#really not sure about the placement of the lines but whatever I can’t be fucking bothered anymore sjhdhdjdjks. happy new year ig

[weepingvoidpenguin]

One of Your Favorites

Jealous Bucky x Reader

Summary: You have an objective. Get Rumlow to confess. Simple enough, right? No. Aside from his usual condescending attitude towards you, Bucky has made it extremely apparent that he doesn’t think you’re capable of - well, anything, but especially not handling Rumlow. And yet, he is the biggest challenge of this entire ordeal.

Warning: T R I G G E R WARNING!! ATTEMPTED SA, DRUGS, language, light smut. PLEASE PLEASE PLEASE DO NOT READ IF SA WILL TRIGGER YOU. 

Word Count: 8.3k

   “We have good intel stating he’s working as a double agent for HYDRA. Selling information, exploiting tactics, even going so far as to tell them where we’ll be and when.” Natasha scanned the room, making sure she had everyone’s attention during the briefing. 

   You slouched back in your swivel chair and twisted to-and-fro slightly with your hands gripping the arm rests on either side. It took all of your willpower to act engrossed in her words. And you meant every single drop. You’d been paying attention, sure, but the only issue was the dominating presence two seats to your right and directly in your line of sight to Natasha. You rolled your chair to the left to clear the path for the third time, only for him to block your way without missing a beat. The growl that left your mouth was nearly involuntary. Nearly.

   How long would this man act like a child? Despite his graceful and seemingly unsuspecting movements, you were fully aware his placement was intentional. This was not the first, nor did you doubt that it would be the last, time that Bucky acted impudently toward you. Frankly, you’d grown bored of his behavior. It was the same thing everyday. He would act a nuisance during the briefings, speak over you whenever he had the chance, steal the limelight from you and invalidate any concerns or thoughts you shared. The whole charade grew tiring and he had been dancing on thin ice for months now.

   You averted your gaze from burning holes through the freshly washed, brown locks and switched your attention back up to the redhead. Thankfully, too, because you managed to catch the end of her sentence just as she locked eyes with you.

   “And that’s why Y/N is going to be the one to extract the information from him,” she finished.

   You blinked, “Wait, what?” 

   Bucky straightened his posture and threw a quick glance your way, “Yeah, what? She’s got no heat, couldn’t toast marshmallows if we gave her all day. She shouldn’t lead this, she wouldn’t know how,”

   “Well, tonight might be a good time to start learning, then,” Steve chimed in, throwing a wink your way. You smiled and appreciated his aid, not because you needed it but because at this point, you were seething and if you opened your mouth to defend yourself this meeting would go south, quickly. Luckily, Steve always believed you were capable of a great deal of things and knew you strove for more experience so any opportunity to lead or expand was one he thought you should take. 

   “Besides,” Tony spoke up, twirling a platinum pen between his fingers from across the table, “our little double-agent has always had the hots for Y/N so unless you’re gonna be the one to bat your eyelashes at him and get him alone in a room, Mr. Barnes, we have to use his own flaws against him.” He turned to face you and held up a hand, “Not to say that liking you is a flaw, you’re great Hot-Stuff but exploiting him is our best option indefinitely,”

   “Do I have to seduce him?” You huffed, crossing your arms over your chest and raising a brow towards Nat, trying your damned hardest to avoid the unmistakable glare the brown-haired super soldier was sending your way. 

   “The only thing you have to do is extract any information on him that you can. Get him a little drunk, catch him in a slip-up or two, take note of any inconsistent stories and be on your merry way,” she reassured, “How you manage to do that is up to you,”

   “Ooh, extortion,” Clint chirped up from the far back corner, his hands rubbing together maliciously around an arrow he pulled from his sheathe, something you noticed he did a lot when he was uninterested; be it a person, mission, or conversation.

   “No. Not extortion,” Steve shut it down and you chuckled at how Clint’s countenance fell into one of disappointment. 

   “Not yet anyway,” Natasha mumbled and you sighed as she walked around the room and handed each of you a folder with your individual objectives inside.

   “But he’s such a pervert,” you grumbled.

   “All the easier,” 

~

   The rest of the day was drudged with Nat while she taught the pertinence of body language (both yours and theirs), verbal ruses, and overall ensnarement. You bat your eyelashes until you were certain you would catch enough wind to fly away, smirked enough that your cheeks began to ache and raised your eyebrows ‘til you felt the impending wrinkles on your forehead. By the end of the drill you weren’t sure you were even going to make it to the company party from the migraine creeping its way on.

   “How’s the bait coming along?” His voice alone caused you to roll your eyes but you paid no mind while you rubbed at your temples and stood up alongside Natasha.

   “She’s not gonna be able to lie to me any time soon but she can flirt her way to whatever she wants,”

   “Benefits of targeting a narcissistic misogynist, they don’t think anyone can fool them.” Tony belted as he sauntered into the room with strawberries, offering them out to you while he munched on one.

   “She’ll still mess it up,” Bucky countered, “Make someone else do it,”

   You plucked the fruit off Tony’s tray and examined it, trying to figure out whether you were going to consume it or use it as a weapon.

   “I really appreciate your words of encouragement, James. Unfortunately, they’re not wanted, nor are they needed.” You bit into the fruit and glided towards the door, looking over your shoulder at the super soldier, “So unless you actually have something to contribute, I suggest you stay the hell out of my way while I get the job done,”

   Nat walked out behind you and handed you a tiny, skin-colored device meant to conceal itself and you placed it in your ear. 

   “The conversation is gonna be recorded so we can catch any inconsistencies. We’ll all be able to hear what you’re saying so tread on delicate waters but don’t be afraid to shake mountains if you have to,”

   You nodded and opened your door for her to enter your room knowing she’d want to help you get ready for the event. Natasha, shocking as it turns out, enjoys company while preparing for events. She would much prefer to be surrounded by people than be alone. You never had gall to ask her why that is. Or maybe you respected her too much to ask.

   An hour had passed, maybe two, but you enjoyed the silence between you both. There was no need to fill the empty quiet when it was so comfortable and welcoming. You two spoke without words at times and that was probably your favorite personal skill. Eventually, there came a knock on your door and you opened to find Wanda with her flat iron and make-up bag in tow. It’d long since been decided that your room was the gathering center.

   Wanda helped you finish touching up your outfit and you waited on your bed while they finished getting ready. Nat occasionally quizzed you on certain situations and how you should act depending on the tones and moods of the conversation. You tried to explain that you didn’t have difficulty reading a room but Nat tested you all the same. 

   “And if he puts his hand on your thigh?” She called out from your bathroom.

   “Then he loses it,” you practically sang in response.

   You were met with a flying hairbrush and laughed at the onslaught.

   “You’re not the only one with that mentality,” Wanda called out as well, her iron glossing over thin strands of hair.

   “Nat knows I can handle myself.” You sat up on the bed and went over to your closet to collect your favorite pair of shoes to go along with the formal attire Nat selected for tonight. “What a coincidence that we happen to have a company party the same night we have to extract information,” you hollered over your shoulder, moving aside terribly worn shoes while you scoured for the pair you had in mind.

   “This objective has been in the works for weeks now,” Nat released the tendril of hair from around the barrel and pinned it to her head so it could cool.

   “Wow, thanks for the heads up, then.” You gripped the desired pair and placed them beside your nightstand for later.

   “The plan wasn’t solid until we knew for a fact that Rumlow was coming. It’s a company party so it’s not mandatory but once he heard you were making an appearance, it didn’t take very much persuading,”

   You rolled your eyes and plopped back down on your mattress, “He’s so annoying, I doubt I can hold much of a conversation with him,”

   “Take a shot or two to ease your nerves, if he sees you drinking it’ll put him at ease too. He’ll be more inclined to drink,” Natasha recommended. “But don’t act too out of character. If you were always curt and short with him and suddenly you start acting over-friendly, he may get suspicious. He’s an idiot but he’s a paranoid one,”

   You nodded, taking a mental note to have a half-empty bottle in your grasp when Rumlow arrives. If he thinks you’ve already been drinking, he might also consider catching up. 

   “Y/N? Not uptight for once?” Wanda sarcastically questioned. “I can’t picture it,”

   “Oh, fuck off,” you grumbled and in turn received laughter from the two girls. “Besides, of all of us I’m by far the least uptight. Barnes takes the cake for that one,”

   There was a beat of silence that you didn’t register before you were met with a response.

   “Ya know, he’s not as bad as you paint him out to be.” Nat unpinned the curl from her head and moved on to the next section, “He’s got some serious loyalty and always willing to volunteer first for everything,”

   You lifted your head to stare at her reflection through the mirror, “What are you talking about? He’s annoying and irate and lacks a filter,”

   “Mmm, irate isn’t the word I would use,” Wanda countered, looking over to Natasha.

   Nat shook her head in response, “I’d lean more towards . . . over-protective,” 

  “Much better,” Wanda agreed.

   You squinted your eyes at their image and felt the corners of your lips turn downwards, “Over-protective? Since when are you two defending Barnes?”

   “We’re not defending him, per say.” Wanda glanced over to Nat, “We’re just trying to give you a fresh perspective,” 

   “You could give me a brand new pair of eyes and I’d still see him the same,” you retorted, now leaning on your elbows due to the strain on your neck. 

   They ignored the comment, “And he’s only annoying to you,”

   “You’re telling me he doesn’t annoy you at all?” You asked, an eyebrow raised.

   “More like . . . he doesn’t go out of his way to mess with us.” Nat applied a nude color onto her lips.

   “So you agree that he goes out of his way to irritate me,” you stated rather than asked.

   “That’s been made very apparent,” Wanda responded. “But you have to wonder why,”

   You huffed a little and sprawled back out on the bed just to result in staring at the ceiling above. If you looked hard enough your mind would create pictures from the chaos of the cracks and shapes began to form. Sometimes, when the night lay still and life seemed to dwindle at the edges of your reality, you could swear a familiar face fashioned together and your imagination ran wild with the images you’d see. Some that brought a warmth to your cheeks even now. 

   You shot up out of bed and shook the memories from your vision. Ugh. He haunts you even when he’s not actively tormenting you. How he’s managed to crawl his way so deeply within your skin you had no idea but you fought for control of your thoughts whenever you caught them slipping into that hellhole.

   “Or slipping into euphoria,” Wanda chimed in.

   “Wanda!” You scolded, crossing your arms, “Euphoria my ass,”

   “Yeah, he thinks so too,” she continued and you chucked the abandoned hairbrush back their way. 

   “Stay out of my head,” you jokingly sniped at her but was met with a low chuckle.

   “I didn’t even have to be in your head to know what you were thinking of,” Nat defended and caught your weapon of choice.

   “Are you guys done yet?” You rolled your eyes and stretched yourself out before swiping up the pair of heels you’d chosen and sliding them onto your feet.

   “Why? Are you in a hurry to see a certain someone?” Natasha teased and Wanda let out an eruption of laughter.

   “All right, I’m done.” You made a beeline for the door and threw it open, “Lock up when you’re finished!” You bellowed over your shoulder and made your way to the top floor of the building where all the parties are typically held.

   You didn’t run into anyone on the way up and you used that time to calm yourself, prying inch by inch away from the invasive thoughts that called for you in the darkest hours of the night. But, then again, maybe those tormenting thoughts weren’t that bad? You mean, he certainly IS handsome, very much so actually. And he has the most knee-wobbling smirk you’d ever come to know, not to mention those little tricks he does with his knives always manage to entrance you. God, did he know how to use a knife. 

   On more than one occasion had you caught yourself staring at how his hands encapsulated the hilt of the blade. How they clenched and relaxed, drawing out some of the more prominent veins on one of the extremities; of course, you were even more so enticed by the hand he hid as well. You’d imagined what it felt like to have such strong hands grip onto your thighs and coax you into spreading them open with just a few teasing touches here and there. You couldn’t fathom the front you’d put up would last very long, he was stellar at pulling reactions from you. He’d see you break under his caresses and he’d degrade you like he always did but this time it’d emit a different response from you, one that made you whimper and shake. At that, he’d probably call you a good girl, he definitely seems the type to switch between degradation and praise, and would press his mouth up just where you wanted it the most. You’d try your hardest to be quiet but damn the way that tongue moved against you and the way he’d pull you harder against his face at each sound of pleasure you let slip past your lips. He’d enjoy it, too. Eyes closed as he devours you, he likes to put on a show for you to watch. Give you a memory that’ll slick your thighs later that night if he hadn’t fucked you into a coma by then. He’d make you watch him and if you dared to close your eyes you’d earn a firm, cold smack on your ass. He knows you like when he uses temperature play. He growls a little too, he can’t help his innate behavior. Then, just as the accumulation is coming to its apex he’d pull away abruptly and kiss you straight on your mouth so you can taste yourself and that’d earn him another whimper which would result in another smack that leads to that cold metal trailing its way to your core and just as he pushes the tip of his finger inside-

   You cough and straighten your posture as the elevator door opens. When had you leaned up against the back wall of the elevator? Oh Gods, you could feel the slick at the apex of your thighs and you squeezed them together as inconspicuously as you could in fear that you were producing a . . . scent that would be rather difficult to conceal. But the slick only grew worse when you locked eyes with the person stepping into the elevator.

   Fuck.

   “That’s what you chose to wear?” He asked, a certain venom in his tone that immediately calmed the ache in your heat.

   “And what would you have me wear instead, Barnes?” You quipped back, your body facing forward as he took his place beside you in the cramped space.

   There was a beat of silence. Then another. “Not that,” he responded.

   “Well I’ll make sure to ask you next time since you have such impeccable taste,” you retorted, your eyes yet to abandon the sight of the closing doors.

   You weren’t sure of all the effects of the Super Soldier Serum that had been injected into Bucky and all that it heightened but you prayed to any God that would listen that his hearing wasn’t one of those things. You were too preoccupied with attempting to settle the hot pulse beating between your legs to worry about how loud your discomfort came across.

   “What do you look so nervous about?” Bucky’s gruff voice prodded. “You can’t possibly be nervous about the mission considering how big-headed you are,”

   You took a deep, long breath and held it to soothe you. Had you not been so previously preoccupied, you’d have given him hell for the insult. “I’m not nervous about that,” you sniped and rested back against the cool wall to satiate your burning skin before lifting your gaze to him only to find him already examining you.

   “Of course not, I just said that,” he retorted, bringing a gloved hand to his face to rub along his jaw, “there’s obviously nothing for you to worry about,”

   You scoffed, “And why is that, Barnes?” Cue the dramatic crossing of your arms. 

   “You’re smarter than Rumlow and significantly better trained. Overall, he really doesn’t hold a candle to your ability,” He paused for a second, his whole frame tensing until he remembered to relax, “But that’s not really saying much considering it’s Rumlow,” 

   You hadn’t noticed you raised your eyebrows until you felt your face fall, “Ah, there he is. You had me worried there for a second, Barnes. Thought you might actually try something new and display common decency for once,”

   A corner of his mouth turned up subtly and he shook his head. You trailed your gaze down to his hidden hand and stared long enough to burn a hole through the fabric.

   “If something’s bothering you, Dollface, go ahead and speak up,” 

   You weren’t sure what possessed you to say anything, especially knowing how touchy the subject was for him but the words left your mouth anyway, “I don’t know why you insist on hiding yourself,”

   He lurched his head back, your statement seeming to have a physical affect on the man and you mentally slapped yourself for saying anything.

   “I’m not hiding myself,”

   “But you are,” you interrupted, your thoughts coming out in pools of candor, “you aren’t your hand. You aren’t your past. You are you. Presently. You’re not the Winter Soldier anymore. That’s not even the same hand you had back then. It’s not tainted and neither are you. I say drop the gloves,”

   “And why would I care about what you say?” He growled, his eyebrows furrowed together and his neck tight in potential restraint.

   The elevator dinged and you looked towards the opening doors, “You don’t have to but they don’t look right with your suit either.” You walked through the exit and sauntered over to the others who had already gotten the party started, leaving Bucky dumb-founded behind you. “I need a shot,”

   “Already ready,” Tony quipped up, holding the small glass in the air for everyone to behold before bringing his cheek to yours in mock welcoming, “This’ll up your tolerance for the next hour, try to get all your drinking done within that time-frame,”

   You pulled away with a warm smile after faux kissing his cheek, “Finally!” you displayed and threw the liquid back in one swift motion, your face scrunching together against your will.

   “Yeah, she’s got a kick to her,” he mumbled and handed you a fruity drink to chase it down with. 

   You went around and said hi to everyone as you recognized most of those present. You made small chatter with those lesser known and drank the liquid in your hand significantly quicker than you’d like to. You excused yourself after you finished the drink and walked over to the bar, scanning the room as you were handed another glass. No Rumlow in sight.

   You headed towards the foosball table and gripped the handles after setting the beverage down on the counter beside you. You flinched as a reflection of light caught your eye and at first you thought your glass was the source. Until your eyes fixated on the reflection’s actual origin. To your far right, and up a few steps you found Bucky conversing with Steve, a dull light emitting from his hand. Not a glove in sight.

   “So, where’s your boyfriend?” Sam inquired when he filled the opposing spot.

   You rolled your eyes, “Bucky’s not my boyfriend,”

   “Bucky?” Sam’s tone chirped up teasingly, a knowing look wearing on his face.

   Your grip tightened around the handles and you slowly pulled away to throw the little white ball through the circle, your hands immediately twisting the miniscule players around. Your eyes shot back and forth, your sight never leaving the darting sphere. Sam still managed to win the first point.

   “Ha!” He shouted in triumph, bringing his finger up as if to scold you, “Don’t think you got away with that comment either, Y/N,”

   ���What comment?” you questioned and gulped most of your drink before slamming it back down on the table.

   You heard your earpiece come to life with quiet static and you tried to keep your face masked. Rumlow had entered. Not a surprise either, the party was finally starting to pick up now.

   Sam threw the ball in and you turned the players meticulously this time, brute strength hadn’t helped you earlier so maybe you should take it slow. Steve made his way over to the table and threw his drink back, the liquid trickling down the side of his face before he wiped it away. Sam won the second point.

   “I play winner,” Tony chimed, standing beside Steve.

   You made a point to catch up and now you two were tied at three each. 

   “Best out of five?” You proposed, quirking an eyebrow at Sam.

   “If you didn’t want to play anymore you could’ve just said that,” he teased and you smirked at him as Tony made a subtle show of handing you another drink and you finished your second. “Loser takes two shots?”

   “Deal.” You nodded, knowing you didn’t have much of a choice as a small crowd began to form around you two. Rumlow amongst them. 

   Your jaw dropped when Sam shot the ball directly into your goal as soon as he’d let the ball go.

   “What the fuck?” You shouted, “No fair! That doesn’t count!”

   Thor erupted in laughter to your right and you blinked slowly, staring at the gargantuan man. 

   “It most certainly does,” Sam shouted back, his grin practically touching his ears.

   “Sam, take it easy on her,” Bucky muttered from beside him, quickly averting his gaze from yours and his expression loosened, “The brat hates losing,”

   “Brat?” You snarled.

   Bucky took a swig of his beer, watching you the entire time and you reeled back the fire beginning to form in your chest just to bring your drink up to your lips and chug the entire thing down. You handed it over to Tony who left to replace it. 

   “Last point,” Sam stated, “It’s not too late to quit now,”

   You shook your head and blinked away the feign distortion you were supposed to have. “Just play the ball,”

   “Don’t say I didn’t warn you,” he teased and threw the ball in. 

   You wanted to win. Desperately. But you had a character to play tonight and she was supposed to be drunk. So you hit your hand against the corner of the table just as Sam happened to make the winning point. You grumbled and threw him a glare when Tony broke through the crowd.

   “Coming through,” he shouted, handing two small glasses to you while you gripped your knuckles in pain. “Noooo, you’re not getting out of taking these. C’mon, take your punishment,”

   “Yes, Daddy,” you grumbled and cringed at your own words when the realization hit you. Whatever. You were supposed to be drunk, anyway. 

   “Daddy?” Tony quipped and pulled the drinks back towards himself, “Maybe you should be cut off,”

   “What?” You argued, leaning slightly on the table with your hand and snatching the drinks from Tony’s hold, effectively spilling some on yourself. “See?” You lifted up the half empty shot glass, “This barely counts as a shot,”

   “I’ll get her a new one,” Rumlow offered and disappeared before anyone could argue. 

   “She really doesn’t need another-” Bucky tried to interject and take the shots from you but you twisted around and chugged down the one full glass.

   Water.

   You looked up at Tony and his smirk was barely noticeable. But you could tell. Bucky nearly ripped the other drink from you but Tony blocked his path and you exaggerated your next drink as Rumlow broke back into the crowd, shot in tow.

   “Here.” Rumlow’s calloused hand held the drink up above you and you stared at him with a questioning look. “Open,” he ordered and the fire burning in your chest fought to destroy everything in its vicinity. You bit your lip in refrain but tossed your head back and opened your mouth.

   Static broke over your earpiece. Don’t drink that! Wanda’s voice erupted.

   Your eyes widened as the liquid made its way down but you coughed hard to stop whatever you could. 

   Why? Steve’s voice came through right after.

   You choked on the liquid and shut your eyes at the way it burned its way down. You reached your hand out to grab someone’s drink to ease the burning and grasped a tall glass and tossed it back. The burning didn’t ease up and you felt a hand rest on your back.

   “Are you okay?” Rumlow’s voice rang out and your skin nearly recoiled from the contact, “How about we get you some water?”

   You looked up at him when the burning subsided minimally and nodded your head, letting him lead the way to the bar. He parted the crowd and someone took step right behind you to follow when the presence suddenly died out abruptly. You turned around to check who it had been and found no one.

   Why? Steve asked again.

   Where’s Wanda? Bruce broke through.

   You lifted your head and flitted your gaze around the room until you found the familiar Sokovian on the couch, laying down with her eyes closed. You pulled away from Rumlow but his grip on your hand tightened and his steps grew in haste. You whirled your head to yell at him but the way the room swayed with the movement cause you to shut your mouth in surprise. 

   Didn’t Tony say you would have a higher tolerance?

   “Couch...” you muttered, pointing over your shoulder just in case your target was curious enough to ask but the message was delivered.

   Rumlow hoisted you up onto the bar stool and stood on your open side, using his body to keep you from falling over. Or to cage you in.

   “I don’t feel good,” You rested an elbow on the countertop and held your head up.

   “I can’t imagine you would. You’ve been chugging those drinks like they’re water.” Despite that, Rumlow motioned to the bartender and asked for two more.

   You giggled and your head lulled forward with the action. You let Rumlow catch you from tumbling over. Why did your body feel so heavy? Not to mention the way everything around you dazed about. You couldn’t catch a single action, let alone attempt to read Rumlow’s body language. But you did happen to notice the way his eyes searched the room before coming back to you.

   “You okay?” You rested your forearm against his chest and pushed slightly to allow yourself a better view of his face.

   A small smirk, “Am I okay? What about you?”

   You smacked your lips and brought the ice cold glass to your lips. That’s not water. “I’m doing reeaalllyy good,” you drawled.

   Rumlow chuckled and pushed you deeper into the chair, “I can tell.” He took a sip, his attention never faltering from your body, “Just be sure to pace yourself from here on out,”

   You made a show of cocking your head to the side and letting a smile sprawl onto your face as you studied him. 

   “What?” he questioned, a curious lift in his brow.

   You shook your head gently and kept your gaze on him over the brim of your glass, “You’re just . . . not what I was expecting,”

   “And what were you expecting?” 

   Don’t forget to bat your eyelashes. “Worse,”

   “Sorry to disappoint,” he jeered, his attention once again cast throughout the room before centering back on you.

   You followed his action but quickly came to the conclusion that moving any pace faster than a sloth was going to make you nauseous and you could barely keep a thought together. Your stomach began to rise in your chest and the fear seized your throat shut. Why couldn’t you hold onto a thought for longer than a second? It was like you were aware of your lack of consciousness but could do nothing about it because any thought or bout of panic phased through just as soon as it arrived.

