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riastarthe · 2 years ago

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alive in it

i’m burnt out.

it's not new, i've felt this but i haven't really known it. so now i have the knowledge to accept that it’s here, sapping me. it's an autistic thing. it’s a trans thing, a PTSD thing, an autoimmune thing, a work thing, a poverty thing, a pandemic thing. these things will go on because there is no support. (assistance, as it stands, comes with ever more surveillance.) the pandemic, and the pandemic as a perfect excuse for governments to rain new or continued fire on us, is taking a huge toll on everyone i care about. emotionally and physically. for others who live radically differently from me, it has smoothed over into inconvenience. and watching that from the sidelines comes with grieving too.

i always think about what my friend Jules said, that we all talk a lot about how to prevent disability ("do this, not that") but not about being presently disabled. if under capitalism we're just trying to shift how its rules affect us here and there, we can't actually work healthily-- and there is absolutely no way for a disabled person to work healthily. so we fade from view. and what then?

this is the first year where i have to really consider whether or not i can keep going.

it feels awful to say that! as though i'm throwing it in the face of everyone who has ever been (much too) kind to me. that kindness spurs me. who doesn't want affirmation, warmth, to be recognised and welcomed? i am grateful in a way where i have basically no idea how to contain it or return it in kind, it's so huge to me. i'm at a loss for words, at least creative ones. i wish i could spend more time on it. it's sometimes too much and i have to come back later. i wish i could do better and the goal is that i will.

and of course to me, it's not a question: "yes! Forever, yes! i love this! i need this!" but my body and my circumstances, specifically how my circumstances don't allow for more or faster work currently, forces me to question it. the way my work is treated, and myself as the person making it, and where i put it, and how "present" i must be--

i mean, why the fuck did i go back to work immediately following an emotionally devastating legal battle? it doesn’t feel good or victorious. it's not a new lease on life, it’s just buying time. why, in a pandemic, am i so worried about keeping up a palatable public appearance? (other than that my income relies on it?) i take a long time to talk and i have a lot to say. historically, people don’t care to hear it, so i try to read the room every time to know exactly how much to say and in what way, and even if i try to do exactly how all the real people do, there is some gross intangible quality to me that taints it and implies permission to pick it apart in bad faith or dismiss it entirely. i know it's not the fault of one thing, and it's the result of many elements coming together neatly. but i know that because i have to.

being trans and being autistic are pretty similar to each other in that regard-- you can always count on supposed allies to use one part of you to justify the other’s eradication, or, in polite conversation, their utter disinterest in your point of view or needs. because there's something too fucking weird about you! can't quite put our finger on it, but you're just kind of a little bit gross? (There are papers about the neurotypical reaction to neurodivergent people, if you want to read about it.) sorry. Love what you do for us but you are too exceptional. no one feels the way you do and it’s not enough that you feel it.

it's exhausting. it’s much easier to be quiet than risk it all. literally.

with my work being veritable outsider art, i’ve always cared much more about entertaining myself and having company. i don’t want to be lonely in it, and i care about that more than the impractical idea of making a fat stack off of comics. in this economy??

this isn’t a guilt-tripping “wah, i wish people engaged with me more.” honestly, what is engagement, anyway? “interaction.” to me this isn’t about numbers. this isn’t about clout. it isn’t about x number of y rewards. it doesn’t matter how many people, or where. it’s about watching myself sink. it’s about being treated fairly. ultimately, i think i am food. i think this because i’ve been told it. i’ve been told i’m some sort of stepping stone. that this is what being “brave” is, and people take it and run with it. i think i am a blank slate for common use. bad or good, i've only given enough to be misconstrued. if i have been brave, that’s not what’s being seen here.

these feelings are substantiated all the more when i see similar behaviour (or lack thereof) repeated in how people approach trans artists (just casting the widest net here, obvs it changes per other factors!) considering how trans people are constantly pulled apart and rewritten by the public, this should bother people much more. whether it’s our lives that are taken, our bodies and relationships examined, our housing and medical and job access litigated and limited, our histories renamed, our work uncredited, it should be unacceptable. and given that we’re spoken about with genocidal sentiment, the shit i’m concerned about really shouldn’t be the biggest concern.

but you want proof, evidence you understand, you want me to make you see things which you are, even with best intentions, fundamentally opposed to seeing. the burden is on me to be righteous and sweet in response to petty, punitive games when something far worse looms. it’s all connected, anyway. and nothing is ever good enough-- if you don't even believe i could be abused, or have/ought to have autonomy, that i could be sick or suffer (and that there is no speedy cure the way there might be for you,) that i could be the gender/s i am because of xyz... that i can or can’t be attracted to so and so... that i don’t deserve to live... that i don’t deserve to complain... what can i make you see, really? and why should i try?

i’m the type of person who naturally enjoys learning about the context for the work and stories i see/read, and i presume other people do, too. i don't like having that taken from me. i don't like feeling as though i can't talk about myself honestly, seriously and/or with levity. i worry my own interests aren’t interesting to my friends and that this is perceived as a negative quality rather than a neutral one. if i act out of line i will lose my entire income in a moment. no care, no questions.

i am proven over and over that i am worth as much as i work, that my worth is derived only from what viewers find in my work, and, naturally, they find themselves-- they don't find me there with them, nor do they want me in there with them. people say don’t interact if, and they list things about me. yet they feel exceedingly comfortable entering MY space without seeking or wanting me in it. it's strange. because i reference myself and my experiences repeatedly. i reference my body. hair, scars, big bazongas, fantasies and realities. how do i make something like that more literal than just depicting it? i reference photos of myself in an effort to love what's there. with the physical comes too the intangible framing. through presentation my work can end up divorced from the experience or labour of making it, it does feel good to know i am alive in it.

i used to think that if all the confronting and unsettling work by weirdos were to disappear, that people would look around and miss what it brought. but now i’m not actually sure if that’s true.

“representation” isn’t just being done FOR trans viewers. the trans shit that you find, that shit that really shakes and builds foundations, is BY (or at the very least was touched by) trans people. many kinds. all kinds. (who of us then is it okay to kill?)

we all come into ourselves through different means, but i think many will agree it can be a real gift to find this stuff. for me it was an early internet, sequestered but borderless. for many now, it’s mainstream media properties or platformed independent work (whatever independent means in regard to having safety nets.) but i wish that what we have now, and what we have when we look back on earlier expressions of trans/queerness, was treated with more care, more slowly. i wish the humanity of the person mattered more. i, personally, whether i like or dislike something, have a hard time extracting the person from it. they are an encapsulation of a time, conditions, qualities.

what is important art? who decides? can it just be important that i feel joy? yes, with so much suffering, large and small, it is important that i feel joy. and i derive joy from stupid bullshit and from articulating, in literal metaphors, many types of despair.

rage. vengeance. hopelessness. selfishness. terrible mistakes that hang in the air and all you can do is swallow and try again. psycho meltdowns and lashing out with displaced grief because the grief is too big, wanting it to become a hammer or a spear, something to break it. the dread and the quiet, out of body compulsions that come in the dark bathroom mirror. a violent hunger when you're denied food for being too fat, when you're asked if you can just be pretty, can you just try. wanting to become smaller and smaller to feel powerful when bigger and bigger is reviled. bigger deserves mercy killing, it's only right. fear from having your body pried apart, vivisected. wanting obsessively, tearfully to have the rage and agony fucked out of you. a thing, a monster, a "girl", a boy, a shadow. when you don't want to die-- or you do, but wish you didn't have to. the way that stubbornness sticks like useless knife. and what being property does to a person. but hey, if your aggressor thinks you're someone else, maybe then it's okay, maybe then what they do isn't really happening to you :) maybe it doesn't count. maybe you can tell yourself that enough times.

emotions and expressions that other people may find challenging, that they’ll tell you to suppress. and equally suppressed, the methods with which you regain yourself. the art i make rejects that faux-concerned suppression and it will evolve as i learn more about myself. it's important that i have a place to speak. especially a place that isn't dependent on the exact most precise words for hundreds, or thousands, or millions, or any amount of hypothetical eyes and itchy fingers.

i've always felt like art-- or at least my art, or at least, some of my art-- shouldn't be fueled by spite because spite, the emotional space and energy of it, is a resource that can be depleted. i don’t only want to make art through a single set of conditions and if i only source the one thing, i can easily find myself spent.

but sometimes i am so angry at the way art is consumed + simultaneously scrutinised with conspiratorial fervour for any potential of hidden moral failings while very real violence, at a state or corporate or even industry level, is dismissed. i hate that i was advocating for the safety of myself/my family in an unmasked courtroom in an unmasked courthouse while being painted as insane or vengeful by an active abuser-- an abuser who, legally, must know my home address.

I hate that for court i have to carefully pick which clothes might make me most empathetic from various angles. For the doctor, I have to look like I give a damn, and I guess by fretting over it, I do. If I'm going to share photos of myself, whichsometimes I do to remember I am not so far away, I better find the right lighting conditions to suspend disbelief. Don't be too fat or (after ~9 years HRT) too "in transition"-y. For court, which tone or pitch is most like a victim? Or the better question: is my natural way of speaking too stupid or mean? Which tone commands the appropriate respect? Well, I probably won't notice in time anyway.

I hate that I have to be referred to by some other name because I can't trust anyone-- certainly not the government-- to safely use the one I call myself, and I hate that I care about my name at all as a source of self-affirmation.

I hate that i need a perfect, but not too aggressively confident, memory of my own mistreatment. I hate that there's no burial site for memories of home, no ceremony i can trust to put them to rest. The present eats and dissolves the past. There is no time. (And there it is again: eating. Devouring. Gobbling it up. What an ugly and uncouth thing to do! Unless your body nourishes another.)

In the car to and from court, i find myself wondering if my art will ever play a part in this case, or a future case, and wonder if the people posting my work on hate sites will somehow play a part in this case, and wonder who, of the people currently enjoying my art, will turn on me and either recreate or align themselves with this traumatising system.

i hate that art is called "important" when it's so clearly not: it's a commodity that as a practise/purpose is devalued. it’s a Thing. it’s Candy. there is little to no education on how to receive or create it. i don’t just mean higher education. culturally, in western society, we don't prioritise the historical and modern education necessary to value art or to value workers broadly. things arrive to us ready-made and then we own them. the people who make art, even or especially people doing so-called "important" work, are treated like shit. by their bosses, by the industry, by the audience.

and so, holding out hope that the work/impact might outlast your own brief life is a magical comfort, and how tightly it's held is entirely relative to you & your community’s bleak conditions while living. maybe i will matter when i’m dead. but how is that possible if my work lasts for all of the 30 seconds that someone looks at it? how can i matter when i’m dead if some of those viewers would rather me dead now? i think about how my work might be used, or forgotten, and i don’t even have enough money to be deadnamed on my headstone.

it's like i'm crafting heavens when i think that, maybe, while i might languish and die unknown, my dirtbag pervert transsexual JPGs might outlast me. maybe someone will trace it in their notebook or something and when the automatic action is done maybe they'll try to remember what it ever meant. the trans boy fagdyke butch daddy watersports (or w/e) might not imprint on their memory-- but if they find themselves "fooled" into enjoying it, i hope they’ll have the decency not to blame me for their gift of knowledge. pleasure and comfort is not my sin.

lol: i’m thinking about what Mr. Wheatus (of the band Wheatus) said on the pod. that people are usually agonisingly aware of their own insecurities and shortcomings, and when an artist is able to point to them in a sloppy, human/humanising way, through the gauzy or challenging space of art, people love it. doing something perfectly isn't what matters, because perfect isn't relatable. some people hate seeing something close to them and some people hate seeing something far away. but i’m sick of being clean and tiptoeing around my own humanity in case someone finds it disappointing or disgusting. in real life i have no choice but to live in this body, or occupy it, and be disgusting the entire time. so if that's true then i'm sick of allowing myself to be flat and nothing for ease.

and if i am nothing: okay then! that’s exactly what i’ll give.

#just shittin around #writing #digital wellbeing

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kingexpl0sionmurder · 5 years ago

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Missed Connection - Shinsou Hitoshi

Author: @kingexpl0sionmurder Rating: NSFW 18+ Warnings: Unprotected sex, blowjobs, dirty talk, poking fun at fakes who shop at UO and wear band t-shirts for bands they don’t listen to, terrible poetry, Kaminari is a weirdo. Pairing: Shinsou Hitoshi/F!Reader Words: 4,554 AN: This is for the bnharem server collab, the theme is pen pals! We were able to write basically anything as long as there was some kind of communication/writing/texting etc! This is the first time I’ve written for Shinsou and I head cannon him as a fucking closet goth so don’t at me. Collab Masterlist (Please go check out everyone else’s contributions!) My Masterlist Buy me a Ko-fi -- When his phone started ringing, Shinsou was tempted to throw it halfway across the room. Whoever thought it was okay to call him at - he turned to squint at the clock on his bedside table - 10 in the morning on his day off, better have a good excuse. He frowned at the screen once he’d found his phone, and sighed.

“The world better be on fire, Kaminari.” His palm rubbed over his face as he pressed the phone to his ear, his eyes closing again.

The blonde chuckled, full of energy as usual. “Aw, come on ‘Toshi! It’s not that early.”

A million ways he could kill his friend and make it look like an accident flashed through his mind. “You know I like to sleep late on my days off.” He left it at that, no further explanation needed. Kaminari knew he stayed up impossibly late on his off days, crawling under the covers only when the sun started to rise.

“You want to hear this, I promise. I wouldn’t call this early unless it was important.” Shinsou listened to the sound of a keyboard clicking through the phone, waiting impatiently for his friend to continue.

“So, you know how I sometimes like to fuck around on the internet?” This was a rhetorical question. Of course he did. “Well, occasionally I like to browse through Craigslist, and this morning I was in the missed connections section, and I found something interesting.”

“Why do you look through missed connections?” He didn’t really care, he just thought it was kind of...weird. But, then again, this was Denki, so he shouldn’t have been surprised.

Kaminari huffed. “Dude, sometimes it’s so sad to read how they saw someone and thought there was a connection. It makes me wonder if they ever find each other.” He was quiet for a moment like he was deep in thought. “But then sometimes, it’s like ‘You farted in the produce section and I’d still date you, let’s go out’ and it kind of loses the romantic appeal.”

“You’re a sap. Also, gross.” He found himself drifting off, bored with the conversation already. “Do you have a point?”

“God, you’re impatient! Listen, I was scrolling through the ads and I found this one, I think you should hear it.” Clearing his throat, he began to read.

“You were the sleepy purple-haired man in the cat cafe on Main, I was hiding behind an orange tabby by the window. I was staring, but I wasn’t trying to be creepy. You just looked kind of lost, and the black and white short hair on your lap seemed to have all your attention. Oh, I think his name is Socks. Isn’t that unoriginal? Anyway, I’ve seen you there a few times and I want to know more about you. If you see this, please respond.”

Shinsou sat up in his bed, ignoring the sharp pain of his muscles protesting at the sudden movement. “What the fuck?”

“This is about you, isn’t it?” Denki’s excitement was clear. “You’re the only sleepy guy with purple hair I know who frequents that cat cafe on Main Street.”

“How long ago was that posted?” Hitoshi felt strange, restless energy flowing through him. Someone had noticed him and decided that he was interesting enough to want to get to know? He wasn’t anything special, and he kept to himself mostly. What did this even mean?

“Last night! When did you go to the cafe?” He didn’t even wait for a response. “I’m forwarding this post to you, and you better send them an email! It’s been too long since you’ve dated someone, ��Toshi, and I’m concerned.”

Unfortunately feeling more awake than he wanted to be, Shinsou shifted until his feet were on the floor. “Yesterday afternoon. And it hasn’t been that long.”

“It’s been like a year, dude.” Kaminari sighed. “Okay, I sent it. Please write back to them. Let me live vicariously through you in this weird turn of events.”

Shinsou sighed and said goodbye, ending the call and staring off into space for a minute. He needed coffee before he could even think about reading it for himself and then maybe responding.

Uh, hello.

I can’t help but feel like this was about me? I’m not even really sure what to say. This feels weird. You could have come over and said hi, maybe. I don’t bite. I might have stared at you and made things awkward but I feel like it would have been a surefire way to talk to me instead of posting this on craigslist of all places and expecting me to see it.

You’re lucky I have a friend who likes to scour the dark recesses of the internet for entertainment purposes and happened upon this post.

-Shinsou

How do I know this is really the person I’m talking about? What were you wearing when you went to the cafe? That’s like the only way I can be sure you are who you say you are.

The only reason I didn’t come over and talk to you was that I had Oliver on my lap and he is a grump and didn’t want me to get up until he was good and ready. (That’s the orange tabby’s name, by the way.) By the time I was able to coax his fat ass off of me you had gone.

Honestly, I’d let those cats climb all over me like their own personal cat tree all day long and not complain about it, but I digress.

I didn’t expect you to find this or reply, it was kind of my way of convincing myself that I’d given it a shot, even though I really hadn’t done much.

-Y/N

I was wearing the following:

A Joy Division t-shirt depicting the cover of Unknown Pleasures, which is arguably the most cliche t-shirt I own. It’s become one of those shirts that people wear who have no idea who Joy Division is, they just like it for the aesthetic. (I’ll have you know I happen to know who they are and like their music very much.) This shirt was more than likely covered in cat hair.

Black jeans, which were probably covered in cat hair as well.

Black boots, a staple of mine.

I am a closet goth. I don’t know what else to say. I won’t deny it. I’ve learned to embrace who I am. I happen to know that Oliver is a grumpy shit, so I am not surprised he kept you pinned down for so long. That cat has been known to knock people over and purr loudly while “making biscuits” on their chests for hours at a time. I’m glad to know that you survived his assault.

So what are you going to tell me about yourself now? I have confessed to you about my goth status, so I demand something in return.

-Shinsou

Yeah, it was you.

I was hoping that you actually liked Joy Division and you weren’t one of those Urban Outfitters aesthetic people. I can now rest easy. I like them too, but I really like New Order more? I hope this isn’t the end of our budding friendship.

I will not say that I am a goth, though I have goth-like tendencies? Or I just appreciate the music. Whatever. I don’t have, like, a pet bat or anything. I own a pair of Doc’s, though.

I have been on the receiving end of one of Oliver’s attacks before, so you don’t have to tell me about them. I have experienced his pushy demeanor on more than one occasion.

So, something about me? I don’t know. I spend a lot of time in that cafe because I love cats, but that’s kind of a given, isn’t it? I usually bring my laptop and make an attempt to work on my homework, but it’s usually futile. I’d rather pet the cats.

Oh, I guess that counts as something right? I go to college. I’m an English major and taking a fuck ton of creative writing courses. What about you?

-Y/N

An English major? That sounds like fun. I think if I had a need to go to college I’d have liked to take something like that. I have a friend who writes ultra depressing Gothic poetry, that would be right up his ally as well.

I’m a pro hero, hence why I didn’t need college. Saving people is something I’ve always wanted to do, especially since I was always bullied about my quirk as a kid. It kind of made me more determined, I always wanted to prove those assholes wrong, you know? So, here I am.

I’m glad to know we can wear matching Doc’s together, and that you don’t keep a bat as a pet. As cute as their faces are, they’re not very easily domesticated.

New Order is fine. The real question is, The Smiths or The Cure? Your answer to this question will be what determines the longevity of our friendship.

-Shinsou

This is the worst question you could ever ask me. How could you do this? I could never choose between them. Both? The answer is both.

I hope your next email will not be your last.

Bats are cute but they always seem to dive bomb my head when they’re around. Not that I go places with bats often, but I used to go camping as a kid and they always did that. It was not a good time.

I think it’s amazing that you’re a pro hero! You’re really out here, fighting the bad guys and saving people and then coming into the cat cafe and petting kittens and drinking coffee like a normal person. I think it’s admirable how hard you worked to achieve your dream. I know we don’t know each other that well, but I’m proud of you. Why were you bullied for your quirk? You don’t have to answer that if it makes you uncomfortable.

I wish I could write ultra depressy Gothic poetry. Here let me try:

The night is black like my soul Clove cigarettes burn slowly My life is Meaningless

How was that? Do I get a gold star? Or a black skull? Which is appropriate?

-Y/N

I’m printing that and sending it to Tokoyami. Thank you for making my entire existence with that poem. I’m breaking out the red wax candles and putting on “How Soon Is Now?” right now.

You get a star, but it’s a pentagram. We have to keep with the theme.

My quirk has to do with mind control, so I was always told I was meant to be a villain. You can imagine what that could do to a kid’s psyche, being told by peers and adults alike that you weren’t hero material, when that’s all you wanted. It’s okay though, I did what I wanted and they can eat my ass.

Sorry if that was too raunchy, but it’s how I feel.

If my earlier comment wasn’t proof enough, I prefer The Smiths, but I cannot deny the impact of Disintegration. Lullaby is a really great song.

That being said, this will not be my last email, so you can breathe easy.

On a semi serious note, I really enjoy talking with you. We have a similar sense of humor, and you like cats which makes you automatically better than most people. Would you like to get coffee sometime? I know a nice place that’s quiet and filled with fluffy kittens...

-Shinsou

—

I’m glad I haven’t lost your friendship due to my opinion. I know how important that feud can be to some people. People get very passionate about it. Kind of like with Blur versus Oasis, or Brand New versus Taking Back Sunday. I hate that these are the only examples I can think of.

It wasn’t too raunchy. Those people can most definitely eat your ass. I’m glad you have decided to use your powers for good. You’ll have to explain to me how your quirk works sometime.

I shall treasure my shiny pentagram sticker with my entire heart.

Isn’t Tokoyami the Jet Black Hero: Tsukuyomi? He looks like the type to write Gothic poetry. I am not even mildly surprised.

Even though the way we met was unconventional, I’d like to think I’d have gotten up the courage to speak to you the next time I saw you in the cafe. Somehow this is better, though. It makes for an interesting story, you know?

I’d love to get coffee. I think I know the place you’re talking about. Let me know when.

-Y/N

—

Shinsou was nervous. It was stupid really. He’d been exchanging emails back and forth with you for a few days, and even though you’d barely revealed much about each other, the easy banter through your messages was comforting. He felt like the two of you would be compatible. He just hoped that he was able to keep the conversation going in real life.

When he entered the cafe, he ordered his usual and picked his normal table towards the back. Socks, his favorite black and white companion, was at his side almost immediately. He let his hand drift down to scratch behind her ears, his gaze fixed on the door as he waited for you to arrive.

Out of habit he was a little early, but he figured it would be easier this way. He had no idea what you looked like, but you knew him, so he knew you’d come over when you got there, and it would make things less awkward.

A few minutes later he saw the door open, and he immediately knew it was you. Black Doc’s and thigh high stockings, a black skirt and an oversized deep red sweater adorned your body, a leather jacket over your shoulders and your hair tucked under a black beanie, cheeks pink from the chill of the autumn weather outside. You were pretty, and he felt his nerves increase tenfold when your eyes met his, a smile gracing your face.

He watched as you ordered a drink at the counter, the paper cup clutched in your hands as you made your way to his table. He stood up when you approached, letting himself appreciate you up close. “Y/N?”

“Hi, Shinsou.” You were so much shorter than he was, and he found himself having to gaze down at you when he was standing at his full height.

“It’s nice to put a face to all those emails.” The way you blushed under his attention made his heart flip. “Please, sit.”

You nodded, sliding into the seat across from him. He sat back down, his hands moving to grip his coffee cup.

“This is kind of weird, isn’t it?” You looked down when Oliver made his way over, rubbing himself against your boot. “I almost feel like I don’t know what to say.”

“I know what you mean. We could just sit here and email each other, if that would make you feel better.” Your laugh was like music to his ears. “I’d rather hear your voice though.”

Your face was red when you looked back up at him. “I have to agree.” You leaned your elbow on the table, your cheek cradled in your palm. “Tell me more about yourself, Shinsou.”

“It’s Hitoshi. You can call me Hitoshi.”

—

If anyone would have told him that the night would end this way, he’d have said they were insane, and should probably get themselves checked into the nearest institution.

But here he was, his face pressed into the spot where your neck and shoulder met, lips ghosting over soft skin, his calloused palms sliding underneath your sweater. You were purring, your head thrown back and your fists clenched in his t-shirt, your back pressed against the wall in the hallway that led to his bedroom.

