#my life is a sitcom and i am my own laugh track

[spyglassrealms]

had a fucking hilarious dream that tumblr replaced the "block" function with the far funnier "glock" function, which did the exact same thing except whenever anyone blocked you a random bullet hole, like a png of a bullet hole, would appear on your blog. discourse blogs were unreadable bc you'd go to the page and the sheer amount of bullet hole pngs stacked over the blogs obscured everything. I woke myself up laughing

[heyiappreciateyourshoelaces]

Only I could get blisters from a FOOT MASSAGER

I CANT FUCKING WALK

I know I should be pissed, but it’s too funny.

[milflewis]

22 + chalex for the prompt thing! 🫶🏻

22. hug

[LOG ENTRY: SOL 1: So. I am fucked. Surprise though! So you can stop all the tears — talking about you, Commander, the softy that you are - I am alive.]

—

Two weeks after NASA has declared Alex Albon dead and left on Mars, Charles writes to George. He sends it to Sebastian and makes him swear to get it to Lewis in the crew’s next info dump, who will give it to George.

He tells him about how Alex’s plants are doing, and about his shifts at the hospital, how he’s on night work now, with the shifts rotating over. He tells him about going to the beach and just standing there for hours, staring out at the water, until he could no longer feel his face from the cold. He tells that he’s more or less sleeping, that he’s going to work, that he’s eating. He tells him that he hopes they’re keeping safe and that he loves him.

He doesn’t talk about Alex. He doesn’t tell George he doesn’t blame him. He knows he’ll know. That he won’t need Charles to write the words.

—

[LOG ENTRY: SOL 2: I think I've got this actually. Ignore yesterday. Getting stranded on Mars kinda messes with your head. I've got a plan and I'm feeling good about it! ]

—

[LOG ENTRY: SOL 2: Update. I do not got this. If I die, Charles, I demand a mourning period of at least eighty-three years. Please bury me under some nice flowers. Blue if you can.]

—

“Come back to me,” Charles says, arms tight around Alex’s neck, mouth pressed under his ear. He smells of shampoo and asphalt. His bony elbows are digging into Charles’s back.

“I’m going to make Mars my bitch,” Alex says, grinning, and Charles shoves him away with a laugh.

Alex catches his wrist with a warm hand. His palm is dry and calloused. “Charlie,” he starts, low and careful. “I love you, you know that, right?”

“Yeah.” Charles’s voice cracks. He tries again. “Yes, I know, of course, of course. Me too.”

Alex smiles, and it’s wonderful. Charles memorises the shape of it.

Down the line, with his back to the hoard of cameras, Commander Lewis Hamilton is pressing his mouth against his husband’s knuckles. Both of their eyes are closed.

—

[LOG ENTRY: SOL 54]: Did you know that if you grow something somewhere that you've then colonised it? So, like, now that I've got my potatoes going does that mean I now own Mars? A win for the gays and the losers, motherfuckers!]

—

Toto swivels in his chair and looks out of the window to the sky beyond. Night is slipping in.

"What is it like?" he wonders. “Stuck up there. Alone. He does not know we know. What does that do?"

He looks at Niki. "I wonder what he is thinking right now."

—

[LOG ENTRY: SOL 61: How come Aquaman can control whales. They're mammals! Makes no sense.]

—

Some days, when he hasn’t had much sleep and the air warps and curls over on itself with heat, he sees Charles.

He’ll only ever be far off in the distance — too far for Alex to even see the details of his face, let alone touch him. He’d know the shape of those shoulders anywhere.

Alex waves to him sometimes. This dark blur on the horizon that just stands there and watches. He never waves back. The sun on Mars is unforgiving.

Alex wonders if he’s moisturising his hands. The latex exam gloves he has to wear for work always dry out his skin.

—

[LOG ENTRY: SOL 76: I'm going to have to science the shit out of this. George, please don't use this as porn. I know how hot and bothered you get about me being all smart and sexy.]

—

George has, like, every sitcom ever downloaded in his personal storage. Alex works his way through them all. If he never hears another laugh track in his life he’d die happy.

Lewis’s music list is jam packed full of different genres. There is a surprising amount of The Beatles in there. Alex wouldn’t have guessed he was a fan of them.

Alex decides the music Lewis had made himself, all chords and notes and little words, is some of his favourites. It can be hard hearing other people speak at you and not being able to talk back.

Every book Valtteri had downloaded is in Finnish. Alex thinks he probably should’ve guessed that would be the case.

It turns out Finnish is very hard to learn, especially when the only words you’ve picked up are swears that you’ve heard Valtteri muttering under his breath before media duties.

—

[LOG ENTRY: SOL 206: Finally got into contact with NASA because I am that bitch and I will be damned if I die here, and that is a promise. They won’t stop telling me what to do now though, so, like, it’s a give and take, I guess.]

—

The first thing Charles notices about Alex is that he has freckles all over his face but especially across his nose and cheeks. This feels very important.

The second thing he notices is that he is tall and his wrists are bony. Charles eyes the strip of skin where his MATHS IS SEXY top rides up. There is an equally tall man sitting in the booth beside him with a shirt that reads: NO ITS NOT.

The third thing he notices is that he is extremely drunk. His cheeks are flushed and he’s half falling over the table as he tries to explain something while laughing.

Charles probably falls in love right there if he’s being honest, even if he never gets the courage to go up and talk to him. Alex is the one who says hi, weeks later, asking him if he wants to play pool.

Charles doesn’t know how to play pool. He says yes anyway because he thinks it might make Alex smile. It does.

He keeps saying yes and Alex keeps smiling. They move together after college graduation.

Charles is coming off a double shift and he can’t feel his feet when Sebastian shows up to give him a ride home. He makes him tea when they get in. It’s a blend of something herbal and sweet like honey.

Sebastian tells him Alex is still alive as Charles breathes in the steam. He tells him that they left him behind on Mars. That it was an accident. That they’re figuring out how to get him home.

Alex is alive, Charles thinks. I’ll get to see Alex smile again, Charles thinks, and promptly bursts into tears.

—

[08:47] BUTTON: Good, keep us posted on any mechanical or electrical problems. By the way, the name of the probe we're sending you is Iris. You know, the one who rode the waves of heaven using the wind. I think she's also the chick with the rainbows.

[08:49] ALBON: Gay probe coming to save me. Got it.

—

I’m so glad it’s not me stuck up there, the navigational assistant tells him. He was the one who discovered Alex was still alive in the first place. He tells him he noticed the MAV moving. His name is Yuki.

Alex thinks he’s going to say he’d miss people or fresh fruit or Netflix or sex or something. Alex hasn’t had a mango in so long. He hasn’t had a blowjob in even longer. Some days he isn’t sure which is worse.

Yuki is very very funny.

Can you imagine only eating potatoes, he tells Alex. I would rather die dead and alone. And then: though I guess you would not have to imagine.

And then: the eating potatoes bit. sorry. you haven’t done the other one yet.

Alex laughs so much he rebreaks a only barely healed rib and NASA yells at them both. His calcium levels are very low.

—

[21:27] BUTTON: How are the crops affecting that number? As to your question: We haven't told the crew you're alive yet. We wanted them to concentrate on their own mission.

[21:30] ALBON: The crops are potatoes. I got them from the ones we were supposed to eat for Christmas. They're doing great but the available farmland isn't sustainable. I'll run out of food around SOL 900. Also. Fucking tell the crew I'm alive???? What the fuck is wrong with you????

[21:31] BUTTON: SOL 900 is great news. That'll give us time to get a supply mission to you. And I’ve been told to tell you to watch your language. Everything you type is being broadcasted around the world.

[21:32] ALBON: Look! A pair of boobs - > ( . Y . )

—

Dear Alex: Apparently, NASA is letting us talk to you now. And I drew the short straw. Sorry we left you behind on Mars.

But we just don't like you. You're sort of annoying. And you shed hair everywhere.

Also, it's a lot roomier on the Hermes without you. We have to take turns doing your tasks. But, I mean, it's only botany. It's not a real science.

How's Mars?

— George.

—

Alex stares up at the plain white ceiling of the HAB. The wind roars and rages outside and the Level Threw sandstorm shakes the walls. It holds. It always holds.

When he makes the journey to find the HAB of the HERMES TWO, he’ll be technically crossing international waters without any explicit permission from a governmental body. That makes him a pirate.

I’m going home, Alex thinks. And then: I can’t wait to tell Charlie that he’s married to a bad boy.

Alex runs a hand over his face. He’s even gotten the beard to go with it.

—

Dear George: Mars is fine. When I get lonely I think of that steamy night I spent with your mum.

How are things on Hermes? Cramped and claustrophobic? Yesterday I went outside and looked at the horizons. They really do go on forever.

— Alex.

—

"Thing is," Alex scrambles to say, mouth dry and sore. "I'm selfish. I want all the memorials back home to be just about me. I don't want the rest of you losers in any of them. I can't let you guys blow the VAL. Also, I'm the only one who is allowed to make Charlie cry. Them's the rules."

"Oh," Lewis says. "Well, I mean, if you won't let us — wait. Wait a minute, I think I see something on my shoulder patch here. Oh, right, yeah, it says I'm the Commander. So, you know, what I say goes. Shut the fuck up and sit tight. We're coming to get you."

Alex swallows — or tries to at least. His whole body aches. He thinks he broke a rib, or two. Or three. He wants to cry.

"Copy that, sir."

"We've got you, man." Lewis's voice is warm. Alex doesn't have to imagine his smile anymore. He's going to get to see it very soon.

—

Alex is all bone and mouth when Charles gets to see him again. He has lost so many of his freckles. He hugs him close, pressing his thumbs into the hinge of Alex's jaw. Alex bows and curls over him and Charles doesn't let either of them fall.

He tastes vaguely of salt and snot when Charles kisses him. Charles is crying.

Alex is smiling when he pulls away, arms tight around Charles' back. "Look at your face," he says softly. He's talking to himself.

"I'm here," Charles replies, louder than necessary. Alex blinks at him and his smile, impossibly, gets even bigger. Charles's stomach squirms.

"You're a mess," Alex teases him, running a hand through Charles' hair. Charles doesn't say anything about how his hands shake.

“You should stay here and take care of me then,” Charles says, and Alex closes his eyes, smushing his nose hard into the skull of Charles’s forehead. Charles digs his nails in.

Fuck you, Mars, Charles. Fuck you.

[octoberobserver]

We're a Documentary, Not a Fucking Sitcom - WWDITS Fic

(Read on ao3 here)

I read ' 'The power dynamics seem so problematic. I mean, that’s his boss,' and this possessed me. Enjoy! 😉

“I shouldn’t have done that.”

Guillermo blinked his eyes open, the ghost of Nandor’s cold, smooth lips still lingering on his own.

He had just kissed him. Right on the mouth, mid-sentence, on a random Tuesday night, three months after Guillermo became human again.

“I…Mas–Nan…”

The words died in his throat as his brain whirred like a computer with too many tabs open.

“I am your boss,” Nandor continued as if he had not heard him, beginning to pace the length of the Fancy Room. “You are my employee. It is frowned upon…problematic.”

That snapped Guillermo out of his stupor, frowning as he tried to make sense of his rambling.

“Okay, first of all, employees get paid. If anything, I was an unpaid labourer,” he held up his hand to stop himself from tracing his lips with the pad of his thumb.

“Second of all, you’re not my boss anymore anyway. I’m just your human roommate now, remember? I have a new job teaching self-defense down at the YMCA. I’m not your familiar. We’re equals. We made the deal that I would stay in this house once none of you treated me like shit anymore and you got a new familiar. You’re just too stubborn to let me help you pick a replacement.”

That stopped the vampire in his tracks, a petulant pout on his handsome face.

“That’s because they are all terrible, Guillermo! Francine didn’t know how I like my hair combed, and Jason did not do my buttons up correctly!”

“You didn’t give them a chance to learn!”

“You picked it up right away!”

“Well, not everyone can be me!”

“I know! That’s the problem!”

Somehow they had closed the distance between them and were right back where they started moments ago, mere inches from each other. Naturally, Guillermo’s eyes fell on those pale, alluring lips, but he dragged them back up to a safe spot, focussing on the crinkle between Nandor’s eyebrows from where his head was bent downwards.

“Third of all,” he forced out, his breath no doubt bouncing off his chin. “‘Problematic?’ Seriously? You brutally killed innocent people that I lured here every single week for the last thirteen years. And you’re worried about us having a…a ‘workplace kiss’ being problematic?”

Look. It wasn’t like it had never crossed his mind. Both kissing Nandor and the very morally bankrupt decision to feed random humans to a group of bloodthirsty vampires every week for his entire adult life. But ever since he was faced with directly killing an innocent person so he could live and being unable to do it, he was questioning himself and his choices more and more lately.

(The whole wanting to kiss his former Master thing was a constant, ongoing thing. And definitely not a recent development. But that was his business.)

“Well,” Nandor waved a hand, undeterred. “Darla said it is frowned upon.”

Guillermo squinted up at him.

“And who is Darla?”

“My spotter at the gym. She’s a grandma looking to strengthen her pelvic floor.”

“Ew, what—? No. Doesn’t matter,” he winced. “So, what would Darla think about you kissing someone ten seconds after they tell you they’re going on a date? Is that not ‘problematic?’”

Nandor scrunched up his nose.

“Well, it just happened, so how would I have time to tell—”

“Mierda,” he muttered under his breath, staring up at the ceiling for a God he couldn’t believe in anymore.

“I shouldn’t have kissed you, Guillermo. I am sorry,” Nandor said in the ‘I’m trying to be diplomatic but am being a giant baby about it’ voice that he found hard to truly hate. “I just…thought that you had sworn off dating?”

