#Carole also did directly ask him about it too you’re totally right

[compacflt]

“You live with that coldhearted son of a bitch?” Cyclone says later, when it’s just the two of them in his office, after he’s done tearing Maverick a new one for stealing a Super Hornet and flying it in a manner such that it may never be airworthy again.

“Uh,” says Maverick intelligently; he’s more tired and anxious than he’s ever been in his life, and no one’s ever come out and asked him directly about it before.

Rereading this part of Debriefing and oh god... NO ONE ever talked about it before with Mav? Not even Carole? Seriously no one? How did my man cope with it all... I can just imagine the whiplash he receives when Ice casually mentions that the entire brass + dozens of politicians across the world knew about them...

yeah that paragraphs getting edited when slider drops bc SLIDER directly asks him about it. “It’s been a while since someone asked him directly about it.” thanks for reminding me

[twdmusicboxmystery]

TWD 11x02: The Talking Dead

Okay, I DO have a details post, which will go up tomorrow. Because Emily was a guest on TTD this week, I thought it would be more important to post this first this week.

P.S. Apologies for the low quality of the pictures. I wasn’t able to get my usual screenshots this week, so I had to take pics of my TV. ;D

Right off the bat, let me say there weren’t any huge, smoking guns about Beth’s return in the episode. In other words, not much that the general audience (GA) would pick up on.

But we’re not the GA, are we? LOTS of suspicious dialogue and symbolism came out of this. Way more than we usually get from TTD. So, let’s dive right in.

The first thing was in the introduction. When Chris Hardwick was introducing his guests, as he always does, he used the phrase, “Beth is back!” That sort of thing always catches our attention and makes us side-eye.

@wdway​ observed that Emily’s outfit was a mixture of black and white/cream colors, Xs, and diamond patterns. In the past, I might not have been entirely swayed by that. (We’re assuming she chooses her own clothes, right?) But there have been too many times in the past when similar things have happened. Like for the S8 premiere when she wore that bright pink top that looked exactly like the pink bra ashtray in Still? Yeah, I’m no longer convinced Emily ISN’T dropping hints through her clothing.

It was also observed that her hair was very long. Whether extensions or not, it was very long (Beth length) and very blond. Might have been another hint.

One of the first questions Chris asked he was what she thought of Maggie’s SURVIVAL. That’s important both because it’s a question about someone who was left for dead surviving and also because Maggie crawling under the train was a direct parallel to Glenn, who was a direct parallel to Beth. So I was definitely side-eyeing that.

At one point, Chris referenced the Commonwealth interrogating people before letting them in, and he asked if Hershel had done that at the farm, would Rick’s group have made it past the screening process. Emily, overall, said yes. But Josh (McDermott who was on with her) said Shane wouldn’t have. They then started talking and making typical fandom jokes about Shane’s craziness.

The reason this made me smile is because Emily often deflects questions by saying she doesn’t remember, or doesn’t know, or that she no longer keeps up with the show. But here, she talked about specific characters and events in specific parts of a season 9 years ago as though she’s VERY familiar with it. It was like, “oh, but that character didn’t do that until minute 32 of episode 8 of season 2. But I don’t know. I don’t really keep up with things anymore.”

Okay, I’m totally exaggerating there. She wasn’t that specific. But that’s what it felt like. The little fibs she tells to keep people from suspecting Beth’s return are showing.

In talking about the significance of Maggie giving Negan a gun, Lauren said something kind of interesting and Beth-ish. She said, and I paraphrase, that Maggie is struggling to hold onto the person she was, rather than giving into who she might become. Just very reminiscent of Beth’s line to Daryl from still. “You gotta stay who you are, not who you were.”

Chris then asked what Beth would have thought of the current Maggie. And he asked specifically, “Would she even recognize her?” Now, of course he meant that in terms of recognizing who she’s become, because Maggie has changed so much as a person since Beth’s death.

But given the memory loss theories and all the surrounding evidence, we really think there’s a good chance Beth won’t recognize Maggie right away. So that was a huge hint to drop.

See what I mean? It’s not that they talked about Beth’s return in a huge, smoking gun sort of way. Rather, they just dropped a lot of hints through dialogue and the way they phrased questions.

The other thing I noticed is that Emily, in answer to the question, said that without Maggie, everyone seemed adrift and as if they didn’t know what to do because they no longer had a leader (until Maggie showed up again) to tell them what to do. Especially since it didn’t directly answer Chris’s question, I felt like maybe Emily was hinting at Beth’s leadership. New sheriff in town, and such.

Then Josh brought the shiv to everyone’s attention. I don’t think I mentioned this yesterday. If not, it will be in tomorrow’s Details post. But we saw Eugene wheedle a piece of wood into a sharp shive/spike and stick it into his sleeve. It was very reminiscent of Beth hiding the scissors in her cast in Coda. And Josh specifically called attention to that scene. He actually compared it to Terminus, rather than Coda, because we saw them trying to create makeshift weapons in the train car in 5x01. But still, it’s all season 5 and revolves around Beth’s arc.

Actually, as they went along through the episode, they did callbacks to various things in S5 a BUNCH of times. Kind of convenient given that Emily is sitting on the couch next to him, no? Both Lauren and Josh mentioned Terminus multiple times in various ways. Which works because Eugene’s group has been around a lot of train cars these past few episodes. But the thing is, they didn’t really equate Eugene’s storyline directly with Terminus. They were simply finding ways/reasons to randomly mention it.

They also brought up Noah’s death multiple times, comparing Gauge’s death to it, since in both cases, people watched them die horribly from behind a glass partition. Totally makes sense, but yet another tie to Beth by really talking about Noah a lot.

Lauren, talking about good vs evil and what people are capable of, a la Maggie’s disturbing cannibal story, said it wasn’t just about what outward choices people make. She pointed to her chest and said, “it’s what’s in here.” That just gave me huge Beth feels from Still, when she said, “…or it kills you. Here.” And pointed to her chest in the same way.

It just felt like they were invoking Beth a lot during this episode.

This next one was kind of the big kahuna. Chris, just out of left field, looked at Emily and asked, “Will Daryl prove Beth right? Will he be the last man standing?”

And that’s important because it has nothing to do with this discussion or this specific episode. Daryl wasn’t even in this episode.

And I have to acknowledge that there’s a good chance Emily was supposed to be on last week, and her appearance was pushed. We just don’t entirely know what happened there. So possibly, they would have asked this last week during a more Daryl-centric discussion. But still, Chris didn’t say that. It wasn’t like, “Oh you were supposed to be on last week and we wanted to ask this…” No. He just launched into it.

Furthermore, Emily knew exactly what he was talking about. Yes, it’s a well-known line of Beth dialogue from Still that she probably would have been familiar with either way, but even so. The “will Daryl prove her right” came directly from Daryl’s origins episode. So again, despite “not keeping up with the show,” she clearly watched the Origins episode and knew what Chris was talking about.

A couple of suspicious things in her answer:

She essential said yes, that she believes Daryl will be the last man standing. But she also said she didn’t think he would be the ONLY last man standing. Then Chris made a joke saying (and I paraphrase), “Yeah, it’s not like Beth could have said, ‘Daryl, you’re going to get a spinoff.’” And they all laughed and joked about it.

Let’s consider her statement first. She said he wouldn’t be the only one who was standing last, but how would she know that? If she doesn’t follow it anymore and is only associated with it as a previous, deceased character, how would she know that.

And yes, you could argue that this was conjecture on her part, but she said with such…I don’t know, authority? As though she knows something we don’t.

I think you can interpret this one of two ways. The first is what I’ve hinted at above: that she knows others besides Daryl will survive to the end of the show. And I totally agree with her on that. While most of us believe, I think, that Daryl will live until the end, I think plenty of others will, too. Rick and Michonne. Probably Carol and Zeke. Hopefully Maggie, though I’m a little more worried about her. You get the idea. But once again, why would Emily know anything about that?

The other way you could interpret it is that this is a statement about Daryl not being alone. He’ll be the last man standing, but he won’t be the ONLY one. He won’t be alone in that, because Beth will be by his side.

And here’s your friendly neighborhood reminder that in an interview with Larry King prior to S5 airing, Gimple confirmed that Daryl will find love in the apocalypse at some point.

Then there’s Chris’s statement about the spinoff. Now, that came from Chris rather than her, but it was still a really random reference. For me, what Chris does or doesn’t know is kind of irrelevant at this point. I personally believe he knows everything and is fully in on Beth’s storyline. But even if I’m wrong about that, these questions come from tptb. If Chris recognizes their significance, he’s being instructed to ask them and direct the conversation in a particular way.

And they way he threw in this mention made it seem like he was equating Beth with the spinoff in some way. Even the way he said, “there’s no way Beth could have known to say…” the thing about the spinoff struck me as interesting. Because back then, I truly don’t believe the writers knew anything about the spinoff. As I like to say, everything changed when Kirkman abruptly ended the comics and the writers decided to pick up all the characters and story lines and move them to a different vehicle: the spinoff. Probably for legal reasons. But they couldn’t have know that would happen back in S4.

There’s also the unspoken implication that, while Beth couldn’t have “known” about the spinoff, she didn’t know about other things. Like her return and Daryl’s fate.

Emily even told a story about how when they were getting ready to film the porch scene for Still, both she and Norman were hounding Angela Kang (not the show runner back then, but the writer of that episode) about the last man standing line. They both wondered if it was some kind of foreshadow. She implied they were both worried that Daryl would die soon because of it.

A few things about that. 1) I don’t think either of them actually believed Daryl was soon to die. I seriously doubt that. This is just one of those stories they tell to illustrate a point. Which leads me to my next point. 2) Clearly they are implying that this IS some sort of foreshadowing. They’re just not being specific about what it foreshadows. 3) Keep this in mind--that they were both asking about what a certain line of dialogue might foreshadow--the next the time actors try to claim they have no idea what anything means or what’s going to happen next. They’re VERY aware of how the writers put these symbols in and are constantly wanting to know where the show is going, just like we are. 

So yeah. I was definitely a fan of that whole discussion.

The Inside the Dead portion referenced some interesting Easter eggs, including Gorbelli foods (seen in Tara’s backstory in S4, which had lots of Beth parallels) and Duane Jones Whiskey (alcohol, Morgan, etc; we’ve compared that with Beth before). Kinda small potatoes, but still important.

I missed part of this next question, but they asked Emily something about whether she thought the Commonwealth is going to turn out to be a good thing and helpful to Alexandria. She said no. Again, maybe not a smoking gun but given that we think she’s most likely coming through Eugene’s story line, it might have been a hint.

They asked her about the Eugene/Stephanie story line, and she said she was excited for any love story in this world. *coughs Bethyl hint*. She also said she’s suspicious of ‘Stephanie’ (emphasis mine) *coughs plot hint*.

For the quiz, they talked about how many walkers Dog killed in the episode (1). Where Mercer said he went to school (Westpoint). What was interesting, is that they kinda gave something away there. After giving the answer, it said, “Mercer didn’t go to school there, but the actor that played him did.” So, they kind of hinted that Mercer SAID he went to Westpoint, but was lying. Just more evidence that Eugene’s group is being lied to and manipulated. Finally, they had a fill-in-the-blank of Eugene’s dialogue. It was when he asked how he was being processed. And one of the options was “as in bologna and other meant stuffs…” (again, I’m paraphrasing; forgive me if my wording is a little off). Anyway, it said at that moment, Eugene was thinking about Terminus. So, just another callback to that story line in S5.

Near the end, Chris asked Lauren and Emily what they miss most about working together. Lauren’s replay was, again, suspicious. She said Emily was “such a bright light,” which we equated to Norman’s famous description of Beth as Daryl’s light that “went out.” She also talked about how it was a testament to Emily’s goodness that she’s “being so missed.” Which made me think of, “you’re gonna miss me so bad when I’m gone, Daryl Dixon.”

Finally, even before the episode aired, @wdway had a theory about Emily being in the studio for the episode, rather than via satellite. Well, I guess it was more of a hope than an actual theory. Now that the episode has aired, it’s an actual theory. 

See, she had a hunch that maybe the Commonwealth story lines (what Josh should be filming right now) might be filmed in studio, rather than on location in Georgia. And there IS an AMC studio in L.A. What we saw--Josh in person on the show while Lauren was there via satellite because she’s in Georgia--does seem to back up this idea. Or at least the possibility. 

The fact that Emily was also there in person could be a coincidence. But it could also possibly mean that she’s filming in studio for the Commonwealth story line as well. @wdway​ thought of this because we think she’ll first come through Eugene’s arc, and none of the Commonwealth stuff is being filmed on the main Alexandria lots where people generally look for spoilers.

Not something that can be proven either way, of course. But a great theory that I’m 100% behind! 

Okay, that’s it for TTD (but that was a LOT) and it makes me super happy. Together with the screeners not being able to talk about episodes moving forward, I think we’ll see Beth very soon. Any references in TTD that I missed?

[lovelyirony]

@ironmanspussy​ here we are, directly inspired by your wonderful texpost! 

King Rhodes needed a partner to rule. It was ancient law, something he hadn’t really desired to follow. But unfortunately, the lawyers are assholes and want to create a monopoly of power that he just simply hasn’t the time to dismantle if he’s to follow his ten-year policy plan.

His partner should be well-mannered, aware of high society dress codes as well as how to navigate regular, everyday wear, and be calm in times of crisis.

So begins the search.

“You’re not going to find someone you like like that,” his advisor, Carol says, laughing. “I guarantee it.”

“We’ll see,” Rhodes decides.

Oh, they saw.

They saw a lot.

Almost every single candidate is bad. Or just off, in some way.

“Rogers seemed like a nice fit,” Carol says, tapping on her clipboard.

"He was nice, not for me. A bit too much.”

“What, muscle?”

“You could say that’s a factor. He’s also just a little too take-charge-of-everything.”

“Mm, that could pose a problem later. Well, the candidates who most matched your requirements are all out.”

“You’re kidding.”

“You’re a very particular kind of guy, Jim. So here are the rest.”

“Send in the clowns,” Rhodes says, waving his hand in dismissal and drawing the other one to his forehead to signal a headache about to come on.

“You just sent Barnes out,” Danvers reminds him, grinning.

“Asshole.”

“I’m still getting paid!” Carol sing-songs.

-

It’s almost better. Almost. Prince Clint Barton is an impossibly good marksman, and...that’s about it. His leadership style is far different from the Rhodes kingdom needs and he admits that he almost showed up in jeans.

Well, at least there’s honesty. Rhodes could find that forgivable.

But the jeans. Good god.

-

Bruce Banner is a total sweetheart, but his constitution is quite poor and again with the fashion choices. He shows up in a very nice outfit and has a nice wit about him.

They talk at length, and Carol swears that it will go well and perhaps there will actually be a wedding by June, all things said and considered.

This is until Rhodes leads Dr. Banner out to the gardens to meet Thor, their part-time warrior and full-time gardener.

Thor is completely gone on the scientist-ruler, and there it is.

“This is supposed to be your matchmaking,” Carol reminds him, scowling. “It was going well.”

“Once he met Thor anyways, it would have been all over. You know Thor’s type. The scientists that could ruin the earth if they truly had the thought to.”

“I suppose you’re right. Next person, then. She looks promising, Empress Romanov?”

-

Natasha Romanov is a terrifying figure. Very, very terrifying.

That being said, she has excellent taste in fashion and promised to send Rhodes some reviews, but “unfortunately has her heart spoken for.”

(It’s not very unfortunate. Rhodes feared for his life.)

-

He’s about to lose it, to be completely honest. Is there seriously no one out there?

“Your last candidate, at least for this month, is Tony Stark. High-profile inventor.”

“Not royalty?”

“Essentially, he is. Dad helped create weapons, he followed with protection and medical detail. He usually doesn’t agree to meet, so you’ll have to ask him why.”

“Refuse to meet royalty?”

“People.”

-

Tony Stark did, in fact, refuse to meet people. In general, people were not his strong suit and he saw no point to marriage.

“If you marry well, you get more access to resources for your reacting thing,” Pepper says.

“My reactor. I’ve told you that a million times.”

“And I’ve forgotten it a million and one. But if you meet Rhodes, he’s probably your best chance of not marrying a total shit royal.”

“And why is that?”

“Searching online for your answer is free, I am not. Your bill will be sent to your inbox.”

Tony stares after Pepper. She’s too damn capable.

He sighs to himself.

He does need more funding for his projects. His father cut him off completely and while that wouldn’t be the worst thing, Tony’s not going to charge obscene prices just to keep himself afloat.

So...marrying a royal. Not the best plan in the world, especially given Tony’s track record with people. Sure, he can play the part. But he just...won’t.

-

This is why Tony’s about five minutes late, cursing up a blue streak at a guard that has followed him into the hall because due to his appearance he thinks he needs to have a “check-in” with the people at the front desk for appointments, and in general? The day has been bad.

Also, Pepper forced him into “nice” clothes. While Tony can and has worn his nice clothing before, he does not like the ones that Pepper chose because they are uncomfortable, stiff, and absolutely a bit too long.

So he trips on the carpet.

“Motherfucker!”

Rhodes’ head pops away from his conversation with the chef regarding the dinner menu.

Here is a man with probably the most intricately embroidered robes he’s ever seen on, hair that looks like it was probably not even styled, just brushed through, and had about the entirety of the guard behind him asking him about an appointment time.

Obviously, he’s the most attractive man Rhodes has ever seen in his life.

“And who are you?” he asks.

“Tony. Stark. Mechanic and inventor. Um, you talked to Pepper about me? I think I’m in your circle of potential candidates for ruling. It’s totally fine if you kick me out, I kind of scuffed your carpet.”

“We need new carpet anyway,” Carol says. “We’ll disregard your entrance for now, Stark.”

“Tony, please.”

“Tony,” Carol says slowly, smiling. “You will be walking around the gardens with King Rhodes, pausing for dinner.”

“Cool.”

Rhodes has to stop from laughing. Cool. He’s already a fan of this.

Carol leans over to him, whispering in his ear.

“I thought you wanted someone who had a cool head, not someone like that.”

“Well, I can be wrong every once in a while.”

“Or more.”

“Every once in a while,” Rhodes reiterates. “Besides, I have a good feeling about this.”

“Hm.”

-

Walking through a garden with a stranger is not as smooth as one would expect. Rhodes isn’t exactly well-versed in asking people what their plans are for the future, and if they are amenable to perhaps marriage.

“What do you do for fun?” Tony asks.

He’s sort of taken aback at the question.

“Pardon me?”

“What do you do for fun?” he repeats. “Like, do you cook? Sew? Duel with your rivals? What do you do for fun?”

Well. He has to think for a moment.

“I go on runs.”

“That is not fun. Don’t tell me that that’s what’s fun for you.”

“What, can’t run?”

“I don’t run, there’s a difference. I’ll run when something’s chasing me.”

“And yet you won’t have training, like I will.”

“Did you forget my trade, Your Imminence?” Tony asks, voice mocking him.

It’s honestly refreshing. Rhodes doesn’t like it when people are so serious around him, so afraid to disappoint.

“An inventor? You’re going to invent a way to run better?”

“To fly, honey. Honestly...”

-

After that, it’s a dead-set decision from Rhodes.

He offers his hand in marriage, as well as the crown. Tony blinks.

“You haven’t even seen me take a turn in the ballroom.”

“It’s either going to be wildly entertaining or surprising, and I can’t wait for either.”

-

Tony enters his own room, in a panic.

This has to go well. He has to dress to impress.

“Pepper, he’s holding a party for our engagement. I have to dress nicely.”

“You know how to do that, I don’t know why you’re telling me that.”

“There are so many factors. Do you know anyone who can embroider his family crest on any shoes? What colors I’m meant to do? Oh my god, we have to fuse the colors together. This is going to be a disgrace. I’ll be exiled to be a hermit in the forest who relies on bark for sustenance, and this--”

“Can you. Potentially, maybe, chill? It’ll be fine.”

“You say that, but right now I’m imagining having to go to war because I didn’t wear the right color of red, so...”

“You are literally the worst person alive.”

“False, we both know Justin Hammer and out of the two of us, I think you’d want to date me more.”

“Don’t be a smartass.”

“Just practical, Pep. Just practical. Now help me shade match Rhodey’s red.”

“He’s Rhodey now?”

“In my head? Yes. I don’t like Rhodes, I absolutely will not call him Jim until we both hit seventy years old.”

“Better let him know that.”

-

Rhodes gets a text from Tony.

so a.) your new nickname from me is rhodey. don’t question it, honeybear. Anyways, would you say your royal family color is closer to garnet-red or blood-red?

Rhodey blinks. He likes the nickname. It’s different. He has to show the text to Carol.

“What in the hell does that mean?”

“Let me google it.”

She analyzes the results, frowning.

“I’m thinking blood-red.”

“Okay. Thanks.”

“Why does he want to know the color?”

“I don’t know, I’ll ask.”

we’ve decided it matches closer to blood-red, Tones. Why do you ask?

Tony blinks. Other nickname. Interesting. He likes it.

my outfit choice relies heavily on this.

He leaves it at that, grinning as he puts his phone away.

Rhodey is laughing. He’s excited to see his husband-to-be.

-

Tony knows he looks damned good. The whole outfit is incredible. Red with gold stitching throughout, and he got his hair to cooperate to be artfully messy instead of just messy.

“I’m surprised at you, you clean up well,” Pepper teases. “You ready to go and make your debut?”

“As ready as ever,” Tony says, fixing the chain around his neck. The gold glints off the lights, and he knows he’s about to be the best dressed person in the room, with perhaps the exception of Rhodey.

He knows that most people are surprised that he’s the one that King Rhodes has decided to marry. He’s not known for being a particularly polite royal. In fact, he has told multiple members of royalty to “get fucked or get out of my way” when they want him to build something that he refuses to build.

So he’s not exactly the perfect choice. But his outfit is still the best in the room.

“Hi gorgeous,” Rhodey says, smiling. “You look incredible.”

“Well I do know how to make an entrance, after all,” Tony says. “You’ll find out this is only the tip of the iceberg.”

“Well then, I’m in for treats all my life,” Rhodey says. “How are you tonight, Tones?”

“Doing well, finished up working on one of the cars for Thor today.”

“Wait, you’re the one who’s refinishing it? He hasn’t been able to shut up about it for weeks! I was the one who used to look at it.”

“You like fixing up cars?”

“Yes, of course I do!”

-

From there, conversation flows. They understand each other well, laugh at the same jokes, and agree on cake flavors.

It’s not love, not yet. But they’re getting there.

-

It is officially love when Tony steals Rhodey from his royal duties to get a cheeseburger.

“Sometimes it’s good to get out of the throne, don’t you think?” Tony says, grinning over his sunglasses.

“For a cheeseburger? Can’t say I’ve ever done anything like that.”

“That’s because you’re all fancy and posh, I bet you don’t even know the f-word,” Tony says.

“Fuck you,” Rhodey jokes.

Tony gasps. “The king knows a curse word? Oh my lord! What...shame you bring to your family!”

Rhodey laughs, and it’s in this moment that he realizes that spending the rest of his days with Tony is potentially the best possible option in the world.

“I’m so glad we’re getting married,” he says. Tony stills.

“You...you are?”

“You’re the best thing to happen to me, I think,” Rhodey says, taking a sip of water as if he hasn’t just said the sweetest thing Tony’s ever heard. “And I hope that I’m the best thing to ever happen to you.”

“I mean I don’t know, the AC/DC reunion tour was pretty sick...” Tony says, grinning. “I’m kidding. Rhodey, I think we’re gonna be a good team. And I’m glad that I get to be with you.”

-

Their wedding is the talk of the year. Literally no one can shut up about it, but maybe that’s because Tony accidentally showed up late because he was inventing and had wild hair and maybe a stray grease-stain on his forehead.

Rhodey just grinned.

“You better not be late to the reception.”

“I’ll try my best. You know how I am.”

They kiss, and Rhodey sends him into a deep dip. Tony laughs into the kiss, and it becomes one of the most well-known photographs of the year.

-

Sure, Rhodey didn’t exactly get all of the qualifications that he wanted out of his ruling partner. Tony is absolutely not calm in times of crisis, and stress-bought novelty socks.

He more than once told a difficult business partner to “absolutely get fucked up on a Thursday, see if I give a singular shit when my husband is ten times better than you,” and also has a certain unawareness of some of his public outfit choices. (Hello sweatpants with holes in them and a striped hoodie.)

But Tony makes the best coffee ever, always gets Rhodey flowers from the supermarket, and is perhaps the most compassionate man he’s ever met.

So not a bad trade-off.

They lay in bed together, Rhodey looking over his obscenely trashy detective novels with his reading glasses, and Tony battling Pepper in a word search competition online.