“Fuck, ‘Toshi.” You mumbled, pressing yourself closer to him. “Bed?”

You didn’t have to ask twice, his hands sliding down to lift you up by the backs of your thighs, his cock hard and straining in his jeans as you rutted against him. He turned himself and began walking toward his room blindly, his eyes still shut as he sucked a mark into your neck.

He pulled back so he could peer over your shoulder and maneuver your bodies through the doorway without bumping into anything, laying you back on the bed.

The events of the night were a blur, your coffee date turned into him taking you out for ramen at the restaurant down the street, and then he asked you back to his apartment to show you his record collection.

It was mostly a ruse though. You’d been flirting back and forth, the both of you getting bolder as the night went on. He was only half surprised when you’d entered his apartment, barely removing shoes and coats and hats before you spun around on him, pressing him against the door and kissing him like your life depended on it.

He rested on his forearms, poised above you, looking over your flushed face and kiss bruised lips. Your legs wrapped around his waist and pulled his hips closer, making him groan. “Impatient?”

Your hands moved to cup his face, pulling him down toward you. “Very.”

He wasn’t expecting your strength, caught off guard when your lips crashed into his, your body pushing him over until he was on his back and you were straddling him, knees on either side of his hips. You ground down against him, moaning when his hips snapped up reflexively. He was happy to give you control for a while, especially when you sat up and grabbed the bottom of your sweater and pulled it over your head. The view was spectacular.

He let his hands wander, tracing along the lines of your thigh highs from under your skirt, and up to the lace at your hips. Your chest heaved as you tried to catch your breath, the devilish glint in your eye was not lost on his as you shifted down his body, fingers swiftly working to unclasp his belt and undo the button on his jeans.

You slid off of him, and he lifted his hips to aid you in pulling his pants down his legs, his boxers following. His cock was achingly hard, the tip angry and red as it sprung free from it’s confines, nearly slapping his stomach. You eyed it greedily, and he was lost for words when you surged forward, delicate fingers wrapping around his length and stroking him, your tongue peeking out to taste him.

Amethyst eyes rolled back when you took the tip in your mouth, tongue swirling around the head, a low moan sounding from the back of your throat. The warmth and wetness that surrounded his cock when you closed your eyes and bobbed forward had him breathless, his hand threading through your hair, and his palm resting on the back of your head. He kept himself steady, fighting back the urge to buck his hips and push you down further on his length.

Shinsou bit down on his lower lip, his stomach muscles tensing as he tried to keep it together. Kaminari had been right, it had been a while since he’d been with someone, and he wanted this night to last as long as possible. The sweet and innocent look in your eyes as you looked up at him through your lashes, your mouth enveloping him all the way to base, was nearly too much for him to handle, his hand tugging at your hair gently to pull you off of him. “I’m not going to last if you keep that up, kitten.”

You visibly shivered at the pet name and he grinned, loving the feeling of being able to invoke that reaction from you. He scooted forward when you sat back on your knees between his spread legs, his arms circling your torso as he worked at the clasp on your bra, pulling the straps down your arms when he unclipped it. Strong hands gripped your waist and moved you to the side as he stood up, reaching under your skirt to tug your panties down your legs.

He took a moment to consider what he’d do next. He wanted to taste you, it was only right for him to return the favor, and he was almost certain you would taste as sweet as you looked. Another part of him wanted to hike up your legs around his waist and slam inside of you, desperate to hear you moan his name as he pounded you into the mattress. As he contemplated what to do, reached back and pulled his shirt over his head, and then let his hands wander up to the apex of your thighs, digits sliding through your folds. You gasped, falling back onto your elbows, back arching as he toyed with your clit, letting his long fingers slip inside your heat. “So wet. Just for me?” Eyebrows raised, he teased you.

“Fuck, Hitoshi, please.” Breathless and panting, you gazed up at him, biting your lip.

“Please what? Tell me what you want.” You would make the decision for him. “Would you like my mouth or my cock? I’ll let you choose.”

Huffing, your hips rutted against his hand impatiently. He kneeled on the bed between your legs, adjusting his arm and adding a second finger in with the first, his thumb finding your bundle of nerves again. He listened to your breath hitch, and your quiet mewls, pride filling his chest that he was the one coaxing those noises out of you. Finally, you breathed deep and answered him. “Fuck me, Hitoshi.”

Ignoring the protesting whine that left your lips when he removed his fingers, he brought them up to his mouth, maintaining eye contact with you as he sucked on them, tasting you. “You’re delicious, kitten. I’ll have to make sure to taste you properly later.”

Wasting no time, he lifted your legs up to rest your legs over his shoulders, one hand on his cock. He lined himself up with your entrance, grabbing at your hips and pushing himself inside you. If he thought your mouth was hot and wet and basically everything he thought was heaven, he was mistaken. This was it. This was everything. He wasn’t even inside you all the way and he was fighting back the need to cum again, cursing himself and breathing deeply. He leaned forward, forearms on either side of your head as his mouth crashed against yours, all lips and tongues and teeth, his need for you growing tenfold as you wiggled your hips in an attempt to feel more of him.

Groaning, he bucked forward, filling you up, the both of you sighing in relief at the feeling. He gave you a moment to adjust, lips moving down your jaw and tongue laving at the mark he’d left on your neck earlier. “You feel so good, kitten.”

“Toshi, you can move…” Your hands were gripping his biceps, nails leaving crescent shapes in his pale skin, breathing ragged as you clenched around him.

Hissing, he followed your instructions, hips pulling back until he was almost completely out, before sliding back in. Your arousal made the glide easy, your back arching underneath him. He started a steady rhythm, grunting quietly and letting the feeling of you pulsing around him keep him grounded. He let one of his hands wander, shifting his weight so he could ghost his palm over your side, fingers pinching your nipple and rolling the hardened bud between them. You keened, chanting his name like a prayer, the sound of blood pounding in his ears almost masking the sound.

It spurred him to move faster, his chest tight, sweat pooling at his temples and between his shoulder blades, purple locks sticking to his forehead. His gaze was locked on you, and it stole his breath. Your chest and neck were flushed, the most beautiful sounds spilling from your lips as he fucked into you. It became clear to him that he wasn’t going to last much longer, and neither were you.

“Hey, kitten. You gonna cum for me?” He shifted back to his knees and trailed the fingers on his left hand down your stomach, coming to rest between your parted legs. “I want to hear how pretty you sound when you come apart.” He kept a firm grip on your hip to keep you from sliding away, rolling his hips and rubbing tight circles on your clit.

“Fuck, Hitoshi!” The effect was almost immediate, your body and lungs seizing, eyes rolling back as you fell over the edge, your cunt clenching around him like a vice.

Falling back over you, his thrusts became sloppy as he chased his own release, barely able to move with how tight your pussy was gripping him, your orgasm still rolling through you. He felt your hands on his face, guiding him to kiss you again, fingers carding through his hair and down his back, your nails raking red trails down his back. He felt like he could barely breathe, lost in you. “Y/N…”

He felt his muscles tense, and moved to bury his face in your neck, his hips stilling as he came hard, filling you up with his release. You squeezed around him again, and he sighed into your skin, eyes closed as he tried to regulate his breathing.

Rolling over to the side, he hissed when he pulled out. You chuckled, and he turned to look at you, a lazy smile on his face. “What?”

“Is that what you call showing me your record collection?”

Snorting, he propped his head up on his palm, leaning on his elbow, his free hand reaching out to push a piece of hair away from your face. “You attacked me, remember?”

“I couldn’t help it!” Protesting, you blushed. “I wanted to kiss you from the moment I walked into the cafe.”

It was his turn to blush. “Yeah?”

Shrugging, you turned on your side to face him. “Mm. Can you do me a favor?”

His body was still buzzing, muscles loose and pliant as he shuffled closer to you. “Anything.”

“Can you thank your friend for being a weird internet troll and finding my post?”

Shinsou coughed a laugh, leaning forward to rest his forehead against yours. “Please, I can’t do that. It’s all he’d ever talk about for the rest of our lives if I did.”

You leaned up and kissed him, your fingers pushing back his hair.

He hummed against your lips, feeling content, shifting himself on the bed and wrapping his arms around your waist, tugging you into him. “Maybe I’ll send him a text later. For now, I have other plans.”

Kaminari’s phone buzzed on the coffee table, and he picked it up, eyes widening at the message that appeared on the screen.

Toshi: I owe you a crate full of Pokemon cards and my eternal gratitude for being a weirdo meme king who trolls the internet.

Denki: Oh, you’re in a good mood. Did you get laid?

Toshi: Fuck all the way off.

Denki: That’s a yes. You’re welcome.

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miraculouswolf99 · 3 years ago

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The Language of Flowers

I love Chloe Salt and while this is not the most action-packed of one-shots, I hope you all appreciate the effort that I did to research each and every meaning of the flowers.

*****

Lyon and Vallia Garden.

The first, a teen that would be described as having a heart of ice and a gaze that could freeze you solid. His twin sister, on the other hand, was pretty much said to be a flower garden made human with tree sap instead of blood.

Yet the two stuck to each other as if they were one of those pairs of conjoined twins. The two were opposites in personality, style, and even how they talk. But even then, they were as close as a brother and sister could be.

Nobody in Ms.Bustier's really had any idea about the two foreign students in their class. Of course, they knew that it was part of a program for students of different countries to experience other cultures. But it was almost like having two ghosts in class. They would come and go each day, silent as ever, and it was like they were never there at all.

There wasn't really much of a problem with them, especially since the first day they were there was pretty much the only time they had ever spoken. But they spoke only to give the class brat, Chloe, a good tongue lashing that they all thought she deserved when she tried to make the two as submissive to her as Sabrina. But since then, the two were so silent that most people that were not in the classroom thought that they were mute.

"They two of them are such a mystery," Nino says, a lot of the class hanging out in the classroom during a break since an akuma attack was recently stopped.

The twins were not in the room for reasons no one else knew.

"A mystery wrapped in an enigma and stuffed into a riddle," Alya added, the reporter in her really frustrated.

"They are not as bad as you guys think," Adrien tells them, a bit tired after his fight as Cat Noir.

"How can you be so sure," Alix crosses her arms. "They don't talk to anyone but each other and never in a language we understand."

"I've seen Lyon at his archery practice sometimes when Kagami and I are at fencing," Adrien says. "He probably just has high expectations expected of him like Kagami and me."

"It is probably the same for Vallia, as well, then," Marinette agreed.

"They could, at least, make an effort with us," Kim said.

"My calculations say that there is a less than five percent chance that the two will speak with any of us," Max says.

"They need to learn their places," Chloe sneered. "Bowing at my feet."

"Why are you even here, Chloe," Alya put her hands on her hips. "Everything that ever comes out of your mouth is about as trashy as that dumpster akuma last week."

It had been a garbage man that was having a bad day. Apparently, his daughter was sick, his partner in the truck would not stop singing opera, and then one grosser bags he was trying to put in the truck ripped open. All that combined made him a prime target for Hawkmoth. Luckily, Ladybug, Cat Noir, White Wolf, and Beautifly managed to stop him from turning Paris into one giant landfill. Which, ironically, was his villain name. Landfill.

"My father will hear about..." Chloe tried.

"Shut up, Chloe," Marinette yelled. "Maybe the reason they don't talk to us is that they think we are all just as under your pathetic thumb as Sabrina."

"I'd rather be turned back into Timebreaker than be her minion," Alix stated.

"Adrikins, you going to let them talk to me like that," Chloe tried to whine.

For once, Adrien didn't even try to defend her. He turned away from her, shaking his head. To say that the young model was sick of her never-changing attitude would be the understatement of the century. He did a lot of thinking after the Despair Bear incident. Chloe would never change how she was. She has gotten away with it for too long to ever even want to change. She especially didn't change after being turned into Queen Wasp not too long ago.

"They've only been here for a little over two weeks," Marinette reminded them. "Maybe they just need more time to adjust."

"Having friends would help them adjust, girl," Alya put her hand on her best friend's shoulder.

"There is an 86.5 percent chance of them adjusting better with friends by their side," Max said, Markov floating by his head.

The class would have talked more, but they heard the sounds of two people chattering away in a foreign language coming toward the classroom. And since Lila was still MIA since her first day in class, that meant that it had to be the twins. Everyone quickly scrambled to get into their seats and not look like they had a class meeting without the entire class.

When Lyon and Vallia walked in, the silence that had fallen over the classroom seemed to be a lot worse than being caught in a class meeting. But the Greek twins simply walked to their seats in the back and sat down for class to start up again.

"Vríkate ta sostá louloúdia," Lyon whispered to his sister. Translated: Did you find the right flowers.

"Me píre lígo, allá to ékana," Vallia whispered back. Translated: Took me a while, but I did.

The two silently had smirks on their faces.

*****

The next day, the class was unbelievably shocked by what they saw when they walked into the classroom. There were bunches of flowers on all of their desks. A different flower was on each of them. No two desks had the same flower. Except that Ms.Bustier's desk seemed to have a flower bunch with one of each blossom in it.

"Geia," the Greek twins greeted them, standing at the front of the classroom.

Most of the class was too shocked by the flowers to notice that the two of them had actually talked to them.

"Was there some type of flower akuma and we didn't know about it," Alya looked disappointed that she might have missed an akuma attack for her blog.

"Pardon," Lyon crossed his arms.

The class suddenly realized that the twins were talking to them. The two of them were also each holding a few roses in their hands.

"Are you two actually talking to us," Alix asked.

"Eínai tóso dýskolo na eísai oraía," Lyon says to his sister. Translation: They make it so hard to be nice.

"Páre, aderfí," Vallia responded. Translation: Behave, brother.

"Class, sit down," Ms.Bustier instructed. "Lyon and Vallia have some things that they have collecting in order to share with us."

"Flowers," Max asked, confused.

"We basically grew up surrounded by nature," Vallia says. "Plants can be a language all on their own. You just have to know how to use them."

Lyon took a small sniff of the roses he was holding.

"Take roses, for example," he said. "They perfectly describe us. Roses are said to represent people that are quiet and traditional. Quite fitting for the two of us, isn't it."

The class all sat down in their respected seats. Adrien and Marinette were probably the most interested ones of the class, even if they were all curious. Except for Chloe, of course.

"We spent these last couple of weeks getting to know you guys from a distance," Vallia explained. "It is one of our family traditions to give flowers to someone when they enter the family. By marriage or birth."

"We decided to take that tradition and make a classroom version of it," Lyon says. "Each of you has been given flowers that match your personalities. It took us a while to find the right ones and get them here. Luckily, we have a very wide range of flora at our family sanctuary."

"You spent over two weeks getting us flowers," Alix raised her eyebrow.

"Can there really be a flower for each of us," Mylene wondered out loud.

"You have them all in front of you," Lyon looked a little annoyed.

Vallia did have to admit that she was a tab annoyed as well. While they did not know just how much nature meant to them as a part of their lives, the doubt was still annoying.

"We figured this would show that we are more than two foreigners that like to keep to themselves," Vallia says.

"Keep in mind that I still like to keep to myself most of the time," Lyon said, Vallia knowing how much her brother likes the quiet.

"So, what do these flowers mean," Adrien asks.

To his surprise, neither of the twins pulled out a list or anything that could help them remember all the information. They must really know their stuff.

"We can start with Mylene," Vallia says, the small girl blushing. "We gave her peony flowers. They represent those that are kind and also like small gestures."

Ivan was particularly shocked by that. He had only gotten together with Mylene because she read his song as a poem after his second time being akumatized as Stone Heart. She was not up for the big-time rock and roll version he wrote it as, and just liked it as a simple poem or soft song.

"Ivan's was simpler to find," Lyon said. "The carnation flower has always been used to describe down-to-earth people. Ones that are very grounded."

The other members of Kitty Section looked at Ivan, knowing how that was very true. Ivan had always been the first to calm down any fame that might go to their heads after the Captain Hardrock incident and their performance. Well, after Luka that is. Juleka's brother was basically a saint when it came to being cool, calm, and collected.

"We chose poppies for Alix," Vallia explained the red flowers in front of the skater. "The traits that they represent are those that are creative and bold."

That was definitely Alix to a "T." Her art was a mix of both since she did spraypaint street art. And her natural athletic abilities did make her do some pretty bold things.

"Max and Kim, I thought, were the easiest to match," Lyon said. "Max has the aster flower, which represents those that are smart and devoted. Kim has hydrangeas, for those that are athletic and team players."

The class was starting to see just how much the two had worked on their "project."

"I, personally, liked to say that I enjoyed finding flowers for Rose and Juleka," Vallia smiled. "Mostly because I am holding one of their names."

That got a giggle out of the pink-dressed blond and an eye roll from Lyon.

"Get on with it, Vallia," Lyon says. "We still have actual classes to attend, sister."

The class had to hide groans, especially since Bustier was in the room and they did not want to insult her by accident.

"Fine," Vallia sighed. "I thought that tulips matched Rose because they are for the bright and cheerful. Juleka's are also my personal favorite flower, the lily. They are for ones that are quiet but also inspirational to others."

Juleka tried to hide her face in her hands, knowing that she was blushing. Rose was over the moon, for herself and her best friend. If there was any flower that was spot on for anyone in the class, it would be the one that Rose got.

"Nathaniel and Adrien ended up having the flowers that tie as my favorite," Lyon admitted. "I chose the iris for Nathaniel because it is a flower for daydreamers and the imaginative. Orchids are Adrien's because they represent those that are sophisticated, refined, but have good hearts."

Both mentioned boys blushed. While Adrien did have more friends than Nath, both of them were naturally quiet and not used to such praise. Yes, Adrien is a model, but it be a miracle to hear any sort of praise from his father. And Nath was only just starting to come out of his shell thanks to Marinette.

"Sabrina was a tad bit more difficult to match," Vallia almost did not want to admit. "But when you learn about who she is, she is optimistic and also tends to be a morning person. Those are the traits of the daisy."

Sabrina was shocked, as were most of the class. As usual, Chloe didn't care. She had been sneering at the flowers in front of her since she had sat down. Sabrina was internally jumping up and down in excitement. No one had ever tried to get to know her, especially after she became friends with Chloe.

"Alya is a very modern person while Nino also very much in the tech universe, so they were also a little difficult to translate to our olden tradition," Lyon says. "But we did think that Alya best matched with the daffodil. It represents those that are very social and also love friends and family. Nino's flower is the sunflower, a blossom for the warm and those that tend to be very happy-go-lucky."

Both of those descriptions perfectly matched the two. Alya was probably the most social person in the entire school. She had to be to run Paris's most popular blog.

"I thought that Marinette's was very much telling about who she is," Vallia says, Marinette a little embarrassed. "The calla lily is for hardworking people, but also represents people that can be said to be quite rare as well."

Marinette was now bright red as she hid her face in her arms, Alya patting her back. But you could see the look on the blogger's face that she was enjoying someone telling Marinette how special she was. The girl was too humble for her own good.

"And last, Chloe," Lyon did not look happy about it being his turn to talk when it came time to tell the brat about her flower.

"Saving the best for last," the blond ruined the nice moment the twins had created. "About time you two start giving me the respect I deserve."

That was when Lyon got the most ice-cold look on his face that the class had ever seen. Rose even shivered a little bit, as if she was actually cold from the look he gave the brat.

Adrien remembered seeing him give that look only once more. It was last week when he was at a photoshoot after school. Lyon and Vallia had been in the same park as the shoot and had heard the photographer becoming rather aggressive with him. After a few words about acting like a model should and not a teenage boy, Lyon got in the photographer's face and gave him that very look. He had not said one word, but that look was enough to make the man weak in the knees. He had not spoken to Adrien again the entire shoot and a different photographer was assigned to him soon after that day.

"Alright, here is what your flower says about you," Lyon's voice could freeze the Atlantic. "The gardenia flower represents those that like living in a life of luxury. Those that like the lifestyle of the one percent..."

Chloe seemed to be happy with that, but Lyon almost smugly popped her bubble.

"Basically, it's the flower for spoiled brats that need to get taught the meaning of the word 'no," he finished.

#ml salt #chloe salt #i hate chloe #original character #miraculous fandom #miraculous #miraculous ladybug #class sugar

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recurring-polynya · 4 years ago

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Hi. I recently - just recently- discovered that ikkaku is good with his hands and he build two tiny little wheels for yachirus sword because she kept dragging it on the ground behind her. And I don't know what to do with that information. I am both delighted and wierded out. Like what else can you do that I don't know - other than a bankai that everyone knows you can do - next thing I know someone tells me that he can see and cook as well. Is he the one who fixes things when yachiru or kenpachi breaks them?

Hi, yes, this is actually one of my favorite fun facts about Ikkaku! It’s so... humanizing. Like, you have this guy, and his big thing is fighting and all he talks about is fighting he shouts all the time, but, like, obviously, you can’t fight all the time, he’s gotta do something in his spare time.

For starters, it is excellent worldbuilding that the shinigami from the poorer part of the Rukon would all have some basic skill at repairing things, because a) they grew up without a lot of stuff and b) stuff in the deep Rukon is shit and breaks constantly, because if it were any good, it would get sold up-district for a higher price. That’s actually the driving force of my Rukongai headcanon-- that people with skills, that natural resources, that anything that’s any good flows upstream, leaving the outer rings in an inescapable poverty trap, plus there’s an insidious narrative that people on the outskirts must be trash, by tautology, because if they were any good, they would have been sorted into a higher district, or their skills would have been recognized and they would be able to move up, even though, in practice, this is nearly impossible.

Back to Ikkaku! Another thing that’s interesting about this is that many of the other shinigami have hobbies like poetry or tea ceremony that are sort of... highbrow. Hitsugaya actually makes elaborate sculptures out of ice and has a column about it in the Bulletin, and I really like the idea of Ikkaku, in comparison, just super-gluing things back together or shaving down a sliding door that swells in the wintertime. (The Bleach Bootleg also lists at least three different people’s hobby/special skill as napping and I really respect that)

Let’s be real: Yachiru has to break shit, just constantly. I imagine that Ikkaku and Yumichika are just suckers for her (in the sense that Yumichika can’t stand her screaming and Ikkaku can’t stand Yumichika’s complaining about her screaming), so Ikkaku gets in the habit of fixing the things she breaks. Does the Seireitei have hardware stores? God, Ikkaku is definitely a hardware store guy, like my dad, where he just likes to go down there on a Saturday and wander through the screw aisle, contemplating thread gauges. Seireitei hardware stores have all kinds of nice stuff compared to the Rukon, where you just fixed stuff with tree sap and braided grass or whatever you could find. Ikkaku probably acquires a bunch of clamps and various adhesives. To be honest, I think a lot of people in Squad 11 break things, and it gets around that Ikkaku is the guy to talk to when you’ve cracked your scabbard. He will repair holes punched in walls or windows that people have been thrown through, but he’ll make the perpetrator help.

I don’t think Ikkaku’s a particularly creative guy, but I can see, at some point, he gets the itch to make something, and comes out with those wheels for Yachiru’s sword or some specially articulated dummy that explodes when you hit it just right. He would practice for, like, a year, and throw out a bunch of attempts and finally go to talk to Hitsugaya about joining techniques, and it turns out that Hitsugaya is actually really down-to-earth about constructing things and loves to talk shop. Then, for his birthday, Ikkaku presents Yumichika with a little box with special compartments for eyelash feathers and eyelash glue and eyeliner, and it has an inlaid peacock on the lid. Yumichika gets very misty and has to excuse himself to the restroom before he ruins his mascara.

In the anime episode right at the end of the Soul Society Arc, Renji is whittling while he’s hanging around the Coordinated Relief Station to keep Byakuya company, and I absolutely headcanon that Ikkaku taught him how. I can see Ikkaku roping Renji into some of his bigger projects. Renji is really good for holding things still while Ikkaku hits them with a hammer, absolutely not a job for the faint of heart. Ikkaku and Renji would absolutely build Yachiru a soap box derby car and then ride it down a hill themselves.

* The English translation of the Bleach Bootleg that I own claims that Ikkaku’s hobby is haiku, but my understanding is that this is a translation error. This did not stop me from making jokes that it was probably erotic haiku.

