#ACROSS THE SHEETS (BAREFOOT EDITION)

[slrmagazine]

BRETT YOUNG’S NEW ACOUSTIC ALBUM,ACROSS THE SHEETS (BAREFOOT EDITION) AVAILABLE NOW

BRETT YOUNG’S NEW ACOUSTIC ALBUM,ACROSS THE SHEETS (BAREFOOT EDITION) AVAILABLE NOW. #brettyoung @BrettYoungMusic

DIAMOND-selling and ACM Award winning country star Brett Young has released a new acoustic version of his fourth studio album, ACROSS THE SHEETS (Barefoot Edition), out now via Nashville Harbor Records & Entertainment. The album features acoustic versions of all eight previously-released songs, including his smash hit “Dance With You,” which earned Young his biggest week one streaming numbers to…

[the-last-kenobi]

I... don’t have a reason for this one. it’s been sitting in my drafts for months so here we go.

_-_-_

Pale tiled floors, shining from regular cleanings and scattered with a few mismatched rugs in warm, rustic tones, each one made from different fibers and threads, each one showing signs of wear.

A long window, curtained over with sheer fabric that still permitted the light of dawn to suffuse the room. It filtered lazily over the furniture, just as mismatched and well-loved as the rugs, and the less tidy kitchen, a grey pot still spattered with an orange sauce left absent-mindedly on the stovetop.

A pair of boots discarded sloppily in the small space before the entry door. Large, mud-spotted, scuffed — Qui-Gon’s, abandoned in a fit of sarcastic humor when he kicked them off the afternoon before, returning at last from a months-long mission.

A book, an actual paperbacked edition with edges made soft by use, by fingers lovingly and unthinkingly caressing the ridges and the binding, lying on the side table next to the coziest chair — Obi-Wan’s, deliberately set aside late last night when he realized he’d been reading much longer than he’d meant to.

Now, just after dawn, it was not surprising that the Master was the first to wake.

Qui-Gon exited his own room and paused in the common area, drinking in the familiarity, eyeing the book with knowing amusement. He went to the window and with what some of the crankier Masters would have called flagrant laziness, waved his hand and let the Force gently part the curtains.

It was not much brighter without them; they were sheer as it was and the smoggy vista this morning did not allow for much sun.

Still, sunshine was sunshine, polluted or not, and Qui-Gon relaxed as it washed over him, barefoot and still wearing his nightclothes under an old robe that had grown so ratty he had cleaned it and resigned it to the realm of comfort clothing.

He looked at the book again and smirked, shaking his head; as he walked past it towards the other door in the room, he ran a finger over the cover, feeling the ridges of the embossed title. Still, he thought, no excuses. I warned him we’d begin today with meditation. He can sleep in tomorrow.

“Obi-Wan,” he said, and opened the door to the boy’s room, a smaller and more cramped version of his own.

The light was greyer, here; the sunlight didn’t quite cross the threshold, and the solar-lamp on the desk was unlit. Shadows played with his eyes for a moment, and then Qui-Gon focused on the form on the bed, folded messily in the soft white sheets, curled on one side with one arm tucked beneath the pillow and the other dangling off the side of the bed.

“Obi-Wan,” he said again, cheerfully speaking with totally unnecessary volume. “Good morning.”

No response.

Snorting quietly, Qui-Gon approached the bed, reaching down to ignite the lamp as he did.

Golden light spilled out, and Obi-Wan’s soft golden-red hair burned like fire in response. Still, he slept on, his face turned towards his pillow and the sheets half-covering his cheek and nose.

“Padawan,” Qui-Gon said, exasperated now. “Good morning.”

He tugged on the braid that he had helped retie less than twelve hours ago, and Obi-Wan’s head twitched on the pillow as he was pulled, but the boy didn’t even blink.

“Star’s sake,” mumbled Qui-Gon, and pulled harder.

Obi-Wan’s whole head turned, his neck limp and unresisting at that mild tug, and the stark white face with its closed eyes and slack lips stared upwards, completely still.

Qui-Gon’s soul felt like it had lurched right out of his body.

He collapsed on his knees on the bed, kneeling over his apprentice, hands moving to frame the pale face and finding cool, stiff skin without a trace of the grouchy blush the poorly rested teenager would have given him any other day.

Frantic, Qui-Gon’s hands searched for a puff of warm breath from the open lips, for a heartbeat from the chest, for a pulse in the limp wrist that still dangled inches from the floor.

But there was nothing.

Qui-Gon shook his head wildly, lifting Obi-Wan’s head from the pillow, trying to make him sit up. The boy rolled limply in his arms and hung there like a rag doll, his face pressed against his Master’s overly worn robe, unknowing and uncaring of how awkwardly he was being held.

“Obi-Wan,” Qui-Gon tried to say again, but this time it came out stretched and broken, wavering like a child’s uncertain attempt at handwriting. More of a moan than spoken word. “Obi...Obi-Wan? No, no, no no no...” Begging, denying.

He’d do anything—

Obi-Wan was twenty. Twenty. Young, healthy, a few years at most from Knighthood, which was only the beginning. He was strong and well-trained and he had laughed when Qui-Gon left his boots on the floor last night and shaken his head, saying he was going to stay up and read and have to deal with that eyesore in his peripherals all evening, and he’d smiled when Qui-Gon reached over to tug on the Padawan braid and added a casual, paternal caress of the thumb across the freckled cheek as he did, and —

“Obi-Wan, wake up,” he begged his Padawan, pulling the boy closer, bowing his own head down to touch the slumped shoulder. “Please come back. I don’t understand. I don’t — Obi-Wan. Please.”

The words devolved into hyperventilating breaths, which turned into ragged sobs, which turned into... a blur.

A comm call. Someone asking him to breathe. Hands separating him from his Padawan. Someone he didn’t know casually moving the boots out of the way, as if they didn’t matter, as if they weren’t there so Obi-Wan could laugh at them again. Being led to the Halls. Questions being asked of him. Condolences being offered. Again and again. And again.

“A heart problem,” a distant voice saying. “Insignificant enough that it wasn’t picked up on. We think he had a startling vision, or a bad dream, and his heart-rate spiked but his breathing didn’t match it.”

“A small heart problem,” they said.

“Rare,” they said.

“Might never have caused problems, except...” they said.

“I’m so sorry,” they said.

But nothing they said was making anything make more sense, nothing they said was making reality any less nightmarish.

Obi-Wan was twenty.

He was supposed to wake up grumpy and meditate with him, he was supposed to make the tea because he liked to make the tea, and he was supposed to laugh about the boots while Qui-Gon teased him about his book.

He was not supposed to go into cardiac arrest in his sleep because his heart and his lungs weren’t working together as they should have.

He was not supposed to die.

“I would have felt it,” he heard himself say weakly. “I would have sensed it.”

“We’re not all-knowing,” Mace’s voice said heavily. Had he been talking to Mace? He supposed he must have been, but then he stopped caring and tuned the rest of the conversation out.

Then Qui-Gon was standing in the common area again, fixated on the book, well-loved, gently used, waiting patiently on the side table next to the coziest chair — because Qui-Gon preferred the sofa or the floor cushions, and because Obi-Wan liked to cross his legs and dangle them over the arm and he had been doing that since he was thirteen and lonely and still bearing bruises from when he’d been kidnapped and enslaved when he should have had a Master to protect him, and so that chair was Obi-Wan’s, really, just his — and the book was waiting and waiting and it was going to wait forever.

And that did it.

The boots, shoved aside, unremarked.

The book, waiting innocently on the table.

Obi-Wan was gone, and wouldn’t be coming back. Despite the dawn, despite the chair that was understood silently to be his, despite the promises of early meditation, despite the affection in the touch across his cheek, despite the boots waiting to be smiled at, despite the book waiting to be read again, despite a Master’s protection — a Master’s love —

Obi-Wan had been stolen away again, this time for good, and everything, everything was as ashes.

Qui-Gon stood rooted to the spot and watched the night pass and a new dawn creep up on its heels, hoping for golden light that would chase away some of the cold.

But the light was grey this morning, and he was alone.

Qui-Gon blinked aching eyes, feeling dried tears across the lids as he did. The lights hurt, and he groaned, turning away.

A face slid into view above him as at the same time two gentle hands held his head still, examining his face, and Qui-Gon froze, staring up at the person holding him.

He tried to speak, but he couldn’t, his throat swollen and throbbing from abuse.

“Shhhh,” said Obi-Wan, his face pinched with concern. “Go back to sleep, Master. You’ve been drugged. It’s almost over. I’ve got you. The Healers say you’ll be all right. Go back to sleep.”

Qui-Gon reached up, straining impossibly just to make his shaking hand obey him, and felt his callused fingers glide across the young, sun-freckled cheek, felt warmth and saw a dimple appear as Obi-Wan smiled down at him.

“Shhh,” said Obi-Wan again. “You’ve been dreaming something awful, I think. Nobody has hurt you, Master, you’re all right.”

“So...are you,” Qui-Gon rasped, his voice thin and unfamiliar to his own ears.

A strange look crossed the boy’s face, like realization and confusion all at once. Still, he nodded, and lowered his head down to rest his forehead briefly against his teacher’s. “I’m all right, Master. It was only a dream.”

_-_-_

[imagine-organization-xiii]

Org with an s/o who's an artist who just asked if they could have some help with anatomy practice?

omg I absolutely LOVE this prompt

Edit: excluding the babies because I posted this and then realized that I forgot to do them whoops

if someone wants to draw these photos/poses I might actually have a heart attack and die

-

Xemnas

Willing to help as long as it doesn’t interfere with his work. You’ll probably have to catch him in a candid pose, maybe while he’s working or going about his daily routines.

[Pose: Candid image of Xemnas sitting behind his desk in his office, pen in one hand but gaze focused on something outside of his window. It’s late evening, so the office is dark, but his eyes are narrowed and bright.]

Xigbar

Xigbar doesn’t even care, man. You barely even finish your sentence and he’s already stripping out of his clothes to give you an intimate anatomy lesson. Of course he’s going to help you. How could you even think otherwise?

[Pose: Naked, but sprawled across the bed and laughing. You’ve just told a great joke to get him out of his seductive expression and on something more natural. Blankets and sheets are covering his intimate areas, and his hands are clutching his stomach a he curls his head into the covers and laughs.]

Xaldin

Hey, you want anatomy practice? The best time to do that is to get him when he’s shirtless and working out. You get some good practice in and he’s pretty smug about being ogled by you.

[Pose: Xaldin shirtless and barefoot, mid-pull-up. His hands are clenched tightly around the bar above his head and the veins in his arms are bulging. He has an expression of tense concentration on his face, hair tied back and stray strands plastered to his forehead with sweat.]

Vexen

Vexen really doesn’t have time for this, but like Xemnas, he allows you to draw him while he works. As long as you don’t bother him, he’s content to let you sit in the corner of the room and do your own thing.

[Pose: a candid sketch of Vexen behind one of his lab tables. He looks ruffled and frustrated, sleeves pulled up as he pours some sort of unidentifiable chemical into a beaker. He has a pencil tucked behind his ear and several half drunk mugs of coffee scattered around the table.]

Lexaeus

Doesn’t want to say no because he cares about you and your endeavors, but he can’t deny that he doesn’t exactly feel comfortable posing nude, despite the fact that you’ve definitely seen him naked before. It just seems a bit more weird being nude when not in an intimate, sexual setting, but he really can’t say no to you.

[Pose: An image of Lexaeus on his way out of the bathroom after a shower. He has a thick towel against his waist and his skin is still slightly damp. He has an exasperated expression on his face and his cheeks are pink.]

Zexion

Refuses to do anything naked - he’s seen how difficult it is to deal with life after nude photos get out into the world. “Zexion, it’s just a drawing, not a nude picture that i’m going to send to the entirety of the eleventh grade.” But he doesn’t budge, so you’ll have to take what he gives you, which is like, nothing.

[Pose: Zexion’s favorite table in the back of the library, with dim lighting and shelves and shelves of old books that you’ll probably never fully understand. Zexion is sitting at the table, head down as he snoozes half top of the wooden furniture. His legs are stretched out as far as they can go, touching even more books that he had previously pulled off of the shelves.]

Saix

Kind of like Xemnas - willing to help and do whatever you want as long as it doesn't interfere in his work. He gets to decide if the image is good and if it gets to see the light of day. He has a reputation to uphold.

[Pose: Saix is walking down the hallway in his regular uniform, a clipboard in hand and staring down at the floor. He's mid-step, not paying attention to his surroundings, and looks as though he's mumbling to himself.]

Axel

Another who's not ashamed of being full frontal - in fact, he insists. No covering, no sheet draping like "those other wimps" as he says. You want anatomy practice, he's going to give it to you.

[Pose: Axel standing in the middle of his bedroom in a superhero/victory pose. The curtains are opening, letting in the bright sunshine of the day. He's smiling cheerfully, clothes tossed haphazardly on the bed behind him.]

Demyx

So excited, he’ll make up his own pose because he’s that extra. He wants to try something unique and, well, gets a little bashful once he realizes he has to strip, but gets over it fairly quickly when he’s sees the way your own cheeks heat.

[Pose: Demyx sitting cross legged on a rug on the floor with his sitar in his lap. He looks as though he’s naked except for a pair of boxers that are peeking out from behind his instrument. He’s fiddling with the strings of the sitar while looking down at a sheet of paper near his feet.]

Luxord

He trusts your creative judgment and knows that you'll make him look awesome no matter what you do. You're super talented and he can't wait to see the result of your hard work!

[Pose: It's early morning and the sun is barely shining through the cracks in the curtains. Luxord is naked with the covers up to his waist, hair mussed and half asleep. He lounges on his side with a cup of warm tea in one hand, grinning at you sleepily.]

Marluxia

He’s up for it, but Marluxia is going to bring the theatrics. He’ll tell you, “okay, bring what you need to the garden area in about two hours and be prepared to draw.” You’ll get there and Marluxia has set up a whole scene with himself as the centerpiece.

[Pose: The middle of Marluxia’s garden. A wide variety of flowers are spread across the scene, spreading to where Marluxia sits draped across a large white fountain. A bouquet of lilies is covering his intimate parts, and he looks as though he’s trying hard not to laugh.]

Larxene

Larxene is also all for it; she’s definitely not ashamed of her body at all, but... okay, she’s kind of nervous that the image might fall into the wrong hands. She’s willing to pose for you, but under her terms.

[Pose: Larxene lounging by the pool in a cute, but modest bathing suit. She has sunglasses on her face and she’s lounging on a beach chair with a magazine in her hands. She’s scowling at something in the distance near the pool, and a large splash of water seems to be coming in from the side of the image.]

[buckupbuttercup]

Wow guys! Touch prompts was amazing. Thank you so much to everyone who sent in a prompt. That was a much needed writing (and serotonin) boost. I officially wrote over 12K words in 8 days (edited and posted in ten!) which is a lot for me. Lately I’ve been struggling to write so this really lit a fire under me. And I had so much fun doing it! Once Big Bang is over (and I go through the rest of the prompts in my inbox, I promise you guys I see them!) I will definitely do something like this again.

Touch Prompt Master List

A Gentle Touch (T; 596 words; hurt/comfort, TW for implied domestic violence) @fleurdebeton requested (2) running fingers through hair and (20) bandaging/stitching up an injury

Everything looks worse in the harsh, bright lights of the bathroom and this is no exception. The cut slicing through Buck’s eyebrow is still weeping blood, a trail of rust stained into his skin from the corner of his eye down across his temple and along his jaw. Already the red, irritated skin is darkening with the promise of a bruise that will no doubt crawl up the side of his forehead by the morning.

The Cadence of Beating Hearts (T; 758 words; Buddie emotional hurt/comfort, angst) @fleurdebeton requested (9) listening to the other’s heartbeat & (36) lifting the other one up

The house is quiet as the first light of morning filters in through the curtains. Just the soft hum of the ceiling fan spinning above the bed and the quiet shuffle of sheets as the body next to him shifts. It’s in moments like this, where the world is standing still, that Buck can give in. His worn out heart can unclench in his chest and he can finally breathe, knowing that they’re all safely tucked away in this bubble. Even if it’s only for a little while.

The Girl on the Ledge (T; 994 words; emotional hurt/comfort, TW for suicide) Anonymous requested (8) shielding the other one with their body

It happens so fast. One second she’s there and the next second she’s … gone. Just gone.

