#rhythm: satellite

[tsunagite]

started playing phigros again recently and i felt so fucking stupid when i realized the camellia-sounding songs in that one collection were actually made by camellia 💀💀

Yeah, personally I keep forgetting his name is usually written as かめりあ than just Camellia lol

[and-the-stars-collided]

House of Feänor as Aesthetics:

Fëanor  —  loud voice, commanding presence, analytical, natural leader, piercing eyes, foggy hillsides, black boots, tipping their head back to breathe the air, mirrored lakes and everything below the surface, tearing leaves from trees, blunt sarcasm, long dark hair, deep sleeper, rotting tree stumps, black leather jacket, songs that makes you want to create a storm, rebellious, ambition, unstoppable passion, fast trains, polaroids, empty castles.

Maedhros — walking silently, stronger due to all the stuff meant to kill them, ignoring their mental health issues, fiery red hair, crumbling marble, oversized hoodies, raw voice, lingering touches, faint music in the distance, calming down from a panic attack, long heavy cloaks, cold hands, disillusioned with the world, insomnia, unhealthy habits, sighs made visible by cold night air, strong hugs, never sleeps, loud music, freckles, dark under-eyes.

Maglor — hypnotising smiles, a broken mind, melancholy, driving through mountains and the woods, iced coffee, the faint feeling of raindrops on your cheeks, ripped jeans, tight hugs, whispered compliments, deep conversations, late night texts, nimble hands, thin blades, white lilies, vertigo, unkept journals, lightning and thunder, rhythms so raw the heartbreak is showing, shattered glass, walking alone on a cold night, silver necklaces, regret.

Celegorm — bright eyes, climbing rock formations, cold-hearted, hard breathing after running, wood cabins, gladiator arenas, wicked smiles, twisted branches, wild hair, growing more and more dangerous, night drives, adrenaline rushes, bruises, bloody cloaks, running from society, breathless laughing, that animalistic unpredictability, silver and leather bracelets, strong coffee after a sleepless night, city lights from a high rise, addiction, barking dogs, hurricanes.

Caranthir — ironic smirks, bitten nails painted black, lightning in summer, empty threats, sunglasses hiding dead eyes, thick chain jewellery, temperamental, goes to car races just to watch the crashes, deep glares, tongue/lip piercings, midnight walks, lightbulbs burning out, diamonds, crushed ice, a glint of cat eyes in the dark, gold coins in storm drains, cold hands, storm clouds rolling in, theatres, suppressed emotions, wrought iron gates, motorcycles. 

Curufin — cherries and Diet Coke, white marble, a studio apartment on the 67th floor, tattoos, neon lights, sweetened coffee, smudged makeup, too-loud music, cursive notes written in red ink, veiny forearms, sharp canines, fresh snowfall, high rise buildings, white light, sheer robes with nothing underneath, fog, stained glass windows, colourful hair, slow heartbeats, long-forgotten love, cold mountaintops, eternal silence.

Amrod — burnished copper, feverish eyes, hues of orange and gold, stars and spades, brewing tea, freckles, hardwood floors, poisonous flowers, listens to Hozier, messy hair, fake circle glasses, bullet point notes on a restaurant napkin, comfortable silence, broken wings on insects, old hungers, the whispering of trees, kicking stones on deserted paths, forgotten places, origami stars, old overgrown stone castles, morning mist, horse riding.

Amras  —  misplaced keys, wandering aimlessly, selectively mute, deep lakes hiding secrets, pine trees, restless nights, misunderstood, reliving the same day over and over again, graphic tees, dead moths, visual mind, muffled screams into a pillow, listens to asmr, doc martens, profanity, burned cigarettes, zoning out often, heart fluttering nervously, confusing satellites for stars, comic filled bookshelves, radios, old jeeps, glowing keyboards.

Celebrimbor — ravens, white-hot metal, the darkest shade of black, glittering skin, low waist pants, stars falling, the heat lingering in the evening, petals falling off dead flowers, trusting the wrong people, blue veins, cobblestone paths, linoleum tiles, bruises/scars easily, the heat lingering in the evening, cities awake late, card games, overanalysing everything, shiny fabrics, the slamming of a shot glass, the sting of betrayal.

[randomshyperson]

As It Was (Part 2) - Milf!Wanda Maximoff x Reader

Summary: Once the truth is out, will you be able to forget and forgive the past, or the weight of choices be heavier than the feelings you and Wanda never learned to outgrow? | The Second Part is more based on "Satellite" than "As It Was" tbh. | Part One

Warnings: angst(ish) with happy ending, milf!Wanda, age gap, ex-lovers meeting again, witchcraft lore, some making out but nothing explicit in this part | Words: 6.552k

A/N-> At the request of many, I managed to write a sequel to that one "As It Was". It was much longer than I expected, but I managed to write things that I hadn't done before, so the result pleased me. Forgive me for the lack of smut, it ended up not fitting within the context and rhythm of the story, but there is the possibility of specials. I hope you all enjoy your reading.

General Masterlist | AO3 | Wattpad | Song-Based Collection

-&-

It occurs to her that you are distant.

Physically speaking, it's quite evident - Wanda hasn't seen you for five days. Not even on her secret getaways from family dinners, school reunions, or anything typical of an American suburban mom's routine so perfectly set up for herself, brings you back. You don't visit her on any of the days that follow, not for lunches or late afternoons, nor do you send either quick or long messages made up of intense declarations that always shake her with all the emotions she might have.

Wanda has no idea where you are, and the lack of control over the situation almost suffocates her. 

But there is something new that occupies her enough not to take action on it. Or rather, someone new.

It's true that time passes differently in Westview. The leaves are starting to turn orange when Pietro Maximoff arrives on her balcony. Wanda is trying to find her footing with so many ghosts from the past coming back at once and she has to admit that her twin brother's presence impacts her enough for her not to escape her house and family in an attempt to find out if you were still in the same motel where she left you in the early hours of one morning almost a week ago.

Wanda tries to focus on the good things in life; she has the family she always dreamed about, complete at last. A husband, children, and even her long-missed brother. She has friends and a house. She should feel happy and fulfilled, or so she tries to convince herself while she tries to ignore the not-so-easy feeling in her chest when she lies next to Vision at night.

He doesn't mind that she's distant herself. Sometimes, Wanda thinks he doesn't even notice. Maybe it's her will, playing with everything around her and ensuring she's not disturbed. In fact, Vision has stopped noticing many things since the last heated argument they had, on the same night that Pietro reappeared. He's just as distant as she is as if he has a whole life going on outside those walls. Wanda could say the same.

She falls asleep with difficulty, and it’s one of those nightmare nights once more. 

When she opens her eyes, she knows she’s still dreaming.

Nevertheless, she allows herself to fall into that fantasy with peace of mind.

The atmosphere is familiar, and the smells and sensations too. Wanda remembers well how things were before Hydra, and before the outbreak of civil war in her country. In the few years of tranquillity at the end of her adolescence, where the revolution group was almost a pastime for irritated young people, for a moment, she could imagine herself as nothing more than a schoolgirl.

Of course, the war would get worse, and almost the entire group of her former colleagues would leave the universities to occupy the streets, but in the safety of the dream, none of this would happen.

Wanda could leave the soft bed and follow the smell of food. She knew she would find you in the kitchen, moving your hips softly to a gentle melody because this was a memory Wanda had never learned to erase.

Her voice came out raspier than she expected once she tried to call your name. But luckily, you were distracted enough by the food to notice the tears welling up in her eyes. After a whole week without hearing from you, she truly believes she lost you once more.

But in this dream, things were saved. Your hands just continued to separate the mixture. “Morning, krasotka (gorgeous). Sit down, there's coffee on the table."

Wanda swallowed, controlling her temper. She watched your back for a moment, trying to memorize every feature of that appearance in case this was the last time and she wouldn’t have another chance before that fantasy ended.

When she didn't sit down you looked at her, offering her an easy smile from a face marked with flour and youthfulness.

"What's wrong, Wanda?"

She moves instead of answering, determined steps until she reaches you at the counter. Your confused eyes close as Wanda, who has just grabbed your belt, pulls you close and kisses you firmly.

It takes you by surprise, but you respond without hesitation. The position isn't ideal, but you kiss her eagerly, as breathless as she is once she breaks the act. Wanda's tight grip around you makes you chuckle softly.

"Hey, Pietro will wake up soon." You warned in the same casual tone, rubbing your nose against hers. "He'll kill me if he finds out about us like this..." Your mouth pecks down her jaw to her neck. 

Wanda giggles tearfully. She had forgotten about that. The teenage fear of telling her protective twin about you. Thinking back at how obvious you two were, she was sure that Pietro knew. To be fair, anyone could notice the way you looked at each other.

You tried to pull away, but Wanda didn't allow it. A sigh escaped your lips, which formed a mischievous smile.

"Behave yourself, Wanda." You warned softly, but she raised her hand to your cheek, the touch surprising you a little. Your curious expression didn't intimidate her.

"Where are you?" She questioned and curiosity gave way to confusion.

"Here, dorogoya, what do you mean-" But green irises turned red, and the confusion vanished once your eyes reflected her magic as well. Your shoulders tensed, and you sighed as if you were tired. 

You tried to pull away and this time, Wanda allowed you to. Your hands reached for a cloth, and the flour from her favorite pastry that you had prepared for her in that memory was leisurely wiped from your skin.

When you sighed again, more calmly you were leaning on the counter, with your arms crossed and your gaze distant.

"That's different." That was the first thing you said, with a small smile at the corner of your lips. Wanda swallowed, pushing her emotions down. She looked in the same direction as you next. "The sofa was dark blue, not brown."

"Some things..." She cleared her throat, trying to hide the urge to cry. "We remember it differently. Some things, they're just... different."

You hum thoughtfully, shrugging. "Yeah, like ourselves."

Wanda fiddles with her fingers. "Y/N..."

"I wasn't afraid to tell Pietro." You cut her off with no emotion in your voice, but seriousness in your gaze. "You were. I was always ready to shout out to the world that I loved you, but you were terrified of his reaction. Why did you change that?"

"I didn't." Wanda fights back immediately, defensive. You look away with a dry laugh, and she sighs. "I didn't do it on purpose. I... It's only been a long time, Y/N. It's hard to remember exactly what it was like."

"I heard that grief changes things." You retort more softly, and Wanda is sure she's going to start crying. She hugs her own body, and you sigh. "When..."

"No." She cuts you off, her voice breaking. "Why can't you just give me this day? This memory? Just... stay here. Let me live it again." She practically begs, but you don’t flinch, stepping away for the kitchen counter to move closer.

Your hands hold her arms, and your gaze makes something in her spark.

"Don't you think you deserve more than a fantasy, Wanda?"

She chuckles tearfully because this has to be a joke. 

"And what choice do I have?" she retorts, tears running down her cheeks. Wanda doesn't have the opportunity to wipe them away, you do so almost immediately. Your instinct is as quick as hers to lean into your touch. "God, there isn't... a day that I haven't missed this. Us."

You smile tenderly at her confession, and Wanda closes her eyes for a moment. She’s just enjoying the feeling while you wait. It takes another sigh for her to ask: "Where are you?"

Being asked again doesn't surprise you. You caress her cheek, and your other hand entwines around her waist.

"It doesn't matter."

She sighs impatiently. "Of course, it matters!" She insists. "I want-I need to see you." She corrects herself and you frown slightly. Wanda lets her hands grasp the collar of your blouse, and her red eyes are almost desperate in yours. "Tell me. Please. Where-"

You kiss her, hard enough for the protest to turn into a needy moan. The hand around her entwines her completely to lift her onto the counter, and Wanda melts. She kisses you as she manages, almost overwhelmed by the longing she has felt over the last few days for the sensation of your lips again.

When you part, she's tingly all over, but your hands don't go beyond her clothes. Your affected breath hits her cheek before you look at her again.

"I remembered."

Wanda almost breaks down in a sob but she manages to keep her emotions around her border. With a sniffle, she guides pleading eyes to yours. Her legs tighten around your waist as if she fears your escape.

"Please stay with me." It comes in a whisper.

You chuckle and Wanda can feel her cheeks burning, her heart breaking. She fears your answer more than she's ever feared anything else in her life.

"You don't understand, Wanda." That's what you say, pulling away and grabbing her hands. Before she can despair, imagining that you were pushing her away, your hands entwined with hers, your eyes tender and intense. "Tell me what you remember."

She looks at you with confusion before denying it with her head. "I don't like... thinking about that day."

"I know, but I need to talk about it." You say, kissing her hands for a moment. "I'm not a memory, Wanda. I'm here. I really am here."

But she shakes her head, her shoulders tensing and her breathing going out of rhythm. "My mind is playing tricks on me... First you, and now Pietro. None of it makes sense. The only thing I know is that I don't want to lose you again. Please don't leave me again."

She doesn't even realize she's started crying. You hug her, trying to calm her down with pats on her back as she wets her shirt. 

Wanda clings to you as if you're going to disappear, but you stay there until the tears dry.

"I'm not going anywhere, I promise." You whisper. "Never again, Wanda. I can't change what happened to Pietro, but I'm staying. Screw the consequences, I'll never leave you alone again."

She looks at you with confusion, wiping her wet face with the hem of her blouse. " What consequences- what you talking about?"

But you smile, kissing her cheek quickly. "It's time to wake up, my love. Meet me when you're ready to leave. I'm waiting outside for you."

Wanda tries to grab you by the blouse, but she wakes up in a jolt. Vision complains low in bed so that she stops making so much noise and Wanda hides her tears in her pillow.

She dares to try to search for your presence around the house, every floor, every room but all there is is Vision and her twins.

Her mind is playing tricks on her. A stupid dream just to try to break the perfect life she has now.

She goes back to sleep and makes sure that she won’t dream of anything else.

-&-

It's not the ideal place or your favorite setting, nor does it have the best food, but the dinner is the closest outside the Hex that you could find, so it's enough.

The back table becomes the mystery traveler's spot (that's how you hear the waitress and some truck drivers refer to you) for the next few days.

It takes almost two for Agatha to show up.

"You're late, witch." That's how you greet her, outside in the parking lot. The cigarette is hanging unlit from your lips, and Agatha snatches it from your mouth before you have a chance to light it. Your relaxed posture breaks, and she hits you over the head with a slap.

"Insolent child! Irresponsible! Arrogant-" You let her hit three more, they don't hurt, and it's good for her anger. The next time she's about to swear at you for something else, you hit her first. 

"Get a grip, you grumpy old woman." You snap. " Don't cause a scene, huh?"

Agatha raises a finger in warning, her eyes blazing with fury before she walks away with an annoyed grunt. 

"You're unbelievable." She retorts, taking up your personal space again. She pulls a box of cigarettes out of your leather jacket pocket and takes one for herself. You roll your eyes but watch her light one, and blow the smoke away. Agatha keeps muttering to herself “Challeging a direct order; what will the council say? In the worst scenario, they will know I helped you and I’m done. This little shit…”

You adjust your posture to lean on one of the parking lot irons, your hands in your jacket pockets. You pull the witch out of her complaints with a question:

"What's the matter with you anyway?"

Agatha chuckles dryly, the cigarette between her fingers. "Your girlfriend."

Your posture doesn't change, but the glint in your eyes is almost sinister. "Watch your next words carefully, Miss Harkness."

It's her turn to laugh dryly and take another drag before turning her face toward you. "What is with little show you put on anyway? Standing guard outside, waiting for Rapunzel to leave her tower?" Her teasing only makes you chuckle. Agatha sighs impatiently. "You laugh now, but the whole place is surrounded. If that crazy witch ends up getting shot, I won't sell you any spells to fix it."

You roll your eyes, snatching the cigarette from her fingers. "Stop talking shit, Agatha." You retort. "There are no agents inside, I kept my part of the deal. Now, if the whole thing's still on, it's you who's not doing yours."

Agatha clenches her jaw, looking at you angrily. You just flick the cigarette, and she rolls her eyes.

"I've had unforeseen difficulties."

"Right." You laugh. "You're getting soft, that's for sure."

The cigarette flies out of your hand with her hard slap. You snort in annoyance, but Agatha is busy pulling something out of her purple suit, back now that she's out of the Hex. It's an old piece of paper that she presses hard against your hand.

"Do as written, it will be irrevocable. He'll be forced to show up." She guides between her teeth. "I doubt Mephisto will explain, but just getting his presence should do some good. And don't talk about me. I still need a big job to get back on his good side."

There's something like gratitude in your gaze, and Agatha waves you away, turning her attention to the barrier not invisible to magical eyes a few meters from dinner while you tuck the paper safely away in your pocket.

"I'm going to end all this crap today, Y/N." She declares, and you look up immediately. "Are you sure you won't-"

"No." You cut in, forcing a smile. "I'd just be getting in the way. Either side, I suppose. Wanda thinks I died, and well, I have no idea how to break the whole story to her. 'Hey baby, you thought I died but I kind of sold my soul to keep you and your brother alive. When that didn't work out for him, I ran away for fear of fucking up your life too, but whatever your magic rank, it's high enough to summon one of Mephisto's riders against his will. Any chance you would want to date me again?'”

Agatha laughs softly at the statement, shaking her head. "Don't forget the part where you're helping a witch take down her little fantasy town."

You grunt slightly. "In gratitude for my memories, only. You're a tricky merchant, Miss Harkness."

The woman chuckles, shrugging. Before she can walk away, you clear your throat and Agatha looks at you curiously. "Anything else?"

"Our arrangement, don't forget." You retort. "You won't do anything against her, or the boys."

Just to torment you, she raises an eyebrow. "No request for her husband's safety?"

You snort, rolling your eyes. "He's already dead." You grumble, and Agatha laughs darkly.

"Until recently, you were too."

"I wasn't really!" You retort indignantly, but Agatha is already turning and waving goodbye.

Alone in the parking lot, you feel the weight of the summoning spell in your pocket. Your boss would have to listen to you at some point.