#ikkaku madarame #squad 11 #this is one of my all-time favorite Shinigami Facts #if i am ever reading some kind of modern au and ikkaku is *working on a car* i absolutely go apeshit

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bitsandbobsandstuff · 5 years ago

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Black lace and property damage

Summary: With your messy work hours, Bucky’s consistently inconsistent mission schedule, and those basic life tasks you’re both ignoring (when was the last time he actually bought a new toothbrush?), the simple act of just being together has been shunted to the side. Bucky’s officially starting to panic.

Characters: Bucky x Reader Warnings: SMUT, 18+. Sweet sex, awkward sex, some dirty sex, some sex on a car. Basically sex. Swearing. Bucky wearing a white t-shirt and dog tags. My sketchy automotive knowledge.

A/N: This story is sort of an ode to anyone struggling to make time for your person. Life gets busy, so don’t be afraid to get creative. Also sometimes sex goes smooth and perfect, but often it comes with mishaps and giggles. Both ways are great, Bucky says just roll with it!

Want to find all my stories? Search #bitsmasterlist or try the link in my bio!

*****

The porch light above the front door is out.

Was he supposed to change that before he left?

“I’m not touching it Bucky, there are spiders up there. Big ones. The kind that give you rabies.”

“Spiders don’t have rabies.”

“No one’s ever proven that.”

Dammit. Yeah, he was.

Picturing you stumbling up the porch, using the pathetic flashlight on your phone to light the way, Bucky feels like a world class, Grade A jackass. He needs to make it up to you.

Good thing he has plenty of ideas for that.

“Please be home,” he mutters, “please be home, please dear god be fucking home.”

Fingers crossed, he kicks the door open and calls out a hopeful hello.

An empty echo returns.

Bucky blows out a frustrated breath.

Figures.

Slogging down the dark hallway, he slings his bag on the kitchen table with a thud. Grenade pins, bullet casings, fun size candy bar wrappers, and handfuls of beer bottle caps rattle loose in the army green canvas and he grimaces.

One of these days, maybe, just fucking maybe, he’ll convince Natasha to stop using his bags as her garbage bin.

Ignoring that disaster zone (a problem for future Bucky), he wanders over to the sink, where he spies a small tableau on the counter. Propped up beside his favorite coffee mug, the one with sparkly pink letters proclaiming “Bitch, I’m Fabulous”, is a folded piece of paper, his name scrawled across the front.

He flips it open.

“Hey Bucky Bear. Don’t let your sexy ass fall asleep before I get home, I have a surprise!”

Drawn under your bubbly letters, he finds two stick figures entangled in an outrageously lewd sex act. Tracing tender fingers over the very obviously male stick figure (you never were very subtle), he grins so hard his cheeks ache. Leaning on the counter, he sniffs the letter because he’s a sentimental sap and it smells like your Cherry-Almond lotion, and drops his head in his arms.

“So tired,” he whines softly, voice muffled against sleek granite.

Three weeks. That was the last mission. Three weeks, even though Steve guaranteed Bucky three days max. Of course, two days into the mission Bucky remembered that Steve Rogers is an accomplished liar, so instead he spent three exhausting weeks dodging bullets, rewashing all his underwear, and hysterically rationing his bag of fun size candy bars.

Finally home, he wants to forget everything and sink into the post-mission domesticity he dreams about when he’s stuck in some dank motel on the corner of Fuck This and No One Cares. The routine is simple. A scalding hot shower, burrito wrapping himself in the feather duvet, making out with you for a few hours, taking a break to eat some pizza, and then fucking you so hard he breaks the brand new headboard he made for you last month (actually the third headboard he’s made...a fact he smugly reports to anyone and everyone).

And after all that fun, he wants to sleep. Maybe two full days. Or five. Tops.

Is that asking too much?

“No,” he sighs out loud. “It’s not.”

Carefully folding the cartoon and your sweet message, he kisses the paper and tucks it in his back pocket.

No way he’s falling asleep before he sees you. Nope. Nada. Negative. Totally not happening.

Pepping himself up, he goes to work, whizzing through his homecoming task list.

Blood-stained tac clothes go in the washer with three cups of bleach. Guns and knives are wiped down and polished. The contents of the dirty green canvas bag are unceremoniously trashed. The spider infested porch light is changed (with only three furry sightings). The shower is set to a blistering temp and he hangs out in there for an hour, soaping his hair into a foamy mohawk, belting out a few showtunes with his shampoo bottle microphone.

Scrubbed fresh and clean, he flops on the bed with his Starkpad and opens up Netflix, searching for something to keep him awake. Several scrolls later, he finds Brooklyn 99 and settles in for a laugh.

Confident in his ability to resist the appealing pull of sleep scratching at his brain, he takes a slurp of the Super Double Big Gulp sized coffee on his nightstand and stretches his eyes wide open.

Staying awake. Piece of cake.

Ten minutes later, Bucky’s fast asleep.

*****

When his eyes pop open, the room is dark. He feels tipsy, sleep drunk on his first uninterrupted hours of rest in weeks.

Beside him, he feels the cozy pressure of another body. Glancing down, he finds you curled under the sheets at his side, your face smushed against his arm, steady breaths fogging the gleaming metal.

Asleep.

Bucky grits his teeth. Squeezes his eyes shut. One thing. You asked him to do one thing.

God. Dammit.

Furious with his lame old man ass, he almost wakes you up. Almost. But then he swallows that desire and thinks.

Before he got married, Bucky read every relationship advice book under the sun. He gets the importance of keeping the romance alive. He knows you need to cherish your person, make them a priority, shower them with love. He knows. He gets it. He watches Oprah, for fuck’s sake. Relationships take work.

But lately? This is life.

With your messy work hours, Bucky’s consistently inconsistent mission schedule, and those basic life tasks you’re both ignoring (when was the last time he actually bought a new toothbrush?), the simple act of just being together has been shunted to the side.

Bucky’s officially starting to panic.

Although, he muses, eyes lingering on the innocent curve of your mouth, the chaos has forced both of you to get more…creative.

He grins.

It was you who instigated it the first time. He was lying in a dingy motel bed when you nervously offered.

“Hey, um…do think maybe you’d…like…would you…uh…”

“Spit it out babe.”

“Doyouwannatryphonesex?”

An anxious slur so fast, he nearly misses the question. He remembers that beat of hesitation, before you dove in headfirst, telling him in obscenely explicit detail exactly what you wanted to do to him. He was so shocked he dropped the phone and had to naked crawl under the grimy mattress to fish it out.

He must’ve jerked off five times that night. Replaying your filthy words. Remembering the quiet whimpers as you came on your fingers, gasping out his name. What a treat.

Sexting soon followed, accompanied by a plethora of nudes. None from you of course, because as you always remind him, you’re a lady, but Bucky? He gets irrational joy from sending them. They come in a variety of close-ups and poses, several which Sam accidentally discovered when he walked in on Bucky prancing around naked, searching for his best angle.

Sam always knocks now.

But sometimes words and pictures aren’t enough. Sometimes you need the soothing weight of someone in your arms. The scent of sweaty skin beneath your nose. Hot breaths of pleasure in your ear and the touch of a cool tongue licking across a heated body.

Sometimes he just needs you.

Could he wake you up? Sure. He knows you wouldn’t mind, you’ve told him a thousand times. But he also knows how tired you’ve been, and he can’t bring himself to shake you awake, selfishly stealing those bits of recovery you need.

So instead, he searches for something to keep him occupied.

He tries reading Game of Thrones again and gets nowhere. Thinks yet again someone needs to get George R.R. Martin an editor.

He flicks on his phone and covertly watches PornHub on mute. Seriously debates whether he can get away with jerking off while you’re sleeping because hey, Bucky Barnes is nothing if not stealthy.

He stares up at the ceiling and tries to see how long he can hold his breath. He gets 2 minutes and 8 seconds (a new record) before giving up.

In the end, he rolls onto his side stares intently at you. Wills you to wake up on your own. Come on baby, please.

But nothing works, and when sleep still doesn’t come, he decides to be productive. Crawling carefully from the bed, he smothers a laugh when you curl instantly into the warm mattress dip of his body, burrowing further under the blankets and unconsciously stealing his pillow. Most mornings Bucky wakes up hanging off the bed, no blankets or pillows to his name, while you’re swathed in comfort, cold toes shoved beneath his belly.

Maybe he should be annoyed. Except every time he looks at you, he forgets how to scowl.

Love is weird.

Rummaging silently through the closet, he unearths a threadbare pair of jeans and an oil stained t-shirt, slips into his worn leather boots. He drops a light kiss on your forehead, brushing a finger down the curve of your neck. Smiles to himself when you snuffle a quiet snore.

And he heads out the backdoor, down the weatherworn brick to the garage out back.

It was an added bonus when he bought the house. An unanticipated domestic perk. Hell, he never thought he’d find someone would actually date him, let alone someone who wanted to marry him and buy a house with him and accept his penchant for hoarding things in a rickety old garage (come on, I grew up in the Depression and I need this, he whines every time you take him to Target).

Thank god you said yes. He’s the luckiest jerk in the world.

Flicking on the garage light, Bucky still gets a little thrill. The entire place is an homage to eclectic, random artifacts, from the box of ugly 1970s vases he found at a flea market, to the fishing equipment he insisted on buying and has yet to use, to the sack of broken seashells you drunkenly collected on your honeymoon in Costa Rica.

In the midst of the swirl sits his pride and joy. Cherry red paint, black leather seats, a tad dusty, full of potential.

The 1969 Camaro looks like a teenage wet dream.

He remembers the day he brought it home, that surge of macho pride when your eyes lit up. After you slapped his ass and told him how sexy the car was, he reveled in your admiration for maybe 10 seconds, before hauling you back to the house and under the sheets. Took several hours before you both came up for air.

That was a good time, he thinks dreamily.

The car attracted his friends as well. Sam and Steve brought over a celebratory case of beer and stood by while Bucky explained the changes he had planned. Steve gave a few sage nods, while Sam helpfully threw out words like fuel injector now and then. Neither had a fucking clue what was happening, but Bucky graciously let them fake it.

Tony also saw the car once. Got a fervent gleam in his eye and started to say the phrase jet fuel, before Bucky ushered him out the door. Tony doesn’t get to see the car anymore.

There are still plenty of fixes to make, but for tonight he takes it easy. Flips on the ancient radio perched above the workbench and flops down on a rolling seat, sliding under the Camaro to tinker around. He goes to work, lets the crackle of the radio and the mechanical puzzle lull him into focus mode.

So intent on the task at hand, he barely hears the garage door opening.

The click of a shoe alerts him too late and he freezes, gripping his wrench tight. Muscles tense, garage floor plans and fight scenarios flooding his brain.

“Bucky? Do you have a sec?”

His breath whooshes in relief at your voice. A silly grin bubbles up because you’re finally awake, until he tilts his head sideways, peering out from under the car to see your feet.

Black high heels.

Stomach sinking, Bucky closes his eyes. Back to work then. Motherfucker. He missed his chance again.

Swallowing down the bitter disappointment, he croaks out a plea.

“Hey babe, do you gotta go back to the office so soon? Can you just - “

Click click and you step between his legs. Firm hands clutch the oil stained fabric at his knees and you pull. The seat rolls easily and he slides free, squinting up at you in the dim light.

The words die on his lips.

Black high heels, yes.

And.

Lacy black underwear, the sides held together with thick satin ribbons. A lacy black bra, your breasts threatening to spill out.

Gorgeous, devilish smile.

Fingering the wide satin bow between your breasts, you tease a light tug and Bucky starts sweating like a virgin on prom night. His wrench slips from numb fingers, thunking him in the nuts and clattering away.

“Shit,” he grunts. There’s a moment of confusion on whether the fresh ache in his balls is from the punch of the wrench, or tantalizing swathes of skin before him, but then you say his name and he figures it out pretty fucking fast.

“Hey Bucky Bear,” you purr, in that raspy voice he loves. “Still want that surprise I promised?”

Palming himself roughly, Bucky adjusts the suddenly tight front of his jeans, eyeing you with a lusty smile. Fuck yes, he wants his surprise. He wants everything about you.

“You bet your sweet ass I do. What’d you have in mind?”

“I have some ideas,” you say playfully. Stepping closer, slipping your fingers into his silky hair, he leans into the touch. “And I promise we’ll get to them. But first, how about you stay down there and maybe show me how much you missed me?”

Torn, Bucky looks down at his oil stained fingers. They spasm, clutching the edge of the seat so tight the metal bends. His voice drops several octaves.

“Babe, I - shit, I’m gonna kill the mood here, but my hands are all dirty, I should wash ‘em first,” he apologizes. Rolling your eyes, you shift closer until the edge of his nose is a mere inch from the delicate lace panties.

“I’m not asking for your hands, soldier. You have a mouth. Get creative.”

Bucky’s jaw drops. Sassy and domineering? And nearly naked?

Hell yes, his dick shouts. Here we fucking go.

Warm and cool, tentative fingertips press into the smooth skin behind your knees, stroking higher until he’s plucking the satin ribbons and pulling. It feels like Christmas morning when the knot slowly breaks apart, whispers of satin and lace floating to the ground.

Nosing against your core, he inhales, long and deep. A low growl rumbles, rough hands gripping your hips tight and heat explodes across your skin when his tongue presses into your folds, licking over your clit.

“God,” your moan is dark, desperately breathless, “keep - that feels so good, Bucky, keep going, please, been way too long.”

Bucky gives a fervent nod of agreement, strands of his dark hair tickling your thighs. When was the last time he did this? Nah, you know what? If he has to ask, it’s been too long.

From now on, the only correct answer should be every damn day.

He feels you moving his head, guiding him exactly where you need him most, and he hums hungrily. Shoves his tongue deeper. He adores when you take charge, using him, his mouth or his fingers or his dick, to get yourself off. He loves it, dreams about it, wishes you would let him film it just one time (because sometimes missions last three weeks not three days Steve).

But until then, he devotes himself to making it perfect because you deserve perfect.

Fast, firm flicks of the tongue. Long, leisurely strokes, licking you slow and sweet. Rough pressure, his plush pink lips sucking tight around your clit. So good.

Your eyes fall closed as his tongue moves faster, quicker, pushing you closer closer closer -

No, that won’t do. Cold metal lightly pinches your ass, a bid for attention. Chest heaving, you open your eyes.

Bright eyed and eager, Bucky gazes up from between your legs, looking thoroughly debauched. White t-shirt stretched tight across broad shoulders, dark hair mussed in your fingers, an obvious erection straining his jeans.

So close, you’re so close, right on the edge, just another second -

He knows, of course. Could always play you like a fiddle. He cocks a challenging eyebrow, sucks your clit between his teeth -

“Oh god, Bucky, fuck,” you moan. Weak knees buckle and his hands clutch your ass, keeping you upright and open. He never stops licking, swirling that talented tongue to draw out the bursts and shocks of pleasure until you’re gasping. When he’s wrung every drop from you, he kisses the sensitive bud and tips his head back with an arrogant smirk.

Legs like jelly, you promptly collapse into his lap.

The momentum of the fall sends the rolling seat flying. Busy being chivalrous and keeping you from tumbling headfirst onto dirty concrete, Bucky lets the wheels send him whizzing backward. His head smacks the door handle with a sharp thwack.

“Ow,” he grunts.

“Sorry,” you pant. Struggling for breath, wrapped in the haze of post orgasm bliss, you cuddle against him, soaking up his warmth. “Want me to rub it?”

Massaging his head, he wrinkles his nose. “Maybe. Depends on what you’re offering to rub.”

“Dealer’s choice,” you sass, and Bucky barks out a laugh. Wandering hands skim lightly over your shoulders, fingering the straps of the lacy bra, feather light trails along your collarbone, to the satin bow between your breaks. Tugging impatiently, he smiles when it unwinds, your breasts spilling free.

“Well, how about I take my pants off, we get in the backseat of this car, and you rub whatever you find.”

“Intriguing. What happens after I finish rubbing whatever…pokes my fancy?”

Bucky dips his head, takes your nipple between his lips, sucking gently. The feel of his wet mouth has you squirming closer until he pauses to offer an option.

“Maybe we fuck like a couple horny teenagers?”

“You’re killing me with the romance here, Barnes,” you say drily and he chuckles. “But I was maybe thinking something different.”

“Yeah? And what’s that?”

Licking a lazy strip between your breasts, he kisses up, up, up, until his tongue finds the hammering pulse of your heartbeat. Bemused, he hears your voice falter, before bravely offering your idea.

“I was thinking maybe I sit on the hood of your pretty red car, and – and you spread my legs and fuck me so good, I can’t walk for a week.”

Startled, Bucky pulls back. Excitement explodes in his chest.

“You - really? Seriously? That’s what you want?”

“Yep,” you confirm, palpable relief at successfully executing the dirty request. “That’s exactly what I want.”

Bucky plants a sloppy kiss on the tip of your nose. Wiggles his eyebrows and winks.

“Well god damn. You got it sweet cheeks.”

Wasting no time, he pushes off the ground and you kick your heels off, wrapping your legs around his waist. He huffs out a blissful moan when you suck a string of hickeys down his neck, grinding against you as he stumbles to the front of the car. Without thinking, he drops you on the shiny red hood and -

“Cold!”

Icy metal meets your bare ass. There’s a panicked scramble back into his arms and he manages to catch you, until your flailing upper cut cracks his jaw. It sends him off balance, tripping forward to smack his kneecaps on the Camaro’s fancy new grill. A grating screech tears the air and the grill rattles to the floor, the metallic clang bouncing off the walls.

Flinching, you peer up at him as it fades away.

Bucky’s nose twitches.

In all his fantasies (and there are many, because you are one sexy piece of ass), this shit never happens. Every sexcapade is effortlessly smooth, sensual and steamy, where you both look great, not a hair out of place, no oil-stained hands or unintended destruction of expensive vintage cars.

In reality, it seems like something always goes sideways. One of his nipples gets gouged by your fingernail or the silk from your negligee gets caught in the plates of his arm, or one of his perfectly aimed thrusts sends you both toppling off the bed. Sometimes he wonders if this is just the two of you? Do other people have perfectly orchestrated sex lives? Is porn not a true mirror of real life?

Is porn a lie?

Maybe he should watch more porn and form a more educated opinion.

For now, he takes in your crestfallen expression, vehemently shaking his head when you try to apologize.

“Buck, I’m sorry, I -“

Holding up a stern hand, he stops you cold. Sets you on your feet, gallantly whipping off his shirt, and spreading it on the shiny red paint. This time when he sets you on the hood, you lay back until the familiar scent of his cologne hugs you close. Bucky lifts your feet, propping each on the hood, spreading your legs open. He leans in close, a pink flush spreading over his chest, crawling up his throat, blue eyes turning dark.

“Listen to me. Don’t ever apologize, okay? You’re worth more than this old junker.” A crooked smile tilts his mouth, his voice as soft as the lips now brushing yours. “You’re priceless. You understand?”

“Okay,” you murmur. Fingers dance lightly up the hard planes of his stomach, wrapping around the chain of his old dog tags. “I understand.”

Bucky nods, watching your eyes drift down, drinking him up. He lives for that look. Sets him on fire, to watch you ogle him. When your eyes skate down his right side, he flexes his forearm a bit, because he knows it turns you on.

A swift tug of the chain and he dips easily, mouth slanting over yours. There’s a faint sound of teeth clacking together, and he stifles a laugh at your excitement. Deep kisses, stoking that simmering fire sitting right below the surface. Your lips part and he slides inside, curling his tongue around yours, pulling away to lick along the corner of your mouth, to suck your bottom lip between his teeth.

The thought appears, same as when he had his mouth between your legs. How long has it been since the two of you just made out like this? Same answer? Too fucking long?

This is definitely happening more often.

He feels your eager fingers reach for the button of his jeans, popping it open, slipping your hand inside. Cool fingers wrap tight around his cock, the other hand wandering down to squeeze a handful of his ass. Bucky hurriedly shimmies his pants to his knees, sets both hands on the car and leans forward, tipping his face down, touching his forehead to yours. Blue eyes flutter closed, breath hitching while he concentrates on the feel of your capable hands, slow strokes along his length, slicker with each tug.

“Fuck, that feels good,” he grits out. “Can you - damn that’s good - can you, there, bit lower -“

Ragged pants melt into a low groan when you slip your hand from the death grip on his ass to cup his balls, rolling them against your palm.

“Like that?”

“Yeah, yeah, yes, fuck yes, just like that,” he hisses, thrusting into your hands. “Can you - can you pull just a little-“

He stammers the question, ignoring your amused hum. It was a quirk, one he discovered early in the relationship. It came out of the blue, a bashful request during a romp in the sheets, but for some reason, Bucky has a thing for having his balls tugged. Not hard (which was also discovered after an unconsciously rough yank had him squealing in pain), but more of a soft squeeze, followed by a slow pull.

Like how you squeeze an overripe banana, he had explained later, gingerly massaging his balls. Not so hard it squishes.

Many entertaining attempts later, and he swears you have the move patented. Stroking his dick faster, your thumb presses over his balls, before a careful pull. Tipping his head back, Bucky stares glass eyed at the ceiling, lost in pleasure, pushing himself into your firm grip.

“Feel good?” you murmur.

“Yeah. Yes, so good, so god damn good ,” he chokes out. Faster, harder, faster - and then a strangled gasp and panicked blue eyes catch yours. “Wait, too good, it’s too good! Don’t wanna come yet, hang on! Need to be inside you first.”

He grabs your wrists, the thwarted sting of a denied orgasm obvious in the grind of his teeth. Both of you look down to where your hands are wrapped around him, one still kneading his balls, the other curled around the velvety hot skin of his cock.

“Okay,” you say, looking him up and down. “Fine, but - you’re so sexy, Bucky. And I love your balls.”

Bucky nods furiously, gulping a deep lungful of air. His ass cheeks are twitching.

“I love that you love them, I really do. But babe, I need you to let go of my balls or I’ll come all over your hand,” he rasps, wiggling away. Releasing him, your hands run up his chest, twining around his neck, dragging his sweat damp chest flush against you.

“If I must,” you agree, smiling into his lips. Bucky relaxes into you, the slow melt of tongues follows, the kind where a kiss bounces around, until it finds the perfect rhythm. His hands trace up the line of your arms, unlocking your fingers and pulling them free. Brushing his thumbs over your wrists, he bends close, kisses your knuckles.

And then he folds your arms above your head, pinning them down.

“Keep them there, alright? Don’t move until I say you can.”

“Kinky. Yes sir,” you breathe. He smirks.

“You’d better watch it, you little deviant. I might get used to that.”

“Sorry…sir.”

Pulling you further down the hood, he rubs his cock between your legs, sliding himself between your folds until a slick sheen coats his skin. It startles a grunt from you when he abruptly shoves inside, sinking deep until his hips press flush to yours.

He waits. Has to wait actually, because its been a long damn time and if he’s not careful he’s going to embarrass himself before he even gets started and holy shit, is this even real life? Is he dreaming?

Splayed out on the hood of his car, legs wide open, breasts wet from his tongue, black lace and crumpled satin ribbons. Arms pinned above the luscious skin bared just for him. Bucky stares between your legs, dry mouthed and dizzy.

“Come on, Bucky, please? Fuck me, please fuck me, I missed you so much.”

How could he ever resist this? You naked, writhing against the vivid red of his Camaro, moaning for him to fuck you, with his cock buried in your -

“Aw fucking hell,” he mutters. After so many weeks apart, he knows full well this won’t last long. It’s a damn good thing he has more than a few rounds in him.

Cracking his neck, rolling his shoulders back, he digs thick fingers into your thighs, pulls back nice and slow. He waits. Waits. Waits a bit longer because he likes to be an asshole and hear you beg.

“Bucky, come on -”

And he plunges into you, burying himself in the tight, silky heat of your cunt. Warm up over, no slow start. The pace he sets is rough, so deep he feels the pleasure licking down his spine and into his toes. Over and over, he slams into you until one particularly sharp thrust presses the tip of his cock against that perfect spot inside and you arch up with a broken cry. Hands scrabble above your heard, searching for anything to hold onto, finding something flexible.

