#HE'S AN ICON HE'S THE MOMENT HE CONSUMES MY THOUGHTS WITH A SMUG LOOK ON HIS FACE AND I LET HIM DO IT BECAUSE IT'S AN HONOR HE'S EVEN HERE

[mixtapedoh]

charmer!! yoongi pics pls 🥺

yoongi you will always be the most attractive man ever, i said what i said and i will unabashedly say it again

ੈ✩‧₊ — charmer

appalled by the lack of mint yoongi in my saves, but also can you tell which hair style i think suits yoongi the most asdfghjhgfd

[rosaliepostsstuff]

Little steps (George Weasley x reader) | pt 3 - Awe

Pairing: George Weasley x reader, (hinted) OC x reader

Part 1 • Part 2

Word count: 3254

Summary: Y/N and George deal with everyone around them with a week left to the ball, and then the big moment comes

warnings:  probably cursing, but nothing worse

a/n: it’s long but I’m not sorry this time. Next part will most likely be huge too, because I don’t really feel like dividing it up more, but maybe I’ll have to?..

George closed the door to his dorm room behind him and paused for a second, leaning back on it. “How’s the schoolboy doing? Library air working wonders?” His brother looked up at him before going back to the ‘Which broomstick?’ issue Lee and him were huddled over. His reflex was to get back at Fred for that lazy jab, but he didn’t, too dazed to care. He came over to his bed and plopped down onto it.

“I asked Y/N to the ball.” Both his roommates snickered and looked up at him. When he didn’t continue, they looked at each, then back at George. “You did?” Asked Fred, to which George answered with a confirming  “mhmm”.

Now they were both laughing. “How loud did she laugh at you, mate?” said Lee between wheezes. “On a scale of Pince’s shushes” added Fred, trying to fake seriousness. George smirked looking at the roof of his four-poster “She agreed” he said trying not to be smug, the idea still odd to him.

“Sure she did. If you snatched Y/L/N as a date, then I’m running for Minister when we graduate.”

The same night, you were all showered, in your PJs. You were standing in your little section of the dorm room, slowly brushing your long, h/c hair, getting ready for bed. Hermione already tucked in with her book, the rest of your roommates still out and about, so you were just with your friend, in that comfortable silence.

“I have a date to the ball” you broke it. “Hmm?” Hermione got detached from her evening read. “Oh, yeah. So he finally got around to asking you?” You broke your gaze from your reflection to look at her. “Actually, it’s not Matt.” Hermione raised her brows and closed her book after marking her page, but did not interrupt. “George asked me.” You pressed your lips tight. “George?..” You nod. She sits up “Our George?” Nod. “George Weasley..?!” “Well what’s wrong with that?” You stop brushing your hair, voice tone still soft, but you got slightly defensive when it was so hard to believe. “No, no.. not wrong” she assured quickly. She was now fully sat up, pushed her covers off and swung her legs over the bed. “I – I guess I just.. didn’t realize the two of you talked? … Like that, I mean. You know, besides when we all hang out or we’re at the Burrow.” She was now examining the rug at her feet. You bit your lip and shrug, looking her in the eye.

As the end of term was getting closer, the time only seemed to speed up. You managed to finish the assignments you planned to do that time and tried to stay on top of the ones still coming up.

Week after your encounter with George were limited to the polite ’hi’ and small smiles across the table or the common room, when you caught each other’s eye, before looking away.

Matthew got around to asking you to the ball when you visited Hufflepuffs’ common room last the previous weekend. He wouldn’t bring that topic anymore.

You were sat on the couch, Matt’s long arm rested on the back of the couch behind you. Your friends were doing some kind of roast contest after a few butterbeers. You were laughing under your breath at them, your own bottle in hand. You felt his hand trace circles on your exposed upper arm – the fireplace in front of you and the faint amount of alcohol consumed enough to keep you warm. You looked up at him to see that his piercing eyes were studying your face. “Everyone in this castle seems to be talking about the ball” he said. “all the girls are freaking out.” accompanied by his iconic eye-roll, which earned your chuckle  “..are you excited, Y/N/N?” “For the ball? Of course.” you said, looking down at your lap. You started fiddling with the bottle in your hand, already knowing what’s about to come. “Will you be my date?” he said delicately poking your side with his free hand, his bottom lip caught between his lips in anticipation.

There was a week left till the end of the term. You were sat at the table with Hermione, who was pouring over her potions notes, Harry, reading Flying with the Cannons for the millionth time according to you, and Ron, who was  building a card castle out of his Exploding Snap cards, a novel in front of you. You were half listening to them bicker about schoolwork and Harrys lack of preparation before the second task of the tournament.

“Leave him alone, Hermione, he’s earned a bit of a break,” said Ron, and he placed the last two cards on top of the castle and the whole lot blew up, singeing his eyebrows. “Nice look, Ron… go well with your dress robes, that will.” It was Fred and George. They sat down at the table with you. “Ron, can we borrow Pigwidgeon?” George asked. “No, he’s off delivering a letter,” said Ron. “Why?” “Because George wants to invite him to the ball,” said Fred sarcastically. You kept your gaze fixed on the book and tried to hide how you twitched at that sentence, with the words ‘George’, ‘invite’ and ‘ball’ in it. “Because we want to send a letter, you stupid great prat,” said George. “Who d’you two keep writing to, eh?” said Ron. “Nose out, Ron, or I’ll burn that for you too,” said Fred, waving his wand threateningly. “So… you lot got dates for the ball yet?” he asked missing how you lifted your eyes from the book in front of you to George’s face for just two seconds, biting your bottom lip; his twin’s half-smile “Nope,” said Ron. “Well, you’d better hurry up, mate, or all the good ones will be gone,” said Fred. “Who’re you going with, then?” said Ron. “Angelina,” said Fred promptly, without a trace of embarrassment. “What?” said Ron, taken aback. “You’ve already asked her?” “Good point,” said Fred. He turned his head and called across the common room, “Oi! Angelina!” Angelina, who had been chatting with Alicia Spinnet near the fire, looked over at him. “What?” she called back. “Want to come to the ball with me?” Angelina gave Fred an appraising sort of look. “All right, then,” she said, and she turned back to Alicia and carried on chatting with a bit of a grin on her face. “There you go,” said Fred to Harry and Ron, “piece of cake.” “Well, I don’t suppose, Y/N..?” asked Ron quietly. You snorted without looking up. “Yeah, that’s what I thought…” Fred got to his feet, yawning, and said, “We’d better use a school owl then, George, come on…” They left. Ron stopped feeling his eyebrows and looked across the smoldering wreck of his card castle at Harry. “We should get a move on, you know… ask someone. He’s right. We don’t want to end up with a pair of trolls.” You looked up from your book now, and Hermione let out a sputter of indignation. “A pair of…  what, excuse me?” “Well — you know,” said Ron, shrugging. “I’d rather go alone than with — with Eloise Midgen, say.” “Her acne’s loads better lately — and she’s really nice!” “Her nose is off-center,” said Ron. “Oh I see,” Hermione said, bristling. “So basically, you’re going to take the best-looking girl who’ll have you, even if she’s completely horrible?” “Er — yeah, that sounds about right,” said Ron. “I’m going to bed,” Hermione snapped “you coming, Y/N?” You didn’t feel like going back to your book anyway, so you nodded and together you took off towards the girls’ dorm without another word.

As both Harry and Ron got rejected by the first girls they asked and the topic of Hermione’s mystery date came round you kept quiet, not because you didn’t know, but you wanted to see the look on their faces when they saw him next to her.

  One day during that last week, when afternoon lessons were over with, you decided to finish the chapter you weren’t able to the other evening. So there you were, lying on the couch, in the mostly quiet common room, as you heard multiple voices and laughs coming down the stairs to boys’ dorms. “I’ll believe it when I see it” said Lee, walking into the common room with Fred, George, Seamus and Dean. “Oi! Y/L/N! “ Seamus called over “Yes?..” you said without looking up “That true you’re going to the ball with Weasley?” You sat up, finally looking at the boys over the backrest “You dimwits got nothing better to do? Like last minute homework before the break?” “No” he said quickly, the boys still grinning, looking between each other. George was behind them, arms crossed at his chest, leaning back on one of the tables. “Well there’s lots of them, you’re gonna have to be more specific, dear” George looked at you, tilting his head to the side “Yeah, I am” “Seriously?! What’s he got, that I don’t?” asked Dean, pretending to be hurt “See - if you have to ask, you’ve got your answer, love.”

   December 25th, 1994

You stood in front of your great mirror, examining your appearance carefully. You were mentally checking all the steps of your preparations – make-up done, your hair done in a loose low-bun, delicate jewellery complimenting the dress you had on. Oh, that dress. Its colour worked with your hair and eyes beautifully, golden accents making sure you stood out, but not too overbearing. Your shoulders were exposed and the length of the dress was comfortable, so there were no accidental dance-related exposures, but short enough to accentuate your legs. Your feet were adorned with surprisingly comfortable heels, and you used just the right amount of perfume.

You kept wondering if there was something you could’ve forgotten. In that moment, when million thoughts a minute flooded your mind, you wondered if George had asked you, like many others, because you were popular and pretty. Then, you got worried if he even thought you were pretty at all. Glancing at the clock you concluded, you just did everything you could to live up to your reputation.

The entrance hall was already bustling with chatter, students talking to their friends and dates or still waiting for them.

George was standing with Fred and Lee, half-listening to their bickering. His hands slightly sweating in his pockets, he was subtly looking over everybody’s heads to try and find you, then glanced through the entrance to the Great Hall, checking for the third time already if you were perhaps waiting for him there.

His attention brought back to his friends after Lee mumbled a string of rather rude words. “Should I shake your hand or something, mate? Cause damn…” Said Lee directly to him. What was he talking about? Then George saw his twin stare at something behind him with his mouth slightly open. “You might wanna turn around, Georgie.”

Before that night, saying what he thought of you would’ve been difficult. He met for the first time when you were still just a kid. A friend of his brother, a fellow Gryffindor, who after your first year everybody was sure had a knack for heroics. He enjoyed his interactions with you, you weren’t quite like anyone else. Not always saying a whole lot, but when you did, it was on point and your comment only got more bold over the years. You were also popular in the school, especially after puberty hit, and you seemed to interact with people from all the houses. He couldn’t deny it, you were naturally beautiful. That used to be just a fact, irrelevant to his life.

At this very moment in time, as you were slowly making your way down the steps to the Entrance Hall, he couldn’t fathom why you would want to be his date.

Your eyes found him quickly, his tall figure standing out amongst the crowd. Your excitement and unfamiliar nervousness showing in a smile that could light up the darkest of times.

Your heart was hammering in your chest and you were begging the universe not to let you trip on those stairs, when you really couldn’t watch where you were going, your eyes glued to ones across the room. Damn, he looked good in those dress robes.

“Hi.” you said, still grinning, once you walked up close to him. “Hey..” he smiled at you, still feeling as if he was in some kind of limbo. “You look beautiful” he said sincerely, without much thought “Thank you” you almost whispered, looking down at your shoes and blushing a bit. You weren’t really good at taking sincere compliments. “You look real smart” you looked up at him. He was grinning and playfully ran a hand through his hair.

You were saved from trying to fill the silence, as it seemed that the champions had started to gather for their opening dance. “We should go inside.” you gestured towards the great hall with your head. He offered you his arm to take, which you did. As you made your way inside and stepped aside with everyone else, you didn’t let go, but tried to place that feeling. The feeling of being next to George.

As the two of you were dancing, that electric feeling didn’t leave you and you were enjoying George’s company and the comfort it brought you more than you even anticipated. An he was surprised with himself, how the tiniest of your reactions to his jokes, laughs or the most irrelevant comments encouraged him to just let go and be himself.