   “What are you so tense for, Rumlow? You know you’re not currently on the clock, right?” You teased, your head leaning on your shoulder as you spoke.

   He brought his drink up to his lips and finished it off in three gulps, “I’m not tense. It’s just hard to turn it off sometimes,”

   You nodded slowly and pushed your drink towards him, “Relax. You know everyone here,”

   He shook his head and placed your drink back in front of you before asking for another beer.

   “And two shots!” You shouted to the bartender, throwing two of your fingers high up and instantly regretting how fast you’d done it.

   “Are you trying to get me drunk?” He asked you, a side smirk beginning to form.

   You placed your finger over your lips and hushed, “Shh, I won’t tell if you don’t.” You dragged your lower lip down and his eyes fixated to commit the scene to memory. “Besides, I always feel dumb if I’m the only one drunk,”

   He motioned to the rest of the party, “Believe me, Sugar, you’re not the only one enjoying yourself,”

   “But are you?” 

   “Am I what?” 

   “Enjoying yourself?” 

   Your skin crawled when he placed his rough hand on your barren thigh, “Absolutely,”

   Don’t forget what you’re here for. Don’t let the objective slip. Gods, how the fuck were you supposed to retain anything when you were so sleepy? And why was it so warm?

   “Hot,” you mumbled, fishing around in your glass for an ice cube to rub on your face.

   “Thank you,”

   You threw your head back in laughter and nearly earned yourself an up-close and personal view of the floor had Rumlow not wrapped an arm around your waist and held you steady. Once he was certain you weren’t going to toss yourself onto the ground, he parted your legs and stood between them to keep you rooted to your seat.

   All the movement had you spinning and you white-knuckled Rumlow’s cotton shirt to keep yourself grounded to something, anything. Red warning lights were firing up in your chest and you tensed with the way your body buckled to the panic coursing through you. Your heart pounded in your ears and danced across your skin, lighting it on fire and making the room too stuffy to bear. Please, no. Not now. Focus. Snap out of it. Come back, stay back. Your breathing hitched and you looked down at the sensation crawling its way up higher on your thigh. Too hot. Everything was too hot, if you didn’t get out of this now you would never-

   “Vision!” You cheered, happy to see your friend.

   The presence on your thigh recoiled slightly.

   “I’m taking Wanda to her room, seems she’s had a bit too much to drink,” Vision informed and you’d only just then noticed the body in his hold.

   “Wanda!” You smiled, admiring her peaceful features as she slept in his arms. You poked at her cheek then jerked your gaze back up to Vision. “What? Wanda doesn’t drink,”

   She’s not acting, Sam’s voice erupted in your ear and you flinched at the sound. 

   Vision’s eyes went from you to Rumlow then back to you slowly, “Y/N . . . are you okay?”

   You beamed at him and slowly brought up your thumb. “Good,” you responded.

   You followed Vision’s gaze back up to Rumlow and smiled at the agent beside you. You guess he’s kind of cute. In a strange, unsettling way.

   “She’s had a lot to drink, so we’re just trying to slow down the pace. Aren’t we, Y/N?” Rumlow looked down at you.

   You nodded fervently, “Yup!” 

   Vision hesitated but knew he didn’t pose much of a threat with Wanda in his arms unconscious, so he quirked a smile and walked towards the hall.

   Someone get to Y/N, something’s not right, Vision ordered and you lifted your head up to find him. You could have sworn he just left.

   “Here.” Rumlow handed you a glass, “Drink this, it’ll cool you down,” 

   You stared at the glass in his hold and looked up at him, “You drink it first,” you slurred, holding your finger up at him.

   He cocked his head to the side but took a swig of the drink and you watched it go down his throat. You shrugged and grabbed at it.

   Do not drink that, Nat ordered from somewhere and you looked around in wonder at who she was yelling to.

   Bucky, Sit down! Steve growled.

   Like hell, responded a voice you knew all too well.

   Your smile grew and you looked through the crowd, “Bucky!” You feverishly called, completely expecting to see him before you. Rumlow’s head lifted instantly, his eyes scouring the area.

   “I’ve got this, Pretty Boy,” Tony hastily spoke, “How ya doin’, Hot Stuff?” He interrogated and you reeled at the tone.

   “Quite well, thank you,” you responded tenaciously and attempted to take a swig of the drink in your grasp.

   Tony’s hand shot out and covered the top, slamming the cup back down on the counter and effectively getting the drink all over your dress.

   “What the fuck?” You tried to shout but the words came out heavy and required too much energy to speak.

   “You’ve had enough for tonight,”

   “It’s just water,” Rumlow defended but Tony paid him no mind.

   Your jaw dropped open and you glared at the older man. Who the hell did he think he was? Tony’s stare burned through your skull and despite your irritation, you couldn’t help but wonder why he was so pissed.

   “Are you mad at me?” You drawled, lulling your head to the side.

   “No,” he responded curtly. 

   “Am I being too loud or something?” You pushed. You couldn’t imagine you were any louder than any other drunken bastard at this party.

   “No,”

   Get her out of there or I swear to God I will, his voice hissed into your ear.

   Your eyebrows rose slightly in excitement, “Mmm, Bucky,” you smiled and Tony nodded.

   “’Mmm, Bucky’ is right. Wanna go see him?” Tony offered, sticking out his hand for you to take.

   You fell forward into Rumlow’s chest but shook your head furiously none the less, “For what? So he can tell me I’m horrendous at my-”

   Oh shit. Your job. The job.

   If only your body didn’t feel so heavy and your mind so light.

   You pushed off Rumlow’s chest and glared at Tony, “I can handle myself,” you insisted, a new sort of sober tone making its way through that caused him to do a once-over. “I know what I’m doing,”

   “How many drinks have you had?” Tony challenged and you fell silent.

   Then you felt a tap, and another and a few more.

   “Six,” You said, hoping you’d counted right.

   Tony, don’t you even fucking consider it, Bucky threatened.

   “You could at least change, recuperate and then come back,” Tony offered and you sighed a breath of relief before nodding.

   “Deal,” you agreed, “I’m hot anyway,”

   Tony gave you one last glance before turning around and blending into the crowd on the other end of the room.

   You looked up to Rumlow who’s gaze was still locked on the sea of people, “Don’t you wish you’d taken that shot now?” you tried to jeer, every last word bringing you deeper and deeper.

   “Are they always that intense?” He questioned, not turning his attention to you.

   “They can be over-bearing,” you admitted, hand grabbing the water from earlier and pressing it up against your forehead, “They consider me the baby so they’re always criticizing and suffocating until I just wished they’d disappear.” You took a gulp, “Don’t get me wrong, I appreciate the family and I like that I have a cause but . . . they don’t let me do anything. It’s exhausting,”

   You let out a long breath and smeared the condensation from the glass onto your chest. Rumlow studied you then, not just your body but your reaction. He was watching how you dropped your shoulders at the confession and how you faced your back to them to block them out. 

   You plastered your torso on the countertop and tried to slow your heartrate down. You couldn’t be the only one here unfathomably hot.

   “Why is it so fucking hot?” You questioned, fanning yourself weakly.

   “There are a lot of people around,” Rumlow offered, “how about we go somewhere else? Tony did say you had to change,”

   You peered up at him through half-lidded eyes and meekly groaned in compliance. “Fine,”

   You lifted yourself away from the counter and gently placed your feet on the floor. You’d touched the ground faster than anticipated. Had the ground always been so close?

   “Don’t worry, I gotcha.” Rumlow threw an arm around your waist and helped you trudge towards the elevator.

   Where the hell are you going? Bucky yelled and the sound of shuffling could be heard from his end.

   We can’t let you leave with Rumlow, Y/N. We’re not even sure you’re acting anymore, Sam stated.

   Rumlow pressed the button when you couldn’t muster the strength to do it yourself. The level that your room was on lit up and the doors began closing. You thought you saw Rumlow wave at someone but the mock smile on his face didn’t make it seem like a warm good-bye.

   Your legs had all but given out by the time the elevator reached your shared floor. 

   “Heavy,” you muttered, letting Rumlow carry your weight fully.

   “I know, Sugar. We’re almost there,” he soothed and you conceded to the fatigue wearing you down.

   Your head hung low and your arm dangled uselessly at your side. The familiar sound of your door sliding open caught your attention but you did nothing. You couldn’t. 

   “How . . . know . . . my room?” You questioned, each word causing you to pull from an empty well of energy.

   “I’ve been here before.” Rumlow tossed you onto the bed and sprawled you out.

   “Oh. Ok.” You tried to turn on to your side but strong hands gripped down onto your ankles.

   Rumlow sighed and slipped the heels off your feet, examining the pair like he wanted to wear them. You extended your feet until you felt every muscle in your leg stretch to its capacity and let out a groan of pleasure at the release. Those shoes hurt so bad.

   “You seem . . . intelligent, Y/N.” Rumlow dropped your shoes onto the floor and slithered to the side of your bed, standing beside it with his hands tucked into his pockets.

   A bead of sweat trickled down your forehead, “Hot . . .” you croaked and he nodded.

   “You’re right. It is getting kind of hot.” He brought a hand up to his neck and ripped off the tie hanging around it.

   Get the fuck out of my way, a growl erupted in your ear.

   We’re going with you, Buck, Steve responded before knocking something over.

   “So, what I have a hard time understanding is. . . why you’re here?” 

   You groaned a weak ‘huh’ but even that didn’t sound right.

   “You’re good at what you do, you finish every mission successfully and yet you’re underappreciated.” He took a seat at the foot of your bed and placed one of your legs into his lap, “Why do you allow them to treat you like that? We wouldn’t,”

   The shuffling in your earpiece halted.

   “We?” 

   He began to massage your calf and brought your knee up to his lips, peppering light kisses on it. “We could use someone with your skillset, babe. We’d take real good care of you,”

   The shuffling started again.

   Rumlow had made his way onto your thigh at this point and you let out an involuntary moan when he skimmed over a delicate part on your inner knee.

   “Ya like that?” he questioned but didn’t wait for a response. He brought a hand up to his temple and grabbed the earpiece. You figured he just hadn’t taken it out from his earlier shift but when he pulled it apart, you understood why he always kept it on him.

   “Flash . . . drive earpiece?” Your weak tone tilted a little. “W-why tell . . .”

   “I figured I’d give you the option to leave since you seem so . . . suffocated. If you said yes tonight then I would remind you tomorrow. If you didn’t,” he chuckled, “well, you wouldn’t remember anyway.” His hands trailed to your mid-thigh and you squeaked. “I’m impressed though, I’ve never given anyone else as much as I’ve given you tonight. The drug usually works so quickly on others, but not you. It’s kind of hot, actually,”

   Sick fuck, Natasha growled through a ragged breath.

   The world around you was slow or maybe it was you that was slow? You couldn’t tell, honestly. But when Rumlow moved as if he could predict your actions before you could make them, you wondered whether you were moving at all.

   “Don’t worry, it’ll be over soon,” Rumlow sighed.

   You shook your head, or thought you did but despite the way your body was live-wired, it remained still against all desire. 

   Fight. Move. 

   You managed to push your legs shut but his hand slithered between and spread them open similar to opening a door, but this required much less force.

   “Kill,” You threatened and the sinister smile that crawled its way onto Rumlow’s face was vile enough to sink your heart into your stomach.

   “Kill is fucking right.” Someone snarled and your door was ripped from its hinges.

   Rumlow’s hand jerked away from your body and Bucky seized his open palm, intertwining their fingers and pushing Rumlow’s so far back that they touched the back of his own hand. The cracks were sickening onto themselves but had you not been so weak you would’ve turned from the sight altogether. You really couldn’t fathom how his fingers were still attached at all.

   “Lay another hand on her and you won’t be able to use it again.” Bucky spit.

   Despite Rumlow’s pain, the sinister smile remained sprawled on his face, “You should’ve heard the noises she made,”

   Bucky’s grip tightened and the bones in his palm broke next, “I did,”

   Natasha flew in right behind Barnes but completely dismissed the two and headed straight for you with a needle in hand. Your eyes shifted from the needle to Nat’s face and back again until she stabbed it into your upper arm. Ouch. 

   “Wha-”

   “Shh,” Natasha hastily hushed, “Keep your strength, you should be back to normal soon,”

   Steve came behind Nat and scooped you up to lead you out of the havoc going on in the room. Nat turned her focus to Bucky and reached over to grab the earpiece from Rumlow. Who knows if his nose will ever heal back normally. You held one finger in the air as Steve stepped over the splintered door.

   “Goddamit, Y/N,” Steve huffed, jogging towards the elevator and pressing the floor that led to the infirmary.

   “We won,” you croaked out, a small smile on your face and Steve shook his head.

   “I’m never going to hear the end of this,” 

   Steve looked you up and down for bruises but couldn’t find any and you promised you weren’t lying to him when you told him Rumlow did not get very far in his ‘advances’ at all. You had to swear the mid-thigh was the worst that it came to. 

   Bruce was the one that took a few blood samples and made sure everything was reversing back to normal. Apparently, as soon as Rumlow took you to the bar Tony handed Banner the shot glass that Rumlow gave you and Banner ran analysis on it. The cure was pretty easy to find.

   After being given strict orders to lie down for the next hour or so, it had been decided that Rumlow was to be turned in considering all the evidence required to make the arrest was in the flashdrive and everyone was to gather together for a ‘family night’. Whatever the hell that meant.

   You were in the middle of debating which movie to pick with Steve when the infirmary doors flew open.

   “Where is she?” Bucky nearly shouted upon seeing Bruce.

   “That’s my cue.” Steve stood up just as Bucky rounded the corner, “If you need anything me and Banner will be right over there,”

   You smiled and thanked him then turned your attention to the super-soldier who just arrived at the foot of your bed.

   He didn’t say anything for a while, just looked at you. No, not really. Not at you but through you. A few painstakingly slow seconds went by that way.

   “You owe me a new door,” you joked, a half-smile on your face.

   “Are you okay?” He asked, finally registering your presence.

   You nodded slowly, “I am,”

   Then a few more seconds.

   Bucky turned his gaze down to his hands, both of them barren and on display for the world to see, before shifting his weight between either foot, “Did he- did he touch you?”

   “Not really. Just really liked my legs for some reason,” your attempt at another quip didn’t reach Bucky. He stared back up at you waiting for an answer, an honest one. You sighed, “The damage is more mental,” you admitted, now you were the one not able to look up, “I didn’t like being in this altered state of mind. It’s invasive and . . . scary. He could’ve done things, much worse things but it never got that far or that bad. It was more realizing that I wasn’t completely conscious or present and having that state of mind be taken advantage of, that mostly frightened me. Ya know?”

   “More than anyone,” he answered immediately.

   You looked back up towards him, finally making eye contact, “But I’m fine now, really. Just a little spooked. Steve wants to do a movie night tonight and I would actually prefer that over being alone.” Your eyes fixated on the way his hands clenched and unclenched on the bar by your feet, “If I’m alone then I’ll get stuck in my head about it. Besides, I consider this a hard victory with a few bumps in the road,” 

   He chuckled, lulling his head a bit, “You’re too stubborn for your own good,”

   You shrugged, “Maybe. How’s Rumlow?”

   Bucky hissed and moved over to the side of the bed where he took a seat, “He’s unconscious. And has a hand that he’ll never be able to use again. But other than that, he’s fine,”

   You chuckled and Bucky watched how the laugh met your eyes. He liked that look on you. It was one of his favorites.

   “Why are you looking at me like that?” You questioned once it fell silent between you two again.

   “You called me Bucky earlier,” he remembered.

   You scoffed, “I call you Bucky all the time,”

   “Not to my face,”

   “Not to your face,” you agreed, a teasing smile dancing on your lips and Bucky had one that mirrored yours. 

   “It was nice. Hearing it, I mean,” he admitted and a wave of warmth made its way to your face.

   “I see your hands are exposed,”

   He looked down as though he weren’t aware that he’d taken off his own gloves, “These bad boys? A friend of mine reminded me that I’m not my past. I’m my present. Why hide my growth?”

   You twiddled your thumbs together, “She sounds smart,”

   Now he scoffed, “Oh, it wasn’t a girl, it was some old buddy of mine.” He quirked up a brow, “Unless the person being a girl would make you jealous because in that case it was most definitely a girl,”

   You fought against the natural tug at the corners of your mouth, “Is she at least pretty?”

   “Stunning,” 

   “Smart?”

   “Genius,”

   “Good at her job?”

   “Amongst the best,”

   “Then consider me jealous, Barnes,”

   Bucky chuckled and you watched how the laugh met his eyes. You liked that look on him. It was one of your favorites.

[caralara]

I know there’s another whole discussion going on here but one thing that still confuses me is why Louis and Eleanor got matching tattoos at all 😭 surely it would’ve been easier to get her to wear a ring and call it a day, long engagement whatever and then they split up because he’s too busy touring or something of the sort

Hi anon!

So. The reason why they got matching tattoos in that placement is simple - it’s a cheap copy of the real thing, just like the first vacation they went on was a skiing vacation, just like Harry’s and Louis’ first vacation was a skiing vacation.

Harry and Louis got matching tattoos, and Harry got LT tattooed on his hand (and is wearing it around his neck always lol)

So they decided, again, to copy it, bc if it’s proof to the fans (larries) that this is one of the factors that make Larry a real relationship, it should work to convince them Elounor is real (it’s kinda working isn’t it?)

Now, if it is a real tattoo or not, I’m kinda on the fence about. Like. It’s so much effort to reapply it constantly?? Be aware of it? Not leave the house without it? I could see Eleanor not really giving a shit and just getting it, and Louis having it stand for “Edward” instead, idk. The thing that keeps me in doubts about it - and at this point, I’m genuinely asking people to debunk those for me so I can find peace (it being real doesn’t change anything of my view that the relationship Elounor is still a stunt, just a question of how far they’re willing to go to make it look “real”) - but there’s a few things I can’t unsee. For example, right when he debuted it, there was BTS footage of the photo shoot where you can clearly see there’s no E on his hand, and there was a video, too, and the fact you simply can’t find the video anymore is super sus - and the Instagram photo really does have that fucking pixel thing around the E, you can look it up yourself

Then the fact that they hide their hands a lot in sweater paws and their pockets, especially Eleanor, and all the instances where we couldn’t see the L on her finger - like that’s arguable, it could be lighting or position - but the fact she immediately deleted those photos and reuploads them with the L added or just keeps them off is so ???

Then, and this is smth I found myself, last year during the Samsung promo video, I went through it frame by frame bc again lighting and position was ambiguous, but what I found was a stray line in a single frame, like, where did it come from? There was no “vintage filter” over the video the way he likes to use now with his tour igtvs. This only happens when someone loses the line during editing to add those lines accordingly to how the hand shifts in every single frame and forgets to clean it up, bc you don’t see it if the video runs, only if you go through it frame by frame. And yes, as I work in the film industry and have been in editing rooms I’ve seen people edit and correct scenes frame by frame, it’s not uncommon. So. Why?

Like if it’s not real, I’m sure Louis applies it as a semi permanent tattoo with smth like inkbox during tour, and not a sharpie lol and I also think most of the times when fans point out that it’s not there it can be attributed to angles and lighting, but those facts I mentioned, they keep me from being 100% convinced they’re real

So, to conclude - I’m not sure. Either way it’s a PR thing and to me irrelevant to my opinion whether Elounor is real or not, bc it’s not, but yk… it’s just so much effort?

[bratz-kitten]

Hello there love, a fellow 11th house mercury here! just saw a post where you talked a little about that placement and it was the most accurate thing I’ve ever read hahaha so my question is if you could elaborate a little bc i find it a little hard to understand that placement. my mercury is sadly also in retrograde in my chart so that doesn’t make things easier…

thank you so much!! much love xxx

okay so, for reference, i touched a bit on mercury in the 11th house here and here (which was mostly about mercury in the 12th house anyway), but the biggest point i made there was that this mercury makes you someone who needs constant intellectual stimulation, we have very restless thoughts and it can be maddening sometimes because our brains just don't shut up... ever. which is why we need to be engaging in conversation so much or at least letting our thoughts out some other way, in a blog, for example (take it from me lmfao). it's interesting that the 11th house rules technology as well as social circles, because it sure feels like we have a non-stop podcast in our minds. like, the only time where i feel like my brain is experiencing a moment of peace is afterward a really intense conversation, when i get to debate my ideas with someone who's just as passionate (and slightly insane) as me.

that being said, we prefer to keep conversation light-hearted and fun. this house for mercury shows an ease when it comes to talking with whoever, so you might have a lot of acquaintances. you might even feel like wherever you go, everyone knows your name and it can be a very unsettling feeling at times. as in, you get introduced to a group of people you've never met before but somehow they all know who you are, so you might experience people gossiping a lot about you, making up rumors that get widely spread; people make all kinds of assumptions about you. that's because even though you know a lot of people, you keep the conversation purposely superficial and only open up to like three people, if that much.

now, keep in mind that this is a double-edged sword: not only do people gossip a lot about people, but you tend to gossip as well. even if you tell yourself it's light-hearted and you only do it with your closest friends, it can be too much at times, and it's very easy to cross the line of "i'm just curious" to being downright shitty, and you need to watch out for what comes out of your mouth because you do stress a lot about having good morals.

you possess a lot of social intelligence and you might be very aware of that, using it in everyday matters – when you enter a group, you start observing the dynamics that play between everyone: who talks the most with who, who feels the most or less comfortable with who, who's still only acquaintances and who's falling in love but doesn't know it yet; you observe all of that and start taking mental notes about people's behaviors: the way they talk, their humor (especially if they laugh at the expense of others or not), if they overshare, what they leave unsaid; you take in all of that and that's your way of getting to know people so that you can start predicting their behavior. like i said, you find it very hard to trust others enough to open up so you make others prove themselves before you do so. in friendships, this is less biting, as in you don't just walk up to someone and go like hey prove me of your worth lmfao, you simply start observing their actions and if they pass the vibe check, they're in.

the problem starts in your romantic relationships – this is where you make someone prove themselves again and again that they're deserving of your trust and loyalty as you continuously doubt them. and suddenly, this isn't the dating stage; it's like your potential partner is harry potter going through the triwizard tournament just to get the prize of 10% of your trust. and it's, like, no. stop it. you can't expect people to drop everything to offer you the world while you're hesitant about even holding their hand in public. that's self-sabotaging and it's just a way for you to ensure that you don't get too intimate with people, that you don't reveal too much of yourself. relationships are about the equality between giving and taking, and you can sometimes be caught up in wanting to receive before even considering giving.

the best way i can put this is through an example: kim kardashian has her mercury in the 11th house. so, it's no wonder that this mercury makes someone really fucking ambitious, sometimes even without you realizing. the 11th house rules dreams and humanity as a whole, so you might be constantly in tune with your dreams and finding a way to get yourself further to them. like i said, this can be unconscious at times; perhaps you take on a small project that's meant to be fun and insignificant but suddenly it blows up out of proportion, suddenly your whole life revolves around it and you're getting recognized for it. you can be very calculating and borderline manipulative at times since you're so focused on trying to control the circumstances around you. not even just in real life, perhaps when you're playing video games you find yourself focusing a lot of your attention on understanding the characters and their motivations; and then, when you meet someone who feels shady as fuck and who looks like they could betray you, your thinking process isn't how can i stop this person from betraying me, it's how can i use this person's betrayal to my advantage. it's like, jesus christ on steroids lmfao. you have a talent for turning difficult situations into the diamond in the rough, for thriving when facing obstacles.

you're very cynical about your friendships, you understand that most people don't have good intentions and you're likely to make a clear distinction between party friends and actual friends. the first group are the people who you have casual fun with, who you do stupid shit with and who perhaps you engage with to keep up appearances or further your connections, while the second group are the actual people who you'd ride or die for, and those are scarce.

here, there's a yearning for actual friendships present even through your fear of doing so, and you might find yourself getting occupied with issues of the 11th house: philosophy, metaphysics, individuality vs. humanity as a whole, freedom, moral issues – for you, nothing is taboo enough, just like nothing is progressive or out-of-the-box enough. my advice for people with this placement is to read the greeks. seriously, hearing plato spend a whole book discussing what is morality is like our wet dream. you love debating especially with your friends, and if you can't talk with someone for hours and hours on end with the conversation never once stalling, then they're not fit to be your friends at all. besides this, you might be very drawn to politics, power, any knowledge that helps you achieve your dreams.

you have big dreams and you might feel a strong calling to help as many people as possible, to save the world, to have your voice be heard. your goals might be downright inconceivable to some people, so you can feel ostracized by the members of the community where you live: perhaps your parents and other family members don't believe in you and would rather you just stick to the plan they forged for you; perhaps you were forced into choosing between their path or yours; no matter what, the choice lies in your hands and so does the power to achieve whatever you desire.

