#He listens to heavy metal and kiss now beware

[cookiekat-blogz]

and the public opinion on Deku’s hair cut?

it varies!!

I’ve seen a lot of talk about it and I’d like to post a poll to see how people here on tumblr feel as well!

[ask-the-crimson-king]

Music Shill of the Day: "JUDAS" by Lord of the Lost

PART 2 of 2: "SALVATION"

Welcome back to part 2 of me shilling the fuck out of Judas and telling you, the lucky reader, of why it's so great. If you didn't see part 1, here's a link. Beware, it's long as fuck. LINKS TO ALL SONGS WILL BE PROVIDED. All songs will be rated on a scale of 1-10; 1 - garbage. Horrible. Why did you let this leave the studio. 5 - average. Meh. Not horrible, but not impressive. 10 - fantastic. Thank you for this existing. I love this too much. I will make a final post about my overall thoughts separately as well as give the top 5 songs of the album. BUT FOR NOW, we venture ever onwards. STARTING WITH--

13. "The Gospel of Judas" - 9/10

Starting off EXTREMELY strong with a very excellent piece with a brilliant message.

These lads said "happy last day of Pride, please take this video and this song" and I say thank you because. Watch the video. Careful with some people malding over them becoming "political" by adding a pride flag in the comments (but there are plenty of responses shutting them down since LOTL has regularly been supportive of the LGBT+ community and very vocal about that support).

This song is meant for those who are outcasts in society for being who they are, whether it be from gender-based, sexuality-based, race-based, whatever. Great intention and a great message.

The song itself, I find myself liking the choruses more than the verses. I'm not a huge fan of the "Judas, Judas" parts, but it works well enough for the song. Not quite an absolute banger of a song, but still really fucking good.

14. "Viva Vendetta" - 9/10

This song is fascinating for two reasons. The first; it features a full 386 person choir. The second; its instrumental was given to 32 different artists, with no title attached, to see what they'd do with it. That's really fucking cool.

As for the actual piece, it has a very nice, flowy, bouncy beat all throughout. I like it. It's something to vibe to, most certainly. It has almost a bit of an 80s feel to it.

The instrumentals are very neat, with the guitars making a very nice sounding bassy groove. Though there does seem to be acoustics used throughout as well, and the occasional synth. Overall? Dope as fuck song. It's genuinely awesome. It slaps.

But. As much as it slaps. A challenger approaches. A song I had been anticipating for over 3 weeks since I heard the "Track by Track" 30s preview.

15. "Argent" - 11/10

Okay. Okay. I know. Priest? Slaps. Born with a Broken Heart? Beautiful. Death is Just a Kiss Away? Love the strings. But.

But, dear reader. Allow me to enlighten you as to why this is, in my humble opinion, the best song on the album.

Let us start with the wonderful, Arabian-sounding vocals to open it. And then the introduction of the piano, it begins to build. And build. And then the guitars and the drums kick in, along with that industrial sound in the back.

It keeps growing and growing, then it begins to cool for the verse. Everything is still there, just waiting. Slowly, everything keeps growing in intensity. It builds and builds along with the vocals of the first verse.

Then we transition to a pre-chorus for a small calm...

Are you out there? Are you out there? I suffer... Your thirteenth suffers!

And then...

IT GOES OFF!

ARE YOU OUT THERE? I'M CLINGING TO THE DARK! ARE YOU OUT THERE? MY FALLEN COUNTERPART! BETRAYAL BURNS, LIKE THE SILVER IN MY HEART! ARE YOU OUT THERE? THE ERROR OF THE STARS!

The best chorus of the album. Without a doubt. There is so much raw emotion here barely simmering at the surface. As my friend @hoholupercal-adopts said;

"It captures ethereal rage, suppressing emotions, sorrow, bliss, and a love and need for hope."

And he is so spot on with that. It is beautiful. It is intense. It's amazing.

And then we come right back to a verse. And we start again, and after the second chorus we enter a small break of calm.

As the bridge starts up, the vocals from the beginning return, along with Chris' wonderful and soft yet gravelly voice with the slowly building instrumentals behind him...

The error of the stars... The error of the stars... A searing oath on the circles of the heart, Are you out there?

The error of the stars...

A brief pause, and then it smashes itself right back into that insane chorus.

This entire song is so powerful. Its so... so raw. So full of just a mix of emotions that it almost feels overwhelming. I just. I love this song so much.