-&-

Being betrayed by what seemed to be her only real friend for some time felt like a punishment.

Well, maybe it was karma. For what she was doing to Vis, and by God, to all those people trapped and subjugated to her wills, fears, and desires. But Wanda wasn't to blame, or at least, she wasn't ready to take on any of it. There was only emptiness at first, and then there was contentment. Crude and meager, but there. Her peace was as superficial as the magical fantasy surrounding her, and it didn't take long for the fear to creep back in; until finally, she was confronted with the reality of what she and her brother had never been able to accept in their youth: there is no magic formula to fix things. Just as Hydra didn't save Sokovia and cost her her twin, her magic didn't fix her grief but made it even worse.

Wanda would have to say goodbye to her children, and for this kind of pain, she had never been prepared.

Agatha seemed to take some amusement from her agony; a lot of ironic jokes as she searched through her memories. But even centuries of experience didn't rid the witch of her innate arrogance, and just as the Black Widow had once taught her, Wanda saw the opportunity to exploit her opponent's weakness.

The victory was not that satisfying, even if Wanda felt more powerful than ever. 

And Agatha, in a last desperate act, said the name of the one person who would make Wanda hesitate.

With her fingers still in the air, the redhead narrowed her eyes at the witch lying on the ground, powerless and frightened.

"I know you're bluffing."

"I swear I’m not!" Agatha assured hurriedly. "I'll take you to her. I can-"

"She was one of your tricks, then? It's as cheap and cruel as using my brother, Agatha." Cut the redhead off coldly, but the witch held up her hand, asking for time.

"Wanda, by the wizard oath." She insisted, letting out a laugh exhausted by the effort of the fight. "She was one of your tricks, not mine. You summoned her to this place."

Wanda nodded, sniffling a little. "Stop lying! I know she's dead."

Agatha shook her head. "She's not! Let me go, I promise I'll take you to her."

Wanda hesitated, in her gaze, in her posture, in her heart. Agatha continued to insist, and she looked back at her family waiting for her and all those agents around.

She turned to Agatha, who fell silent when her hand was raised again.

"I'll say goodbye first. And I swear if I find that you’re trying to trick me again-"

"I know." Agatha cut in, forcing a smile. "I promise." 

That seemed true enough to Wanda, and Agatha's determined look convinced her. She sighed and nodded, then turned away to hug her children, who were already running towards her. A mask of happiness, despite the heartbreak, stamped her face.

When it was all over, Wanda was physically and emotionally exhausted. She said goodbye to Agent Monica too, realizing bitterly that perhaps that woman was the only real friend she had made since Natasha and that she would have to lose her now too. 

And as she crossed the city limits, she assumed that Agatha had taken the opportunity to escape, and came to the conclusion that she didn't care about that at all. Something inside her broke the minute she had to put her children to bed for the last time. No silly rivalry could really bother her. 

"Look alive, Maximoff." The joke was unwelcome, but Agatha didn't mind. Nor did she get out of the parked vehicle.

"Have you ever heard of magic portals? Or, I don't know, flying?" Wanda asked as soon as she noticed the witch waiting for her from inside the car parked outside the city. Wanda didn't understand how the witch had kept the SWORD agents away from that edge, but her mind was elsewhere to ask. 

The older woman chuckled at the question, adjusting herself to lean her arms on the window and look at Wanda. "Did I mention I like the new look? Did I leave the oven on or is that heat coming from you, hot stuff?"

Wanda chuckled with more indignation than anything. When she was close enough, she sighed. "Just do what you agreed to do."

Agatha smiled mischievously. "Well, you're the one with your back to the show." She retorted, pointing at something behind her.

When she turned, she saw two figures, too far away to be identified. The sunlight didn't help either. The people had been talking for some time and it didn't seem to be a peaceful discussion.

"Who...?"

"Who do you think?" Agatha interrupted somewhat ironically. Wanda's heart leaped, and her stomach did a complete flip. It couldn't be you, could it? 

"B-but she... she was-"

"Yeah, the confusing world we live in." Mocked the witch in the car seat. "She wanted to explain everything to you but she has been a pain in the ass so I'll do it. Your friend made a deal with the devil, in the literal sense of the expression. Whatever Hydra did to her, it almost killed her. Mephisto, being the good opportunist he is, offered her a deal and perhaps because she had two people to protect and a hole in her chest, she accepted without reading the terms." Agatha smiled at her own narration, while Wanda continued in shock, being able to imagine the whole story. "And of course, like any deal with the devil, nothing goes according to plan. Mephisto must have known that the boy would die in battle, so he lied to get your friend's soul. She chickened out, by the way, after she heard about her brother. She thought the same would happen to you if she got close, of course at the time neither of you must have known your true power and authority..."

"Authority?" She interrupted hoarsely, getting a laugh from the other witch.

"By Hecate, young witches these days don't know anything," muttered the woman. "As I said before, Wanda, you are the Scarlet Witch. You're the greatest magical authority on earth. And the fact that you don't know this is exactly why I'm needed." Agatha explains. "You need a magical tutor, Miss Maximoff. Someone to train you, and explain important things, like your magical power to break a contract of souls and summon one of Mephisto's ghost riders as you please."

After everything that had happened, absorbing and accepting the madness of this whole story seemed like just one more little push for Wanda to collapse. 

Lucky for her, she wasn't alone this time.

You finally started walking towards her, until the figures became clearer, and without needing to ask, Wanda was sure that the man with a skull pipe walking next to you was Mephisto.

Everything about his posture was intimidating, and the air seemed much heavier and darker once he was close enough. But Wanda didn't mind the audience, she threw herself into your arms and was greeted in an equally enthusiastic embrace.

Mephisto waved to Agatha from the car, letting the two of you have a moment of reunion as he commented quietly to the older witch:

"I send you to collect an undeserving one and you not only fail, but you make me lose my best rider."

Agatha swallows dryly, annoyed by the scolding. But if there's anything she feels besides fear, it's pride. And that's something she and the man share, and Agatha knows it very well.

"No creature, not even the Lord of Hell, has power against the Scarlet Witch. The humiliation of losing is strong, but you get used to it." She teases, and Mephisto loses his temper, punching the car hard and trying to grab Agatha by the neck.

A scarlet tug pushes him away.

"You filthy hag, how dare you-"

"Watch your temper, Big M." You interrupt with a serious expression, despite the provocative nickname. You gently put Wanda down, who until now had been lifeted in your arms, but you continue with a hand around her waist. 

The man huffs angrily, but visibly struggles to contain his anger, while Agatha hides a little smile and Wanda tries to gain confidence in her new title and the respect that comes with it.

When Mephisto addresses her, he is much more submissive than anyone would expect after the scene.

"My Queen, please, there has been an agreement. With both of the present, this treacherous witch owes me favors and the rider owes me her life. It's not fair that I go unpaid. If I'm not compensated, I'll obviously have to withdraw the loans..." He speaks but Wanda raises a hand in the air, interrupting him.

"I think I understand what you mean. You saved my friend, and if she doesn't serve you, she dies?"

"Yes, my lady."

You tried to protest, but Wanda put a hand on your shoulder and looked at you quickly: in her eyes was the simple request that you let her handle this. 

Agatha didn't interrupt either, nor did she react when Wanda approached Mephisto.

"I've been told that the title of Scarlet Witch makes me the highest magical authority." She begins, and somewhat begrudgingly, the man nods in agreement. Wanda sighs. "I don't understand this power entirely, but I will. What I do understand now is that if I am the authority, you must obey me."

"My lady-"

"I am not done talking." Mephisto bites his tongue, but doesn't risk challenging the red irises again. "Let's make a few things clear, sir. These two don't belong to you, I do not care about the debt. I don't know how to settle it yet, but I will. So for now, you should know that they're off-limits. Agatha will be my tutor, and any extra activity must come with a guarantee that she'll return to lessons in one piece, and as for Y/N, well..." Wanda takes a step forward, a dry laugh escaping her. "She's mine, do you understand? You're not going to harm her in any way. Not ever. You've kept her away from me long enough, toying with her perception of the truth. Of that, I think we both understand well."

Mephisto clenched his jaw, seeming to fight the urge to end you right then and there. You exchanged a proud glance with Agatha at the witch's posture in front of you.

"This will be my only warning, Mephisto. I'm taking her with me, and it's better that she keeps breathing after we leave."

Irritated but restrained, he retorts: "A rider must serve, my lady, and I don't say that to contradict you. Even if she doesn't obey me, she won't be able to ignore the call. Her soul only stays in this body because of its usefulness."

"We'll deal with it without your intervention in the matter, don't worry." Wanda assures him. "And as for your payment, I still don't fully understand how this realm works, but I'll learn with the help of Agatha and the Darkhold. I believe the Lord of Hell can wait."

To Wanda's surprise, he grew friendlier, with a smile full of evil intentions. Without her realizing why the mention of the book made him so excited, Mephisto bowed again briefly. "I see a promising future for our professional relationship, Scarlet Witch."

He adjusts his hat as a sign of farewell, and it's as if the sun changes direction only for rays to obscure her vision for a moment. Just long enough for Mephisto to disappear.

"He's always rude, don't take it to heart." 

The older witch commented, but neither you nor Wanda were paying much attention to her. Wanda came back to you, wrapping you in a tight hug as a confirmation that things were really happening. And as you held her, you exchanged a quick glance with the witch in the car, a grateful one, and all Agatha did was offer the first sincere smile of the day before breaking the moment with a loud honk.

"I'm sorry, but your girlfriend is a fugitive, and flirting in the middle of the street isn't really appropriate for this moment." Mocked the witch, remembering the dozens of federal agents in the area all too willing to ask Wanda for a statement. It wasn't really a problem - but it was a nuisance.

Your girlfriend ignored Agatha's warning to kiss you on the mouth. It almost takes you by surprise, the intensity, but you manage to match it until the older witch honks again and you and Wanda break into a shared giggle.

"Don't worry, we'll have time." You meekly assure her, kissing her cheek before pulling away to open the car door. Wanda doesn't seem too keen to let you go - not that you'd want anything different - so you follow her into the back seat. Even under Agatha's warnings about behaving or she'd throw the car off the first bridge.

Once on the road, the witch met your gaze through the rearview mirror.

"My place or yours?" 

You sigh. "Mine's fine."

-&-

The first fight happens as soon as Wanda finds out that for years, you've lived nearby.

So many days when she could have taken a different route from Avengers Tower downtown to the Compound and bumped into you. 

Of course, you assured her that you kept a safe distance and that New York was full and big enough for that, but the justifications only made it worse.

And Wanda started crying and locked herself in the first room she found on the way.

You tried to look at Agatha on the sofa - very much comfortable in other people's homes, by the way - but the witch shrugged as she used her magic to bring food from your kitchen to where she was. 

With a sigh, you leaned your forehead against the door.

"Wanda, I'm so sorry I left you alone. I swear to God, I lost count of how many times I wanted to break into that tower and just say that I was with you. But I couldn't. I went to the memorial, to visit Pietro. I saw the news about the fight. I saw him die, and I kept seeing it, every time I closed my eyes. And my nightmares replaced him with you. I was sure that if I got close, you'd get hurt, and I'd rather live away from you than lose you." You confessed with emotion, knowing that she was listening even if she didn't answer now. With another sigh, you continued. "I kept my distance, but I never left. I went to all your public events, I even sent you gifts as an anonymous fan. I almost risked everything so many times. And when your friends got into fights and you disappeared to the Raft, I lost my mind. That's when... he made me forget you. It was the only way I could keep doing the jobs and not go after you. But I still lived here, and there was this lack in my chest and I had no idea what it was. Then one day I heard your voice, like a whisper in my heart, and I followed it. I ended up in Westview, and the lack was gone. It was Agatha who gave me back my memories, and we ended up here. With me trying to make you understand that there hasn't been a day since we were separated that I haven't missed you, that I haven't loved you. Please, Wanda. Forgive me."

It takes a long moment, almost long enough for you to think about letting her have more time to think about it, for Wanda to open the door.

She hugs you by the neck, very tightly, and you waste no time in reciprocating.

"Agatha has to leave." That's what she says as she releases you, making you assume a confused expression. You're ready to recall that the witch, despite her mistakes, helped you when Wanda pulled at the edges of your shirt while hiding her face in your collarbone. The way she speaks again makes you understand. "We've lost a lot of time, my love. She needs to go, so we can make up for it."

You nod foolishly, glancing quickly at Agatha who is already getting up without abandoning a bottle of your most expensive drinks that she opened without permission. Not that you're paying attention to anything other than the woman clinging to you.

"You two are disgusting, I'm out." Complains the older witch, practically running out the door as Wanda kisses your neck again and you sigh.

The door had barely closed and Wanda had already pulled your face back to hers, meeting your mouth in an intense, passionate kiss that almost made you lose your bearings.

Your hands wandered across her cheeks in a foolish attempt to gain some control of the kiss, then towards her hair and down her arms to her waist, squeezing and earning a satisfied sigh in return. Wanda's hands were busy undoing your clothes, bursting buttons, and finally throwing your belt aside.

Your blouse ended up somewhere in the room after you kicked your shoes away and while using the interruption and distance necessary to undress, Wanda spoke again.

"All this time you've been keeping watch... tell me, how far have you gone?" she asked between kisses, leading the way to the sofa as she pulled you up by the straps of the barely hanging pants on your hips. 

You fought your own arousal to reply: "Hm, never very close. Except, once..." You try to count between kisses, almost losing your train of thought when Wanda pushes you sit up and looks so stunning with her flushed face and out-of-rhythm breathing standing in front of you. "On your birthday. I went to your window, and I just... watched you sleep."

Wanda let out a curious giggle. "Do you fly now?"

"Not really, it's something called astral projection, I'm sure Agatha will teach you." You mumble quickly, and it's your turn to tug at the straps of her jeans. "Can we talk later? U-unless of course, you don't want to do this anymore, because then I'll need a minute to stop shaking and then I can tell you everything-" She interrupts you with a determined kiss, taking the opportunity to sit on your lap too.

With another sigh, she assures you, "We'll talk later." Those are the last firm words of the evening, really. After that, all that leaves Wanda are begging moans and whimpers of pleasure calling out your name.

You wouldn't have it any other way.

-&-

It's a simple routine, within the normal range of living with two witches and having your soul in imprisonment with the Lord of Hell at least.

Agatha becomes a tutor - it suits her, even if she is grumpy and mean and doesn't have much patience for teaching magic. She ends up doing a good job, and in a few months, Wanda already has the same knowledge that a witch who has spent half her life in a coven would have.

As well as classes with the grumpiest teacher on the planet, Wanda has the Darkhold. You don't see her use it that much, because she always chooses the times of your rider duties to study. That, and well, that book gives you a very bad feeling. But Wanda always makes sure that everything is under control and kisses you until you forget about it.

Of course, over time, people tend to waver in their lies and perhaps because it's a Rider's business to feel dark magic, you end up discovering exactly how bad the Darkhold is for your girlfriend. 

Or maybe the black fingers gave you a hint.

"It's not too much to ask that you be careful!" You were arguing - no, discussing - Wanda's intense study routine with a book that apparently condemned all readers. "Actually, it's quite reasonable for me to worry-"

"Oh, that's rich coming from you!" She interrupts you. Even though she is now twice the age you first met her, Wanda Maximoff is still as beautiful as the first day you saw her. And just as stubborn as the angry teenager she once was. "Do you want to talk about being reasonable? Do you think you made a good decision when you decided to sell your soul, or when you believed you could stay away for ten years and act as if it didn't affect our relationship?"

You hesitate. "I-I... you said you forgave me."

But Wanda snaps back: "Forgiving isn't forgetting! And why do you think I'm doing all this? I have to learn to control my magic, and I have to learn to be the Scarlet Witch. But most importantly, I have to learn to undo a deal with the devil because at some point you thought it was a good idea to be the Dark Lord's little slave!"

"I did it for you!"

"I know you did!"

"Then why are you angry?"

"Because I love you, you idiot!" she retorts breathlessly. "I love you and I hate how stupidly loyal and impulsive you were to do something like that. And I hate the pain we were forced to endure, and I hate that we wasted so much time."

"Wanda, I-"

"I know." She interrupts with a sigh. "I love you too."

You smile. "Stop reading my mind."

She returns the same smile. "There's not much to read." She teases, wasting no time in bringing her hands to your shoulders when you take her by the waist. You chuckle with a false offense.

"Wow, I'd forgotten how evil you can be." You retort in the same playful tone, nipping at her jaw and lowering your mouth to her collarbone.

Wanda sighs, hugging you for a moment. In the bedroom mirror by the wall, she can see her true reflection and all the Darkhold's influence on her hidden appearance. She blinks away from the demonic appearance to focus on the person holding her so dearly.

"You have no idea, my love." She whispers, forcing a smile when you look at her again. "I just want to keep us safe. Nothing and no one will ever break us apart again. I'll make sure of that."

You don't want to worry, or at least, you don't want Wanda to notice your hesitation about the frightening determination in her eyes. So all you do is kiss her forehead and hold her close.

[butmakeitgayblog]

Teach Me

Ch. 8

Woods residence

/////////

The street that matched the address in her phone was slim. An offshoot sat sleepily on the outskirts of towns, stippled with cars sitting under twin rows of shady trees that dotted the entire block. 

Sedans sprinkled themselves in among driveways filled with minivans and SUVS; all decked out with bike racks, tags denoting the proud parentage of some middle school kid, and more than a few sprawling stick-figured family trees that would leave anyone wondering if these people had ever heard of birth control. 

Every lawn looked manicured with its little picket fences. Every house, a revolving shade of white, eggshell, or beige. 

Clarke had to double check her GPS just to make sure the satellite triangulation hadn't somehow directed her to Mayberry circa 1930.

Only one house stood out in such an HOA hellscape. 