A disbelieving laugh escaped his chest.

“So, what, you thought you’d kiss me in…protest?”

Something warm was fluttering around his abdomen as his heart beat what felt like a million times a second, his brain very unhelpfully replaying the kiss over and over in his head.

Stop thinking about it, stop thinking about it, stop—

“I’m just confused,” Nandor was shrugging when he forced himself to focus. “You seemed uninterested in dating, and now you come in here and tell me not to wait up because you’re going out with some fucking gu—”

“And why is it you think I’d be uninterested in dating, Nandor? Would it be ‘cause the last boyfriend I had, you fucking cloned for yourself, and then sent him away so he could meet up with Freddie and have him cheat on me with himself?!”

The words echoed throughout the large room.

Nandor looked just like he did when he'd been slapped.

“Guiller—”

“No. Let’s talk about it,” he cut him off, shooting a glance at the nearest camera before glaring up at him. “I’m so sick, of never talking about things in this house. Just letting them revert back to the status quo. We’re a documentary, not a fucking sitcom,” he huffed, pointing a finger in his face, still standing so close he almost poked him.

“You turned your wife into my boyfriend, and that was really fucked up. You know, something actually ‘problematic.’”

He added extra sarcasm and generous bunny ears around the word, scorn and hurt rising within him from where it had laid dormant for over a year.

“You destroyed Marwa, and then my relationship, and you’ve never once taken responsibility for it. Or anything else you’ve ever done. So if you wanna talk about what’s ‘problematic,’ let’s start—”

“I changed her back.”

Guillermo froze.

“What?”

Nandor was busy staring at the red couch, murmuring so quietly that he almost didn’t hear him.

“I said I changed her back. I used my remaining wishes to…undo it all. Give her the life she deserves…without me. She’s in Washington now. Has gone back to school, last I heard.”

His heart skipped a beat as he digested that.

“Why didn’t you tell me?”

“Well,” Nandor scoffed, stepping even closer, gaze locked back on him. “I might have if you hadn’t been so busy conspiring with Laszlo because you went behind my back and got Derek to turn you INTO A VAMPIRE. DEREK! FUCKING GUY.”

Guillermo’s blood began to boil, spilling like molten lava in his veins.

“Because YOU WERE NEVER GOING TO!” he exploded. “After YEARS of putting up with all of your shit, I had enough of waiting!”

Nandor’s jaw clenched.

“I was going to turn you, even though I wasn’t sure if it was right for you, but you abandoned me for London!”

“Laszlo locked me in a coffin and shipped me to London like a giant FedEx package! I had literally zero control over that!” Guillermo shot back.

“Well,” Nandor cast his eyes around the room for an answer and grinned humorlessly when he found one. “You didn’t look for me.”

Oh, hell no.

“Yes, I did! But I had no way of contacting you,” Guillermo spat. “I had Nadja reach out through the ether and said she couldn’t find you, that you were blocking her somehow. So, yeah. It wasn’t like you were looking for me, either!”

His chest was heaving like an overwhelmed Victorian maiden whilst Nandor was as still as a statue, but he didn’t care.

Finally. Finally he was airing his grievances. After all this time. Years and years of pent-up anger and hurt and resentment, they were finally talking about it all. And God, it felt amaz—

“I was mad at you when you didn’t meet me on that platform…you broke my heart.”

Those words turned his molten blood to ice.

But that didn’t stop his own words from tumbling out of his mouth anyway.

“Yeah, well. You broke mine first.”

Their eyes met.

Silence engulfed the room.

“That’s a lot of information to get in thirty seconds.”

His head whirled around to find Colin Robinson staring at them from the doorway.

“This is a private conversation, Colin Robinson,” Nandor replied, his gaze still burning a hole into Guillermo. “Leave. Now.”

“Right. Private,” Colin retorted with his usual deadpan tone, gesturing to the cameras. “Whatever. Just fuck already. It’s faster. Especially the way Nandor does it.”

They listened to his retreating steps for a beat, Nandor cursing him under his breath.

“Did he quote Friends?” Guillermo gaped after him, realising it was in vain when he remembered who he was asking, though he could swear he saw one of the camera crew quietly nodding.

“Do not change the subject, Guillermo,” Nandor drew him back in, his dark gaze unwavering. “What did you mean when you said I broke your heart first?”

They don’t call him ‘The Relentless’ for nothin’.

“Come on,” he cleared his throat, his heart firmly lodged there as he tried to step around him. “We don’t have to do this. It doesn’t matter anymore.”

“Yes, it does, and yes, we do,” his hand shot out inhumanly fast and held him in place by the wrist, firmly but not something he couldn’t break from. “You wanted to talk, so talk. Please.”

What were you saying about pent-up feelings, again?

“You,” he took a shaky breath, forcing himself to stand his ground. “You…have to know how I…how I’ve felt all these years. I know you’re not that dumb.”

Nandor’s lips parted, but Guillermo kept going, words flowing from him like a burst dam.

“Every cruel word, every dismissal, every time you rebuffed my hugs or compliments or belittled me or my accomplishments…it was death by a thousand cuts. Because I fuckin’ loved you anyway.”

A bitter laugh escaped him as tears stung his eyes.

“Huh. Now that’s problematic.”

The silence was deafening.

Nandor had yet to move an inch, not even to blink.

Well, you’ve done in now, de la Cruz. And even managed to reference a Taylor Swift song. Bravo.

Seconds ticked into nearly a minute, and Guillermo was really starting to get freaked ou—

“‘Loved…’” came a raspy voice, barely above a whisper. “...as in past tense?”

He stared at the hand that was still clasping his wrist, right over his hummingbird pulse point and thought, fuck it.

“Love. I love you, Nandor. I always have. And I meant it when I said I was gonna be right here by your side. Even…even if it’s just as your friend and roommate. Because that’s what love means.”

He had done a lot of brave things in his life. Had taken on and killed dozens of vampires, faced witches, zombies and werewolves without batting an eye, and had emo bangs way past 2012, but Guillermo de la Cruz had never felt true bravery until this exact moment.

He watched as Nandor’s face crumpled like creepy paper, his eyes squeezing shut as he took in a deep breath he didn’t need and mumbled to himself.

“Floating through the cold, dark universe like a little grain of furry sand.”

“...what?”

Those large, dark eyes that he loved so much popped open, and he almost gasped at their intensity.

“I…I once thought I was completely alone in this world, Guillermo. Without someone to love or love me. But I’m realising now that that hasn’t been true for a long time, has it?”

Guillermo swallowed the lump in his throat.

He shook his head.

Slowly, a small smile spread on Nandor’s face, his thumb brushing against the thin skin of his wrist.

“And it hasn’t for you either, you know.”

Guillermo felt his brow furrow.

“Wha—”

Cold, soft lips covered his for the second time that night. Heart hammering against his ribcage, he hurried to kiss back this time, leaning up on his tip-toes and gently trailing his tongue along Nandor’s bottom lip.

The kiss deepened as he opened his mouth, the corner of one of his fangs brushing against Guillermo’s tongue and sending a thrill through his entire body. They gripped each other, on the edge of frantic.

“That is why I kissed you, Guillermo,” Nandor murmured, leaning back to press his face into his jaw, peppering little pecks there. “I love you too. But I was too dumb to acknowledge it. Until I thought I was losing you again.”

Shock flowed through Guillermo at both confessions, gripping the back of his neck to pull him further down into him, arousal sparking in his gut as a large hand clutched his hip and pulled them flush together, covering his mouth with his carefully but passionately.

Over six feet of solid muscle draped over him like an awning, and he had never felt more in tune with his own body before, letting himself get lost in the sensation.

Dios mio.

After a few seconds, minutes, or several years, his heart squeezed on the bridge of pain, his head spinning a little, his lips growing numb.

Breaking for air, he gasped, reminding both Nandor and himself, “B-Breathe, I-I need to breathe.”

Smiling apologetically, Nandor’s giant hand cupped his cheek, gaze boring into him.

“I know I’m not your boss anymore, Guillermo. But I would still like it very much if…if you kept your post as my heartguard.”

Now he was breathless for a whole different reason.

Beaming, his eyes stinging again, he brought his hand up and linked their fingers.

��Okay. Only if you’re mine too, though.”

“Deal.”

“Deal.”

Somewhere in the depths of the house, they heard Nadja let out a loud gag, followed quickly by, “Give it to him, good, Gizmo, and shut up already!”

Face on fire, he turned to him, leaning back in.

They still had a million and one things to talk about and work through. Obviously. Issues like theirs—problematic or otherwise—didn’t disappear with one, two, or even three admittedly fantastic kisses. But for now, their roommates had a point.

“Fucking vampires,” Guillermo chuckled.

“No,” Nandor replied with a sharp grin. “There’s just one vampire to fuck. Me."

Groaning at the dumb pun, Guillermo allowed himself to be kissed deeply and thoroughly, winding his hand into the silky, dark hair he adored and tugging.

It was as Nandor let out a quiet mewl (that he was definitely filing away for later) that he remembered the cameras. And the other people in the room. And his date.

“Wait, sorry,” he broke the kiss, his mouth already raw from beard burn and loving it before he turned to the crew.

“Can we have some privacy, guys? Please? And here, take my phone and text my date that I’m sorry I won’t make it, but he seems like a good guy, and I hope he meets someone else.”

He watched as the crewmember closest to him just barely caught his phone while the rest of the team just gaped at them, frozen in place, until a dark shadow cast over the room.

“He asked nicely,” Nandor said, his voice an octave lower than usual. “Do not make me ask not nicely.”

Not needing to be told twice, the crew scrambled to vacate the room, lugging their cameras and equipment behind them as Nandor reeled Guillermo back in, pushing him gently against the wall and cradling his head.

“Out, out!” he shooed over his shoulder, kissing along his jugular, his sharp fangs lightly scraping his skin and making him shiver. “We are a documentary, not a fucking porno!”

“No, save that for the honeymoon, old chap,” Laszlo’s muffled voice wafted from above. “And, if you need any pointers, let me know!”

[graytalents]

A little something for my Gojo and Geto lovers out there:

After getting blazingly high, one person's horniness affects the entire vibe.

I miss weed so much lmao.

CW: smut, threesome, oral, fingering, lots of mentions of drugs and alcohol.

“Doll? You want s’more?” Geto nudges the lit joint towards you. You take it, and inhale the smoke towards your lungs.

You, Geto, Gojo, have all been lazing around and smoking joint after joint, with some empty beer cans around you. Gojo, smoking and watching TV, sighs. It’s not often he gets to relax completely like this.

“Hey, you ever dated someone before?” Gojo suddenly asks.

“Hm?” you take one last puff and pass the last of the burning roach to Geto. “Why’re you asking?”

The white haired man lolls his head back lazily and stares at the ceiling. You’re all sitting on the ground in front of the actual couches, backs pressed against the bottom of the furniture. Someone thought to put on a sitcom for background noise, but it had been a while since any of you paid attention.

Quiet laugh tracks and corny jokes were the backdrop to your stoned conversations. Nothing was off the table when you guys got together like this. Not school, not work, and certainly not gossiping.

“I was thinking about it. Me and Geto tell you who we’ve been seeing, who we have a thing for,” he pauses to sip his beer. “Who we’ve been fucking.”

He says the last word with a hint of humor in his voice, though his face is expressionless. Almost.

“Mm, that’s true,” Geto starts. “You don’t really tell us if you have a thing for someone. Do you? I’d feel real hurt if you didn’t tell us.”

He fake pouts at you, but his eyes betray his amusement with the situation. It’s now your turn to sigh.

“Am I interested in someone right now? Not really. At least, not romantically.” In order to avoid revealing more, you quickly grab your beer and begin to take large swigs. You’re almost out, though. Damn.

“Oh? Not romantically? So sexually huh? Who do you want to fuck? To bone? To get it on with?” Gojo perks up at the newfound revelation. “Don’t tell me … Shoko? She’s hot, and I heard she just got back from studying.”

“Mm.” You opt not to answer, instead reaching for another joint that Geto had thankfully made. The lighter chooses not to cooperate with you, sending only shitty little sparks that won’t catch on the thin paper.

Geto sees this, and remedies the situation. Fishing another lighter from his pocket, he motions for you to come closer. Because the windows are open to air out the room, a breeze was making its way through, causing Geto to cup his hands around the stick in order for it to light.

Your faces were impossibly close, and Gojo looked on in interest. He always thought you were attractive, if not sometimes reserved. Questioning you and your private life directly just to see you squirm entertained him. He wanted to push some buttons, just to see what the outcome could be.

“You guys look hot like that,” he stated. “I should take a picture for later, just to see if it’s the weed or if I’m crazy.”

Geto seems to have taken the hint. “If you’re gonna take a picture, might as well make it a nice one.”

He sticks his tongue out and poses, waiting for you. You hesitatingly stick your own tongue out.

“‘Ake ‘ha ‘icthure,” you try to say. Gojo whips out his phone and snaps a few pictures. He then gives you both a half smile.

“Why don’t you guys kiss for one?”

Geto takes a drag on the now-lit joint and motions for you to come closer as he hands it off to Gojo. Gojo watches as Geto blows the smoke into your slightly ajar mouth for you to inhale. As you do, he licks your bottom lip and fully kisses you.

Surprised, you gasp. You weren’t expecting him to do it so quickly. Geto grabs the back of your head with one sure hand to bring you in closer. His tongue makes his way into your mouth, fully giving Gojo a show.

Gojo finishes his drag and puts out the joint on the nearby ashtray. He then picks up his phone and snaps a few more pictures, making sure to center your mouths in the middle of the frame. He can feel himself starting to get hard, watching his two friends make out in front of him. Geto’s long hair falling in pretty strands over his shoulders, all while your high and enthusiasm kissing him back had Gojo wanting to palm himself.

