#which is how i always feel about modern john

[redstoneofaja]

AHEEM HEEM… WHIMPER

from constantine & the demon round robin pages in the back of superboy: the man of tomorrow #4

[novemberheart]

Chapter 1 -> Chapter 2

{overview} You need someplace to stay- and fast. Luckily your aunt Kate knows the perfect place for you. Only problem is you’ll have four other roommates, who are all dating each other?

{warnings} polyamory/poly141 x fem reader, chapter story, inaccuracies all around, cursing, future smut and suggestive language, reader is inexperienced when it comes to relationships but age is not specified, appearance of reader not specified, some slow burns, some quick burns, angst, drama

“John, when you have a moment I’d like to speak to you,” Laswell requested, sticking her head into the Captain's office. A few playful gasps and ‘what’d you do now’ spread through his office. With a groan he pulled his heavy body to its feet, the weight of the world on his shoulders. His gaze quickly caught Simon’s who gave him a knowing stare. John followed Laswell to her office- which was conveniently situated across from his. “I have a favor.” She continued, plopping a pile of folders onto her already crowded desk.

Cue another grown.

“We just got back, Kate. The boys have hardly slept. Kyle has lost about ten pounds. Simon is still getting over a knife to the shoulder”-

“Calm down mother hen.” Laswell interrupted. John tsked, but realized his own antics were bordering on the tease. “You don’t have to do anything.” She paused for a moment. “Well, you almost have to do nothing.”

The Captain raised his eyebrow.

“I have a niece who needs a place to stay. You still have that empty bedroom right?”

His first instinct is to lie. The last thing he and the boys needed was an interloper- a pest in their home. They spend so much time hiding that the thought of doing it in their home, a place that is decorated so thoroughly with each of them sounds almost torturous.

“Please don’t lie, John,” Kate spoke up. “She a good girl. She’s trying to move up in her job but it’s taking some time. The only places she can afford are in rough neighborhoods and quite frankly I’m worried for her. So is her mother because she calls me about twice a day to check on her.” An airy laugh left Kate, which she quickly shook off. “I go back to the States in two weeks and I would really like to have her set up and safe before I leave. It’s only temporary- two months at the most till she can get a down payment on an apartment.”

“I don’t know how the boy’ll feel about it.” Price finally spoke. Kate nodded her head in understanding.

“She’s a modern woman if that’s what you’re worried about,” Kate said slowly.

“How about we meet her first? Give us a few days to adjust being back home, then maybe we can go out for lunch or something. If the boys’ll agree on it.” John offered. Kate sighed, hoping this meeting would’ve resulted in a bit more of a clear outcome. Nevertheless, she nodded her head, as quiet agreement escaped her lips.

“Deal.”

“Anything important?” Simon hummed as the Captain stepped back through the door.

“Yes actually and it involves all of us.” At this, the boys quickly tossed the things they were working on, onto the coffee table. John cleared his throat, taking a seat next to Simon. It was a small noise- one that John wasn’t even aware he had made, yet it caused each of their backs to straighten at the underlying authority present in the small act. “Kate was hoping her niece could stay with us for a while, two months at the most, while she looks for a place to live.” John looked around the room, trying to get a grasp as to what they were thinking. ‘Unreadable’ was the first thing that came to mind. Suddenly Johnnys' lips curled up into a smirk.

“You have a picture?” The Scotsman questioned.

“No, mate.” Kyle scolded, before the rest could roll their eyes. “Not everyone was put on this earth to be eye candy for ya.’”

“You were.” Johnny shot back without missing a beat. Kyle nearly smiled but pulled his lips into a tight line, his knee nudging Johnny.

“Why does she need to leave?” Kyle asked. Always the voice of reason.

“Safety reasons. Lives in a bad area.” John explained. That softened them. “I suggested we meet her first, she’ll probably put her best foot forward- but we should be able to tell if she’d be a good fit or not.”

“I think we should just give ‘er the keys.” Johnny piqued up again.

“Oh really.” Simon muttered from across the coffee table.

“Yeah. I mean we risk our lives for strangers everyday out there. At least with this, we could help someone out without having to do much.”

“You just want a date Mactavish.” Kyle sighed from next to him, sliding down in his seat. The corner of John’s eyes lifted in a slight smile before he stood up and returned to his desk.

“I’ll have Laswell send her our address, so we can meet her.”

“So it is a date.” Johnny chirped.

If it wasn’t for the checkpoint to get in you wouldn’t have known it was military housing. Kate drove you both in. Her fingers drummed against the steering wheel feeding off of your own nerves. Never ending rows of brick houses lined both sides of the street. There were lots of trees- which you were happy about. The houses varied in size from small townhouses to big houses with fenced-in backyards. One street even led down to a nice apartment building.

“I’ve driven past here before and never knew all these houses were back here.” You broke the silence.

“The trees hide them well- and the fog.” She smiled, not taking her eyes off the street. Each house was decorated with various flags out front- most of them being a Union Jack. She finally turned down a street, one that seemed narrower than the others. There were no houses across the street, just a large green field. A family and their dog playing in the neatly trimmed grass. The trees surrounding the area made the air fresh and your lungs felt lighter with every deep breath. Even though it wasn’t raining your nose could imagine the smell of wet earth. You shut the car door.

“There’s a nice walking path down that way.” Kate nodded her head towards the tree line. You followed her up onto the sidewalk, wondering which house she was going to head towards. It was the third one from the end. It looked like all the others but something set it apart. The outside of the house was spotless, like each brick had been hand scrubbed. The bushes and trees were neatly trimmed and there were even some potted plants you could see from on the porch.

You inspected each car in the driveway. Two trucks, one a shiny black, so large you could see it no matter where you stood. The second truck looked more like a fixer upper. It was older, painted a nice brown and beige- well loved. Behind the black truck was a just as sleek, black, shiny muscle car, that you’re sure the neighbors love hearing in the early mornings. Next to it was a banged-up, red, 4-runner geared up like it was ready to take off into the mountains at the drop of a hat.

You wondered how reflective each car was of each man.

Kate rang the doorbell. “Don’t worry.” She whispered to you over her shoulder. You were in fact worried. Very worried. It felt like all of your job interviews and presentations rolled into one. Your heartbeat only had the chance to beat 15 times before the door opened. Your insides shriveled as one of your worst fears came to light.

He was handsome- very handsome. Boarding on pretty.

“Kyle.” Laswell greeted, at which his lips perked up into a smile.

“Calling you Kate feels too informal.” He admitted. He opened the door further standing to the side to allow you both the enter. You had yet to move from your hiding spot behind Kate.

“Then don’t.” She chuckled. His head dodged around Kate to finally get a glimpse of you. His smile faltered slightly, but he quickly whipped it back on.

Your brain kicked into gear and you extended your hand with a soft introduction.

“Nice to meet you, love.” He smiled warmly taking your hand into his. He was warm and his hand held no paranoid shakes like yours.

You followed Kate into the entryway. It was plain, with an expensive-looking wooden dresser with a bowl filled with various keys and random bolts. ‘Junk bowl’ you thought mindlessly. Boots and shoes were lined neatly against the wall, making sure to avoid the rug leading into the living area. Kyle closed the door behind you.

Your eyes racked up and down his form. You knew he would be fit for his line of work, but you didn’t picture someone so carefully carved out of marble.

“Do I need to take off my shoes?” You questioned.

“Nah, don’t worry about it. We usually just keep our work boots here.” He explained. He extended his arm forward, silently guiding you further into the house. Just through the entryway was another hallway and the stairs, but Kate led you to the left into the living area.

The house was beautiful. It was a mismatch of styles but they all somehow charmingly complimented each other. The furniture was rustic. Brown leather couches, chairs, and everything from the TV stand to the coffee table was constructed from wood. The decor was more modern- but not in a cold grey and white way. There were lots of dark greens and blues. Plants were scattered around the home, making the air inside just as fresh as outside. Various pictures hung up on the wall all sketched from charcoal. You weren’t close enough to see what they were about.

“It’s beautiful.” You whispered over your shoulder. It was a home. It’s been a long time since you’ve got to experience one.

“Thanks. Cap’ is picky about where he sits so he picks out all the sitting furniture. Simon woodworks in his free time so he built almost everything you see here. ‘Tavish is the artist.” He explained, his tender gaze following yours as he took in his own home. He could feel his chest swell.

“You must be the green thumb?” You hummed. The quirk on his lips remained as he nodded his head.

“And the one who makes everything look nice.” He muttered, sending a small wink your way. “Just through the arch is the kitchen.” Kyle continued, taking the lead away from Kate. When you spoke to Kate it sounded as though this was just a meeting. Yet the way Kyle spoke and smiled at you made you feel as though you had already been voted in.

The kitchen was nice. Dark oak cabinets pushed up against the wall with light granite countertops. There was a small island with just enough room for two stools and a sink. It was clean- like the rest of the house. Everything had a place, even the fruit bowl on the counter and the tea kettle on the stovetop. Kyle turned to the right.

“And just across the hall we have the dinning room.” He lit up a bit as he crossed the hall into the room. Two men were sitting at the table. Both big and commanding in size.

“Hi.” You spoke first- a trained reaction.

“Hey, Bonnie!” You nearly jumped again at the enthusiasm. He was sitting closest to you and he reached for your hand before you could hold it out for a greeting. “John Mactavish- but you can call me Johnny.” You wondered if every man in this house had overwhelming smiles.

“Nice to meet you.” You returned his greeting with a repeat of your name. He plopped back down in his seat. The man next to him stood up. Something about him made you want to know him. He seems like the sort of person you go to when you need a shoulder to lean on . His movements were precise and swift, yet the crinkles around his eyes made your shoulders relax.

“John Price. Very nice to meet you.” It was polite and warm just like him. Your hand itched to hold his and you were disappointed when he didn’t extend it. So you extended yours. He quickly took it, his hands as calloused and as warm as you thought they’d be.

“Nice to meet you too.” You added. You quickly let go- hoping you weren’t too sweaty.

“Sit please.” He requested, gesturing to the seats across from him.

“Hello everyone.” Kate gruffed from behind you. The two men’s eyes widened quickly sputtering out an apology for ignoring her. With a playful huff, she rolled her eyes taking a seat next to you.

“We have some pastries if you want, there’s also drinks in the fridge,” John said, nodding his head towards the plate in the center of the table.

“We wouldn’t mind throwing on the kettle either,” Kyle added, sitting at the head of the table.

“Don’t mind if I do.” Kate quickly took them up on the offer grabbing something with blueberries. You grabbed a scone with the most icing. “Good.” Kate hummed between bites.

“Corner shop just outside base.” Johnny chirped. You wondered for a moment if they had bought these just for you. Well maybe not for you to eat- but maybe so you’d perceive them as caring? Or put together? You shook the thought out of your head, taking a bite of the scone. It was softer than it looked and had hint of orange. Your eyes lifted up from the scone. Each man was staring at you- not expectantly, but like one would look at zebras at the zoo. With slight wonder, but mostly curiosity. They were accessing you and you couldn’t blame them. You were asking a lot from them.