“I mean,  by now you should really just tattoo ‘Death threats welcome’ on your forehead.” he tapped his finger on your forehead “Haa-haa.. you’re the one who had a one-way snowball fight with You-Know-Who.” you replied, to which he scrunched up his eyebrows and looked at you in confusion.

The two of you were having a break from dancing, sat side to side at your table, butterbeer in front of you.

“Three years ago, we were all staying at Hogwarts for Christmas. You and Fred bewitched some snowballs to hit Quirrell on the back of his head, remember?” He nodded, smiling at the memory, but didn’t quite get where you were going just yet. “Well Qu-qu-quirrell turned out to be his number one fan, sharing a head with him, didn’t he?” George raised his eyebrows and you both laughed, leaning on each other as the realization dawned on him. “We’re on the hit-list too, then.”

You talked some more, of the events from the past you never shared your thoughts on, family, people from the school. Then you saw him, across the hall, looking at you.

“Do you mind if I go and catch up with some friends for a bit? I promise to come back.” “Yeah, sure.. of course.” George tried to sound casual. He joined some of his friends in a conversation and mentally scolded himself for feeling possessive of you when some tall Hufflepuff bloke kept smiling, standing so close to you. Or when he took you to dance.

 When you walked up to your best friends later, it didn’t go at all as intended. Before the ball you were anticipating Ron’s reaction to Hermione going with Victor Krum, just wanting to get back at him for being nasty. You didn’t expect him to be even nastier after finding out, as you were currently listening to their fight. Truth be told, Ron’s dumb accusations made you speechless at first, but it was getting out of hand. “Obvious, isn’t it? He’s Karkaroff’s student, isn’t he? He knows who you hang around with… He’s just trying to get closer to Harry — get inside information on him — or get near enough to jinx him —” “Would you listen to yourself?! Or have you gone bonkers sitting at the table, green with jealousy the whole night?!” you stepped in “Oh, what would you know about that? I’m surprised you noticed what I did tonight as you were having so much fun with my brother. What’s up with that, huh?! Were you planning on telling me about it?” “Okay, that does it!” Hermione grabbed your hand and pulled your speechless form out of their sight.

 When you eventually got back to him, George sensed something was off, but he didn’t feel in place to ask about it. He did the best he could in this situation – take your mind off of it. You were dancing, both your hands in his, and he did everything so over-the-top. Spinning you, then pulling you close to him. After a while, you were a giggling mess, enjoying the sound of his laughter, worries forgotten.

“All right Hogwarts, just a couple numbers left until this night is over, so make the most of it.” said the vocalist of the Weird Sisters, before a slow song came on.

You both froze, testing each other’s reaction, hands still together, though the grip a bit looser.

“Do you.. want to..?” he trailed of his question. “I mean, the ball is almost over, it would be a shame to just sit it out..” was the best answer you could gather up courage for. With that you let go of his hands to place hands delicately on his chest. You were looking at your feet, feeling as if looking up at his would be too intimate. His own hands went carefully to your waist, both of you testing the waters.

And you swayed like that, content with what you had, close to each other, but neither pulling the other in completely.

Being close felt like the forbidden fruit you took a single bite out of, but taking another one would be pushing your luck.

And then the music stopped. You joined in as the crowd clapped the band one last time, listened in silence as Dumbledore thanked everyone and bid you goodnight.

“Let’s let the crowd pass a bit, yeah?” you asked, and he squeezed your hand lightly and nodded.

You were walking back to the common room in silence. Almost comfortable silence. It was just such a shame the night was over, when it could go on forever.

“I had fun tonight, so I guess, thanks for that? I mean, I expected no less” you bumped his side with the little energy you had. “At your service, m’lady” he bowed his head with a charming smile “I had fun too”

Silence.

Before you knew it, you were in front of the Fat Lady. George told her the password and the both of you came through. You only stopped next to the stairs to the girls’ dorms.

“I really had a good time” you were stalling. “Me too”

You let go of his hand to face him properly, standing on the first step to be a little taller, to which he chuckled. Now, closer to his eye level, looking at him was truly intoxicating.

Tonight changed how you saw George. It showed you just how much you liked him as a human being and how well you got along. When you looked at each other, relaxed smile on his face, you looked at his lips and wanted to kiss them so bad.

But you had forbid yourself to jump head first.

You kissed him on the cheek. “Goodnight, Georgie.” you said softly, pulling away. “Night, Y/N..”

You walked up the stairs, leaving him dazed at the bottom.

Part 4

[kitkatopinions]

Accidentally deleted my Tyrian and Watts asks while I was trying to fix a mistake so... Sorry about that, everyone! Here they are! Tyrian and Watts for the RWBY character asks!

Let’s do Tyrian first, because I have less to say about him, I feel like.

My top three ships for the character

Tyrian/Watts. Dysfunctional villainous romance of the century, no one knows how they’ve managed to make it to their tenth anniversary without killing each other, including them. Tyrian/Salem is my second top ship for him. Major Bellatrix/Voldy vibes with this one, but I could see it. Tyrian/Hazel is my third ship for lack of options. Does this one make sense? No. But I can at least see Tyrian being super flirty and Hazel being endlessly tired, but never really stopping it. (Also I hate Hazel so much lol.)

My three least favorite ships for the character

Tyrian/Qrow sucks for me. Like... I kinda feel like two people fighting each other just gets shippers, which is fine and totally understandable. But for me, Tyrian poisoning Qrow and almost killing him and calling his beloved niece a bitch and then killing Clover is a big no from me, dog. On that note! Tyrian/Clover is also one big no from me, since Clover murdered him. And Tyrian/Ozpin is another really big no from me. Tyrian and his crazy Salem worship can stay five hundred and fifty feet away from my son.

My biggest criticism for the character

They went a little too much on the crazy in the fourth and fifth season and it made him feel annoying. Like, I don’t mind the Bellatrix vibes, but I do mind the movie version Bellatrix vibes, sometimes. It just got kinda annoying. I wish his crazy was always more on the dangerous side and less on the kooky side, but that’s just personal opinions.

My favorite thing about the character

The way people are so uncomfortable around him. Whenever Tyrian talks to Emerald or Mercury, he’s honestly freaky. Like both me and the characters are waiting for him to snap. That’s a great quality in a villain that we’re meant to hate or love to hate. He has a real presence and it’s enjoyable.

A headcanon I have about them

Tyrian doesn’t often try to act normal, but he can, and he’s got a great ‘respectable, cool guy’ act that’s actually a little reminiscent of Qrow or Clover. He’s even passed himself as a Huntsman here and there.

What I would change about them if I was making a re-write

More involvement in volumes 4 and 5, and I’d treat him a bit more seriously and make him a bit more dangerous. Maybe I’d have him wound a member of Team RNJR in his attack as well as poison Qrow (maybe give Jaune a reason to unlock his semblance in season 4 and in response to the pain of a member of his team. Also, his ‘Tyrian purple’ color should be more than just the color of his eyes. Like, how come so many RWBY characters season 4 and onward have such boring colors? I’d give Tyrian some strong purple and pink.

What I I think of their character allusion and what (if anything) I would change about it

Tyrian alludes to the animal fable ‘the Scorpion and the Frog,’ and that’s... really in name only, I think. A part of me wants to give them some kind of points for having Qrow work with him against Clover, only for Tyrian to kill Clover, which lines up with his ‘its just my nature’ scorpion stinging the frog so that they’ll both drown and die. But they didn’t mean for Qrow to really be wrong! They didn’t mean for the lesson to be ‘Qrow shouldn’t have trusted the poisonous villain’ it was ‘wowza does Qrow’s semblance hurt him. :( Too bad Clover got himself killed.’ Which makes the whole allusion kind of suck.

Now for Watts, the single best villain in my opinion.

My top three ships for the character

Tyrian/Watts. See above. This ship would be a dysfunctional mess, but it’d be a wild ride. Watts/Villain!Ironwood. I kind of hate this ship when it’s ‘fallen hero turned villain’ Ironwood. But if he actually had been written as a secret villain or obviously headed that way from the start, I can see him and Watts also being a dysfunctional mess of a wild ride ship, only with way more ‘evil power couple’ vibes than Tyrian and Watts would have. Also my favorite version of this features Watts having been the one to build Penny (maybe by stealing the plans from Pietro) and him and Ironwood raising a still bright and cheerful, still innocent and trusting, villain Penny who will attack to kill with a smile on her face and a ‘it was nice meeting you!’ And this is very weird and niche but Watts/Evil Stepsister (specifically the one with the sharp bangs and highlights.) Someone sent me an ask saying the Evil Stepmother and stepsisters should’ve been connected to Salem and gotten Cinder involved and I totally agree with this. I then started envisioning a world where the step sisters competed with Cinder and all three of them were raised in Salem’s circle. In this version of things, I could totally picture one of the step sisters having a romantic tension driven connection with Watts and the two of them subtly flirting sometimes (and bonding over their mutual hatred of Cinder.) I picked the sister with bangs for no real reason except that I like her look more.

My three least favorite ships for the character

Watts/Cinder. Watts thinks of her like a bratty little girl, and Cinder kills him. Watts/Lionheart. Kinda really hate this one because of how clearly Lionheart was terrified of him. Just a bit uncomfortable for me to see that in a relationship. Watts/Hero!Ironwood or Watts/HeroTurnedVillain/Ironwood. Sorry, but Ironwood in canon got such a bad, bad portrayal in season 8 and the end of season 7, and I just can’t help but blame Watts for quite a bit of it. I only like them as a ship if Ironwood is an antagonist from the start.

My biggest criticism for the character

They shouldn’t have killed him! He was one of Salem’s best followers and one of the best villains and it was such a big mistake to kill literally one of the only actual loyal followers. It threw off any character development for Cinder and it was a big mistake. I really wanted the Cinder / Watts / Neo team up to keep going! I’m so disappointed it got thrown away.

My favorite thing about the character

Watts is an entitled, petty bastard, and I think that’s so good for a villain that isn’t meant to be social commentary (because tbh, RWBY never should’ve tried to be social commentary.) Watts isn’t sympathetic, he’s an Atlas born and raised guy in a three piece suit, he’s posh, he’s upset because he wasn’t given exactly what he wanted. Most of the villains in RWBY are either victims of abuse, systemic oppression, or poverty, and that’s... Not fun in a show that’s never handled social commentary well and is about magical girls destroying Voldemort/Satan with the power of friendship (Ruby literally never says anything about Faunus rights iirc.) Watts is refreshing because he’s exactly the type of villain that you can expect in a show like what RWBY should’ve been, and he flourishes as that. Why would we be sympathetic to Watts when he’s just doing this all because he wasn’t picked first for his tech? Why would we feel soured towards conflicts with Watts and Team RWBY? He’s just a petty bastard being evil because he was snubbed. Why would we be frustrated that incredibly significant problems are being shoved to the side with Watts? He’s a fun villain, he’s not meant to be more, he’s not meant to make you emotionally invested only to then be gutted for it. You can hate to love him without it feeling bad. Maybe that’s why he’s just my favorite non-kid villain (other than Roman.)

A headcanon I have about them

Watts has been trying to build his own AI robot like Penny, in his spare time. He wanted it to be done in time to become a Maiden, but it wasn’t, and Salem gave that slot to Cinder and got after Watts for not contributing enough. He of course thought this was deeply unfair (especially after being made to contribute a lot to Cinder’s Beacon success without getting any credit for it.) And this just fueled his hatred of Cinder, his hatred of Pietro and Ironwood, and by extension, his hatred of Penny.