Not yet, though. He couldn’t start pawing at himself before he cemented this situation for what he wanted.

“Okay, okay, I got my pictures. Geto, be a gentleman, would you? You gotta let people breathe, man.”

And it’s true. You pulled away with a soft, wet pop! and you were slightly panting. Lips were cherry red from where Geto had nipped, and your heartbeat could be heard in your ears. Hell, you could feel your heartbeat and blood rushing to your groin.

But that was it, right? It was just a kiss, and it’s not like they wanted more. They were being dumb on purpose, is what you thought.

That’s why, when Geto pulled you in to bite your lip, you were completely surprised. Despite your shock, you took the opportunity to place your hands on his thighs for support, and lean into him. He bit you, and ran his tongue over the indentations to soothe the string. Tiny dribbles of drool coated your mouths as you hungrily made out. Geto’s hands began making their way to the bottom of your shirt, seemingly wanting to remove it.

Gojo has had enough. He wanted in on the action too. He wanted to see that same hunger on your face for him as well. He reached out to your arm, and gently pulled you away from Geto and towards himself. You broke free of Geto’s embrace, and began to kiss Gojo. Kissing him was different. Whereas Geto was sure of his actions, Gojo was more curious. He was dying to know what you tasted like, and if you would make cute noises for him. He slid his hand up the back of your shirt, and his hot fingers made you sigh into his mouth.

You felt like putty in his hands, and he wanted to mold you to his desire.

“Take it off,” Geto murmured into your ear, tugging at your shirt. You quickly tugged it upwards, Gojo helping you discard of it by tossing somewhere behind the couch. Geto took the opportunity to feel your smooth shoulders, back, and snaked his way to your chest. He thumbed over your nipple, causing you to gasp and let out a small whine.

Gojo took your face with his thumb and forefinger to make you face him, and promptly forced your mouth open. He stuck his tongue inside, swallowing your pretty little sounds.

Geto was hard. He was so hard it was almost unbearable, and he was sure that you needed a fucking that only he could provide. He sucked on your neck, and nibbled on the soft skin, taking care to leave marks. He wanted you to think about him long after today.

After being satisfied with his work, he made his way down your chest and flicked his tongue over your sensitive flesh. The cool air had caused your nipple to perk up, so he played with it with the tip of his tongue.

His actions caused you to arch your back, seeking more. You whined into Gojo’s mouth, and he responded by taking your free hand to place on his upper thigh. You moved it towards the bulge in his pants, and lightly traced your fingers over it. He was so undeniably hard as you stroked him slowly and rhythmically.

Meanwhile, Geto had taken to lightly rolling your pretty nipple between his teeth. The sensation was indescribable, as you felt sticky between your legs. The ache you felt was all consuming, clouding over your judgement and causing you to seek pleasure now, consequences be damned.

“Fuck, you look so hot like that,” panted Gojo. A thin string of saliva still hung from your mouths. You looked incredible right now, a needy expression painting your face as Geto continued to give your chest and neck attention.

Gojo slid his fingers into the waistband of your pants, pulling them slightly. You understood his intentions, and grabbed his wrist. After loosening your pants a bit, you stuck his fingers inside, guiding him to your warm wetness.

He practically moaned. “You’re so wet, baby.” He collected your arousal on his fingers, getting to know your folds. The pad of his fingers hovered over your entrance, as if waiting for permission.

You shook your head, and fished his hand out. You gently pushed Geto away, and shimmied your pants off.

“It’s not fair that I’m the only one getting naked,” you pointed out. The two men quickly took off their shirts. Gojo guided you towards the couch and gently pushed you to sit. The two men sat on either side of you.

Geto grabbed your hand and placed it on his crotch. You stroked him over his pants, and motioned for him to take them off. He stood, removed them, and sat back down in his boxers. You hesitatingly pulled his waistband down, and let his cock spring free.

It was fully hard, heavy weight causing the tip to touch his stomach. After giving him a moment, you leaned down and gave it a kiss on his leaking tip.

Geto groaned, and pushed your head further into his lap. You gave it small kitten licks around the shaft, taking special attention to the vein running on the bottom.

“C’mon, stop teasing,” he breathed. You gave it a few broad stripes with a flattened tongue before taking it into your mouth. Your cheeks hollowed, sucking hard on the mushroom tip.

“F-fuck, yes, just like that,” he keens. He bucks his hips upwards, trying to find more pleasure in your hot and wet mouth.

Gojo could not contain himself at this point. He had you on your knees facing Geto’s lap, and pulled your ass up into the air with his big hands. The movement caused you to take more of Geto into your mouth, drawing moans and whines from the two of you.

Gojo inspects your clothed pussy from the other side of the couch. Your underwear is damp with arousal, and Gojo can’t help himself but to press a long finger against your slit. You wiggle your ass slightly, trying to find more needed friction.

Gojo slides the cloth to one side, exposing part of your pretty pussy. He uses two fingers to spread your lips and observes the way your arousal begins to drool down your thigh.

“How are you this wet already?” he murmurs. He gives you a tiny lick with a pointed tongue, and collects your juices in his mouth. As you groan, the sensation has Geto snake his fingers into your hair and gently pulls. Gojo takes your noises as a sign to continue, and he licks a longer stripe from your throbbing clit to your empty hole.

You arch your back and keen, as much as you can with Geto’s thick length in your mouth.

“Relax your throat for me a little, I want to try something,” Geto pants.

You relax as best you can, as Geto cups your throat. He slowly thrusts upwards, and feels you gag and try your hardest to let him in. Feeling the way his dick slides into your throat makes him throw his head back and groan. He keeps up his slow and steady thrusts into your mouth, taking his dick out every so often to let you breathe.

Gojo, at the same time, is fully making out with your messy pussy. His mouth, nose, chin, and cheeks are covered with your juices as he keeps up a steady rhythm of flattening and pointing his tongue on your clit. He increased the speed once he heard you deepthroating Geto and inserted a long finger into your hole. All three of you could hear the squelch as he filled you up to his knuckle. With the pace of his tongue never faltering, he soon adds another finger, slowly working you open on his mouth and hand.

By now, there was just too much. You felt so full, so stuffed from two of your friends. They were working you open so meticulously that you had no choice but to let go.

Geto, feeling you coming close, held your head down on his veiny cock. He came as you gagged uncontrollably, throat squeezing his cock in the most delicious way possible. He bucked his hips a few more times involuntarily, as he released thick and hot ropes of cum down your throat.

All the meanwhile, Gojo heard his friend coming and tried his damnest to get you to come at the same time. As he heard you gagging, he began to suck on your clit hard and kept up the same pattern of sucking and flicking his tongue over your hard little nib. As he did this, he curled his digits into you, reaching for the soft and spongy pad inside of you. Your velvety warm walls sucked his fingers in, and made the wettest squelching noise he’d ever heard. If he weren’t so focused on your perfect, messy little pussy, he would have wondered if you were a squirter.

As Geto came in your throat, Gojo gave a particularly hard suck on your clit, which sent you over the edge. The warm feeling of tension in your lower belly exploded, leaving you shaking and releasing clear liquid into Gojo’s waiting mouth. He slurped loudly on your clit again, and had you release Geto from your mouth to keen loudly.

“Please, a-ah aah, pleasepleaseplease—“ you choked out as Gojo plunged his curled fingers into you again, causing you to gasp.

Just as you thought you finished, Gojo began to plunge his fingers into you again, faster and with more purpose. He stopped eating you out to watch the look of pure ecstasy on your face.

After a few pumps of his fingers, he lowered his pants and boxers and guided his tip to your folds. You wiggled your ass on him again, drawing a chuckle from him.

“God. Holy shit. You’re insatiable. You seeing this, Suguru?”

He rubbed his tip around your soaked pussy, and finally pushed his tip in. He went slowly and watched you grip Geto’s thigh. Geto stroked your hair and whispered filthy profanities to you.

“You like that, sweetheart? You like the way Satoru plays with your slutty pussy? Look at you. If I knew it only took some weed and beers to get you like this, I would have down this a long time ago.”

You whined at his words, but he continued. As he spoke, Gojo pushes all the way in, and thrusts into you lightly.

“Satoru, look at her. You should have felt her throat. The way she was squeezing around me..” he laughs. “Incredible. Don’t wear her out too much, I want to see her bounce on my cock later. Would you like that? Or how about me and Gojo take turns fucking you later, tie you down so we don’t do anything but that? What if you take us both in that pretty little cunt? Hm? We’ll get you nice and wet, like you are now, and just have you take on both of us.”

You nearly scream as Gojo increases his pace, hands gripping your waist with such strength, you knew you were going to bruise later. A thick ring of white formed around the base of Gojo’s cock, and all you could hear were the lewd sounds of skin slapping against skin and your labored breathing.

Geto’s words made your walls squeeze around Gojo. Gojo sucked in his breath, trying hard to maintain his composure. He angled your ass more towards him, and began to drill into your hole.

Geto slipped his thumb into your mouth, and you suckled on it. Gojo reached between your thighs, and pinched your sensitive and puffy clit between his fingers. As he rolled your clit in his fingers, you felt that same burning white sensation and came around him, hard. Gojo pulled out and spilled all over the small of your back.

After getting cleaned up and clothed, Geto smiles at you.

“I wasn’t talking out of my ass earlier. I do want to try other things. But maybe you should take it easy today. And tomorrow. Maybe next week?”

[polysyndetonaddictsupportgroup]

don't wait for tumblr to give u more tags. go off about tony and steve and zola pls i am humbly requesting

As a part of my ongoing war on my ask box this is a very old post regarding a tumblr tag essay i made forever ago. i half answered this ask when it came in and then forgot to finish. without further ado:

Anon is talking about this post about Steve and Tony’s relationship. I HIGHLY recommend the original post it's great but i copied the original tags essay below since it's been so long since the ask arrived.

#I feel like anyone who writes Tony stark for marvel should have to go watch bojack horseman first as like a mandatory assignment#because that show understood the premise of Tony stark better than any MCU writer ever has and it wasn’t even writing for tony stark#in sum bojack horseman follows the titular bojack who is a washed up 90s sitcom television star#bojack himself is extremely self destructive and the show follows him as his selfish and egotistical tendencies erode at his relationships#However bojack himself is an extremely sympathetic character. his harmful acts are all tied very directly to the trauma of his life#he’s a survivor of generational abuse whose own substance abuse problems stem from the fact that he was in such a neglectful environment#that he had started drinking at an INCREDIBLY young age got himself sober only to relapse due to a spiked drink after fame

#this sympathic is increased by the fact that he does geninuinely love and care for his friends and often goes to extreme lengths to show it#but what the show understands that MCU writers dont is that his tragic past doesn’t excuse the harm or pain he causes and the show goes to#LABORIOUS extents to emphasize the consequences and suffering his actions cause in his attempt towards making amends#it is FASINCATING to me that MCU just fails to grasp this because it’s really the core of Tony’s character. his story is one of redemption#and regret. but what it never seemed to get is that requires recognition of wrongs and change and his relationship with steve is a prime ex.#when they meet tony is 40+ and Steve is 23-25. steve has been awake from world war 2 for less than 2 weeks everyone he loves is dead and hes#visibly haunted by his time in the ice. his ptsd flashbacks to crashing the plane is how his character is introduced. Tony spends the time

#calling him ‘capsicle’ and talking about how much he can’t stand steve. the narrative plays it off as a gaff of little consequence but#practically speaking that’s INSANE. like can you imagine you’re a traumatized war vet who got out of a coma 2 months ago and woke up to#discover everyone you ever loved is dead and this stranger twice your age at your new work nicknames you coma boy and hates your guts bc of#his daddy issues? like Tony in avengers is borderline cruel but the narrative and the fandom never acknowledge it. it’s like removing the#laugh track on a scene from one of those old sitcoms and realizing how mean it is. and while we can fully acknowledge that Howard hurt Tony#that doesn’t make it Steve’s fault and doesn’t give Tony the license to take it out on him. like at the end of the day your healing is your#responsibility and the MCU fails to grasp that with Tony. honestly it does a disservice to the depth of his character b/c Tony should have#already grown past this by the time of Avengers. he had already gone through iron man 2 and grappled somewhat with his relationship w howard#while that doesn’t mean he’s healed yet it does mean that his character needs to learn to grow past it or he risks stagnation. mcu just#happily embraced stagnation and it made the character worse for it. Theres a scene in the comics where Tony is the first to reach out to#Steve post ice. he takes him to the air&space museum and welcomes him to the future. THATS the growth we want. Bc fundamentally even if we

#sympathize for Tony’s abuse by Howard lashing out at someone who was functionally dead at the time of ur dads mistakes is a very juvenile#mindset. /growth/ is deciding to be better than the person who hurt you and the MCUs obsession with blaming Steve for howard cut that off#CW would have been SO MUCH MORE COMPELLING if Tony had formed a relationship with Steve bc Steve would be torn between past and present but#instead Tony is saying how much he hated Steve during the fucking movie and Steve’s taking it with grace. like you’re 50 man you gotta work#past this at some point. out of tags but I have Opinions about Tony and actually zola too but we won’t get there give me more tags tumblr

Fundamentally, my issue with Tony and how he's written for the MCU is that he has the potential for one of greatest redemption arcs ever and the writers are fucking allergic to giving it to him, and his dynamic with Steve is a a prime example of it. How poorly Steve's relationship with Tony was mishandled is a pretty perfect case study as to how Tony as a character was mishandled as a whole.

