#remember kids. you're never too old to hide under your bed in fear from the brain monsters

[neverendingford]

.

[lunaekalenda]

warnings: angst, death, wounds, blood, major jjk manga spoilers

"You always said you were the strongest... Prove it, Toru."

You don't even recognize your own voice, breaking from time to time due to the sobs. His hand sneaks weak to your cheek, taking the tear that it's about to run down your cheek away with his thumb, leaving a little blood trace under your eye. You can't take your gaze away from his, you can't stop pressing the wound of his chest. He smiles, weak, softly, but only for you. You can hear the noise of explosions not far from you, more of your friends getting hurt, more of them dying. You keep pressing his chest while his head lays on your thighs. It's getting worse, but you are too selfish to leave Satoru here, alone, to his slow death. Specially, after he gave his own life for you. You're convinced there has to be a way to save him, to save your other half and the only man you've ever loved so deeply and strong to not be able to imagine a future without him. But still, with every blood drop that escapes between your fingers, a second of his life goes away. His usual pale skin looks transparent under the moon, and his body temperature isn't even close to the heat that receives you when you go to bed late. His blue eyes are teary, fixed on yours, still shining with all those feelings he has told you so many times before. "Toru, you're gonna make it alive." You're not sure to who you're trying to reassure, but a tiny part of your mind wants you to be right. You'll remember this moment when you grow old, he'll tell this story to your grandchildren.

Your tears fall slowly on his cheeks, getting mixed with his own ones, as he catches air to speak, even when you told him not to.

"Don't cry, my love. Don't cry for me." his low voice is followed by violent coughs. You try to calm yourself as you try your best to keep the wound pressed, but he rests his hands on top of yours, trying to put them away of his body, but you are firm on your decision. "Hide. Go away. Save yourself." You reject all his ideas shaking your head, too sad to speak. But then Satoru grips your arm stronger. "I can only trust Megumi to you. He doesn't deserve to lose us both." He caresses your skin lovingly, as he always does.

"He's not gonna lose us, Satoru. We can keep taking care of him together, you're gonna survive." You pray for the fight to be over, to someone to find you both, to someone to help him. He was there on every single scar your skin has now. That's what his wound will be, a scar more on his body.

When Gojo discovered that Sukuna took Megumi as his vessel, one part of him never recovered. Megumi wasn't blood-related to your man, but it was his only family. His child. He taught him how to do the laundry and how to cook. He read stories to him until the kid fell asleep, he made his favorite meal every single birthday the two of them passed alone. It was always Satoru and Megumi, until you entered their life.

Satoru felt like you were the missing puzzle piece for their little family. Megumi loves you as much as you love him. You're an example for the kid, and he has been always nice towards you. And Satoru. Goddess, Satoru is your soulmate.

There's no other way of explaining your bond, and there won't ever be a similar feeling towards anyone. You love him with every inch of your body and every particle of your soul. Your hearts followed the same pace, and you fear that yours will stop as soon as his does. But, as long as you're by his side, you'll make sure it still beats. Satoru sighs when another explosion sounds far, as if the fight was moving towards the surroundings of Tokyo. Sukuna probably believes Satoru is dead, and that's your best option to survive. You're sure someone will come and help you both. Both of you are still there, under an almost demolished building, covered in blood, dust and sweat, but together. Satoru's mind flies towards the events of this afternoon, as his eyes darken a little. He knows it wasn't Megumi, and he knows how to take Sukuna out without hurting him, but still... It was too impressive for him to react. Sukuna didn't need more than one hit to hurt him deadly. He played with Satoru, played with his feelings and his loyalties. And you'll never, never, forget that.

You hear quick steps around you, and you hug your boyfriends's body, still pressing on his chest. The voice that speaks from behind you is clearly recognizable.

"G-Gojo?" Utahime seems too shocked to speak, and even when she sighs when he speaks back to her, she quickly leaves in search of Shoko, even when the future of Satoru is not certain. He coughs softly before speaking.

"Sukuna will release Megumi once he gets all his power back." Satoru tries to fight the knot in his throat, and holds your hand in search of strength. "I'm not sure what... he will do to him first. Please, take care of Megumi. And remember him that nothing is his fault, and that I love him. And I'm proud of the man he is now." He looks directly in your eyes now, even when you can see him between tears. "My love." Why does he sound as if he was saying goodbye? He is going to make it. He's going to watch Megumi grow up by your side, he will still wake you up with breakfast in bed, and he'll prepare desserts for the three of you on his days off. He'll take you to dates, he'll buy more tiny things that reminded him of you, he'll take you for a walk every Sunday morning. He'll kiss your ribs and your wrists and your lower back as he always does, he will lend you his sweaters when you're cold and he'll take your hand in crowded and not so crowded places to keep you near. "You're strong, beautiful and pure. You have so many beautiful things waiting for you, even if I'm not here to see them with you." His cold hand touches your skin again. "Live for both, darling. Keep me in your mind, but don't let my memories tie you to the past." he takes air violently, and you press his wound harder. You're gonna save him. "And I love you. I love you in a way I didn't knew I could love, as if a part of my soul is tangled to yours." His eyes are teary again. He tries to sit, but he's too weak. Instead, he takes his index to his lips, kissing the fingertip, before slowly pressing it against your lips. "I love you."

And Satoru's heart stopped beating under your hand.

[itsjustmyfantasyroom]

A feeling.

This was requested by the lovely @ben-c-group-therapy who asked for this:

< Hi! So I’d like to request a story between Nick and reader. Reader is Nick’s pregnant wife who gets kidnapped and held most likely due to a case Nick had been involved with putting the person away for etc. (of course that’s up to you lol.) She and baby would be fine just she would have some bruises or something from where they tied her or whatever. Idk. I don’t have enough courage to write it and I wanted to come to you with it. If you like the idea I’d love to read it! Thanks!>

Hope this hits the spot for you lovely and it’s what you were looking for. A I bet you could absolutely write something like this and it would be amazing. 

Warning: angst, a lot of angst, talks of SVU cases, talks of kidnapping,  happy ending and soft soft Nick. The pinch of Spanish that’s in there, sorry if its wrong I used google.

WC: 1770

Enjoy x

Nick had been day dreaming since he got back to his desk after court that morning, he hadn’t been this happy in a long time and he was finally starting to feel more relaxed now your maturity leave had started, you had only been married for 6 months before the two pink lines showed up and you were both looking forward to adding to your existing family. He knew you had an appointment with your OBGYN that lunch time that he couldn’t go to because he was in court.

But as he sat at his desk, he couldn’t shake the uneasy feeling that was filling him. His phone started to buzz in his pocket and when he pulled it out, he frowned his brows at the doctors office number flashing on it, confused at why they were calling, you weren’t due for another 2 weeks,

“Hello, Nick Amaro”

“Mr Amaro, its Jill, Y/N didn't show up for her appointment today, I have tried to call her cell but she didn’t answer. Have you heard from her?”

All colour drained from his face and he froze just as Liv walked out of her office and Sonny jumped up from his chair walking to Nick and taking the phone off him to find out what was going on. Sonny hung up after talking to Jill and turned to Liv, Amanda and Fin filling them in. Nick was looking ahead, fear filling him and everyone tried not to show how worried they were as well, it wasn’t like you not to show for an appointment and even if you didn’t Nick always knew why you weren’t going. Sonny grabbed Nick’s shoulder and shook him to snap him out of his head,

“Come on man, I’ am sure she is having a nap, we all know how tired she is. She only has 2 weeks left. We’ll go and check on her, ok?”

Sonny drove as fast as he could to your apartment building, they rode the lift up to your floor while Amanda and Fin worked with TARU to track your phone as you still weren’t answering and Liv made some calls around to local hospitals and your family to see if you were at any or if they had seen you.

Nick and Sonny rushed out the lift door down the hall to the front door. At first it looked like it was shut but when Nick tried to put his key into the lock, the door opened up. He raised an eye brow at Sonny trying to hold back tears and they both reached for their weapons, drawing them and started to walk into the apartment. Nick had to remember to breath at the state of it and tried to push away the horrible feeling that washed over him as his eyes scanned around your shared home. Sonny’s eyes blew wide at the mess around, the whole place was trashed and there was a smashed coffee cup with coffee pooling around it on the floor.

They both searched the apartment finding you nowhere, Nick yelling your name at the top of his lungs, but he panicked even more when he walked into the bedroom and found photos spread out on the bed of Nick with a recent victim, who had to go into hiding after testifying against her FBI husband,

“Carisi” Nick shouted trying to hide the fear in his voice. Sonny came rushing through the door and his eyes set on the photos, and he too had to try and hide the panic that bolted through him,

“I’ll call Liv” Sonny pulled his phone out of his pocket and made the call to her.

The next few hours where a blur and Nick found it hard to focus worrying if you and the baby were ok. TURU and the FBI agents sergeant finally found the location on where you were and they were getting ready to move in, Nick given strict instructions to wait at the car. Liv, Sonny and FBI were busting into the front of the old factory and Amanda, Fin and SWAT were getting ready to move in from the back.

Nick had seen first hand what this guy was capable of, you had as well, it was the last case you worked on before your maternity leave started and you knew how much Nick was there for the wife and helped her get out with her kids. He kicked himself for not knowing this was coming, and now you had been gone for hours, heavily pregnant and although he was trying to prepare himself for what he could be walking into, he also knew you were strong and he was hoping for nothing but the best for the whole situation.

They all moved in as quickly, but quietly as possible. As they walked into the big room, Liv and Sonny saw you in the middle of the room tied to a chair still in your pj’s, rope around your wrists to the chair arms and duct tape on your mouth. Sonny could see your tears in the shine of the sun from the windows behind you and the FBI agent was screaming in your face and holding something up to you throat,

“Stop, police” Amanda’s voice filled the room.

Shots where fired and you squeezed your eye’s shut, sobbing hearing the shots being rung out of the room and fading away into the background. As soon as Nick heard the shots, he did what he was told not to do and he ran as fast as his legs could carry him into the factory. It didn’t take long for him to find you sitting in the middle of room shaking and crying,

“Y/N, mi amor” his voice echoed through the room.

Your eyes sprung open and you sobbed uncontrollably watching as Nick ran towards you dropping to his knees in front of the chair undoing the rope on your wrists as quickly as he could. As Nick undid one rope he saw the deep marks around your wrist from how tight the rope was around you. He then moved onto the other one and when he pulled off the rope, you were bleeding slightly. Rage filled him even more when he looked up your arm just under your sleeve and saw a bruise from where you had been grabbed too hard,   

“It’s ok Y/N, I’ am here now, you're safe. You’re ok. Baby, you’re ok”  Nick repeated over and over till he reached up pulling the tape off your mouth.

You launched onto him, wrapping your arms around his neck hugging him tight and he did the same wrapping one arm around your middle tight and his other rested on your large belly, tears spilling from his eyes when he felt the baby kick his hand,

“Nick” you sobbed squeezing your arms around him tighter.

Nick kissed all over the side of your face, the hand around you rubbing over your back and his other rubbing over your belly,

“It’s ok, I’ am here my love. I got you”

Without pulling out of your embrace, Nick moved to stand up, pulling you up with him and he scooped you up carrying you out to EMT’s. Nick spent the rest of the day with you at the hospital while you and the baby were checked to make sure you were both fine and getting your wrists patched up, Amanda and Nick’s mum went back to the apartment to pack bags for you both, Amanda dropping the bags and his mum back at her place where you were both going to stay for a while and Sonny organised a cleaner for your apartment for when you were both ready to go back. Liv told Nick to start his leave to keep an eye on you, while she, Fin and Rafael worked on the case against the FBI agent to make sure the book was thrown at him harder this time.

You were finally back at Nick’s mum’s sitting on the spare bed after having a shower and his mum making your favourite dish, Nick just got out of the shower and he was making you a tea. He walked over to sit next to you on the bed, sitting the cup on the bedside table and he sat down right next to you, his arm going around you and his hand resting on your belly.

You moved yourself to lay into his side, his arm coming down to rub up and down your arm, kissing the top of your head and then resting his head on top of yours, a comfortable silence filling the room till Nick broke it,

“We will stay here as long as you want to, I’ll go and pick up the bassinet and the new born stuff tomorrow and we will look for another apartment we can move into as soon as we can, a secure one this time”

“I like that idea”

You sat up off him and your eyes locked with his, you both sat there for a moment looking deep into each others eyes. Your hand rose up to his cheek, a smile pulled to his face and he lent into your hand,

“You were on my mind the whole time” you whispered.

“You were on mine too. Everything was out of my control, I wanted to go out to find you, I felt so helpless. I needed you to be safe” a tear rolled down his cheek and landed on your thumb “I couldn’t lose you” you both giggled when the baby kicked hard and Nick lent down kissing your belly and muttering into it “You too, mi pequeña niña, Te quiero” Nick kissed your belly again.

Nick sat back up and rested his forehead on yours, both of his hands moving to the sides of your head. Nick pulled back slightly, his hands still on your head and yours on his cheek. Nick titled his head to the side looking into your eyes again,

“Nick, kiss me, Please?”

