#takeover: New York

[visit-new-york]

640 West End Avenue (corner of 91st Street). 12-storey building from 1912, famous for its ivy-covered facade.

[contemplatingoutlander]

The above is a gift link 🎁 for this excellent report/commentary by Michelle Goldberg about what is happening at the New College of Florida under Ron DeSantis. If you click on the link, you can read the entire article, even if you do not subscribe to The New York Times.

DeSantis has replaced the president of the college and the board of governors with right-wing partisans (including the far right culture warrior Chris Rufo), who want to remake this small, highly-ranked, public liberal arts college into a copy of the private, Christian, conservative Hillsdale College. 

Given the above, one of my primary questions is how can a state college be allowed to be turned into a “Christian” college? 

It’s like DeSantis thinks it is fine to just completely ignore the First Amendment’s Establishment clause, not to mention ignoring the First Amendment’s free speech protections (by attempting to limit what can be discussed/ taught at public colleges and universities).

Below are some excerpts from the article:

When I spoke to [Chris] Rufo in early January, he said that New College would look very different in the following 120 days. Nearly four months later, that hasn’t entirely come to pass, but it’s clear where things are headed.

The new trustees fired the school’s president, replacing her with Richard Corcoran, the Republican former speaker of the Florida House. They fired its chief diversity officer and dismantled the diversity, equity and inclusion office. As I was writing this on Friday, several people sent me photographs of gender-neutral signage scraped off school bathrooms. [...] Whatever New College’s administration does, this will likely be the last year classes like the ones [student Sam] Sharf is taking are offered, because a bill making its way through the Florida Legislature requires the review of curriculums “based on theories that systemic racism, sexism, oppression, and privilege are inherent in the institutions of the United States.” The sense of dread on campus, however, goes beyond what’s happening in Tallahassee.

Eliana Salzhauer, whose 17-year-old son is a New College economics student, compared the seemingly inexorable transformation of the school to Twitter under Elon Musk: It looked the same at first, even as it gradually degraded into a completely different experience. “They are turning a top-rated academic institution into a third-rate athletic facility,” she said.

Salzhauer was referring, in part, to the hiring of Mariano Jimenez, who previously worked at Speir’s Inspiration Academy, as athletic director and head baseball coach, even though there’s no baseball diamond on campus. In the past, New College hasn’t had traditional sports teams, but the administration is now recruiting student athletes, and Corcoran has said he wants to establish fraternities and sororities, likely creating a culture clash with New College’s artsy queer kids, activists and autodidacts. Before Wednesday’s board meeting, about 75 people held a protest outside. “We’re Nerds & Geeks, not Jocks & Greeks,” said one sign.

[See more under the cut.]

For many, the board of trustees meeting was the clearest sign yet that this is the last semester of New College as they know it. The pivot point was the trustees’ decision to override the typical tenure process. New College hired a large number of new faculty five years ago, and this year was the first that any of them could apply for tenure. [...] Corcoran, however, had asked all the professors up for tenure this year to withdraw their applications because of the tumult at the school. Two of the seven agreed. The rest — three of them professors in the hard sciences — held out for the board’s vote. This was widely seen as a referendum not just on the individual candidates, but on faculty independence.

Fifty-four people registered to speak at the meeting. All but one of them either implored the trustees to grant the professors tenure or lambasted them for their designs on the school. Parents were particularly impassioned; many of them had been profoundly relieved to find an affordable school where their eccentric kids could thrive. Some tried to speak the language of conservatism: “You’re violating my parental rights regarding our school choice,” said Pam Pare, the mother of a biology major. One student, a second-year wrapped in a pink and blue trans flag, was escorted out of the meeting after cursing at Corcoran, but most tried to earnestly and calmly convey how much the professors up for tenure had taught them.

It was all futile. A majority of the trustees voted down each of the candidates in turn as the crowd chanted, “Shame on you!” That’s when [faculty chair Matthew] Lepinski quit, walking out of the room to cheers. [...] “Some faculty members have started to leave already, and obviously some students are thinking about what their future looks like,” Lepinski said right after quitting. A few days later, we spoke again. “There’s a grieving process for the New College that was, which is passing away,” he said. “I really loved the New College that was, but I am at peace that it’s gone now.”

Rufo couldn’t attend Wednesday’s meeting in person, because he’d been delayed coming home from Hungary, where he had a fellowship at a right-wing think tank closely tied to Viktor Orban’s government. (This seemed fitting, since Orban’s Hungary created the template for Rufo and Desantis’s educational crusade.) Instead, he Zoomed in, his face projected on a movie screen behind the other trustees.

After Lepinski quit, Rufo tweeted that “any faculty that prefer the old system of unfettered left-wing activism and a rubber-stamp board are free to self-select out.” Turnover, he added, “is to be expected — even welcomed. But we are making rapid, significant progress.” He and his allies haven’t built anything new at New College yet. They are succeeding, however, in tearing something down.

It makes sense that Chris Rufo, the activist who spearheaded the right-wing anti-CRT crusade, has recently been taking notes on how to create a very conservative college based on a “template” from the neofascist Viktor Orban’s Hungary.

I hope that lawsuits will be filed against DeSantis and the New College president and board of governors for their assault on First Amendment freedom of speech protections and the Establishment clause by Florida’s attempts to turn New College into a state funded conservative “Christian” liberal arts college.

[seilon]

no like when I say any answer on the queerest city poll that’s not San Fran is wrong I mean it is factually and historically WRONG

[seniouesbabes]

Lily Maymac 🌸🍒💋🌸 What a lunch 😋 😍 @hellomollyfashion

[news4dzhozhar]

[theepoetrygod]

Bayley vs Sasha Banks

Singles Match for the NXT Women’s Championship

NXT Takeover: Brooklyn (2015)

[bucky-fricking-barnes]

The Cards We're Dealt

Title: The Cards We’re Dealt

Pairing: Mafia!Bucky Barnes x Reader

Word Count: 15k

Warnings: Arranged marriage, alcohol, cursing, objectification of women and mild sexism, bad parents, angst, fluff, mentions of drugs

Summary: Bucky and Y/N are the children of the two most prominent mob bosses in New York. When their parents use them as part of a deal, they’re left to figure out how their lives fit together.

A/N: Wow! Another long fic because I have no self-restraint. There’s a bit of Irish in this because I couldn’t resist it when I wrote Steve. Translations are at the end, and anything incorrect can be blamed on Google Translate. As always, thank you for reading, liking, commenting, reblogging, and supporting me in all the ways you do. 

There is an unspoken rule amongst the mobs in New York that the more drug manufacturers a man controls, the nicer you treat his daughter. So, when Bucky’s father tells him that he’s once again been pimped out as part of a deal, Bucky knows to ask the question,

“How many does he control?”

If Bucky had his way, of course, he would treat all girls as well as he is able (which is very well). He likes girls, and he likes going out with girls. He just wishes he could choose which girls he got to take out.

“Seventy-five percent,” George Barnes says, and Bucky freezes with his glass against his lips. He has a club soda to his father’s whiskey—he’s in a good mood and was actually hoping to enjoy the day, though now he’s reconsidering it. His plan to lounge by the pool with Becca and soak up as much of the late spring sunshine as possible is quickly dissipating. 

“That’s not possible,” Bucky replies. He quickly does the math in his head. His dad owns over half the manufacturers in Brooklyn. “We own—“

“Not anymore.”

The library falls silent as Bucky tries to wrap his head around the news. Just yesterday he’d overheard his father on the phone with one of his men, explaining in great detail what he’d do if they didn’t get him a sample of their newest product by the top of the hour.

“How?” he asks. He sets his glass aside and sits straighter in his chair. “Did something happen? You didn’t tell me about a takeover.”

George takes a sip of his whiskey. “That’s because there wasn’t one.” He sets the crystal tumbler on the small bronze tray nearby. Marta will come clean it up later. “I sold them.”

“You sold them? If you’ve already struck a deal, then why am I taking out his daughter? Isn’t that normally something you have me do to butter their fathers up before you make the deal?”

Bucky watches as his own father stands and goes to watch the landscapers through the library window, his hands clasped behind his back. He’s long since been out of the army, but some habits die hard. Very rarely did the man ever relax.

“You are the deal,” George answers, his voice much too casual for Bucky’s liking.

“What the hell are you talking about?” snaps Bucky.

“Watch your tone, boy,” his father replies. He doesn’t turn around to witness the way Bucky grinds his teeth together in response. “In exchange for the majority of Theo’s territory, you and Y/N will be married within a year and a half, though the exact date is up to the two of you. I believe that Theo mentioned his daughter likes spring, so perhaps a spring wedding. June is popular, from what I’m told, though that’s cutting it a little close to the deadline.”

Bucky’s up out of his seat now. He can feel his pulse thrumming and he can’t quite catch his breath.

“So what? You threw me in to sweeten the pot? Am I just another bargaining chip to you now?”

He’s shouting. He doesn’t care.

George turns and regards him in silence, and, like always, his expression betrays nothing of what he’s thinking or feeling. He doesn’t seem fazed at all by Bucky’s outburst.

“You’re my heir. I make my decisions based on what’s best for our family. Nothing about this decision is impulsive or frivolous, James,” he finally answers, his voice cool and even. There’s nothing familial in his tone—George Barnes is all business. 

“You can’t just decide that I’m getting married. I won’t do it. I refuse,” Bucky tells him. He balls his fists at his sides and he sets his jaw, furious. How dare his father try to control his life like this? It’s one thing to occupy the majority of Bucky’s nights and weekends with dates, meetings, dinners, and weapons runs, but it’s another to throw him into a marriage he doesn’t want.

“I can and you will. If you don’t, there will be consequences. To start, you will be immediately cut off from our family. You will have no money, no home, no resources, and no contact or communication with anyone involved in the business, including your mother and your sister.”

Heart pounding, Bucky glares at him. He’s got a migraine coming on. He knows his father isn’t kidding, but he wants more than anything for Steve to pop out and say that this is all just a joke. He’s never even met Theo’s daughter. He’s barely even met Theo. According to the rumors, his only daughter is his most prized treasure. She isn’t someone who frequents any of the bars, clubs, and restaurants that he and the other “mob children” frequent. Maybe “mob children” isn’t exactly the right term, at least not anymore. After all, Bucky’s engaged now. He’s just part of the mob, another pawn to be moved around the chessboard.

“You have the rest of the day off. I’ll see you at eight tomorrow morning,” says George. He picks up his glass and downs the last of the liquor. “Theo and his family are coming for breakfast, and then Y/N will be moving in with us. I want you on your best behavior.”

He pauses and Bucky continues to glare at him, not validating his words with a response. George’s eyes grow dark with a thinly veiled threat. Bucky knows that look—if he pushes his father any harder, he’ll regret it. 

“Do you understand, boy?”

“Yes, sir,” Bucky grinds out.

Turning on his heel, Bucky stalks out of the library and slams the door behind him. He immediately heads down the hall, then down the stairs and across the ground floor of the Barnes Estate to the garage. His keys are still in his pocket; he’d only just gotten back from a night out with Steve when his father had summoned him.

It doesn’t matter that he’s still wearing yesterday’s clothes. Bucky climbs onto his bike and revs the engine, speeding off down the long driveway that winds around the house. The guards barely get the gate open in time and then he’s flying down the road, heading straight to Steve’s bar in the city. He knows his friend will be there, most likely nursing his hangover and going over the books in his back office. He won’t be hard to convince to go out again, though Bucky knows he won’t approve of the plan to drink as much as he possibly can in the next twelve hours. It doesn’t matter, though—it’s Bucky’s last night as a free man, and he’s determined to make the most of it.

You sit between your parents, staring at the empty seat across from you. They’d told you this morning that you were going to the Barnes Estate for breakfast, and while you’d expected the grandeur of the dining room and the meal, you didn’t expect the eldest Barnes child to be completely absent. You’ve never met him, but your mother has insisted that you speak to James—George Barnes’ only son and heir—as much as possible during the meal. Supposedly, he’s the same age as you.

Rebecca Barnes is a ray of sunshine and her cheery disposition is a stark contrast to the dark clouds that now hang over your fathers’ heads. Maybe it’s a deal gone wrong or maybe it’s something else, but you don’t like it. It leaves an uneasy feeling in the pit of your stomach. Silently, you sneak a hand under the table to find your mother’s. You squeeze and your mom squeezes back, glancing over to give a reassuring smile.

“Y/N,” Mrs. Barnes starts, and you jump a little in your seat. You haven’t been verbally addressed since you’d been seated a half hour ago. The food has yet to be served. “Your parents tell us that you’re very interested in horticulture. Did you know we have a rose garden out back?”

You force a polite smile. “I don’t know about very interested. I have a few house plants that I’ve managed to keep alive, though I would love to see your garden sometime. I’m sure it’s beautiful,” you add.

“Maybe Bucky can take you,” Rebecca says, earning herself a sharp look from her mother. She simply shrugs.

Oh, to be as unbothered as Rebecca Barnes!

“Where is James?” your father asks. His voice is a low, threatening growl and you sink down in your chair, staring at the cloth napkin still folded atop your plates.

“He knows to be here,” Mr. Barnes growls back. “You’ll have to excuse his tardiness, he’s not normally like this.”

Mrs. Barnes gives Rebecca an even harsher look when she opens her mouth to speak, and this time the girl actually looks ashamed. She takes a sip of her orange juice to hide the guilty look on her face. She’s the first person to have actually touched something on the table, and it’s like whatever spell the room has been under is broken.

All at once, the dining room springs to life. A short, slightly heavy-set woman in a gray dress and white apron enters through one door. She’s holding a delicate silver coffeepot and the smell of coffee instantly fills the room. Two younger women in identical uniforms follow behind her, each of them pushing golden carts laden with food. Through the door across the room, a tall man with short, dark brown hair stumbles in. He’s wearing all black, from his rumpled button-up and jeans to his boots and sunglasses. His hair is sticking up in every direction and just like the coffee, you can smell the stench of alcohol coming from him even from your seat.

You grimace at the smell and pull your napkin into your lap as one of the women comes to place food in front of you. It’s a formal dining service and the strange new man who’s entered feels entirely out of place. From his attire to the way he shuffles across the antique rug, everything about him screams that he’d rather be anywhere else. If you acted like that, your father would be pulling you back out into the hallway to reprimand you, and you look anxiously at Mr. Barnes, who’s seated at the head of the table. 

“James,” he greets, his voice unnervingly even. A chill runs down your spine. “It’s nice of you to join us. I trust that you slept well last night?”

James collapses into the only empty chair at the table, the one across from you, and pointedly ignores his father. You risk a glance up at him as he reaches for the cup of coffee that’s already been poured.

True to form, Rebecca leans over and claps a hand on her brother’s shoulder blade. “Good morning! Aren’t you excited to have breakfast with our guests?” she shouts, and her smirk makes it much too clear that she’s fully enjoying the way her brother’s scowl deepens. Rebecca also ignores her parents, including her mother, who leans forward to look past James and give her a look of warning.