With a plastic snap, the windshield wiper blade breaks off in your hand.

Bucky stutters to a halt, blinking sweat from his eyes when he sees the look of horror on your face. The apology is still forming when he snatches the plastic from your fingers, throwing it aside.

“Don’t care,” he grunts. Giving you no time to argue, he wraps his hands behind your knees and raises your hips, fucking into you faster. The filthy echo of sweat slick skin accompanies his breathless order. “Touch yourself. Let me watch.”

A frantic agreement and one hand slips between your legs, the other cupping your breast. Frantic circles over the swollen bud, trembling fingers plucking at a pebbled nipple. Bucky watches greedily, eyes flickering back and forth, memorizing those things that bring you pleasure, fantastically dirty memories to replay on a rainy day.

“Bucky,” desperate fingers rub your clit faster. “Keep going, please keep - keep doing that, I’m close, I’m so close, I’m -“

Sharp and sweet and unexpected, the orgasm crashes into you. Arching up, the low moan tears free, and Bucky slows, hypnotized by the sight of you shuddering beneath him.

“There you go, that’s it,” he urges hoarsely, before surging forward and capturing your lips in a wild kiss. Two more pumps of his hips and he stops, grinding against you until he comes with a heavy groan.

Silence fills the room, broken only with the sounds of harsh breaths and the wet rush of his heartbeat thumping in his ears. He rests his forehead between your breasts, listening to the staccato beat of your quick breaths, until you struggle up onto your elbows, pushing his sweaty hair away from his face.

“So I broke your car.”

He says nothing, but a moment later his shoulders begin to shake and suddenly he’s laughing, great rushing wheezes as he struggles for breath. Raising his head, he finds you nervously squinting down at him. He stretches up, presses a kiss to your forehead.

“I got insurance. Just need to check my coverage for mildly destructive ‘I missed you’ sex.”

“You might consider expanding that policy. I’m just saying,” you suggest with a giggle and he snorts.

Quiet contentment blankets the stuffy garage, both of you basking in that tingly afterglow. Folding your hands behind his neck, you draw him close and Bucky nuzzles into the crook of your neck.

“Been tough lately,” he whispers, mouthing gently along your throat. “Trying to find time together.”

Nodding slowly, your smile turns wistful.

“Yeah…guess it makes any time we get even better. Right? It doesn’t matter to me what we do, as long as we’re doing it together.”

Bucky feels a lump in his throat (the kind that could easily dissolve into manly super soldier tears), and he gathers you in his arms, tucking you against his chest. When he answers, his voice cracks just a bit.

“Someone’s a sentimental sap.”

He hears your muffled laugh against his chest, feels you bite at his collarbone and he chuckles.

“I love you Bucky. And I’m really sorry I murdered your car.”

“I love you too, babe. I’m glad you came down here. Especially in that outfit.”

“Yeah? You liked it?”

“Fuck yes I did. What spurred that idea, hmm?”

“I just don’t want to lose our spark,” you admit, snuggling closer. “When things get so busy, it’s easy to let things like this slide, and I don’t want you to - get bored, I guess. With us.”

Bucky thinks about all his relationship advice articles and the fact that he sometimes even prints them out and goes through with a yellow highlighter to capture the key points. Hearing your soft concern makes him fall even more in love with you.

Because this is important. This relationship, this love, this spark he was lucky enough to find with you, it’s the most important thing in his world. You are the most important thing in his world.

Brushing a knuckle down your cheek, he coaxes your chin up.

“I know it’s tough, always being on different schedules, but I want you to know, I’m always gonna love you and I’m always gonna want you. Nothing changes that. And if you ever doubt just how much I genuinely want to bang you all night long, then you say something. Deal?”

He boops your nose and you grin.

“Deal.”

“And honey, not that I’m complaining, trust me, but you don’t need to dress sexy to get me all reved up,” he shrugs. “You do that just by looking at me.”

“You do know how to charm the pants off a lady, Barnes.”

He throws his head back and laughs. Swings you up in his arms and calms your startled yelp with a kiss.

“Damn straight. Now how about we give that backseat a try. I think you mentioned wanting to rub something back there?”

*****

#bucky x reader #bucky barnes x reader #bucky fic #bucky barnes fic #bucky barnes #bitsmasterlist

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muertawrites · 4 years ago

Note

LOVE your writing now i know it's not on the prompt list but (at any point) could we get a sokka x reader having to do w him making her a BETROTHAL NECKLACE

Never Wear White (Sokka x Reader)

Word Count: 1,100

Author’s Note: Okay so like, I know I’m supposedly focusing on other things right now but this week has been difficult for me as far as finding my motivation to do anything but lay in bed and it’s one in the morning and I all of a sudden got emotional so I figured I would use the tiny little spark of creativity I have while I still have it. Now I, personally, have some very strong ideas about marriage, namely that I don’t want to ever do it, due equally in part to the fact that it seems like a lot of stress and hassle and financial strain that I don’t want to put myself or my loved ones through and also that I’ve been emotionally destroyed by most of the people I’ve loved so that kind of commitment just doesn’t seem like it’s in the cards for me. Inspired by the song Never Worn White by Katy Perry because I’m all hurt inside and writing and music are how I attempt to heal myself.

I’m also posting this without editing so... sorry. (Also I think the ending is extremely cheesy and it’s the kind of sap I typically hate in fiction but whatever)

~ Muerta

Sokka meets you under the gazebo where he took you on your first date. It’s been eight years since then; eight years since he kissed you out of the blue, since you clutched his hand tightly within yours before darting down the hill back to the center of the village, scared of what you felt for him. Eight years since he showed up on your front porch asking for forgiveness, knowing you were terrified, and knowing he overstepped. Eight years since you took him in your arms and admitted you loved him.

Leaning against one of the gazebo’s pillars, gazing down at the glittering lights of the village below, you feel just as shaken as you had that night. You knew the moment he asked to meet you what he wanted to do, and it made you want to run like hell until you were miles away and your legs could no longer carry you - you’re seriously considering it by the time he approaches.

One look at him, though, and you’re planted in place.

He smiles at you with the same brightness as the day you first met him and you could tell he was clearly smitten with you, his cheeks blushing pinker than the spring blossoms that dotted the trees lining the village’s quaint, ancient streets. His lapizine eyes shimmer in the dimming light of the horizon, reflecting the golden glow of the lanterns hung around the edge of the gazebo’s roof. You note the minute lines that have etched themselves into his face in the near decade you’ve spent with him, the spare strands of silver that sprout in his deep sorrel hair; each make him all the more handsome, his features and presence the most of a home you’ve ever known.

He greets you by curling his arms around your waist and pressing a chaste, tender kiss to your lips, which you return without hesitation. You sit beside him on the gazebo’s single bench, your fingers twined comfortably between his.

“I didn’t think you’d be here,” Sokka admits with a grin.

You smile guiltily, lowering your eyes to his knuckles; the callouses and scars from years of battle and wear.

“I was about to run when you showed up,” you confess.

Sokka chuckles, giving your palm a gentle squeeze. You can tell by the way his brows crease in the middle, dipping at their ends, that he’s just as nervous as you are. His skin is hot and damp against yours; you can’t tell if it’s from his own doubt or yours.

“You know what I want to ask,” he states. Not a question; never a question - his intuition is so in tune to you that he hardly ever has use for them.

You nod, swallowing despite the sand that coats your throat.

“It doesn’t have to be anything big,” Sokka assures you. “It can be just us if you want - everyone will understand. I know how you feel about this kind of stuff, and you don’t have to say yes right away, or ever, even. I just… I love you. I love you more than I’ve loved anyone else and… I’ve never been so sure of anyone else, either.”

Then he does exactly what you hoped he never would - he drops down in front of you, one knee bent into the wood floor below, and removes a slim, ivory box from his pocket. You don’t have to remove the lid to know its contents, but you do anyway.

An intricate moonstone charm stares up at you, laced through a ribbon of blue suede. You’re thankful that, given his questionable artistic talents, Sokka chose a beveled pattern instead of an image; it’s the curl of a wave crashing against the cliff of a coastline, the meeting of earth and water. You run your fingers over the crags of the cliff’s rocky surface, how they smooth and soften where the waves caress them; you bite your lip, sniffing as you fight the tears that refuse to stay behind your eyelids.

“Do you like it?” Sokka asks in a whisper.

You nod, unable to speak.

His hands cradle yours as you raise the betrothal necklace from its divot in its case, holding it delicately to your neck so he can fasten it in place. It fits exactly like it’s meant to.

Your arms quiver as you find them falling around Sokka’s chest, clinging to the fabric at his back as you pull him in, clutching him tightly to you. He holds you securely, pressing your body to his as his hand cups the back of your head, as if shielding you. He stays like this for either minutes or days, giving you the time and protection you crave.

When you finally pull away, his hand moves to your cheek, wiping away the remnants of your tears; you can’t help but laugh when you notice his shoulder is stained with them.

Neither of you says anything. You know he’s waiting for an answer - any answer - that will solidify your union one way or the other. Once you speak, you’ll never have the conversation again, and you can’t tell if you’re more terrified by the idea of what lies beyond agreement, or what you’ll miss in denial. You take his hands once more, grasping them firmly within yours as if you ground yourself.

And in that one action, you know - your fear is arbitrary. Sokka is your comfort, your safety, your sanctuary against the insecurities instilled in you by ghosts who refuse to be exorcized from your heart. Sokka is the one who reminds you that it still beats.

You nod frantically as your hand flies to your face, swiping at a new current of saltwater that cascades down your cheeks. Sokka’s eyes widen, his grip tightening around your palm.

“Are… are you saying ‘yes’?” he squeaks.

You laugh, still nodding as you become more disheveled, snot now starting to pool above your upper lip.

“Yes,” you tell him, your voice shaking as violently as your limbs. “Yes, I am.”

Sokka leaps to his feet, catching you in his arms as he spins and cheers with delight. Your laughter continues, your arms draping over his shoulders as he twirls, fingers knitting into the hair at the back of his neck. When he sets you back onto your feet, he cups your face in his hands and kisses you, holding you there for as long as he can keep his breath; you kiss him back, savoring the sweetness of his lips as it mixes with the bitter salt of your tears.

“I promise,” Sokka breathes once he pulls away. “I promise, I’ll prove that I’m worth it.”

You smile wistfully, shaking your head as you brush a wisp of hair that’s come loose from his top knot out of his face.

“Sokka,” you murmur, “you already have.”

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sariahsue · 5 years ago

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Lost Things Always Turn Up

Many, many years ago, I took a poll about what story to write. @galahadwilder, you voted for one of my favorite choices. “Person A buys then loses an engagement ring, only to have Person B find it, start asking questions, and then finally propose.” I loved it and wanted to write it even though it didn’t win the vote, and it’s your birthday so... HAPPY BIRTHDAY!

***

Adrien checked his dresser drawers for a third time, flung the blankets off his bed, then raced back into the kitchen. Maybe he'd gotten distracted and left it in the fridge? When that turned up nothing, he dove into the living room, burying his head in the couch.

How could he have LOST the ring?! He'd waited too long to ask her, and now he'd LOST IT! When he surfaced, empty-handed, he had to admit that he was in trouble. The apartment was a disaster, his engagement ring was missing (though he still had no idea how to propose anyway), and Marinette would be there any minute.

She would know something was wrong and question him. Coats were draped across the kitchen counter. His blankets spilled out his bedroom door. Books were piled next to the bookcase because he'd had the crazy idea that maybe the box had slipped to the back of a shelf on its own. A disaster. Just like him.

Marinette burst through the door. "I finally made that design work," she crowed. "Haha! I told you I could do it."

"I never said you couldn't," Adrien murmured, still slightly awestruck by her presence even after so many years together. The way her eyes lit up with delight and how she skipped into the room momentarily stunned him. She was just too good.

Of course, it wasn't until Marinette cast a curious look over him that he realized he was still holding a couch cushion in one hand and staring at her like a sap. He tossed the cushion aside and stuffed his fists into his pockets, like maybe she hadn't seen that.

"Did you lose someth-"

"No." So much for that idea.

She took a step closer, dropping her purse on top of his coat as she went. "Can I help you look-"

"NO." He pushed his hands deeper into his pockets. Nothing was wrong. She didn't suspect a thing.

"O-o-okay," Marinette said. "I'm glad you haven't picked up my habit of losing things. It'd be fine if you had though, since I've gotten pretty good at finding things too. Lots of practice."

"Good to know. Uh. Hungry?"

Everything is fine, Adrien told himself as he escaped to the fridge. The ring would turn up in a few days. It wasn't like he'd been planning on popping the question today anyway. His proposal had to be perfect, and he still had zero ideas for what he should do or say. Lost things always turned up when the time was right.

Right?

Adrien pulled ingredients out of the fridge while Marinette started to get to work on the room, picking up the evidence of his search.

"Now I'm really curious about what you lost," she said, shuffling papers back into one neat pile before getting attacking the counter, which was littered with stuff. "You obviously have been looking hard."

"Have not."

"And you're still denying. Curiouser and curiouser. I might have to put my detective skills to the test."

Adrien stuck his head back into the fridge to hide his blushing. She was going to figure it out if she kept thinking about it. What could he do to distract her?

He waited until her footsteps shuffled back into the hallway and the coat closet creaked open before he thought it was safe enough to emerge.

"Hey, Kitten?"

"What?" he called, walking toward the towers of books in front of the bookcase.

"This thing you didn't lose... was it small?"

Adrien's stopped dead even as nervous energy pooled in his feet, telling him it was probably a good time to run away. "Uhhhh... maybe," he said. "Why?" She couldn't have found it, could she?

"Was it pretty?"

Oh, no. "Not as pretty as you."

Marinette practically floated around the corner and into view. Her fingers were clutched around a very familiar red velvet box, barely too big to sit in the palm of her hand. No way, no way, this was not happening. Adrien wanted to close his eyes and block it all out, but he couldn't stop staring at the box.

"Was it supposed to be accompanied by some sort of speech that included a lot of cat puns?"

"Uh," Adrien said. "No?"

Marinette just smile at him, then pitched her voice low in a terrible impersonation of him. "My Lady, you are the most meow-velous purr-son I've ever met."

His face burned. "I'm not that bad," he said, putting out his hand. "Give it back."

She only smiled more broadly. And then took a step back, clutching the box to her chest.

"It's not yours yet." He swiped for it, but Marinette danced out of his reach.

"It could be mine right now!" she sang as she dodged around the counter island and then led him back into the living room as he started to chase her. After so many years of being Ladybug, it was easy for Marinette to gracefully jump over furniture and slip away from him, alternately laughing and throwing cheesy one-liners over her shoulder, most of which he'd remembered saying to her at least once, things like, "you're the cat's meow" and "I'd spend all nine lives with you." Sheesh, he really was that bad.

They ended up in the middle of the room, with nothing but the coffee table between them. If he dodged right, she'd go left. He could take the left, but then she would be sure to go right. He was about to risk hopping straight over, when she started in again.

"You're my favorite person."

He didn't remember ever phrasing it like that to her, though it was definitely true.

"You're the best partner and the best companion I could have ever asked for." She stood up straighter, jutting her chin up and putting her free hand over her heart and looking thoroughly pleased with herself for having successfully stolen her own engagement ring from him. "Every moment with you is a joy, even the tough ones. You're so good, and so selfless, and so fun."

Adrien stared at her, quest to recover his lost ring forgotten. The true treasure was standing right in front of him anyway. The corners of his vision started to go watery.

"I will never stop loving you," she said, face illuminated by a huge smile. Then, she surprised him when she reached over the coffee table and, with a flourish, offered the unopened box to him. "So will you please marry me?"

Slowly, Adrien stepped over the table and right up next to her, covering the box with his hand but not taking it out of her. This was too perfect. She was too perfect, and here she was proposing to him! The lady of his dreams! One tear managed to escape and slipped down his cheek.

"Adrien!" Marinette gasped. "I'm so, so sorry. You bought me this beautiful ring and now I'm making fun of you with it, and you probably had this whole plan, and I completely ruined it, and I'm awful. I'm so sorry!"

"Do you want to know why I want to marry you?" he asked, reaching up to cup her face, letting his thumb caress her lips.

"Because you love me even though I make fun of you all the time?" she mumbled.

"I've had this ring for two weeks, and I couldn't figure out what to say or how I should ask you." Keeping his grip over her hand that still held the box, he dropped down on one knee. "You're thoughtful and kind," he said, and noticed her eyes were getting watery, too. "You're brave and creative. And you make everything in my life better. Even proposing."

He finally slipped the box away from her and flipped it open so she could see inside for the first time. She gave a little gasp.

"To answer your question," he said, "yes, I will marry you. Will you marry me, too?"

Marinette's eyes darted between him and the ring for just a moment before she flung her arms around his neck and kissed him.

***

This was inspired by one of @otpprompts‘s posts. Thanks for the idea!

#ml #miraculous #miraculous ladybug #adrinette #adrienette #proposal

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likesomekindofcheese · 5 years ago

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hi, if you haven't already, could you do a pieces reader x the queen boys? if you only want to do one, it's your choice :)

I haven’t done one yet, so here it is! All three with a Pisces! Enjoy!

Deaky...

Deaky is a natural romantic and you are a hopeless romantic so it’s an automatic good match! He loves to write you songs and list all the things he loves about you and leans your head against your shoulder when he’s tired.

You two like to bop along with everything in life. But together and smiling. He is fiercely devoted to you and is always at your side even when things seem scary or uncertain. And you adore his loyalty to you and match it with your overwhelming love of him to the point of near worship.

He feels so lucky to have such a sweet and patient listener. Sometimes, after a long recording day with everyone bickering, he lays down on the couch and you snuggle up to him, play with his hair, and let him rant it out while you give him affirmation of his experience and tell him everything will be okay. So then he just cuddles you for a while and sometimes you both fall asleep on that couch talking about everything and nothing

Sometimes dates get a little spontaneous, with seeing a new place especially. “I want to go there someday,” you say.

“Y/N…let’s go today.”

“Really?

“If we keep saying we will go there someday, then we will never go there at all!”

So you wind up going to whatever thing or place.

Though you both enjoy laughing and giggling like two little kids. You both take off your “adult” masks sometimes and let loose. There was one time you even took to splashing in puddles in the rain and accidentally got him. But he just laughed and grinned warmly.

You love to be escapist sometimes. And your imagination takes you. Sometimes you tell Deaky little stories before bed about him being some noble knight and you being a sort of mage and what sort of adventures you both go on. He enjoys it and always asks if he ever gets the courage to slay some monster. You always make sure he does. It’s like a story before bedtime, but he feels free to do so. In return, he shows you his Flash Gordon comics and his nerdery over them. It’s that level of childlike fun and comfort with you two.

Now for Roger...

You both have big hearts. Roger always keeps up with the news. He reads the papers every day and keeps up with it on television. But if it’s too disturbing, you have the freedom to ask him to stop. He will click it off and lovingly touch your shoulder and say “I’m sorry love, I hope you’re alright. You’ll be safe.”

You both have a flair for the artistic. At one point, Roger teaches you to play the drums with you on his lap. He shows you all the tricks and the way it can alter a song, albeit subtly, but present. It’s fun to play with and sometimes he has to pry you off his set!

But you both see the best in each other. When you feel more insecure, Roger will tell you about your creativity, your kind heart, your passion, and how loving you are, and how much he loves you. “Being a looker helps too” he adds with a slight laugh.

Roger and you also have a lot of curiosity regarding each other. Sometimes late at night, you will ask all sorts of silly questions to each other like “what cereal did you eat as a kid?” or “which month of the year’s the best for you?”

Sometimes you listen to Roger as he drafts lyrics and covers for all of his songs and projects. When he feels odd, uncertain, or like his own skills are crap, you are right there to assure him and hype him up. He also does the same for you for all of your own projects and ideas, for fun and professional. He adores how you affirm and lift him up, it gives him confidence. It a side of himself he doesn’t show often, so it makes you pretty special!

Although you are both very different. Sometimes at parties, Freddie will say something like “how in all the bloody hell did you two even end up together?” after a drink. But you two will look at each other and laugh. You balance his fire and he gives you strength and energy. Roger is the sun and you are the moon.

The way you communicate, though awkward at first because you hate confrontation, you can see right into Roger’s soul and you can tell whatever is really going on through him and hug him. Roger learns to think before he speaks. You both make a loving, romantic, and very soft pair.

Lastly Brian...

At first, you two were just pining away. There would be loving looks and glances and little talk, but nothing much. Until finally, Brian walked up to you and asked you out and you nodded eagerly, nearly squealing, and said yes!

You are both sensitive and imaginative. On your first date, Brian took you to this beautiful painting gallery that was going to be in London. There was one piece that was so lovely you both stared at it for a full five minutes. You even noticed a slight tear on him and wiped it off, and he kissed your hand as thanks.

Brian is very loving as a boyfriend. He nurses you with soup and blankets when you are sick. He holds your umbrella when it rains. He gives you a safe haven with him to be who you are and do whatever you would like and speak as you wish.

You both are very go with the flow kind of people. One evening you were looking at the options of what you would make together for dinner and you said that they both looked good. When you asked Brian what he thought he said he would be happy with either option! So you just closed your eyes and pointed at one recipe and picked it.

Brian is SUCH a sap around you. He calls you all sorts of nicknames like “honey”, “my lady/my man/my dearest one,” “my bird”, “my pearl,” and so on. It makes you melt just to hear it. You turn really red and smile really big and mutter a small thanks and kiss his cheek.

You love looking through the photos he has taken over a while and reminisce. You laugh over the time Freddie tried an acrobatic trick over a hotel pole in a closet. You admire a beautiful costume Brian wore that made him look like he had large white wings. And you share memories of your own experience with him as well. You both grow closer.

You both have artistic natures. You love listening to him strum on his more acoustic guitars when you both need peace and quiet while drawing or writing or reading or crafting or whatever you enjoy doing. These are sweet moments because you don’t need to touch or talk, just each other’s presence is enough.

Taglist: @queenlover05

#queen zodiac series #carrie writes #brian may x reader #roger taylor x reader #john deacon x reader #queen fanficiton #queen hcs #brian may fluff #roger taylor fluff #john deacon fluff #brian may x you #roger taylor x you #john deacon x you #brian may x y/n #roger taylor x y/n #john deacond x y/n

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lizzieraindrops · 4 years ago

Text

Your chance to make the sun rise thrice (Chapter 3)

that a garden will grow (11,143 words)

"There are no happy endings, because nothing ends." - The Last Unicorn, Peter S. Beagle That does not mean that there is no joy.

Veera is alive.

Also on AO3 | Playlist soundtrack | Aesthetic sideblog

Happy autumn equinox, everyone.

When I started this story as a oneshot back in 2016, I had no idea that it would turn into a series spanning four years of new life for these characters, much less that it would end up taking me nearly the same amount of time to write it.

I wrote the first part during the darkest yet time of my life as an abstract fantasy of being in a better place. I finish writing it today from a better place, physically, mentally, emotionally, and even spiritually. If I've learned anything from this, it's that your own creativity saves you and is powerful enough to call the better things that seem so impossible into existence.

This is my tribute to Veera as a character and everyone like her and anyone who has identified with her. She changed my life. Even with all OB's many, many flaws (dear god there are SO many), without the explicit representation of Veera's neurodivergence in the Helsinki comics, I don't know how I would have figured out that I'm autistic. That has been both the biggest hurdle and the greatest blessing in the trajectory of my healing. Since it's been so central to this story and its writing, I've included a link to some resources for autism spectrum self-diagnosis.

Part 1: Herbs on the windowsill

Part 2: Someday colors

Part 3: Your chance to make the sun rise thrice | Chapter 1 | Chapter 2 | Chapter 3

***

Veera wakes gently, early, unexpectedly so. As she sits up, her weighted blanket slips off and crumples around her waist like a shed skin. Bands of muted morning coming through the blinds slide over her as she rises from the plane of the bed. The summer sun has still risen first, of course. True dark never falls here in the summer, at this high a latitude. But right now, its light is softened and diffused by a thin veil of cloud over the city. Listening, the others aren’t up and moving yet.