If there is any song you listen to off "Judas", please make it be this. I cannot stress enough how fantastic this piece of incredible artistry is. It is, apparently, "Globalization in practice" according to Chris Harms himself. It is so beautiful. Please listen to it. Do yourself a favor.

16. "The Heartbeat of the Devil" - 8/10

This song has a great groove to it. I like the choice for using electronic drums. It has a very 80s feel about it. Very nice opening, with very open sounding verses and then a very nice chorus.

The piano also works as a nice accompaniment, as per usual at this point. The song is a fine song indeed, it really is grand. However its missing a few things that keep it from a 9/10 or a 10/10. Not entirely sure how to pinpoint what they are, but they're there.

Overall, a grand song, as most of these songs have been. Also this is a song for the Emperor of Mankind and it's funny cause it's number 16, which is Horus' number. But you wanna know what else else? It isn't the only ironic incident of this happening.

17. "And it Was Night" - 10/10

This song took me a bit. Off its intro with the synths, I wasn't vibing with it too much. With the introduction of the guitar and drums, I started to get into it. For the verse, I was still uncertain. That kinda odd synth was back. But it still sounded fine, I supposed.

However. The chorus is, ironically enough, where it shines the most.

It sounds beautiful. There, everything reconverges after the break in the verse, along with the backing choir, and it is simply...

It sounds ethereal. It sounds dreamlike. It sounds perfect for a song entitled "And it Was Night".

Everything afterward sounds great. The elements used in the intro and the chorus are used a bit more in the following verse, and the chorus just hard carries this song to a 10/10. It is fucking fantastic. It has some raw emotion within it, similar to Argent, but instead on a more... dreamlike, hopeful level. Kind of like childlike hope and wonder.

Also I've had 2 people tell me it's a Lorgar song and I agree wholeheartedly. Plus its #17. So ha.

18. "My Constellation" - 6/10

The vocals are fine, and they remind me of a song I can't really put my finger on. But this song just doesn't really do it for me. It has plenty of nice emotion and power with it, but the instrumentals feel kind of... weird. They fit, somehow, but they feel like they shouldn't.

It's still a very above-average song for the musicality of it alone, and the very pretty lyrics. Plus the vocals of the chorus are also nice. But it's still just missing things. It's not that great, but it's definitely an above-average song. One of the weaker entries on this album, but that's not saying a lot since this album is still fucking amazing as a whole.

19. "The Ashes of Flowers" - 8/10

The synths in the back of the intro with the piano sounded kind of odd at first. This is a song that doesn't have much buildup, it just goes along for about a minute and then BAM, intense instrumentals.

I do appreciate such songs as much as I do those that build. Those that slap you in the face will usually, indeed, slap. And this song does, for the most part. There are some bits that sound a bit janky to me, but it is a good song. Very strong entry on the list. At times it shares in that "these don't feel like they should fit together" vibes as its predecessor, but it only happens twice at most. Very gospel-sounding song, especially with how it sounds around the 3:30 mark, with the choir and Chris singing.

20. "Iskarioth" - 9/10

Now we got that more classic sounding heavy metal on the album. I grew up listening to stuff with this sort of style. But of course, the song has some newer elements added in. I love the riffs, though. They sound great. Love that classic sounding over-overdrive on the guitars. Love how it carries into the second verse. The beat and rhythm have that classic metal feel to them as well.

The chorus is, as most on the album thus far, very powerful and clean. The heavy riffs from the intro and breaks between chorus and verse are absent, leaving room for Chris and the backing choir to shine alongside the beautiful piano.

The break for the bridge that slowly builds to the final chorus is very nicely done, and I like how the guitars were added back in. An extremely strong song. Very well done. Love it.

21. "A War Within" - 9/10

Strings are back. I'm a bitch for strings. I love them when they're used in metal. I love them when combined with an organ and piano. I love them also when combined with great vocals. The opening verse leading to the pre-chorus, the repetition, the build to that powerful chorus, it's wonderful. The piano, as always, twining beautifully with the vocals.

The fucking cello solo with the leitmotif is fucking amazing. Favorite part of the song. It's so beautiful.

Very, very excellent piece of music. This song is a 9 for sure. Not quite a 10 since, while the chorus is nice, it could've used a bit more intensity. The pre-choruses where the rhythm picks up and everything feels more urgent is where the song shines for sure. Without a doubt.

22. "A World where We Belong" - 8/10

An interesting somber song that blends the heavier and intense pieces with this overall feeling of melancholy, yet hope. This song doesn't have an instrumental intro. Instead, Chris just starts right off singing. This song definitely feels like a sort of cheesy church song. But it does have a nice message to be found within the lyrics, and it's a nice and slow song too.