What I would change about them if I was making a re-write

I would keep him freaking alive and keep up the pair up he had going on with Cinder and Neo! But also I’d increase his relationships with Emerald, Mercury, Tyrian, Hazel... Just some more Salem’s Inner Circle moments to flesh out their characters. Other than that, I wouldn’t change much. He’s a pretty good character.

What I I think of their character allusion and what (if anything) I would change about it

Okay, I’ve talked about his character allusion in a very long post awhile ago, but I’m not scrolling down that far to tag it. To sum it up... I hate his allusion. XD I loved the Sherlock Holmes books and read most of them, and I didn’t realize he was supposed to allude to John Watson until I read someone else’s post saying so, and I started freaking out about how awful it was. Watts has so little in common with Watson, he’s essentially the anti-Watson. Which basically means he’s Sherlock Holmes, the opposite of Watson in almost every way, up to and including freaking faking his death which is one of the most iconic Sherlock Holmes thing ever. Watts is everything Sherlock Holmes is on his worst days, arrogant, callous, consumed with his projects, petty, smug, over the top - as well as being hyper intelligent and a genius who often just gets passed over. He has rivalries with his colleagues like Holmes did. And like I said, he faked his death, only to reveal himself to an old friend later on the cusp of carrying out a scheme. He’s evil Holmes! He has nothing to do with John Watson - caring, humble, down to earth, not brilliant like his friend but content to be ordinary and special because of his emotional depth and devoted heart, medical former doctor who spends quite a lot of time chronicling the successes of someone else because he’s content to live in the background. Don’t get me wrong, a ‘Watson’ character who is evil could work - Watson himself indulged in crime for the sake of Holmes sometimes in the original works and if he worshipped Salem or one of her followers and did everything for her while still being a more humble, more friendly, not brilliant person he could be good - but Watts is not that person. Even the gimmicks Watts is given are stupid and don’t make it obvious he’s Watson. Boy’s got a moustache and a revolver and they thought that’d be enough. Idk why they thought 'we’ll make him Watson’ when he’s clearly a Holmes! Also, he’s supposed to be ‘Watson if he’d met Moriarty instead of Holmes,’ and to that I say boo! Watson wouldn’t turn into a super genius just because he meets a different mastermind!

...That’s summing up my feelings, yeah. Because I have so many feelings about his warped, weird character allusion. If I was changing it, I’d just make him Holmes like I think he was clearly supposed to be.

[prouvaireafterdark]

Hi friend! Same anon who suggested the thigh riding fic here (still not over it, iconic). A change of pace - and if you’re comfortable writing about this subject matter - Alex and Michael getting super stoned. Michael brings a joint over to Alex’s, they haven’t smoked together since high school and lazily rub off against each other (too much cotton mouth to give head and not enough coordination to fuck) and it brings back a rush of warm and fond memories of doing the same when they were kids.

Hope you like! 😘

Also on AO3!

***

“Guess what I’ve got,” Michael says excitedly as he enters the kitchen and tosses his keys on the table.

He walks up to where Alex is leaning back against the counter, sipping on a half-empty glass of red wine, and drops a kiss on his cheek in greeting. It’s so sweet and domestic that Alex almost forgets why he’s supposed to be mad. Almost.

“An excuse for why you’re an hour late to dinner?” Alex asks when Michael pulls away.

“I’m sorry,” Michael cringes, deflating a little. “Liz needed some last minute help with an experiment, I got here as soon as I could.”

“Everything okay?” Alex asks, standing up a little straighter.

“Yeah, only minor explosions this time,” Michael jokes.

Alex sighs and shakes his head, but he can’t keep the smile off his face.

“Text me next time, okay?” Alex asks, tugging Michael close by the edge of his fleece-lined jacket. “I worry about you.”

“I will, promise,” Michael concedes, kissing the corner of his mouth this time. When he pulls away there’s a mischievous look in his eye. “So, you gonna guess?”

“Thought I already did,” Alex says, raising an eyebrow.

“Fair enough,” Michael concedes and reaches into his pocket.

He pulls out a small ziplock baggie with a joint inside.

“Guerin,” Alex says, a little disapprovingly. “I thought we weren’t breaking the law anymore.”

“Relax, I didn’t buy it,” Michael defends himself with a roll of his eyes. “I liberated it from Rosa.“

“She’s using again?” Alex asks, worry etching its way onto his face.

“Nah, she found it in an old book she had in her room and wanted to get rid of it.”

“Good,” Alex says, relieved. “That’s good.”

“So, you wanna?” Michael asks after a second, shaking the baggie in front of Alex’s face.

Alex gives the joint, and Michael, a dubious look.

“Oh, don’t look at me like that,” Michael pouts. “I used to get my weed from you in high school.”

Alex laughs and shakes his head.

“It’s not that,” Alex insists. “It’s just—that thing’s a decade old, it’s gonna taste terrible.”

“So did the cheap shit we used to smoke in the back of my truck,” Michael argues with a shrug. “Come on, it’ll be just like old times.”

He has a point, Alex must admit, and he’d be lying if he said he wasn’t at least a little seduced by the idea of revisiting the rebellious days of their youth.

“Dinner first,” Alex decides. “And we’re doing it outside. I don’t want our bedroom to smell like a dispensary.”

Michael grins at him and leans in to steal a kiss.

“Whatever you say, baby.”

Later, Alex watches Michael’s cheeks hollow as he takes a long drag off the joint where they sit in their backyard, side by side in front of the unlit fire pit. A few seconds later, a large cloud of smoke billows out of his mouth.

“Eugh,” Michael says, making a sour face as he hands the joint to Alex. “Okay. You were right.”

Alex laughs at him, but accepts it anyway. No going back now—if he’s gotta smell it, he might as well get something out of it.

He takes a hit and, yeah, it tastes like shit, but he can’t help feeling a little nostalgic at the gentle burn in his chest. It takes him back to those cool summer nights spent curled up with Michael in the bed of his truck, far enough away from Roswell that it didn’t matter who Alex’s dad was or where he was shipping off to—all he’d needed to think about was the way Michael made him feel when he straddled his thighs and shotgunned smoke into his mouth.

The thought sends tendrils of heat snaking through Alex’s belly that have little to do with the smoke in his lungs. Michael extends his hand toward Alex to take the joint back, but Alex has a better idea.

“Come here,” Alex says, locking eyes with Michael and patting his thigh.

Michael visibly swallows as he stands up and walks over to him. At Alex’s gentle prodding, Michael climbs into his lap and arranges himself across his thighs just so to keep most of his weight off Alex’s bad leg. Alex rests his left hand against his hip to keep him there.

Alex takes another drag off the joint and holds the smoke in his lungs as he leans into Michael’s space. He watches Michael’s eyes flutter closed as he brings their lips together, feels them soft and warm and wet against his own as he exhales slowly into Michael’s mouth. Alex flicks his tongue out against Michael’s full bottom lip once his lungs are empty, the taste of Michael’s skin much more pleasant than the acrid smoke curling around them.

“Fuck,” Michael whispers into the space between them as he exhales.

“Just like old times, right?” Alex asks, his lips quirking up into a smug smile.

“Mhmm,” Michael hums and presses a proper kiss to Alex’s lips before he leans back and takes the joint delicately from between Alex’s fingers. “My turn.”

They smoke a few minutes longer, trading kisses between hits. Alex isn’t sure if it’s Michael or the weed or some combination of the two making him feel like he’s floating, but he happily sinks into that warm buzz until Michael gasps softly against his mouth.

“What?” Alex asks, eyes half-lidded as he pulls back to look at Michael’s face.

“We have ice cream.”

Which is how they end up in bed approximately twenty minutes later, stripped down to their underwear with matching bowls of melting chocolate peanut butter ice cream in their laps as they watch Mythbusters reruns.

Michael is enraptured, spoon frozen halfway to his open mouth as he watches the team succeed in driving a motorcycle over the liquid surface of a lake.

Alex, on the other hand, is struck with the sudden, terrible realization that Jamie Hyneman’s mustache kind of makes him look like a walrus and promptly loses his fucking mind.

“What?” Michael asks, glancing down to where Alex has sunk into the bed and is rolling onto his side to smother his laughter against Michael’s hip.

Alex opens his mouth to speak, but he only giggles harder when he looks up at Michael’s face and sees a fresh smear of ice cream on his chin.

“You’re so fucking stoned, babe,” Michael laughs, reaching down to thread his fingers through Alex’s hair.

Alex is laughing too hard to disagree.

Michael puts his and Alex’s bowls on the bedside table before he lies down next to him. He pillows his head on his arm and watches him with an amused smile, evidently finding him much more interesting to watch than his favorite childhood TV show. If it wasn’t for how obviously bloodshot Michael’s eyes are, Alex would wonder if he was the only one feeling the joint they split right now.

“You have ice cream on your face,” Alex tells him, wiping the tears streaming from his eyes once he’s settled down.

“Where?”

“Here,” Alex answers, and instead of swiping at it with his finger, he leans in to lick it off his chin. The chocolate is sweet, but the soft moan Michael makes as Alex drags his tongue across his stubble is sweeter, and Alex finds himself chasing that sound right into Michael’s mouth.

Alex loses all sense of time as Michael kisses him—it could be seconds, minutes, or hours that he lies there, consumed by the softness of Michael’s mouth against his. He feels so hyperaware of him, so connected, that just the brush of Michael’s fingers against his cheek has pleasure buzzing through his whole body.

They trade slow kisses like that until Alex feels something hard against his hip. He pulls away, smoothing a palm down Michael’s bare chest to keep the distance between them, and looks down to see the thick outline of Michael’s cock straining against the fabric of his boxer briefs.

“You’re hard,” Alex points out before looking up at him again.

Michael follows his line of sight, as if he hasn’t noticed, and Alex bites off a moan a second later when he feels Michael’s warm hand cupping his cock.

“So’re you,” Michael says, palming him gently through his underwear. Alex’s hips twitch involuntarily into Michael’s touch as he asks, “Want me to blow you?”

Alex shakes his head. He remembers all too well what a mood killer it is to try to  suck cock with cottonmouth.

Instead, Alex reaches down to pull Michael’s cock out of his underwear, pushing the waistband under his balls. He gives him a few strokes, delighting in the way he jumps against his fingers. Michael slips his hand into Alex’s underwear to wrap around him in turn, but Alex lets go of Michael’s cock and takes him by the wrist, drawing his hand away from him. Michael’s brow furrows in confusion as he watches Alex free his own cock, but understanding clicks into place as Alex grabs hold of Michael’s knee and hikes it up over his hip, slotting his right thigh into the space he makes between Michael’s legs. Alex presses close until he can feel both of their cocks trapped hot and hard between them.

“Like we used to,” Alex says, grinding his hips encouragingly against Michael. “Remember?”

Michael lets out a shuddering breath and nods, drawing his leg tighter around the back of Alex’s body.

They move against each other lazily, sweat and pre-come slicking the way, and Alex can’t help but think of that summer before he shipped off to basic again, when his life was a series of moments stolen in the back of Michael’s truck.

He remembers lying on a pile of blankets and sleeping bags, the smell of rain and cannabis thick in the air around them as they rut against each other until they came at least twice, Michael gasping into his mouth each time he fell over the edge, unwilling to spend a single second not kissing him.

There was no need for words then, their bodies speaking to each other in a way that transcended language, and Alex finds it’s no different now—he can feel how much Michael wants him in the way his cock weeps against his belly with every rock of their hips, he can hear how much he needs him in the soft, desperate whimpers he smothers against his mouth, and he swears he can even taste how much he loves him on the very tip of his tongue as it slips passed his lips.