“I love you,” Tony says out of nowhere, smiling. He presses a kiss to Rhodey’s shoulder.

“You’re okay,” Rhodey responds, patting Tony’s thigh.

He makes a squawk of outrage as Rhodey’s head turns from his book, grinning.

“You better give me a kiss to make up for that,” Tony demands. Rhodey rolls his eyes.

“Of course, drama queen.”

“Drama queen? I was told by the love of my life that I was ‘okay’ after one year of marriage? And I am supposed to be unaffected? Absolutely unacceptable, I think I will fling myself into a pit in the ocean, and--”

Rhodey cuts him off with a kiss.

“Or not. Not could definitely work.”

[onegayastronaut]

The Avengers Meeting (Maria Hill x Reader fic)

Requested by anon:  Hi. I love your writings so much. I always re-read them a lot. I was wondering if you do a maria hill hc/imagine (?) With the promt of Person A: are you... blushing? Person B: What, no. A: did I get the ever-stoic, hardcore, total badass Person B to blush? B: No... its... it's the cold. A: huh. It's the cold. And not that I told you your face is freaking adorable and that I bet the rest of you are too. B: *blushing harder* *voice crack* n-no

Word count: 1212

From the first day you had started at SHIELD, your goal was to be assigned to work with the Avengers. You knew it was most likely a long shot as there were many agents that have more experience than you, but it never hurt to have a goal to work towards. Last week was apparently the week in which your professional dreams came true when you stepped into your apartment to find Nick Fury sitting on your living room couch.

“How does such a talented agent such as yourself live in a dump like this?”

“Uhh...well, the cost of living downtown is higher than my paycheck can afford.”

“I see. You’re still a junior agent at SHIELD, is that right?”

“It is. I’ve always dreamed of working at SHIELD and it’s been great --” You stopped talking when Fury waved his hand at you.

“I already know how much you want to work for SHIELD. That’s not why I’m here. I’m here because I want you on the team that directly works with the Avengers.”

“No way, this can’t be happening.” You could not believe that Nick Fury himself, the man who had worked with not only Carol Danvers but also with Captain America and Black Widow, was asking you to work with them.

“Is that a no, or a yes?”

“Yes! I mean, yes, I would love to work with the Avengers! I’m so excited --”

“Okay, you start tomorrow.” Fury stood up and headed towards the door. “And don’t forget, the Avengers like to get up early. You’ll meet the rest of the team when you get to the Avengers base in the morning.”

-----

When you got to the Avengers base, you were surprised to see Maria Hill waiting at the top of the stairs. Even though you had only heard of her before, everyone who worked at SHIELD knew that she had worked with the Avengers on several missions.

“Agent (Y/N)! Follow me to your station.”

“Director Hill! I’m very excited to start working under you with the Avengers.” You didn’t get any further as you ran after Director Hill. You didn’t expect her to walk so fast, but you assumed it was part of what it took to be the director. The rest of the day went by in a blur as you were shown where you would be stationed, and you met the agents that you would be working with. You were very disappointed to learn that the Avengers didn’t stop by on a regular basis, but at least you had the opportunity to see them if they ever did stop by.

-----

Throughout the next few months of working on the team, you noticed that Director Hill was taking more notice of you whenever there was an assignment. Even though you still haven’t been given a “big” assignment yet, your performance reviews were at the top of the team. You didn’t have that many opportunities to talk with Director Hill personally, but you still managed to find out little details about her, such as the fact that she liked women and that she liked eating sour candy whenever she’s stressed. It wasn’t much to go on, but at least you got to know that your boss wasn’t a complete machine. 

You didn’t know this, but Director Hill found you attractive, which made her more awkward around you than she was with other people. This did not go unnoticed with Steve and Thor, and they both tried getting her to ask you out.

“I believe you must tell her your true feelings for her, Maria.”

“Thor, I can’t do that. I’m her superior.”

“So promote her then! I don’t see what the problem is.”

“You know, back in my day, you could just ask her out to a dance.”

“No one does that anymore, Steve.” Maria huffed and walked away stiffly so she didn’t have to talk about her feelings for you. The two Avengers were left standing with their arms crossed and thinking about the ways that they could get the two of you together.

-----

You were busy with research when Steve quietly came up next to you and sat on your desk. “Doing research for the next mission, (Y/N)?”

“Yeah, I’m almost done.”

“I’m sure Director Hill will be pleased that you’ve finished your assignment so quickly.”

“What does Director Hill have to do with anything?”

“It’s obvious that she likes you. Go talk to her and tell her that she looks very good today.”

“Are you crazy? She’s my boss! And Maria Hill of all people! No way. There is just no way she likes me like that. The ice you were trapped in has messed up the way you think, Steve.”

“Now you sound like Bucky. But never mind that, just give her a compliment. What’s the worst thing she can do, glare at you?”

“That’s bad enough, Steve.” You took a stack of papers and marched off. It’s so like an Avenger, assuming that everyone likes them. Not everyone has the privilege of stepping out of a machine looking like a well-muscled god. The fact that Steve thought Maria could ever have a crush on you was laughable at best.

------

As usual, you were the first person to make it to the meeting. Since this new mission concerned the Avengers, Steve was there too. Punctuality is a major personality trait for both of you, and it showed whenever you had a meeting him involved. Director Hill had called the meeting, and sure enough, Maria walked in as soon as the digital clock turned 7:30 PM.

“How are you, (Agent (Y/N)? Steve?”

“You look nice tonight.” The words came out of your mouth sooner than you could stop, and both of your eyes widened.

“Uh-hmm, thank you, (Agent (Y/N).” Director Hill nodded and started walking rather quickly to the head of the table.

“Wait, are you blushing?”

“What? No!”

“Did I get the ever-stoic, hardcore, total badass Maria Hill to blush?”

“No...it’s the, uh, it’s the cold.”

“Huh. It’s cold. And not that I told you your face is absolutely adorable and that I bet the rest of you are too.”

Maria blushed harder as she crossed her arms across her chest. She opened and closed her mouth several times before trusting herself to speak. “N-no.” The crack in her voice was audible to even Steve, who snorted, causing Maria to blush even harder than before. “We should get back to work.”

“Or maybe, since it’s almost 8 PM, we can go to the bar down the street and cool off your face with a drink or two.”

“That seems to be a good idea.” You didn’t even see Natasha enter the room, but she looked like she had been standing there for a while. 

“But we have a meeting to get to!” Maria still seemed hesitant to leave work so early, but with a slight nudge from the Avenger, she finally relented. “Fine. I’ll have one drink. We’re resuming the meeting at 6 AM sharp tomorrow morning. And I’m only drinking on a weekday because I’m feeling nice.”

“Whatever you say, boss lady.”

“Call me that again and I’ll kick your ass on the training mat next week.”

[whispersafterdusk]

Lost in Time - ch 12

Spring was here; it was still cold but now it was a lot wetter.  He missed the snow in a way, since it was essentially a readily available cold pack for sore muscles.

And oh boy, were Arlo's muscles sore.

Eli had started them out easy; a couple weeks of basic work outs with her slowly introducing new techniques and exercises each Monday with the weekend set aside for rest and recuperation.  But by the second month of spring she'd started ramping things up: harder, more grueling exercises, longer sessions, diet requirements.  He could tell he was starting to put on muscle mass already but all the work left him so stiff and sore that he often got back to his room in the evenings, climbed into bed, and didn't move again until morning came.

He couldn't go straight home tonight though; his day had started bright and early with the group exercises, then he'd spent another afternoon down in the facility, and tonight he was supposed to meet Nora at the Round Table for dinner.  It was the first arranged meeting they'd had in...awhile.  No amount of sore muscles would have him missing this. ((Continued below cut))

-------------------------------

The Barnarock Black was her Thursday evening drink of choice, and being as it was both a Thursday as well as right on heels of a several-hours-long social meet-up with Carol and Antoine, Eli was ready for a drink.

And food.  Being as she hadn't expected the meeting to last as long as it had she'd skipped lunch, and while there were snacks and tea she had to really restrain herself from eating a ton of junk food while trying her best to ignore the rumblings in her stomach.  Thankfully the chatter never really let up so she didn't think anyone had heard her gut screeching for sustenance but once they'd all parted ways she'd all but run down the street toward the Round Table.

On her way through the door she was almost knocked over by Nora leaving; the girl had thrown the door wide open and slammed it (accidentally) into Eli's hand as she'd been reaching for the handle to open it herself.  As Nora shuffled by with a half-apology and all but ran toward the hill leading toward the church Eli stood there both wondering what the heck had prompted her to rush out of there while also trying to awkwardly pinch shut the fresh cut over her middle knuckle before it started to really bleed.

Inside the Round Table she could see Asher at the long side of the counter, Dawa and Dana at the far end of the counter taking up the pair of stools there, Mars and his daughters in a back booth, and Gale and his family were sitting at the round table in the middle of the room.   Sonia was busy buzzing back and forth between tables and the back of the restaurant and Django was nowhere to be seen but based on the number of people in here he was probably up to his ears in food orders.  

"Evening," Asher greeted her as she took a seat next to him.  He tilted his head and got a look at her hand.  "Need something for that?"

"Nah.  It's just a scrape.  Did Django not have her favorite pie or something?"

"Who?"

"Nora, isn't it?  With the church?"

"Oh, yeah - that was Nora. No idea.  Didn't even know she was here until she left - I never seem to notice that side room there."

Eli knew what he was talking about; there was what looked like a newer addition on the front of the restaurant - it had a large bookcase stuffed full of books, a radio on a stand alone cabinet, and a single booth with a pair of loveseats (which wasn't so odd considering that instead of benches or chairs at the other booths there were plush couches that seated 3, maybe 4 if you piled in together).  It was easy to let your attention slide right passed it since you couldn't really see it or see into it unless you crossed the room to the tables on the back wall.

It looked like just Arlo was sitting-

Ah.  Ok then.

Eli inhaled through her teeth - an awkward hiss, of sorts - and sat down at the counter.  It took awhile for Sonia to make it over and take her order; the cut on her knuckle kept oozing and she'd resorted to periodically swiping the blood off with a thumb and then sticking said thumb into her mouth.

"You SURE you don't want something to wrap that in?"

"All the napkins here are cloth.  I'd rather not stain them with a bodily fluid."

Asher rolled his eyes and pulled a rumpled, dark green handkerchief out of his pocket and offered it.  "And before you ask, no, I haven't blown my nose into it.  It's clean but stained so don't worry about adding to it."

As he said the handkerchief WAS stained - looked like oil, and blood too - but she wrapped it around and tied it off.  "Well, at least I won't drip anywhere.  Thanks.  I hate how much hands bleed before clotting up."

"I agree - knees and shins too.  And no problem.  I've actually never, ever needed to blow my nose in one of those - my dad made me carry one around for that purpose and I always end up using it for something else.  It's a pretty gross concept, really...stuffing a crud-filled cloth back into my pocket.  And I'm supposed to use it several times over a day?"  Asher wrinkled his nose at that.  "And I say that after having gutted fish and food animals...guts and blood?   Totally fine.  Snot?  No thank you."

Eli chuckled; he had a point, after all.  He also still had a noticeable bruise across his cheek from a cross-country jog last week where he'd taken a tree limb right to the face when an end piece had snapped off and slapped the rest of it directly back into him as he'd gone to push passed it. "We usually had bandages and tissue glue on hand for little things like this.  I've even stuck industrial tape over cuts to hold it over until I got back to treat it properly.  Drove Peter absolutely insane doing that.  Was good times..."

"Peter?" Asher repeated.

She leaned forward and braced her elbows on the counter, putting her chin in her hands.  "Yeah - he was one of our team medics.  Him and Ashley, kept us pieced together and put all the blood and chunks back where they belonged."

Asher nodded slowly at that.  "Not a bad idea - having a dedicated medical person.  It's not something we typically do unless it's a big expedition.  But, we all have some basic first aid training so it's not like we're heading out without anything at all."

"Do you have assigned squads in your Flying Pigs?  I'm not even sure what an adventuring guild is."

"Not really," he answered.  "We're a sort of grab bag group - we pick and choose who goes where, unless someone was specifically requested for a contract job.  As for what we do we inspect old ruins for dangers and clear them out, protect those who need protecting, and we help map out areas that no one's been to in centuries.  We've been a bit focused on that lately - eventually we'll make better strides out into the Peripheries and the Great Begeondan and get some settlements in place there too but, no lie, those are some of the most dangerous places on the continent.  Full of monsters and rogue AIs, weird weather, extreme temperatures too."

"Sounds like my kind of place."

The look he gave her was somewhere between surprise and suspicion.  "You're...joking, right?"

"Not in the slightest.  Believe it or not there were a lot of wild, wide open places still left in the world back in my time period.  A lot of our training happened out in harsh areas, and sometimes we'd get called in to go track down some idiot tourist or terrorist that had disappeared out there.  Rangers had to be ready for just about anything, in any climate or location, for any reason."

Now he looked less like he thought she was joking and more just genuinely surprised.  "So - I mean.  It just seems weird to me that what survived through the ages were stories of humans living lazy, luxurious lives, with robots doing everything.  And then you say there were wild spaces and hard training and having to be ready at the drop of a hat.   Why was there any need for soldiers, or rangers?  At least, human ones anyway."

Eli shrugged.  "Each time I hear 'robots did everything' it surprises ME because it seems like no one actually gives thought to what that means beyond its surface.  Would YOU want your life in the hands of something that's one hack or power failure away from shutting off entirely, losing all your files, or turning on you?  Most people tended to act honorably and not target the innocent and whatnot but still, there were those who wanted their voices heard or wanted power and control no matter how many people they incidentally or purposely killed.  In hindsight the fact that the leaders of the world worked so hard to keep the nasty, dark, and terrible things out of the public eye seems to have...really slapped the rose colored glasses on, to the detriment of accurate historical record. Granted, "accurate records" were a bit of joke anyway - at least to those who knew what was being to told to military and what was sent out to civilians. Oh, a hospital got hacked? A train engine exploded for no reason? Power shut off mysteriously?  Nah, nothing serious - just "equipment failures" causing weird quirks and shutdowns," Eli said, raising her hands to stick air quotes around 'equipment failures' and all but oozing sarcasm.  "The world was...certainly something, compared to what it is now.  But there's no such thing as a utopia.  People are always going to be unhappy about something, or slip through the cracks of society and feel they have a justifiable reason to make their displeasure known in violent ways.   There's a reason all the nations still had standing armies even though we'd had peace for centuries, before I was even a concept in Fate's outline.  They kept us all busy with public works projects, organized war games - think big but friendly skirmishes with harmless paint-based or laser weapons with sensor suits - and, like I mentioned before, the occasional idiot tourist rescue, but it wasn't all sunshine and daisies unless you were a regular citizen."

Asher let out a soft noise - Eli thought it was 'geez' or something similar - and rubbed at his chin, going silent for a bit.  Sonia brought out Eli's usual beer then disappeared just as quickly as she'd popped up; Eli had half the bottle downed before Asher spoke again.

"Bet you never thought you'd be correcting history books, huh?"

She sat the bottle down and did a half-assed imitation of jazz hands.  "Ta da, I am full of surprises."  That rapid shaking movement dislodged the handkerchief around her knuckles a bit so she untied and then re-tied it back into place, using her teeth this time to help tighten the knot a bit better.

Over the chatter and sounds of cutlery on plates Eli made out the sounds of plodding feet, and shifted on her stool just enough to see Arlo slouching his way toward the door; right as he reached it it opened and Remington was framed in the doorway briefly before he stepped aside.

"Oh, hey - how'd it--" Remington was cut off as Arlo slipped passed him and kept going without a word; the man stared after him a moment.   "--go..." he finished his sentence with a frown, and a shake of his head.  He came inside and up to the counter to take the empty stool on Eli's left.  "Evening, guys."

"Evening.  How's the knee?" Eli asked.

Remington slid his legs around and flexed his leg a bit.  "Not as bad as I thought it'd be, by now.  It hurts but no more than it does when the weather is bad."

"Good to hear.  I wish flex-gel still existed...that stuff worked wonders."

"Well, we make do," Remington chuckled.  "What's tomorrow looking like?"

"Starting with a warm up run, then I have a couple new things to show.  They're...hard, so I won't keep you all too long at it, and you'll have the weekend to recover like normal."

"Something to look forward to, then," Remington replied.  

Sonia came back with Asher and Eli's orders, took Remington's, and disappeared again.

As she picked up her fork Eli offered the two men a small grin.  "I probably should have warned you both to eat light tonight.  It's going to be a rough morning."

-----------------------------------------------------

"Before today...no idea...what a burpee was," Asher wheezed from where he was laying flat on his back on the grass.  "Can't say I care for them....or the reverse ones..."

"A sentiment I can get behind," Sam groaned.  She wasn't laying down but she was sitting a couple feet from Asher with her arms around her legs along with her head nearly between her knees.  

Remington was off to the side finishing up some additional push ups with a sack of sand on his back for weight; Eli had let him do a few burpees to see how his knee held up and had eventually decided not to risk blowing the joint out.  While Sam and Asher did regular and reverse burpees with one-pound sacks of sand in each hand Remington had to do lunges, sit ups, and push ups with a five pound sack.  

For whatever reason though Arlo wasn't present.  

Earlier, before they'd started on their run, Eli had caught Remington and Sam sharing a knowing look, and when asked neither of them owned up to knowing why Arlo had skipped today.  She'd decided not to press the issue and had gone about the morning as she'd planned; being as the burpees had wiped everyone out she was content to not do their cool down jog and was just settling on the top of the fence when she spied Arlo's figure coming toward them from Portia's gates. He was...slouching a bit, and looked a little tired.  

"Morning," she called when he was within not-quite-shouting distance.

"Morning.  Sorry, didn't mean to miss today."

"No problem.  I can do a repeat if you're still up for it."

From his spot still flat on the ground Asher raised a hand.  "Run - run while you still can."

Eli snorted.  "Well, yeah - running is part of the routine."

"Not what I meant," Asher chuckled.  He rolled over and groaned as he got to his feet.  "I've got to get back out to the facility...maybe lay down somewhere that isn't wet and muddy for a bit before I get dragged into the depths to watch some old folks fart around in piles of dust."

With a smile Eli slid off the fence.  "Remind them to leave things where they found it and to not try turning anything on.  Going to be hard enough as it is to unlock personal stations without them tripping the lock out mechanisms."

"They've been fairly good at keeping their hands to themselves now that they have Stewart to entertain them but I'll remind them.  See you guys later."

With that Asher headed out of the fence gate and headed toward town; he was walking in a slow, wincing manner, and Eli made a mental note to go a bit easy on them on the next couple of work days.  A few moments later and Arlo was standing at the fence - on the outer side - and after a pause he sighed.

"I have something I need to speak to you privately about, if you have time."

"Sure."  She hopped off the fence and looked to Sam and Remington.   "If you want to do your cool downs that's up to you but otherwise I'll see you guys Monday morning, or whenever I next run into you."

She left through the gate and walked alongside Arlo down the road heading toward the shoreline; by her estimate they were halfway to the harbor before he started speaking.

"I wanted your opinion on something because it technically involves you.  But first I need to ask - have you noticed anyone treating you differently, or rudely, lately?"

Eli shook her head.  "Not that I've noticed.  There's still some people that I think I make nervous but they're also not anyone I speak to or see often."  She paused and then let out a small huff of laughter.  "I think I'm doing a pretty good job proving I'm harmless to people I see on a day to day basis."

Arlo nodded at that and his pace slowed just a bit.  "Have you interacted with Nora or Lee much?"

"Ha, no.  Nora runs away from me and I think Lee would walk straight through the side of a building to avoid walking on the same street as me.  I do notice he gets a bit louder in his sermons in the plaza if he sees me nearby but he doesn't directly single me out."

"So, you don't think Lee has had too much influence on how others are treating you?"

Eli slowed to a stop; Arlo took a few more steps before stopping but he didn't turn around.  "Not that I can tell.  But I'm guessing he's got some sort of influence over YOU and I'm at the center of it, right?"

He sighed heavily, sounding annoyed.  "Yes, unfortunately."  For several moments he stood there silently, then finally turned around to look back at her.  "Nora and I were sort of dating.  I'm not really sure if we were officially a couple or not.  There's...something there, but I don't know what.  The thing is, she broke things off with me last night because of my association with you."

Eli raised an eyebrow at that.  "Don't tell me she thinks you were cheating?"

"No, nothing like that," he answered quickly.  "She's not happy that I'm openly associating with something the Church is so against."

"...the past," Eli sighed; Arlo nodded in response.  "You know that's a bit ridiculous, right?"

"The Church has its views, and I have my own regarding technology from the old world.  I agree that there's a lot of dangerous things left behind from your time period.  But I also agree that not all of it could possibly be bad.  If it was ALL bad I feel like there wouldn't BE a past for us to be studying.  I know Nora strongly believes we shouldn't be using things from the past but I also know she's changed her mind on a few things once she'd directly experienced it or learned about it.   Knowing that, I feel like Lee is responsible for her...stance, I guess, regarding associating with you."

"So confront him about it."

"That's...something I'm considering," he replied after a pause.  "But what I wanted to talk to you about was your own personal experience with Portia's townsfolk.  Gale was pretty direct about wanting to hear about any sort of trouble that Lee is causing, in the context of it causing YOU trouble.  But this doesn't directly affect you in any way, it just affects me.  If it's not your life he's interfering with then I don't know if I should tell Gale and risk rocking the boat."

"I think you should," Eli said, crossing her arms and glancing over a shoulder toward the distant and yet somehow looming pinnacle that the Church sat on.  "If she wanted to break things off it should be HER decision, not because some crusty evangelizer told her to. No preacher or employer or authority figure should be free to meddle to that degree in someone's personal life.  Not to mention that he's just asking for Balance to beckon and Judgement to come reckon..."

Arlo looked briefly confused by that last bit; Eli just shrugged - she could always explain the phrase to him later if he was interested.   "-look, even if it's not affecting me directly it's clear I'm being used as a sort of weapon here.  I could care less if someone is cursing my name up, down, and sideways, but I really don't like the idea that I'm essentially being used as a political bludgeon.  In fact, I think I'LL go talk to Nora and get the real story out of her."

"I'd rather she not know-"

"Do you really think she'd just expect you not to tell anyone?" Eli interrupted.  "Or that no one would notice you two split and not have questions?"

"I... I guess not."  He sighed heavily again and tilted his head back to stare up into the sky.  "I just don't want to cause a rift between anyone."

"Let me see what I can find out and THEN we can decide if we want to rock this particular boat or not.  Might be that IF Lee was behind this, and IF he thinks he got away with it, he might try it again with other people and then THAT might actually affect me directly.  If anything it's worth it to try and stop that before the metaphorical rocking ends up capsizing instead."

Arlo nodded. "All right, I guess.  I'm going to head back to the Corps building.  Let me know what you found out."

"Will do."

They walked back to town in silence and at the base of the hill near the plaza Arlo kept going while Eli took a sharp left to head to the path that spiraled up to where the church sat on top of a ruins (and if it was the location she thought it was it had once been several floors of administrative offices, a number of clothing boutiques, and a ground floor restaurant).  By the time she got to the top and was looking at the church's doors that familiar feeling of nostalgia had hit her...nostalgia felt like a strange emotion to be having but she supposed it was a step up from the usual soul-crushing gut punch she usually got when she let herself think about something she recognized.

"Knock knock, anyone home," she found herself muttering as she shouldered the door open and stepped into the quiet chapel.  

It was nice in here, at least - nothing opulent or over the top.   Pews, carpet down the aisle, banners and a chandelier, stained glass windows and murals on the walls.  There was a fountain near the back wall behind the pulpit (which was just a small podium with a book sitting open on it), and she thought she could see a piano back there too.

The only thing breaking up the silence was the gurgle of water and the rhythmic sounds of sweeping coming from somewhere to her left; Eli walked up the small ramp into the sanctuary proper and from that spot she spied Nora off in the corner with a broom in hand.

The girl looked up to her and Eli saw her tense up.

"Morning. If you've got a moment I'd like to speak with you," Eli said.  Not much of a greeting but the girl already didn't like her so no amount of politeness was probably going to change much.

"I uh...I need to finish sweeping."  The girl was gripping her broom like she thought Eli was going to attack her; Eli wondered what exactly Lee had been telling her.

"That's fine.  I can wait."