Slight shifting of her relaxed limbs makes the softness of the sheets into an extravagance. She’s in a rare, delicately balanced state, one where her senses have sharpened just enough to turn ordinary sensations exquisite without overwhelming her. She’ll have to spend some time listening to music – and with Niki and Beth. That was the plan anyway. But the others aren’t up yet.

Today, there’s a restlessness in her. Most days, she gets up slow, simply waiting until her body is ready to go about the day. Yet a quiet kind of discomfort has made a home in her core, nudging her to get moving. The feel of it is neither full nor hollow, not exactly painful yet nothing like comfort. It’s just there, a subdued directionless yearning.

But her mind needs to go at its own pace waking up. Inertia drags at her when she tries to move too fast or cut corners in her daily ritual. Subtle distress quickly follows that inertia if she tries to press the issue. It shows in the incrementally increasing fine tension of her muscles, slowly winding her up like clockwork. So she sits with the feeling. Motionless except for her breath in the middle of her bed, she thinks.

Light. Leaves. Home. Hunger. She should eat soon. They’re out of cereal, though. There’s a farmer’s market a few blocks away that should have fresh summer fruit. She could go. She does, sometimes, early in the morning like now, before Niki wakes up, and just wanders around. As long as she keeps it short and doesn’t talk much, she should be able to manage it without giving herself a headache.

Twenty minutes find her feet traversing muted pink granite. Neat rectangular stone cobbles pave the street below her living room window. The rumble of a loud truck passing right by close makes her flinch, but she manages to shake the discomfort out of her neck and shoulders easily enough once it’s gone. Other than that, the streets are unusually peaceful. Most people like get out of the city this close to midsummer.

She steps lightly over the stone in snugly laced canvas shoes, toes touching down first. There’s some sort of bird hidden in the trees lining the street, singing two repeated notes on a slow loop. A flycatcher, she thinks.

Being in motion somewhat soothes her restlessness as she slips through broad swathes of clouded morning light between the shadows of buildings. The persistent sensation is nothing so strident as the hypervigilance that used to keep her so high strung. But its subtle company has been constant, lately. She can tell she’s internally processing something, but she can’t quite pin it down. Maybe that’s why she’s been waking up so much earlier than normal.

Lately, a strangeness has been gently tugging at the edges of her mind. In part, she knows it’s a growing awareness of how much things have changed since four years ago. It’s happened so gradually. It was nigh invisible until she cast far enough back along the path of her own footsteps to see how far she’s come. She almost died, but she didn’t. She’s no longer in a desperate race to survive. Now, she’s alive. The question of who and what she is now is an unnervingly open one.

These days, she wakes within a body that is soft and scarred. She is both a wounded creature walking this world with strange steps and a thing healing yet already whole. More often than not, she finds her shoulders loose and her chest open, instead of curled tight into a semblance of stone. They can still seize up when her fears circle back around to worry at invisible scars. But it’s not an endless anxious state. It isn’t everything she is anymore.

Likewise, her nightmares don’t spend as many nights haunting her. Weeks pass between them, sometimes. When they do steal back to the surface of her psyche, the quiet fear they stir up saps all her energy and trails lazily through the daylight hours like an oilslick. She spends those days baking something sweet in the apartment’s warmly lit kitchen. Or she takes inventory of the shapes and textures of the leaves that hang suspended in the air of every familiar room.

It helps, even if dreams or memories linger smoldering in the back of her mind the whole time. The sensations and sense of space keep her grounded, both within herself and outside of the fickle fear and pain that flares and fades and keeps returning. Of course, nothing is so immediately comforting as the presence – and, in this searingly ephemeral moment, presences – that remind her she is not alone. But even when they aren’t there, the space itself reminds her that she lives with and in this place she’s chosen to call a home.

The apartment is the first home she can remember that feels the way she suspects one is supposed to. It fits around her, small and enclosed enough to know every inch without uncertainty scratching at the bounds of her awareness. Tucked away up on the third floor, it nests in a quiet old brick building that’s as comfortably worn in as her favorite hoodie. Its wide windows spread big and bright in every room, reminding her to breathe freely. She is no longer a creature caged. Shadows are soft in this place, and the sunlight is as much a part of it as the walls. Its radiant forms lance through glass and smile through aches, never failing to wrap her in warmth.

Leaves unfurl gently in every window. She likes to run the living silken or waxy greenness of purposeful growth between her fingertips. Perhaps their green faces are outnumbered by all the strangely familiar human ones in the photos along the whitewashed walls, marking where friendships have germinated. But then again, perhaps not. It’s a close call, and there’s always more of both growing. They’re still something of a miracle to her, after so long alone.

Low murmurs of outdoor conversation bring her back to the pop-up stalls of the market hovering just ahead. She’s there.

There are somewhat fewer visitors than normal, but the market still appears to be proceeding about business as usual. Early on, this Saturday market tends to be quieter than the Sunday one, not quite as full of people. It's that perfect balance of un-crowded enough that she can keep to her own internal world without interruption, but bustling enough that she doesn't stand out. She's just another woman at the market. Once in a while, gazes will slide over the scars on her cheek, or her upper arm if she’s wearing short sleeves (not her leg or ankle, as she never wears anything except pants). Her skin begins to remember to crawl - but then the eyes keep on sliding past, on to the peppers or the green beans or the fresh cut flowers.

Weaving her way into the dispersed crowd, she heads for the egg stand first, just in case they run out. They often do. With a dozen blue and brown eggs in tow, she roves about until she finds a stand with peaches she can smell from several paces away. Their sweet tang fills the air as she picks them out. She also gets some fresh apricots, brushing her fingertips over their velvety little coats of fuzz. She tucks the stonefruit and eggs safely into the backpack she brought and keeps moving. A yeasty oaf of fresh bread for picnicking later joins them. The rounded tip of the long loaf pokes out the top of the zippered pocket, hovering just behind her ear. She leaves the top of its paper wrapper open so it stays crisp.

Live music rolling out from the street corner captures her, pulling her out of her trajectory mid-stride to swing toward the unadorned sidewalk stage. The resonance of shimmering metal strings and singing wood flows over her and through her, and she simply sways with it, part of it. It sparkles over her skin and hums along her bones, making her flutter her fingers in pleasure, and it’s blissful. After everything she’s been through, the long gauntlet of near misses and fires and nightmare flames, it still seems wrong somehow for things to be this okay, to feel this good.

That’s why, when visceral self-consciousness swoops down on her again without warning, its familiar fear is as much something like relief as it is a thorn in an old wound. Nothing even causes it, really: just a stray passing glance from a stranger that slid over her hands instead of her scars and didn’t even linger. But it makes her remember the oddness of the ways her hands move, when she’s happy, when she’s stressed. It makes her stand out if she doesn’t make the effort to hide them – or if she takes a little too long to think in a conversation – or if she lets on that she can be hurt so easily by the smallest, normally inconsequential things.

In more dangerous times, standing out could have ended very badly for her. The feeling of being hunted might have retreated to the back of her mind, but it has never truly left. In moments like this, she still snaps back into old habits. Her fists clench into stillness, her mind into sharp wariness, her whole self into the ache of immobility except for consciously calculated movements. It’s not quite the old full-body taut-wire tension of terror. Nonetheless, it’s a painful tender twisting inside, pulling things skewed and wrong in her chest.

The thing is, she knows she’s one of the lucky ones. For so many people, the fear never gets to recede at all. Either the danger remains ever-present in the casual cruelties of the world, or their wounds never get the care they need to heal. Not everyone can be set free by toppling a single old castle of corruption into the sea. Veera gets to try to heal, as impossibly hard as it is and always will be. She has support to fall back on now, kind hearts that hear her, arms that will hold her when she hurts. Though they’re rare, she has days where she doesn’t feel like she has to hide at all. It’s so strange. Even before the Helsinki fire, she spent so long becoming acquainted with the wariness of attracting too much attention. She’s still trying to understand who she even is if she’s not hiding.

That’s why she’s doing the work she does with CYGNet. They’re all muddling their way toward healing from their one-off odd brand of hurt, but the support system they’re building could be useful for so much more. In her mind, they’re just the beginning. One day, maybe they can expand to help even more people beyond the Leda project. The Beths with different faces but surviving the same family history. The Nikis with different nightmares but recovering from the same betrayal. The Veeras with different scars who are just as overwhelmed by the everyday world, but deserve just as much of a chance to experience it without having to hide their truth in shame and become someone they’re not.

Well. Maybe one day. For now, one thing at a time. She has to take care of herself and her own healing if she’s going to make any progress down that distant path. Sometimes, the path she’s on right now still seems to stretch so much further ahead than she can fathom.

Eyes closed, Veera takes a breath into her tense stillness. To her own fragile heart, she whispers, It’s okay, it’s okay, it’s okay. She breathes; it passes.

Giving herself a few minutes more to listen to the music, she waits until the grip of physical memory lessens. The sound is still lovely, even if she can’t quite fall back into the two-piece symphony the way she did mere moments ago. She calms further as she carries herself onward again down the tent-lined street. Under the surface, though, in the same hollow where her restlessness lives, her heart remains sore where something still won’t settle into place.

Fortunately, there are other good things at the market that help soothe the ache. Even for someone like her who needs to limit her exposure to overstimulation and crowds, they make it worth braving all the bustle now and again.

A small smile tugs at the corner of her mouth at the sight of a profusion of green fronds leaning out from beneath the awning of the stand up ahead. It's bursting with foliage in more shades of green than she knew existed, and chock full of rows of those knobbly little succulents she loves so much. The vendor is a quiet man with a ponytail and a kind face. He merely smiles at her whenever she comes by. He’s one of those strangers who are friends by the shared appreciation of silence. Sometimes words get in the way.

He nods at her in recognition as she ducks into the stand to avoid a loud group of shoppers. Though there are people in there, something about the vendor and the greenery keeps things calm. The tiny forest is an island in the flow of people. It’s nearly on the opposite end of the market from where she started, and it always provides a brief respite where she can recover a little before heading back. Besides, she likes to look over the lacy ferns and trailing philodendrons and all the tiny succulents in every color of the rainbow, even if she already has too many.

She still leaves most of the houseplants to Niki to look after. But to her own surprise, she’s quite good at taking care of the succulents. For the most part, she leaves them somewhere sunny and ignores them. They love it. Sometimes they even treat her to little shiny-papery flowers in brilliant pink or yellow.

Ranks of mini succulents line one of stall’s tables. She’s barely skimming her fingers over the surfaces of a row of flat, stone-like lithops when she sees it. One of the tiny pots is filled with what appear to be little green spheres like peas. Looking closer, they’re round, succulent leaves attached to thin trailing stems. Sprouting from the end of one string of them is a long, spindly stem curving up to a closed flower bud that bobs in the breeze. She’s never seen anything like it.

The man running the stand notices her looking at it. Veera points at the plant and tilts her head in a question. He smiles and extracts a sheet of paper for her from a messy pile half tucked under the cash box. Its a care sheet for Senecio rowleyanus, or string of pearls.

Veera did promise Niki she’d stop bringing home so many succulents. But the plant man’s pressing the little pot of pearls into her hands, waving her wide eyes away with a smile when she reaches for her wallet. This one will have to be an exception. Her small smile and wave of thanks receive another nod in acknowledgement and farewell. Cupping the pot in both hands, she ventures back into the mid-morning river of people to take herself home.

On the way back down the street, the plant cradled against her chest draws smiles from the crowd. They often transfer to her as well. Something about the green thing in her arms softens people’s expressions, even when they see her scars. It makes it easier to walk softly, and to carry her dull ache of residual fear just as gently.

As if struck, she stumbles when she remembers that today, she gets to go home to her two best friends in the entire world. The ache that knowledge calls forth is just as arresting as the kind that comes with the clinging oilslick fear, yet different. This is far stronger and far sweeter, its truth a soft clarity. Veera clutches her plant close to her chest with one hand as she catches her balance on a fruit-covered table with the other. A handful of little oranges roll off as she bumps into it.

Stammering apologies, Veera scrambles to gather up the fallen fruit. A nearby woman browsing the citrus in a purple sweater kneels down to help her. Veera wasn’t planning on buying mandarins, but she can hardly knock them all over the ground and run off. She hopes she has enough cash left. Straightening up, she looks for somewhere to sit the fruit down so she can check her wallet.

But the woman in the sweater holds her hands out for them. She’s already put the ones she picked up in a canvas bag.

“I’ll take them,” she says. “I was gonna buy some anyway.” Her sweater is a few shades bluer than the warm purple of Veera’s own hoodie.

Veera blinks at her. “Are – are you sure?” She holds out one of the mandarins, showing its dented skin, fragrant with released citrus oils.

The woman gives her a small smile. “Yeah. I’ll eat that one first.”

“Oh. Um. Okay.” Veera delicately hands three more mandarins over. “Thank you.”

“You’re welcome. Don’t worry about it.” The woman’s voice is like her smile: small but kind.

Veera whispers her thanks again, then hurries home before she can be waylaid by any more painfully kind gestures from strangers.

***

Veera’s so relieved to walk through her own door into the kitchen that she doesn’t realize someone’s in the living room, not until she hears a soft sob. Her head snaps up. Niki’s on the couch with her face in her hands and Beth next to her with an arm around her. Alarmed, Veera drops her bag on the kitchen counter and begins to make a beeline for her. But she hesitates. She’s used to offering Niki comfort whenever she can, but is she interrupting?

Too late. Beth makes a small sound of surprise when she notices Veera hovering halfway into the room. Niki looks up too, but she wipes her eyes and gives Veera a watery smile. It’s okay.

Niki holds a hand out as Veera makes her way over to the couch. Gladly, Veera takes it. As Veera stands there before the scruffy secondhand sofa in the hazy light from the window, the three of them are briefly an interlinked chain. Beth watches the other two with soft, understanding eyes, her arm steady over Niki’s shoulders.

Niki heaves a shaky sigh. Then she gives Beth’s knee a thankful squeeze and uses Veera’s hand to lever herself up to standing. She briefly embraces Veera, who returns the gesture. “I’m okay,” Niki whispers. Veera nods. Then Niki slips away into the kitchen and starts bustling around, half-seen behind the half-wall that divides it into an alcove off the main room. Presumably, she’s taking a moment to collect herself while unpacking Veera’s groceries. She does that. Niki doesn’t mind if Veera sees her cry – or Beth, apparently. But she always takes a moment alone afterward to put herself back together.

Veera shakes her head to clear away the traces of her second unexpected fright of the morning. In its wake, the empty spot on the couch is too inviting.

She flops onto the cushions next to Beth with a sigh and goes limp. Maybe going to the market was a little too ambitious for today. She’s already had too much excitement this week with Beth visiting, and she hasn’t slept well because of it, which only saps more of her limited energy. Even good things can be so exhausting. She knows she needs to get more rest than most people do, especially when there’s so much happening. But that’s so hard to remember when she knows that this moment is such a rare blessing. Both of her most important people are right here with her right now. It’s so hard to not throw herself completely into every possible joy she can have, in this transcendent sliver of time.

She rolls her head where it rests against the back of the couch to look at Beth sideways. “I got breakfast,” she offers.

“Looks like you wiped yourself out doing it.” Beth leans against the arm of the sofa to look at her. “Morning.” Her own tired eyes twinkle.

Veera smiles. She tries to fix this moment into memory: the wisps of Beth’s unbrushed hair catching the light, the wooden clatter of Niki opening and closing cabinets in the kitchen.

“Are you okay?” Veera asks.

Beth runs a hand through her hair. “Yeah. We were just talking, about,” she waves a hand around, encompassing all the faces in all the photos on the walls, “everything. We’re so different. But some of the stuff, it’s the same. The things we’re all going through. You know?”

Veera does.

The kitchen clatter intensifies as Niki starts moving pots and pans around and clinking them down on the stovetop.

“How many eggs do you want?” Niki calls, voice more steady now. When Veera and Beth come over to investigate, she’s already got a skillet out and is debating with herself whether to start a pot of porridge, too. Veera’s always in favor of porridge no matter what, and Beth’s never had proper Finnish porridge before, so that settles that.

Niki starts scooping the mixed grains into the pan without measuring, like normal. She fills it with an unknown amount of water from the sink with some arcane skill of estimation that Veera has never understood. It always turns out fine. As Beth gets to work slicing some of the fresh fruit, Veera sidles up to Niki and lays a light hand on her arm.

Niki meets her questioning eyes. “I’m okay,” she says again. But she leans into Veera’s touch and stays there. Veera says nothing, just strokes a thumb over Niki’s shoulder and holds the space. Oats and rice swirl in the saucepan as Niki stirs them into the water with a wooden spoon.

“I was talking to her about what happened with Aleks, and mum and dad.” Niki’s voice goes soft, but not hushed. Her words aren’t directed at Beth at the other counter, but they’re not hidden from her, either. “How it made it so hard to trust anyone anymore. Especially Suvi, ‘cause she was there before. And you know how that gets me all... ugh.” She twiddles her wooden spoon in the air. Then she leans even more into Veera, into the arm that curls around her in half an embrace. To think, that Veera is someone who offers such gestures now with hardly a hesitant thought.

“She just gets it, you know?” Niki continues. “Not that you don’t, but it’s different. Like, you understand about how people are always expecting things from you. People see what they wanna see, and only take you seriously if you play along with it. It’s so frustrating. And it’s bullshit! I’ve never met anyone who understands that better than you.” She stirs the porridge again.

“And Beth... she was telling me some about her dad. She knows about having someone close to you just pull the whole rug out from under your world.” Niki pauses her stirring, and looks at Veera. “I’ve always been amazed, how you just landed on your feet and hit the ground running, when you found out. I couldn’t have done that, if I was alone.”

Veera shrugs, incidentally squeezing Niki sideways. “I never was very close with Matti.”

Watching her, Niki’s face falls a little. “I’m glad he didn’t hurt you that way. But I wish... I don’t know. I wish you’d had someone who was there for you, then. Everyone deserves that.”

“Huh.” Veera blinks. “I’d never thought of it that way.”

Arms suddenly wrap tight around her middle, a face tucked into the crook of her neck and shoulders. The handle end of a wooden spoon presses into the muscles between her shoulderblades.

“Niki!” Veera exclaims softly.

“Hey, look.” Her voice is sniffly again. “I’m having a day, okay, let me just –” She holds Veera tight.

“Nikiii,” she cajoles. “I’m fine.” Her eyes flick toward Beth over Niki’s shoulder. Her hand hovers over a peach on the cutting board as she meets her eye. Veera tucks her head down a little, embarrassed. But Beth’s smiling, if also looking a bit watery.

“I know,” Niki says into her shoulder. “I know you’re fine. You’re wonderful. But I’m here, okay? You’re always here for us. But we’re here for you, too.” Niki reaches an arm out blindly toward Beth until her fingers make contact, then gathers her in as if calling in backup. Beth gladly lays down the knife and joins the impromptu embrace next to the stove.

“Um.” Veera automatically relaxes under the extra pressure. It’s nice. But she’s still flustered. And the vociferous burbling of the porridge is getting a little concerning. “I think the porridge is going to boil over.”

Niki releases her with a groan. Veera’s sure she’s rolling her eyes, even though she’s a little too overwhelmed to look at either of them.

“That doesn’t mean you’re getting out of letting us be nice to you,” Niki says as she returns to the stove. Soon, the porridge is placated and eggs sizzle in the skillet, providing a crackling accompaniment.

When the food’s ready, they crowd around the table squeezed into the little kitchen nook below the window as if they do this every day. They pick slices of ripe peach and apricot off a cutting board in the middle. Spoons click in bowls as they do their best not to elbow each other. Stonefruit and cinnamon mix in the air with the light sulfur of fresh eggs and the pervasive aroma of the basil in the windowbox.

After a languid breakfast and a long morning spent simply enjoying each other’s company, the cloud cover is well on its way to burning off. The three head out to the nearby park, determined to make the most of the sun while the two Finns show off the splendor of the Helsinki summer to Beth. They pack up the fresh bread and cheese and the rest of the fruit for a picnic later.

Veera’s companions’ eyes are bright and animated as they leave behind the crisscrossing tracks of the train station and step into the shelter of the park’s old trees. Boughs bend and leaves whisper lazily in the light wind breathing over the bay. Veera follows them. With the hood of her jacket pulled down, the cool and verdant breeze caresses her short hair. Shade and sunlight dapple the grass between the footpaths and spatter the old blanket that they throw over the green, the one that usually lives on the couch that Beth’s currently taken over. They’re exposed to the open sky and anything else that might wander the earth with them. But branches lace and lattice across the blue, and the handful of other park-goers are too immersed in their own summer reverie to pay them any mind.

It’s surreal, almost. Niki basks like a lizard, looking like she needs nothing else in the world to keep her happy. Beth keeps running over to stick her toes in the salt water of the little bay. She takes every deliberate step into grass and gravel as if both she and the world are fresh and new. Peace settles into Veera’s bones. She spends half her time watching the others while reading an old fantasy novel in the shade. The other half, she looks upon the scene as if watching herself, absolutely bewildered by the way she both sees and cannot see the pain that still lives in the three of them, even as she still feels the scores it left trailing across her heart.

It's a long and lazy afternoon in the best understated way. By the time they return home sunwarmed, though, Veera’s starting to feel the effects of having been out all day doing too many things. Her skull is beginning to ache. But it’s familiar and cool and quiet here. She can rest.

Once they unpack the remains of their picnic, Niki makes good on her earlier threat of not letting Veera get out of being fussed over. She chivvies the other two into the living room and onto the couch. To Veera’s mild bemusement, Niki sits next to her, across from Beth, looking far too pleased with herself.

Then Niki pulls all three of them into a cuddle pile with Veera caught in the middle.

Veera lets out a little squeak of surprise as she’s smothered in limbs and warm laughter. Beth’s only too happy to help Niki tag-team her, the traitor. She squeezes Beth’s wrist in retaliation, but all that gets her is Beth slipping out of her grip just enough to tangle her fingers with her own.

With a little shuffling, Veera ends up with Niki pressed comfortably up against her side leaning her head on Veera’s shoulder. Niki also tucks an arm around her, as natural and necessary as breathing. Curled up against her other side, Beth backstops her. She lets Niki play with the ends of her long dark hair with the hand that reaches around Veera’s shoulders. Beth’s still holding onto Veera’s hand, steady like she’s never planning on letting go. The intense late afternoon light slants into the room, sending stars refracting off of the glass bottles on the sill that trail green-leaved vine cuttings.

Veera doesn’t know that she’s ever been as happy as she is right now. She watches herself in half-believing wonder, then stops. She breathes. She feels the others’ breathing like her own. She reminds herself to just be here, just exist.

But the restlessness that she awoke with doesn’t cease, even now with the two presences she treasures most on either side of her, tucked almost as close to her body as they are to her heart. It still aches and whispers in her ear with a soft insistence. Something about the fragile intensity of this moment calls to that unknown quantity like its own.

This little apartment on the edge of the city was never meant to be more than just enough for her and Niki to carve a safe space out of a terrifying world. And it has been that. But then there was more. There were the herbs keeping the kitchen and the succulents dotting the shelves. There were the colors covering the floor in rugs and memories covering the walls in photos. There was ample quiet to replace chill silence, and the fullness of kind words spoken like truth. There were pancakes. There was sunshine. There was Jade and Justyna and Janika and Sofia and Sarah and Helena and Katja and Aryanna and Danielle and Alison and Cosima and Jennifer and Tony and Femke and Fay and Krystal; and there was Beth, and there was Niki, and there was her.

Perhaps that’s the strangeness that keeps plucking at her mind. Not only have her situation and surroundings strayed so far from what her life used to be, but she herself is someone different now. She emerged changed out the other side of the two fires that consumed her entire life. Maybe the flames were bookends. She doesnt remember anything from before the first, and the space between them was long and lonely. The person she became during that in-between time is still fused into her foundations.

And yet, so much of the structure of her self has shifted. New parts of her unfurl daily. Being within her own body feels both utterly familiar and completely new. She can look back at the strange girl she once was and still recognize parts of her as the strange woman she is now. Now, she’s someone who gets called Veera with a voice full of love and Mika with sense of wonder and Leda with mild curiosity, and they are all her.