[theepisceswriter]

𝐇𝐎𝐍𝐄𝐘𝐌𝐎𝐎𝐍 𝐀𝐕𝐄𝐍𝐔𝐄 — 𝐑.𝐁

♡ Pairing: Reiner Braun x AFAB!Reader  ♡ Rating: 18 plus, MDNI! or I’ll gnaw on your ankles like corn  ♡ TW: Smut obvies besties, breeding kink like heavily, nursing mentions, lactation mention, oral (fem recieving), dirty talk, praising, a whole lot ! Also not proofread. ♡ Synopsis: Wedding night sexy and fluff with your breeding kink ridden husband Reiner  ♡ WC: 2.3k

♡ A/N: AHHHH, my first ever collab ! this is for my bby, @saccharine-darling​ ‘s Reiner and Zeke birthday collab. Thank you so much for letting me participate and giving me the experience of being in my very first collab. Congrats on your milestone yet again babes !

The welcoming aroma of lavender and rose candles that omitted a warm, soft glow throughout the dimly lit suite of the newlyweds did very little to help calm the nerves that ran like electricity through your nervous system. 

Every second your fingers ran over the see through coverup nightgown over your lingerie, not even smoothing out wrinkles anymore but giving your so awkwardly placed hands something to do; anything that kept you hidden away in the bathroom for a couple more seconds to compose yourself before you had to be met with Reiner’s hunger filled gaze.

This was nowhere near his first time seeing you naked or the first time he would ravage your body, nor would it be the last, but it was something about the newfound intimacy between you two as husband and wife that made this night especially special, the two of you right back in your honeymoon phase all over again. 

Not that you two had ever really left it. Every day with Reiner was a day you felt loved and appreciated by him and that was only amplified by 100 today. You couldn’t possibly count how many times he glanced over at you with that loving doe look in his eyes that just screamed ‘Finally, you’re my wife.’ And you could’ve sworn that you saw tears slip from his hazel eyes the moment he saw you cladded in your silk white wedding dress, done up the prettiest he had ever seen you, as you walked down the aisle towards him.

He made sure to let everyone know that he was proud of his beautiful bride by holding you close to his side the whole day, arm hardly ever leaving from around your waist and always ready to sing praises about you to whoever would listen.

And now that the two of you were alone he was ready to appreciate you in a different way, the way he knew best.

“Come on, love. There’s no need for you to act all shy around me now,” His voice beckons you from the other side of the door, “I want to see my pretty bride in all her glory.

He lounged on the large California king sized bed situated in the middle of the room with nothing but briefs attached to his body, toned chest prickled slightly with stray blonde hairs that glimmered against the golden light of the lit candles, as he awaited your arrival. Any time spent away whether it was a couple of days or a handful of minutes while you got ready in the bathroom was always excruciating for him to deal with.

With hesitant fingers you twisted at the doorknob until the door opened wide enough for Reiner’s eyes to meet yours with something like a sly smirk painting his features the moment he saw the lace lingerie that hugged your body in all the right places.

It was his words and the expression on his face that gave you enough confidence to step from behind the bathroom door, finally putting your whole body on display for him to see as you made your way over to the bed.

He wastes no time at all, the moment your knees hit the cushioning of the bed he already has his large hands at your waist groping the skin that couldn’t all fit into the restraints of your undergarments and pulling you into his lap, forcing you to straddle his large thighs.

 Immediately his lips find their way on yours, wanting and hungry as he practically devours them with open mouth kisses with the occasional tongue slipping past your lips just to get whatever taste of you he could right now.

His fingers traced the irregular pattern of the lace adorning your skin, continuing the pattern up your abdomen until he reaches the mounds of your breasts where he transitions to a grope, his hand nearly covering every square inch of the skin except for the gaps in between his fingers. 

Breaking away from the kiss with a trail of saliva still connecting you two, hooded darkened hazel eyes looked up at you with nothing short of admiration, “Look at you,” The blonde nearly growled out in a feral tone, “So, so pretty and dressed up just for me. Too bad I’m going to ruin it, hm?”

His words bring flutters to the deepest parts of your abdomen, making the already damp spot that had begun to collect on your underwear accumulate even more. He always had that type of effect on you.

Peeling off the cover up that hid the rest of your body from him, he discarded it on the floor and was quick to do the same with your bra next. The warmth and moistness of his mouth engulfed your nipple and large areola with ease, already knowing exactly where to direct his mouth after doing so plenty of times, before beginning to suckle on it gently as if he were nursing from you while his other hand flicked over your other nipple getting it prepared next.

“That feels so good, Rei.” Your moans only encouraged him on more, his suckling becoming slightly harder and his tongue flicking faster once he moved on to the other nipple. 

“I can’t wait until these are filled to the brim and leaking with milk once you’re carrying our child,” he nuzzles his face between the valley of your breast, sucking on the skin there and leaving a few hickies before motorboating and pulling away completely.

Ruin is exactly what he planned to do with you tonight. In seconds you were being flipped onto your back, not hard enough that it hurt but with enough force to leave you confused and shocked before you realized your positions had been switched. It left him with the perfect opportunity to lean down and rip your panties quite literally off of your lower torso completely, mumbling about how he was going to buy you even prettier ones in the future as he trailed kisses down your legs. Making sure to stop and give extra attention to the areas on the inside of your thigh that he knew would make you squirm up against him.

“Fuck,” Just the sight of your cunt adorned with arousal alone had him ready to cum undone, rough finger pads moving your lips around to observe the beauty that was you. 

“I’m the luckiest man on earth. I must be to have someone as beautiful as you, love.” The words leave his lips in a tone that doesn’t allow it to come off as anything short of a fact because in his heart it was. 

Spreading your legs further apart with the placement of his arms, he allowed a long trail of saliva to escape from between his lips and fall directly over your sensitive bud, sending shivers up your spine, before leaning down and adding on to the mess he created with his saliva by moving his tongue in a way that only accumulated more. It didn’t matter how much you squirmed beneath him or tried to move your hips against his mouth at a pace that wouldn’t have you cumming as fast as he was going to, he wasn’t going to slow down.

His lips isolated directly over your clit and collected all the wetness he could in his mouth as he continued abusing it with pleasure. His face was soaked in your juices at this point and that only made it all the more better for him; Reiner getting just as much pleasure as you the more he made you feel good.

“Oh, fuck baby,” the words left your lips in a broken moan that borderlined a choke and something about the way your husband hummed against your cunt in surprise let you know that he knew you were close as well,

“I know darling, I know. Go ahead and cum all over my tongue like the good girl you are.” 

Removing himself from your cunt with pop, he allowed only those words to be spoken before he went right back to work. Even going the extra mile and slipping two fingers inside of you to give your pussy something to clench around for the meantime. 

And it wasn’t long after that, that your thighs clenched tight around the sides of his head and your fingers found themselves entangled in his blonde locks as you rode your orgasm out on his tongue. Your hips bucking wildly up against his mouth that he gladly left open for you to use and small ‘thank you’s escaping with gasps from your lips.

A kiss to each inner thigh was given before Reiner merely situated his lower torso between your waist instead of his face, gathering your legs from the back of your thighs and pressing them against your chest so you were spread out nice and perfect for him. He didn’t even bother removing his briefs completely, only moving the band around his waist down far enough for this thick cock to come springing out and slap against his stomach. The precum leaking from his pretty peach tip leaving a stain on one of his abs that glistened when he was positioned perfectly in the dim lighting of the room.

He strokes his thumb over his tip with a groan, taking his cock at the base and sliding it through the soaked lips of your cunt. He needed as much lube as he could possibly get. Taking him wasn’t an easy task at all even after you had done it plenty of times; he was huge just by girth alone and he didn’t want to hurt his pretty wife. Especially not the pretty pussy he was going to be stuffing with children in the near future.

Lining himself up with your plush entrance, he groaned with each inch of him that sunk into your inviting walls, moving his hands to the side of your head for leverage as he began snapping his hips up against yours in swift calculated motions he knew would curve up into your most sensitive areas. His eyes never left contact with yours, still holding that loving gaze he had hours before during your ceremony despite how roughly he was thrusting up against you, cock hitting all the right spots.

“Fuck you feel so fucking good baby you have no idea. Such a tight and breedable pussy you have on you.” His fingers tangle with yours and holds them tight as he pounds into you from above, the weight of his meaty body keeping your legs pressed up against your chest, still sensitive from his suckling and biting from earlier. 

And all you could do was take how deep he was going and the feeling of his tip gently pressing against your cervix at a pressure that didn’t quite hurt, but sent a shiver throughout your whole body in response. 

“Fill me up, Rei. I want you to fill me up nice and full.” You finally managed to get out in stutters through his rough pace of fucking, thock cock invading every inch of your insides and wall with a burn that felt too good.

Your words clearly had an effect on him because not only did his cheeks visibly turn red, but you could feel dribbles of precum dripping inside of you. You just had that type of effect on him.

“My pretty little wife wants to be bred like a slut, hm? Then I’ll do exactly that for you, love. I’m gonna fill you to the brim with cum until you have no choice but to take it and get pregnant.” And on cue, hot spurts of cum release deep inside of you with one last stroke. So filled to the brim with cum that even with his dick inside of you acting as a stopper, it still can’t help but trickle down to your asshole.

“Don;t think we’re done yet because we’re nowhere near that.” He huffs into your ear and although you can't see his face, you can just hear the smirk in his tone. “M’not stopping until I know for sure that you’re going to be nice and plump in the next few months.”

[ashintheairlikesnow]

OH ANTONI 🥺🥺🥺 my poor baby. I hope he will find it within himself to come clean to Jake or SOMEONE about this :((((

(((ALSO CANT WAIT FOR MORR))))

One Two Three Four Five Six

CW: Wound cleaning, burns, touch aversion, aftermath of torture, BBU, conditioned fucky headspace

"Lift your chin for me," she commands, and he doesn't really remember that he could choose not to obey.

Antoni dutifully shifts, his eyes moving to roam over a line of framed photographs along the wall behind her. A wedding photo, faded with time, a much, much younger version of the woman currently dabbing a cotton ball dipped in something cold and stinging to the fresh burn on his throat with a man he's never seen. The two of them are smiling, holding hands, looking right into the camera.

Bright white wedding dress turned cream with yellowing paper, with time, covered in lace. Powder-blue tuxedo. Brilliant smiles.

She touches the cotton ball to his skin and he hisses, hands tightening where they grip the edges of the chair he's sitting on. The sting rockets through him, only a pale echo of the original pain, but it's enough.

It's enough.

Fuck, that's hot.

He catches the sob before it can leave his throat, forces the burn behind his eyes to stay there and not turn into tears. He will not cry over this again.

Not now.

"There we go, just a bit more," She says, her voice gruffly compassionate. She presses a small rounded bandage against his throat, her fingertips are warm against his neck.

His skin crawls at even this slight, indirect touch, but he doesn't protest.

He wouldn't dare.

"All done. That's not s'bad, I think with a good bandaging it won't scar half so bad as all its little friends down south," She mutters, more to herself than him, really.

Where her fingers touch, he feels the echoes of other hands around his throat. Thicker fingers, heavy with rings. Smiling down at him.

Beg for me, love.

"Please-" It's automatic. He's drifting, in and out of this old kitchen that still looks like it must have looked thirty years ago, when the man in the wedding photo would still be here maybe cooking or cleaning or chatting up a storm to anyone who popped by for a visit.

"Hm? You say something, sweetheart?" Miss Ruth looks at him, and those dark eyes are shrewd. They know more than anyone is supposed to, they know things Nat hasn't told her. Hasn't had to.

"Ah, no," He whispers. "Just. I am very tired."

"No doubt. I'll finish these up and you can get back to your own bed and no doubt you'll be glad to get there." She looks him over, and his eyes dance to hers and away again. Back to the photos.

He sees a family photo, the two people from before and a daughter and son. Everyone is smiling, looking carefully just off to the side. They wear matching outfits.

"Get a look at 'em?"

There's a 35th wedding anniversary picture with a big banner behind the happy couple. The two people, much older, stand in front a cake nearly as tall as they are, surrounded by others. Everyone in the photo smiles in sort of the same way.

The next photo is a birthday, he thinks. There's a boy and a young baby in the photo, and the man from wedding and anniversary photo isn't there. Miss Ruth, holding her grandbaby he thinks, is wearing all black. The photo was taken in a church, and there's a spray of white lilies just visible at the edge of the picture.

Another, with Jaden, who Chris plays basketball with. The kid who more or less effortlessly opened his life for Chris when Chris badly needed a friend his own age, or closer to it, to remember what being a kid was like.

He is reading, in images, the story of this woman's adult life. Marriage, and death, and birth. Children. Life going on.

A life he won't have, that he gave up every possibility of having, because of... of whatever is inside him that Mr. Davies knew about, that the people who just hurt him could see in him even though he cannot see it himself.

He must look like someone who deserves to be hurt.

"Young man." She taps on the back of his hand and he flinches, blinking at her, struggling to pull himself out of his reverie. Her words filter through his mind, shift into the language all his thoughts are moving in, come back out in hers. He swallows, feeling a lump in his throat that refuses to move.

"I'm... sorry," He says softly, with difficulty. "I did not hear."

"I can tell. I asked did you get a good look at whoever did this to you." Her eyes roam over his chest, his stomach. The circle of new burns, placed so carefully compared to the haphazard placement Mr. Davies had favored, no pattern at all. "Looks like they took their damn time, anyway, to get you so much."

"N-... no." Antoni's eyebrows furrow, and he tries to think, but all he can remember is their hands holding the lit cigarettes, the quiet one touching his face, ruffling his hair. He can't... he can't remember their faces at all. "I am sorry."

You're fucking gorgeous, buddy, you know that?

"Hm." If she's disappointed in him, nothing changes about her expression, still held in a kind of skeptical compassion as she wets a new cotton ball in liquid from a small frosted plastic bottle and touches it to each burn, one by one, in the circle. It's like a ritual, the sting, washing away a bit of sin with each hint of pain. He clothes his eyes and breathes carefully through it.

When he is done, each circle covered with a bandage that is shades darker than his skin, she steps back to look him over, critically. She steps away and he takes in deep breaths free of her air, the powdery scent of her. He breathes in her absence, no one nearby.

She returns with a washcloth and he takes it, scrubs at his face until his cheeks are red but clean, until you can't tell anymore that he cried while they burned him.

Good boy.

"You can stay here," She says, voice low now. "Sleep it off for a while. I've got a guest room."

"No. No, I will go home. Thank you. I will... I want to go home." He looks out the kitchen window right at Nat's house next door. No lights are on... yet. But there isn't much time before they will be.

"Fair enough. You plan to tell 'em what happened to you?"

He looks back at her, searches for the judgement, finds none.

"No," He says. Confesses, really, his sin. "I will not."

I will lie to them.

"That's your choice to make, I suppose." She lays a hand on his arm. He doesn't pull away from her. He wants to unzip himself from his skin and step out of it, let them all have what they seem to want to touch so much.

Instead, he holds himself perfectly still, until she pats him a few times and steps away again.

"I've done what I can do. You come back over here tomorrow or the day after and we'll look 'em over again and make sure they're healing up nice, you got me?"

"Yes," He says. He is good. He can be good.

"Right. Off you go, then, before your people wake up and you get to come up with a story about why you're in an old widow's house at 4:30 in the morning, hm? You're pretty enough, but you're no Wilbur." She laughs to herself, a dry and crackly sound, and he thinks that her laugh was the sort that could set a whole crowd to laughing, when she was young.

It still is.

The corners of his mouth twitch in an answering smile.

"Yes, ma'am," he says, and pushes himself off the edge, standing up again. No one has seen his scars, no one but this old neighbor woman who looks at them like they are simply part of living, not something to be pitied. "I go. S-... thank you."

"Paugh." She scoffs, waves a hand in dismissal. "Go on, now. You've thrown off my morning coffee time. Tell your young man that Jaden will be over this afternoon."

She all but shoos him out the door, and the air is clear and clean and quiet. The only dirty thing is Antoni himself, smudged and mussed, still feeling in his scalp the prickles of Quiet One's hands, still feeling on his arms the sharp pressure of the shirt tied around his wrists.

Still aware of every single burn under the slight pull of the bandages pressed over them, the gentle sting that feels like a return to how he was always meant to be.

Even the walk from one yard to another feels like too much. Antoni's eyes move over the empty darkened windows of the houses all around him. How obvious he must be, if three people saw him in the darkness and knew him for a pet pretending to be human.

He shouldn't have left, shouldn't have gone on those walks. He'd left himself open and vulnerable, hadn't he? His scars are deeper than skin, and they must shine like the streetlights to anyone who knows what to look for.

Antoni stops at the porch, where he carefully lifts a loose bit of board from the porch railing, finds the small box hidden inside. The slightest scrape of metal on metal as he pulls off the lid makes him freeze, but no one is awake to hear it. He takes the contents of the box, moves it quickly back to its hiding place, replaces the board.

Like nothing ever happened.

Everything can be made as good as new, as long as it isn't him.

He slips inside the safehouse, where everything is still quiet, in the silent inhale that comes before the exhalation of morning. The clock in the kitchen reads 4:45, fifteen minutes until Jake's alarm will go off, until he - and likely Chris - will stir.

Fifteen minutes for Antoni get upstairs and look so deeply asleep that no one will realize he was ever gone.

No time to shower.

He will have to sleep with the grime of their hands still ground deep into every single pore. He will sleep with Deep Voice's we know what you are in his ears, with Quiet One's fingers tangled in his hair, running over his skin. He will sleep with Lookout's eyes locked on his chest as he presses the cigarette in.

Antoni hasn't worn a collar in years now, but he buckles it on, just one notch too tight like Mr. Davies would have, and climbs under the covers, pulling them over his head.

He breathes in as deep as he can, to feel the constriction. Breathes out, and runs his hand up over his chest, over the bandages that cover his burns.

They knew what he was.

Everyone always will.

Good boy.

The ashtray falls asleep humming a lullaby, afraid that if he pulls the blankets back down he will see bars on the windows.

[jemej3m]

Aaron takes the mental health course part of pre med (is that a thing?) and starts recognizing Andrew grounding himself, having an episode, etc

bruhhhhh 

bruuhhh

*

Aaron winced as his son sprinted for the door, yelling the whole way. The twins knew that their uncle was coming to visit and were absolutely ecstatic about it. A well-known fact amongst the old Foxes and their children was that Andrew was very, very good with kids. 

Well, Aaron conceded. Andrew wasn’t good with them. He just didn’t even have to try: they loved him right off the bat. And barring the slight furrow in his brows whenever one of Aaron’s twins or Kevin’s spawn whined ‘please!’, he didn’t seem to mind being around them, either. 

His son was jumping for the doorhandle excitedly, so Aaron put his hand atop of his head and stilled him before swinging the door open. 

Andrew was much the same. They were aging the same way, albeit the slight muscular composition difference. Andrew’s teeth were a little more yellow, though he’d given up smoking a few years ago, and Aaron had reading glasses tucked into the collar of his shirt. Other than that, they were just as similar as they always had been. 

“Hey,” Aaron said, but his son was already yelling and jumping and tugging on Andrew’s hand. Andrew’s lips nearly twitched into a smile. Nearly. 

Once his bags were deposited and shoes tucked into a corner, Katelyn handed him a mug of cocoa and they all sat on the couch as the kids regaled their uncle with stories of preschool and their neighbour’s new dog and how Dad had found them in the bathroom with craft scissors, which was why Aaron’s son had such a short haircut now. 

Katelyn got them settled for bed soon after: Andrew had arrived relatively late in the evening, just in time for ‘adult dinner’. 

“How was the flight?” Aaron asked, taking a dish of potatoes out of the oven. 

Andrew hummed into his glass of wine. “Miserable.” 

Aaron had known for quite a while Andrew’s deliberating fear of heights, ever since the Foxes had taken a reunion trip to Hawaii a few years ago. When his wife hustled back into the kitchen, Andrew nodded at her and she smiled back. Aaron felt something odd in his chest. Andrew had been very tolerant of Katelyn lately. He assumed it was the kids’ doing. 

They ate dinner quietly. Katelyn chattered about the kids, and their medical placements. Andrew asked about their specialties. 

Aaron stared at the plate. Katelyn nudged his shoulder. 

“Right.” He glanced up. “I’m not sure. What I want to choose, that is. It’s between surgery or psychiatry.” 

Andrew hummed. “Psychiatry.” 

Aaron shrugged. He’d done a lot of mental health work throughout his postgraduate degree. It just seemed to make sense that he’d go into that field. It takes one to know one, and all that. “What do you think?”

Andrew just arched an eyebrow. “Does it matter?”

“Well, yes,” Aaron said, tone a little frigid. Drake’s trial had been a public debacle, but it was Dr Richmond Proust that Aaron couldn’t get out of his head. It was during their fourth year when the news had come on about a psychiatrist at Easthaven being exposed for forceful sexual conduct with patients. Andrew hadn’t spoken to anyone but Neil for a week, and then disappeared for another two when Waterhouse asked him to stand witness to Proust’s trial. 

“Psychiatry is glorified drug dealing,” Andrew decided, stabbing a piece of broccoli with his fork. He paused, then shrugged. “Could probably do with a bit of Minyard fuckery, though.”

Aaron was finally able to read Andrew’s subtext though: that was the biggest compliment he’d ever get. Unable to bite down a smile, he said “I thought so, too.” 

His brother simply hummed. 

The rest of dinner passed quietly. Andrew had three of Katelyn’s triple fudge brownies and sent a photo of them to Kevin, just to piss him off. The evening slowed down with a nightcap in front of the news, Katelyn heading to bed early. She’d agreed to take the kids to their daycare in Aaron’s stead so that he could have breakfast with his brother alone.

Aaron was just about to turn in for the night when Andrew’s phone rang. Andrew squinted at the unknown number, mouth turned down: he could remember everyone’s phone numbers, and this was clearly one he didn’t recognise.  

He rose the phone to his ear. The slight frown disappeared and transformed into a blank stare, something far deadlier. Aaron hadn’t seen him wear it since college. 

“When,” Andrew snapped, gripping the phone so hard Aaron thought it would break. The voice continued. “And you only thought to call me now? I’m his next-of-kin.” Aaron froze. 

Eventually, Andrew hung up, holding the phone midair as his eyes glossed over. 

“Andrew?” 

“Neil got in a head-on collision,” he mumbled. 

“Dead?”

“Unstable.” 

“I’ll book you a flight.”

Andrew wasn’t moving. When Aaron saw a flush rise in his cheeks, he realised Andrew wasn’t breathing, either. Shit. Shit. His brother was having a fucking meltdown. Goddammit, next time Aaron saw Neil he was going to strangle him. 

He got off the couch and crouched down in front of Andrew, careful not to touch him. “Andrew.”

Andrew didn’t move. 

“Hey, Andrew.” Aaron stood up a little more so that they were eye level. “Andrew, you need to breathe. Okay? If you’re going to go make sure Neil’s okay, I need you to breathe.” 