As stated in the Tumblr Tags Essay above, by the time Steve came on the scene, Tony should have already grown past his hate for Steve. To be clear, that is not saying he should have gotten over Howard or any harm that he suffered as a result of his. Howard was his parent who was, to some degree, at least emotionally neglectful, if not abusive. Healing and learning helping coping mechanisms does not demand you forgive your abuser.

But Steve was never his abuser. He's a 20-something year old guy who has been trapped in a block of ice for Tony's entire life and who woke up two weeks ago to find out that everyone he ever loved is dead or suffering from alzheimer's and that his sacrifice was for nothing because he was just told the thing he drove a fucking plane into the fucking arctic over is Back Again Because We Learned Nothing.

And the thing is that the realization that "This man can hold literally no complicity in my abuser because he was frozen in the Arctic Circle the entire time" requires a level of emotional maturity you generally achieve at the age of thirteen or so. Tony is fucking fifty. Mentally, he's over twice Steve's age. At absolute best, the way Tony treats Steve from the outset is immature and more accurately it's downright cruel. Voluntarily killing himself by driving a plane into ice only to wake up and discover that he has lost everyone he ever loved is undoubtedly one of the most traumatic things that has ever happened to steve, and he just woke up from it. He is two weeks out from this. He's actively having flashbacks of what happened right before Tony starts cracking jokes about it. It'd be like if Steve walked up to Tony right after he got back from Afghanistan and called him Waterboarding Boy and everyone treated it like it was a cutesy character trait.

That's one of the most egregious parts of how Tony's character is written--things that are objectively things that need to be addressed in his character arc area treated like acceptable and borderline justified quirks in his personality. Tony's relationship with his father is one of the cornerstones of his backstory and who he became. While he doesn't have to forgive his father on the road to recovery, he does have to realize when he's using it as an excuse to hurt others and stop it.

That's also something he never does, and one of the reasons why i think that the writers for him need to watch Bojack horseman. In the same movie he's claiming to that he was Steve's friend, he's still saying to his face how much he fucking hated him over things that happened when Steve was supposed to have martyred himself to save the world.

There's multiple parts of Tony's character that could have formed the basis of an amazing character arc if he grew and improved from them, but the narrative refused to even recognize them as problems, let alone have him overcome them, and his relationship with Steve is a perfect example of it. The writer's refusal to recognize that brings down the quality of his entire arc and cheapens him as a character.

If Tony had been allowed to recognize that Steve was not to blame for his father, accepted it, and given a man half his age who just lost everything a lifeline, that would have shown an amazing amount of growth. Instead, they left him as immature and cruel. It's a shame and an insult to the potential of his character, and it's a mistake that they repeat again and again. Tony was supposed to be completely against developing weapons for others, but he canonically helped build a major part of Project Insight. Tony's entire stance in Civil War was meant to show that he had accepted that he made mistakes and that he needed to be held accountable for his actions, but then he went and unilaterally built EDITH, whose existence violates multiple international treaties including the Accords and had so few safety precautions that a teenaged boy was able to accidentally call out a missile strike on his teenaged classmate. He's in a movie where he's driven by his guilt for causing the death of someone's college-aged son, and in that same movie he blackmails a high-school-aged boy to join in on a fight he knows nothing about, that goes directly against his interests, and could get him killed even if he was certain that Team Cap wouldn't use lethal force. Rhodey got paralyzed from the waist down from friendly fire. Tony had a moment in the same fight where he had reason to fear that Peter had been injured if not killed.

Ultimately, Tony's entire character is built on a foundation of repentance and growth. That's why he has so much potential and why he's so compelling. The fact that his writers were unable to recognize when he even needed to repent, let alone allow him to grow, was honestly insulting to what he could have been.

Zola:

The reference to Zola is actually more of a response to fandom’s response to Zola as a whole than the actual specific person who made the comment.

Overall, the majority of fandom response that I've seen just seemed to be sort of besides the point? The thing about Armin Zola working for SHIELD is that I personally have only seen discussion about this in context of talking about how Peggy and Howard are Bad or talking about how steve would feel betrayed when he discovered it. To be honest most of the discourse I’ve seen has just been about hating Peggy Carter and using this as a sledgehammer in that discussion.

It’s not that I disagree with that reading of it—like, I do think Steve felt betrayed by the realization that Zola was recruited in the end, and I think it’s bad to have recruited literal Nazis—but I do think that fandom elevated the most tangential point of it to the detriment of its entire narrative purpose. I've only ever personally seen it used in character discourse and shipping wars--which like, anyone can draw on any plot point they so choose while participating in fandom. But Zola's recruitment was the thematic core of Winter Soldier, and it always seemed kinda weird to me that it was treated as a personal defect in Howard and Peggy when it was the entire argument of the movie and one of the best social commentaries that the MCU ever made.

Zola gives what I think is one of the better MCU villain speeches in the bunker about how Hydra recovered after the war. He states that they realized that taking the freedom of the world by force only galvanised people against them. It led to their own downfall. But he explains that Hydra realized that the people of the world would freely give away their own rights and freedoms if you made them comfortable. If you say you’re doing it for their own safety and comfort, then they’ll effectively look the other way while Hydra seizes control of the world. And that entire monologue is bolstered by the fact that that is exactly what happened in Zola’s case.

Zola was brought into SHIELD as a part of operation paperclip. Operation Paperclip was a post-war initiative by the United States government to recruit key Nazi scientists into United States scientific development. This entire initiative was brought about in response to the Cold War arm’s race and it was justified on the basis of dire national security need. Both America and the Soviet Union were EXTREMELY CONCERNED about losing the cold war. As a result, they were willing to take pretty much any strategic advantage they could, including After, President Truman, who gave the final go-ahead for the initiative, said that "this had to be done and was done."

Even after it became public knowledge, it was defended as more of a necessary evil and the cost of the practicalities of governance than a world power welcoming war criminals with open arms. Multiple participants have been linked to human experimentation, slave labor factories, etc, though none were ever formally found guilty of anything--which may be because the US aggressively whitewashed their pasts and then went so far as to help relocate one of the members of the initiative to Argentina.

This was, again, all a part of the Cold War arms race with the USSR--who had an identical program going at the same time, Operation Osoaviakhim.

En arguendo, let's just assume that all of this was done with the best possible intentions and execution. The nominal rationale was the Cold War. While analyzing the Red Scare and the entire Cold War period would take way too long, I think a solid premise we can agree on is that nuclear war is bad. It would have been disastrous for anyone alive if the Cold War had escalated, and recruiting top scientists from the Nazi regime 1) kept the USSR from doing it instead, which they were actively doing, and 2) helped prevent strategic advantage in one country or another that may have led to an escalation. Now, I'm not a historian, and all of these premises can naturally be debated, but these were the like, best faith premises that world leaders had at the time. If you want a nuclear deterrent, you need the biggest stick.

The thing is that, if you assume these premises as genuine for the sake of the argument, the absolute best this leaves you with is doing a very bad thing for a very important government purpose. You're supposedly preventing nuclear war, but you're doing so at the cost of justice for all the people who suffered at the hands of these people, and the risk of future harm that they may cause.

Which, thematically, is the core of the Winter Soldier.

I've usually seen Zola's recruitment discussed in terms of Peggy or Howard making the decision to let him in, when in reality, they probably didn't make the call themselves so much as become complicit in it later. Zola was captured and recruited right at the end of CA:FA (he later clocks this at 1945) but Peggy and Howard didn't even have an organization at that point, let alone the power to recruit a head Nazi scientist. This was two decades before SHIELD was ever founded, and if we take the Agent Carter series as binding canon, at the time of Zola's transition into American government would, Peggy had so little sway that she couldn't even get anyone to listen to her, let alone recruit a nazi scientist, and Howard was potentially on the run and definitely not involved in any formal governmental decision making. Even if you assume that they were somehow in charge of a government agency at the time of Zola's recruitment, the actual recruitment and function of Operation Paperclip was conducted by independent agencies (Joint Intelligence Objectives Agency and the Counterintelligence Corps) that Peggy and Howard weren't a part of, and the person who made the call for Operation Paperclip itself was The Literal President Of The United States. Whatever way you cut it, Peggy and Howard probably had nothing to do with Zola's initial recruitment--what most likely happened was that two decades passed (the time between Zola's recruitment and SHIELD's founding) and when resources were being allocated some big-shot in the overseeing body was like Yeah You Do Weird Stuff? We Got A Guy Who's Been Doing Weird Stuff For Us For Like Twenty Years and then when Peggy and Howard saw him they were like Oh Its This Motherfucker.

To be clear, this is not at all to absolve howard and peggy for working with a guy they knew did literal human experimentation because he did it on one of their best friends. But this is to more clearly reframe it from Decision They Personally Made to The Ways Being At A Certain Level Of Government Makes You Complicit With Horrible Things, which perfectly encapsulates the heart of the movie.

At the open of the movie, Steve is visibly on a fucking ledge with SHIELD. Fuck, Fury and Nat spend most of the opening trying to keep him from flying the coop. And it's because Steve for the very first time has to grapple with the consequences of being an active participant in a governmental body.

Straight up--Steve spent the entire war going AWOL. His entire military career was spent doing what he wanted and flipping his superior officers the bird. The man was a terrible fucking soldier but by the time anyone figured it out they had already given him a comic book and the Medal of Honor and the man could bench press a tank it was simply too late. Then, he got encased in ice for 70 years, woke up, had two weeks of fun future integration activities like Not Getting Therapy For His Problems and Looking At Pictures Of His Dead Friends, got tapped in because they fucked up with the exact thing he lost everything to stop, immediately went AWOL again, almost died again, went on a roadtrip of self discovery, and at some point between then and CAWS started working as one of the main STRIKE members of SHIELD. This is likely his first time having to ever deal with the realities of being a hand of the government.

One of the most insidious things about high-level government work is there's rarely some Main Guy sitting behind a desk signing Evil Decrees and responsible for everything. Power is allocated and things get messy very quickly.

Take Ghost for example. One of SHIELD'S Main Guys falls out with another Guy, smears his name, which makes the Ex-Guy so desperate that he takes unnecessary risks in his experiments that predictably blow up in his face and leads to his young daughter having a debilitating power that results in her uncontrollably phasing through objects. Another Guy tries to do the right thing and help her, but Other Main Guys think "This kid would make a GREAT assassin" and leverage a cure for her debilitating health condition into turning her into a forced operative. This health condition starts to kill her, but the Main Guys were so happy with their new forced assassin that they never looked for a cure to begin with and was going to use her until she died. She goes rather reasonably goes AWOL, and in her attempts to cure herself, she's willing to do just about anything to get cured, and including contemplating kidnapping Scott's daughter as an option.

Steve obviously wasn't called in to help with that (he was AWOL himself at that point) but assume he was--he would only get pulled into this mess at the very end when all the damage is done and there's a highly unstable assassin kidnapping little girls. SHIELD was at fault for every horrible thing that happened to this person. He has a strong sense of justice, and he'd likely to be furious to find out that SHIELD took an orphanged child and abused their incredibly painful and terminal medical condition, which was indirectly caused by them, in order to force them into becoming a highly skilled operative.

But there isn't just one person that he'd be able to find and blame for what happened with this--culpability was stretched out over Multiple Main Guys who made bad decisions, a lot of Lower Guys who built the suit, trained her, handled her in the field, and experimented on her to learn her limits, many of whom likely didn't even work for the organization any more.

Who do you go after for that? The Main Guy who smeared her dad? But he didn't have anything to do with the assassin business or the actual accident. The Main Guys who made the calls for the assassination thing? Better candidates, but is it that simple? What about the guys who just get orders every day and have no decision making authority, who were handed a little girl who was vulnerable and in pain and told to train her to kill? What about the ones making a child-sized tactical suit with no details about what was going on but who had reason enough to suspect it wasn't all good? They were just following orders, but so were Nazis working the camps.

How do you go after people for that? Fire them? It's been decades. Most are probably retired. And that's a pretty lame punishment for what they did. He doesn't make the calls for legal action, they definitely have qualified immunity for their decisions, and there's a whole host of problems with proving anything.

But, on the flip side, what does he do about Ghost? what happened to her is terrible, but if she had kidnapped Cassie Lang, he couldn't exactly sit on his hands and let it happen no matter the justification. There's a very good chance he has to stop her and become another link in a chain of what's been a lifetime of abuse. Things get messy when you're just a cog in the machine of a sprawling agency that has a lot of power to abuse.

While we don't know what Steve's been doing while he worked for SHIELD, we do know that it pissed him off to high heavens. The very first thing we see him doing for SHIELD is recapturing the off-course Lemurian Star from pirates, and he is the exact opposite of a dutiful soldier during it. He doesn't just salute and follow his orders without question--one of the first lines of his mouth is calling them out for lying about the ship being in those waters because it was off-course. He's like "Oh, so it's not off course, it's trespassing" to which Nat says "I'm sure they had a good reason" and Steve replies "I'm getting a little tired of being Fury's janitor."

He's saving the hostages, and then all of a sudden he finds Natasha in the control room downloading the drive and realizes that this was about SHIELD's data to begin with but no one clued him in on that fact. He's pissed because the hostages could have died, which is a fact he immediately goes after Fury about.

There is so much character jammed into those few minutes of screen time. This is visibly an old argument--at one point, Fury says to him "It's damn near getting past time for you to get with the program, Cap" to which Steve tells him not to hold his breath. Steve doesn't like or approve of a lot of SHIELD's actions, but he's called in after all the bad things they did went to shit. Like, what's he going to do--say, sorry, the Lemurian Star was obviously Up To Some Shit that I don't want to be a part of, RIP to the hostages but I'm just going to let them get shot in the head? He's the janitor and he's sick of getting called into SHIELD fucking something up through their own immoral actions and calling him to pull their ass out of the fire. He spends the entire first half of the movie on the verge of flying the coop entirely, and Nat and Fury visibly know it and are trying to get him off the ledge in every interaction they have on screen with him--which directly contributes to the fact that Steve doesn't trust either of them for the first half of the movie.