Time slows to a crawl even as one minute bleeds into the next. Michael’s heated skin is heaven beneath his fingers, every sigh, every moan, every gasp hitting his ears sweeter than any music he’s ever heard. In the midst of a symphony of sensations, Alex barely notices when his pleasure crests and he spills hot and wet between them.

A second and a lifetime pass before Michael does the same, burying a moan into Alex’s neck as he comes. Alex holds him close as he trembles with the force of it, all the while thinking, yes, this is just like it was when they were kids.

Except it’s better, Alex decides as he settles against Michael’s chest after haphazardly cleaning up, sleep slowly pulling him under.

It’s better because they’re in their own bed, in their own home, with their own TV playing softly in the background.

It’s better because this moment isn’t stolen at all.

[seasami]

Larry Fic Rec -- June/July

hii!! so I’ve got some fics that I read in June and July (until now). If you see a ✰ next to a title it means I really liked it and it’s one of my favs from the ones I listed. If there’s a 🔒 next to title it means you have to be logged in to read.

[Click on the title for link]

                                               _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ 

Latitude by nikogda (44k)

Summary: Harry’s a hybrid on a boat about to be hit by a storm and Louis is the human who comes to his rescue. That storm is all the time they have to fall in love before going their separate ways. That is, until almost a year later… 

Ever Since I Tried Your Way by Anonymous ✰ (25k)

Summary: Harry had been kissed before, but never like this.He’d shared sweet, curious kisses behind bleachers and in soda shop booths, one or two more daring ones in cars parked on dark suburban streets, but the girls he’d kissed had never filled him with the desperation that erupted from Louis’ touch. He parted his lips and pulled him closer, as though he could breathe Louis straight into his lungs, as if he could swallow him. He wanted to consume Louis the way he consumed the body and blood of Christ. He wanted to place Louis on his tongue and feel him dissolve into a frothy mess of starch and saliva. He wanted to gulp him down until his teeth were stained purple and he was drunk on him. He wanted him in some violent holy way that made his hands shake where they were twisted in Louis’ shirt.

In 1949 Harry left his bride at the altar, running away from the only life he'd known. When a kindhearted farmer offers him a ride in his truck and a place to sleep the two find themselves inexplicably drawn together. Isolated on Louis' farm with nobody but a field of dairy cows to intrude, the men are finally able to explore the parts of themselves they've spent their lives hiding away.

No Candle No Light (No Friendzone To My Love) by Anonymous (11k)

Summary: Louis glanced at his friend, glaring daggers and Niall chuckled. He looked like his idea could end world hunger and Louis was horrified. [...]“Come on, Niall! Tell me!” Harry insisted, excited.“You can threaten him other than with violence. You said you want a little revenge, right? What if an ex-boyfriend came to reconquer you? You know, the jealous and aggressive kind.”Harry sighed loudly, closing his eyes. Louis frowned, just like Liam and Zayn. What was he talking about? And why was he still looking at Louis that way?“Niall, this could’ve been a nice idea if I had an ex-boyfriend, but-”“Let me explain!” Niall barged in. “ You don’t have an ex-boyfriend but you can pretend you have one! I’m sure Louis would love to help you with that.”Liam almost choked on his wine and Zayn bit so hard on his lip to contain his laughter that it might have bled. Niall looked satisfied as hell, of course he was the little shit, and Louis just had time to flip him the finger before Harry turned to him. He was fucking delighted.

Or the one where helping Harry getting rid of his boyfriend may be the only way to his heart

Sugar by lettersfromvenus (15k) ✰

Summary: 

“I hope our paths will ‘croissant’ again.” 

There’s a little smiley face drawn next to the words, and it’s ridiculous, Louis knows, but he can’t help the swell of butterflies that he feels as he reads over the words once more. An odd fellow indeed, he thinks.A moment later he shakes his head and collects himself, because he really does need to get home; he’s sure that Harry is probably watching him from behind the counter, all sweet, smug smiles and pink cheeks. And if he’s being honest, he’s not entirely sure he won’t toss his groceries into the trash and walk straight back into the bakery if he doesn’t leave now, so… he really does need to get going.

 Before he goes on his way, though, he plucks the note from the top of the container and carefully tucks it inside of his wallet to protect it from the rain.

That’s how it begins.

Only Been Here One Time by alienharry (10k)

Summary: 

“Good morning, Liam. Harry.” Louis nods at them both and then cocks his head. “Are you aware you have four nipples, Harry?”

Harry looks down at his chest, suddenly worried. He doesn’t know how many nipples humans have, but four must not be a usual amount. “Should I have six?”

“Not unless you’ve a litter of kittens to feed.”

Soft Hands, Fast Feet, Can’t Lose by dolce_piccante (112k) ✰

I KNOW ITS ICONIC BUT I READ IT A MONTH AGO SO I THOUGHT I’D INCLUDE IT HERE. 

Summary: American Uni AU. Harry Styles is a frat boy football star from the wealthy Styles Family athletic dynasty. A celebrity among football fans, he knows how to play, he knows how to party, and he knows how to fuck (all of which is well known among his legion of admirers). 

Louis Tomlinson is a student and an athlete, but his similarities to Harry end there. Intelligent, focused, independent, and completely uninterested in Harry’s charms, Louis is an anomaly in a world ruled by football. 

A bet about the pair, who might be more similar than they originally thought, brings them together. Shakespeare, ballet, Disney, football, library chats, running, accidental spooning, Daredevil and Domino’s Pizza all blend into one big friendship Frappucino, but who will win in the end?

It’s All Brand New by midnightwhistleberries (10k)

Summary: “Harry,” Louis intones emphatically, “literally everyone in the U.K. has known that I’m openly bisexual since 2011.” 

“’Cept you, I guess,” supplies Niall. 

In which Harry studies engineering, loves Madonna, and can't tell if Louis likes him or just keeps coming back to the record store because he's some sort of musical hoarder. Louis is famous, Harry has no idea, communication issues are rampant and fluffy pining ensues.

Fool For You by flowercrownfemme, lesbianferrissbueller (46k) ✰

Summary:  “It’s not a game.” Harry scoffed, trying to push past him once more but Louis held his ground. “And I’ve never once told you a lie.” “All you do is lie," Harry argued. "Jests and tricks and made up stories, that’s your trade. I’d never trust a word from your mouth.” “I tell stories,” Louis conceded, “but a good one must be based on truth. And my stories tend to get a bit more truthful when I’m around you, Princess.”

In which Harry is a brooding prince who's scarcely smiled since the death of his mother and Louis is the dashing jester hired to change that.

streetwise hercules by bottomlinsons (7k) 🔒

Summary: I said,” Louis’ voice is venomous, “who the fuck is this?”Right. This is Harry’s part.

(Uni AU, where Louis pretends to be Harry's boyfriend to scare away his one night stands.)

Close Enough To Touch by stinky28 (7k)

Summary: “You are killing it!” The stranger shouts in his ear, to which Louis raises a brow, setting up the next transition and song, bobbing a bit in place before glancing over to the stranger and Oh. Red. 

He’s staring right at a very large, oddly tied red bow tie. It takes up the whole stranger’s chest and..it’s bloody brilliant. He fucking loves it. He feels himself break into a giant grin, looking up at Mr. Red Bowtie’s face and Oh. Fuck. 

OR an au where louis is the dj for the met gala after party and harry can’t leave his side.

Hate Me To The Moon by harrystylesandstuff (83k)

Summary: The last thing Harry wanted was to spend his entire summer stuck with his dad's new fiancée and her kids. He wants no more when he learns she's a very religious dictator, raising a sixteen year old nun and a clean cut potential priest ass kisser.

Everything takes a slightly different turn, however, when Harry finds out his future step-brother is actually the rude stranger he caught sucking off a guy in a pub, far from the reserved Christian his mom thinks he is...

AU where Harry is a sexy nerd, Louis is a great actor, and they both pretend to hate each other's guts to convince themselves they're not feeling things future step-brothers shouldn't feel...

hush. by Wankerville (41k)

Summary: “I don't like you like that, Harry.”

“See,” Harry starts, Louis can hear the smile in his voice, “that's where I think you're lying.”

or an au where small towns suck, louis is losing it, and harry’s just too perfect.

The Unsuccessful Promise by trysomecats (11k)

Summary: At the end of the previous school year, Louis swore to everyone that he would return in the fall as an alpha. He made this promise especially to his arch-nemesis Harry Styles, who has already presented as an alpha himself. Unfortunately over summer break, the worst thing possible happens: Louis presents as an omega. Now school is back in session and he has to return and face the consequences of pre-determining his status. 

Featuring Liam and Zayn as Louis' doting and exasperated parents.

Autumn At My Window by TheCellarDoor (20k) 

Summary: A canon-compliant AU, in which Harry and Louis are both in the band and have been sharing flats and hotel rooms for nearly five years, but never made the leap past 'friends who are too close for comfort'. 

Featuring a lot of pining, Louis' addiction to Harry's scent, and a whole lot of sexual tension that might just snap loose when they decide to spend some time together all on their own.

OKAY! That’s it for now cause I don’t want this post to be too long (oof i’ve read a lot actually). I have Fic Rec June/July Part Two in drafts and im also gonna collect fics that I’ve read on my kindle (its usually above 50k and make a fic rec with them). Stay tuned and follow my blog so you don’t miss it idk <33. 

PLEASE GIVE ME YOUR FEEDBACK ON THIS: I can make: Iconic Fics, My Fav Fics or try and do some themed fic rec. LET ME KNOW IF YOU’D WANT THAT! 

[psychosistr]

Don’t Cost a Thing- Part 5

Summary: Domino wakes up after his little “outburst” and looks for his partner. And then tries to figure out why said partner’s lying face down on the floor...

Notes: Some more blood and death in this chapter, but not as much as the last one.

-First Part-

Dominic stood in the middle of the bar, panting heavily as he finally began to register the finer details around him again. Blurred colors and hazy blobs began to focus into broken tables and dead or nearly dead bodies at his feet. One hand was still clenched in a fist while the other gripped one of his guns, his entire body tense and sore and positively exhausted from the flurry of movement he’d been in since he woke up.

Looking down at his hands, he made a disgusted and annoyed expression at the sight of the red liquid staining his feathers. He could feel similar stains and smears on other parts of his body and already knew he would need a LONG shower when he got home tonight.

Looking past his hands to his attire, he was even more displeased to see the current state of his clothes. The soot, dirt, and bloodstains were unpleasant, but he was used to dealing with those due to his line of work. The far more irritating part was the condition his coat was in- it was practically in tatters. Taking it off to examine it properly, he found that one sleeve was barely hanging on by a thread, one of his iconic dominos had been snapped off and the other was chipped, the buckle was bent, and there was a knife still stabbed through the bottom of it alongside some rather nasty gashes.

Well, wasn’t that just great? Steelbeak would probably make some paltry joke about how sloppy he got when he fought or something.

Wait..

Where was the loud-mouthed fowl?

Dominic looked around the bar for any sign of his partner. The last time he’d seen him, he’d gone into the kitchen to investigate an opened trap door when Dominic had felt something stab him in the neck and everything went black before he had a chance to warn the other bird. When he started to wake up, the only thing he registered was someone touching him. He shuddered briefly at the all-too-fresh memory of it, as well as the memory of others trying to do the same. Everything after that for a while was a blind drug-influenced and rage-induced blur of fury and adrenaline as he destroyed anything he came in contact with. Whatever he’d been shot with was long gone from his system now thanks to how quickly his blood had been pumping, and his earlier anger had cooled now that he was alone-

He froze when he saw something among the piles of bodies strewn about the room.