The unexpectedness of being given so many names still leaves her bemused. There’s a surprising intimacy to them, the way people speak them like they’re describing the shape of her in so many other lives. She’s unaccustomed to it. As difficult as people can be, what she has now is... good. When she thinks on it too hard, it makes her ribs feel like they’re closing in on her heart even while her lungs expand to take in the whole sky in an single endless exhilarated breath.

She’s thinking about it now. It’s not just a thought. It’s a longing and a fulfilling, an ache and a balm, a memory and a future, a call and response. It becomes all of her in this moment, and she shivers with its intensity. The shiver ripples into the bodies nestled on either side of her. Only a few years ago, she could never have imagined being so close, or wanting to. Sometimes it’s still too much, even with Niki – even with both of them, now, who are both so inexplicably easy to be around. The companionable solitude bathes her soul like the green breathing of a forest in eternal spring. She thinks about the unlikeliness, the flouted impossibility of it all. The feeling that it calls into bloom from her seed of a heart is almost too much.

“Veera?” Niki turns to face her in response to the shiver, her golden head catching and holding the gilded afternoon light.

“You alright, Veer?” She blinks at the new sound of the new name spoken in Beth’s softest-leather voice. It fits, too.

Veera inhales to speak, but words evade articulation. She releases the breath again to its own wordless purposes. The hand that’s been interlaced with hers squeezes gently as Beth makes a little questioning sound like a cat and shifts the comfortable weight of her knees in Veera’s lap. On Veera’s other side, Niki leans even further into her than she has been and rests her chin on Veera’s shoulder.

The press of their affection and concern envelop her in dearest aching, and it’s so much. She wants to stay right where she is. But she’s hardly slept for the past two nights and she’s tired and aching from overextending herself and her words have left her again. The immensity of feeling blooming inside her on top of everything else is just too much. She won’t be able to stay like this much longer. She needs to be by herself, to quietly sort through the backlog of everything she’s experiencing that’s stacking up faster than she can process it.

First, though, she needs them to know how much this means to her. Her ears pick up every breath and brush of smallest movement, and her world is filled with little strokes of sound that fall across her skin and hum in her chest as if painted there. They’re closer and dearer to her than anyone has ever been. Veera lifts Beth’s hand with her own and sweeps Niki’s hand into her grasp as well. Then, she presses both of them hard against her heartbeat. She bends her head down and locks her arms over her own chest to hold them there. No sound escapes her except a minute whimper.

Wordless murmurs and small shufflings to stay close tell her that they understand what she can’t say right now, and tell it back to her twofold. She sniffles a little, then begins to untangle herself without yet letting go. She doesn’t want to leave. But if she doesn’t, the waves of overwhelm that currently shove at her will become a tide that pulls her under and leaves her head pounding.

Niki’s voice, low. “You getting overloaded?”

Veera nods.

“Okay,” she says gently. “Go wind down. We won’t be loud.” Niki’s always been so understanding, right from the very first moment she’d shared her strangeness. Secret for a secret, she’d said, guarding Veera’s like her own and holding her trust like a treasure.

“Take care, Mika,” Beth says, mimicking Niki’s tone. Beth’s never been here here for this before. But Veera has texted with her at length numerous times in the past, when she can’t bear conversation out loud but still wants company. Veera can still hardly believe that Beth’s really here, proving herself as compassionate through soft sounds and touches as through a keyboard. “Don’t worry,” she adds as Veera still hesitates to let go. “We’ll be here later.”

Veera breathes out and nods again. She manages to stand, still holding one hand in each of hers. She squeezes them one more time, one after the other. Then she picks her way around the blue-and-brown mess of clothes spilling out of Beth’s suitcase onto the living room floor and steps softly into her own room. She closes the door.

With the blinds half shuttered against the afternoon light coming through the west-facing window, it’s cooler, dimmer, quieter than the main room. Veera likes it that way. She needs its restful seclusion as much as she needs the sun-glazed warmth of the rest of the place. Filled with muted purples and greens, there’s no dizzying array of photographs here. The only picture on the walls is a large cream and gray poster of a detailed sketch of the moon with all its craters arcing over its surface. Stubby succulents dot the heavily book-laden shelf and her cluttered desk in front of the window. They sort of glitter in the sunlight. The beams catch the water stored in the overlarge cells of their chunky little leaves, brightening their soothing shades of green, grey, dusty lavender, and mauve.

Nerves spangling, she changes out of her jeans into something softer without looking at what she’s doing. Sometimes, even just looking at things gets to be too tiring. Her hands know exactly where she keeps everything stashed in her dresser drawer, and her fingers are familiar with the texture of nearly every piece of clothing she owns. She doesn’t need to see them to tell them apart.

Veera sinks into the soft give of the comforter spread over her bed with a sigh. When she pulls the weighted blanket at the foot of it over herself with the rain-like rustle of plastic beans in its quilted pockets, it wraps her in gentle even pressure from above and below. The heaviness of it flattens out the frayed edges of her nerves. Laid out flat on her back with her arms floating loosely on either side and her elbows bent upward, the blanket covers everything except her face and hands.

As the creeping tension begins to trickle away, another sigh escapes her lungs. It’s a slow process. With how large her emotions are now, and with all the excitement and exhaustion of the past three days, it will take a few hours to wear down the worst of it. The tightness of her shoulders and the pinched feeling in her neck will fade. But they won’t completely disappear for a day or so – and that’s if she does nothing but rest her body and mind. The strain is mental as much as it is physical. Her brain just does what brains normally do, only sometimes slower and sometimes faster, and getting there via unorthodox roads. When rushed, the process only gets backed up, the road blocked, the paths tangled. Pushing it is like trying to run with a twisted ankle. It only makes it worse.

At times like this, it’s even easier than usual for the world to turn into sandpaper on her soul and senses. Overexposure to the riptide of existence all around rubs her nerves raw, living faster than she can think and burning brighter than she can bear. Sounds become ocean waves with weight behind them and lights fill her eyes with their intense brilliance. Gentle touches catch her skin like fire, while firm pressure forms a gravity well that could either pull her into a stable orbit or sling her satellite round reeling. It’s so easy for her to get overwhelmed by pain and pleasure alike. The line between them is faint and fluid.

To some degree, that vibrant intensity was always going to be part and parcel of the way she experiences the world. She was always going to be strange. Maybe if she hadn’t been put through two fires, it wouldn’t be quite so overwhelming quite so often. Probably. But she doesn’t know where the scars end and the inherent self begins, because they’re the same now. Whatever the cause, the person she is now is someone subject to both exquisite sharpness and terrible softness, captivated by so many infinitesimal pangs of ache and grace. It’s a lion’s share of pain and wonder across a lamb’s shoulders.

She wouldn’t change it, if she could. She didn’t choose it, but it’s hers. It’s her. It’s given her an unprecedented ability to be gentle in just the right ways with the people who need it most. That comes in handy considering how many traumatized Ledas she works with. Besides, she’s found all sorts of unusual yet efficient ways to do what she needs to do, because the normal ways don’t work for her. Sometimes that results in really neat new things, like the advanced cyber-security system she personally designed for CYGNet. It hasn’t been beaten yet, and if her constant updates have anything to say about it, it never will. If she ever gets tired of co-running the organization with their board of Ledas, she could always actually go into the tech field.

Right now, ever leaving CYGNet seems such a remote possibility. After a couple years of a reduced workload so she could actually finish school and take a few courses in database management to supplement her work, she’s finally returned in her full capacity. It feels good. Between her responsibilities managing the sheer volume of information DYAD had surrendered to them and protecting both it and their secure communication network, she has plenty to keep her mind busy and satisfied.

Now that Sofia and Aryanna take care of most of the administrative work, things run a lot smoother, too. Sofia’s steadied into tenacious steadfastness as her confidence grows, and she’s got a level head and a killer knack for budgets. Aryanna’s a great project manager and she’s got plenty enough charisma to handle the public-facing parts of CYGNet that Niki used to wrangle.

Niki’s stepped back a lot from CYGNet since Veera came back full time. She’d only been involved out of circumstance and necessity in the first place. For years, Niki had been the smiling face of Leda to the world, giving their story the life it needed to be told. Veera doesn’t know how she’d ever have done any of it without her. But really, all Niki wanted was a quiet life with the people she loved. So now that things were steadier and the world’s scrutiny had moved on, she was taking more time for herself. She worked part-time in a cat café downtown a few blocks away from the park, went on dates with Suvi around the city, and came home smiling to Veera and their little apartment.

Niki seems softer these days, happier. It’s like she’s settled into her natural gentleness, rather than defiantly clinging to it like a lifeline after the fire tried to burn it out of her. Her recovery is a thing of beauty. Sometimes Veera is stricken into stillness at the sound of Niki humming to herself in the next room, or at the sight of her smiling to herself while reading in a patch of sunlight, her legs stretched out on the couch. Sometimes, the memory of almost losing her so soon after finding her four years ago floats forth, casting Veera’s current joy in a sickly shade.

But they’ve talked through that fear they both have, many times. They’re both here, alive. They both care too much about the closeness they’ve created to ever choose to be too far apart. Anything else that might separate them will just be the ebb and flow of life, and that’s always true for everyone. Veera tries not to worry about it too much. She’s lucky to have Niki in her life. And these days, Veera’s gotten better at believing her when she says she wants to stay.

She finds her mind going unfocused, her body gone heavy like she needs a nap. It’s been an eventful day. Veera curls up on her side under the blanket, burying the rough texture of her scarred cheek in the softness of her pillow. To see her now, anyone might assume she was one of the others, marked only invisibly. Instead, a chapter of her story is written all down the right side of her body in curlicues of too-light ridges and and too-dark indentations, dappled from face to elbow to ankle. People don’t always read past that page to reach the rest of her. Much of the time, she still can’t, either. But at least there is another chapter now. It’s right here where she’s living in this strange new moment.

Her already heavy limbs go slack. Thoughts shift and sift and slip over each other half-defined. Maybe there will be more chapters she can’t even imagine yet, even better than this half-healed, aching glory.

***

When she wakes once again, Veera finds evening falling in its long, slow descent. It’s late. The sky glows with that particular kind of soft, omnipresent golden glow that only comes with the midnight sun at the height of summer. Niki and Beth have probably gone to bed already. They’re both early risers, and Beth is adjusting relatively well to her jetlag. As usual, the evening belongs to Veera.

Evening here is a half-seen time, gilded in twilight in the summers and shrouded in restful darkness throughout the long winter. Her eyes get a reprieve from the sharp definition of day among the soft placement of shadows. Even in winter, she rarely turns on the lights. Navigating the familiar space is easy by the sound of her feet on thin carpet and linoleum, by the brush of her fingertips on the matte whitewashed walls. She’s usually the only one awake. Even when Niki wakes up with bad dreams and seeks her out for comfort, they don’t talk much. Voices are kept low. Most of the time, it’s a space for her to be alone with her thoughts, turning them over and laying her experience of the day to rest before she sleeps.

Cautiously, in case Beth’s asleep in the living room, Veera pries her door open so it doesn’t clunk in its uneven frame. Sure enough, Beth’s curled up in her nest of blankets on the couch. Niki’s bedroom door is ajar, and through it she can just catch the barely-heard sounds of an occupied room, the imperceptible breath or rustle of presence simply felt. It’s the difference between quiet and silence. It's subtle, but worlds away from the dullness that permeates an empty space. Having grown up roaming two floors of dim, silent rooms with only the click of the keyboard from ‘uncle’ Matti’s office for company, Veera is endlessly familiar with that emptiness. This is something else: a living seed hidden under the soil; a flower that’s closed its petals for the night.

Pulling the hood of her well-loved purple hoodie up to shield her ears from the mechanical hum of the fridge, she slips out of her room and heads into the kitchen. Things are less sharp now, but she's still unusually sensitive, especially her ears. Retrieving a tall glass of room temperature water and a tin of chicken soup tipped into a bowl takes only a minute. She doesn’t heat it. The quiet is worth more to her than the warmth, in this comfortable stillness. She retreats to her room with the bowl clutched in her hands and curls up at the foot of her bed for a quiet dinner.

She’s far more relaxed and grounded now than she was earlier. But, checking the clock, she’s just woken up from one of her exhausted five-hour recovery naps. She’s too awake, if in a mild and focused sort of way, to go to sleep like she normally would around now.

Well. Though she’s mostly taking the time Beth’s here off from CYGNet work, she has been checking once a day just to make sure nothing critical or time-sensitive has come up. She hasn’t done that yet today because she was absolutely and completely passed out and dead to the world for half of it, so she might as well get that done now.

She cracks her door partly open so that the presences of the others can better keep her company at a distance. Then she boots up her computer and dials down the display to a dim setting in the endless dusk.

Everything looks fairly normal. There’s nothing of note in the security reports, just the usual bots automatically blocked. Other than that, there’s only two messages in her inbox that have been flagged for immediate attention by her custom filters.

The first is a notice of identity confirmation for Jennifer Fitzsimmons in the States. She filed a request not long ago for all her information retrieved from DYAD to be destroyed. It’s one of the solutions they originally came up with to make sure CYGNet didn’t just replace DYAD as a repository of excruciating detail. The whole point of the organization was to help them all reclaim the autonomy that had been stolen from them. That meant making sure every Leda had full control over their own records. CYGNet couldn’t do much for those who didn’t contact them except seal and guard their data in case they wanted it someday, which Veera did dutifully. But they could make sure that anyone who heard about the organization knew they had the option to cut that unauthorized tie.

Veera was surprised how few chose to do so - only 34 of the 113 Ledas in contact with CYGNet. Many seemed to simply consider it a comprehensive if unnervingly detailed medical history that they could refer to for their own use. Others, like herself, saw the data as a window into otherwise lost parts of their lives. After she’d decidedly parted ways with Matti, she had no one to tell her anything about the times she was too young to remember. Still others, like Beth, wanted nothing to do with their records, but chose to preserve them as proof of their ordeals.

On the other hand, a minority including Jennifer had made contact for the exclusive purpose of requesting their data be destroyed and didn’t seek any engagement with it. CYGNet verified their identities to make sure the files in question pertained to the one who was actually making the request. But they made a point of doing the verification by traditional means. They’d all had enough of blood tests and lab rats.

It was more common for people to decide to delete their data after actually accessing some of their records, the way Niki did. After confirming the identities of her monitors, she’d wanted nothing to do with any of it. She said all it did was hurt. She’d already experienced enough of the sharpness of betrayal without knowing the prickly details of every last lie. Her DYAD records were the first ones they erased. Veera deleted the digital files, and Niki burned the hard copies herself, her smile strangely grim yet satisfied as she set them alight with shaking hands. She seemed lighter, after, and less wary of the warmth of flames.

Veera spends a few minutes completing the second half of double-authorizations for Jennifer’s digital and physical record destruction (permanent removal needed confirmation from two board members) before initiating file deletion. She watches the progress bar creep toward 100% while sending the requisite forms off to Danielle in record storage. She’ll put the hard copies in the incinerator. Set to its lowest volume, Veera’s computer gives a small congratulatory bloop as Jennifer’s digital data disappears for good.

Finally, the only other thing that needs her attention is a request for the general Leda health packet from a new sender, [email protected]. Piquing Veera’s curiosity, it specifically asks after the packet’s chapter on the autism spectrum and common comorbids, even though the sender “would hardly deem it necessary, but my new psychiatrist wants to be thorough.”

As she delves further into the odd letter, it hurts a little to read. It’s laced through with the kind of disdainfully certain air of superiority that reveals just how deeply someone has internalized the cruel views that the world holds of certain ways of being. Veera’s found that this attitude is particularly common in people who actually are on the spectrum, but have been taught since before memory, consciously or unconsciously, to suppress every natural expression of their own differences from the norm. They’re more likely to notice and disparage any deviations in others, specifically because they’ve spent so long trying to disavow their own. They’ve gone so long unsupported, learning to see support only as a weakness instead of as a natural and too-often-denied necessity.

It’s heartbreaking, because Veera’s recognized so many of her own eccentricities in so many of the others, and hardly any of them know what it probably means. She sees it again and again, over CYGNet video conferences and at the occasional Leda meet-ups. Cosima’s hands dance while she talks in much the same way that her own flutter when she’s nervous. Tony’s always blasting his music like his life depends on it, and as far as sensory regulation is concerned, it probably does. Rachel deliberately tilts her head in just such a way that Veera can tell she’s masking, trying to remain poised while she takes an extra moment to process and adapt to a situation.

It’s not that surprising, really, since they all share the same genetics. Most people don’t notice, though, because they only know the broadest and most inaccurate stereotypes. That’s why Veera had insisted on adding the neurodiversity chapter to the health packet.

Veera lightly skims her fingers back and forth over the keyboard without pressing down, thinking. The clicks of the barely jostled keys clatter out a tiny rhythm. Normally, they’d want new contacts to establish a secure CYGNet account. This email’s tone and its throwaway address, though, suggests that it’s either from someone who either isn’t comfortable making contact, or who is struggling too hard with internalized shame to ask for help without doing so anonymously.

It’s an easy decision. Veera attaches the health packet PDF to her reply and sends it along with just a few words of her own.

Hey,

Here’s the health packet, including the neurodiversity chapter. Whether or not any of it applies to you, I hope it helps you find your way closer to yourself. We’ve all got a long way to go if we’re going to build lives we can call our own.

Veera’s fingers hover over the keys. She wants to somehow tell whoever this is that it’s okay. It’s okay to wonder, to look into their own strangeness, to perhaps embrace it. But they’re probably not ready to hear it.

If looking into neurodivergence ends up being a path you need to walk to do that, you’re not alone. I’m here, and so are a lot of the others. You know where to find us.

She signs off as merely MK, hoping that whoever it is might feel more comfortable with another semblance of anonymity. That’s all she can do, and for herself, that’s enough.

All at once, weariness weighs her down. Synthesizing such a delicate appropriate response takes so much effort. She’s gotten better at it, especially when she has time to compose and distill her thoughts. But such nuances don’t come naturally to her. She sags, shoulders loose. Though the light is still golden, it’s actually past midnight now. She hadn’t realized how long she spent trying to craft her words into the right shape. She folds her laptop away and sits on the end of her bed, opening the blinds to stare at the glowing amber of the summer night sky.

Now that her senses are less flooded than they were this afternoon, they itch in the way that means they’re craving some kind of input to regulate them, to calibrate her back into balance. Her vast collection of shared music is her go-to for that. There’s really nothing for it quite like becoming a song for a little while. It lets a steady measured flow of clean water smooth down the troubled riverbed of her nerves, torn up by the passing of the flood.

With her headphones on, she’s bathed in a swell of sound that washes over her like the cool sea on a warm day and just as refreshing. Her widely varied tastes change from hour to hour and minute to minute, but she always comes back to metal. The density and intensity of it literally drown out everything else with that single symphony of sensation. Now, she sways to its current in much the same way she wanted to at the market earlier – was that just this morning? Except now she can because she’s alone, and the only people near are the ones she trusts most. She lets herself dance in it, soothingly rock herself back and forth within its waves, shake out her hands along its endless ripples. She forgets the passage of time for awhile, existing only in the sound and the single present moment.

She emerges from her reverie far more relaxed and substantially more grounded. Setting the headphones aside and stretching her spine out along the bedspread, her limbs have gone soft and slow. Even with her long nap earlier, her overload was exhausting enough that she can probably manage to sleep again til morning. The thought is barely formed before she’s already drifting off.

***

She knows what’s different, when she wakes in soul-deep stillness. Lingering tendrils of vague golden-glazed dreams might just be yesterday’s memories. They retract from her consciousness like opening petals, only to birth her into that same sunlight. She can see the brightness without even opening her eyes, warmth flooding into her room through the door she’s left open.

It’s not just that she’s different now; it’s that she’s actually okay, sort of. And even after years, she’s also clearly not. And somehow... it’s enough.

The truth of it holds her in stillness for a nascent moment, like gentle hands around the wings of a bird about to be released into the sky. Then her eyes open to a room washed in brightness. Her neck and shoulders still ache, but her sight is sharp and clear. The bedroom is the same it’s been for years now, furnished simply, with a mess of cords spilling over her desk to the power strip and the too many favorite books crowding the shelves. But she can see it now, the way it’s filled with life in a way that these traces only barely begin to show. It’s not alive because she moves things around and grows plants in it now. She grows plants in it because she is vulnerably, tenaciously, heart-breakingly alive. She is what is filling the space.

Her life is now full of joy in ways she once could never have imagined. Her happiness feels strange because she is not used to it. She is healing, but she is also just beginning to understand the shape and nature of the scars on her heart and mind. They are just as deep and real as the ones on her skin. They may never truly leave her, and she has made peace with that. But that has done absolutely nothing to stop beauty from seeding her life and springing from every fracture like grass from cracks in concrete.

The restless discomfort that’s been plaguing her has been nothing more than her own hesitance, holding back from fully inhabiting this current joy. Some part of her must still believe that it’s undeserved, or that it’s impossible until she is completely okay.

But it’s not. It’s right here and already making itself hers, as broken and whole as she is. She’s been looking at every new leaf wondering if she’s allowed to love it, even while it’s sinking roots into her life and breathing life into the air.

Few people like her get the opportunities she has; to heal, to help, to grow. She’s already trying so hard to give back as many of those chances as possible, even if it's just to the handful of Ledas she’s been able to help. But that doesn’t change the fact that these opportunities are hers; and yet she’s still half holding back.

She could take them. Not from anyone, but for all of them – and for herself. She could choose it in the unknown names of all her people who have been so lost and alone and longing, the ones who never will be found and the ones who are still hoping. She could believe for all of them that she deserves the joy right in front of her. Maybe this whole time she’s been trying to help the others, she’s been trying to heal herself.

It's a terrifying prospect. But maybe doing right by people like her means doing right by her self, too. Maybe it’s as simple, as impossibly hard, as just letting herself be where she is.

With a shock that catches her breath, she realizes that she’s already made her choice. Somewhere deep inside, something has already shifted like a flower turning toward the sun. She has changed.

It’s never going to be easy. She is going to be healing for the rest of her life. Not to mention, she’ll have to do it in a world where she knows all to well that people are often cruel. But there are also people it’s easy to be around. People like her, and unlike her, but kind people, understanding people, even strangers like the plant vendor at the market and the woman with the oranges. Perhaps she needs to mourn the fact that it took her so long to find any. But now... oh, now.

She tumbles out of bed in yesterday’s clothes. She makes her way out of the room past the crusty soup bowl that she left on her desk last night. Brushing past the great glossy leaves of the swiss cheese plant like a forest creature through the undergrowth, she steps into the central room that’s blazing with light and color and life.

As she enters the kitchen, she ignores the twin cries of greeting from the stove. She casts about for her new little pearls plant. Looking around, she spies it in the kitchen window half hidden under the canopy of the basil. She marches right up to it and into the vault of sunlight streaming in.

One by one, each round little bead of a leaf leads up to the stem holding its spindly floating flower - and it's actually a compound flowerhead. It’s opened up several miniscule pinkish-white flowerets with five pointed petals each. They’re giving off the most incredible, intense smell that fills that whole corner of the kitchen and seems like it couldn’t possibly be produced by something so tiny. Her hands flutter near her shoulders in absolute delight. As she breathes in, the little flower’s fragrance mixes with the pungent aroma of the herbs growing next to it. She drinks it all in deeply, breathes in the smell until it fills her lungs. Sometimes she feels as if she could survive on the richness of such things alone, like a hummingbird subsisting on nothing but nectar.

Nonsense. Her world is so much larger than she ever thought it could be, and she wants it, chooses it. Unlatching the window, she flings the shutters open wide to the trees just outside dancing in a kaleidoscope of green and brown and gold and the sunny city beyond and the blue sky above. The summer breeze that rushes in ruffles her messy hair with a wonderful effervescent sensation.

She laughs out loud, then turns around and practically throws herself at Niki and Beth with arms outspread. She seizes them both in a messy hug that somehow manages to include that wooden spoon again. Veera still laughs, and she feels tears on her cheeks, too.

“Whoa! Hey, girl.”

“Oh, shit! Hi Mika.”

“Hey, Veera, are you okay?”

No. Yes. Always. Never. She finds herself crying harder than she’s ever cried in her life. But she’s still smiling, steeped in a deeper kind of joy and certainty than she’s ever felt before. Someone threads their fingers through her hair and strokes her head until the tide turns and sets her free. And then, still, she is held.