A small smile pulled to his face again and he licked his lips before he closed the gap and his lips met with yours, fitting together. The kiss never deepened, it was soft, slow and loving. Nick peaked your lips, then along your cheek till he hugged you tightly in his arms pulling you into his warm solid body as he sat back on the bed head. You laid into him, your head resting under his chin,

“I love you mi amor, so much”

“I love you too babe”

Tags: @beccabarba @alwaysachorusgirl @lovebishoplosamiguelgalindo

[jademakean]

𝐒𝐭𝐨𝐫𝐦𝐲 𝐍𝐢𝐠𝐡𝐭

Timothée Chalamet x Reader

𝑷𝒂𝒖𝒍𝒊𝒏𝒆 𝑪𝒉𝒂𝒍𝒂𝒎𝒆𝒕 𝒊𝒔 𝒚𝒐𝒖𝒏𝒈𝒆𝒓 𝒊𝒏 𝒕𝒉𝒊𝒔.

｡･:*:･ﾟ

  Drizzles of water began coating your body as you rushed to your best friend's porch, hurriedly knocking on the wooden door.

The extra holiday break from school allowed you to spend more time with Pauline, meaning: chaotic sleepovers

“Hello?”

You looked up meeting a pair of green eyes you hadn't seen in a long while. “Timothée?”

Once the slender figure came to the realization of who was waiting at his front step, his mouth went agape mirroring yours.

You both had been close since you were little. You became friends with Pauline in middle school and met Timothée through her. From then on you were a trio and would do everything together, but that all changed.

Him, being three years older than you meant that he'd go to college first and in the end, there would simply not be any time for you both to be together. You did try to hang out once every two weeks but his college was way too far and he needed to spend his time focussing on his studies. It ended in a bad note, with many hurtful words shared.

Before you knew it, Timothée had you in bone-crushing embrace  “I haven't seen you in months, more than a year maybe! God, I missed you.”

“Why didn't you tell me you came back?” you couldn't hide the slight disappointment of him not thinking about letting you know. “I wanted to but I switched phone numbers and my sister wanted me to surprise you instead. I just didn't know I was going to see you this soon.”

Though you both shared your relief in seeing each, there was some strange tension in the air.

“I gotta visit my aunt right now but we should celebrate tomorrow or something.” He suggested, breaking the silence.

“Yeah totally. I'm sleeping over anyways so we'll probably see each other after dinner. Just be careful, the weather seems to be getting worse.”

“Oh yeah of course. If you need some clothes you can get some from my room, they're in a box on my bed. I know that Pauline's clothes are too small for any human being to wear.”

You giggled at his over-exaggeration nodding “Thanks. Stay safe.”

Once the door shut you felt your mood change. It's not like you weren't happy to see him, you were, but not being able to have the same connection you once had made your heartache.

“DJ Paulina in the house mother fuckers!”

You jumped at your best friend's sudden outburst but laughed nevertheless.

“Holy shit, you're wetter than the pacific ocean!”

You roller your eyes “Really? Damn, I wonder why. It's alright though, Timothée allowed me to borrow one of his shirts.”

“Wait you already saw Timothée?”

“Yeah, he just left.”

Paulina grimaced slightly knowing how hard it might've been for two introverts to reunite after a long period of time, let alone after they had a fight last time they were together. She quickly changed the subject not wanting to upset you.

That didn't mean she wouldn't plan on rebuilding your bond.

۵

The snaps of thunder kept you awake and the heavy drops of rain overtook your mind.

As the time pasted you began wondering what would happen if there was a monster under your bed, if a ghost yanked you by your leg, or if the shadow of the hanging coat was actually a person.

Full-on scaring yourself.

And Pauline's sleep talking was not helping the situation.

Both of you spent the day baking, eating and watching movies. Though it's not how most teenagers take up the opportunity of an empty house, it was more than enough for you two.

What was irritating you at this precise moment was the fact that you were exhausted during the day and still are, except you, can't bring yourself to actually fall asleep.

Creaking sounds were heard throughout the room as your feet made contact with the wooden floor.

You grumbled making your way to the kitchen for a cup of fresh cold water.

The bright electronic clock on the stove displayed the time. 2:23 A.M.

You were so dazed and distracted by the clock that before you could fill your glass with water, the cup fell on the counter.

You felt your heart stop the second the loud sound emitted throughout the quiet space, fearing you'd break your best friend's parent's glass. But once you realized that everything was still stable, you proceeded to finish your plan.

“What are you doing still awake?”

Your body jumped at those words. You turned to see Timothée with hooded eyes and slumped figure, clearly more than half asleep.

“Sorry, I'm a light sleeper and the thunder was keeping me awake.”

“Do you want to sleep with me?”

He smiled softly with a droopy gaze

Not gonna lie, initially some inappropriate thoughts crossed your mind, but vanished once you remembered how every time you had trouble falling asleep, you'd get in his bed and he'd make conversation until you fell asleep.

“Sure.”

Timothée was probably too out of it to understand why it had taken you so look to answer, which you were grateful for.

He lazily intertwined your fingers and led you to his room.

It looked the same as before, maybe some items we're missing so he'd be able to decorate his new apartment, but other than that, still the same.

You hesitantly laid down turning your body away from the curly-headed boy. You felt yourself heating up as last time you shared a bed you were a quite innocent 15-year-old, and to be fair you've always seen him as a bother figure.

But two years have passed and he was now 20, it felt like being with a stranger even though he wasn't.

“You alright?”

He mumbled quietly

“Can I ask you something?”

“Go ahead.” You chewed your lip anxiously. You've never been good at confronting people.

“Is there a reason why you got mad at me when you left. All I remember was you telling me how we couldn't be friends because of all the work you had and how you couldn't handle too many things at the same time. But in the end, you suddenly got mad at me and it ended in a huge fight.”

You could tell that Timothée was now fully awake, definitely not expecting you to mention the topic at this time of night.

“Well, in all honestly I knew you wouldn't want to give up on our friendship. I've always seen you as a loyal strong friend and I didn't want to disappoint you by continuously bailing out on our plans.”

Thought his solution was a stupid one, you understood what he meant. You would most definitely get let down many times and eventually get mad at him, even if it wasn't fully his fault.

“I understand. Just-- Just don't do that again. I'd rather have a relationship with you even if we rarely saw each other, instead of not seeing you at all. I miss being with you.”

Timothée's heavy arm hugged you closer to him. So close you could feel his gentle heartbeat against your back.

“I'm not as much of a mess I was back in the first year of college. I have more spare time, even if college is too far we can face time and meet once a month.”

It was nice to witness his change in attitude regarding the situation, he's now more open-minded and optimistic.

“Is that why you seemed so tense when you saw me today?”

You suddenly felt yourself redden from slight embarrassment “I mean yeah. I kinda overreact a lot, but you know that. I didn't even recognize you, you've changed and I didn't know how to feel.”

You felt chest shake from a deep chuckle as you played with his fingers “Is that a good thing?”

He was making you flustered and he knew it.

“I mean, yeah. You look mature for a 20-year-old. When you were 18 you still had your baby face- it's not a bad thing at all, but now you, um, okay I'm just going to stop talking.”

Once again, Timothée's body shook slightly from his laughter which eventually died down.

There was silence once again, the downpour was hitting the window aggressively but managed to make you feel calm. The heat that radiated from the man's body was wrapping you in a warm blanket, his cold breath tickling your neck.

“How do you see me?

The silence was halted by your simple question “What do you mean?” his raspy voice asked, not understanding the question very well.

“Before you said that you saw me as a loyal friend. How do you see me now?”

Timothée turned your body to face him “Well, you've changed as well. You don't look like a little kid anymore.”

You hummed in response staring into his eyes. The moonlight was shining through the window behind Timothée, illuminating his hair, making it look as though he was wearing a halo around his head.

“Has anything interesting happened while I was gone? House renovations, dead grandma, boyfriends..?”

You had to cover your mouth from bursting out laughing “How the hell do you go from dead grandma to boyfriends?”

The boy shrugged his shoulders waiting for an answer “I had a boyfriend for a little while but it didn't work out.”

Timothée nodded for you to keep going

“He treated me differently when we were around his friends, kinda like he didn't want me. We would get into a lot of arguments and I just wasn't happy. So I ended it.”

He took your hand caressing it carefully with his thumb. You knew he was trying to make you feel better though you weren't actually sad about the breakup. You decided not to say anything against it since his action-filled your heart with butterflies.

“He's an asshole for doing that.”

“Yeah well, most of them are.”

There was a small pause in the air before Timothée spoke up again

“I wouldn't do that to you.”

You were taken aback from his sudden confession. You expected him to joke around about some dumb stereotypes.

“If you were my boyfriend, or just in general?” you asked genuinely curious to which he answered:

“Both.”

You being the anxious human being you are, decided to play it off as a joke. Like always.

“Yeah right, you would never date me, you might as well be one of those extra frat boys that-”

“Why would you assume I wouldn't date you.”

You were becoming more and more agitated, not fully grasping the meaning of his words, and why he was now saying it.

“I've always adored you. The reason why I never said anything is because I'm three years older than you and didn't want to make you uncomfortable.”

“Why are you saying this now?” You shuttered out as he moved closer to your body.

“I didn't realize how much I loved you until we separated. Now I'm realizing how much time I wasted.”

Timothée began breathing heavily, his eyes focusing on the different features your face held.

“Would you date me now?”

He nodded, not trusting his voice to speak. “Even if we wouldn't see each other often?”

He nodded once again, this time speaking “I haven't seen you in two years and I still have feelings for you, they won't go away even if I tried.”

Timothée let his fingers gently brush against your lips studying them thoroughly making your mind hazy.

You were so focussed on each other that the background noise was now muffled.

Your mouths were agape wanting one thing and one thing only.

“Can I kiss you?”

He whispered breathlessly. If he wasn't studying you so closely he would have missed your little nod.

But he didn't miss it.

The second the small gesture was caught, was the second his lips made contact with yours.

The kiss was heated and desperate, your eyebrows furrowed hopelessly from the connection. Tongues soon intertwining as Timothée held himself on top of you for better control of the situation. Not giving you room to escape.

You sighed through your nose not being able to break from the kiss, not wanting to break from the kiss.

His front pressed flush against yours, allowing his hands to travel all over your body with no hesitation.

You mumbled Timothée's name against his lips before you broke apart. “Did I go too far?”

You smiled at his worried state “No, I loved every second of it.”

He copied your smile resting his forehead on yours “Sorry, I could help myself.”

He laid on his back before you cuddled to his side, leg wrapped with his and head resting on his shoulder.

Timothée observed your crimson cheeks and swollen lips. He wanted to tease you about it but he knew damn well that he looked the exact same.

Sleep eventually took over you. The soothing sound of the storm was the last thing you heard, and the motion of Timothée's chest calmly rising and falling was the last thing you felt.

[itgetsdarksometimes35]

Revenge is Best Served out of the Ice

Warnings: Non con, dub con, death, cursing, blood, rough vaginal sex, other things, Bucky isn’t okay. 18+

Word Count: 2,529

Prompt: I’m as mad as Hell, and I’m not going to take this anymore

Pairings: Dark ex-Hydra Bucky / Ex-Hydra Reader

Summary: Reader is in hiding after the fall of Hydra.

~ Indicates a time change

--- Indicates a POV change

A/N: This is my very late submission to @kellyn1604 challenge hope you guys like it. I’ll be in the woods for about a week, but I’ll upload an equally late submission to a challenge when I get back. 

XXX

It was never meant to go down like this. You had answered a silly job as an assistant with a company; never did you think you’d be helping a man who leads a terrorist movement looking to take over the world. 

You wanted out the minute you saw the asset. The way Alexander treated him wasn’t human. Even though he insisted he wasn’t, he was an experiment of sorts, it still didn’t sit well with you. His icy cold eyes held life, even if they did make you queasy every time you looked into them. 

Very rarely did you go into where the assassin was kept with Pierce, but when you did he always stared at you until his attention was drawn back to his abusers. The instruments made you feel awful, so you avoided invitations inside as much as possible. The machines that tortured him when he did wrong, the ice he was put in to keep him alive, the electricity that would go through his brain to make him forget. You wondered how old he truly was and who he was. Did he have a family? What did he do to get here?

~

You gasped as you woke up with a jolt from your nightmare. The same blue eyes that had met yours for 5 years refused to go, even in your dreams. You saw him everywhere; the Winter Soldier. After he was ordered to kill Captain America, Hydra was found out. Many were arrested and tried, some people had to go into hiding, including yourself, and others were ordered to rebuild under a new name. After Alexander was killed you had faked your death and ran away to Vienna. Nobody knows where the Winter Soldier went. 

That all had been nearly two years ago. You had moved on in every sense. You had gotten a new job, and this one you loved. Sure, it wasn’t anything you dreamed of doing as a little girl, but it awarded you the privacy you sought. You weren’t ready to reconnect with the world yet. Plus the hours were flexible and no job beats the one where you can be at work in your home in your PJ’s. 

You went out once a week for groceries. You didn’t have a tv, a computer, and the only time you used your burner phone was for work. You kept yourself entertained with the old books left in your old apartment. It was a life different from the one you were used to, but that’s what you liked about it. 