“I would like to tell you why I need to leave my apartment.” You offered, setting the scone down on a napkin. They shifted in their seats- sitting at attention. “I know this is a big ask and I would just like to say I would absolutely be happy to pay some utility or some other expense. I don’t want you to think I’m mooching off of you.”

“Don’t need to worry about that.” John spoke, quickly putting an end to any concern you have. You took a deep breath, your eyes drifting over to Johnny. His face was serious now, but his smile lines remained. You couldn’t imagine smiling so much that it would be etched into your skin. You breathed out.

“A few nights ago my apartment was broken into, during the night while I was at home.” Kyle winced, and Johnny stiffened. John remained the same. “Luckily I had bear spray and a crowbar.” You chuckled despite the heaviness in the air. “Nothing happened and they ran out fairly fast once I started screaming and swinging the crowbar around- but I just don’t feel safe anymore.”

“Of course.” John affirmed after you. “I’m happy you were able to react. Sometimes in those situations, people freeze.”

It was small but it was the validation you needed to hear.

“Thank you.” You said softly. “This wasn’t the first time it had happened. My place has been broken into two other times, this was just the first time it had happened while I was home. I’ve gone to the police but they never follow through. On top of that when I come home it’s usually dark and I’m almost surprised when I make it home.” Your head turned towards Laswell who nodded at you to go on. You hoped they didn’t think you were a baby. People are going through hard times all over the world. What makes you so special that you should be free from it? These men had no doubt been exposed to horrible acts, things you don’t think you could cope with hearing let alone experiencing. They’re probably thinking how entitled you are. How you should buck up and stop playing victim. You shook yourself out of your thoughts. “I‘ve been saving money for a few months but it still not enough. If I could just have about a month’s paycheck that would put me at my goal. I know it’s a big ask, but it’ll be like I’m not even here, I promise. I’m a rather boring person, unfortunately.”

They chuckled at that.

“Well, Sweetheart. I think you just landed yourself a bedroom.”

Hi friends I hope you liked this! I have 5 more chapters scheduled to post so I won't leave you hanging! Don't be afraid to say hi or come visit me on my page!

The next chapter will be posted in three days! 🤎

See you at the next chapter!

[mrshesh]

"for... me?" - modern warfare 2 x reader

overview: mw2 men reacting to you giving them a friendship bracelet

pairing: mw2 men x gender neutral reader, romantic & platonic

genre: fluff

a/n: my first mw2 headcanons... i'm nervous about this. i will be eternally grateful if you leave your thoughts and criticisms in the comments, reblogs, or in messages. with that being said; enjoy.

x simon "ghost" riley

Simon is a sweet guy deep down. He appreciates you deeply, and he’d never hurt you intentionally, so you don’t know why you’re so nervous as you’re standing outside his door, your hands concealed behind your back as if you’re hiding an illegal drug. 

When you hesitantly open the door to his room, you get greeted by Simon’s cold gaze, which immediately softens when he sees you. 

He quickly sees the worry on your face, making his heart ache against his will. He cares about you so much. His mind always races when he sees you upset, his fight or flight response kicks in when you’re hurt, and his face always heats up when you’re smiling. You know this - yet you’re so nervous. 

He stands up from his bed, reaching you to open the door further as you step back. He grimaces at the sight of you being so distressed - what could you possibly have done to be so concerned? 

“What’s wrong?” He immediately asks, his eyebrows furrowing when he sees the small droplets of sweat on your forehead. 

“Nothing’s wrong, Simon. You always assume the worst of me.” You roll your eyes jokingly, feeling calmer when he pinches his nose bridge in annoyance. It’s such a Simon thing to do, instantly making you giggle. 

“Well, you’re sweating like a fuckin’ madman. What’s wrong?” He repeats his question, waiting for your response to determine his approach. He is so tense, worried that you have gotten yourself into something. (Although he would never admit that.)

“Give me your wrist.” You say after you take a deep breath, making his eyes narrow in confusion. Still, he extends his arm for you, his other hand resting comfortably on his hip as he observes your every move. 

When you reveal your masterpieces, his gaze goes from suspicious to surprised in a heartbeat, his lips slightly parting behind his mask. 

You’re holding a friendship bracelet - a black, gray, and white candy-striped yarn bracelet in your hands. Simon quickly takes notice of the bracelet on your wrist because it is identical to the one on your shaky palms. His brown eyes turn to yours, and you swear you can see a faint smile on his face. 

“I’m assuming that one’s for me, yeah?” He chuckles, taking the bracelet from your hands to look closer at it. It sure is beautiful - it has some imperfections, which only makes it more precious in his eyes. 

He puts it on calmly, twisting his wrist to look at it again when it’s on. His gaze turns to you, one of his eyebrows cocking up at your horrified expression. 

“You are that fucking nervous over a bracelet?” He chuckles, his hand finding your head on instinct, patting you gently. “I like it, so you can stop shitting yourself, love.” 

He secretly loves it. 

When Soap notices that you and Simon are matching, his heart swells up with pride, but he tries to hide the ego boost he got. He feels special, knowing that he is the one matching with you.

He’s experienced so much loss in his life, but he promises himself that he will never lose you nor that bracelet the second you give it to him.

He wouldn’t match bracelets with anybody else.

x john "soap" mactavish

Johnny has suggested getting matching jewelry before! He’s big on showing you how much he cares about you, and he thinks it would be a perfect way to show his appreciation for you. 

So you know that he’s going to be ecstatic when you show him that you’ve not only gotten matching jewelry for the two of you, but you’ve made it yourself! 

You approach him when he’s sparring, his body covered in sweat and red patches from where he got hit, yet he’s still smiling and running towards you the second he sees you. 

The Scotsman instantly notices that you’re hiding your hands behind your back, which sparks his interest enough to try to look at what you’re covering in them. 

“What’re you hiding, bonnie?” He asks with a laddish grin, wiping the sweat on his forehead with the back of his hand. He can’t help but snicker when you smile at his curiosity, a huge weight seemingly lifting off your shoulders. 

“Can I see your wrist?” “My wrist?” He quickly repeats, seeming a bit dumbfounded. Still, he complies, extending his arm for you to grab while his breathing slows down. 

You don’t waste any time, immediately tying his baby blue, royal blue, and navy Chevron bracelet on for him. 

He initially looks baffled until he realizes you’re wearing an identical bracelet on your wrist. 

Johnny’s face lights up, bringing his wrist closer to his face to inspect the carefully made bracelet, the different colors of yarn complimenting each other perfectly. 

“Do you like it?” “I love it!” He quickly exclaims before he picks you up, hugging you close to him as he spins you around, erupting a hearty laugh from you. 

“I’m never taking this off, m’eudail.” 

And he’s telling the truth! 

You will never catch that man without that bracelet on his wrist. 

He shows it off to everybody, forcing you to hold your wrist next to his for proof. 😭

If anybody accidentally tugs at it or touches it without permission, he will yell at them. His go-to phrase is: "Hands off, eejit." He's just so dreamy. 😍😭

x kyle "gaz" garrick

Kyle is a sucker for you. He loves it when you think of him, take the initiative to be with him, and do thoughtful things for him - you’re pretty much his favorite person, so he adores it when you do anything nice for his sake. 

So you know he will never turn down matching friendship bracelets! 

You are playing UNO with Kyle when you finally get the courage to show him the bracelets you’ve made for the two of you. He noticed that your mind was somewhere else the second you two started talking, and his suspicions got confirmed when you eventually put all of your cards down, looking into Kyle’s eyes like you were guilty of a war crime. 

“Can I give you something?” You ask, clearing your throat and smiling nervously at him. “Yeah, why not?” He nods in agreement, putting his cards aside to see what has gotten you so worked up. He hates seeing you so tense, but he can’t deny that it’s sparking his interest. 

“Let me see your wrist.” You extend your hand, signaling him to place his wrist on your palm. 

“Alright.” He utters, placing his wrist on your hand, his eyes alternating between looking at your face and his arm. (I just know his face looks like this 🤨)

His judgemental look soon gets replaced with a look of pure adoration the second he sees the ocean wave bracelet you tied on his wrist, his cheeks feeling like they’re on fire. 

“You made these?” He asks after a comfortable silence, his heart throbbing at the thought of you sitting and weaving that yarn between your fingers for hours to create this for him. “Yeah. Do you like them?” 

“I love them. You might have to teach me how to make these.” 

After that, he quickly grabs his cards again, insisting on finishing the UNO game...

But this time, it’s him whose mind is somewhere else. 

He shows it to Price the second the game is over. 

Every time he sees you, he goes, “Nice bracelet.” as if it’s the funniest thing in the world.

He has picked up the habit of checking his wrist regularly to see if the bracelet is still there.

x john price

John is a strict sweetheart. You know deep down his intentions are pure, but sometimes you think his mouth could use some soap. His words and criticisms are not for the faint-hearted, sometimes hitting you deeper than any bullet ever could, which is why you are terrified to give him the bracelet you’ve made for him. 

You don’t want him to think your gift is superficial since you put a lot of thought and care into making them. You can understand why your tribute may seem cursory, but you hope John won’t think your hard work is shallow. 

Still, you take a deep breath and knock on his office door, squeezing the matching bracelets in your balled-up fist as your anxiety levels catapult. 

“Come in.” John gives you the green light to enter, which you do hesitantly, clearly looking worried. 

John immediately readies himself for the worst when he sees you sit down on the chair in front of his desk, reading your expression like a book. Why do you look so anxious? 

“What’s wrong?” He sighs, contemplating what approach he should take to speak to you. What you say next, however, he does not expect. 

“I have a gift for you.” You give him a nervous smile, only to be met by silence. You’re waiting for him to say something, your heartbeat’s pace increasing. You don’t feel like being a victim of his harsh words today. 

“A gift?” His curious look gives you the courage to place the bracelets on his desk, letting him look at them for as long as he needs. He takes the bigger one, bringing it closer to his face, getting a better look. The bracelet has a zig-zag pattern, the yarn being different shades of purple. It has some design errors here and there, but that only makes it all the more human. 

“Did you make these?” He puts it on, looking at it closely as it perfectly fits his wrist. You grab your bracelet, quickly sliding it on before you nod, your skin glistening in sweat. 

“Very impressive, soldier. I like it.” He smiles, making you exhale in relief. He likes it. Sweet. 

“Why purple, if I may ask?” “Thought I’d bring some color into your boring life.” “...” 

He loves it. He always laughs when he remembers your look of terror when you gave him the bracelet. 

He discreetly shows it off and then acts surprised when somebody points it out. 

He takes it off when he has missions. He doesn’t want it to wear out too quickly and encourages you to do the same.

And no, he doesn’t find it superficial at all. <3

x alejandro vargas

Alejandro has a huge soft spot for you. He’s very open with that fact, so you aren’t too nervous when you present him with the matching bracelets you’ve made for the two of you, but you still feel slightly worried. What if he simply dislikes them?