When they arrive on scene, she is already out over the ledge, barefoot and emotionless as she stands on the steel crossbeam of the bridge. The salty sea breeze whips her blonde hair up into a tangle, white sundress billowing around her knees. Her eyes though, bloodshot and haunted, paint the picture of desperation that will never leave their minds.

Kisses Interrupted (T; 1199 words; Buddie; fluff, slice of life, two tired dads) Anonymous requested (44) sitting in the other's lap

He scoots around Eddie to place the leftovers in the fridge and pulls out two beers. It might be a school night for Chris, but neither of them have shift tomorrow. He doubts they’ll stay up much longer than an episode of True Crime and a beer, but it’s worth a shot. They haven’t spent any time together in … weeks it feels like. And as lame as it sounds, he wants nothing more than to snuggle on the couch, wrapped up in Eddie’s arms. Or …

Dinner Plans (T; 1140 words; Buddie; domestic fluff, Eddie cooks!) Anonymous requested (27) pulling the other towards them

Buck eyes Eddie, and the disaster he’s making in his kitchen, with no small amount of suspicion. It’s not that he doesn’t trust the man, because he does. Every day on shift he puts his life in his partner’s hands when they run into burning buildings or scale down a cliff with nothing but a rope keeping him from plummeting to the rocks below. He trusts Eddie with his life and, more recently, with his heart. He just doesn’t trust the man with his stove.

More Than A Jeep (G; 1281 words; Buddie; mild hurt/comfort, car accidents) Anonymous requested (1) touching foreheads, (2) running fingers through hair, (3) hiding face in neck, and (21) kissing the other’s brow

A gunmetal grey Jeep sits in the middle of the intersection surrounded by skid marks. The back is smashed in from a pick-up truck rear ending it, but the worst of the damage is on the driver’s side. It’s crumbled in from a second impact, frame of the Jeep bowing inward, part of the roof and door cutaway. Just seeing the damage makes Eddie’s stomach twist into knots. Officer Williams’s eyes go wide in understanding, fingers releasing their grip. Eddie only spares a moment to nod a thanks in his direction before he’s sprinting away.

Shout It From The Rooftops (G; 661 words; Buddie; fluff, idiots in love, relationship reveal) @221bsunsettowers requested (14) putting an arm around the other’s waist & (44) sitting on the other’s lap

It’s not that he’s ashamed, because he’s most definitely not. Eddie loves Buck, that is a sure fact. Loves the man with every fibre of his being. And if he were a ‘shout it from the rooftops’ kind of guy, he would scale the highest mountain just so everyone would know.

Eddie Diaz, Terrible Patient (T; 1248 words; Buddie; sick fic, mild hurt/comfort) Anonymous requested (17) holding the other’s chin up & (45) feeling their temperature

Eddie is a pretty awful patient.

There is only a small window of time, twenty minutes to be exact, where he’s left unsupervised from the time Carla leaves the house with Chris in the morning until when Buck gets home from shift. Twenty minutes in the early morning in which most sick people would just stay curled up in bed. Not Eddie. No, instead Buck finds him hunched over in the kitchen wheezing through congested lungs as he tries to empty the dishwasher. Hence, terrible patient.

They Left A Scar (G; 771 words; Buddie; emotional hurt/comfort) Anonymous requested (17) holding the other’s chin up

Buck’s past lives in him like a knot of scar tissue, harmless and unnoticeable most of the time. Talking with his parents, though, is like poking and prodding at it until it strikes a nerve. Then they just seem to press all their weight against the tender flesh until Buck is crumbling under the pressure, body rocked with phantom pains that echo for days after.

Miles From Okay (G; 1120 words; Buddie; angst; hurt/comfort) @stellarm requested (28) feeling for each other in the dark

It takes a monumental amount of effort, but Buck’s able to move his arm, the one not pinned under his body and raging in agony. He slides it slowly across the floor in front of him as far as he can reach, fingers scrambling in the darkness in hopes of finding his missing partner.

“Eddie,” he moans to the shadows.

Scrapes and Bruises (T; 1387 words; Buddie; mild hurt/comfort) Anonymous requested 20) bandaging/stitching up an injury & (22) falling asleep on the other’s shoulder

“Any headache?”

“Other than the one you’re giving me?” Buck quips back.

Eddie cuts him a stern glare to which Buck just groans.

“No headache. No nausea. Never lost consciousness,” Buck tells him, monotone. “I’m painfully aware of every embarrassing second, thanks so much.”

Code Word: Penguin (G; 1458 words; Buddie; fluff, boys in love, marriage proposal) @buddiextarlos requested (2) running fingers through hair & (38) stroking their leg

And he knew, on a lazy Sunday morning with the early rays of dawn streaming in through the bedroom window, just the two of them tangled beneath the sheets in a quiet house, that he loved Buck. He had opened his eyes to see Buck’s face smushed into his pillow, blonde curls sticking up in all directions, lips parted as he snored away, and felt the world shift into focus once again. This is what he wanted forever.

Thank you all so much! Happy reading!

[hiraeth-doux]

Tagged by @svgurl410!  Thank you so much! 

post seven sentences from your current WIP and then tag seven others!

This is from my WW/JL 20-chapter crossover I wrote in 2019 (it’s technically current because I never finished editing it). Undecided when/if I might share it, but it my favourite work to date, so... 

--

In his dream, he had once again been running barefoot across the field while orange smoke rose around him and the smell of something sweet permeated his senses, making him sick to his stomach and so terrified of what was after him he couldn’t think straight. There was no plan and no reason, just raw animal fear and an instinct that screamed at him to escape.

Except, there was no escape. Just the feeling of being hunted.  

Tangled in the sheets, he sucked in a breath, trying to get some air into his lungs and slow the pace of his heartbeat.

He was safe, he told himself. He was awake, and safe, and—

tagging: @akajb84 @finnicks @rupzydaisy @marwanckenzari @dreamer-wisher-liar @melsunicornonesie @onetrainsnowpiercer @lunabelles @wonderrbat anyone who feels like doing it :) 

[awake-dearheart]

When Lies Become The Truth [prologue]

Series Masterlist

Summary: Loki has always been known as the God of Mischief and Lies. So what happens when he meets someone who can see through his lies? And what will he do when he learns she is promised to another?

Word count: 1200

Pairing: Loki x Sigyn

Warnings: Small mention of blood and VERY minor violence

A/N:Originally posted 8/6/19. This is my first attempt at a multi-chapter in YEARS. I started this a long time ago and it’s gone through a major edit since the first iteration. Send me an ask if you’d like to be added to the taglist!

Clouds hung low in the skies above Asgard and the gloom they brought with them had transplanted itself into dispositions of the people. Most stayed indoors, hiding themselves from the imminent rain. Of course, there was an exception. In one of the palace courtyards, a young girl ran barefoot through the grass, arms outstretched, waiting for the rain to fall. She spun and laughed and danced until she felt the first drops of water hit her skin. Giggling, she closed her eyes and tilted her head back. The rain splashed down upon her; slowly first, then faster and faster.

"Sigyn!" a voice called loudly. The girl opened her eyes to see her mother glaring at her reproachfully. "Come in out of that rain this instant!" Sigyn frowned and looked back to the sky. Days like this were her favorite on Asgard. Her mother had brought her here when she was still very young. It was an honor bestowed upon them by Odin after her father had died in the war with the frost giants. To most, living in the palace of the Allfather would be a dream come true. It certainly had been to her mother. The people here were friendly and called them both "m'lady." The days were almost always sunny and warm. Still, Sigyn never truly felt at home among the gilded halls of the golden palace. Their home on Vanaheim had been much more modest and without the grandeur they had found here. But on days like this, when the rain fell in sheets it brought back one of the only memories she had of her father and her home world. There had been a particularly heavy rain and, rather than run from it, her father had insisted upon going outside to play. He had chased her around the fields behind their home until they were both soaked to the bone with sore stomachs from laughing. Her mother had scolded her on that day too.

"Sigyn! I will not tell you again!" Her mother's voice snapped her back from her memory.

"Coming, Mother," she mumbled. She slowly trudged into the hall and allowed her mother to fuss over her. They began walking back to their chambers as the rain picked up. Her mother droned on about station and what she deemed "appropriate behavior" and Sigyn nodded mutely, barely paying her any attention. As they rounded the corner past the stables, Sigyn heard a noise. She stopped and looked for the source. Out of the stables and into the pouring rain tumbled a boy. His face was smeared with blood and his raven hair was matted to his head. He looked up, frantic for help, and his eyes caught Sigyn's. They held anger, desperation, and, most of all, fear. She wondered what he could be so afraid of. The answer came in the form of another boy. He strode from the stable, staring down at the figure in the mud. The second boy was much larger than the first with light blonde hair and an arrogance that permeated the air.

"Brother, please, no more," the boy in the mud pleaded, pushing himself up on to his knees. His plea was met with a hard kick to the ribs. Coughing, the dark boy fell again and it was all that Sigyn’s heart could bear. She tore off across the yard, bare feet slapping the wet ground and ignoring the cries of her mother behind her. The older boy pulled back his fist to deliver another blow, and as he began to swing, Sigyn reached him. She caught him by the wrist and locked her eyes with his.

"Leave him alone," she growled. She may have been small for her age but that didn't stop the blonde-haired bully from flinching. 

"Take your hands off of me!" he shouted, trying to wrench his arm free. The shock on his face was apparent. Clearly he wasn’t used to being spoken to like this. “This is my brother. I never meant him any harm. We were only-“

"You're lying," Sigyn retorted curtly, holding tight to his wrist. "You wanted to hurt him. To make him suffer. All because you’re jealous. You’re jealous that your mother is teaching him magic and not you." She released his wrist and he stumbled back, looking bewildered. 

"Do you know to whom you speak?" he yelled. "I am the son of-"

"Odin," Sigyn finished. "I know who you are, Thor. Now leave before I go and tell the Allfather how shamefully his son treats his own blood." Thor sputtered at her for a moment before steeling himself, tilting his chin to the air, and walking away. Smirking, Sigyn turned her attention to the other boy. He was still on the ground, looking up at her with his mouth agape.

"No one but Mother has ever spoken to Thor that way," he whispered. Sigyn smiled at him.

"Well it seems long past due," she replied. The boy chuckled and stood, wiping the blood but not the astonished look from his face. Now that he was at his full height, Sigyn saw that he was not much shorter than his brother, but rather thinner and without the muscles Thor had clearly worked hard to define. His face was pointed with bright green eyes that made Sigyn feel like he could look right through her.

"Thank you for your help, my lady. I am Loki, son of Odin, Prince of Asgard" he proclaimed, striking his most regal stance. Sigyn giggled and curtsied. 

"I am Sigyn, my prince. I am happy to help whenever my lord might need me." She bowed her head as her mother had taught her, and turned to leave. 

"Wait!" Loki called, breaking his royal facade. "How did you know all that?" She looked back at him and raised an eyebrow in confusion. "You knew Thor was jealous of my mother teaching me magic. How?" Her face fell and her stomach knotted. She wasn't supposed to tell anyone about her abilities. Her mother strictly forbid it. The prince looked her over, waiting for her answer. She chewed her lip and sighed. 

"I have a kind of magic of my own. Not one that I learned, but a gift I was born with. If I am touching the skin of another person, I can see through any lies they speak to the truth." Sigyn tore her gaze from the ground to meet the prince’s eyes. She expected to see doubt or fear, but instead she found wonder reflected back. Loki was amazed by her.

"Can you teach me?" he asked. Before Sigyn could answer, her mother stormed up to her. She pulled Sigyn behind her and turned to Loki.

"Please forgive her, my prince. She is young and knows not what she does," she apologized, pulling Sigyn into a low bow beside her. Loki struck up his regal stance again, and spoke words that had obviously been well practiced.

"Worry not, madam," he answered, his voice slightly deeper than before. "Your daughter has done me a great service today. You should be proud to have raised someone so brave and selfless. I would very much like to see her again." Sigyn stole a sideways glance and couldn't help but let out a small giggle at the look of disbelief in her mother's eyes. 

"Well, I'm sure something can be arranged, my prince," she said, rising from her bow. She took Sigyn by the hand. "Come along, daughter." The pair walked away, and Sigyn took one last glance over her shoulder to see Loki smiling broadly at her.

Permanent taglist: @farfromhaz @spideyboipete @marvelxholland @gyllenwh0re @eeyore101247 @hollandraul @sunflower-spideyy @sunmoonandbucky @angelhaz11 @thefridgeismybestie @fairytaleparker @afictionaladventure16 @missmeganrachel​ @geeksareunique​ @captainsteveevans @dasexydevitt13 @my-drowning-in-time @creepylittlemarvelgirl @stabbyhat​ @heyhihellowhatsup0​

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[shreddedparchment]

Man and Wife Pt.08

The Reconciliation

04/21/2019

Pairing: Bucky x Reader          Word Count: 11,265

*Masterpost in Notes     Warnings: lusty scenes, language, depression, fucking angst in boat loads

A/N: I am...emotionally exhausted. I’m also hungry. I got home from work, answered all the comments for chapter 7...and then started work on this one. I have only gone through to edit ONCE. So if you see something funny, please ignore it for me. I will come and edit again, probably tomorrow, but I didn’t want to keep you guys in suspense and I wanted to know what you all would think. I’m so excited to read your reactions to all of the different things we learn in this new chapter. I hope this pieces some of y’all’s hearts back together a bit. As always if you happen to reblog, thanks so much for helping me spread my work! xoxo

You wander the streets completely out of your mind. This night seems more silent than any night before it. The world has died because you’ve died. Inside, you’re broken, raw and cut, bleeding heart turning your limbs cold. Or is that the winter air?

You’re not sure what time it is but suddenly you’re not moving. You hear a mumble…a distant hum of sound and syllable. Warmth bleeds through your sweater, Bucky’s sweater. Why had you dressed yourself in his clothes out of all the damn clothes you had?

It feels like another life, this morning when you chose the light gray piece and pressed it to your face to inhale his heady scent. He hadn’t even worn it, but your apartment had been filled with the smell of him.

You look towards the warmth and see dark hands. They’re large and the veins on the back protrude as they hold you harder. Your body jerks back slightly and you look up towards the mumbling.

It’s not a face you want to see. You blink, trying to clear your vision of it, but it won’t go away.

You don’t want this face. You don’t want any face. You’ve never wanted to not exist. From the moment you were born, through the death of your parents, after your grandma died, and then after your grandpa left you last—even then, when you were alone with no kin to claim you, you hadn’t wanted to disappear and dissolve into nothing.

Tonight, you do. Tonight, is hell. It didn’t happen. It can’t have happened.

You turn to look back the way you probably came. You don’t remember walking this far. You don’t remember choosing to go this way. Maybe you should go back and check to see if you’re wrong?

“Y/N?!” A final firm shake, and you jerk your head back towards Henry’s bewildered face. “What the hell’s the matter with you? Answer me.”

You watch his mouth move and then look up into his dark eyes with your own blank expression.

“I’m cold.” You confess and realize you’d left your coat at home…no…not home. The apartment. Bucky’s apartment. How can that be your home when it’s been defiled and disrespected?

Henry sighs heavily and shrugs his long tan coat off then wraps it around your shoulders. He shuts the top button and then rubs your arms to warm you with friction.

“What are you doing out here this early?”

Early? You look towards the left and see that the sun is rising making the sky pale and winter gray. The cold seems to bite more fiercely, and you finally reach up to wrap your arms around yourself. You’re still a little numb. Angry.

You can feel unforgiving fire rush through your veins, charring your heart as you flash back to the image of a beautiful, perfect, Amazonian blonde laying in your bed, her bottom barely covered with your sheets. Bucky laid out beside her, staring up at the ceiling as if it were an everyday occurrence.

Is it? Had this already happened before? Has he done it often? Is that where he’s always been? Sleeping with other women? Had he just been that angry with you today that he’d brought her home? Is she his girlfriend? His mistress?

“Y/N?” Henry shakes you roughly, jerking your head back and forth sharply. “Damn it, say something or I’m going to take you to the hospital.”

“I can’t go home.” You sigh.

“Why?”

“Bucky he…can you take me to Casey’s?” You ask, unashamed of needing Henry right now. You might have walked to Casey’s eventually but it’s so cold out.

Henry leads you to his car, talking, asking you questions but you’ve drifted into thought again. You think about all those days that Bucky has been away from you and wonder how many more girls he has.

When the car stops, you look around and get out on your own to head towards the old redbrick townhome. All the lights are out but Case will get up for you, right? Even if you don’t have your husband…You stop at the base of the cement steps as the agony of what you walked into suddenly decides to catch up to you.