Today was the day you go shopping for food. You sat up in your bed, noticing the little bit of sunlight that passed through the black blankets you’d hung on the windows as makeshift curtains. 

You got up and started your routine before heading out the door. The small market was filled with buyers bargaining for better prices and sellers yelling their final price. You make your way from the seafood to the fruit; the seafood was always the first thing to go in the market. Vienna seemed to have too much fruit. 

As you’re checking out the apples you start feeling watched. You look around but see nobody. Weird. You get enough fruit to keep you satiated for the week so you leave the market as soon as you can. The less human contact and time outside as possible the better, and you were starting to feel off. Someone was watching you, you could feel it, but no matter how many times you turn you see nobody looking. Thank God the walk home is short. 

When you get near your apartment you run up the brick stairs and shove the key into the door, pulling it open and slamming it closed then locking it. You didn’t realize you had been running until you tried to catch your breath and calm your crazy heart. 

You look outside through the peephole before concluding nobody followed you. And if they did they at least left you alone for now. You walked to the kitchen to set down the mesh grocery bag before unloading everything. 

That’s when you heard it. 

The only way into this apartment other than the front door was the fire escape that was connected to the window in your bedroom. The sound of the window opening, no matter how faint it was, has been trained by you to be heard. Your irrational fears of being robbed or found while you're sleeping has finally helped you as you quietly reach for the knife on the counter. 

You continue unpacking and pretend like you didn’t hear a thing in order to trick the intruder. You keep the knife in front of you on the counter, hidden by your body, as your ear strains to listen to what’s happening behind you. 

“You don’t live where I expected.”

Your eyes widened at the voice. The amount of times you heard that voice is less than the amount you saw the face connected to it, but you could recognize it in a concert of sounds. 

You spin around with the knife in your hand to see the man who plagued your nightmares. The Winter Soldier.

He looked down at the puny weapon in your hand. It would do little to protect yourself against the super soldier, but it helped your confidence a bit. He smiled at your shaking grasp on the knife.

“Do you think that’ll work?”

“What are you doing here?”

The man narrowed his eyes at you a bit before ignoring your question. He made a move and you stuck out the knife in a threatening manner. It did nothing to the assassin as he reached for the milk you had just bought, and popped the cap off before taking a few sips. He wiped his mouth before continuing. 

“I’ve been looking for you everywhere. You’re hard to trace, you know.” Your breathing is getting more erratic and your heart is beating so loud you can hear it. But even if you couldn’t you know the superhuman before you could. “Do you remember me?” His eyes seem searching, like he’s not sure he’s got the right person. Or if he’s confused as to why you’re scared to see him. 

“Yes.” The man nods at your response. 

“After my last mission I was on the run from Hydra. I wasn’t sure what would become of it, but after figuring out I started a plan. I started tracking down the people who the government failed to bring into custody and killing them one by one.” Fuck. “At first I wasn’t looking for you, you hadn’t hurt me after all. I could see your hesitation every time you saw me.” Then why are you here? “But then I remembered the way you looked at me. How disgusted you were. You saw me for the monster that I was.” The man paused, waiting to see if you’d argue. You didn’t. You couldn’t. He was right, even if you felt bad for him, you saw him as a war machine, murderous monster.

“So, I tracked you down. I found you on a car camera at the market, but you never leave. I thought I had the wrong place for the longest time, but today I finally saw you. моя маленькая сука.” The blue eyes that haunted you weren’t dead anymore, they held a flame now that terrified you. 

“Listen, I’m sorry. I am. If I had any idea what was going on I would’ve never accepted the job. I was just trying to work, I’m sorry. Please, just go.”

The man just scoffed at your words. “You would’ve never taken the job, but you wouldn’t have helped me. You wouldn’t have helped innocent people. You think I wanted to kill all those people? I still see their faces, no matter how many times they fried my brains, I can’t fucking forget! I don’t have the option to just run away. Unlike you, you fucking bitch!”

You jumped as he was starting to get angrier, the container of milk crushed in his metal fist, leaking down to the floor. Tears started to sting your eyes and you were shaking even worse. “Please, I get why you’re angry, but you don’t have to do this.”

“And you didn’t have to keep quiet for all those years, but you did. Didn't you?” You shook your head. He didn’t get it, you could’ve died. You had no choice but to stay silent. “My name’s James Buchanan Barnes by the way. Everyone called me Bucky. I had a life, a family, friends. A career that I loved. Hydra took all that from me and turned me into the thing you see today. I should’ve died a long time ago; but now I’m as mad as Hell, and I’m not going to take this anymore!”

The soldier suddenly lunged at you, twisting your wrist causing you to scream out. You dropped the knife to the floor with a clang, and you were shoved against the counter with your back to the man who had broken back into your life. 

“I could easily kill you, but I’d be lying if I said I didn’t always have a thing for you. The way your ass would look in your pencil skirts, it made me feel normal again, the feelings I’d get when I’d see you. Well, that is until Hydra just fucked me up again.” He whispered low in your ear as you felt him unbuckling his pants. Your struggles were kept to a minimum due to the metal arm holding your body uncomfortably close to the wooden counter. 

“I used to even daydream about a life with you. White picket fence, big house, two kids, the whole nine yards. The normal shit I had as a kid.” the man dryly chuckled, “How stupid of me.”

Without warning he slaps your ass. Hard. He gripped your panties before shoving them down your legs, riding your dress up your thigh to reveal yourself to him. You squeezed your eyes shut as you felt your face get hot with embarrassment. 

The soldier suddenly drops to his knees and grabs your ass cheeks in his hands, spreading yourself more for him to see. He moaned before diving right in, licking at you slit. You moaned out before you could catch it with your hand causing the man to groan into your core. 

“You like that don’t you?” Slap. “Fucking slut.” 

The man continued to eat you out as you reached hopelessly for an escape. He held you steady and firm up to his face, and you had no control over the vulgar sounds that were leaving your mouth. 

You let out a high pitched scream as the soldier started sucking on your pearl of nerves, driving you over the edge into ecstasy. He continued to suck up all that you had to offer him before standing up.

“You’re slutty cunt has me hard as a fucking rock, you know that?” Another slap to your backside has you jolting forward just a bit and groaning out at the pain that blurred the line of pleasure.

You heard more clothes shuffling before you felt something hot poke at your entrance. “Ready Babygirl?” The man chuckled as you shook your head. 

“Please, you can still stop! I won’t tell anyone, just let me go!”

“Aw, imagine it being your choice.” With that he shoved himself to his limit within you. You both moaned out at the feeling of your walls stretching around the thick member inside you, pulling at him as he moved deeper.

“You’re tighter than I always imagined, Doll.” the soldier moaned into your ear, starting to find a rhythm inside you. He wasted no time using your body as his toy. He deserved this after all that Hydra put him through. After all that you allowed him to be put through.

“Y-you’re hurting me!” 

“Good.”

You’re closing your eyes so hard you can see stars. You feel hot tears escape from your eyes as you’re trying to wait out the torture your body was being subject to. Pretty soon the pain is too much and you’re sobbing.

“What are you crying for, bitch?” the man grabs a handful of your hair and yanks it back, your scalp burning from his roughness, “You don’t get to cry, not after what you let happen to so many people. You don’t know true pain.” He shoved your head forward and you barely miss hitting your head on the counter. Your neck still hurt from his force, though. 

The Winter Soldier’s movements start to get harder and he starts hitting a spot within you that makes you clench around him, your orgasm creeping up in your lower stomach.

“That’s right, clench my cock, cunt. Just like that and I’ll cum for you. You’ll like that won’t you?” Bucky slapped your ass three times before grabbing your left cheek, making you squeeze him again. “Answer!”

“Yes! Please cum inside me, Bucky!”

That was a mistake.

Bucky shoved your hips into the counter for sure causing bruises to rise. You cry out, more tears escaping down your hot and inflamed cheeks. “Don’t call me that. It’s sergeant to you,” The man growls out at you, “You know that? I was a fucking sargeant before this shit. Respected. Now look at me,” he chuckles humorlessly. 

You can feel blood trickle down your leg as the sergeant continues to abuse your pussy, any orgasm you might’ve had is gone now, replaced with a painful yet numb ach. 

“God, fuck-” You feel warmth spill into your channel as the soldier stills inside you. He pulls out of you, letting your weak and overused body fall to the tile floor painfully. You draw your legs up to your chest as you examine the blood on the floor, some of it gushing out from under your inflamed core. You have no idea what he fractured, he had to have done something, but it sure as Hell hurt. 

You hear a click and look up just as a loud bang is heard. Then everything went black.

---

Bucky looked down at the woman he just fucked, saw how the blood trickled from the bullet wound in her head down to the floor to mix with the blood from her pussy. 

He looked around at the dump she called an apartment. It is a place where nobody can trace easily, he thought. She was the last person he had to kill on his path of revenge, and now he needed somewhere to lay low. Maybe he’ll stay, nobody will realize a difference. The bitch never talked to anyone or interacted with people, and those who did know she existed would probably assume she left or that he was her boyfriend or something. They wouldn’t ask questions. They didn’t care.

Bucky finished putting the food she had gotten away before working on disposing of the body. He smiled to himself, content with the job he had done. It wouldn’t right all his wrongs, but it certainly helped. Besides, revenge is best served out of the ice. 

XXX

Tags: @coconutqueen21 @kellyn1604 @jtargaryen18 @collette04 @nsfwsebbie @what-just-happened-bro @gigistorm @avengerimscreaming @venusavengers @saharzek @navybrat817 @bucksgoat @xoxabs88xox

[angelsswirl]

Vellichor

The One With The Breaking and Entering

"And you're the only thing that's going on in my mind. Taking over my life a second time."

Ryland's brows furrowed at the tapping on her bedroom window. She was a notoriously light sleeper, so ignoring it wouldn't work.

There's a tree right outside her room, so she assumed it was it causing the noise. She should be able to just snap off the offending twig.

She frowned as she approached the wide window. Her knees hit the day bed as she opened it. There was absolutely no wind and the tree's branches were too high to be touching the glass.

She looked down with a frown.

Her eyes widened.

"What are you doing?" She stage-whispered furiously.

The source of the sound waved up at her happily, a handful of pebbles tucked into their fist.

"I came to see you."

"Taylor! My mom's going to kill you if she sees you. Go home."

Taylor just shrugs and smiles happily, "Hey, all in the name of love. I couldn't think of a better way to go!"

"Stop yelling." Ryland spoke through her teeth, a burning blush painted her cheeks. She peered further into her dark room. The hall light was still off as far as she could tell via the sliver under her door.

By the time she looked back, Taylor is half way up the large oak tree.

Ryland rolled her eyes, "Couldn't wait for me to let down my hair?" She deadpanned and backed up as Taylor more or less fell into the room.

"Your hair isn't long enough for that, Princess." Taylor smiled brightly and placed a soft kiss on her girlfriend's cheek.

Ryland's blush deepened further somehow, "What are you doing here? If my mama catches you she's going to kill you, bring you back to life, then kill you again."

Taylor shook her head fondly, "I didn't get to see you today and wanted to tell you about my day. And I thought after I did that, we could sleep together."

Ryland's eyes widened comically at that last part.

"Oh! No! Not like that! I-I meant actually sleep. I know you're not ready for the other kind of sleep together and that's totally fine." Taylor smiled reassuringly.

It was then that Ryland noticed Taylor's clothing. Apparently the girl had walked all the way here in her pajamas. A plain white short-sleeved crew neck and red plaid sleep shorts.

"Do your parents know where you are?"

"I left a note on mama's forehead, and little bro was still up so I told him." Taylor nodded resolutely, referring to Suzy and her 15 year old brother, Jackson.

"Well that's something. I don't exactly like the idea of you walking around New York at night by yourself." Ryland fiddled with the cross necklace latched around Taylor's neck.

"I understand, but if it makes you feel any better, soccer helps me run really fast." Taylor seems to think her joke is rather hilarious. Ryland wholeheartedly disagrees.

"I have no idea why my mom doesn't like you. You're so much alike."

Taylor hopped onto Ryland's bed, her arms opening in invitation for the omega to join her, "Well, she's never actually met me. She doesn't like my mom."

"Did Rosé ever tell you why?" Ryland rested her head on Taylor's chest, tucking the necklace back into the alpha's shirt.

"Not directly, but I've deduced that it probably has to do with the fact that my mom and your mom have definitely fucked before."

Ryland sat up in the bed quickly, "What?!"

"Yeah, that's the reaction I had." Taylor just shrugged and calmly pulled Ryland back down towards her.

"Now, lets quickly change the subject to my day and away from our moms having sex with each other."

Ryland only nodded slowly, her mouth still open in shock and also mild disgust.

~•~

Your children all sat in front of you. Wary expressions on their faces.

They had sat at the island counter coincidentally from oldest to youngest, save for Kaleb who was comfortably sitting on Peyton's lap.

"Are you guys getting a divorce?" Peyton asked accusingly.

You and Jisoo frowned, "No."

"Oh, then what is this meeting about?"

"Moms. I already know. You don't have to tell us. Mom's not my biological mother." Lia said resolutely, she didn't seem to notice everyone else staring at her like she was an idiot.