When you get assigned a mission with Alejandro, you don’t wait! You bring your bracelets with you, keeping them safe and hidden in your pocket until you finally see him again. 

He’s the first to walk up to you, kissing the back of your hand to exchange greetings. “It’s nice to see you again, cariño.” He greets, his eyebrow cocking up upon noticing how jittery you are. 

“I have something for you.” You tilt your head to the side, looking pleased with yourself. “Really? What have you got for me, corazón?” He can feel his excitement reach the roof. His aura radiates curiosity, making you feel more self-assured and breezy. 

Your hand reaches into your pocket, taking hold of both the bracelets inside. 

Your confidence skyrockets when you notice his expression change, his heart’s speed increasing when he sees the sage green spiral staircase bracelets in your hand. 

“I made these for us. Cute, right?” You smirk when he takes them from your hand, looking at them with such intensity your worry almost spikes up again. 

“They’re beautiful, amor.” He says when he finally looks up at you with a grin, his whole body feeling warmer in flattery. His change of expression and body language makes all your worries about this seem insignificant. You can tell that he loves them. 

He insists on tying yours on for you. He won’t take no for an answer. 

He stares at them for a few minutes when they’re on, feeling his ego skyrocket. 

He shows it off to everyone, to the point where Rudy’s getting sick of him. 💀

He has never loved an object more than that bracelet. 

If you gift him another one, he will 100% wife you up, no joke. 

x könig

König’s a ruthless Colonel. He’s strict and calculated, and he doesn’t let shit slide. But he’s so uncharacteristically soft when he’s around you.

His anxiety-prone heart is so fragile when it comes to you, so whenever he gets confirmation and comfort knowing that you still care about and love him, it only fuels his desire to keep going, to treat you better, and be there for you. 

And a friendship bracelet is an excellent reminder. :) 

You step into the armory, watching König polish his sniper carefully as he softly hums to himself. He only notices you when you knock on the wall next to you, alerting him that you’re present. 

“Hey.” He utters, wiping the lens of his sniper as his blue eyes lock on your frame, his attention shifting to your hands, or lack thereof. You’re hiding them behind your back, endeavoring to conceal something from the Austrian. “Is everything alright?” 

“Yes, everything is fine. I was wondering if I could give you something.” You step closer to König, your mischievous grin leaving him curious, wanting to poke for more information. 

“Sure, what is it?” He cautiously puts his sniper away, his elbows resting on his knees as his eyes find yours. 

“Give me your hand.” You extend one of your hands, clutching his wrist to reveal the bracelets you’ve been keeping out of sight behind your back. König’s eyes widen at the bracelets in your hand, cautiously leaning closer to your hand to get a better look at the yarn armbands. 

His expression softens as his focus shifts to you, making you raise an eyebrow at him wonderingly. “So? What do you think?” “They’re beautiful, liebling! Are they for us?” He asks, not wanting to assume that you’ve made one for him. However, his worries get swept away when you snicker and tie on his bracelet for him, allowing him to get a closer look at it. It’s a five-strand braid, the color palette being very military-esque with different shades of green. It compliments his skin and uniform well, recognizing that you’ve put more care into this than anybody has for him. 

He quickly stands up from his seat, wrapping his arms around your frame like a security blanket, making you melt in his grasp. You can hear his smile in his words, and you know right then and there that you made the right decision in gifting him this. “Thank you. I will cherish it forever and ever.”

He never takes it off. 

He constantly stares at them when you socialize with him. Work-related reasons or not - he can’t keep his eyes off them, a light blush covering his cheeks as he stutters out his words, making him especially grateful for his mask. 

He has gotten into the habit of hugging his wrist while he sleeps, keeping the bracelet close to his body to protect it from harm. 

He kisses it at least once a day. <3

[duchess-of-mandalore]

Star Wars, friends. I know this is not why you follow me, but please make this my most shared post.

You are here.

We're living the lead-up to Revenge of the Sith, and it scares me so much a) it feels like there is so little we can do, and b) young people are acting as if there is nothing we can do.

If you don't know what's going on, I need you to wake up and get engaged.

I have two history degrees. My whole life I've always been the person saying, "When people say, 'This is the most important election ever," it just shows how little they know about history.'"

So please believe me when I tell you that THIS is the most important election (cycle, not just presidential race) that you will likely ever be a part of.

Trump is not Hitler. He's too stupid to be Hitler.

But our democracy only held together in 2020 because of a few people like Mike Pence who were willing to stand up against Trump when it was truly the last line of defense. I know that's hard for some of you to hear, but whatever you think of his beliefs, Pence showed he has integrity and stands by the Constitution.

There will be no Mike Pences this time around. Trump will not make the mistake of surrounding himself with those who are not fully committed to him.

Trump is a convicted felon. He is running to avoid his convictions and likely jail time more than anything else. If he wins, he will be able to pardon himself of his federal crimes, but he's going to keep acting like Donald Trump. If he's still alive in 2028, do you think he will leave the White House peacefully and just submit to further cases against him?

Please watch John Oliver's recent expose on Project 2025 and Trump's Second Term. It is linked in a comment below.

Trump and his administration are already putting in place plans for sweeping reforms that truly will make America look like The Handmaid's Tale. Presidents usually will push for more when they're in their second term because they don't have to worry about another election campaign, but this is different. This is about dismantling the democratic system so that it only benefits the most radical conservatives and Christians.

Christians, I am one of you. I was raised Evangelical (capital E meaning politically motivated culture warrior), and I am still evangelical (lower-case e, referring to theological beliefs). This is not the posture of Christ-followers. There is no good that comes from state-mandated religion, which both coerces people to claim that they are believers for social and cultural clout AND waters down the true religious fervor of the church because most people are only nominal believers.

There is NOTHING about Christian Nationalism that is in the best interest of Christians or in the best interest of the neighbors Christians are called to sacrificially love. If you need a reminder of who your neighbor is, read Luke 10:25-37.

Please start talking with your friends. Young people, please register to vote and bring your friends to do the same.

I know so many of you are disillusioned. I am too. Things that are going on in Palestine and Ukraine and so many other places make it very hard to vote for people with "D"s behind their names (especially after the recent presidential debate).

But punishing Joe Biden is not the revenge you want to pursue here. Are you unhappy with him giving Israel $12.5 billion? I am too, but do you think that number won't be repeated multiple times under Trump? Again, I was raised Evangelical. A staple of (politically-focused) Evangelicalism is that Christians (and thus America) must support (the modern state of) Israel no matter what because they have a hyper-literal understanding of the verse where God tells Abraham that he will bless those who bless him (including his descendants who became Israel).

Do not underestimate the importance of that view in their ideology. Nearly every member of my biological family has shunned me for suggesting that this is not a blanket endorsement of every action the modern state of Israel takes.

Trump is a criminal running for president to save his skin. He supports Benjamin Netanyahu, the prime minister of Israel who is now himself wanted for war crimes. Trump has aligned himself with the authoritarian leaders/dictators of Hungary, China, North Korea, and Russia. He is open about his love for Russian president Vladimir Putin's authoritarian regime and stands against Ukraine's democracy and national sovereignty.

This is what happened before World War I and World War II.

I know this isn't what you follow me for.

But George Lucas was showing the dangers of authoritarianism. He shows that democracy is hard. It's frustrating trying to negotiate with people you disagree with vehemently. It may seem like nothing gets done.

Go and watch the Naboo picnic scene. Go and do it. And after chuckling at all the funny memes it's given us, let me tell you why it scares me so much.

Because Padme laughs.

Anakin tells her who he is, and she laughs.

She passes it off as a joke, or as flirting, or maybe even as just the ignorant views of a boy who views life as far more black and white than she knows it to be.

But the alternative to all of that frustrating democracy, all that gridlock in the Senate, all those choices and compromises you have to make in order to benefit the people at all ... the alternative is a dictator who says, "I will make all the decisions for us."

That's why there are people who applaud Palpatine. That's why we as viewers see Bail and Padme as the reasonable ones and think it's crazy that anyone would applaud, but they do.

The applaud because Palpatine says, "You don't have to be frustrated anymore. You don't have to be worried about those who disagree with you anymore." Safety and security and ease are powerful temptations when you live in a polarized society, and Palpatine offers them all of those things.

That's why many people applaud Trump, too.

There were also people who applauded Palpatine who did see the danger of what he was doing. But they applauded because it was easier to do so. He had already amassed power because they didn't stand up to him before. They applaud him now because standing against him now would have dire consequences they wouldn't have faced if they had stood against him before.

So vote. And get your friends to vote.

If there is any part of you that believes Star Wars has important things to tell us about real life, then I need you to fan that flame into a fire.

Otherwise, you won't be living in the prequels anymore. You will be living in the time of the Empire.

Vote.

[multific]

Modern Warfare Men as Sugar Daddies (Extra) - Preferences

Part 1

Warnings: Smut, Sugarbaby-Daddy relationship 

A/N: Since the previous post was very well-loved, I decided to write more details about the characters. Apologies if there are things which have been mentioned before. I also considered the vote and wrote this according to what people wanted to see the most. 

John Price

It was never about the money for John.

But now, he enjoyed every aspect of it.

Buying you everything you wanted, and in exchange, you would oh-so-nicely bend over his table without a question.

John is a very giving person but he does enjoy being taken care of. 

"I'll take care of you, Daddy." you would say with a sweet voice and John would be a goner.

He loves oral. Bot receiving and giving. 

But let's be fair, he is a giver after all.

He can spend hours between your legs and is not afraid to overstimulate his pretty little doll.

He likes to hear you plead and beg. 

But in the end, he would always give you exactly what you want.

And after sex, he would be a sweetheart. But let's be honest, he first needs his sleep. A little nap for Captain John Prince and then, he would be good.

He would be so hungry so no matter if you are as well or not, food would be a given. 

So be prepared for a nice order of any he craves at the moment.

You never had sushi naked before? Now you will. 

Johnny MacTavish

Let's be honest this man has a kilt.

And he fucked you many times while wearing said kilt. He would hike it up and then pound you.

The little devil doesn't even wear any underwear under his kilt.

Johnny likes you in pretty dresses. The shorter the better. Without anything under.

Just a dress. 

That's it.

Every restaurant you go to, you always feel people watching you.

"They are jealous, Bonnie." he would say. And you believe him.

Being with a handsome Daddy, wearing pretty dresses and jewellery, who wouldn't be jealous.

He likes to give you jewellery.

But his favourite is always that pear necklace he gives you every night.

Seeing you covered in his cum turns him on. It is a way to show that you are indeed his.

After the fact, showering is a must.

He would just kiss every inch of your skin while washing your entire body.

Kyle Garrick

Kyle likes to tease you in public. The thought of getting caught turns him on and you never object.

He likes to buy you things so he can rip them all off.

"I'll buy you something prettier. Let me eat that pussy now." he would always say.