Andrew finally looked at him. He was angry. Terrified. Aaron couldn’t really tell: his gaze was like looking into a void, pupils blown wide. 

Calming someone down was a lot simpler when Aaron didn’t know them. This was like walking a tightrope of barbed wire over an alligator-infested pit. 

“Can I have your phone? I’m going to book you a flight. Okay? Nod if you can hear me.”

Andrew nodded but didn’t relinquish the phone. Aaron grit his teeth. 

“Andrew. It’s going to be okay. He’s unstable, but he’ll make it. He’s always made it. He’s impossible to kill, right?” 

“I hate him,” Andrew mumbled. 

“I know. Can I use your phone?” 

Andrew dropped the phone into Aaron’s hand and dropped his head into his hands, utterly still. His breathing went all ragged and choppy. 

There was a springy voice on the other end of the line. “Hello, this is the service desk for Terminal 1 domestic, how can I -?”

“I need a flight for Denver as soon as you can,” Aaron snapped. “It’s an emergency. When’s the next available one? I’m willing to pay whatever’s necessary.” 

“Oh,” the woman sputtered. “Um, there’s a red-eye leaving in an hour, but there’s only first-class left - ”

“That’s fine. Please book it for Andrew Minyard. I’ll be there in twenty minutes.” 

“Sir, I really can’t - wait, Andrew Minyard? Seriously?”

“Dead serious.” 

“Alright,” she allowed. “Okay. If you can make it to this desk in 25 minutes, I’ll have a seat for you, Mr Minyard.”

Aaron hung up. “Andrew, we need to go.” 

Andrew’s breathing sped up, fingers digging into his hair and pulling hard enough to rip it out. Aaron’s chest began to ache, watching as the sleeves of his shirt fell down to reveal the black armbands, still everpresent after all these years. 

“Hey,” he said, keeping his voice gentle. “Are you with me, Andrew?”

Andrew glanced up slightly, glaring at Aaron’s collarbone. 

“All you need to do is breathe. Neil is okay. He’s going to be okay. You’ll see him soon, alright?” 

Aaron tapped his hand gently on his knee, palm down for four counts, then holding his fist closed for eight counts, then palm up for four counts. Andrew slowly began to breathe in time with his hand, chest heaving as he inhaled through his teeth. 

It took a while, but Aaron watched him slowly come back to his senses. His hands slipped over his eyes once his breathing was steady, kneading at his temples. 

“I’ll drive you to the airport,” Aaron said. 

“Okay,” Andrew rasped. 

*

“Babe,” Katelyn whispered. “Your phone is going off.”  

Aaron blinked his eyes open, glaring at the ceiling. Why’d he been up so late? 

Oh. Right. 

He blindly reached out for his phone. 

Most of it was the Foxes going mad, but there in the midst of chaos, was Andrew’s number. 

he’s going to be ok. thank you.

Aaron sighed, oddly relieved. He didn’t like Neil Josten one bit, but it would’ve been a slight hiccup if he’d died. 

good, he said, texting blindly without his glasses. don’t mention it.

trust me, his brother texted back. I won’t.

*

nawww twinyards!

[jadelynlace]

Hvitserk’s First Tattoo / Ink Drinker Modern Vikings AU Request [Ivar x F!reader]

catch up on the porno, I mean series, here.

requested by: @quantumlocked310 ♡

author’s note: thanks to this post, you’ll all be subjected to the written requests. here is the visual reference for the tattoo Hvitserk gets (image isn’t mine and all credit goes to it’s original owner). mentions of brotherly bickering, Hvitserk being scared and Ivar tattooing.

synopsis: You finally talk Hvitserk into getting some ink.

✎

“Did I miss it?” You say, nearly falling in through the main door of the shop. “I almost took the ambulance over here just because it has lights and sirens,” Hvitserk offers you an estranged look, one mixed with him being mortified and slightly impressed with your timing after the over night shift.

“I’ve never seen you this excited,” Sigurd calls from his spot, pulling a record from the shelf as he goes about lining it up, pulling the needle over so the music can fill the room.

“She doesn’t even get this excited when she sees my dick,” Ivar teases from his spot and you offer him a less than kind finger gesture. 

“Can you blame me?” You remark back and Ivar only returns your original hand motion. “Did you pick yet?” You the ask as Hvitserk studies Ivar’s portfolio, as if he will be quizzed on it at the end of the session.

“I can’t believe you talked me into this,” He groans, another turn of the laminated pages.

“All of our best talks happen when it’s in the ambulance cabin at four in the morning,” You laugh, patting his back as you round the small counter. Ivar’s hands are quick to seat you on his lap, wrapping around you almost instantly and you both breathe in relief.

“Long night?” Ivar asks softly in your ear.

“Routine bullshit,” You grumble back, his hands tracing up your back and you could almost fall asleep in the very spot. One hand leaves your spine, reaching along the counter to grasp the tall can of his energy drink, offering it to you but you only shake your head. “That crap tastes like cough syrup,” You add as Ivar downs another gulp.

“Hurry up Hvitserk, we’re here after hours for this,” Ivar calls before he pulls the can back to his mouth.

“Yeah, I can’t wait to pop your cherry,” You say and Ivar looses some of the energy drink through a spray from his lips.

“You can get her name on your ass,” Sigurd says, walking past Hvitserk and tapping his uniform clad back. 

“Why? So Ivar and I can match?” Hvitserk grumbles back and you laugh against Ivar’s chest. 

“How do they know about that?” Ivar asks you quietly, through a teasing voice and you raise slightly, giggling against his mouth as your catch his lips with yours.

“Oh, for fucks sake—Hvitserk here, do that one,” Sigurd says, tapping his fingers against the page. “Paramedic Ragnarsson gets an anatomical tattoo,” 

“Nice choice,” Ivar hums, standing to his full height with you latched still around him and he sets you to sit along the counter.

“Is it nap time for the baby?” Sigurd says, voice taking on a toddler’s tone as he sits back at the front desk, and at the receiving end of the pen that flies from Ivar’s grasp. Leather combat boots stalk along the dark wooden floors, pulling the design from its laminated home before Ivar sends the image through the printer in the far corner. Your eyes catch sight of his back, the muscles in his biceps, the veins on his forearms as he programs the machine to spit out the stencil. Looming your eyes up the gray fabric of the old band tee, over the locks that he’s starting to comb into a bun, and then down the dark wash jeans and over how they end in the tops of his shoes. More thoughts swirl about how you couldn’t wait to undress him when you two would go to your apartment.

As Hvitserk makes himself comfortable in the black leather chair, he rolls up the uniform sleeve, a quick unbutton and folding of the blue material, already deciding on where he deemed the appropriate placement. The curl of his sleeve stops above his elbow and you could see the faint burn mark on his wrist from when he tried to eat a marshmallow that was still on fire. You watched Ivar position himself at his station, a meticulous arrangement of his tools, setting everything in a straight line to connect. There was a squirt of the ink into the containers, a pull of gloves onto his hands, wiggling his fingers into their spots and cracking his knuckles. You bit down on your own tongue to stop that moan that tried so hard to escape. Taking the razor to shave off the blond fuzz, he gingerly laid the stencil on his brother’s inner arm, pressing it gently before pulling it back.

“Double check in the mirror that you like the placement,” Ivar says, tossing his head towards the back wall with the mirror surrounded by an intense wooded frame Floki had built. Hvitserk stands, and you see the slight tremor in his hands, never a fan of any sort of pain—intentional or not. You’ve seen this man cry at the sensation of a paper cut, and all but sob when he jerked his shin against the metal grate on the ambulance’s bumper. But, he was also the man who would tell the patients that it was going to hurt—the realignment, or when he set up the hare for an isolated femur fracture—it was going to hurt and they had his full permission to break his hand if need be. You laugh every time there’s an active labor call, and Hvitserk reassures the mother that he has two hands, and if she needs to break one to push her child out, he’s willing to suffer. It calms the hysteria, even on the worst calls you two had walked into, Hvitserk always knew how to calm any of the demons that danced in the ambulance. Ivar turns to you as Hvitserk gazes, probably far longer than other client has to date, and slides himself over to where you’re perched. There’s a removal of one glove, an index finger and thumb on your chin as he kisses you once, twice, and third time. 

“I already know what I want to eat for dinner,” He whispers against your ear, just loudly enough so you’re the only one to hear his words. “But make sure you leave the polo on, baby girl,” He adds, kissing your temple and nudging the badge that’s on your chest, as a slow blush roses over your cheeks while he turns back around. “Alright brother, ready?” He calls, tapping the seat of the chair and Hvitserk takes a final look before plopping both himself down and his arm against the cushion. 

“Is it going to hurt?” Hvitserk asks, trying to bite the smile he’s showing while both Ivar and Sigurd are preparing to throw whatever they can reach. “I’m sorry I couldn’t resist,” Ivar offers him another lethal glare, nearly plucking the smile from his lips as he begins to spread a thin layer of the ointment across the purple ink. There’s a buzz from the needle gun and Hvitserk whimpers not unlike a puppy. Ivar’s glove-clad fingers stretch to pull the skin taunt, taking the gun down the first line and wiping it with a paper towel.

“Still alright, sir?” You say to Hvitserk as if he’s a patient in your ambulance and you’re watching an IV start. 

“Can you hold my hand?” He whines in a faked voice of concern.

“No,” You say back and there’s a snicker from Sigurd on the far side of the shop. The room dulls to only the noise of the record, the vibration of the needle and you watch Ivar so effortlessly in his element. Eyes watching, concentrating on what he’s doing yet singing lowly to the lyrics of the song that floods your ears alike. He rolls his chair slightly, maneuvering Hvitserk’s arm to his liking as he holds it down with his own. Strength unmatched because his least favorite thing is when the client fidgets, since it sends his work to become sloppy, and he’s grown accustomed to a way to hold the body part down to his liking. And that sight makes you think about him over you, body weight pressing against you like a weighted blanket, one with a smart mouth and curved lip who melts at the sheer stroke of your nails on his skin. Your thoughts rolls from the shift you worked prior, reanalyzing what you had done, gone through, pulling it to part like thread. They roll like waves but crash with thoughts of Ivar, his small comment earlier and then they shift. From work to pleasure and you’re squeezing your thighs before you realize it. Ivar’s voice comes through your ears to halt the dissection, and you move your head to see Hvitserk admiring the piece now forever on his skin and you smile back. Another layer of ointment and then it’s wrapped tightly with Ivar’s instructions to leave it on for an hour. 

“See? No need to be a little baby about it,” You tease him and he laughs.

“That’s his default setting,” Sigurd’s voice calls as he stands up. “Ivar you’re closing up tonight, right?” And Ivar just nods. “I will see your smiling face tomorrow morning then,” He adds sarcastically, and with a wave and check of his pockets he’s out the shops front door.

“Wasn’t as terrible as I thought,” Hvitserk jokes. “Maybe I will get your name on my ass after all,” You offer him a faked smile and forged laugh. “I’m going to head out too, I got the over time for tomorrow,” And he’s gone with a salute through his hand and the hundred dollar bill on the desk, leaving you and Ivar alone in the shop.

“I like seeing you in here,” You say softly as you watch him clear his materials, place everything in their homes and he smiles while he works. “You’re so relaxed,”

“I can say the same thing when I see you in that ambulance, baby,” He replies as he casts a look back to you and then he’s standing, arm grabbing you to come into his side. “Now let’s get going, I’m really looking forward to my dinner…”

Ink Drinker Tags:

@smileysam13579 @dreamtherapy @heisentwerk  @angelofthenightposts @ill-skillsgard @youaremyfamiliar @unbetaedimagines @kathryn-jane @readsalot73 @skrsgardspam @lihikainanea @queen-sarang   @anastasiaskarsgard @andmyannabellee @walkxthexmoon  @flowers-in-your-hayr @peachyboneless @heavenly1927 @victoria-styles @quantumlocked310 @xbellaxcarolinax @mighty-ragnarssons @alexhandersen-marcoilsoe-fandom @queen-of-upshur @nanahachikyuu @apenas-mais-uma-pessoa  @youbloodymadgenius @love-all-things-writing @theanxietyqueen17 @trip2themoon @fandomlifeandeverythingelse

*please message me to let me know if you would like to be added or removed from my tag list. specifications for series/etc. are also welcomed, as well as feedback.*

full masterlist can be found here.

[ofherlionheart]

hey uh. wanted a quick writing exercise so here’s some boo chronicles: part i from zuko’s pov

—————

It’s not the first time he’s been slumped over his kitchen island at a stupid hour, eyes drying out as his tries to finish yet another dull paper by someone who’s allegedly smart enough to be relevant to his field, and it’s also far from the last time he’ll do this, but that doesn’t mean Zuko can’t huff about it. As his eyes glaze over another paragraph, he absently taps out a text to Sokka, because Sokka always has something funny to say about whatever’s on Zuko’s mind—even his petty complaints.

He’s just set his phone facedown on the counter again when his text tone dings. Zuko blinks. Sokka’s never up at this hour, but …

like u wouldn’t kiss bersani’s gravehole

Zuko smiles and shifts his thumb to slide the text open when another message appears with a chime: hey. would u be my pretend boyf plus-one for a wedding in two weeks?

He drops his phone, shooting upright in his seat and staring at his cell warily.

That’s. That’s one hell of a loaded, unexpected question.

Except Sokka doesn’t know about Zuko’s feelings for him. Zuko’s continued to treat one of his best friends like a best friend, because … because. Because Zuko knows he had his chance when they first met, seven years ago, but Zuko wasn’t ready for Sokka and wasn’t ready for anyone, really. And then Sokka moved on and that was fine, really, because this thing between them is as profound as Zuko’s relationship with Mai or Azula or Ty Lee, and Zuko wouldn’t trade it for the world.

He picks up his phone and replies, what?

A second later, a photo of Sokka wearing a bucket hat and sunglasses as he pretends to kiss a fish he’s caught flashes onto Zuko’s screen. Sokka hates that Zuko chose this photo for his contact; he thinks it makes him look like a straight man on a dating app. Zuko has to remind him that Sokka’s the one who sent him this photo in the first place.

Zuko picks up the incoming call and immediately gets an earful of Sokka. “—be the ultimate flex of a significant other on an ex. You’re, like, the most thoughtful, big-hearted person I know, and you’re beautiful and fashionable and accomplished. You’re going to be world-renowned famous in, like, two years.”

Sokka’s always been too generous when it comes to characterizing Zuko, but that doesn’t stop the flutter in his gut. It’s a flutter that tends to rise into Zuko’s throat, making his words catch and give him away when Zuko really doesn’t want to confess to anything, so he breathes steadily and waits until the feeling subsides before he asks the logical question: “Why not Suki?”

“Suki and Zahra are almost the same person,” Sokka answers without missing a beat, “so Zahra would just take pity on Suki and shake her head at me. But she’d think you’re wildly out of my league—”

“I’m not,” Zuko automatically refutes, even as he’s thinking, Of course, Zahra. Sometimes, when he’s not thinking like a kind and generous person, he wishes Zahra were an awful human being so he could properly hate her for the ringer she put Sokka through. She’s not, though—she and Sokka were just the maybe-right people and the definitely-wrong time—so Zuko’s left with nothing more than Of course, Zahras and a heightened awareness of Sokka whenever she’s brought up.

Sokka’s still going. “—and thereby infer that I’ve grown as a person since she dumped me, and then she might even question whether walking away from me was the right choice.”

It was three years ago, and Sokka put himself back together a while back, but sometimes something slips through the cracks.

“To be clear,” Zuko says—encourages a reaffirmation, really—“Her walking away from you was the right choice. Right?”

A sigh, and then an exhaled, “Yeah.”

He wishes he could see Sokka’s face. Usually, he can read Sokka from just the tone of his voice, but one word doesn’t give him much. “Sokka, you aren’t asking me to do this just because there’s a chance you’ll feel a brief sense of victory over someone you’re actually perfectly cordial friends with … are you?”

“No,” Sokka immediately says. “I’m asking because there’s no one I’d rather have by my side than you.”

Zuko’s throat tightens.

It took him a stupidly long time, really, to realize that words don’t mean the same thing to other people as they do to him. He used to get caught up in and read into word choice and modifier placement and goddamn commas to try to understand exactly what other people meant, but it wasn’t until Mai snapped at him, once, during their senior year of high school, “For fuck’s sake, Zuko, I sent t-h-x instead of thanks because it’s quicker, not because I secretly hate you,” that he learned that words are just plain words to most people.

So he knows that Sokka doesn’t mean that he wants Zuko with him first and foremost at all times. That’s just Zuko’s literary brain slathering layers of meaning and significance onto a sentence that Sokka meant in a very, ordinary, unexceptional way.

There’s still a small part of him, though—a part he’s working on—that needs to check anyway. “As emotional support,” he says, curling and uncurling the corner of his printed article with his fingertip.

“Yes.”

“Okay.”

There’s a pause before Sokka echoes, “Okay?”

Of course, okay. Sokka wants him there, and besides, no one reads Sokka as well as Zuko does, and he doesn’t think even Suki knows the full extent of the Zahra thing. He doesn’t want to send Sokka spiraling, though, so he directs them in a safer direction: planning. “You said it’s two weeks from now?” he asks.

“Yeah, on Saturday—you’re sure?”

Sokka’s hesitation never fails to baffle Zuko. The man has always radiated steadiness, and he’s been the stalwart of their ever-evolving group of friends since forever, so much so that it took Zuko a while to parse why Sokka was ever hesitant. Now that he understands that aspect of Sokka, though, whenever his uncertainty crops up, Zuko just wants to fight anything that’s ever held his friend back. No one deserves to thrive and grow more than Sokka.

“Why would I say okay if I was’t sure?” Zuko replies.

Sokka clears his throat. “Great,” he says and then surges on. “Uh, it’s in Montreal. I don’t know what your work schedule is like, but I was planning on taking Friday off to drive up, and then come back on Sunday—”

“Works for me,” Zuko interrupts the rising ramble. He has a couple meetings, on Friday, but meetings can be made up. This can’t. “We can take my car, if you want,” he offers, because he’s actually parked in the city and certainly gets better gas mileage than Sokka.

“Actually—yeah. That’d be great.”

Zuko can tell Sokka’s mind is elsewhere, so he waits. Sure enough, he clears his throat again. “The pretend boyfriend thing … We don’t—we don’t have to do it. Bottom line, I’d just like it if you were there.”

“Are you backing out?” Zuko teases before he catches himself, and fuck, okay. There’s no going back now. But that’s fine, because he’s an adult, and he’s equipped to deal with this. They might even be able to have fun with it. “Let’s do it. I bet we can get her to second-guess herself for at least a second.”

He can hear the smile in Sokka’s voice when he agrees, “Okay.” A few clicks make it through the line; Sokka must be working with some data. “I think I should get to bed. This data set won’t process faster just because I’m watching it.”

“I wondered why you were awake right now.”

“Enjoy the Bersani booty-lickers.”

Zuko sighs—the rectum essay isn’t the only thing that Bersani’s contributed to the field—and Sokka snickers. He should let Sokka go, since his friend really isn’t a night owl, but there’s something still tickling the back of his mind. “Sokka?” he asks.

“Yeah?”

He finally grasps the thought. “You have grown as a person. Since the stuff with Zahra happened.”

It takes Sokka a moment to respond. “Thanks. I’ll see you soon.”

His voice is soft, in a way that it rarely is around the rest of their friends, and fuck, Zuko’s throat is acting up again. “Get some rest,” he manages and then hangs up.

This time, he intentionally drops his phone on the counter, and his forehead follows soon after. The marble is cool against his skin, and he breathes deeply against the racing of his own heart. He’s doing this, he reminds himself, because he’s the best person to help Sokka in this situation.

It’s incidental that he’s powerless to the urge to remind Sokka, in every way he knows how, that Sokka deserves to shine his brightest self at all times.

[trulymadlysydney]

1/ ok long anon :) back longer than ever ! because was there one time Harry was seen at like a western bar? or a bar that had a mechanical bull and he rode it ?? Then left with a girl? did that actually happen am I making that up? Anyways Harry’s in the middle of his American tour and has a 3 day break before his next show on Friday. And let’s pretend he’s somewhere around Nashville, or down further south near Dallas or Houston, or maybe west near Phoenix, or could be up in Boston, anyways point is, it’s Tuesday night and Harry just wants to find a place to have a beer at an actual bar with his band and some of the crew, and hopefully not be center of attention for a moment. And the bar he manages to make his way into isn’t packed whatsoever, but still has a nice crowd of what seems to be older locals, there for open mic night/karaoke. He and the band manage to make their way in to go sit at a booth tucked away and if any of the patrons do spare a look at him, it’s not really at him, but more so at his funky multicolored cardigan. And Harry’s having a great time just being able to be out drinking and having a good time with his friends, just laughing over stories told, pausing to listen to whoever is up at the mic if they catch his ear. Harry suggests another round of drinks, and he walks up to where you’re behind bar in a pair of Levi’s shorts, head turned away as you’re filling up a glass from the tap, and as if you could sense someone there behind you, you’re already saying “I’ll be with you in a second” without even turning around. And when you hear a “take your time” in an accent that’s definitely not from one of your usual crowd, you quickly look over your shoulder and just as quickly turn back to the tap because holy shit…it’s actually Harry Styles at this bar of all places. And as you turn to take the drink you poured to the patron at the corner of the bar, Harry gets an actual look at you and thinks to himself oh wow…she’s pretty. Really, really pretty even in this low lighting. And as you slide your way back over to him, you ask “what can I get you?” in the most calm cool collected way you can manage. And maybe it’s the alcohol or maybe it’s because he’s naturally a menace, but Harry says “your name” with a slight grin. And you won’t lie, hearing that from Harry Styles did make your heart start pumping faster, and a smirk starts to make its way to your mouth that Harry catches, but is shaken away as you roll your eyes because men really are the same no matter who they are and you respond “it’s y/n. Now seriously, what can I get you? They don’t look it, but this crowd can get rowdy if they don’t get their drinks in time even if I tell them that it was a young big shot rock star decided to hold up the line” And there it is. The little weight that settled on your shoulders for a second lifted because you know that he knows and he knows that you know who he is. But you also can’t help but notice the little bit of hurt that crossed Harry’s face when you responded. And Harry, he’s a little taken back by your sharp response, mouth dropped, but not so much shocked that you know who he is (he’s not conceited just knows how relevant/big he is). And he doesn’t know what it is whether it’s the fact that you’re so pretty, or the fact you tried to play it cool (the shocked-knowing glance you made at him when you thought he didn’t notice turns out was noticed) the alcohol, or the slight bite in your response, but he turns to look back at the booth with his friends and notices that they’re so deep into conversations and laughs and (some even dancing with some of the older patrons) honestly, haven’t noticed that Harry’s been gone for a moment. He looks back to you and says “Y/N” (that rolls nice off his lips), “I’m sorry, I’ll have one of whatever is on tap.” And you nod as you turn to pour his drink while Harry decides to settle in and take a seat at the bar. And when you place his drink on the table, he goes “Seriously, I’m sorry if I offended you or made you uncomfortable in anyway.”