It also is likely the motivator behind why he does ultimately trust Sam. Steve spends the first half of the movie getting Managed. He's increasingly pissed and distrustful of SHIELD and its agents, and he's got good reason to be--Nat and Fury hide things from him and keep trying to persuade him to stick with the program (to be clear Nat's (and to a somewhat lesser extent Fury's) own actions and whether any culpability for things like project insight could possibly be imputed to her has to be analyzed under an entirely different lens due to the difference in her personal history and character type, but this is already way too long to tackle that here. this isn't actually meant to assign blame to her, but more to analyze the likely results on steve). Fury takes him for a tour of his Fascist Death Machine and tells him that's what the world needs. The neighbor he was growing increasingly intimate with was a SHIELD agent who lied to him about her name and the fact that she was spying on him. At the end of the day, the majority of the of the early movie is spent with his desires and principles are treated as secondary and unwanted complications to the fact that they really need him to keep throwing that shield on SHIELD's behalf (whether this is actually what nat and fury specifically are trying to do is, again, a separate analysis we don't have time for, this is just to go to how it likely affects and appears to Steve).

Sam, meanwhile, is beautiful and charming is the only one who openly expresses a genuine concern for Steve as a person and not steve as a solider. Sam spends the entire first half of the movie reaching out to someone in a position he's been in himself and trying to get him help. his entire first meeting with Steve is defined by him trying to help a fellow Vet recover from war. he tries to gauge where Steve's at with the future, invites him to the VA, and packages it in a easily-seen-through excuse that gives them both plausible deniability--Steve can come by and get the help he needs not as Captain America The Man The Myth The Legend Who Is Really Fucking Struggling, but as Steve the guy helping Sam impress the girl at the front desk.

When he comes to the VA, Sam has the direct opposite response that everyone else in the movie has to Steve questioning his place in SHIELD and in government work--he's like "Quit. Quit now. Be free and beautiful like me. become an ultimate fighter or whatever the fuck you want." He doesn't give two shits about what the world will do without Captain America keeping it safe--he just cares about what Steve needs.

This all goes to a greater analysis about how Sam is beautiful and charming the perfect parallel to Steve, the only one who could possibly have taken up his shield, and actually wrong in that line he says about how he does what Steve does but slower because he consistently decides to do the right thing before Steve is another analysis that would go too far off the point to get into. The point being is that Sam exists in the narrative as the direct opposite and alternative to the reality fury and nat offers Steve. Steve spends the beginning of the movie with Nat and Fury seemingly sacrificing the means for the end, but there's Sam, beautiful and charming someone who made the same decision he's now faced with, being like "fuck it. sometimes you have to walk."

Steve's entire struggle about his position with SHIELD reaches its climax when he first finds out the truth of Project Insight.

For the avoidance of any doubt, SHIELD secretly being infiltrated by HYDRA has no effect on how wrong Project Insight was from the start--it just emphasized how horrifically wrong it could go. But "Space Super Death Weapon That Can Immediately Kill Dangers To National Security" is a bad idea no matter who is in charge of it. First off, Steve is right--punishment follows the crime. No government has a crystal fucking ball and anyone who justifies things on the basis of "taking out threats ahead of time" is talking out their ass. to be clear, i'm not saying you need to wait for someone to be on a plane and flying at the twin towers to stop a terrorist attack--in law, we have a designated level of "closeness" that lets us say "yeah you were totally actually doing what we don't want you doing" at which point you can charge them with attempt, and often a lot of the earlier steps leading up to the Big Harmful Thing are actual crimes you can intervene with.

Project Insight was the flagship of of a "quantum surge in threat analysis." It did exactly what it was designed to do: it took out threats before they became threats. The only difference between SHIELD being at the helm and HYDRA is who gets defined as a threat. HYDRA would have defined that as anyone from a high school valedictorian in Iowa to Stephen Strange, but it's not any better if SHIELD's defining that as some random kid in Afghanistan who shows whatever traits show a risk for one day becoming a combatant.

And yet, steve's the only one in the movie who says this. We don't actually know how much Nat knows about Project insight itself, but Fury is fully aware and a participant in it, and Tony Stark apparently took one look at the thing and said "your engines are shit. i'll improve them." Steve takes one look at them and calls it fascist bullshit.

At the end of the day, you can never justify shit like this under the assumption that the people controlling it will use it for the best, because you cannot trust the people controlling it. Yeah, Project Insight was probably pitched with being used against the worst threats. Dangers to public safety, terrorists, that kind of thing. Do you want to know who else was considered a danger to public safety? MLK, who the FBI fucking murdered. The people who define threats to national security are the ones who have the same incentive to maintain the status quo in an unjust world. Even if we assume Project Insight was made to stop the next 9/11, we also have to assume that at least some of the strikes it would have carried out under not-HYDRA control would have been for the wrong reasons.

What the fuck does all of this this have to do with Zola?

Operation Paperclip and Peggy and Howard's decisions within it directly mirrors Project Insight and Fury's decisions within it, directly mirrors Steve's journey and central conflict over the course of the film, and directly contrasts with the alternative Sam poses within it.

CA:WS at its thematic core, says that initiatives that sacrifice justice for claims of national security and public safety are exactly what robs us of our rights and freedoms and ultimately endangers us all. It's not even subtle--Zola says it out loud in his evil villain speech. but operating at a high level in a government agency puts you in a position where you're meant to make that decision again and again, even if we assume you have the best of intentions.

Peggy and Howard were people who believed that they had to make the hard decisions to save the world. They were handed a decision where perception of culpability was obscured by how distributed out the blame was, and the direct public benefit to national security was posed to be overwhelmingly good. It leads to SHIELD's infiltration. Project Insight went through on the exact same reasoning. Fury, Maria Hill, possibly Nat, and Tony (off-screen) all do the exact same thing and justify the means by the end, and it leads to the helicarriers being made.

Steve spends the movie being told, explicitly, to "get with the program" and start making the same decisions. His central conflict is being someone on the inside of this club, being told that he needs to start understand what keeping the world safe demands, and his journey leads to him refusing to do it. The climax of the movie is a character so minor that we never learn his name refusing to launch the helicarriers with a gun pointed at his head, even though the complicity he carried in it would have been just as attenuated as Steve's was as SHIELD's janitor. And all throughout it, there's Sam, someone who left the military explicitly because he couldn't follow the rules he was being given anymore.

Peggy and Howard's decision to go along with Zola in Operation Paperclip is a direct parallel of the decisions Fury made with Project Insight and the decisions Steve ultimately refuses to make himself. Making Peggy and Howard complicit in what let in Arnim Zola encapsulates the entire core argument of CA:WS and it's so weird to me that I've only ever seen it discussed in shipping wars and discourse as to whether a Character Is Bad.

Peggy and Howard, ultimately, were members of a governmental task force who made the Hard Decisions for The Public Good. As an inherent part of that role, they did bad things. Unjust things. They undoubtedly saved the world multiple times over as a part of their tenure as the head of SHIELD, but it would be absolute naivety to assume that anyone in that position didn't become complicit in terrible fucking things. It's the direct product of their positions in the government, and it's exactly what leads to Steve's position in Civil War. it is absolutely bonkers to me how people watched Winter Solider and then reacted to Steve's opposition to the Accords like Local Imperialist Military Boy Refuses To Listen To Anyone Else. Steve just had a masterclass in how people in the government make decisions that sacrifice justice up to and including people he once trusted with his life. Of course he didn't fucking trust General Human Experimentation And I Consider Bruce Banner The Property Of The United States Military with his every action as Captain America. He had just learned that he couldn't even trust Peggy and Howard with it.

[anime-kia]

You Can Do What?! (Part 2)

Happy New Year! I hope your year is looking great so far!

I finally added pictures! Also, if your hair isn't medium/long just imagine you added hair to achieve the style (y'all know how versatile our hair is). 

^ Uh... Tumblr does not like to transfer pictures (I used to write on Wattpad) so just use your imagination lmao. (2023 me writing this)

No warnings.

Relationship: Helpful Erik x Reader

"Hey, it's Tasha. I'm on vacation right now. Appointments will resume next month, please don't blow my phone up with time requests. I'll get back to y'all when I'm home. Bye!"

"Nah, sorry boo. I'm full."

"We don't do walk-ins."

"This number is no longer in service, please hang up and try ag-"

You sigh for the tenth time today, tossing your phone to the left on the sofa. Every single one of your stylists were either fully booked or gone away on vacation. Tasha was your go-to, but she was away and you became stressed when her voicemail picked up. 

Erik peered his head out from the kitchen, "You good?" The smell of food wafted into your nose, promising you a delicious dinner later on.

"No, everyones either gone or full." You fold your arms against your chest and sink further into the couch. Times like these were when you wished you listened to your mother and learned how to braid as a child. You proudly (and embarrassingly) belonged to the secret society of black women who don't know how to cornrow braid for shit. 

"Why don't you just go to the lady who does my dreads?" He suggested, but you turned that down immediately.

"I am not paying a hundred dollars to get my hair braided down."

"I'll pay." Yes, Erik was boujee, "A hunnid ain't much." As hell.

Sitting up, you give him an incredulous look, "Okay, Bill Gates." And with an eye roll you add, "That's a waste of money. You know what Tasha could give me for half of that?" And you explain that you could get a wash, braid-up and styling, which was a lot more worth it. You considered wearing a wig, but the ones you had needed to be retired.

"Aight, hold up." He disappeared back into the kitchen, the sound of the stove turning down and metal clanging broke through the silence.

In two days, you had a very important meeting that would potentially change your life and Erik knew how much it meant to you. It was all you would talk about once you got off the phone with the CEO of Beauty Inc.  

After the Cantu and Shea Moisture conundrum, you started your own line of hair products, a small one actually- with a leave-in conditioner, a shampoo and a deep conditioner. At first, you'd hand out samples and sell some products to family and friends. Then when you profited enough, you made an Instagram page dedicated to your small business. You paid for promotions and handed out samples for people to review and eventually your small business became a medium business and now you're on your way to partnering with one of the best beauty and hair companies in the entire country. 100% black owned, by the way.

When Erik reappeared, he had a slight smirk on his lips while scrolling through his phone. 

"What?" 

He sat down beside you and showed you the screen. "Look at this." 

You stared at the three images he had on display. Three different women with three different hairstyles. 

"Those are cute..." You scrolled back and forth between each picture. "But how does this help me, E? I can't braid, you know this."

"Just cuz you don't know how to braid doesn't mean I don't." 

At first it didn't register until you realized how long you were staring at him with a puzzled expression. "You can do what?!" 

"I. Can. Braid." He said slower looking a little annoyed.

If this were a sitcom you would've fainted *cue the laugh track* but Erik was being so serious, the smile on his face had been replaced with a stoic expression. 

"How the hell am I just- Erik! We've been together for how lo- Oh my g-" You couldn't even finish your sentences due to the shock. This man was full of surprises, but this right here definitely put the cherry on top. At some point you got up, pacing back and forth with your fingers resting against your temples. "Boy-"

He grabbed your arm to stop you from moving, "Chill baby, you acting like you ain't never seen a man braid."

"Nah that's not even it! You of all people can braid!?" You're not exactly sure why you were reacting like this... Maybe it was out of embarrassment that your hyper-masculine boyfriend could do something so stereotypically female that you couldn't. This had to be something he learned during the military, but what would they be braiding other than ropes? If they even did that! 

"So you gon' let me do your hair or nah?" 

With a hefty sigh (that he called you out for), you grabbed a pillow off of the sofa and placed it in between his feet. "Hold on." You retreated to go get your hair products for this man to either slay or destroy your hair.

By time you got back with your styling tools and hair products, Erik had set on a comedy movie, one that he's seen a million times, but you refused to watch it- not anymore of course as you were now trapped in between his legs.

"Oh nah, you're hot as hell." You got up even faster than when you sat down and went to blast the AC. 

"That ain't me, that was all you. Pacing around the damn room like you was warming up for track or some shit."

You sat back down, scooting closer to rest your back. "I can't believe I'm doing this." 

"Have faith in me baby, when have I ever let you down?"

You could recall a few times, "Remember our first date?"

"Aye, that was a first date. Them shits never go as planned." He retaliated.

"You're lucky I even considered a second date."

He began to chuckle, "I made it up to you with my fire di-" But he always fixed it.

"Okay!" You slapped his leg. "See, all you think about is pussy!"

"Nah, that's not all."

"Really?"

"Yeah, I think about your booty and tits too." 

You roll your eyes and slap him even harder on the calf, "Nasty ass."

"Anyway, you ain't choose a hairstyle." He leaned down showing you the options again, his torso resting on your head.  

"Hmm..." You scrolled back and forth one last time before going with your favourite style, "That one." 

"Aight cool." He sat up and you could hear him rub his hands together, "My baby bout to look sexy as hell."

"And if you do anything st-"

"(Y/n), chill. I said I got this, quit all that worryin' shit." He untied the wrap off of your head and tossed it to the side. 

"I'm serious, E. You know how much this meeting means to me."

"And you acting like my hands have never been in other chick's hair."

Your eyes widened as you got ready to stab him in the leg with the rattail comb. "WHAT?"

He erupted into a laughter, "Chill. I'm just playing!" He began taking the twists out one by one.

Oh he he ha ha now nigga, you almost made me stab you in the fuckin' popliteal. "You ain't funny." 

"I am funny, you just don't know how to take a joke."