A shining beacon among the drab suburban nightmare, all ash-toned trimming and rustic finishes that complemented its deep, grey stone facade. It was a single-story lot stretched out from one boundary line to the other, creating an angular pancake sort of a house, squat and rather moody (if a house could even be described as such), topped with a slate roof with dark shutters, and a rough-cut stone chimney stretching skyward on one side.

The sight of it made Clarke smile as she parked under the shade of the house's designated curbside oak. 

Lexa had indeed said she couldn't miss the place.

Clarke spared herself a once-over in the reflection of her car's window when she hopped out, taking a second to check the understated allure of her makeup and the exact placement of the deep v-line of her sweater. 

A waist-high swinging iron gate decorated in blunted curls and ornate geometrics separated the manicured sidewalk out on the street from a front yard left to breathe and bend at its own will. Clarke made her way through the controlled chaos of the front walk, admiring the twin lilac bushes that flanked either side and drifted her fingers along the purpling of their first Spring bloom. An obnoxiously yellow jeep that Clarke would've never imagined for her tweed-and-tie wearing professor sat parked in the driveway in all its garish glory, sticking out like a sore thumb amidst the beige single file suburban backdrop.

A heated swoop flashed through Clarke's belly as she took the two front steps in one go, and she wondered when that delicious aching had replaced the more innocent flutter of butterflies. When just thinking of Lexa had started eliciting such a violent uptick in her heart's rhythm; the mere idea of being near her rocking Clarke with these sudden shots of adrenaline. 

She supposed it was probably somewhere between sneaking kisses in the studio's kiln room and exchanging dirty messages while they each, presumably, got themselves off.

Clarke hadn't had the courage to ask if she was the only one…

It really didn't matter in the grand scheme of things, not when the door swung open before she could even finish her third knock. Because framed in the picturesque doorway was - possibly, potentially, easily debatably once her brain would start working again - one of the most beautiful women Clarke had ever seen in her thirty-nine years of life. 

Just… not the particular one she'd expected. 

////////

Read on AO3

[thatsmzbitchtoyou]

Stranded Chapter 3

Summary:  Tossed overboard and lost at sea, Bucky washes up on an uninhabited island.  Injured, lost and scared, with little to no wilderness training, he fights to survive.  But is he really alone?

Warnings: bodily injury, mentions of sexual harassment/assault, eventual smut

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They were able to get into a rhythm with each other as time passed.  Y/N showed Bucky all the ins and outs of the island, where to find fresh water to drink versus to bathe, where most of the food could be found, and taught him how to fish the ocean around them so they could have more than just fruit to eat and how to cook it properly so he wouldn’t get sick.  His chest injury slowly healed, leaving a gnarly scar that spread across his pectorals.  

Y/N still had some things left over from when the plane crashed like a few books she and the others had, and Bucky took to reading them on the beach after cooking up a fish for dinner.  He could almost always guarantee that he would hear a song being sung throughout the day as Y/N went about doing the daily survival chores.  He had always thought she had a nice voice when he’d heard her songs on the radio years before, so getting to hear her in person was a nice soundtrack to his daily routine.  

The days turned to weeks and then months.  Y/N had already done all the things he’d thought of to try to attract attention from nearby ships or planes or even satellites flying above them, and within the four or so years she had been here nothing had worked.  He contemplated ways that maybe they hadn’t thought of, things that could possibly work, but so far had come up empty.

They had talked extensively and learned a lot about each other.  She quickly became one of the best friends he’d ever had in his life, not just because they were stuck with each other for the foreseeable future.  Bucky could tell that he was getting into dangerous territory as his feelings toward her changed to something more romantic.  He did some introspection to see if it was a case of Nightingale Syndrome: falling in love with someone who saves them.  As much as he was appreciative of that, he felt that wasn’t it.  He loved her voice and getting to hear her sing everyday.  He loved her smile and how much wider it became as the months went on.  He loved making her laugh, and how loud and boisterous she laughed.  He loved how determined she was and how calm and collected she could be in high pressure situations, and that even with all she had been through she could still find it in herself to be soft and kind.  

They shared the bed every night and more often than not woke up entangled in each other’s arms, and it was turning into more of a common routine now for them to cuddle together as they fell asleep, rather than doing it by chance overnight.  As Bucky’s hair grew Y/N started to hold him to her chest and run her fingers through his hair, humming or softly singing a song she loved called “Nature Boy” that lulled him to sleep without fail.  If there was ever a night where she happened to not do it he would have a fitful sleep.  

As the winter season started to set in, the nights became colder, making it so sleeping was difficult without being completely snuggled against each other for warmth.  On one such night Y/N couldn’t stop shivering, even with Bucky behind her and the blankets cocooned around them, the windows blocked with clothes and other things to keep the cold out.  

“Y/N, for God’s sake,” Bucky sighed as he rubbed her arms, her feet freezing against his shins.

“I’m s-s-sorry,” Y/N whined, her arms tight against her chest.  “I don’t know w-w-w-what’s wrong with m-m-meee…”

Bucky tried shifting her so she was facing him, tucking her cold nose against his chest, making him gasp.  “Jesus Christ, you’re freezing.”  Y/N nodded slightly, her fingers diving under his shirt and slotting under his armpits.  “FUCK!  Okay, we gotta figure something else out,” Bucky said as rubbed her back and made sure she was tucked in by the blankets well enough.  He had a fleeting thought as her fingers warmed under his armpits that made him tense.  Something about how body heat is the best way to make sure people don’t freeze…

“W-w-what?” Y/N asked, looking up at him as he tensed.

“Um…there’s something that might help,” Bucky said quietly, trying to calm his frantic heart.  

“I-I-I’ll do anything…my whole body hurts,” Y/N whispered, her face burying into his neck.

Bucky was becoming genuinely afraid now.  He did not want to wake up to a dead woman next to him, especially the love of his life.  “We need to take our clothes off,” he said urgently, starting to pull his shirt off.

“Wait…what?” Y/N now tensed, her wide eyes staring at him.

“Sharing body heat will keep us both warm,” he explained as he shifted and took his pants off.  Y/N was dumbfounded.  “Come on, lovey, or else you’ll freeze to death.”

Y/N exhaled sharply then started pulling her shirt off.  Once they were both naked he held her close to him again, desperately ignoring the fact that her breasts were against his stomach and one of her legs was tucked between his, making his cock rest on her thigh.  Her cold limbs more than made up for the awkwardness as he rubbed her arms and legs, trying to get her to warm up faster.  She tucked her face back into his neck, her hands against his chest slightly tracing his scar as she tried to breathe normally.

Bucky could feel her warming up within a few minutes and it made him sigh in relief.  Her fingers no longer felt like popsicles, her feet moving against his legs and not making him flinch away.  She sighed heavily as her nose warmed up against him and her breathing evened out.  The shivering eventually died down and she wrapped her arm around his back, making her body flush with his.

“Thank you, Buck,” Y/N whispered, her lips moving against his jaw.

“Don’t mention it,” Bucky huffed a laugh, kissing her forehead.

Y/N froze at that.  As much as they had cuddled and were now in this crazy predicament, they had never done anything intimate like kissing, even in very neutral parts of the body like on the forehead or the hand or anything else.  Bucky waited for her to calm down, but she didn’t.  “What happened?” he asked quietly.

“Nothing,” Y/N rushed out.  

“Was that not okay?  I’m sorry–”

“No, it was okay, I was just surprised,” she said.  Her voice was giving off an air of nonchalance but her body was still tense.

“Sure, and I’m not hugging a statue,” Bucky snorted.

Y/N laughed at that, her body shaking at his joke.  Bucky laughed along with her.  “It…it was just nice, is all,” Y/N said, still giggling.

“Oh you liked it, huh?” Bucky teased her, his hands slipping to tickle her sides.  Y/N squealed and twisted in his hold, her hands pushing against his chest to get away.  He moved up so he was hovering over her and tickled her neck.  Through their movements they found themselves within an inch of each other’s faces, catching their breaths and staring at each other.  Bucky’s eyes blinked rapidly as they flicked between her eyes and down to her mouth.  Y/N did the same to him.  He leaned down and kissed the tip of her nose softly, making her smile.  “This is…dangerous,” he whispered as he stared at her lips.

“Yes,” Y/N agreed.  “We should probably stop.”

“Probably,” Bucky nodded but didn’t move away.  

Y/N took the initiative and pushed away from him again.  “Let’s, uh, get some sleep,” she said, disappointment laced in her tone.

“…okay,” Bucky said, feeling dejected but knowing it was probably for the best.

They awkwardly lay close together again, letting the warmth envelop them and eventually dozing off to sleep.

[rambleonwaywardson]

Clegan Astronaut AU - Part 17

Masterpost Read on AO3

AU Summary: the boys as modern day NASA astronauts. Taking place in 2025, Bucky is about to head to the moon as mission commander of Artemis III while Buck is CAPCOM at NASA. Established relationship (obnoxiously in love).

Author's Note: Thank you so so so much to everyone who has been so understanding of me needing to take some extra time with this now! I love you all. I originally was going to end this chapter very differently but had to split it because I wanted to focus more on certain things, so you'll be getting yet another extra chapter than planned.

---

Somewhere between November 27 and November 28 Houston, TX

Alive. 

Alive. 

Alive. 

The late November stars in the darkness over Houston shine bright – at least, those bright enough to shine through the night lights of a city. If one could see them up close, they’d be fiery reds and blues and yellows. But way up there in the geocentric sky, they’re mostly just white. Explosive, burning masses of hydrogen and helium dozens to hundreds to thousands of lightyears away. 

They don’t sleep, and neither does Gale. 

It might seem funny that he’s wide awake. For days, he could hardly sleep because his husband wasn’t at his side, because he was worried sick he may never sleep beside John again. Now Bucky is here, and Gale still can’t bring himself to sleep. All he can do is sit on the uncomfortable couch beside the hospital bed and stare at the still form of his husband, broken and bruised but still breathing. He listens to the beeping of his heart monitor, and every beat seems to echo the words Gale is trying to drill into his head. 

Alive. 

Alive. 

Alive. 

After so many days spent preparing for the worst – grieving a loss he was sure would come but couldn’t bear to believe – Gale barely dares to look away. He’s worried that if he does, John will somehow slip from his grasp once again, pull away from this world even after everything it took to bring him back to it. What if he looks away, and in the absence of his gaze, Bucky drifts into the open void of the unknowable?

To the stars from which we came, the stars to which we return. Bucky Egan, at the very least, wouldn’t mind having died out there, pushing the boundaries of human exploration, ever the wanderlust-fueled explorer. But here? In a hospital?

Stop it, Gale. 

John is here, bound by gravity once again where Gale can touch him and talk to him and see his smile. He’s fine. He’s recovering. The worst is over.

But still, Gale watches. No matter how many times his tired eyes threaten to close, how shallowly his own heart beats, how fuzzy his head feels. He reminds himself to keep breathing, and he counts Bucky’s breaths, too. Bucky’s lungs fill with Oxygen, and they fill Gale’s with hope. 

Sometime too early in the morning, just hours after he finally laid eyes on his husband for the first time in weeks, Gale feels himself drifting. The TV in the corner of the room is playing on mute, some 80s rom-com that he always confuses with some other 80s rom-com. If John were awake and coherent, he’d insist on coming up with his own dialogue and plot-lines for whatever is silently happening on screen. Absurd stories that would never be aired on television but always, inevitably, make Gale laugh. 

Bucky’s knocked out, though, and it becomes harder and harder for Gale to keep his eyes open. He rests his chin in his hand and looks out the window, at the high-rise view of the lit up, lonely Houston street. Streetlights below, stars above, a black cloudless sky and a glowing quarter moon. That nowhere and everywhere that they’ve both chased for their entire lives. It’s not meant for humans to claim, and Gale grips his hair in his fingers, stares at Earth’s only natural satellite, and thanks it for not claiming his husband. He hears the rhythm of Bucky’s heartbeat, and it beats in time with the pulse of the universe that gave him this life to run with. 

Gale imagines being up there, chasing that infinity again. What does it say about him, that even after all this, he’s itching to get on that rocket, walk on the lunar surface, see the Earthrise from 240,000 miles away? He longs for it almost as much as he longs to hold John in his arms. It’s what both of them were meant to do. 

Their relationship has always been that way: fully dedicated to one another, but just as dedicated to their careers. Split three ways. Buck, Bucky, and boundless flight. 

He imagines looking down on their perfectly imperfect planet through Orion’s window, or Gateway’s or Starship’s – the view that he’s dreamed of, worked for, his entire life. He imagines hurtling through that wide open cosmos towards the moon and beyond, little beacon stars lighting his way to the next frontier, the next dream. He imagines setting foot on that fine lunar soil, craters rising up on all sides, his footsteps imprinted on the surface for years to come.

Or, more simply, he imagines flying a plane through the night sky, the dark Gulf beneath him, the coastline, an invisible map that he knows like the back of his hand. This world that he loves in this universe that he loves, and he’s soaring high above it all in a plane that is his purest home. Free and fearless and full of life. The only place he’s ever felt like he truly, unequivocally, knows who he is and where he’s meant to be. It could be an Air Force jet, a bomber, a NASA trainer. Or it could be his own little prop plane. 

He can feel the familiar controls in his hand, energy thrumming through the aircraft and straight into him. He can hear it so clearly, as if he’s taking off from the runway at this very moment. He inhales with the sense of peace that washes over him, the simultaneous rush of adrenaline that it brings him. He imagines the way he can bank and roll and spin through the sky, completely in control and yet untethered from the rest of reality. Lost in the clouds. Maybe it’s just him, or maybe Bucky’s at his side, stars in his eyes and a grin on his face as they soar higher and higher. Maybe his hand finds Gale’s. They look each other in the eye, and Gale feels all the wrongs of this life wash away.

Two pilots. Two astronauts. Two Buckies. The way the world is meant to be.

“Gale?”

John’s voice cuts through the thick, quiet, TV-lit dimness of this wonderland of the sick and broken, dragging Gale back down to Earth. The sound is so small that Gale almost wonders if he really heard it, or if it was simply an echo of his drifting not-quite-day-dream. But his ears are tuned to the sound of John’s voice, and no matter how soft, it hits him like a wall of stone. Weak and nervous, the same as it was on Starship and Orion. Like a child waking alone in the darkness with no one to hold onto.

Gale, not for the first time, wonders why, in a place of fear and vulnerability, Bucky has turned to calling him by his real name. Gale not Buck. 

He gets to his feet, feels the room tilt around his own fatigue and undoubted dehydration. “I’m here darlin’,” he manages to say. 

In the LED light of the television, he sees Bucky’s eyes, open and unfocused. They seem to find Gale, though, latching onto him like he’s a flame in the dark. Bucky doesn’t smile, but a certain tension leaves the worried set of his features as he follows Gale’s every move.

At the side of the bed, Gale gently grasps Bucky’s clammy hand in his, mindlessly rubs his thumb along the silver band on his ring finger. Mine. My heart. My soul. My love. “What’s wrong?”

Bucky stares at him, eyes wide, as if he can’t believe Gale is there. “‘S’not Orion.”

Gale shakes his head, biting at his lower lip as his heart looks for its own steady beat. “No,” he agrees. “You’re home. You’re in the hospital.”

“Oh.” That’s it. Just oh. Like it makes sense but also makes no sense at all, and Gale doesn’t know which it is or if it’s somehow both. Maybe he could’ve told Bucky he was anywhere and he would’ve believed it. As he’s trying to sort through what comes next – trying to figure out if Bucky remembers anything or if he understands where he is and why – Bucky says something else. “You’re here.” Again, like he can’t believe it.

Gale squeezes his hand gently, holds back a choked breath when Bucky squeezes back. He uses his other hand to stroke Bucky’s cheek, feeling the warmth there, the softness of his skin, solid and whole. “I’m right here,” he whispers, because his own voice isn’t strong enough to say it any louder. 

The next word to come out of Bucky’s mouth is the last for the night, but it carves something sad and grateful and all-over undefinable deep into Gale’s chest. He looks into Gale’s eyes and his lips part and it comes out in a rush of breath that is so simple but ties this fractured reality together again. 

“Stay?”

So he stays. 

Two people, especially two grown men, really, really do not fit in a hospital bed. But Buck and Bucky tend to find ways to bend the laws of physical space to their will, to accommodate the whole that they collectively constitute. Gale helps Bucky scoot over, ever careful of his casted leg, and he eases himself into the bed, wraps himself around his husband like he alone can hold the pieces of him together. The warmth of Bucky’s body pressed against him settles something in Gale’s soul, and his heart swells at the familiarity of having this man in his arms – something he went too long without and nearly lost all together. Bucky is fast asleep the moment he nuzzles into Gale’s chest, and try as he might to stay awake with this ridiculous notion that he needs to watch over Bucky, Gale drifts off without fear clutching at his throat for the first time in weeks. 

They only get a few hours of quiet, nightmare-free sleep before the morning nurse walks in and finds two world-renowned astronauts tucked against each other between the cramped bed rails. Her patient is sound asleep, his face finally relaxed instead of pained. Gale’s face is tucked into the crook of Bucky’s neck, his hand on Bucky’s chest. She can do nothing but smile, shake her head, and do her best not to wake them.

Gale’s eyes groggily open to the rising light of a cloudy dawn and the sound of the nurse adjusting Bucky’s IV. But she just pats him on the leg and tells him to go back to sleep. She was briefed by her superiors and by NASA itself. She knows what kind of Hell they’ve both been dragged through. If John Egan and Gale Cleven want to share a bed for a few hours, they can damn well share a bed.

—

That first morning that Bucky wakes up in the hospital, he’s convinced he’s on Orion. Faintly, he hears rustling around him, feels someone prodding at his IV, his leg, his head. Without even opening his eyes, he winces at the pain. His head feels like it’s splitting in half. He tries weakly to push away the hands holding him in place, hears someone shushing him like a spooked animal, tries to push them away, too. And then all of it is gone.