2/ And you notice how genuine he sounds right now, and you were neither offended or uncomfortable, just more shocked that Harry Styles is asking for your name. You tell him “it’s fine, really, just wasn’t expecting /that/ from you. Anyways, what managed to bring you all the way over here?” And that’s how you two started talking about everything really even as you excused yourself to fill orders, the conversation was easily jumped back into. Harry told you of how he’s been on tour and just needed to feel like a person and you told him about yourself. How you took up bartending because you’re starting grad school in the fall and little stories about the old timey crowd that like to inhabit this place. Like how behind the dingy curtain on the little stage, there’s actually a mechanical bull that is hardly ever used now because too many drunk old people nearly breaking a hip trying to live out their Wild Wild West fantasy. And you both don’t really notice, but as the conversation has gone on, he’s leaned more across the bar as you’ve leaned closer to him as well. Harry’s noticing how your eyes crinkle when you laugh and the mole on your forearm as you stretch to hand people their drinks. And your beautiful doesn’t go missed by the kind elderly guests who he can hear make comments on how “you get prettier every time I see you y/n” And you’re really smart. When you told him what you’re going to grad school for, and what you’re researching, Harry was reminded how he stopped going to school at 16. And you’re noticing how easy he is to talk to. Surprisingly easy and despite being a huge celebrity, he’s really down to earth, still cocky but charming. He’s also so handsome, strikingly so, especially this close. Anyways, the night has gone on, more of the crowd turning in for the night, and you’re now around the bar, sitting on the stool next to Harry, knees occasionally knocking against each other, still talking. At some point you’re both broken out of whatever trance you’re both under by each other by one of Harry’s friends coming over to tell him that they’re all leaving and you think sadly to yourself that this weird, unexpected, encounter has come to an end. But when you see that Harry hasn’t gotten up from his stool, and he tell them that’s going to stay back and he’ll get a ride back later, something lights up in your belly. As they all wave back at him you send a wave off as well and Harry turns back to you and says “Is that okay with you? I’m honestly having a really great time talking with you.” And you swear steam could come out of your ears and your face is probably beet red right now as a high pitch “no, that’s fine, I’m really having a great time too. But I am going to have to start closing up now, so if you do want to leave…” and Harry is all “oh….well is it okay if I stay as you close up, give you some extra company? I promise I’ll stay out of your way, or I could help, you know?” And he adds with a smile, “Whatever I can do that’ll make you want me to stay, lovely” And that last part makes you smitten really as you nod okay to him. So the bar is now closed, and you’ve been going through your usual closing routine (it’s just you that night since it was Tuesday) and you just can’t believe Harry Styles is here helping you sweep and flip chairs onto tables (“I can help some. I used to be a baker you know?”) And you’ve plugged your phone into the speaker to play your Spotify as you clean and when you hear the opening of Canyon Moon, a shock runs up your spine as you pause mid tabletop wipe down and your eyes move to meet Harry who has looked up mid sweep. And you’re blushing again and stammering an apology of “I am so sorry let me change it” as you rush to your phone to change it as Harry who has gone back to sweeping says “no I like this one” with a grin and looks back to you. And you’re a little relieved but still embarrassed biting your lip as you tell him “yeah i do too” with a returned grin.

3/ And you both go back to cleaning and talking, you’ve both ended up in one of the booths, Your feet brushing against each other under the table as you finish up looking over inventory sheets between asking Harry about his tattoos (his sleeves rolled up,holding his arm out on the table as you admire and you didn’t miss the flex of his hand when you brushed against the one of the holy Bible asking if the placement of the bookmark means anything particular). And at some point Harry looks towards the stage at one point and asks “is there really a bull behind there?” And you told him “yeah and that bull has a name, and it’s Stella by the way named after an actual cow the owner had on a farm as a kid” and now you’re pulling the curtain to reveal, the very intimidating mechanical bull that takes up most of the tiny stage. And Harry’s all “can I ride it?” And you’re all “are you sure? I mean it hasn’t been used in awhile besides my coworkers when we’re fucking around after closing sometimes.” And Harry’s like “yeah it looks like fun.” And that’s how he ended up, on top of the bull, shoes discarded and socked feet, holding on with one hand as the bull bucked and you laughed at first because of how ridiculous he looked, and he’s laughing along with you having the time of his life too, but oh…the way he’s practically grinding against the seat is making you have some really impure thoughts. And you shake your head a little as he’s finally lost his bearings and has fallen off onto the protective padding below laughing his head off. And jokingly you say “23 seconds. And here id thought you’d last longer.”

4/ And Harry catches your shot at his ego as he gains his composure, rising up to where you are at the controls to say “heyyy now. Bet you can’t do better.” And you’re a little insulted at his assumption because you mentioned earlier to him that you and the rest of the workers here will occasionally ride the bull after work for fun and you’d managed stay on the longest several times thanks to your highly strategized technique you’ve developed, as you scoff “oh please I know how to ride” and your eyes widen because you didn’t mean for your response to be that saucy, but Harry is already looking at you with that smirk and says “well, show me how you ride then” and you swallow and agree and after giving harry a rundown on the easy to use controls, you’re perched on the bull. With the bull facing the away, your starting with your back towards Harry, and he can’t help but to notice your ass in your shorts again as it’s slightly arched on the bull with your hand in the air. Once he actually starts up the bull, he realizes how right you were about knowing how to ride. And he didn’t think this was possible but you’ve managed to make this whole activity seem graceful? In the way that you’re going with the motions of the bull. Harry also can’t help but notice how sexy you look up on it too, he can’t help but let his himself imagine you riding him like how you are on the bull right now. You rocking rhythmically back and forth on the saddle. Harry’s glad that he’s behind the controls right now as he reaches to his pants to discreetly adjust himself because he’s getting hard. And your gleeful laughter snaps him out of his dirty thoughts as you make eye contact with him, and it’s a split second but oh did you just see him? adjust himself? Oh… and it breaks you from your concentration as you’re flung from the bull a little harsher than expected onto the padding below. And Harry has exclaimed your name as he has stepped his way into the padding of the bull pen rushing to you as you’re rolled onto your side catching your breath laughing a little because this is, just so crazy, crazy, crazy, crazy that Harry Styles has not only showed up to your bar, but he /likes/ talking to you, he called you lovely and now, he’s hard over you. And Harry is leaned over you, rolling you onto your back, concern on his face, and asking “are you okay?” And you’re still trying to catch your breath as breathless laughs escape you as you tell him “yeah, yeah I’m fine.”

5/ And now you’re close, really close and really looking at each other as Harry goes to sweep some of your hair off your face. And you reach your hand up to softly brush against the bare skin of his tattooless arm. And you’re looking at Harry’s lips as he’s paused his ministrations in your hair looking down at you and smirks “you were right about knowing how to ride.” And a smile spreads across your face, and your eyes are doing that crinkled thing that Harry likes as you reply “oh, you think?” and your hand moves to tug on his collar, to bring him down to your face as you kiss him.

Anndddddd that’s all I’ve got lol.

---------

BESTIE....... BESTIE OH MY GOD HELLO??? IM SPEECHLESS IM... OMFG HIM BEING A LITTLE NERVOUS? YOU BOTH BEING SO EXCITED TO HANG OUT AFTER HOURS, AND THE REALIZATION THAT LIKE... OH FUCK HE’S ACTUALLY KIND OF INTO YOU... OH MY GOD

[practicalmagicintuitions]

Here is the Chris Reading for the anons asking for it:

I’ve placed a whole bunch of things down for this one. You guys wanted general, so until I could hone in on something, I had to just test the waters on all things. (I’m not following him so I don’t know what’s going on at all) if you guys notice something in this reading that you think could be symbolism for something you actually know of in his life, let me know! :)

I was asked for General, how he feels about relationships, how he feels about marriage, career? And love life.

1. I put down Chris

2. Being in a relationship” second. BIAR Wanted to be in front of Chris, Chris also wanted it there

3. Career was confused where to go, Being in a relationship was in the way. Career decided it’s gonna jam itself between them. (Already this is super telling.)

4. Being Single - single was attached to career, it wanted to stay with career it wouldn’t move elsewhere

5. Family are right behind Chris, (good that’s where they should be. Doesn’t look like any animosity atm)

6. Strangely, marriage wanted to be in front of in a relationship……..? That’s gonna be a fun one to figure out.

7. “Having kids” is behind him, past family and on the left (it’s the furthest placement away so far”

Chris is staring ahead at Career, single, BIAR and single. They’re all in a line.

Chris is staring straight at career. I can’t feel anything from him besides the fact that this big brick wall called a career is in front of him. I see nothing past that. “Single” though, rather than seeming as big as career, seems to represent itself as a little flag thats just been pressed into the side of the brick wall, single isnt giving me any feeling either.

That being said, the career brick wall is not intimidating. It’s just more like he’s looking up at it like, “huh. Big guy” he has the need to climb over it.

Yeah, listen this wall is a wall but he’s not trying duck his head to the side and see past it, he just has the need to jump over this brick wall. The wall is maybe 7 foot tall, so in comparison to himself and how big he feels in this scenario (he feels his normal 6 foot self) he absolutely could. But it’s just interesting that what I’m seeing/feeling is a brick wall that’s like 5 foot in length and yet he has no desire to just bypass it and go to the side, he wants to climb the fucking thing?

Chris stans, tell me what the HELL that is about. You know him better than I. Does he like the competition or accomplishment? Does he feel he needs to prove himself the hard way?

Anyway, he’s pretty confident he can jump this wall. And single is not even a thing to him in its current position.

He’s thinking very hard about how to jump this wall. Like he knows how, you lift yourself up and jump over it I can see that image in my head very easy, but he’s struggling to actually DO it?

Nope, ok he doesn’t want to.

He knows he can jump it, he knows it’s blocking everything else, but I go to take an action for him and he’s like “nah I’m good tho”

Seems a fitting time to put in “anxiety.”

I laughed out loud when I had to place anxiety. Take a wild guess where it felt it needed to be?

You bet chya, it’s on the wall.

And then it couldn’t make up its mind. Officially I’ve placed it on the wall together with “single” and “career” but the energy for anxiety is actually that’s it’s jumping in front of the wall, to on the wall, to behind the wall and it keeps doing that. Just back and forth.

Makes total sense as to why he can’t cross this wall.

Now that anxiety is there he doesn’t want to look in its direction at all.

He’s gotten a bit warm and a bit of a headache too now, and a bit dizzy. The headache is real present.

The good news is in these situations where someone can’t move due to anxiety or otherwise, it’s always a good time to place supports, so the person can feel supported to do the thing they want and move forward. Luckily, his family are already placed behind him, they seem to really love him, so it’s just about me utilising that now.

This part I’m going to do more privately (as in I won’t type it) cause this would be a personal thing (maybe even generational thing) that he needs to move through with his family in order for them to feel that support. His anxiety didn’t come from nowhere. That being said I’m also not going to do a whole ass constellation with him cause 1. He’s not here and 2. It would take hours.

All I’ll say is his mum is a MASSIVE support for him, and also……. 😬 kinda swamping him a bit. He doesn’t mind it, it’s actually very comforted, but she truly is just physically in this reading SWAMPING him. An outsider could see that she’s maybe a bit too involved with his life.. which isn’t great for a fully grown man. But, he finds it comforting, what are ya gonna do. Clearly he doesn’t want it to end… :/

(For reading purposes So it’s not just jumping, I took about 5 minutes with him and his family to help move past anxiety, his family love the crap out of the guy it’s real cute.)

I thought this was important to note:

What Career feels in relation to CE:

Very big, bulky, serious. Reminds me a bit of Wilson Fisk from into the spider verse. Just very big, bulky, serious a bit of a bully. Not gonna move. You’re gonna do what I tell you. Restrictive. That kind of energy. It doesn’t HATE him, but it has rules. And Chris is gonna follow them. (That’s a threat) it also feels like within career is actually a powerful male that kinda owns his ass? Not sure who that could be, once again CE stans, gimme the tea.

For the next part I might… get in trouble. I know that when it comes to the talk of relationships no one likes to hear it. Don’t kill the messenger here you guys:

he has his back TURNED from “single”

I could encourage him to look everywhich other way for any other representative, but single? Back turned.

Doesn’t wanna look at it.

Single on the other hand is kinda looking at him like a little kid like :) hi Chris look pls. Chris! Pls :) Chris look at me Chris pls :) Chrissy! Take a look!

For whatever reason “single” in this reading is feeling very adolescent. Maybe he feels that being single isn’t a grown up thing to do anymore? (I forgot to mention, the things in the field take on the energy of the person it’s focused on, not necessarily how it is perceived by EVERYONE in the world, only how it’s perceived or how it acts in relation to the client. Single to ME might be a knight in shining armor that protects me, Single to Chris seems adolescent.

So, Chris is looking at both “marriage” and “being in a relationship” he’s not feeling particularly drawn towards either, but he is giving a lot more attention to “being in a relationship” than marriage.

Which is weird, cause if you don’t want single, yet you don’t want relationship, what do you want?

I have now brought in “situationship” “flirting w/ someone” and “fwb”

situationship is closest, but doesn’t have his full attention, as it’s to the left side of him at an Angle. FWB is just behind situationship but more aligned to be in front of his eyesight, and flirting with someone is on the right from him, at an angle and is the furthest of the three.

Ok, FWB feels the most comfortable for him, he actually took a step towards it. He’s not feeling super fond of any of the three in any way, but FWB is nice it’s comforting, he’s.. semi happy? It’s not even really happy… it’s just like “doing ok!This is ok! This is comfortable.”

He’s side eyeing the shit out of “situationship” though and is anxious at how close it is. He doesn’t actually want the situationship there, but it’s close now and it’s not moving, and he’s having a bit of anxiety about it. He can’t stop looking at it though. FWB is immediate comfort, situationship is SO ANXIETY INDUCING but it’s also more interesting to look at?

(Chris get therapy 🙄)

Flirting with someone is out of the picture, been there, done that doesn’t care about it. (Could be that he’s already gone through the flirting stage with someone that’s why it’s of no interest to him)

Now that he’s finding situationship more interesting, he’s looking past FWB and to “being in a relationship” which he also finds nicer to look at. The thought coming up is “that would be nice” but in a wistful way.

Marriage is still right out, we’re not looking at marriage.

I’m gonna move relationship closer to situationship to see if he feels better or worse.

Lmao ok, I put them both together and imagined situation ship and relationship being close, like they’re holding hands. In his mind, situationship is a cute little brunette that’s like 5’4 and “being in a relationship” is built like an Amazonian 6’5 goddess and he’s both in awe, yet intimidated a bit, but also not hating it, but the only thought that came up was “ahhhhh…. Fuck.”

Two thoughts came up but they both got crossed out before he could finish it.

“I don’t want-“

“I’m not ready……..-“

And now he just keeps hesitantly saying relationship over and over again but he’s saying it like he’s brand new to the word, like he’s trying to find the word for the word - yet he’s already speaking it??

And now it’s just a flatlining “😐 mmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmm……”

Sat with this for a while and didn’t have much movement so time to move to:

Question time:

Q: Chris.. are you in a situationship?

I don’t know what I’m in

Q: Ok. Are you… sleeping with someone

Yeah

Q: Are you FWB?

He’s hesitant? Like he’s not sure. That word doesn’t seem to fit what he’s up to atm. He seems very confused about what he’s in.

Q: Are you going on dates with someone?

I’m going on dates

Q: With many people or just one?

Just…. One… (not sure why he was hesitant about telling me, but I feel like I’m starting to cross on something I’m not meant to talk about, so I’m ending it here. If he wants to keep it to himself, he is absolutely in his right to do so)

I will say when He said just one, a person did show up: brown hair, she’s shorter than him (but that’s obvious) and she’s slender and kinda perky. When I see her she looks like she’s fun! I saw her dancing around a bit. I liked her energy.

Sound like anyone you guys know?

Note: this is where I’ve ended it. Wasn’t gonna push on it he was getting more and more hesitant it’s not my place to push anything that he doesn’t want me to access. Now that we’ve created the focus though it will be easier to go from there :)

Hopefully that covered it for the anons that asked :) I’m over @energyanon to anyone that needs anything clarified.

Thank you for doing this @energyanon ! Your gift is amazing and thank you for your dedication!

[xjoonchildx]

airplane, pt. 2 | jjk x reader chapter one: ICN --> LAX

pairing: jungkook/reader word count: 6.4K rating: 18+

genre: smut | silly smut | nonsensical smut

warnings:  criminal!jungkook, koreanamerican!jungkook, highly improbable condom placement, unrealistic use of available sex space, reality has left the chat, plausibility has left the chat

Chapter 01 | 02 | 03 | 04 | 05 | 06

artwork by the shmexy @ppersonna​ who’s smut is even better than her art

*************************

One day it works out too well, then the next day I’m completely screwed (I still) Who should I live as today, Kim Namjoon or RM? 25, I still don’t know how to live well So, today as well, we just go -- Airplane, Pt. 2 BTS

**************************

Jungkook Jeon is basically your Carmen Sandiego.

You stare down at the photocopy of the state of California driver’s license in your hand, into the face of the brash little fucker you’ve been chasing across the globe for the better part of a year.

He looks barely old enough to drive.

Of course, this picture was taken years ago when he was a sophomore at Stanford. Back before he dropped out of school despite being in the top of his class. Back before he broke the law by taking six million dollars of someone else’s money, then broke his parents’ hearts by disappearing without a trace.

You should already have him in custody — and If he were like any of the other greedy assholes you usually chase, he would be. But instead, Jungkook Jeon has managed to deflect and dodge and avoid you at every turn for months.

It’s driving you fucking insane.

One time, you’d been so certain about cornering him in Argentina that you’d boarded a plane with a pair of thick-necked US Marshals and flown south. You’d had to head back to the States empty-handed and sunburnt and pissed.

The real kicker was when you’d gotten home and opened a one-line email – encrypted to hell and back – with a picture of your FBI Academy graduation headshot attached.

you’re so hot i almost want to get caught. almost.

That had hurt.

So you’d had to lick your wounds, bide your time and wait for a man who apparently didn’t make mistakes to make a mistake. And for a while, he didn’t.

Until he did.

************************************** 

Agent Kim Namjoon is definitely not the pencil pusher you imagined him to be during your many phone calls and other interactions.

No, the man who meets you and your team at Incheon International Airport is what the kids these days call a snack. He is tall and broad and wears a pair of dark thick-rimmed glasses that should make him look like a giant nerd but somehow don’t.

Very, very cute.

“Welcome to Korea,” he says with an easy smile. You smile back, then clear your throat and remind yourself you’re not here to flirt with your contact with Korea’s National Intelligence Service.

Seriously.

Agent Kim’s English is immaculate – this you already knew since you’ve exchanged more than a few calls in recent weeks. He’s got his own team ready for briefing at his headquarters. After a quick drive, you’re all in one room going over the plan.

His guys have tracked Jeon to a high-end restaurant in Seoul where he’s been working for a few months. They already have a rough sketch of the area. You’re going to block off every exit, cover every angle, and make sure there’s no way he’s getting out of that restaurant without coming through one of you.

This should go off without a hitch – but then you remember Argentina and frown.

“He’s there. My guys are ready to go,” Agent Kim says, after taking a quick call on his cell phone.

It’s decided, then.

You load into black vans and take off for the west end of the city. Agent Kim drives and you have the chance to look out the window at the streets. It’s a beautiful place, you think. Agent Kim seems to read your mind.

“You should come back sometime,” he says. “When you’re not here on business.”

Sigh. You’re going to have to flirt with this man, aren’t you?

“I would like that. Maybe you could show me around some time,” you reply.

His eyes stay on the road – his hands locked at 10 and 2 – but you see the ghost of a smile pass over his lips. You smile to yourself and look back out the window.

Minutes later you’re parked outside an industrial-looking brick building. Gleaming glass-and-stone condos and perfectly manicured greenscaping confirm you are in a high-dollar neighborhood. It’s a Saturday night in a ritzy part of Seoul and you’re probably about to ruin someone’s date night.

Or maybe rescue it, depending on the date.

You stare out at the restaurant and imagine Jungkook Jeon inside, going about his life without realizing you’re here to throw a wrench into all his plans. You get a little thrill when you imagine the look on his face when he realizes the gig is up. Victory is so close you can taste it.

Agent Kim gets a call from his point man, everyone is in place.

Showtime.

******************************

“Is that consommé? It looks like consommé. What do you think, Agent Kim?”

Jungkook Jeon looks shaken for a moment when you step in front of the table where’s he’s just laid out a picture-perfect pair of starters. His guests, a nicely-dressed older couple, also look shaken as they glance nervously between you, Agent Kim, and their now permanently off-duty server.

He straightens to his full height.

The youthful roundness of the face you’ve stared at so long in that driver’s license picture is gone. You have no idea what this guy’s been eating for the past few years, but in place of that baby-faced kid is a man, tall and broad and muscular. Tattoos you can’t make out run across his hands, up his arms, and disappear into the white dress shirt he has rolled to the elbows. His hair is on the long side, pulled back, giving you an unobstructed view of what can only be described as a perfect face. Serious, literal perfection.

Good grief.

Somehow the little shit recovers from his shock in an instant. He smirks, despite his clear disadvantage.

“I gotta say, you look even better in person.”

Oh yeah? So do you.

You ignore his opening line.

“It’s time to come home, Mr. Jeon. Pay the piper and all that.”

He has the nerve to roll his eyes and your hand itches with the desire to punch him in his stupid fucking perfect face.

“Teamed up with some Korean suits, huh?” He gives Agent Kim the once-over and apparently finds him lacking.

“Mr. Jeon,” you feign a scandalized tone. “Just how do you think I was raised? It would be downright rude to barge into a sovereign country without an invitation. Besides, Agent Kim here has been an absolute pleasure.”

You could hear a pin drop inside this restaurant right now. Every knife and fork and glass has come to rest on the fine white linen on these tables. The guests are frozen in place, taking in the strange scene.

Dinner and a show tonight, guys.

Jungkook doesn’t move an inch. You’d half expected him to just walk up, accept his cuffs and get this show on the road. But no, apparently he’s in a talking mood.

“Tell me how you found me.”

You sigh. You’re not a pair of girlfriends catching up over coffee. You open your mouth to say just that, but Agent Kim speaks up.

“We had a source come through with some very specific information on you.”

“Oh, I think Agent Kim is being far too kind,” you counter. “What he means to say is that your Korean sucks. You see, Mr. Jeon, you may look like them,” you gesture at the restaurant full of guests, “but you sound like us. Let’s just say you stick out like a sore thumb here.”

The corners of his eyes crinkle in amusement at the jab.

“I hated Korean school, you know.”

“It shows.”

He laughs.

Agent Kim clears his throat as if to remind you both that you’re not alone.

“Well this isn’t a social call, and I’m sure all these fine people would love to get back to their meals. So why don’t we finish this chat on the way back to the United States, Mr. Jeon?” you say, getting back to the task at hand.

Agent Kim signals his guys and they swoop in to put him in cuffs. He doesn’t resist, just holds out his hands and shoots you his most flirtatious smile.

“I’m going to hold you to that, Agent.”

On your way out the door, you glance over at the consommé and hope it’s supposed to be served cold.

**********************************

“What is a man who stole six million dollars doing waiting tables at a restaurant?” you muse out loud.

Jungkook Jeon is in the backseat of Agent Kim’s black SUV, looking out the window.

“I had to have some kind of story, right? Besides, I kind of liked it.”

“You didn’t get to spend the money,” you say.

“Not really,” he admits. “It’s much easier to fantasize about blowing millions of dollars than it is to actually do it.”

“Tsk, tsk, Mr. Jeon. What a shame.”

He leans forward in the backseat, hands cuffed in front of him.

“You know what would really be a shame, Agent? If I don’t get the chance to fuck you before you lock me up.”

A muscle twitches in Agent Kim’s jaw.

“Watch your mouth,” he warns, glaring into the rearview mirror. You immediately decide you like him a little stern. It’s pretty hot.

“Mr. Jeon, you and your dick will be free to do whatever you’d both like in about twenty years. That’s how this whole grand larceny and evasion thing works,” you say, ignoring the sensation that spreads across the back of your neck at his crass words.

He whistles.

“I’m really going to waste my best-looking years in prison.”

No kidding.

“Oh, don’t be too disappointed,” you say sweetly. “I hear there are a few advantages to having such a pretty face behind bars.”

You hear the clink of his cuffs and look into your rearview just in time to see him give you the finger.

*********************************

The government can be so cheap sometimes.

You’d have loved to pull right up to the tarmac at Incheon International, walk right onto a chartered plane like the Feds do in the movies. But alas, private flights are definitely not in the budget.