It was clear Nora had been hoping Eli would just leave but instead she watched silently as Eli moved a bit further into the room and sat down on the back pew there.  Eli kept looking forward, admiring what she could see of the murals on the nearby wall; eventually she heard the sweeping start up again and could track Nora by sound as the woman finished up in that corner and moved down to the entryway, then back up and across into the corner on the right.  She heard the scrape of a metal dust pan and the clatter of what she guessed was the top of a trash can opening and closing, and then silence.  Eli let the silence stretch on for a bit before turning around; Nora seemed like she was debating whether she should run out the door or not but froze when she noticed Eli looking at her.

"Good to go?"

"Go...where?"

"I figured we could just step outside so if your minister shows up he can't yell at me for being on church property."

Nora inhaled and exhaled slowly then nodded, and mutely headed out the door; Eli followed along as the girl headed off to the right, to a wooden platform that was similar to the other wooden platforms that made up sections of the path that led up here -- it lined up with the path, in fact, and made it look like whoever had built it had intended to keep going up and around into the sky.  She had a slight twinge of discomfort from the fact the platform gave a clear view of the land around Portia which included quite a few destroyed buildings.

 Don't think about it.

"All right," she said then, blowing out a breath.  "I'll get right to it: Arlo told me.  And I want to know if that was YOUR decision or if Lee put you up to it.  Because he's not sure and I'm not happy to be in the middle of this."

Nora winced slightly and rubbed at an arm, and at first didn't respond.  Eli stuck her hand in her pockets and purposely looked to the left and down into the tree farm while trying to ignore the ruined observatory that she could still see out of the corner of her eye.

"We talked about it...and I agreed, so it was my decision," Nora finally said.  "The relics of the past are dangerous, we shouldn't be embracing anything from that time period."

Eli turned her attention back to the girl.  "Including me?"

"It's..."

"Look, I get it - you church folk aren't going to like that I exist. I'm a living reminder of how humanity almost wiped themselves out.  I'm not asking you to like me.  I am asking you if YOU made the decision to break things off with Arlo, on your own, for your own reasons, or if Lee convinced you to do it because in his mind it was the right thing to do because of Arlo's associating with me."

Nora's shoulders slumped a bit and again she was silent for a long period.  "...I guess it's a bit of both.  Lee's said that-"

"-let me stop you right there.  Lee hasn't bothered talking to me, period.  Whatever he's said I intend to do or teach is something he pulled directly out of his own ass."  At that Nora's eyes widened a bit but Eli didn't know if it was due to the language or because of some possibility that she'd exposed Lee for lying.  "Here's the thing.  I know a lot about a lot of dangerous things everyone seems afraid of - AIs, weapons, computers, devices.  Just because I know how something works, or worked, doesn't mean I can replicate it here.  For every one thing I could maybe manage to write up a technical readout for there's fifty others that I can't.  I know how to put a plasma pulse rifle together but I couldn't begin to tell you how to make one starting from a raw material base; I could describe step by step how to troubleshoot an anti-grav propulsion unit but hand me every single separate part, down to the nuts and bolts, and I'd have no clue how to assemble it.  There's a lot of things that, if it already exists, I could probably get it working again but there's no way I could build it from the ground up because even if I knew everything about everything, the fact remains that your technological level just isn't where it needs to be to MAKE anything."

Nora simply stood and listened silently, and was staring at some indeterminate point on the horizon past the tree farm.

"...so," Eli said into the silence that followed.  "Was it Lee, or was it your choice?"

Nora hung her head.  "You already know the answer to that."

"I was hoping I was wrong.  So, barring Lee's meddling, WOULD you have made that choice?"

To her surprise Nora lifted her head and answered immediately.  "Yes.  I think so, anyway.  Just...not like I did, or when I did."

Eli nodded approvingly at the admission.  "All right, we're getting somewhere then.  What's the ACTUAL reasoning then?"

"I just... I don't know.  I'm attracted to him - he's brave, and handsome, and kind. But I feel so...  I love his stories, and love spending time with him, but there's so many times where once he runs out of stories it gets...it's like we run out of things to talk about.  We don't have much in common it seems.  I try to find things to talk about but its usually the same things each time - the weather, the news.  I've even tried telling him about books I like but I feel silly trying to explain an entire book's plot. And..."

Eli raised an eyebrow.  "And?" she prompted - she wasn't going to let her clam up now that the proverbial dam had apparently burst.

"-I was only supposed to stay in Portia for two years.  I asked to stay longer and was granted an extension to my mission with the Church, and while I love Portia I can't stay here forever.  I have schooling to finish in Atara and then I'd like to settle down and start a family, and Arlo wants to join the Flying Pigs and would be traveling all over.  I don't think either of us can stay with the other unless someone wants to give up a dream."

"Aha..." Eli muttered.  "That I can understand.  Mine and my husband's jobs kept us apart quite a bit but neither of us would have ever asked the other one to give up their career."

"How...did it work out, then?"

Eli gave her a small smile.  "We enjoyed every moment we got together, when we had the time. Truth be told, my marriage was arranged - I just got super lucky in that I actually fell in love with the person my parents picked."  At Nora's shocked look she held up a hand.  "I know, it sounds weird - arranged marriages weren't at all popular back then, and were even against the law in a lot of places.  But all the men I was around were all soldiers or rangers, and I didn't want to marry another serviceman.  My parents picked someone I knew in gradeschool so he wasn't a total stranger, and we ended up fitting together nicely."

"Phyllis ran away from an arranged marriage...I didn't think one could be successful."

"Don't get me wrong - I thought long and hard before I asked my parents to do that for me, AND asked them to make it clear to whoever needed to hear it that I wouldn't be putting my boots away if I got married.  It's not something I would ever suggest to another person.   But, to get back on track, I'm only mentioning my marriage and circumstance because it's entirely possible you and Arlo could make it work even if you're apart for long periods of time.  It just boils down to, do you think that's what you'd want?"

Again Nora fell quiet, and Eli stayed where she was while the other walked over to the edge of the platform and leaned against it with  her arms folded across the top plank of the fence. Standing there, in the quiet, Eli could hear footsteps coming up the path and assumed they were about to be interrupted - probably by Lee.  She gave Nora a couple more minutes before clearing her throat to grab her attention.

"Give it some thought, and be honest with yourself.  And when you have your answer, walk your happy little butt down to the Corps building and be honest with Arlo.  You're still welcome to dislike me," Eli added after a moment, smiling slightly.  "I hear someone coming though so I should probably make myself scarce."

"All right...I'll do that," Nora replied, voice quiet.

Eli nodded to her and then turned to plod back down the path.  As she expected she passed Lee coming up; he gave her a brief sour look then turned his nose up to her and sped up to get by her faster.  She managed to keep from rolling her eyes until she had her back to him and once she'd circled around enough to put him entirely out of sight she sped up into a trot -- may as well get her cool down jog done.  She would check in with Arlo later this afternoon instead (it made more sense to give Nora time to go talk to him on her own, before Eli went to tell him what she'd said -- it'd also mean a lot more for him to hear it from Nora).

As she passed under Portia's gate she paused at the split in the road; ordinarily she'd jog down to the harbor and back with the others for their cool down run.  If she hung a right here she'd go up to the tree farm and she could easily keep going and check in at the facility - today was supposed to be one of her free days to do...whatever she felt like, but she didn't have much in mind to do.  Maybe she could get back to rummaging through the spare parts and start the onerous duty of stripping down and re-working the auxiliary power bank to see if they could convert it over to wind power.

Yeah, that would probably be a better use of her time today.

She paused to stretch and then continued on, jogging up the road; there was someone coming down the road toward her - someone she didn't recognize.  She offered the man a smile and moved off the road into the grass, and the man returned the smile and offered a little wave as she went by.

As she got to the tree farm's gate it swung open and out came Dawa, and when he saw her he waved at her and gestured for her to pause.

"Hey, Eli!"

"Hello Dawa.  You need something?"

"Was Selene home when you left?"

"Uh...  I actually have no idea.  I usually get up and out of the house before she does and I spent the morning out exercising with the Corps folks."

Dawa nodded and grunted.  "Ah, all right.  Was hoping to possibly save myself a trip down there.  But no big deal - it's not like I'm walking across the continent," he chuckled.

"I'm just out for a jog, I could turn around and see if she's there and then send her your way."

Dawa considered that a moment, then nodded.  "If you don't mind.   I've got a lot of work I need to get done by tonight and any minute I can save is worth it."

Eli raised an eyebrow.  "Yeah?  Need a hand with anything?"

"Nah, it's just a lot of chopping and getting things delivered on time.  I can manage it...I think."

"Fair enough.  I'll go have a look and come back up this way if she's not there."

"Thanks Eli!" he called after her as she turned around and jogged back down the path.

She caught up to that same man from before on the way back; he'd stopped not too far from where she'd first passed him, and was sitting on a bit of broken stone off the side of the road watching her approach.  With how he had his feet propped up she could see his brown leather boots were worn and had a few holes in them, and they matched his equally worn duster coat; the man himself also looked weathered and old.

"Hello again," she said as she came up.

"Hey," was the man's response.

When she got back to the house she did in fact find Selene working in her factory and let her know Dawa was looking for her.  She got a sort of distracted, non-committal promise to go talk to him and then Eli left the builder to whatever it was she was piecing together and once again jogged up the path toward the tree farm.

The man was still sitting there; he'd taken his coat off and had it draped over the rock beside him.  His clothes were baggy but were in considerably better condition than his coat and boots were.

"You stuck in a rut?" was the man's gravelly greeting as she jogged near him for a third time.

She laughed quietly.  "Just playing messenger for a bit."

She heard him chuckling behind her as she kept going; it didn't take long to let Dawa know Selene would be along in a bit and then she continued on out to the facility.  Down there it was easy to lose track of time and before she knew it it was early evening - far later than she'd actually intended to be down here...she REALLY needed to recreate a damn Hi-Def or, bare minimum, get a pocket watch or something.

At the very least the tourist man wasn't still sitting on his rock when she went by there again; she did spot him sitting at the nearest booth in the Round Table though, and offered him a nod when she thought he was looking her way.  He didn't respond but that wasn't a big deal - at least no one could claim she wasn't friendly to strangers.  

"Eli!"

She paused, halfway to a stool at the counter, and turned when she heard Arlo.  He looked to be in better spirits and was waving her over to the table where he, Remington, Asher, and Petra were sitting together.

As she headed over Arlo slid to the side to make room for her on the end of the couch next to him and Petra shifted around to the other side; in the few seconds it took to cross the room and sit down Sonia had come over to the table for her order.  Remington, Petra, and Asher all had half-finished drinks in front of them.

"Did you find that sensor thing you were looking for?" Asher asked as she sat down.

"Nope," she answered.  "Granted, I didn't spend too much time looking for it though.  Started in on tearing down the aux unit and making a list of what needs replacing.  We're going to need an amp converter for sure but I'm fairly confident we can manage to make it work."

"That's good news," Petra said.  "We already have the wind generator blueprints and have several up near South Block that are working just fine.  If you can give us an idea of the power output that's needed we can see if we need to alter those blueprints."

"I'm still working on that.  The main hitch is deciding what numbers to use and how to get them - we won't be using the same amount of power that the facility did in its hey day but I also don't know of any other number to use just yet.  I might have to ask Stewart to set aside a week and just run everything from lights to toasters down there to see what consumption level it can even hit, then add some zeroes to account for potential future increases and then see what I get."

Petra nodded.  "That makes sense. I just hope the wind coming down from the bluffs would be enough."

"Well, if its not sufficient then my backup plan was water turbines instead.  There's that waterfall that's not too far away...biggest hurdle then would be waterproofing all the equipment."

At that Petra rubbed at her chin.  "Water turbines and waterproofing... It might work so long as we can avoid altering Portia's water quality."

"Shouldn't be any different from the motorized boats I see out in the harbor with the exception that there won't be any fuel runoff in the equation," Eli replied.  "That ought to make it pretty clean."

Further discussion was interrupted as Sonia and Django brought out all of their orders together and they got to eating; when they finished Petra and Asher excused themselves, paid, and headed out.  As Remington ordered a second lemonade Eli subtly leaned toward Arlo.

"Did she come find you?" It was barely above a whisper, and neither Sonia nor Remington seemed to have heard it.

Arlo nodded.  "She did.  We worked it out.  Still friends."  His voice was equally as quiet.

Eli straightened and flashed him a brief smile - she didn't need details; she was just glad Nora had followed through and Eli wouldn't have to have that conversation in her stead.

"So..." Arlo said then, voice loud and clear.  "I hear I missed learning what a burpee is."

--------------------------------------

The three of them ended up sitting and chatting for quite awhile, then moved on to the back room for a couple games of darts (Remington won every single game). ��As they'd stood and headed back Eli again nodded to the old man in the booth and this time got a half wave and smile in response. When they came out of the game room later the man was still there nursing a single coffee.  He offered them a quiet good evening and was digging in his coat pocket for gols as they were filing out through the door.

"Any plans for tomorrow?" Arlo asked, as they stood together just beyond the edge of the extended patio roof outside of the Round Table.

"Sleeping, hopefully," Remington chuckled.

Eli shrugged. "Not really.  I was thinking of seeing if Selene had a rod and reel I can borrow.  I'm determined to see a live frog fish for myself - it's still so hard to wrap my head around the idea of bizarre animal hybrids."

"You should talk to Qiwa - I'm sure he'd be happy to tell you all about the native fish in this region," Remington said.  "He's the one who usually wears purple, if that helps."

She considered that a moment, then nodded; on her To Do list was checking with the local school to see if they had books they could lend her on wildlife, geography, and cultures of the current time period but she kept forgetting about it until it was too late in the evening to catch anyone there.  "Probably a good idea.  I need to start making time to learn about the world as it is, instead of focusing on telling everyone on how it was."  She paused for a breath then looked to Arlo.   "If you'd like to make up for today I'll have time tomorrow."

"Sounds good.  In the morning, as usual?"

"Works for me.  See you tomorrow," she said, smiling and heading off.

The lights were still on in Selene's factory - had she ever gone to talk to Dawa?  Eli hoped so.  Inside the house it was quiet; Eli took a quick bath and tiptoed into her room wrapped in just a towel.  Her pajamas were not on the edge of her bed though, which where she swore she'd left them this morning.  Maybe she'd overshot the edge when she'd tossed them there?  As she came around to the other side of the bed to check she saw a strange pink lump partially sticking out from under the bedskirt, and under it was a single pajama pantleg.

She reached out with one bare foot, grabbed the pantleg fabric with her toes, and pulled; sliding out from under the bed came the biggest, roundest, pinkest cat she'd ever seen.  It was lounging on top of her pajamas and seemed not at all disturbed by the fact it had been dragged out of its little hiding spot.

"...excuse me, who are you and also I need those."  Eli had to let the towel flap open as she bent down to roll the rather sausage-shaped cat off her clothing; when she had retrieved the pajamas she dropped the towel over the animal and heard a rather confused "mrrp" noise from under it.

Selene hadn't mentioned that she owned a cat, much less a neon pink one.

The world was a very weird place nowadays.

[princesssarcastia]

star trek into darkness

okay so I’m watching st:id again after all my AMAZINGG back and forth on AUs with @starlightandsunshine centering on the emotional aftermath of this movie, and I now have several (many) meta thoughts

Soo I’m thinking about how

Jim actually opens up emotionally to uhura after blowing everyone else off, also lets her wave him off in the middle of the mission to fight with her boyfriend, and then takes her side in the argument. THEY ARE FRIENDS AND LIKE EACH OTHER, I will not be accepting any other canon, ever.

He makes chekov (19 y/old????? fucking hell) chief of engineering after soctty leaves; is it because keenser was next in line and quit too? or is it because kirk roots his command in personal decisions and trusts chekov more than anyone else to do what he needs? he only bonds with marcus when marcus mentions how he was (ostensibly) the one to talk pike into joining starfleet.  Poor Chekov, he literally did not deserve this stress.

I’ll bet you anything that Jim when Pike took the enterprise from him, even as Jim was angry, he never once, not for a second, regretted what he did.  He’d lose the enterprise a thousand times over to save spock’s life.  to save any of their lives. (ignore me and you will get everyone on this ship killed, Khan says, and Jim turns right back around, pissed as hell, because Khan has observed him for five minutes and had him clocked COLD. he knows that’s Jim’s one huge button)

Deeply enjoyed how Spock got back at Jim for his teasing about Carol, the new science officer, by not telling jim shit about her deception “until it became relevant.” don’t ever tell me spock’s a robot because he enjoys antagonizing jim just as much as jim enjoys antagonizing him

the enterprise deserves someone in that chair that knows what he’s doing.  that’s not me. that’s you, spock. Do you ever think about how Jim literally abdicated the captain-ship during this movie? idk if that was him 619ing, or him maybe...agreeing with what Pike told him, before he died.  That Jim wasn’t ready for command, didn’t deserve it, that he wasn’t capable of upholding the mission and protecting his crew (clearly, since he almost got them all killed, in Jim’s mind).  Jim is...literally admitting that he doesn’t think he’s worthy of being captain, and that Spock should take his job.  that’s fucked up, especially given that he goes and basically commits suicide an hour later. (they give spock a line at the end of the movie to show that spock thinks that bullshit: as a mission of this duration has never been attempted, I defer to your good judgement, captain. really, though, Spock’s face as Jim essentially makes him captain-captain is kind of devastating; like Spock had no idea Jim felt this way or harbored these insecurities)

I’d totally missed, up until this point, that Jim was the one who suggested this mission to Marcus in the first place!! Like holy shit, talk about feeling guilty. Marcus sure as hell took advantage of it, and it’s largely his fault, but Jim was the one who walked up to the head of starfleet and straight up asked for an off-books incursion into enemy territory for revenge.  You can’t tell me that Jim doesn’t take that whole burden onto his shoulders, given that he, again, pretty quickly afterwards commits suicide via warp core.

This crew all loves each other SO FUCKING MUCH.  And the also love their captain.  Jim says “hey chekov i know you’re a navigator and 19 but be my CEO” and chekov’s like “yikes, sure!”  Jim randomly comms Scotty, who just quit and is drunk, and Scotty drops everything to go break into a secure starfleet base behind Jupiter and literally save everyone.

And they spend this whole movie trying to pull Jim back together after all this shit, losing the enterprise and Pike dying.  Bones fusses over his health and flirts with Carol to exasperate him, Spock makes it clear he’s unequivocally on Jim’s side while kicking him in the ass over his dumb decision making to get his brain working again.  Uhura acknowledges his loss and commiserates with him over spock being...spock.  Chekov and Scotty go waaaaaay out of their comfort zones without question because he needs them, no questions.  Sulu is his amazing damn self and literally the entire ship would fall apart without him, and I like to think if he’d had more time he would have dragged Jim into some sparring to let it out in a way that doesn’t involve, you know, klingons.

all due respect commander, but we’re not going anywhere.  how is sulu consistently the best part of every single movie?? I love him

and this...this is what you would have done.  don’t fucking tell me Jim doesn’t know what happened in TOS, don’t you fucking dare, because Jim in this moment chose to take spock’s place. i want you to know why I couldn’t let you die. FUCK Jim knows for sure, for sure. UGH.

Okay but Scotty doesn’t even have to say anything to Spock beyond telling him to get down to engineering; he knew exactly what that meant.  Knew it meant Jim was dying or dead.  Because every single one of the bridge crew knows about Jim’s self-sacrificial tendencies; they were devastated, but not surprised, not at all, because aos!Jim learned the day he was born that the best way to show someone you love them is to die for them.  And he loves them. so much.  god, Bones’ face when they bring Jim’s body in is haunting. Uhura gripping her mouth, because there aren’t words.  Scotty crying his eyes out.  Spock...going feral pre-surak vulcan on everyone.

And then the whole bridge crew is so fucking furious that Khan, directly or indirectly, took advantage of those tendencies, that they all help Spock go fucking feral and absolutely would have helped him murder Khan if they didn’t need him to get Jim back.

This concludes my mostly angsty thoughts about ST:ID and how it relates to aos!Jim’s angst ridden ass and the bridge crew’s relationships therein. will definitely be playing into the next round of time travel au discussion for sure

[xxfanfiction-emo-trinityxx]

Nerd - Gerard Way x Reader

Request: Hi! I miss you 💕💕 When you're back, could you write about Dallon or Gerard meeting a nerdy reader? She is out with friends, and sarcastically says sth like "yeah, 'cause a girl who daily references LotR, Doctor Who and other stuff is every guy's dream." He overhears, and starts: "Actually..." Thanks and have a lovely holiday ✨✨✨😉

Reader: female

Warnings: fandom references, many of them

Word count: 1 843

Even though it was one of the bars in town that was on the fancier side, people still dressed pretty normally. At least the guys did. But most of the females in the room were wearing skirts and dresses that seemed to be several numbers too small so short that you wondered how they sat down without the skirt riding up so far that too much skin was exposed. But maybe that was the whole point. You did not really know much about these things. The only thing that you knew was that people did not like it when you said that their skirts were shorter than those of the uniform dresses in Star Trek OS. So you kept that comment to yourself, while you pulled on the sleeves of your cropped “Wings of Freedom” jacket, the latest treasure in your collection of merchandise.

Going out with your friends was never as easy as you would have liked. They were, just like the other women in the bar, dressed in these terribly tight clothes, and you, dressed in a soft, fitting, dark shirt with a tiny TARDIS pattern, some skinny jeans, sneakers, said cropped jacket, and an Evening Star necklace, stood out like a torch in a dark forest.

You knew your friends did not mind. They had been out with you before, and they knew this was the fanciest you could dress for a relaxed night out. But you had been very aware of the stares from other people in the room, men and women alike.

“(Y/n),” one of your friends called over the small table on which the group was seated, trying to get your attention over the loud music that played on the dancefloor, “spotted anyone you like already?”

You grinned, knowing Grace would absolutely love to set you up. The beautiful girl had braided her curly black hair to the side, wore metallic green eyeliner and a matching dress that sparkled beautifully against her dark skin. You loved how easy it seemed for her to put herself out there, and sometimes you wondered if you could do that too, if you had more self-confidence. After all, the lack thereof was probably the main reason you were hiding behind your merchandise.

Trying to answer her question, your eyes skipped through the room, trying to find the man again who had drawn your attention to himself earlier. Now he was sitting at the bar, a strand of his almost shoulder long, raven black hair brushed behind his ear. He was sipping from what looked like a glass of water, in the other hand holding a pen, and fumbling around with it.

You nodded into the direction of the guy, very well aware that someone as attractive as him could directly look at you, and still not see you.

Grace turned her head, following your eyes, and nodded approvingly.

“He’s cute,” she stated.

You nodded, embarrassedly turning your eyes away.

“Wanna go and talk to him?”

“What? No, no way,” you quickly answered, looking up at her alarmed.

“Alright, alright, chill,” she laughed.

“Hey, would you like to dance?”

A man had approached Grace from behind, the third one this night. You wondered how some girls like Grace seemed to pull people in, while you always seemed to repulse them.

“Sorry, I’m not in the mood right now,” Grace answered friendly but firm, “Later maybe.”

The guy nodded and trotted off again.

“Should we go get some more drinks,” she asked you, motioning to you empty glass, “we could go talk to Mister Mysterious over there as well.”

You groaned.

“Come on, you know how that will go. No offence, but I don’t even have the splinter of a chance with you next to me. Not to mention, that a girl who daily references Lord of the Rings, Star Trek, Doctor Who and other stuff is every guy’s dream.”

You rolled your eyes and shook your head, wanting to add how you talking to that guy would never happen, when suddenly a voice sounded from behind of you.

“Well, actually…”

You turned around, more reflex than anything, and stared up into brilliant hazel eyes. It was the man who you had watched while he had been sitting at the bar, but the conversation with Grace had distracted you, so you had not noticed that he had gotten up. The strand of hair which had been brushed behind his ear had fallen into his face again, and the way he was fidgeting with the pen he was still holding gave away that he was somewhat nervous, which relieved you to a certain degree. Also the fact that he wore a washed out Star Wars t-shirt managed to settle some of your nerves right away.

The conversations around the table had died down, everybody expectantly watching the scene unfold. After all, it was the first time in all the nights they had been out with you, that someone had tried to chat you up.

Honestly, you were at a loss for words. You were not sure if that was because the man in front of you was just seriously beautiful, because all of a sudden you had been approached by someone, or if it was because he had basically said that a nerdy girl like you could be someone’s dream girl. But whatever the reason, you could not find an answer, or just anything to say really; so you sat there, somewhat helplessly, blinking up at him.

The man smiled slightly, apparently not minding your speechlessness.

“Your drink is empty, may I invite you for a new one?”

Before you could even answer, another friend next to you, Carol, encouragingly nudged you, tearing you out of the haze you momentarily been in.

“Oh, yes, that would be great,” you quickly answered, standing up from your chair.

“I’m Gerard, by the way,” he introduced himself, offering you his hand.