You dramatically slammed your hand onto the counter, "Who told you?! I never meant for it to happen like this! We-we-" You fall dramatically into Jisoo your shoulders shaking with heavy fake sobs until you began to laugh.

Lia is pouting now.

"You don't feel bad about that, do you?" Jisoo asked seriously. Lia just shrugged.

"Not really. I don't remember mom not being there so it's all the same to me." And she was telling the truth, she never felt out of place, mainly because you went out of your way to ensure that.

"Well, if you guys are done making terrible guesses, your mother and I have decided you're all old enough to know the truth."

Ryland raised an eyebrow, "The truth about what? Peyton's an alien, isn't she? I knew there was something off about her." She only chuckled when said sister shoved her into Lia.

"No, about why Jisoo's a bit...indifferent to Taylor being your mate." You said, making sure to choose your words carefully.

Ryland nodded, "Oh yeah. Tay told me last night. She said you and Christen fu-slept together."

Peyton has to hide her face in her brother's large mass of curly dark hair to try to hide her smile. This was an absolutely hilarious turn of events.

"How would she know?"

"Last night?"

"She said she just guessed. And did I say last night? I meant last week...." Ryland winced at her slip up.

"No. You meant last night. How could she have told you last night? You were here all day and you forgot your phone in the living room." As if she reminded herself, Jisoo pulled her daughter's phone out of her pocket.

"I plead the fifth."

"Well, then you wouldn't mind me going into your room then, would you?" Jisoo doesn't wait for an answer, she stormed into the omega's room, and sure enough. She could practically smell Taylor's lingering scent through the door.

"It's rather unfortunate that poor kid must die now." Jisoo shook her head solemnly.

"Well, you could always just calm down and get over it." You pointed out with a roll of your eyes.

"Nah, I'm gonna kill her." She sighed as if this was a burden she couldn't shake.

"Has it ever occurred to you, that you might be overreacting?" You crossed your arms.

"No, why?"

"'Cause you are. Look it's not like they did anything untoward. Plus, she's an adult, she wouldn't even be here if it wasn't the summer."

Jisoo pouted and stomped her foot like her four year old did when he was mad, "But she's my baby."

"She's mine too, but we've got to let her grow up."

Jisoo scowled, "Fine, but I still get to interrogate the kid and put the fear of God into her. It's my right."

"I'm not quite sure that's how that works, but I'm not going to stop you."

Jisoo kissed you on the cheek, "And that's why I love you."

[eirabach]

Skin Deep [TAG post 3x26]

Oh my god. Oh my GOD.

Okay, here's my first mini dive into post canon TAG. It is unlikely to be my last 😂

----

Jeff Tracy has five sons.

A five times fic that isn't really a five times fic at all. After all, a man rarely comes back from the dead more than once.

----

----

I can feel my heart beating as I speed from

The sense of time catching up with me

----

It starts with a mission. 

Nothing too out of the ordinary, just a freighter struggling at the edge of the atmosphere, an unstable fuel supply, and his teenage son piloting a rocket to relieve them. Perhaps it is a little out of the ordinary. He does try not to show it though.

Alan is certainly an accomplished pilot, maybe even better than Jeff himself. He's certainly better than Jeff had been as an eighteen year old, taking pretty girls out for joyrides in his mother's ancient turboprop.

Alan is doing just fine.

Scott? Not so much.

Jeff had been led to understand that John had fielded all of IR's calls during Jeff's long absence, a fact that certainly accounts for the dark circles beneath the boy's eyes,l. So it was John's toes he'd worried about stepping on when he'd begun routing calls through to his desk, though John had assured him he'd be glad of the rest.

It isn't John's voice interrupting his every order.

He mutes the line between himself and Three, and spins his chair to glower at his eldest. Scott is pouring over the telemetry, his knuckles white against the edge of the pad.

"Scott," he says, as strongly as he dares. "You're confusing the kid. I know what I'm doing."

"But Alan --"

"Is my son!" He regrets it at once, the way Scott's jaw drops and his hands fall. Hates the way he sounds -- like a bitter old man. Jealous.

He hates the way he means it, how Scott's single nod sits like satisfaction at the back of his throat when it ought to sting.

"I know," Scott says, all quiet and reasonable as though he might be Virgil in a mask. "but he's still my brother."

Soft words gently said, yet they leave a burn he feels right across his heart.

He doesn't quite know why. 

---

Virgil is his grandmother reborn, with one fairly major difference. Virgil is absolutely big enough to pick Jeff up and put him in his room if he thinks for one moment that Jeff might be overdoing it.

It seems he thinks Jeff is overdoing it a lot.

It's the third full med scan of the week, and Jeff has undergone less torturous poking and prodding in order to be shot into space than Virgil appears to deem necessary for him to be allowed to head down to the hanger under his own power.

It's touching. It's sweet. It's… getting a little old.

He isn't likely to tell Virgil that though, because although he's treating Jeff as though he's made of glass it's clear to anyone with eyes to see that Jeff's not the fragile one in this room.

Another vial of blood, another heart rate monitor. Another whisper, directed somewhere around his right knee.

"I'm so sorry, dad."

This has to stop. "For what?"

"Scott never gave up."

Ah. Jeff's been gone a long time, but some things never change. Virgil has never been one to admit to being wrong. This is probably as close as he'll ever come, and it's so damn unnecessary that if it weren't for his son's downturned expression Jeff might be inclined to laugh.

"Tell me something Virgil. Do you still play?"

"Yeah, yeah when disasters allow. You know how it is."

Jeff very much doesn't, but he fears a reminder of that fact might just tip Virgil over the edge.

"You stopped for a while, as I recall. After your mother went."

"Yeah. It hurt too much, knowing she'd -- that she'd never hear me again." Narrowed eyes. "You remember that?"

"I'm getting old, Virgil. I'm not senile." A smile. "Did you ever give up painting?"

Virgil stares, then, shaking his head.

"No. I never gave up painting."

Jeff thinks of his own art, scratched into the walls of his hellish home. The villa. Three. His Lucy's eyes scrawled over and over until they became too much to bear and were hidden behind a washing machine. Those same eyes look up at him now.

"Hmm." Jeff squeezes his wrist, lies back on the med bed, and closes his own. "Glad to hear it."

---

He doesn't know what to make of it, any of it. John's standing there with a computer in his hands and an expression on his face that suggests Jeff needs to tread very, very carefully.

Unfortunately, this has never been his strong point. Eight years of isolation have not helped.

"What is it?"

The computer flashes, a circle of yellow light, and John winces. A voice Jeff doesn't know echoes around his lounge. 

"I prefer she."

"My apologies," he manages, because his mother's watching and she didn't raise an oaf. "What is she?"

"John made me."

"She's yours?"

John shuffles on the spot, awkward, as though he's confessing to something rather more dire than the writing of a computer program.

"She's not -- I don't own her. I created her, but she's -- she's her own person. Kinda. We're working on it."

"Working on it?" His voice goes up at the end. John winces again. The computer glows. Amber to red to amber. "She's sentient? You created a sentient being?"

Gordon laughs, because Gordon would, and claps Jeff on the shoulder.

"Your first grandkid is a sociopathic sentient computer code. Bet you weren't expecting that one."

"I do not like you, Gordon Tracy."

Gordon beams at this, and John rolls his eyes. It almost looks like they've had this conversation before. Rehearsed it. He'd believe that of John. He'd believe almost anything of John. But this --

"See?" Gordon's still grinning. John's still watching him, the computer held close to his chest. "She's totally John's kid. Grandpa, meet Eos. Eos, this is your Gramps."

"Charmed," the computer says, an echo of John's laugh in her voice, and Christ, he needs a scotch.

Grandchildren. He'd never dared dream of them.

(He knows why, and shame chases the whiskey down his throat.)

---

He spends a lot more time out in the pool now. It starts as physiotherapy, Virgil and Gordon guiding his struggling body through the motions that will help to strengthen atrophied muscles and support weakened bones, but becomes, in time, a place he spends the hours after dinner, watching his youngest children and wishing for things he'll never have.

He does it a lot, enough that his space pale face is now bronzed and pink, enough that Gordon and Alan think nothing of a cry of 'c'mon, get Dad!'. Enough, that when Gordon grabs him round the waist and goes to throw him, he shouldn't be shocked. He should have noticed.

There's a great silver-red scar arching from his boy's shoulder and curving up his spine, stopping just where the high collar of his blues must hide it. 

What the hell happened? What the hell happened?

He must say it out loud, or maybe his face says it for him, because Gordon freezes, releasing him, and then just stands there. A little hunched. A little sheepish. In the pool Alan treads water, silent. Waiting.

Alan knows. Jeff does not.

That's just the way of things, now.

"Had an accident."

Alan scoffs, his voice louder across the water. "Nearly got murdered, more like."

Jeff's grip tightens until Gordon flinches. He lets go as though burnt, but his hand still hovers there, just above the puckered ridge of skin. Waits.

"Son?"

Gordon shrugs, the scar pulling tight.

"Alan's exaggerating, dad. It wasn't --"

"He nearly died!"

"I got better," there's a false sort of brightness to it, a twist to Gordon's mouth that suggests Alan is probably closer to the truth than Jeff would like. "It's no big deal, dad. Swear. It's nothing. I don't want to make a thing of it."

The sun dips below the horizon and throws a last burst of red across the water, across Gordon's back and Jeff's hand and he wants to argue. Wants to demand. Wants the information that's owed to him as this boy's father. Who would dare lay a finger on his boy? Just how close had he come to losing him without even knowing?

But his funny little boy isn't a boy anymore, and Jeff's rights to his stories are lost somewhere in the trail of the stars.

"Of course, son," he tells him. "Of course."

---

He catches Alan at the table, some piece of electronic junk spread out in front of him like a childhood jigsaw, his brows furrowed.

"Everything alright there, Alligator?"

Alan's nose wrinkles at the old nickname, as though he's forgotten. Probably he has. Jeff had left him just a little boy, and he's come back to, if not a man, then a boy right on the cusp of adulthood. A boy who's already been taught to shave, and fly, and behave by other men who are not and never will be, him.

"Yeah, yeah all good." He looks up and smiles. Alan's smiles were the purest memory he'd had, out there. They're more beautiful than he'd remembered. "What's up?"

"Not much, believe it or not." Jeff sits, fiddling with a transistor as Alan blows dust from a circuit board. "Electrical engineering, huh? You thought any more about college?"

Alan turns the board over and over in his fingers. "Not really?" He shrugs. "Like you said, I've got a rocket. I save people. I dunno what letters after my name are gonna do to help."

"Well," Jeff says mildly, "it never hurts to have a plan b, son."

Alan drops the circuit board, shoves the various pieces as far away as he can reach, and turns on Jeff with an expression half fury and half abject terror.

"For what? What do I need a plan b for, dad? What's gonna happen now?"

And though Jeff is a man, a grown man, he doesn't have an answer for that.

[joonieebear]

you're the sun that rose again in my life

chapter one // chapter two // 

“Do you like it here?” What kind of question is that, you dumbass? 

Yoongi has learned a lot about the once strange lump on his couch, more than he ever anticipated doing when he agreed to let him stay for a week or so (“I mean it, Jimin! One week tops! Definitely no more than two weeks!” “Okay, hyung, whatever you say…”).

It wasn’t easy, at first. Yoongi wasn’t irritated by the boy staying in his apartment, but he was irritated by the fact that he couldn’t be irritated because Jeongguk was pulling his weight and then some. During the week that he was sleeping on the couch, Jeongguk always made sure to be up before the other two boys to fold his blanket and straighten up the cushions, even making breakfast for them a couple mornings that week. Every time Yoongi tried to find a reason to make the boy leave, Jeongguk did something else to make Yoongi want to let him stay.

Yoongi doesn’t even know why he was looking for a reason to kick him out. Jeongguk had never done anything to Yoongi personally— he just didn’t want to have to share his space with another person. Before Jimin, Yoongi had a terrible time with his previous roommates. They partied all the time and came home loud and drunk, had random people sleeping over constantly (some they didn’t even know), never cleaned, ate Yoongi’s food, stole his laundry detergents— he was very seriously considering finding a second job to pay for an apartment to himself. When they told Yoongi that they were going to move in with one of their party pals, Yoongi was so excited he almost offered to pack their things for them. Yoongi was hesitant to post an ad on the campus bulletin board looking for a roommate, but he knew he couldn’t afford many more months of having the apartment to himself. Jimin contacted him within a couple hours of Yoongi posting the ad, and when they met up at the coffee shop Yoongi worked at, Yoongi was a little wary. Jimin had higher energy than Yoongi, but that wasn’t hard to do, so Yoongi gave him the benefit of the doubt and told Jimin he could move in that weekend.

Jimin was a blessing really. He wasn’t too messy (his room was another story, but it was his space, he could do whatever he wanted in there), he split the groceries with Yoongi, and when he partied, he stayed with a friend if he knew Yoongi would be home or working at their apartment. They had been living together now for almost a year and they hadn’t really had any fights in that time. The one they did have was over which couch they would get, since Yoongi’s old roommates had taken the one they had with them when they left (Yoongi didn’t mind, that couch had seen too much to be comfortable, anyway).

