#so i don't often seek out these buddies of mine

[eldritchmochi]

(i hope this doesn't come across as rude, i'm just genuinely confused) i saw your tags on a post you reblogged about how you like to jerk off to the thought of your work crush, and that you're aspec. but i thought the whole point of being aspec is that you *don't* feel sexual attraction? isn't thinking of someone to gain sexual pleasure also sexual attraction to that person? isn't wanting to have sex with someone sexual attraction to that person? i can't imagine jerking off to someone i'm not attracted to so maybe i'm just close-minded but what you said really doesn't sound aspec at all. again i'm not trying to be rude, i'm just not aspec so i really don't understand how *not* feeling sexual attraction can be a spectrum, but feeling sexual attraction apparently isn't a spectrum??

not rude imo! i am happy to play educator!!

so tldr, i have a particularly complicated relationship to.... relationships. i tend to label myself as broadly "aspec" as a whole as shorthand for expressing that i dont really experience attraction but it, like basically all the labels i use, isn't wholly accurate for my personal experience because labels--especially queer identity labels--are a broad stroke generalization for very individualized personal experiences of the same general gestures thing. not everyone who shares the labels i use for myself will agree with the way i use them or even the fact that i DO use them (hi, he/him bi lesbian here, eat me) and thats totally okay, as long as they mind their manners

i find "aspec" used as a specifically nonspecific umbrella micro label is convenient shorthand for the whole not really experiencing attraction thing because its more true than not. i really dont "really" experience attraction, either sexual or romantic..... except for when i do. those instances of attraction however are so incredibly rare that they're an exception, not the rule. i'm in my thirties and consider that tally to be two people i have legit thirsted after and possibly two??? people i am Romantically In Love With (as opposed to just In Love With, which is different for me, because i love all my friends in unique ways because they're unique people i have a unique relationship with, but i digress) (ftr i am not 100% sure on the romance bit because its *incredibly* hard for me to sus out the difference between my feelings for these particular people compared to everyone else i love because i just kinda go on vibes: if i'm happy with someone, i'm happy, and i dont really feel the need to Officially Label things)

btw, "aspec" as in asexual (and in my case aromantic) spectrum is very much a spectrum my dude, and that spectrum people generally report on does include occasional incidental attraction. other axis often involved in the spectrum are things like libido or even general willingness or interest in interactions that involve sex (or romance, or both!). some folks enjoy having sex and seek it out despite not experiencing sexual attraction, with or without a libido. some people are completely sex adverse when it comes to sexual situations involving themselves but will engage with sexual content, such as porn/erotica/virtual roleplay. some people want nothing do do with bumping uglies literally or figuratively. some people are absolutely baffled when it turns out no they just wanna bump uglies with this one particular person and they will DIE if they dont why are humans wired like this its SO INCONVENIENT (shhhhh dont ask me how i know). there are a ton of microlabels for any and all generalization of experience within the a-spec spectrum because there is just a HUGE variety of experiences but i personally dont like them for myself cos im a vague-as-possible kinda guy

so: complicated relationship with relationships and a complete disregard for the "rules" some people wanna insist on when it comes to identity labels. a buddy of mine has described me as her friend who is "all queer identities at once" which, yeah, i'm into that, its a good summation

i would also like to note for our viewers at home that you are totally allowed to stick yourself in whatever box feels right at the time, even if you change boxes a bazillion times or put a peet in a bunch of different boxes all at once, or play musical chairs with the boxes, or whatever. theyre made up and the points dont matter, what matters is having some facsimile of language to communicate an aspect of your experience to allow for communication and conversation about that experience, not that you tick off a check list of required traits to get your box assigned to you by The Committee. go forth, be weird, love freely, eat the rich, and fuck the (thought) police

[lit-works]

One Thing after another

Pt.2

I've often wondered what became of the Red Ghost–Ivan Kragoff, the Russian scientist who willingly subjected himself to the same kind of cosmic rays that turned me and my friends into the Fantastic Four. The rays affected him and several experimental apes in a variety of ways–he was able to make his body completely untouchable. The Red Ghost has always given me trouble–my strength isn't much good against him–but he's been out of sight and laying low a long time.