“(Y/n),” you replied.

He nodded thoughtfully.

“It fits you,” he decided, before suddenly blushing, realizing what he had said. “Shall we… get drinks?”

He lead you over to the bar, where he found two chairs for the two of you, before he asked what you would like to drink, ordering the same for himself as well.

“So… you are well acquainted with fan culture, I see,” he said, nodding to your clothes.

“Yes, I-“ nervously you reached for the Evening Star necklace, wrapping your fingers around it, “it’s like… I don’t really know, it’s like-“

“A protection from reality?”

You nodded, smiling shyly at Gerard’s comment.

“Yeah, exactly. Just, some worlds to feel safe in, you know, where heroes will always safe the day.”

“I totally feel you,” Gerard agreed, “you should have seen my locker in high school; it was a Lord-of-the-Rings-Star-Wars-Doctor-Who shrine.”

“I’d pay to see that,” you laughed, feeling the nervousness slowly melt away. Gerard seemed to understand you, seemed to get why these fictional worlds were so important to you.

“Fascinating,” he giggled at your response, making you crook your head.

“Was that Star Trek reference intentional,” you wondered, narrowing your eyes at him, making him laugh lightheartedly.

“Take an educated guess,” he challenged, nudging your knee with his.

“You’re a nerd,” you answered, rolling your eyes at him.

“Says the one with the TARDIS shirt,” he defended, laughing.

“Says the one with the two decades old Star Wars shirt,” you kept going, poking his chest.

“Okay, that is true,” Gerard gave in, giggling.

Just in that moment the bar tender brought over your drinks, and Gerard handed you one.

“May the force be with you,” you spoke, raising your glass for him to click his glass against yours.

“And may you live long and prosper,” he winked, gently bumping the glasses together.

The rest of the evening was filled with laughter and chatter about your favorite movies, a heated discussion about the best Star Wars Movie, anecdotes about building light sabers and Stormtrooper uniforms from when you were kids, and too many references to keep up with it (anything ranging from single word exclamations, to page long monologues).

It was well past midnight when both of you decided to call it a night. Your stomach hurt from laughing so much, and Gerard’s hair was completely disheveled from how often he had ran his fingers through it.

Both of you stepped outside into the cold night, and you wrapped your jacket, tighter around your body, feeling the napkin, on which two hours earlier Gerard had written his phone number and a doddle of himself, in your pocket press against your leg.

“So… will you call me,” he asked teasingly, but you noticed how important it was to him.

“I’ll think about it,” you grinned.

“Fantastic,” he nodded, obviously already excited.

“Yeah, yeah, alright doctor,” you laughed.

“Get home safe,” Gerard mumbled, giving you a quick hug that left you slightly blushing.

“You too, see you soon.”

Your flat was not far away, so you used the short walk to calm down from the exciting night. Gerard’s face was burned into your memories, and his giggles still rang in your ears as you walked down the dark streets.

A big illuminated display at the entrance of the cinema that was just down the street from your apartment pulled your attention to it.

“Late Night Showing of the Planet of the Apes”

A crazy idea came to your mind as you pulled out your phone and checked the time; the movie would start in ten minutes, this had to be the universe pulling a prank at you.

Without hesitation you pulled out the napkin, and dialed the numbers which Gerard had scribbled down for you.

“Gerard? It’s me, (y/n). Do you know the Starlight Cinema, five minutes away from the bar?”

Gerard on the other side of the line, agreed eagerly.

“Planet of the Apes in ten?”

“I’ll be there in five, don’t go in without me!”

You giggled at his excitement, hearing how he seemed to start hurrying while hanging up. This was crazy. But maybe you needed a bit of personal crazy in your life; you could not live vicariously through screen heroes forever.

And sure enough, five minutes after you had called him, Gerard came running down the street.

“You really waited,” he cheered, throwing his arm around your shoulder, as if you had known each other since forever. “I want popcorn and we need to share a big coke, but only one straw, so we can accidentally kiss, because you better believe that I won’t let you walk away without kissing you tonight. Because someone who calls me at half two in the morning for a late night showing of Planets of the Apes can’t just walk away like that from me.”

You laughed at his rambling, blushing at his words, but being pretty sure that you would not mind such a kiss. He held the door open for you to slip into the building.

“Okay,” you agreed, “but first we need to buy the tickets, dork.”

“I know, nerd.”

[shellheadtm-a]

alright, y'all, fuck it, i'm not going back and rereading civil war again bc it literally breaks me every goddamn time bc my stupid ass will literally always reread the confession and the road to civil war, and leads to me rereading iron man: director of shield, which also breaks me, which makes me read secret invasion and dark reign, which makes me read fraction's run, which makes me-

you get the idea.

but let's.  let's talk about this a minute.  i'm not gonna rehash the entire comic civil war here, it's a lot, but you should read it if you haven't.  it's a big turning point in the 616 world and leads almost directly to the current state of things as they stand today.  you should read it.  period.  if you're mcu be prepared for a bigger gut punch than anything the films gave you, i sob like a fucking baby every time i read fallen son and the confession.  and...the end of the brain wipe, which i'll also get to here in a minute, when tony starts filling himself in on what he's missing.  it's different.  it's bigger, but more contained (as in us-based only).  it's nastier.  and it drags on a hell of a lot longer than what amounts to one fight in a walmart parking lot, i'm talking months.  there is no nomad bullshit in this (steve hasn't picked up nomad in a very, very long time and the circumstances were different).  what i'm saying is, civil war literally divided and tore the entire us superhero community apart.  people that were friends were suddenly on opposite sides of the debate.  it didn't just tear apart tony and steve, think of carol and jess.  think of peter parker caught in the middle.  think of all the people who loved tony and steve equally and found themselves torn on who to support.  think of sue and reed, and johnny and ben, who were all over the board and nearly ripped their family apart permanently over it.

civil war was no bullshit.  it hit hard.  it hit fast.  people died.  it left the superhero community in complete tatters.

so let's get going.

extremis:  there are things concerning this i want to touch on.  one:  steve rogers did not like extremis.  this isn't fanon, he vocally was displeased about what tony had done to himself.  he thought it made tony strange.  distant.  more machine than man. (he wasn't really wrong in some ways.)  but something i really want to point in connection with it, outside of execute program which is a nice move into civil war, is that...tony never once really used it to find the rogue avengers.  not once, not really.  he had access to every camera, every satellite, every...digital anything.  he had the upper ground there.  and yet, somehow, the new avengers always managed to mostly stay free.  funny, huh.

miriam sharpe:  there's something too right about her, which makes her feel too wrong, you get me?  there's something about her that...is too perfect at pressing tony's emotional buttons to make her...mmm...legit.  i don't know if she was a plant for sure.  i don't.  but i'd be completely, utterly unsurprised to find out she was.  i also wouldn’t be surprised if she also turned out to be a skrull, tbh.

the night before registration was signed into law:  the team leads were separated.  god, folks, outside of steve's touchiness about extremis, and execute program, this was one of the best teams of avengers since the early mansion years.  tony and steve were closer than ever, they'd put down the avengers and then when steve wanted them back, tony couldn't tell him no.  they were doing what they do best, and doing it next to each other (and i'm sorry, you can fight me, but steve and tony are at their absolute peak when they're working together as an unstoppable duo, they're a team within a team, they're partners, they're best friends - in a lot of ways they're each other's whole world and driving force).  but the night before while they'd all gathered together, steve got called to the helicarrier.  tony and steve were separated.  steve was given an illegal order and refused.  he had fire opened on him.  and he bolted.  he and tony never did regroup and circle the wagons, not really, to actually talk about it.  i don't think...in any way...things would have gone as sideways as they did if steve and tony had been together and presenting a united front.  and i think certain powers that be were well, well aware of that fact.

thor clone:  tony might have had a thor hair, okay.  sure.  i can see him thinking at some point it would be neat to see what asgardian dna looked like but uh.  did everyone forget that biochem's not his thing?  it's not his wheelhouse?  he's an engineer.  an electrical and mechanical engineer.  now...who do we know that's a biochem person that supported registration, one of the foremost scientists in the field, hmm...oh, that's right.  hank pym.  and...gasp.  it turned out...hank pym...was a skrull.  wow, what a coinkidink.  i'm sure that totally absolutely doesn't mean a thing.

steve's extremes:  okay, so...steve does some stuff that is...drastic.  like steve is stubborn.  he's bullheaded.  once he plants his feet, getting him to move is damned near impossible.  you know who can usually bring him around to some form of compromise or agreeing to disagree?  ding ding ding, tony stark can.  this is not the first time tony and steve have had a bitchfit at each other.  they're in each other's pockets, literally, at almost all times, they fight sometimes.  it happens.  but they always, always manage to patch up and walk away friends and better for having had that talk.  the supreme intelligence.  tony erasing him being known as iron man.  the whole shebang, if you're familiar with the older comics.  they fight, they make up, they climb back in each other's back pockets again and they go home happy.  so...this is it?  they've had bigger shit on their plate and this is the one that does them in as friends?  this is the one that makes them fight like they do?  steve...does some hinky as fuck shit here, no one is blameless in this, steve is not in the right, tony is not in the right, no one is.  that's the fucking point.  but the extremes steve went to:  tony meeting him in good faith to actually talk because they haven't and need to and tony knows that, and steve taking him out with an emp (which if it had shut down extremis completely it would have killed tony and don't think steve isn't aware of that - steve is far more tech savvy than you'd think).  tony begging for another talk to ask steve directly if he had anything to do with happy hogan's death and yet another ambush by team steve.  meeting in the mansion one final time to talk and he and tony literally beating the shit out of each other (or rather, steve really unfairly smacking tony around because tony dropped his armor, and had been practically sobbing, begging steve to talk to him) and parting ways for good.  the thing here is:  tony called steve and steve still picked up.  steve still fucking picked up even though they were at war with each other.  and...of course...that final fight.  tony's armor was disabled by the vision.  he was a fucking sitting duck, he could not fight back in any meaningful way against 220+lbs of pissed off super soldier.  his armor was dead.  and steve beat the everloving fuck out of him.  tony, laying there in the street, his helmet smashed to hell, jaw broken, face swollen, steve on top of him with the shield raised about to drop it on tony's unprotected face, and tony laying there...begging steve to end it.  begging him.  and then steve getting yanked off of tony by a bunch of civilians who saw steve about to murder tony right there in the street and took action.

is it all steve's fault?  fuck no, tony did some nasty shit, too.  which is my point.  they both did things that overall, were out of character for both of them.  tony okaying hit squads?  of supervillains?  to bring in kid superheroes?  tony?  are you fucking serious right now?  that is not typical tony stark behavior.  see:  young avengers for details, when it's very obvious he doesn't think steve coming down so hard on kids wanting to help make the world better place was necessarily the right thing to do.  steve rogers, the man who mourned bucky barnes for years?  because he lost his best friend?  about to kill his other best friend in cold blood?  in the middle of a street?  really?  really???

steve in his cell:  when steve surrenders and steve's in the helicarrier, power dampner on, under arrest, awaiting arraignment, and tony comes to talk to him...things i want to point out:  this wasn't like an extended period of time after steve surrendered.  this was...very soon after that.  please remember, tony had been beat to all fucking hell by steve.  he shows up in full armor, never removes his helmet, nothing.  extremis's healing factor is good, but it's not that good.  tony's still beat to hell.  i'm willing to bet he was using the armor's autopilot function, too, because if he could actually stand up straight i'd call you a fucking a liar.  steve flinging out accusations on tony's mental health like barbs (he's not wrong, though, but you can bet tony takes every fucking word to heart in the absolute worst way).  the last words steve rogers says to tony stark is "was it worth it?  answer me."  as tony walks away.

steve's death:  hoo boy.  okay.  so, let me just...throw this out here:  steve's death fucking broke tony.  broke him.  completely.  utterly.  unmade him entirely.  steve on his way to arraignment takes a sniper shot for someone else, because steve is that kind of guy.  sharon, under mind control, pumps three bullets (time bullets it later turns out) into steve's stomach.  steve bleeds out.  dies.  you know what happens?  tony, who was supposed to give steve's eulogy, loses it.  breaks down when he gets up to speak.  starts sobbing hopelessly.  has to step down, there's no way in fuck tony stark will ever hold it together to deliver a real eulogy like that for steve.  i keep saying i cannot overstate how important they are to each other.  i can't.  i really can't.  like...they're so close at some points i feel like they're one soul in two bodies.  anyway.  when asked, tony says finding steve was the greatest day of his life.  not only does tony just fucking lose it, it turns out they don't bury steve that day.  instead, the remaining of the original avengers (tony, hank, jan) meet in the ice fields they found steve in.  they give him a quiet send off, for just the three of them and steve.  it's where "i miss your battlecry" comes from.  namor takes steve's coffin, promises no one will ever bother it.  they put steve back in the ice they found him.  yeah that...sure sounds like...the treatment of a guy who hated steve rogers, huh, and this on top of the fact that, yes, tony watched steve's autopsy (through the helicarrier camers).  he tortured himself just like that.  clint never had to tell tony he might as well have pulled the trigger himself, tony was already telling himself that.  he saw what happened to steve's body after, just...what it looked like.  he argued with sharon.  and then made sure sharon was taken care of, as completely as he could, after everything, because that's the kind of person tony is.  he continued to completely fall apart and not deal with steve's death in any fucking meaningful way.  he talked to steve's body after they brought him to the helicarrier before his autopsy.  he told him literally everything.  he told him through snot and tears and sobs and a complete and utter breakdown.  he told him it wasn't worth it, because the truth is, tony stark cannot bear the thought of living in a world where steve rogers does not exist.  there's a flipside to this, hold that thought.

tony's breakdowns:  post civil war tony has...quite a few of these.  he hallucinates steve (a side effect of extremis, all the info he takes in on a daily basis gets shoved into the part of his brain that processes guilt to be sorted through, and then his brain spits out important information in the form of people who are dead that tony blames himself for - steve played a prominent role there).  everyone can see it.  he doesn't leave the armor most of the time.  he flips out randomly.  he loses his shit utterly.  he's put on admin leave barring a psyche eval as direct of shield (a position he got ultimately railroaded into).  tony doesn't deal, is what i'm saying.  steve's death?  fucking breaks him.  totally.  tony does not pull himself back together at fucking all.  he doesn't handle it.  he blames himself for everything.  utterly everything.  yes, he was at fault for some things.  yes, he made a lot of bad calls.  but he canonizes steve (who also did hinky shit) and then turns around and tells himself he doesn't deserve even the modicum of happiness.  he has good days and bad days.  sometimes he almost seems like his old self.  most of the time he's barely holding himself together with spit and bubblegum.  ...i'd argue he may have been more than a little suicidal, at points.  he does some really, really risky shit - riskier than normal.

bucky/steve's letter:  bucky comes to kill tony.  there's just no other way to put it.  and they fight.  and tony does his absolute best not to hurt bucky.  he'd just gotten steve's letter - via execution of steve's estate - and even in the thick of it...steve still reached out to tony.  that letter was like...a friendly shoulder squeeze through the veil, you get me?  tony needed that, he really did.  it was a bandaid over a bullet wound, but he needed it.  and he turned around, and because steve utterly believed in bucky, put the weight of his faith and his trust behind bucky completely.  gave him the shield.  knew no one else would carry on steve's legacy the way bucky would.  ended up trusting bucky enough as the new cap to give him all the info on iron man, and how to shut tony down permanently, if need be.

frank castle:  steve damn near kills him.  steve.  that steve.  steve rogers.  y'all get how weird that is, right?  steve is wound like a bowstring the entire goddamn length of civil war.  i wonder if...the purpose...wasn't to get him to snap utterly and you know what that could have culminated in?  that's right.  tony's death at steve's hands.  you'd never get tony to kill steve.  ever.  ever.  but the other way around?  if you...tweak it just right?  hmmm.

the brain wipe:  so tony just...magically doesn't have any backups that include the worst year of his life.  i'm supposed to believe tony "meticulous to a fault" stark didn't back up his brain more than once.  uh huh.  okay.  so he just...manages to forget completely how unfunctioning he was after steve's death.  wipes out how utterly devastated and destroyed he was because steve was no longer in the world, who was fine with steve hating him and never speaking to him again as long as tony could protect him.  okay.  sure, karen.  but also, as a point, he left the decision up to thor and cap, ultimately, whether or not to bring him back.  at the time, thor was...mmm... but they had don.  and cap was bucky.  but they also brought steve in, who was alive at that point, because everyone knew when tony said cap in that recording he meant steve rogers.  and the holdout was pepper.  no one else really hesitated.  of course they bring tony back.  the world needs iron man.  the world needs tony stark.  gee, does...does that sound...like the guy ready to turn his best friend's head to mush with his shield?  hmmmm hmmmm hmmmm.

brain wipe aftermath:  tony's not wrangled well enough.  i...will argue that leaving him alone with pepper and maria hill might not have been the best of things to do.  i get it, osborn was being osborn, but.  it played out as being vindictive, letting tony stumble upon all of that himself.  but the huge, key thing to note here is steve fucking rogers tearing into the building where tony's being kept, knowing what's up, demanding to know where tony is because tony's only very recently woken up and...it turns...out...he's playing catch up on the last year and...has found...he thinks steve is dead.  in that moment tony stark thinks steve rogers is dead and you know what he does?  what tony always does when confronted with steve's mortality:  he starts crying.  he gets upset.  and i definitely think how tony finds out sets the tony for things for...a good long while, especially between himself and steve.

and going on in the background of all of this melodrama is...civil war itself, of course, everyone fighting each other viciously over registration, the nightmare of the fifty state initiative, which does not...go well.  the shit with the negative zone and a huge flashing warning light in the form of tony telling carol that of course they have to bring their friends into custody.  if he and the mighty avengers don't, they will.  they being shield.  remember project wideawake?  think microchipping every superhuman.  think genetic testing for powers.  think sentinals for everyone, not just mutants.  think people like spider-man on a dissection table.  all the shit tony was trying to get in front of, and put a stop to.

secret invasion happens.  and the first person in the entire thing, openly, that gets taken out?  tony stark.  extremis is mostly shut down.  his tech gets taken down.  iron man is, for a time, effectively removed from the picture completely.  tony, having seen it coming, has set rhodey up with a suit that has no starktech.  has a plan in place.  tony seizes.  he damned near dies, really.  almost gets taken in by the skrull queen (who's been psing as spider-woman all this time).  and during all of this steve's floating through time, trying to make his way back to his own body so the red skull can't take it.  eventually succeeds at that.  what i'm saying is everything was a complete and utter shitshow.

norman osborn?  now director of shield.  it goes about as well as you think it does, him and his dark avengers.  he tries to lay siege to asgard (which is floating up above and near broxton, oklahoma) after going off the rails.  he does some naughty naughty things.  it's not good.  he steals tony's tech.  he damned near beats tony to death on live tv.  the rt in tony's chest doesn't just cover the brain wipe, folks, it handles the fucking brain damage norman osborn did to him.

things to particularly consider:  jessica drew was a skrull during all of this.  with pheromone powers.  firmly on the side of team steve.  just...think about that.  think about steve's aggressiveness.  think about how easily the real jess is able to like.  sweeten up the hulk (he made her a sandwich and it's the most precious thing) even when he's angry and in pain.  just.  think about it.

think about project wideawake.  think about how firmly tony opposed it.  think about how he saw the writing on the wall after stamford and knew they had to get in front of it.  think about tony going to all those kids' funerals.  think about how emotionally open he'd be.  think about how perfectly miriam sharpe played into things.  think about all the praise she heaped on tony every time he did something she wanted.  think about how tony's self-esteem issues work.  just...think about that.

think about how a lot of players in shra were all involved in anti-mutant stuff.  consider that a moment.

think about how easily the green fucking goblin was able to get into the good public graces by killing the skrull queen.

and the most important piece of evidence i'll give you:  civil war: warzones.  it's a what if.  a what if had civil war dragged on instead of ending in steve's death.  guess what.  turns out the skrulls had been escalating and manipulating the entire fucking time.

just.  think about it.  all of it.  and civil war starts to make a hell of a lot more sense.

[pinkykitten]

to the Future

Marvel 

Yon-Rogg x pregnant! female reader

Warning: none

Specifics: drabble / blurb, pregnant reader, romance, fluff, comedy, race neutral reader

People: yon-rogg, carol danvers 

Words: 835

Requested: By anon If you still do requests, how about a Yon-Rogg X Reader maybe either she finds out she is pregnant or he asks her to marry him?

Authors Note: i did not re read this so if there are typos im sorry im just really lazy atm so pls forgive me. also i am accepting avengers: endgame requests so if you want to request cool if you dont...thats cool too it like whatever you want fam. thnx for requesting and for reading i think u guys r great and just amazing!

(not my gif! do not own!)

Your heart pounded at a quick rate as you stared at the sign. Your hands were sweating and clammy. Your lips became dry and you almost fainted. 

“How could this possibly be?” The question filled your mind as you pondered over your future. It echoed in your head, making you think the worst. 

“What if doesn’t want it?”

You quickly went to your most trusted friend, knowing she would know what to do. 

“Vers! Vers!” You shouted as you looked around her room to spot her presence. 

“Hey, what happened?” She was by your side in a second. She look worried and she held onto your shoulders, trying to comfort you. You were having a panic attack. Fear consumed you as you took short breaths, your eyes searching for something to relax on. “Look at me y/n! Look at me. You’re gonna be okay, tell me whats wrong.”

With a quiver in your voice, you looked up into her eyes. Your lips quivered as you spoke those few words that seemed foreign to you. “Vers...I’m pregnant.”

Carol eyes opened and she was shocked. She sat down with you and she grabbed onto you hand, “do you know-”

You nodded, “yes...Yon-Rogg.” For a minute you thought Carol was going to be angry with you. Heck you assumed she would scold you but instead she smiled. “What are you smiling for?”

“You guys are so cute together! You two make a great couple. I don’t see why you don’t tell him, like you should be saying this great news to him not to me!”

You stood up and paced around her room, “see the thing is I don’t know what he’s gonna say. What if he hates kids? What if he doesn’t want to be with me anymore? There are just so many things that could go wrong.”

Carol stood in front of you and hugged you, “but you see there are also many things that could go right. You need to tell him y/n and if he doesn’t like it then you know you’ll always have me.”

You grinned and thanked her. 

“But just know my fist will have a nice greeting with his face,” she called to you as you left.

As you stood by the training room door you felt the whole world getting smaller to you. It felt like the spot light was on you. You were nervous, not wanting to hear what he had to say. 

With every ounce of courage you walked in and with your head held up high you looked directly at the man you loved.

“Yon-Rogg?”

He looked back at you and gave you a grin, “yes my love. What is the matter?”

You sat down on the benches and played with your fingers, “there is something I need to discuss with you.”

Yon-Rogg was worried and sat beside you. “Go on.”

“I don’t know how else to say this...but I am...pregnant.”

Your eyes were closed, not wanting any rejection if it came. You looked at his face and saw he was...expressionless!

“Well!”

“I don’t know what to say...”

You crossed your arms, “well say something. Please.”

“Well I was going to do this a little days later but since now we are having a child then I feel this is the most appropriate times.”

Yon-Rogg stood in front of you with his hand on his heart. “My love, my dear y/n. You and me know how difficult it was for me to have this relationship with you. I was stuck in my ways but you brought me out and made me see that life was more than not having emotions. It felt odd at first but now I depend and look forward to feeling, and I do indeed when I see you or hear your name, or your voice. You make me feel. You make me love, to understand, to have compassion. You have brought the best out of me and I am truly thankful to you for that so following that I would like to ask you a very important question...”

Yon-Rogg got down on one knee and pulled a bright orange box with iridescent scales on top of it. “My y/n l/n, would you do me the honors of marrying me?”

He opened the box and the ring on top was spectacular. It was a purple diamond, it sparkled and shone like the universe, like space. You started to cry. Putting your hand on your mouth to muffle the cries of happiness. 

“Oh Yon-Rogg,” you slid on your knees to hug him. He then put the ring on, kissing you on the lips and then your stomach. 

“I love you and this bundle of joy we will have. I will love it and cherish it throughout the rest of my days. Thank you y/n...for bringing me such happiness. I do truly love you.”

He gave you another kiss on the lips and you just basked in all the joy, and looked forward to the future. 

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[natashasbanner]

Date Night: Chapter 1

Carol and Maria have been friends for years and are practically inseparable. It only made sense for Carol to move in with Maria and Monica. And it worked out for awhile.

But when Maria starts dating again, it digs up feelings Carol thought were long buried. She refused to ruin their friendship because of her stupid crush, but will she end up doing it anyway?