James shrugs his sister off of him and starts buttering the toast on his plate. You watch for a moment, then start picking at your own food as your mother also begins to eat. Everyone’s acting so strangely that you’re already on edge, and you’ve only managed to get down a few grapes and two bites of dry toast by the time your father speaks up again.

“So when are we signing these papers?” he asks, sipping his coffee. 

“As soon as the marriage license is signed,” answers Mr. Barnes.

You frown. Marriage license? Who’s getting married?

“And the terms are the same as when we last spoke?”

Mr. Barnes sips his own drink, something that looks suspiciously like whiskey, and sets down the glass. “Yes. I have that contract in my office. We’ll review and sign after we’re done here. Are all of your daughter’s things ready to be moved?”

Your stomach drops and you turn to stare at your father with wide eyes. He nods, not even paying attention to you as he continues his conversation with the other man. Your mother pointedly ignores you, choosing instead to stare at her plate as she eats. When you look around the room, it seems like almost everyone else is doing the same. Rebecca is the only person who actually meets your panicked gaze. She gives you a pitying look as your anxiety rises.

It feels like your mouth is filled with sandpaper, and you grab your glass of juice. You have to drink half of it before the feeling even mildly abates. As soon as you set it down, one of the women in gray appears to refill it.

“What’s going on? Why are you moving my stuff?” you finally choke out. You twist the napkin in your lap with both hands, wringing it as you look from one person’s face to the next.

Mr. Barnes stops mid-sentence and the whole room freezes. Even James, who’s pouring something into his coffee cup from a small silver flask, stops what he’s doing.

“Y/N, sweetheart,” your mother begins, taking your hand under the table.

You want to pull away. You don’t.

“After breakfast, your father and I are going home, but you’ll be staying here with the Barneses.”

“What?” you whisper, your eyes filling with tears. “No, I don’t— I don’t want to stay here. You never said anything about me—“

“We’re getting married,” James interrupts. He’s chewing and you look over at him, gaping at the casual way he’s sprawled out in his chair. You can feel his gaze on you even from behind his sunglasses and it makes you feel dirty. 

“Excuse me?”

He chuckles and sits up, then leans forward in the chair. He drops the greasy strip of bacon he’d been eating onto his plate. “We’re getting married. They’re using us like bartering chips, sweetheart. You and me in exchange for all the drugs and all the territory in New York.” James gestures grandly with one hand, a too-wide grin on his face. There must be at least ten rings on each of his hands and you swallow thickly at the threatening display of black and silver metal.

You’re trembling now and you pull your hand away from your mom’s. She reaches for you again but you shake your head, shying away from her touch. Frantically, you look around the room to see if this is some kind of joke or a drunken rambling, but no one is laughing. Even Mrs. Barnes has the decency to look sympathetic on your behalf.

“No, no. You wouldn’t—“ You look back at your parents, imploring them to say that it isn’t true. You swallow thickly, trying to stave off tears, and your voice wavers as you prompt, “Mom? Dad?”

Their silence speaks volumes and a whimper escapes you as you wring your hands in your lap. The napkin slides onto the floor. It suddenly feels like you can’t breathe and when your mom reaches out for a second time and starts to tell you to calm down, you jerk away and stand. The chair falls backwards behind you, but you ignore it as you rush out of the dining room and into the hallway you’d entered from. Everything is unfamiliar. Frantically, you pick a door and yank on the handle. It doesn’t give way and you continue the process until one of them finally opens and you can rush inside. You lock it behind you and press your back against the door. The curtains on the floor-to-ceiling windows are closed, shrouding the room in darkness. You can’t make out much of the furniture through the tears in your eyes.

Out in the hallway, you can hear your mother calling for you and your father arguing with Mr. Barnes. Mrs. Barnes is yelling at somebody too, but it’s hard enough to hear the others over your own gasps and sobs. You’re properly crying now and you sink to the floor, curling up on the carpet as you heave. It’s a good thing you weren’t able to stomach much breakfast.

A knock on the door makes you yelp and then cry harder, and you crawl into the darkness of the room to try and find a hiding spot. You’re lucky enough to find an old, heavy desk right away. It’s the perfect size for you to crawl under for shelter, and there’s no chair for you to move out of the way. The drawers on both sides create a cubby for you, so you crawl into it and curl up into a ball with your back towards the door, just in case someone manages to get in. If you’re quiet enough, it’s possible they’ll walk right past you.

The crowd in the hallway has definitely heard you by now. The doorknob is rattling as whoever’s on the other side tries to get in, but after a few minutes, they stop and the hallway goes quiet. You hold your breath after every couple of sobs, listening for any sign that they’ve found a key or that they’re picking the lock. Nothing happens, however, and after a while, you give up on listening.

You sit in the darkness and cry until you’re thoroughly exhausted. Once you’ve run out of tears, you sit and zone out with your head resting against the side of the desk drawers for a while longer, numb from the news. Your body feels light and a buzzing, tingling feeling makes moving your limbs seem impossible. You could’ve never imagined that your parents would be so capable of treating you so poorly. You’ve always felt so loved by them, and to hear that they’ve practically thrown you away at the first chance of a profit makes you want to puke. Upon that realization, you actually do throw up, and the stink of your vomit on the carpet of whatever room you’re in makes you want to cry all over again.

The door opens just as the stench is becoming too much to bear. Light floods in from the hallway and you squint, curling up in fear. After a moment, the shorter woman in the gray uniform that you’d seen at breakfast appears a few feet away from the desk, right in the path of light. You look up at her. 

“Oh dear,” she sighs, and you instantly feel ashamed at the disappointment in her voice.

“I’m so sorry,” you whisper. Your bottom lip is trembling again as fresh tears somehow appear in your eyes. Sniffling, you wipe your nose with the back of your wrists. “I can clean it if you—“

“You’ll do no such thing,” the woman says. Her voice is gentle and kind, so much so that you don’t feel the need to argue with her. She waves her hand dismissively and approaches you, then holds out both hands. She’s careful not to step in the mess you’ve made. “Now come on, up you go.”

You let her help you to your feet and then you straighten out your clothes, sniffling and wiping at your nose again in a desperate attempt to look more put together than you feel. Still a bit unsteady, you whimper for a second time, “I’m sorry.”

“It’s alright, dear.” She gives you a warm smile. “My name’s Marta. I’m the head housekeeper here. It’s very nice to meet you.”

You don’t feel the same way about meeting her, given the circumstances, but you hold that comment to yourself and simply nod in agreement. Marta leads you back out into the too-bright hallway. It’s empty except for a bald man mopping the floor on the far end.

The high ceilings and glossy marble floors make it look like you’re in a castle. Even the silence feels regal. Everything seems so cold compared to your home, and you feel too small in the massive space.

“What time is it?” you quietly ask, looking back at Marta.

“It’s almost noon, Miss.”

Your stomach sinks and you press your lips together, inhaling deeply as you look around again. Three hours have passed.  “My parents…”

“They left about fifteen minutes after breakfast,” she tells you. Her words are matter-of-fact, even if she delivers the news in the softest possible way.

Somehow it hurts worse that they’ve left you than finding out they’d practically sold you to the Barneses in exchange for God knows what. Drugs or territory, whatever James had said. Not only did they treat you like nothing, but they’d deserted you after it was clear you didn’t agree with their plans. They hadn’t even tried to reassure you that they still loved you or that you’d still be able to see them. Maybe you wouldn’t be. Maybe they didn’t.

You nod numbly. There’s been nothing to prepare you for this, no precursor or warning, so you keep looking around the hall, though in reality you’re not really seeing anything. 

“Your room is ready upstairs, Miss Y/N. Would you like me to take you?” asks Marta.

You nod again. You feel like you’re underwater as you follow her up a grand staircase and then down a long, narrow hallway. It’s decorated similarly to the ground floor, though with a plush Persian rug running its length. Marta talks as she walks ahead of you, no doubt explaining what the many doors lead to, but her words simply go in one ear and out the other. It’s all so surreal that when you finally get to your own room, you don’t even open the door. Marta has to reach around you to open it, and then she gently ushers you inside when you still don't move.

Just as they had said at breakfast, your belongings have all been moved into the Barnes Estate. The furniture here is different, grander than what you’re used to, but your blankets and pillows are on the bed, and the two bookshelves are packed full of the books you’ve collected over the years. Even the strip from the photo booth at an old friend’s wedding is pinned to the bulletin board above the desk. Someone’s even thought to put your plants on their own table by the window. 

“There’s a bathroom on the left and your closet is on the right,” Marta explains, pointing to each. “If you’re hungry, dinner is at five.”

“Do I have to eat with them?” you ask.

If Marta is surprised by your question, she doesn’t show it. She simply shakes her head with a gentle smile. “No. We can bring food here if you’d like.”

You nod and stand in silence until she leaves and closes the door behind her. Then, after another minute passes, you drag yourself over to the bed, climb under the covers, and close your eyes.

If there’s any mercy left in this life, you think, I’ll fall asleep and never wake up again.

Weeks pass and you still haven’t adjusted to life at the Barnes Estate. The staff is only slightly less friendly than those you grew up with, but they’re more attentive. It helps that there are more of them. For every member of the Barnes family, yourself included, there are at least four staff members to attend to their every need. It makes you feel like royalty, but it also makes you feel guilty. You don’t need this much. You certainly didn’t ask for it.

You haven’t seen James since the ill-fated breakfast, nor have you seen your parents. They’ve gone so far as to block your number. After that discovery, you’d locked yourself in the massive ensuite bathroom and cried for an hour. Marta had been the one to coax you out. The poor maid who’d found you when coming to get you for dinner hadn’t known how to help. You’d spent that entire evening curled up on your bed while reruns of The Nanny played on the TV embedded in the wall across from the massive mattress. Marta had spent every second with you that she could, but eventually Mrs. Barnes—Winnifred, as you referred to her in your mind—had scolded her for neglecting her nighttime duties across the estate. That made you feel even worse.

“Are you okay?” Rebecca asks, and you turn to look at her from where you’re staring out the hallway windows at the gardeners. The backyard is massive, complete with a rose garden in full bloom, an outdoor swimming pool, a forested walking trail, a large green expanse for games and parties, a gazebo, a fountain, and what seems to be stables far in the distance, though you haven’t ventured far enough to be sure. A visit to the rose garden hasn’t been brought up again either, and nothing seems interesting enough to explore on your own.

Nodding, you don’t say anything before turning back to watch the men work. They talk and laugh with each other as they prune, pick, and water. You wish that you could trade places with them. 

“You don’t look okay,” she says. Rebecca props herself up on the window ledge to your right, facing you with a suspicious look on her face. “We haven’t seen you at any meals, and Valerie told me that you were crying in the bathtub three nights ago.”

You should feel ashamed, but you’re too numb to care. It feels like you’re floating through each day, detached from most things. You’ve spent your entire life thinking that you would marry for love and live happily ever after. Now, your parents have sold you to the highest bidder and your husband-to-be is a cruel, disgusting man-child that wants nothing to do with you.

Rebecca’s fingers lacing with yours jerk you back to reality and you look down at your joined hands in confusion. Her nails are bitten short and she wears a single ring with the Barnes family crest. It’s dainty and gold, a stark contrast to the many rings on her brother’s fingers.

“You’re safe here, Y/N,” she tells you, her voice gentle. “You don’t have to be alone. I’m so sorry for everything that’s happened to you. If I had any say in it, you could be home right now with your parents, but I’m far from the top of the totem pole.”

“I hate them.” You spit the words out and jerk your hand away from hers. “I hate my parents.”

That’s the first time you’ve ever said that in your entire life and your heart skips a beat as the anger makes your lip curl. You’re baring your teeth at her but Rebecca doesn’t even flinch. She’s a mafia princess, through and through.

“They made me believe that I could have anything I wanted, that I could marry whoever I wanted whenever I was ready, and then they threw that all away and treated me like shit the first time it was convenient for them.”

She nods. “That’s true.”

“I was so foolish to have believed them,” you growl, but the fight in you is fading just as quickly as it came. You burn bright, but you burn quickly, too.

“No,” Rebecca says, shaking her head. “You’re just human.”

You look away, embarrassed by your display of emotion as your eyes begin to water with more tears. You were raised to be reserved. You knew very little about the inner workings of your parents’ business, but you’d learned as a young girl that you’d fare better if you always clung to the edges of the room, avoiding the dirt and grime and blood that surrounded your whole life. Over the years, you’ve grown very good at hiding yourself and your emotions from the people around you. From the spark in her eye, you have the feeling that Rebecca is the exact opposite. She could hold her own if it came down to it. You couldn’t.

“It’s okay to be upset,” she insists.

Shaking your head, you take a deep breath and look back out the window. You lift your chin slightly and when Rebecca tries to rope you into another conversation with her, you ignore her and focus on the men outside. They’re finished tending to the roses on the edges of the garden. Now they’re working their way inwards.

You’re finally left alone a few minutes later and as soon as she’s around the corner, you let out a heavy sigh and relax your posture. Slumping forward, you lean forward into the window ledge, curling up just a little as you continue to watch the gardeners. The silly song from Alice in Wonderland pops into your head and you hum along, eventually mumbling to yourself about painting the roses red.

You feel a little bit like Alice, you realize. You’re out of your element in a strange land where everything you’ve learned about life seems to be turned on its head. In this world, nobody marries for love and the girls are just as entrenched in the business as the men. Does Rebecca conduct business with her father and older brother? You could certainly picture it. Will the same be expected of you?

That afternoon, Marta knocks on your door with a written invitation from Winnifred. Your presence is being formally requested at their dinner table, though from the look the housekeeper is giving you, it’s more of a demand than a request. With her help, you pick out something to wear. By the time five o’clock rolls around, you’re crossing the enormous hallway in a dress and heels that you’ve never seen before. It’s far too showy for your taste, but it’s clearly something someone wanted you to wear. Otherwise, they wouldn’t have put it in your closet.

George Barnes and James stand when you enter the dining room, as do several other men you don’t recognize. Your father is standing near the head of the table with George, though your mother and Rebecca are nowhere in sight. Besides Winnifred, you don’t recognize any of the other women. The only empty seat is beside James and your immediate instinct is to flee, but then he’s stepping aside to pull out the chair and all eyes are on you.

Slowly, you close the distance between the two of you and sit. He helps you scoot in, then takes his own seat on your right. The other men sit as well and then dinner resumes. You sit in silence, staring at the top edge of your plate with your hands in your lap. You’re not really listening to the conversations around you, either, but you can feel someone’s eyes on you as you try to stay as quiet and motionless as possible.

“Are you sick or something?”

You startle and look up with wide eyes. James is watching you. He’s got one hand on the table with his fingers brushing the stem of his wineglass and the other resting on his thigh. Unlike your fateful breakfast weeks ago, James is dressed in a neat, all-black suit. He has no tie, and his rings are all gone except one. It’s identical to Rebecca’s family crest, except his is silver and has a thicker band.