Some time later – it could be an eternity for all he cares, but Gale tells him it was only about an hour – the sound of quiet music brings him back to the surface. The wake-up alarm, for sure. He tries to blink his eyes open, but his eyelids feel heavy and sticky and don’t want to cooperate. He sees glimpses of bright light, grays and whites above him. Orion’s interior. Someone is beside him; he can feel them. Rosie, probably.

“I’ll be home for Christmas, you can count on me…”

Bucky wonders who on Earth – or not on Earth – chose a Christmas song as their morning alarm.

But then a gentle hand is wiping sweat off his forehead, trailing down his cheek like it just doesn’t want to pull away quite yet. Someone isn’t just beside him, but he can feel them pressed up against him, all along his side, warm and comforting. A soft weight is pressed over his chest – someone’s arm, not holding him down, but simply holding him. Slowly, the music becomes clearer, and he realizes that it isn’t a song playing over Orion’s speakers. Instead, the someone beside him is singing quietly, a deep, smooth voice that brings Bucky to pieces every time he hears it.

Why is Buck on Orion?

“Christmas Eve’ll find me, where the love light gleams…”

Bucky fights to open his eyes all the way, tilting his head towards the warmth at his side, the voice in his ear. But Gale’s voice trails off when he notices Bucky stirring. Bucky whines in protest, and Gale picks back up, finishes the last few lines of the song.

Finally, Bucky’s vision comes into focus, and he sees a tall white ceiling above him, monitors on either side of the bed he’s laying on. His leg is held together by a stiff, scratchy cast, elevated at the end of the mattress. The walls are white and empty. Square.

Not Orion. Too big. 

Bucky’s heart rate jumps, and he hears a beeping noise reflect that for everyone around to hear.

“Hey, it’s alright.” Gale’s hand gently cups the side of Bucky’s face again, his thumb rubbing gently over his brow, then his cheek.

Bucky opens his mouth to say something, to ask what’s going on because his brain is only putting together bits and pieces that he can’t fully wrap his head around. He feels like, somewhere, he remembers things that happened, but he doesn’t remember what they were. He doesn’t remember the when or the how. He was on the moon. And then he was in pain. And a lot is missing but somehow he was on Orion again, and all he can remember is blurry moments, pain and fear and sickness. Somewhere, he knows where he is and how he got here, like it’s right on the tip of his tongue, but his brain can’t find the correct puzzle pieces to fill in the gap. They’re there, but they’re not where they need to be. And now he finds that his throat hurts and his head hurts and his lips are dry and sticky and-

“Here,” Gale says. He turns away to pick up a cup of water, and he guides a straw to Bucky’s mouth. “Water. It’ll help.”

Water. Bucky can do water. He clasps the straw between his lips and sucks on it gratefully. It tastes different than what they had up there.

When Gale pulls the cup away and sets it on the little table beside the hospital bed, Bucky finally comprehends that Gale is laying on the bed beside him, squished in between the bars. They’re in a hospital room. He remembers Gale being here when it was dark, kneeling on the floor, crying against Bucky��s hand. His husband looks wrecked, exhausted, worn out. 

Because of Bucky.

And yet he turns back over, propping himself up on his side with one elbow, and there’s a small, hopeful smile on his face.

Because of Bucky.

Two things can be true. 

“Christmas songs?” Those are Bucky’s first words of the morning, scraping out of a scratchy throat but strong and intentional nonetheless. “How long was I out?”

Gale’s thumb strokes lazy patterns over Bucky’s chest, covered by a thin hospital gown. “It’s November 28th. You splashed down on the 26th and arrived stateside yesterday.”

A little laugh pops up out of Bucky’s sore chest. Everything is sore, and the laugh makes the pounding in his head intensify. But it’s worth it to see the way Gale’s tired eyes get a little brighter. Usually, Bucky is the one trying to celebrate Christmas as early as possible, even before Thanksgiving comes around. The moment Halloween is over, Bucky moves right on to holiday cheer. Buck is always the one futilely begging him to wait until December. Yet here he is, singing Bucky a Christmas song.

“You like them,” Gale mutters quietly, reading Bucky’s mind. And Bucky gets totally lost in the way Gale’s eyes shyly flutter downward as he looks away, biting gently at his lower lip. Bucky lifts his hand, which feels as heavy as lead, and rests it over top of Gale’s. The touch sends a bolt of electricity through him, like they’re just awkward teenagers again, holding hands for the first time, and it grounds Bucky back to this planet.

Gale reaches forward suddenly to grab something before it falls to the floor. A little stuffed bear in a NASA shirt. Delicately, he presses Beary Egan back against Bucky’s side, secure between his chest and bicep. Bucky looks down at the little guy. “I remember you,” he mumbles fondly.

His brain feels fuzzy, and he wishes his head would stop pounding so bad. He looks at Gale, wants to say something, the words on the tip of his tongue. But he can’t hold onto them, like trying to catch a bug in a net, and he forces his eyes to focus on his husband’s face. Soft and familiar and the most beautiful thing he’s ever seen. 

I love you, he wants to say. His lips move, but the sound doesn’t quite make it out. Gale kisses the top of his head and pulls him close, so Bucky is resting against his chest. He starts singing White Christmas, low and sweet, his lips brushing against the hair still exposed at the top of Bucky’s head above the bandage. Bucky smiles, and as he fiddles mindlessly with his husband’s fingers, he can feel Gale smiling, too. 

—

Those first 24 hours are the most promising. Bucky rapidly regains strength under the hospital’s care. He wakes several times throughout the day, seeming alert and aware. He complains about the scratchy hospital gown, and he goes so far as to mention things he remembers about the mission. “Didn’t get the plants,” he’ll say. Or “‘S’quiet on the moon” or “felt sick a lot.” Sometimes he doesn’t have the words for what he wants to say, even if Gale asks him about something specific. He might smile or frown or shrug, part his lips to answer but stop short of spitting out the sounds. He looks out the window, watches whatever’s on TV, holds Gale’s hand. His fine motor control remains shaky, and Gale finds himself having to help him eat sometimes – more soup for now – especially later in the day when Bucky gets more fatigued. The doctor assures Gale that regaining full motor control may take time, but is likely at the rate Bucky is progressing.

Bucky asks about Pepper at some point. Gale doesn’t have the heart to tell him that she’s been grieving his absence. He tells him that’s she’s staying with Benny right now, that she misses him. 

Gale slips out for a few hours in the middle of the afternoon to head to JSC, where he debriefs with Mission Control, Harding, and the rest of the crew. It’s the first of several meetings of the sort, where they’ll discuss everything from spacecraft performance to experiment results to crew health. For now, they tiptoe around the elephant in the room – what went wrong with that rover. Bucky’s accident and everything that followed will constitute its own debrief, or possibly more than one.

Before heading off with Marge to prep for a post-flight press conference, the three present crew members ask about Bucky, and Gale assures them that he’s doing okay.

The man in question is asleep when Gale returns in a fresh change of clothes. He’s carrying two duffel bags – one full of clothes and supplies for himself, and one full of clothes for Bucky so he doesn’t have to wear that awful gown. He drops the bags in the corner of the room and takes the opportunity to turn the TV back on, volume low. He flips to the press conference. Harding and Marge are both present to moderate, and Curt, Rosie, and Alex, dressed in flight suits, sit together at a long table emblazoned with a NASA Artemis banner. Gale listens as they answer questions about the mission, but he finds he can’t focus for shit.

The press room is packed full of people, buzzing with a need-to-know energy. Of course, the first reporters to shoot their hands into the air ask about Bucky’s condition, to which Rosie responds that the commander is “recovering well.” The next is about the injuries he sustained, and then there’s one about if he’s expected to make a full recovery. “We’re optimistic,” Rosie says – code for, we hope so, but we don’t know. 

Gale knows that, as the questions pour in about what happened and how it happened and what it means for NASA, Marge and Harding will begin to shift the conference away from John’s accident entirely. A single “how can NASA justify such a dangerous program” will be professionally answered, and then any further questions regarding the incident will be pushed aside for now. But Gale doesn’t make it that far anyway. 

When someone asks for an account of what went wrong that day on the moon, Curt, as the only other person present, is forced to explain what happened at Shackleton Crater. He makes every effort to speak professionally, but everyone watching can plainly see that it’s an uncomfortable conversation to have. Gale can’t stand to listen for even another second.

He’ll be forced to relive what happened over and over for months, maybe years to come. He’ll hear it in debriefings and on the news. He’ll discuss it in interviews and press conferences. It’ll loom over him as he prepares for his own mission. It’ll haunt his dreams, even when Bucky is home safe, healthy and happy and raring for another go. It won’t leave him. Ever.

So for now, he turns off the TV. He sits quietly. He listens to the beeping heart monitor. And he tries not to forget that his husband is alive beside him.

—

The nurses allow a handful of visitors over the weekend. Bucky experiences intense periods of discomfort and confusion overnight, but once again seems lucid in the morning. Whatever they put in the IV is starting to dull the fever and helps with the pain, but only so much can be done when the pain is nearly unbearable. It also has the side effect of making Bucky feel nauseous throughout the day. Despite all of that, he’s in good spirits, making small talk with the nurse as she takes his vitals or kissing the back of Gale’s hand whenever he has the chance. So, late on Saturday morning, Gale leaves for another debriefing at JSC, and he returns in the afternoon with Benny and Marge trailing after him.

One of the nurses lets Gale know that Bucky woke again about an hour ago, cooperated well for all of his hygiene tasks, and ate some yogurt. He seems lucid now, but had an initial moment of anxiety when he realized Gale was gone. The head of the bed is raised, so he’s in an upright sitting position, now dressed in an old Air Force t-shirt and gray shorts. A fresh bandage is wrapped around his head.

“You look like shit,” Benny tells him as he stops at the end of the bed, arms crossed. He grins at Bucky, who raises a hand and just about manages to flip him off.

Marge goes straight to the bedside, leaning in to wrap Bucky in a tight hug. He raises both arms to hug her back with a force that surprises both of them. On Earth and in proper healthcare, he’s finally regaining the strength for things like that, even if his hands don’t always work right. 

“I’m so glad you’re back,” Marge whispers.

“Kinda miss the moon,” Bucky whispers back. Gale, who stands on the other side of Bucky’s bed, smacks him gently on the shoulder, making Bucky smile. “I missed ya, Marge,” he says sincerely as she lets go.

“Didn’t miss me?” Benny asks.

Bucky playfully glares at him. “Heard enough of your voice for a lifetime.” 

Benny rolls his eyes, but he switches places with Marge to give Bucky a hug. “I’m glad you didn’t die.” He pulls away and motions to Gale. “Your husband would’ve been a nightmare to deal with.”

Gale scowls and raises an eyebrow, unimpressed. Bucky reaches for his hand, kisses his knuckles. And none of them say a word about the fact that Gale was nearly inconsolable as it was.

Bucky looks at Marge. “Saw the guys on the, um… the…” He points vaguely to the TV and closes his eyes in frustration. 

“The news,” Gale supplies, and Bucky nods. “I didn’t know you were awake for that.”

Bucky shrugs. “I never really know when I’m awake.” This makes Benny snort, because it sounds like such a John thing to say, and yet right now it’s actually true. 

Marge sits at the end of Bucky’s bed. “Hope it’s alright they did the post-flight press conference without their commander.”

“Doesn’t seem right, huh?” Bucky points out. He smiles though, so Marge knows he doesn’t mean it. He knows there wasn’t much choice. “World’s gonna think I’m dyin’.”

“Well,” Benny starts to say, but Gale hits him with a nasty glare that shuts him up. 

Marge rolls her eyes. “What? Do you want me to post a picture of you or something? Prove you’re alive?” She’s joking, but Bucky isn’t. 

So the Artemis PAO posts two photographs on NASA’s various relevant social media accounts: one of Bucky sitting up in the hospital bed, head wrapped, leg in a cast, face pale, but smiling brightly with two thumbs up; and one candid of him and Gale, looking at each other with all the love in the world, their hands clasped together on top of the shitty hospital mattress. 

She drafts a brief statement to go with them, starting with the words: “Artemis 3 commander, Major John Egan, is recovering well after his incident at the lunar South Pole.” She also includes, at his insistence, the sentiment that he’d go back, it was the mission of a lifetime, and he’s grateful to have had such an amazing crew up there with him. 

She does not include his message of “fuck you” to everyone who thought he deserved it.  

—

When Harding comes by in the afternoon, he first pulls Gale into a tight hug. No words pass between them, but the look Chick gives him says everything that needs to be said. I’m proud of you, I’m here for you, everything will be okay. 

Both of them are caught in a nervous sense of relief and tentative hope. They both thought they might lose John. One of Harding’s boys. Gale’s entire world. They both felt, in their own ways, the world crash around them. No one saw the director of the spaceflight program break every wine glass in his kitchen cabinet by chucking them at the wall. No one saw the way he paced in the darkness and screamed at the moon and interrogated every man and woman who had a hand in building that damn rover. 

All they saw was a hardened, fearless man, hell bent on bringing his astronauts home. He spoke to the press every day, fielded every absurd question they had. He directed the flight controllers and oversaw the task forces and pushed them all to do better, work harder, find more solutions. He watched Gale fall apart. He prepared for John’s death, had to have Marge draft a damn statement about it – something she never told Gale. He had to stand in his office and practice giving it, stone-faced, in the event he had to give it on live television.

Today we lost an American hero… He gave his life doing what he loved… 

John Egan, a good pilot, a good astronaut, a good husband…

This is a devastating loss for the NASA community and for America…

We commit his soul to the stars, and we hope he will fly among them with the same fire in his heart…

“Hey Chick.” 

Chick takes a long moment to stare at Bucky, upright in the hospital bed. He looks sick, but he doesn’t look small. He doesn’t look weak.  

We commit his soul to the stars…

The words ring in Chick’s head, and just a few days after Thanksgiving, he can’t thank this world enough for not forcing him to say them on a live broadcast. Miraculously, John’s wild, unruly soul still has a home on this Earth, reflected in his grin, in the way his curls stick up in all different directions from beneath the bandage around his head, the glint in his eyes, still glassy from fever but wide open and watching. 

“Well if it isn’t the man of the hour,” Harding says, pushing aside the emotion he feels. He shoves his hands into his pockets, then pulls them back out, adjusts the collar of his shirt, looks at Bucky’s cast, his IV, his fever-reddened cheeks. Listens to the heart monitor playing its steady song.

Bucky reaches an arm up, inviting Chick in for a hug that both of them desperately need. Chick will swear he didn’t cry, but it was damn close.

Bucky smirks at him when he stands upright again. “I think I deserve man of the year.”

—

When the rest of the crew comes to visit on Sunday, finally released from NASA’s laundry list of initial debriefings and medical checks, the first thing that happens is they come marching into the room single file, singing “We’re glad you’re not dead” to the tune of Happy Birthday. Gale doesn’t know if he should laugh or hide his face in second hand embarrassment. Bucky waves his hand in the air like a conductor as they gather around his bed, Curt on his right, Rosie seated at the foot of the bed, Alex standing at the end. Gale sits on the couch, present but allowing the four crewmates some space.

The second thing that happens is all four astronauts stick their tongues out at each other. Gale raises his eyebrow, but not a single one explains. 

The third thing that happens is Curt hands over a sealed silver packet, much like the ones they had on the spacecraft. Exactly like the ones they had on the spacecraft.

“The fuck?” Bucky scoffs, even as he grabs the packet. “Hospital food’s bad. Space food ain’t much better.”

“Orange juice,” Curt says. He’s pleased when Bucky’s eyes widen a little bit, skepticism replaced with gratitude. “Buck mentioned the juice here kinda sucked. Nicked it from the space center this morning.”

Curt and Rosie both have half a mind to open the pouch for Bucky, hold it up for him to sip from. But Bucky pops the top off all on his own and presses the straw between his lips. He nods in approval after taking a sip. “Thank you, orange juice, for keeping me alive.”

Curt holds a hand over his heart, using the other to motion to himself and Rosie. “I think the orange juice had a little help.”

Bucky waves a hand to brush them off with a roll of his eyes, but then he grins at them. “I wouldn’t, uh…” He tilts his head, squinting as he seems to lose the words he wanted to say, and the grin falls away. After a long few seconds, he looks at them again, a more tempered smile returning to his face. “Wouldn’t be here if… if it weren’t for you two.” 

Even if the words would stop fading from his brain, there aren’t any words that can appropriately encapsulate what Bucky needs to say. How do you thank someone for saving your life in a situation that is quite literally beyond the human limits of survival? How do you thank them for looking after you, day and night, doing whatever needed to be done just to make sure you kept breathing? How do you express regret for having upended the once in a lifetime mission that they’d spent years preparing for? Sadness for what was sacrificed? Gratitude for making that sacrifice anyway?

Curt shakes his head and rests a hand on Bucky’s shoulder. “Couldn’t stand the idea of flyin’ home with your dead body in a space suit. Keepin’ ya alive was the best way to avoid it.”

Bucky looks up at him. “Sorry you didn’t get to…” He sighs and shakes his head.

“The plants,” Gale calls out.

Bucky nods. “The plants.”

He doesn’t remember much of anything from those touch and go days on Starship. But in every memory he does have of it, Curt is right there with him. Curt, standing over him with worry all over his face. Curt, speaking to Houston. Curt, staring out the window at the little greenhouse he’d never see again. Curt, cleaning up Bucky’s messes and struggling to get him into the OCS suit. Curt, reaching out to him, telling him he was gonna be alright.

Little snapshots of a blurry, industrial world. Whites and grays and pain and fear. And in the middle of it all, Curt.

The Artemis pilot shrugs and grips Bucky’s shoulder a little harder. “You’re worth more to me.” It’s the single most genuine thing Curt has ever said to him. He smiles self-deprecatingly and says “Alright, quit goin’ all sappy on me. I saved your ass. What else is new?”

Bucky laughs and shakes off Curt’s hand. Then he looks at Rosie. “You… are a steely-eyed missile man.” Of all the words to be able to remember, of course, for a space-obsessed boy-turned-pilot-turned-astronaut, that term sticks out loud and clear.