As these thoughts pass through my mind, I notice something strange about the Red Ghost–he seems to be glowing. But, I'll have to solve that mystery later. Right now, I've got my family to save 

"Okay, Ivan, Whattaya want? An' make it fast, I don't usually palaver with arch-villains, especially after they beat up my buddies, know what I mean?"

"I appreciate your position, monster. I hope you can appreciate mine. A crack team of Russian researchers and scientists has bio-engineered a disease aimed exclusively at those whose blood and tissue has been charged or mutated with cosmic rays. They hope to eliminate you and the rest of the Fantastic Four. My beloved apes were their first guinea pigs. My testing followed shortly after. The apes are finished…in a coma. I escaped the motherland and came to you seeking aid. Perhaps Reed Richards can effect a cure. I cannot."

Sheesh, next thing I know, Doc Doom'll be comin' around wantin' Reed to remove his bunions.

The moment is charged with tension. The Red Ghost stands rigid and stolid, waiting to see what I'm gonna do. I stand equally motionless, trying to decide what to do. In the end, there isn't any choice: The arch-villains stands, glowing evilly, surrounded by my unconscious friends.

Glowing? The Ghost musta picked up a new trick while he was outta sight. But I'll deal with that later. Right now, I've got some friends to save.

My mind is made up, I reach down and grab a handy medicine ball–a handy thousand-pound, Thing styled medicine ball–and hurl it at the Red Ghost, hoping to catch him unawares, and before he can make himself untouchable. It's a nice try, but not good enough. He shimmers and fades, and the ball passes right through him, destroying the wall behind him.

"I'd hoped to not have to do this, Thing. Intangibility is the one thing I can't afford right now, but you leave me no choice…"

What's he talkin' bout? Intangibility was always his first, best, line of defense.

The Red Ghost drifts towards me, looking for all the world like the apparitions from which he derives his name. I try desperately to think of something I can do, some way I can use my strength against an untouchable foe. I come up with nothing, but it doesn't matter–to my astonishment, the Red Ghost stops just before he reaches me. His eyes wide in pain and amazement, a scream leaves his lips, and he begins to glow even brighter, bathing my body in a cold, yellow light.

Then he's gone.

I stand in 4 Freedoms Plaza, alone, wracking my brain, trying to figure out what just happened. I rush over to my fallen comrades. They're out cold, and they don't look good. Could The Red Ghost've been telling the truth about some cosmic disease? He didn't seem to be much in control of his own power…and his exit didn't look planned.

I pick my friends up off the ground and carry them tenderly to their quarters. Then I return to my own quarters and spend the rest of the night trying to think of a way to fight a killer disease. I come up with nothing.

Early the next morning, I awaken to find Sue and Johnny still in bed where I left them. They're alive, but they won't be going anywhere for a while. Reed, bless his brain, is in his lab. Though weak almost beyond imagination, he insists on running tests to determine just what the Red Ghost did to the Fantastic Four.

I seem to be nearly unaffected by the Ghost's attack, so I act as Reed's guinea pig. Finally, Reed completed his tests, and then staggers to a chair. He looks haggard, and, as he speaks, each words seems to take it's toll: "Ben, The Red Ghost has transmitted a disease along to us…affects only cosmically-charged blood. The disease is fast-acting. We're all infected. It mutates red blood cells…have to find a way to reverse mutative effect…" before he can get out the next word, he falls unconscious.

What did Reed mean by "reverse mutative effect"? Again, I fall deep into thought. Finally, a possibility springs to mind: If the disease mutates cells the way Reed says it does, reversing the mutation would cure me and my friends. Reed once said something about our old foe Annihilus, the ruler of the negative zone…something about his cosmic control rod having the power to change the atomic structure of matter. Maybe it would work on living matter and change my mutating blood cells, effecting a cure.