"My other niggas are a lot more funnier than you." You tease with a serious tone.

"Aw hell naw, see (y/n). Why you tryna get somebody killed? I can do that shit right now."

"Chill. I'm just playing." You mock his response. 

"Oh you got jokes, huh?"

"Yup, just like my other niggas." You quip, this time with a smile. A feeling you have not felt since you were a child painfully tingled your head. "Did you just pop me in my head?!"

"You're misbehaving. And if you wanna act like a child, I gotta treat you like one."

You wanted to bite his hypocritical ass. "Boy, fuck you."

"Like I said, we can do that later."

For the rest of the time, you both continued to exchange remarks to tick each other off. You got popped in the head at least five more times with each comb. At one point you did end up biting him on the thigh, but that only resulted in him starting the braid over because you screwed it up according to him. He surprisingly wasn't rough as he usually was with everything else (despite getting hit by the comb) and he was very precise. You could catch a small glimpse in the camera on your phone, but each time you tried to look, he would yank your head back so you couldn't see. You had to remind him that your neck wasn't made out of jello. 

One thing you learned from this experience was that Erik is huge on perfection and tidiness. Now the cleanliness of his big ass house made sense. You thought he hired a thousand maids, but each time you've been there you haven't seen one. When your bedroom was a mess, Erik would actually go in there and tidy up for you, but not before criticizing you of course.

If a braid looked slightly crooked or not good enough, he'd take it out and start over. No, he was no professional, but he wanted his girl to look amazing after he was finished. 

The movie was coming to an end and you were ready for him to be out of your hair. Not that it didn't feel good when his fingers ran across your scalp, but you were very anxious and based on the conversation you both shared within that time, he could've been ruining your hair just to be petty.

"Eriiiik?" You whine.

"Hmm?" He was done the braids and now fluffing your curls.

"You didn't fuck me over, right?"

He sighed, "What, you don't trust me?"

"I ain't never seen you do hair in my life. What am I suppose to expect?"

"Greatness." He simply said, adding shea butter to seal in the moisture. "Trust a nigga sometimes, baby. I'd never have you looking like a fool."

He wasn't lying. Erik always had you in the latest fashion, even though you asked him to stop buying clothes worth half of your pay check. Not that you had bad taste, but as said before, Erik was boujee- as hell. 

Suddenly the thought came to your head. When the hell did he even find the time to learn how to braid? He was usually always so damn busy. 

"So who taught you?"

He sucked a breath in between his teeth before responding, "You gon' get mad."

Already knowing the answer you still ask, "Why?"

"Cuz you was prolly expecting me to say something like my grandma." He scratched the back of his neck and sat back, "But it was that hairdresser I was messing around with." 

You knew exactly which one. Kaleisha. 

That's actually how you met Erik. And it actually explains a lot of why she unexpectedly banned you from going back to her salon. Erik's dumbass just had to flirt with you in front of her clients. If gossip was an olympic sport, the whole shop would've won first place all the time. You didn't know they were a thing at first, not until Miss Betsy, an elder lady who wore the stiffest wigs, warned you. She was in everybody's business, inside and outside of the salon.

"The one that kicked me out cuz of you." You grumbled and got up to stretch as he finished. He watched your back arch, reminding himself to get it even deeper later on.

"Right." He gave you a coy smile, "Aye turn around, lemme see that pretty face."

You didn't even try to fight your grin as you turned around. The smile on his face was enormous. It was a bit scary too, he was usually frowning or not broadcasting any emotion. 

"I. Did. That. WHEW!" He jumped off the sofa, startling you and pulling you into a tight. "Sexy ass!" He littered your face with kisses.

"E! St-stop!" You laughed, barely able to push him away. When he finally let you go, you ran over to the mirror to see his accomplishment. You stared at your hair in awe. He really did that! You were speechless honestly, it was excellent! Better than some of the hairdressers you've been too. 

He smiled at you, "I told you I know what I'm doing."

"Ain't no way!" You were astounded. How the hell could he braid better than you!? Well actually to be fair, you didn't obtain that skill and you refuse to ask him how. He'd hold that over you till the day you die. You continued to admire your hairstyle while saying, "Oh my God." It made you wonder who he been practicing on for it to be this good, so you ask.

He frowns, "What did I tell you before? Trust a nigga sometimes."

You turn around and give him a hug, "Thank you baby! I love it."

"Anything for you, shorty. But, imma need a payment." His tone became very mischievous. 

"Payment?" You narrowed your eyes at him.

"Yeah, you thought shit was free?"

"Uhh... Yeah." 

"Nah lil mama, show me that arch and we can negotiate a payment method." 

This ni- Fuck it, if there's anything he deserved right now it would be this. 

Oh, and your meeting with that CEO went a lot better than you thought. You would definitely be thanking Erik for giving you that glow and a confidence boost when you got home.

Thanks for reading!

What hairstyle did you choose out of the three? I'd pick #2.

Apologies if you can't see yourself doing any of them. If you have short(er) hair or none, it's all good! It was just to add visuals.

I was actually gonna let Erik do normal cornrows (that ended up being a bit messy) so she could wear a wig, but I said screw that. I feel like Erik would perfect anything, and plus he's a smart guy so I'm sure he'd be able to braid. 

P.S. Who else belongs to the secret society of black women who don't know how to braid? 😂 I'm half in-half out lol, I just need more practice.

(Start/Finish: January 4-5, 2019)

P.S. I am no longer a part of the secret society :P I learned later in 2019 (current me writing this) Once again, ignore the A/N’s since the pictures are missing.

[thecomedyofdating]

Picture this: I was cruising through life, happily driving my relationship convertible towards the wedding chapel. We had the destination set, the GPS locked onto "happily ever after," and then... BOOM! Unexpectedly ended when he showed me his true self.

Now, I find myself back in the dating game at the age of 37. After three years and six months. It hasn't been an easy transition; everything feels different and strange. However, being a positive soul, I can't help but find it all hilariously amusing.

So, I had this brilliant idea to share my dating misadventures with all my friends, colleagues, and even random strangers like you.

Every date I go on becomes a legendary tale, a rollercoaster ride of cringe-worthy moments and hilarious blunders. It's like I've become the star of my own romantic sitcom, complete with laugh tracks and popcorn-crunching audiences.

So, my dear friends, buckle up and join me on this wild ride through the dating amusement park. Let's hold hands (not too tightly, though, I don't want to scare potential dates away!) and share a laugh or two. Together, we'll navigate the treacherous waters of love and find solace in the fact that no matter how strange or awkward it gets, we'll always have these hilarious tales to bring us closer and keep our spirits soaring. Cheers to love, laughter, and the absurdity of it all!

Years ago I left my hometown behind when I landed a job in the city of « Dustopia », It is here that the stories I am about to share with you have taken place.

Dustopia is like a glittering mansion with high walls, where the residents live in a constant state of masked masquerade. It's a place where everyone wears designer suits and expensive jewelry, but their hearts remain hidden behind layers of pretense and fear. It's as if the city itself casts a spell, hypnotizing its inhabitants into valuing money and sex above all else.

Guys, brace yourselves for my debut story. Coming soon, so stay tuned!

[randomdemondude]

A bit about me:

• High school student

• Male

• I'm Part Mexican and Guatemalan (I get it from my parents *sitcom laugh track*)

• Born In USA

• Young Gen Z

• Spanish Speaker (not so fluent,still needs some practice, I know, it's kind of embarrassing)

Things I like:

• Fitness and working out

• Martial arts

• Singing and Listening To Music

• Asmr

• Sleep

• Friends

• Video Games

• Searching up random topics that serve me no purpose

• My own jokes and stupid thoughts

• Beans and Rice

Things I dislike

• The existential dread of existence

• Morons

•The number 7

What you can expect from my blog

• stuff about my life

• The inner ramblings and jumbled up thoughts of an idiot teenager

• Me doing some vocal covers of my favorite songs (I am heavily considering this and am not sure if I will do this just yet)

=)

------------------------------------------------------------------

Un poco sobre mi:

•Estudiante de Secundaria

• Soy un Hombre

• Soy Parte Mexicano y parte Guatemalteco (lo heredé de mis padres *pista de risas*)

• Nací en Estados Unidos

• Joven Generación Z

• Habla español (no tan fluido, todavía necesita un poco de práctica, lo sé, es un poco embarazoso)

Cosas que me gustan

• Fitness y ejercicio físico

• Artes Marciales

• Cantar y escuchar musica

• Asmr

• Seuño

• Mis Amigos

• video juegos

• Buscando temas al azar que no me sirven para nada

• Mis propios chistes y pensamientos pendejadas

• Frijoles con Arroz

Cosas que no me encantan

• El miedo existencial a la existencia

• imbéciles

• el número 7

Que puede esperar de mi blog

• Cosas de mi vida

• Las divagaciones internas y los pensamientos confusos de un adolescente idiota.

• Yo haciendo algunas versiones vocales de mis canciones favoritas (estoy considerando esto y no estoy seguro de si voy a hacer esto todavía)

=)

[spyglassrealms]

How can I gaslight my parents into thinking I’m a stripper? I mean how can I instill just a hint of the possibility into their minds I miiiigt be one? Like not enough for them to ask about it, but enough for them to question it and wonder if they’re reading into things or not? I’m a young lady who still loves with them. I have a good job, have never gotten a speeding ticket, kissed someone, or really often into any trouble, but that’s boring. I need to spice stuff up

........ ma'am I am a worldbuilder?

[kierancampire]

I feel bad for laughing, but i was watching a hospital show about a real hospital and people going in for real procedures, so not a sitcom/drama sorta thing, reality TV. A dude, not there for a procedure but to share his story, shared how he climbed a building to get a football, his ring conducted electricty on a nearby wire which gave him powerful shocks, he then grabbed onto anything nearby and grabbed onto an electric cable that pumped i think it was 24 thousand volts into him, this then propelled him off the building and onto some train tracks where a train severed off his leg

God even writing that i am shaking and it was hard to type :') I thought i was accident prone but fuck me, that's the sorta thing you'd see in a horror/comedy :') Imagine thinking "Ah fuck! Football's stuck on the roof!" then, god i can't stop laughing :') You almost get electrocuted to death and have your leg severed by a train, like, you thought the football was bad "But wait! There's more!"

I know it was real life and a traumatic incident but god :') I also think i am in a dark humour mood, as I'm now watching a fictional show about a girl in a plane crash, and a guy she was with was seemingly dead and instinctually i said "Eat him." then it showed he was bleeding out of a leg wound and i said "Oh look, he made himself halal!" and laughed incredibly hard at my own joke

[mossybank]

Baby You're a Haunted House — W. M.

Wanda Maximoff x GN!Reader

Summary: Y/N helps Wanda grieve and gain closure on Pietro's death in their own special way, a perculiar way to flirt in the eyes of others. — au/non-canon accurate timeline

A/N: Baby You're a Haunted House is a song that's been stuck in my head on a loop, and although it was only meant to be a place holder title I've actually become quite fond of it.

semi-proofread

Y/N had been meaning to talk to Wanda for a while, amongst all the chaos of Ultron, they didn't get a proper opportunity to introduce themself; and to do it afterwards, as the girl realised she'd lost her brother, just seemed crass. They thought that maybe now they'd left it too long to introduce themself, coming off as rude and tone deaf for not doing it earlier, but the longer they avoided doing this the worse it would become.

In order to give themself an excuse for waiting so long, Y/N made Wanda a welcome hamper of sorts. They'd scoured the Eastern European aisle at the shop in hopes of finding something Sokovian, hoping it would remind Wanda of what was once her home, but they also feared that would be cruel, they didn't want her to feel anymore homesick than she most likely already did.

Eventually they threw a few things together, mostly sweets and snacks of the sort that they thought she'd enjoy, and anxiously knocked on her door before entering sheepishly.

"Hey, uh, I—" They glanced at Wanda and then at her TV before fixating their gaze to the floor, it was much less intimidating, "I'm not interrupting anything, am I?"

"No, no," Wanda shook her head and paused the TV, the laughing track stopping, "Nothing important."

Y/N knew Wanda would have a Sokovian accent, she was from the country for gods sake, but that didn't stop the tips of their ears from heating up at the sound of it. It was typical, but Y/N simply had a thing for accents, and they hoped Wanda hadn't noticed.

"I wanted to introduce myself, I've know we've met before," Y/N cringed, righting a robotic threat to earth seemed like a bit more than just meeting, "But we haven't met-met... I, um, I brought you a gift!" They held the gift basket out awkwardly, a lopsided smile overtaking their face.

Wanda chuckled quietly at Y/N's antics and shuffled from her position of the edge of her bed, making space for Y/N to sit beside her and patting it. Y/N quickly obliged, placing the gift basket between them.

"I wasn't sure what you'd like so it's a bit of everything."

"Thanks.. No one else has done this for me." Wanda said fondly, looking through the basket with a content expression, "You didn't need to do all this."

Y/N looked down at their hands, and shrugged, "I just wanted to make sure you felt welcomed here and stuff, y'know? I know what it's like to be a new Avenger, it's a lot of change at once so I just want to make sure you're doing okay."

After some small talk, the two decided to watch one of Wanda's sitcoms together. Y/N wasn't too sure what it was called, but they'd definitely ask her later in order to binge it themself.

"We used to have movie nights as a child where we'd only be allowed to speak english to help us learn it," Wanda's expression dropped temporarily, gazing to the side. Y/N followed Wanda's gaze, eyes landing on a framed photo of her and Pietro.

"... I'm sorry." Y/N said hesitantly after a second of silence, "If there's anything I c—"

Wanda's expression caused Y/N to stop talking, she'd clearly heard that phrase repetitively from everyone.