Slow footsteps walk up behind you, the scrape of sole on dirty cement. “Y/N?”

His voice is gentle, soft, and kind. Your eyes begin to water as you whimper, afraid to breathe, afraid to speak, afraid to blink because if you do, you’ll shatter and there will be nothing left but the dry flakes of your broken spirit.

You had tried so hard to make him happy. So hard…and he wasn’t happy.

Henry moves around you, staring at your face as your lip quivers. Your eyes continue to water but with your refusal to breathe, your face starts to show signs of your lack of oxygen.

You can see that Henry is at a loss for how to help you. He hurries up the steps and rings the bell. He rings it five times. Long presses to wake Casey up.

“What?” Casey's sleepy voice snaps, annoyance sharpening her voice.

“Casey, it’s Henry. Y/N is out here, I-I think something’s wrong.”

There’s silence and then the sound of the intercom buzzing off. Less than fifteen seconds later, the foyer light shines yellow and the heavy black door is pulled open. Casey’s holding her robe shut at her chest, her eyes flash to Henry and then search for you before she nearly jumps the stairs down to you.

“Y/N, what’s wrong?” She demands, her hands on your shoulders.

You look at her, searching for comfort in her green eyes and you finally breathe. A harsh gasp in and a long wracking sob out as you slowly sink to the ground. Casey goes with you, trying to hold you up but she can’t seem to do it.

Henry rushes down towards you and Casey, hovering beside the pair of you unsure of what to do.

He and Casey exchange a loaded look but then Henry’s helping you up. He lets you lean against his chest as he supports most of your weight as you continue to sob loudly, almost violently in the way your breathing stops and then starts again with pure pain.

His warmth moves with you until you feel yourself settling onto a bed. Your old bed. Where’s Lisa?

Your brain doesn’t seem to be working correctly. It’s like you come in and out. Like tuning a radio to a really shitty station.

You hear talking. Then darkness. You feel the bed. Then darkness. You feel the cold slip away. Then darkness. You see Casey kneel in front of you. Then darkness. You feel Casey sitting beside you. Then darkness. You see Henry disappear through the bedroom doorway. Then darkness. You hear a phone ring. Then darkness. “Are you fucking kidding me, Wilson? You just got back! You didn’t even give me any of that sweet sugar.” Then darkness. “Listen…I think something happened with Y/N and Bucky. She’s here but it’s like she’s gone catatonic. She was crying for a bit, bad crying. Like when her parents died. I’m scared, Sam. I’ve never seen her like this.” Then darkness. Casey is smiling. “I can’t wait for you to come back and keep that promise.” Then darkness. “Steve is going? Good. I hope it’s nothing too serious. I’m going to try and see if she’ll sleep.” Then darkness.

Casey then helps you lay down. She coaxes you down on your side, and you shove your hands between your knees. You stare at the wall until you’re once again swallowed by darkness only this time it stays.

Bucky stands in his kitchen archway, staring across at the picture—the selfie—that he took. Your hair is dusted with flour, so is his for that matter. There’s chocolate cake mix on your cheek puffed out as you laugh, your brilliant blinding smile making his chest burn with regret.

His own eyes are shining bright, faux surprise on his expression, mouth wide open, as your left hand—with one finger sticking out and covered in brown—holds his right cheek so that his left is pressed flush to your right, a large chunk of that same chocolate cake mix dabbed on the point of his nose.

Bucky cries. Soft slow tears that drag down his cheeks heavily as he stares at the shared bliss in the picture. He’s still not even completely sober. This pain will be worse when he is. How could he have let you leave? He should have held you. He should have clung.

He should not have slept with the stupid blonde!

What has he lost? What has he done?

How long he stands there, staring at that picture he doesn’t know. The alarm for his morning workout goes off in the bedroom. It’s suddenly cut off and Bucky realizes that his guest must finally be awake.

Bucky will never drink again for the rest of his God forsaken life. How could he have let this happen?

Warm hands wrap around his chest and he grabs them, squeezing too tight and jerks them away from his body.

Penny’s eyes are wide with surprise and her mouth open in a pained gasp. “Ow…”

“Get out.”

“What is your problem?!” She demands. “Oh…”

Bucky glances at her and sees her staring at the same picture.

“That’s right…you’re married.” She licks her lips then tries to reach out again. “It’s okay, baby, everyone slips up sometimes.”

As her skin touches his, Bucky recoils, glaring black and death. She retreats a step, blinking with fear at the look on his face.

“GET OUT!” Bucky screams, so loud the room shakes.

Penny jumps and she disappears down the hallway again. A moment later she emerges, dressed but barefoot, the long zipper up her back still undone. Bucky walks into the kitchen as she passes behind him and doesn’t stop until he’s resting his hands on the blue tiled counter. The front door opens and for the second time tonight, slams shut.

He looks up at your face, that beautiful face…every kiss, every touch, every caress he's given you has been tainted. The last time he saw you, the last time he told you he loved you, he’d been reckless and unsympathetic towards your civilian capabilities. You weren't a soldier. You weren’t an agent. You weren’t even a normal person with advanced athletic ability.

You were you, and he'd made you feel inadequate. How is that the last time he’d shown you any sort of affection? He should have been more careful. He should have show you he loved you every second of every day. Instead he watched as your heart tore in two. He ripped it out of your chest, laying naked beside that girl.

Bucky shakes his head, still staring at your laughing face, wishing he had the real thing before him so that he could beg and plead. Even at his worst moments, when Hydra’s darkness had edged close once more, Bucky had never wanted to end it all.

It had never even been a fragment of a thought. But with the prospect of facing a lifetime without you when you’ll never smile at him like that again…how does he fix this? He has to fix this.

“Bucky?”

He turns, finding Steve with his hands clenched at his sides, shoulders wide and heaving. As new tears trail down Bucky’s cheeks, he can already see the disapproval in Steve’s eyes. Steve knows. Probably passed the girl on her way out.

“What did you do?” Steve asks, disappointment and anger burning behind his sea blue eyes.

Bucky licks his lips, tastes the salt of his tears as he looks down at the floor then back up to his closest most trusted friend in the world.

“I lost her, Steve. I need to get her back.”

“Are you still drunk?” He asks, unforgiving and harsh in his voice.

Bucky licks his lips again then shakes his head. “Not really.”

“Then suit up. Elias resurfaced. We leave now.” Steve turns and leaves the apartment, slamming the door behind him.

The sounds of the office are deafening. You have such a headache. An unwelcome visitor that has more than out stayed its welcome.

Your eyes mist over as you massage your temples, wishing for relief. But you can’t take any pills. Not yet. Your hand flutters down to your stomach, pressing and rubbing at the area where your baby waits…not even a baby yet. Nothing more than a small bean, somehow still growing and flourishing in your wrecked body.

Your phone beeps again. Just a singular and short beep. You’d changed it from the old tone, too long and to jarring to keep when your mind is already splitting.

You look at the screen and your eyes water as you read the message preview.

The Perv: Y/N…please…? You don’t have to answer my calls but at least text me back. Please. I made a mista-

The screen dims out and you shut your eyes tight. The picture of you and Bucky at your wedding, still in its fancy silver frame shines like a beacon of failure on your desk. Lyla saunters up to you and eyes you warily. You’ve never been this reserved and unapproachable at work before. Of course Lyla is the only one willing to do so.

“What’s the matter with you?”

“Would you please, fuck off?” You ask, ruder than you’ve ever been in your entire life. You have no time for Lyla and her passive aggressive teasing or her just plain aggressive insults.

“Jesus, what the hell crawled up your ass?”

“Oh my God, Lyla! Just leave me the fuck alone! Every day I come in here and have to deal with your petty ass bullshit. Henry doesn’t want to fuck you, alright? Get over it. Stop being so desperate and get a damn life!” You rise, grabbing your purse from underneath your desk, and push past her.

Lyla jumps as you brush past her, everyone else in the office stopping to turn and look at you as you stalk towards the elevator.

You hear Henry’s door open as the previously noisey office is plunged into stunned silence at your outburst. When you move into the elevator and slam your fist on the button, you turn to see Henry with his hands on his hips, staring at you as you disappear behind automatic doors.

Bucky sits relatively still, wearing dark pants, a black t-shirt, over which he’s thrown a dark gray blazer with a breast pocket on the left to level up the look. He’s wearing black Chucks, so the outfit is really just casual.

“Are we just going to sit here?” Says a warm, slow speaking voice. It’s almost monotone though the single tone it speaks in is friendly, easy, and coaxing. It comes out of a woman who looks to be in her late fifties, with dark brow hair a streak of gray down the top left that flows into her carefully piled high bun.

Bucky sits up straighter, holding his hands between his knees as he leans forward a little and twiddles his thumbs gently.

“No. No.” Bucky assures the woman.

“Okay. Tell me about yourself.”

Bucky sighs. “My name is James Buchanan Barnes and Sam referred me to your office.”

“Mm.” The lady says, nodding quickly twice. “And why are you here, James?”

“Bucky.” He corrects her, gently. His anger has long since left him.

The woman smiles. “Why are you here, Bucky?”

“I…had a wife.”

“Had? You’re not married anymore?”

“No, I am. I have a wife. I’m married.” He nods, adamant suddenly. You are still his wife…it doesn’t matter that he hasn’t seen you in a month. “She…she left me.”

“Why?”

“Because I…I slept with someone else.” He tightens his jaw, smooshing his lips into a quick thin line before relaxing his mouth again.

“Why did you sleep with someone else?”

“My wife, Y/N, she made me angry, but it wasn’t her fault.”

“Making you angry wasn’t her fault?” Bucky shakes his head. “Why?”

Bucky sighs heavily, inhaling through his nose then releasing with a slow stream of air through his mouth. He reaches down and scratches his ankle with his shining metal fingers. The doc doesn’t even look at them. She’s a real pro.

“I shut her out. I’d been snapping at her. Overreacting to things that shouldn’t make me angry.” He shakes his head, staring at the floor by the doc’s feet as if he’s arguing with himself in his head. “She wanted to be in my life but…I can’t let her be there all the time.”

“Why not?”

“It’s not safe and I’m afraid.”

“Afraid of what?”

“Afraid I’ll hurt her. Worse than words. Worse than sleeping with someone else. Sometimes, I…I snap. I get violent. I don’t mean to and it’s been better since she’s been around, but it still happens from time to time.”

“Does she know why you keep her at a distance?”

Bucky nods, the weight in his chest increasing. “Yeah, she knows. But not because I chose to tell her. My friends told her best friend Casey and Casey told Y/N while I was on mission.”

“And how did she react? Did you two get to talk about it?”

Bucky scoffs. “No. We didn’t get to talk about it but that's also my fault. I picked a fight as soon as I got home and during the argument she alluded to me never telling her anything, but she didn’t come right out and say it.”

“How did that make you feel? Knowing that she knows even though you didn’t tell her yourself?”

“Like shit. It makes me feel like I’m a terrible husband. I should have told her.”

“And are you a terrible husband, Bucky?”

Bucky thinks for a moment then nods. “Yes. I pushed her away. I hurt her.”

“Why?”

“What do you mean, why? Because I’m a dick.”

“No, Bucky. Why have you been pushing her away?”

“Because I want her to be safe and I’m not safe. Not always.”

“So, you’ve been trying to protect Y/N?”

Bucky nods, thinking about the judgement he’s received from his friends, especially Steve. He’s so angry at Bucky for hurting you. For ruining this. But it goes further than that. Bucky saw it in all of their eyes at the gym while he’d been training you. All of them want to protect you.

“Yes. Even my friends are—they're really invested in her being safe.”

“Safe from what?”

“I don’t know? Me? I’m afraid to ask them.” Bucky admits, leaning forward to rest his elbows on his knees.

“Why?”

“What if they say yes? I’ve hurt them before.” His mind shifts to Tony.

The doc is silent for a long moment and Bucky shifts his gaze to the floor, picking at his cuticles with his metal thumb.

“Let’s go back to you keeping your real reasons for pushing Y/N away to yourself, Bucky. Why was it so important for you to hide the truth from her?”

“I-I didn’t want her to be scared of me.” Bucky admits, looking down at his fisted hands, gripping each other tight.

“Why would she be scared of you, Bucky?”

“Because I’m a monster. A murderer. She had a vague picture of what my life was before we got married but she didn’t know how many lives I took. She didn’t know what I was truly capable of. Now she does and I don’t deserve her.” He admits and he knows that it’s true. You’re good and sweet and pure and gentle and even in the heat of your anger literally moments after you’d found him in bed with another woman, you hadn’t been able to hit him. He’d been ready for it, recognizing the strength in you. The strength he’d fallen in love with at the water park when you’d slapped him for telling you breasts were awesome.

But the hit never landed. You had looked almost stunned at your own display of violence and whatever reaction he’d had to your raised hand; it had scared you.

The doc leans forward, pulling Bucky’s gaze back to her. “Does your wife love you, Bucky?”

“Right now?” Bucky asks, bitter and sarcastic as he thinks about the hundreds of missed calls. All those texts still unanswered. You’d completely cut him off. “I don’t know. She did. Before I did what I did. I’m sure she did.”

“Should she love you?”

Bucky shakes his head instantly. “No. She deserves better than me. She shouldn’t love me. I hope she doesn’t.”

Even as he says the words, he doesn’t mean them. He wants to mean them. He wants you to have a safe and fulfilling life with someone that can make you happy. But when he pictures you with someone else, Henry for example, rage fills his belly, stinging pain and hard jealousy shadows his mind and no, he can’t stand it if you don’t love him.

He needs you. More than ever, now that he knows what his life is like without you in it, he needs you.

“Don’t you think Y/N should be the one deciding that?”

Bucky meets the doc’s eyes and he knows she’s right. Regardless of what he wants, hopes, or needs, all that matters is what you want.

You’re cold. The table’s too cold. The synthetic plastic sticks to the skin of your arms so you lift them and place them on your stomach.

A loud sharp click echoes in the sterile room and you jump, startled by the rush of noise. Your hands flutter up to your chest, but you quickly compose yourself as a woman with kind brown eyes and dark wavy hair moves into the room.

“Mrs. Y/N Barnes?”

“Yes.” You smile nervously at the doctor, her pristine white coat giving you relief for some reason.

“Is this your first time with us?”

You nod and the doctor smiles. “I’m Doctor Carroll-”

“L-like Lewis Carroll?” You ask her stupidly, too nervous to stop your own mouth from moving.

She chuckles and nods as she takes her seat to your right on a black rolling stool. “That’s right. Just like the author. I’ll be your attending OB-GYN from now on so if you have any questions regarding your pregnancy, please feel free to call the office and I will call you back as soon as I am able. Okay?”

“Okay.” You reply timidly.

You hate to admit it but when you’d been with Bucky…you weren’t this shy. Being with him, knowing he’d chosen you, had filled you with some strange confidence. An audacity to put yourself forward and now…

“Can you lift your shirt, Y/N?”

“Of course!” You hurry to do as she asks and bundle the soft jersey fabric of the button up sweater at the crease beneath your breasts.

“When was your last period?” She asks curiously as she reaches over and adjusts the paper sheet that you’ve laid over your legs, your bare nakedness under it making your ears hot.

“Uh…about two and a half months ago? Maybe longer? I’m…I forgot to keep track.” You’d been so wrapped up in Bucky that you’d completely forgotten to mark your cycle days in your phone’s period app.

“Okay.” The doc says with a smile then scoots closer to the ultrasound machine. She removes a tube of what you know will be that weird jelly stuff you’ve seen in movies. You had never pictured yourself here, waiting for her to say- “It’ll be a smidge cold okay? Sorry.”

She’s really nice. You nod as the inner corners of your eyes prickle.

There’s a funny squelching noise as she applies the gel to the wand, but you don’t laugh, though maybe if things were different, you might have.

When the cold gel hits your lower belly, you gasp lightly but your eyes zoom towards the screen. The doc looks at the screen intensely, staring for a bit then reaching over to click a few keys on a small keyboard. The coloring on the screen changes and there’s more white than black, another few clicks, then more black.

“I-Is everything okay?” You look at her face, frantic with worry suddenly.

“Mmmm. I can’t seem to…find…”

Can’t find? Find what? Where’s your baby?!

The doc picks up the wand and sets it aside. “Give me one sec, I’ll be right back.”

She gets up and leaves as your mouth opens and closes as you try to call out to her, to ask her questions, because your mind is in a flurry. You can’t think suddenly. A panic rises in your chest making your heart ache in lamentation. Had the pregnancy test been wrong? Were you just having irregular periods now?