I call Alicia Masters and ask her to watch over the fallen members of the Fantastic Four while I'm gone. She's still out of town for an art gallery opening, but when she hears the news, she agrees to return at once. She arrives not long after.

Me…I head to the negative zone to talk to Annihilus.

[jakganim]

Seeing people talk about their friends make me feel happier so can you talk about your best friends on tumblr and in real life? It's ok if you dont want to btw

hello anon!!! i’m finally back with time to fulfill this ask :’)) hope you haven’t forgotten about it yet. this is gonna be long!

hmm i’ve realized, as time went on, that while it’s gotten a lot easier for me to meet new people and make friends with them, it’s gotten a lot harder for me to make strong connections and lasting friendships that i could imagine keeping for the rest of my life. my brother always told me that i’d make all my lifelong friends in college bcos that’s what happened for him. but actually my best friend is still my best friend all throughout middle and high school and she’s the only person i could guarantee being a part of my life forever. she’s basically family now i guess LOL which is funny bcos we technically have the same last name in chinese. i could go weeks, even months without seeing her/talking to her and our friendship would literally never waver. and when we meet again it’s like nothing’s changed. we just catch up and our relationship is the same as it has been for the past ten years. i think we have a very good understanding of each other and our needs and we have like complete and utter faith in each other and our relationship so even though we can’t see each other all the time (though we sure wish we could) we still consider each other to be best friends. and i mean like best friend. she is my best friend, anyone else at that level of connection to me is literally related to me LOL like my cousins and stuff. idk, it’s just one of the most stable connections i have going on for me. and i love her to death we are basically the same person. 

as for tumblr, i used to be on this site like… quite… a few years ago. like in high school LOL and i say i went on a “2 year hiatus” because the last time i was here before i came back was 2 years ago but rly, it was much longer than that tbh. i think i had come back briefly and kind of just went through my blog, reboogied some bts stuff, and contemplated getting rid of it but instead just kept it. and now here i am!! and i’ve been back for a few months and since then i’ve met some really amazing people :’)))

first would be lala. bcos she is literally the first person i started really talking to when i returned to the tumblr world. i came back for astro and got all these amazing aroha friends instead and i am so thankful and blessed, honestly. a few of the friends i made actually came together because of her haha. we all had this one common goal and so we decided why not come together and just be a support system for each other and her (while also being loud n crazy in the process). aside from lala, some of the people i consider my closest friends here would be kat, jane, seal, and dasha. every single one of them is just so kind and loving and funny. i also noticed that many of them are very giving and i think sometimes they have a lot of trouble taking back what they give and now i feel a little like i know why these people have been brought into my life. i, for one, am already very blessed to be surrounded by some really loving and supportive people and i’ve learned through them over the years how to care for and love myself. and i think what i want right now is just for my buddies here to learn how to care for themselves first. i know how much they care about each other but the truth is, the more love we give ourselves, the more love we are capable of giving others, as well as receiving from others. and i think that’s something we could all learn to accept. it’s not really something i can make anyone do. but i want to show them that it’s possible and that they are capable and deserving of all of this. and my friends here, my lovely, lovely beans here, they’re all so wonderful and talented and selfless and it would honestly make me so happy to see them realize all of these things and just be happy and healthy :’))) so i want to be here for that. i want to stay friends with these people and have them be apart of my journey as well as have myself be apart of theirs for as long as possible. i’ve learned so much not only about them but about myself these past few months. and they’re really precious to me even if they don’t realize or feel like it.

then there’s vivi, who’s managed to get caught between two worlds and it’s amazing. we met here on tumblr but realized we were physically close enough to kind of just hang out whenever we’re both free and so we’ve hung out a few times and honestly she is another amazing bean here and i love her, truly. i want to spend more time with her these days but i’ve been busy and tired and so i haven’t really asked her to officially hang haha. i also feel like i’m still trying to navigate that because i ain’t tryna scare away nobody rn LOL but she is really special to me because there’s really no one else i know irl that gets to see tumblr me as well. and it’s not like i’m leading a double life or anything by being here, i’m pretty transparent about it, it’s just that nobody else i’m friends with irl is interested in this part of me. so to be able to talk to vivi about the whole spectrum of things going on in my life and have her understand it all is very special to me :’)

okay this got really long. i hope… this was what you were looking for? LOL i just kind of went on and on with no real direction so i hope this made some sense to you :’))) moral of the story: i love my friends. they’re great. they mean a lot to me, and i’m grateful to know i’d be able to share with them my joy, my tears, my fears, and everything in between.