Good pacing. Good vocals. A good song.

23. "Apokatastasis" - 10/10

So. Um.

This song is an instrumental that's basically entirely strings.

The name means "the restoration of equilibrium after the apocalypse", and it serves as a respite for the album. A breath of fresh air, similar to Be Still and Know.

However, where Be Still and Know had the various members of the band show up, this one has them quieting down. It features the leitmotif once more, and it definitely has that feeling of peace and quiet. The album, until now, has been a bit chaotic. There's been a lot of emotion, power, and just... feeling.

This is a beautiful piece. It truly is.

10/10, easily.

Now let's wrap up the album.

24. "Work of Salvation" - 9/10

Soft, gravelly vocals greet the listener after that beautiful respite, paired with a lovely choir and piano as well.

Slowly, we get that buildup again. The organ comes back. The song feels very much like "The Death of All Colours", only this time with instrumentals backing instead of just vocals. A nice callback after this long journey.

This song works as a great ending to the album, a very nice catharsis. It isn't overbearingly powerful, but it isn't too soft either. It matches the mood of its predecessor and of that of the album wonderfully.

I'll talk about that in the post after this, but wonderful song.

It even ends with a beautiful, and almost sad rendition of that leitmotif on piano. As if lamenting that the journey is over. A beautiful end to a wonderfully amazing album.

[cap-samwilson]

hand to heart

(where tony gets his reactor removed a bit later, and bucky is there for the result. 

tony/bucky, established relationship. angst with a happy ending, hurt/comfort, tw: hospital scenes and mentions of bucky’s trauma

read it here on AO3, or after the read more, beware, mobile!)

bucky is there when the reactor is taken out of tony’s chest.

it happens in stages – the initial appointment with the doctor who’s going to do the procedure, the follow-up meetings where the doc gives the details of how exactly it’s going to go down, the twenty-four hour period where tony isn’t allowed to eat or drink a damn thing and starts to spiral, the fourteen-hour procedure – and bucky is there for all of it. holds tony’s hand when the surgeon starts mentioning the scary stuff, like how delicate the operation is even with something as useful as the reactor holding all the shrapnel in the same spot. it’s weeks and months of preparation, even more time just trying to come to the damn decision, and bucky is there, like a shadow, making sure tony’s supported every step of the way.

of course, tony needs the support. he needs to have someone there for him, and sure steve and potts and rhodey all want to be there, and are there sometimes, but bucky is there. and he sits through the meetings. pulls himself together. pushes away the panic that comes from bright and white and medical.

the day of, tony’s hands are wringing, his stomach growling and his eyes half closing after not having a single drop of caffeine for a world-record day and a half. he’s snappy, nervous, the smile he shows the nurses one that the outside world usually gets. but when the gown goes on, and he gets the first needle prick of an i.v., bucky presses a kiss to his fingers and lays them against tony’s forehead.

“i won’t let anything happen in there. anything that shouldn’t happen, at least,” he teases, and tony takes it with a better smile, one that’s small but real.

with a shrug, the restless patient glances toward the door, as if expecting the doctor to burst in and do the procedure then and there. “i mean, the longer i’m in there, the more you get peace and quiet,” he jokes back.

“hey.” bucky stops him, lifting his metal hand to keep the words at bay. it’s weak. they both know he lives off tony’s energy, the way he laughs, the way he talks, the way he lights up the damn room. steve calls it love or something. bucky’s prone to call it that, too. “you’re out any longer than a day, and i’m suing the whole damn place. you got the lawyers, i’ll make it happen.”

that gets a laugh, and together they wait, hands clasped together until tony falls asleep and he’s wheeled out, followed close behind by the sound of bucky’s boots as he goes to wait in the theater.

one moment, it’s there, shining and bright and blue. the next, it’s gone.

not gone gone, it’s still there, still bright, but the shine comes from the metal of its encasing and not the soft glow of life.

the docs, all of them crowded around tony’s body like he’s just another experiment weapon patient, pull back the curtain to showcase the new scar where a hole used to be. a reconstructed sternum, rearrangement of the superior portion of the ribcage, and the removal of twenty-five pieces of shrapnel later it’s done, the souvenirs all in a convenient to-go cup. some of them are so small that bucky can’t even see them with the best sniper eyes in the business.

bucky goes and throws up a couple of times, wipes his mouth with a determined set of his jaw, and starts waiting all over again.