They must have picked out a pretty comfortable one, given that Jeongguk never once complained about sleeping on it. After a week, Jimin started to worry about Jeongguk’s sleeping and comfort so he suggested that he bunk with him after talking to Yoongi for Jeongguk.

“Hyung, he’s scary, its okay. I can find somewhere to stay, I don’t want to wear out my welcome,” Jeongguk told Jimin when he had reached the end of the week.

“Oh shut up, I’ll talk to him. He isn’t scary, Jeongguk. He just wants everyone to think that. Go move your bag of clothes to my room.”

Jeongguk couldn’t believe Jimin at first. He had never seen Yoongi even smile, how could he not be afraid of him? Jimin was just crazy.

If Jimin was crazy, then Yoongi must be insane.

“Hyung, you’ve seen how he is here, what is one more week? You know that finding a place to stay doesn’t just happen overnight. I have a pretty big room, he can stay in my room with me and you will never have to see him. Please, hyungie” Jimin begs, breaking out the puppy dog eyes and infamous pout that no one, not even Yoongi, can say no to.

He does clean up after himself and doesn’t cause any trouble… he’s a pretty good kid— shut up Yoongi, you don’t want another roommate, remember?

“Alright. One more week, but I swear this is the last week. He’s got other friends he can crash with doesn’t he?”

“Well, no…. not really…”

“What? You mean you’re this kid’s only friend? Poor kid..”

“Hey! I am an excellent friend, thank you! But, no, he doesn’t really have any friends other than me. His boyfriend was the jealous type and didn’t really want Jeongguk hanging out with anyone else. The only reason I got a pass was because we’ve been friends for a long time.”

“Ah, the irony. Maybe Jeongguk should have been the one who was more controlling.”

“Nah, he’s never believed in being controlling in relationships. He doesn’t even say which club he wants to go to when I ask, even though I know he doesn’t want to go to the one’s I choose.”

“Hmm. Well, like I said, one more week.”

“That’s what you said last time too, hyung,” Jimin mumbles, smirking at Yoongi.

“What was that?”

“Nothing, hyung. I’ll go tell him!”

⭒⭒⭒

Jeongguk was actually baffled at Jimin’s room. The floor was completely covered in clothes, dirty and clean, there was paper scattered everywhere from assignments, and if it weren’t for the bed frame, Jeongguk isn’t sure he would have been able to tell where that was under the combination of textbooks, blankets, and food packages.

“Oh, sorry about the mess, Ggukkie, I’ll clean a little after dance practice today. You can throw your stuff on the bed for now. I know it’s kind of small, but I don’t take up that much room. When I get it cleaned off there’ll be plenty of room for us.”

Jeongguk was stunned, standing in the doorway of his new room. He almost considered asking if he could stay on the couch.

“Shit, I’ve got to go or I’ll be late. See you later, Gguk!”

He couldn’t just stand there, his skin was crawling to clean. After convincing himself Jimin probably wouldn’t mind, he picked a corner and started gathering clothes. Turns out, Jimin does have a laundry basket, it was just buried in the corner near his desk. Jeongguk couldn’t tell what was suppose to be clean or dirty, so he decided to wash all of them for Jimin. “Surely it won’t be more than two loads.”

It was five.

Jeongguk was alone in the apartment for the rest of the afternoon. Sorting through what looked like notes, assignments that had been graded, and things he didn’t know what were really but Jimin might need them, Jeongguk had Jimin’s room looking like an entirely new space. He had taken out the trash, folded all but one load of laundry, and made the bed by the time he heard the door unlock and open.

“Hyung, I cleaned the room, I hope you don’t mind!” Jeongguk called out, thinking it must be Jimin coming home from practice.

“I don’t care what you do in there, kid.” Yoongi called back, shuffling towards his own room.

“O-oh, hi Yoongi hyung. I thought you were Jimin coming home. He said you were working at the shop tonight.” Jeongguk’s face couldn’t hide the embarrassment he felt for mistaking Yoongi for Jimin or the awkwardness that settled in over the two.

“Slow night. Thought about going to the studio, but then I thought about my bed,” Yoongi said, looking in at the floor he hadn’t seen since Jimin had moved in. “Nice work in there, room hasn’t been that clean since before Jimin.”

Jeongguk thought his eyes might pop out of his head. “W-what? Jimin hyung lives like this all the time?”

“Yeah, says he doesn’t have time to clean all the time. Keeps his door shut, so I never really say anything.”

“Oh my god,” Jeongguk mumbles. “He’s gonna kill me.”

“You hungry, kid? Brought home some takeout but I doubt I’ll eat it all.”

The confusion must have been evident on Jeongguk’s face, because Yoongi chuckled and just walked to the kitchen, calling back to him, “If you don’t eat it, Jimin will take it to your room and it won’t come back out.”

“Coming, hyung!”

⭒⭒⭒

When the second week was up, Yoongi was actually the one who approached Jeongguk about him staying. Yoongi had thought it over, and the kid was pretty decent. If he was interested, then having a third roommate could work out for all of them in the end.

Jeongguk had never been so scared in his life. He was ready for the impending death he was facing when Yoongi had asked to talk to him after classes that evening. He spent all day thinking of people he might be close enough with to ask if he could stay for a little while, unable to come up with a very long list. Most of his “friends” were actually his ex-boyfriend’s friends, besides Jimin.

Not having much of a plan, Jeongguk figured if it came down to it, he could call his aunt who lived in the next town over.

He was not expecting the bomb that the terrifying, scary, probably-could-actually-kill-someone Min Yoongi dropped on him when he stepped into the apartment after classes were over.

“So, it’s been two weeks, kid,” Yoongi starts out, finding amusement in the look of slight fear on Jeongguk’s face.

“Y-yeah, I’ve been looking for somewhere to go,” Jeongguk manages to stammer out, avoiding eye contact with Yoongi.

“Found anywhere yet?”

“No, but I can probably just call my aunt. She lives right outside of town.”

“Outside of town? How would you get to class?”

“I can catch the bus, pick up extra shifts…”

Yoongi replies with a hum.

“Do you like it here?” What kind of question is that, you dumbass?

“I mean, yeah? But I don’t want to burden you and Jimin hyung more than I already have.”

Yoongi chuckles at this. “Jimin loves having you around kid. I’m pretty sure he would trade me for you any day, especially after you cleaned his room for him.”

Jeongguk didn’t know how to respond to that. What was Yoongi getting at?

“You’re a pretty decent roommate, kid. I’ve thought it over and if you’re down, you can stay. You’ll have to keep sharing a room with Jimin, though…”

“What? Seriously? I don’t want to step on any toes, hyung. I don’t know how Jimin will feel about me taking over his room like that…”

“Please, I’m honestly surprised he isn’t blowing my phone up already asking me to let you stay longer. He loves having someone to room with, he’s like a little kid at a sleepover. You said you can pick up extra shifts, where do you work?”

“Oh, I work on campus between my morning and afternoon classes at the library.”

“Hmm. Well, naturally, you’d have to help out with rent if you move in. It isn’t too bad, considering how close we are to campus, but other than buying your own groceries or contributing to the ‘snack stash’ as Jimin calls it, rent is the only thing you’d have to pay here. No need for busses or extra shifts.”

“Oh, that’s perfect, hyung. I would love to stay here with you and Jimin hyung!”

“Cool, you can break it to Jimin that he has to get a smaller bed.”

“What?”

“I mean, unless you want to keep sharing the one he has now. His room should fit two beds if y’all have smaller beds or bunk beds, but y’all can figure that out yourselves.”

Jeongguk didn’t mind sharing Jimin’s bed for the past week, but he wasn’t sure he could take Jimin’s shuffling and tossing and flinging himself across Jeongguk’s body for much longer.

“No, no— I’ll talk to him about it later tonight,” Jeongguk said, smiling as he realized he no longer has to worry about finding somewhere to go. “Thank you, hyung. I really mean it, I promise I’ll be the best roommate you’ve ever had!”

“Don’t let Jimin hear you say that, he’ll start a competition with you for that title and I don’t have the energy for that.” Yoongi felt a strange pang in his chest when he saw the way Jeongguk’s face lit up at his offer. This poor kid, who would have thought something like this could mean so much to him.

⭒⭒⭒

The next day, Jeongguk decided it was time go get his things from his old apartment. He didn’t want to go back there, but he needed his things. He didn’t really want to go alone, though.

Pulling out his phone, he stares at the newest contact in his phone:

Yoongi-hyung

It was Jimin’s idea to add a little devil emoji next to his name, since he hid the fact that he was letting Jeongguk stay from him until the evening before. Jeongguk didn’t keep it there though, Yoongi was letting him stay after all.

Jeongguk was still scared of Yoongi though.

He couldn’t bring himself to ask Yoongi to go with him to get his things, but he could ask if Jimin was home yet. His shift at the library would be over in half an hour, and he wanted to get this out of the way.

Holding his breath, he opened a new message.

On second thought, he would just wait and see if Jimin was home when he got off.

[pookapics]

‘Way down to Hadestown’ - MobBoss!Steve Rogers x Reader - Chapter 3 - Wait for me as he builds his wall.

Masterlist - https://protectthelesbians.tumblr.com/post/189126314108/way-down-to-hadestown-masterlist-mobbosssteve

Warnings:  Mafia!SteveRogers, Mobsters, Heartbreak, Cheating, Eventual romance, Sexual innuendo, Age-Gap (Reader is 21 and Steve is 30 so 9 year difference), Hints of violence.

Сволочь* - Scum/Jerk in Russian

Big Louis’ POV

The club was quiet, the drunk patrons had stumbled out of the club, leaving only those working late left. Pietro, the bartender, himself and a couple of the girls who performed and entertained the guests were some of the few left here. My guys were outside, taking a break for themselves, like dogs needing a run-about when being stuck in the house all day. The quiet was nice, the only sound being the clinking of glasses as Pietro cleaned the used glasses and gently dried them off with his white towel which he kept slung over his shoulder. The soft music played throughout the club, my foot tapping gently as I settled back. When suddenly a figure rushed through the club’s doors, the man looking around aghast 

 “(YN)?!” The man called out which made everyone perk up and turn to look at the man who was yelling the name of one of their ex-coworkers. News spread fast around the club, the walls were always listening even when you didn’t think they were. I recognised the boy, dressed in a cheap suit, faking it till he made it. 

 It was (YN)’s old boyfriend, Oscar. Everyone knew what kind of guy he was. It was obvious from the first encounter I had with the punk, he was full of big dreams. Dreams that he prioritised over his girl. His girl who’d been nothing but loving from the looks of it, loyal like a dog to its master. 

 But it was obvious that the feeling wasn’t exactly reciprocated. 

 “Hey, the big artiste! Ain't you working on your masterpiece?” I bellowed out, Oscar turned around quickly to face me, his hands clutching a piece of paper which seemed to be a poster but had something written on the back, (YN) had probably left a note for him. Guess he wanted answers. Oscar made a quick quip and asked, venom hidden in his voice, almost like a child who’d lost their favourite toy “Where is she?” He glared at me, this kid for sure had some guts to talk to me like that but I needed to shoot him down, that girl was free and didn’t need whatever was darkly lingering in this ex of hers near her anytime soon.

“Brother, what do you care? You'll find another muse somewhere~” Deeply chuckling as I watched the young man glare at me “Where is she!?” He repeated like a broken record, getting right in my face as he did so till one of my guys came back in and yanked him off with a grunt “Oi!? Hands off the boss, you street-rat!? You want us to get rid of’ him, Boss?” Holding Oscar in a tight hold, gripping onto his shirt collar. I raised my hand to stop my men “Keep a hold on em’ I wanna talk.” 

 Smirking, I cracked my knuckles and staring into Oscar’s eyes, as if trying to intimidate him “Why do you wanna know?” Leaning down to patronise him, as Big Louis, I need to show him who was the Boss around here. Oscar stared up at me with wide eyes as he tried to come up with something to say “Wherever she is, is where I'll go!” He struggled against the grasp of my men “Where is she?! I know she works here?!” My men kept him down as he got a bit feisty. In my head, I pondered what I was going to do with him, would I just dispose of him permanently or....

 Would I have some fun?

 I chose the latter “What if I said she's down below?” smirking like a cat that got the cream, watching as the kid’s face dropped, face gone pale and white “Down below?” He stuttered out and stared with wide eyes, he understood the meaning behind my words. When people around here said ‘Down Below’ they knew what it meant.

  ‘The Underground’, a place of rumour and myth, where only a few were welcome and where unwanted people would never return from.

  I chuckled deeply and nodded and repeated “Down below.”

 ‘Six-feet-under-the-ground below

She called your name before she went’

 I glared down at him “You’ve not been easy on your girl, young man~ She had enough of your bullshit.” I could see the rage building back up again in Oscar’s face as he tried to speak but I interrupted quickly “Couldn’t you see how brought down your girl was? Well… But I guess you weren't listening.” Oscar’s face dropped as it hit him, the reality of it all “No…” He looked defeated for a moment as he stared at the floor, for a moment I felt bad but then I remembered. This guy left his girl to the dogs in his chance to reach success, in this place you needed to stick together. Even the girls in the club stuck together, I’d seen the sisterhood of them all during the busiest nights. And though I kept myself up front, I did secretly take care of my staff, making sure they were safe in this dangerous part of the city. Pulling the strings behind the scenes, keeping the front of the cold type, many in this profession needed to keep a tough face, as not to let anyone see through you.