[red-will]

I don't know what to do with good white people.

I've been surrounded by good white people my whole life. Good white people living in my neighborhood, who returned our dog when he got loose; good white teachers in elementary school who pushed books into my hands; good white professors at Stanford, a Bay Area bastion of goodwhiteness, who recommended me M.F.A. programs where I met good white writers, liberal enough for a Portlandia sketch.

I should be grateful for this. Who, in generations of my family, has ever been surrounded by so many good white people? My mother was born to sharecroppers in Louisiana; she used to measure her feet with a piece of string because they could not try on shoes in the store. She tells me of a white policeman who humiliated her mother by forcing her to empty her purse on the store counter just so he could watch her few coins spiral out.

Two summers ago, my mother showed me the welfare reports written about her family. The welfare officer, a white woman, observed my family with a careful, anthropological eye. She described the children, including my mother, as "nice and clean." She asked personal questions (did my grandmother have a boyfriend?) and wrote her findings in a detached tone. She wondered why my grandmother, an illiterate Black mother of nine living in the Jim Crow South, struggled to find a steady job. Maybe, she wrote in her loopy scrawl, my grandmother wasn't searching hard enough.

This faded report is the type of official document a historian might consult if he were re-constructing the story of my family. The author, this white welfare officer, writes as if she is an objective observer, but she tells a well-worn story of Black women who refuse to work and instead depend on welfare. Occasionally, her clinical tone breaks down. Once, she notes that my mother is pretty. She probably considered herself a good white person.

In the wake of the Darren Wilson non-indictment, I've only deleted one racist Facebook friend. This friend, as barely a friend as a high school classmate can be, re-posted a rant calling rioters niggers. (She was not a good white person.) Most of my white friends have responded to recent events with empathy or outrage. Some have joined protests. Others have posted Criming While White stories, a hashtag that has been criticized for detracting from Black voices. Look at me, the hashtag screams, I know that I am privileged. I am a good white person. Join me and remind others that you are a good white person too.

Over the past two weeks, I've seen good white people congratulate themselves for deleting racist friends or debating family members or performing small acts of kindness to Black people. Sometimes I think I'd prefer racist trolling to this grade of self-aggrandizement. A racist troll is easy to dismiss. He does not think decency is enough. Sometimes I think good white people expect to be rewarded for their decency. We are not like those other white people. See how enlightened and aware we are? See how we are good?

Over the past two weeks, I have fluctuated between anger and grief. I feel surrounded by Black death. What a privilege, to concern yourself with seeming good while the rest of us want to seem worthy of life.

When my father was a young man, he was arrested at gunpoint. He was a Deputy District Attorney at the time, driving home one night from bible study when LAPD pulled him over. A traffic violation, he'd thought, until officers swarmed his car with shotguns aimed at his head. The cops refused to look in his wallet at his badge. They cuffed him and threw him on the curb.

My father is mostly thankful that he'd stayed calm. In his shock, he had done nothing. That's what he believes saved his life.

I think about this while I watch Eric Garner die. For months, I avoided the video, until we arrived at another officer non-indictment. Now I've seen the video of Garner's death, as well as a second video I find even more disturbing. This second video, taken immediately after Garner has been killed by a banned chokehold, shows officers attempting to speak to him, asking him to respond to EMTs. They do not yet know that he is dead, and there's something about this moment, officers shuffling around as an EMT seeks a pulse, that is so bafflingly and frustratingly human, so different from the five officers lunging and wrangling Garner to the ground.