His eyes are full of something you can’t place and you shift uncomfortably under his gaze. As quickly as you turned to him, you turn away and look back at your plate. The napkin is folded in some elaborate way on top of the plate. You’re not sure if it’s supposed to resemble anything at all, but maybe if you stare at it long enough, it will look like something.

“Y/N?” he prompts. You nod once, tightly, and then pull the heavy cloth napkin into your lap when a server appears to present the first course.

Between the second and third course, you can feel James’ eyes on you. After the third, he gets roped into conversation with a man sitting across the table, but you know that he’s glancing at you all the while. After the fourth, he bumps his arm against yours. You shirk away and feel him tense beside you.

“Excuse me,” you mumble, and you push your chair away from the table. Immediately, the conversations stop and all the men stand again. It’s too much attention on you and you hurry out of the dining room as fast as your heels and dress will allow. You’re stumbling over yourself by the time you get back to your suite on the third floor. The door slams behind you and you collapse onto the floor beside the bed, too overwhelmed to even climb atop the oversized mattress. You’re on the verge of tears when there’s a soft knock from the door, and that rips a sob from your chest that you hadn’t expected.

Immediately, the door opens and James is standing in the open space, a dark look on his face. You sob again and scramble backwards until the edge of the bed frame is digging painfully into your spine.

“What are you doing?” he asks.

You swallow hard and take several gasping breaths, trying to control yourself. Your mind is spinning with insults, calling you weak and pathetic, and you believe every one.

“It’s just too much,” you answer through your tears. “I don’t want this!”

James huffs. His angry expression has faded, now replaced with something more akin to irritation. “And you think I do?”

You shake your head. “Of course not.”

“These are the cards we’ve been dealt, doll. You’re gonna have to get over it. Let’s just get married and then we can live happily ever after in a big house where we never have to see each other. I’ll do what I want and you can do what you want. Sound like a plan?”

You look down at your hands. A big part of you wants to say that no, it doesn’t sound like a plan. You don’t want that life. You don’t want a house so big that you practically need a golf cart to get from one side to the other. You don’t want a husband who ignores you in favor of his blood money or his side chick or the next shiny toy off the black market. You don’t want James.

Though every part of you is screaming the opposite, you nod. He crosses the room and you inhale sharply to steady yourself as he approaches you with no care. His black dress shoes are tracking dirt across the rug. James holds out a hand to help you up and you take it. The heirloom ring on his right hand digs into yours until you’re standing, and then he drops your hand like it’s on fire.

“We need to go back,” he tells you, and you nod again. “Our parents are pissed.”

“Of course they are,” you mumble. 

James pauses, staring at you critically. You’ve been staring at the baseboards since he helped you up, but when he doesn’t move or speak, you glance upwards at him. He’s got one eyebrow raised. His expression is thoroughly unreadable otherwise and an unsettling feeling blooms in your stomach.

“What?” you ask. You step back a little, but there’s no place to go except up against the bed again.

He shakes his head at you. “Nothing. Come on, princess.”

“Don’t call me that.” You scrunch your nose. “Anything but that.”

“Sugar?” he offers, and when you shake your head, he sighs. “Well, what do you want me to call you, since you’re suddenly the one calling the shots?”

His words cut deep and you look back down, hating the way shame immediately pools in your belly. How could he seem angry and irritated with you, then borderline kind, and then completely disinterested in your feelings the next? It’s disorienting, and you don’t need that on top of everything else.

“That’s what I thought. Let’s go.”

Grabbing your arm in a grip just bordering on painful, James pulls you out of your bedroom and back down the hall. He holds on as you stumble behind him in your heels. When you reach the ground floor hallway again, he drops his hand and offers you his arm. You’re hesitant to take it, but he sighs a little and you decide that it’s easier to give in than to put up a fight.

The two of you walk back into the dining room and the conversations immediately hush. James leads you to your waiting seats, pulls out the chair for you, and then helps you scoot towards the table again once you’re seated. As he takes his spot beside you, your father speaks up.

“Have you and James discussed when you’ll be getting married?” he asks.

You pick up your fork and stare at the strange food on your plate, ignoring him. Though your stomach is churning, you force yourself to take a bite. He can’t expect you to answer while you’re chewing—it would be bad manners.

“Next spring,” James answers. “In the rose garden.”

You want to spit on the roses. You swallow your food instead.

“Good choice,” Mr. Barnes agrees. He turns his attention back to your father. “Your daughter is quite the well-behaved woman. She’ll do well with our James.”

Beside you, James tenses again, his grip tightening slightly on his fork. You glance at him, holding your breath, and wait until he relaxes again to take another bite of your food. 

The rest of the dinner passes with mundane, meaningless conversations. Nobody addresses you for the remainder of the meal, not even your parents, and finally the men begin to make their way out of the dining room to an adjoining room. You hadn’t even realized there was a room connected; the door is hidden amongst the paneling and crown molding on the walls.

“You can’t go in there.” James grabs your wrist as you stand to follow the group of men into the new room. His voice isn’t malicious and his grip isn’t tight, but you flinch away from him anyway. It’s only then that you realize the few women that had been in the room are leaving through the door to the hall with their wineglasses in hand.

“Because I’m a woman?” you counter.

“Because you don’t want to hear the things that they’re going to discuss,” he answers. He tosses his napkin on the table and stands, towering over you. After a long second of eye contact, he steps away from you and heads towards the men.

You watch him go and silently weigh your options. A few weeks ago, you wouldn’t have even thought about following the men into the second room. You would have simply taken the same path as the other woman, though your wine would have continued to remain untouched. Now, however, with your wine in hand, you stood at a crossroads. You could go into the room and potentially face the wrath of your father, James, and George Barnes, or you could live forever curious as to what was actually being discussed. 

With your mind made up, you down your wine, step around James, and head through the open door into the room. It’s a study with dark wood paneling on the walls, leather couches, and stale cigar smoke in the air. As soon as you enter, the laughter and conversation stop and all eyes land on you.

“Y/N, you should be with Winnie and your mother,” Mr. Barnes says, stepping towards you. James is behind you now and though you’re hedged in, you simply lift your chin at the older man.

“Why? Am I not allowed to know what family I’m marrying into?”

His face darkens. “Girl, I’m warning you—”

“Don’t speak to my wife like that.” James’ voice from over your shoulder startles you and you quickly turn your head, looking back at him with shock. 

Why is he suddenly standing up for me?

“Hold your tongue, James,” his father snaps. “You aren’t married yet, and Y/N needs to learn her place. One would think her father would have taught her better, considering the problems his wife caused.”

Though you hate your parents for what they’ve done to you, your blood boils at the insult. Your anger rears its ugly head even more when you realize that your father doesn’t look intent on standing up for you or your mom, either.

“That’s enough!”

You swear the room rattles around you when James shouts and you grit your teeth, furious at Mr. Barnes. How dare he insult your father? How dare he talk to you and his son that way?

James grabbing your hand shocks you back into reality. Once again, his grip is almost painfully tight, but you force your face to reveal nothing.

“Y/N and I are going out. If I so much as hear that you’ve said a single thing about her in my absence, you will regret ever giving me any kind of power in this business,” he growls. “The next time you see her, I expect that you’ll treat her with the respect she deserves.” 

The men stare at you and James in disbelief, and then you find yourself being practically dragged out of the room. You’re too stunned to fight back, so you let him pull you across the ground floor of the estate to a door only two down from the dark room where you’d hit the morning your parents had left you behind.

“We’ll have to take the car, unless you’re okay riding the bike in that dress,” James says, pushing open the door. He doesn’t look back at you as he speaks, and it takes you a second to realize he wants a response.

“Car,” you answer after a few seconds. “Please.”

The room James has led you to is a massive garage, stretching farther than you ever realized a similar room could. Three of the walls are made of light gray cement, as are the floor and ceiling, and the fourth wall is made up of windowed garage doors, each one big enough for several cars to drive through simultaneously. Running down the center of the rectangular garage, there is a row of seven parked cars, with enough space to fit at least another car between each one, and beyond that, you can see a row of several motorcycles parked in a similar manner. The cars are in varying shades of gray and black, with the exception of one red sports car at the far end of the group. You can’t see the bikes well enough from the door, but you catch glimpses of blue, silver, gray, and black.

Four enormous, black and silver tool chests are lined up against the wall facing the hoods of the cars, but there isn’t a spot of oil or dirt in sight. You don’t even see any loose tools or equipment. Looking around, you wonder if the tool chests are just there for decoration, or if someone on the estate actually works on the cars and motorcycles.

Maybe James works on them?

“Are all of these yours?” you ask, unable to help yourself. He seems like the kind of guy who would enjoy driving around for fun, and he’s just mentioned something about a bike. You stare at the side of James’ face as he plucks a set of keys off a black pegboard on the wall. There’s a button embedded in the wall beside the board. James pushes it with one thumb and the keys in his hand bump against the wall.

One of the garage doors near the last few cars starts to roll upwards onto the ceiling, revealing the outside of the estate. The sun has completely disappeared from the sky, and the moonlight is blocked by the clouds you’d seen rolling in earlier in the afternoon. The leaves of the large shade trees that surround the estate and form a protective shield from the outside world rustle in the wind. Crickets and cicadas chirp, reminding you of the cool spring nights you’d spent on your family estate as a little girl. You’d run around in the grass near the garden while your mom or your nanny watched you. Sometimes your father’s men would watch from the perimeter of the property, and when you’d wave, they’d wave back, asking what you’d done that day. You always answered them, even if you knew it would get you in trouble. They never stopped asking either, even if it got them in trouble, too.

You stop walking and close your eyes, then breathe in deeply as the night air rushes into the garage. It’s the first time you’ve been even close to the outdoors since arriving at the Barnes Estate. Your skin is still warm from the stifling dining room and the anger you’d felt in the men’s study. The breeze is a blessed relief, even if you do shiver after only a moment. Goosebumps form on your exposed skin—the dress Marta had picked out for you did little to keep you safe from the elements. 

James keeps walking down the aisle formed by the wall and the front of the cars, though you hear his footsteps pause a few moments after you stop following him. 

“Are you okay?” he asks.

You’re a little surprised that he’s not demanding that you catch up. When you open your eyes, you immediately meet his gaze, and a weird feeling bubbles up in your stomach. The expression on his face betrays little, but his stare reminds you of the way your father’s men looked at you all those years ago—interested and almost fond, but ready to push you away at a moment’s notice. You nod and hurry to catch up with him.

Once you get closer, James presses a button on the key fob in his hand. One of the cars in front of the open garage door rumbles to life. The sound it makes is a low purr, almost seductive, and you raise an eyebrow as James approaches, then runs his fingers over the hood. Even if the others aren’t, this car has to be his. It’s a sleek black, with dark tinted windows and a gleaming silver grill in the front. The BMW logo shines proudly in the center. It looks like a car your own father would own. Though you know he’s never owned a BMW, if this car is anything like the ones in your father’s fleet, you know that the inside will be as much a picture of luxury as the outside.

You slide into the passenger seat when James opens the door for you, and in the time it takes him to cross around the front of the car to the driver’s side, you take inventory of the interior. It’s a manual transmission—something your father once said was obsolete, except for car collectors and enthusiasts—which means that you wouldn’t be able to drive it, even if you tried. The car is pristine, so much so that you’re afraid to move. Two water bottles are in the cupholders, and it still smells brand new inside. There isn’t a speck of dirt or dust on the dashboard, nor on the floor mats. The leather seat is soft and there’s a control for seat warming and cooling on the control panel.

James climbs into the driver’s seat and shuts the door. He buckles up and you follow his lead, and then you sit back as he reverses the car out of the garage and onto a winding driveway that leads you around the front of the estate, then along the other side to a large gate with a guard house. You’d forgotten about the extensive security since the last time you’d been outside the Barnes Estate. Your father had handed over your driver’s license, along with his and your mother’s, before breakfast all those weeks ago, and there’d been a strange code word of some kind. It dawns on you as the guard opens the gate for you and James that you’d never gotten your license back.

“Where are we going?” you ask as James pulls onto the main road. It leads away from the estate and into the city. 

“To get some real food,” he replies. His tone is gruff, and it feels like he’s on the verge of an angry outburst, so you slump back in your seat as he shifts gears and the car accelerates. The tension in the car is thick. You don’t want to be the one to deal with it, especially since he’s the one creating it.

After several minutes of watching the enormous mansions and the forests surrounding them pass by, you look over at James again. His expression, just like in the garage, reveals nothing, but you can tell that he’s more put-together than the last time you’d interacted, and it’s not just the tailored suit. His hair has been trimmed and styled, and he has an even dusting of stubble that frames his jawline nicely.

In the time since you’d learned you were engaged, James hasn’t said anything to you. You’ve heard him talking in the hallways as you wandered, but you haven’t wanted to be near him. This is the closest you’ve ever been. Your brief conversations so far tonight make up the majority of the words you’ve spoken to each other. His words from the bedroom echo in your head, until finally, you can’t help but blurt out your thoughts.

“Do you really not want to marry me?” you ask. Your voice sounds small and pathetic, and you hate it, but it’s too late now. 

He glances over at you with one hand on the wheel and the other resting on the gear shift. “What do you mean?”

You sit up a little in the seat, though you keep your hands in your lap and you try not to move your feet, just in case there’s dirt on your shoes.

“I mean,” you say, watching him carefully for his reaction, “that when you came to get me upstairs, you said you didn’t want to marry me. Is that really true?”

“I never said that.” He shifts gears again as you near a stoplight, and the car slows. 

“Yes, you did.”

“No,” he shifts again, his teeth now clenched, “I didn’t. I asked if it looked like I wanted to marry you, and you said it didn’t. But I never said I didn’t want to.”

Now you’re confused, and you frown at him, ignoring the obvious irritation in his voice. The car rolls to a stop behind a Ferrari blasting music out the open windows. 

“So you do want to marry me?” you ask. 

He sighs and drops his hand from the gear shift, then looks over at you. “Y/N, I’m not going to pressure you into anything you don’t want to do, so if this is you testing to see how I’ll treat you, then you have nothing to worry about. I’m not a monster.”

“It’s not. I just…” You stop, unsure of how to phrase what you’re feeling. It’s strange to be upset over a marriage you don’t even want, but for some reason, you are. 

“What?”

“If you don’t want to marry me and I don’t want to marry you, then why are we going along with this?” you finally ask, settling for the bigger question than the one that’s truly nagging at you.

“Because we know that if we don’t, life will be hell,” he answers.

It’s the truth. You know it is, and you know it deep down. If the two of you refuse this marriage, your life will be worse than you could possibly imagine, and you’re fairly certain that your fathers will find a way to make it happen anyhow. They’re well-connected in every sphere of life, not just when it comes to drugs and weapons. Your father probably has a priest on his payroll.

The light turns green and James moves the car forward again, merging into the right lane almost immediately. He slows as you approach a valet stand outside an upscale bar you’ve never heard of. It’s not one of your father’s, which means it probably belongs to George Barnes.