Instead, you have to settle for regular seats on a Korean Air flight. You’d been in touch with the airline ahead of time and they’d offered you and your team privacy in the back rows of the plane – complete with a curtain separator. You really couldn’t blame them for not wanting passengers to be greeted by a handcuffed man and his gun-toting babysitters.

Smart move all around.

Seating arrangements are decided, you and Jungkook on one side of the aisle, your two Marshals on the other. They’re both smart men, highly-skilled and boring as hell. You’d already had to suffer through their small talk on the fourteen-hour long flight here, and you’d be damned if you had to do it again on the way back.

“Are you going to let me have a drink?” Jungkook asks, as soon as you’re settled into your seats.

“Of course,” you reply, scrolling through a few emails on your phone. “What’s your favorite kind of juice?”

He snorts.

“It’s gonna be a long flight unless you play nice,” he warns.

“Mr. Jeon,” you sigh. “Shut up.”

He shakes his handcuffs.

“You could at least take these off,” he grumbles. “Not like I can walk off of a moving plane.”

“Nope,” you reply, affecting your best bored tone. You grab a magazine out of the seatback and pretend to leaf through it.

“So you want me to sit here – no phone, no headphones, no nothing – for fourteen hours?”

“Better to practice that ‘bored out of your mind’ routine sooner rather than later. I’m sure it’s gonna come in handy.”

You don’t look his way, but you can feel the glare he’s fixed on you and you have to fight the urge to smile.

******************************

The flight attendant who rolls a giant drink cart into your quiet section of this plane looks like a doll. Porcelain skin, huge eyes and the whitest smile you have ever seen.

Jungkook straightens in his seat immediately. He’s been pouting for the last hour but now he sees this dazzling young woman and his game face is back on.

“Hello,” he says, flashing her a smile.

Then he stops — seems to remember his audience — and resumes the exchange in Korean. You stare at him as he makes eyes at the flight attendant, working her with the confidence of a man who is not wearing handcuffs right now.

She blushes deeply at something he says before turning back to her cart to pour a Jack and Coke.

“Are you serious, Jeon?”

He smiles.

“You don’t hate me, right? Like, obviously I’ve pissed you off, but you don’t hate me. Because only a person who hated me would stop me from having a drink on my way to federal prison.”

You open your mouth to protest, but instead decide that he’s right. He’s a thief – not a killer for pete’s sake.

A super-hot, ridiculously charming, complete asshole of a thief who is definitely not getting under your skin by flirting with the flight attendant right now.

The porcelain doll turns back and hands him his cocktail and Jungkook winks at her. This man just accepted his drink with his hands in fucking handcuffs and this woman is blushing at him like he just asked for her number in a nightclub.

“Are you done?” you hiss.

“With what?” he asks innocently, cuffs clinking as he lifts the drink to his mouth.

“Eye-fucking the flight attendant.”

He feigns shock. “Are you – are you…jealous?”

You scoff and turn your attention back to your magazine.

He leans close.

“Don’t be jealous,” he says, blowing whiskey-scented breath into your ear. “I wanted you first. I’m only flirting with her because you’re really mean to me.”

He leans back and takes another sip of his drink.

There is something about this mischievous boy-man with the chiseled body and the smart mouth. He certainly has a charm. You’re certain he’s been able to use that charm to get out of more than a few sticky situations over the years.

“I wasn’t kidding you know,” he says. “About wanting to fuck you.”

He shakes the ice in his glass to show off that he’s already drained it and gives you another one of those self-assured smiles that’s really starting to piss you off. You drop your gaze back to your magazine.

“I’m not going to fuck you,” you state simply, pretending to have a deep interest in some blurb about face masks.

“No? Are you sure about that?”

“You are mind-bogglingly arrogant for a man who is headed to prison for the next two decades,” you reply dryly.

“Probably headed to prison,” he corrects. “Innocent until proven guilty, due process and all that. Unless things have changed? I realize it’s been a while since I’ve been home.”

You snort.

“Okay fine, you’re right. I’m headed to prison for the next twenty years which is why it’s imperative that you fuck me now. Immediately. Anything else would be,” he gives a dramatic shake of his head, “Inhumane.”

This time you can’t help but laugh and one of the Marshals across the aisle gives you a disapproving look, like he’s been forced to chaperone a pair of giggling teenagers.

You clear your throat and look back down at your magazine, force the smile off your face.

“Argentina,” you say. “How did you get out of there before I got to you?”.

The flight attendant returns with another drink and another smile for him.

“You want something, I want something,” he says, taking a long sip. “Maybe we could work something out?”

“I’m not going to fuck you for information, Jeon. All of that will soon come out in the wash,” you sigh.

“Then fuck me for charity. For good will. Fuck me because it’s the least you can do since you’re blowing up my entire life right now.”

You roll your eyes.

“You blew up your life, you idiot. You’re the one who intercepted a wire transfer and stole six million bucks. You’ve already been fucked. You fucked yourself.”

He smiles wistfully for a moment.

“Yeah, you’ve got a point there.”

*******************************

You stop him at three drinks.

His eyes have taken on a soft quality and his entire energy is a bit more relaxed with some booze in his system. It’s hard, it’s really hard to ignore how hot this man is without even trying.

But when he tries? Then it’s damned near impossible.

You check your watch. You still have seven hours to go on this flight.

“Luck,” he says, suddenly.

“Excuse me?” you say, looking up from your magazine.

“You wanted to know how I got out of Argentina in time. I was gonna make up some fancy story about how I’d figured out you were on to me and beat the clock to get away but the truth is, I was just lucky. I’d already been there too long and I was getting restless. I was ready to go.”

Hmm. So the booze has made him talkative.

“Your landlord said we’d missed you by one day,” you counter.

“Yup,” he laughs, closing his eyes momentarily as if reliving the thrill of the chase. “I used to have a lot of luck, actually. Before I ran into you.”

“Sorry about that.”

“No you’re not.”

“Fair enough,” you say and the two of you share a laugh. You open a bag of pretzels and offer him one. He begrudgingly accepts.

“Why did you take the money?”

He chews thoughtfully for a moment.

“Because I wanted to know if I could. I didn’t think I was gonna pull it off, but again, it was my luck. Once I figured out how to do it, I just did.”

“How remarkably stupid,” you breathe, a smile on your face. He smiles, too.

“Yeah, well. I said I was lucky, not smart.”

“Oh, but you are smart, Mr. Jeon, and don’t think you’ve convinced me otherwise. Your transcript from Stanford tells a very interesting story. What did your parents say when you dropped out at the top of your class and went to work at a gas station?”

The sarcastic back-and-forth screeches to a halt. For the first time, you see darkness pass over his face.

“Don’t ask me about my parents,” he says curtly. “I’ll tell you whatever else you want to know, but that shit is none of your business.”

“I’m sorry,” you say, and this time you mean it.

He shifts to his side, away from you, and looks out the window.

You sit quiet, thinking for a minute – but after a while you both fall asleep.

********************************************

You wake to Jungkook nudging you.

“Get up,” he says urgently. “I have to piss.”

You groan, trying to clear the fog from your brain and glance at your watch. Still four more hours to go on this flight.

“Like now,” he says, bouncing one leg to ward off the sensation.

You get up, stretch out, and wait for him to stand but then realize he’s waiting for you to help him since it’s an awkward fit in the seats with his handcuffs. Instead of making a snarky comment, you just offer your hand and a slight smile.

Very unlike you.

“Thanks,” he says, straightening out, stretching his legs. One of the Marshals raises an eyebrow at you.

“He has to use the bathroom,” you say, stilling the man with a raised hand when he makes to stand. “It’s alright, I need to stretch, too. I’ll walk him down there.”

The Marshal looks skeptically from Jungkook to you and back.

“It’s fine, Agent,” you say, a little annoyed. “It’s not like he can go anywhere, right?”

“Right,” Jungkook says, still bouncing that leg.

The Marshal gives you a look that makes clear he doesn’t approve, but he’s not going to stop you.

You walk behind Jungkook as he makes his way past the curtain, down the aisle and towards the bathroom. It’s a half-empty flight, and you’re glad for it when you see people staring at his handcuffs. You don’t know what’s gotten into you, but you can’t help but feel a little embarrassed on his behalf when you hear them whispering in Korean. At least you don’t know what they’re saying.

The firm set of Jungkook’s mouth makes you think he wishes that were the case for him, too.

“Just uh, give me a minute,” he says, when you reach the bathroom.

It turns out to be a lot longer than a minute.

You’re half tempted to bang on the door and demand to know why he’s taking so long. Maybe the Marshal was right to be suspicious of Jungkook. Maybe he figured out a way off this plane through the toilet.

You’re bouncing your own leg impatiently when he finally reappears.

“What took you so long?” you ask, annoyed.

“You ever try to take your pants and underwear off while handcuffed?” he asks. “You know what — never mind, don’t answer that. You’ll start giving me ideas.”

Ah. He’s back, then.

Part of you is a little relieved to hear his smart-ass mouth again. You feel a hell of a lot less guilty around this version of him.

“Listen, I did a little recon and it’s a tight fit, but there’s definitely enough room for us to fuck,” he says, face comically serious. “And we’re running out of time for you to pull the trigger, so what’s it going to be?”

“Ugh. You’re foul,” you say, pulling a face.

“But you kind of like it,” he shoots back.

He’s right, though. You kind of do.

***********************

Clearly you’ve lost your mind.

Pheromones have short-circuited all the portions of your brain that control logic, reason, and risk. That’s the only plausible explanation for why you are slumped into your seat right now, legs pressed together tight, imagining fucking Jungkook Jeon in an airplane bathroom.

Sympathy and curiosity and more than a little horniness are making for a strange mix. You reason to yourself — as if you are actually entertaining this madness — that he’s not a convicted felon, just an accused one. There’s gotta be a loophole in the FBI handbook somewhere.

“You’re thinking about it, aren’t you?” Jungkook asks, leaning close — a smile playing over his lips.

“Shut up.”

“You are,” he whispers in a scandalized tone. “I mean with these on, I’m not going to be able to do my best work, obviously, but I’ve done more with less. Unless you want to take them off,” he says, rolling his wrists in the handcuffs.

“I already told you, I’m not taking those off,” you say sharply.

“Alright, alright. Keep it kinky. I can roll with that.”

”Shut up, Jeon.”

He gestures across his mouth like he’s zipping it shut and throwing away the key and you fight the urge to laugh.

“If I decided to fuck you, and I’m not saying I would,” you hiss, “I would have to stuff a sock into that smart mouth of yours just to not have to hear it.”

He laughs and his face looks so young and relaxed it takes your breath away a little.

“Make it your underwear and we have a deal,” he winks.

You pick up another magazine and get back to actively trying to ignore him and that annoying pulse between your legs.

*************************

Two hours left to Los Angeles.

You glance over at your guard dogs, who’ve both knocked out after a snack. One has a newspaper draped fully over his face, grandpa style.

You should have ordered a drink. You should have ordered six. That way, if you’re ever called to the carpet about the decision you’re about to make, you can blame it on alcohol-induced psychosis. Because the Marshals are asleep and you feel bad for Jungkook Jeon and he’s so hot you can barely think straight at this point. You take a deep breath and make a decision.

Fuck it.

You stand quietly, motioning to Jungkook with a finger over your lips. For a moment, his brows knit together in confusion but that look passes almost as quickly as it came. Then his entire face breaks out into a wide grin.

“Yeah?” he whispers.

“Shut up,” you whisper back, through gritted teeth.

You hold out your hand to help him to stand and when he grips it, he rubs his the pad of his thumb across your wrist. You try to ignore the sizzle of arousal he manages to drum up with that brief touch.

Quietly, you both walk past the curtain, past sleeping passengers and back to the clean but cramped bathroom where you are about to do the dumbest shit you have ever done.

You glance around at the passengers nearby and notice only one older man, eyes wide on the two of you. You shoot an excuse-me-sir-this-is-official-government-business look at him before following Jungkook into the tiny space.

You lock the door and turn to face him.

“Glad you finally came around,” he says, immediately backing you into the door. His mouth goes right for your neck and he pushes his entire body into yours in this tiny space. He is large and warm and he smells way better than he should after working a restaurant shift, being arrested, and then being jammed into a plane seat for hours.

His lips work up the column of your throat and his hands, still secured in front of him, push uselessly into the front of your lightweight wool dress. Shame, really, that you couldn’t take him out of these. You’d love to feel those hands right about now.

“I wasn’t kidding about keeping your mouth shut,” you manage to say, breathless at the feel of his mouth on your skin. “Don’t make me change my mind.”

The vibration of his laughter tickles the shell of your ear.

“I’ll be a good boy, I promise,” he says. “I just need to get my face under this dress.”

Your brain stutters for a moment, hung up on the mental image. He drops to his knees in front of you, lifts his hands to try and push up the front of the almost-too-tight garment but his handcuffs make it impossible. You graciously help him out, hiking the hem up your thighs. You’re about to work your underwear down, but he’s impatient, burying his face directly into the wet satin and inhaling deeply.

“Fuck, you smell amazing,” he groans, nosing the aching nub between your thighs. You’re glad he can’t see the way your mouth drops open when he licks out at the damp material, teasing you with the barest hint of friction.

“Help me out here,” he moans, and you do just that, sliding your panties down as best you can with the amount of space you’ve got.

At this angle, you can only get them down to your knees, but Jungkook doesn’t seem to care. He pushes his entire face into you, lips and teeth and tongue driving into you, working you with a fervor that makes your knees start to wobble. You grab a handful of his hair to steady yourself but it’s no use. Absently, you realize the tremors running up and down your body are rattling the door.

“Nice to know that mouth is good for more than just trash talk,” you tease on deep exhale. He laughs.

“Maybe some day you’ll get the chance to enjoy the full-service experience.”

“Probably not, Jeon,” you moan. “This is just a one-time favor, got it?”

All the blood in your brain has taken a dive into parts lower south and you marvel at how quickly your impending orgasm is coming on. But then, you’ve basically had about ten hours of foreplay up to this point, so maybe it’s not that surprising.

That damned door keeps rattling and you just know the little old man on the other side is probably staring it down. You’re not sure what it says about you that you think that’s kind of hilarious.

Your body jolts when Jungkook wraps his lips around your clit and sucks so hard you see stars. “You’re the one about to come on my face in an airplane bathroom,” he groans, licking obscenely between words. “So who’s doling out favors right now?”

Well, that does it.

The second he brings his lips and tongue back to your clit, you fall apart, gripping his hair so hard you’re certain it has to hurt. You pour all your energy into not screaming as your orgasm steamrolls you, and whatever energy you have left goes into trying to stay upright. Jungkook stays face-first in your heat, lapping up your release until the last tremors shake you and that goddamned door.

“Shit,” your voice is shaky, chest heaving when you finally make a sound.

“You are very, very fucking hot,” Jungkook says, breathless from where he sits on the floor. “Way too hot to be a Fed.”

You laugh.

“Well you are definitely too hot to be a criminal, but here we are, huh?”

Your eyes slide down to his glinting handcuffs, but they aren’t what’s catching your attention. Instead, your gaze heads right to the giant bulge straining against the front of his jeans. Turnabout is fair play, and you’re suddenly very eager to return the favor.

You help him stand and immediately seal your mouth to his, tasting yourself on his lips. Your fingers fumble past his restraints, underneath to where you can feel the button of his jeans and you undo it as fast as you can. He stops kissing you long enough to groan into your mouth when your hands slip into his boxers and your fingers wrap around his cock. He is hot and thick and hard in your hand. You squeeze around him, enjoying the way his hips jerk in response.

“Don’t tease,” he whines. “I’m gonna have to fantasize about this blowjob for the next twenty years.”

“I’d better make it memorable then,” you say, sinking down to your knees in the cramped space. You shove his jeans off his hips and look up at him as you gently push his boxers down and over his straining cock. His body is rock hard, lean muscle and defined lines running from his shapely legs up to his cuffed wrists and underneath that white shirt you’d love to peel off but can’t.

His head falls back the second your lips touch his swollen head. You tease it for a moment with a few quick licks, but decide this is really not the time to be dragging this out. The strangled “fuck” he whispers when you take him down fully is the sweetest and dirtiest thing you’ve heard in a while.

You manage to catch his gaze for a moment as you maintain a steady rhythm on his cock with your hands. His eyes are glassy with drinks and arousal, and you nearly have to slip a hand between your legs when his tongue slips out of his mouth to wet his lips.

He lifts and drops his handcuffs a couple of times before growling his frustration at not being able to put his fingers in your hair. You feel a faint throb of sympathy for him for a moment before reminding yourself that you literally have your mouth around his cock so frankly, things could be a lot worse for him than they are right now.

“You gotta stop,” he says, after a few minutes of the slow, wet torture. You release him with a soft pop and a confused expression.

“It’s your last blowjob for twenty years, Jeon. You want me to stop?”

“No, no,” he says quickly. “I have to fuck you. Please let me fuck you. It’s all I can think about,” he whines.

“You can’t,” you say firmly. “No condoms.”

He blows out a heavy breath like he’s thinking for a moment and there you are, on your knees in this tiny bathroom, confused as to what your next step should be.

“Look around,” he says suddenly.

“What?”

“Look – people fuck in airplane bathrooms all the time, right? It’s a thing. Maybe someone out there pulled some hero shit and is looking out for the next person.”

“This bathroom,” you say skeptically, “is the size of a goddamned shoebox, Jeon. You think we’re going to magically scrounge up a condom?”

“Just look,” he implores through gritted teeth.

“Fine,” you huff, leaning over to pop the cabinet under the sink open. You put one searching hand inside and pull out three sanitary pads that look like they were packaged in the 1970s.

He groans, frustrated.

“Hang on,” you say, jamming your hand back inside. Your fingertips brush up against something smooth and you fish it out, eyes wide with utter disbelief.

“Oh, you’ve gotta be fucking kidding me,” you say, more to yourself than to him.

You hold the condom packet up for him to inspect.

“Holy shit,” he breathes, cock jerking at the sight of it, like it knows he’s just hit the jackpot.

He laughs so hard for a moment you fear this entire encounter has gone entirely off track.

“My luck is back,” he declares triumphantly, finally. “Now, please hurry up and get on my dick.”

You’re shaking your head in disbelief the entire time you’re ripping the packet open, rolling it down Jungkook’s impossibly still-hard cock. He’s breathing hard, body tense with anticipation when you slide your heels off to take your underwear off completely.

“The heels,” he groans, watching as you slip your panties over your ankles. “Can you — you know…keep ‘em on?”

“Ugh, you are such a pervert,” you scold, slipping your feet back into the shoes and leaning back to line him up with your entrance. He surges forward and you moan at the stretch as he fills you entirely in one thrust.

“Fuck,” he murmurs, dropping his head into the crook of your neck, already rolling his hips frantically against you. “Shit, that’s incredible.”

And truthfully, it is. The ledge of the sink is biting into your ass with every thrust and you’re having to do most of the work given his handcuff situation but you really don’t even care because he still feels amazing like this.

He mouths uselessly at the wool covering your breasts because there’s no way to get to them. You nearly admonish him because he’ll leave crude wet spots on the fine material, but you decide against it.

“Oh, I bet you have amazing tits,” he groans, hips maintaining a steady rhythm. “Giving me something to look forward to for next time.”

“There won’t be a next time, Jeon. And there won’t be a this time if you don’t hurry up already,” you shoot back.

He laughs, a little breathless from exertion. “I’m close, I promise. Fuck, you feel so good.”

You squeeze tighter around him, push harder back against him, angle your hips a bit more to ensure he’s going to the hilt with every thrust. The guttural sound he makes in response sends a shiver up your back.

“I’m gonna come,” he gasps after a moment, mouth covering yours as his hips begin to stutter at the first ebbs of his release. Your ass is numb from the sink ledge at this point, legs tired from supporting your weight and his.

“So come then,” you tease, biting gently on the sensitive skin at his pulse point. He groans from deep inside his chest as he lets go – hips jerking as he pumps himself through it.

“Shit,” he groans, leaning on you with his full weight.

“You are crushing me Jeon,” you complain, pushing at his chest with both hands. He chuckles. “Yeah, sorry about that. Balance is a little off at the moment.”

You open your mouth to shoot another sarcastic comment his way, but there is something about the way he is looking at you right now that stops you short.

You clear your throat, uncomfortable with the tiny glimpse into whatever that was.

“Well, as much as I’d love to ruminate on how good this was,” you say, shifting your dress back down and making a beeline for your underwear, “We’ve been in here an insane amount of time already. There’s probably a line outside the door.”

“Yeah,” he agrees, a little too quiet for your liking.

So you put yourself back together and help put him back together, too.

And strangely, when you open the door to leave there is no line. But that little old man is still watching, a look of astonishment on his face as you both walk past.

***********************************

“Listen, are you sitting down right now?”

You frown at the phone display in your office because any conversation that starts with an opening line like that is headed south.

“Uh…yeah. Why?”

“Hang on, I’m coming to your office.”

Seconds later, Agent Novak bursts through the door.

“So you haven’t seen it,” he says, rushing up to your desk.

“Seen what, Novak? Spit it out,” you say, frustrated already.

“Check your email,” he says, arms crossed over his chest. He looks fit to burst with some kind of excitement and your chest already feels a little tight at whatever it is he’s dying to show you.

You click into your email to find an urgent bulletin that you’d missed because you were working on a stack of papers on your desk, not your computer. The subject line makes your heart hammer.

URGENT MEMO: Fugitive Search, Jungkook Jeon

ATTACHED VIDEO FILE

“The guy just walked out of a federal courthouse like he was on an afternoon stroll. Had on a suit and everything,” Novak says, a note of awe in his voice. “Check out the video.”

Your mouth is already hanging open before you even click on the attached CCTV footage. A camera inside the courthouse shows Jungkook Jeon walk out of a bathroom in the front lobby, dressed like an attorney, not a defendant. His long hair is cut into a more professional style, his suit covers his tattoos and he looks entirely in place.

Novak is right – he walks so casually past the guards and other visitors that no one even thinks to stop him.

“Word is, court was on a lunch break and it looks like he had everything ready to go. Walked into a waiting Uber and vanished like smoke.”

You haven’t said a word since Novak walked in with this bombshell.

You just watch the CCTV footage over and over again in a loop, willing your brain to accept what your eyes can see clear as day.

This motherfucker.

Guess his luck really is back.

***************************

[lovelyirony]

Could I get number 30 "Why is arson always your first answer?" With winteriron?

England wasn’t necessarily Tony’s favorite place to be. For one thing, Pepper always asked for some sort of collection of Burberry scarves, and Tony would rather die than step foot in a store, but Pepper is the one who makes sure he gets out of countries and into countries as discreetly as possible. 

For another, England usually means either expensive art or expensive jewelry, and art is a bitch to get out of an event if you haven’t worked up a back story for the last year, and jewelry is...well. People are bound to notice if it’s famous enough. 

This go-round, it’s art. A rare miniature of a high-society woman, someone Tony doesn’t at all care about. He has a buyer from the middle of nowhere Montana, and he’s not sure why a cowboy from Montana cares about this so much, but he offered a pretty steep salary for Tony, so here he is. 

The thing is this: Tony Stark is not known as a thief. No. He is known as a reclusive billionaire who only comes out of his house, like, once a year to mourn his parents. 

Except he doesn’t do that, that’s just the yearly walk that he lets them notice and take pictures of. 

Anthony Carbonell is known as an elusive thief who likes to make fun of every single agent of any organization that attempts to track him or the works that he’s stolen. It’s cute, honestly. 

Agent James Barnes is the newest hire at SHIELD Protection, which moonlights as an insurance agency. 

His newest job is one that no one else has managed to complete: capture Anthony Carbonell, and protect the newest artwork. 

It’s sending him to England. He has to wear a suit and everything, and he’s not exactly excited about it. 

All they know is that he’s dark-haired, is shorter than six feet, and has a penchant for playing practical jokes on the agents when they end up not capturing him. 