“I think that title is reserved for the engineers,” Rosie chuckles. It’s a name that first popped up in Mission Control during the Apollo days – originating with John Aaron – for an astronaut or engineer who proved resourceful and quick-thinking in a crisis, devising a solution to a life- or mission-threatening problem. “All I did was keep you from finding new ways to fuckin’ off yourself.”

Bucky remembers more of his time on Orion, though not all of it. Mostly he remembers the pain and the nausea, the feeling of his body floating in pieces, no longer a whole. He remembers the stars and the Earth out the window. Beary Egan in his hands. He remembers Rosie trying to get him to eat. Rosie, at his side day and night. Rosie, brushing back his sweaty hair and hugging him when he couldn’t stop shaking. Rosie, trying to convince him to keep fighting just a little longer.

Rosie worked through every single problem. He guided Curt through how to care for Bucky, how to stabilize his leg, hold him down through a seizure, keep him stable. Then on Orion, he hardly slept, watching over Bucky at all times. He prevented Bucky from re-injuring himself, from tearing out his IV. He worked out how to keep Bucky going on rationed IV fluid and the little food he could stomach. Sure, Houston was there to help. But Dr. Rosenthal is the one that actively figured out how to keep Bucky alive at every point of their journey back to Earth. He foresaw and solved the problems. He brought Bucky home.

So Bucky shakes his head when Rosie tries to be modest. He looks at Gale. “Buck, tell Marge to write up somethin’ ‘bout Rosie. Steely-eyed missile man.”

“I don’t tell Marge what to do,” Gale says flatly.

Bucky rolls his eyes. “Ask her.” He catches Gale’s eye and points at Rosie again. It takes him another moment to get the words right, and they fumble through his lips, but they make it through. “This man d-deserves it more ‘n anyone.”

Articles about Dr. Robert ‘Rosie’ Rosenthal, the “steely-eyed missile man” who got Major Egan home, will be circulating within 48 hours. 

Finally, Bucky looks at Alex. “And you… thanks for lookin’ after her.” He means the capsule, of course. Alex stepped in when Bucky couldn’t, made sure Orion kept functioning and got them all home in one piece. “G-Got her home at least as good as I could’ve.” 

Alex rolls his eyes, but the engineer smiles and sets a hand on Bucky’s leg. “I wish you didn’t almost clock out on us, but it was a hell of a ride.”

Gale watches the four of them laugh and joke and give each other shit. Even as Bucky starts to lose energy, Gale sees the way he smiles at his crew, sticks his tongue out when Curt says something rude. The way he tries to stay present even when the words seem to leave him. The way he leans into Rosie when the physician gives him a tight side hug. The way he willingly hands Beary Egan off to Alex to inspect before protectively taking the plushie back again. 

This right here is their family. They’d each do just about anything for one another – not even the sky's the limit. And yet Gale feels like he’s indebted to them for life, because against all odds, they brought his husband home to him.

—

Somewhere in the liminal space between Sunday and Monday, Gale has to wake Bucky – twitching, near-crying, and scratching at his IV – from a nightmare. Bucky won’t speak, won’t tell Gale what the nightmare was about. He holds onto Gale’s hand and won’t let go until Gale finally climbs into the bed beside him, holding him tight. Beary Egan remains clutched to his chest.

Monday morning finds him in another state of confusion, more or less mute with an elevated heart rate signifying his distress. He keeps trying to get at the cast on his leg or pull off the bandage on his head. He scrabbles weakly at the IV and tries to lash out when the nurse attempts to restrain his hands for his own safety. Gale has to clamp both of Bucky’s hands tightly in his own as he tries to ask him to calm down and assures him he’s alright. He quietly sings Blue Skies, looks into wild blue eyes. He squeezes Bucky’s hands, and slowly Bucky’s heart rate drops; the tension leaves his body.

The nurse ups his morphine, and he’s out again.

The next time he wakes, early Monday afternoon, Bucky is of clearer mind. Gale, who left for a few hours to stop by JSC, returns to the hospital to find him flirting with the nurse taking his vitals. He’s eating scrambled eggs, his hand trembling the littlest bit as he lifts his fork to his mouth, but he’s smiling at the nurse. She blushes at something he says, and Gale knocks on the open door.

Bucky’s eyes are clear and focused as they immediately shift to Gale, who is dressed in black jeans, a gray long-sleeve, and a NASA flight jacket with his hair gelled back. 

“There’s my lovely wife!” The smile on Bucky’s face widens, and a glob of scrambled eggs tumbles off his fork and onto the plate. He glares at it and lowers the fork back to the plate as well. 

The corner of Gale’s mouth curves up as he leans against the door frame. “Losin’ interest in me already?” 

“You’ve had me wrapped around your finger since we met, doll.” Bucky reaches a hand out, causing the IV to tug at the skin – red and irritated from his attempts to remove it this morning. Gale fully enters the room to take Bucky’s hand. Then Bucky motions to the nurse. “Doesn’t mean I can’t tell Clara she looks beautiful today.”

The nurse – Clara – smiles shyly as she jots down information on Bucky’s chart. “And you certainly keep us on our toes Major Egan.”

“What he does best,” Gale agrees. He looks down as Bucky slides his hand away once again, looking intently at his plate. 

“His temperature is going down,” Clara tells Gale by way of update. “Only 99.2, so the propranolol seems to be helping. We’re very pleased.” 

“Damn eggs,” Bucky mutters. He picks up the fork again and scoops up some of the offending eggs. His hand shakes as he lifts the fork to his mouth and barely manages to get his lips around it. No matter how many times he’s told it’ll take some good occupational therapy to regain fine motor control, he’s pissed about it. 

Clara sets the clipboard with John’s chart down on the mattress. “Shall we take a look at that scalp infection? If it’s healing nicely, we can keep the bandage off.”

Bucky nods, and Clara unwinds the gauze from around his head. The healing gash is a lot less angry than it was before, and she deems it improved enough to keep the wrap off for now. Bucky raises a tentative hand to the back of his head, feeling the patch of stubbly hair where they had to shave it once again upon his arrival. Gale gently smacks his hand. “That’s what got you in trouble in the first place.”

Bucky scowls but lets his hand be guided away from his head. “Think it was the rover that got me in trouble.”

Gale can’t really argue with that, and he tries to push past the unsettled feeling the statement leaves him with. Sensing the sudden tension, Clara pats Bucky on the shoulder, tells him to try to finish his eggs, and leaves the couple be.

Over the next 24 hours, Bucky manages to not only finish his scrambled eggs but also eat jell-o, a late dinner of chicken and rice, and half a pancake for breakfast that he savors the taste of but nearly throws back up – too rich too fast. Sometimes he needs Gale’s help holding the utensils, and sometimes he doesn’t. They go on a couple of walks around the hospital ward, Gale pushing Bucky in a wheelchair. 

They talk until Bucky’s brain refuses to talk anymore. Then they stay in peaceful silence, or Gale fills the gaps with stories, well-wishes from friends, or, most often by Bucky’s request, more singing. Bucky drifts in and out of consciousness with a far better sense of place and time than when he was on Orion, but his baseline anxiety levels are elevated. Overnight, they deal with more nightmares, more heart rate and blood pressure spikes, more lapses in memory and awareness. 

Turns out Gale isn’t the only one with a newfound unease in the night.

In the daylight, Bucky’s cognitive capabilities are far more reliable, and he seems nearly normal. Cocky, charismatic Major Bucky Egan with the winning smile, flirting with Gale and every nurse – young or old, male or female – who attends to him. 

On Tuesday, Bucky’s fever is gone. The headwrap stays off. Rosie comes by early that afternoon to visit and consult with the doctor, who lets Gale know that Bucky will likely be able to go home the next day. Rosie helps Gale make a list of things he’ll need to do to help Bucky at home, and he assures Gale he’ll help out, too.

It feels like they’ve climbed a damn mountain, and they’re so close to the summit. It’s the bottom of the ninth, as Bucky would say. He’s running for home.

—

The first time Gale hears Bucky cough is early on Tuesday evening. He hardly even glances up from his laptop. Just a quick look to make sure John is alright and then, seeing his husband peacefully asleep, he goes back to reviewing Orion flight data sent over from JSC, noting down how Artemis 3 findings may impact Artemis 4 protocols. A couple hours later, when he hears it again, it’s louder, wetter, and Gale frowns. But still, Bucky remains asleep, his brow just the slightest bit scrunched. Gale watches him for a minute before returning to his work, running a hand through his hair as he stifles a yawn. He takes a sip of shitty hospital coffee, tries to blink the tiredness out of his eyes, and wraps his fists in the soft sleeves of the Yankees sweatshirt that he’s wearing once again.

By about 8pm, he’s struggling to focus on the data swimming across his too-bright laptop screen, fending off a headache of his own. He’s debating whether or not he can stomach food from the hospital cafeteria, or if he’s better off going in search of something else nearby. Hunger is, for better or worse, something he’s started actually feeling again since Bucky has been progressing under the hospital’s care. 

He’s thinking about calling Benny or Marge to see if they want to meet at the Hundred Proof when the coughing starts up again. And this time, it doesn’t stop. Instead, when Gale looks up from his laptop, Bucky’s eyes are wide open, and he’s coughing so hard his face is turning red. He winces at the pain that the violent motion causes to his head and body. Gale sets his laptop aside and steps over to the bed, helps Bucky to sit up, rubs a hand up and down his back and presses the other to his chest. 

“Gale?” Bucky whispers. His face looks panicked, scared. And it pulls at Gale’s heart as he wonders if this is what Bucky looked like on Orion, every time he reached out into the void, hoping for Gale to be there. He takes Bucky’s hand in his and squeezes, a silent I’m here. A secret, I’m sorry I wasn’t before.

When the coughing subsides and Bucky manages to catch his breath, he makes a disgusted face and gags a little bit. Gale grabs a napkin from the tray at Bucky’s bedside, holds it out for Bucky to spit into, which he does. “You alright?���

Bucky squints and shakes his head, lifting a hand to rub at his eyes. He sniffs, and Gale notices for the first time that Bucky’s all stuffed up again, breathing mostly through his mouth. His eyes are a little red and watery, lips chapped, cheeks pink. The dark curls over his forehead are damp with sweat.

Gale presses his wrist to Bucky’s forehead, and he sighs. “You’re warm.”

Bucky looks up at him. The fever he’d been fighting since his return trip had finally gone down, and yet here he is all hot and stuffy again. When Bucky talks, his voice is thick with congestion and tired with the difficulty of drawing air into his lungs. “Shit.”

Gale goes to alert one of the nurses, who promptly follows him back to the room to take Bucky’s temperature. Sure enough, it’s back up to 101.

Gale settles for hospital food. He convinces Bucky to drink juice and swallow a few bites of soup, but he refuses anything else. Any progress he made in eating more solid food over the last day is fundamentally lost. Now, he shakes his head and tells Gale that the soup makes him feel sick. 

—

By the middle of the night, Bucky can’t breathe too well anymore. Unregulated gasps give way to pained wheezing as his lungs refuse to draw in the right amount of oxygen. His head is spinning, and he doesn’t know where he is. “Rosie?” he weakly calls out. It’s too dark, he can’t see the other astronauts across from him. He can’t feel Curt’s presence at his side.

He blinks in confusion when someone kneels down beside him, because that isn’t how people move in space. A strong, slender hand grabs onto his. “Look at me, darlin’.”

Bucky blinks slowly, tries to understand why that voice is here. With him. He reaches a hand up to his own ear in search of a com cap that isn’t there. “Buck.” A cough wracks his chest, and he feels any breath he’d managed to draw being choked from his aching lungs.

“I’m gonna get the nurse,” Gale says calmly. 

“No,” Bucky mutters. His hand searches for the side of Gale’s head, wanting to touch, feel, reassure himself that his husband is here. He feels the gravity pull at his limbs, the IV tug at his skin, the pulse pounding through his leg and his chest and his head. “W-Where am I?” 

In the darkness, he sees the way Gale frowns, and then tries to smile again, and then drops any expression entirely. Gale grips his hand harder, uses his other to brush the sweaty hair back from Bucky’s forehead. Bucky’s heart lurches at the familiar feeling, recalling vague memories of others doing that for him on Orion. His eyes feel wet.

Gale doesn’t break eye contact even as the question tears him apart. “You’re in the hospital, sweetheart. In Texas. You came home five days ago.”

Bucky stares at him, trying to compute something that just won’t quite come together. He remembers being here. He doesn’t remember how he got here. He remembers the pain of being on Orion, and yet part of him is angry that he’s back on this Earth. He doesn’t understand how Gale is here, but he wants to hold on and never, ever let go. He still feels dizzy and he can’t stand the sound of his own breathing, strained and inept. His chest hurts.

“I’m gonna get-”

“Don’t go,” Bucky pleads.

Gale looks pained, but he nods. Carefully, not letting go of Bucky’s hand, he reaches over to press the nurse call button beside the bed. He doesn’t leave Bucky’s side until a nurse comes in to see what the problem is. 

The nurse checks his vitals. “You’re gonna be alright,” she says in a calm, southern drawl. She moves about with such certainty, and Gale tracks her every move even as Bucky can’t, his head hurting too much as he focuses on not suffocating. And then the nurse is fitting a nasal cannula under his nose and around his ears, brushing back his hair in the same comforting way that Gale and Curt and Rosie did. 

“We’re gonna get you some extra oxygen here,” the nurse explains. “Just hold your husband’s hand and try to breathe easy, honey.”

—

In the morning, they take Bucky for imaging, and Gale’s fears prove true: everything about Bucky was weak by the time he made it to the hospital, including his immune system. After being isolated from everyone but a select few for weeks on end and receiving little sufficient nutrients for so long, he contracted a cold and some form of pneumonia during his hospital stay. 

They adjust his IV antibiotics, convince him to drink some water, but can’t get him to eat. The doctor pulls Gale into the hall, and she tells him that they want to keep Bucky for a bit longer to make sure they have a good handle on the infection in his lungs. Gale finds himself flexing the hand he’d punched the mirror with – weeks ago, now – looking for something to ground him. But the skin is healed over, painless. He wishes he could punch something else. Wishes he could have a drink. Hates himself for it. 

Instead, he finds himself dropping, numb, to the chair conveniently beside him. He briefly wonders if doctors do that on purpose, give people bad news where there’s an easy place to sit down. 

It’s not like it’s the worst thing she could’ve told him. It’s not like it’s even unexpected. Out of everything that has gone wrong, could have gone wrong, it could be worse. 

But they were so fucking close. 

Gale nods to himself and runs a hand through his hair, blows a heavy breath through his lips. 

“He’ll be just fine, Major Cleven,” the doctor tells him. “He might be weakened. But he’s not weak.” 

Gale nods again. Nothing about John Egan is weak. Never has been. But Gale also isn’t naive. 

The doctor puts a hand on his shoulder and assures him that John will get better soon. And then she leaves him be. 

He texts Rosie an update. Sits quietly for a while, surrounded by white halls, white floors, the scent of disinfectant. He finds it ironic that the hospital that is supposed to help Bucky heal also brought him new sickness. 

“They’ll get him taken care of,” Rosie’s text comes back. “He’ll be home in no time. Let me know if you have any questions or want to talk.”

Gale pockets his phone and gets to his feet. He holds his breath, counts the seconds. One. Two. Three. Four.

When he hits ten, he exhales and walks back to Bucky’s room. Over the last few days, they’ve accumulated get-well cards and a few flower arrangements, a stuffed Husky from Benny. There’s a brand new drawing from Maggie, one of the little girl and Bucky together on the moon. In the corner, a few balloons from the crew – one meant to look like Mars, one like the moon, and one a star. The gifts are scattered around, brightening a sterile room, and Bucky sits in the middle of it, propped up in bed with his casted leg propped on a pillow, Beary Egan resting beside him. His cast has been signed in colorful marker by his crew mates (at Curt’s insistence), a few of the nurses, and by Gale (at Bucky’s insistence). Gale even drew a little paw print for Pepper. 

Gale pauses in the doorway, taking in every detail. He’s struck by the thought that this is a view he’ll remember for the rest of his life: his husband in a hospital bed, hooked up to oxygen, an IV, a heart monitor; his unkempt hair, growing long from too many weeks of not cutting it, curls draped over his ears and his forehead; his face flushed with a fever that won’t go away; the sound of him choking back coughs and the sterile scent of the room. Every good and bad little nuance of this situation collides in an earthquake that leaves Gale a little dazed. It’s all nearly too much, broken puzzle pieces that are too big for the space they try to occupy. The grief he’s been through, a tragedy narrowly avoided, the gratitude he feels, the relief, the despondency that came with the doctor’s news. All wrapped up in a pure and painful, unequivocal love for the man in front of him. They’re emotions that Gale doesn’t have words for, can’t even begin to sort through, but they all rise up in his chest unbidden. 

He leans against the door frame and watches Bucky, who is looking out the window at the late morning light, the trees and the birds. Gale wonders what he’s thinking about. He runs his thumb along his wedding ring, and he notices that Bucky is doing the same. 

It’s at that moment that Bucky turns to look at him. For the first time, Gale thinks he looks small in that bed, face pale, eyes glassy once again. But he smiles at Gale like none of it matters, like they’re on a beach on the Gulf, drenched in sun, instead of stewing here. Gale forces his mouth into a crooked little half-upturned thing to keep the emotion from showing on his face, keep his features steady. His throat feels tight, his own eyes burning. But he blinks away the tears that threaten to well up, and he takes a breath.

“Hey there,” he says.

Bucky lifts his hand, holding it out. Gale steps into the room to take it, and Bucky presses his lips to Gale’s knuckles. “Hi.”

“Doc says you have to stay here a bit longer.”

“I know.”

Gale bites his lip and nods, looking down at their joined hands.