A/N: I had this idea and it sort of spiraled into this whole story. It's completely written and just needs some editing in a few later chapters so updates will be regular. Please enjoy :D

Also on AO3 

“Captain Rambeau,” Carol said, holding her glass up to Maria’s. “Has a nice ring to it.”

Maria smiled and looked at Carol over the rim of her glass. “I think Captain Danvers might also be on the horizon,” she said, raising her eyebrows.

Carol leaned back against the worn seat and shook her head, a small smirk in place. “You really think they’d let me be in charge of anything?”

“They’d be crazy not to,” Maria argued. “You’re a damn good pilot.”

“Yeah, well I think I’m too much of a loose cannon for that any time soon.”

“I guess we’ll see.” Maria said with a look that Carol knew meant she wasn’t done yet.  

Carol sighed and took a drink of her beer. It was the story of her life. She didn’t fit into anyone’s box and it rubbed a lot of people the wrong way. But she wasn’t going to apologize and climbing through the ranks wasn’t a priority. She just wanted to fly.

She watched Maria finish the rest of her beer and smiled softly to herself. Maria looked up with a raised eyebrow and Carol quickly averted her eyes to the bar.

“Up for another round?” she asked, already sliding out of the booth.

“Only if you’re buying.”

“Tonight’s on me, baby.” Carol said with a wink and headed for the bar.

The place was mostly empty, save for the regulars. Nothing like the weekends.

She turned around to lean against the bar while she waited for their beers. To her surprise, Maria wasn’t alone in their booth. A man had slid into Carol’s seat and was talking quietly to Maria. Carol pushed away from the bar, ready to scare the guy off if need be, but Maria let out a laugh, a real laugh, at something he said. Carol stood down and turned around when the bartender slid their drinks across the counter.

“Hope I’m not interrupting,” she announced as she approached the table, a little too cheerily eve to her own ears.

The man slid something across the table to Maria before he stood.

He nodded at Carol as he passed with a quiet “ma’am”.

Carol watched him return to the small group of men in the corner as she sat back down, sliding Maria her new beer.

“Who was that?”

Maria bit her lip as she ran her finger along the edge of the napkin he’d given her. Carol could see his number scribbled over the thin surface.

Maria shrugged and looked back up at Carol. “Said his name was George.”

“You two looked cozy,” Carol said with a teasing smirk, swallowing the lump in her throat.

Maria was silent, taking a long drink of her beer.

“He seemed alright,” she said eventually, glancing over her shoulder.

He waved and she quickly turned back to ace Carol.

“Oh man, he is smitten,” Carol teased, wiggling her eyebrows.

Maria ducked her head and bit her lip again, but Carol saw her slip the napkin with his number on it into her pocket.

Carol just sipped her beer and watched them steal glances until they eventually left the bar.

“You still haven’t called him?” Carol asked a few days later as they did dishes together in Maria’s kitchen.

Monica sat at the table, scribbling happily in the new coloring book Carol brought over for her. Carol saw her little head pop up and look at them curiously.

“Called who, Mommy?” she asked.

“No one baby,” Maria said, shooting a pointed look to Carol, shoving a plate into her hands.

Carol smirked and looked directly at Monica. “A guy gave Mommy his number and she still hasn’t called him back.”

Maria dropped her the rag in her hand into the soapy water and glared at Carol with her lips pursed.

“What?” Carol asked innocently. “There’s no use lying to the kid.”

“Yeah, Mommy,” Monica chimed in.

Carol winked at the five year old who went back to coloring, bored with their conversation already.

“Beside the fact that he’s a complete stranger,” Maria sighed, fishing her rag out of the sink. “It’s been so long since I’ve been on a date.”

“So what?”

“I don’t know if I’m ready,” she admitted softly.

Carol set down the plate in her hands and reached over to touch Maria’s arm.

“Anyone would be lucky to go out with you,” she said earnestly, looking Maria in the eye. “So what if you haven’t been on a date in a while? You’re a catch, if he can’t see that then he doesn’t deserve you.”

“You’re right,” Maria agreed, smiling at her.

If it made Carol’s knees go a little weak, that was beside the point.

“And if he turns out to be a total ass, I can blame you for making me go.”

Carol smirked. “I think I can live with that.”

Carol sat on the couch while Maria paced back in forth in front of the phone. She had the napkin from the bar in one hand and the other kept repeatedly running through her hair.

“Just do it,” Carol groaned, rolling her head against the back of the couch.

“I am,” Maria said, a little snappily.

“Really?” Carol asked. “Because it looks like you’re wearing a hole into the floor.”

“I told you it’s been a while since I’ve done this.”

Carol rolled her eyes. “It has not been that long.”

“The last date I can remember was before Monica was born.”

“What about that guy you to the movies with?” Carol asked, her eyebrows furrowed. “That was only like a year ago.”

“That guy tried to cop a feel as soon as the lights went down,” Maria said, looking at Carol with an eyebrow raised.

Carol couldn’t help but laugh at that. She remembered when Maria told her about that particular date. She’d poured her whole soda on him before storming out of the theater.

“Come on,” Carol said once she’d stopped laughing. “If you wait any longer you’re going to talk yourself out of it.”

“Maybe that’s not such a bad thing?”

Carol pushed herself up from the couch and rushed over to Maria. She snatched the napkin out of her hand and ran into the kitchen before she realized what was going on. She’d already dialed half the number by the time Maria rounded corner.

“What are you doing?” Maria whispered, her eyes wide.

“Helping a friend,” Carol said, punching the rest of the number.

The phone rang a few times before someone picked up and Carol immediately thrust the receiver into Maria’s hand.

Maria mouthed something at her, more than likely a treat on her life, before she relaxed and started talking.

Carol, proud of herself went over to the fridge to find herself something to drink. She tried not to eavesdrop on the conversation, but she couldn’t help it.

“It’s Maria, from the bar,” she heard Maria say.

Carol popped the tab on her soda and sat down at the little table.

Maria glanced over her shoulder at Carol and pulled took the phone around the corner, the cord stretched around the doorframe.

Carol wasn’t surprised, but that didn’t stop the sinking feeling in her stomach. As long as she’d known her, Maria had kept her relationships close to the vest. Everything that had happened with Monica’s father had really done a number on her. Carol didn’t blame her, she just wished she’d open herself up a little more often.

A few minutes later, Maria came back around the corner and hung up the phone. She drifted over to the table with a dreamy look on her face. She sat down in front of Carol and reached for her soda, taking a sip and humming.

“I take it it went well then?” Carol asked, taking back her soda.

“I’m meeting him Friday night for dinner and a movie,” Maria said, smiling softly.

“Classic,” Carol said, picking at the placemat on the table. “You can’t go wrong.”

Maria checked her watch and looked back at the phone.

“I should start trying to find a babysitter. Before they’re all booked up.”

“I’ll watch her,” Carol offered with a shrug.

“You will?”

“Why not? Don’t waste your money on one of the five teenagers who overcharge.”

“What if you make plans?”

“I’m sorry I’ve got a date with a five year old. Besides, what’s the point of me moving in here if I don’t pull my weight?”

Maria rolled her eyes playfully. “I didn’t ask you to move in to be my live-in babysitter.”

“No, you just got tired of me sleeping on your couch and borrowing your clothes.”

“I haven’t gotten any of those back, by the way.”

“Must be in the wash.”

“Sure they are,” Maria said, swiping her soda again. “Are you sure?”

“Absolutely,” Carol promised. “It’ll be fun.”

“I feel bad leaving you here while I’m out having a life.”

“At least one of us does,” Carol laughed.

Maria sucked in a breath and looked at Carol across the table.

“I’m going on a date,” she said, mostly to herself.

Carol laughed and patted her hand. “You’re welcome.”

[peachrogers]

my summation + overall thoughts of avengers: endgame

including: what i found wrong with endgame and why i am currently refusing to acknowledge that it happened.

okay i wrote this a while ago but after i never actually got around to posting it so here it is. 

first off,, i will once again introduce myself since this account is fairly new. hello, my name is mackenzie, call me mackenzie, or zie or mack or whatever you want. this was originally to be my main acc after i deactivacted all my old tumblrs because i planned to start fresh on tumblr again and after watching endgame for the second time last wednesday, this account became a marvel acc strictly so !! yeah follow me lets be friends !! message me whenever if you wanna talk or cry or anything. 

to put it bluntly,, endgame fucking sucked. 

endgame was meant to tie everything together. endgame was meant to be this great movie to sum everything up and tie it all together and to just make it make sense in other words.

there was so much hype surrounding endgame, so much pressure, so much excitement. 

in my opinion? the joint effort of the writers and the directors managed to ruin it all. they managed to take a movie that was supposed to do so much for the mcu, to tie everything together as a final conclusion to this infinity saga and they blew it all up.

endgame wasn’t a horrible movie, but there were multiple parts that i (and multiple others i know of) did not like and i will be going over it in this post.

it’s not just because of steve’s ending, which i know, i know, i’ve bitching and crying about that for a while on this account. it’s more than just steve’s ending.

this post is a little all over the place but i’ll try to keep my thoughts together the best that i can.

just a disclaimer: UNDER THE CUT I WILL BE TALKING IN DEPTH ABOUT THE EVENTS OF AVENGERS: ENDGAME AND THIS WILL INCLUDE MAJOR SPOILERS ABOUT THE MOVIE SO PLEASE BE WARY. (if you haven’t, seriously where the fuck have you been) BUT IF YOU HAVEN’T SEEN ENDGAME AND DO NOT WISH TO HAVE IT SPOILED PLEASE SCROLL PAST THIS. YOU HAVE BEEN WARNED.

okay here we go !! so i made posts before about this but this is gonna just be a big long post about EVERYTHING and i’ll explain everything and why endgame sucked. 

originally i had decided to go through scene by scene and talk about each scene but i mean, that’s not really the point of this post and frankly, doing that would probably make this post longer than i want it to be. so i will be focusing on the important scenes. the ones i think are most important to point out and talk about.

as i mentioned above the cut, it’s not just about steve. i know my user is peachrogers and steve rogers has always been my fave avenger. but its more than just steve’s ending and i’ll get into that as we get to it.

i used a transcript while writing this just to help me completely recall everything as it actually was since i don’t consider my memory completely reliable so i linked it if anyone else wants to look at it.  

and again, as i mentioned above, i don’t hate everything about endgame. there were parts of endgame i did like and enjoy. tony and nebula playing paper football for example, i thought that scene was very endearing and adorable and carol coming to save them really made me happy. 

but at the same time, there were scenes i did not enjoy. and i will be mainly going depth on those scenes since i kinda wanted to just summarize and explain and captalize on why endgame failed at doing the job it was meant to do in tying together these 22 mcu films released in the past 11 years.

so starting at the beginning of the film, after they find thaos and thor chops off his head and they have a five year time skip, we see steve, in a group therapy session. 

where steve once again brings up the love of his life and how everyone has to move on. which SPOILER ALERT he doesn’t. this scene, when i first watched i was kinda like whatever, but watching it the second time and watching it now(or even thinking on it), it makes me SO SO mad. pretty sure they kept this scene bc one of the directors is in it. this scene also just makes steve contradict himself since he goes on about how important it is for to move on and yet he just doesn’t even follow his own advice in the end and it aggravates me which i will get into later on.

so skipping to after scott comes out of the time machine van and then steve goes to visit natasha. tbh everytime i watch this scene with natasha and steve, it always just breaks my heart because of the whole:

you know, i keep telling everyone they should move on and… grow. some do. but not us.

(there steve goes again just contradicting himself:(()

and

we both need to get a life. 

you first.

and i remember reblogging a gif set of nat and steve with the same caption and i just :( bc of where they end up in the end and it’s just its really sad. 

seeing tony and pepper with morgan and the fact that tony has finally achieved a level of normalcy where he has his own life with his wife and his child, it’s really nice to see. he definitely deserves it. and i completely understand tony shutting down steve, nat, and scott because he doesn’t want to risk everything especially if it doesn’t work and he ends up losing it. and i totally understood that.

the diner scene where nat, steve, and scott go to talk to bruce about time travel. first off, i just wanna point off how annoying that scene was ?? especially the part with the kids and them not wanting a pic with scott and apparently they only kept that part in bc one of the kids was one of the director’s kids?? there’s just so much wrong with it. 

and now i move on to the great marvel cinematic universe version of time travel. which in itself really hardly makes any sense whatsoever since the directors and the writers both contradict each other on how it works. if you’re going to put time travel in your movie, i really feel like everyone should be on the same page on how it works but i mean, that’s just me. 

it took me a little bit to understand it bc what the fuck. 

the scene where clint,rhodey, bruce, nebula, and scott are discussing how time travel works and rhodey is just naming off all these time movies where time travel works the way that i see it as working(where your past completely changes your future/butterfly effect/chaos theory) and bruce and nebula basically debunk the whole thing and explain it as how changing your past doesn’t change your future and all the whole thing is just bullshit if you ask me. it’s so hard to understand.

okay im not here to argue about time travel. but let me just give some perspective. for me personally, i just see time travel to work like it did in life is strange because it makes more sense. if you change something in the past, that would directly impact your future. if you go in the past and prevent someone from dying, that would not just change the fact that they didn’t die but other factors would be affected too.

and when they brought in the alternate timelines and the “multiverse” it just made things so much more complicated for me.

and i have tried to educate myself more to understand it, i’ve read through multiple posts on the whole time travel thing and i’ve rewatched movies as well to try and understand.

i guess the biggest thing that didn’t sit well with me is just that the directors and writers WHO YOU WOULD ASSUME would bring some clarity and insight on the matter really just brought more confusion and only contradicted each other and i do Not Like it at all. 

but i mean who cares about what we want ? it obviously doesn’t mean shit to them.

moving on.

uh lebowski thor idk at first i really wasn’t into it and i was kinda like wtf but i mean i’ve kinda come to be cool with the change in character. and apparently chris hemsworth was really into it so idk to each their own. 

and just for the record: i think we all know that Noobmaster69 is deadpool

also i fucked loved the america’s ass joke but i’m pretty sure everyone did. 

okay moving on to stony going to the camp lehigh in the 1970s. really i just want to address the scene where steve hides in peggy’s office. you see on her desk that one picture of steve and the picture of her kids and legiT PEGGY WAS RIGHT THERE IN THE OTHER OFFICE HOW DID SHE NOT SEE STEVE WHAT THE FUCK

god idk just thinking about how it was the 1970s and she still thinks about steve who tbh she hardly knew, especially if you compare him to idk daniel sousa ?? and steve saw the picture of her kids and he still was like lol yeah not moving on.

natasha dying okay yeah that was hard to watch. especially since she got nothing for it. tony gets a whole funeral with everyone and yeah ig she got that one moment with the five of them talking about trying to bring her back but that was it and i hate that. natasha deserved more love more attention more recognition way way more than what she got.

ON YOUR LEFT

okay idk how people heard steve’s avenger assemble when the fucker literally whispered it.

i mean it was really nice seeing everyone coming together and fighting and idk it was just everything to see the final fight against thanos. 

ALSO CAP WIELDING MJOLNIR 

tony dying, like i definitely did cry and it was sad, but in a way it was okay because he did it for them he did it for everyone. 

there was an interview with the writers who said there wasn’t a draft where tony didn’t die and i don’t doubt it because i mean, i think it was needed. i think tony needed to be the one to do it. 

and now we get to my favorite part. you know, the worst part of the movie. where steve just ruins everything. 

in the process of returning the infinity stones, steve decides to create an alternate timeline with “peggy” and live out his life with her in that timeline while actual steve of that timeline is in ice.

okay listen i was cool with the final dance, i think that was definitely needed and it would’ve been a perfect end for steve to do that and return and idk give up captain america. but instead NO THEY HAVE TO DESTROY ALL OF captain america’s character development, all of peggy carter’s character development, RUIN BUCKY AND JUST RUIN EVERYTHING THAT WASNT OKAY I AM STILL JUST SO UPSET BECAUSE FOR STEVE TO JUST THROW EVERYTHING OUT THE WINDOW AND BE WITH PEGGY IN A DIFFERENT TIMELINE ITS NOT SOMETHING STEVE WOULD DO

we all know that is not something steve would do so it just it killed me and the directors hardly even gave an explanation for it and idk its just its such a let down and im just im not okay with it and i won’t be for a while. steve has always been my favorite avenger and for him to go out like this. its so disappointing, steve rogers deserved a better ending than this. 

endgame sucked and its gonna take me a while to accept that endgame actually happened. 

[cristalknife]

Kadam Week 2021 Day 4 ~ You are my treasure, can I keep you as part of my hoard? 2/4

(In four parts Part 1, Part 3, Part 4 or read complete on ao3 or ff.net)

To his immense surprise and relief it was an acceptance letter. As he kept on reading he discovered some strange peculiar notes that made him frown.

For one, he was offered a double major in stage combat and musical theatre with a minor in costume design. No other option, no choice about having only a single major, or even only one major and one minor. The whole affair seemed rather weird to him, but at the same time the price tag to it was not as inflated as he thought it would be.

The tone of the letter made it very clear, it was either accepting the offered position, or reject the suggested plan and choose a different school, no changes allowed for any reasons.

But Kurt reasoned that it wouldn't be too much of a problem, he wasn’t afraid of working hard, and it wouldn’t be a greater economical burden.

He knew he could do it, even a perfect stranger at Nyada, after seeing his audition had thought he could do it, so he couldn't see why he shouldn't believe in himself in the same way.

The second weird part was that they requested a private interview with him at his earlies convenience to work out living accommodation for the duration of his studies and that more would be explained in person.

Third even more puzzling part was the final note that any concerned parents were allowed to join into those informal interview.

When Burt reached that line the small distressed growling sound he had been emitting faded into nothingness.

Looking up from the letter and still seeing the expectant looks on both Carole and Finn's face Kurt smiled and said simply "I got in, they asked for an interview to better manage the living arrangement"

Both of them grinned and congratulated him and then Finn continued "Man you're so lucky, maybe the interview is to set you up with a cool room mate. Wish other school did that as well.”

Kurt hummed pondering on Finn's guess, if that was the case then it would be really cool indeed, however he had a slight suspicion that wouldn’t be the case, more likely it would have to be something connected to his newly discovered supernatural heritage.

Kurt didn't know exactly what to expect, but he reasoned that he would find out soon enough at that meeting, after all he had still time before he needed make a decision whether to accept his place or not.

Burt was considering their options then said "We should call the school hear if they do those fancy meeting on a short notice basis, we could even make a long weekend trip out of it, some family time”

Kurt looked intrigued "You thinking about getting the car and drive the ten hours there, the train or flying?"

Burt shrugged sending a warning glare at Kurt's teasing emphasis on the last one "I do have free miles we could use to get tickets there, all those times flying to DC must bear some fruits somehow…"

Finn started looking uncomfortable... "If we all go, can we please not saying anything to the others? Like can we totally avoid mentioning anything to Rachel in specific?"

Carole, bless her soul asked worried "Why there's something wrong with having a family trip together?"

Finn looked down and started shuffling his feet "It's just Rachel is going to blow things out of proportion, and either demand we take her with us because we're almost married and thus practically family already. Or she would give me hell for not telling her about this.”

Kurt allowed a small scoff leaving his mouth "You know that the easiest solution of all would be not getting married to her in the first place right?"

And for the first time Finn looked as lost as he really was "She's still my girlfriend.."

Kurt opened his mouth ready to retort, but seeing the confused look still in Finn's eyes, he choose instead of closing it up again and pressed his lips in a thigh line.

He was raging internally at how Rachel was making his brother feel like he had no other options, but it would be counterproductive if he started to say anything about it before Finn was ready to hear and listen to what Kurt had to say.

Sadly he had a very good idea that Finchel wouldn't survive Rachel’s New York aspiration .

As he had just asked few hours ago to not have people interfering in his own private life he couldn’t very well barge uninvited into someone’s else. However Finn was family, so he simply offered him a lifeline saying calmly "If you want to talk about it, you know where to find me"

The grateful look on Finn face would have been enough, but the added looks of pride present in both Carole and his dad's eyes made it all even more worthwhile.

The phone call to settle and schedule the date of the interview solved Finn's problem easily enough, when it was explained that the concerned family allowed in the interview were solely blood relatives sharing the same heritage as the student.

Namely it was a pretty neat line to make it clear the supernatural aspects of Kurt's life were the one going to be addressed.

And while it sounded a little discriminatory, it was also pretty understandable why other supernatural beings wouldn't want to admit or talk about such things in front of people not able to fully grasp the situation.

At least they were helpful and suggested that if only his dad was a blood relative, to simply saying that their interview would allow in only one parent anyway. So that the meeting wouldn’t be cause of tension or distress for their family.

It worked neatly, and Carole was very understanding, once they were alone Kurt asked curiously "So air plane flying or you flying flying?"

Burt snorted and shook his head "Come on kiddo what do you expect? Have you seen many flying lizards around the news?"

Kurt shrugged and chuckled "No but we are in Lima, I doubt such news would even pass the local censure..."

Burt found himself chuckling as well and patted his son back "Nah no need to get exhausted when a plane could do all the work for us and without even having to learn the way..."

Upon arrival at the school they were met at the front door by Madame Tibideaux, the same person Kurt auditioned for.

To his credit, he blinked his surprise away and put on an easy calm smile on his lips within the first minute, noticing how the woman's smile grew after that as she nodded approvingly

"Mr Hummel, Kurt, please follow me we can have our talk in my office, it's this way."

As they started following her Kurt noticed a very faint and intriguing smell reminding him of sugar and cinnamon with a hint of peppermint.

It was a very attractive scent and he unconsciously licked his lips. The knowledge he'd soon be here to properly chase it down, until he found to whom this scent belonged to, was the only thing that kept him from going into a frenzy search right in that instant.

He had remained a step behind as Madame Tibideaux was giving his dad the selling pitch.

Kurt got distracted by a couple of students sneering down pointing alternatively at a poster and at the tall redhead they were badmouthing.

Their interaction escalated quickly to the point the duo started to physically push the read headed guy.

Something in Kurt roared to life at the mere sight, what were just darkening embers turned into molted lava, and he could feel the low growl reverberating in his chest.

He didn't even throw a glance at the two adults to see where they were going, he wasn't even sure why he felt that he needed to step in, he simply knew he had to.

He walked up to the snotty duo and asked in an icy tone "Is this how supposedly topnotch talents from all around the country behave in this school? I thought this was a college not a kindergarten, but if I am mistaken, then someone ought to be put down for a nap for being so cranky"

His words had frozen all three students, but Kurt didn't even take notice of that, instead he went directly to help up the redhead, receiving a small grateful smile in return and a look of awed admiration

"Thank you, I don't think anyone else would have dared to go against them, but it's too late for you to be a second semester student and I'm sure I would have seen you before..."

Kurt smiled sincerely and offered his hand "Kurt Hummel, and no I'll be a freshman starting from september, just to know beforehand, am I to expect more of this once I start here? Because honestly it's a little bit of a put off for me”

The redhead took the hand and shook it smiling brightly "James Porter, and well the school has its own internal working, but I can tell you it's not as bad as it looks, most of the times. This was really nothing, they would have just continued throwing some more insults at me and at the group I'm part of, and then left once they reached their daily quote of mean girls attitude"

Kurt frowned and for the nth time his eyes fell back onto the poster as he started to point it with a finger, almost reaching up "So I guess you're part of the Adam's Apples then?"

James offered him a bright smile noticing how Kurt's eyes kept returning to the poster every once in a while "Indeed, I can see you like our poster, would you like to take one with you home? So you know exactly who to search for when you come back here in the fall?"

Kurt smiled grateful at the offer, and this time he didn’t fought the instinct of reaching up to touch reverently the precious piece of paper.

It was… he didn't know what it was or what it had around it, but for some weird reason being close to it just felt right, in a way he didn't recall anything else ever feeling that way before.

James chuckled at the besotted look on Kurt’s face, then proceeded to remove the poster from the bulletin board and roll it up.

He fished a couple of rubber bands from his pocket and secured the poster in position before offering it to Kurt, admiring how it was accepted like a precious treasure.

He then looked around and asked Kurt "So how come you're here all alone?"

Kurt said before even looking around "I'm in here with my dad for an interview, Madam Tibideaux is leading us to her office"

James' eyes grew larger and then he nodded "I can take you to her office before they notice you've lagged behind, one suggestion as thank you for what you’ve done, when you get back home if someone else from your school had been accepted, try to keep under wrap that you came here for living arrangements. That is the kind of information you don't want people to know upfront."

Kurt look taken aback and blinked in surprise, he had not realised that in getting in the middle of this situation he would risk to lose his guide.

However the new information that James gave him made sense, he simply nodded his understanding. Despite the warning he could not feel threatened by having shared that information with James, so he took it as a sign that maybe the redhead was trustworthy, he surely felt that way.