Steve Rogers was the master of that.

This young man however was easily seen through, he was as transparent as glass.

 So I decided to test him, to see if he could pull his face back and not be seen right through to the other side “So… Just how far would you go for her?” Wiping my thumb and forefinger across my chin as I stared at the man before me, examining how he would react, he quickly responded, not pondering for long “To the end of time, to the end of the earth.” I held back a chuckle, empty words with an empty meaning behind them, a fool’s words. Tapping my foot repeatedly against the ground as I spoke up “Strong words, young man but how do you expect to get the underground? You got a ticket?” Questioning him more as my men and I looked down at him as he played with his hands, trying to form a plan on the spot. You needed to be quick off the mark “No...?” He spoke quietly and sheepishly as I bellowed out a laugh “Yeah, I didn't think so.”

Turning my back to the boy for a few moments, before teasingly letting out a sliver of chance for the man, playing with him “Course, there is another way, but I ain't supposed to say it…” Pretending to be torn about whether or not to let out the piece of ‘information’ I had passed from my lips as I saw the Oscar’s face light up “Another way?” Hope laced his voice somewhat as I approached Oscar “Yeah, around the back, but that ain't easy walkin', Jack, It ain't for the sensitive of soul, so… You really wanna go?” Quirking my brow at him as he nodded fervently, I smirked ‘Just what I wanted to hear’ circling Oscar as I spoke, awaiting him to speak again “With all my heart…” He spoke solemnly and stared determinedly, I questioned how I thought of the boy but memories of (YN) calling up the club in tears about him was enough, I needed to know, so I began to spin my tale “Huh, with all your heart… Well, that's a start.” I ran my hands across my suit jacket before getting face to face with Oscar “How to get to ‘The Underground’, you'll have to take the long way down.” My hand motioning downwards to gesture the descent he’d be making to ‘find his girl’

 ‘Through the underground, under cover of night’

 I snapped my fingers, making my men drop Oscar to the floor, letting him adjust his collar and rub his neck, which was bruised from being held up by men by his shirt-collar “Laying low, staying out of sight.” I knelt down and spoke to him, he’d recomposed himself quickly for a young man “How do I find it?” He asked, making me laugh and chuckle “You think the gangs would be desperate to find the place if there was a set of directions? There ain't no compass, brother, ain't no map, just a telephone wire and the railroad track, you keep on walking and you don't look back… 'til you get to the Bottomland.” I pointed to the door, that was all the information I’d give him, motioning for him to get out, which he did. Scuttling to the door like a rat on the subway, frightened and on a mission

‘Wait for me, I'm coming

Wait, I'm coming with you

Wait for me, I'm coming too

I'm coming too…’ 

 Pietro, who was still behind the bar, he turned to me and frowned “Uhm Sir… If this is not too much to ask but why did you tell him how to find her? I thought you set this up for her to get away from that Сволочь?*” Frowning at me, I knew he’d be defensive at the mere mention of this, knowing his sister was close to the girl “I didn’t, he’s too much of a fool to see through my lies~” Pietro was shocked but refilled my drink quietly and quickly “I just sent ‘em on a little goose-chase.” I picked up my refilled glass “And no man without a death wish would enter ‘The Underground’ even if given the correct coordinates.” Taking a swig of my drink and wiping my lips with my sleeve.

  ‘ The river Styx is high and wide’

I sighed, “The place is paradise to those who are already livin’ there but those who try to enter unwanted are given a daunting welcome… Cinder bricks and razor wire, w alls of iron and concrete.” Explaining to the wide eyed Pietro who gasped “You’ve been there haven’t you.” As I chuckled and briefly nodded, Pietro asked again “But what about the… you know?” Hesitant and fearful like a child asking about the monster hiding under the bed “Oh I’ve met them alright… Hound dogs howling 'round the gate, them dogs'll lay down and play dead, If you got the bones, if you got the bread, but if all you got is your own two legs...You best be glad you got 'em.” Pretending to snarl deeply which made Pietro shiver, he’d heard rumours and chit-chat of the ‘Hound dogs of the Underground’ around the club, and it wasn’t good chit-chat at that. 

 ‘Wait for me, I'm coming

Wait, I'm coming with you

Wait for me, I'm coming too

I'm coming too…’

 Placing my glass down “I’m an old man, I’ve seen the neighbourhood grow darker and darker as time goes on. I’ve ran, I’ve fought and scratched my way up to where I am now.” Glancing to Pietro who hung off every word that left my lips  “You're on the lam, you're on the run, don't give your name, you don't have one and don't look no one in the eye…” I pointed my finger to Pietro before pointing to the club as I continued, Pietro watched and as did the girls from round back, listening in “Listen to me, this town will try to suck you dry, they'll suck your brain, they'll suck your breath… They'll pluck the heart right out your chest.” Pulling my hand to my chest where my own heart was beating quickly as I reflected on the bloodshed that lingered on the streets of this neigbourhood.

 ‘They'll truss you up in your Sunday best

And stuff your mouth with cotton’

 Pietro let out a faint smile as he cleaned a glass “There is a heart in there after all.” He teased and put the glass away in the cabinet, ready for tomorrow as I chuckled “There once was, I guess this is just the remains of what once was there.” Finishing my drink which Pietro had made “Couldn’t let a sweet thang get swept into that darkness, at least she has a chance with Rogers. A chance to get away or at least hide from it easier.” Pietro nodded “Good for her…” he took off his apron as it was officially time to close up “Yeah… Good for her.”

 ‘Wait for me, I'm coming

Wait, I'm coming with you

Wait for me, I'm coming too

I'm coming!

Wait

Wait

Wait

Wait…’

 Your POV 

Steve brought you to the warehouse, this was the front of the Underground, you figured. It wasn’t finished and seemed to be expanding, ever-growing. Hoards of people were working at different tables, some holding down blueprints while others were sorting through crates in the corner 

 ‘Why do we build the wall?

My children, my children

Why do we build the wall?’

 ‘Was this the paradise everyone spoke of?’ You thought as you stared around, Steve continuing to guide you through the place as the workers glanced in your direction in interest, trying to sniff you out. Keeping your head down as not to draw attention to yourself as you entered a new room. It was much smaller and more decorated, decorated with care. Inside there were 3 figures sitting at the table, bickering over something.

 Two men and a woman, that flipped a switch in your head. You’d heard around the club about the infamous ‘Hound-dogs of the Underground’. They were spoken in quiet whispers, as if, if you even dared speak their name too loud they’d be summoned and will tear you apart like the newspapers explained in their sensationalist articles. The Hound-Dogs were also called another name…

 “Cerberus.” You spoke aloud by mistake, eyes wide in fear like a deer waiting to be attacked by the wolves, the wolves you feared that were worse than the pride of lions you’d left behind. The small group turned their heads to focus their attention on you “That’s a new one.” The red-headed woman smirked, she looked as if she’d eat you if you looked at her the wrong way, she sauntered over “This must be the sweet thing the Boss won’t stop talking about huh?” Her heels clicking against the floorboards, you gulped, slightly intimidated by her presence which was overwhelming at best “Nat~ Stop teasing, play nice with the new girl. Sorry ‘bout her doll she can be… a bit much.” The man who spoke was tall and had long dark hair which hung around his face but there was something you couldn’t ignore about him.

  The singular black leather glove he wore on his left hand.

 A curious thing it was but you wouldn’t ask to many questions, not wanting to find out if there were consequences to your action “Uhm its okay.” You squeaked as you looked at the woman named Nat and the man with the leather glove. Nat shoved the man jokingly “I wasn’t trying to scare her James, I was going to play nice~” winking at you, you didn’t know what game she was playing but you guess over time you’d figure it out. The last man walked over “Enough bickering you two, jeez its like an old married couple.” He rolled his eyes “I’m Sam Wilson, I’ll be polite and introduce myself unlike those two.” he joked which made you faintly giggle. Steve who was still stood beside you, hid a smile as you giggled. The other two turned to face you fully “Wow Wilson, that hurt my feelings~” Nat pouted and then looked at you “I’m Natasha, Natasha Romanoff, I keep these two in line most of the time and unlike these two I’ll actually do my job right and keep you safe.” She smiled faintly, that gave you some relief, she wasn’t as scary as she looked, but you wouldn’t underestimate her. 

 Next came the man Nat referred to as James who held his non-glove covered hand out for you to shake which you did “I’m James Buchanan Barnes, but most just call me Bucky.” you nodded and smiled as Sam spoke up again “And your name would be?” he laughed as he saw your cheeks go pink as you realised you hadn’t introduced yourself “U-Uhm I’m (YN) (LN).” You pulled back from shaking Bucky’s hand as the group nodded “A pretty name to match a pretty fa- OUCH!” Sam started to flirt but broke down into a pained expression as Nat’s heel was stamped into his foot, you hadn’t caught what happened or why? Bucky snickered and watched as Sam glared at Nat, the same way Steve had been glaring at Sam moments before, secretly. 

 Steve spoke up “Sam, can you accompany me to sort out transport to the main house?” He asked, staring at Sam who just nodded and agreed. Steve turned his head to you and placed his hand upon your shoulder for a moment “I will be only a moment.” his hand left your shoulder as he walked away, the warmth he emitted left you when he did, leaving you cold as he walked out of the room, leaving you with Natasha and Bucky. The room was quiet, your eyes turned to the one window in the room as you stared out to the construction “I-If I may ask… Why are you building all this? Its like you’re building a… well a-” 

 “A wall?” Natasha interrupted your stuttering, you nodded “Yes. A wall.” you stared out at the ever-expanding warehouse which was now starting to resemble a fortress. Natasha sighed “ The wall keeps out the enemy and I guess we build a wall to keep us free.” You frowned, a wall to keep you free? That statement to you was juxtaposed, walls were to keep you contained and withheld, how could it keep you free? “The enemy?” you managed to speak out, eyes watching Natasha, who was staring out to the construction as well now. 

 ‘Who do we call the enemy?

My children, my children

Who do we call the enemy?’

 Natasha sighed and rested her back against the wall, still staring outside, but still alert and on-guard “We have a lot of enemies laying out there, beyond the Underground, different gangs we’ve had some… nasty interactions with if you understand what I’m saying.” Her eyebrow raised until I nodded “I understand.” looking away from Natasha and the window to look around the room 

 ‘Who do we call the enemy?

The enemy is poverty

And the wall keeps out the enemy

And we build the wall to keep us free

That's why we build the wall

We build the wall to keep us free’

 Staring at the door, you waited for Steve to come back as you thought back to the crates that were in the main part of the warehouse, you thought back to it and wondered what was in them, curiosity getting the better of you. Bucky brought you back from your thoughts “Something making you think, doll?” You looked at him “Well. Uhm. I don’t want to ask too many questions. I don’t want to bother you.” Holding up your hands in defense as you looked at him. Bucky chuckled “What? You think if you ask too many questions we’ll chop your hand off or somethin?” He joked, making Natasha laugh as well, pink tinging your cheeks as he kept talking “You’re here now and well its best if you know how ‘this’ operates an’ all.” Gesturing to the warehouse, to which you nodded “So. Ask them questions is basically what James here means.” Natasha put it bluntly, cutting to the chase, something you think is a primary quality of hers. Just a hunch. 

 Breathing out, you asked your first question “What do you sell out? Most gangs have their specialties if I’m not correct.” It was common knowledge that most gangs had a specific poison they dipped their finger into.

 Drugs, Alcohol and Casinos.

 And you wondered which specialty the Avengers Mob fell into.

 ‘What do we have that they should want?

My children, my children

What do we have that they should want?’

 Natasha laughed “Well… We mostly like to keep our hands clean so drugs are off the table. We specialise in liquor, even though that dratted law* is being repealed, we still have to smuggle it in, meaning big business, cause we have and they have not…” She paused before continuing “And now, we’re The biggest suppliers in the city.” Natasha spoke with pride, you could tell she’d been in this business for a while and was reveling in the success of it all. 

 ‘What do we have that they should want?

We have a wall to work upon!

We have work and they have none

And our work is never done

My children, my children’

You smiled “Well. The repeal is nearly complete, we’re winning. The club I work. Well worked at, though its still hidden away, we’re still getting some success. And I can see that success is here too.” Nat simply nodded and glanced to you “Well. Even though the battle so far is in our favour... we can’t forget that the war is never won.” Her prideful tone dampened which made your heart sink to your stomach “I-I guess.” was all you could say in response to her. And with those words, Steve with Sam alongside him walked back into the room. Pulling yourself away from the window when you saw them enter, Natasha did the same as Steve spoke “Our Driver’s back from his break, he’s ready to take us to the Big House.” Bucky, who’d been quiet for some time nodded “Well, let's get there. I think the new girl needs to get settled in her new living quarters, eh Steve?” Steve nodded “Indeed. Lets go.” Steve was short with his words, walking out with Sam in tow, Bucky followed after the two. 