And again, you don't object.

You couldn't even go to the movies without his finger soon finding your clit.

"Don't make a sound and I will give you a reward," he whispered into your ear.

You loved his games. 

And he loved to play with you.

Every outcome of his games was always so pleasurable. 

Giving you nice little rewards which could either be a night of long fucking or a new pair of shoes.

Kyle could be very kind even if he preferred to be a tease. He has his sweet moments when he just enjoys spending time with you. He would have such a sweet smile every time.

Simon Riley

Never call him Daddy. Ever!

Even IF he is your Sugar Daddy, calling him that would not work. Given how his father was with him, he banned you from calling him that after you did once.

You didn't ask why, the hurt in his eyes spoke louder than any word. So from then on, you called him Sugar or Simon. 

He would be fine with silly nicknames.

Just imagine the faces of people when you come running with a new bag to him asking him to buy it and you call him your little bunny.

Simon's favourite thing is when you tell him that he can do anything.

And you do mean anything.

So, for his upcoming birthday, your daddy asked you one gift.

Anal.

Without hesitation, you said yes.

Not like you can say no to him.

You weren't too surprised anyway. He always somehow managed to insert at least one of his fingers into your butt whenever he was fucking you, no matter the position or occasion.

But then, the next week his hyperfixation is your boobs. He wants nothing more than to fuck your beautiful boobs, no matter their size. 

After the fact, Simon would need a moment for himself, just like 2-3 minutes alone in the bathroom/kitchen to collect himself. But as the months pass, he would get more and more used to having you and he would stay in bed with you. He would pretend to sleep, he enjoys you cuddling to his side and he refuses to admit it.

König

After your little photos and videos you send him, he always sets his mind to punish you.

You deserve it, he always says. And he can be ruthless. Yet, he would never do something you don't like.

Like that one time when he was mad because you disturbed him during his debriefing, he arrived home and set his mind to fuck you senseless. 

And he did.

He fucked you first with his fingers, then a toy and finally, when you were so cock-dumb, he finally gave you his cock.

But before he did, he looked at your face, the tears and he stopped for a moment.

"Are you okay?" It was a simple question but it held many meanings. 

"Of course, Daddy."

"What's your safe word?"

"Diamond."

"Good girl."

To say that this man fucks is an understatement.

This man fucks and destroys furniture.

It got to the point where after your fifth bedframe, you two ended up with only a matress on the floor. 

The frame left marks on the wall, to the point where it needed a fresh coat of paint.

He was called King for a reason. And he is the King of your Pussy.

Logan Walker

He got used to you rather fast. To his brother's delight. 

Now the two often teased each other about you.

To your surprise, Logan is mostly normal in bed, nothing too freaky-deeky. 

Which did make you want to see the wild side of Mr Walker.

You want to know more, do more for and with him.

But you knew better than to ask his brother... that would be too weird.

You needed to find out yourself

And so, you pushed him to the edge. With what?

Jealousy.

Wearing a dress too short, looking at a man across the bar maybe for too long. 

And it did the trick.

Logan dragged you home, tied you to the bed and teased you for the entire night.

While he might not be freaky, he for sure likes to spend time with you.

You noticed he liked to just be in the same room.

Doesn't have to be sex.

But you promised to never make him jealous again. He made it clear, you were his and his alone.

He doesn't share. And the marks along your body were the proof of his claim over you.

Alejandro Vargas

Having him as a Sugar Daddy, you called him your Mexican Devil Daddy.

The one who whispers sweet things in Spanish into your ear while he does the most unpure things to your body.

He likes to have you in his arms at all times. 

Never ask him for a reason behind it.

He doesn't have to explain himself.

His hand is glued to your thigh as he drives.

Alejandro is not a huge fan of punishment but if you push his buttons, he wouldn't be nice.

He says he hates it when you whine but he actually loves it. He for sure has a thing for your brat side.

Keep telling him how much you missed him and he will give you anything you want.

"Chiquita, what would you like?"

"Dinner with you, Daddy."

"Hmm. At the place you like so much?"

"Yes."

"With the private balcony?"

"Yes."

"Do you plan on being naughty like the last time we where there? When you 'forgot' to wear your panties and I had to punish you right there and there?"

"I would never do that, Daddy. I am a good girl." 

He would laugh, you adore his laugh. 

But he would give you the world. 

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~Masterlist~

ˇAO3ˇ

DO NOT STEAL, REPOST OR TRANSLATE ANY OF MY WORKS  

[cowboyfromh3ll]

Hcs for the boys' toxic traits. Preferably arthur, javier, john, and charles, but other boys are welcome too! I'm curious to see what you'd say Dutch's toxic traist are, though they're pretty self explanatory 😭

I just love how you write sm sorreyyyy

Van Der Linde Gang's Toxic traits

(Arthur Morgan, Javier Escuella, John Marston, Charles Smith, Micah Bell, Dutch Van Der Linde, Sean Macguire, Kieran Duffy, Eagle Flies)

HAHAHA THIS WAS SO MUCH FUN TO WRITE. I tried not to sugarcoat anything.

Arthur Morgan - He definitely has some trouble communicating. Not to say he never will communicate with you but it'll be long in between and after it's been plaguing him for a milenium. As we've seen, this man is capable of having deep, well thought out conversations. He'd also be pretty prideful to some degree. Mostly depends what point in time you start dating, later in game he'd be able to see past his pride. Also, I feel like if you were dating a major point of contention in your relationship would be questioning whether it's time to move on from this life.

Javier Escuella - WAY too jealous. I don't even mean it in a cute way but in a way that would genuinely cause several arguments between you two. "Why were you looking at him that way?" "That sounded like you were flirting with him" "Why do you spend so much time around the other guys?" Would also be around you 24/7. Someone would be incapable of having a conversation with you that doesn't include Javier. You two would also argue about Dutch's leadership skills.

John Marston - Oh my God this man is so indecisive. Doesn't know what he wants ever. In a modern setting you two would be sitting in the car, asking each other back and forth "what do you wanna eat?". And his commitment issues? Good lord. At some points in your relationship it'd probably feel like you guys aren't dating at all. You'd probably have to beg him to put some effort into the relationship to be honest.

Charles Smith - It's so hard to think of ANYTHING this man can do wrong but alas, I must. You probably wouldn't be his top priority at all times. Which isn't to say you should ALWAYS be at the top of his list, but sometimes it can result in your feelings being neglected over a situation that affects you. Only when the day reaches it's end will he consult you over something, which will have you feeling incredibly frustrated.

Micah Bell - This man is a walking red flag so let's not dance around his flaws. Incredibly prideful, will ignore your warnings over something just to get his way. Also probably lies to you A LOT. Can be way too rough with you in many aspects. Also this man embodies the word sleezy. Yuck.

Dutch Van Der Linde - Do I even need to say. So fucking stubborn. He also probably thinks he's intelectually superior to you. If you bring up a concern to him he'll probably use as many flowery and big words as possible to make himself appear smarter during the discussion than he actually is. And if you advise him to do anything he'll probably just ignore you, saying you don't know what you're talking about. All in all, thinks he's better than you. Also you're probably a trophy wife since Dutch views women as accessories to his success, if you can even call it success.

Sean Macguire - He doesn't take anything seriously. If you're trying to have a genuine discussion with him he'll play it down and make it seem less important or severe than it actually is. Don't even bother trying to emphasize how serious you are because he won't take that seriously either. It's only until he feels the consequences of his actions will he listen to you, which results in a frustrating cycle.

Kieran Duffy - Also very indecisive but in the way where he can't speak up for himself because he doesn't think it's important. Has such low self esteem, he also probably thinks his emotions are less important which results in a lot of miscommunication on his behalf. Sorta just let's you take the lead all the way, always let's you have your way, with no valuable input of his own. You have to shake his shoulders and beg for him to actually speak his mind.

Eagle Flies - He's probably so childish. Like, mommy issues CEO over here. Will probably seek for you to fulfill that role in his life. Has almost no control over his emotions and has trouble identifying them, and when he does indentify them, has absolutely no idea what to do with them in terms of expression. He will make various efforts to communicate with you but will struggle immensely. Being with him will probably be like teaching a man how to experience emotions in a healthy way. I could write an entire post dedicated to what I think his toxic traits are

More eagle flies ones

[brotherwtf]

what do you think their jealousy levels are like, as in do they get jealous easily/sometimes/not at all? and if they do, what specific things do you think gets them jealous? love all your work btw, your blog is one of my favourites on here xx

oh boy y'all aren't ready for this 😈 love writing me some jealously. also thank you so much! I love you too 💕💕

I think they are about equal parts jealous, but John is more verbally jealous while Gale is silently jealous. John will laugh jokingly and push other guys away, trying to be friendly but his eyes are ice cold. Gale will bring John in closer to him, shooting glares at people who try to come close

Gale HATES when John flirts with girls, in canon and in fanon, and just seethes when John comes sidling back over after sweet talking a girl like nothing has happened. He knows he shouldn't be jealous, hell he feels the exact same way the girls must feel, it just irks him how easily John smooth talks them

John gets really worked up when Gale lets another person touch him like he does, casual arm around the shoulder or a hand on his thigh. Gale will usually smile and push it off quickly, but it leaves John seething. Sometimes, he'll push the other person off of Gale and put his arm around him instead, claiming him as his

I feel like Gale gets jealous a little easier just because John is so flirty and charming, it makes him feel unworthy because the words just slip out so easily, did John mean anything he said to Gale?

They get really possessive whenever they're around exes in a modern au, maybe Gale has an ex he's on good terms with and they cross paths while he's out with John and they start chatting lightheartedly. John, of course, hates it and makes sure to pull Gale in by his waist extra close as if to say "He's mine, back off"

What if one time John spies an old fwb at a bar that Gale knows about. She starts chatting with John and John (professional yapper) obviously starts talking with her casually. Gale sees the flirting look in her eyes and the way she looks down at his lips every so often, and Gale bristles. At some point, he just grabs John's jaw mid sentence and kisses him obnoxiously, which scares the poor girl away

I think they're hella possessive of each other, once they got each other they don't want to let go and so I think that manifests itself a lot in their jealousy

The sex GOD the jealous sex. They would both get so handsy, wanting to rip flesh and conjoin their bodies so that they are one. John would fuck Gale into the bed, holding him down by his shoulders and whispering "You're mine, all mine," into Gale's ear the entire time. Gale would ride John like there's no tomorrow, pulling his hair and biting his neck to claim him as his

the morning after is always a blast, bright red bite marks on John's neck and shoulders, bleeding scrapes on his back from Gales nails. Gale would have marks all over him, red bruises along his ass, chest and neck from where John laid his claim on him, ass red and abused from how hard they fucked (they love it though, the pain caused by the other, it makes it feel real)

They lay in each other's arms and press soothing kisses to the harsh angry marks, an apology but still a claim all in all. God they love each other so much.

god I love them, my possessive little babies 🥲 this was really fun to write about, thank you for the ask!