Instead Kurt asked "Can you please take me there now then?"

James nodded then after few steps he looked back at the two still frozen students, and asked "What about them?"

Kurt turned to look and then waved his hand dismissively "They are free to go when they have cooled their hot tempers enough to know that sometimes it's better holding one's tongue."

And true to his words, as soon as Kurt said that, the snotty duo scrambled away sending incensed looks, but kept their mouth shut, to James' satisfaction.

The older boy grinned at Kurt and nodded, then proceeded to take a shortcut to the vocal performance dean's office.

True to James' promise Kurt walked right behind his father as if he had been there there the whole time.

From a afar, James noticed that the poster had found its way safely and discreetly into Kurt's messenger bag.

Feeling extremely pleased and satisfied with the outcome, he carried on with his day after sending a message to the other Apples that they were more than likely to gain a new member in their group in the the fall.

When later that afternoon Adam came to James asking "How can you be so sure of that?"

James grinned like he knew something important, something that they were all going to figure out on their own, when they'd finally meet the new freshman "Because I met him, his name is Kurt Hummel, and he stepped in to defend me, in the main hall when the snotty duo was throwing their daily dose of insults my way..."

Adam looked just as impressed as James had been "Mind if I ask you how he did it?"

James' whole body language became neutral and his smile placid, not giving anything away, and yet that level of neutrality was a tell in and on itself.

"He had few chosen words to say and they were very effective, but the part I think you'd probably should find more interesting, was that he kept looking longingly at our poster. Like he couldn't take his eyes off of it, and he had reached to touch it more than once. Though I doubt he'd even consciously realised it, so I took it off and gave it to him."

Adam's breath caught at that and he looked up at James hopeful as he asked in a low rumbling voice "And?"

James offered a small genuine smile "And he looked like I had handed him a treasure, I didn't even notice how or when, but before he went on with his day as we parted ways, he had already put it safely away, I suppose in the messenger bag he was clutching for dear life.

Adam's grin grew as he closed his eyes briefly whispering softly "Just one last summer and then we'll meet. Thank you so much for telling me James, I appreciate it"

James only hummed in response, basking in the happiness this day brought.

Once inside Madam Tibideaux’s office, Kurt discovered that, as James had promised, his absence had not been noticed. In fact it seemed as if the time he spent with the other students hadn't passed at all.

The way the two adult were talking, it seemed as if his presence or input wasn't at all needed nor necessary.

He was getting quite lost in his own thoughts, when suddenly Madam Tibideaux asked him if he felt comfortable in shifting and letting her see his form.

Something in that request rubbed him in the wrong way and he couldn't stop himself from asking "And exactly why would you need to know that?"

Burt offered the dean a knowing smirk and a shrug of his shoulder, as if to say ‘told you so… Feel free to try to convince him’

Madam Tibideaux, smiled in what probably was supposed to be a reassuring and friendly way, but to Kurt it just felt off, "We just want to make sure your accommodation would be comfortable, allowing you the downtime to relax in your more natural form"

The words had the shiny appearance to seem aimed to aid him, but something, more than one something actually, felt so terribly wrong.

If he was to reveal his form, he was pretty sure it would be listed somewhere, information that then would be stored somewhere inside or anyway connected to the school.

Kurt might not have been aware of his supernatural heritage for a long time, but having lived in such a small town as Lima had taught him that there were things best left unknown to the general populace. Some things were private and were supposed to stay that way.

James' advice was also still ringing in his ears. If he wasn't supposed to be that liberal in sharing the fact that, as supernatural being, he had been granted living accommodations.

Then more than likely he wasn't supposed to share exactly what he was or allow any record of it, or even pictures to be added to his name in some file cabinet or database.

Returning an equally friendly and placid smile, just as fake as hers, Kurt replied politely "I'm sure that such organised school as yours has rough shape classification catalogue or book that could be used to indicate a student's shift dimension. Probably even cut in categories like small, medium and large if not able to go in even more details. I'll be more than willing to pick from those lists the current size of my shifted form."

Madam Tibideaux looked like she had been handed a basked full of lemons to swallow, but still she managed to smile "I see your point Kurt, in that case let me pick the shape size book for you."

Burt quipped smiling "I'd say you probably should take directly the medium large part of it"

Kurt managed to restrain himself and didn’t look as shocked as he was feeling.

He simply allowed his father to lead the discussion, he wouldn't have said that he was that big, but to be honest during the times he shifted he had been more preoccupied with other things like grooming and flying lessons on top of other similar activities that were supposed to be taught early on.

And with his late awaken he had to have crash courses to be sure of being ready by the time he left home.

Madam Tibideaux put the shape book in front of Kurt and he tried to gauge what to do. Clearly his dad was suggesting he'd declare a larger shape than his current one.

Maybe he still had growth sprouts left in him, at least as far as his shift shape was concerned.

Looking at his dad he noticed he was pointedly looking up at the sky outside the window, and a small smile formed on Kurt lips.

He kept reverently pass over the shapes as he had done before and then shook his head moving forward to bigger ones, as if he had been looking longingly wishing he had a smaller size than his actual one, instead of trying to gauge which one would be more a more accurate one.

If he was supposed to have enough space to fly then he was going to declare to be at least trice as big as he actually was.

Adjusting the book’s position in his lap he didn't notice that his bag shifted, and a whiff of that faint scent of sugar, cinnamon and peppermint reached his nose making him stop for a moment.

They were going to gauge the living accommodation to house his size, but that scent made him want to have a nest.

A place he would be able to keep beyond his school years, and that meant he had to be redirected to external sources rather than take ‘advantage’ of the ‘opportunities’ the school offered.

On a whim he closed the book and reopened it on the last page before commenting softly "Dad I might be wrong, but I don't think even the biggest one in this book is quite as large, what do you think?"

To his credit Burt barely blinked, he took the book that Kurt was passing to him with the hand that had inconspicuously petted the poster, and carried on it the new scent that was quickly becoming important to to Kurt.

Burt's eyes glimmered for a moment, almost assuming a reptilian pupil, that returned normal in less than a blink of an eye. He hummed making a show of looking between the book and Kurt and then nodded "Indeed you're right son"

Then he turned to Madam Tibideaux and asked "Are those all the dimensions you can accommodate?"

She hummed thinking throughly. She was clearly trying to decide whether the two men in front of her were serious in their affirmation, or if they were toying with her, in the end she decided to answer neutrally "That is the top rage that we can accommodate on school properties. We do have though contacts of other friendly places where accommodation could be found. But I'm afraid then that the school would not be able to provide for the costs of such option. It would be exactly as if Kurt was an off campus student, while if instead he could manage to stay within school properties, that expense would be taken care by the school"

Kurt raised an eyebrow and tilted his head asking innocently "But weren't you the one saying just now that I was supposed to feel comfortable and able to relax in my shift's natural size?”

And with that Madam Tibideaux knew she had lost any chance to actually have Kurt under the school's watchful control. She sighed internally and nodded "You're correct, in that case let me offer you the list of agencies that will know exactly what to offer you and be discreet about it if you mention that you're going to be a Nyada's student."

Burt raised an eyebrow and questioned "And will those report back to you and tell you which place we might end up renting?"

Madam Tibideaux smiled intrigued and then shook her head "No, they will only report how many of their special heritage friendly places have available, nothing more."

Both Kurt and Burt nodded pleased at the news, then Burt collected the list then said "Guess we are all good then?"

Madam Tibideaux nodded and stood up soon followed by the two men "Can you gentlemen find your way out or shall I take you back to the entrance?"

Burt smiled and said swiftly "I'm sure we can manage to find our way out, thank you so much for your time. It has been a pleasure"

Once out, Burt looked at his son and asked "So are we going to check the places now and try to see if we'd get a good deal?"

Kurt looked surprised, "You know that if we do that I'll be in here probably from the beginning of the summer?"

Burt nodded "I know son, point is you have already shown me you can deal with most of the issues that might came out. Mind you kiddo, I don't really want to push you out of the house, but I also know you are ready to fly away from the nest, and that you'll do wonderfully"

Kurt hugged his dad and said in his ear "Then can we please do it now and see if we can land a place already?"

To their surprise their search didn't last long. On the second name on the list had exactly what felt like home to Kurt, it was a big empty loft in Bushwick, it was a top floor with private access to the roof.

It required quite some work and care, in fact the agent showed it only because it was the biggest they had available, but warned them it was very much a rundown property that probably wouldn't suit the needs of the younger man.

However, when they walked into it, Burt saw just how enamoured Kurt was of the place…

Kurt was striding through the whole space with a sure footing, touching the walls every so often, and looking like he could already see what the place would be like, rather than how it currently was.

So Burt asked all business like "Is there a rent to own option for this place?"

The agent looked surprised and then checked twice on her phone "Actually, could you give me a moment there's something I need to double check"

Burt nodded and the lady went to the very opposite end of the open space. Kurt was checking on the state of the bathroom, finding it in perfect conditions, clearly a recent renovation.

Both Burt and Kurt tried to not overhear the rather frantic call the agent was having, but it was sort of difficult when her voice sounded crystal clear in their ears

“Are you sure that number is correct? Yes, yes I know, and yes I know that those were the exact words but… I know, look it’s just weird I… Yes, of course, of course I didn’t mean to be disrespectful. Yes sir, yes I’ll talk to them, I’ll let them know and bring them back to the office to sign the papers… Yes Sir”

Kurt at that point had stopped running around the place and returned to his father’s side.

The agent then returned to them with an embarrassed smile and said with some hesitancy “To answer your question sir, yes there is the option of rent to own, but you see, it’s something that the owner would like to discuss at the agency, if you’re really interested, you know so you could talk things through.”

Both Burt and Kurt looked at each other and then nodded. The ride to the agency was silent, the agent clearly wasn't that comfortable, but neither men felt the inclination of starting some small talks just to ease the tension in the car.

Once they reached the office the owner of the agency came out to greet them with a big smile.

Kurt was quickly starting to pick up that everyone who felt more whole,this far had ended up being somehow connected to the supernatural, a world he was still growing accustomed to.

Burt was met with a firm handshake and a smile, when it came to Kurt's turn something tingled in his mind and without really knowing why, Kurt returned the offered handshake with a smile of his own as he said "Kurt Hummel, Ser Leonids, a pleasure to meet you"

And to the agent’s surprise, the owner of the agency smiled extremely pleased. The British Ser Lionel Leonids, had been living in the states for little over four decades, he never lost the birthright to his title, but he also never advertised or even used it. So Kurt, in all honesty, shouldn't have been able to known about such detail, even less knowing to use it.

And if someone had asked later on, Kurt himself wouldn't have been able to pinpoint exactly what made him say that.

However, that was all the proof Lionel needed to exclaim "I'm so glad you've finally arrived. Come in, come in, let's clear up all the pesky legal details and set up to the conditions...”

Burt was pretty surprised by it all, and when they all sat down, Lionel asked to Kurt "So tell me have you already met many of your future classmates?"

Kurt blinked and then shook his head "Just three, two of which I could have done without, but James sounded like a good friend to have and he seemed friendly enough with me"

Lionel dug a little more, evidently both curious and in search of something in particular "And does your friend also have a last name"

Kurt looked straight into the older man eyes, trying to gauge his intentions. Instead of answering like he felt slightly compelled to, he offered a smile of his own and replied gently

"Of course he has one, but I don't see how that would be important, or even relevant to me signing a lease for the loft in Bushwick.”

If Kurt was honest with himself, he thought he would have received the stinky eye for offering such a borderline rude answer. Burt for sure was looking at him like he was torn between being proud and wanting to scold him.

To everyone's surprise Lionel laughed pleased "Well done boy. I was worried for a minute that you'd be too soft for New York, but you'll feel right at home here. You've chosen one of the best places to build a nest in. And it will come to serve you well. Here's my offer, I'll give you one year of lease in your name, so you can built your credit score. In one year time you'll return and let me know if you want to keep the lease as it is or if you've found someone else to be added as co owner.”

Burt frowned at the insinuation, while Kurt found himself both curious and intrigued by the notion, Lionel continues as if he hadn’t taken notice of the two men reactions.

“If you have found someone, I'll give you a further year of lease so you’ll both will have better credit score, and then it's going to be officially yours, with the rest of the payments to be paid in monthly instalments until you have reached the whole sum, or until you gathered the whole amount needed to finish buying it off. How does this sound?"

Burt raised an eyebrow the incredulous snort in his words barely concealed "A little too good to be truth in my opinion..."

Lionel smiled and nodded "It's not an offer I would have done to anyone else. Let's put all our cards down on the table, shall we? "

He waited until first Burt and then Kurt nodded their agreement and then Lionel continued

"We're all dragons in here, and from the still settling scent I can get from young Kurt here he had most likely already scent marked the loft as his territory"

Burt raised an eyebrow thinking about it and then nodded slowly "I suppose that was what he was doing. I didn't realise that."

Kurt blushed especially as soon as Lionel smiled and asked again "And weren't you doing that while holding something precious? Already trying to picture where it would be the best place to hang it, so you could see it from every angle of the loft and get comfort from it?"

Kurt instinctively wrapped his arms around his bag making sure it was close and the poster inside was still safely there.

Lionel just chuckled at the gesture and raised his arm in surrender "Peace young one peace. It was not an attack, I was merely pointing out that I already know this happened because in my bloodline there was a strong affinity for the foresight. I knew there was going to be a young strong couple that would settle in my city, and who will need help to have a nest worthy of their position and of the work they were going to do for our community. I didn't have any names, or dates only, few exact details, All I had to do was be there at the right time waiting for them. So I settle down and waited. And now you're here..."

Kurt fund himself purring softly in agreement, it was a very soft and low sound that made Burt look at his son with tenderness, and a little bit of fear, seeing his son so ready to take over and live his life as an adult standing on his own.

Lionel continued "So do you find my terms agreeable?"

Kurt nodded happily, his mind flying already back to the loft, and the promise and potential it held.

Lionel chuckled and took out the papers, Burt asked to see them first and Kurt didn't mind his dad's interference at all. It felt like it was going to be one of the last things his dad would be able to do for him.

After all the highs and lows of the day it took a surprisingly short amount of time to set everything up. The lease would start from July, allowing Kurt a whole summer to work on the loft and to make a home out of it.

Lionel promised to have the loft cleaned and fixed up into working condition with a neutral coat of paint so Kurt could decide to decorate as he pleased without having to wait for the paint to dry.

Once they returned back to Lima, with the promise that Kurt could drop by the agency on July first and pick up the keys of his new home, the first thing they did was talk with both Carole and Finn about how the interview was not something offered and available for everyone. They explained that it was a special scholarship open to only to a limited number of candidates, and it was better not let people know that Kurt had been offered it.

Kurt actually took his brother to the side and asked earnestly "In fact could we please not mention at school that I've got in? I rather not have to hear Rachel complaining on how unfair it was that I could get in without doing all the ‘hard work’ she had to do to convince Madam Tibideaux to let her in... Is that ok with you?"

Finn looked almost relieved "Yes please, no offence lil bro but I really don't want to hear her moaning and groaning about that all the time. It's going to be difficult enough if I don't get any letters from New York..."

At that Kurt looked worried and asked "I'm not the one to judge, you know I've wanted out of here since forever, but is that what you really want?"

Finn just shrugged "Isn't it too late now to think about that?"

Kurt shook his head "It's never too late. Just please consider thinking and searching for something that you enjoy doing, and not something that could support Rachel's dreams and fits her fantasies..."

Finn looked like he had swallowed a stone "You don't think we'd survive New York do you?"

Kurt bit his lower lip and asked softly "what answer do you want to hear?"

Finn looked up and asked worried "What answers do you have?"

Kurt started listing and counting on his fingers "The one meant for comfort that’s not necessarily truthful, the brutally honest unadulterated truth, and the one where your worried brother tries to give you an honest opinion without being too rough on you."

Finn looked up and asked in an almost child like manner "Can I have brother answer then?"

Kurt gently patted Finn's shoulder and invited him to sit down on his chair while Kurt himself sat on the nearby stool

"I think that Rachel is very focused on reaching her own goal, uncaring of what are the costs she and the people around her have to pay. I think that you are a sweet guy who wouldn't really mind the midwest way of life of getting married right out of high school, and get a job to take care of the family you’re building."

Finn was nodding along glowing at the praises, and the Kurt squeezed Finn's hand gently "And I think Rachel is not really mature enough to have the kind of relationship where both people make compromises and meet each other in the middle.”

A confused look started to form on Finn’s face as he listened, as if there was something he didn’t quite understand or figured out. Kurt still continued talking.

“That is the kind of relationship you deserve. One in which you are and your partner are equal, a relationship where your desires and dreams are just as important as your partner's"

Finn frowned confused and then showing an hindsight not as rare as it might have seemed, he said "But your relationship with Blaine wasn't like that, you always did what he wanted. Just like I do with Rachel…"

Kurt smiled sadly and nodded "You're right it wasn’t like that, and that's precisely why I ended things with Blaine. It was not the kind of relationship I wanted or deserved, so I got out of it."

Finn nodded looking lost in thoughts. Kurt gently patted his back and mechanically Finn raised from the chair and went back to his own room.

Graduation came and passed, Blaine was still under the illusion that Kurt would come around, despite the fact that Kurt had made sure to prepare and return to the boy, a box full of all the stuff borrowed, gifted or in any way connected to Blaine. ~End of Part 2~ Next

[awkwardnessandbaseball]

Come in From the Cold

Surprise, @natascha-remi-ronin​! I’m your Captain Swan Secret Santa!

I hope you enjoy this fic I wrote you :)

Special thanks to @cssecretsanta for organizing this whole event!

AO3

“You know, you’re supposed to use a piece of last year’s yule log to light this year’s. It protects the house from evil spirits.”

Emma nearly smacked her head on the top of the fireplace as she turned around.

“It’s not a yule log, it’s just a regular log in a regular fire,” she rolled her eyes.

“Semantics.”

She playfully shoved Killian out of her way as she stood.

“Well, I didn’t save any firewood from the Christmas party last year, so we’ll have to make do. I suppose I should beware of black cats crossing my path today, too?”

“I mean, you should always beware of black cats walking directly in your path, Duckling.”

Emma was well aware of Killian’s tendency towards superstitions. He didn’t leave his house on Friday the 13th, he didn’t walk under ladders, and he always did that weird thing with salt whenever it spilled. He was one of David’s quirkier friends, but she loved him all the same.

He, of course, didn’t know just how much she loved him. Or rather, in what way.

Killian still thought of her as his best friend’s little sister. He ruffled her hair, teased her relentlessly, and still occasionally called her ‘Duckling’, an unfortunate nickname that had followed her since her obsession with The Ugly Duckling as an eight-year-old. When the neighborhood kids had started using it against her, David and Killian had stepped in and made it a friendly nickname, one she secretly loved hearing. Even now, as an adult.

“Are you coming caroling with us, Duckling?” Killian followed Emma into the kitchen.

“You’re going to drag me along either way, I don’t know why you bother asking.”

“Someday you’ll agree to go willingly, and I won’t have to hold your hand the whole way.”

Not a chance, Emma thought to herself as she blushed just a bit.

“I saved you some cookie batter. Go shove a spoon in your face so you don’t have to bother me anymore,” Emma scolded him gently.

“You really should have led with cookie batter,” he pressed a kiss to her cheek and went to find a spoon.

“This is gonna be the year. I can feel it.” Mary Margaret appeared at Emma’s side, whispering.

“You say that every year.”

“And every year, you find a reason to leave early, and every year, Killian is disappointed for the entire evening afterwards. This year, stick around. Please?”

“I think you’re exaggerating Killian’s level of disappointment when it comes to my presence, or lack thereof.”

Mary Margaret simply hummed in response.

There was a clatter behind them as Killian tossed the bowl and the spoon into the sink.

“I’ve finished the chocolate chip.”

“That’s David’s favorite!” Emma swatted his arm.

“I know,” and there was that grin. The one that made Emma’s insides do somersaults and her legs go all gooey. Emma was not a gooey, lovey-dovey person. But Killian Jones did something to her – had done for half her life. He brought out a side of her that thought maybe, just maybe, sometimes life did bring you happy endings and romance and fairy tales.

Of course, all of that would only be true if he’d stop looking at her as the same kid she’d been when they’d met, so long ago she couldn’t even remember. Killian had been a staple in her life in her earliest memories, ones of David showing her around the elementary school, showing her how to get from her kindergarten classroom to his third grade one. And while David had held her right hand, Killian had held her left.

The Nolans had adopted her when she was in the middle of kindergarten. And though things at home were comfortable, and she rarely wanted for anything, the kids at school were cruel. Where Ruth, Robert, and David provided Emma with a home, hugs, praise, and love, her classmates reminded her daily that someone hadn’t wanted her.

“Where are your real parents, Ugly Duckling?”

“Why don’t you go back to your real family?”

And every time Emma left her lunch period crying – from age five and up until high school – she went and found David and Killian, and one of them held her and protected her, while the other went and told those bullies exactly who they were messing with.

It was right after high school when Killian started to look less like a bonus sibling and more like…well, a real human adult man. He’d taken to the sea, to rowing and sailing and surfing and nearly anything else you could possibly do on the water. The rowing especially had done…something to his physique that Emma particularly appreciated.

After his older brother died – killed in action while serving in the Navy – Killian grew out his hair and stopped shaving regularly. That was also when the superstitions began, after Liam’s unit had left port on February 2nd, despite the superstitions against leaving for any voyage on Candlemas. He disappeared for months at a time, at first, but he always came home in time for Christmas.

Ten years later, he always made sure to be the first one through the door for Christmas dinner, whether he’d been away for months or he’d just seen them all the day before.

“It’s a blessing for the home if the first person who visits during Christmas is a black haired man,” he’d wink when Emma answered the door in her pajamas, barely awake and hair askew.

“No one else will be here for at least four hours, Killian. Can’t you be the first person to visit…later?”

“Can’t take that chance, Duckling. With Ruth and Robert gone, I’ve got to make sure this house stays blessed for you, don’t I?”

And then he’d make her hot chocolate and put on Christmas movies. And Emma knew, somewhere deep down, that he also wanted to make sure that she didn’t spend one second of Christmas alone. And that he didn’t particularly want to spend any of it alone either.

Eventually, David and Mary Margaret and Regina and Robin would show up, and sometimes Ruby came and she always had a different date on her arm than she had the year before. And they always teased Emma and Killian about what the could have possibly done alone together for four entire hours when the house was still such a mess and none of the food was cooked. And Killian would roll his eyes and Emma would blush because she, of course, was dying to do some of the things that they were insinuating that she was doing with Killian Jones.

But that was a part of the tradition and Emma looked forward to it every single year.

After dinner, Killian waited until everyone had had just the right amount of liquor – enough to feel silly, not enough to feel tired – and then he’d yell out about how it was time to go caroling.

And since Emma lived in the same house she’d grown up in, David wanting to build his own castle for himself and Mary Margaret when Ruth and Robert had passed away, they caroled at the same houses that they’d been caroling and trick-or-treating at since they were small enough to believe in Santa Claus.

And this year was no different. Emma had just brought out the second batch of cookies – snickerdoodle – when Killian decided it was time.

“What’s the lineup, Jones?” Regina asked, just the tiniest bit of a slur to her voice.

“Jingle Bells, Rudolph, Have Yourself a Merry Little Christmas…” Killian began counting on his fingers.

“We’re saving that one for Ruby’s grandmother, right? It’s her favorite.” Emma pointed out.

“Yes, Duckling, I’m well aware of my audience, thank you.”

Emma stuck out her tongue.

Thirty minutes later, they were all bundled up, a few more shots of rum were gone, and they were ready to sing to the whole street.

Emma complained about the cold and the songs and the cheesiness of it all, and Killian grabbed her hand, hooked it through his elbow, and dragged her along anyway.

When they reached Marco’s house, singing O Holy Night, Emma noticed a small bit of mistletoe hanging on the porch. It was really more above David and Mary Margaret, but if Emma stretched just a bit to the right, it’d be above her shoulder, sort of, and she was already hooked to Killian’s arm, so…

“Oh look, David, mistletoe!”

Mary Margaret had seen it first, was already kissing David before Emma could step under it and act as though she hadn’t seen it before. She knew Killian would kiss her, and she knew it was probably ridiculous and childish to want that, but he was so superstitious and you kind of had to kiss under the mistletoe for luck or something, right?

They moved onto the next house.

It was nearly 10PM when they got to the Rabbit Hole. They ended their caroling session there every year, and Emma never lasted more than twenty minutes. The warmth of the rum was gone, but it had left its weariness behind. There was a chill straight through to her bones from being outside for so long. She just wanted the warmth of her own bed.