 Natasha sighed “Come on, let's catch up. Don’t want them leaving without us.” Her shoes clicking against the wood as she walked out, you followed after her like a lost puppy, sticking close to her as she was slowly growing into someone you could somewhat trust.  You hoped so, she was a formidable force of a woman, a good person to have on your side you figured. 

‘The enemy is poverty

And the wall keeps out the enemy

And we build the wall to keep us free

That’s why we build the wall

We build the wall to keep us free

We build the wall to keep us free...’

The group was herded into the limousine you’d arrived in, the driver from before who’d obviously been on his break was finishing his cigarette and stubbed it out on the group and crushed it beneath his heel quickly. Steve took your hand and helped you inside, he guided you to sit beside him, which you did. Natasha, Sam and Bucky sat on the other set of seats which were in the back of the limousine, sat back comfortably on the sleek, leather seats.

  The limousine drove off, leaving the warehouse behind and heading into an area between the trees, easily hidden behind the warehouse, no wonder they were building the warehouse like a wall. The road was smooth as they drove along it, your hands remained in your lap as the journey to the ‘Big House’ was quiet among all of the people huddled in the back, glancing to the window, all you could see was trees. Dead due to the winter breeze which had taken over the city, the trees barren of leaves and of any life. A hand upon your thigh broke your gaze into the trees as you turned to see Steve looking at you “The trees spring beautifully in spring, many of the trees here are cherry blossoms, my ma admired them greatly.” he whispered to you, a softness you hadn’t seen before in him, revealing something so personal.

  A crack in the mob boss persona, you suppose.

 You smiled “That sounds beautiful.” whispering back to him as you stared back at the barren trees, imagining them beautifully in bloom in the spring-time with this horrid winter long behind them. As soon as that beautiful thought was imagined in your mind, the limousine stopped, they had arrived. Blinking, your eyes drifted to see the place they’d driven to, those same eyes widened in shock. 

 The ‘Big House’ was large indeed, a large stately home, rooms to spare probably if you guessed just by looking at the outside, biting your lip out of nerves as the Driver got out of the front to open the door for everyone, letting Steve and yourself out first with Natasha, Bucky and Sam tagging behind, Steve was of course let out first because of his title, who he was. Steve walked up to the large house, his arm extended to you, you took his arm as he pushed open the doors. Biting back a gasp as you looked around at the wondrous home, walls decorated in paintings, expensive paintings. The floor’s wooden and shined to perfection, no imperfection lay in the crevices in any pane of wood, the spiral staircase is what grabbed your attention the most. The stairs were shining opalescent, a dark burgundy carpet lined the middle as it trailed down each step till it reached the bottom. 

 Eyes wide in wonder, your head turned to take in the sight of it all, you’d never seen such luxury before in your life. It felt like something out of a fairy-tale you’d been told as a child by your grandparents, something that you couldn’t believe was real. Steve coughed as if to bring attention “Driver, bring her bags to the decided living quarters, Natasha will show you upstairs.” The driver carried the bags inside, though being a bell-boy wasn’t in his job description, he wouldn’t speak back to Steve Rogers so did what he was told. He turned to you, who was still admiring the beauty of the home 

 ‘Then Steve told (YN)...’

 Steve’s hand gently graced your waist, snapping you out of your daze and turning to focus on him as he spoke lowly “There are papers to be signed … Step into my office.” He led her away from the main entrance and towards a room on the far left. The room resembled a library, books lining the walls and soft furnished seats surrounding the old, dark oak desk which had its back to the large windows, giving the person who sat at that desk the perfect view of the warehouse and the surrounding area. Steve let you wander in first “Take a seat.” following orders you took a seat facing the desk, knowing Steve would sit behind it most likely.

 ‘And he closed the door behind’

 Your ears perked up at the sound of the door softly clicking shut, you turned your head for a moment to watch Steve walking over to the desk, he smoothed out his suit jacket and trousers as he took his seat behind the desk, stretching out his arms “Now… I had Bruce write up a basic contract, just some things you need to be aware of and a job has been sorted for you, if you like the sound of it.” He had his business voice on, the same voice which answered the phone when you decided to take his offer “Yes, I understand.” you answered, interested in this job proposal he had. Steve chuckled “That’s good to hear.” he brought out the paperwork and put it on the desk, pulling a pen from his jacket pocket and extending it out to you.

This felt somewhat like a deal with the devil, being lured to his side and making a deal in return for your soul, unaware of the catch. But you didn’t have to be lured in anymore, he’d captured you in his lure hours before this moment. You took the pen from him and uncapped the fountain pen, you watched as Steve flicked through the pages of the contract, licking his thumb and forefinger before he did so, your cheeks tingling slightly “Firstly, we must discuss loyalty. To be sure that you will never share information concerning our dealings here or our location with anyone who could… disturb what we’re doing here. Understand, Songbird?”

‘Now a lot can happen behind closed doors’

You could only nod, not knowing what to say in response, but Steve needed more than that “I know this is a lot but I need your word.” His eyes flickered to a softer expression when he spoke this time, a kinder version came forth as Steve talked with you. Looking him in the eyes, you found your voice again “You have my loyalty and you have my word, Sir.”  Steve froze for a moment but nodded “Good…” and as he flicked to the next page he spoke “and please call me Steve when we’re in private.” he smirked faintly which made your heart pound. 

‘That's for sure, brother, that's a fact

Steve chuckled as he continued and flicked through the contract more “Now for your job proposal. Have you by any chance heard of JARVIS’ ?” He asked, to which you quickly nodded “Its one of the most exclusive speakeasy clubs in the city Si- Steve.” You corrected yourself quickly “Indeed. And I happen to co-own it with Anthony Stark.” he tapped his fingers against the desk “Tony Stark? The billionaire?” You tilted your head, making Steve nod and chuckle “Yes, I’ve been working closely with him for some time, I knew his father.” to which you briefly nodded, having heard of the Stark legacy and wealth. Steve hummed “Well, the recent singer has left due to unforeseen circumstances and they need a new source of entertainment at night.” 

You went pale, he was offering you a job in the most exclusive club in the city, only the top dogs got into a place like that. Not even Oscar got a gig in there, it was reserved for the real wealthy, the ones who controlled the city. A perfect place to be ran by the mob. It again was the opportunity of a lifetime, you had to take it “So you’re offering me a job as a singer?” eyes wide still and heart beating fast, you wouldn't believe it. Somebody ought to pinch you. 

Steve nodded “Yes. If you want it.” He eyed you closely and awaited you to respond with a simple yes or no, watching you as he saw your mouth open “Yes, I’d love the job. Thank you Steve.” Feeling the need to thank him for all of this, to which Steve held up his hand “You’re perfect for the job, your own talent got you the job, I just managed to have a space for you.” He grinned and watched as your eyes lit up “Thank you… no one's ever really told me that I’m well… talented.” you admitted as he flicked the pages “Well people should because its the truth.”  

‘But a lot can happen on the factory floo r’

Steve showed the contract “This will be your pay, is this alright?” He pointed to the figure displayed on the paperwork, your eyes widened. He couldn’t be serious!? This was more than what you could earn in a year back at Big Louis, hell even triple “Steve… that can’t be right. Its far too much.” You couldn’t accept that much from him, it was a mad amount of money. Steve stopped you “It isn’t, we’re paying for your talent and that’s how much your talent is worth to us.” He insisted and eventually you relented and agreed upon the amount, it was an impossible amount to even imagine. 

‘When the Foreman turns his back ’

Steve opened on the last section of the contract “As for housing, you may stay here if that what you wish, though if not I would have to insist. This place is the safest, guarded and protected.” The sight of men patrolling outside the edges of the house could be seen out of the window which you saw over Steve’s shoulder. You nodded as Steve continued, “You would have your room and ensuite, the rest is shared amongst the rest of us who stay in this house.” You wondered how many people lived in this house, you guess you would find that out for yourself soon enough “I’ll stay here, as you said its the safest.” You looked into Steve’s eyes which were on you, the blue of his eyes looked electric amongst the deep colours which shrouded his office, he looked golden and shining, his hair still resembling a halo like it did back at Big Louis’. Steve nodded and pushed the contract towards you, it slid gently across the desk to where you sat 

“Now all you have to do is sign.” His voice deep, it made your ears tingle in the best way, sounded like a deep melody which would bring you in closer with every note, you held the fountain pen in hand as you signed the bottom of the page with your name, for it to be labelled there forever

‘(YN) (LN)’

Gently you passed the contract back to Steve, who simply checked it through before putting it aside “I suppose you should be wondering where you will be sleeping.” he rose to his feet as you agreed “Lets have Natasha show you to your room, I have business to attend to.” He stood beside you as you walked towards the office door, he leaned in and whispered into your ear  “But I will check in on you, Little Songbird.” That voice and those words sent a shiver down your spine, goosebumps on your arms as he opened the door and let you out. Closing the door behind you, leaving you standing in the large expanse of the house, chest tight and cheeks flushed pink. 

He truly was the devil, but the devil is so tempting and enticing, its impossible to avoid his captivating spell which he’d cast upon you. A spell for some reason, you didn’t want to end anytime soon. 

Wandering back to the main entrance, you followed the sound of voices till you reached a lounge where Bucky and Sam were seated, Natasha was stood behind a make-shift bar which was situated in the farside of the large lounge-area, seats were everywhere, to house a large amount of people, the house parties here must be extravagant. You sat down on a seat opposite Sam and Bucky, the two rose a brow “Did you sign the deed?” Bucky asked as you responded “Yes, Yes I did.” that was enough of an answer for him. Trying to settle your tight chest with the pounding of your heart, you sat back in the chair, trying to re-compose yourself, feeling similarly to how you were when you first met Steve back in the club. 

Natasha’s voice broke the silence of the lounge “ Anybody want a drink?”

————————

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[tragicbooks]

Something to keep in mind next time you're getting your wanderlust on.

I left Canada to travel the world for a year. A generation earlier, my father escaped Vietnam in a small boat. Don’t take your freedom of mobility for granted.

<br>

In August of 1983, at the height of the international humanitarian crisis in the aftermath of the Vietnam War, my father leapt onto a boat headed for the Gulf of Thailand — an escape he had already attempted 10 times before.

"If we’d stopped, they would shoot," my dad told my sisters and me, referring to the cảnh sát, or police. We looked at my mother, incredulous. She was nodding emphatically.

This tenth time, my father was lucky. Their boat managed to evade the Việt Cộng at every checkpoint; soon, they were out at sea. For two days, my father waited in the open waters that had already swallowed the lives of those brave enough to go before him. But again, he was lucky. Their crew was spotted by the knightly Chevalier, and the Frenchmen brought my father to safety at the Singaporean shore.

My father waited in a camp while Western deities deliberated his fate. Switzerland staked a claim, but he didn’t accept their offer; English was already difficult enough to learn, let alone German or French. Eventually, he was flown across the world and dropped off in Toronto, a cold, foreign city he would try his best to make his new home.

Like my father, I, too, have crossed continents and traveled far from home. At 20, filled with wanderlust, I embarked on a trip around the world. I visited a friend in Israel, toured ancient temple ruins in Myanmar, interpreted for doctors in Vietnam, interned at an NGO in Phnom Penh, partied in Siem Reap, partied some more in Koh Phangan, bathed in the Ganges river, practiced yoga at an ashram in Rishikesh, and taught English to monks in exile in Dharamshala. I went to many places far and foreign. I met new people, ate new foods, and learned new things.

But the circumstances that led to my travel, as opposed to my father’s, could not be more different.

My father, a Vietnamese army doctor turned political dissident, crossed the Pacific Ocean because he had no choice. My father traveled to escape a regime where enemies and academics were sent to ruthless "reeducation" (i.e. prison) camps. He had to leave behind his homeland, a country where kids walking home from school, including my mother growing up, knew to run into neighbors’ homes and hide under their beds when Cobra choppers and jet fighters and banana helicopters arrived overhead; rockets and grenades and explosives were about to be next.

Just one generation later, I had a powerful Canadian passport in my pocket and disposable income at hand. My travel was a choice.

One morning last year, I woke up and opened my laptop to see that an acquaintance — let’s call her Elizabeth — had posted on Facebook to encourage her virtual friends to seize the day and travel the world. Elizabeth, a recent American University graduate and a former sorority sister, was still high off a "transformative" trip to Indonesia earlier that year, a trip that mainly entailed hopping from one island to another, drinking cheap cocktails, and riding on exotic elephants (or at least, that’s what I gathered from her pictures). Life-changing indeed.

No one contested her point of view; an outpouring of likes and comments validated Elizabeth’s motivational status update. Even I found myself nodding my head in agreement. Change the world, and it’ll change you!

It’s so easy to forget that others may have had to make immense sacrifices to do something you’ve come to see not only as a rite of passage, but indeed, a right in itself.

Is travel a right? In the strictest legal sense of the word, I suppose you could argue "yes." The right to mobility is enshrined in Article 13 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, which asserts that "everyone has the right to leave any country, including his own, and to return to his country." In the United States, the freedom of movement is protected in the United States Constitution, and in the 1958 Kent v. Dulles decision, Justice William O. Douglas opined, "Travel abroad, like travel within the country … may be as close to the heart of the individual as the choice of what he eats, or wears, or reads. Freedom of movement is basic in our scheme of values."