You scrunch up in the only form of crunch you will ever do voluntarily, as you watch the doc disappear through the door, she’d come in.

This can’t be happening. Yes, you are angry. Yes, things are shit. Yes, you aren’t sure what is going to happen between you and Bucky but…that’s your baby!

For two extremely long minutes, you wait. You stare at the ceiling, willing yourself not to cry because you don’t want to blubber in front of Dr. Carroll.

You jump again as the door clicks open, accompanied by a harsh, “Ugh!”

You jerk your head towards the door and watch as Dr. Carroll sits back down and unhooks the little wand again.

“I-Is everything okay?” You gasp and Dr. Carroll punches two buttons near the top of the keyboard then applies more gen and presses the wand gently back to your tummy.

Loud thrumming fills the room and your heart explodes with relief. Dr. Carroll turns a kind smile towards you.

“New machine. I’m so sorry, I’m still trying to figure out the exact way to get it to do what I want it to do. Our ultrasound tech is out on vacation.”

But you’re not hearing her. You don’t care what she has to say because you’re crying, staring at the screen at nothing apparently but it’s there, the heartbeat and until this moment you had no idea just how much you wanted this baby. You’d been excited to do this with Bucky and now you know that even without him, you will do this. You will raise this baby gladly.

“How about some pictures?” Dr. Carroll asks and you nod frantically.

“I-Is she-I mean, I don’t-” There’s no way to know if it’s a boy or a girl, crazy. “Where is it?”

Dr. Carroll smiles. “You’re only eight weeks so it’s just a tiny little blip but, right…there.” She points at a small smudge. You cry harder, shutting your eyes tight as you smile.

“Thank you.” You sigh and lean back to watch the screen a little longer.

“You’re very welcome.” Dr. Carroll says with a sympathetic smile. She looks slightly uncomfortable for a second, opening her mouth then shutting it before she finally decides how to word what you know she’s probably been dying to ask. “How many copies should I make?”

Do you want one for the dad? That’s what she’s asking. Where’s the daddy? That’s what she wants to know. Out of professionalism, she’s not asking you, but you see the question in her eyes.

You can’t keep this to yourself forever. “Two.”

Dr. Carroll presses a few more buttons and then a printer buzzes away in the corner. She gets up to retrieve the pictures and holds them out to you, the small smudge right at the center. Sadness begins to overwhelm you and your eyes mist over making the image blurry.

You’ll give it to him, right? You have to. Only question is, when?

Bucky opens the door to his apartment and moves inside, dragging his feet because he doesn’t want to be here.

Your blanket it still on the sofa, exactly where you’d left it on the right arm. You always got cold watching movies, so Bucky had bought you an ultra soft green throw. It smells like you and he’s afraid to touch it in case he somehow contaminates it with his own scent.

The kitchen sink is clean…he misses the dishes neatly piled at the center of the basin. You hated doing dishes. If you forgive him, he’ll do the dishes from now. Forever.

It’s depressingly empty inside. A small pile of your clothing is still sitting in the corner of the bedroom in the low pink chair he’d bought you to read manuscripts in while he slept. He liked you close. If you forgive him, he’ll never complain about the clothes being left out again. He just wants to watch you read until he falls asleep again, like he used to.

Bucky settles onto the end of the bed, new green sheets bought for the bed—those yellow ones, the ones you’d loved so much, he’d throw out. He begins pulling off his boots slowly listening as muted music shakes the ceiling.

Everyone is celebrating. The music dies and there’s rhythmic counting. There’s a shout of, “One!” followed by a louder shout of “Happy New Year!”

He tosses his boots at his dresser, they hit and fall with dull thuds on the carpet. His eyes find the picture of you and him, his metal arm around your shoulders as he holds you tight against his side while you rest your head in the crook of his collarbone. Your smile is sweet and real, and Bucky misses you so much he could die.

“Happy New Year, baby.”

You sit by your desk, sighing lightly as you reach for another cookie. You munch on it unenthusiastically.

Your office party has almost completely died down. Music is still wafting from the stereo but almost everyone is gone.

“Hey, you doing okay?”

You look up to find Henry, completely sober because unlike his employees, he’s not one to drink and get all silly. He’s wearing such a nice suit, all dark and sleek with a shiny silver vest underneath to celebrate the new year.

“Of course.” You nod, turning your eyes back on Lyla and her cohorts. They’re all drunk and acting stupid. “But you won’t be if she spots you. She’s drunk enough to do something bad enough that you’ll have to fire her.”

Henry smiles wide. “You’re probably right. I should go. I don’t want to tempt her. I’m glad you came, Y/N. Casey was right, you need to get out and get back into the world.”

You frown. You don’t want to talk about this again. You’ve been doing your best. This isn’t easy. Christmas had been so hard. It would have been your first Christmas with Bucky and you’d spent it with Jess and Jeff and their kids, then Casey and Sam when they’d torn themselves away from Tony’s lavish Christmas party.

Henry seems to sense your train of thought and he suddenly grows nervous. “Right, well, I’m going. I’ll see you tomorrow?”

“Yeah. Happy new year, Henry.” You give him a smile but gasp as he suddenly leans down towards you. He presses a kiss to your cheek, letting it linger before he pulls back to stand up straight.

“Happy new year, Y/N.”

He walks away, leaving you to deal with the nervous flutters in your stomach and the painful ache in your chest. An ache that seems to have soldered itself into your very bones. Into your soul.

An hour later, you’re shutting off the lights, and pulling on your coat to go. You’d told Casey that you’d be home late. She and Sam had been invited to Tony’s New Year’s Eve party—so had you but they knew you wouldn’t go—so she knew that at least you weren’t alone which meant that she could have fun without you and not worry.

You fix the collar of your heavy red coat and lean in to shut off Henry’s office light when your eyes scan his desk and a bright blue binder catches your eye. “Shit.”

The manuscript! You rush to it and flip it open. He hadn’t approved the edits. The office is closed today, and it needs to be in the mail first thing Wednesday morning. Which means only one thing.

You knock on the door again, loudly, using the side of your fist to hopefully rouse Henry from his sleep.

His neighbor’s door suddenly opens and an angry looking man with dark curly hair and black bushy eyebrows glares at you.

“S-sorry.” You stammer, nervous when he steps out further, his eyes looking you over hungrily. You know that look, even if it is dulled with sleepiness.

You bang one more time, even harder, as your heart panics.

“Alright, alright!” Henry’s voice, easy but clearly drowsy comes through. The door opens and you squirm inside, pushing against him so that you can shut the door behind you.

You push yourself up onto your toes to look through the peephole and tremble as the fear passes.

“Y/N? What’s wrong?” Henry puts his arm around your waist and pulls you aside to look through the peephole himself.

“Nothing. I…your neighbor creeped me out.”

“Good. He’s an ex-con. Nice guy, usually, but I’d rather you not bump into him again. What’s going on? Why are you here?”

You sigh and hold out the manuscript, thick and heavy, and needing his approval. “You forgot it in your office. We can’t miss this deadline again. The author’s getting impatient.”

“Shit, I forgot. Thanks for bringing it over.” He takes it from you, and you realize as he holds it to his chest that his chest is bare. His beautiful dark skin on full display for you to gawk at if you wished to.

You’d be lying if you said it wasn’t nice. His body is hard as a rock, his muscles etched as if in stone, cut and clean. His Apollo belt barely hidden by dark, low slung sleep pants. The atmosphere shifts quickly first curiosity rages within you and then pain. So much pain. Your heart squeezes hard as you shut your eyes and try not to picture Bucky.

His body laid beside that stupid blonde, perfect and sculpt, even more than Henry’s. The world sways beneath your feet and you teeter backwards towards the wall.

“Y/N, you alright?” Henry’s right hand finds the back of your left shoulder and he helps hold you steady.

Instead however, you go tumbling towards him. You fall against his chest and he wraps his arm around you.

“Jesus…” Henry says in slight shock, but he holds you against him just the same as you lean, not because you want to but because if you try to stand you will fall.

You know the dizziness might just be because you’ve been running around all day and you haven’t had a real chance to catch your breath. But the fire in your chest, burning, charring, and blackening your heart is what steals your breath.

It makes your eyes sting and before you can stop them, tears are springing forward.

It’s New Year’s another important first that you don’t get to share with Bucky. You’re so angry at him. You’re so furious and yet you miss him and wish things were different. You miss feeling safe. You miss belonging to him and the way he belonged to you.

You want to feel needed and wanted and desired again. Was it you? Did he go to her because you weren’t enough?

“Y/N…” Henry whispers, and you look up at him. His dark eyes are intense pools of black, searching your eyes for a rebuke to his arm around you but even if you wanted to pull away, you still can’t. Your world is still spinning.

“I wish I knew how to fix it.” You sob. “I don’t know how to fix it.”

“Then don’t fix it.” He brings his other hand up, dropping the manuscript to the side so that it falls to the floor and pages fall free of the flimsy metal binding, and caresses the sides of your face. “I can make you so happy, Y/N. Let me make you happy.”

You’re sobbing when he leans down and tentatively kisses you. His lips are soft. So damn soft and it feels so good to be caressed and cared for again that you give into it and kiss him back. The kiss gets deeper as Henry licks your lips and your mouth opens to welcome him in. The burn in our chest still hurts but it also flutters and sparks.

It feels good to be kissed. But not as good as it had felt with Bucky.

You pull back and whimper, the pain cutting and deep. You don’t want to think about Bucky. It hurts.

Henry unbuttons your coat and slips his hand back along your sweater, wraps it around your waist, and pulls you up to lean against his chest. His lips dive back towards yours and he kisses you a little harder, commanding and demanding reciprocation.

Your sob splits your mouth and Henry delves into the depths of you, tasting you, reminding you that you can still feel other things besides betrayal and hurt.

He holds you tighter, dipping his hips and you feel the unmistakable rock of his cock. You gasp against his lips and your sob turns into a moan.

The sound ignites him, and he walks you back until you’re pressed against the wall.