In the wake of this non-indictment, a surprising coalition of detractors has emerged. Not just black and brown students hitting the streets in protest but conservative stalwarts, like Bill O'Reilly or John Boehner, criticizing the lack of justice. Even George W. Bush weighed in, calling the grand jury's decision "sad." But even though many find Garner's death wrong, others refuse to believe that race played a role. His death was the result of overzealous policing, a series of bad individual choices. It would have happened to a white guy. The same way in Cleveland, a 12-year-old Black boy named Tamir Rice was killed by officers for playing with a toy gun. An unfortunate tragedy, but not racial. Any white kid playing with a realistic-looking toy gun would have been killed too.

Darren Wilson has been unrepentant about taking Mike Brown's life. He insists he could not have done anything differently. Daniel Pantaleo has offered condolences to the Garner family, admitting that he "feels very bad" about Garner's death.

"It is never my intention to harm anyone," he said.

I don't know which is worse, the unrepentant killer or the man who insists to the end that he meant well.

A year ago, outside the Orange County airport, a white woman cut in front of me at the luggage check. She had been standing next to me, and soon as the luggage handlers called next, she swooped up her things and went to the counter. She'd cut me because I was black. Or maybe because I was young. Maybe she was running late for her flight or maybe she was just rude. She would've cut me if I had been a white woman like her. She would've cut me if I had been anyone.

Of course, the woman ended up on my flight, and of course, she was seated right next to me. Before the flight took off, she turned to me and said, "I'm sorry if I cut you earlier. I didn't see you standing there."

I often hear good white people ask why people of color must make everything about race, as if we enjoy considering racism as a motivation. I wish I never had to cycle through these small interactions and wonder: Am I overthinking? Am I just being paranoid? It's exhausting.

"It was a lot simpler in the rural South," my mother tells me. "White people let you know right away where you stood."

The problem is that you can never know someone else's intentions. And sometimes I feel like I live in a world where I'm forced to parse through the intentions of people who have no interest in knowing mine. A grand jury believed that Darren Wilson was a good officer doing his job. This same grand jury believed than an eighteen-year-old kid in a monstrous rage charged into a hailstorm of bullets toward a cop's gun.

Wilson described Michael Brown as a black brute, a demon. No one questioned Michael Brown's intentions. A stereotype does not have complex, individual motivations. A stereotype, treated as such, can be forced into whatever action we expect.

I spent a four hour flight trying not to wonder about the white woman's intentions. But why would she think about mine? She didn't even see me.

In elementary school, my older sister came home one day crying. She had learned about the Ku Klux Klan in class that day and she was afraid that men in white hoods would attack us. My father told her there was nothing to worry about.

"If a Klansman sat at this table right now," he said, "I'd laugh right in his face."

My mother tells stories of Klansmen riding at night, of how her grandmother worried when the doctor's son—a white boy—visited her youngest sister because she feared the Klan would burn down their home. When I was a child, I only saw the Klan in made-for-TV civil rights movies or on theatrical episodes of Jerry Springer. My parents knew what we would later learn, that in the nineties, in our California home, surrounded by good white people, we had more to fear than racism that announces itself.

We all want to believe in progress, in history that marches forward in a neat line, in transcended differences and growing acceptance, in how good the good white people have become. So we expect racism to appear, cartoonishly evil like a Disney villain. As if a racist cop is one who wakes in the morning, twirling his mustache and rubbing his hands together as he plots how to destroy black lives.

I don't think Darren Wilson or Daniel Pantaleo set out to kill Black men. I'm sure the cops who arrested my father meant well. But what good are your good intentions if they kill us?

When my friends and I discuss people we dislike, we often end our conversations with, "But he means well."

We always land here, because we want to affirm ourselves as fair, non-judgmental people who examine a person not only by what he does but also by what he intends to. After all, aren't all of us standing in the gap between who we are and who we try to be? Isn't it human to allow those we dislike—even those who harm us—a residence in this space as well?