during the procedure, he’s all nerves and anxiety and dread, sam and steve bringing some food, natasha clothes for them both. after, the waiting is expectant. for tony to wake up. to see the thing there, on the bedside table, apart from him. a whole different kind of awful, but a little easier because the docs say he’s fine, that he’s gonna be okay and awake any minute.

and bucky should be happy, because tony’s free. the arc reactor did its job, kept tony alive, and now it’s gone and tony doesn’t have to cling to it. doesn’t have a crutch. no more fear.

so why isn’t he?

there’s no way to pinpoint it, but bucky’s sure it’s because tony’s not awake yet. because he still doesn’t look like he should, out cold with tubes coming in and out of him in a way that gives buck the shivers. like he’s dead. or close to gone. the sight of him without blue coming from his chest makes it worse, more vivid, and he has to close his eyes tight to get that thought out and away from him

a few more hours pass. bucky writes a bit in the journal doctor hall gave him, a way to get out thoughts before they fester, and puts it away so he can stare at tony some more. worries. writes some more. rests a bit, eyes closed but not really sleeping before he hears the telltale hitch of breath.

“buck?”

with a soft whimper tony winces, the stuff that’s supposed to keep away pain starting to fade because he was out for a bit longer than expected.

“hey, doll.” he reaches for tony’s hand again, squeezes it. “good job out there.”

“shouldn’… you be thankin’ the guy who done it?” he’s slurring like he did at Christmas, the spiked nog having been a bit too much. he looks like he’s gonna pass out again, too, his eyes are already closing. but bucky keeps talking.

“nah, you were the star. the picture-perfect patient.”

“mmhmm?”

“yeah, baby, you did swell. you look great, too. they did a good… good job.”

why does the word hitch? struggle to get out? it’s not a lie, it’s not. but tony doesn’t even notice the internal conflict because he’s got medication in every part of him, and bucky’s left alone in that hospital room once again, wondering why there’s a rush of bile every time he sees the reactor on the table.

“tony, for the last time, you can’t do something like that for at least another three weeks. operating heavy machinery, remember? big no.”

it’s the result of a rough few weeks. tony’s more restless than bucky’s ever seen him, basically bouncing off the walls after bedrest in a hospital room, then bedrest at home, then limited activity, then… slightly less limited activity. especially considering that it’s an operation that’s never been attempted, one that will probably never be replicated. there’s no precedent, so everything goes slow. they have the timeline posted on their bedroom wall, ticking off the days until he’s full health, back to himself.

limited activity. limited food. limited sex. everything has a limit, for the man without any. he complains about it all, and bucky lets him. it sucks, that’s for fucking sure.

“how am i supposed to get out there as iron man when right now the suits i have all run on arc reactor power? no arc reactor, remember?” tony’s voice is accusing, as if bucky could somehow forget.

“i know, i was there,” he sighs out, before pulling the genius toward him with the grip of a firm hand, lets his arms wrap around him so he can start pushing kisses against dark curly hair, gets a whiff of shampoo that cost more than him and steve’s rent at one point. “why don’t we go and watch a movie or something, huh?”

“we’ve been watching movies for a month,” tony mutters, but the fact that it’s not at the top of his lungs is a good sign. another one is the way he melts at the contact, sinks into bucky’s arms like they’re good pillows. “movies, tv, reruns, new shit. only so much you can do when you’re not allowed to go forth into the outside world.”

right.

suddenly, something swims to the surface of bucky’s mind, something on their timeline that they had been counting down to.

the arms around tony loosen a bit, but before the genius can protest bucky’s hand start to slide down his sides, run over his hips, under the waistband of sweatpants that he’s about ninety percent sure aren’t tony’s at all.

“what are you doing? remember? no sex until i’m up and at it,” tony hisses out, but the sound bucky lets out is low, a little laugh. tony starts to pull away a little, spins to face the soldier with a look that asks why he would do a thing like that when they both know it’s not an option.

“a month.”

“what?”

“a month, tones. today.”

understanding dawns over tony’s face, slow and steady. suddenly, there’s a burst of color to his cheeks, a small noise leaving him, and a fierce nod, a “god, yes” before they’re against each other, bucky’s hands gentle but his lips fierce, needy, so goddamn ready.

tony has no such restraint, until something he does, probably the way his shoulders move, pulls a noise from him that’s definitely not of pleasure. bucky freezes and his eyes are wide and fearful, but tony just lets out a sigh of frustration.