"The only thing you could do to make me feel better would be to bring him back." She said bitterly before looking at Y/N, her sour tone dropping off of the end of the sentence as her eyes met their, "I didn't mean that, I shouldn't... It's not your fault."

Y/N shook their head, cutting Wanda's apology short, "No, no! You have every right to be upset and excited, but.." They trailed off, a moment of debate in their brain, "If you, um, really wanted to see him again, I could try help?"

Wanda raised a brow, frowning slightly as if she thought Y/N was making some sick joke.

"The little ghost army thingie back in Sokovia when we were fighting Ultron? That was me! Uh.. Trying to reach Pietro would take time though.. Usually ghosts follow people around but I haven't seen him.."

Wanda sighed and shook her head, "You don't have to do that for me, you looked exhausted from how you used your powers back there."

"But I'd like too! And it'd be a great bit of training even if it didn't work, I've never been able to summon anyone specific before." They tried to reason, but ultimately they wouldn't do anything without Wanda's permission.

"... I'll think about it."

It was a week later when Wanda next spoke to Y/N regarding their conversation about Pietro, they'd spoke in between but dancing around the topic of a dead brother was difficult work. Eventually, they had to discuss it once more.

"I'm willing to try, but if anything goes wrong, that will be it." Wanda comes to the compromise, presenting her deal to Y/N one morning in the kitchen. Y/N looking at Wanda and nodding, zoning out slightly and taking in her features, only snapping back into reality as boiling liquid came into contact with their hand.

They cursed, almost dropping their mug, foiled by the classic sitcom trope of overpouring your coffee and burning yourself as the result of some stupid crush.

"Oh, Y/N! Are you o—"

"Yeah, yeah, I'm fine!" They reassured, shaking their hand dry, ignoring the sting of the burn, "If you give me an hour, we can try immediately!"

Wanda nodded and promptly left, she longed to truly make sure Y/N was okay but held back,she’d dread to come off too doting this eraly in their relationship. Y/N's shoulders slumped and they let out a breath they didn't know they were holding. They'd barely knew Wanda, whatever they were feeling had to go away soon, it was just unprofessional when their whole thing right now was helping the girl talk to her brother one last time!

The medium was pulled out of their deprecating thoughts by a boisterous chuckle, turning their head, they recognised it to be Thor.

"Ah, young love," The god teased, giving Y/N a firm but well-meaning pat on the back, "Good luck, young Y/N."

Y/N blushed and defensively assured Thor that is was 'nothing like that', but it was clear to everyone else that it absolutely was.

Arriving to their semi-impromptu séance, Y/N gave Wanda a run down on what was going to happen. Usually, when summoning a spirit, Y/N only summoned those already around, but it seemed Pietro had already moved on from this world- it made sense, his death was somewhat honourable and he didn't seem to have any unfinished business or grudges- that just meant Y/N's process would be a little more difficult and required a few more attempts. For a summoning like this, they'd have to temporarily leave the mortal realm, appearing to those around them as unconscious. Luckily for Y/N this was something they were particularly good at, often doing so accidently and getting stuck when their powers first manifested as a child.

Laying down on the floor, Wanda knelt beside them with a soft grip on their hands ready to wake them should something go wrong, Y/N closed their eyes, the last thing they felt before slipping away being Wanda tenderly stroking her thumb across their knuckles.

With a start, Y/N woke up, sitting slowly and looking around their surroundings. Blue, everything was blue here and although usually a tranquil colour, here it was chilling and made everything feel off. Standing up, Y/N thought of a game plan, there was no point wandering around the blue plains of this realm, they'd get nowhere; not that there was anywhere to go or find regardless. The best way to find a spirit was to call out to them, and so that's just what they did.

If they steadied their breathing and kept quiet enough, they could make out distance conversations in hushed tones, they sounded like gibberish to them though— whether they were speaking English or not, they didn't want Y/N to know what was being said, and so that's how it stayed.

Their first few attempts at summoning were futile, each time they'd wake up with a start, taking a surprisingly deep breath and breaking out in a coughing fit, Wanda vigilantly by their side to help them through it, always offering a glass of water or a cough drop. 

The pair began to hang out outside of Y/N’s attempts to contact Pietro, by now the two both knew they most likely wouldn’t find his spirit, but neither of them mentioned this, thinking giving up on the summoning would mean they’d stop hanging out. Of course this likely wasn’t the case, but anxieties between the two certainly made it seem so.

One thing the two seemed to bond over a lot was food; it was what Y/N used to introduce themself to her and now Wanda was teaching Y/N a childhood recipe, opening herself up to them. There were little things the two did that everyone on the team seemed to notice except for them; for example, when telling Y/N to stir the food, she place her hands softly over their own to show them how to do it, her touch lingering longer than it should have. Occasionally other avengers would point this out, only being met with blushes by the two of them and various statements of denial, but with those statements of denial came coy but questioning looks from one to another as if to ask if they really meant that.

“It’s always best to try summoning on a full stomach, you never know how long it’s going to take so you should always be in good condition.” Y/N explains, cleaning the plates they’d just used to eat.

“How did you get your powers?” Wanda asked, warily, getting her powers wasn’t the best experience of her life and she’d hate to know something similar had happened to Y/N.

Drying up the plates, Y/N leans against the counter and faces her, “They run in the family.. sort of .. I mean, everyone on my mums side has some kind of fascination with the supernatural, but I’ve by far shown the most power in generations, apparently.”

Hearing that put a smile on Wanda’s face, she was glad it was something that came naturally to Y/N and that they could so easily embrace it.

Done with the washing, Y/N held an arm out for Wanda, her gladly taking it, and the two walked side by side ready for another attempt.

Y/N found themself once again in the place they'd now dubbed their own personal blue hell. They shivered, fiddling with the fraying hem of their sleeves and looked around. It was empty, of course, it always was. Occasionally they'd accidentally summon someone, but sensing that they weren't wanted, they often left quickly.

"Pietro?" Y/N yells, cupping their mouth to try enhance the sound of their voice, it was no use, "Wanda misses you.."

They were yet to find a buzz word to pique the spirits attention.

After a few more minutes of waiting, Y/N sat down, they sighed exaggeratedly,

"Quick bastard, powers probably made him move realms quicker too.." They muttered angrily in defeat, about to begin their process to return back to Wanda.

Just as they closed their eyes, Y/N felt a sudden gush of air pass them, jumping, they looked around. Nothing.

Groaning, Y/N put their head in their hands, at this point they were just being teased.

Another gush of wind went by and Y/N swore.

There was one final gush, stopping when a bright light stood in front of Y/N. It was impossible to make out what, or rather who, it was, no features discernable through the blue light that shone out the figure, so bright Y/N had to cover their eyes.

After a few seconds, Y/N knew they needed to question it, ".. Pietro..?"

The figure moved, tilting its head and trying to speak back, but just like everyone else here, it was distorted and hard to make out.

The longer Y/N looked at the figure, the less it began to shine, features becoming more readable.

Just as its face was finally revealed, Y/N only just catching a glimpse of its face, they awoke back in Wanda's room, the red-head leaning over them with a worried expression.

"Y/N!" She exclaimed, helping them sit up and handing them tissues, it was only then that they realised their nose had been bleeding, "I was so worried." She kept her hands on their shoulders.

Y/N looked at her confused, tilting their head in question.

"I—.. You, you starting shaking and mumbling something, then your nose started bleeding," She looked down nervously, "I've been trying to wake you up for ages, nothing was working.."

She was clearly distressed, her hair a mess from running her hands through it and tears brimming her eyes.

"Wanda..." Y/N pulled the girl into a tight hug, "it's okay, I'm fine," They reassured.

Wanda sniffled and pulled back, "We.. We should stop trying to do this.. I don't want it to hurt you." She says sternly after calming down.

Though disheartened by the comment, Y/N knew it was coming, Wanda’s one condition from the start had been that they stop immediately should something go wrong.

As Wanda and Y/N had feared in their heads, they didn’t seem to speak as much since stopping the seances. It was weird, like something had changed, Y/N would try make conversation with Wanda but she’d only give them a guilty sort of look and make an excuse to leave the interaction.

It started to frustrate Y/N after a while but they didn’t want to push her, they knew they never should of suggested summoning Pietro, it would only bound to cause more heartbreak for the poor girl. Knowing this, they wanted nothing more to fix it; they never wanted to go against Wanda’s wishes, but they were just so close the last time they tried and knew that they couldn’t give up till they succeeded.

A week later, Y/N was content, but clearly exhausted, they would try summon Pietro’s spirit often, thinking that they could surprise Wanda, but they’d gotten so used to trying with her by their side offering comfort that it know became difficult to carry out this ritual alone. By now they'd accepted that perhaps this one spirit was just too far gone to bring back.

Reluctantly, contradictory to their original plan of letting Wanda approach them first, Y/N decided they needed to say something. They refused to go see her empty handed though, they made her an overly extravagant mug of hot chocolate in order to satiate her sweet tooth. Besides, it was much better to talk over a drink.

Opening her door after knocking was awkward, making a mug for themself too, the whip cream and marshmallows piled high, Y/N had no hands free. This caused them to need to do an awkward elbow maneuver with the door handle, the drinks threatening to spill. Wanda gave Y/N a funny look for a second, questioning their difficulty to open the door, before noticing the two mugs in their hands and quickly made her way over to them to take them.

“It’s just the way you like it..!” Y/N says, looking down at the floor and grimacing at where some of the hot chocolate had stained right outside of Wanda’s room; they’d have to remember to clean that up later if a janitor didn't get to it first.

Wanda smiles, humming, she thanks Y/N and puts the drinks down. The two sip on them awkwardly for a minute, unsure of what to talk about without addressing the elephant in the room. The two of them seemed to think alike, breaking the silence in unison,

“I missed you.”

Both seemed shocked by the others words, eyes widening and cheeks dusting a warm hue, before laughing. 

Wanda held her hand out for Y/N and they took it, hands resting intertwined on the coffee table, “I’m sorry for avoiding you, I just... seeing you like that.. I felt like it was my fault.”

Guilt pang in Y/N’s chest and they shook their head, giving Wanda’s hand a comforting squeeze, “It’s my fault, I should know my limits, I do know my limits, but I decided to exceed them anyway. I didn’t mean to make you feel bad.”

“Maybe,” Wanda starts, a teasing undertone in her voice which lightens the mood, “You could take me out to apologies?” 

The suggestion alone was enough to knock the wind out of Y/N, they did a double take before finally bringing themself to respond, “Like a.. like a date..?”

“If that’s what you want.” God, this girl could be the death of Y/N.

“You know, this whole time I’ve been berating myself in my head for liking you.” Y/N chuckles, letting Wanda in on the secret, knowing from her amused expression that she had been doing the same, “so, its a date then?”

A wide smile spread across their face being able to say that, widening further as Wanda nods in confirmation. This whole time Y/N had thought the only way they’d be able to get to Wanda’s heart was to bring her brother back, that ended up not being the case at all. 

They realised when thinking this, zoning out, they’d been staring at Wanda this whole time, who looked back at them with a bright red blush across her face, the sight was almost too adorable for Y/N to handle.

Wanda looked at her and Y/N’s joined hands and then back to their eyes, “Could I.. kiss you?” she asks catching Y/N off guard, “To seal the agreement to our date!” She adds on flustered, the line sounding much smoother in her head than it did aloud.

Y/N didn’t seem to catch the awkwardness in her words, nodding enthusiastically, then toning it down quickly thinking that it was too much, and lent forwards, Wanda doing the same.

They closed their eyes, tilting their head to the side in order to not ruin the moment by accidently bumping noses or heads.

As their lips touched, everything felt just right, it was like electricity and fireworks, like the perfect first kiss every book seemed to describe. It was like a gush of fresh air, and as the two pulled away they gave each other matching coy smiles. Fully invested in each other, it was like nothing else existed around them. Maybe that’s why they failed to notice a new addition to the room.

A fake gagging sounds comes from behind the two, causing them to jump and quickly look for the source of it. Like the realm Y/N had traveled to many times before, this figure was blue, but now in the realm of the living it wasn’t as bright nor did it sound so distorted. It took a second, but the two finally realised what, or rather who, was in Wanda’s room; Pietro.

Wanda gasped, letting go of Y/N’s hand and standing up, hesitantly approaching Pietro who gave her a smug smile. The two looked at each other for a while before going in for a hug, Pietro spinning Wanda around. Y/N’s heart warmed at the sight , though it also frustrated them a bit, if they’d known all it would take to summon him was to get with Wanda, they would have made a move much sooner.

Y/N got up and nervously stood behind Wanda, not wanting to say anything and ruin their reunion. Tears brimmed in Wanda’s eyes, but this time they could tell they were from happiness. She stepped away from Pietro and put a comforting hand on Y/N’s arm.

“So you two are a thing now?” Pietro questions, crossing his arms and giving Y/N the classic look of an over protective brother who would kill them should they hurt Wanda. Looking back at Pietro, Y/N noticed he was still slightly transparent, he wouldn’t be able to keep up a physical form in this realm for long.

Wanda looked down, blinking away her tears and looking back up with a smile on her face, corners of her mouth quivering slightly, “You didn’t see that coming?” She uses Pietro’s catchphrase against him, voice wavering slightly as she does so. Hand still on Y/’N’s arm, she lead them and Pietro back over to the table, the three would have a lot to talk about till Pietro had to leave once again.