Bucky disappears completely from your mind as Henry’s hands find the skin of your back, your coat is discarded, and when you’re both naked he takes you into his bedroom and falls with you into the bed to make sure you understand just how well he can take care of you.

~~~~~~~~~~

You’re not numb. You can feel every sting of confusion, every bite of regret, every hint of agony that Bucky’s indiscretion has left with you. You can see a life beyond Bucky, beyond your marriage to him. You can see how you might move on and how you might create a new life away from what he did to you.

As Henry’s arms wind their way around your waist, you realize that this isn’t what you want. You catch his wrist and pull it up, away from your body as you sit up. The silk sheets of his bed fall away, baring you for him once more.

“What is it?” He asks, curious but otherwise unaware that anything might be wrong.

You blink, fighting the renewal of the need to cry. All you seem to be doing lately is crying.

“I’m married.” You remind him.

The atmosphere shifts and you can feel the spark of passion ice out. The nerves radiating off of Henry as he scoots closer, reaching for your exposed hip. You grab his wrist again and stop his hand from touching you.

“But I thought-?” He begins, hopeful.

“This was a mistake.” You whisper, hating to hurt him but hurting so much too.

“Are you seriously going to stay with that guy? After what he did to you?” Henry demands, getting a little agitated.

“I don’t know.”

“Then why-?”

“Because I’m married, Henry.” Doesn’t he see that you’re just as bad as Bucky now? You needed to feel wanted, you’d been coming to Henry so much when Bucky wasn’t paying attention to you, for comfort and company when you should have been telling Bucky that he was making you feel excluded.

“Married?!” Henry asks, indignant, his voice dripping with sarcasm. He grabs your left hand and holds it out for you to see. “Like this?”

You know what he’s pointing out and you yank your hand out of his grip where there still rests no ring.

“I don’t need a ring to remind me that I’m married.” You argue and for a moment you wonder if Bucky had had a ring if he wouldn’t have cheated. It’s stupid to think that a ring might have prevented what happened but you’re grasping at straws here.

“He ignored you, Y/N. He clearly wasn’t ready to be your husband.”

“And I wasn’t ready to be his wife.” You point out. “Don’t pretend to know what we went through, what our marriage is—was. You weren’t there.”

You get up and gather up your clothes, pulling them back on as quickly as you can.

“Y/N…please don’t do this. Let me show you what it’s really like when someone loves you. I’ll marry you myself.”

You don’t look at him as you pick up your coat.

“Goodbye, Henry. I’m sorry.” You hate yourself for giving in. You’d fought it for so long. You’d pushed Henry away for so long but in the end, you hadn’t been able to fight four years of history. What you know now though, is that you don’t love Henry and you never did.”

When you reach the spot where you’d given in to your physical needs, you quickly begin to gather up the spilled manuscript. When it’s piled neatly, you move to the large desk in Henry’s living room and place it neatly at the center. You grab the title page and flip it around to its blank side then quickly scribble with a red pen from Henry’s desk,

I quit. -Y/N

Winter is at its end, the wind chilly but with the sun on one’s skin, it feels pleasant and refreshing. Many people seem to think this because they’re all out wearing shorts and thank tops, t-shirts and dresses, enjoying the large park and the small buds of the coming spring, blooming in the carefully fenced off shrubs by the concrete path.

New leaves are growing, small and fragile but green and soon they’ll turn the park jade again.

Beside him, Sam is walking, at ease as he looks down at his phone. His fingers fly across the keyboard. Bucky seems almost as eager as Sam does in his steps, moving with a wide stride towards the center of the park.

A snack stand comes into view, wooden, made to look like a small log cabin. In it a man is selling lemonade and pretzels. In the small queue, Bucky spots their target; a blonde with short blonde hair, freshly cut and styled in large curls.

“Case!” Sam calls out, shoving his phone into his pocket and lifting his hand up into the air so that Casey won’t miss him, completely ignoring the fact that she couldn’t even if she wanted to with the large super soldier walking beside him.

At first, when she hears his voice, Casey smiles. She beams, excited and happy to see Sam. Then her eyes drift to his right and she spots Bucky. Her eyes blaze and she stomps out of line. Sam hurries forward and catches her in a hug—no…wait, he’s holding her back.

Bucky stops. She’d already known he was coming but he should have expected this reaction anyway. Bucky’s eyes aren’t watching Casey anymore though, he’s scanning the crowd, steel blue eyes hungry for sight of you.

He hasn’t seen you in three months. Three months!

No other time in his life has Bucky felt so empty, not even when he’d literally been emptied of everything that made him who he is.

“You have a lot of nerve!” Casey growls, Sam sighs but holds her around her waist. “She’s not here, dumbass.”

Bucky’s eyes fly to Casey and her blazing red face and toxic green eyes spew hate at him, but he doesn’t care. All he cares about is that you aren’t here.

“What?” It’s the reason he came. He was here for you! He knew that he might not be able to talk to you. He’d known that he shouldn’t.

“Why the fuck did you even ask her to marry you if you were going to dive into some other chick’s snatch at the first sign of marital problems?! Asshole.” She makes another jump and swipe at Bucky, but Sam wraps his arms around her more securely, closer, distracting her for a moment as she looks up at him.

Bucky’s shame is endless. He swallows hard because she’s right and he’s suddenly even more desperate to see you than he was before.

Sam is whispering to Casey, calming her down somehow.

“Is she really not here?” Bucky’s voice is so heartbroken that when Casey looks back to him, Sam barely looking over his own shoulder at Bucky, he can see a softness in her green eyes. She feels bad. Maybe for the situation? Or you? Or both of you and him? She’s not only angry at Bucky, that much is clear.

There must have been a lot of Sam pleading Bucky’s case to her over the past three months and Bucky suddenly feels a swell of appreciation for his friend.

Casey sighs heavily, reaching down to intertwine her fingers with Sam’s. He squeezes hers, reassuring her.

“I-I won’t talk to her, Case.” Bucky pleads. “I just want to see her. Please?”

Bucky can hear his own desperation and he doesn’t care. He needs you. Even if all he can do is watch from afar.

There’s a guilty shift to Casey’s eyes and Bucky’s not sure what to make of it but then it doesn’t matter because she lets Sam pull her closer, hugging her tight, and rests her head on his chest. “She’s around the corner, sitting on a bench. She knew you’d be here. She didn’t want to see you!” Casey raises her voice to call out after Bucky because he’s already pushing through the line and around the snack cabin towards the path where it curves to the left and right.

Which corner? To the let or the right? He’s almost tripping over his feet as he searches for you. He chooses the left path and he doesn’t even turn completely when he spots you about halfway down the walk, sitting on a bench, hunched forward as you reach down to scratch your shins.

You’ve got your navy dress hiked up to your knees, it’s long, floor-length but you’re wearing brown sandals.

You’re perfect, your hair loose and flowing, the look on your face neutral—much better than the way he’d seen it last. He half hides behind the corner he’d almost turned down to stare at you more, greedily eating up your form with his eyes. His chest is burning with satisfaction for only a second before it’s full of yearning.

You’re so close. Finally seeing you has only strengthened his need to have you, to keep you, to hold you. But he can’t. You don’t want to see him. You need your space and he gets that. You still haven’t even responded to any of his calls or texts which he still sends you tons of. He only calls once a day. Just before bed. To wish you good night. But you never answer.

Bucky could stand here all day, staring at you, his eyes brimming with unshed tears, but he can’t. If you see him, you might turn and run, and he doesn’t want you to feel like you need to flee. He should be the one running. He was the one in the wrong.

He begins to edge back towards Sam and Casey, moving in inches because he can’t bear to tear his eyes off you. Then you stand and his heart leaps into his throat because what if you turn and see him?

But then you straighten out and the dress falls to your feet. It evens out, and for a moment Bucky forgets how to breathe.

There is no way that he’s seeing things because even though the dress’s skirt is loose, the waistline just below your breasts is tight and it he can see the top bunched up section of the skirt stretch outwards.

He stops trying to hide and steps back around the corner, standing tall and straight in his white t-shirt and jeans. His black leather jacket left unzipped. His eyes, stare with his jaw slack from shock, as he stares at your clearly pregnant belly.

It’s not big…not yet. Just extended enough that he can tell.

Then you sigh and your shoulders sag, but your hands move down to that belly and rub affectionately as you turn towards him, confirming that yes, you are indeed pregnant.

The shock on your face as you spot him, your eyes wide, your mouth falling open is barely noticed as Bucky begins to move towards you, his arms hanging limply at his sides. You are frozen it seems because you don’t dare budge. Your hands are still curved around the tiny swell of your tummy and Bucky can’t find the words as he reaches you because he can still only stare at it.

He knew he wanted you back. He knew that he couldn’t do anything about it because it’s not what you needed. After seeing that belly, he knows that he must stop at nothing to win you back.

“How?” He finally sputters. He sees you gasp at his question, agony rips through your eyes. “When?”

He’s needs to know, he has so many questions. So many hopes. The guilt in your face is understandable. You hadn’t told him. Of course, you’d feel like you did something wrong, but nothing matters. Nothing else other than that you’re clearly several months pregnant. How many months? Do you know the sex? Have you heard the heartbeat? Shit, did you go alone to the doctor? No. He should have been there.

He looks back up at your face and finally, you speak. “I slept with Henry.”

This must be what it feels like to die. This sensation of endless falling in suffocating darkness. And then the pain as you finally hit the ground. Brittle bones breaking and your insides splayed out in vivid reds and pinks, your guts torn asunder. If he hadn’t already felt like he’d lost you for good, he might feel worse…and then his eye drift down to that belly.

Is that not his baby?! Horror fills him up, gnawing at the small hope he’d found in seeing you pregnant.

“Is…is it-?” He can’t ask. He doesn’t want to know. What if it isn’t his? What if you’re with Henry now? Are you going to ask him for a divorce?

“I’m four and a half months.” You tell him and Bucky feels like he can breathe again. He breathes in deeply through his nose as he pinches his mouth shut, fighting the grief that threatens to break him. For one horrible minute he thought that baby wasn’t his and it was everything that all of his worst nightmares are made of.

He brings his hands to his hips, turning away from you a little as he struggles to compose himself. He whimpers a little, so quiet that no one but you, standing so close, can hear. His eyes are bloodshot as he fights the urge to sob. When he turns back towards you, he can see your own beautiful face contorted with sadness. Your lips pulls down deep at the corners as your eyes water.

“I was going to tell you but…but then…I need to go.” You suddenly say and turn to leave the park, but Bucky can’t let you go. He can’t. That’s his baby! You’re his wife! His everything. He has to make you see.

“No, wait. Please…” You stop and turn to look at him, his heart ripped in two as he watches your lip quiver. The last image he had of you was of the pure rage when you’d caught him in bed with another woman, this broken beauty, made pitiful with a quivering lip is not what he wants to see. And he did this to you. He broke you.

“I’m sorry, Y/N, please…please don’t go. Come home.” He begs.

You look away from him as your tears begin to fall, down at the ground, you don’t hide your face from him.

“I can’t.” You sob. “Let go.”

“Y/N…baby, please?” His own voice breaks but you pull out of his grip and when you dash away, he doesn’t follow.

“Y/N, is this really a good idea?” Casey asks as the two of you move into the now fully restored elevator of your old apartment. Your home. Can you even come back to it now? Bucky begged you to come back but was that because of your baby? Or because he still loves you?

Even after you’d told him that you’d slept with Henry, he’d only cared about the baby.

“You said they’re out on mission, right? That Elias guy is in the states now?” You ask, your eyes glued on the doors before you while you lazily rub your stomach. A habit you’ve formed from worrying so much about how you were supposed to tell Bucky. Now that he knows, the movement is simply to comfort you.

“Yes.” Casey nearly growls. She doesn’t want to be here. She doesn’t like drama, especially when she thinks she might just stab Bucky through the eye if he makes you cry again. You’d been inconsolable two days ago. “They took off for Nevada this morning.”

“And Sam said they wouldn’t be back today, right?”

“Yeah.”

“I just need to grab a few things, Case. Then I won’t have to worry about coming back here and I won’t need to see him again.” Seeing Bucky is dangerous. You’d nearly caved at the park. Hearing his voice, seeing his face, the tears that he’d cried…You wanted him. You still want him. It’s not fair.

It’s not right.

You’re still angry. You can’t trust him. But you love him, and you want him. Why can’t you stop wanting him? He’d hurt you so much.

“Are you sure this is what you want?” Casey asks, eyeing you suspiciously. “Moving out?”

“Yes.” You lie.

You press your thumb to the small panel and are stupidly relieved when the door clicks, and you can pull it open. Why you’d half expected Bucky to have removed you from the system, you don’t know. Surely, he’d put hers in so she could come and go as she please…but then, why did he ask you to come home?

Thankfully the apartment is empty. You don’t give yourself time to look at the pictures of you and Bucky hanging on the walls or sitting on tables and shelves. You breeze through, hurrying to get a bag packed with your things so that you can get out of here. Even if you’ve been assured that Bucky won’t be here, you’re terrified to see him, here of all places.

You just might stay if he asks you to.

It takes you twenty minutes to track down all the items you wanted and quickly zip up the brown leather bag and throw it onto your shoulder. It’s heavy. You groan as you lift it and struggle to hold it there on your shoulder as you move back out of the hallway and into the living room.

Casey stands staring towards the front door and you follow her gaze. Your eyes land on him just as the door snaps closed.

No.

You see his blue eyes flash with questions, curiosity, agony, wonder, agony, hope, agony, and then he finally settles on desperation.

You look at Casey and she looks at you, her eyes a screaming question of What do we do?

You look down at the floor and grunt lightly as you re-hoist the bag on your shoulders.

“We’re leaving.” You assure Bucky, avoiding his gaze but before you can even take a step, he’s there in front of you, his hands on your arms.

“No! No, please don’t go.”

Casey moves towards the door, slowly, trying to be unnoticed.

“Bucky-” You begin.

“I-I’ve been going to therapy, Y/N. I have so much to apologize for. So much to make up to you. Not just what I did that night but everything that came before. I pushed you away, I can see that now. I wanted to protect you from the person I was, the person I can never stop being. I’m broken, Y/N. So much more than you know. I should have told you everything from the beginning, but I didn’t want you to be afraid of me. I didn’t want you to hate me.”

As if you could ever hate him. You want to! But as he reaches up, placing his hands on the sides of your face with his fingers eagerly, in desperate need like an addict finally getting his hands on his vice, stroking your cheeks and your hair and whatever other part of your face he can touch, you know that you don’t hate him.

He hurt you and you’re angry at him. But you can never hate him.

“It was stupid and selfish of me to keep that part of myself from you. Please forgive me. Not only for that but for everything that followed. If you’d known that the reason I was getting upset was because of my struggle with…with the memories and the flashbacks then maybe we could have found a way to work through it together? I failed us by shutting you out. I didn’t trust your strength and you lost it because I didn’t let you use it. I’m so sorry…please…And I know I wasn’t the greatest husband. I left you alone too much. Saying that I wasn’t used to having someone depend on me and want me around is a cheap cop-out…I was thoughtless, Y/N. I didn’t think about your needs. I only thought about mine. I will never, never do that to you again. You are my life, I love you. If you come home, you’ll have to chase me out the door with Barnes before I leave you again.”

You might have laughed if things weren’t so strained between the two of you. Barnes, his favorite handgun, is still stored at Casey’s. You’d stopped carrying it with you everywhere because it hurt too much to know that a piece of Bucky was always with you…the baby doesn’t count; the baby is part you.

“Bucky…” You sigh, crying again because how could you not cry when he so fearlessly bares himself to you. “Henry…”

Bucky’s hands freeze, his breath hitches as he struggles to find his voice again. His slides his hands down along your neck and it feels so good you think you might pass out.

“A-are you two t-together?” He wonders, struggling to keep his voice even.

“No.” You sigh. Should you have lied? “It happened once, on New Year’s. But I slept with him Bucky, and you hurt me. Do you have any idea what it felt like to see you laying there next to that woman, whatever her name is?”

“Pe-”

“I don’t want to hear it!” You gasp, almost shouting at him because the last thing you need is a name to put to the body.

“Sorry…” He whispers, or maybe he just doesn’t have enough air to speak louder?

“I-Is she the only one?” You force the question out because this is what’s tormented you since the night you left him. How many more athletic blondes are there? “Or have you been with more-?”

“NO!” Bucky’s adamant denial startles you and you jump. He adjusts his tone, quieter but just as assertive as you look up into his frantic blue eyes. “No, Y/N. It was just the one time. I was drunk out of my mind because I thought you’d left me, and I was so…nothing I say can ever make right what I did. Even if I was drunk, I should have known better.”

Yes, he should have. So, should you.

“I don’t know what to do with this, Bucky. I don’t know how to not be angry at you. Every time I picture that night, I wanna throw up. I want to punch something and yell and I’m so mad at you. How could you do that to me? To us?”

Bucky groans, leaning forward to rest his forehead against your shoulder.

He smells so good this close, like home.

“I-I don’t know if I can trust you. We had a fight. A big fight. And you slept with someone else. How do I know that you won’t do it again? If we were to get back together-”

His head shoots up at these words, hope flowing from them.

“We will fight again, Bucky. How do I know that you won’t go looking for another woman with a better body than mine again?”

The jealousy is stupid but it’s also there, etched into your bones because of how perfect that woman had been. It’s like he looked for just the right person, the one that would check all of your insecurity boxes, and then he fucked her in your bed.

“I won’t, kitten, I promise.”

“Stop making me promises you can’t keep.”

“I can keep it!” He insists. “Let me prove it to you. Come home. Please, please come home.”

That pet name. Why had he used it? He’d been doing better without using it. Now you were so very aware of just how much you wanted to stay. How much you were already leaning towards yes.

It scares you and you panic.

“I…I can’t do this, Bucky.” You say suddenly then move to go around him, avoiding looking at his eyes because you know what you’ll see there, and you won’t be able to resist it.