It couldn’t be…

Dominic’s coat fell to the floor, forgotten as he walked over to make sure what he saw was real and not just a trick of the light. His breath caught in his throat at the sight of an all-too familiar figure lying face down on the ground beneath the body of a pit bull.

After pulling the other body aside by the back of its coat, his fears were confirmed. There was no mistaking that combination:

Light feathers on the body with green tail feathers and a large red comb.

A designer suit with custom fitted shoes.

And a normally pristine white jacket…currently soaked with blood that was distinctly darker in three particular spots along his back.

Even without seeing the prosthetic that was his namesake, there was no mistaking it- this was Steelbeak.

The longer that Dominic stared, the more he felt a horrible, creeping sense of nostalgia consuming him. His mind kept flashing back and forth between the current bar he was standing in and a cold F.O.W.L. headquarters up north. Instead of the bodies of his enemies surrounding him, they were his fellow officers and his eggmen.

Then, for the briefest of moments, the body in front of him with deep pools of blood in his back was that of an overly affectionate but loving dog with dark fur and a bright smile instead of an arrogant but clever rooster with off-white feathers and a smug smirk.

He remembered the time he’d spent after his last partner’s death, isolated and alone with his grief for three days before being dragged back into the line of duty by high command. The hassle of relocating, moving miles away from his past and the life he’d built with his former partner. The uneasy introductions that ruffled both birds’ feathers despite how well they ended up working together-

Dominic shook his head to chase away his spiraling thoughts. He’d have to call F.O.W.L. high command, tell them what happened………wait, what DID happen?

Steelbeak had been in the kitchen before Dominic blacked out, why had he left? Had he come out to grab him or was he forced out by the enemy? Was he in the room during Dominic’s blind fit of rage? He would’ve known to stay away, but-

A dark thought crept into the loon’s mind when he caught the gleam of the over-head lights off of the pistol still clutched in his hand:

Was…Was he the one who shot Steelbeak…?

His hands shook as he scrambled to check his gun. It was loaded with the lead bullets, but how many had he fired? Had he reloaded during the fight? Darn it, he couldn’t remember, everything was too blurry! It was bad enough losing another partner he cared about, but to think that he may have been the one responsible for it was-

Movement.

It was subtle, almost imperceptible to the untrained eye, but Dominic’s eyes were very well-trained after years of sharp-shooting, and he KNEW he saw the other bird’s back move just now.

“Steelbeak…?” He questioned, having to swallow down the lump that had caught in his throat just to get the simple word out properly.

“Hm..?” There was a grunted reply before the other man’s head turned slightly to glance at him with one eye. “Dom?” Seeing his partner stare down at him, Steelbeak, much to Domino’s combined relief and surprise, began to sit up with no more difficulty than popping a few stiff joints once he was seated upright on the stained hard-wood floor. “About time you woke up. Done blowin’ your stack there, short fuse?”

“You’re…You’re alive…?” Dominic was relieved by this revelation, of course, but his mind was also still caught in its natural state of cautious disbelief.

“Gee, don’t sound so happy about it or I might start cryin’ over here.” Steelbeak rolled his eyes, his tone dripping with sarcasm as he began to unbutton and remove his jacket.

Once it was off, Dominic could see that the blood stains were deep, having thoroughly soaked through the white material, but there were no notable holes in the fabric. “So..the blood isn’t yours?” He assumed, looking to the dead pit bull he’d pulled off of his partner’s body earlier to see three deep wounds on its own back that, now that he was calm enough to think about it, lined up perfectly with the spots on Steelbeak’s coat from when it had been on top of him.

“Nah, I ain’t that sloppy.” Steelbeak stood up, his red shirt not showing the bloodstains as noticeably as his coat had. “You started hittin’, so I hit the deck- figured playin’ dead would be the safest bet ‘til ya calmed down.”

Dominic fought back the smile that threatened to turn up the corner of his beak. “Not a bad idea.” He admitted before his legs gave out from underneath him and he joined his partner in a seated position on the floor, all of the earlier soreness and fatigue returning ten-fold now that the panicked adrenaline had left him.

“Woah, ya good there, Dee?” Steelbeak asked with a cocked brow, kneeling down and giving the loon a quick glance over to check for any visible injuries. “ ‘Cause, y’know, if ya broke a leg or somethin’, I am NOT carryin’ your butt back to the car.”

“Wouldn’t ask you to, even if my leg was on the other side of the room.” Dominic sighed, leaning back against a nearby table that had been flipped over in the earlier chaos. “I’m just…tired. I’ll be good to go in a few minutes.”

“Alright.” Steelbeak stood back up, grabbing the C4 explosives and detonators from his jacket. “I’mma go plant these- keep an eye on the place, would ya?”

Dominic attempted to stand up. “I’ll come with yo-”

“YOU can stay here and take five.” Steelbeak insisted, dropping his coat by Dominic as if he were trying to make a point.

The loon glared up at his partner. “I can handle-”

“You already ‘handled’ your half of the work.” The rooster insisted while gesturing to the numerous bodies around them. He looked back down at the other bird once he felt his point had been made. “Now lemme go handle mine.” Dominic was about to refute the other bird’s statement, to insist that he could handle planting a few explosives. But, the next words out of the larger bird’s beak actually surprised him a little. “We’re partners, right? That means we share. We share the praise, we share the pay, we share the work. So quit tryin’ t’ be a one-man army and share for once, got it?”

For someone who was normally so self-centered, and for someone who was not a fan of dirtying his hands with hard work any more than he absolutely had to, the statement carried quite a bit of weight to it.

So, despite his reservations, Dominic sighed, settled back down against the table, and closed his eyes. “Fine. You get five minutes. After that, I’m hotwiring your car and going home- with or without you.”

He couldn’t see it on the lighter bird’s face, but he could certainly hear the amusement in his voice. “Buddy, you take my baby on a joyride without me, partner or not, gettin’ home’s gonna be the least of your problems.”

Dominic gave a tired chuckle and waved the other bird off. “Then get to work for both our sakes- you’ve got four and a half minutes left.”

“Hmph. Wise guy.” Steelbeak chuckled himself before Dominic heard the tell-tale clack of his shoes on the hard wood floor heading into the kitchen to plant the explosives deeper down within the facility and steal anything the deceased agents may have left behind.

Once he was certain his partner was far away from the main room, Dominic opened his eyes again and cast a tired gaze to the carnage around the bar. He’d certainly done a number on the place, that’s for sure. It had been quite a while since he’d lost control like that- though the drugs that had been coursing through his veins probably didn’t help matters any…

Glancing down at the stained white jacket beside him, he allowed his fingers to trail over the back, skimming just shy of the blood stains. Though the adrenaline of the situation had long left him, he could still feel remnants of the cold-terror that had stabbed him at the thought of losing his partner- that terror multiplied by the thought that he could’ve been the one to end his fellow agent’s life and not even realized it.

Dominic closed his eyes again and slumped further against the table, absentmindedly gripping the sleeve of the jacket as he took a few deep breaths to calm himself down.

The thought of losing Steelbeak, despite his loud-mouthed, smug, flashy nature…it hurt. It hurt in a way he hadn’t felt in several months. What that meant on a subconscious level, he wasn’t fully ready to face just yet, but it at least made one thing clear to him:

He cared about his partner. He genuinely, without a doubt, had come to care for the taller bird. Whether that type of care would shift into something similar to what he had with his previous partner remained to be seen, but he at least knew now that he cared for the other bird and didn’t want to lose him.

And to think, just the other day his main thoughts regarding his partner were how he tried too hard to buy his attention and that he wouldn’t let it work on him. What a night this was turning out to be…

Right at the four minute mark, he heard the door to the kitchen open and let go of the sleeve he’d been holding. He moved his hand back over to rest casually on his extended legs before cracking one eye open as he heard the other bird’s steps getting closer. “Finally finished?” He questioned the fowl when he came into view in front of the table.

“Yep.” Steelbeak said while planting two more bombs in the main room itself. “This place is set to go off like a theme park on the Fourth of July.” He finished setting up the bombs and glanced over to his partner, taking his condition in once again. “……” Without saying anything, he walked over to where he’d left his minigun and picked it up before making his way over to the loon still sitting on the floor. “I gotta plant a couple more things in here. How’s about you take this out t’ the car and I’ll meet ya there in a sec.” He extended the large gun towards the loon so that the handle was facing him.

Dominic rolled his eyes slightly, recognizing the gesture for what it was but accepting it nonetheless. “Fine, I’ll do the heavy lifting for a change.” He grabbed the offered handle and, with Steelbeak bracing the other end of the gun, pulled himself up to his feet. Once he was stable, he took the gun from the other’s grasp, compensated for the weight, and began walking towards the door. “You’ve got one minute left before I leave you.”

“Believe me, I know.” Steelbeak grabbed his jacket off of the ground and reached into the pocket to fish out his car keys. “Just don’t go bleedin’ out in there- I just had her detailed.”

Dominic easily caught the keys that were tossed to him from across the room. “It won’t be my blood on the seats.” He paused briefly along his path to glance down at his own coat on the ground. He debated about taking it with him, but, he decided, it was far too damaged to be reparable at that point. “It’ll just burn up, anyway..” He muttered to himself before continuing out towards the car.

With his back to the other bird, he didn’t catch Steelbeak glancing over to his tattered coat as well, giving it a thoughtful expression before walking around the bar to finish his work.

___________________________________________________________

True to his word, about a minute after Dominic had loaded the minigun into the trunk and gotten comfortable in the front seat, Steelbeak exited the bar with his stained jacket balled up under his arm. He tossed the ball of fabric into the trunk with the gun and joined his partner up front.

After driving a few miles down the street to make sure they’d reached a safe viewing distance, Steelbeak presented a remote detonator to Dominic. “Care t’ do the honors, Deedee?” He quirked a brow at the loon with a smirk.

“I thought you’d never ask.” Dominic’s smirk matched his partner’s when he reached over to press the red button.

Within less than a second the bar that had just been the sight of a rather brutal and bloody battle was decimated by an earth-shaking explosion. What remained of the building was quickly engulfed in flames, destroying any remaining evidence and bodies (be they dead or somehow still semi-alive). It was flashy and more than a bit over the top but, honestly, after the day they’d had, such a sight was extremely gratifying.

____________________________________________________________

The car ride home was sparse on conversation, but pleasant, nonetheless. They’d both had a long day and were rightfully exhausted. After calling high command to inform them of a successful mission without any major incidents, the pair were relieved to find out that they could wait until tomorrow afternoon to give their full report in person at HQ- a gift that neither of them would question given how tired and in need of some well-earned rest and relaxation they were.

Which was why Dominic was surprised and more than a little confused as to why Steelbeak merely dropped him off at the secret underground F.O.W.L. entrance to their apartment complex (handy on nights like this when agents returned home covered in blood and/or carrying less than legal items), instead of simply parking the car and joining him in the elevator.

“A little late for a joyride, isn’t it?” Dominic questioned the other bird while getting out of the car.

Steelbeak’s answer was a simple shrug. “I got a few things t’ take care of. You just go on up and get your beauty sleep- you need it more than I do.”

Dominic rolled his eyes and shut the car door behind himself. “You’re lucky I’m too tired to shoot you right now.”

“Wow, I am SO lucky- must be my birthday or somethin’.” The rooster chuckled with a sarcastic tone and gave Dominic a two-fingered salute. “Catch ya later, Dee.”

And with that, he drove out of the garage, barely giving Dominic time for a brief wave of his own. He still couldn’t imagine what on Earth his partner would want to do (or even had the energy to do) so late at night after such a draining mission, but, he supposed, once they were off the clock, their business was their own. Besides, at that moment the need to clean himself up and get some rest far outweighed his curiosity over what his partner was doing, so he spent the rest of the night doing just that- taking a nice long shower to clean the blood, soot, dust, and alcohol off before sleeping a very much needed eight hours.