[violetlichen]

dol surnames

I've spent the past two years since I first discovered DOL painstakingly considering the surnames of the love interests and Bailey. I'm finally satisfied with what I've come up with and wanted to share:

John Avery

Now this one is not a surname. Avery is always male in my game. In my (currently on indefinite hiatus) fic Immaculance I wanted Avery to seem very imposing by being referred to as a name that's not really his name, a la Mr. Big from Sex and the City, so I decided he commonly goes by his surname. John is basic enough, one syllable and chic yet traditionally masculine sounding. Sounds good paired with Avery, rolls off the tongue nicely.

Alex Greene

This one is a little on the nose. Alex lives on a farm surrounded by nature, nature = green. But I also like that it feels fresh. Whenever I romance Alex and start staying out at the farm it feels like a fresh start for my PC, like they're starting over together. I can picture their mailbox out by the road with The Greene's written on it... I might've also been inspired by the Greene family farm from the Walking Dead 👀 I headcanon that all the farm workers call Alex 'Greeney' as a cute nickname.

Thomas Bailey

Another character that I think goes by their surname. I haven't decided on a feminine name because Bailey is also always male when I play, but I feel like it would be a strong name that could shorten to something masculine, like Wilhelmina or Bernadette being shortened to Wil / Bernie. Something long that feels a little stuffy, that fem Bailey would hate being called. Not necessarily because it's too girly but because it's a mouthful and Bailey doesn't have time to say all that. For male, I like Thomas because it's classic and gives me Victorian era vibes and even though the game has a modern setting PC is still an orphan and I want to pretend it's the 1800s.

Eden O'Connor

Still kind of up in the air about Eden, but I've settled on this for now. I just like how it sounds.

Kylar Fritz

Kylar was the hardest one to come up with. I was really set on it starting with a funky letter like G or F, and not being super common. I wanted it to feel a little strange when you say it. They could easily be bullied with this name. Fritz rhymes with pits. And everyone thinks Kylar stinks, so there you go.

Robin Davies

I feel like Davies is a quintessential English surname? Don't come at me, I'm American. I don't really have much to say for this one other than it just sounds pretty to me. Very boy/girl next door.

Sydney Spiegelman

Really, really had my heart set on this for some reason. It came to me straight away. According to House of Names, it's derived from the German word "spiegel" which means mirror, and also the Yiddish word "shpigl" which means to look or to see. I thought this was really fitting for Sydney who seems to be a conduit for the Ivory Wraith.

Whitney Clarke

Came up with this for my fic. Again, I just like it. I've posted about this before but I headcanon that their parents names are Robert and Elizabeth, and that male Whitney's middle name is Robert, and that he hates it. Fem Whitney also really hates her middle name - whatever it is - and never tells anyone what it is.

Let me know what your thoughts are, or comment if you have any name ideas yourself!

[avonne-writes]

I’d love your thoughts on gales relationship w his father in any of ur modern AUs + how John reacts to/fits into it!!

Thank you so much ❤️ Great question! I will describe their relationship in the high school AU, because the others are not yet defined in my head.

In the HS AU:

Gale's dad is often drunk or at a bar in the evening and gets home in the middle of the night

If he’s drunk at home, he keeps Gale up, if he gets home at night, he wakes him up by being too loud

So Gale has sleep problems. Because of this, he sleeps at Bucky’s as often as possible, which usually means every weekend and sometimes during the week too

When Gale’s dad has a bad night gambling, he gets verbally aggressive, berates Gale and his mom, blames them for bad luck etc. Bucky told Gale to call him even during the night if this happens. Gale never does, but the thought that he could feels really comforting to him.

Gale's dad isn’t overtly homophobic and he doesn’t threaten Gale for being gay. But all Gale's life, he has been saying stuff about what a real man should look like and how he should behave. The older Gale gets, the more he disagrees with the man’s ideas. This is why he grows out his hair.

A few times, Gale’s dad hit him when drunk. Bucky helped hide the bruises with his mom's make-up.

Gale asks his mom to get a divorce multiple times, but she's always torn about it and if she tells Gale's dad she's going through with it, the man sobers up for a while and acts all nice and decent to keep them.

When he starts drinking again after a nice period, Gale goes to Bucky and just lies in complete, silent defeat in his embrace.

He tells Bucky he’s moving out as soon as possible and will never go back.

None of their friends know about all this, they just know he fights with his parents and spends a lot of time hanging out at Bucky’s place.

He goes to the school psychologist every week, and Bucky always waits for him, often kicking a soccer ball around in the schoolyard. If Gale had a session that shook him / left him drained, he sits on a bench and Bucky shows him tricks with the ball and plays around until Gale smiles again.

Gale's parents almost never attend school events / swim meets / competitions.

Gale's mom is so caught up in her own struggles that she uses him as a crutch too in dealing with his dad. Gale is used to taking this responsibility on his shoulders but as he gets older, and especially after meeting Bucky's mom, he realizes that this is not how it should be and he grows resentful. It’s perhaps unfair but he resents her more than his dad and then feels guilty for it.

Gale loves Bucky's mom and she loves him too. One day, when he has a crisis, she tells her that she'll always be there for him, even if he and Bucky break up.

Bucky's mom is a single parent and is away a lot due to work (which feeds into one of Bucky's problems, but that's a different story). But she's laidback about a lot of things and doesn’t try to hold Bucky back from exploring, so it's not really an issue when they start having sex. There’s none of that bullshit "open door policy".

Gale categorically refuses to take Bucky home with him. They've been dating for like two years or something already when he lets Bucky enter the house with him for the first time.

By the time this happens, Bucky is taller than Gale's dad. He’s gangly but he’s not intimidated by the man. Him being all protective actually makes Gale feel a mix of affection and arousal.

There’s definitely an altercation between Bucky and Gale's dad at one point, possibly close to graduation, but Bucky disengages when he realizes that it makes Gale upset.

Bucky helps Gale learn how to relax and enjoy things. Gale reassures Bucky that Gale is someone he can always count on and who won't abandon him.

[comicgeekery]

Sherlock and Co.

So I just listened to the latest episode, the conclusion of A Case of Identity. I have to say, it was deeply disappointing. For the most part I've been really enjoying Sherlock and Co. It's been fun and engaging. The actors are great. It's a solid new take on "Sherlock Holmes but in the 21st century". I love that they're going through all the stories of the original canon and giving them modern updates. So many Sherlock Holmes adaptations seem to have the basic trappings of the characters and premise without any interest in the original mysteries. This show is clearly being made with love and deep attention to detail. Also, on a personal note, my heart melts every time it explicitly (and even casually!) confirms that Sherlock is autistic and that that is a DISABILITY for him. He gets overstimulated. It gives him an often restricted diet. He hurts people's feelings from not picking up social cues and feels bad about it! There's also a lot of hints that Sherlock used to struggle to interact with others FAR worse than he currently does, to the point where he has never graduated from any school he attended. And John is kind and supportive, understanding the situation as a friend and a doctor, while also having his own understandable limitations. He gets annoyed with Sherlock sometimes and they need to hash things out. It's not perfect between them, but I can see how they're growing closer as they come to understand each other. John Watson is also handled very interestingly in this podcast. He's clearly got some issues of his own he's going through. There's some obvious PTSD from his time in Afghanistan, but also more mundane issues. He feels unappreciated by his mother and still grieves the father that died when he was ten. He's clearly massively insecure, as he constantly expresses jealousy of other people's wealth, good looks, and success. He seems to perk up every time he hears of an idea that could, in theory, make him rich or successful. He constantly second-guesses himself in any social situation because he's so afraid of looking foolish. I even think the reason that he himself decided to call their detective/podcasting business Sherlock and Co. (rather than Sherlock and Watson or something more evenly balanced) is because of his profound insecurity. He doesn't think anyone would care about the role he plays in the business. Clearly Sherlock is the only interesting person there.

But for all of that, I think this is the most competent, helpful, and good Watson I've ever seen. (ACD's Watson is excellent, but the stories almost always really downplayed his role in the crime-solving.) He is shown, again and again, to be an excellent doctor and more than that, one who is very calm and capable under extreme pressure. (Which makes perfect sense with his history as an army doctor.) If someone gets shot at your wedding, Dr. John Watson is the one who will have the skill and the presence of mind to use an expired condom as a tool to save their life. And he's also a good co-detective. He regularly helps Sherlock see connections that Sherlock might have missed. Things relating to pop culture, to social norms, to anything medical, not to mention all the support and encouragement John offers. And Sherlock genuinely appreciates it! These two are an actual, real team! It's excellent! (I have a soft spot in my heart for Nigel Bruce's Watson, but I can't deny that he inspired a real line of idiotic, totally a sidekick, why-are-you-even-here Watson portrayals. Granted, we've gotten away from that in most modern portrayals; Liu, Freeman, and Law were also very capable, though I think Liu was easily the smartest. It's just refreshing to have a Watson I can respect.) But all of that is a pretty roundabout way of getting to my point of what disappointed me with A Case of Identity. So, in the original Case of Identity story, a woman comes to Sherlock and Watson saying that her fiancee has disappeared. The eventual solution is that everything about this fiancee was a lie. He was actually her evil stepfather in disguise "wooing" her with the intention of disappearing mysteriously and leaving her too heartbroken and loyal to think of marrying anyone else (and thus depriving her stepfather of her fortune). The Sherlock and Co. adaptation has a solid update to the story. It's now about a rich, though insecure, man who's being cat-fished. He loves "Angel", even wants to marry her, and has given her tons of money for two years now. He's only going to Sherlock at all because he has a friend who thinks the situation is sketchy. In a parallel to the original story, it turns out that "Angel" is actually Des, the client's stepfather. It started off as a scheme from Des and the mother, Clara, to keep Miles from dating women they didn't approve of. Then Des went behind Clara's back to keep the charade going and get more and more money, consequently getting more and more intimate with his stepson the whole time. I was already a bit nervous at that point, because Des was coming dangerously close to playing out a transphobic stereotype. Being a man who pretended to be a woman for personal gain, and willing to completely betray and deceive the people closest to him. It also didn't help that John had made a point of saying that there was nothing wrong with being a Tory mere minutes before. (Which to me read as more of his insecurity and need to not alienate the in-universe listeners but certainly wasn't interrogated.) But I tried to be optimistic and kept listening. Unfortunately...it was even worse than I'd feared. Des turned out to not only being grifting his stepson through a semi-incestuous cat-fishing scheme, but he had a split personality. Angel had become real through Des having a mental health crisis. And she could spontaneously take over, which she did in order to grab Clara and hold a knife to her throat when the truth came out. Finally, Angel/Des tries to kill themself, which is something the show has the audacity to make a joke about before the audience knows if Des lived or died.