Then again, you think as a uniformed man opens your door, maybe it belongs to James.

“It’s nice to see you again, Mr. Barnes,” a valet on the other side of the car greets.

James hands him the keys. “You too, Tommy. Listen, don’t park it too far off. We’re not staying too long.”

The man nods and climbs into the driver’s seat as your own valet leads you away from the curb. James meets you next to the valet stand and offers you his arm, then heads towards the doors.

“What is this place?” you ask as he holds open the door for you.

“My friend’s bar,” James says.

Your stomach twists itself in knots as heavy club music starts to get louder. The bass rumbles in your chest and you dig your nails into his arm as you near a set of glossy black double doors. You haven’t been to a club in a long time. The last time you’d gone, you’d been dragged by a childhood acquaintance, but you’d spent most of the night alone after she’d ditched you for someone she met on the dance floor. You’re not particularly eager to relive that experience tonight, especially with the man you’re being forced to marry. Who’s to say he won’t ditch you for someone else right in front of you, just to rub it in your face? After all, he’d said it himself in the bedroom—you’ll do what you want and he’ll do what he wants. It’s the cards you’ve been dealt.

If these are the cards, then I’ve got a sucky hand.

“James—”

“Bucky.”

You stop and squint at him in the low light of the entrance hallway. The two bouncers in all-black suits stop with their hands on the door handles, ready to open them for you once you start walking again. The music pounds in your ears, so much so that you can feel your eardrums vibrating.

“What?” you ask, not sure you’d heard him correctly.

“Bucky,” repeats James, a little louder this time. “You should call me Bucky, if we’re going to be married.”

“Is that… a nickname?” 

Even in the darkness, you can see him laugh, and a bashful, boyish smile spreads across his face. “My middle name is Buchanan. Steve used to tease me about it when we were kids, and he started calling me Bucky as a joke. It caught on.” He shrugs it off, but there’s a fondness in his voice when he speaks of his childhood friend, and it makes you smile just a little.

You loosen your grip on his arm. “Okay then. Bucky,” you add.

When Bucky steps forward again, the doors are pulled open, revealing a much more casual bar than you could’ve anticipated. Though it’s clean, it looks a little run down, and the heavy music fades into jazz piano as you step through the open doorway and into the large, open space. With almost cathedral-height ceilings, walnut floors and support pillars, and well-worn wooden booths and tables, the bar feels more homier than you’d expected. It’s clearly been well-hidden from the busy crowds of New York. Only a few patrons are scattered around the room, sitting in the booths or at two-top tables, but Bucky leads you to the wood, u-shaped bar that juts out into the room from the back wall. A single man stands behind it, drying glasses with a white bar towel. He smiles when he looks up and sees you approaching.

“Bucky,” he greets, and he reaches over the bar to pull Bucky in for a hug. It’s the first time you see Bucky smile—a real, full, genuine smile—and you watch in silence as he hugs his friend.

“Steve,” Bucky replies. Instantly, your brain starts connecting the dots. This is his childhood friend, the one who gave him his nickname.

“Tá sé go maith tú a fheiceáil.” Steve turns his attention to you, and you quickly look away from Bucky and at him. Your brain whirs as you try to place the language he’s just spoken. It’s not one you’ve heard before, which means none of your father’s men speak it, and neither do any of the Barneses.

“You must be Y/N.”

You nod and offer Steve a small, polite smile. You’re not sure how to act around Bucky’s friends. If they’re also part of the mob, it’s possible they’ll treat you even worse than George Barnes had after dinner, but a new, surprising voice in your head argues that Bucky would never be friends with someone like that.

“It’s okay,” reassures Bucky. He reaches out and touches your arm, gentler than he has all evening. “Steve’s a nice guy, and he knows about our family businesses. You can trust him.”

Steve looks between the two of you before picking up a glass and setting it right-side-up in front of you. “What’ll it be, Y/N?”

You glance at him, then at the wall of liquor behind him. After a moment, you list off a drink that’s not your favorite, but that you know you’ll be able to stomach no matter the circumstances. Steve nods in response before starting to make it.

Silently, Bucky takes one of the chairs at the bar, and you do the same. He sits with his arms folded on the counter. He’s still wearing his suit from dinner. You feel a little out of place in your fancy clothes, and you wonder if he feels the same.

Your drink is placed in front of you a moment later, and after Steve’s silent prompting, you take a sip. It’s delicious, and you can’t help but smile at him.

“Aha, I’ve still got it!” Steve cheers, and you laugh. He grins at you, a charming type of smile that makes your heart flutter in your chest. You feel a little sheepish at the intensity of his joy, and you fidget in your seat, then with your hair.

Beside you, Bucky rolls his eyes and tosses a round paper coaster at his friend. “Knock it off, Rogers,” he huffs. “Stop flirting with my girl. You’ve already got one of your own.”

You glance over when he calls you that, but you don’t say anything. There’s another weird feeling in your gut now. This one, unlike the one you’d had in the car or the fluttering feeling Steve had given you, you recognize immediately—pride. It feels good to have Bucky call you “his girl”, even if you barely know him. It’s strange, and the thought makes you squirm in your seat again. You drop your hand down to the bartop and take another sip of your drink, trying to quell the strange feelings inside of you. 

What is going on with me? Why can’t I just feel normal about all of this? Is there even a normal way to feel about this?

“You hungry?” asks Bucky, and you nod when you realize he’s talking to you again.

“I make a mean twice-baked potato,” Steve says. He plants his hands on the bar to look between the two of you. “Whaddaya say, Y/N? You up for it?”

“Only if you put the jalapeños on the side this time, punk,” Bucky tells him before you can reply. He seems to remember himself a second later, however, because he looks over at you. “Unless, of course, you want them on top.”

You shrug, not wanting to upset anyone, and Steve groans.

“Come on, Y/N,” he says, and he smiles wide as he gestures around the almost-empty bar. “I’ve got all the time in the world to make your food exactly the way you want it. Don’t make me guess.”

“He’s bad at guessing,” Bucky chimes in.

“Terrible,” Steve adds, nodding earnestly.

Tentatively, you list off what you want, and Steve makes a note of everything on a notepad that seems to appear out of nowhere. Once he’s got your order down, he disappears through a door in the back wall. Before it closes, you catch a glimpse of a shining kitchen filled with stainless steel, and you wonder how many patrons come through the bar if Steve has what looks to be a full-sized kitchen in the back.

“You didn’t eat much at dinner, so I figured I’d bring you someplace that actually has good food,” Bucky says. He reaches across the bar to grab a bottle of beer Steve has left out, and he uses one hand to pry the top off. 

You gape at him, too distracted by the blatant show of strength to properly process the very thoughtful thing he’s just said to you. “What?”

“I said that you didn’t eat much at dinner, so I figured—”

“You just pulled the top off like it was nothing. How did you do that?” You look around on Steve’s side of the bar for another bottle, hoping to try your luck. Maybe it’s some new kind of bottle that he’s trying out before it hits the market, or maybe Steve has bootleg beer with a different kind of cap.

Bucky is staring at you, seemingly just as confused as you. “With my arm.”

“With your arm?” you repeat. You’re certain that he’d used his hand to pry it off.

He stares at you for a second longer before the confusion disappears and is replaced with a glint of mischief in his eyes. It makes the shadows on his face melt away a little, and his blue irises seem bright and youthful again, entirely unlike a man who’s seen too much.

“My arm,” he reiterates, and then he pulls off the black glove you’d assumed to be part of his personal style. It’s not just for show, however, because he pulls it off to reveal a black metal hand with dull gold knuckles. Bucky continues, standing and shrugging off his jacket, then rolling up the sleeve of his button-down shirt. As he reveals more and more, you realize that the black metal continues, making up what would be his left arm.

No wonder it hurt when he grabbed me.

“It’s metal,” you dumbly say, and he snorts.

“Observant.”

You shake your head and look from his arm to meet his eyes. “You have a metal arm. How didn’t I know that?”

Bucky shrugs and drapes his jacket over the back of the chair. He leaves the glove on the bar where he’d first set it down. Once he’s seated again, he rolls up his other sleeve to match.

“Beats me. I figured everyone knew. My dad wasn’t subtle when he was bragging about the arm he had made for me when it first happened,” replies Bucky. He takes a sip of his beer, then sighs and sets it back down.

You don’t want to pity him, so you try your best to school your expression by taking a sip of your own drink.

“Was it an accident?” you ask after a minute has passed. He doesn’t reply right away, and you scramble to save the conversation. “You don’t have to tell me if you don’t want to.”

He shakes his head. “It’s okay. It was a long time ago.”

“How old were you?”

“Seventeen,” he says, and his voice is quieter than before.

You look back down at the drink in front of you. Twisting the glass around and around, you ask, “And it was an accident?”

Bucky takes another swig of his beer. “I was with my dad, working a job. I didn’t even realize I’d been injured until I woke up in the hospital, two weeks later, missing an arm. Apparently, falling shipping containers are heavy.”

You can’t help but curse. What he’s describing sounds horrible, but Bucky only laughs.

“That sounds about right, yeah. I’m lucky I had Steve around to keep me sane,” he tells you. “My friend Sam was a big help too, but he moved down to Louisiana a few years ago.”

“Steve seems like a good friend,” you agree. “They both do.”

You can feel Bucky staring at you now, and you take a sip of your drink while you wait for him to look away again. When he doesn’t, you glance in his direction.

“What?” you ask.

“What?”

“Why are you staring at me?”

“I’m not.”

“Yes you are!” you laugh, and you look at him fully this time. Bucky’s grinning, and you ball up a cocktail napkin and toss it at him.

“Okay, I was staring,” he admits, still smiling. “But I can’t help it. You’re pretty, and you’re nice, and you seem smart.”

You feel your cheeks grow warm at the compliment, and you look away. “You don’t have to say that. We’re already engaged.”

“I’m not saying it because we’re engaged. I’m saying it because it’s true.”

You don’t have a chance to reply before Steve comes out with two hot plates. He places them in front of you, joking briefly about giving you the wrong order, and it’s distraction enough that you sit up tall and smile wide. You push Bucky’s compliment out of your head as you chow down, groaning and moaning about the potatoes. They’re exactly what you need after the stressful dinner. Bucky was right—you hadn’t eaten much, and Steve’s cooking is delicious.

Once you’re full, you push your plate away and lean back in your chair. Steve grins at you before he goes back to counting the cash drawer. The other patrons have left already, leaving you, Steve, and Bucky alone in the bar.

“That was amazing,” you tell him for the hundredth time, and Steve chuckles.

“Thank you. I’ll be sure to tell mo bhean chéile—my wife—you said that, considering she still believes potatoes aren’t a meal.”

You notice the wedding band on his left hand as soon as he says it. Above it, also in silver, is a familiar ring. If you weren’t able to see the family crest, you would’ve thought it was the same as Bucky’s, but this ring has an eagle and a star engraved on it, rather than the wolf you’ve seen on Rebecca and Bucky’s rings.

“Potatoes are a meal!” you argue. You can tell that Steve has clocked you looking at his rings because he shifts his hand, instinctively blocking your view as he looks for your own ring. You’d taken your parent’s ring off the day you’d cried in the bathtub and you haven’t worn it since, but no one in Bucky’s family has replaced it with their own. It’s the first time since middle school that you haven’t worn a family ring, and you’d be lying if you said it was a weight off your shoulders. You’d thought it might be, but instead it just makes you feel naked.

Steve laughs and his posture relaxes. He stops hiding his rings from you when he realizes your hands are bare. “Well, whenever you meet her, you can have that argument with her, because I’ve already had it at least a dozen times.” He closes the drawer and fixes his eyes on Bucky, who’s just finishing his food. “Speaking of, when are you two coming over? I promised Peg I’d wait until Y/N had settled in to ask, and you seem settled enough to me.” He glances at you for the last part, and you look down at your empty plate.

“It’s not up to me,” answers Bucky. “We’ll come over whenever Y/N is ready. This is the first time we’ve been together since my dad dropped the bomb on us.”

Steve pauses, his hands on the tablet he’d set down before starting to count the night’s profits. “Wait. Really?”

You nod when he looks at you, suddenly self-conscious again, and you pull your hands into your lap. “I haven’t been the best house guest…”

“You’re not a guest, Y/N. It’s your home now, too,” Bucky interjects.

Reaching over the counter, Steve smacks the side of Bucky’s head. His accent is thick when he huffs, “Íosa Críost, you thick! You didn’t think to go talk to her? To see if she wanted to watch a movie? To see if she needed anything?”

Bucky stammers over in his seat, and you keep your head ducked to hide your smile. Clearly, Steve knows more about being married than Bucky does—most likely from experience, since he’s already mentioned his wife—and he isn’t afraid to tell his friend off for not looking out for your well-being.

“I’m sorry!” exclaims Bucky, ducking another hit. “I wasn’t thinking!”

“Like ifreann you weren’t!” Steve retreats and picks up the tablet with a huff, then looks at you. “Y/N, I’m sorry you’ve had to deal with him. He’s actually a nice guy when he’s not being stupid.”

“Stupid?” Bucky protests beside you.

“I wouldn’t have talked to him even if he’d tried,” you admit, finally looking up, “but it wouldn’t have hurt if he had.”

Steve nods, satisfied with your response. He leaves you a minute later when his phone rings. The wide smile on his face is enough to tell you who’s on the other end, but then he says her name as he walks away, the phone already held to his ear.

“So what’s with this place?” you ask. The quick change in subject is purposeful, and you hope that Bucky will take the bait.

Thankfully, he does. Bucky glances around before finishing off the last of his drink and setting the empty bottle closer to Steve’s side of the bar.

“Well, Steve wanted a place that we—and other people like us—could spend time without feeling like there was always a fight about to happen. We didn’t have that growing up, you know? And now that he’s in charge, he can do what he wants with his money. Everything’s filed properly, he doesn’t advertise, and all employees are paid above the table. If other people show up, then sure, they’re welcomed in, but they’re also fully vetted once Steve gets their IDs. Weapons aren’t allowed, and there’s no shop talk of any kind.”

“So it’s your little hideaway,” you say, propping your head up with one hand. The heaviness of the potatoes combined with the alcohol is starting to make you sleepy, and the emotional exhaustion from the night has started to weigh heavy on you, too.

He smiles a little. “Something like that.”

Bucky stands and rolls his sleeves back down, then pulls on his glove. He pulls a wad of cash out of his pocket and sets it on the bar.

“Come on, doll. We should head home,” he says.

The warm feeling you’d felt when Bucky had called you his girl comes back, and you smile a little when he holds open his suit jacket for you. A little sheepish at the gesture, you slide off your seat and let him help you into the sleeves, then take Bucky’s hand when he offers it.

“Bye Steve!” you call, waving with your free hand.

Steve looks up from the other end of the bar, where he’s wiping down a counter with one hand and holding his phone with the other. He lets go of the rag to wave back.