<-Previous Part Next Part->

End Notes: Alright, that’s it on the death and destruction for the story, hope everyone enjoyed it ^^

Getting into the home stretch now with two parts left!

[spideyscnse]

Mask

Word Count: 1.5K

Pairing: Stark!Avenger!Reader x Peter Parker

Warnings: just lots of fLuFf ???

Summary: Y/N is hanging out with Peter in his room as they do homework, until she becomes a bit curious about how the suit works and the two of them end up getting distracted.

Note: Please don’t plagiarise my work!

Masterlist

*

“So, which idea would you rather go with?” Peter Parker said, gesturing at the two mind maps that you’d worked together on and you’d taped onto the wall.

“I like the first one more,” You said contemplatively, from where you were sitting on the top bunk of his bed—the one you slept in whenever you slept over.

The two of you always worked together whenever the teacher allowed you to pick your pairs, having always clicked with each other and agreed with ideas since you’d met two years back, at the airport battle—only after discovering that you actually both went to the same school.

Even the teachers sometimes paired you two together, knowing how well you worked together and how good the work you did together always was.

Besides, it wasn’t exactly a secret to everyone (except for Peter) that you had a massive crush on him.

“I like it, too,” Peter said, nodding in agreement, “I feel like we could expand it,” he pointed to one particular area of the mind map, “here, and pull some thoughts from the other idea to build on our concept.”

“Yeah,” You said, hopping down from your spot on the top bunk to join him where he was sitting on the carpeted floor, “That’d be good. Wanna get brainstorming?”

He shrugged, “Sure,” and pulled out two pencils, passing one to you with a smile, because he knew that you neverhad pencils, and you gave him a grateful smile in thanks, taking the pencil between your fingers.

Unrolling a massive roll of paper that Peter kept under his desk, he tore off a sizable section and spread it out on the floor.

“So, we can start here,” You said, drawing a circle at the middle of the paper and writing the name of your concept inside of it, “And then stretch out with the sub-sections.”

“Yeah, that’d be cool,” Peter said, a tiny bit of pink rising to his cheeks when you patted his hand and told him, “Let’s get going, then.”

Even though you had seen his tiny blush, you knew that he’d also spotted the slight redness of your cheeks before you’d averted your gaze and covered your face with your long brown hair as you began to scribble across the paper.

After about three quarters of the paper was filled in, your hand was starting to ache, and you were really ready to take a break.

Glancing over, you noticed that Peter was still consumed in his work, his face super close to the paper as he tapped his pencil against the side of his head in a way that you found extremely cute, especially as he pursed his lips in thought.

“I think I got it!” He exclaimed suddenly, turning to you, making you jump.

You weren’t fast enough to look away and pretend like you hadn’t been staring at him, and as you realised that you’d just been caught staring, heat rose to your cheeks and you said, “Really?” In a feeble attempt to cover up your embarrassment, even though the small, almost smug smile at the corner of Peter’s lips as he turned away and wrote down whatever idea he’d thought of on the paper, revealed that he had definitelycaught you.

Desperately trying to quell the embarrassment building inside of you, you bit your lip and glanced around his room, taking in the science-y things, the several Star Wars items, the unmade bed, and then the blue and red pile stuffed at the corner of his room, right beside his desk.

The all-too-familiar Spiderman suit that your dad had made for him.

“Hey, Pete,” you said, crawling over to the suit and grabbing it carefully, before making your way up to the top bunk, “How does your suit work, exactly?”

“Didn’t you help to build it?” He said, his attention now fully on you as he placed his pencil on the floor, kicking the massive piece of paper to the side as you pulled out the mask from the pile and looked inside of it, checking to see if there was anything special in there.

“I helped to designit,” You corrected, shaking your head, “You know, pick the colours and everything. My dad is very possessive about his own projects—so I usually just work on my own stuff because he doesn’t like it when I accidentally mess things up.” You chuckled a bit.

“Your Dad’s a genius, though,” Peter said with a light laugh, swinging around the bed frame to climb up the ladder and reach your bunk, “Did you know that I have so manydifferent kinds of webs now? It used to be just the one kind, but now there are a ton of them.”

“I heard that you managed to hack it,” You said with a laugh, which made Peter’s ears go red, “So clearly my Dad’s not too genius. Even though he kind of is. But you know.”

“That was Ned, actually,” He said, sitting directly opposite you, picking up the suit in a bundle as he felt the familiar material between his fingers, “He’s better at that sort of thing.”

“What, hacking Spiderman suits?” You joked, still holding the mask in your hands.

“Not specifically,” He laughed, “Doing tech stuff in general.”

“Oh, well, you’re pretty good at that, too,” You said, slapping his shoulder lightly, half-smiling.

“Says the tech-genius daughter of Tony Stark,” He scoffed.

“Says Spiderman,” You retorted, “I don’t even have a superhero title.”

He shook his head, “You don’t needa title, Y/N.”

“Well, yeah, but it’s pretty cool to have one,” You said, furrowing your eyebrows as you noticed that the eyes of the suit had special mechanisms that allowed the eyes to change size, something you’d never really wondered about before, “Whoa, how does this mask work, exactly?”

“You wear a mask, too,” Peter pointed out.

“Yeah, but I built my own one, and it’s not as cool as yours,” You said, still fascinated by all the tech hidden inside the spandex-like material.

“You can try it on, if you want to,” Peter said with a shrug, a half-smile on his lips, “If you’re so interested in it.”

Your eyes lit up, “Really?”

This made Peter laugh a bit, “Sure.”

Pulling the mask over your head, you blinked several times, getting yourself adjusted to the mechanics of it, feeling the whirring of the eyes as you furrowed your brows, the expression on the mask no doubt changing along with yours.

“Why do you look so confused?” Peter asked in amusement.

“Do I?” You asked, reaching up to touch your face and feel the mechanics of the mask, “It feels so weird.”

“Well, I’ve gotten used to it,” He said with a chuckle, “I mean, your suit is made out of iron, so—,”

“It’s actually a nickel-titanium alloy,” You corrected, as you always did.

“Right, right,” He replied, shaking his head in amusement, “I think you’ve told me before.”

“Yes, but you always forget,” You said, before the two of you lapsed into silence.

After a long moment of neither of you saying anything, you finally sighed and said, “Isn’t it so cool to be Spiderman? Like everyone knows you as Spidermanand you’re so iconic around New York and everything—,”

“Y/N, you’re awesome just the way you are,” He interrupted, cutting off your rambling.

“Everyone only ever knows me as Tony Stark’s daughter, and I know I’ll never be as smart as him, or as strong as him, and it’s just—,”

“Hey,” He said, cutting you off again, putting his hands on your shoulders, “Y/N, stop. You’re amazing just as you are. You’re amazing and awesome and great and beautiful—title or not. Even if you weren’tTony Stark’s daughter, I’d still think you’re so wonderful because you’re you, Y/N. Even if you weren’t at all related to Tony Stark, I think I’d still…” he swallowed, blinking several times as if to clear his thoughts.

“Pete?” You asked softly, wondering if he was going to continue.

“I think I’d still like you, Y/N,” he blurted out, his cheeks turning pink, “I’d still like you somuch. Because you’re perfect just the way you are—mask or not.”

“Pete…” You whispered as you pulled the Spiderman mask over your head so that you could really see Peter, just with your own eyes rather than through the mask, and before you knew it the distance between the two of you was gone and you were kissing—noses pressed together, hands in hair kissing—and you felt the sparks travel all the way through your body.

When you finally pulled apart, you said softly, a smile on your lips, “Peter, I like you too.”

You pulled him into a hug, breathing in a deep breath as you said, “Mask or no mask.”

( Masterlist )

[upstartpoodle]

The Cornish Way (Chapter 2)

Rating: G

Pairing: George x Elizabeth, Francis x Demelza (background), Caroline x Dwight (background)

Summary: The second chapter of my coffee shop AU, in which Caroline has a gift for George, George goes back to the coffee shop in Truro, and he and Elizabeth meet for the second time.

Previous Chapter

George awoke to the sound of pigeons cooing heartily in the tree outside his bedroom window, which he had thrown wide open the previous evening in order to let some air into the room. A warm summer breeze was now wafting in through it, the thin, floor-length curtains swaying and billowing in front of it, its fingers caressing the bare skin of his back and shoulders where he lay face-down on the bed, his cheek pressed against the soft pillows. With a slight yawn, he rolled over onto his back and opened his eyes, staring up at the pale ceiling. The light was so bright that even with the curtains drawn, there was not a hint of darkness in the room.

“What time is it?” he wondered aloud, reaching for his wristwatch, which had been placed neatly next to his phone on the bedside cabinet. The face read nine-thirty. He blinked at it, then grabbed his phone, checking the time on there. It too stubbornly showed the time nine-thirty. But that was… He never slept this late. Usually, he would be up by half-six at the latest—unless he was ill of course. Yet he didn’t feel particularly ill now.  If anything, he felt pleasantly refreshed—a feeling that he had not experienced in quite some time. Upon making this realisation, a small, treacherous part of his brain began to wonder if this holiday weren’t perhaps long overdue after all.

Shaking himself, he sat up and reached over for his dressing gown, which was draped over a nearby chair. He wrapped it around himself and carefully made the bed before heading over to the oval mirror which sat on the side table at the far wall from the window. His hair was sticking up in all directions, and he quickly took a comb to it, so that it looked at least reasonably presentable. That done, he ran a hand over his jaw, feeling the slight roughness of stubble under his fingertips. He would have to shave later, no doubt, but it wasn’t particularly urgent at that moment. He would sort it out after breakfast.

Back in London, breakfast was usually a hurried affair—one slice of toast hastily consumed as he rushed around his flat, getting ready for another long day at the office, if that. This, however, was quite different, and given the hunger that was beginning to gnaw at him, George wasn’t about to pass up the opportunity to savour it. Rifling through the cupboards, still not quite familiar enough with the cottage’s kitchen to remember exactly where everything was kept, he took out a prettily pattered bowl and a mug, before moving over to the kettle and filling it with water. As it boiled, he filled the bowl with milk and cereal and, after he had finished making his tea, took both items, headed over to the kitchen table, sinking into the chair at its head, and began to eat.

His tablet was sat on the table a little way away from him, and he reached over to it, propping it up in front of him and typing in his password with the intention of checking his emails. He had perhaps been a little optimistic—from the fact that both his work and personal emails were completely dead, it was evident that Ms Collings had been ruthlessly efficient in enforcing her promise that he would not be disturbed during this holiday.

“Goddammit” he muttered to himself. He didn’t like being out of the loop, not knowing what was going on. Rationally, he knew that his subordinates were perfectly capable of working without him for a few weeks, but in the absence of being informed of what was happening, his mind was far more inclined to jump to worse conclusions than better ones.

He finished his cereal perhaps a little quicker than was necessary, and his eyes began to wander towards the large wicker basket that sat on the middle of the table. Prudie Paynter, the owner of the farm and the proprietor of the little bungalow in which he was staying, had brought it over to him the day after he had arrived, full of an assortment of homemade baked goods. It was far from the last time he had seen her, despite only having been here a couple of days—the woman was almost alarmingly friendly, and seemed to take a personal interest in each and every one of her guests. She appeared particularly determined to gift him with as much of her produce as was humanly possible, in fact—apparently he looked underfed.

With a slight shrug, he reached over towards the basket and pulled it towards him. Opening it, he peered at its contents—a couple of loaves of bread, an assortment of biscuits and some muffins of various flavours, both savoury and sweet. He took one of the savoury muffins and bit into it. It was delicious and, hungry as he was, he soon found himself taking a second one despite himself.