“i still can’t do much,” he explains, reaching up a hand to press over the tank top that has no cutout in the front.

but bucky just hums, leans forward and takes tony in his arms once more. his lips are gentle against a sharp jaw, breath ghosting over a perfect neck.

“let me handle this, sweetheart,” he whispers, and the feeling of tony’s body shivering against his is like the best drug. “you don’t have to move an inch.”

it doesn’t take long to sate them. a month away from any kind (or most kinds) of sexual contact does that, and bucky takes pride in squeezing out two orgasms from tony, pulling him apart bit by bit with his mouth, his fingers. seeing tony fall apart does it for him, and so he’s taken care of a couple times, too, and puts the sight into the back of his mind for later when he’s feeling reminiscent. bucky can’t give tony what he really wants, what he was begging for, not for another two weeks, but this is enough, is so much more than they had, and by the end of it tony’s out like a light, breaths long and deep.

it’s good, but… something keeps bucky’s eyes open. keeps him tossing, turning, unable to sit still. tony’s dead to the world, but bucky… bucky stays awake for a while. stares up at the ceiling, listens to tony breathe, his metal hand tucked behind his neck, his other hand resting on his stomach.

the room is dark, pitch black now. no stars or moon outside really to push shine through their window, and the curtains are drawn tight to prevent any unwanted eyes, so. no light, no shine, no… no blue.

suddenly the bile claws its way up his throat again, and he has to force it back down, close his eyes. the cold metal of his hand sends a shiver down his spine, and he opens them again to get rid of visions of medical facilities and masked agents forcing shit into his body.

tony’s free now. free of his vice. it sits on one of his stands in his shop, not a place of honor, but not discarded either. it’s just there and when bucky goes down there to get another tablet or something tony can tinker with, it mocks him. the steel winks at him and his arm answers back.

it’s so dark in the fucking room.

with a soft huff, he pushes himself out of their bed for the third time that week, lets tony sleep, watches him to make sure his breaths are still steady before pushing out the door and closing it without a sound. the hall lights rise to half power, and bucky winces before pushing forward to the front room. the walls are lined with windows and he can stare at lights all around the city with a view like this.

the same thoughts had been riding him for a month now, ever since tony came back from the procedure with the circular scar that he now carried with him. it’s a reminder, more than anything, and once the pain faded it would be the only thing left. sure, there’d be reactor power everywhere, in the tower, the compound, the city… but it wouldn’t be in tony anymore.

his vision blurs a bit.

and that’s what the genius wanted. wanted to be free of it, right? and bucky had supported him, because he loved the asshole and wanted what was best for him and this was what was best. he was proud and he still loved tony, that would never change, right?

so why can’t i sleep next to him anymore?

gripping his head, bucky falls backwards into the couch. the light of outside cuts across him, and he realizes he’s still naked. flesh and bone, except…

his hands clench into fists as he pulls them in front of his face, lets his eyes scan over them.

and then it clicks, clicks with the soft sound of whirring that makes bucky’s jaw tight, as his metal fist compacts itself into a weapon of mass destruction posing as a hand.

tony’s metal parts were bright. soft. lit up the room. bucky remembers hours spent just staring at it, when the genius was asleep after laughing and talking for hours before those moments to himself. they were good. they kept tony alive.

bucky’s metal parts made him walk off balance. made him wince when he stretched wrong, ached as the metal inside him rubbed against nerves and muscles in his shoulder. invaded every part of him. they had killed and murdered and had ruined lives.

tony used his reactor for so much… so much good it hurt. had changed the world with it, created sustainable energy that would last lifetimes, had saved himself with it.

when bucky closed his eyes, he still saw the damn red star on the shoulder. a regime that wiped away the weak and strong alike. took apart power and built it up again in the image of themselves.

he blinks. feels something fall down his cheeks. when he wipes it away, it’s with the hand that he’s cursed with, and he feels a tug as the interlocking parts tug at his skin.

when he stands again, he’s shaky, and he makes sure there’s no crying when he goes back to tony. can’t show what’s filling his head, and he’s not sure he’s able to hold a pen long enough to get them onto paper. when he slides in next to tony again, his metal arm is buried in the sheets. his normal, good, better fingers reach for tony’s hand before he stops, feels a strangled noise leave him, and curls up on his own side of the bed.

he doesn’t sleep. can’t. gets up early, dresses, makes sure the coffee maker is going and there’s breakfast waiting for him. he’s sure tony will wake soon, needing pain medication, some comfort, so he grabs the pills out of the cupboard, too. but looking at them makes his stomach roll. makes his head hurt, his heart pound. but before he can put two out, with a glass of water to be safe, the bottle is crushed in his hand. the little white pieces of comfort scatter, and bucky watches in horror. unfurls the metal fist to see white powder, crushed orange plastic, tony’s name on the paper.