“Hey,” Bucky whispers, prodding Gale to look at him again. “I’ll be alright.”

A fleeting, sad little smile crosses over Gale’s lips, blink and you’ll miss it. “I know.” He squeezes Bucky’s hand, and he decides right then and there that he believes it. Bucky will get better. He has to.

—

It’s not easy. Bucky gets worse before he gets better.

Gale feels like he’s stuck in a weird time loop, where every night and every early morning feels frighteningly similar. Bucky has nightmares or wakes in the dark, in pain and crying out. He panics when he can’t seem to get enough air into his lungs, and the doctors consider intubating him one night, but manage to get his oxygen levels under control before it comes to that. Often, Bucky’s brain plays tricks on him, convinces him he’s on the moon or on Orion. The darkness and the brain fog leave him disoriented and anxious, not comprehending where he is, until a nurse helps Gale calm him down, gives him more sedative. Gale holds his hand or lays beside him, strokes his sweaty hair, presses his lips to the side of his head. He sings quietly or tells mundane stories until Bucky falls asleep again.

The days are better. With the sun streaming through the window in pastel rays that light up the room, Bucky is tired and lethargic, but coherent. He sleeps a lot, as much if not more than he did on Orion. When he’s awake, he talks as much as he can manage, but often loses his train of thought and seems to drift away. If he manages a conversation, the coughing often brings his contribution to an end, leaving his head pounding and his ribs protesting. Gale worries he’ll break one of those, too, if the cough doesn’t leave him alone.

“Quit lookin’ at me like that,” Bucky will say, when he catches Gale watching him with uncertainty all over his face. “I’m not dyin’.” But then he’ll be consumed by coughs, choking on his own breath.

He isn’t allowed visitors anymore due to the risk of exposing him to other germs, but when Gale isn’t around – or even sometimes when he is, just to give him a chance to get some air or some food – the nurses take to spending their breaks with Bucky. Most often, they take him on walks around the ward, pushing his wheelchair easily through the halls. They tell him about their day, and sometimes if he’s up to it, he tells them abridged stories about the moon or flying jets. One day Gale returns from JSC to find Bucky sitting in a wheelchair, one of the little rolling standing desks that doctors use lowered to his height. Nurse Clara sits in a rolling chair on the other side, and they both have a selection of playing cards in their hand.

“What’s this?” Gale asks as he removes his flight jacket, clutching it in one hand. He peeks at Bucky’s cards.

“Go fish,” Bucky replies, glancing up at him, and Gale notices that his eyes are clearer than they were in the morning. Bucky frowns as he slowly, laboriously convinces his fingers to grab onto the corner of a card, shakily laying it on the table.

Gale raises an eyebrow, and Clara smiles at him. “Just a little something to work on his fine motor control and keep his brain engaged.”

“I’m winning,” Bucky states proudly, and Gale kisses him on the head before going to sit on the couch, leaving them to it.

He never thought a game of Go Fish would make him want to cry.

During the worst moments, Bucky can become just as agitated as he was on Orion. He asks for Curt or Rosie or Beary Egan. He scrabbles at his IV, tries to pull it off, nearly succeeds once before Gale takes notice and makes him stop. He complains about his leg or the nausea or the pain in his head, and Gale can do nothing but be there, hold on tight, try to help him calm down. It’s those panicked moments in the middle of the night that leave Gale feeling bereft and alone, like he’s fighting single-handedly for Bucky’s survival. And even then he knows, it’s not even comparable to what Curt and Rosie went through, way out there on their own. 

Gale was there – even if only in voice – every step of the way on Bucky’s journey home, but he is now made aware, in startling clarity, that he wasn’t there. No matter what information he got through the coms, none of it could really pull into focus the reality of working Bucky through this all day and night in real time. He may have been here, a voice in Bucky’s ear, doing his best from thousands of miles away. He may have been here, feeling alone on this blue planet as he grieved the potential loss of the man he loves. He may have been here, living the nightmare in his own way. But he wasn’t really there for the play by play. He didn’t see the extent of Bucky’s pain and disorientation. He didn’t wrangle him into a spacesuit or clean up his vomit or rush to keep him stable when he tore out his IV. He wasn’t there for the nightmares or the bouts of confusion or the refusals to eat or drink or generally cooperate. He wasn’t there.

But now he is. He’s getting a taste of all of it, trying to keep his husband from crumbling away.

Rosie drags him to the Hundred Proof one night for some quality time with friends, even though Gale protests the whole way and keeps insisting he needs to get back to Bucky. “You need to breathe, Buck,” Rosie tells him. 

“He’ll be alright,” Curt adds. Just like everyone keeps telling him. “You need a break.”

Marge hugs him tight and gets him a glass of soda. Gale watches Rosie and Alex play a round of pool. He talks to Curt about anything that pointedly isn’t Artemis, but they inevitably fall into conversation about it anyway. Even so, Gale’s mind barely leaves the hospital the entire time he’s at the bar. Benny smacks him on the back at one point and tells him to get out of his own head.

When he gets back to the hospital that night, Gale is so exhausted that he feels dead on his feet. But he sits on the edge of Bucky’s bed, and he rests the back of his hand against Bucky’s forehead. Too warm still. The fever is going down, but hasn’t disappeared. He listens to Bucky’s strained breathing, marginally improved, and to the machine-echoed beep of his heart rate. Bucky has a new IV, held in place with even more tape than before to prevent him from pulling at it, and Beary Egan is cradled in the same arm.

Bucky scrunches his nose when Gale pulls gently at a soft curl over his forehead, and his eyes flutter open. His lips part to say something, but no words make it out of his sore throat.

Gale kicks off his shoes and slips into the bed, not even bothering to change out of the jeans and sweater he wore to the bar. Bucky’s fingers fumble at the button to raise the head of the bed, but he can’t quite manage in his groggy, half-asleep state, and Gale reaches over to help. The bed raises until they’re both more or less upright, Gale half curled around Bucky in the cramped space. 

Gale’s phone buzzes with a text message from Curt – tell the idiot to get better soon – and he glances down at it. Bucky looks over at the lit up lock screen, and a hoarse noise comes from his throat that makes Gale look over. Bucky blinks and points to the phone. The screen. The photo on the screen.

“Our wedding,” he finally manages to shove out.

It’s the photo from their first look, with Bucky staring at Gale with such adoration it might consume him from the inside out

Gale never managed to get through the whole album, but he saved this one particular photograph as his phone background, because he couldn’t take his eyes off it any better than Bucky could take his eyes off Gale that day in October.

“Mmm.” Gale tilts the phone to better show Bucky. “This one’s my favorite so far. I haven’t looked at the whole album. Couldn’t without you.”

Bucky stares at the photograph, and a sweet little smile lights up his face, even in his exhaustion. “My beautiful bride.”

Gale is about to ask if he wants to look at a few more, but before he can, Bucky chokes on a breath and coughs violently, leaning forward, away from Gale. Gale puts the phone away and rests a hand on Bucky’s back, but the coughing fit only gets worse, until Bucky can hardly breathe at all. He wheezes between wet, desperate coughs, pressing his arm over his abdomen as the force threatens to crack a rib like Gale is so afraid it will.

When it finally subsides, Bucky is left curled over on himself, one hand wrapped over his stomach and the other clutching weakly at Gale’s hand. He’s drenched in sweat, every part of him ranging from sore to extreme pain, and there’s blood on his hand that he coughed up from his lungs. Gale grabs a napkin from the stand by the bed to wipe it off, and he wipes some sweat from Bucky’s forehead.

“Don’t feel good,” Bucky mutters.

Throwing the napkin to the side, Gale grabs the cup of water and offers it to Bucky, guiding the straw to his lips. “Try to drink,” he instructs. Bucky does as he’s told, but pulls away after a couple of sips, and Gale returns the water to the table.

“Come here,” he says. Gently, he eases Bucky back until he’s laying with his head on Gale’s chest. Gale holds tight to Bucky’s hand, and he strokes his fingers through Bucky’s hair. “You’re alright, darlin’. Just rest, okay? You’re gonna be alright.”

Bucky doesn’t protest, just grips Gale’s hand right back as he shakily tries to keep his breathing under control, wills the coughing to leave him alone for a little while. Eventually, Gale feels Bucky’s hand loosen its grip on his, falling lax as he drifts off to sleep once again. 

It’s a long time before Gale allows himself to do the same. He can see the moon through the window, lighting up the night sky, and he has no idea what time it is, but it doesn’t matter. He once again doesn’t want to take his eyes off his husband even for a moment, like his continued existence is contingent on being in Gale’s line of sight. Or maybe it’s just that Gale spent so long unable to set eyes on Bucky, unsure if he ever would again, and now he can’t get enough. Making up for lost time and time he almost lost.

His fingers remain curled over Bucky’s, their hand’s resting on Bucky’s chest, and he feels the gentle, if shaky, rise and fall. He takes a deep breath of his own, as if it can somehow make up for the inadequacy of Bucky’s lungs, give strength to his body.

A song from Curt’s playlist comes to mind, and Gale finds himself singing it softly in the darkness as he holds his husband’s sweaty hand, willing the fever to break, the pain to go away. He wonders, if he stands guard in the night, will the nightmares leave Bucky in peace until morning comes?

“Ooh-ah, Soon you’ll get better,” Gale croons. He’ll stay up all night if he has to, if that’s what it takes for Bucky to rest easy.

“Ooh-ah, soon you’ll get better.”

He willed the universe to bring his husband home to him, and now he wonders if he’s being greedy, asking for more. But all he wants is Bucky to be safe and healthy again, free of pain, free of fear. He meant it when he said he’d love John Egan in any way, in any form, no matter what. But they’re so damn close.

Please. Just let him heal now. Let him rest. Let him come home. Give him this life as he wants to live it.

Please.

“You’ll get better soon.

‘Cause you have to.”

…

…

Everyone thank my beta reader (I don’t deserve them)

Part 18

[literaryvein-reblogs]

Writing Notes: The Moon (pt. 2)

Earth’s Moon is thought to have formed in a tremendous collision. A massive object ― named Theia after the mythological Greek Titan who was the mother of Selene, goddess of the Moon ― smashed into Earth, flinging material into space that became the Moon.

The brightest and largest object in our night sky, the Moon makes Earth a more livable planet by moderating our home planet's wobble on its axis, leading to a relatively stable climate. It also causes tides, creating a rhythm that has guided humans for thousands of years.

The Moon was likely formed after a Mars-sized body collided with Earth several billion years ago.

Earth's only natural satellite is simply called "the Moon" because people didn't know other moons existed until Galileo Galilei discovered four moons orbiting Jupiter in 1610. In Latin, the Moon was called Luna, which is the main adjective for all things Moon-related: lunar.

The many missions that have explored the Moon have found no evidence to suggest it has its own living things. However, the Moon could be the site of future colonization by humans. The discovery that the Moon harbors water ice, and that the highest concentrations occur within darkened craters at the poles, makes the Moon a little more hospitable for future human colonists.

With a radius of about 1,080 miles (1,740 kilometers), the Moon is less than a third of the width of Earth. If Earth were the size of a nickel, the Moon would be about as big as a coffee bean.

The Moon is an average of 238,855 miles (384,400 kilometers) away. That means 30 Earth-sized planets could fit in between Earth and the Moon.

The Moon is slowly moving away from Earth, getting about an inch farther away each year.

The Moon is rotating at the same rate that it revolves around Earth (called synchronous rotation), so the same hemisphere faces Earth all the time. Some people call the far side – the hemisphere we never see from Earth – the "dark side" but that's misleading. As the Moon orbits Earth, different parts are in sunlight or darkness at different times. The changing illumination is why, from our perspective, the Moon goes through phases. During a "full moon," the hemisphere of the Moon we can see from Earth is fully illuminated by the Sun. And a "new moon" occurs when the far side of the Moon has full sunlight, and the side facing us is having its night.

The moon's near and far side.

The Moon makes a complete orbit around Earth in 27 Earth days and rotates or spins at that same rate, or in that same amount of time. Because Earth is moving as well – rotating on its axis as it orbits the Sun – from our perspective, the Moon appears to orbit us every 29 days.

The leading theory of the Moon's origin is that a Mars-sized body collided with Earth about 4.5 billion years ago. The resulting debris from both Earth and the impactor accumulated to form our natural satellite 239,000 miles (384,000 kilometers) away. The newly formed Moon was in a molten state, but within about 100 million years, most of the global "magma ocean" had crystallized, with less-dense rocks floating upward and eventually forming the lunar crust.

Earth's Moon has a core, mantle, and crust:

The Moon’s core is proportionally smaller than other terrestrial bodies' cores. The solid, iron-rich inner core is 149 miles (240 kilometers) in radius. It is surrounded by a liquid iron shell 56 miles (90 kilometers) thick. A partially molten layer with a thickness of 93 miles (150 kilometers) surrounds the iron core.

The mantle extends from the top of the partially molten layer to the bottom of the Moon's crust. It is most likely made of minerals like olivine and pyroxene, which are made up of magnesium, iron, silicon, and oxygen atoms.

The crust has a thickness of about 43 miles (70 kilometers) on the Moon’s near-side hemisphere and 93 miles (150 kilometers) on the far-side. It is made of oxygen, silicon, magnesium, iron, calcium, and aluminum, with small amounts of titanium, uranium, thorium, potassium, and hydrogen.

Long ago the Moon had active volcanoes, but today they are all dormant and have not erupted for millions of years.

With too sparse an atmosphere to impede impacts, a steady rain of asteroids, meteoroids, and comets strikes the surface of the Moon, leaving numerous craters behind. Tycho Crater is more than 52 miles (85 kilometers) wide.

Over billions of years, these impacts have ground up the surface of the Moon into fragments ranging from huge boulders to powder. Nearly the entire Moon is covered by a rubble pile of charcoal-gray, powdery dust, and rocky debris called the lunar regolith. Beneath is a region of fractured bedrock referred to as the megaregolith.

The light areas of the Moon are known as the highlands. The dark features, called maria (Latin for seas), are impact basins that were filled with lava between 4.2 and 1.2 billion years ago. These light and dark areas represent rocks of different compositions and ages, which provide evidence for how the early crust may have crystallized from a lunar magma ocean. The craters themselves, which have been preserved for billions of years, provide an impact history for the Moon and other bodies in the inner solar system.

If you looked in the right places on the Moon, you would find pieces of equipment, American flags, and even a camera left behind by astronauts. While you were there, you'd notice that the gravity on the surface of the Moon is one-sixth of Earth's, which is why in footage of moonwalks, astronauts appear to almost bounce across the surface.

The temperature on the Moon reaches about 260 degrees Fahrenheit (127 degrees Celsius) when in full Sun, but in darkness, the temperatures plummet to about -280 degrees Fahrenheit (-173 degrees Celsius).

During the initial exploration of the Moon, and the analysis of all the returned samples from the Apollo and the Luna missions, we thought that the surface of the Moon was dry.

The first definitive discovery of water was made in 2008 by the Indian mission Chandrayaan-1, which detected hydroxyl molecules spread across the lunar surface and concentrated at the poles. Missions such as Lunar Prospector, LCROSS, and Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter, have not only shown that the surface of the Moon has global hydration but there are actually high concentrations of ice water in the permanently shadowed regions of the lunar poles.

Scientists also found the lunar surface releases its water when the Moon is bombarded by micrometeoroids. The surface is protected by a layer, a few centimeters of dry soil that can only be breached by large micrometeoroids. When micrometeoroids impact the surface of the Moon, most of the material in the crater is vaporized. The shock wave carries enough energy to release the water that’s coating the grains of the soil. Most of that water is released into space.

In October 2020, NASA’s Stratospheric Observatory for Infrared Astronomy (SOFIA) confirmed, for the first time, water on the sunlit surface of the Moon. This discovery indicates that water may be distributed across the lunar surface, and not limited to cold, shadowed places. SOFIA detected water molecules (H2O) in Clavius Crater, one of the largest craters visible from Earth, located in the Moon’s southern hemisphere.

The Moon has a very thin and weak atmosphere, called an exosphere. It does not provide any protection from the Sun's radiation or impacts from meteoroids.

The early Moon may have developed an internal dynamo, the mechanism for generating global magnetic fields for terrestrial planets, but today, the Moon has a very weak magnetic field. The magnetic field here on Earth is many thousands of times stronger than the Moon's magnetic field.

Earth’s Moon was born out of destruction.

Several theories about our Moon’s formation vie for dominance, but almost all share that point in common: near the time of the solar system’s formation, about 4.5 billion years ago, something ― perhaps a single object the size of Mars, perhaps a series of objects ― crashed into the young Earth and flung enough molten and vaporized debris into space to create the Moon.

Five Things We Learned from Apollo Moon Rocks

The chemical composition of Moon and Earth rocks are very similar.

The Moon was once covered in an ocean of magma.

Meteorites have shattered and melted rocks on the Moon’s surface through impacts.

Lava flowed up through cracks in the Moon’s crust and filled its impact basins.

Lunar “soil” is made of pulverized rock created by meteorite impacts.

If these writing notes helped with your poem/story, please tag me. Or leave a link in the replies. I'd love to read them!

Writing Notes: The Moon (pt. 1)

[lakeofflowerss]

The moon, she and I ( Fleurmione )

English is not my first language so I apologise in advance for my mistakes.

They had said goodbye to Ron and Lavander less than five minutes before so they could start their way to their respective homes. The night was beautiful. Hermione couldn't tell if it was because it wasn't hot because, on the contrary, it was quite cool and the weather wasn't so overwhelming or because Fleur was holding her by the shoulders almost pressing her to her as she talked about how the stars seemed to shine much brighter than usual at the same time the music, now soft, was still enveloping them despite being almost a block and a half away from the bar.

Fleur's laughter echoed in Hermione's chest just at the height where she had her head resting. She looked up and Fleur's mouth was moving as she let out giggles and words that Hermione's brain, totally hypnotized by the situation and intoxicated by the strawberry cologne, couldn't quite understand. At some point the laughter subsided as well as the walk, she could not say for sure when they stopped moving forward, much less could she define the exact moment when Fleur fixed her gaze on her with a beautiful glow, even more dazzling than the moon's own.