It’s almost like he knows what you’re thinking because he suddenly drops to his knees right in front of you.

It startles you because yes, you love Bucky. Yes, you believe him when he tells you that he loves you.

Before all this shit happened, the two of you had been trying to make this marriage work but for him to get down on his knees? He didn’t even do that when he proposed. It makes him look small and desperate and as you find his eyes, you realize you’ve brought him to this point.

The two of you have brought each other to these exact points, one scared to stay. One desperate to keep.

This constant misery that the two of you have been in, this torment is your fault as much as his. It would have been easier to leave him if you’d lied to him about the baby being his. Now that he has you back home, he’s almost wild in his need to keep you here.

“No! No. Please, please, Y/N. Please don’t say that.” He begs, pulling you close with strong arms that you know you can’t pull out of.

He leans slightly to his right to bury his face into the side of your slightly extended tummy. Your baby, probably reeling from the cacophony of emotions racing through you, kicks. It’s so faint but you feel it. You know Bucky can’t have felt it. Your little one isn’t strong enough yet.

With that kick comes the realization that this is bigger than your wounded pride. This is your family. However, broken it might be at the moment, this man clinging to you, and the life growing within you is all you have.

This had been your dream. A loving husband. A beautiful baby. More than one beautiful baby hopefully. You’ve been alone all your life. Casey the only exception. Her and her family had accepted you so openly but as much as you love her and them, they aren’t yours. Not like this.

Your eyes water and you sigh with shallow breath, struggling to breathe.

“Please don’t leave me. I kn-know that I haven’t been the best husband or even an adequate husband. I know that I ignored you and I didn’t mean to do it, really, I didn’t. I just didn’t know how to…I’ve been so used to it being me. I know that’s not an excuse. I asked you to marry. I moved us in here. I didn’t call you when I should have. I left you alone every morning. None of this is your fault so please, please…” He pulls back to look up at you, his eyes pouring and red. “Please don’t give up on me. You are my life’s only gift. Please don’t take it away from me.”

He hides his face in the side of your belly again, clinging to you and the future growing inside of you.

You cry with him. For several minutes, the two of you just cry. Your arms hang at your sides as Bucky’s are wrapped tightly around your waist and bottom.

“No.” You finally say, your voice cracking and morose.

Bucky jerks his head back to look up at you with his mouth slightly open, his eyes wide and searching but already full of defeat.

“No, Bucky. You didn’t do this alone. I told you, I slept with Henry.”

“Don’t-” Bucky grits his teeth and looks at your belly. He reaches up and places his hands on the sides, probably reliving the moment that he thought the baby might not be his. “-don’t say his name.”

Finally, a real reaction to your own mistake. Something believable.

You can’t blame him for not wanting to hear Henry’s name. You stopped Bucky before he could tell you that blonde’s name, and you don’t care to know it either.

“I made that mistake.” You say, determined to at least not torture him with Henry’s name being spoken aloud and in your home. “But this is also my fault. I knew that things weren’t going well with us, and I said nothing. I kept my mouth shut and let things fester because I didn’t want to fight. I thought maybe I was being sensitive? I’ve never been married before. How much attention do wives get from their husbands?

“I should have told you that I wanted to see you more, that I felt like I wasn’t important to you.” You watch as Bucky leans in, scrunching his eyes with the regret that he made you feel that way. “I betrayed us by not being honest about the struggles I was going through. I’m sorry that I didn’t speak up. I’m sorry.”

Bucky’s eyes search our face, also stained with tears, and then looks at your tummy. “Then, will you stay?”

As his eyes meet yours you shake your head. “No, Bucky, I-I can’t yet. But I wanna try and make this work. I love you…and I miss you…but I’m still so angry at you. I want to trust you, but I don’t know how.”

“I’ll show you. I’ll prove it to you.” He nods. “By doing what we should have done from the very beginning.”

“And what’s that?”

“Will you go out with me?”

The question confuses and startles you. After a few blinks, you shake your head.

“What do you mean?”

“I mean, I want to take you to dinner and maybe a movie? Or whatever stupid things couples do on dates. We’ll go play mini-golf.”

You laugh once and it’s like you’ve given Bucky back his reason to live. He holds you tighter, stands up to pull you closer. You one laugh igniting a fire within him, a fierce determination. He leans in to kiss you, but you shake your head.

“No.” You’re not ready for that yet.

He doesn’t complain. “Go on a date with me?”

And after a long moment of staring at his beautiful face, you sigh. “Okay.”

Forever Tag List @until-theend-oftheline @jessieray98 @dsakita @coldfacedwarf @just-trying-to-survive-marvel @fairislesheets @jewelofwinter @mannls @moonlessnight14 @sovereignoblivious @pandazlazykid @lilulo-12 @moli1497 @shifutheshihtzu @the-real-mary-jane @pastelxvirgo @just4muggles @vulpecula-minor @wildefire @mdgrdians @tiffanynguyen03 @shield-agent78 @i-cant-shine-without-darkness @the-wayward-robot @babytrollgirl @alagalaska @sincerelytlh @theonelittleone @sea040561 @xrosegoldwolfx @peppermintvanillaa @awkwardfangirl2014 @crist1216 @xxloki81xx @idk-random-fan-girl @romimiux @badassbaker @this-side-of-midnight5 @booklover2929 @natura1phenomenon @xlittlestarling @whosmarisaaarw @hiddles-rose @supernaturaldean67 @literallymoonshine @sebbystanlover-vk @pineapplebooboo @quokkatrash

Man and Wife @ria132love @slender--spirit @booktease21 @just-a-littlebit-of-everything @netflixa @caitfairwrites @brownlee-22 @ilysebstan @igotkatiepowers @jamielea81 @whom-the-fack @backflip-into-a-garbage-can @chuuulip @mizzzpink @nerdygirlwithacrush @chipilerendi @rainbowkisses31 @ben-c-group-therapy @lydklein1 @jamierdr @kenna-dance14

[escondidolibrary]

Here are some recommendations for the “Adult Graphic Novel” square on the Summer Library Book Bingo sheet! 📖 MONSTRESS Vol. 1 by Marjorie Liu and Sana Takeda. (Also available on OverDrive, Libby, and Hoopla!) 📖 BAREFOOT GEN Vol. 1 by Keiji Nakazawa. 📖 THE WITCHER Library Edition Vol. 1 by Paul Tobin, Travis Currit, Borys Pugacz-Muraszkiewicz, and Karolina Stachyra. (Also available on Hoopla, OverDrive, and Libby!) 📖 THE WAY OF THE HOUSEHUSBAND Vol. 1 by Kousuke Oono. (Also available on OverDrive and Libby!) ☀️ Try to get Bingo across, up and down, sideways, or four corners plus the middle square, or really challenge yourself and try to fill out the whole card! NOTE: A single book can count for multiple squares! ☀️ Don't forget to share your completed sheet as a post or in your story and tag us! ☀️ #escolibrary #escondidoca #bookbingo #books #reading #bingo #virtualchallenge #readingchallenge #summerreading #summerprogram #summerreadinglist #summer #librariesofinstagram https://www.instagram.com/p/CCwnZ7zjuOU/?igshid=ru84aawi7yya

[snarky-badger]

I was wondering if you could continue the "Moral Compass" story?

Here you go!

Sequel to Moral Compass

(Not technically compliant with the Movie’s plot. I wrote the first part of this before it came out, so I’m following that story line.)

EDIT - I intended this to be the last part, but well.... there will be a part 3! When I have time to write it. (Why do I do this to myself? >.

It had been a long time since you’d woken up to someone else in your bed.

Ideally, the other person would have been your boy or girlfriend. Currently it was a tired looking man with a five o’clock shadow and a symbiote half covering him like an oily blanket.

You yawned, scratching at your head as you sat up, tugging your tank top back into place. Heard Eddie - that was his name right? - shift a little, his hands grabbing at a pillow as he nuzzled into it. Poor man didn’t look like he’d gotten much sleep lately.

Really, waking up to a rather nummy looking guy in your bed wasn’t so bad. 

The symbiote sprawled across him rippled then, a black tendril rising to poke him in the back of the head. Eddie grumbled, blindly swiped at it, but it snuck past his feeble defense and poked him again.

“Nughhh… what?” Steel blue eyes cracked open a little, blinking sleepily, before Eddie focused on you. “Shit!” His eyes popped open as he paled, shoving himself up on his arms. Tried to leap to his feet, got tangled in the blankets, and crashed to the floor in a tangle of sheets and limbs.

You sighed, shaking your head as you rose up and crawled over to the opposite edge of the bed, peering down at him. “Are you alright?”

“Jesus! I’m sorry!” He tried to wriggle free of the blankets coiled around his left leg, only managing to pull all the sheets off the bed. “He’s got no fucking idea about boundaries! Last I remember we fell asleep on the couch!”

“Apparently Venom got lonely,” you drawled with a small laugh, moving to your proper side of the bed before getting to your feet. “Need help?”

“Nope. No. I think I got it.” There came a grunt and a muttered curse before he got to his feet, blankets bundled in his arms. “Um…”

“Just dump it on the bed.” You adjusted the shorts you slept in, then grabbed your housecoat and threw it on. “Coffee?”

“Fuck. Please.”

Yawning again, you padded barefoot to the kitchen, giving your Keurig a fond pat as you shoved a small pod of Breakfast Blend into it, put a mug into place, and turned it on. The wonderful sound of brewing coffee filled the apartment, and you scratched at your mussed up hair as you leaned back against the counter, stretching a little.

Heard angry muttering from the bedroom and rolled your eyes as you moved to tidy up all the papers and open textbooks on the small kitchen table, shuffling things into proper order as you did so.

The first mug of coffee was ready by the time Eddie shuffled out, wincing a little at the light coming in from the open windows. Poor guy looked even more ragged in the daylight.

Your mother’s habits of feeding anyone who came into her house had transferred to you. And while you were technically living on a student’s budget, you had enough to at least get some food into him.

“Here.” You pushed the mug of coffee into his hands, then reset the Keurig for an other mug before going to scavenge in your fridge. “I have…. eggs and,” you opened a container a little, gave a curious sniff, and promptly closed it again with a gag. Disgusted by your fridge, you yanked open the freezer door, rummaging around a little. “Huh. I have eggs and some mildly freeze-dried italian sausages for breakfast. Jesus, I have to go do a grocery.”

A tired laugh left Eddie as he sank down onto a chair at the small table. “You don’t have to feed us.”

“You’re in my house, you get fed. Oh. I have tater tots too.”

“TATER TOTS?”

Blinking, you glanced back, doing a double-take at the sight of Venom’s head hovering above Eddie’s right shoulder, weaving on a black stalk of symbiote mass. “Uhhh….”

“He likes tater tots,” Eddie drawled with a roll of his eyes as he sipped at his coffee. “And chocolate. This is really good coffee by the way.”

“It’s the only thing I splurge on. I need coffee to live, otherwise I think my eyeballs would fall out.” You saw Venom blink at that and quickly added. “Not literally! That’s, thankfully, impossible without massive blunt trauma. It’s just an expression.”

Shaking your head at the weirdness of it all, you prepped the oven, dumped the bag of tater tots onto a cookie sheet and then put the frozen italian sausages into the microwave to defrost.

“Sorry you had to skip your classes,” Eddie murmured, and you frowned as you turned to look at him, leaning back against the counter again. Venom was eyeing the frozen tater tots on the counter, and you not-so-subltely pushed the cookie sheet a little further away from him.

“Don’t worry about it. I needed a day off anyway.” The Keurig clicked, and you turned to retrieve your own mug of coffee. When you turned back, Venom’s head had vanished, and you relaxed a little. “Besides, I have a friend I can copy notes off of.”

Eddie hummed, eyeing your textbooks, but he didn’t say anything more on the topic.

Rolling your eyes, you placed the tater tots into the safety of the oven, then went to sit across from him. “You can ask, you know.”

“Ask what?”

“How I ended up at the Life Foundation.” When Eddie dropped his gaze in embarrassment, you sighed and set your mug on the table as you took a seat on the second chair. Curled your fingers around it, letting the warm chase the chill from you as you stared at your reflection in the coffee. “I want to be a molecular geneticist. To study diseases and try to find cures, especially in the medical field. The Life Foundation… Carlton Drake came to one of my classes and offered jobs to a bunch of us with the highest grades. I didn’t know where the first genetic samples came from–” You sighed and looked up at Eddie, who was staring at you. “I was there two weeks before Drake showed us the symbiote.”

“And you started having second thoughts,” Eddie guessed.

“Yeah. I think I was the only one who did too. Drake kept us away from Venom for another couple of weeks before letting us take more direct samples… I couldn’t do it. Got shit from my co-workers for it. And there was this guy, Adam–”

“Oh, I’ve heard all about Adam,” Eddie said with a disgusted tone of his voice, blackness flitting across his eyes.

“I don’t doubt it. Sick fucker.” A sigh left you. “I thought I was going to be able to help people with the research we were doing. Not– Not torturing a sentient being and helping an asshole experiment on the homeless population.”

“It’s not your fault.”

“Isn’t it?” The microwave beeped, and you pushed yourself up from your chair, going to stab a fork into the defrosted sausages to make sure they weren’t frozen anymore. “There’s no telling what Drake used my research for.”

“You’re not responsible for another person’s evil,” Eddie told you sternly, and you sighed, glancing at him over your shoulder. “You’re not. Drake used you, plain and simple. At least you had the guts to leave when you found out what he was doing.”

“…the other symbiotes? Are they–?”

“Dead, as far as Venom could tell. Drake tried to force them to bond with people, and it didn’t take.”

Something clenched in your chest, and you had to take a few breaths to calm yourself. “He’ll be hunting for the two of you, then.”

“LET HIM TRY.”

The dark, predatory, angry, voice sent a shiver down your back, and you turned, finding that Eddie had vanished, replaced by Venom, who was towering over you, hands clenched into fists.

“Don’t underestimate Drake,” you warned Venom gently, drawing that pale, alien, gaze to you. “There’s nothing more dangerous than a man with nothing to lose. He’ll do anything to get you back.”

“WE CAN HANDLE OURSELVES, MORSEL.”

“I don’t doubt it. But that doesn’t mean that Drake isn’t a threat.“ Venom huffed, glancing away, and you pressed on. “He spent millions of dollars to get you and the others… You’re the only survivor. He’s not just going to let you go.”

A low rumble left the massive form. “BECAUSE OF MONEY.”

“Yes. And because he’s obsessed. Power can corrupt people, and Drake is as corrupt as they come.”

He scrowled, then met your gaze, and you rocked back on your heels a little at being the center of that predatory focus. “AND HE THINKS WE CAN HELP HIM GET MORE MONEY.”

“Yes.” You sighed. “People like Drake, they always want more. More money. More power. More fame. From what I heard from the others at the Lab, he was hoping that using you symbiotes would help humanity evolve. You’re immune to all of our diseases, can heal almost any wound, even help us survive in toxic or low-oxygen environments. The implications of that… If Drake were to transfer even a fraction of your abilities to humans… Well, there are a lot of people who would be willing to pay a lot of money for something like that.”

“MONEY. IS IT ALWAYS ABOUT MONEY WITH YOU HUMANS?”

The disgusted tone of his voice made you bristle. “We’re not all like Drake, Venom,” you snapped. “There are plenty of good people in this world. I doubt you’d have stayed with Eddie for as long as you have if he was like Drake.”

Venom shifted, deflating a little. “NO. NO, EDDIE IS NOT LIKE DRAKE.” A grumble left him, and he visibly relaxed, tilting his head to look at you. “YOU ARE NOT LIKE DRAKE.”

“I try very hard not to be.” Still a little insulted, you turned and went about slicing up the italian sausages before throwing them onto a frying pan, jabbing at them with a fork.

A low rumble sounded from behind you. “WE’RE SORRY, MORSEL. EDDIE SAYS WE’VE INSULTED YOU.”

“I’m not…” You sighed, calming yourself, then glanced at him. “Alright yeah. I’m a little mad. Don’t… don’t judge an entire world of people by the actions of one selfish bastard. We’re not perfect, but we’re not all like, Drake.”

Silence fell over the apartment, apart from the sizzling of the sausages in the pan, and the next thing you knew, Venom was invading your personal space, bending down to rest his chin on the top of your head, arms looping around you.

It was weird, but you didn’t protest, merely forced yourself to relax and concentrated on cooking. “You gonna let Eddie back out so he can eat?”

“AFTER TATER TOTS.”

You peeked into the oven. “Five more minutes.”

He grumbled, then huffed warm breath into your hair. “WHAT IS IT WITH YOU HUMANS AND COOKING EVERYTHING? IT’S ALL DEAD.”

An amused chuckle left you at the petulant tone of his voice. “First off, most foods taste better when they’re cooked. Secondly, eating raw meat can be dangerous. There are bacteria and such that can make humans really sick. Cooking it kills the bacteria and makes it safe.”

“BLEH.”

“Can’t all be bad if Eddie says you like tater tots and chocolate.”

He laughed. It showed that you were getting used to him that you didn’t jump at the predatory rumble. “TRUE.” A pause. “EDDIE IS COMPLAINING ABOUT BOUNDARIES AGAIN.”

You tapped at the arms around your waist. “Most people who aren’t in a relationship wouldn’t be this close to each other. It’s a rule that Western Culture forces on us, I suppose. I know that things are different in other parts of the world.”

“WEIRD.”

“Little bit. Here, let go for a moment, I think your tater tots are ready.” Used an oven mitt to retrieve the potatoes from the oven and set them on an unused round of the stove, idly swatting Venom’s hand away when he tried to snatch up some tots. “You’ll burn yourself.”

He grumbled. You turned back to the almost cooked sausages, glanced right when something tapped on your shoulder, then caught Venom grabbing a massive handful of potatoes out of the corner of your left eye. “Seriously?”

“WE’RE HUNGRY,” was the answer you got as he shoveled food into his mouth, tongue licking up pieces that escaped his fangs.

Shaking your head, you dumped the rest of the potatoes onto a plate, then handed it to him, rolling your eyes when he merely opened his maw impossibly wide and upended the contents into his mouth.

Okay, then.

Marveling at the new insanity in your life, you grabbed the egg carton out of the fridge, then used a spatula to move the sausages across the frying pan. Filled the free space with three eggs, then scrambled everything together.

Heard some curious sniffing, and glanced at Venom as he loomed over you again. “You can have some when it’s cooked.”

“SMELLS BETTER RAW.” And before you could stop him, he’d lashed a tendril out to pluck up one of the remaining eggs and popped it into his mouth, shell and all. “MM. NOT BAD. CHOCOLATE IS BETTER.”

A laugh left you. “Chocolate is always better. There’s a couple of bars in the fridge if you–” Wow. You didn’t think someone that large could move so fast. Miracle the door stayed attached to the fridge too. Jesus.

Rolling you eyes, you retrieved two plates and divided the contents of the frying pan equally, setting the pan onto a cold round to cool. You turned, both plates in hand, sighing when you saw that Venom had left a large dent in the handle of the fridge’s door.

“OOPS?”

“Uh huh. Let Eddie out so he can eat, please.” Doubtless, the poor man’s metabolism was working overtime while his body was hosting Venom. You didn’t voice it though, merely watched as Venom crunched through a final chocolate bar before the symbiote rippled away from Eddie.

“Here you go,” you set his plate and a fork down on the table before claiming the second chair and taking a seat. “Eat up.”

“You’re… being amazingly blaze about all this,” Eddie commented with a curious look as he sat down, picking up his mug of coffee and grimacing as he finished off the no doubt cold brew.