“Stay, Emma. Please.” Mary Margaret begged her. And Emma wanted to give in, but she couldn’t give herself some sort of false hope that Killian would do something differently if she were there, couldn’t set herself up for that disappointment.

Instead, Emma said her goodbyes, saving Killian for last.

“I wish you’d stay for once, Duckling.” His eyes looked sad. Maybe Mary Margaret hadn’t been totally off base.

“I’m tired, Killian.”

“One more round?”

He looked at her with his patented puppy dog eyes, biting his lip, one eyebrow raised.

How the hell was she supposed to say no?

“One.” She said firmly.

His face broke out in a grin, and Mary Margaret laughed, covering it with a cough.

One more round of drinks turned into two, and then three, and before Emma knew it, she was out until 2AM on a night she’d planned to be in bed by 11. The bar closed down and they all waited together for cabs and Ubers, huddled together for warmth.

“Should we share a cab?” Killian asked her. He lived two streets away from her, an easy distance for either of them to walk if the driver only wanted to stop once.

“Sure,” and Emma would lie later and say her face was red from the rum and the cold, and not at all from the excitement of sharing a backseat with someone she’d known her entire life.

Christmas was bringing out her embarrassingly romantic side.

She nearly fell asleep on his shoulder in the backseat of the cab, and he sat silently, the quietest she’d ever known him to be.

“You up, Duckling? We’re home,” he whispered in her ear.

He coaxed her out of the car gently, letting her lean on him as they walked up the driveway. He walked her to the door, pausing as if he had some important message to deliver. The look in his eyes – all nerves and a bit of liquid courage – woke her up as she scrambled to find her keys.

“I hung some decorations out here this morning before I knocked,” he said.

“Decorations?” she mumbled, desperately digging through her purse for those damn keys, her fingers already growing numb from the cold.

“Well, one. A singular decoration.”

“What are you talking about, Killian?” She couldn’t hide the frustration in her voice, still struggling to rummage through her mess of a bag.

“Dammit, Emma, just look up!”

She’d found her keys as he yelled, but she dropped them to the ground when she looked up and found mistletoe hanging from her porchlight.

She opened her mouth to question…something, to ask what he was doing hanging mistletoe on her porch, but before she could get the question out, he was kissing her.

It was everything she’d imagined it would be, except they were drunk and their teeth were clicking together and their lips were cold and her fingers were numb so she couldn’t grab his hair the way she wanted to.

“It’s bad luck not to do that,” he said against her neck.

“Is that why you hung it there in the first place?” And there was a tiny voice in Emma’s head that wanted to question all of this, couldn’t understand why Killian Jones was suddenly kissing her on her front porch after Christmas dinner. But the larger part of her brain smacked that tiny part down and kissed him again.

“I had to find some way to kiss you, didn’t I?” He grinned against her mouth.

“Do you wanna come inside and…finish off the snickerdoodles?”

Killian reached up and grabbed the mistletoe before following her inside. She eyed him questioningly.

“Just in case I need to kiss you again.”

[chocomintdrops]

Chapter five!!

Chapter five: Kenny’s feelings

Craig: Did you find it honey?

Tweek: Yes!

Stan and Kyle confused: Wait, what??

Craig: Tweek forget the bee costume in Token’s house so I ask him to bring it back today.

Tweek shows the costume to the boys, they feel ashamed for that they think of Tweek before.

Tweek: I bring my camera too, so we can take some pictures.

Craig: Great honey. Let’s go.

Tweek: Bye guys…again.

Craig flip the boys again and close the door.

Stan: Godamnit!

Kyle: Calm down dude, he isn’t telling anyone.

Stan: You’re right…So what we do now?

Kyle: I don’t know, wanna play video games?

Stan: Yeah, let’s go dude.

They walk smiling to Stan’s place.

Inside the house, Tweek asks:

Tweek: That they wanted?

Craig: Nothing I care about.

Tweek: Alright them… Did you already put the pirate costume on Stripe?

Craig: Yes, is my favorite.

Tweek: Mine too.

The couple smile and start taking pictures.

When the night falls, every kid was already on they own houses, Kyle don’t want search for answers anymore, he want to accept and live with the new situation, maybe, he thinks, Eric will forget him for a little time; but Stan don’t give up yet, he really need some answers.

The boys now only see each other again on Monday’s morning in the bus stop. Stan and Kyle was already on the usual spot when they see Eric and Kenny walking in their direction together holding hands, still they arrive they on spot and stop.

Stan angry: Can you two NOT do this?

Eric: What Stan?

Stan: Holding hands like this.

Eric: What is your problem Stan, you’re too afraid to hold Kyle hands and need to attack Kenny and me so you can feel better?

Kyle decides end the fight before gets bigger, he just want to everything be like before all this drama.

Kyle putting himself between the two boys: We don’t need to fight for this, dude.

Kenny: (Yeah dude, why you acting like this?)

Cartman feels betray by Kenny, for him side with Kyle

Stan calming down: Sorry guys, I shouldn’t say that.

Eric: You better be sorry.

Kyle: Now can we just have a normal Monday morning please?

The bus arrived, the boys get in, Eric and Kenny sit together, Butters notice it. Usually Eric sits with him.

Eric and Kenny enters on the school together but they separate after get in the classroom.

Stan and Kyle act normally for all day. Craig and those guys avoid The boys, except for Clyde, since nobody involved him on the drama, he still talk and sit with The boys on lunch time along with Butters.

After the class ends, Kenny notice Cartman exited a little earlier. He get back to his house wondering why he did that.

Getting in home Kenny tired, leaves her backpack on the couch and go to the kitchen to drink some water. He notices that Karen isn’t around. His mother is washing some dishes on the sink and Kevin is eating a waffle, sited on the table.

Kenny: (Mom, did you see Karen?)

Carol: Ah your friend invite her to play so she I let she go to his house.

Kenny: (Friend??)

Carol: Yes, the fat one.

Kenny visibly worried: (Cartman???)

Carol: Yes, I believe is that one.

Kenny runs off the house, Carol didn’t understand why he run like that.

Carol: Kenny? Where are you going?

Kenny runs the fasters he can run, he enters in Cartman house without even knock first, he goes directly to the backyard. He found Cartman and Karen having a tea party with Karen’s doll sit next to her.

Eric still not noticing his boyfriend: Do you want more tea Karen? I can ask my mom to make some cookies too.

Karen: Oh, I will love some cookies.

Kenny seems relieved to see his sister is safe, but now he wants kill Cartman for taking his sister like that.

Karen finally notice his brother and run to him.

Karen: Kenny, you came too, you will gonna have tea with us?

Kenny hugging his sister: (Yes, Karen but I need my dress first.)

Kenny: (Cartman, can you please help me?)

Cartman know how angry Kenny is, but accept go with him.

Eric: Of course Keenny.

The boys leave and go directly to Kenny place. They don’t talk. When they finally are in Kenny’s room, Cartman has his neck grabbed by Kenny and is pushed against the wall.

Kenny: (Wtf are you doing with my sister in your house?)

Eric: Stop Kenny, you are hurting me.

Kenny pushing Cartman: (Answer me!)

Eric: We are just having a tea party is not a big deal!

Kenny let Cartman go, Eric cough a little.

Kenny: (Why you doing this before telling me anything?)

Cartman: Because you are a totally psycho about your sister, I knew you never let me get close to her.

Kenny: (Leave Karen alone!)

Cartman: I just trying to be friend with her dude, you can stay and see.

Kenny calm down he know he over react about this situation. Is funny how all the four boys over react so easily.

Kenny: (Ok, I will.)

Cartman angry: So let’s go, asshole.

Kenny open his closet and grabs his princess dress, Cartman waits impatiently for Kenny get ready.

Eric: Hurry up princess.

Princess Kenny with a soft voice: (I’m ready now dear.)

Kenny always seems to change his personality completed while being Princess Kenny and Cartman decided respect that.

Now back on the tea party, they see Karen playing with the doll.

Karen: Ah, princess you came for the tea party.

Princess Kenny: (Yes, Karen we can start now.)

They sit on the table again, P. Kenny in front of Karen and Eric on the head side of the table. Eric serves tea for the princess.

Eric: Do you enjoy some sugar with your tea my princess?

Princess Kenny: (Of course darling.)

Eric put two spoons of sugar on Princess Kenny’s tea and mix.

Eric: There you go Princess.

Princess Kenny: (Thank you darling.)

She tries the tea while Cartman serves Karen as well.

Cartman: Now Karen the princess will explain why we having this tea party today.

Kenny didn’t planning anything, but know what about Eric was saying.

Princess Kenny standing up and cleaning her throw: Karen, my dear, me and this gentlemen are dating. Please don’t be afraid of him.

Karen: I’m not afraid anymore princess, he was nice to me.

Princess Kenny: Very well Karen, just remember this is a royal secret and anyone should be tell about this.

Karen: Yes princess, I will not tell anyone about it.

Princess Kenny: So the tea party can proceed.

She sits again and continue to play, they keep playing still start to get dark and she decided was the time to bring Karen back to home.

Earlier, back in the end of school, Stan and Kyle walk together to they homes.

Stan: All this is making me so confused.

Kyle: Try not to think about it dude, nothing really change after all.

Stan: Yeah, but I can get why Kenny is into guys now.

Kyle: Yeah I know, maybe he is just pan or bi.

Stan: You are right.

Stan: But I still don’t get one thing.

Kyle: What dude?

Stan: How kiss a man feels like.

Kyle choked: Really dude?

Stan: Yes, all this things are making me so confused. If I also bi? Did you ever make that question?

Kyle: I don’t know dude, I never think too much about it.

Stan: Maybe I should kiss a guy and find out?

Kyle: Wow! really?

Stan: At least I will know.

Kyle: That is true.

Stan: Well that is my house…see you tomorrow dude.

Kyle: See you later dude.

While walk to his on house Kyle question himself, he now can stop thinking about Stan words. They are close friends or he always felt something more for him? He could answer that.

At night, Karen is awake for a sound in her room.

Karen: Guardian angel, is that you?

Someone is on the door.

Mysterion: Yes Karen.

Karen: I wasn’t expecting see you today Guardian Angel.

Mysterion: I hear that you make a new friend today.

Karen: That was my brother’s friend. He made a tea party for me.

Mysterion: Was he nice to you Karen?

Karen: Very nice guardian angel, he even date my brother, they said that is a royal secret but I know that I can tell to you guardian angel.

Mysterion: That’s right Karen, but you should they our parents that.

Karen: I will not tell, Guardian Angel.

Mysterion: That is good Karen, now you should go back to sleep.

Karen: All right Guardian Angel, good night.

Mysterion: Good night Karen.

He disappear from the room.

Back to his own room, Kenny receive a text message from Kyle and vanish from his room once again.

End of chapter five.

[thesundanceghost]

i’m ready to break, you’re ready to bend

for @eggo-my-leggo, thanks for motivating me ely :)

read on ao3

tw: implied/referenced child abuse

Steve walked down the road quickly.  His eyes were burning, but he wasn’t sure how much of that was from the cold.  It was freezing, and he tucked his hands under his armpits before the fell off.  Winter in Indiana was always shitty, but in the evening it was even worse.

“Why the hell couldn’t you have grabbed your jacket, Harrington?” he muttered angrily at himself under his breath.

His teeth were chattering, which unfortunately only worsened the soreness in his jaw.  His cheek stung bitterly, and he tried not to think about it, since it only brought hot tears to his eyes.  He dragged a hand over his face and continued stomping through the cold, empty streets until he spotted his destination.

The phone booth was still freezing, only a couple of degrees warmer than the outside, but he pushed through.  He grabbed some quarters out of his back pocket-- he was so thankful he actually got in the habit of keeping change on him in case of emergencies-- and inserted them into the slot.  He grabbed the phone off the hook and pressed it to his ear, grateful for his hair which kept the cold plastic of the phone away from his skin.  

He dialed the number slowly, not because he had to think about it but because his hands were so cold it felt like he was wearing six pairs of layered gloves.  As he waited, Steve looked at his reflection in the glass.  His cheek was still bright red, which didn’t surprise him, and there the skin on his jaw looked a bit darker that he was used to.  He pressed his fingers to it softly and winced as pain shot through his skull.  That was definitely going to bruise.

He stared at himself for a bit longer, feeling his throat tighten up as his mind raced over the events of that evening.  He took a shaky breath which felt like he was breathing through cotton balls.

“Hi, Wheeler residence,” Mike’s young bored voice called out over the line, and Steve cleared his throat, standing up a bit straighter.

“Hey kid, is your sister there?”  Steve asked, trying to keep his voice normal.

Mike sighed before yelling out to Nancy on the other end of the call.  Steve waited patiently until a familiar voice rang out.

“Steve?” His girlfriend asked, and he couldn’t help but relax slightly at her voice.

“Hey Nance,” he responded, trying to keep it as casual as possible  “What’re you doing right now?”

“We’re having game night with the Henderson’s.  I told you that, didn’t I?” She asked slowly.

Steve closed his eyes, instantly upset with himself for forgetting.  He hated making Nancy feel like he didn’t listen to her.  “Yeah, no, sorry, I just forgot.” He paused, wondering if he should just give up, but he pressed on desperately.  “So that’s gonna go late tonight?”

“You want to come over, don’t you?” She asked, though it wasn’t much of a question.  She sounded unimpressed, but also a bit amused, so he got the feeling she wasn’t actually upset.  Steve stayed quiet.  “Steve, there’s no way I can get out of this.  They’re totally going to notice if I sneak upstairs. I’m sorry, alright?”

Nancy did sound sorry, and there was no way he could hold it against her, but some irrational part of him couldn’t help but feel incredibly unwanted at that moment.  She has better things to do that give a shit about you, a voice sneered at him from the back of his mind.

He pressed his forehead against the cold glass of the phone booth, squeezing his eyes shut in frustration as he pushed the angry thoughts aside.  His eyes felt hot as the tears that had been threatening to spill over bubbled up to the surface. She’s my girlfriend, Steve reminded himself.  That’s it.  She doesn’t owe me anything.  Stop being dramatic.

He cleared his throat and blinked rapidly before responding, but he words still sounded a bit strangled.  “Right.  Sorry, I shouldn’t have called.”

Nancy didn’t say anything for a second, and Steve wondered momentarily if she’d hung up.  “Hey are you okay?  You sound a bit odd.”

“I’m great, Nance,” he responded a bit too quickly.  His voice broke slightly in the middle of the sentence, and he winced, knowing there was no way she didn’t pick up on that.

“Steve, if something’s wrong--” she started, her voice soft but serious, and fuck he needed to stop this before he started crying in a phone booth.

“Nancy, nothing’s wrong,” he said with a chuckle that somehow managed to sound normal.  “I just miss you, is all.”

There was a silence before Nancy spoke up again.  “Alright.  Well, I’ll see you Monday, right?  At school?"

“Of course,” he responded easily, already a bit distracted as he looked around outside to see where he’d head next.

“I miss you too, Steve,” she suddenly said, and that brought Steve directly back to the conversation.  He smiled, easily able to picture the blush she was wearing from her voice.

“Bye Nance,” he answered back, finding it a bit easier to breathe after that.

Steve heard the dial tone take over the call and he set the phone back on the hook. He walked out of the phone booth and glanced around at the streets, not sure what his Plan B was quite yet.  It had started snowing again in the time he was on the phone, a soft sprinkle of snowflakes drifting down.  He pulled the sleeves of his sweater down over his hands and jammed them into his pockets before they got too cold.

There was a Waffle House that was only about a ten-minute walk away, but he doubted they would let him sit in there without ordering anything and he definitely hadn’t grabbed his wallet either.

“Nice going, man,” he muttered to himself.  He was thankful it was late enough that everyone was at home, because he wasn’t sure how sane he looked at the moment.

He probably could’ve walked to the Wheeler’s anyway- not many families just turn someone away when it’s freezing cold and they’ve got a swollen cheek.  But he could just picture the shocked and sympathetic faces in his mind, and that was enough to set him off the idea.  Even Nancy would pity him, and he really didn’t want that.  He loved her to death, and would probably die for her in a heartbeat (he’d already gotten too close to testing that theory), but she wouldn’t understand.

Without realizing, he’d started walking down the road nearing the forest.  He let his feet lead him to his destination without any conscious thought.  Deep down, he knew where he was going, but he pushed it out of his head for about ten minutes before he stared down the driveway to the old house on the edge of the woods.

What the hell are you doing? A voice that sounded suspiciously like Carol’s shouted at him from the back of his mind, but he pushed it away and made his way to the front door.  There was music playing from inside, something loud that sounded vaguely familiar but nothing he could place a finger on.  He knocked twice before he could change his mind. As he waited for the door to open, he focused all his energy on not freezing to death.

The music cut off and then the door swung open, and suddenly Steve was staring into the face of Jonathan Byers.

Jonathan froze as soon as he saw him like he’d seen a ghost.  He clearly hadn’t expected company, and was dressed in sweatpants and a T-shirt underneath an old flannel.  They stared at each other for a long moment before Jonathan’s eyes dropped to Steve’s cheek, which was still stinging slightly.  Steve shuddered under the attention, but luckily it was cold enough that it probably wasn’t obvious.

Finally Steve cleared his throat.  "You gonna let me in, or watch me freeze to death?"

Wordlessly, Jonathan opened the door wider and stepped aside so Steve could slip past him.  It was warm in the house, and Steve couldn’t help the shiver of relief that went through him as the cold slowly began to slip off of him.

Jonathan hadn’t stopped staring at him, and that was way too much for Steve to handle at that moment, so he spoke up.  “Is your family here?”

“No,” Jonathan replied.  His voice was hoarse, like he hadn’t spoken much recently.  “My mom’s on a date.  Will is at the Sinclair’s.”

“Are you busy?” Steve asked.  Part of him hoped that Jonathan would say yes, that he was swamped with homework or about to fall asleep.  Then Steve could at least say he tried, but Jonathan just shook his head.

Steve nodded in acknowledgement.  Jonathan looked at his cheek again, and the intensity in his eyes made Steve uncomfortable, but he didn’t know what to say.

“You can sit down if you want,” Jonathan offered after a moment, sounding hesitant.

Grateful for an excuse to do something other than stand there, Steve sat on the couch and peeled off his jacket, which was cold and wet from the snow.  Jonathan sat at the edge of the armchair across from him, looking uncomfortable and out of place even in his own home.  Steve got the feeling it was his fault.

Steve had held maybe two conversations with Jonathan since the whole...thing, and one of those was the incredibly awkward attempt at a normal apology.  Jonathan had kept telling him he didn’t have to, saying that they were “even”, but Steve didn’t believe that for a second.  They’d left things better than they were, but there was no way that anyone would call them friends.  In fact, if it weren’t for Nancy, they probably would’ve drifted apart completely.

So what the hell was he doing here?

“Do you want to, I don’t know, talk about it?” Jonathan asked with a shrug, breaking the careful silence.  He tripped over his words, clearly not sure of the protocol here.

“Nope,” Steve responded without hesitation.  There was no way he was going to talk about his feelings with Jonathan freaking Byers.

He leaned back in his seat and glanced around the house.  He realized with a start that this was the first time he’d been back in the Byers’ home since November.  It was cleaner than he remembered, and the hole in the wall had been fixed, although it was still bare and stood out against the rest of the wall.  He stared at the ceiling, remembering vividly the image of a monster falling out of it.  It gave him the creeps just thinking about it, and he wondered how Jonathan could spend all his time here.  Since November, Steve hadn’t gotten close to his swimming pool, and he hadn’t even seen what had happened there.  Jonathan was a hell of a lot braver than him, that was for sure.

“It wasn’t Tommy, was it?” Jonathan suddenly asked, and Steve redirected his attention.  He wasn’t looking at Steve.  His head was ducked down, and he was wringing his hands anxiously.  Steve frowned, and Jonathan glanced up to meet his eyes, shrugging.  “I just… figure you’d look a lot worse if you got in a fight with Tommy H.”

Steve raised his eyebrows.  “Maybe I won,” he shot back, though he wasn’t sure why he even bothered.

Jonathan gave a small snort, as if the very idea of Steve winning in a fight was ridiculous.  Steve got the feeling he should have been offended, but he really couldn’t find the energy, so he turned back to staring at the ceiling.

“Was it your dad?” Jonathan asked, his voice quieter.

Steve froze at the question.  No, he wanted to yell in response, but he suddenly couldn’t remember how to form the word.

“That’s a nice picture!” He said instead, nodding at a framed photograph on the counter.  It was a nice picture-- Joyce Byers had her arms wrapped tightly around Will’s stomach, and her face was tucked in his neck, no doubt peppering her youngest child with kisses as he laughed.  “Looks like it should be on a Christmas card.”

Jonathan didn’t say anything for a moment and just looked at the picture.  His eyes were softer as he looked at it.  “I don’t think we’re really a Christmas card kind of family.”

Steve snorted, and the sound brought Jonathan’s eyes back to him.  “You should be glad for that,” Steve commented.  “We have to do one every year, and it’s shit.  This year was particularly terrible.  My mom sat in this ugly and uncomfortable chair, and me and my dad stood behind her in suits, and we all try to smile like we don’t all wish we were anywhere but there.  I looked like some kind of uptight senator with nice hair.”

Jonathan looked down, but Steve caught the beginning of a smile on his lips.  It occurred to him that he’d never made Jonathan smile before, and the realization made him feel strangely proud at that moment.

“Why do you do it, if everyone hates it?” He asked after a moment.“Because we…” Steve faded off, frowning.  He didn’t really have an answer to that.  It was just the way things were.  “We just do.  If we didn’t, it’d be like the end of the world.  Hell, it could be like a Mad Max apocalyptic wasteland, and my mom would still prioritize those goddamn cards.  Hell if I know why.”

As he spoke, Steve began to think about how vastly different his life was from Jonathan’s.  It was almost as if him, a Harrington, sitting on the Byers’ couch was plain abnormal, like a housecat walking through the middle of Antarctica.  He looked at Jonathan, and got the strange feeling that he was thinking the exact same thing.

They drifted back into silence, which Steve didn’t mind.  He rubbed at his jaw, which was actually growing more painful with time.  He opened and closed his mouth several times, feeling as the joint groaned with the movement and made a small popping sound.

He frowned.  If this didn’t fix itself soon, making out with Nancy was going to be a bitch.

Jonathan suddenly stood up and walked briskly into the kitchen.  Steve stared after him, wondering how he could have pissed him off in such short a time.  Whatever, Steve thought, It’s not like you wanted to talk to him about it.  That wasn’t why he was here.  He came here to… to what?  Get away from the cold?

Sitting here on the Byers’ couch completely alone with a bruised jaw… he was starting to miss the snow.

All of a sudden Jonathan reentered the room, now holding a small bowl with a spoon stuck inside.  He handed it to Steve without explanation, and he looked down to see--

“Ice cream?” Steve asked, feeling bewildered.

Jonathan kept frowning, but Steve realized now it was out of uncertainty rather than anger.  “For your jaw,” he explained gruffly.  “Soft cold foods help.”

Steve blinked.  He hadn’t meant to be obvious before, but Jonathan must’ve noticed.  It was… thoughtful.  “You have ice cream in January?”  He heard himself say, and he’d never wanted to punch himself more.

Jonathan frowned, immediately curling in on himself, and Steve wanted to shout at him to stop it.  “Yeah, well, Will wanted some… you don’t have to eat it if you don’t want to.”

He reached out to take it back, and Steve immediately took a huge spoonful of the vanilla ice cream and popped it into his mouth possessively.  “Didn’t say I didn’t want it,” he said around the food.

Jonathan blinked at him like he had three heads before turning and sitting back down.  Steve swallowed the ice cream, the sweetness of it waking him up a bit.  He watched as the younger boy picked at the moth holes in his shirt.

“You ready for school on Monday?” Steve asked.  He was never good at staying quiet.  

Jonathan looked up.  “Not really,” he responded honestly.  There was an awkward pause.  “You?”

“Better to be stuck at school that stuck at home,” Steve responded without thinking.  The answer was a bit more honest than he’d been going for.  Jonathan seemed to be taken by surprise as well.  “I mean, I’ve got friends at school, you know.”

Steve looked down at his ice cream before he could see the other boy’s reaction.  They both knew perfectly well that the only real friend Steve had left was Nancy, and he’d still seen plenty of her over the holidays.

“Are you going to join any clubs or anything?  Gotta build up that resume, right?” Steve tried to joke.

Jonathan looked at him with distaste, though he figured it was more because of the stupid question.  “Yeah,” he drawled sarcastically.  “I’m going to join a club.  That’s what I’m gonna do.”