"You know what? He means well," we say. We lean on this, and the phrase is so condescending, so cloyingly sweet, so hollow, that I'd almost rather anyone say anything else about me than how awful I am despite how good I intend to be.

I think about this during a car ride last weekend with my dad, where he tells me what happened once the cops finally realized they had arrested the wrong man. They picked him up from the curb, brushed him off.

"Sorry, buddy," an officer said, unlocking his handcuffs.

They'd made an honest mistake. He'd fit the description. Well, of course he did. The description is always the same. The police escorted my father onto the road. My father, not yet my father, drove all the way home without remembering to turn his headlights on.

Brit Bennett recently earned her M.F.A. in creative writing at the the Helen Zell Writers' Program at the University of Michigan. She is currently a Zell Postgraduate Fellow, where she is working on her first novel.

[jpat82]

Blizzard

Me & M’Boys

Evening had set in, and you paced the living room, peeking out the window every so often watching as the snow flurries continued to fall at a heavy and quick rate. Your heart slowly getting heavier and heavier as the minutes ticked by. When Hershel sent out the mass text early this morning you knew it was going to be a long day.

A winter storm had rolled in, and an alert sounded way before the sun even rose for the day. There would be close to 36 inches of snow dropped by midnight, and so Hershel sent out the text to all his farm hands; Rick, Daryl, Carl, Bucky, everyone who worked for him and even Steve. There was a lot that needed to be done to make sure that the farm was ready for the blizzard that would hit.

Both of your boyfriends dress immediately and left before the sun cracked over the horizon. Both promising to be home before night fall, and yet here you were looking out the darkened window pane watching as more snow fell to the ground adding the already deep drifts that piled against the porch.

'Guys, not to be a pest but.. do you know how much longer? If the roads are too bad please don't try to be the idiot super heroes you are, just stay there till morning.' You sent the text to both of them, biting your bottom lip. You tossed another log on the fireplace and settled as well as you could on the couch, pulling the throw blanket from the back. You grabbed your book from the end table and set it into your lap, leaving it in your lap closed as you stared at the window pane, watching as large white flakes floated down to the ground.

——

"Come on Sam!" Bucky yelled, taking large steps through the knee deep snow as the goat bleated, bounding farther away from the barn.

"Bucky!" Steve yelled, stepping outside, covering his eyes slightly as the icy flakes hit him in the face as the wind blew.

"Out here!" Bucky hollered back, turning slight, his voice slightly muffled by the thick wool scarf wrapped tight around his lower face. He could slightly see Steve's silhouette back lit by the barn. He turned back, looking out into the crisp cold night, following the tracks caused by the infuriating creature. "Stupid goat."

"Buck, I can't see you." Steve shouted above the noise, stepping out into the torrent of white. Bucky had followed the animal into the lower pasture, and was farther out there than the light from the barn could touch.

Steve looked around vaguely seeing the other man's heavy boot prints in the quick accumulation of new snow fall. He followed out, his ears picking up on every sound. But the snow itself made a hushing whisper as the wind blew across whipping up flakes that had rest gently on top, creating vortex's of white.

"Bucky!" Steve shouted again as he stopped, the snow stung his face as he stood listening.

A bleat from his left caught his attention, Steve turned and started to trek through the heavy snow. He heard the unmistakable sound of Bucky's muffled voice cursing the animal out, slowly the closer he got he saw Bucky tangling in the barbwire separating the pastures, the tethered rope around the animals neck caught on the sharp wire.

"Jesus Buck." Steve breathed a sigh of relief as he walked over.

"Stupid animal won't come when it's called." Bucky snapped, trying to rip the barbwire that was tangled around his pant leg. He was failing, and his frustration was getting the better of him. At some point the man had pulled his gloves off, and his good hand was bleeding turning the white crimson as he worked to free himself.