“I had my little freak out about alien life a while ago,” you smirked, spearing a piece of sausage with your fork. “Venom is… intimidating, yeah. But if I thought either of you were a real threat to me, I wouldn’t have let you crash on the couch. Or my bed.”

He blushed, and you hid a smile. “Sorry about that. He’s very… touchy feely.”

Your lips quirked. “I noticed.”

“Sorry.”

“S’okay.” Breakfast went by quietly as Eddie wolfed down his food as if he hadn’t eaten in days, and you glanced over at the counter. “I can make toast?”

He blinked. “Huh? Oh, no. That’s okay. Sorry. It’s just, ever since Venom bonded with me, I’m always starving.”

“Your hosting another living being. Your metabolism is probably in overdrive.”

“Mn. It’s gotten better since Venom started eating junk food, actually.” Eddie polished off the last bits of egg, then rose, ignoring your protests as he took your empty plate and walked over to the sink. Only when he had his back to you did he continue talking. “It– he, kinda ate a guy’s head.”

You did a slow blink. “…well, that’s… kinda… horrible.“

“You have no idea. Got him to promise to only, uh, bite, the bad guys at least. But, still...” Eddie stiffened suddenly and turned to you with wide eyes. “We wouldn’t hurt you though! Jesus, fuck, I’d throw myself out the window first!”

The panic in his voice made you frown. But then again, if you were suddenly host to a sentient, predatory, alien, you’d be panicking from time to time too. “Eddie, it’s okay. I believe you.”

Moving slowly, you rose and went to make more coffee, paused, decided that Eddie didn’t need the caffeine, and put a hot chocolate pod into the Keurig instead.

You were about to insist that he didn’t have to do the dishes when your phone warbled the Doctor Who theme, and you huffed as you rushed back into the bedroom to answer it, pausing a little at the blocked number before thumbing the proper button. “Hello?”

“All of the men I had watching you are missing! Care to explain?”

Drake. Shit.

“Well, how the hell should I know?” you snapped, waving at Eddie to stay silent when he was drawn to the bedroom doorway due to the anger in your voice. “I’m the one whose privacy you’re invading it’s not my job to keep an eye on your thugs.”

“They were highly trained security personnel. The only way they’d be missing is if they were dead.” When you didn’t rise to the bait, Drake tried another approach. “That symbiote is dangerous. Nothing else could have taken out my men. And whether you want to admit it or not, you created a rapport with that creature. With your security detail... missing, I think you should come back to the facility. For your safety, you understand.”

Safety, your ass.

“I appreciate your... concern, Mr. Drake. But that doesn’t change the fact that I find you, and your methods of ‘research’, distasteful at best and criminal at worst.” It wasn’t Eddie in the doorway anymore, it was Venom, and you hoped that the growl he loosed upon hearing Drake’s name wasn’t audible over the line. “Now, and I mean this sincerely: go fuck yourself.”

Hanging up on someone never felt so good.

“Well, shit,” you muttered afterwards, raising your eyes to Venom’s. “I think he knows you’re here.”

[velvetchen]

11 Questions Tag

so i was tagged thrice (!!!) by three lovely people, thank you so much!! i couldn’t decide which set of questions to do bc i didn’t want to leave any out so i did all three! thank you again for tagging me!

i’m putting my questions & tags right at the top so y’all don’t have to scroll through my 33 questions of rambling lmao 

rules:  answer the 11 questions from the person who tagged you and then make 11 more for the people you tag.

edit: i was tagged again, so i decided to come back and add on to this and i noticed tumblr didn’t actually tag anyone so yeah i fixed that now rip

here are my questions!

1. Book/movie/art piece that made you think the most and why? 2. What’s your favorite physical/personality feature of your bias(es)? 3. What colors and smells reminds you of home? 4. If you could only listen to 30 seconds of one song for your entire life, what song & time interval would it be? 5. Languages you'd like to learn? 6. What are three pieces of advice you’d give to 30-year-old you? 7. If you bumped into your bias on the street and you had no idea who they were, what would your first impression be and what would you do next? 8. Ultimate holiday itinerary? 9. You go to your bias group’s concert, and you’re one of the lucky fans invited on stage for a ~special performance~... what do you do?  10. What made you first notice your bias? 11. Do you have any bad habits?

tagging 11 people: @blushtones @sehunsface @whimsical-ness @yeoleow  @fuck-me-up-fam @romantichen @xingmithefool @honeyjongdae @ineedyixing @dropsofletters @chanyoel

sorry if you’ve already been tagged / you don’t wanna be tagged!

@dragon-dust !! thank you love

What’s your favourite flower? 

hmmm i’ve said this before but i do love pink lilies! i also love hydrangeas and orange blossoms and i think the skeleton flower is cool as heck (it’s a flower that turns crystal-clear when wet) 

Sunrise or sunset?

i like sunrises bc it’s colder and there are always a lot of bugs around at sunset...not to mention it gets dark really quickly!

Favourite childhood piece of music? 

mmm a lot bc we used to listen to a lot of music!! but anything by michael jackson or lucky ali is v nostalgic to me

Name a character from a book that you can’t forget.

i don’t have one from a books (rip i’ve never properly liked a book character) but the magician from the webtoon annarasumanara kind of stuck with me? i just felt so sad for him & he reminds me of what i don’t want to end up being

Pictures or gifs? 

pictures! 

Is there any really famous movie that you’ve not ever seen? 

ohhhhh boy a lot! i don’t watch movies much and if i do the last thing i’d watch is romance/comedy/etc so i haven’t seen all those ‘classics’ like the notebook and legally blonde and so on... i’ve never seen high school musical either (or any of those disney channel shows)

Clean desk or a messy one? 

it starts off clean and then it gets messy lmao

If you could start again and change only one thing, what would that be?

i would love myself more, and i would’ve made an effort to speak all my languages :(

Five things, one desert island for the rest of your life. What do you bring

(assuming i can’t bring exo) uhhh, because i’m practical: a good knife, large sheet of tarp, indefinite number of matches, clean clothes and something to hold water

Favourite way to spend your free time. 

wasting it tbh... but i love having long chats w my friends

Would you rather be able to fly or walk through walls? 

i’d fly bc walking through walls would be a lot more easier to get caught at... @technicallymilkshakes   !! (i love these questions!) 

You’ve been friends with your bias for some time now and you’re pretty sure there’s some mutual attraction between the two of you. How does this attraction get resolved? Does someone confess (who)? Is it more physical? Do you agree to remain just friends? Or does it stay unresolved? 

okay okay ASSUMING this ever happens ... i’d confess! i don’t like keeping things that could change my life. even if i wasn’t sure they liked me too. i’d go for a half-relationship/half-friend thing?? bc i hate proper relationships 

Do you have a recurring daydream you like to revisit? What is it?

yep! plenty hahaha. i have one where Ambiguous Person and i are hiking through the woods, another where we’re trying to ballroom dance and then one where we’re forced to share a bed... you know the one... (SORRY i’m so soft when it comes to romance)

How did your bias become your bias?

ahhh okay at first my bias was jongin?? bc i usually like the dancers? and i was watching a lot of exo-k so i didn’t even know about jd but like... i watched a couple of lives and his voice just got me... and then of course all those ‘try not to fangirl’ challenges that sucked the life out of me

What’s one song from your bias group that can always make you happy?

i love love love replay! especially the live ver. where they all cried... i cry everytime i hear it too?? and the whole lucifer album also (surprise!! my bias group isn’t exo lmao)

Are you right-handed? Left-handed? Ambidextrous?

right-handed! i can write w my left hand but not for long periods of time

You call in to the radio show your bias is a guest on. It gets picked up and now you’re live on the air. What would you say to them?

i’d say (in my crappy korean) that i love them and i’m so happy i got to talk to them! and that i hope they’re happy and taking care of themselves 

What’s the best concert you’ve ever been to?

i’ve only been to two :( both of them were incredible though! i saw yanni live & a classical concert by zubin mehta + the australian world orchestra and !!!! mesmerizing experiences! now if i could just see tsfh i’d die happy

What’s your favorite film genre and what are some movies you would recommend from it?

like i said i don’t like films much but,,, i do love space movies and historical settings! i can’t recall any besides interstellar which most people have probably watched

What do you think other people’s first impression of you is? What do you want it to be?

they probably think i’m kind of rude? ;;;;;;;; bc i’m super shy so i don’t talk much at all? also they probably think i’m homeless or something bc i’m always barefoot, my hair’s always messy and somehow i end up getting dust all over me RIP

Is there a book that you’ve given up on finishing? If so, why? 

i’ve dnf’ed a loooot of books! most recently, a court of thorns and roses (s. j. maas) & caraval (stephanie garber) MAN i really hated those

You went to a fansign and your bias signed your album and drew a special note + a little doodle just for you. What does the note say and what’s the doodle? Do you show it off to everyone when you get home or do you tuck it in a safe spot and take it out once in a blue moon to reminisce alone?

ldkfns i’m imagining this and i’m SUFFERING but uhh i’d ask him to draw a cat lmao and write something that makes him happy!  and the second one! i’m not a showy person so i’d definitely keep it somewhere safe and take it out when i want to remember :’)

@jds1andonly  !! 

If you could have any exo member as your twin, who would it be?

probably chanyeol bc i need some positivity! and he’d be really fun to talk to and do everything with

Imagine you have one day where you can eat anything you want: what would you eat for breakfast, lunch and dinner?

assuming this also means no gastric troubles... i’d go to the most expensive vegan restaurants in the world and gorge myself (bc i’m still morally obligated)

What is something you want to do by the end of the year?

oh boy considering there’s only a month and a half left... finish my ongoing series, be done with all my school stuff and ready for my exams in january, and organize the trip i want to go on with my friends after graduation!

What is your dream job?

i wanna be a teacher or a professor! maybe go around the world and teach in poorer regions? i actually have this dream to start an organization for volunteer teaching in low-income areas around the world. after i retire, i want to run a cafe/library in a really secluded place.

What is your favorite part from exo’s unfair performances (any one of them)

oh my godddd they’re all so sickeningly sweet but i like the christmas one with the santa suits and jongdae’s part in the second verse where he goes ‘oooooh oooooh’ with the finger heart? it’s so cute i wanna die

What was your favorite TV show as a kid?

spongebob ndsfnsk obviously... 

What is the funniest thing you’ve ever heard about your bias?

this one video someone tagged me in of jd wearing those periscope glasses and screaming?? 

What is your least favorite food and why?

i haaaaaaate curry leaves they make me nauseous :-/ 

What TV show have you been watching recently?

does masterchef australia count? i watch it obsessively!!

If you had a superpower like the exo members, what would you want yours to be?

hmm. hmmmmm very good question. probably telekinesis bc it’s really cool and i can move stuff from across the room without having to get up

If you could be in any kpop group, which would it be and why?

just for the concepts? id say exo or vixx for the music but i wouldn’t really fit in lmfao so like maybe snsd or EXID 

okay this was super long i’m sorry but i had fun!!! thank you guys for tagging me again!!! 

[mastcomm]

International Center of Photography Refocuses in a New Home

It’s not just your cellphone that’s a camera now. Your doorbell can take photographs, and so might your car, your refrigerator and your toothbrush. Camera-sporting athletes now do the work of sports photojournalists, and all New York City beat cops wear a body camera. War photography has gone from a specialist’s art to a citizen’s daily action, and the stupid selfie you uploaded yesterday has already been scraped into a database and could be sold to law enforcement agencies or a private detective. This is the paradox: the average photograph has never been more banal or irrelevant, yet photography as a medium has never mattered more.

In 2020 we are in desperate, desperate need of a richer discourse about this new, pervasive era of photography: how the lens-based image became a ubiquitous thing, and how any image or photographer can gain distinction in this flood of pictures. Cross your fingers that the International Center of Photography finds its way there soon.

Since its founding by Cornell Capa (brother of Robert Capa, the photojournalist who shot the most notorious picture of the Spanish Civil War), ICP has stuck up for photography as both an art form and a historical record, but it has bumbled in the time of the social photo. What should a photography museum do when photographs are just about everywhere? ICP has to answer that in a new home at Essex Crossing, the large new Lower East Side development, though its initial programming suggests it’s still not sure.

ICP started out in a Museum Mile townhouse in 1974, where it focused on the documentary tradition Capa called “concerned photography,” and moved in 2000 to Midtown, where it placed equal attention on photography as a fine art. Its rent-free Midtown lease expired in 2015, just as the cameraphone began to swallow photography whole, and you could almost see ICP’s confusion about its approach to the medium reflected in its real-estate peregrinations. Its collection was displaced to Jersey City, its school stayed in Midtown and its museum drifted to a low-ceilinged home on the Bowery.

The Center’s new Essex Crossing residence, a 40,000-square-foot interior space designed by Gensler within a new condo building by SHoP Architects, is nothing flashy but no worse for that. There are two floors of galleries, some with full-height windows and some convertible into black boxes, plus an old-is-new-again Pentagram logo embedded in the tiles. (Proper ceiling heights, too!) There’s also a ground-floor cafe for those who haven’t gorged at the Market Line food hall across the street.

Other good news: ICP’s school will soon move to Essex Crossing, placing education and exhibition programs under one roof for the first time in two decades. But the new site is still not large enough to bring ICP’s collection of some 200,000 prints, including many signal photographs by American midcentury photojournalists, back from Jersey exile.

The inaugural shows do at least include one exhibition drawn from its permanent collection. “The Lower East Side” has 40 black-and-white prints shot in ICP’s new neighborhood, when immigrants from Ireland, Italy, Eastern Europe and China moved in and food came not from bistros but pushcarts. The Hungarian-born photographer Arnold Eagle, in his “One Third of a Nation” series, captures children in tenements and rabbis at the yeshiva. Seven photographs by the Danish-American reformer Jacob Riis expose filthy SROs and overcrowded schools, though the curators slime him in the wall texts as a labor-hating conservative whose pictures “often rob people of their humanity and dignity.”

The other three shows range from underwhelming to vacuous. Worst is “Warriors,” a techy rasp by the Seattle-based artist James Coupe, which uses facial-scanning software to insert gallerygoers’ faces into a 1970s B-movie. Billed as a “deepfake,” or nearly undetectable edit, the videos in fact exhibit glaring disjunctions: the inserted flesh judders right off the jaw, and the faces have overly rouged, Kewpie-doll cheeks.

More troubling than the janky tech is the muffed rationale; artists’ reconstructions of traditional cinema were old hat 20 years ago (think of Douglas Gordon and Pierre Huyghe). This is tech for tech’s sake, and ICP should expect artists to examine life as shaped by new photographic technologies, rather than simply announce new technologies exist.

The largest show at the new ICP is “Contact High: A Visual History of Hip-Hop.” It was first seen at the Annenberg Space for Photography in Los Angeles, and is curated by the journalist Vikki Tobak, who previously put together a book and an Instagram account of the same name. Amid nearly 40 years’ worth of photographs of rappers and singers, the niftiest materials are the many contact sheets, including Michael Lavine’s outtakes for the cover of OutKast’s album “Stankonia,” and Eric Johnson’s shots of the rapper Eve strutting through New York in a floor-length robe.

Yet there’s a touch of Madame Tussauds in the approach of “Contact High,” which sets aside visual analysis for an undemanding showcase of your favorite celebrities. The principal wall texts do not name a single photographer, instead offering dubious platitudes like “Hip-hop portraiture is about pausing to see the subjects for who they truly are.” A whole wall is given to fresh inkjet prints of 1990s stars — Tupac and Jay, Missy and Mary. It will be easy to walk out of this show having ignored the actual achievements of photographers like Janette Beckman, Barron Claiborne and Al Pereira, whose talents are subordinated to Public Enemy, the Notorious B.I.G. and Queen Latifah.

ICP’s most interesting inaugural exhibition, though not without its own problems, presents the work of Tyler Mitchell, a 24-year-old American fashion photographer who rocketed to prominence two years ago, when he shot Beyoncé for the cover of Vogue. Many of the photographs here, which are almost exclusively of black models, have appeared in such hip magazines as Document and Zeit Magazin, though you can see them too on his Instagram account, amid selfies. Here he has printed some pictures on fabric and hung them on clotheslines (a motif he used in his Beyoncé shoot), which feels like a dubious effort to pump up the digital photograph for a gallery exhibition, as does the astral music pumped in.

In real space or digital, Mr. Mitchell has a solid eye and a skill for lighting that makes him a natural at editorial photography. His half-length portraits are especially beautiful. But he overindulges the easy absorption of social-justice language into the realms of fashion and style, and his video works feel elementary when compared to his stills.

Consider the three-screen installation “Chasing Pink, Found Red,” whose willowy young subjects in chinos lounge barefoot in the grass, while his many social media fans recount experiences of racism and issues of identity in voice-over. This sweet-and-sour, one-plus-one-makes-two approach might suffice for a fashion editorial, but art takes more, and you can wonder what ICP might have been had it given its first major show here to an artist with more experience and fewer Instagram followers.

For it is a wounding mistake to think that reaching a broader and younger audience requires a lowering of ambitions, and I can name one institution that used to know that. It was at the International Center of Photography, back in Midtown, that the artist Coco Fusco and the curator Brian Wallis presented “Only Skin Deep,” their sprawling 2003 exhibition on the role of the camera in the construction of American racial categories. It was at ICP that Okwui Enwezor, the towering Nigerian curator, first mounted “Rise and Fall of Apartheid,” an impassioned and typically precise study of South African photography and history from 2012, which mixed fine art, photojournalism and bureaucratic documentation.

Artists like Ms. Fusco and curators like Mr. Enwezor taught me, when I was as young as the children now flocking to Essex Crossing, that the photograph had both an aesthetic and a moral dimension. (And that the photograph of the black body, in particular, required all our intellectual efforts to account for a crushing historical lineage.) It wasn’t enough to glance. You had to think hard, read deeply, and look both at the surface of the image and the rhetoric that framed it.