Silently, Bucky leads you out to the front, where the valet already has his car pulled up. You’re not sure how they knew to have it ready, but you don’t dwell on it. Stranger things have happened in your world. Bucky tips the valets with another wad of cash before opening the passenger door and helping you in.

You fall asleep on the drive home. You don’t mean to, but Bucky turns on the radio a few minutes into the drive, and he lets the first station that comes on continue to play. The music is soft, and he drives so smoothly that it lulls you to sleep before you’re even fully out of the city.

When you wake, it’s because Bucky’s stubbed his toe on something, jostling you in his arms. He’s muttering curses under his breath and hobbling down the hallway, and though the jerking motion and his tightening grip isn’t the most comfortable for you at the moment, you keep your eyes closed and force yourself to keep your smile at bay. Bucky is a much sweeter guy than you’d first thought him to be, and it seems like he’s trying now to make up for lost time. You’d misjudged him at first; just like you, he has his own ways of dealing with the life forced on him by his parents, but he really is a gentleman underneath it all.

He carries you to your bedroom and carefully lays you on top of the covers. Then, as gently as possible, you feel him lift your foot and pry off the uncomfortable shoes Marta had picked out for you. Bucky stays totally silent as he takes the shoes off and sets them on the floor at the end of the bed. He pulls a thin blanket over you, one that you’re sure is just for decoration when the bed is made, and presses a kiss to the side of your head. You have to force yourself not to smile when he whispers,

“Goodnight, sleep tight.”

The door clicks shut as he closes it slowly, and you peek open an eye after a few seconds have passed. Your room is dark and empty. Silently, you smile to yourself and crawl under the covers, your eyes heavy. It’s been a long, exhausting evening, and you’re happy to be in bed. You fall asleep to the sound of spring rain on the estate windows and with Bucky’s jacket still wrapped around you.

Over the next few weeks, Bucky slowly enters your life in both big and small ways. He smiles at you over meals in the dining room and late night snacks in the kitchen. He drives you to the city to visit Steve, Peggy, and his other friends, and when he finds out that his father still has your license, Bucky argues with him for over an hour to get it back. Marta delivers your license to your room the very next day, along with a handwritten note that the dark blue Mercedes in the garage is there for your use. Sometimes, you wake up to a bouquet of flowers with another handwritten note. Sometimes it’s a text, and sometimes it’s a gift. Bucky develops a habit of purchasing anything you mention enjoying or even vaguely liking, and you eventually have to tell him to stop because he’s bought you so much that there’s nothing left to buy for yourself.

Bucky turns out to be a closer friend than anyone you’ve ever known. He’s kind, and funny, and intelligent, and he remembers all the little things about you that nobody else does. When you’re sick or feeling lonely, he’s attentive and his presence alone reminds you of all the good things in the world. He makes your days brighter, even the worst ones. You find yourself falling in love with him, much to your surprise. You admit this to him one day. He kisses you then, and he tells you that he’s been in love with you since the first trip you’d taken to Steve’s bar. 

Halloween, Thanksgiving, and Christmas roll around. New Year’s, Valentine’s Day, and Easter come and go. The Barnes’ grand celebrations for every holiday blur together as the months fly by, until eventually, it’s June and you’re standing in your room, staring at your reflection in the full-length mirror.

The wedding dress you’d picked out a few days after Christmas is just as beautiful as you remember it being. It fits you perfectly, thanks to the impeccable work of several tailors employed by Winnifred, and your hair and makeup are flawless as well. There’s no possible way you could’ve imagined how beautiful you look and feel on your wedding day. 

Through the open window, you can hear a string quartet playing outside in the rose garden, where the ceremony is set up. Steve has already come by once to check on you at Bucky’s request, but both men are back downstairs. Bucky’s no doubt at the front of the garden with the priest—the one that you now know for certain is on your father’s payroll—and Steve is waiting with the rest of the wedding party. The only people remaining in your room are Marta, your mother, and Peggy. 

You’ve grown to love Peggy more than any of your childhood friends. She didn’t grow up in the same world as you. She didn’t even grow up in the same country, and you love her all the more for it. She’s rational, cool-headed, and kind, though she’s not afraid to stand up for what’s right. On top of all that, she’s drop-dead gorgeous. It’s easy to see why Steve fell for her during his time in the military.

The quartet finishes the song and moves onto a new one, one that you recognize after only two notes. Your stomach drops and you close your eyes, gripping your bouquet tightly. It’s the song you’d been listening to the morning you’d found out about your engagement. You’d discovered it the night before, and you’d had it on repeat before going to sleep that night, then again that morning as you’d gotten ready. You’d even listened to it in the car on the drive from your parents’ estate.

Who added this to the playlist? Is this some kind of sick joke to them?

The same feeling of dread you’d felt that morning comes back, making your mouth dry and your head spin. You try to take a slow, deep breath to calm your nerves and block out the song, but it doesn’t work.

“Y/N?” Peggy asks.

You inhale sharply at the sound of her voice so close to you. She’d been texting Steve from near the window only moments before. You hadn’t thought that anyone would realize your distress, and you’d hoped to be able to collect yourself before it was noticeable. You hadn’t even sensed her coming closer.

“Y/N, are you alright?”

“I’m fine,” you tell her, but your voice wavers and your lower lip quivers. You try to take another slow breath.

“What’s going on?” Marta asks. Her hand lands on your arm and you pull away, closing in yourself and pulling the bouquet tight against you.

Your mother’s scolding makes you feel like you’re a little kid again. “Careful, Y/N! You don’t want to ruin those flowers. We don’t have time to make another bouquet for you. George is already hounding your father about how soon after the ceremony you’ll be signing the certificate.”

Anger wells up in you at her thoughtless comment, and you open your eyes. She’s standing behind you in the main part of the bedroom, near the foot of your bed. Any guilt you might’ve felt over ruining the flowers is gone now, and you turn and chuck the bouquet at the carpet by her feet. It bounces once, then lays motionless in a heap of smashed petals and ribbons.

“Enough, Mother!” you shout.

Marta rushes to close the window so the guests in the garden won’t hear your outburst.

Your mother gapes at you, somewhat surprised, but she doesn’t budge. “Y/N, dear. What are you doing?”

“What am I doing?” you yell, stepping closer. Your dress swishes as you walk, and you normally enjoy the sound, but you’re too furious to care how pleasing it is. “What are you doing? I am your only daughter! You should be treating me like a princess and worrying about how I’m feeling and what I need, but instead you’re too busy thinking about the damn flowers! I’m sick of you thinking of me like I’m an object you can sell, steal, and trade away whenever it’s most convenient! You and Dad are so obsessed with the timeline you’ve created for yourselves that you don’t even notice how much this has affected me! You didn’t even ask if this is what I wanted!”

She scoffs at you, and any trace of motherly care and concern has disappeared from her expression. Your mother is showing her true face—the mafia wife that has almost as much blood on her own hands as her husband does, if not more.

“It’s too late for that now, isn’t it?” she asks. She picks up her clutch from the end of your bed and steps closer until you're standing eye to eye. Her voice is patronizing and infuriating, and she continues, “It’s your wedding day, dearest, and you can’t back out now. We’ve made sure of it. Even James has agreed to the contract.” 

Your anger wavers. “Contract?”

“Yes, the contract,” she repeats, smirking. Her cards are all on the table now, and she’s got a winning hand. You both know it.

There’s a malicious glint in her eye as she says, “It’s already in effect. It has been since we agreed on the marriage.”

“What contract? What are you talking about?” There’s a sinking feeling in your chest, like your heart has decided to drop into your stomach, then down to your feet and through the floor. Bucky hadn’t said anything to you about a contract, and you trusted him, but you certainly didn’t trust your parents anymore, nor did you trust George and Winnifred Barnes.

Your mother smiles, a sickeningly sweet smile that makes you want to puke. “That’s a conversation for another time. After all, it doesn’t even matter to you until James gets you pregnant.”

The alarm on your phone rings and you close your eyes, your hands trembling. You’d set that alarm to remind you when it was time to leave for the ceremony. Right on cue, the wedding planner knocks on the door to your bedroom.

“Y/N?” she calls, knocking again. “Are you ready?”

Slowly, you squat down and pick up the bouquet. It’s smashed on one side and the petals have fallen off of various flowers, but it’s mostly intact. It shakes as your hands tremble and tears well up in your eyes.

Marta appears in front of you, having pushed your mother out of the way, and over the ringing in your ears, you hear Peggy talking to the wedding planner. Somehow, you make it out to the ground floor of the estate, to the double doors that lead out to the rose garden. You’re dazed by your mother’s strange revelation. The sound of the alarm is still ringing in your ears. Peggy says something to you, but you can only stare straight ahead. 

Your father is next to you then, as Peggy disappears through the doors and joins the rest of the wedding party. You see her glancing back at you, and whispering to the rest of the groomsmen and bridesmaids. Most of them are Bucky’s friends who have now become your own, and all of them look worried. 

“Let’s go, princess,” your father says, and he pulls you forward by the arm.

Numbly, you follow his lead. Not even Bucky’s initially delighted expression shakes you out of your trance, but the way he rubs his thumb over your hands at the end of the aisle pulls you out of it just enough for you to lift your head and look around. You don’t remember walking to him, nor do you remember handing off your bouquet to Peggy, just like you’d practiced last night at the rehearsal.

“Y/N? Darling?” Bucky asks. He crouches and tilts his head slightly to try to catch your eyes. “You okay?”

“I—” Your mouth is still dry and you swallow, your eyes flitting from one place in the garden to another with no rhyme or reason. The world feels like it’s spinning and you clutch Bucky’s hands, unsure of what to do.

“Someone get her a chair,” Bucky orders, raising his voice enough that you flinch. He immediately starts murmuring reassurances to you, and he pulls you into his arms until he can lower you into a seat.

Someone fans you and a cool glass is pressed to your lips. You drink obediently, closing your eyes as the water helps the sandy feeling in your mouth abate just a little. When the water is gone, the glass is pulled away. 

“Y/N, can you hear me?” Bucky asks. 

Slowly, carefully, you nod your head. He sighs in relief and when you open your eyes, he’s kneeling down in front of you. His shoulders are tense and his forehead is creased with worry. You’ve never seen him this stressed over anything and it makes you want to cry.

“I’m sorry,” you croak, heat flaming in your cheeks. You feel horrible. Bucky has been looking forward to the ceremony—he’d told you last night at the rehearsal dinner.

“It’s okay,” he quickly replies. He reaches forward and takes your hands, and you glance away from him to peek at the guests, your parents included, who are still watching you from their seats.

“Are you ready for this, or do you need a break?” 

You look back at Bucky. “A break?”

“She’s fine,” your mother says, and you look over at her from your seat. She’s standing in the front row, her eyes fixated on the priest behind you. “They’re fine, Father. Y/N’s been a bit nervous all morning. Wedding day jitters, you know.”

“I—” You frown at her, still clutching Bucky’s hands. “That’s not what it is.” You look down at him and shake your head. “I’m not nervous to marry you.”

“I’m not nervous either,” he says with a small smile. 

“Then shall we continue?” the priest asks.

You turn to shake your head at him. “No. I’m sorry, Father. I need to talk to Bucky—James—in private for just a minute. Is that alright?”

He smiles gently and nods. “Of course.”

There are more agitated murmurs from the crowd, but you ignore them as Peggy, Steve, and Bucky help you up and back down the aisle. When your mother moves to follow you, she’s blocked by Sam and Clint, another one of Bucky’s friends. She calls after you once, but you ignore her as Peggy helps you onto a bench inside, then leaves, closing the double doors behind herself. She’s handed back your bouquet, and you clutch it with both hands like it’s an anchor in the storm.

“Is everything okay?” Bucky asks. He stands near the door, and you can tell from the way he rolls his shoulders that he’s stressed. His prosthetic always bothers him more when he’s agitated, and you suddenly feel even worse about stopping the ceremony.

“Yes,” you say, but then you shake your head. “No, I’m sorry. Obviously, it’s not, or I wouldn’t have stopped everything. I’m sorry, Bucky, but I have to ask you something.”

“Okay…” There’s a wariness in his eyes, one that you loathe yourself for. You put it there, and you wish with all your might that your mother hadn’t told you what she did. Maybe then you wouldn’t have had to do this.

“Did you sign a contract? With our parents?”

He frowns and his whole body grows very still. “A contract?”

You nod. “Yes.” With your hands still fisted tightly around the bouquet, you inhale deeply and add, “A contract about getting me pregnant.”

“What?” Bucky’s furious response is immediate. He shakes his head, his eyes searching your face for any sign that you might be making this up. “Y/N, what are you talking about?”

“Did you sign a contract agreeing to marry me, and agreeing that my parents get something after you get me pregnant?” The words make you sick to your stomach. You haven’t eaten anything all day, which doesn’t help, but the thought of Bucky agreeing to something so vile… It’s enough to make anyone nauseous.

He’s shaking his head at you again. “Why the hell would I sign anything like that? Do you really think I would do that?”

You shrug a little and look down at the bouquet. “My mother…”

“Darling…” Bucky sighs and comes closer, and he kneels down in front of you again, just like he had outside. All the fight and anger has left his voice. “I would never do anything like that. Not in a million years, and especially not to you. I love you.”

“She said you signed it before they’d even told me we were engaged,” you said, quiet now that he’s so close. You’re afraid to look him in the eye, to see what his face might be telling you that his words aren’t.

“Can you look at me? Please?”

Reluctantly, you lift your eyes from the flowers in your lap to meet Bucky’s eyes. They’re just as blue as the ribbons wrapped around the flower stems, a choice you’d specifically made without the wedding planner’s guidance. You’d wanted him to be your “something blue”, even if it felt a little cheesy.

“Do you want to marry me?” Bucky asks.

You swallow the lump in your throat and nod. “Yes.”

“Do you believe me when I say I had nothing to do with that contract? That I didn’t know it existed?” he questions.

You nod again, tears forming in your eyes.

“And do you trust me to help you find a way to get rid of it, once all of this is over? Do you trust me to protect you?”

You nod for the third time, and Bucky takes both of your hands in his.

“Okay. Then let’s get married, and I swear to you that as soon as our honeymoon is over, the guys and I will start doing some digging.”

“What about me?” you ask, sniffling. You pull one of your hands away to dab at your eyes before the makeup can get too damaged by your tears.

“What about you?”

“Can I dig, too?”

Bucky chuckles and kisses your knuckles on the hand that he’s holding, and then he pulls himself up off the floor to sit beside you on the bench. He pulls you into a half-hug and you cling to him, sniffling and smiling as he rubs the your back and answers,

“You can do all the digging you want, doll. I’ll even hand you the shovel.”

Tá sé go maith tú a fheiceáil. = It’s good to see you.

Mo bhean chéile = My wife

Íosa Críost = Jesus Christ

Thick = A stupid person

Ifreann = Hell

Thank you for reading! If you liked this, please consider reblogging my work so that others can enjoy it too.