Sooooo, yeah. That's incredibly offensive on so many levels. Angel, while not quite a trans character (I think?) plays into transphobic rhetoric beat-for-beat. It's also an incredibly cliche representation of split personality disorder that plays into extremely tired representations of people with mental illnesses being violent dangers to society. And that's especially disappointing because of the attention Sherlock and Co. usually pays to portraying mental health issues with sensitivity. What the fuck, Sherlock and Co.? Did you get a new writer for this one? Did they time travel directly from the 1950s? This is cheap drama that hurts. It hurts trans women. It hurts people with mental illnesses. And it hurts the wider queer and disabled communities. Which, if you're trying to get popular with the most vocal Sherlock Holmes fans today, are largely the exact people you most want to like you.

Cards on the table, I've been really hoping this show would finally be the adaptation where John and Sherlock would become an actual, explicit couple. It's something fans have longed for for literal generations and now that all of Sherlock Holmes is in the public domain it can finally definitely happen. I felt like Sherlock and John had good chemistry and were maybe even flirting in previous episodes, but I'll save those theories for now. My point is that this is a show where I believed that could happen. I trusted Sherlock and Co. to be respectful and thoughtful. And I'm not saying that all my goodwill is gone now. But it has taken a hit. Sherlock and Co. has been overwhelmingly clever and interesting, finding creative ways to recast the classic stories while still keeping their hearts. I love the acting, I love the action and mysteries, and I haven't even come close to expressing how much thought I've put into what overarching plot threads might be getting established in each episode.

But I won't be able to continue to enjoy those parts if I come to spend my time listening more concerned about if a plot twist is going to leave me feeling attacked. I don't know who writes for this show and I don't know if you read any reviews on Tumblr, but I hope you do. And I hope you do better in the future. An apology and some good trans representation in the future would be nice. Please, I really want to be able to obsess about your show peacefully!

[liesmyth]

Anon with the friend who's reading tlt on the reverse order: Yes, he knows he's being a lab rat, he doesn't keep motes on the books because he's very much a casual reader (and thus perfect for the experiment) and so far we have only done Nona The Ninth and The Unwanted Guest, plus some chapters of HTN & Doctor Sex. There's the slight chance of osmosis corruption because I occasionally reblog modern au memes on my main blog, which I think is how he got Palamedes' whole deal.

There's not much he guessed, and even less he guessed correctly. He did call the fact Crown and Ianthe are related a pleasant plot twist, and he initially thought John was Varun.

The most interesting guess he had, which he arrived through flawed means, was Paul's existence, and the fact Pyrrha had some sort of connection to Gideon The Ninth — mostly because he guessed the average Lyctorhood to be Camilla and Palamedes', and with the reference of Gideon and G1deon as 1) permanently dead, in a setting where he's aware necromancy exists and he thought zombies to be actual resurrected people 2) connected to Pyrrha, and 3) the fact Pyrrha had "some weird vibes" (he refused to elaborate) led him to thinking Pyrrha was half Gideon, half someone else, and the reason Kiriona was vaguely off-putting to people was because she didn't have a full soul. Anyways he did think the same would happen to Palamedes and Camilla, which it did, and that Kiriona was pissed at Pyrrha because of an ambiguous degree of relationship

We have paused rn, as the labrat experiment is in return for me reading a webcomic per book

Oh yeah also im doing this because i either dreamt a post proposing it up or actually saw it, and honestly i wanted to see how much biases and previous narrative impacted the relationship of the reader with tlt characters, their relationships, and worldbuilding, as i absorbed tlt by osmosis as an agender aroace. so yeah giving a gay guy tlt without previous context in the reverse order to complete the trifecta (lesbian woman reading it in the correct order, aroace agender getting to know it by osmosis and figuring out the plot best I could before reading it, gay guy reading it in reverse)

ANON THANK YOU FOR COMING BACK! @mayasaura and everyone who wanted a follow-up to the first part.

"Thought John was Varun at first" is soooo big brained actually! I'm always thinking about John's more RB-like traits. I'm also very amused that he cast Pyrrha as the zombie puppeteer, I bet he's going to love tiny Harrow walking around her dead parent's bodies for a decade.

I also feel like the worldbuilding in NtN is veeery different from the general #vibe of the first two books — it feels like an "anime filler arc" kind of sidequest plot — and I'm very curious if going from NtN to HtN is going to make the settings vibe changes feel stronger or weaker than reading it normally would.

Anyway, I love that you decided to do this, and please let us know what he thinks about HtN! I hope you enjoy the webcomic :D

[shelbystales]

Best Aid - Part Nine

Modern Tommy Shelby x Reader - Masterlist

Previous parts: 1 - 2 - 3 - 4 - 5 - 6 - 7 - 8

Summary: you are a young doctor in Birmingham. After a crazy incident, Thomas Shelby shows up at your hospital. You don’t know much about the man everyone seems to fear, but you definitely will.

Warning: swearing

A/N:  Comment and interact, tell me what you think! it means a looot. Hi guyss!!!! long time no see hahaha, sorry for the hiatus, needed some time. Can't promise i'll be back 100% posting every week but i'll try for sure! Gotta say i missed writing :)

English is my second language so I apologize in advance for the grammar mistakes.

︵‿︵‿︵‿︵‿︵‿︵‿︵‿︵‿︵‿︵‿︵‿︵

A week has passed since your last conversation with Thomas. In that time, you had only seen each other once when he came to pick up John Doe, now also known as Johnny Dogs. This time apart helped you sort out your feelings about everything you had been through in the past few weeks. 

Surprisingly, the week went by like any other. You kept up with your shifts, visited your mom and brother over the weekend, and caught up on your TV series episodes. It felt like everything had returned to how it was before the man with the incredibly blue eyes walked into your emergency room, and you saved him. 

Back to your normal and safe routine.

As soon as your shift ended, you joined Jeremy and his fiancé, Alan, for a pizza night at their place. You spent the evening eating, drinking wine, and gossiping about everything, from the most unrealistic romances at the hospital to Alan’s latest work presentation.

The evening turned out better than you imagined. Being in Jeremy's company is always great; he's a clown, constantly making everyone laugh, even if not intended. 

Alan, on the other hand, has a geekier style and is a bit more reserved, resembling those cute librarians the main character falls for in a classic romantic movie. They were a perfect match.

After dinner, your stomach ached from laughter and overeating. The fact that you spent the past few hours laughing and getting drunk made you feel like things were back on track again. 

You left their place feeling happy and carefree.

The lobby of your hotel was nearly deserted, with only a few employees and scattered guests, which was odd because the hotel restaurant was usually packed at this hour every day.

As you waited for the elevator, the quiet murmur of the lobby was interrupted by two passing employees whispering about the kitchen being closed for maintenance. “An intern messed something up,” the woman said, her voice loud enough for you to catch.

When the elevator doors opened, Thomas stood there, looking effortlessly handsome. Your heart skipped a beat, and your stomach fluttered nervously. When his eyes met yours he gave a small smile. 

You smiled back, hoping your voice wouldn’t betray your nerves. "Heading up?" He nodded, and you stepped into the elevator. The space suddenly felt much smaller. His presence, his warmth, and that cologne mingling with the faint buzz from the wine, made your pulse quicken. "I didn't even know there was a floor below us" you chuckled, trying to ease your nerves. “Well, obviously, there are several negative buttons here," you pointed to the panel awkwardly. “Funny… I never noticed it before.”

"Just a few parking levels," he said in his smooth Birmingham accent, his voice sending a shiver down your spine. "How are you? You seem happy."

"Well, I am," you smiled, butterflies dancing in your stomach. "And also in urgent need of a shower. But I'm good." You leaned against the elevator wall, the weight of your shift and your growing desire for him pressing down on you.

"Had a good night, eh?" he asked, glancing briefly at the notification on his phone.

"Yeah, trying to enjoy myself before next week," you said, "I have 36 consecutive hours on call."

"That's a lot of hours," he said, his eyes flicking back to the screen as new notifications appeared.

"Yeah, but I'm used to it," you smiled. "Is everything ok?” you wondered what was all the fuzz on his phone. 

“Yeah, just having a kitchen mess today” he put his phone back on his back pocket 

“I overheard someone mentiion that it’s closed. A result of some sort of an intern’s lack of care?” you said and watched confused as he frowned 

“Sure. That's what happened” he let out almost as a whisper "you should know that things will start to calm down," he replied, and your smile grew wider. His words gave you a glimmer of hope.

"Good to hear that! What happened?" you asked almost as an impulse.

“I'm not sure you want me answering that Y/n…” he chuckled as he got a cigarette out of his pockets. Will he light it in here? you wondered, but he simply put it to rest between his lips.

“Right…”  You hesitated, your heart pounding, desperate to talk about something else, too afraid to let that subject be the center of your conversation once again. “So, uh, do you have any plans for tonight?” The question slipped out before you could stop yourself, and you immediately regretted it.

Thomas looked at you with a raised eyebrow, a faint smile playing on his lips. His gaze was penetrating, almost as if he could read your thoughts. "Plans?" he echoed, his tone light but curious.

You quickly clarified, feeling heat rise to your cheeks. "Oh, I didn't mean it like that! I was just wondering what you're up to this late at night." You fidgeted with the strap of your bag, trying to appear nonchalant. Begging for the elevator to stop making random stops at almost every floor and finally get to yours, now hating the fact that he gave you one of the top rooms. 

Thomas smiled faintly at your question, his eyes studying you for a moment longer than usual. "Polly is traveling, so I'm checking on things for her and the kitching needs some cleaning up. I'm heading to her room to get the master key"

You nod, trying to hide your slight disappointment at his answer. "Oh, that sounds nice of you," you reply, mentally chiding yourself for asking in the first place. It wasn't like you were inviting him or expecting him to join you, right?. The elevator dinged softly as it reached your floor. “Well, I won't keep you. Have a good night, Thomas."

"You too," he said, his eyes holding yours for a moment longer before you turned and walked down the hallway.

The elevator doors slid shut, leaving you alone with your thoughts. 

Why did you ask that? You mentally scolded yourself again as you walked down the hall to your room as you replayed the encounter in your mind. 

Thomas's presence had a way of unnerving you, yet you couldn't deny the flutter of excitement his proximity brought. As you walked you were already mentally planning your night: a hot shower, maybe some Netflix, and straight to bed. That's all you need right now.

As you settled into your room, the encounter with Thomas replayed in your mind again, like a vivid movie scene. His smile was etched into your memory, and the way he looked at you sparked a warmth deep within. 

Your phone buzzed with a notification, breaking your train of thought. It was a message from Jeremy, asking if you got home okay. You quickly replied, assuring him you were fine and thanking him for the fun evening.

Setting your phone aside, you found yourself unable to shake the lingering thoughts of Thomas. The way his presence seemed to fill the elevator, the scent of his cologne that still lingered in your mind - it all stirred something unfamiliar yet exhilarating.

Suddenly your mind started to play games with you as it imagined his hands on your skin as he kissed you desperately on the elevator. His lips gently caressing your cheek, making his way to the warmth between your legs…His body pressing yours against the cold elevator wall.. fuck! 