- 

Barnes touches down in England, follows one of their British agents to a safe-house, and gets out the tuxedo. 

God help this night. 

- 

Tony usually isn’t thrown for a loop when it comes to guests at high society auctions. Most everyone is publicly known, or at least known when they should be known. 

There’s a new man in town. 

Tony can’t deny that he has the nicest looks he’s ever seen. A jaw that won’t quit, eyes that seem to observe everything, and a tasteful bun drawn at the back of his head. He also fills out a tuxedo quite nicely. 

Something about him screams danger. Tony smiles to himself in his cocktail; he’ll keep his eyes on that man, so far as everything goes to plan. 

- 

Bucky can feel eyes on him, but he can’t tell if it’s because he’s technically new to all of this, or if it’s because Anthony is here and he already knows. 

He wasn’t stupid. He knew as soon as he walked in that Anthony would be here, and he would be aware. But he’s not really going to focus on the people milling about. He sticks close to the miniature, observing the security measures. 

Or lack of. 

The security measures are barely there. If Bucky could cause a distraction in the room, or maybe pull a fire alarm, he could easily abscond with it. 

He assumes that’s why the band is in another room. He had read the reports that Clint had managed to nick; the band was supposed to be playing in the room, but an anonymous guest had suggested that the acoustics were better in a room adjacent. 

He’s pretty sure that Anthony had recommended that, wherever he was. It’s not like any of the rich people would have had common sense enough to call ahead and ask about the placement of the band, and take into account the arch of the room with the acoustics of a violin. 

It’s smart, honestly. Everyone is dancing, they want to notice what other people are wearing so that they can either discreetly copy them later or make a laughing stock of them in about six minutes, give or take, and no one will notice if someone who wasn’t supposed to be there in the first place slips out. 

He’s not exactly wrong. 

But Tony has been working for an exclusive catering company for two months. Very fun stuff. He learned that he will never want to eat another crab cake again, and he learned how to improvise descriptions for food that is essentially chicken fingers and ketchup. 

Barnes is looking for someone who looks like they fit in. And Tony does, just...not in the way that he actually knows how to do. 

If he was high society, he’d be recognized immediately; everyone still knows how Howard smiled, how Maria moved around the room with the practiced grace of someone raised to be a fun little accessory on your arm. 

Tony has both of those attributes, and if people actually noticed others, they would clock him easily. 

-

He got bold. 

Too bold. 

He was serving appetizers, and he offers one to the new guy on the block. 

“Care for one?” he asks, eyes timidly looking up, energy nervous. 

“Thank you,” New Guy says, and he looks at Tony directly in the eyes. “I appreciate it.” 

No one thanks you at events like these. 

And no one looks at you. 

This was the mistake. 

-

His features are umistakable, Bucky decides. The way his head tilted when he offered the food, the way his eyes look at his, and they’re not used to being looked back at. 

It almost fooled him. Almost. 

But most who work for the upper class learn early on from someone or another that you don’t look, even if you know that they won’t spare you the time of day. 

He’s tempting the odds, and he’s exactly the kind of person who would do it. 

Bucky has Anthony Carbonell’s face memorized, from the surprisingly warm brown eyes to the way he walks away. 

- 

Tony has blown this mission. He knows it. He fucking knows that SHIELD knows who he is right now. 

He texts Pepper, incorrect grammar and everything: 

tell guy job is over. i can refund him for inconvenience. 

what do you mean, over? 

been had. :( 

i don’t like that that’s your reaction. but get out of there, whatever means necessary. i can’t get you out of there until tomorrow morning, or i lose the deposit on your room . 

srsly??????? 

yes, seriously. the woman who let us rent it was very specific about two-day-stay. in the mean time, maybe grab a bottle of wine or something. how are you going to escape? 

well...

don’t you dare

-

Arson is an art that has to be carefully done, if you were wondering. You can just decide to do it, but you need to have some experience for it. 

Tony has. Kind of. 

He has a matchbook from a local hotel that he went into, and it’s been tucked into a pocket of his pants, and he is currently debating if he can actually finish the job or not. 

“Is arson always your first answer?” 

Shit. 

“Uh, smoke break?” Tony asks, knowing that it’s a Very Stupid Excuse because he doesn’t have any cigarettes. 

“Be real with yourself,” Barnes says. “You also have a very unfortunate British accent, as in it sounds terrible.” 

“My apologies if I didn’t work on it,” Tony says. “I’ve been too busy with...other things. Speaking of which, you’re new to SHIELD, aren’t you?” 

“You’re my first mission.” 

“How unfortunate.” 

“And why is that?” 

Tony smiles at him, and it’s disarming how genuine it looks. How genuine it is. (Bucky’s been able to spot a fake smile since he was seven and his mother let Mormons into their house. He knows a lot of things.) 

“Well, darling dearest, I’m going to make my escape.” 

“And you’re saying I can’t find you?” 

“Oh, you’ll find me. You’ll see me everywhere.” 

Tony then proceeds to kiss the ever-living hell out of Barnes. 

It is probably the best kiss of his life, honestly. 

And it leaves him dazed. 

Dazed enough that Tony only has a light jogging-pace as he makes his escape, stealing one of the various Rolls Royce cars that is parked underneath a brilliantly-lit lamp. 

- 

Bucky keeps thinking about that line, about seeing him everywhere. 

He doesn’t know what it means. He describes Anthony Carbonell to a sketch artist, they ask around, and then there’s Friday. 

Friday. 

It’s the day everything becomes clearer and yet infinitely more complicated, because Anthony was right. 

Tony Stark is dedicated to a more “transparent’ image for his company. He’s stepped into the limelight, and all the attention is on him. Everyone in the world is stalking his every move. 

It’s smart. Bold and risky if any former clients have seen his face, although Bucky has no doubt that he has enough money to make sure they go away quietly. 

It means that he can’t be touched. For at least one year, maybe two. 

God, it’s smart. Be so well-known that even the secret agencies would be found if they even attempted to reach you. 

- 

Pepper thinks Tony is God’s Given Idiot. 

Arson probably would have been the better choice. It’s not like the building didn’t have insurance, and it’s not like the fire would have lasted for that long. 

Instead, Tony has decided to make himself internationally known and request a meeting with the guy who could have ended his career, and still could if he talked to the right people. 

-

Sam thinks knows that Bucky is God’s Given Idiot. 

He agrees to the fucking meeting. 

It’s a well-known, public restaurant. It means that Barnes is going to be well-known, or at least photographed from an angle that’s unflattering. 

He should’ve debated, should have fought for a secluded place, or at least somewhere on their turf. God, that would’ve been an iota smarter. 

- 

They both sit down. Peruse a menu that neither are interested in. 

Bucky is wondering what the procedure is on leftovers. And if he’s paying for his own bill in this. He was invited, but with everything going on, he’s not sure. 

Tony sits across from him. Tony, with a now-distinctive goatee, an easy elegance, and a satisfied look in his eyes. 

“You amaze me, James.” 

“Bucky.” 

“I refuse to call you that out of respect for humanity.” 

“I don’t answer to James.” 

“Then what about another nickname, hm?” Tony asks. 

“Like what?” 

“Take your pick. You could be honey, darling, or love. Or something more creative, although if it’s kinky, I’d like it in writing before I refer to you in public with that, so-” 

“James is fine.” 

“Knew it would be,” Tony says smugly. “So. Let’s talk about the fact that you know my dirty little secret.” 

“I wouldn’t call it ‘little’, would you?” 

“It’s a hobby.” 

“Rich people steal shit as a hobby?” 

“Usually not with my methods, but yes,” Tony says. “They usually do it with the careful guidance of the IRS or some shit.” 

Bucky does a little laugh at that one. 

Their waiter comes out, jovially asks how their day is going. 

“Oh it’s going magnificently,” Tony says, peering up through violet-tinted glasses. “How is yours...Lincoln?” 

“Brilliant,” Lincoln responds with a large smile. “What can I get you to drink? Our seasonal cocktail is to die for, and if you’re not in the mood for a cocktail, the cider is simply divine...” 

It’s mundane conversation. 

Tony Stark is a thief who goes by (went by?) Anthony Carbonell, and he’s listening to Lincoln the Waiter talk about seasonal drinks and desserts. 

It’s kind of...grounding. Also odd. 

“And for you?” 

Bucky fumbles with the menu. 

“Uh...water? With lemon?” 

“Refreshingly good choice,” Lincoln says, grinning. “I’ll be right back with those, you two catch up on whatever you need to catch up.” 

Bucky nods, turning to Tony with an eyebrow raised. 

“So, what do we need to catch up on?” 

“Well for one, you need to use my name. It’s Tony, and I’m betting it sounds heavenly coming from you.” 

Bucky’s eyes widen a fraction. 

“Alright. Tony. What do you need to talk about?” 

“Keeping our little secret a secret.” 

“I’ve already told others about you.” 

“Who?” Tony asks sharply. 

Lincoln comes back with their drinks, asks if they need more time to decide. 

Bucky just goes for it and orders a plate of mini quiche-things that he’s not exactly sure he’ll like. Tony orders something with a perfect accent, because of course he does. 

“You do this often?” 

“Go out to eat? On special occasions, and every other Friday.” 

“Tell me what you want.” 

“Touchy, touchy,” Tony says, unfolding his napkin. “But I...have a deal for you.” 

“And why should I take it?” 

“Because it’s going to benefit SHIELD in the long-run,” Tony says. “And they’re all about benefits, if the rumors hold up against them.”

“And what rumors have you heard?” 

“I’ve heard plenty, although I seem to recall one about a flooded pipeline and a Broadway performance being improvised.” 

Bucky shakes his head. 

“Not true? Damn...” 

Tony looks around the restaurant before his eyes meet with the captivating ones across the table. 

“I have a secret identity. So do you.” 

“And we’re against each other, aren’t we?” 

“Only sometimes,” Tony says. “I essentially steal shit because it’s either random or has a purpose.” 

“And the miniature job you pulled was what, part of a scheme?” 

“Hell no,” Tony says. “A farmer in Montana wanted to see if I could do it because the face vaguely reminded him of his great-grandmother. I also, as a principle, try to steal as much shit from England as possible.” 

That’s funny, so he laughs. 

“And what do you want from me?” Bucky asks. 

“Oh my darling dearest, I want a lot of things from you,” Tony leers. “I only want one thing from SHIELD. I want them to keep my identity secret without any strings attached.” 

“It doesn’t work like that.” 

“I was hoping you wouldn’t say that.” 

“Well, it is what it is,” Bucky says. “I’m not gonna get you what you want, but I think you knew that. That’s why I’m out here dining with you, and I’ll be in the magazines for what, about a week?” 

“And notoriety for all time,” Tony says. “Your face is known, or at least on the internet. You should be prepared for people to ask you to model, by the way. God knows that you could kill it on the runway.” 

Bucky is amused. 

“Aw, you think?” 

“Of course I do. No one is gifted with that amount of shock in their eyes and goes on life being normal.” 

“My, how flattering you are,” Bucky says. 

Lincoln brings their food. Tells them that they can take their time, but there’s the bill. 

“You know who I need to talk to,” Tony says. 

“Maybe I do,” Bucky answers, evasive as possible. 

“I know you got hired for skills, but if it was for lying, then this is child’s play,” Tony says. 

Bucky rolls his eyes. 

“It wasn’t for lying. It was because if I was about two hundred feet away, I could shoot your right pupil out and you wouldn’t even know.” 

“You think I don’t have my own tech encircling the city?” 

“No,” Bucky answers. 

Tony stops sipping on his cider. 

“Explain yourself, blue-eyed wonder.” 

"Because if you’re found out, it destroys every single reputation you’re going to have to build from the start, and the climb to the top is too delicate for that.” 

Tony sits back. 

“I’m impressed.” 

“Don’t be,” Bucky says. “But you’re going to want to meet my boss. I’ll take you to him some time this week, if you need. Or he can meet you.” 

“I doubt he’ll be able to.” 

- 

Okay so maybe Tony shouldn’t have said that, because there is a man with an eye-patch and a truly impressive trench-coat sitting in his office chair. 

“If that’s supposed to be an intimidation tactic, that’s what I learned for my ninth birthday with dear ole’ dad,” Tony says. “Literally none of them work on me.” 

“Then change your ‘visitor’ chairs, they’re damn uncomfortable,” the man says. “My name is Director Fury.” 

“Any first name?” 

“None that you need to know. Barnes told me that you wanted to talk to me about a deal.” 

“I don’t do deals.” 

“And yet you run a business.” 

“Noted,” Tony says, leaning on the window. “So. I want to keep doing what I do, and I want you guys to butt out of it.” 

“And why would we do that?” 

“Because it’s technically only making rich people sad,” Tony says. “And the occasional museum, but oh well. And, I can easily make your life worse.” 

“You think I haven’t been threatened before?” 

“Oh I know you have, what with your sparkling personality and charm,” Tony says. “But I’m threatening the whole of SHIELD. I have been in the dark for a long time, Fury, and as much as you hate to admit it, you don’t know half of what I can do. 

The only thing people really know is that I’m a genius and so was my father, but nothing else. Neat, isn’t it?” 

Fury doesn’t say anything for a moment. 

“What’s your deal?” 

“Glad to know you know what I can do for you,” Tony says. “I can provide security and make sure that every single person has the latest technological updates. I have one stipulation: I get to make Barnes a new arm.” 

“That’s your only condition?” 

“Oh, you’ll be grateful it’s the only thing I’m asking for,” Tony says. “Believe me, I’ll still be annoying. I can promise you that.” 

Fury looks at him carefully. Tony Stark is still a mystery, although he seems to overestimate himself. Or how much Fury can actually see about people. 

“Why Barnes’ arm?” 

“Why not?” Tony asks. “After all, he deserves an arm that looks as nice as he does.” 

“No in-work relationships.” 

“Consider me not an employee,” Tony says. 

“Then you’re not on the payroll.” 

“I don’t have to be paid to get what I want to get,” he remarks. 

Fury gets up from the chair (he’ll make a note to Maria: he needs something like it soon) and gives Tony a pointed look at the doorway. 

“You sure about this?” 

Tony’s eyes gleam. 

“Are you sure you’re ready?” 

- 

Director Fury is not ready. Tony shows up in floral-printed shirts and makes sure to blast rock music wherever he goes, or worse, metal. 

Barnes has never had a good poker face, which is why he’s the sharpshooter. Damned man turns to goo whenever the billionaire struts onto their property. 

But he’s happy about his office chair. 

[letterboxd]

In Focus: Interstellar.

Inspired by Christopher Nolan’s Interstellar placing high across three notable Letterboxd metrics, Dominic Corry reflects on how the film successfully hung its messaging around the concept of love—and what pandemic responses worldwide could learn from its wholehearted embrace of empathetic science.

“Love isn’t something we invented. It’s observable, it’s powerful. It has to mean something.” —Dr. Amelia Brand (Anne Hathaway)

This story contains spoilers for ‘Interstellar’ (2014).

Although it is insultingly reductionist to both filmmakers, there are many reasons Christopher Nolan is often described as a modern-day Stanley Kubrick. The one most people usually settle on is the notion that both men supposedly make exacting, ambitious films that lack emotion.

It is an incorrect assessment of either director, but it’s beyond amazing that anyone could still accuse Nolan of such a thing after he delivered what is unquestionably his masterwork, the emotional rollercoaster that is 2014’s Interstellar.

In the epic sci-fi adventure drama, Nolan managed to pull off something that many filmmakers have attempted and few have achieved. He told a story of boundless sci-fi scope, and had it be all about love in the end. It sounds cheesy to even write it down, but Nolan did it.

That Interstellar is such an overtly cutting-edge genre film that chooses to center itself so brazenly and unapologetically around love, is frankly awesome.

Love informs Interstellar both metaphorically and literally: the expansive scope of the film effectively represents love’s infinite potential, and love itself ends up being the tangible thread that allows far-flung astronaut Cooper (Matthew McConaughey) to communicate with his Earth-bound daughter Murph (played as an adult by Jessica Chastain) from the tesseract (a three-dimensional rendering of a five-dimensional space) after Cooper enters the black hole towards the end of the film.

Matthew McConaughey as Joseph ‘Coop’ Cooper, Mackenzie Foy as Murph, and Timothée Chalamet as Tom.

In transmitting (via morse code) what the robot TARS has observed from inside the black hole, Cooper provides Murph with the data to solve the gravity problem required to uplift Earth’s population from its depleted home planet. Humanity is saved. Love wins again. Hard sci-fi goes soft. Christopher Nolan’s genius is confirmed, and any notions of emotionlessness are emphatically washed away.

This earnest centering of love in Interstellar is key to the film’s universal appeal, and undoubtedly plays a large role in why it features so prominently in three significant Letterboxd lists determined by pronoun: Interstellar is the only film that appears in all three top tens of “most fans on Letterboxd” when considering members who use the pronoun he/him, she/her and xe/ze. (“Most fans” refers to Letterboxd members who have selected the film as one of the four favorites on their profile.)

To get a bit reductionist myself, sci-fi adventure—in cinema, at least—has traditionally been a masculine-leaning genre, but Interstellar’s placement across these three lists points to it having superseded that traditional leaning, hopefully for the better.

Yet the film reliably still provokes reactions like this delightful tweet:

few movies make me as mad as Interstellar. who the fuck makes 3/4 of an excellent hard sci-fi movie backed up by actual science and then abruptly turns it into soft sci-fi about how the power of love and time traveling bookshelves can save us in the final 1/4? damn you, Nolan

— the thicc husband & father (@lukeisamazing)

February 13, 2021

Although this tweet is somewhat indicative of how many men (and women, for that matter) respond to the film, I think it’s pretty clear the writer actually loves Interstellar wholeheartedly, final quarter and all, but perhaps feels inhibited from expressing that love by the expectations of a gendered society that is becoming increasingly outdated. The “damn you, Nolan” is possibly a concession of sorts—he’s damning how Nolan really made him feel the love at the end. It’s okay, @lukeisamazing, you don’t have to say it out loud.

Conversely, it can be put like this:

“The emotion of Interstellar is three-fold: Nolan’s script, co-written with his brother as with all his best stuff, masters not only notions of black holes, wormholes, quantum data and telemetry, but it also makes a case for love as the one thing—feeling, fact, movement, message—that can mean more and do more than anyone in our current time, on our existing planet, can comprehend.”

The writer of this stirring summation, our own Ella Kemp, is paraphrasing a critical section of the film, when Nolan goes full literal on the concept of love and has Cooper and Dr Amelia Brand (Anne Hathaway) debate its very nature, quoted in part at the top of this story. It comes when the pair are trying to decide which potentially humanity-saving planet to use their dwindling fuel reserves to travel to. Brand is advocating for the planet where a man she loves might be waiting for her, instead of the planet that has ostensibly better circumstances for life.

Brand: “Love is the one thing we’re capable of perceiving that transcends dimensions of time and space. Maybe we should trust that even if we can’t understand it.”

“Love has meaning, yes,” responds Cooper, heretofore the film’s most outwardly love-centric character, exhibiting a stoic longing for his dead wife, while also abandoning his ten-year-old daughter on Earth for a space adventure (albeit one designed to save humanity) than has now inadvertently taken decades. “Social utility. Social bonding. Child rearing.” Ouch.

McConaughey with Anne Hathaway as Dr. Amelia Brand.

Brand: “You love people who have died. Where’s the social utility in that? Maybe it means something more. Something we don’t yet understand. Some evidence, some artefact of a higher dimension that we can’t consciously perceive. I’m drawn across the universe to someone I haven’t seen in a decade who I know is probably dead. Love is the one thing we’re capable of perceiving that transcends dimensions of time and space. Maybe we should trust that even if we can’t understand it yet.” Amen.

Cooper remains unconvinced by Brand’s rationale, but this dispassionate display presages him going on to realize the true (literal) power of love (and his poor, science-only decision-making—thanks Matt Damon) when it provides him the aforementioned channel of communication with Murph in the tesseract. Nolan has a female character make the most eloquent vocal argument for love, but it’s the male character who has to learn it through experience.

So while Interstellar does initially conform to some prevailing cultural ideas about love and how it supposedly relates to gender, it ultimately advocates for a greater appreciation of the concept that moves beyond such binary notions. That is reflected in how important the film is to Letterboxd members who self-identify as he/him, she/her and xe/ze. We all love this movie. Emphasis on love.

Brand’s speech—not to mention the film as a whole—also can’t help but inform the current global situation. Interstellar argues for a greater devotion to both science and love, in harmony; such devotion might have mitigated the devastating effects of the coronavirus pandemic where both concepts were drastically undervalued by many of those in charge of the response.

Jessica Chastain and Casey Affleck as the grown-up Cooper siblings.

Despite the reactions cited above, responses to Interstellar aren’t always split down gender lines. We’re all allowed to feel whatever we like about it, and substantial variety comes across in the many, many reviews for the film.

Zaidius says Interstellar is so good that, “after watching [it], you will want to downgrade all of the ratings you have ever given on Letterboxd.”

On the other hand, Singlewhitefemalien takes issue with Dr. Brand’s aforementioned love-based decision-making in her two-star review: “She wants to fuckin’ go to Planet Whatever to chase after a dude she banged ten years ago because women are guided by their emotions and love is all you need.” A perhaps fair assessment of the role Nolan chose his sole female astronaut to play in the film?

Sam offers food for thought when he writes “First, you love Interstellar; then you understand Interstellar.”

Letterboxd stalwart Lucy boils it down effectively in one of her multiple five-star reviews of the film: “I needed a really good cry.” It’s hard to say whether Vince is agreeing or disagreeing with Lucy in his review: “Fuck you Matthew McConaughey for making me cry.” The catharsis this movie provides for dudes becomes clearer the deeper you venture into our Interstellar reviews (and I ventured deep): “How dare this fucking movie make me cry… twice,” writes John. Let it out, John.

Then there’s Rudi’s take: “I sobbed like an animal while watching this but I’m not exactly sure what animal it was like. Like a pig? Like a whale? I don’t know but I do know that I cried a whole fucking lot.”

Emotionless? With all this crying?

Christopher Nolan inspires more debate than any other filmmaker of the modern age (when we’re not getting unnecessarily riled up about something Marty has said, that is) and while Nolan has the passionate devotion of millions of viewers, I’d argue he still doesn’t quite get his due. Especially when it comes to Interstellar.

By so successfully using love as both a metaphorical vessel and a palpable plot point in a sci-fi adventure film, he built on notable antecedents like James Cameron’s The Abyss and Robert Zemeckis’ Contact, two (great) films with similar aspirations that didn’t stick the landing as well as Interstellar does. In Contact, McConaughey engages in a similar debate about love to the one quoted above, but notably takes the opposing side.

Steven Spielberg (who at one point was going to direct an earlier iteration of Interstellar) did a pretty good job of showing love as the most powerful force in the universe with E.T. the Extra-Terrestrial, but there hasn’t been a huge amount of room for such notions in the genre since then.

Kubrick’s 2001: A Space Odyssey, Interstellar’s most obvious forebear, is often accused of being the director’s most brazenly emotionless film. And while that’s perhaps a bit more understandable than some of the brickbats hurled Nolan’s way, there’s more emotion in the character of Hal 9000 than in many major directors’ entire oeuvre. It’s also, in part due to Hal’s place in the examination of queer consciousness in the sci-fi realm, the film currently in the number one spot on the xe/ze list.

Two films that notably exist in Interstellar’s wake are Denis Villeneuve’s Arrival, which expands upon Interstellar’s creative use of time-bending (and like Contact, features a female protagonist) and James Gray’s Ad Astra, which tackles the perils of traditional masculinity with more directness.

Interstellar doesn’t solve the sci-fi genre’s cumbersome relationship with masculinity and gender, but it makes significant strides in breaking down the existing paradigms, if only from all the GIFs of McConaughey crying it has spawned. Its appeal across the gender spectrum is an interesting and encouraging sign of the universality of its themes. And the power of love.