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Forever: @aya-fay

Bucky Barnes: @lipstickandvibranium @valhalla-kristin @buckymcbuckbarnes

[mariacallous]

The first thing to say about the hate and scorn currently directed at the mainstream US media is that they worked hard to earn it. They’ve done so by failing, repeatedly, determinedly, spectacularly to do their job, which is to maintain their independence, inform the electorate, and speak truth to power. While the left has long had reasons to dismiss centrist media, and the right has loathed it most when it did do its job well, the moderates who are furious at it now seem to be something new – and a host of former editors, media experts and independent journalists have been going after them hard this summer.

Longtime journalist James Fallows declares that three institutions – the Republican party, the supreme court, and the mainstream political press – “have catastrophically failed to ‘meet the moment’ under pressure of [the] Trump era”. Centrist political reformer and columnist Norm Ornstein states that these news institutions “have had no reflection, no willingness to think through how irresponsible and reckless so much of our mainstream press and so many of our journalists have been and continue to be”.

Most voters, he says, “have no clue what a second Trump term would actually be like. Instead, we get the same insipid focus on the horse race and the polls, while normalizing abnormal behavior and treating this like a typical presidential election, not one that is an existential threat to democracy.”

Lamenting the state of the media recently on X, Jeff Jarvis, another former editor and newspaper columnist, said: “What ‘press’? The broken and vindictive Times? The newly Murdochian Post? Hedge-fund newspaper husks? Rudderless CNN or NPR? Murdoch’s fascist media?”

These critics are responding to how the behemoths of the industry seem intent on bending the facts to fit their frameworks and agendas. In pursuit of clickbait content centered on conflicts and personalities, they follow each other into informational stampedes and confirmation bubbles.

They pursue the appearance of fairness and balance by treating the true and the false, the normal and the outrageous, as equally valid and by normalizing Republicans, especially Donald Trump, whose gibberish gets translated into English and whose past crimes and present-day lies and threats get glossed over. They neglect, again and again, important stories with real consequences. This is not entirely new – in a scathing analysis of 2016 election coverage, the Columbia Journalism Review noted that “in just six days, The New York Times ran as many cover stories about Hillary Clinton’s emails as they did about all policy issues combined in the 69 days leading up to the election” – but it’s gotten worse, and a lot of insiders have gotten sick of it.

In July, ordinary people on social media decided to share information about the rightwing Project 2025 and did a superb job of raising public awareness about it, while the press obsessed about Joe Biden’s age and health. NBC did report on this grassroots education effort, but did so using the “both sides are equally valid” framework often deployed by mainstream media, saying the agenda is “championed by some creators as a guide to less government oversight and slammed by others as a road map to an authoritarian takeover of America”. There is no valid case it brings less government oversight.

In an even more outrageous case, the New York Times ran a story comparing the Democratic and Republican plans to increase the housing supply – which treated Trump’s plans for mass deportation of undocumented immigrants as just another housing-supply strategy that might work or might not. (That it would create massive human rights violations and likely lead to huge civil disturbances was one overlooked factor, though the fact that some of these immigrants are key to the building trades was mentioned.)

Other stories of pressing concern are either picked up and dropped or just neglected overall, as with Trump’s threats to dismantle a huge portion of the climate legislation that is both the Biden administration’s signal achievement and crucial for the fate of the planet. The Washington Post editorial board did offer this risibly feeble critique on 17 August: “It would no doubt be better for the climate if the US president acknowledged the reality of global warming – rather than calling it a scam, as Mr Trump has.”

While the press blamed Biden for failing to communicate his achievements, which is part of his job, it’s their whole job to do so. The Climate Jobs National Resource Center reports that the Inflation Reduction Act has created “a combined potential of over $2tn in investment, 1,091,966 megawatts of clean power, and approximately 3,947,670 jobs”, but few Americans have any sense of what the bill has achieved or even that the economy is by many measures strong.

Last winter, the New York Times columnist Paul Krugman, who has a Nobel prize in economics, told Greg Sargent on the latter’s Daily Blast podcast that when he writes positive pieces about the Biden economy, his editor asks “don’t you want to qualify” it; “aren’t people upset by X, Y and Z and shouldn’t you be acknowledging that?”

Meanwhile in an accusatory piece about Kamala Harris headlined When your opponent calls you ‘communist,’ maybe don’t propose price controls?, a Washington Post columnist declares in another case of bothsiderism: “Voters want to blame someone for high grocery bills, and the presidential candidates have apparently decided the choices are either the Biden administration or corporate greed. Harris has chosen the latter.” The evidence that corporations have jacked up prices and are reaping huge profits is easy to find, but facts don’t matter much in this kind of opining.

It’s hard to gloat over the decline of these dinosaurs of American media, when a free press and a well-informed electorate are both crucial to democracy. The alternatives to the major news outlets simply don’t reach enough readers and listeners, though the non-profit investigative outfit ProPublica and progressive magazines such as the New Republic and Mother Jones, are doing a lot of the best reporting and commentary.

Earlier this year, when Alabama senator Katie Britt gave her loopy rebuttal to Biden’s State of the Union address, it was an independent journalist, Jonathan Katz, who broke the story on TikTok that her claims about a victim of sex trafficking contained significant falsehoods. The big news outlets picked up the scoop from him, making me wonder what their staffs of hundreds were doing that night.

A host of brilliant journalists young and old, have started independent newsletters, covering tech, the state of the media, politics, climate, reproductive rights and virtually everything else, but their reach is too modest to make them a replacement for the big newspapers and networks. The great exception might be historian Heather Cox Richardson, whose newsletter and Facebook followers give her a readership not much smaller than that of the Washington Post. The tremendous success of her sober, historically grounded (and footnoted!) news summaries and reflections bespeaks a hunger for real news.

[destielmemenews]

"Dozens of counter-protestors, many wearing white masks and flags over their shoulders, arrived around 10:45 p.m. and attempted to dismantle the pro-Palestinian encampment that has overtaken Royce Quad since last Thursday. The agitators lobbed fireworks at the encampment and set off what may have been bear or pepper spray.  

Demonstrators on the pro-Palestinian side used umbrellas to shield themselves, and skirmishes broke throughout the night out as counter-protesters attempted to wrestle away wood pallets, plywood and metal fencing from the encampment."

"New York City Mayor Eric Adams said on MSNBC’s “Morning Joe” on Wednesday morning that police had to move in to Columbia University’s Hamilton Hall “for the safety of those children.”

He blamed outside agitators for the building takeover and said “There are people who are harmful and they’re trying to radicalize our children and we cannot ignore this.”"

source 1

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[survivingcapitalism]

Reminds me of how the British blamed the Acadians for the Mi'kmaq resistance.

The crackdown on campuses offered a grim continuity: Police and other officials churned out all the same old excuses for quashing resistance. Most notably, their rhetoric relied on the predictable canard of the “outside agitator.” New York Mayor Eric Adams trotted it out as grounds for sending in an army of baton-wielding cops against the city’s students. And Deputy Police Commissioner Tarik Sheppard went even further on MSNBC Wednesday morning, brandishing an unremarkable chain lock — the sort of which I’ve seen on bikes everywhere — as proof that “professionals,” not students themselves, had carried out the takeover of the Columbia building. The bike-lock business quickly came in for rightly deserved mockery, but the “outside agitator” myth is no joking matter. In this current moment, the “outside agitators” conjured are both the perennial anarchist bogeymen or Islamist terror groups sending funds to keep student encampments flush with the cheapest tents available online. The “outside agitator” trope has a long, racist legacy, including use by the Ku Klux Klan. In the 1930s, the Klan issued flyers in Alabama claiming that “paid organizers for the communists are only trying” to get Black people “in trouble.” The allegation does double rhetorical harm by denying the agency and commitment of organizers themselves and suggesting that “outside” support from beyond a given locale or institution is somehow a bad thing. More recently, the canard has been hauled out in defense of movement repression in Atlanta, against Stop Cop City protesters who had made a national call for backup. And it was a common refrain for politicians nationwide during the 2020 uprising, as well as discourse around the earlier Black Lives Matter protests in Ferguson after police killed Mike Brown. Blaming outside agitators or interests always was a propaganda ploy and remains so now. The idea that Palestinian liberation struggle is a mere proxy for Iranian interests repeats the delegitimizing logic of the past. In fact, the Gaza solidarity encampments on campuses are student-organized and led, with Palestinian students at front and center, and a disproportionately large presence of Jewish students too. It is students, over 1,000 of them, who have faced arrest. It also happens that millions of people have called for an end to Israel’s genocidal war, and support for Palestinian liberation is not and must not be limited to the mythic and maligned terrain of campus activism.

[wilwheaton]

Republicans across the country are waging a movement to remove and censure Democratic lawmakers simply for speaking out against the GOP — a movement that Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, D-New York, is saying is the next natural step after the GOP-backed attempted coup on January 6, 2021. On Wednesday, Ocasio-Cortez spoke at a rally with Rep. Maxwell Frost, D-Fla., and Tennessee state Rep. Justin Jones (D), who Republicans voted to expel from the legislature earlier this month. At the rally, she said that the January 6 attack was just one of the first steps toward the GOP's goal of total political control; rather than a large, violent coup, the GOP is implementing a slow takeover across the country. "For [Republicans], January 6 was just a dress rehearsal. Because, legally, let's not lose the plot: They were trying to block a duly elected official, in this case the president of the United States, from taking office," she said. "Legislatures across the country looked at that and [said], 'you know what? Let's try to get Representative Jones out from office. Let's try to get Rep. Zooey Zephyr in Montana out of office. Let's try to kick out the people because we cannot beat them,'" continued Ocasio-Cortez. "That is their motive."

AOC: “January 6 was a dress rehearsal” for GOP campaign to expel Democrats

[slexenskee]

Only Shooting Stars (Break The Mold)

The AU where Gojo is actually All Might's California kid that literally no one asked for, including me 🤦‍♀️

Satoru’s best friend just told him she hates him. Actually, she told him she wanted to go hiking, which is basically the same thing. 

There is emphatically nothing he’d like less than being dragged through the parched, dry hills around the Dish on an otherwise perfectly normal Saturday morning free of classes, but Makoto is only in town for two days and he promised her he’d do whatever she liked barring arson and/or more tequila shots. 

“Can’t you just get Captain Underpants to go with you?” He throws out as a token protest, staggering into her rental jeep with the darkest shades he owns tossed over his eyes in a desperate attempt to keep his hangover at bay.

He squints at her as she settles in the driver’s seat of her rented death contraption. And why isn’t she hungover, anyway? She had even more to drink than him last night. 

“You know his hero name is Captain Celebrity, and please don’t say that where anyone can hear you.” She rolls her eyes as she starts the car. “Until I get a more famous client he’s still my cash cow, and I’d really rather not get fired right now.”

“You couldn’t have picked a worse one.” Satoru snorts, flopping into the passenger seat. “Isn’t he still cheating on the daughter with the stepmom or something?”

“Alleged,” Makoto hisses. “Allegedly cheating. And no, obviously. I wouldn’t still be his publicist if he was that much of an idiot.”

She tries to back out of her spot and almost immediately slides several inches down the heart-palpitation-inducing San Francisco incline he’d parked her on last night. She gives him a look of pure, sheer terror over her steering wheel. 

Satoru quickly undoes his seatbelt. “Yeah, okay. Put the parking brake on and switch with me— I’ll drive.” 

He has them up and off the worst of Hyde St.’s incline with the undisturbed impassivity of a kid who’s spent his entire driving career wedging himself into tenuous and visibly improbable parking spots all across the bay area. Makoto gives a sigh of relief once they clear the worst of the soaring hills, and actually doesn’t bring up the topic he knows she’s itching to broach until he’s pulling onto the 101. 

“You know, I wouldn’t have to bother with Captain Celebrity if someone would just finally agree to be a hero.” Makoto needles him, for the umpteenth time. 

He rolls his eyes behind his glasses. “Not happening.” He shoots her down flat. 

“You can’t stay in college forever!” She protests.

“What do you mean, forever?” He protests back, offended. “I’m not even twenty-two yet!” 

And she makes it sound like he’s wasting his life away going to college or something! As if getting into Stanford isn’t the most snobbish badge of supremacy you can wave around in this damn state! 

This is what he gets for saving her all those years ago, he laments. A best friend who nags him over all his life choices. He should have let her just fall from that damned New York skyscraper. Or more realistically, just waited it out and let an actual hero swoop in and save her. It’s not as if there hadn’t been plenty around at the time. 

She’d been a twenty-one year-old intern at a prestigious marketing agency caught at the wrong end of a villain takeover, and as far as his mother was concerned he’d been a seventeen year-old ostensibly touring the city for colleges, but in reality had been touring music dive bars more than campuses. They’d immediately bonded over the fact he’d saved her life, but also the indie band shirt he’d been wearing as he’d done it. 

Growing up in LA, his only two real options were surfing or surf rock, and he’d chosen to spend more time on the route that wouldn’t lead him to immediate skin cancer. His mom had eventually moved them to San Francisco, but he’d never quite grown out of his SoCal roots. He’d loved music in his last life, and in this life, he’d decided to chill the fuck out and ignore society and all it’s problems, and music seemed as good a way as any to do it. And he was pretty damn good at it, if he did say so himself. His expansive catalog of songs from his last life and eidetic memory made most people call him a genius, even if he rejected the label. So he was a passable— if not prodigal— guitarist, and Makoto had just learned to play the bass herself, so it was really no surprise they’d not only immediately bonded, but immediately decided to make a band together. 

Makoto jumping ship and splitting her time between the US and Japan had thrown a bit of a wrench in their rockstar dreams, but they were making it work somehow. And considering he can teleport around the world at will, it’s really not that much of a hindrance. 

That does beg the question though, of why Makoto would rather him be a hero than a musician. But he imagines he actually already knows the answer to that. 

“How about you stop cleaning up after stupid celebrities, and become a celebrity yourself.” He argues, with a raised brow. 

Makoto scoffs. “Do you have any idea how hard it is to break into the music industry?” 

With the confidence of several dozen platinum hits spanning several dozen genres sitting pretty in his head, Satoru retorts; “I don’t think that will be a problem for us.” 

She laughs him off at first, but then seems to give it genuine thought. “I guess you are pretty enough to have lead singer appeal,” she concedes, uncharitably. “But we haven’t even released an album yet; you have no idea how well it will be received on the charts. Playing little dive bar shows isn’t going to get us anywhere.” 

Satoru just shrugs. “Then what’s stopping us? Let’s record an album.”

Makoto just rolls her eyes. “Yeah, sure. Come pop by Japan next weekend, and let’s do it.”

“Sure.” He agrees immediately, making her do a double take. He grins winsomely at her. “What? I’m free next weekend. Why not?” 

She just shakes her head in wonder. “Even seeing it multiple times, sometimes I really do still forget you can just… teleport across the world. And stop bullets with your eyeballs.”