Steve snorted at the sarcasm in amusement.  He hadn’t been exposed to much of Jonathan’s sense of humor, but it took him by surprise every time, and he found it hilarious.  “Yeah, I get that.  I was thinking about going out for baseball again, but I’m not so sure anymore.”

Not since I used a baseball bat to knock out an eight foot monster from a parallel universe, he didn’t say, but Jonathan nodded like he understood.

“I hate baseball,” Jonathan said suddenly with obvious distaste.  After a second he looked up guiltily.  “Sorry, I mean, it’s not that bad…”

Steve laughed.  “It’s okay.  I mean, I love baseball, sure, but I can handle one person not liking it.”

Jonathan relaxed.  “Sorry,” he said again anyways.  He looked at Steve, a weirdly sad look in his eyes.  “It was always my dad’s sport.”

Well then. That changed the mood.

Steve looked down at the bowl of ice cream again.  The silence that came over them was the most uncomfortable one yet.  He didn’t know what to say. (That wasn’t true.  He knew exactly what to say.  He just didn’t know how to say it.)

He spared a subtle glance towards Jonathan.  He was lost in thought, and judging by the look on his face, they weren’t good thoughts.  The image sent a jolt of guilt and discomfort through Steve.  He wanted to fix this.

“You were right, before,” Steve found himself saying.  He looked back down at the ice cream like a life line.  “It was my dad.”

He waited for a gasp, a whine of pity, anything, but he was met with silence.  He looked at Jonathan, who was watching him carefully.  He didn’t look surprised, and for some reason that upset Steve.

“But you know, I deserved it.  I was egging him on and totally asking for it.  I mean, come on, you know better than anyone that sometimes I need to get punched,” Steve continued, hoping the joke would lighten the mood, but it served the opposite effect.

Jonathan flinched, his frown deepening.  Bad joke, Harrington, he thought to himself, regretting his words.  He honestly didn’t even know why he cared what Jonathan Byers thought of his dad, but for some reason he needed to set things straight.

“He’s not a bad guy,” Steve tried again.

“Sure,” Jonathan replied monotonously.  Steve couldn’t detect any hidden implications in that response.  Hell, he couldn’t detect anything from that response.  So naturally he plowed on.

“Well maybe he’s an asshole sometimes, but like, he’s my dad.  And he’s just a bit strict and stuff sometimes but he still loves me.  It’s not like he hits me all the time, you know, he’s a dick, sure, but he’s not abusive or whatever, he’s not like--”

Steve stopped short, the words freezing on his tongue.

“He’s not like my dad,” Jonathan finished for him.  He didn’t look angry, like Steve thought he’d be.

It wasn’t like it was a secret.  The first time Steve had ever laid eyes on Jonathan in elementary school, he remembered seeing the bruise around his wrist, like someone had grabbed him a bit too roughly.  The bruises hadn’t stopped there.  Everyone in town knew about Lonnie Byers, even if there were mixed reactions about him.  Some people thought he was an abusive asshole, some of them thought he did the best he could with his sons, and some of them thought he was a goddamned hero just for being able to get out of Hawkins.  Steve’s parents had nothing but distaste for Lonnie Byers, but it had more to do with his image and presentation of himself than his parenting style.

Steve didn’t know what to say, so he just shrugged.  He couldn’t meet Jonathan’s eyes, so he looked back at the melting ice cream instead, pushing it around with his spoon.  He wondered if he should apologize, but he kept quiet, not wanting to step on any more toes.  He’d already gotten kicked out of one house that night.  He didn’t want to make it two.

Steve shivered at the thought of going back out in the snow.  Jonathan must’ve noticed, because he reached over to grab a coat on the chair and tossed it to Steve without question. Steve caught it, his quick reflexes coming in handy, and stared at the denim jacket. Jonathan shrugged, looking unconcerned with the fact that he just offered to let Steve wear his clothes.

Well, Steve thought as he set the ice cream down and shrugged on the jacket, if it doesn’t bother him, it can’t hurt.  Steve was lankier than Jonathan, but he remembered the sleeves being too long on the younger boy, so it fit without too much trouble.  It was warm, and Steve couldn’t help but pull it tight around him, waiting for the warmth to seep into his bones.

“What’d you do, then?” Jonathan asked, leaning forward on his elbows.  He nodded towards Steve’s cheek.  He sounded curious, but not judgmental, and Steve appreciated it.

He smirked, though it felt a bit bitter.  “I told him that he should start bringing Julia to family dinners.  She’s the woman he’s been screwing for like five years now.”

Jonathan blinked, clearly surprised at the information.  “He didn’t know you knew about her?”

Despite himself, Steve chuckled at that.  “Nah, he knows. I mean, everyone knows, just nobody ever talks about it.  Including me, usually."

“Oh."

Steve flopped down on the couch, continuing with the story.  “Yeah, I said that if she came over, then maybe my dad would actually start showing up for dinner, since he can’t seem to stay away from her.  And that if he was serious about me being out of control and how I need to be kept in line more, than having two moms would probably get the job done.  He didn’t seem to like that very much.”

Jonathan let out a small chuckle, and Steve grinned at him, ignoring the pain in his jaw.  He was surprised at how much he liked making Jonathan laugh.  It felt like an accomplishment, being able to put a smile on Jonathan Byers’ face.

There was more to the story, but Steve stopped there.  He didn’t need to talk about the yelling, the shouts about sons respecting fathers and the replies about husbands respecting wives.  That part of the story was too depressing, and Steve was nothing if not a good entertainer.

“Hey, what were you listening to before I go here?” Steve asked, the thought suddenly occurring to him.

Jonathan glanced over at the speakers, blushing like he hadn’t known Steve had heard.  “Bowie,” he mumbled in answer.

Steve hummed and nodded.  That made sense.  He didn’t actively listen to Bowie, but he’s heard him on the radio from time to time.  “Do you want to keep listening?”

Jonathan looked at him suspiciously, like he was trying to figure out if it was a trick or not, and Steve made sure to keep his expression genuine.  He got the feeling Jonathan was just starting to let his guard down, and he didn’t want to mess that up.

Satisfied with whatever he found, Jonathan crossed to the stereo and pushed the tape back in, waiting to sit back down until the music began to play.  An electric guitar rang out through the small room and Steve waited patiently for the lyrics to start.

It wasn’t his kind of music, but as he listened to it, he couldn’t help but bob his head in time with the beat and hum along to the strange melody.  He could see why Jonathan listened to this stuff.  It was meant to be played at top volume, to be screamed at the top of your lungs, and Steve felt like he could resonate with that emotion.

It was a long song, but Steve didn’t get bored, taking in every guitar solo and verse with excitement.  When it ended and gave way to a slower song, he looked over at Jonathan.

“Could we, uh,” Steve floundered.  “Could we play that again?”

Jonathan smiled briefly but obediently went to take out the tape and manually rewind it.  Thirty seconds later, the song started again.  Steve closed his eyes and listened to the melody wash over him again, humming along to the parts he remembered.

When it ended for the second time, Steve didn’t have to ask before Jonathan was rewinding the tape again.  This time, Steve watched Jonathan, who was mouthing along to the words and moving his hands like he was playing on the drums.  Steve didn’t know any words besides “teenage wildlife,” but every time Bowie sang it, Steve made sure to sing it unison, much to Jonathan’s apparent delight.

The song ended for the third time, and this time Jonathan grabbed a tape from the table.  “Trust me, you’ll like this,” Jonathan said confidently as he stuck it in the stereo and waited for it to play.

Steve did like it—it was softer, but still rebellious with a good melody and awesome guitar phrases, and he felt exhilarated just listening to it.  He grinned through the whole thing.  It made his jaw ache, but he didn’t care.  It was the best he’d felt all night.

They went through countless tapes, mostly of Bowie, but there were other punk bands interspersed, some Steve like more than others. He really did like listening to the music, but after a while, he began to just watch Jonathan. Jonathan stayed thoughtful through the whole thing, closing his eyes and listening to each song like it was the best thing he’d ever heard.  He wasn’t sure why, but something about it made Steve want to take a picture of him.

After they finished another tape, Steve glanced at the clock on the wall, which now read 12:21.  It must've been later than he'd thought when he'd stormed out of his house.

“What time is your mom getting back?” he asked the other boy.

Jonathan glanced at the clock and frowned, like he had forgotten time was passing.  “She didn’t say really.  Probably soon.”

Steve sat forward and reached for his shoes, which he’d kicked off sometime during the mini concert.  “I should probably get home.  Before my mom sends out an APB.”

He said the last part with a crooked smile, even though it was a stupid joke.  It was past midnight—his parents were fast asleep whether he was home or not.

“Are you sure?” Jonathan asked hesitantly.  “You could stay here, if… if you wanted.”

Steve shook his head.  He appreciated the offer, but he didn't think he could sleep in that house without having nightmares.  Not that he was going to tell Jonathan that.  “Nah, I’ll be fine.  Besides, I know how to sneak in my own house, and my dad has work early tomorrow.  If I’m lucky, I can avoid a lecture about tonight until…” he tilted his head in thought.  “Probably Monday.”

Jonathan nodded, and they both got to their feet.  Steve suddenly remembered the weight of the jacket on his shoulders, and he glanced down at it, unsure.

“You can keep it,” Jonathan said, and Steve’s eyes flew to his.  Jonathan frowned, reddening slightly.  “For the walk home, I mean.  It’s cold out there. I’d feel like a shitty host if I let you freeze out there.  You can give it back at school."

Steve nodded and tucked his hands into the pockets, grateful for the warmth.  He made his way to the door, and Jonathan followed behind him.  He paused, not sure what to say.

“Hey, thanks man,” Steve said, dropping his hand from where he had reached for the doorknob.  Jonathan startled, like Steve had just said something insanely ridiculous.  Maybe he had.

“I didn’t do anything,” the boy responded, scratching awkwardly at his jaw.

“You’re a good guy,” Steve said with a shrug.  He paused, not sure what to say.  “I can see why she likes you.”

Jonathan’s eyes jumped to his, and a blush came over his cheeks.  It was subtle, but he was so pale that any coloring stood out starkly.  Steve just smirked and clapped him on the shoulder before walking outside.  It was still freezing, but at least the snow had stopped.  He glanced back to see Jonathan standing in the doorway, watching him closely.  They shared one last awkward smile before Steve strolled leisurely down the road, humming a Bowie song to break to eerie silence around him.

[ravenforce]

Hot Hydra 2.0

Prompt: This is part two of Hot Hydra as requested by some of you. There’s really no prompt, except for it to be fluffy.

Pairing: Carol Danvers x Reader, Natasha Romanoff x Reader, Carol Danvers x Reader x Natasha Romanoff

Word Count: 3168

Warning/s: FLUFF.

A/N: You liked it, you asked for it, I wrote it. Brush your teeth after you read it. If there are mistakes that escapes me, I apologize. Hope you guys like it. If you haven’t read Hot Hydra yet, you can find it here.

***

After defeating Thanos and Apocalypse with the combined forces of the Avengers and the Mutant Underground, it took quite a while before you saw Carol and Natasha again. You’re out having dinner with the Strucker kids when you did. While it’s currently winter you’re seated on the outdoor eating area of the restaurant when recently resurrected Wanda saw you from across the street. She looked so satisfied having been able to drag Carol, Natasha, and Agent Hill to the mall.

“Hey (Y/N)! Hey Lauren! Andy!” she greeted cheerfully. You guess if you’re erased from existence, you’d probably be obnoxiously chirpy as well after being revived. The Strucker kids smiled and wave back at the Avengers. Even though you’ve worked with them before, certain awe still remains that the Earth’s mightiest heroes acknowledge your presence.

“Retail therapy?” you teased Wanda but looking directly to Carol and Natasha.

“Yes! Best therapy ever!” Wanda exclaimed you chuckled. You would guess from their faces that Carol and Nat would rather be elsewhere than the mall but they couldn’t begrudge the others.

“What about you guys? What brought you out and about at this weather?” Agent Hill asked.

“Oh! We’re run off before Thunderbird can kick (Y/N) ass for flying all the way to Atlantic City to get tacos,” Andy explained. Everyone laughed.

“Tacos you requested,” you said rolling your eyes before laughing with everyone else.

You’re the hottest HYDRA experiment I’ve ever seen.

Wanda choked on her water and successfully spraying Agent Hill in the process, which earned more laughter from the group. Maria quickly wiped her face, while you patted down Wanda’s back.

“Are you okay?” you asked. Wanda just nodded and hurriedly made an excuse about Vision needing her. She walked away, dragging Agent Hill with her. Carol and Natasha hanged back for a few seconds.

“It’s really nice seeing you today (Y/N). Totally highlight of our day,” Carol said. Natasha nodded.

“Maybe when you’re not busy we can get tacos too,” Natasha said. You smiled at both of them who looks uncharacteristically nervous.

“Sure, you got my number,” you said before they turned and jog towards Wanda and Maria. When they reached the two they have a giant smile on their faces, while Wanda’s sporting a deep scowl.

“Glad to know you had your priorities in order while we were dead,” Agent Hill said. Carol and Nat looked baffled.

“You’re both buying me a drink, maybe five, to wash away the image of both of you ravaging (Y/N) at the medical bay in my head,” Wanda said. Agent Hill laughed so hard, they had to stop at the side of the street. Carol and Nat beet red in embarrassment.

***

A week after your encounter with Carol and Natasha, both of them asked you to meet at the compound. Agent Hill met you and ushered you to their private runway where Natasha is waiting for you at the mouth of an engine-ready quinjet.

“24 hours Romanoff. Also if Nick finds out, I’ll tell him you threatened me,” Agent Hill told Natasha seriously but with a trace of a smirk on her lips. Nat just nodded at her.

“Have fun (Y/N),” Agent Hill said before walking away.

Natasha led you inside and closed the door of the quinjet. Carol is in-charge of flying you tonight, to where they just wouldn’t tell. The conversation was light and easy between the three of you; Carol told the story of her time with the Kree, Nat told you about her life as a Russian spy, and you told them the little things you can remember of your life before Apocalypse turned you into the Archangel.

Four hours later, the three of you are alighting the quinjet. When Natasha opened the cargo door, you were greeted by a Japanese man wearing SHIELD uniform.

“Welcome to Tokyo, Agent Romanoff,” he greeted politely. “Captain Danvers,” he continued before looking at you. He smiled politely at you.

“(Y/N),” you introduced yourself.

He shook your hand, “of course, welcome to Tokyo Archangel,” he said.

Natasha walked ahead of you and Carol to speak to the man. You took the opportunity to turn towards Carol, you didn’t have to ask the question. Carol can read right through you.

“You’ll see,” she assured you with a mischievous smile on her face.

Just before you can say anything, a grey Maserati Quattro Forte idled next to you. When the window rolled down, Natasha spoke, “get your beautiful butts in. I’m hungry!”

Natasha drove expertly around the street of Tokyo to a hotel called Trunk Hotel to check in on the Dining Suite and park the car. Natasha informed you that you’ll be going around Shibuya by foot from there onwards. You surmised this is not Natasha’s first time in Tokyo as she happily points out landmarks. She stopped in front of a shop called Ichiban, there’s a short line ahead but Natasha assured you it’s worth the wait.

“We went to Tokyo to eat Ramen?” you asked flabbergasted.

“Yes, we heard from a certain Strucker that it’s your favorite,” Carol explained.

“So we decided where better to have our first date,” Natasha blurted out. When she realized what she just said a look of panic crossed her face. Carol is stock still and eerily silent next to you.

“Well, Fury will definitely have both your asses if he finds out you took the quinjet to take me on a date,” you said laughing. Both woman visibly relaxes at that and started laughing with you.

Carol feeling bold and bored wrapped her arm around your neck conveniently as you stand in front of her. She caught you off guard causing you to wobble on the step you’re standing on a little, thankfully Natasha held your hand. You tried to hide your blush but by the smug look on Nat’s face, you’re pretty sure you’re failing spectacularly.

The ramen was divine but more than anything sitting there next to Natasha and Carol made it all the more special. After eating ramen, Carol and Natasha insisted on walking around Shibuya and Shinjuku where you were able to buy cute keychains for the Mutant Underground kids. The three of you are back in New York not more than 18 hours after.

“Thank you for an amazing first date,” you said giving them both a kiss on the cheek when they dropped you off at the Mutant Underground HQ. Dates became frequent after that.

***

Three months after you got back from your date in Tokyo, you have already moved out of the HQ and into your own apartment downtown. In the span of three months, you’ve gone out with both Carol and Natasha more than you can count. You were never really bothered by the lack of label between the three of you; you like them, they like you and that was enough until Andy asked if both of them are your girlfriend now and you didn’t know how to answer.

“Do you know if they’re seeing other people?” Andy asked, earning an elbow from his sister.

You gaped at them. You never really considered the thought, which actually makes sense since they’re not officially your girlfriends it means they can see other people. It bothered you all morning, so when you sat at the table where Carol and Natasha were waiting for you for lunch with a deep frown and furrowed brow they were worried. They tried to ask what’s wrong but you were adamant that nothing is amiss. You were fairly quiet over lunch as well, which worries both of them further; you’re one of the best conversationalists they’ve ever met.

“Okay enough, tell us what’s wrong? Did we do something to upset you?” Natasha asked while waiting for the bill. She held your eyes while Carol silently chewed on her bottom lip, which is very distracting to be honest.

“Am I your girlfriend?” you blurted out. You figured it’s best to rip the bandage sooner than later.

“What?” both of them asked.

“Are you two seeing anyone else?” you continued without answering either of them. Thank goodness your table is in the outdoor dining area at the back of the restaurant because you can’t sit still. You stood up and started pacing in front of your table.

“Which is totally okay if you are, I just want to know where I stand in whatever this is we're doing,” you continued. When you look back at them, they’re both sporting a soft look on their face.

"I think we should discuss this in private,” Carol said before she’s practically dragging you to your apartment, Natasha hot on your heel.

When you arrived at your apartment, Carol pushed you against Natasha who’s standing behind you and is kissing you before you can even fathom what’s happening. Natasha wiped your hair on one side and is planting soft kisses on your shoulder. Before things can get out of hand, Carol pulled away and leaned her forehead against you.

“There’s no one else I want in this universe than both of you,” Carol confessed sincerely.

Natasha held you against her tighter. “If that still didn’t answer your question, then yes, you’re our girlfriend silly,” she said teasingly against your shoulder. You turned your head so she can kiss you, and she did.

***

Six months after your date in Tokyo, Carol and Natasha are basically living in your apartment too. You’re definitely not complaining, no; you love having them both with you. You love walking in at the end of the day with both of them trying to make dinner. You love having a long soak at your expansive tub, which Natasha insisted you need, after a long day of saving the world. You love quiet dinner of takeouts and Netflix and most of all, you love waking up next to both of them.

But your apartment isn’t built for three people, especially your walk-in closet. You decided to breach the topic to your girlfriends at dinner. When you came home after spending the day with Thunderbird and Blink you found both of them huddled in front of Natasha’s computer. When you came close enough to see the screen, you saw what they’re looking at.

“What’s wrong with my apartment?” you asked suddenly.

Sneaking up at your super-powered, and super badass agent girlfriends’ a really bad idea. Carol and Natasha whipped around so fast, you only had a second to retract you wings for cover before Natasha is throwing her ninja stars at you. When they realized it was you, they just rolled their eyes before sitting on the couch. Carol patted the space next to her for you to cuddle in, which you instantly obliged while Natasha continued searching the internet.

“Nothing is wrong with your place but it’s really not built for three people, don’t you think?” Carol asked after planting a kiss to your cheeks.

“You’re right. We need one big room as our walk-in closet, our bedroom, living room, kitchen, and maybe a gym,” you said.

“A gym? You don’t like working out,” Natasha said looking up from her internet search. You laughed because it’s true. Being a mutant has its perks.

“I don’t but you two do and I like watching you two work out,” you said suggestively wiggling your eyebrows before standing and walking to the shower. Carol and Natasha watched you walk away.

“What a goof,” Natasha said.

“Our goof,” Carol answered before leaning in closer to Nat to continue searching for your new home.

***

Eight months after your date in Tokyo, you officially moved in at your cozy new place at Christopher Street in the West Village. You just walked the Struckers’ out when you found both your girlfriends standing in the middle of your living room taking it in. You stood right next to Natasha.

“This is our home,” Nat said in no one in particular.

That night you were the last one to fall asleep after you made love to both of them in your new bedroom. Carol and Natasha looked absolutely beautiful and peaceful sleeping on both sides of you. First, you traced the outline of Carol’s spine as she lay flat on her chest, you scooted a little closer and gave her shoulder a kiss.

“I love you, Carol,” you whispered before tugging the sheet to cover her back. Then you turned towards Natasha. You traced your fingers lightly at the bridge of her nose down to her lips before you pressed a soft kiss on her chin.

“I love you, Nat,” you whispered before getting comfortable between them and finally falling asleep. You were out like a light soon after, that’s why you didn’t see both your girlfriends opening their eyes and smiling at you.

***

Twelve months after your date in Tokyo, Natasha and Carol have successfully enlisted you as a SHIELD agent as well. You have settled in nicely and has already developed a routine. Your girlfriends wake up every day without fail at exactly 5 in the morning. Usually, they’d go for a run around the neighborhood for an hour, and bring home some bear claws from the bakeshop around the corner to wake you up or if they’re feeling like it they would cook pancakes. You both agreed that showers should be done separately in the mornings or else you will all be late for work every day.

Then Natasha would drive all three of you in your shared 2018 Black Jeep Wrangler Rubicon to work. You’ll give them kisses before you exit the car because all of you has a badass reputation to uphold. Sometimes you really don’t see your girlfriends at work because Fury mostly gives you separate missions. Today though Fury told you he’ll be sending you, Carol, and Natasha on a mission to Tokyo. You didn’t think too much of it, international travel has been common for you after you become an agent.

The mission was fairly easy especially with the three of you working together. When you reported back to Fury, he asked you to stay put as the Japanese team performed a maintenance check on the quinjet. Natasha and Carol didn’t really mind.

“At least, we have time to unwind,” Carol said.

“Let’s go to an arcade,” you suggested. Carol perked up at the mention of an arcade. Natasha rolled her eyes playfully at both of you. Sometimes she swears she’s the eldest between the three of you.

“Fine but Ichiban after,” she agreed. There’s no protest from both you and Carol.

Finding an arcade in Shibuya isn’t a problem. Natasha joined in playing a few arcade games even. On the way to Ichiban, you found a working photo booth where Carol and Natasha happily indulged you to take a few pictures together. You’re skipping towards the restaurant ahead of your girlfriends, clearly distracted by the photos. When you looked back they’re standing a few feet away from you.

“What?” you asked.

“Marry us,” Carol said.

“What?!” you exclaimed, gaining some looks from the other customers waiting in line with you.

“Marry us,” Natasha repeated. Both of them crossing the gap between you in long strides. You would have laughed if not for the very serious face they’re both sportings. Shit, they’re serious, you thought.

“How?” you asked clearly confuse how they plan to pull this off.

“We don’t need a wedding. Natasha and I are ready to commit to spending the rest of our lives and fighting bad guys with you,” Carol said holding your hand. You looked at Natasha who looks at you earnestly.

“We love you (Y/N). We want no one else to adventure with than you,” Nat confirmed.

You tugged both of them in a hug while chanting yes against their hair. They pulled away and gave you both a kiss on the cheeks.

“I love you both of you too,” you said.  

“So do we get rings or that’s cliche?” you teased after having your ramen dinner.

“I have an idea,” Natasha said.

***

When you landed back in New York, Maria was waiting for the three of you at the tarmac.

“How’s the anniversary?” Maria asked before giving you a hug.

“Best anniversary so far,” you answered beaming from ear to ear.

“Good. Now meet me at my office for debriefing after you get change,” Fury said as he approached.

You were the last to meet with Fury when you walked in at the living room of the compound most of the team is arguing what movie to watch. Carol and Natasha turned towards you when you entered the room but made no move to leave the conversation they’re having with Steve and Tony. So you decided to head to the kitchen and get yourself a drink instead.

You greeted Peter who stops mid-conversation with Wanda when he notices you.

“Hey (Y/N), nice tattoo,” he said, noticing the single red line tattoo that goes all the way around your right pinky finger.

“Hey, Carol and Natasha had the same tattoo,” Wanda said.

Yes because they’re my wives, you thought loud enough for Wanda to pick up on before walking out of the kitchen and towards your wives.

“Holy shit!” Wanda exclaimed loud enough for everyone to hear.

***

Note: Since I’m feeling extra today, here’s check the following links for visual inspo.

Imagined New Shared Place | 2018 Jeep Wrangler Rubicon | Red String of Fate Tattoo