Everyone should have the right to travel, but, of course, that doesn’t hold up to reality.

For one, not everyone can afford it. My eight-month trip was paid for by two years of disposable income saved from my part-time campus job. Halfway through, I managed to squander all my own money, but I was lucky; my parents swooped in to finance the rest of my journey of self-discovery. Because of them, I was able to continue living my life-transforming, resume-padding life abroad. Thanks, Mom and Dad!

In any case, our carefully curated Instagram grids, full of lush Airbnb homes and landscapes with the ever-trendy "fade" filter applied, seldom mention how much the plane ticket to Byron Bay cost or who’s financing our Alternative Break to Myanmar (yes, my parents paid for that too). Instead, we use hashtags like #blessed, #wanderlust, and #35mmfilm and call it a day.

There’s also the opportunity cost of traveling. I wasn’t in a rush to start earning money, but many college students are. Over 70% of all "gappers" come from families whose parents have an estimated annual parental income of over $100,000. Case in point: At my ultra-altruistic, ultra-worldly, ultra-expensive alma mater, the average student’s family income is $107,753.

Besides the cost of travel, remember that this "right" is granted only to those who own an actual passport — and the nationality associated with your passport can determine whether foreign borders will invite you in or shut you out.

For many, the notion of traveling probably conjures up images of white sand beaches, modern skyscrapers, or pastel-colored colonial architecture as well as feelings of leisure, self-discovery, adventure, and hope.

But for millions of others, traveling comes with the credible fears of embarrassment, rejection, and even death.

According to various accounts, an estimated 200,000 to 400,000 Vietnamese boat people drowned at sea by the time the United Nations resettlement efforts ended in 1996. My father and his siblings were among the luckiest to have, quite literally, made it out alive.

Shortly after arriving in Canada, my penniless father (a doctor in Vietnam) went job hunting. An old family friend in Vietnam had told him to answer "yes" to every question in every interview. A pizzeria owner asked him if he knew how to make pizza, and my father, who had never seen a pizza before in his life, enthusiastically answered "yes." He was hired and, needless to say, fired a couple days later. My mother, also a doctor back in Vietnam, humbly spent her first couple of years in Toronto working in an electronics factory.

When my mother and her family arrived in Toronto as sponsored immigrants, they were reunited with their siblings, who had weathered the trip by boat six years earlier. The family of seven spent the years shortly thereafter sharing a two bedroom apartment.

While the teenage kids passed their days in high school classrooms, the adults worked their way toward becoming doctors, pharmacists, and engineers again. Although most of their education and retraining was supported by scholarships and loans from the Canadian government, everyone worked long hours and extra shifts at factories and restaurants in order to make ends meet. At their jobs, they endured not only laborious pain, but constant discrimination as well.

As a medical resident, my mother was examining a young boy’s ear when his mother angrily eyed her and pulled her son away. The boy’s mother asked for the doctor, even after my mother had already introduced herself as the doctor. The woman then exclaimed that she wanted another doctor, and kept insisting until the attending physician — an older white man — came into the room and to my mother’s defense.

But my mother knew not to cause a scene and remained silent. In fact, my mother’s had a lot of practice with staying quiet and obedient; the sassy, mouthy woman I know now had learned very quickly back then to keep her head down and her mouth shut when the white folks volleyed racial insults at her from across the factory assembly hall.

Welcome to Canada, they said.

My parents came to Canada with nothing but the clothes they wore on their backs; when I traveled, not only did I carry a fancy Osprey backpack and a snazzy Nikon camera, but also access to Canadian embassies as well as the comfort of knowing that when I was bored with "finding myself," I could always come home.

My father, on the other hand, relinquished his Vietnamese citizenship when he traveled to Canada. He believed in his heart that leaving meant saying goodbye to home forever.

With my perfect English and universally recognized North American accent, doors opened up to me on my travels that would have remained closed for others. “She’s American,” locals would exclaim to each other, wide-eyed, when I opened my mouth to speak. At first, I would try to tell them that I’m actually a Canadian studying in the United States, but it all got too confusing; anyway they didn’t really care about Canada, so after a while I just stopped trying.

Everywhere I went, people seemed to be obsessed with America.

I discovered that being treated like royalty isn’t uncommon when you’re a “Westerner” traveling abroad. Conversely, my parents’ accounts of hardship, discrimination, and sacrifice aren’t unusual for non-Western immigrants and refugees.

The next time you embark on a big adventure, remember that you carry much more than what’s in your bags. Remember that in your wallet, you carry the dollar, against which most other currencies in the world are matched. Your thin passports represent how lucky you are to travel visa-free to 166 countries. Your voice projects a widely recognized version of the world’s most universal language.

In light of today’s unfolding refugee crisis, remember that not everyone has your freedom of mobility.

This story first appeared on The Development Set and is reprinted here with permission. This is a shortened version of the original piece.

<br>

[socialviralnews]

Something to keep in mind next time you're getting your wanderlust on.

I left Canada to travel the world for a year. A generation earlier, my father escaped Vietnam in a small boat. Don’t take your freedom of mobility for granted.

<br>

In August of 1983, at the height of the international humanitarian crisis in the aftermath of the Vietnam War, my father leapt onto a boat headed for the Gulf of Thailand — an escape he had already attempted 10 times before.

"If we’d stopped, they would shoot," my dad told my sisters and me, referring to the cảnh sát, or police. We looked at my mother, incredulous. She was nodding emphatically.

This tenth time, my father was lucky. Their boat managed to evade the Việt Cộng at every checkpoint; soon, they were out at sea. For two days, my father waited in the open waters that had already swallowed the lives of those brave enough to go before him. But again, he was lucky. Their crew was spotted by the knightly Chevalier, and the Frenchmen brought my father to safety at the Singaporean shore.

My father waited in a camp while Western deities deliberated his fate. Switzerland staked a claim, but he didn’t accept their offer; English was already difficult enough to learn, let alone German or French. Eventually, he was flown across the world and dropped off in Toronto, a cold, foreign city he would try his best to make his new home.

Like my father, I, too, have crossed continents and traveled far from home. At 20, filled with wanderlust, I embarked on a trip around the world. I visited a friend in Israel, toured ancient temple ruins in Myanmar, interpreted for doctors in Vietnam, interned at an NGO in Phnom Penh, partied in Siem Reap, partied some more in Koh Phangan, bathed in the Ganges river, practiced yoga at an ashram in Rishikesh, and taught English to monks in exile in Dharamshala. I went to many places far and foreign. I met new people, ate new foods, and learned new things.

But the circumstances that led to my travel, as opposed to my father’s, could not be more different.

My father, a Vietnamese army doctor turned political dissident, crossed the Pacific Ocean because he had no choice. My father traveled to escape a regime where enemies and academics were sent to ruthless "reeducation" (i.e. prison) camps. He had to leave behind his homeland, a country where kids walking home from school, including my mother growing up, knew to run into neighbors’ homes and hide under their beds when Cobra choppers and jet fighters and banana helicopters arrived overhead; rockets and grenades and explosives were about to be next.

Just one generation later, I had a powerful Canadian passport in my pocket and disposable income at hand. My travel was a choice.

One morning last year, I woke up and opened my laptop to see that an acquaintance — let’s call her Elizabeth — had posted on Facebook to encourage her virtual friends to seize the day and travel the world. Elizabeth, a recent American University graduate and a former sorority sister, was still high off a "transformative" trip to Indonesia earlier that year, a trip that mainly entailed hopping from one island to another, drinking cheap cocktails, and riding on exotic elephants (or at least, that’s what I gathered from her pictures). Life-changing indeed.

No one contested her point of view; an outpouring of likes and comments validated Elizabeth’s motivational status update. Even I found myself nodding my head in agreement. Change the world, and it’ll change you!

It’s so easy to forget that others may have had to make immense sacrifices to do something you’ve come to see not only as a rite of passage, but indeed, a right in itself.

Is travel a right? In the strictest legal sense of the word, I suppose you could argue "yes." The right to mobility is enshrined in Article 13 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, which asserts that "everyone has the right to leave any country, including his own, and to return to his country." In the United States, the freedom of movement is protected in the United States Constitution, and in the 1958 Kent v. Dulles decision, Justice William O. Douglas opined, "Travel abroad, like travel within the country … may be as close to the heart of the individual as the choice of what he eats, or wears, or reads. Freedom of movement is basic in our scheme of values."

Everyone should have the right to travel, but, of course, that doesn’t hold up to reality.

For one, not everyone can afford it. My eight-month trip was paid for by two years of disposable income saved from my part-time campus job. Halfway through, I managed to squander all my own money, but I was lucky; my parents swooped in to finance the rest of my journey of self-discovery. Because of them, I was able to continue living my life-transforming, resume-padding life abroad. Thanks, Mom and Dad!

In any case, our carefully curated Instagram grids, full of lush Airbnb homes and landscapes with the ever-trendy "fade" filter applied, seldom mention how much the plane ticket to Byron Bay cost or who’s financing our Alternative Break to Myanmar (yes, my parents paid for that too). Instead, we use hashtags like #blessed, #wanderlust, and #35mmfilm and call it a day.

There’s also the opportunity cost of traveling. I wasn’t in a rush to start earning money, but many college students are. Over 70% of all "gappers" come from families whose parents have an estimated annual parental income of over $100,000. Case in point: At my ultra-altruistic, ultra-worldly, ultra-expensive alma mater, the average student’s family income is $107,753.

Besides the cost of travel, remember that this "right" is granted only to those who own an actual passport — and the nationality associated with your passport can determine whether foreign borders will invite you in or shut you out.

For many, the notion of traveling probably conjures up images of white sand beaches, modern skyscrapers, or pastel-colored colonial architecture as well as feelings of leisure, self-discovery, adventure, and hope.

But for millions of others, traveling comes with the credible fears of embarrassment, rejection, and even death.

According to various accounts, an estimated 200,000 to 400,000 Vietnamese boat people drowned at sea by the time the United Nations resettlement efforts ended in 1996. My father and his siblings were among the luckiest to have, quite literally, made it out alive.

Shortly after arriving in Canada, my penniless father (a doctor in Vietnam) went job hunting. An old family friend in Vietnam had told him to answer "yes" to every question in every interview. A pizzeria owner asked him if he knew how to make pizza, and my father, who had never seen a pizza before in his life, enthusiastically answered "yes." He was hired and, needless to say, fired a couple days later. My mother, also a doctor back in Vietnam, humbly spent her first couple of years in Toronto working in an electronics factory.

When my mother and her family arrived in Toronto as sponsored immigrants, they were reunited with their siblings, who had weathered the trip by boat six years earlier. The family of seven spent the years shortly thereafter sharing a two bedroom apartment.

While the teenage kids passed their days in high school classrooms, the adults worked their way toward becoming doctors, pharmacists, and engineers again. Although most of their education and retraining was supported by scholarships and loans from the Canadian government, everyone worked long hours and extra shifts at factories and restaurants in order to make ends meet. At their jobs, they endured not only laborious pain, but constant discrimination as well.

As a medical resident, my mother was examining a young boy’s ear when his mother angrily eyed her and pulled her son away. The boy’s mother asked for the doctor, even after my mother had already introduced herself as the doctor. The woman then exclaimed that she wanted another doctor, and kept insisting until the attending physician — an older white man — came into the room and to my mother’s defense.

But my mother knew not to cause a scene and remained silent. In fact, my mother’s had a lot of practice with staying quiet and obedient; the sassy, mouthy woman I know now had learned very quickly back then to keep her head down and her mouth shut when the white folks volleyed racial insults at her from across the factory assembly hall.

Welcome to Canada, they said.

My parents came to Canada with nothing but the clothes they wore on their backs; when I traveled, not only did I carry a fancy Osprey backpack and a snazzy Nikon camera, but also access to Canadian embassies as well as the comfort of knowing that when I was bored with "finding myself," I could always come home.

My father, on the other hand, relinquished his Vietnamese citizenship when he traveled to Canada. He believed in his heart that leaving meant saying goodbye to home forever.

With my perfect English and universally recognized North American accent, doors opened up to me on my travels that would have remained closed for others. “She’s American,” locals would exclaim to each other, wide-eyed, when I opened my mouth to speak. At first, I would try to tell them that I’m actually a Canadian studying in the United States, but it all got too confusing; anyway they didn’t really care about Canada, so after a while I just stopped trying.

Everywhere I went, people seemed to be obsessed with America.

I discovered that being treated like royalty isn’t uncommon when you’re a “Westerner” traveling abroad. Conversely, my parents’ accounts of hardship, discrimination, and sacrifice aren’t unusual for non-Western immigrants and refugees.

The next time you embark on a big adventure, remember that you carry much more than what’s in your bags. Remember that in your wallet, you carry the dollar, against which most other currencies in the world are matched. Your thin passports represent how lucky you are to travel visa-free to 166 countries. Your voice projects a widely recognized version of the world’s most universal language.

In light of today’s unfolding refugee crisis, remember that not everyone has your freedom of mobility.

This story first appeared on The Development Set and is reprinted here with permission. This is a shortened version of the original piece.

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