None of this will last. Nothing does. There is more elation and agony and monotony and uncertainty and wonder up ahead. And yet, they’re still here, and she’s beyond grateful. She’s never stopped being here. Maybe this really is exactly where she needs to be. Maybe all she needs to do is tell the garden of her heart that it doesn’t have to stop growing.

When she can, Veera breathes in deeply, her ribs pressing against the arms circling her. She feels the way her exhale blusters soft and warm in the small space between her face and the shoulders she leans it into. The yielding soft pressure of the embrace engraves itself into the very bones of her arms, and she will never ever be able to forget the ache of it and will never want to.

Fuck the fires – this is what’s real now. She wants this to be what makes her who she is. This dance of joy in strangeness can be the story she makes of the rest of her life. All she needs to do is remember her choice, and make it, again and again and again.

“Hey, there, hey... there you are,” Beth murmurs. “You’re here. I’m here. We’re here.”

She is; they are.

They are.

#orphan black #clone club #veera suominen #beth childs #niki lintula #mk ob #fic #long post #herbs on the windowsill au #queerplatonic #aroace #lizzie's adventures in writing #lizzie taking up space #it's here!#it's done.

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brideylee · 4 years ago

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Chateau Quarantine

Sophia Coppola smokes a cigarette while she waits for an omelette she has no intention of eating. It’s a gloomy marine layered morning, you can barely see across Sunset. She’s been in lock down for three weeks and while she normally loves the moody, brooding decadence of the Chateau Marmont, its elite solitude is giving her a bit too much time to reflect. She thinks about the concept of crying as she watches a long torso-ed model skinny dip in the pool from the penthouse. There are no rules anymore, not that there were many in the first place. The hotel was shuttered to the public as of three weeks ago, and those who were already there could stay indefinitely. Sophia lives alone in the tower suite with the three bedrooms and the wrap around porch, known by some as “the Deniro”, but Robert himself couldn’t tell you why. Any legends or gossip about the Chateau were just bread crumbs to keep the public hungry and mystified. The real Chateau for the privileged few who used it, was an unceremonious respite for excessive loneliness, addiction, and often not great sex. The Chateau had a reputation: look but don’t fuck. Everyone’s genitals were rendered useless from anti-depressants.

She thought she would be filming by now. Her cast is stranded too, with little guidance other than “we’ll wait it out.” The film she wanted to make stars Hugh Grant and Ewan McGregor as two estranged brothers coming together for their father’s funeral. Iman was set to the play the mysterious woman who shows up at the funeral who they then realize was their father’s mistress. It was going to be a slow movie about the brothers coming to terms with their father’s death and equally so falling in love with the woman he hid from them. All this would be suggested through intimate long takes, and funny, stylish, improvised montages. Always subtle and romantic without the sap, this was the tight rope Sophia liked to balance on. At the end of the movie, both brothers are mildly changed, but not entirely. She has a sweet spot for the immovability of people’s psyches, particularly men.

Sophia watches impartially, as the naked model floats on her back in the calm pool. It is so cold and early to swim, is she on drugs or is everyone at this place even more numb than they think? She wondered if her film was too male, too disembodied from her personally to mean anything. Tapping into the male gaze, was an ability she was born with. Her father’s point of view was all she interacted with as a kid, and the underside of his specialties became her focus: the lost parts of men when they are too weak to hold up the heavy crown of their egos, who they were when they could let themselves feel outside of their work. But given the state of the world, and the molasses nature of time during lock down, Sophia started to question if what she always found to be her strength was just simply trauma. Was her whole profession a way to resolve some genetic creative stifling that took place in the shadow of her dad? Surely her body of work contains more than that. It’s not all a selfish attempt at repair. Is any art not selfish? "Maybe I should make a different movie, something that everyones gonna like for once.” She thinks to herself. Thank God, her goat cheese omelette has arrived.

Later on, the gothic lobby is empty besides the cast of her film and the elegant model behind the reception desk standing like a hollow sculpture, frightened by the chaos that lurks outside. Ewan McGregor, drunk off of five Marmont Mules, is showing Hugh Grant an app that maps the stars and constellations. Ewan has gone on and on about a camping trip he took around Scotland and how amazing the stars were, but when pressed for details about where exactly he was or what he saw or what year he did this, he can’t seem to remember anything at all.But that doesn’t dampen his excitement about the app. “See, that, there is Orion’s belt!” Ewan enthusiastically points out, his cute smirk displaying his bottom row of sweet corn kernel teeth. Ewan just recently learned about the stars. Until the age of 47, Ewan had been referring to them as “night freckles.” Many think this is why he didn’t have a fun time acting in Star Wars, space simply befuddled him. Hugh and Ewan are dressed exactly the same: navy blue beanie, black jeans, a tight blue thermal, and desert boots- the actor man uniform they give you after you play opposite Nicole Kidman or Renee Zellweger.

“That’s brilliant,” says Hugh Grant completely perplexed by the app and confused at Ewan’s rambling. Hugh sticks a handkerchief up his nostril with his pointer finger and wiggles it around somewhat violently. Iman clocks this with a blink of disgust, her silk, gold blouse glistens with god-like royalty in the amber glow. “Can you turn your face away? That’s how the virus is spreading.” Her voice is deep and she rarely uses it because it changes the direction of the wind and messes with the tides. “Aw, fuck me. That’s right, isn’t it?” Hugh Grant turns away and starting blowing his nose and coughing obnoxiously. Hugh is acting like a resentful brat because he knows he wont be able to have Iman. He decides he’s gonna pick a fight with Sandra Bullock via face time later to blow off steam. Iman is thinking she was right all along, she should never have agreed to this. She was already sick of the “beanie twins”.

Hugh had been rattling on about how the movie needed a sex scene or at least a sexy scene and went on to say that Sophia had some sort of block. Iman felt that both Ewan and Hugh, however innocently, were exploiting their acting roles to gain real life experience, and there was no way in hell, she was going to kiss either of them. Her kiss would make them immortal and Iman knew their souls needed more lifetimes to grow. Plus, she liked the script the way it was- underwritten and open for interpretation. Her character is symbolic of the side of their dad they didn’t get to meet- spiritual, graceful, embodied. It was a soulful choice not to show any nudity or sex, one that could lead Americans to try to use whats left of their iPhone stolen imaginations.

Meanwhile Michael Cain, who was supposed to play the dead father, is staring at the beautiful Victorian tapestry hanging behind her. “It’s like it’s right out of the Cloister’s.” Michael says under his breath. Michael is sweet, Iman thinks as she watches him stare at the tapestry with wonder, his mouth agape, and a lil warm milk spilling out of his left eye. Iman and him have known each other for years and he always reminded her of her husband: his fierce devotion to his craft, his rigorous intellectuality that does a bad job hiding an animalistic sexuality. Both men contained so much and no one can handle a man like that besides a mystical siren like Iman.

Hugh and Ewan’s chatter dies as their drinks empty. “If I were to be honest with myself…” Hugh begins. “Better later than never…” Michael Cain interrupts without cracking a smile, a dryness a la Maggie Smith. In fact, fuck, this was Maggie Smith. No one had realized. Hugh winks at Michael/ Maggie and continues. “ I don’t think were going to be filming any time soon, folks. I think we are being held hostage a bit by Miss Coppola.” Ewan stares off with a thinking face like no one has ever had a deeper thought before. “That is interesting to think about. There is some kind of bratty assumption that all this will fade away soon enough. And we’ll be back on set. But what if it’s not for another year or so?” Ewan is really getting worked up “What if we live here for the rest of our lives!!” His eyes are big and dazzling, it’s like he’s thinking of the most ideal outcome for the rest of his life.

Suddenly, Sophia joins them at the table. “There they are, my little hunchbacks!” This is what Sophia affectionately calls her actors, the origin is unknown. Sophia has a strange new confidence around her. Usually, when she walked into places, she would feel like a Nat Sherman cigarette, like only some select tall New Yorkers in the back would still appreciate her. “Hello, love! Someone slept well.” Maggie Smith as Michael Caine chirped. Even when Maggie-Michael said something sweet, it still felt like someone was aggressively tickling your ribcage.

“I have news.” Sophia sits down, and smiled large and toothy, a stark contrast to her usual chic, despondent stare, a look only afforded to artists born with trust funds. “We’re not making the movie.” Hugh taps the table. “Well, I believe I won that bet.” Ewan’s jaw drops, destroyed. “You mean we cant live here together forever?” He runs his hands through his hair, petrified. Iman is quiet, which can mean many different things and all things at once, she is eternally the glory of God, a forgotten pyramid at the bottom of the ocean that if unearthed would explode us into 5D ascension.

“We are making a better movie! A super hero movie!!” Sophia exclaims. Sophia gets up close in the faces of her cast, pitching them on her new idea. “It’ll be a real heroes journey- good guys versus evil! Fun CGI! Sexy starlets and fun on trend jokes!” She turns to Michael Maggie, her mouth inches away from their milky eye, and says- “And much much more!” Sophia climbs up on the table now. “The adults will love it, as well as the little ones!” She does an Irish jig and starts spinning around and then poses with her arms up as though at the end of a musical. It was not fun to watch. Iman cuts her off-“I don’t trust what is happening.This is not reality. This is delusion. A karmic spell.” The power of Iman’s words blows the power out of the Chateau, pipes burst, the fire alarm goes off, and Joel Madden of Good Charlotte in room 304 stops jerking off for a second. Sophia is still catching her breath from her presentation, her sweating, arms stretched to the ceiling. She gulps as her eyes meet Iman’s. “Why don’t you just write from my character’s point of view?” Iman says as softly as she can without causing chaos. Sophia freezes. Her whole body calcifies and turns to ice, then crumbles onto the table. Ewan and Hugh watch in absolute horror as Iman drops some of the ice into her water. She knows she shouldn’t have said yes to this project and looks on lovingly at Michael/ Maggie who has dozed off.

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danyka-fendyr · 5 years ago

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Absence of Good - 4

Chapter Four: Clowning Around

Okay, so, I know I said I probably wasn’t going to get this written this week but...surprise! I tried out this tip where you write it in comic sans and it’s supposed to make you more creative and uh...it did. It definitely works guys. Like maybe it’s just the placebo effect but this was a BREEZE to write. And for all of my stats people out there, yes, I am aware that z-scores aren’t actually done like this, but it’s a JOKE, okay, a JOKE. Anyway, I hope you guys also think this is good.

Taglist: @dreamwritesimagines @rhabakoli

AoG Taglist: @pancakefancake @prettyboyspenerrr

Wordcount: 2655

Warnings: Mentions of death and murder. Clowns.

“When someone loves you, the way they talk about you is different. You feel safe and comfortable.”

-Jess C. Scott

“This one…isn’t real, right?”

You leaned over on your seat in the jet to whisper in Spencer’s ear. You just couldn’t believe this kind of thing could possibly happen. You had to be investigating some kind of prank show crap or something. Perhaps Netflix’s newest horror movie. Maybe Sara J. Maas wrote a new novel series that some LARPers got a little carried away with.

“Hotch never jokes,” Spencer whispered.

“Well yeah. I got that on day one. But maybe he’s like…wrong?”

“File it under Also Doesn’t Happen. The statistical probability of Hotch being wrong is so low that if you compared him to anyone else in his position the z-score you found wouldn’t even be statistically significant,” Spencer explained.

“I don’t remember what the words you just said mean but yes.”

“Well, a z-score is-“

“No no, don’t tell me. A little bit of mystery keeps things sexy.”

“You just don’t want to know because it’s math, huh?”

“Gosh, you know me so well.” You grinned at him.

“Yo, what are you two flirting about over there?” Derek’s smile was best described as a cocky, meddling grin typically worn by people who were sons of-

“Maybe it’s work. Maybe it’s Maybelline.” Spencer shrugged, and everyone on the plane stared at him.

“Spence…Y/N says that. Oh my gosh, they’re even starting to talk like each other,” JJ said, her face the same as Derek’s.

They were terrible people. Terrible, terrible people.

“You know, JJ makes a good point. You guys spend a lot of time together. What would you even do if we separated you?” Emily mused.

You stared at her, hating the idea already. Spencer was what you knew. He was who you worked best with. You were partners in…not crime. Even just the thought of getting up off the jet coach and sitting away from him was unpleasant. You two always sat on the couch, right next to each other. It was important. For brain storming sessions. Important for brainstorming sessions and your work, which you took very seriously.

“We work well together,” You defended your relationship.

“Well yeah, of course, but maybe you would work well with someone else. You haven’t really given it a chance though, have you?” Emily pointed out.

“Yeah. Lover boy over here is being selfish, won’t let you go for 5 minutes. The rest of us want a turn, you know,” Derek said.

“Well you can’t have one. Spencer is my partner. We’re maximizing efficiency, right Spence?”

You looked up at Spencer and he nodded, a serious frown on his face. It appeared that he also did not like the idea of you being ripped away from him, however adamant the team was that they get their turn. Children. Absolute children.

“But if we really wanted to maximize efficiency we would have to test the hypothesis that you and Spencer are the two members of the team who work best together,” JJ said, starting to get in on the fun now. “You know…Hotch, you haven’t given us our assignments yet and we land pretty soon…”

Hotch looked up, appearing completely unaffected by this conversation.

“Rossi and Prentiss, you two will be heading to the morgue. Derek and Reid, I want you exploring the latest crime scene. Y/L/N and JJ, I’d like you two to interview our witnesses.”

And just like that, all your dreams of a sweet, happy work day with Spencer were crushed. Not that your work days usually turned out sweet and happy, but Spence always made a bad situation better. Sometimes when you were having an off day you wanted to call him just to hear the sound of his voice giving you facts about Daniel Powter or something.

You sighed, slumping back into your seat and doing something that an uneducated outsider might call pouting. You, however, knew better. You did not pout. You only displayed disappointment on occasion.

“Witness interrogation?” You mumbled to Spencer. “How on earth am I supposed to interview some poor sap about a clown murderer?”

“Okay, so it looks like our witness here is…let me see…Mandie Dawkins. 16, apparently saw the whole thing while sneaking out to meet her boyfriend, fled the scene then called 911.”

“They did do a tox screen on her, right? Like…I’m just making sure here.”

JJ’s face betrayed her own disbelief as she sucked in air between her teeth. “Yep. As hard as it is to believe, well…kids see the darndest things.”

You two entered the interrogation room to see a girl who was, frankly, terrified looking. You couldn’t blame her though. After all, she had witnessed a man dressed as a clown use a chainsaw to murder a guy. That left a mark that probably wouldn’t come out without a few good years of therapy. You definitely sensed a clown phobia developing here.

“Hi, Mandie. My name is Jennifer and this is my partner, Y/N. We’re just hear to ask you some questions about what you saw the other night.”

JJ spoke gently, and you were impressed by how soft her tone was. You had seen this side of her before, but only briefly. When she brought her kids into the office she was a completely different person.

“Hi,” Mandie said, sniffling slightly.

“Mandie, we know you already told the officers, but could you maybe just tell us again what exactly happened that night?” You asked, following Jennifer’s lead in speaking softly and slowly.

Mandie teared up as she recounted the events. “I…I thought it was just a joke, you know? Like, the whole clown apocalypse thing on the internet or whatever they’re calling it. Just like, a Halloween thing, you know? I didn’t think anyone was actually going out there and hurting people, or, or, or killing them.”

“It’s alright, Mandie. We’re going to catch whoever did this, okay? We’re going to need your help to do that though. I’d like to try something, if you’re alright with it. Can you close your eyes for me, Mandie?” Jennifer asked.

You watched closely. You knew what she was doing. A cognitive interview. You had never done one yourself, but you had been taught how to. They weren’t Spencer’s forte however, so you usually weren’t assigned to situations where that might be necessary.

“Alright, now I want you to imagine that you’re back there, walking to your boyfriend’s. I want you to tell me what you see. What’s the weather like?”

“It’s…it’s cold,” Mandie said. “And a little bit windy, too. There are goosebumps on my arms. I brought a jacket but it’s not heavy enough.”

“Alright. What else? Do you smell anything?”

Mandie thought for a moment. “No, not really. Just the rain from earlier and I guess gasoline.”

“Gasoline?”

“Yeah. Or like, propane maybe. Some kind of fuel.”

“Alright, you’re doing great,” Jennifer said. “Now as you get closer to your boyfriend’s house, what do you see?”

“I’m almost there when I see him. This guy, dressed as a clown. You know, the whole bit too. The really big shoes, a red wig, even the nose. And he’s got this chainsaw, but not like, an old-fashioned one. It’s electric, and it’s really loud. I don’t know how I didn’t hear it before. Probably the wind. Anyway, he’s lifting it up, and it looks like it’s really heavy-“

“Hold on,” JJ instructed. “Let’s stop there for a minute. You said it looked heavy. What made you think that?”

“Well the way he’s lifting it. It’s like it’s really hard for him.”

“Okay. What next, Mandie?”

“Well there’s this guy, right? And he’s just walking down the street, and I think he’s a jogger or something because he’s got sports clothes on. So this clown comes right up behind him and he must have just turned the chainsaw on recently because the guy doesn’t hear him and turn around and he just starts…hacking into him.” Mandie is struggling to speak through her tears. “There’s so much blood. Just like…everywhere, there’s so much blood and screaming and I-“

“Okay Mandie. It’s okay. You’re safe now. You’re here, with us. Try to focus in on what’s happening. Does anything stand out to you?”

“I can see his mouth moving. I can’t tell what he’s saying, but he’s talking to the guy. Or maybe to nobody. I can’t really tell, but he’s definitely saying something.”

“Okay Mandie. Thank you so much for all of your help. You did great today, and you helped us out a lot. Why don’t you go get yourself something to drink, okay?”

“Okay.”

You leaned forward in your chair, looking at Jennifer. “Wow. You’re really good at that.”

“I used to be press liaison for the BAU, so I dealt with a lot of families. I was doing stuff like this before I was ever profiling.”

You nodded. JJ’s history with the BAU had come up a few times before, but you had never realized how deeply it would impact her current work.

“Okay, so this guy can’t be that physically fit, right? If he’s having enough trouble lifting a chainsaw that Mandie can see it from how far away she was, then he must have really been struggling. Maybe he’s sick?” You suggested.

“It’s a possibility. Frankly, I’m more interested in the talking. Even though we don’t know what he’s saying, it gives us more insight into him as a killer. We know he’s killed before, because he’s too unmistakable not to be a serial killer. It could be that whatever he says to them is his version of a signature. Maybe he has to do it to get the right satisfaction from the kills,” JJ theorized.

“Yeah. I just feel like the more we find out the less we really know.” You frowned.

“Welcome to working with people who aren’t super geniuses.” JJ laughed.

“So far it’s been a little rough,” You joked.

JJ became more serious. “Do you miss him?”

You didn’t even have to think about it. The answer was instantaneous, screaming itself in your brain, aching somewhere in your chest. You liked the familiar rhythm you had with Spencer, and even though there was a lot you could learn from JJ, the steady work you were able to do with Spencer was what you preferred. Just you and him, thinking things through, applying logic until things made sense the way you needed them to. Still, you left a pause before you answered her.

“Yeah. I mean, he’s my partner, you know? Working with you is great, but it’s just not the same without him. He gets me.”

“Yeah. It’s always nice having someone who can understand you. But the challenge is important to, you know.”

“Oh, believe me, I know. Spencer never fails to challenge me. The mere existence of his IQ is a challenge.” You laughed.

“I can understand that. When Will and I met he was such an intimidatingly good detective that I felt challenged. Not afraid to break the rules either, and I was such a good girl back then…I never rocked the boat, if you can believe it.”

You couldn’t. JJ stood up for herself so much now that you couldn’t imagine a meek, shy version of her.

“But Will and I, we get each other. In a way other people wouldn’t be able to. When I finish a bad case, he just knows. I never have to say a word when I get home. He can always tell.”

You nodded. “Yeah. Spence has a weird gift for that too. You know as well as I do that every case affects all of us differently, but he can always tell the ones that hit me the hardest. I always think I’m doing a really good job of hiding it, then come to find out he knew I was struggling the whole time and he has biscotti and coffee.”

“I thought you were a tea drinker?”

“I am. Coffee is for when I’m sad or celebrating. Coffee is for closers.”

“Case closers,” JJ joked.

“Yep. Remind me to take you out for coffee some time after this. We can catch up, talk about your kids. It will be fun.”

“Yes! I’ve been dying for a little girl time. We should definitely do that.”

You met with the rest of the team, and as it turned out, they had discovered more than you. In fact, you were fairly certain you had discovered enough to lay down a profile. Not before you caught a relieved glimpse of Spencer though, sharing a quick smile before being dragged over to help give the profile.

You were looking for a white male in his mid-twenties to early thirties. He would come across as weak and submissive in his personal life, and may be looked down on by his peers. Probably works in a job where he is effectively invisible. The last guy you would notice in a room. He would let others control him in his real life, then exercise that control in his killings. It was also highly likely that he was insecure about his physical fitness since all of his victims so far had been joggers and seemed to be in good shape.

“Alright crime fighters, here’s what I’ve found on our victims so far. I think you’ll like this delicious little morsel. As it turns out, our victims all went to exactly the same gym. Not the same times, mind you, but they were in and out on the same days of the week,” Garcia said from where she was video calling in.

“Can you tell us who was working those days and times, Penelope?” Rossi asked.

“Way ahead of you sir. I’ve got three different names that worked every session that our victims worked out and I’ve got even better news coming your way, two of them either have solid alibis or don’t fit the profile. You know what that means…”

“Garcia, I’m going to need a name and an address,” Hotch said.

“Already sent to your personal communications devices! Ta ta!”

“Thanks baby girl, you’re the best,” Derek said before hanging up.

As it turned out, Garcia’s information was good. You caught the guy, 32 year old Randall Myers. He worked as a yoga instructor at the gym and had been killing the clientele of the gym because apparently he felt like they were all judging him. In his mind, he had fabricated a world where he was somehow a victim of them and their bullying. Personally you always felt a bit judged by everyone else at the gym, but not so much that you dressed up in a clown suit and chain-sawed them to death while screaming ‘Who’s the clown now?’ But hey, maybe you were just a little bit too well adjusted for your own good.

You settled into your usual seat next to Spencer on the jet, and you had never been happier to have him join you.

“That was just about exactly as weird as I thought it was going to be,” Spencer said, chuckling to himself.

“Yeah, you can say that again.”

You two sat in silence for a moment, letting your awkwardly separate day hang between you two. Were you supposed to talk about it? It didn’t matter if you were or not, because you did it anyway.

“I missed you.” You both said it at the same time, in near perfect sync.

“It…wasn’t the same without you,” Spencer confessed.

“I do add an unmistakable ambience to the dead bodies and the crime scenes.”

Spencer rolled his eyes tolerantly at your questionable sense of humor.

“You’re right though. I learned a lot from JJ, but I really just wanted to be with you. I guess you complete me, Doctor.”

“I guess I do.” He smiled at you.

You huffed a sigh, leaning your head on his shoulder.

“Such a weird day.”

“That’s how you know you love someone, I guess, when you can’t experience anything without wishing the other person were there to see it, too.”

-Kaui Hart Hemmings

#absence of good #spencer reid #dr. spencer reid #spencer reid fic #spencer reid oneshot #spencer reid series #spencer reid imagine #spencer reid x reader #criminal minds #criminal minds fan fic #matthew gray gubler #mgg

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ramblinganthropologist · 4 years ago

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N7 Challenge 23 and 24 - Boot Camp and Enemies

Summary: So... Alistair and Bo Peep Shepard are grounded and surrounded by enemies on all sides. Lucky for them... they know how to handle the guy watching them. After all, he went down easy enough before. Who knew they had history?

Not them, clearly, but they could use that later if he pushed them to it.

---

Yep... he fucking hated this.

“Any chance we could break out and just go rogue? We stole the Normandy once, we could probably do it again.”

Bo sounded as stir crazy as he felt as they glanced at each other from across the small room. Both were still in formal uniform due to the fact neither had the energy to change after being questioned for a couple hours. Maybe in another hour of complaining, they could do something about it.