He had almost finished his second muffin when his personal email pinged on his tablet. Curiously, he reached out to view it, but before he could press the little icon at the bottom of the screen, a Skype call started coming through, the screen reading “Caroline Penvenen”. He paused a moment before pressing the “accept” button, and his friend’s broadly grinning face came into view.

Since their time at university, Caroline had earnt herself a degree of fame through her high-flying modelling career, but one wouldn’t have known it from the way she looked now. Curled up on the sofa in the living room of her London apartment, she was dressed in a t-shirt that was a little too big for her, and that George suspected belonged to her fiancé, and a pair of ridiculously fluffy, googly-eyed slippers. Though, considering that he was still wrapped in his dressing gown at ten o’clock in the morning, he was hardly one to talk.

“Hello Caroline.”

“And hello to you too,” said Caroline, her voice a little tinny coming through the tablet. “How’s the holiday going? Have you been climbing up the walls for lack of paperwork yet?”

George let out a soft huff of laughter.

“I’ve managed to restrain myself so far” he returned drily.

Caroline snorted, and was about to reply when his vision of her was suddenly obscured by a very close up view of Horace the pug who, having heard his voice, had located it to its source and had come to say hello.

“Yes, good morning to you as well” he said, amused, as Horace yipped excitedly at him. He could hear Caroline chuckling before the dog was suddenly pulled away from the screen and she settled back down on the sofa, placing him on her lap. He looked up at her with consternation, displeased at having his greeting cut short, but was soon mollified as she began scratching him behind the ear.

“Come on then,” she said once Horace was settled. “Spill the beans. What’s it like over there? How are you doing?”

George shrugged.

“It’s alright,” he said, truthfully. “It’s not exactly the kind of place I’d choose to go on holiday—(he studiously ignored Caroline’s interjection of “as if you’d go on holiday of your own free will in the first place”)—but it’s nice enough. I’ve mostly just been having confectionaries forced on me so far.”

Caroline made a sound that was somewhere between a laugh and a scoff.

“Only you would think that was something to complain about,” she replied wryly. “Ooh, by the way, you haven’t seen Unwin about, have you? I heard that he recently got elected as the MP for Truro and Falmouth. I bet his campaign would have been a good laugh!”

As a matter of fact, George had not seen Unwin, nor did he particularly wish to. He had first met the man at Oxford, where they had shared several economics classes (Unwin had truly filled the stereotype of the budding politician by doing PPE at university). At some point in their first year, he and Caroline had become a couple, though how Unwin had managed that George still didn’t understand, and had moved into a private flat together near Oxford University Parks. George, after an excruciatingly long summer of being back living with Uncle Cary, and tired of the antics of his fellow students in his university accommodation, had become their unlikely flatmate after his classmate had mentioned offhand to him that they needed someone to take the third, unoccupied room in one of their classes at the beginning of second year, and had promptly spent five or so months being annoyed by the antics of Unwin instead. The man had not lasted long, however, returning to live at college in a strop after he broke up with Caroline, who, among many other things, had not been impressed with his ambivalence towards Horace, then just a puppy and a Christmas addition to their number. After that, his room had been taken up by a kind-hearted medical student named Dwight, who despite having initially got into an endless number of arguments about who left the milk out on the side with Caroline, adored Horace and thus earned her seal of approval. Years later, the two of them were now engaged, and George had jumped on the chance to deliver her a smug “I told you so”, delighted at having the opportunity to tease his friend when it was usually he who was on the receiving end.

They spent a few minutes speculating over what Unwin was doing now, laughing as they remembered some of the more ludicrous of his antics during university. Then, completely out of the blue, Caroline asked him what he was planning on doing that day. He frowned at her. She sounded innocent enough, but he knew her far too well to take that at face value.

“No idea,” he replied, his eyes narrowed slightly in suspicion. “Why?”

“Oh, no reason,” Caroline returned airily, but there was a definite hint of mischief in her tone now. “Just thought you might want some ideas, that’s all. So I gifted you an e-book. It’s got some suggestions for things to do as well so it should take up a fair amount of your time.”

Still watching her suspiciously, George reached out for his kindle, which had been lying next to the tablet. Activating it, he found what he was looking for. His lips pursed. The title on the screen read “Taking a Breath: A Comprehensive Guide to Meditation for Workaholics”.

“Oh very funny” he sighed as Caroline’s cackles filled the room.

Come early afternoon, George had found himself back in the little coffee shop which he had met with Francis in the previous day. Still not sure what to do with himself (though he had at least ruled out meditation upon reluctantly skimming a few pages of the rather patronising self-help book Caroline had sent him), he had driven into Truro in the hope that he might find something there to occupy him. He had wandered around aimlessly for a little while, glancing in the windows of shops which he was sure hadn’t been there the last time he had visited Cornwall, but found nothing that particularly interested him. Walking for the sake of it had never been one of his favoured pastimes either, and his feet soon led him back down the hill and towards the harbour, retracing his steps from day before.

Despite having eaten well at breakfast, he ordered a reasonably-sized lunch—a ham toasty accompanied by a truly huge portion of side salad that had him raising his eyebrows as Demelza brought it out to him, and a slice of lemon drizzle cake. Elizabeth had spent a good deal of their conversation the previous day trying to persuade him to return and try it and—well—he was loathe to disappoint her. He ordered another americano along with it—he had never much liked the sweeter options on offer, despite being aware that drinking something with that amount of caffeine in it probably wasn’t going to make him any more relaxed.

The food was excellent, even if the salad was a little excessive. The cake in particular was as good as Elizabeth had said it was, the sponge light and fluffy and moist, hitting just the right balance between sharp and sweet, and George had soon cleared his plate of all but a few crumbs and a small corner of cake that he was too full to finish off. Having finished eating, he pushed his plate away from him, pulled out a rather battered old book that had been gathering dust on his shelf at home and began to read.

“Oh, hello.”

Less than a chapter in, George startled at the sound of the bright, friendly voice, and looked up from his book to see Elizabeth standing in front of him, a warm smile upon her face. For a moment, he felt as if his heart had leapt right up into his throat, before he forcefully shoved it down and summoned up a slightly shy smile of his own.

“Hello,” he said. “How are you?”

“Oh, I’m alright,” Elizabeth replied, throwing her surroundings a cursory glance. “I’ve just finished a couple of watercolours I’ve been working on so I thought I’d take a bit of a break. May I join you?”

“Please” said George, gesturing to the empty seat opposite him, immensely glad that he hadn’t had to unstick his throat before speaking this time.

Elizabeth grinned at him and took the chair, peering over at what little remained of his cake.

“I see you’ve branched out to the lemon drizzle cake now,” she teased gently. “Does it meet up to your standards?”

“It does,” returned George with a soft smile. “Though how could it not when I have such a staunch advocate of it sitting in front of me?”

Elizabeth chuckled.

“I only hope I’ve gone it justice” she said.

They spent another few minutes talking about nothing in particular, enjoying the sun and the breeze blowing in from the sea, before Elizabeth asked him if he had any plans for the day. Faced with this question for a second time within the space of a few hours, George found that his answer to her was not much different to that he had given to Caroline.

“Not really,” he admitted. “I only came to Truro in the first place to see if there was something to do here but nothing’s really caught my fancy.”

“Oh well we can’t have that!,” said Elizabeth, smiling brightly at him; he could feel a blush threatening to show on his features, but he forced it down. “Would you like to come with me? I could show you some places if you like. I mean,” she added hastily, suddenly looking as shy as he felt, “I’m sure you must have been to Truro plenty of times before, but well, it’s changed a lot in recent years but if you don’t—”

“No! I mean yes. Yes, I’d love to” he was quick to reassure her, desperately wishing that he that he could have sounded collected and confident rather than stumbling over his words like an awkward teenager. Elizabeth, however, sent him a broad grin, and any hint of embarrassment flew from his mind. He couldn’t help but think that, where she had been beautiful before, she now looked positively radiant.

“Oh wonderful!,” she said. “I’ve just got to nip into the art shop first though—some of my brushes are beginning to wear down and I need some more white. You don’t mind coming with, do you?”

George didn’t mind, and they soon set off in the direction of the art supply shop, Elizabeth talking animatedly about her favourite media and techniques as they headed into the heart of the town. George only understood about half of it, but he listened attentively, intrigued, nonetheless—art had always been one of those subjects which he found very interesting but knew next to nothing about.

His feelings of simultaneous bafflement and fascination only increased once they reached the art store itself, which was filled to the brim with all different kinds of paints, pencils, pens, paper and a good many other things which he had never even seen before, let alone knew what they were for. Elizabeth, headed straight over to a shelf on the far wall where there sat a number of paintbrushes of various different sizes and shapes. According to Elizabeth’s explanations, there were different brushes for different paints, though George couldn’t tell the difference between them beyond the colours of the handles and the signs on the shelves that indicated which was for which. After a slight pause, Elizabeth selected two very fine brushes which were supposedly for watercolours then, retrieved a small tube of white paint from where it was hanging on the adjacent wall, before going up to the till to pay. Putting her purchases carefully away in her bag, she turned to him and nodded her head towards the door with a slight smile, and they walked out of the shop and back into the street.

Despite having done essentially the same thing not two hours beforehand, George found that walking around Truro, looking in shop windows and ferreting out places of interest was a much more enjoyable experience with Elizabeth by his side, pointing out shops or little alleyways with a story to tell about each of them that never failed to interest or entertain him. First, she took him to a little independent bookshop that he had never noticed before, and though he usually had very little time for reading, he couldn’t help but find it rather charming—it suited her very well, he couldn’t help but think as he watched her excitedly unearth a beautifully illustrated copy of The Wind in the Willows from one of the shelves.

“My cousin will love this,” she told him as they stepped back outside, blinking against the sudden brightness of the sun compared to the half-darkness of the shop. “It was her favourite book when she was little, and she loves illustrations. She’s just started at art school this year,” she added upon spotting his inquiring look. “Turns nineteen next month. She wants to be a children’s book illustrator.”

“Does art run in the family then?”

“Oh, not as such, no,” Elizabeth laughed. “Just me and Morwenna. Her sister Rowella’s about as scientific as they come—wants to do physics at uni—and my dad could only just about manage stick men.”

From there they headed off to the museum and art gallery, where she pointed out her favourite pieces to him, telling him a story about how she had once visited the place as a child with a young Francis, Verity and Ross, the latter of whom had thrown an enormous tantrum upon realising that they hadn’t had time for cake, and had complained the whole way home that he’d been forced to stare at pots in glass cases for hours without the slightest reward for his troubles. Her rendition of the incident had him shaking with suppressed laughter, attempting to keep quiet upon noticing an elderly couple a little way along from them were sending them a series of slightly disapproving glances.

Once they had done a full circuit of the museum, they simply wandered, not paying a great deal of mind to where they were going. They ended up walking past the cathedral and up a side street, where a couple of offices were located. The sign on one of them caught his attention, and he stopped to read it.

“Oh, that’s our MP’s office,” Elizabeth said offhandedly when she glanced over to see why he had stopped. “Unwin Trevaunance, you know?”

George thought of his conversation with Caroline earlier that day and he chuckled softly to himself. Elizabeth shot him a curious look.

“Oh sorry,” he said by way of explanation. “It’s just that my friend and I were talking about him this morning—we used to live with him at university.”

Elizabeth seemed particularly interested by this, and he soon ended up telling her the whole story of how they had ended up sharing a flat, along with a good deal of the more bizarre of the man’s habit. The story of how he had once put his slippers in the oven in the hope of warming them up during a particularly cold spell especially amused her, and she was still giggling about it once they had left the office well behind them.