You sat on the edge of your bed, a sudden heat spreading through you. You needed a cold shower to cool down and clear your head.

After a refreshing shower that did little to dampen the heat of your thoughts, you settled into the living room, deciding to distract yourself with a Netflix series. The soft glow of the screen and the familiar characters helped ease your mind, at least temporarily. Ozzy nestled at your feet enjoying your presence but trying not to show it, as all cats do. 

The characters on the screen moved and spoke, but your mind kept drifting back to Thomas.The more you thought about him, the harder it was to focus on the TV.

Your mind replayed all the moments you had shared, trying to convince your horny mind that it would be a bad bad idea. But you couldn't deny the pull you felt towards him, a magnetic attraction that left you both excited and unnerved.

You sighed and shifted on the couch, trying to shake off the thoughts. But they kept coming, flooding.Remembering the first time you kissed, how you just felt like ripping his clothes apart.

And just like that, loneliness settled over you like a heavy blanket. The silence was too loud, and the emptiness too vast. You looked around, seeking something to occupy your time, but nothing seemed appealing. The wine you had with Jeremy and Alan had left you with a pleasant buzz, a feeling of warmth and courage that now pushed you towards a decision.

Maybe it was the wine, or maybe it was the loneliness, but suddenly, you found yourself standing up, driven by an impulse you couldn't quite explain. The thought of Thomas dealing with the kitchen mess alone nagged at you. You had nothing better to do, and the idea of being around him again was too tempting to resist.

Without giving yourself time to second-guess, you  grabbed the bottle of whisky you opened a few nights ago and headed to the door. The walk to the elevator felt surreal, your heart pounding with a mix of excitement and nervousness. You pressed the button and waited.

As the elevator doors opened, you took a deep breath and stepped inside. The ride down felt both too quick and agonizingly slow, your thoughts a whirlwind of anticipation. You almost gave up the idea and went back to your room a few times. When the doors opened to the lobby, you made your way towards the kitchen, each step filled with a strange sense of purpose.

You knew it was a bit crazy, but the wine had given you the courage to step out of your comfort zone and yes you needed to fuck, and why the fuck not him? 

You reached the kitchen door and paused, taking a moment to steady your breathing and gather the courage to push open the door. 

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[alwaysahiccupandastrid]

I know I’ve spoken about my issues with ‘Peter Pan and Wendy’ (2023) before, both in my initial thoughts post about the film after it released and a couple of smaller comments since, but I’ve realised something this past week after rewatching the original Disney cartoon and the 2003 non-Disney live-action while sick, and I feel I need to talk about it.

It’s about Wendy Moira Angela Darling.

While I stand by that Ever Anderson was one of the highlights of the film and that she did a great job as Wendy, the Wendy in the film is not really the Wendy seen in Barrie’s book, nor the one in the play and other films adaptations. It’s a very different character in a lot of ways, and while it’s normal for characters to differ from adaption to adaptation - especially over the course of 70+ years - I feel like the Wendy seen in the 2023 is more like Jane, Wendy’s daughter, from Disney’s Return to Neverland sequel in 2002.

Let me preface by saying that I actually love Jane in the sequel as a character - I see a lot of myself in her, and while the sequel in itself is not really my favourite, I do have some nostalgia for it because I grew up with it and it’s a cute little story. I like that Jane is actually different from Wendy in a lot of ways; she’s a lot more headstrong and more of a tomboy, and while she’s also a storyteller at times like her mother (mostly to her brother Danny), she is a lot more practical I think and seems to be opposite to Wendy in that she’s trying to grow up too fast. Wendy believes in Peter Pan and doesn’t want to grow up, meanwhile Jane believes Peter Pan to be silly childish nonsense, that she has to grow up quickly and be more adult due to the war/her father being away - Wendy says to her, “you think you’re very grown up - but you have a great deal to learn”.

Obviously the 2023 Wendy doesn’t want to grow up, that’s still the same, but in terms of personality, temperament and the way she treats her brothers after the broken mirror incident (blaming John for it), she reminds me more of Jane than Wendy. Like Jane, she also doesn’t seem to have a good time going to Neverland (at least not at first?) and she seems to take on a lot more action than Wendy did in the animated film.

Of course, it’s not the first time that we’ve seen Wendy wielding a sword and fighting pirates - the 2003 Wendy was shown to play with wooden swords and use real ones, even remarking, “who are you to call me ‘girlie’?!”. I’m not saying that Wendy can’t be a sword wielding girl and fight because she can, it’s one of the additions I love the most about the 2003 film.

The problem with the 2023 version of Wendy is not her being a main character (she has always been a main character), nor her sword fighting and being generally bad-ass - it’s the erasure of the other qualities that make her Wendy Darling.

One of Wendy’s primary character traits is her mothering nature - she is very motherly to her brothers, and when she hears that the Lost Boys don’t have a mother, she’s aghast and agrees to be their mother. The whole “Peter is father, Wendy is mother” idea is clearly a reference to how kids in the playground will play games like “mummies and daddies” - kids imitating what they see around them. It’s all a big pretend game in Neverland for fun. It’s also undeniable that Wendy pretending to be the Lost Boys’ mother is clearly reflective of her own mother, who she adores and is portrayed as the loveliest lady ever, and how she’s imitating Mrs Darling in a lot of ways during this “game” - singing to them, telling them stories, medicine etc.

Some would argue that Wendy is “forced” into being the “mother” and that while all the boys are off having fun, she’s left playing house, which I understand. But what a lot of modern audiences and filmmakers don’t understand these days is that motherhood is NOT an anti-feminist idea - there seems to be this view that portraying a girl wanting to be a mother or expressing the wish to be married/have children is some old-fashioned misogynistic notion, which is absolutely bizarre to me.

As a feminist myself, I believe that there is no clear cut definition of “womanhood” or what it means to be a strong woman with autonomy. Some women want to have careers and not have children, and that’s fine; some women want to have children, that’s fine; some women want both, and that’s fine. What matters is that it’s the woman who is deciding what she wants.

For me, Wendy has always been this remarkable and extraordinary character to look up to because she chooses to grow up - and for her, that means having her own children to tell her stories to. That’s what she wanted, that’s why she went back to England, and that’s part of her character arc, realising that by growing up she has things to look forward to.

For some reason, when 2023!Wendy thinks “happy thoughts” to make herself fly when being walked off the plank, her vision for the future that she looks forward to involves piloting automobiles that haven’t even been invented yet and then dying alone? Which… I mean, if that’s how someone wants to live then fair enough but that’s not Wendy. That’s not the Wendy Darling I grew up loving.

A lot of my issues with the 2023 version of Wendy do in fact link with other issues of the film in general: the Lost Boys including girls, for example. Like I get wanting to be inclusive, and I 100% wanted to be a Lost Girl growing up, but the Lost Boys are boys for a reason (“girls are much too clever to fall out of their prams”), and when Wendy arrives it’s a huge deal because they’ve never actually lived with girls before, and the only concept of girls they have is their memories of “mother”, which is why Wendy becomes their mother figure - because they literally don’t have any other female figures in their lives to compare her to other than the tiny scraps they remember of their mothers.

There’s also the issue of the thing prompting Wendy not wanting to grow up being changed; in the original, it’s because it’s her last night in the nursery and moving from the nursery - aka the room she has spent her entire life thus far in - to her own room is a HUGE transitional worry that a lot of kids probably go through (usually it’s in the form of moving from toddler beds to big kid beds but still). In the 2023 version, she’s being sent off to boarding school for some reason which doesn’t really make sense to me because the Darling parents a) are so poor they have to have a dog as a nursemaid and b) love their children so much that they would never do that to them. I’m not saying that being shipped off to boarding school ISN’T a worry for a young girl or a huge deal, but it isn’t one that I think necessarily fits with the story.

There’s the fact that Wendy is no longer the storyteller; in most versions, the reason Peter visits the nursery is because he likes her stories. Instead, the reason he comes to the nursery is not because he likes her stories but because he used to live in the house? And instead of bringing her to Neverland to tell stories, he comes to take Wendy away as he apparently heard her saying she didn’t want to grow up? It just doesn’t sit right with me, but maybe that’s just my opinion.

Also, for some reason, Wendy and Peter don’t actually seem to like each other at all in the 2023 version - I’m not saying there should have been romantic hints or whatever, but even just in a friendship way they really don’t seem to care in any way about each other. They just seemed rather indifferent towards each other, and it’s kind of jarring to see.

In some ways, I feel like 2023 Wendy was made a little too bad ass and on the nose super feminist: “this magic belongs to no boy!”, slapping Peter across the face (which was just…??? Why?!?!), constantly criticising Peter/Neverland, having WAY more action and heroic moments than Peter Pan himself… maybe in a different story it could have worked but for this one, it came across forced at times, like they were intentionally trying to show “look! Look how badass she is! She can fight off grown men all by herself! She doesn’t need a boy to help her! She can do everything by herself!”

This is why I feel like the 2003 version of Wendy is the best one (so far): while they modernised her slightly by making her sword fight and express an ambition to write novels about her adventures, she was still a storyteller and motherly figure to the Lost Boys/her brothers. For me as a child, seeing Wendy be the storyteller and her journey of acceptance about having the grow up was really important to me because I could completely relate to it.

Of course, I recognize I’m very biased because this is the one I grew up with (along with the animated Wendy of course) so I’d be interested to hear other people’s thoughts!

[l0velylecter]

Could you do headcanons on what nicknames the cod guys have for the reader? ALSO EATING UP ALL YOUR COD POSTS ISTG THEYRE SO SMACKING >:]

— the cod : mw ii men + nicknames !  characters : simon ‘ghost’ riley, john ‘soap’ mactavish, alejandro vargas, captain john price, phillip graves, kyle ‘gaz’ garrick, rodolfo parra  fandom : call of duty modern warfare ii tags : f!reader, not proofread  rating :  g for general , sfw! 

01 | Soap would call you hen, bonnie, and love. He’s a big ol’ sap, so pet names are definitely on the table, and when he’s especially moved or feeling more affectionate than usual, he’d call you  mo ghràdh, which is Gaelic for my love. Nothing makes him happier than teaching you the language, laughing as the words clumsily roll down your tongue.

02 | Graves calls you baby, babygirl, sugar, darl’, and sweetheart. He has a bunch of other nicknames for you, the list goes on, and they’re always so coy and smug as they roll down his tongue with a southern drawl. He's definitely big on pet names as a form of affection. 03 | Alejandro is known to be romantic, and he's old school, going with cariño, mi vida, amor, princesa. And sometimes, when he's feeling a little playful, he'd call you mami with a knowing smirk or a grin plastered across his face — leaving you flustered and blushing. 04 | Gaz calls you love, babe, darling, and hun, and you tease him about how painfully British he is. But your favorite has to be doll or angel, something about how he looks at you as he says it: eyes filled with awe and quiet admiration. It’s 10/10 guaranteed to earn him a kiss. 05 | Price refers to you as the missus and goes along with darling, sweetheart, honey, love. You love how the words sound out of his mouth, his voice gruff and heavy like whiskey. You especially love it when he hugs you from behind to whisper them against your ear, beard tickling your neck and making you squeal.