Alistair sighed as he rubbed the back of his neck, still not used to being able to feel his amp without his hair in the way. “That would be a tall order, considering the Alliance took the Normandy to retrofit it. I have no idea where it is now, and it's not like we can search the extranet for it.”

His former XO was already twitching. “Is that because they didn't put it online, or because of the asshole listening into our conversation?”

Obviously, it was the former. James Vega was just an awkward footnote on the absurd comedy of errors that was his life.

Honestly, the Spectre didn't hate the man. It wasn't his fault he had been assigned to guard over both former Commander Shepards as they explained how they had been flying around with a bootleg Normandy built by Cerberus. He hadn't asked to be there, much like they hadn't either. Only difference was, he was following orders.

They were under house arrest.

He shrugged his shoulders at that. “Bit of both, honestly. They're monitoring the searches on my omni-tool.”

“You weren't supposed to know that, Shepard.”

Vega's deep voice carried over their complain festival. Of course he had heard all that – he was sitting in the same room, looking as though he would have rather been anywhere else. The accent made Alistair think Earth, but he wasn't sure where. After all, it was a big fucking planet he hadn't spent much time on.

Bo answered before he could. “You're telling that to a tech, genius. He probably figured it out because the search was a millisecond too slow.”

It was actually the loading pattern and the fact it was half a millisecond slower than he liked. Well, that and he'd found the programming once he'd gotten it back. What could he say, he was twitchy when he had nothing to do. That got even worse when he should have been out there on the Normandy preparing for the Reapers. Instead... he was sitting on his ass. So excuse him if he got a little twitchy and gave his omni-tool a once over when the large man wasn't looking.

Know your enemy, all that jazz.

“Biotics and tech. That's a nightmare combo.” Yeah, to a pure combat type maybe. “And you're a biotic too, but you punch things.”

Bo scoffed, rolling her red eyes. “I headbutt them, Vega. If you're supposed to keep me from breaking out, you should at least know what to prepare for when I finally snap and throw you through the fucking wall.”

Alistair watched Vega tense. He wasn't worried, though. Usually when she was actually threatening violence, the person was already halfway through a wall. This was more a promise of it than anything else. It was her way of warning him, like a rattlesnake's rattle only with a lot more profanity. Hopefully he could figure out the difference, or it was going to be a long containment.

“You two really don't care what you say now, huh.”

This time, he answered as he shrugged. “Went through Omega 4 and all I got was this lousy inquiry.”

“We could both take you, don't worry about that.” Bo grumbled as she stood up. “I'm going to get out of this damn uniform. You better not follow me.”

Then it was down to the two men. Alistair was more focused on his omni-tool than the other occupant. The Alliance had hampered most of the functions, but he still had a basic search ability. Unsurprisingly, there was little to find about the Reapers as he typed.

Even if there had been activity, the Council probably would've hushed it up. After all, they had never believed him anyway.

From what he could tell as he searched, Vega was still in the room. That was to be expected, given he was guarding them. Honestly, Alistair could see three ways he could take the guy out without a lot of effort, but it wasn't worth cleaning the blood off the wall. He was just doing his job. Besides, they would probably drive him insane in a few months anyway.

Poor sap; he had no idea what was waiting for him when he had two Spectres in a very small space with nothing to do with their time.

“So... you really fought a thresher maw, huh?”

He was talking now. Alistair glanced up from his omni-tool, pausing his search. It felt like a break the silence sort of thing. He hated doing that. It made his teeth itch as it activated the switch that made his GAD unbearable.

It was unstoppable force verses unmovable object: his desire to find out more about the reapers, and his inability to be a rude asshole to anyone.

“Two, actually. The second time was close up. Bo did a lot of the heavy lifting though.” He frowned. “Why ask? Didn't you get both our records when they assigned you to guard us?”

Vega looked vaguely uncomfortable. “It seemed kinda bullshit, honestly. Who's crazy enough to go up against a thresher maw on foot?”

“It was for my son's puberty ritual.” Bo appeared, dressed normally. She took her spot back up on the couch, shooting a glare at their guard as she walked by. “We won, by the way. Felt good to shoot one of them in the face.”

Talk about perfect therapy for Akuze. Face your terror over thresher maw by going up against one and shooting it in the face.

Their guard definitely looked impressed by that. “The biotics helped, right? I know they're strong. Learned that the hard way in boot camp. Wasn't looking where I was going and I nearly sat on this guy and he threw me into a wall with his mind. I think I surprised him or something, he kept apologizing after. Or at least that's what they told me, last thing I remember was his giant friend knocking me out.”

He chuckled at that. Meanwhile, Bo and Alistair exchanged the same look. Mentally, the former CO was doing the math, glancing back towards their guard every so often. When he eventually got the answer he needed, then it was time for words.

Lucky for him, he was good at that.

“Uh... when'd you enlist, Vega?”

Vega stopped laughing. “2176, why?”

Bo pointed at herself, then at Alistair. “Because we both enlisted in 2176.”

Alistair nodded. “And I had a nervous reaction when some giant dude almost sat on me in boot camp.”

If he remembered right, it was a lucky break he hadn't seriously hurt the man. They had chalked it up to his new amp settling down after being implanted. Honestly, he had always thought the guy was trying to pick a fight with him because he was so small...

Apparently, it was all one big mistake?

“Wait... that was...” Vega blinked. “Shit, I got my ass kicked by the first two human Spectres?”

Bo's chest puffed out a little at that. “No, you got slammed into a wall and knocked the fuck out by the first two human Spectres.”

“We weren't Spectres then, I don't think it counts.” Alistair's cheeks colored. “Uh... sorry? I guess my flight or fight response reacted with my new amp. You weren't hurt too badly, were you?”

He hadn't really ever gotten the chance to find out. Things had been kind of hectic then, and after boot camp he had never seen the man again. Part of him had just assumed that he had died or something. It was a thing Alliance Marines did during the Blitz and all the hell that had happened after.

People he knew kinda wound up dead – the odds weren't great on return.

“Just a concussion, but I think it was more from the Monster than you.”

The other Spectre in the room snorted. “Yeah, I have a ton of concussions to my name. Wouldn't be too surprising.”

Well, at least he hadn't put the guy in the infirmary. His XO had, but... hey she wasn't his XO then. So no harm, no foul.

Somehow, solving this small mystery that hadn't actually been a mystery and hadn't really needed solving made Alistair feel slightly better. Everything was still going to hell in a poorly made hand basket, but at least his body and injury count wasn't as high as he thought it was. Talk about finding relief in odd areas.

He needed it. There was quite a schedule of inquiries ahead of them.

“Well, don't try that now. You take me out and it's gonna be a bad time.” Vega's tone was a little lighter now for some reason. Maybe he was more comfortable now. That was a bad move – he hadn't seen 2 AM dark biotic breakfast yet. “I don't think anyone would believe a nervous slam into a wall a second time anyway.”

Nah – Alistair rarely used the same move twice. If he was going to try something, he was going to get creative.

“I've got more interesting moves now anyway. Picked up a few tricks from fighting the thresher maw.” He stood finally. “Bo, keep an eye on him while I go change.”

He could hear Vega calling after him that watching after them was his job, but it fell somewhat flat as the Spectre went off to change into more comfortable clothes. They weren't friends, after all. They had history, but that was it.

But he wasn't a bad guy, he supposed. He didn't seem to be blaming him for the accidental slam.

Alistair still wasn't too sure he liked the guy, though. That was for sure as he started to pull his uniform shirt over his head. And that meant he needed to start thinking up plans if things really went to hell. After all, if the Reapers touched down he wasn't going to ask permission to bust out and help people.

God help Vega if he tried to stop him. He wouldn't get up the next time. But, that was only a big “if” scenario. He'd like to end this with them all alive and only mildly hating each other.

#n7month #ramblinganthropologist's writing #Alistair Shepard #Bo Peep Shepard #Yeah my Shepards didn't enlist in the canon time #it's due to their ages and Bo being a big liar #I mean she's big anyway but ths is a big lie

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kotofvi · 4 years ago

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THE MEGA RP PLOTTING SHEET / MEME.

First and foremost, recall that no one is perfect, we all have witnessed some plotting once which did not went too well, be it because of us or our partner. So here have this, which may help for future plotting. It’s a lot! Yes, but perhaps give your partners some insight? Anyway BOLD what fully applies, italicize if only somewhat.

Mun Name: Leo Age: 27 Contact: IM, Inbox, Disco

Character(s) I rp: Canon: Shiro, Sebastian, Dirk, Kyoya, Kurama, Nelliel, Maka, Dwicky. OCs: Hades, Google, Emogene, Dominic, Seirios, Iso, Felix, Reeves, Nyx, Zeru, Ren, Charlie, Dakota, Nemo, Bluejay, Koko, BD, Raven, Cora, Sammie, Lucie, Poppie, Ollie, Alphie, Bambi, Abbigail, Hiraeth, Bonnie, Rei, Rory. Which muse(s) inspires you the most atm?(for MM): Nelliel, Shiro, Rei, Bonnie, Hiraeth. Current Fandom(s): Bleach, V/LD, Naruto. (I’m not deeply involved in the fandoms themselves anymore.) Fandom(s) you have an AU for: Uhhhhh.. I basically have an AU for any fandom if I know it well and am asked for it. My language(s): English. (I’m learning other languages but I don’t RP in them unless it’s just a sentence or two.) Themes I’m interested in for rp: Fantasy / Science fiction / Horror / Western / Romance / Thriller / Mystery / Dystopia / Adventure / Modern / Erotic / Crime / Mythology / Classic / History / Renaissance / Medieval / Ancient / War / Family / Politics / Religion / School / Adulthood / Childhood / Apocalyptic / Gods / Sport / Music / Science / Fights / Angst / Smut / Drama / etc. Themes/Genres you have an AU for: Modern, Mythology, Medieval.

Preferred Thread length: one-liner / 1 para / 2 para / 3+ / novella. (I legit love all lengths, tbh, it’s more so with one-liners I tend to lose interest if there’s no substance to further it.) Asks can be send by: Mutuals / Non-Mutuals / Personals / Anons. Can Asks be continued?: YES / NO only by Mutuals?: YES / NO. Preferred thread type: crack / casual nothing too deep / serious / deep as heck. Is realism / research important for you in certain themes?: YES / NO. Are you atm open for new plots?: YES / NO / DEPENDS. (I’ve admittedly been v busy, so if you’re fine with me takin’ forever-- YES) Do you handle your draft / ask - count well?: YES / NO / SOMEWHAT. How long do you usually take to reply?: 24h / 1 week / 2 weeks / 3+ / months / years. I’m okay with interacting: original characters / a relative of my character (an oc) (It really depends here.) / duplicates / my fandom / crossovers / multi-muses / self-inserts / people with no AU verse for my fandom / canon-divergent portrayals / au-versions (as main or only verse). Do you post more ic or occ?: IC / OOC.(I post more IC, but the gaps between IC and OOC make it seem like there’s more OOC at times???) Are you selective with following others?: YES / NO / DEPENDS. (This is entirely because half the fandoms some of my muses come from are absolute shit so I have to be careful.)

Best ways to approach you for rp/plotting: IM or Inbox-- tbh, Just kick my inbox in and screech that you wanna plot/rp with me so long as you’re a mutual. I’m honestly so laid back?? Sure, it might take me a minute but this is entirely because IRL things and not because I’m putting anyone off.

What expectations do you hold towards your plotting partner: Having fun? Having ideas? I guess, just, mutual interest? I mean, I’m here to write! I’m here to have fun! If you’re not interested in that much alone then?? I guess bye?? ‘Cause I’ll become very annoying to anyone who doesn’t have an interest purely because I’ll randomly ambush my partners with excitement and ideas.

When you notice the plotting is rather one-sided, what do you do?: Oh I’ll just straight up ask if they want to continue the thread or start a new one! I mean, I get it, you can lose interest or otherwise just not feel it anymore and that’s fine! If you’re not interested in that particular thread, then no worries, we can always start more! If you’re just being one-sided in general, however?? I’m not gonna be interested at all and I’ll likely tell you as such.

How do you usually plot with others, do you give input or leave most work towards your partner?: Normally it’ll just happen? I’ll do my “Hey what if they ___” thing and then a rapid bombardment of inquiries and excitement later, there is a thread. It’s usually mutual, the involvement of creating this plot, but sometimes it’s just me being excited and them being excited and then suddenly BAM THERE BE THREADS. S’all good over here!

When a partner drops the thread, do you wish to know?: YES / NO / DEPENDS. - And why?: I mean?? I’d like to know, yes! But I get that sometimes it’s incredibly anxiety ridden trying to tell someone that you’ve lost interest in a thread. It’s alright if you don’t tell me, but if you can muster up the courage to do so I’d appreciate it! I’m not gonna be upset at you for losing interest/muse in a thread! If I cared deeply about the story, I might poke at you and then you can tell me?? Either way it’s fine and tbh, I don’t mind. However, please let it be known that you can take forever on a reply as well so don’t worry about just hoarding a draft too! Tbh, I had someone reply to a thread literally a year later and I was still excited for it! - What should your partner do when dropping a thread?: Just shoot me an IM or hell, make a list of threads you’re dropping and tag me in it??? Which ever! Or don’t even tell me at all, whatever works for you sugar!

What could possibly lead you to drop a thread?: Hmn, being overwhelmed-- I tend to accumulate a lot of drafts and 90% of them are long so sometimes I’ll drop a thread or two to help myself get by. Also lack of muse/interest is a factor. I won’t drop a thread purely out of being overwhelmed unless I just can’t muster up the muse to respond to it. - Will you tell your partner?: YES / NO / DEPENDS. Sometimes I get overwhelmed myself and I’ll drop a thread, forget to tell my partner, etc. Other times I’ll tell them before I even delete the draft!

Is communication in the rpc important to you? YES / NO. - And why?: Yes and no~ Yes primarily! I get that others can take a minute to muster up the courage to talk to others and would just prefer to keep things to a few sentences at first! However, I can and will ambush you with conversation and interest nonetheless. Because communication is important. If you’ve got something you wanna say to me, say it! I’m here for it! - Are you okay with absolute honesty, even if it may means hearing something negative about you and/or portrayal?: Yup! If you’ve got an issue or something that might come across as criticism to say, say it! Civil discussion is absolutely wanted here and I would like to work out any issues you may have with me or my portrayal. - Do you think you can handle such situation in a mature way? YES / NO.

Why do you rp again, is there a goal?: To write and have fun! To explore in depth the characters I create or take on! I mean, c’mon, lbr here-- my gremlin ass muses require some more in depth speculation and investigation into their characters! I love the creativity, the world building, the constant drive to do better and to make others feel something from words alone. The capability to rend emotion from another living being simply from reading and reacting to something I created is amazing and I want to make others cry, laugh, smile and think. I want to create.

Wishlist, be it plots or scenarios: Oh man, there’s an endless supply of things I’d like to do! I want to explore the depths of my muses’ histories more?? Like Shiro, I want to write out the things he must’ve seen, felt, experienced. How Nelliel was when she was alive, how Shiro fared in the Arena when he wasn’t fighting, Seb’s life torn between the various throws of data and reality-- there’s so much! And ALL THE AU’s!!!! All of them!!!

Themes I won’t ever rp / explore: Sure, I work with a lot of darker themes like torture, gore, etc-- but I will not write Rape, sexual abuse, nor will I write child loss.

What Type of Starters do you prefer / dislike, can’t work with?: I can work with most starters! However, if I’m randomly given a starter that I can’t work with for the muse selected, I’ll inform the person who wrote it! I appreciate the effort given but don’t expect me to be able to reply to every random starter given! Sometimes, they don’t even show up in my tag.

What type of characters catch your interest the most?: Okay, I’m a sucker for the underdogs, aggressive folks and the villains. I’m not even going to try and lie and say I don’t immediately look at the Aizens and Kenpachis and go ah yes, those fucking gremlins, give me ten. I also love the background characters? The side characters in a show that seem so unimportant but have a crucial role? I love characters that have such an obscure involvement that you have to stop and ask why and how their involvement was crucial. I also love the soft beans? The ones who are so hyped with positivity and gleaming interest that they just can’t be ignored?? But then turn around and whoop some poor sap’s ass with that sparkle sparkle smile. Also love the upstanding moral types that also acknowledge that some things can’t be avoided and that morality is a grey area dependent on the perceptions of the individuals themselves.

What type of characters catch your interest the least?: Hmn-- I guess the kind that don’t seem to have much substance to them? The ones that are just uncharacteristically too kind. Yes, I love the overwhelmingly positive types but?? Also?? The ones that are too kind and without flaw just?? Don’t strike me as interesting. Also the ones that are just cruel for some obscure reason just to give them a reason to be villains. I mean I understand but also?? Villains don’t have to have a reason?? They can be cruel just to be cruel. Idk that’s always just been a thing with me.

What are your strong aspects as rp partner?: I guess that I’m fairly laid back? I don’t mind if you take 10 years to reply, I’m going to get excited if you message me with some random idea, I’m not going to be bothered by any ideas you suggest?? I can also sometimes give u doodles?? I don’t have time to doodle a lot but sometimes, once in a blue moon, you’ll get a random offering of doodled booty for ur blessing. Also gonna hit you up with random HCs, ideas, threads, etc?? Always?? Idk, I’m not too good at thinking about positive aspects of myself lmfao.

What are your weak aspects as rp partner?: Hnnn, I’m too laid back at times. I take too long to reply and I’m busy af IRL. I’m often goaded into being irritated by some asshole or another so I can come off aggro af too when I don’t mean to be. Sometimes I can get overwhelmed and disappear for a week, other times I can end up overwhelming someone else by being too excited? I tend to watch how much I do and say because I feel like I might come off as smothering and am too used to being shut down and told to shut up so I just don’t?? Do anything sometimes. I’m also not very good at initiating contact sometimes so I tend to go days and weeks without speaking to others.

Do you rp smut?: YES / NO. Do you prefer to go into detail?: YES / NO / DEPENDS. Are you okay with black curtain?: YES / NO. - When do you rp smut? More out of fun or character development?: Usually only if it’s developmental for the characters involved. Sometimes it’s just fun to do! It really depends on the characters involved + if I have any muse in general for it. - Anything you would not want to rp there?: ???? Kinda vague, Idk? I mean if I don’t wanna rp somethin’ I’ll say so.

Are ships important to you?: YES / NO. Would you say your blog is ship-focused?: YES / NO. Do you use read more?: YES / NO / SOMETIMES. Are you: Multi-Ship / Single-Ship / Dual-Ship — Multiverse / Singleverse. - What do you love to explore the most in your ships?: The relationship, the depth of two muses who can be wildly different or even similar. The multifaceted involvement of others to that relationship, the angst, the arguments, the sad moments along with all the happy things and how hard one might try while the other is cold-- etc. I don’t just want happy dates and sunshine, that’s not how relationships work after all! - What is your smut tag?: Kettledrums

Are you okay with pre-established relationships?: YES / NO. - And what kind of ones?: I like a lot of pre-established relationships! However, I can be a tad wary of child muses? Aka: The ones who are children of one of my muses. Reason being, sometimes even I don’t know how they’d raise a child so the muse in question would be off putting to me because it’s out of my realm. Beyond that, I’m down for just about everything!

► SECTION ABOUT YOUR MUSE.

- What could possibly make your Muse interesting towards others, why should they rp with this particular character of yours now, what possible plots do they offer?: Since I have so many damn muses, I’mma just go with Shiro for all of this-- I suppose what they could find interesting is his very multifaceted dynamic as a soldier, human, technical non-human (Zombae), war worn, space exploring person. He can be rainbows and sunshine but also can suddenly become incredibly aggressive and cold. He’s not one or the other, he’s all and everything that he’s learned and encompassed while still remaining fragile and human in the end. Writing with him can be inspiring and can be soul wrenching, depending on the thread. As for plots, dude your character could be in space in one thread if the otherwise couldn’t be. There’s so many ways to go about writing with him?? He’s such an amazing character and the plots he can be instilled in are almost limitless with just his main verse.

- With what type of Muses do you usually struggle to rp with?: Hmn-- I guess the main one I have issues injecting him into place with would be the ones who are strictly non-tech oriented?? I mean, I can still have him there but getting him to fit is just?? Really difficult. Also with people who RP villains of his fandom and expect him not to be volatile. I’m sorry, but if you’re writing a S.endak or a Z.arkon-- you’re not going to get roses and butterflies with Shiro, plain and simple. If that’s something you can’t accept then don’t approach him with those muses. - With what type of Muses do they usually work well with?: He works really well with most anyone! So long as one goes into it knowing he can be hostile with soldiers, Galra, etc; then he can be used no matter what. He’s one of my most capable muses that doesn’t have much of an issue when it comes to responding.

- What interests your Muse(s) in general: Space, mechanics, biomedical engineering, people, freedom, fighting for a cause, flowers, his mother, violin, cats, sparring, getting stronger, constellations, nebulae, engineering, literature, alien languages, cooking. - What do they desire, is their goal?: The safety of others, the freedom of others, the ability to choose, hope-- he wants to make sure those he cares for and all others are free and safe from the Galra take over. - What catches their interest first when meeting someone new?: How they look at him. If they show signs of pity, of fear, he tends to walk away from any possible meeting with them. Otherwise, their appearance is what first catches his eye. How they dress, how they respond to him, how they talk and if he can make them crack a smile with an awkward joke. - What do they value in a person?: Hope, Strength, Loyalty, Purpose, Honesty, Patience. - What themes do they like talking about?: Shiro’s more of a listener than a talker, but honestly he’ll talk about anything of interest and question anyone’s as well to get them to talk about it. It’s what makes conversation with him easygoing most of the time. - Which themes bore them?: Himself. He’ll try to avert any conversation about himself if it’s too personal or too close to something. It’s not so much that it bores him but that type of talk is reserved for those insanely close to him. Also talk of command bores the FUCK out of him. He’s never been one to really like rank.

- Did they ever went through something traumatic?: So. Fucking. Much. Between being a prisoner of a war he was never involved with to being told he was a leader of a rebellion for said war, being a prisoner in the Arena and forced to fight and kill others, being held down and sedated as he tried to warn the others, DYING-- this boy has been thru too much. - What could possibly trigger them?: Certain noises, textures, Galra, medical equipment, certain lighting. - What could set them off, enrage them?: Galra, someone protecting him. - What could lead to an instant kill?: Any bloodlust towards him or those he cares for. Most of the time, he has this under control and tries to be merciful, give them a chance; but sometimes, especially during an episode; there’s no stopping him from gunning for someone’s throat if they had any intent to harm another or himself.

- Is there someone /-thing they hate?: Z.arkon, S.endak, L.otor, H.aggar, Druids, himself a lot of the time. - Is there someone /-thing they love?: The paladins, space fam in general, his mother, his friends, people in general.

Is your Muse easy to approach?: YES / NO. - Best ways to approach them?: Just approach him? Honestly, Shiro’s one of the easiest persons to converse with and get near. That doesn’t mean his guard is dropped, but he’s very easy going a lot of the time outside of battle. So long as you have a reason to approach him (even simpler ones like: his appearance, his arm, etc) then you’re set. - Where are they usually to find?: Oof, honestly? Anywhere. Space, Earth, other places-- he’s constantly on the move. If you want a set place, just say somewhere on Earth and I can work with that.

Something you may still want to point out about your muse?: Shiro is certainly easy to get along with, but he is not without flaw or issue. He has a plethora of issues even after the fall of the Galra Empire. He’s not without his scars, physical and otherwise. Approaching him is easy but getting close to him is not. Don’t expect him to be an open book. Just because he can talk about war, battle, fighting with a straight face doesn’t mean he wasn’t effected by it. He has suffered greatly and it will show the closer you get to him.

CONGRATS!!! You managed it, now tag your mutuals! ♥

Tagged by: @skyvar [ <3 ] Tagging: IF YOU WANNA PARTAKE IN THIS INSANITY, PLEASE DO AND TAG ME IN IT SO I CAN READ IT!!!

#Thx Snow I'm dying now #I think I just filled my word quota that I didn't even have #Dash Games;#Long post //#Shiro;#Shiro Tidbits;#But tbh this was fun to do!!

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