“Oh, I’ll never be able to read his manifesto with a straight face again” she declared with a grin. “But anyway, what did you study? Francis mentioned that you went to Oxford but he never said what you did there."

“Economics and Management,” George replied. “Sounds boring, I know.”

He himself had never found it dull of course, but it had never been entirely his choice to take it. Sometimes he wondered if, had he been given the option, he would have liked to have done something else entirely—Caroline, who had done French and Classics, had always seemed to have particularly interesting classes, and he had quite liked the look of the History course when he had first thought of applying—but his uncle had made it firmly known to him that as he would inherit his father’s business, there was no point in wasting his time on what he called “wishy-washy namby-pamby subjects”. In all honesty, the thing he had liked best about his degree was that he had been good at it. He had enjoyed the feeling of excelling at something—something that he could build on in the real world. And besides, he had been too relieved that he had been accepted in the first place to second-guess his choice of course—he had seen Charles Poldark’s poor reaction to Francis failing to get in and, though he had felt sorry for his friend, hadn’t been able to help imagining how badly Cary would have taken it if he had gone to Bristol instead.

“Oh, I’m sure it isn’t,” said Elizabeth, a friendly smile playing upon her lips. “I would have loved to study at Oxford. It’s such a beautiful place—so much history. I went to London myself, and—well, no doubt you know what it’s like. It’s great if you want to be in the centre of things—lots of culture, lots of entertainment—but a lot of the time I really missed the countryside, you know? Besides, you can’t exactly punt on the Thames.”

George let out a soft hum of amusement.

“The punting’s a bit overrated to be honest,” he replied. “I mean, it’s great in theory but not so much in practice—unless you get a professional to take you of course. But even then there’s always the people who don’t want to pay the extra five pounds or think they’ll be fine doing it themselves. The Cherwell’s complete Bedlam on a nice day.”

Elizabeth laughed.

“A friend of mine did that in Cambridge, and they ended up crashing into the riverbank and all got slapped in the face by a load of wet willow branches. She swore that if she ever did it again, she’d pay the extra money to be punted by someone else in future.”

“A wise decision, no doubt,” snorted George, thinking of the many similar scenes he had witnessed in his time at university. “But what about you? Where in London did you study?”

She went on to tell him about her own time at university. It turned out that she had done a degree in Fine Art at UCL, though it was clear that despite all the galleries and shops and theatres she had been able to go to whilst in London, she had not enjoyed living there very much.

“I just got tired of it all in the end, I suppose,” she said with a shrug, “so I came back here. It’s such an amazing place—there’s so much inspiration for me here, so many beautiful places to paint. And anyway, I always miss the sea when I’m away.”

The day came to an end far too soon in George’s opinion, and it was with some disappointment that he said goodbye to her late into the afternoon as they stood by his car, parked up the hill in the same place as the day before, when he had come to meet Francis. Judging by Elizabeth’s expression, he dared hope that she too was a little reluctant to leave. He was proven right when she asked if he would like to meet again a couple of days from now, and suggested that they exchange numbers to arrange a time and a place. He could only hope that he didn’t seem too enthusiastic, but Elizabeth didn’t seem to mind, beaming at him, and he couldn’t help but respond in turn.

“I had a really lovely time today” she said and, before he could reply, she had darted forward and pressed a swift, gentle kiss to his cheek, given him a shy smile and a “I’ll see you soon” before turning and heading off down the hill with a wave. Once she was completely out of sight, George sank down into the driver’s seat of his car, fingertips ghosting over the arch of his cheekbone, feeling a little stunned. Only later did it occur to him that it was the second time in two days that he had sat in his car on that hill, grinning like a fool, but he couldn’t for the life of him bring himself to care.

Next Chapter: George gets a text and some unexpected advice, and Elizabeth and Verity have a chat.

[hell-on-training-wheels]

Don’t Fear The Reaper

A/N: Quote prompt request from an anon. ^-^ I thought of doing something humorous, but the tone kind of wouldn’t let me. I hope you all still enjoy it.

———–

“I think I may have found a song that accurately describes how I feel towards you.”

———- 

For the ruthless mercenary, there had never been any semblance of doubt that he would one day reach the end of his patience and get his revenge on Sombra. The only question that had been on his tired mind was what and when. What would be the provocation and when it would happen; when they were on a mission, on the airship, or at the most unexpected time?

Reaper had always suspected that it would be the latter. The hacker was insufferable to deal with when they had a serious objective, and even more so when they were alleviated from assignments for the meantime. The most aggravating part about it all was that she didn’t even have to be in the same room.

The ex-Blackwatch agent had longed for seclusion since their last failed mission, and much like with what had happened at Volskaya, he questioned Sombra’s true loyalty to Talon. Reaper trusted her the same way a cricket trusted a hungry lizard, but she was irreplaceable in Talon’s perspective. Plus, the ones that argued to keep her never had to partake in a mission with her like Widowmaker and himself did.

The Talon outpost, located 97 miles west of Dorado in the Mexican desert, had offered the mercenary with the quietness he needed. The agent still had means to communicate with Talon and the other members of his team when needed, but for the most part forsaken. The building he stayed in was an unimpressive fossil, a remnant of Overwatch’s global reach, and therefore, nothing anyone nearby to him cared to visit. The decrepit silver boxed-shaped building, gave a lackluster gleam under the full moon as he made his way back inside; the company of the stars overhead failing to keep any further interest.

Maskless, his scarred face pulled into a light scowl as the door opened for him and he passed by the faded symbol that careened his mind back into remembering bitter memories. The Overwatch symbol, the paint faded and scratched, was quickly forgotten the automatic doors hissed behind him. Shrouded in the darkness of his unlit hovel for only a moment, the lights flickered on as soon as they detected movement and followed him as he walked down the hall of the abandoned base.

They shut off the moment the door to his personal room closed and once again, the building looked unoccupied. The windowless rooms only light came from the holo-computer’s monitor that floated above his weapons workbench. Reaper’s hellfire shotguns laid just by the keyboard and for a moment, he considered using his guns to destroy the computer’s transmitter box just under the bench when the purple blinking of a familiar sugar skull icon blinked on the screen.

An exasperated growl escaped from him, and with every growing second the skull blinked and illuminated his room in neon amethyst light, ire grew within the pit of his stomach. The former Los Muertos member was the last person he wanted to have a video conference with, even when he was in a good mood. There was no escaping it though; he had learned that all too well.

As soon as his heavy footfalls came closer to the desk, the icon blinked away and revealed the hacker’s smirk on the other side.

“This better be important,” was his tempered greeting, his displeasure not only palpable in his tone, but his irritated expression.

Sombra gave a breathy chuckle at him. “Lo siento,” she mockingly apologized with a dismissive wave of her hand. “I forget how you much you enjoy your alone time.”

Reyes ignored her but noticed something particularly odd the more he studied her. The ever-present smugness she carried herself with was amplified with the mischievous smile that didn’t seem capable of faltering. Something was on her mind—something she just couldn’t wait to share.

“Are you going to tell me what it is?” Gabriel demanded with a threatening snarl, his arms crossing over the dark undershirt he wore. Even though the older man was halfway out of his uniform, choosing only to keep his pants and boots on, he was still as intimidating as if he was fully dressed in his garb. Unfortunately, the only ones that ever seemed unafraid were his own teammates.

The Mexican woman sarcastically crossed her own arms across her chest and mirrored his demeanor. “¡No me chingues!” she lowered her voice to mimic his and he almost smiled when she let out a coughing fit, her windpipe disagreeing with the low timbre.

“Lo tienes guey,” was his reply, an arrogant smirk this time working its way on to his face. It vanished the same moment she rolled her eyes at him. Reyes could never understand how the woman was in her thirties and still acted like an impertinent child.

“Nothing important,” she eventually divulged. The devilish sparkle in her eyes brightened at him. “I just have something to share with you.”

Reaper frowned. “If it is not important, than I don’t want to see it.”

Sombra grinned. “You do not have to see, you just have to listen. Even you can manage that, can’t you? Your good friend, Joel, said you enjoy this song above all else.”

“What?” Reyes blinked. She met McCree and they talked about their days at Blackwatch? For a moment, he felt betrayed and promised Jesse would be next on his list after he got rid of Sombra. However, Reyes knew that McCree would never say anything to her—unless she manipulated him.

“I have to admit,” Sombra began, her smile broadening. “It was rather hard to find even for me. It is such an old song, but anything for mi amigo.”

“Sombra…”

Reyes was unsure whether or not the conniving hacker heard his cautionary grumble, but it didn’t matter, because the audio file that she had been waiting to play blasted into his room. The same sugar skull icon returned, and under it the music bar moved regardless of how many times he tried to cancel the program. He grimaced, his ears in inescapable pain as the song blared so loud he was certain everyone in Dorado could hear it as well.

“You are dead when I get my hands on you!”

In all honesty, he wasn’t sure if that threat was more for McCree or Sombra. Secretly, he vowed his revenge on both of them if it was convenient.

After the lyrics began, he quit his attempts; knowing that Sombra wouldn’t let him off that easily. Turning away from the computer, he folded his arms across his chest again and paced until the song reached its conclusion. The song was one he hadn’t heard in a long time, and had recognized it after the first few instrumental notes. Music had been away from his life since his resurrection, particularly because of how much it had reminded him of his humanity, and hearing it for the first time since Zieglar’s biggest mistake, caused his cold blood to boil.

The song drowned out his wild theories on how Sombra got to Jesse and instead replaced his rational thoughts with unwanted nostalgia. There was no way to smother it, as much as he wanted to. It all came back with the intensity of a maelstrom.

Back at Blackwatch, his newest recruit let his superior listen to the songs that got him through his turbulent days in the Deadlock Gang. This song was one that Reyes requested to play a second time, and he would have never guessed that 17-year-old would have similar tastes in music as he did. It had only been a way to kill the time, to make the hours at Gibraltar faster, but it had accumulated more comradery between the two. They played poker to that song, along with many others on the list, and shared a bottle of tequila.  It was something they did routinely… it was how they became better friends…

Now it seemed Jesse had a new friend, and even though their ties had been severed for years, it still hurt the stoic man at the recollection of a fond memory that would be tarnished forever from this point on.

Now, as he continued to listen to it play, he felt wrathful towards Sombra for using a sentimental memory as a joking jab. It was never that simple with her though, and there was always a subtle scheme under what she tried to display as her only intentions. It was blackmail, simple as that, and her message was not hard to translate under the seemingly innocent bout of comedy.

“I got to your precious protégé once, I can do it again, and spill all your secrets.”

She hacked him, by using Jesse.

However, Sombra’s overconfidence made her vulnerable. Did she really think that he would not kill her for this despite the leverage she thought she had over him? In fact, it finally gave him the motivation—it consumed him.

The dangerous mercenary glared down at the floor, his black form still shadowed by the opulent violet glow of Sombra’s cyber skull, he curled his fist into a hard ball; the bones in his fingers cracking from the pressure alone.

The song eventually ended, allowing a brief final message from Sombra to flicker on the screen.

Buenos noches, cabrón.

He could not wait to repeat those same words back to her soon…

———————————————————–

A/N: Inspiration for this came from the comic panel from Tracer’s comic where you can see Sombra and McCree together. Guess all you need to hack a cowboy is by using a ‘Jack’. Get it? Jack Daniels? *I am so alone.*

The song can be anything, for myself, I chose ‘Don’t Fear The Reaper.’

Meh, I hope I did okay with Reyes. This is only my second time writing for him.

Revanant Nonny, your prompt is next and I will get it done by tomorrow. Also, thanks to @kumulonimbus for help in translating.