Taglists;

Wanda Maximoff Taglist — @tatesimper

[uomo-accattivante]

Tiffany Haddish talks about working on The Card Counter with Oscar Isaac and Paul Schrader in the following article:

EXCERPT:

After Tiffany Haddish achieved mainstream success with her outlandish performance in 2017’s hit comedy “Girls Trip,” she was determined to strike while the iron was hot — and she has never stopped striking. Since that film came out, Haddish has published a best-selling memoir; starred in eight films (and appeared in a bunch more), as well as the sitcom “The Last O.G.”; released the Netflix comedy special “Black Mitzvah”; and started the talk show “Friday Night Vibes.” Given her professional voraciousness, it was probably inevitable that Haddish would try her hand at heavy drama, which is what she has now done by co-starring alongside Oscar Isaac in “The Card Counter,” written and directed by that legendary cinematic examiner of guilt and expiation Paul Schrader. Her appearance in the film, which will have its world premiere at the Venice Film Festival in September, would seem to mark a new level of industry acceptance for Haddish’s manifold talents—though Haddish pushed back on that notion. “People have said, ‘You’ve crossed over, Tiffany,’” says Haddish, who is 41. “But I haven’t. There’s this big film festival coming up and I’m seeing what they’re doing for my counterparts: A lot of them are getting paid to be there. I am not. I am paying to be there. But I’m willing to invest in myself. I’ve always made a return on that investment.”

I saw that you’ve been training to play Florence Griffith Joyner.1 Did getting ready to play an Olympic athlete make you watch the Olympics any differently? No. I didn’t think any different. I’ve always thought I would play an Olympic athlete at some point in my career because it’s something I’ve always wanted to do. Everything that I have done in my acting career is something that I’d already wanted to do.

In that case, what were you looking to do with “The Card Counter”? I’ve always wanted to be a pimp.

Which, if I’m not mistaken, you have some prior experience with? I kind of was one.2 In her memoir, “The Last Black Unicorn,” Haddish recounted a brief period in her pre-comedy career when she facilitated paid sexual relationships between young men and older women. Not necessarily the best at it, but I tried. In “The Card Counter,” there’s La Linda, my character. She’s an agent-slash-pimp. She’s a middleman. She’s getting this guy to these poker events and getting him funded. She’s fronting, giving him money to do things. I’m not slanging him, but I’m definitely slanging his talents.

What was most interesting about working with Paul Schrader?3 He’s kind of a strange bird. He was like: “Tiffany, when you talk, it sounds like you’re singing. Stop singing.” I’m like, “I’m not singing.” “Yes, you are.” “I don’t sing when I talk.” “You’re definitely singing when you’re talking.” Then I realized, oh wait, I do sing when I talk. That’s just the way I talk. I think it comes from doing standup. So it was a lot of me working on trying not to have the singsong voice. He did talk about the themes of the film and stuff. I’m like, “Why is Oscar’s character doing this [expletive] with this furniture?”4 Oscar Isaac’s traveling-poker-pro character in “The Card Counter” meticulously covers the furniture and fixtures in his motel rooms in his own clean white fabric. He was like: “That’s not your problem to worry about. That’s more on Oscar. Your character, you’re a charmer. But not as charming as you are in real life. Be charming but not too charming.”

And how was Oscar Isaac? He was horrible.

Oh? Nah, he was amazing. That man is so freaking talented, and there’s a little piece of me that was like, Is he prettier than me? This man is gorgeous.

He is an attractive man. Very attractive man. But I’m good at finding something ugly on somebody so that I don’t get too mesmerized. It was difficult with him. I found one thing: He kept wearing this one shirt. I was like, This shirt is so damn ugly. [Laughs.] It wasn’t him. It was the shirt. But he’s a beautiful person. He was so helpful. Like, “Do you want to run lines?” It’s hard to find other actors that are willing to participate and be a team player. For me, anyway, it seems to have been difficult.

Are there ways you’ve learned to get people to give you what you want? I rarely get what I want. God gives me what I need. You know, I wanted to be a cast member on “S.N.L.” Never got that, but I did get to host, and I got an Emmy because of it. So God gives me what I need. What’s the saying? The rejection is my protection. A lot of people can’t handle rejection. But it always pans out for me the way it is supposed to.

1 In addition to starring as Griffith Joyner, Haddish is a producer of the biopic about the track star, who died in 1998 at age 38.

2 In her memoir, “The Last Black Unicorn,” Haddish recounted a brief period in her pre-comedy career when she facilitated paid sexual relationships between young men and older women.

3 Schrader, of course, was the screenwriter on, among other classics, “Taxi Driver” and “Raging Bull,” as well as the writer-director of the Academy Award-nominated “First Reformed” from 2017.

4 Oscar Isaac’s traveling-poker-pro character in “The Card Counter” meticulously covers the furniture and fixtures in his motel rooms in his own clean white fabric.

(The rest of this article can be read via the source link below.)

[nevervalentines]

on the nights that dani can’t sleep, jamie keeps her company. 

**

Some nights are worse than others.

Logically, Dani knows that she fell asleep in her bed. Jamie had gone to sleep before her, but she’d stayed up late, sifting through boxes they had dragged out of the attic that morning.

The old tenant – who Jamie and Dani have started just affectionately referring to as Agnes, inventing convoluted backstories when they get bored – had left crates of her castaways in the crawlspace behind the bedroom, in the attic hatch at the top of the stairs, and their landlord promised a break on the rent if they sorted through it for him.

Dani doesn’t mind. Jamie’s been working steadily on some sort of project, eyes bright in that way Dani knows, even now, means she’ll tell her when she’s ready – but she has a sneaking suspicion it has something to do with the storefront that emptied out on Main Street a few weeks before.

She needs something to fill her days beyond worry, beyond avoiding her own reflections, a habit she feels she only had the luxury of a few days without. It’s not as bad now, not with Jamie beside her, but the prickling unease creeps up at night, a feeling like being watched, one that burns when the candlelight doesn’t.

She’d found a dusty cardboard box of beaten, well-loved paperbacks among the junk in the attic, and laid them out on the living room rug carefully, paging through the broken spines, earmarking a few to send to Miles and Flora, for when they’re older, setting aside others that she can imagine Jamie nose deep in on the porch in jean shorts and a too-tiny tank top.

She’d crawled into bed sometime around midnight, and Jamie, half-asleep, had immediately turned into her warmth, burying her face in her chest, arm snaking around her waist.

Sleep had almost come easy, tangled in a soft quilt and Jamie’s long, bare legs, but now –

Water fills her mouth, her eyes, her nose. Dani can feel the pressure deep in her ears, like she is 12-years-old again, chasing neighbors to the bottom of the in-ground pool in Edmund’s back yard, daring each other to stay down the longest, until lungs were fit to bursting, and eardrums throbbed with the rhythm of a heartbeat.

Then, it was as simple as pushing off the cool, tile bottom, straining for watery sunlight and that first, ecstatic gasping inhale. Now, there is no relief.

Dani wakes up drowning.

It’s Jamie that seems to save her. She hears the repetition of her name, a worried hum in the back of a throat, then a warm hand cupping her neck, her cheek, stroking gentle over her forehead.

“Dani, baby, it’s okay.” The hands help her sit up, a body curls around her back. “Just a dream, sweetheart. Just a dream. I’m right here. Breathe, Dani, breathe.”

She opens her eyes and it’s like she can see Jamie from a great distance, through the water. Her eyes are wild, image distorted, but she looks older somehow. She is screaming.

They are both screaming.

When she finally wrenches free from the nightmare, she is sweat-drenched and trembling. Jamie, her Jamie, is holding her tight against her chest, smoothing back Dani’s matted bangs and murmuring nonsense against her temple.

Gasping, Dani thinks she might cry, and realizes her cheeks are already wet. She turns her head to find Jamie’s wide, worried eyes.

“There you are,” Jamie says. She exhales, shaky. “That was a bad one, huh?”

Dani nods, chokes around her own voice until she manages the two-syllable break of Jamie’s name.

Soothing, Jamie cradles her closer, turns a kiss into the apple of her cheek, rubs her nose against her temple. In the sling of her hips, the warm-soft-damp of the inside of bare thighs holds Dani close, and that grounds her as much as anything – to be held, to have no one at her back but someone she trusts completely.

“Jamie,” this again, lips tucked into her mouth, a little embarrassed now. “I’m so sorry –”

Jamie clicks her tongue, chiding. “Don’t apologize.” She shifts out from under Dani’s weight, slides to the end of the bed. “I was just thinking I’d gotten my eight hours, anyway.”

Eyes cast to the bedside, Dani can see the neon digits of the alarm clock only advertise 4:30 a.m., but she doesn’t correct her, just reaches for her, a little put out that Jamie has already moved away.

“Alright, clingy, let me just get you a fresh shirt.”

Dani manages a laugh, a little tear-soaked, and sniffles. “I’m so sweaty.”

Rummaging through the top drawer of their armoire, Jamie turns to her curiously. “Like you’ve jumped in a pool. Someone tell your body it’s October, it’s well freezing in here.”

She tosses a t-shirt toward the bed, and Dani recognizes it as one of Jamie’s – black, with a scratchy decal boasting Blondie’s 1977 tour circuit. Despite the lingering sour of the dream, she feels a pulse of pleasure that Jamie would choose one of her own shirts to outfit her in. The smell alone is comforting, even though their laundry loads have long mixed, the fabric still holds something of Jamie about it.

She peels off her own shirt, skin bare underneath, and can practically hear the Looney Tune-esque sproing as Jamie’s eyes narrow in on – and instantly avert away from – her chest. It makes her giggle around another sniff, and she preens a little bit, ruffles one hand through her hair while shaking out the fresh shirt.

Jamie stops pretending not to look, wobbles a step closer instead.

“No fair,” she says, lowly. “You’re in a vulnerable state, stop showing off.”

“I’m not doing anything,” Dani says, though, yeah, maybe she is a little bit. It’s new, this – that thing where watching someone else be turned on by her also kind of gets her off. That even in the near-black of their bedroom, lit only by the glow of the clock and muted streetlights, her naked chest is enough to give Jamie that dizzy, milk-drunk kind of look.

She pulls the shirt over her head, snuggles into the fabric, dipping her nose into the collar for a whiff of detergent.

“Back to bed?” she asks, though her voice sounds unconvincing, even to her.

Skeptical, Jamie steps closer, lays a hand on her knee. “Could you sleep?”

“Probably not,” Dani admits. Shrugs. “I might just go lay down on the couch. I don’t want to keep you up.”

Jamie is already heading out of the room, looking back at Dani like she’s confused why she isn’t following.

“We’ll put something on,” she says. Holds out a hand, and says, awfully, terribly, like it’s common sense, like there’s no other option, “you aren’t waiting up on your own.”

There is still the phantom catch of water in her lungs, still faces forming in the shadows of the room in her peripherals, ghosts there, waiting with catching hands – but the inevitably of it feels impossible in light of Jamie’s certainty. Jamie who, after stepping through the doorway, knows without looking that Dani will follow.

**

The worst nights, the nights like these, when the Beast presses like a headache, they pop an old VHS tape into the VCR and Jamie tucks behind her on the living room couch. The blue wash from the portly, pot-bellied television set and the whir-click-hiss of the VHS unspooling triggers a placebo of near-instant calm.

The VHS tapes are also a gift from dear (likely departed) Agnes. A painstakingly catalogued box of taped Happy Days reruns, with careful handwriting detailing the original airdate, and the episode range on the cassette. Inexplicably the thirteenth episode of every season is missing. Entire nights have been spent arguing the logic of it to no avail.

Like she does every time, Dani compliments (presumably) Agnes’s organization. “Really did us a favor, huh?” she says, sinking back into Jamie’s arms, accepting a kiss against her cheek before wriggling closer.

“Is it a favor?” Jamie asks, a little snarky, nudging her hips against Dani’s, pinned between her and the back of the couch. “Or is this some sort of purgatory? Am I due to spend the rest of my life watching Happy Days reruns before daybreak with my sweaty girlfriend?”

“Hey!” It’s a difficult angle, but Dani tries to swat at Jamie anyway. Jamie just holds her tighter, buries a laugh at the nape of Dani’s neck, then a kiss.

“I’m not sweaty,” Dani says, a beat, “anymore. And we both know hell isn’t a 70s sitcom.”

Internally, the word girlfriend is spiraling through her head in a frenzied whirr. Forbidden. Delicious.

Jamie grants her another kiss, this one just under her jaw. “It better not be.”

The drone of the television in the background is enough to scare the shadows away, and Jamie drags a knit throw over the both of them, hooks her chin over her shoulder, one hand playing at the drawstring of Dani’s sweatpants. They’re lazy enough, sleepy enough, that they don’t even bother to fast forward through the commercials, just let the tape run through seven-year-old advertisements for Kellogg’s cereal and sugar-free JELL-O.

The world narrows to this sliver of couch, to Jamie stroking low on her stomach, a hand slipped up under her shirt now, unrushed, nearly unintentional. She traces shapes on the soft of Dani’s belly, inches up toward Dani’s breast like she’s considering, before running her nails gently back down.

“Don’t start something you can’t finish,” Dani says, voice slurred with almost-sleep, spooning back into Jamie’s hips until she hears her hiss.

“Who said anything about finishing?” Jamie murmurs. Teeth at the lobe of Dani’s ear, nosing into skin. The click of mouth on the metal stud of Dani’s earing, breath warm. “I could do this all night.”

Eventually, she’ll take pity, tune out the laugh track, slip her hand under the band of Dani’s sweats, mouthing at her neck until the Lady is the last thing on Dani’s mind.

Credits roll, the tape clunks to an anticlimactic finish, and the blue screen washes them, static crackling in fizzing threads.

“I change my mind,” Jamie groans. Dani turns in her arms, reaching for her wrist, digging nails in until Jamie curls two fingers inside her, swallowing her gasps, “If this is purgatory, I think I’ll stay.”