“It’s telekinesis,” he corrects, but at this point it’s just rote. 

“No, I specifically remember you trying to explain it had something to do with your eyeballs, don’t try to change it up now.” Makoto pokes him in the shoulder— or tries to, but is stopped with his barrier. “And how the hell that’s supposed to even make sense, I have no idea. But you definitely said it.” 

Yeah, he probably deserves that for trying to explain his cursed techniques while he’d been several mystery drinks deep at a college frat party. Makoto probably still hasn't forgiven him for dragging her to that madhouse, but in his defense, she’d all but begged him to take her to an American college party in the first place.

“It’s… complicated.” He hedges off. “My eyes just help me understand how to use my powers; they’re not actually what creates my barrier.” 

Makoto squints at him suspiciously. “... What’s your mom’s quirk again?”

He chuckles awkwardly. “Oh, she can convert energy from the sun. Mine’s a mutation, obviously.”

“Could just be a strange combination.” Makoto muses. “What did you say your dad’s quirk was?”

“I, uh, have no idea.” Satoru coughs, keeping his eyes on the road in a vaguely panicked manner. 

“Shit, that’s right, I’m sorry.” Makoto jolts in her seat, apologetic. “You still haven’t heard anything? I thought your mom said… I mean, they’re not on bad terms, right?”

Frankly, Satoru almost wishes she would continue pestering him about becoming a hero over this particular topic. 

“They’re not on bad terms, no.” He hedges off, shifting in his seat. Why couldn’t his best friend have a normal quirk, like fire breathing or water bending? Or anything besides being a human lie detector when he has so much he needs to lie about? “But they don’t talk much. I’m not sure she even knows what his quirk is herself.”

“Well, I guess it doesn’t really matter anyway, your quirk is what it is.” Mercifully, Makoto lets the subject drop. “Even if it makes no damn sense.”

Satoru laughs that off. “Does any quirk ever really make sense, though?” 

Makoto just clicks her tongue, then launches into a spirited rant on the laws of quirk science. Satoru breathes a quiet sigh of relief as the conversation devolves into a nonsensical argument on what would be the most useless quirk in history. 

One of these days he’s going to have to cave and tell Makoto the truth, but he’d really rather not do it when he’s hungover and facing the prospect of a miserable hike for the next few hours. 

//

And to be fair, nothing he said to Makoto was a lie. 

His parents aren’t on bad terms. Or rather, they’re not on any terms at all, as he doesn’t think they’ve even spoken once in the twenty-two years he’s been alive in this world. But according to his mom, they hadn’t parted on bad terms. They’d been college sweethearts, and his father had always been honest about his intentions to return to Japan. His mother had been adamant about staying in America and pursuing her own career. They’d split up for practicalities sake, unaware he was already on the way, and his mom looks back on that time of her life fondly. 

His mom would go on to have him several months after his father had left the country, and raise him as a single-mother as she built a life for them. His father would go on to be the world’s strongest hero. 

His mother had only ever known Yagi Toshinori as All Might, unbeatable and unbreakable, with a quirk so strong it would have him going down in history as one of the strongest heroes of all time. As far as she— and the rest of the world knew— he had some kind of strengthening quirk. 

But Satoru had seen him before, on one of his trips back to Japan. It had been from a distance, as he’d taken down a villain to the delight of the cheering crowds around him, but it had been enough for Satoru’s Six Eyes to see his quirk wasn’t quite as straightforward as the strengthening ability listed on his hero profile. All Might’s core— where most humans had a swirling mass of plus alpha energy— was as empty as Satoru’s. Satoru was quirkless because his father, All Might, had been born quirkless. The quirk All Might had now must have been  given to him when he was older, growing around that empty space and spreading through his body almost like a parasite. Or a curse. Satoru honestly couldn’t tell.

Satoru honestly didn’t care. 

He has no opinion on All Might, or what choices he may or may not have made to wield the power he has. 

When he was much younger, and saw how much his mother struggled to raise him on her own without help, he would resent him a bit for leaving her on her own like this. But his adult mind could understand the logic in both his parents’ motivations. They both made their own choices, and did what they thought was right with only care and consideration for each other. 

And it’s not as if Satoru’s childhood was lacking in any capacity.  

Actually, his childhood was awesome. 

To be entirely honest, he doubts he would have wanted All Might around even if that was possible. He can’t imagine a better way to grow up than the way he did, rocking out in the garage with his mom on the weekends, surfing in the mornings (with adequate sunscreen), skating from school to the skatepark in the afternoons, and having the complete and utter autonomy only a latchkey kid could have. His mom did what she could to make sure he grew up comfortably and well-cared for, and that included putting in long hours at work that had him on his own for most of the week. It was the best. There were no rules against using quirks in America— someone finally got their act together on personal bodily autonomy and all that— so he’d use his ‘quirk’ to teleport himself all across the world in his spare time. As long as he was back by dinner time, his mom didn’t need to know if he decided to spend the afternoon wandering the streets of Seoul in search of the best hotteok. 

He tried to keep his excursions on the down low, and keep his grades up and his nose out of trouble. While he adored his freedom, he never wanted to worry his mom. She was honestly too good for this world— and for him too, if he was being honest. The least he could do is be as good of a son as possible.

Well, he can try to be as good of a son as possible. As it stands, the majority of his chaotic existence usually gets in the way of that. 

“Oh, Sacchan, you’re home already?” His mother peers out of her office, thick, horn-rimmed glasses making her purple eyes look comically large on her face as she pokes her head over the wall. “Where’s Makoto-chan?”

“Probably on the plane already, unless it got delayed.” He tosses his keys into the basket by the front door, toeing off his shoes. 

She frowns at him. “You drove her to SFO, right? Don’t tell me you let her go by herself!”

He rolls his eyes. “She had a rental car to drop off, ya know. But yeah, I drove her from the rental place to her terminal.” 

Not that she deserved the consideration, after dragging him on a hike of all damn things yesterday. They’d just stayed out the whole night drinking beforehand, what madwoman does that? 

She gets up out of her chair, stretching her arms over her head as her hapless bun spills silver-white hair over her shoulders. “She’s such a nice girl,” his mother enthuses, as she cracks her neck. “I wish you’d bring more of your friends around, Sacchan. Your poor mother worries.”

“I’m in college now, mom.” He rolls his eyes. “We don’t really bring our friends around to meet our parents.”

More to the point, he wouldn’t want to anyway. College boys are emphatically the worst, and his mom is a very pretty woman. That’s just asking for trouble. And beyond that, he doesn’t have anyone at school he’d feel close enough to introduce her to anyway. He has plenty of people in his orbit to pair up with in labs, hang around the quad with while he’s killing time between classes, or drag to various house parties, but those are superficial bonds at best. 

He’s a young, handsome boy who surfs and skateboards and is good at all sports and plays rock music and still ranks at the top of his class; suffice it to say, he’s never wanted for friends or popularity. But he’s also a full grown man living through a second life; he has very little in common with the people in his age group. It’s gotten better now that he’s a full-fledged adult again, but he still tends to find the petty struggles of his fellow undergrads to be a bit pedantic. 

“You never brought any around in highschool either.” His mother laments. “Sacchan, you’re not embarrassed over your mother, are you?”

“Not at all.” He protests, then adds, because he doesn’t want to worry her, “I just don’t want people knowing exactly where I live. They seem nice enough, but you never really know with people these days.”

He says it to assure her that he’s a perfectly well-adjusted and well-liked kid who has plenty of deep and genuine friendships (entirely untrue) but only serves to worry her even more. 

She frowns at him, eyes downcast. “Oh, Satoru,” she says, in a sad tone that automatically has him lurching forward to comfort her. “I know things with your father are… complicated, but I never wanted to make you feel like you had to hide yourself from the world. I want to keep you safe, but I want you to have fun too, you know?” 

“Yes, I know.” He rushes to reassure her. “And I do have fun— you know I do! You came to my show just last week!”

His mother gives him a watery smile. “Yes, and your bandmate Kenji nearly started a bar fight, and the crowds got so unruly that the fire department got called in.” 

“That guy deserved to be slapped around a bit.” He returns, unapologetic. “And the fire department was just there to make sure we stayed under capacity— we weren’t causing any trouble!”

“No trouble, he says, when the cops were still called by the end of the night.” She teases him. 

He rolls his eyes. He can’t control whether or not two drunks decide to get in a brawl over baby mama drama outside the venue, that was totally not his fault. And also probably not the best show to take his mom to, but it was one of the few local performances they’ve ever done, and she was always making noises about finally seeing his band play in person. Unsurprisingly having two bandmates that live across the ocean and one that hops between two countries means they rarely play shows on this side of the Pacific, and he still hasn’t found a way to admit to her that his teleportation radius is a lot larger than he’d originally told her as a five year-old manifesting his ‘quirk’. 

“Cops or not, it was still a good time.” He grins, adamantly. 

“It was indeed a good time.” She nods, grinning back. She leans up to pat his cheek. “You looked like you were really enjoying yourself up there, Satoru. I always knew you’d be a star.” 

“It was a weekday performance at a local bar, I would hardly call myself a star.” He protests, helplessly. 

Her eyes twinkle behind her glasses. “Maybe not yet.”

--

Yes the title is from All Star by Smashmouth 😂 this fic has the most millennial playlist I've ever made

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[stereodaydreams]

Safe & Sound

Miguel O’Hara x Fem!Reader, 2.3k (18+, smut, oral(f!reciving), pnv sex, established relationships, use of baby/baby girl, no y/n, smidge of angst)

Notes: I write for another fandom in a different blog and couldn’t help but jump on the Miguel train. 💛✨

-

18+

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Nueva York’s metro moves like a metal bullet tearing into a lavender and yellow sunrise. Birds break out into the skies, traveling from one tree to the next. Steam rises from vents as those waking rush to heat their homes, covering the streets and taxis in a man made fog. The thick mist drifts past cafes where open signs have just flipped and welcome bells ring. But high up on the 76th floor of a condominium, two bodies intertwine beneath warm sheets, too far to be awoken by the commotion.

Miguel’s legs drape over the edge of a bed, bare feet caught in strips of golden sunlight. It’s a king sized bed and somehow he manages to spill out of it, especially when he bullies his way over into your side, broad shoulders blotting out the sun and keeping you in the shadows where your sleep remains undisturbed.

There’s a wide gap from where his side of the bed should be. No matter how many times you tease him about a hostile takeover of what little domain you have of the king sized mattress, Miguel finds a way to fit himself around you. Your bare skin is warm and soft against his. You smell like a blend of your body wash, the pile of bed sheets, and a little like him and it drives him fucking wild. He’ll take whatever time he can have pressed up against you because... well.

Being Spider-Man is more demanding than a full time job. Try as hard as he might, there are nights where his superhero duties don’t end in a timely fashion and you sleep alone with a hand on his pillow. He tells you it’s because no one else can do what he does and… well, it’s half of the truth.

“I’m the one and only Spider-Man,” he laments to you. “The city needs me.”

“You have to come back in one piece. Promise?” you ask as worry etches itself on your face and on your body.

Large fingers wrap around your chin and Miguel pulls you in for a chaste but sweet kiss. Brown eyes blink slowly and his cheeks wrinkle in a smile.

“Always,” Miguel answers.

While you know his big superhero secret identity, there’s another secret that’s he’s been keeping from you— a little white lie. Miguel O’Hara is the only Spider-Man of Earth-928 but he’s not the only Spider-Man. He’s seen alternate realities, other universes where he’s an ordinary man working at a lab while a teenager gets bit and becomes Spider-Man or one where he’s a bodybuilder turned movie star. The multiverse is vast and entertaining to pick apart until Miguel gets a peek of realities that make his stomach twist and drop.

The fortunate events which link you two together often leads to roads where one of you is doomed to an early grave. So he decides he doesn’t want to leave your lives up to chance. Everyday, he whittles at his algorithms, tinkers with new wrist tech, all in the hopes of containing the status quo of his reality.

Miguel’s confident. Statistically, there has to be a reality where it all ends well for you both and it very well may be this one.

He watches your chest rise and fall as you doze and slowly moves his arm from your waist to your wrist. His fingers idly trace a band of metal on your ring finger and he smiles to himself, turning his gaze to a matching gold band on his hand.

You’re his, as he is yours and you are here, alive and safe and—

Miguel buries his face into the crook of your neck, breathing you in. Your back tenses as you wake, lungs inflating from a quick and deep inhale. With one eye open, you find the time on a wall clock and wince at the numbers you see.

“Mig…” you protest. It’s early, but not unreasonably so and you wouldn’t mind if it wasn’t your day off together. No superhero business, no work calls, just the two of you and a lazy morning. “Five more minutes. No… wait, half an hour.”

“Baby,” he purrs back in your ear.

You make a noise while burying your face into the pillow, your body twisting away from his grasp. Miguel laughs and exhales a warm breath that tickles the nape of your neck.

“Are you still tired?” he asks, voice low and laced with desire.

You know that tone and if his wandering hands slipping from your waist to your backside are any kind of indicator, Miguel won’t be letting you slumber for much longer. You can’t help it. Your back arches to his touch, lips parting in a half moan.

“Mhmm,” you mumble, your face digging into cotton as you nod. “Can’t wake up m’too sleepy.”

He chuckles, chest vibrating against your back. You’re lucky he finds you cute. Miguel’s palm grips your butt and gives it a small squeeze before the weight behind you dips as he shuffles his large body further down the bed. His hands engulf your thighs, fingers pressing into your skin as he pulls them apart. You’ve no choice but to reorient yourself onto your back, following his movement down your thighs.

“Mig, what are you up to?” You eye him warily with a lazy smile tugging at your lips. Your vision blurs as your eyelids threaten to shut.

He lays a kiss on your inner thigh. Bright red tints the edges of his eyes, threatening to spill over and replace the soft brown.

“Do you need help waking up?” At your nod, he continues, “That’s what I’m up to.”

He smirks, fangs catching the light of the morning sun and it’s gone once his face dips lower. His tongue drags along the seam of your sex, dipping between your folds for a quick taste. Miguel lets out a rumbling sound, pushing his face in deeper to breathe you in. Your fingers work their way into his hair but your grip is loose, a sleepy sort of pawing at his head. Still half awake, your thighs are slack, tensing only as his tongue rises and reaches a hard nub of nerves.

“Mig…” you moan, eyes fluttering shut.

“That’s my baby. Come here.”

A hand wraps around your back and lifts your hips up for him while thick fingers prod at your cunt. Miguel wraps his lips around your clit, licking flat, broad strokes as amber eyes watch you writhe and jolt beneath him.

“You don’t look so sleepy anymore,” he goads. You shake your head and he chuckles. “No?”

“Nuh uh-h. Oh god—”

He eases two fingers in knuckle deep, groaning at how wet they get. Pumping them in slowly, Miguel curls them around sensitive nerves, feeling you clench down on his hand. It’s easy to lose yourself to the feel of your husband’s mouth on you and the stretch of his fingers pounding into you, but you eventually notice something’s off.