That photographic dispensation has been wiped out in the age of Instagram, where knowledge has given way to “influence,” and the critical spirit has been ceded to microdoses of “affirmation.” Maybe, decrepit 30-something that I am, I’m showing my age. But I’d have thought there was no better venue for countering the shallowness of the screen — no better place to teach young audiences to look closely and think seriously — than a museum.

International Center of Photography

All inaugural shows run through May 18; 79 Essex Street, Manhattan; 212-857-9700, icp.org.

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[greaterthannine-blog]

Yvonne Part Three

The Last Edition of my Friend Yvonne on Film

Over the past few months of my gap year, I have come to dearly appreciate school again. Not that I didn't appreciate academic life before, in fact I reveled in it and that it provides so much creative freedom (to some extent) and an audience of people essentially obligated to see/hear/observe your ideas and dole out feedback. When I chose to take a gap year, I knew I would miss school, but at that point (the end of senior year of high school) during the throes of IB exams, I was fucking exhausted and duly needed a hiatus.

But what I didn't realize was how lonely a gap year can be.

Sociality?

What I've temporarily bypassed by taking a gap year is constant social exposure. No longer am I waltzing through hallways and classrooms interacting with friends, teachers, administration, strangers, etc. on a daily basis. I do converse with my coworkers, but customarily those chats are in regards to work-related topics and not interests, hobbies, and other conversational topics. That's what I miss about school, which I never considered I would, given that I limited my mingling to be almost exclusively in school. Even though I love(d) my high school buds amazingly, after the final bell rang I would always require time to myself to recharge for the next day.

But now I don't have that. But I'll manage don't worry. It's not forever.

Besides, I keep myself constantly occupied with Greater Than Nine, photography, art, writing, college applications, retail work and other various pursuits. It's incredible, but I don't really have an immediate group of artsy people to bounce ideas off anymore. But in a way it's a great learning experience, as I now have to problem solve without assistance, advice or feedback from others. Everything can be an educational experience as long as you interpret it as one.

Anyways, given my current lack of social interaction, I do not have any new friends. However, I supplement that by trying my best to maintain communication with people I was great friends with while in high school. One such friend is this lovely lady Yvonne, whom is featured in this lil' series. I've touched on why Yvonne and I share(d) a remarkable friendship in a copious number of past posts, notably Yvonne Part One and Yvonne Part Two, but there are still many other posts where I speak to our relationship.

Behind the Story

Anyways, for these photographs, I turned off our overhead lights and spotlights to solely have sunlight shining in. The weather that day was gloomy and overcast, so such natural light was much darker and helped create a much different mood for these photographs than those with artificial lighting.

I wanted to bring in an air of mystery and suspense to these photographs. Some features were already in place: The white sheet, the vignette created by the camera lens, the oftentimes shotty and irritability of the camera's focus, Yvonne's yellow lace blouse, and her dark hair. Overall my goal was to create an atmosphere as if the The Haunting (1963) met The Addams Family (1964) met a Technicolor film met a smidgen of contemporary fashion. A mishmash of different influences to morph into the mood portrayed in these photos.

I'll describe the story portrayed in these photos, so that you can better understand the concept.

I hope it's entertaining at the very least.

The Actual Narrative

It's a balmy summer's day, and there is a girl. She prances around a meadow barefoot and dressed in her yellow lace blouse and denim shorts. She is not alone in the meadow; surrounding her in between the stalks of grass are butterflies, grasshoppers, dandelions and buttercups, all culminating to a tranquil yet buzzing aura. Cicadas in the trees provide a metronomic serenade as a backdrop to the scene's merriment.

Nearby is the reason for her presence; a family reunion of which she is a part. Under a large canvas tent, are tea and sandwiches, deviled eggs and Shirley Temples. The women don sundresses and straw hats and exchange garb about career pursuits and daintily gloat of their children. The men wear t-shirts or pinstripe button-ups with trousers and boast of their sector occupations or squabble of baseball brackets. The young people wear playsuits or sprightly denim pieces. They play at the edge of the shade provided by the tent, with balls and bubbles and twigs. 

  The girl is years older than her younger relatives, so she remains alone, but occupied. She is lively and adventurous, an untainted and headstrong spirit, laughing gleefully as she explores the meadow. She is not fearful of insects, nor afraid of rampant rocks or splinters. She knows what her true fears are and they are not found in this serene stage.

As she pads through her surroundings, one bare foot after the other, she eyes details that her junior cousins would neglect. To the left a fallen tree painted in lichen and moss, with three snails oozing along. To the right a trickling creek, an object of runoff from the nearby river. As she moves on, she notices a faint trail lined with daisies and forget-me-nots and ladybugs lonesome. Intrigued by the path, she stands on a small boulder in the vacancy it presents among the grassy space and peers onward. As the trail vanishes in nearby distance, she can discern through a copse of willows the silhouette of a looming structure. Curious as to what it could be, she remembers why she is there in the meadow. With her right hand grasping a tree trunk on the side of the path, she glances over her shoulder. The women are chatting. The men are chuckling. The children are zooming to and fro. They will not note her absence, at least for a while. Besides, it will only be temporary. Just for a peek.

Making her mind, a mischievous smile touches her face and she turns towards the trail. She treads carefully, ensuring she doesn't trip while gazing mesmerized through the trees at the shape ahead. In her hypnotization, she does not notice a rusting sign dangling from an old metal gate with faint marks of warning. Even had she seen it, it would not have deterred her. She is fascinated and curious; thriving on the thrill of an unaccompanied adventure. 

When she exits the grove, the trail ends, and before her stands a desolate mansion. Immediately she detects it was once a lively and grand house. There are remnants of hand carved trimming, and immense vertical windows. A stone stairway lined with elegant iron guard rails escalates to the entryway. Despite its apparent grandeur, the manor appears dingy, with peeling paint, shattered panes of glass and a purplish-grey hue to every detail. The wrought-iron fence is rusting, the window frames are flaking and the barrier of the third floor balcony sprawls on the canopy sheltering the front stoop and porch, having abandoned its prescribed post.

But that's not to say that nature is not impeding and reclaiming the space. It is apparent upon first sight. Vines slither up the crumbling siding, and the distant buzzing of bees alerts there is a hive dribbling with larvae and honey. Sparrows dogfight, dragonflies dart from left to right and the front yard is overrun with wildflowers. 

Curiosity confirmed, a distracted grin spreads across her face as she ventures forward towards the gate leading to the front steps. As she pads through the floral undergrowth, she glances up at the daunting structure, but is unfazed by its sinister yet dreary state. Stopping at the front door, she sees a knocker, shaped as a roaring lion's head with a spindly spider inching down the nose. Knowing all too well that the house is abandoned, she bypasses the knocker and turns the solid brass doorknob. The massive door creeps outwardly open to reveal a shadowed foyer. The interior appears to be entirely crafted from mahogany; the floorboards, the trim and railings all the same deep woody shade. Mirrors line the walls and every piece of furniture is cloaked with a white sheet. The end of the entry hall ends in a choice of three directions. Sitting rooms and entertainment spaces to the left and right, and a murky corkscrew staircase leading to the upper levels. The girl sets her sights forward and pads up the staircase, her right hand grazing the mahogany railing as she ascends, and leaving gentle footprints on the creeking dusty floor beneath.

Coming round the stairway's bend she notices a friendlier air. At the top is a hallway leading to the left and the right. Adorning the wall are oil paintings of lilies and ponds and peaches. Her hand skims the wall's surface as she glides left towards a mahogany door opened slightly ajar.

The door resists minutely to her gentle pushes due to decades of dereliction or as if hiding something, but finally it submits and slowly swings inward. The space behind the door is a bedroom, however at first glance it was difficult to place, as almost the entire room is veiled in white sheets, even the floor. But upon more careful inspection the sheets resemble the forms of lamps and side tables, armoires and chaise lounges, and an enormous four-poster bed. She sees that this room, while still tinted a purplish-grey like the rest of the mansion, has been lit by a tremendous French-window on the front facing wall of the house. She tiptoes over to the window and peers out. Over the copse of trees she can view the reunion! Deep in her excitement and joy in the meadow, she had not noticed the manor rising in the festivities' backdrop. Perplexed she failed to see this, as observing is a favorite of hers, she steps over to where the veiled bed stands, only three meters away from the window, and plops down on the sheet-covered floor beside it. If she so chose, she could simply lean back against the bed to watch her extended family, but not wishing to disturb the carefully hung sheets, she suffices with the floor.

It is here on the floor, in front of a four poster bed cloaked by white sheets, in a decrepit, dusty and ominous abandoned estate that we imagine these photographs were taken. Her surroundings are shadowed, eerie and grand, yet she is undisturbed by such characteristics. Because she is headstrong and self-assured, she can be joyful and cheery no matter the state of her environment. Had a photographer waltzed in to shoot snapshots of this girl as she was, these are what s/he would have seen. A girl in her world, dressed how she wants, being who she wants; carefree and smiling nonetheless. 

Insights

That lil' narrative more or less describes the mood, atmosphere and story behind these photographs. If it helped clarify things, wonderful! If not, well... I either did a shit job writing, a shit job developing the mood of the story, a shit job creating a world from which these photographs could come from, or you just didn't get it. Any of those are equally possible, but there's a tad more blame placed on my shoulders than yours. Because if this narrative didn't make any sense whatsoever, than I did a poor job conveying my thoughts, with the consequence being your difficulty understanding. So please don't feel bad if it doesn't make sense. In fact, if it doesn't make sense to you, please leave a comment with feedback so that I may use that information for future photographic reasoning narratives.

Anyways, thank you to Yvonne for being a snazzy-ass model. Can't wait to reunite in a few weeks.

And thank you, to you, for reading.

And as always,

Thanks for popping by.

Toodles,

Isabella

[mastcomm]

International Center of Photography Refocuses in a New Home

It’s not just your cellphone that’s a camera now. Your doorbell can take photographs, and so might your car, your refrigerator and your toothbrush. Camera-sporting athletes now do the work of sports photojournalists, and all New York City beat cops wear a body camera. War photography has gone from a specialist’s art to a citizen’s daily action, and the stupid selfie you uploaded yesterday has already been scraped into a database and could be sold to law enforcement agencies or a private detective. This is the paradox: the average photograph has never been more banal or irrelevant, yet photography as a medium has never mattered more.

In 2020 we are in desperate, desperate need of a richer discourse about this new, pervasive era of photography: how the lens-based image became a ubiquitous thing, and how any image or photographer can gain distinction in this flood of pictures. Cross your fingers that the International Center of Photography finds its way there soon.

Since its founding by Cornell Capa (brother of Robert Capa, the photojournalist who shot the most notorious picture of the Spanish Civil War), ICP has stuck up for photography as both an art form and a historical record, but it has bumbled in the time of the social photo. What should a photography museum do when photographs are just about everywhere? ICP has to answer that in a new home at Essex Crossing, the large new Lower East Side development, though its initial programming suggests it’s still not sure.

ICP started out in a Museum Mile townhouse in 1974, where it focused on the documentary tradition Capa called “concerned photography,” and moved in 2000 to Midtown, where it placed equal attention on photography as a fine art. Its rent-free Midtown lease expired in 2015, just as the cameraphone began to swallow photography whole, and you could almost see ICP’s confusion about its approach to the medium reflected in its real-estate peregrinations. Its collection was displaced to Jersey City, its school stayed in Midtown and its museum drifted to a low-ceilinged home on the Bowery.

The Center’s new Essex Crossing residence, a 40,000-square-foot interior space designed by Gensler within a new condo building by SHoP Architects, is nothing flashy but no worse for that. There are two floors of galleries, some with full-height windows and some convertible into black boxes, plus an old-is-new-again Pentagram logo embedded in the tiles. (Proper ceiling heights, too!) There’s also a ground-floor cafe for those who haven’t gorged at the Market Line food hall across the street.

Other good news: ICP’s school will soon move to Essex Crossing, placing education and exhibition programs under one roof for the first time in two decades. But the new site is still not large enough to bring ICP’s collection of some 200,000 prints, including many signal photographs by American midcentury photojournalists, back from Jersey exile.

The inaugural shows do at least include one exhibition drawn from its permanent collection. “The Lower East Side” has 40 black-and-white prints shot in ICP’s new neighborhood, when immigrants from Ireland, Italy, Eastern Europe and China moved in and food came not from bistros but pushcarts. The Hungarian-born photographer Arnold Eagle, in his “One Third of a Nation” series, captures children in tenements and rabbis at the yeshiva. Seven photographs by the Danish-American reformer Jacob Riis expose filthy SROs and overcrowded schools, though the curators slime him in the wall texts as a labor-hating conservative whose pictures “often rob people of their humanity and dignity.”

The other three shows range from underwhelming to vacuous. Worst is “Warriors,” a techy rasp by the Seattle-based artist James Coupe, which uses facial-scanning software to insert gallerygoers’ faces into a 1970s B-movie. Billed as a “deepfake,” or nearly undetectable edit, the videos in fact exhibit glaring disjunctions: the inserted flesh judders right off the jaw, and the faces have overly rouged, Kewpie-doll cheeks.

More troubling than the janky tech is the muffed rationale; artists’ reconstructions of traditional cinema were old hat 20 years ago (think of Douglas Gordon and Pierre Huyghe). This is tech for tech’s sake, and ICP should expect artists to examine life as shaped by new photographic technologies, rather than simply announce new technologies exist.

The largest show at the new ICP is “Contact High: A Visual History of Hip-Hop.” It was first seen at the Annenberg Space for Photography in Los Angeles, and is curated by the journalist Vikki Tobak, who previously put together a book and an Instagram account of the same name. Amid nearly 40 years’ worth of photographs of rappers and singers, the niftiest materials are the many contact sheets, including Michael Lavine’s outtakes for the cover of OutKast’s album “Stankonia,” and Eric Johnson’s shots of the rapper Eve strutting through New York in a floor-length robe.

Yet there’s a touch of Madame Tussauds in the approach of “Contact High,” which sets aside visual analysis for an undemanding showcase of your favorite celebrities. The principal wall texts do not name a single photographer, instead offering dubious platitudes like “Hip-hop portraiture is about pausing to see the subjects for who they truly are.” A whole wall is given to fresh inkjet prints of 1990s stars — Tupac and Jay, Missy and Mary. It will be easy to walk out of this show having ignored the actual achievements of photographers like Janette Beckman, Barron Claiborne and Al Pereira, whose talents are subordinated to Public Enemy, the Notorious B.I.G. and Queen Latifah.

ICP’s most interesting inaugural exhibition, though not without its own problems, presents the work of Tyler Mitchell, a 24-year-old American fashion photographer who rocketed to prominence two years ago, when he shot Beyoncé for the cover of Vogue. Many of the photographs here, which are almost exclusively of black models, have appeared in such hip magazines as Document and Zeit Magazin, though you can see them too on his Instagram account, amid selfies. Here he has printed some pictures on fabric and hung them on clotheslines (a motif he used in his Beyoncé shoot), which feels like a dubious effort to pump up the digital photograph for a gallery exhibition, as does the astral music pumped in.

In real space or digital, Mr. Mitchell has a solid eye and a skill for lighting that makes him a natural at editorial photography. His half-length portraits are especially beautiful. But he overindulges the easy absorption of social-justice language into the realms of fashion and style, and his video works feel elementary when compared to his stills.

Consider the three-screen installation “Chasing Pink, Found Red,” whose willowy young subjects in chinos lounge barefoot in the grass, while his many social media fans recount experiences of racism and issues of identity in voice-over. This sweet-and-sour, one-plus-one-makes-two approach might suffice for a fashion editorial, but art takes more, and you can wonder what ICP might have been had it given its first major show here to an artist with more experience and fewer Instagram followers.

For it is a wounding mistake to think that reaching a broader and younger audience requires a lowering of ambitions, and I can name one institution that used to know that. It was at the International Center of Photography, back in Midtown, that the artist Coco Fusco and the curator Brian Wallis presented “Only Skin Deep,” their sprawling 2003 exhibition on the role of the camera in the construction of American racial categories. It was at ICP that Okwui Enwezor, the towering Nigerian curator, first mounted “Rise and Fall of Apartheid,” an impassioned and typically precise study of South African photography and history from 2012, which mixed fine art, photojournalism and bureaucratic documentation.

Artists like Ms. Fusco and curators like Mr. Enwezor taught me, when I was as young as the children now flocking to Essex Crossing, that the photograph had both an aesthetic and a moral dimension. (And that the photograph of the black body, in particular, required all our intellectual efforts to account for a crushing historical lineage.) It wasn’t enough to glance. You had to think hard, read deeply, and look both at the surface of the image and the rhetoric that framed it.

That photographic dispensation has been wiped out in the age of Instagram, where knowledge has given way to “influence,” and the critical spirit has been ceded to microdoses of “affirmation.” Maybe, decrepit 30-something that I am, I’m showing my age. But I’d have thought there was no better venue for countering the shallowness of the screen — no better place to teach young audiences to look closely and think seriously — than a museum.

International Center of Photography

All inaugural shows run through May 18; 79 Essex Street, Manhattan; 212-857-9700, icp.org.

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