best. Tony stuffed another mouthful of chicken into his face and sat on his mental hands to keep from dragging Bucky off to their bedroom and demand to talk now.

“So,” Nat said, running her spoon up her chin to catch bits of spillover soup. “If you do not want to talk, I will talk. I have news.”

Oh, right. She’d come home with good news, she’d said. “Spill, Nat,” Tony encouraged. “I’ve waited long enough.”

Nat put her food down, finished chewing, and wiped her lips with her fingers.

“I am going to be Clara,” she said. “Dottie Underwood’s pregnant.”

Nat had been Vivandière at first, one of the doll-toys, and also a snowflake, and a Marzipan dancer, but she’d been understudy to the lead-dancer’s role, the child Clara, to whom the Nutcracker Prince was given. Dottie, who was lead, had been prima donna for a long time. Nat had barely been even looking at the role, because no one expected anything to happen to Dottie.

Bucky practically knocked over his food getting up to hug his sister. “Oh, Tash, that’s… that’s a leading role! That’s great!”

“It is… a great opportunity,” Nat said. “She is pregnant with the producer’s child. There have been rumors that she will not be coming back after the baby. We shall see about that, but in the meanwhile, I have this role. And if I perform with excellence, I may be prima dona for the spring show as well. But I must practice, all the time, now. There will be no second chances.”

“Anything we can do to make it easier,” Bucky promised.

“Yeah, congrats,” Tony said, and he joined them in the group hug, happy for his little family. Happy for his to-be sister.

Just… happy.

Grateful.