06 | Rodolfo is absolutely infatuated with you, obsessed if you will, so he is always calling you sweet names like corazón, mi celo, mi reina, bebé, and the list goes on. He sometimes sings a tune with it, showing just how excited he is to be home and next to you. And you love him all the more for that. 07 | In the beginning, Ghost wasn't big on pet names, and he will never call you them in the presence of others. But when you're alone, and he's sitting by the couch to listen to the vinyl you've just put on and cleaning his equipment, he'd call you from the kitchen — " would you pass me the screwdriver, love ?" You'd immediately drop everything you're doing to be by his side. He had stared at you, slightly surprised, eyebrow raised curiously. From then on, he'd let slip a couple of names like love, girl, princess, and even sweetheart.

a/n : anon you’re so sweet !!! a thousand smooches for you !! i’m so happy to hear that you’re eating up my work 🙈 the chef is blushing !!! i hope you enjoy this one too <3 it’s a bit short but sweet so i hope you like it + i made it f!reader because you did not specify and i freestyled, HOWEVER, if you had wanted it to be gender neutral let me know and i don’t mind making another one xx 😙 thanks for requesting, i had fun writing this !! 

[rambleonwaywardson]

Clegan Astronaut AU - Part 17

Masterpost Read on AO3

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

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

---

Somewhere between November 27 and November 28 Houston, TX

Alive. 

Alive. 

Alive. 

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

They don’t sleep, and neither does Gale. 

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

Alive. 

Alive. 

Alive. 

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

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

Stop it, Gale. 

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

“Gale?”

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

“Stay?”

So he stays. 

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

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

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

—

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

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

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

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

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

Why is Buck on Orion?

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

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

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

Not Orion. Too big. 

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

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

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

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

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

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

Because of Bucky.

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

Because of Bucky.

Two things can be true. 

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

—

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

—

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

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

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

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

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

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

“Didn’t miss me?” Benny asks.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

—

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

“Hey Chick.” 

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

We commit his soul to the stars…

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

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

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

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

—

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

“The plants,” Gale calls out.

Bucky nods. “The plants.”

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

—

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

—

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

—

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

“I’m gonna get-”

“Don’t go,” Bucky pleads.

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

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

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

—

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

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

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

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

But they were so fucking close. 

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

“Hey there,” he says.

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

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

“I know.”

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

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

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

—

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

“Don’t feel good,” Bucky mutters.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

“Ooh-ah, soon you’ll get better.”

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

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

Please.

“You’ll get better soon.

‘Cause you have to.”

…

…

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

Part 18

[thatscarletflycatcher]

Top 10 favourite portrayals in Austen adaptations?

Hi!

10. Peter Gale as John Dashwood in Sense and Sensibility 1981

John Dashwood is most often portrayed as a weak, stupid fool designed to get on everyone's nerves, which tends to shift all the blame that belongs to his character upon Fanny. It is not so with this version of the character. It is obvious that he is rather stupid, but he's also greedy, selfish and callous himself, and an all around superficial person you can laugh at and be infuriated by.

9. Joseph Mawle as captain Harville in Persuasion 2007

Another example of a minor character done well, specially meritorious in this case because this adaptation is a tv movie. It is usually a problem that Wentworth's friends come across as a bit of a blur, but in this case, between writing and acting, Harville comes across as intelligent, loyal, amiable, etc, an all around gentleman whose friendship does credit to Wentworth's character.

8. Guy Henry as John Knightley in Emma (ITV) 1996

And another one! There's several "minor character in movie adaptation" in this list, because it is really hard to make a minor character feel "alive" or nuanced when said character is given very little screen time. Guy Henry steals the scene every time he appears in this adaptation. His delivery of the famous Christmas speech is impeccable. He also comes across as a loving father and husband too.

7. Angela Pleasence as Lady Bertram in Mansfield Park 1983

Jemma Redgrave (Lady Bertram in Mansfield Park 2007) is, in my opinion, a mesmerizing actress, one of those beings that are both beautiful and have a very strong scenic presence. I love her version of Lady Bertram, but Angela Pleasence is something else in the role, and somehow specially because her vibe is the strong opposite of JR. Always sweet, delicate, and soft spoken in her roles, her Lady Bertram is hysterical; I don't think there's a scene where she gets a speaking line where I don't laugh, and laughter is so very welcome in a story that can be as heavy and as painful as Mansfield Park. She provides a characterization that fits Austen's (pliable, lazy, dim, perpetually distracted) without making her insufferable.

6. Kate Beckinsale as Emma Woodhouse in Emma (ITV) 1996

Kate Beckinsale has always had queen bee energy, but her youth in this movie softens it enough that we can see how Emma is ultimately a young woman who means well, and means to be just. I don't read Emma as having the finishing school affectations of a Caroline Bingley (something that in my opinion happens in 2020 and to some degree in the Miramax movie); she was raised at home by an indulgent governess and rarely if ever meets other ladies of her rank. But I also do see where people are coming from when they criticize 2009 Emma for being too modern and her way of carrying herself as one that would have been considered vulgar in the regency era, and I think this Emma strikes a happy compromise. Emma has good manners and a sense of rank, but she's also decidedly provincial.

5. Hayley Atwell as Mary Crawford in Mansfield Park 2007

Love, hate or be baffled by this adaptation of Mansfield Park, most people seem to agree that this casting choice was great, and there's reason to it. Atwell is a very talented actress, and despite the script not helping, she brings out both the best and the worst of Mary out, avoiding both the femme fatale and the pure victim we don't talk about the expose my ankle scene

4. Olivia Williams as Jane Fairfax in Emma (ITV) 1996

I feel like Jane Fairfax also suffers from a problem similar to Emma in adaptations. She's made to have these very suspicious vibes and heavy-looking aspect (against the trendy more Heroin Chic look of Palthrow) in the Miramax movie, she's a mousy creature in 2009, and a sort of severe schoolmistress in disguise in 2020 (I'm exaggerating for effect, but for a character that is traced with few, delicate strokes in the novel, she surely gets a lot of rather sharp depictions). Olivia Williams gives a Jane that is very accomplished, but also elegant, understated and reserved. She's someone we can look at with Emma and see as a glaring spotlight on our shortcomings rather than an interloping rival.

3. JJ Feild as Henry Tilney in Northanger Abbey 2007

I feel a bit silly, because rivers of electronic ink have been poured over this beloved interpretation of one of the favorite Austen heroes, so what can I say about this one that hasn't been said before? Most of the choices in this list are unusual, and while I picked them because I think they are spotlight worthy and truly are favorites at the moment, I won't deny there is an element of... isn't it boring to repeat to each other ad nauseam what has been said over and over and over again and almost everyone is already familiar with? So I'll let you all fill in the blanks here.

2. Robert Swann as Colonel Brandon in Sense and Sensibility 1981

This one is very high on the list because Sense and Sensibility is very dear to me, faultless despite all its faults, I obsess over it, and colonel Brandon is a very dear favorite of mine. So I am very picky about it all, and have grown dissatisfied with the 95 adaptation (I was never particularly keen on 2008) despite acknowledging its many merits as a movie and a period piece. One of the most interesting things about this novel to me, is the treatment of strength and power in its male characters -it's not a central theme, but it is certainly there. John Dashwood and John Willoughby are men who have power, and the power society and money give them, they use to vulnerate the women under their care or influence; and they are morally speaking, extremely weak men. By contrast, both Brandon and Edward are men rendered more or less "powerless" in the circumstances presented in the novel, in appearance "emasculated"; they are soft, unimposing, they don't demand attention or space, but underneath all that lays great moral strength, and it's said moral strength to do what is right and helpful that makes them dependable and even admirable.

That's why it is very important to me for Brandon to keep these traits -that softness, melancholy, humility, unobtrusiveness- besides his moments of high dramatic emotion that showcase his affinity to Marianne, and Robert Swann is the closest to this that we have ever gotten (I cannot call it perfect, but it is so very close), where other adaptations, to different degrees, try to "butch up" his character.

Elizabeth Garvie as Elizabeth Bennet in Pride and Prejudice 1980

We have had our good Lizzys and our bad Lizzys and it gets on my nerves every time someone says "[actor] is [character]!" even and maybe specially when I say so myself, but, boy, has it happened very few times in my life that I have seen a performance and been struck by its likeness to the experience of reading the source material, and this is one of those. She's witty and she's lively but she's also young and vulnerable at times. She makes mistakes, she rationalizes, she reflects and changes and grows. She is what Caroline Bingley would call small and brown and not a beauty, but we see with Darcy the charm of her expressive eyes. I'd say if there wasn't any other reason to watch Pride and Prejudice 1980, Elizabeth Garvie's Lizzy would be reason enough and some.

Some honorable mentions:

Felicity Jones as Catherine Morland in Northanger Abbey 2007 and Hattie Morahan as Elinor Dashwood in Sense and Sensibility 2008

I struggled a lot back and forth with the first. It is a really, really good portrayal of Cathy's ingenuity and honesty and JJ Feild's Henry wouldn't have been as good without her to play off of, but I also sincerely couldn't find a spot in between the others for her anywhere either at the top or the bottom of the list. So she remains in limbo without fault of her own, and I apologize to her for this failure.

Now, the second... there's this story Emma Thompson tells in her diary of the making of the 1995 Sense and Sensibility where she talks about sitting on at casting auditions for Elinor, and, unlike other roles, there being many candidates who gave great auditions, and her commenting "this is a country of Elinors". EDIT: it's been called to my attention in replies that it was Ang Lee calling Britain a country of Fannys, as it was Fanny's casting process. I do feel the dictum also applies to Elinors, on othe opposite end of the spectrum. That's probably the main thing keeping Hattie Morahan off the list. She's my favorite Elinor, but I don't think we ever had anything closely resembling a bad Elinor. 81 wasn't directed well, and Emma Thompson was indeed too old for the part, but characterization wise, they were good. Joanna David was really good in 71. And I felt on making this list that the "standing out significantly" was a key aspect. but she was, indeed, a really great Elinor.

Dan Jeanotte as Edward Ferrars in Sense and Sensibility 2024/Bosco Hogan as Edward Ferrars in Sense and Sensibility 1981

These interpretations of Edward are dear to me, and linked by being sort of opposites that complement book!Edward. Bosco Hogan is an unfiltered portrayal of Edward's diffidence, depression, and lack of personal charm even if his manners are polite. Jeanotte's captures an undercurrent of sass and glimpses of the character's deeper feelings and active negative emotions. Each on its own is incomplete, and yet show something essential to the character that is dissimulated or erased in 95 and 08; I wish I could mush them together somehow and have an Edward portrayal I could wholeheartedly love (From Prada to Nada's Edward gets relatively close, but then that is a rather loose adaptation).

Ask me my top5/top10 anything!