Fans out of touch with their feelings may complain about the role love plays in the film, but that says more about them than it does the film. Love wins. Also: TARS. How could anyone not love TARS?

TARS and Christopher Nolan.

Related content

Men/Boys Crying: a master list

“I Ugly-Cried Like Matthew McConaughey in Interstellar”: Amanda’s list

“I Liked Interstellar”: Sar’s list of what to watch afterwards

Follow Dominic on Letterboxd

[lady-of-glass-and-bone]

Cycles

Ezra x reader

A/N: So. This is a thing that happened. Title and lyrics are from Cycles by Tove Lo. Apparently I’m making a habit out of writing Pedro Pascal’s characters one-shots with Tove Lo songs as some of the inspiration.

Warnings: This is something that happens to me, usually at night when I have a harder time distracting my mind. I get overwhelmed by my own thoughts and I can’t break out of the cycle of thoughts and it’s terrifying. Not like a panic attack but the only things I can do are squeeze something soft, sway in a rhythm, and hum horribly until it passes.

I'm in a cycle / yeah, I admit it / how can I change it when I don't know when I'm in it? / i'm in a cycle

You aren’t sure if it was the humming, the rhythmic rocking sway of your bare feet on the metal floor, or the lack of your body next to his that woke Ezra. Maybe all three.

But you only have a brief moment to notice the confused look on his face, half in shadow, as he searches for you in the low light of the pod. And then it pulls you back under.

That wave of endless fear, dulled only by the coursing of random thoughts that leave your muscles taught and shaking as you squeeze the fabric of the softest blanket Ezra could find you.

It's balled up against your chest, curled and twisted in on itself, the drag of it's plush texture soothes it's way across your arms, your chest, and pushes itself through the thin tank top. You've been rubbing a corner of it between your fingertips for as long as you have been standing here.

It could have been hours and you wouldn't have noticed.

The ends of your hair drag back and forth like a painters brush on your bare upper arms. The only sensations that matter are the ones that keep you from choking on the void of repetitive and disastrous thoughts.

The moment Ezra finds your form, hunched over and drifting side to side with some unknown, intense purpose he scrambles from the cot and over to you as swiftly as he can in the darkness. And once he is close enough, hand outstretched to grasp you, he sees your eyes, they way they reach past anything he can see, tilted up to look out one of the glass panels of the pod.

But you aren't really seeing, you haven't even acknowledged his presence a mere step in front of yourself. Sleepwalking, he considers. But no, this hasn't happened before, and surely you would have mentioned such a thing. Especially being out in the Green.

Oh no, this is something hauntingly different than the you Ezra sees during the waking hours. Your eyes are now fixed, on what he won't dare imagine, when they normally cannot seem to stay in one place. Always searching out something new to see, eventually coming back to land on him.

You are his Hummingbird, quick and skittish, but tenacious. Hungry for new opportunities, new things to learn, to consume and love and protect.

Oh you are a lethal protector, even in your kindness, a fray even he would hesitate to throw himself into.

Your swaying creaks the flooring of the pod in an offbeat tune and he wonders if it isn't helping to keep you locked in whatever state this is, the lines of your body tight with strained muscles.

He puts his hand on your arm but nothing. Not a flinch, no reaction, just the brush of his palm to your skin and you continue in your eerie dance. It sends a slow crawling fear down his gut, cold and precise.

"Hummingbird" he speaks quietly at first, putting his hand on your arm with purpose, not to stop you, just to make contact.

You let out a small hum and it's a weight lifted off of his shoulders.

"Birdie, can you look at me?" he asks, hand grasping more tightly, feeling the muscle beneath your skin coil and relax in turns.

Another hum vibrates the air and he can't decipher its meaning. If Ezra is a man of words, and indeed he is, you are a language he isn't always able to understand, even before now.

It scares him, that he can't always reach you with words, and now he is adequately terrified. He is more than confident that you are aware of this, you speak in looks and silent motions, subconscious expressions are your prose.

So he attempts a line out of your book. Putting his only arm around you, not pulling your body to him but the other way around. He secures himself to you like moss clinging to a tree and sways with you.

The blanket you have clutched against your chest is now a cushion for his as well, your arms caught in-between. Both barefoot on the grating of the floor, the metal is sure to leave imprints as a reminder.

Your head is tilted back, eyes on that far off point he'll never see, so Ezra watches the movement of your neck, the lift and fall of your chest, fingers gripping the cloth of your top where his hand finds purchase on your back.

He doesn't know how long you both stay like this, only that he tries to keep his own body relaxed, hoping it will leech into yours. And he keeps his words from tumbling out, trying to translate them instead to the movements of his fingers, the pressure and placement of his hand on your back.

He would stay here, silent as the coldness of space, for as long as you needed him.

The small tears that roll down your face feel like heaven. Because it's a feeling. Anything other than the blind dread that had woken you, locked you inside with racing thoughts too big, too scary, to have in the dark.

You can finally focus in on the view outside the pod, the foliage hanging above you and the stars beyond it. There is something different about seeing them from a planet or moon, wholly different than being out among them on a ship.

A subtle shift in angle, but not of sight. A shift in being. Being so fucking small.

"Hummingbird, can you look at me?" Ezra sounds worried, teetering on the edge of something akin to panic.

His hand slides up from your back to the stiffness of your neck, cradling the base of your skull and stroking away the tenseness he finds there.

The hum you make sounds broken, mixed with a sob hidden deep somewhere inside your lungs, and you pray to kevva he understands you.

Help. Help me, I can't crawl out of my own head. Please help.

Slowly, he manages to bring your gaze down to his, his grasp on your neck pulling you out of the ether and back into your body. You've stopped swaying. The ache in your muscles is deep, like you've swam against a strong tide.

"There you are" Ezra whispers, the quietest you think you've ever heard him, as he leans his forehead against yours.

His eyes are as deep as the space that you traveled to get to this place, where it is you can't honestly recall right now. But they aren't empty, not an abyss of fear that plagues you in moments of weakness, when you feel your mortality like a monster stalking you.

Ezra's eyes are rich with worry as you simply stare back at him, finding purchase in them, ground you can cling to. You know he finds his place in words and that he's just spent kevva knows how long wrapped up in silence, utterly shut out from you.

"I understand that look, Hummingbird, and I will not for one moment have you entertaining the absurd idea that I need an apology" he says, nose nudging yours and settling you with a look that brokers no counter offer.

"Okay" the word slips out, your voice watery and shaking.

"As for an explanation, I would at some point hope to be privy to one, but only when you feel willing and able to share. Is that alright?"

"Yeah, I just-" a few more tears escape you and you try to blink them away "I feel so small, weak, sometimes and it swallows me and I can't climb out. I get stuck."

You can feel Ezra nod, foreheads still pressed together, as he offers you a small smile, dark brown eyes warm as sun drenched soil,  freshly turned.

"I know you are not inclined to believe things like this so easily Hummingbird but you are the furthest thing from weak and please, understand when I impart to you that I will always be here to pull you from wherever you find yourself trapped, I mean it wholeheartedly."

Nodding, you give a smile that wavers only faintly, eyes closing when Ezra pulls away only to bring his lips to your forehead, pressing a kiss there before ducking down to place another on your lips.

It makes you feel as tall as some of the giant trees you've stumbled upon in the Green, reaching up to the sky, growing against the press of the universe, climbing up and reaching out to the dark. Unafraid.

Your hands have long since gone slack in their hold of the blanket, so you pull your arms free to let it fall at your feet. Slow and shaky, your hands reach up and cradle his face when you break the kiss.

"Thank you Ezra, for listening" you lean into him, thumb stroking the thin silvery scar on his cheek.

"With you, my Hummingbird, I am always listening“ he leans into your touch, pulling you closer, intent on never letting you fall again.

[fanficshiddles]

Caught in his web, Chapter 47

Loki rushed through to the front door, he was about to chuck on his jacket to go and look for Chloe when suddenly the door opened and in she walked, with Bear and Ben.

‘Thank god. I was starting to worry something had happened to you.’ Loki said, relieved.

‘Huh? I bumped into Ben at the shop and he gave us a lift, we stopped at the park on the way back to give Bear a good run so he would be tired out during dinner.’ She motioned to the tired pup in her arms, who was starting to get too heavy to carry.

Loki cupped the back of her head and kissed her forehead. ‘Let me get him settled then. You start dinner, if you’re sure you’re still wanting to cook? We can easily get takeaway.’

‘Not at all.’ Chloe passed Bear to him then grabbed her shopping bags and rushed to the kitchen to get started on dinner.

‘Sorry if you thought I’d stolen your girl.’ Ben teased and patted Loki on the shoulder.

‘I didn’t even know you were with her. It is unusual for you to be late.’ Loki chuckled. ‘Besides, you’re ugly. She would never leave me for you.’ He grinned.

‘Oi!’

Loki got Bear settled now he was tired out, making sure he had enough water and there was nothing lying around that he could chew. Though he was turning out to be a pretty good pup, mainly chewed his own toys. Enjoyed stealing socks, but apart from that was rather well-behaved for his age.

He then went and poured them all some drinks in the kitchen and loitered around while Chloe cooked.

‘What business do we need to discuss tonight?’ Ben asked, taking a sip of his drink.

Loki opened his mouth to reply but before he could, Chloe butted in. ‘No business talk tonight!’

Loki grinned and tilted his head towards her. ‘Of course, darling.’

Ben scoffed. ‘You are so pussy whipped.’

Loki slapped his ear in retaliation, but he heard Chloe sniggering and glared over at her, catching her eye he raised an eyebrow at her, making her giggle as she turned her back on them.

Chloe knew David reasonably well since he was Loki’s closest friend and associate. So she was relaxed with him around. Ben, she had only met a few times. But he seemed nice enough, so she didn’t take long at all to relax this evening. Especially with the wine she was drinking, it helped a lot.

The guys loved the pasta, as expected. Chloe felt rather smug with how clean all their plates were. She was going to have to try another dish sometime though, she thought.

It was good getting to know Ben. He had some funny stories about Loki, too. Since he’d known him for a few years. And he was in love with Bear, as was everyone, he was mingling around under the table, hoping to get food.

‘Chloe.’ Loki said in warning, noticing that she was sneaking Bear a tiny bit of chicken she’d left especially for him.

‘What?’ She asked innocently, quickly dropping the chicken for him.

‘You’ll teach him bad manners.’ He folded his arms over his chest and leaned back.

Chloe shrugged and scratched Bear’s ears. ‘He’s a smart puppy, deserves a little treat now and then.’

‘It’s like dealing with two kids.’ Loki face-palmed, the other two men laughed.

Chloe stuck her tongue out playfully at Loki, making him narrow his eyes at her. But he smirked.

‘How is your fashion course at college going?’ David asked when they retired to the living room for a comfy seat, to have a few more drinks.

‘It’s going really well. Next month I’m doing a placement with a fashion magazine for two weeks, the college organised it. Learn about what they look for in latest trends, photo shoots and stuff. I can’t wait.’ Her face lit up excitedly.

‘Wow, that sounds fantastic! Are you hoping to set up your own fashion line one day?’ He asked.

‘Yep, that’s the ultimate dream. Or work for a really talented designer, if I can’t do my own.’

‘If you work hard, I am sure you can achieve anything.’ Ben smiled. ‘I actually have a few contacts within the fashion business. I’ll see if I can pull a few strings for you.’

‘Really? That would be great, thank you.’

Loki gave her side a squeeze, he was sat right next to her with his arm around her. He was pleased that she was excited about her future. And it was warming that his colleagues were keen to help her out. They knew how much she meant to him now.

Chloe was a little bit tipsy when they decided to call it a night. Ben and David left, getting quick last cuddles from Bear before leaving of course.

Loki made good on his promise of granting Chloe with orgasms when they got to bed. But he also had something else in store that she wasn’t entirely sure about…

After going down on her for near half an hour, bringing her to multiple mind-blowing orgasms that almost had her screaming the whole house down, he flipped her over and started giving attention to her asshole.

She heard the familiar click of the lube lid opening, then she felt his finger prodding about there. She buried her face into the pillow, still taking a moment at first to adjust to the intrusion there.

‘Keep your ass up.’ Loki said, tapping her bum.

She whined and tried to raise it up high enough for him as one finger plunged into her. Then he added a second once he had her a bit more prepared.

‘I’ve been preparing this lovely ass of yours for a while now.’ He hummed, wiggling his fingers about inside her, making her gasp. ‘I think it’s time to finally fuck you in this lovely tight hole. Don’t you think, doll?’

Her head flew up and she tried to move away, Loki held onto her hip firmly and dug his fingers in. ‘Chloe.’ He warned. ‘Behave and stay still. Or I will tie you to the bed.’

Chloe whined, knowing he would do exactly that. But it didn’t stop her from panicking, it was one thing taking his fingers or a butt plug, even though he had been giving her bigger and bigger ones… But it was going to be something completely different having his cock shoved up her ass!

Once he was happy with the fact she was calm again, he let go of her hip and used that hand to work her up more, stimulating her clit and thrusting two fingers in to curl against her g spot. She was still nice and soaking wet from when he’d gone down on her.

‘Be gentle. Please.’ She whimpered, gripping the pillow.

‘Of course, doll. I’ll always look after you.’ He purred, squeezing her bum softly.

He quickly lubed up his hard cock, he was already raring to go. Very excited to plunder into that virgin ass of hers.

But when he pressed the tip against her and started pushing in, even with all the lube and preparing she’d had before it still wasn’t enough for the sheer size of his invasion.

‘No! Stop! Too big!’ She cried and dropped her hips down so his tip fell out of her.

‘Chloe.’ He snarled and grabbed her hips tightly, hauling her back up. He started pressing back into her, but she tried to scramble forwards away from him.

‘Enough!’ He leaned over her more and wrapped an arm around her middle to hold her still and his other hand went around her neck, squeezing in warning.

‘Loki… Please don’t… It’s too big.’ She whimpered as he slowly forced inch by glorious inch further into her. Forcefully spreading her wide open.

He pressed his lips to her ear, hand still firmly around her neck as he kept pushing in. But he did slide his hand from her middle down between her thighs to stroke her clit, making her whimper and accept him a tiny bit easier as she became distracted with the pleasure and also his words.

‘You will take me. I own you, doll. Never forget that. That means every orifice of yours is mine. And I will plunder whatever one I wish to.’ He growled sinisterly.

Whilst Chloe liked the feeling as he stroked her clit, she really didn’t like the way his cock felt inside her ass. It was far too big, stretching her like mad. Even with all the lube he’d used, it still didn’t feel like it was going in easily.

She buried her face into the pillow, sobbing softly in confusion at the pleasure and pain as he started fucking her ass. It was also a stark reminder that even though Loki claimed to love her, and she loved him, he would still make her do things she didn’t want to do.

He was the one with complete control over her. And her body certainly didn’t belong to her.

[eerythingisshaka]

Ficmas Day #5 “Gift of the Hargreeves”

[Diego Hargreeves x Reader]

Word Count: 1.9k

“Hold on, I have to move a little so I can get it in.” “How far down do you need to be?  I’m ready for it already.” “Don’t go too fast!  If you kill me with that thing, ain’t for sure gonna be no damn Christmas!” “Ok!  Geez, don’t get mad.  I’m afraid you’ll break it while you’re holding it and mad.” As you guide the plug in the shadows into the socket, the multicolored lights wake from their storage slumber for another year of holiday cheer. You crawl out from behind the tree, wiping off your knees as Diego takes your hand to help you up.  As he holds you from behind, you hold hands watching the tree in its glory. “We did that, huh?”  you ask. Diego nods.  “Who knew what an hour’s worth of labor can produce.  You did great, baby.  All that’s missing is presents under the tree!” “Uh!  Remember, we’re not gifting big this year.  $50 max for presents.”  You turn your head back to him to share a couple sweet pecks as his hair starts to fall in the way of your lips. “Pfft!  Diego, I really can’t get used to your hair like that.”  You wipe your lips of the phantom sensation of hair before pulling some lip gloss from your pants pocket to refresh your lips. Diego whips his locs back with the grace of a cover model.  “What’s wrong with it?  I thought you like guys with the man buns and flowing hair and shit?” Adjusting your glasses, you reach for his hair, feeling the texture and moving it around back and forth.  “Sure I like that, but...baby it’s just stiff and dry looking.  I appreciate you trying something different if that makes you happy but whew, we need to come up with a routine.” He swipes your hand away gently, looking offended.  “This is my natural beauty you’re dissing, you know that?” You nod.  “Yes, true.  But even naturals have to get their product usage down for HEALTHY natural hair.  I’m sorry you feel oppressed at the moment.” Diego rolls his eyes sarcastically.  “I feel so seen.  But you can help me with that right?  What products work for me?” You shrug, walking past him to get to a box of white and red garland untangled.  “I may be able to help, but I don’t know anything about your type of hair.  Isn’t some $1 shampoo and conditioner from the grocery store all you need?” Diego takes one garland from you.  “You know I’m already using that stuff, and clearly it isn’t working for either of us.” You sigh looking at him again, feeling somewhat bad for him.  “It’s not like I don’t find you handsome as you are.  You still have that pretty sad boy face that I adore…” “Sad boy?”  he asks as you hold his face playfully in your hands. “Yesh!  My wittle sad puppy wooking for wove!  And honey, that chest, them arms, that stomach…”  you give each part mention a squeeze with a lift of his shirt for a peek of his abs.  Diego pulls his shirt down turning away from you.  “Please, control yourself...but keep going if this is turning into something...” You shrug, balling up the garland and walking up to a step ladder to start lining the decoration.  “I’m just saying, don’t think I have lost any interest.  And if all else fails, what’s a paper bag for?  How does this look over here?  Is it high enough?” As you hold a foot of garland along the wall, studying the placement you hear a tiny whistle followed by an impact.  You almost stumble backward wondering what it was until you look up and find a small shiny tack in the garland, securing it firmly in place. “Whoa!  Fuck, D!  I told you not to do that shit by me!”  you yell, jumping down the ladder, leaving the flaccid hanging garland, pushing Diego as he smiles with a handful of tacks. “I won’t get you!  It’s my thing, remember!  My accuracy is never off!” “And I will accurately beat your ass if you throw tacks or whatever metal bullshit you wanna toss around here.  Now let me place the garland with tape first!  Then you can take those spots after I am safely away.” Later that night, Diego stares at the ceiling watching the credits roll from the Christmas movie you watched together.  You come out of the bathroom feeling disappointed to have missed it. “Damn!  Did they find the daughter in that landfill ever?”  you sit on the end of the bed, reaching for the remote to rewind to the part you missed. Diego crawls out from under his blankets, coming up behind you to lightly bite and kiss your shoulder. You shudder under his touch.  “Please, D!  I wanna see this!” He groans, reaching on either side of your face for your glasses to slide them off.  “Now you can’t…” You snort as he takes the remote out of your hands, tossing it aside.  “I’m not blind now, you know that?” He reaches around your waist to pull you backward, turning you on your back as he looks down at you, looking your body over like he’s famished. “And baby I have never been blind to what you do to me.”  He gobbles up your neck, letting his hands caress parts of you that make you giggle and gasp concurrently. “Wait, wait, I wanna...oh nevermind,”  you say into his mouth as he takes your words and thoughts away in his kiss, running your fingers through his hair and giving it a rough tug.  Diego sits up, smacking your hip to flip you on your stomach when all of a sudden you hear a crunch. “What was that?”   you say, accidentally knocking your back against Diego before he was ready to move that knocks some wind out of him.  As you survey the bed you find your glasses with one arm of it sitting wayward beside the other two-thirds of the frames. “Nooo, seriously?”  you sadly utter as you pick up your broken frames. “Oh, sweetheart, I’m sorry.”  Diego says pitifully, looking at the frames in your hand.   “I had these forever!  They were my favorite too,”  you sit back on the bed groaning in despair. “I can fix them I think.”  Diego takes them for a minute looking them over.  “....or buy you some new ones.  Better ones, since it’s Christmas time.” You shake your head.  “No...at least not yet.  That would be way past the budget we set this year for presents anyway.  I don’t even wanna think about a new pair.  It’s so hard for me to get a good prescription, I swear they switch some shit with my lenses every time.  What I see during the test and whatI get are always different.  These were perfect!” Diego sighs, rubbing your back.  “I f-f-feel bad.  I wasn’t th-thinking.” You look over at him with sympathy, giving his leg a squeeze.  “Don’t get upset, it’s fine.  I can still see and shit just gotta find my older frames now and oh I may have a free repair with my doctor on them.  I’ll call tomorrow.  It’s fine Diego, really.” -- When Christmas morning came, you bundled the blanket under your chin tighter for warmth as the cold winter sun peeked through the window.   “Merry Christmas, love,”  Diego hoarsely whispers in your ear as he caresses his hand up and down your hip, kissing your cheek.   Your mood is lifted with his affection.  “Mm, same to you,” you groggily reach for his head, crawling your nails over the side of his head feeling something is different.  When you look back at him, you see Diego with his short cut again. Your eyes buck as your mouth flies open with surprise.  He smiles as you notice the change. “See?  Just did it myself this morning before you woke up.”  He runs his hand over his head proudly before nuzzling into your neck like an excited pup. You try to track your thoughts.   “Wow!  I just...Wow!  It’s so different, I almost forgot how you look without your hair.”  You hold his face above yours, feeling the freshly cut hair under your palms. Diego gives you one more kiss.  “Merry Christmas!  But this isn’t your gift though, so don’t worry!  Get up so we can start gifting!” You slide out of bed and head to the bathroom to freshen up.  Having brushed your teeth, you reach for the cabinet to pull out a container of contacts, cleaning them in solution before opening your eye to place one. “Hey, did you want some pancakes or...what are you doing?”  Diego asks just as you place a contact in one eye, blinking a couple times before looking at him through the mirror.   “Yeah, I have been testing out these new contacts.  My doctor kind of convinced me to give them a shot, and so far it’s not the worst thing.” “Wh-what about your glasses?” You brush him off.  “I still have them, just not fixed.  Apparently I need a stronger prescription anyway and those were kind of out of style.  And now I have contacts, so... You ok?” Diego stares at you in the mirror a little long with an expression you don’t understand. “Oh, and pancakes are fine, by the way,”  you say as you prepare your other eye. “Ok.”  Diego heads for the kitchen, stopping at the tree to retrieve the little box with your gift, setting it on the kitchen table before getting the ingredients for breakfast together.  Not too long after he has started you come to the kitchen with your present hidden behind you. “Diego, before I give you your gift, I was planning this gift before this morning...obviously.”  You hold out the gold wrapped box to him, which he takes with a gentle smile.   “I’ll take anything you give me, baby.  I know I’ll love it.”  He kisses you quickly before pointing to the small red bowed gift on the table.  “It can’t be worse than mine.  I am willing to bet.” You pick up the box, lifting it’s lid to reveal another box monogrammed with love, your name.  You lift it out to reveal a glasses case with an exact replica of your broken frames inside. Your heart drops instantly.  “Ohh baby!!” Diego shrugs with his hands in his sweats pockets as you wrap your arms around his neck, kissing him generously. “But now you’re a contacts girl, so…” You shake your head, looking at him as you squeeze his face.  “Don’t!  This is amazing, you’re amazing!  And you should really open your gift now.” Diego sighs.  “Ok.  Look I’m glad you love yours but you don’t have to try to make me feel better.” You scoff.  “I promise, this will make you feel better if nothing else.” When he opens the box, he takes a beat to stare at the contents.  As he lifts a shampoo bottle out, followed by a conditioner, then a comb and brush set and gel, he looks at you with the biggest grin. “Baby…”  he says, dripping with enthusiasm. “I was -- I was gonna help to style it and-and make your hair better and healthy, then you go and CUT IT!” He puts down the bottles, running up to snatch you up in a bear hug. “I love you so much.  We are so perfect together,”  Diego says, giving you a deep kiss that would put you both on the naughty list next year.