Fleur felt like time had stood still there, in them, embracing and smiling at each other while a gentle breeze caressed their faces. She sighed helplessly as she ran her gaze over every faction of Hermione's face, just as she had done that time on the terrace, the first time she had been dazzled by the particular glow the other seemed to emanate without noticing it in the slightest. Still the Earth's satellite was not at its brightest, apparently she had to wait a little longer to have her picture perfect romantic date under the light of the full moon.

Hermione's eyes were locked on her. She had never been a big fan of direct and sustained stares, to her they tended to be extremely invasive and judgmental but now she had those brown eyes fixed in the darkness of her own she couldn't remember a time when she had felt safer. The lashes and crinkles that adorned his gaze accompanied by the sweetest smile in the world was the sight she wished she could hold as long as possible in her mind.

Hermione's hand slid carefully and gently to Fleur's neck. At no time did her gaze tremble or her smile drop. She separated from the other's body for only inches and for such a short amount of time that it wasn't even worth counting. The older woman's arms wrapped firmly and warmly around her waist in an unneeded attempt to keep her from escaping. She tilted her head to the perfect spot for their breaths to begin to mingle even with two centimeters coming between their lips.

Hermione's thumb first outlined Fleur's jaw as if it were the petal of a rose and then slid across her lower lip. The delicacy of the caress sent a shiver down both their spines. The scene was different, the sensation was different, much more of them, much more private than all the previous ones.

"Can I?" Hermione knew, Fleur knew, they both knew the question was because the connotation of what would come next was nowhere near similar to the previous ones.

"Yes...please." Fleur swallowed saliva and deep breaths came to her chest at the same time Hermione's lips came to her, and with a tenderness she had never been gifted with, she kissed her.

The kiss was sweet and intimate, even when they were in the middle of the sidewalk of a busy street that insisted on reminding them of their normality with the passing cars shouting all kinds of things and honking their horns. The bubble they formed was thick enough to feel that the noises and screams were meters away from them. In the distance, just where the terror of both of them and their insecurity about opening up with each other had been.

The seconds passed and the kiss continued its rhythm, their accompanied and calm breaths were the faithful reflection of the peace that was flooding them. The touch of both of them on the other possessed an extraordinary warmth, the breeze kept caressing them and it was the only thing, together with the soft music in the distance, that kept them on earth without letting their minds make them fly to the thousands of scenarios where they would like to replicate that kiss.

Separating was torture. They both felt the lack of the warmth and comfort that the other instilled in them. When Hermione arrived at her home, number twelve Grimmauld Place, she found Harry, Ginny and Teddy waiting for her in the main library. When she walked through the door she saw her nephew asleep in Ginny's arms who looked like she was about to fall into the same situation. Harry sat up and his face reminded her of her own when he was up to some mischief.

"Where were you, Hermione?" he asked her firmly as he searched her face and body. She couldn't help but smile. Her friend, brother at this point in their lives, was one of her favorite people in the whole world. Sometimes he forgot the detail that they were the same age and cared for each other as if they were little kids, as they did all their lives as the relationship was a back and forth. Although for some time now Harry chose to repay all the care that Hermione gave him since they met.

"Harry, relax" she placed her hands on her brother's shoulders "I was with Fleur." She smiled and felt him relax.

"Were you still with her? You could have warned me, I thought you were only going to see her for an hour and come back. It's almost three in the morning. We thought something had happened to you because your phone was sending us straight to the message box." the quickness of the words and the residue of alcohol still in her system made her let out a giggle as she threw herself on him to hug him.

"I ran out of battery and the truth is that when I'm with her I forget everything" she sighed and walked away "sorry. I promise it won't happen again."

"It's okay." revolleted his eyes and smiled at her. "So...Tell me, how was your night?"

"I'm going to get everything ready for tea and tell you about it. " she turned toward the kitchen.

[hellfxresundays]

The project for @steddiebang2024 is here! I'm working with the phenomenal @pyro-the-dragon to bring a Steddie Prey AU to the table; it's got enemies-to-lovers slowburn Steddie, aliens, a dash of alien Steddie-- and plenty more, coming late '24!

You can keep reading below the cut for the official summary-- snippets incoming at a later point!

Summary

When Steve and Robin are given dual offers aboard the Talos I, it appears to be everything that they could’ve dreamed of. The Talos I is legendary in the neuroscience field for pioneering the ability to rewrite your brain, and for being the only corporate hub built around a satellite hundreds of thousands miles out in space. Cutting-edge research, a place of prestige, recognition as the best and brightest in their fields. For Steve, it’s everything– the perfect fuck you to the Harrington lineage, and the ultimate pinnacle of a long and exhausting career as the best that private security can offer. 

Even with unexplained electrical outages across the station, or Eddie Munson’s startlingly vicious vendetta against him, Steve’s determined to take it as the victory that it is, even as it becomes increasingly clear that everything aboard the Talos I is far from what it seems. He’s no stranger to secrecy, and even manages to wrangle something like a tentative truce out of his most prickly, but surprisingly compelling, coworker.

Just as quickly as he finds his rhythm, though, it all comes crashing down around their ears.

In reaching for the stars, Talos I– and the evasive Dr. Brenner– have found quite a few secrets among them, some of which prove lethal– and hungry– when they escape containment. With nobody coming to rescue them, it becomes a race against the clock– he, Eddie, and the handful of remaining survivors will have to set aside their differences to find a way out and off of Talos I without dooming the rest of the planet. 

Or each other. 

--

[the-wip-project]

SloMo WriNo: Don't Quit Before You Begin

As the new year draws closer the writing goals I’ve set for myself start to feel pretty intimidating. It’s easy to psych myself out and freeze up. After all, if I can’t do it well why bother at all?

When I feel my thoughts going in that direction I slam on the brakes. Because that’s the perfectionism talking.

Perfectionism is an evil task master and it lies, telling me that if I can’t do something perfectly I’m better off not doing it at all. But like I said, LIAR.

The truth is that anything worth doing is still worth doing badly, half-assedly, and slowly.

Giving myself permission to half-ass things is the only way I get anything done at all. So I've officially given myself permission to half-ass my writing. And now I’m giving you permission to do it too.

Are we all going to fall short and fail?

Yes.

Are we going to achieve anything at all if we don’t make the attempt?

No.

And that’s the attitude I want you to approach the challenge with. Setting the goal of writing a novel, or writing every single day, or even every single week is something that you’re probably going to fall short at in one way or another. But making a sincere attempt will mean that you write a lot more, hopefully finish a writing project, and also improve your skills as a writer.

All of that is an incredible win, even if you ‘fail’.

But what if you don’t feel like you’re ready?

What if you haven’t finished preparing? What if your world isn’t built and your characters aren’t fleshed out and your plot isn’t planned?

What if you don’t even know exactly what you want to write?

Don’t stress!

For the month of January my focus is going to be on finding your writing groove, and that involves not only getting the mechanics of how and when to write sorted out, but also figuring out exactly what you’re writing.

Can you start writing The Novel January 1? Definitely! Do you need to? Definitely Not! In fact, even if you have a novel or project planned, you might find it easier to get your rhythm while working on lower pressure work, character studies, satellite short fiction (ie stories set in your world or about your characters, but not part of the main plot) or even completely unrelated stuff.

And full disclosure: I am 100% a Discovery Writer (as in I generally start my projects with almost nothing planned, and just make it up as I go.) If you are like me, you’ll get plenty of support for your process. But if you’re a outliner, don’t worry, you’re welcome too. The process of getting your writing done is the same for everyone, and that’s my goal.

Getting the writing done in 2024. So don't quit before you start.

—Maree

Subscribe to my substack to make sure you don't miss a post, chat with me on the WIP Project discord, and tag any posts you make about the challenge with #slomowrino if you want me to see them!

[tsunagite]

Miscellaneous

[batsplat]

jorge martin is just an off-brand motogp version of george russell. both incredible qualifiers, hard racers, have issues sometimes keeping their tyres together, have stayed in a satellite/backmarker team for three years begging the big manufacturer to accept them into the main fold and will randomly decide that they are actually done with race by beefing it into the gravel/walls on the last laps.

this is why ducati did not hire martin, he hasn’t done the power point presentation

strong last line but hm... do I agree with this...

I don't entirely disagree with the profile of racer, though jorge's a bit more in the flame bright and early mould (partly also just because of the different rhythms of those two racing series). he cut his teeth not just on being an exceptional qualifier but also a starter. even though this year, you do kinda have to say pecco's just?? uh?? he's never been a BAD starter but I swear he didn't used to be this good? some of his starts from the second or third row this year have been genuine works of art. this isn't relevant, just needed to mention it. that's part of why jorge does so well at sprints... he's really good at that abbreviated format, where it's just all out from the very start. mr russell was considered quite a poor starter in his williams days (though lbr that may have partly been car characteristics) - the qualifying's very strong and very consistent, but for a while the question was of capitalising off the line. he's got a few more drives that are about working his way through the field... like qatar last year. I just don't really associate jorge with that?

the bottling thing is debatable and we could get into that debate, but like, never mind that. we're leaving sports analysis now and getting back into vibes territory. the thing about jorge is that he has had a competitive bike from the word go. mr russell, whatever you think about how clutch he is or isn't, did not set a foot wrong in terms of making the mercedes case for himself. what happened with him was basically just... a series of unfortunate events that got him stuck in a spectacularly uncompetitive car for three years. got one shot in a good car in said three years (sakhir 2020) and delivered the perfect performance. but jorge!! jorge had 2022!! he blew it!! he did get unlucky with the gp22 vs the gp21 comparison early that season and how bastianini was able to take advantage of the early stage factory spec malaise, and he's far from the only gp22 who was struggling early on (cf one 'pecco bagnaia'). but still, some of his rides that year were. truly horrendous. and the way the whole thing played out left him with a massive chip on the shoulder.... that's the thing, right, I think what's so key about jorge is that sense of grievance, the fact that he was rejected for that factory seat and we're now several years on from that. and it's a really thin line between that being a good thing and a bad thing. like, anything that's a potential source of motivation fundamentally can be helpful, right? in 2007, casey showed up at ducati as not their first choice, kinda a stopgap, and also after yamaha had pulled the plug on a potential contract not once but twice. he has spoken again and again how yamaha and honda's behaviour towards him made him want to show them exactly what they were missing out on. he used that! it was good for him as a competitor that he had something to get worked up over! he's done it throughout his career! but on the flip side, if you're so busy feeling victimised that you're kind of already... primed for failure, then you've got a problem. like, if the takeaway is you're probably screwed anyway because you're being sabotaged by the factory, then even if that were true you're fucked before you start competing. you've already lost in your own head, you've made excuses before you've even started. it's a thin line! thinking the world is out to get you can either be a good way to get yourself to going, or it can be a loser mindset

quickly circling back to georgie boy, my main feeling is that they kinda have a different type of malaise. one is an overthinker and the other is at times very much an under-thinker. grussy actually shares the overthinking trait with his fellow 63 more than anyone else... all three kinda have this fun meeting point of a lot of cockiness and a lot of insecurity - they just balance them in other ways. and russell reminds me more of pecco in that kind of... being constantly thrown up against a Big Legacy of someone you admire, being in the shadow of greats and having to make your own name... you're very much part of a succession plan that leaves you with massive shoes to fill... (though admittedly grussy has also gone through the unenviable experience of getting to work closely with his hero and eventually having most of said hero's fans absolutely despise him. can happen, I suppose.) jorge is a bit more baggage-free. he's very much the main character in his own story, not so much faffing about with the narrative implications of all this shit. more straightforward! if jorge wins, it's about him. if he loses, it's also about him. ducati has been his world for the past few years, to the point where he's gotten a bit parochial about the whole thing. early this season, he was talking like - sure, the championship lead is important, BUT this is also giving him power in contract negotiations!! which... yes, that's true, but also that should be way down the order of priorities my man. jorge martin might be the only person in this universe who... genuinely might be more obsessed with beating pecco than marc? like, beating the marc marquez would be great and all, 8x world champion bla bla, but pecco is his personal antagonist! he's known him for years! that's ducati's golden boy! he needs to beat pecco so badly! there's something really fun about a rivalry where it feels like at least one side's feelings towards the other... kinda go beyond a personal relationship, like at a certain point it becomes about what the other guy Represents. jorge isn't worried about legacy and the shoes he's got to fill and can he truly live up to all those expectations as much as he's worried about himself and also occasionally pecco bagnaia

anyway, I've been thinking about the bottling thing... what jorge said about it earlier's been rattling around in my head since I saw the quote

man, it must be really tough, right? like, you don't know why it's happening... it's not just cockiness - though there is an element of someone who's kinda used to bulldozing his way through problems with sheer obstinacy and stubborn self belief (another distinction with the 63's, who are more introspective and prone to self-flagellation following mistakes). but it's also just... you can't figure out why it's such a fundamental shortcoming of your game! today, from the way pecco and also luca (apparently) were talking about it, it seems like there was something noticeable about how jorge was gradually losing a bit in his control and precision as a result of how the tyres were going off, as a sort of precursor of the fatal error. which... well, it's at least a somewhat understandable mistake, because it comes from pressure? it's not just the tyres going off each time - the mugello sprint crash was lap four, jerez was lap ten. but an interesting thing about his big errors this year is that they have all come as a result of serious pressure - as a result of pecco directly behind him in the case of jerez and sachsenring and like... in anticipation of the massive points damage he knew he was probably going to take in mugello. it sounds obvious to say pressure is more likely to generate mistakes, but of course that's not always true of our title contenders! pecco only really wakes up when he's already dug a hole halfway to the centre of the earth - but when he faces actual pressure, his track record is mostly very strong. his biggest howlers this season, portimao + catalunya sprints, both came when he was leading comfortably. martin has also made these pressure-light mistakes in the past, most memorably indonesia last year but... well

one of the most fascinating bits of sports are like... limits and ceilings and how your build-up as an athlete kinda determines what's possible for you. like, sports is sort of where you experiment with notions of fate and inevitability and all that, where you question whether it's possible for anyone to ever really change. is it once a choker, always a choker? if you know that you have this problem, this flaw that is always just there in the background, waiting to be actualised - what can you do? does it give you more or less hope that there's not a clear root cause? how debilitating that must be for confidence too, always knowing that you could cause everything you've worked for to crash down in a moment.... this is where. y'know, the thing with pecco, right, is that he's now gotten to a weird place where psychologically he has to be wary of the mistakes he himself makes - but he knows that he can also bounce back from them. he has that muscle memory, because he's done it before. he chucked it down the road in india and he won the title! jorge did it in thailand and he didn't! and the problem is that it becomes a self-reinforcing cycle of sorts, because even though the margin between the two of them at the end of last year ended up being relatively slim... one of them still won and one of them still lost. which actually means that even though pecco and jorge both have made serious mistakes this year (though pecco's track record is cleaner - in portimao the points punishment didn't quite fit the crime and in the jerez/le mans sprints he was kinda just unlucky), only one of them knows they can do this shit and win the title anyway

and now jorge has an entire summer break to go away and think about that. can be a good thing, get some distance, and it's easy to slip into a run of bad form that you can't escape if there's no interruption. can be an awful thing because you're sitting with your mistakes for weeks on end with no chance to rectify them. I'm naturally a pessimist on the 'can any athlete ever really change' question because life has very much worn me down on this topic over the last few years (aka some sports results made me really sad). but I always want to be optimistic! I want to believe athletes can fix their fatal flaws! I want to believe they can get better at managing their tyres and not folding under pressure. and pressure works weirdly... sometimes it's not really a test of 'mental strength' as much as it is of what kind of in-built margin an athlete has (btw this is my best guess for what goes wrong with martin). sometimes it's beneficial in sharpening the mind and erasing the possibility of you just... not being sufficiently concentrated (which is my best guess for what happens with pecco when he's not being pressured). can you truly get better at dealing with that? or at a certain point, have you already accumulated so much mental scar tissue that you're always going to get in your own way? who knows! maybe we're all doomed to repeat the mistakes of the past forever and ever. who knows

anyway. in response to this ask. I do think it's more a case of 63's aligned in being too stuck in their own head, too concerned with legacy, and walking a very thin line between arrogance and insecurity. all three of them, though, have a bad case of 'coming through the ranks in an era of greats they'll always be disparagingly compared to'. what's new can never be as good as what came before, right? and they're constantly struggling to manage or maybe even overcome basic flaws that seem to be embedded in their make up as competitors... maybe they'll make it, just a little. maybe they never will. but it sure is fun to watch them try!

[cognitivejustice]

Hiroto Nagai, a geoenvironmental scientist at Rissho University in Tokyo and a composer, used climate data to create the six-minute-long composition “String Quartet No. 1 ‘Polar Energy Budget.’” 

So how else can you communicate the most pressing issue of our lifetimes? It turns out that music offers a way.

Imagine sitting down at one of the world’s greatest concert halls. The conductor raises their baton and you begin to hear the complex story of 30 years of climate change in the polar regions — as expressed through instruments like violins, violas and cellos — that weaves in chapters of tense and plaintive music.

Hiroto Nagai, a geoenvironmental scientist at Rissho University in Tokyo and a composer, has used climate data to create just that: a six-minute-long composition titled “String Quartet No. 1 ‘Polar Energy Budget.’”

He aims to use music to put the spotlight on how the world’s climate is driven by the flow of energy at the Arctic and Antarctic poles. Sonifying climate data has been done before, but Nagai's work is much rarer — it involves “musification.”

Nagai’s piece, on the other hand, uses satellite data from the past 30 years, but not in chronological order. He instead rearranged and combined the climate data with rhythms and notes of his choosing to make the sounds more musical and convey a story. He believes that this technique of musification evokes more of an emotional response and, in turn, gets people to care more.