You can feel him grinning while he licks and swirls his tongue around your swollen nub, hands beginning to slow to a halt. His fingers pull almost all the way out you, causing your eyes to finally open and a noise of protest leaves your lips.

“Mig—” you begin, swallowing down a hiccupy moan. “Miguel, please.”

Miguel raises an eyebrow at you, shrugs his shoulders like he doesn’t know what he’s doing. Wicked as ever, his tongue moves at unrelenting speeds. Heat flares from your abdomen, thighs twitching out of your control. Between you and him, there’s a damp mess between your legs as Miguel bullies your clit. Your hips try to chase his fingers as they leave you for good, desperate to clench around something, anything. You let out a sob when he stops to press a kiss to your clit.

“Babe!” you cry out, pulling harshly at his hair.

His face rises just enough for you to spot how drenched his chin is. A pink tongue darts around his lips and he smirks.

“You want it, baby girl?” His voice takes on a rougher quality as he challenges you. Large fingers push at your cunt, almost in but not quite. “Work for it.”

Your limbs are still heavy from sleep but the need to feel Miguel makes you roll your hips until you feel yourself push down and squeeze around his fingers. He doesn’t move though, grins wider while he watches you fuck yourself on his hand.

“Isn’t that better?” Miguel asks like he doesn’t know the answer. The hand on your back slips away, flattening onto the bed as he rises above you. You’re too busy trying to follow his other hand to realize he’s right by your head, wide shoulders blotting out the morning sun.

Breath hot and heavy, he snarls in your ear, “Does it feel good when you listen?”

“Mhmm!”

You cling to him, clumsily grabbing his arms as an anchor. Between gasps and moans, his name is a chant on your lips, drawing him closer.

Miguel’s an odd entity. Without the mask, he’s soft with you, cracks smiles throughout the day and fills your ears with loving whispers of devotion. He’s not demanding of you in the way that he is with his team of superheroes at his beck and call. You’ve overheard him being prickly and impatient when things don’t go to his plans, seen him bare his teeth in anger. But never at you.

In here, where the sheets are silken, the atmosphere a little lighter, a little slower… Miguel’s a different man.

“You’re so close… I can feel it,” he growls out. He places a hand on your hip to still your twisting form and it’s infuriating how little effort he uses to hold you like a limp doll. With slick sounds, his fingers slide in and out of you, dragging across taut nerves. “Not yet, baby girl. Not yet.”

“Mig, please. I need you. I need…”

“Hmm?” He lays a kiss on your cheek, lips lifting in a smirk. Miguel wanders down, repeating his hummed reply, kissing your jaw and nipping at your neck. “Say it again.”

You whine and rake your nails across the broad expanse of his shoulders, drawing red lines on sun-kissed skin. “Need you in me, Miguel.”

Your words seep through his skin and into his bones. Every fiber of him aches for you. He’s the king of edging himself, of self control as he fights to ignore the throbbing twitch of his cock. You call to him once more, needy and desperate for him, and Miguel’s done. His hips rut forward, seeking your soaked cunt and he finds it, the fat head of him nudging at your entrance.

He groans out your name, head hung forward and his hands splaying around your face. The sheets strain from his claws retracting and returning and all you see in his eyes are red. Miguel’s shoulders push into the backs of your knees as he hinges forward, forcing your thighs further open for him. There’s mumbled Spanish flowing past his lips as he claims you slowly, your husband taking his sweet time filling you up.

“Fuck, sweet girl. My wife. So fucking tight for me,” he groans.

The pace he sets is fast and devastatingly deep. Miguel reaches spots that makes you incoherent, makes your head toss back as you spew whatever your fucked out mind can give him. It’s messy, rough and he fucks you like you’d never break. And you never do. You always give him what he needs and knowing that brings him to his knees.

Red eyes find you in the waves of passion and Miguel’s looking at you as though this moment is finite. He’s never going to tell you about the other you’s— can’t let you know the statistics which haunt him daily.

Instead, Miguel devours your every moan, lips crushing yours so he can taste you as you tremble. You’re impossibly tight around him, muscles clamping down on him and skin slick with sweat. Your nails mark his back and shoulders, smaller fingers winding into his curls and tugging hard. He can feel you falling off the edge and leans into it, all too happy to chase the end with you.

His hand works its way between you, firm thumb rubbing tight circles around your clit. There’s no reprieve from the cascade of sensations he’s building. Miguel chases your climax until you come around him with a cry of his name.

“Yes, baby girl. Fuck. Fuck,” he moans.

Hips rutting faster, cock pushing you towards hypersensitivity, he wraps an arm around you and pulls you in close. His back muscles seize beneath your hands as he comes with a groan. Miguel’s muttering your name in a breathy chant, hips slowing to a roll as more of his thick spend fills you.

His nose bumps yours, eyes brimming with warmth and fondness. It should feel dirty and hot with how wet it sounds between your legs but you don’t hear it when Miguel murmurs in your ear.

“Still sleepy?” he coos.

You grab at his cheeks and squeeze, receiving an eye roll on his part. He’s handsome but stubborn, your husband.

“Mig…” you laugh. “Can’t feel my bones after that.”

He nuzzles your cheek and hums an acknowledgment. You’re warm, still clinging to him in more than one way. Outside, the sky’s turned blue as the sun finds its way through the windows, shining brightly on your skin. Beads of sweat caught on your neck and chest glitter in the light. He’s never seen anything as beautiful as you.

“Breakfast?” he offers.

“Shower,” you insist and twist your hips to remind him of the stickiness which coats both your bodies.

“Mmm. But I like you like this,” Miguel teases. He rolls his hips, cock still hard and buried deep, eliciting a moan from your lips. “So full of me, baby.”

“I like it, too,” you answer and squeeze his cheek again.

Miguel smiles as if he’s a man unburdened. Here in Spiderman 2099’s universe, you’re safe and sound.

[jgroffdaily]

A few things we learned about Jonathan during the promotion of ‘Merrily We Roll Along’:

1. He’s in therapy. He told Daniel Radcliffe and Lindsay Mendez during a Tonys Instagram takeover that he had therapy that morning, and was feeling “very processed”. Video below.

2. In the ‘Out’ Magazine interview Jonathan said he wants to buy the first bar where Barbra Streisand reportedly first sang publicly, which is now an occupied restaurant.

The actor wants to one day buy a Village restaurant called & Son Steakeasy, which used to be the site of the Lion, a gay bar where Streisand first sang publicly during a singing contest (according to a plaque there, at least). His goal is “turning it back into a gay bar and calling it BARbra.” A neon “BARbra” sign even hangs in his Merrily dressing room as a reminder of this dream.

3. In the same interview, he says he's happy to remain single or be in a relationship:

“I’ve been single now for a couple of years and I’m feeling…ready and open for anything. If that’s continuing with that, if that’s a relationship, I’m cool with that.”

4. At the Out Magazine Pride Cover Party he said:

“I’m single. I’m feeling full of pride. And PrEP.”

Bonus quote from the Buzzfeed puppies interview:

"I’m clearly the single one of the three of because the puppies know. I need love.”

5. In the New Yorker interview, he discussed moving to New York at 19:

The first month that I was here, feeling so lost and confused, I pulled the Bible that my Mennonite grandmother gave me off the bookshelf. She gave me that Bible before I left town. I was alone in the apartment thinking, What the fuck am I doing in New York? Or not even “what the fuck”—I didn’t swear until “Spring Awakening,” and when I would sing “Totally Fucked” I would get beet red. And I remember putting the Bible down and thinking, This is not the answer. This is not making me feel good. And then running to Central Park and standing in front of the Bethesda Fountain. I was nineteen, and I was, like, This feels better—but, like, What? Who am I? What am I doing here? I know I want to act, but I’m so scared. And gay. But it was something—some voice, some passion, some inspiration. Some something brought me here.

6. He's very competitive: asked how ambitious he was on a scale from 1 to 10 he says a 10 (to Broadwaycom at the Tonys junket).

7. He says he's “not really a dog person” in the Buzzfeed interview.

8. He talked more about his relationship with Gavin Creel in interviews with Out and Interview than he has previously, including this quote to Interview:

GROFF: I froze. I hadn’t even thought about coming out as a public person. She [interviewer] was like, “Oh my god, never mind. I’m so sorry.” And then she moved along. And I really remember this moment of looking over to the right and seeing Gavin. He had also just recently come out a year or two before, and seeing him with a bullhorn corralling the people, god, I was so in love with him. I was like, “Oh my god, I am coming out. I’m coming out. I’m coming out.” So I went back over to her and I was like, “Hi, please excuse my hesitation, I’m gay.” And that was how I came out publicly at the March on Washington for Marriage Equality.

9. His 30th birthday alone was a happy birthday (in the New Yorker):

I remember it vividly. We were at the Public Theatre. There was a fire in the East Village, and the show was cancelled that night. I got a cupcake at the deli around the corner from my apartment, on Sixteenth Street, and ate it by myself. I can be a bit of a loner, so that was a happy birthday for me.

10. He said in the Buzzfeed interview the best present he has received from a fan was a signature of King George III, and he hung it in his apartment.

[childrenofcain-if]

PLS, I NEED TO SEE OUR POOKIEBEAR C ACTUALLY GETTING THE COMPANY AND FIRING THEIR DAD'S ASS TO OBLIVION

the morning of C Lacroix’s 22nd birthday was a muted affair, the sun reluctant to break through the thick clouds that hung low over manhattan. it was as if the city itself was holding its breath, sensing the storm brewing beneath the surface.

in the penthouse high above the streets, the air was taut with anticipation, the stillness almost unbearable. everything in the room—the sleek, minimalist furniture, the cold gleam of marble floors, the panoramic view of a city that never truly slept—spoke of control. but today, that control was about to be weaponized, unleashed in a way that would ripple through the lives of wall street’s biggest players like a carefully orchestrated symphony of a tidal wave.

C stood by the window, their reflection a ghostly figure against the backdrop of the city they had vowed to conquer. every inch of their being was coiled with a tension that spoke not of uncertainty, but of the meticulous precision with which they had planned every detail of this day.

for twelve years, they had waited for this moment—twelve long years of enduring the shadow of a man who had sought to crush their spirit, to mold them into something small, something subservient. but today, alain lacroix would learn the folly of underestimating the very being he had dared to even try to break.

behind C, the sound of soft footsteps broke the silence, and they turned to see their soulmate—the one person who had stood by them through it all, who had quietly, relentlessly, maneuvered the pieces into place for this final move. you were the embodiment of subtle power, a force that operated in the shadows, unseen but undeniable. your presence in the room was like a quiet storm, one that had gathered strength over years of meticulous planning. and together, you were about to rain havoc on new york city.

you approached the desk where the final contract lay—a simple document that belied the magnitude of what it represented. the acquisition of lacroix and co. was complete, not through hostile takeovers or boardroom battles, but through the quiet, calculated moves that had become the hallmark of you and C. you had done it, had bought the company out from under alain lacroix’s nose, and now, with a single stroke of a pen, you were handing the reins to C.

“do you know how long i’ve been waiting for this moment?” C’s voice was a low murmur, almost a caress, as they met your gaze. they situate themself on the chair, looking down at the papers representing all the pain they had gone through. there was a fire in their chalcedony gaze, one that had been stoked by years of quiet fury, of pent-up resentment that was now on the verge of release.

you smiled, a slow, dangerous smile that reminded them of secrets shared, of plans hatched in the dead of night. “revenge,” you said softly. “i’ve heard it’s a dish best served cold.”

C’s lips twitched into a smile that was anything but kind. “twelve years ago, he left after taking everything from me.” the words were spoken with a calm that hid the storm raging inside them. “but now, i’m taking it all back.”

you reached for the pen on the desk, holding it out to C with a flourish that was almost theatrical. once they took it, you situated yourself behind their chair, arms wrapped around their shoulder as you peered onto the papers with them.

“the inheritance that was rightfully yours,” you said, your voice a soothing balm to C’s simmering rage. “brick by brick, remember? you’ll rebuild it. and alain lacroix will have no one to blame but his foolish self.”

C reaches up, their fingers brushing against your arms in a moment of silent understanding. this was more than a business transaction; it was a reclamation of power, a rewriting of history. with a swift, decisive motion, C signed the contract, the sound of the pen scratching across the paper like a death knell for their father’s empire.

as they set the pen down, C felt a strange sense of calm wash over them—a calm that came not from the act of signing, but from the knowledge that the final blow was yet to come. they reached for the phone on the desk, their movements deliberate, almost ritualistic. alain’s number was already dialed in, a ghost from the past summoned into the present.

the phone rang once, twice, before a voice crackled through the receiver—alain lacroix’s voice, thick with the arrogance that had defined his every interaction. “who is it?” he barked, clearly annoyed at the intrusion.

“missed me, father?” the words were delivered with a venomous calm, each syllable a shard of ice piercing through the phone line. “you never called. you never texted. i thought you forgot about me.”

there was a beat of silence, then alain’s voice returned, dripping with condescension. “what do you think you’re doing, C? this isn’t one of your childish games. you think buying my company will make you my equal?”

C’s smile was a razor-sharp thing, dangerous in its serenity. “your company?” they let out a soft laugh, one that held no warmth. “you misunderstand. lacroix and co. is mine now, if you haven’t already gotten the news. you took everything from me. but you forgot one thing, father. power doesn’t come from money or titles. it comes from control. and today, i control the very ground you’re setting your shoes on.”

alain’s voice crackled through the receiver, laced with fury. “you think this will hurt me?” he spat, the bravado of a man who had yet to realize his empire was crumbling around him. “you’re nothing without me, you ungrateful—”

“i’ve never been anything because of you,” C cut him off, their tone measured, every word delivered with the precision of a surgeon’s scalpel. “but you, father… you’re nothing without the company. and now, you’re nothing without me.”

C let out a cruel laugh, before continuing, “all those years you preyed on a vulnerable child. you thought you could teach me a lesson, show me my place. now, i’m going to show you yours.”

they hung up the phone with a finality that echoed through the room. alain’s curses, his impotent rage, were nothing more than noise now—background static to the cacophony of destruction C was about to unleash with you on the new york elite.

looking at them, you saw the remnants of the monster that their father had created. beaten and crafted into a creature of rage and pride. one that you had molded into something far more terrifyingly beautiful than alain lacroix’s wildest dreams. your own bloody frankenstein.

“C,” you murmured, your voice a soft, steadying force anchoring them. almost as if on instinct, they leaned their head backward, correctly anticipating the kiss that had them breathing hard and wild.

“let me treat you tonight,” C muttered, breathless against your lips. “anything you want, mon ange.”

“isn’t it your birthday today, lacroix?” you teased, your smile wide and genuine. “save your money. you’ll need it for the next company you buy.”

you noticed the ways the green of their eyes darkened with something deeper than just desire. “then i’m afraid you’ll have to give yourself to me, mon ange. i’ve waited so long to have you like this.”