"Let me help." Steve said, coming over, he knelt down and pulled his phone out. He ignored the texted from you and turned the flash light on, noticing that the phone was in the red. Slowly he unwrapped the sharp metal from around his boyfriends legs, the goat bleated again, nestling itself down under a low tree branch.

"Oh, I'm going to buy you and turn you into stew Sam!" Bucky glared at the animal that just looked back him briefly before looking away.

"There, you're untangled." Steve stated, grabbing Bucky's glove from the ever growing pile of snow. Bucky scooped up the rope and gave it a gentle tug but the animal refused to move. "How did you get tangled?"

"This idiot decided that he wanted to play hide and seek, I wasn't paying attention." Bucky replied curtly walking over and lifted the goat from its hiding place. "Anyway, found the tree trunk from the dead tree we cut down earlier this year and took a tumble. Next thing I knew is I'm hanging slightly upside down and this asshole licking the snow off my face."

"Awe, He was just checking up on you." Steve chuckled as the reached the barn.

"Not funny, punk." Bucky replied, putting the goat in the pen with the others. He walked over to the light and checked the palm of his hand, it was ripped up and bleeding but would heal.

"Shit, my phone just died, our girl texted us, hows your phone?" Steve sighed, slipping the dead item in his back pocket.

"Phone died earlier, what did her message say?" Bucky asked pulling his pant leg noticing that his thermals were bloody as well.

"Dunno, phone died before I had a chance to read it." Steve told him, noticing that Bucky's leg was also tore up as the other man pulled the thermal up a bit. "Ohh, Buddy, is she gonna be mad at you."

"Like I didn't know that." Bucky sighed as he pushed the fabric back down, he stood fully and looked over at Steve. "So, who's truck? Mines got crap tires and yours has shit for brakes."

"Coin toss?" Steve shrugged as they both stepped back out into the cold night, walking toward where both trucks were parked. "Cause she's going to be mad either way, we are way later then promised."

"Rather have brakes then tires." Bucky stated walking over towards his truck, pulling the door open, it creaked in protest. Steve nodded climbing the passenger side.

——

The house was dark when you woke, a soft glow from the embers in the fire place was your only light. Some point you had dozed off and the power went out, you knew the tree had been on when you dozed off. That was unless Bucky got home, he would of let you sleep rather then wake you. You reached out and grabbed your cell phone, the only text was from mom asking if you had power.

You pulled the throw blanket off your lap and shivered as you walked over to the fire place and tossed another log on. You poked around getting the fire going again to heat the room, the light reflecting off on glass ornaments. You looked over to the door and noticed that Steve and Bucky's coats were still missing, causing your heart to sink further. Your eyes drifted to the clock on the wall, it was midnight, officially Christmas.

A tear slowly streaked down your cheek as you settled yourself on the rug by the fire place. Crossing your fingers that they would be okay. You heard the front door unlock, and you sprang from your spot, dashing across the living room as the door opened and shut.

"What happened to the.." was all Steve got out before you crashed into him and Bucky.

"You're both okay." You sighed, the cold still lingering on them but you didn't care as you gave them both a kiss.

"Doll, were you crying?" Bucky asked, tilting your face better so he could see.

"Yes, I thought something bad happened. Neither of you answered my texts." You explained, looking up into the those deep blues.

"Both of our phone are dead." Bucky smiled softly, giving you another kiss. You pealed yourself away from them so they could take their coats off.

Both men went up stairs to change for the night before coming back down stairs. Bucky showed you his leg after Steve ratted him out and his hand. You bandaged him up knowing he would be healed by day break. Steve slid back on the couch and Bucky laid partially against him so you snuggle against both of them, your favorite place to be. The house fell quiet as the three of you laid there, suddenly the lights on the tree flickered on, cascading you three in color.

Steve sighed contently, his arms wrapped over both of your shoulders as you held Bucky's hand over Steve's chest. Snow continued to pelt the world outside your garland wrapped windows, blanketing everything in a cold crisp white but for you, this is where you want to be. Snuggled up, wrapped warmly with you and your boys.

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