As a music enthusiast, he aimed to meld the “tense, uncomfortable sounds of nature” with the “harmony of human emotion.”

“I wanted to show how much expression we can derive from the sonification of data,” he says.

“When you tell the story of climate change, that is not a simple story. I don't like to simply say, ‘stop climate change.’ My wish is, please understand this complex system of ours. That is my message.”

[hottpinkpenguin]

The Way of Winter - Chapter 1

Joel Miller series Reader insert (gender neutral, future chapters will likely read as female) A/n: takes place at the end of episode 6 (spoilers if you haven't seen!). I took a few liberties with the location. Word count: 2,661 | Tags: slow burn | Warnings: none

A gentle snowfall had started, the flakes barely big enough to see. You watched them idly as they landed on your horse Rambo’s dark mane, lasting only moments before his body heat melted them away. The world around you was hushed, the land and the creatures buttoned up in preparation for the storm you all knew was coming. You could see the dark gray clouds rolling up and over the already snow-capped peaks of the Wind River Range in the distance.

Tightening your jacket around your body, you tutted at Rambo, urging him into a gentle trot along the old railbed. He obliged you, his heavy hooves thudding against the frozen ground. You settled into an easy posting motion, timing the rhythm of your body’s rise and fall in the saddle with Rambo’s gait. 

You let your mind wander as you gave Rambo his head. He kept pace easily, the four dogs you’d raised as hunting partners darting in and out of the woods around him like escorts. He knew his way around this land as well as you did.

Your senses pricked up when the dogs caught a scent, their noses lifted into the breeze. The oldest dog, a black German shepherd you simply called Black, broke into a run, chasing the scent straight along the railbed in the direction you were riding. The three others followed suit, their eyes spinning left and right like satellite dishes. Rambo whinnied softly, chuffing and yanking on the bit in his mouth in anticipation. The dogs weren’t signaling an animal - if the scent they’d found was a deer or a mountain lion or even a rabbit, they’d have barreled off into the woods after it at your command, braying and yelping so you could follow them. But they were quiet, tense. They’d found a human scent. 

You pulled the long hunting rifle out of its holster at Rambo’s side, slinging it across the saddle as you kicked him into a canter. He took off with a jolt, his nerves clearly jumpy as the dogs rounded a gentle corner in the railbed ahead and disappeared from sight. You checked that the rifle was loaded and cocked as Rambo carried you down the center of the tracks towards the corner.

You reigned him up as you turned the corner. Black and the three dogs were standing at alert, flanking the tracks, their ears and eyes glued on three dark shapes about a quarter mile ahead. Humans, alright. Two of them, and one horse. You squinted against the gentle flurry of flakes and the dim afternoon light. It was too far to make out the strangers with any detail, although one of them was lying down, the other upright and hovering over the other. The horse was in full tack, standing a few feet away and pawing nervously at the ground. 

You bit your lip, considering your next move. The dogs whined softly next to you, every muscle in their bodies taut like razor wire, waiting for your signal. 

“Off, dogs.” Black and his three siblings relaxed somewhat at your command, although they remained close to Rambo’s sides and their attention decidedly fixed on the strangers ahead. They hadn’t seen you, and you could easily double back without them being any the wiser, cut a wide berth around them to get home. Or you could approach them. It was a risk, you knew. You’d lost your sister and her two sons taking just such a risk. Six years ago, and you’d been alone ever since. Alone, but alive, a chiding inner voice reminded you. 

You shook your head as if you could bat away the thoughts like gnats, urging Rambo forward at a gentle walk. You kept your rifle aimed low and away, but your hand found its familiar purchase on the trigger as you moved towards the two strangers. The closer you got, the clearer their features became. One was small - a woman, probably, and maybe a child. The larger one was lying prone along the embankment on the side of the tracks. 

Finally, the small one noticed you. 

“Hey! Don’t come any closer!”

A young voice. A girl’s voice. A sharp popping sound ripped through the quiet land as she raised a gun in the air, firing off a warning shot. 

The dogs growled next to you and Rambo’s ears flattened backwards at the noise. But, like you, they were far from green when it came to confrontation. You reigned Rambo to a halt, narrowing your eyes at the girl. 

“What’s the problem with your friend there?” you called out, nodding your head in the direction of the unresponsive person.

The girl didn’t answer right away. She shifted her weight nervously from one foot to the other as she took in the sight of you. 

You chutted at Rambo, who moved you a few steps forward, slowly. The girl backed up a half step before calling out at you again.

“I mean it! I’ll shoot! Don’t come a step closer!” 

You sighed heavily, irritated at the budding sense of obligation you felt for this girl’s safety. 

“If he’s dead, you better come with me. These parts aren’t safe, and there’s a storm rolling in.” You tilted your head towards the Wind River Range, now obscured by a heavy snowfall headed for your direction. “Couple of hours from now, you won’t be able to see a foot in front of your face the snow will be coming down so hard.”

The girl hesitated again. You could feel her indecision from where you watched her, some twenty steps away. Her dark, wide-set eyes flicked from you to the dogs to Rambo to some nondescript point in the distance to the man lying on the ground at her feet. When she looked down at the second stranger, you clearly saw terror in her eyes. It reminded you of the way your nephews had looked the day they’d been killed, and the similarity twisted a knife of anguish in your chest. 

You slid out of the saddle, your hunting rifle still in your hands. 

“What’s wrong with him?” you asked her again. You felt a chill run down your spine - the temperature was dropping. 

“He… he got stabbed. I think- I think he passed out.” Her voice was small and riddled with panic. You nodded, keeping your movements slow and deliberate. 

“He’ll need medical attention,” you commented as you slowly approached her. You looked down at the man. His skin still had a flush to it that told you he wasn’t dead. His hands were pressed against his abdomen and stained with blood. Every once in a while, you thought you saw his eyelids flutter as if he were trying to stay awake. 

“Is there a doctor nearby?” 

You raised an eyebrow at the girl, at the note of hope in her voice. 

“Anyone who lives out here has to be their own doctor,” you replied. She looked crestfallen, her gaze darting back and forth between you and her traveling companion. You could see her indecision beginning to thaw, so you took another few steps closer and extended a hand towards her. You were only a handful of paces away.

“Give me that gun,” you urged her, nodding at the small pistol in her right hand. 

“No fucking way,” she snapped back, recoiling from you and aiming the pistol at your chest. Your dogs growled in warning, tightening around your ankles. You saw her dark eyes widen slightly at their four sets of bared teeth.

“You shoot me, and they’ll attack you,” you commented, gesturing with your chin at the shepherds. “You might have time to get one, maybe two shots off before they’ll reach you. And these are hunting dogs. They bring down mountain lions and bison, so I don’t think they’ll struggle with a teenaged girl.” 

It was a cheap move, you knew, to weaponize a young kid’s fear like that. But you needed that gun. She was too jumpy to be trusted with it. 

The girl’s face tightened in a mix of indignation and fear as she took in your words. Her eyes flicked once again to the man lying in the snow, dark blood seeping between his fingers. 

“Let me take a look at him,” you offered, changing tactics when the girl didn’t relent. A vein pulsed in her forehead as she stared at you before nodding once. 

You closed the distance between you and the man quickly as the girl backed away, keeping an arm's distance between you at all times. You ignored her movements as you crouched down next to the man. He was breathing, a soft vapor of breath dancing in and out of his lips in time with the rise and fall of his chest. He was older than you’d initially thought - probably in his fifties - with generous streaks of gray in his dark hair and beard. His face was lined and browned from the sun. He had a thick jacket on, but it was unbuttoned. His undershirt was soaked with blood from his ribcage down. His hands were grafted to his side, but he wasn’t conscious enough to apply the pressure that wound needed. 

You looked up at the girl, noting her own practical clothing and the healthy assortment of supplies on the horse behind her. Whoever these people were, they were packed up for a trip. 

“I’ve got a cabin about eight miles off,” you told her, nodding vaguely in the northwest direction where your home was. “If he can survive the ride, I can probably stitch this wound up.” 

It wasn’t strictly a lie, although you knew you weren’t telling the girl the whole truth. It was unlikely whoever this man was would survive an eight mile ride. And even if he did, you doubted that stitches alone would save his life. He was probably bleeding internally, based on the dark, viscous blood coating his fingers. 

“Or?” The teenaged girl’s question sounded like a challenge.

“Or I leave you here and you figure it out for yourself,” you told her nonchalantly as you stood up and walked back to Rambo. “You better figure it out soon though. We’ve only got an hour or two before that storm rolls in, and I for one plan to be on my way well before then.”

More indecision and hesitation. The girl watched you carefully as you holstered the rifle and wiped the dusting of snow from your shoulders. 

“If we go with you, we’re not talking,” she offered. You chuckled at the odd request. 

“Sure. No talking,” you acquiesced. The girl’s dark eyes narrowed as she nodded. 

“Alright. Can your father stand up?”

“He’s not my father,” the girl replied sharply. You held up your hands in submission.

“Apologies. Can your friend stand?”

You watched as the girl crouched down, shaking the man’s shoulders and talking to him. His head rolled lazily from one side to the other but he didn’t show any sign of waking enough to stand. After a few minutes, she looked up at you with pleading eyes.

You joined her at the man’s side, lifting him so he was sitting upright as you each slung one of his arms around your shoulders. 

“1… 2… 3… lift,” you counted. On lift, you stood, bracing the man’s heavy weight against you. His head lolled against his shoulder, but you could feel the shaky help of his legs bracing his body. He was half-conscious and moaned in pain at the movement to his injury. On his other side, the girl looked over to you for direction. 

“My horse,” you huffed out, straining to keep the man upright. He smelled of days’ old sweat and whiskey and underneath, the sickly stink of blood. 

With great effort, you and the girl plodded in the direction of Rambo. The horse watched your approach with a wary expression, chuffing as you grabbed his bridle and leaned the man against Rambo’s tall haunch. Braced between your horse and the girl, the man managed to raise his head and gaze at you through slitted eyelids. 

“Listen, fella, if you can get up in that saddle yourself, we’d all be the better for it.” Truth be told, you weren’t sure you’d be able to lift his weight alone, and even though his traveling companion was scrappy, you doubted she’d be much help. 

“Joel, please.” The girl laid a hand on his chest and shook him gently. Joel. You made note of the man’s name. 

The man she called Joel managed to stand on his own accord, braced against Rambo’s side. He released a hand from his side, one coming to the pommel of your saddle as he winced. 

“Here.” You knelt down, grabbing his left ankle and lifting it. The man swayed precariously as he balanced on one foot, letting you guide the other into Rambo’s stirrup. The girl caught him with her shoulder under his armpit, grunting under his weight. When one of his feet was in the saddle, you jumped handily onto Rambo’s bare back, settling behind the saddle on his loin and motioning for Joel to join you. He fixed you with a vaguely incredulous look, as if in disbelief that you were asking such a Herculean effort of him. You chuckled darkly against yourself as you gripped the back of his jacket. He heaved himself up, groaning loudly in pain. The girl pushed him from behind, and with a final grunt he settled in the saddle. You reached around him to grab the reins as he slumped forward, breathing heavily at the exertion. You braced his sliding weight between your arms, the effort causing your biceps and shoulders to tense uncomfortably. He was tall, and if he’d sat upright he would have completely obscured your view. Thankfully, with his head falling forward against his chest and his body hunched over the generous pommel, you were able to see clear over him. 

“Your turn.” You jutted your chin towards the girl’s horse. If you’d had more time, you would have switched the double seat saddle on her chestnut mare with Rambo’s. But with the temperature dropping precipitously, you needed every minute you could get. 

The girl mounted handily, reigning her horse in at Rambo’s haunch. 

“Can you gallop?” you asked her. She looked decently comfortable in the saddle, although you couldn’t get a read on her skill level. She shrugged noncommittally. From in front of you, Joel moaned, slumping against your right arm. You grimaced as you fought to keep him centered in the saddle. Rambo shook his head nervously, sensing his rider’s shift.

“We need to make time,” you told the girl, bringing Rambo around to face north along the railbed. She swallowed, her gaze fixed on Joel. “If you can’t keep up, holler.” You didn’t wait for an answer as you dug your heels into Rambo’s side. He responded with a brisk trot. Joel bobbed like a ragdoll in front of you. You noted one of his hands sliding down his thigh and coming to bounce freely at his side. You grabbed it and slid it back to this stomach.

“Keep pressing on that wound,” you called into his left ear, louder than necessary but in an effort to keep him conscious. Joel replied with a watery-thin moan, although he held his hand to the bloody gash on his stomach. 

You looked back over your shoulder, checking to make sure the girl was with you. She was a few paces behind you, bouncing haphazardly in the saddle. Better not gallop, you noted to yourself as you took in her uncoordinated movements. 

After a few more paces, you eased Rambo into a canter. Black and the other dogs took off into their usual pattern in the ditches alongside the railbed. Rambo’s familiar gait lulled you into autopilot as you followed the familiar trails north and west, a snowstorm bearing down on you… 

**chapter 2 here let me know if you'd like to be tagged if you like this series, check out my Joel Miller masterlist for other works

[dreamball-teams]

A team for DJ Subatomic Supernova from No Straight Roads, requested by @terminatedapathy!

Metagross - Metagross has four brains in total. Combined, the four brains can breeze through difficult calculations faster than a supercomputer. This Pokémon can float in the air by tucking in its four legs.

Chatot - It keeps rhythm by flicking its tail feathers like a metronome. It also imitates human speech.

Lunatone - Lunatone was discovered at a location where a meteoroid fell. As a result, some people theorize that this Pokémon came from space. However, no one has been able to prove this theory so far.

Solrock - Solrock is a new species of Pokémon that is said to have fallen from space. It floats in the air and moves silently. In battle, this Pokémon releases intensely bright light.

Magnezone - Three units generate magnetism. There have been many mistaken reports of UFO sightings when Magnezone flies through the night sky.

Castform - It alters its form depending on the weather. Changes in the climate such as the temperature and humidity appear to affect its cellular structure.

Details:

Wanted to split this team between his time teaching, his performing, and his construction of the satellite. Metagross was an easy pick, while Chatot felt like a Pokemon that would be useful for a teacher. A dual alarm clock/note-keeping system.

Lunatone and Solrock were picked for performance, given they’re literally designed to look like the sun and moon and are Psychic-Type.

Magnezone was picked for its constant mentions of looking like a UFO and its magnetic abilities plus Electric-Type, while Castform learns basically every weather move and is good for tracking the weather overall.

[missjenca]

#hilariously enough!; I also imagined Satellite having a Local Hand Commmunication!#Love that we over lap on some thoughts here#this has a lot of some of the things I'd rotated in getting Yusei through a panic attack or just days too much like Bad Times#yell at me to post those

As per your tags, consider this me yelling at you to post about this because I genuinely would like to hear it, pLEASE, I live for this kind of thing, lol

Aye aye! Thankie for the reminder, lemme cook that up, big posr style.

So, Yusei is absolutely not walking away from the plot of 5Ds without being a lil bit fucked up. And while Satellite has given him the ability to simply say 'I will put my nose straight through the grindstone and ignore what is happening to me' (for better or for worse), he also has friends that think it important to help him out.

Leo, our wonderful ball of sunshine, can clock immediately when Yusei is in a certain kind of funk that he can handle. He calls it 'Old Paper White' or 'New Paper White' (if Yusei's freaked out enough to go pale). 'Old Paper White' means that Leo can generally goad Yusei into a duel on the work bench, and bemoan his loss in a way to get Yusei to focus on tips and assistance and generally just Big Brothering Leo until he relaxes. 'New Paper' is trickier, because it's probably a deuling related nightmare at the cause. Which means it's time for different games, be it activity books or putting together plastic models together. Leo would definitely enjoy the Duel Monsters Counterpart of Gunpla, and I think Yusei would find the gentle rhythm of 'Snip piece, connect piece' soothing.

Luna's tactics are fairly similar, though with a different approach. She's armed with fidgit toys and puzzles and big long words and her big wide eyes. She'll word tasks very specifically as 'can you help me with this' or 'can you do this for me', and generally weaponises her Baby Sister Status for his benefit. Because it leans on Yusei's 'Can and Will Do Anything For His Friends' part of his will power, she can get him to focus on small tasks like getting to a safe place or solving a rubix cube until he's calmer.

Crow has been spending years knowing the exact balance of 'filling silence' and 'engaging questions' for Yusei to steady himself to. Crow knows all the gossip, what friends are where, interesting mechanical news, all the safe topics. Crow also knows the exact tone of voice to use that signals that nothing is happening, because it's a very different and specific tone of voice to 'we're pretending to be unaware of cops/gangs/attackers' from back when they were younger. He's also totally clued in to what Yusei's different levels on non-verbal answers or non-answers mean, so he can focus on Yusei without focusing *so much* on Yusei that it stresses him out.

Aki's learned the exact levels and kinds of white noise helps Yusei out. Too much or the wrong sounds and he gets over-stimmed or stressed out, too little makes him anxious because actual silence means something bad is about to happen. She also uses a few meditation techniques with him; she may have learned them at Arcadia, but she controls what she knows now. They're both at least a little fond of it; panic attacks or nightmares aren't something that you can fight physically, but this is almost close. Aki's also the one most on top of making sure he takes a painkiller and eats something afterwards, because he always gets a huge headache from being so tense, and he *will* try and just work through it if left to his own devices.

Jack's the only person who can safely goad Yusei into hitting him without Yusei getting *too* wrapped up in being guilty about it. It's very much not a 'Jack deserves to be hurt' thing, but that it's equal measures of that Jack's Always Gonna Do What He Wants and years of Jack-To-Yusei wordless communication between the two of them. He asks for it because he can take it and Yusei can't. It's a Rivals Thing:tm:. It also helps when Crow rolls his eyes and tells Jack off about it like nothing happened. If they can hit a duel, great, but if we're at the bottom option, Jack is of course the one who knows how to be callous to be kind.