his breathing speeds up, the night’s thoughts rushing back, and before he has time to think, grab a pen, try for sanity, he’s out the door. because he knows now.

tony had gotten rid of his metal parts. tony was whole again.

bucky never would be.

once he’s out in the open air, though, he freezes. he doesn’t want to disappear. doesn’t want to vanish without a trace, though he knows he can. but something tells him going and grabbing his go bag would worry people, and he doesn’t deserve worry. so he starts walking, then running, one foot in front of the other.

his phone starts to buzz. first texts, then calls. tony, steve, even sam all try to reach him. for a moment he wonders if he should turn around, if he should go back, apologize, say he’s fine. but doctor hall keeps telling him lying when he’s not okay doesn’t do any good, and to face them all would be a lie itself.

that he was good. fine. good enough, especially for tony.

as it gets later the calls come less and less. one or two after six, and then his phone is silent. he’s grateful for it. they’ve surely realized by now, what he’s doing, what he needs to do. get away. his feet hurt, he’s hungry, tired after no sleep the night before, but he keeps pushing, sprinting, going forward. he’s walked so far the buildings have start to spread out, get low, become sprawling suburbs. he pushes on.

the sun sets. it gets cold, and he pauses his sprint to zip up the jacket. walks some more. doesn’t even realize he’s stopped until he processes that he’s staring at a sign, the glow of neon almost hurting his eyes after he’s stared at his boots all day. doesn’t realize what about it keeps him from just pushing forward until the blue catches his eye.

arc reactor blue.

everything hits him at once. the pain, his hunger, his exhaustion, his hurt, and he collapses into the wall of the diner the sign belongs to. he’s sliding, now, onto the ground, and everything is blurry. when he lands, his metal arm scrapes against concrete.

doesn’t hear tony’s voice until it’s right next to his ear, can’t get up until steve lifts him and helps him to the backseat.

“what the hell was that?”

“tones…”

“no, steve, shut up,” tony snaps, and his voice is full of righteous anger, frustration, fear. bucky doesn’t process all of it exactly but knows that the force of it is directed at him. his chin tucks a little close to his chest. “i think i deserve an explanation as to why my boyfriend vanished without a trace this morning. what some coffee and a plate of buttered toast and all would be fine?”

“tony,” steve tries again, but his voice is immediately drowned out by since tony’s volume only goes up from there.

“we text, we call. no answer. we try all damn day, we tried to contact you all day, bucky, and what do you do? you ignore us! hell, give us something, why don’t you, so we don’t think someone’s kidnapped you, or hurt you, or fucking killed you! and where do we find you? fucking miles away, at a rundown diner, looking like you’ve been –”

“tony!”

it’s the captain america voice, the one that booms without needing to overpower everyone else in the room. it’s enough to get tony’s attention at least, since he stops talking. bucky’s hands clench into fists, goes so still that he feels like he’s not even breathing.

“steve,” tony whispers after a few moments, the silence thick. “can you give us a minute?”

bucky can see steve’s own boots disappearing, hears them until they’re out of range, and then, and only then, is when he manages to look up enough to meet tony’s eyes.

“you shouldn’t have been driving,” he gets out, voice rough.

he feels like he’s back at the beginning, when steve found him. hair dirty, body grimy, voice unused, bones stiff. a mess. broken. beaten.

but tony seems to just get out a snort, even through his anger. he knows now. how lost bucky is. now it’s just waiting for the inevitable.

“really? you go missing and come back looking like you went to hell and back and i’m what you’re worried about?”

bucky can only shrug, both shoulders lifting, and when they lower tony’s shaking his head at him, in disbelief. it’s enough for bucky to push his chin back down. he was trying to protect tony, didn’t he understand?

he doesn’t look up again until he feels a hand on his wrist, his metal one. it shocks him, that he would even dare after everything.

“buck? you wanna sit down?”

there’s a fierce shake of bucky’s head. no. he doesn’t need to sit to know what’s coming. what needs to happen.

tony’s voice doesn’t sound angry anymore, though. it sounds soft, low, soothing, and still so worried. his voice when dum-e got a virus. his voice when natasha came back with a broken leg. his voice when bucky had a nightmare in the same bed for the first time.

“okay,” he tries again, and bucky braces himself, tenses, can basically hear the words before they leave tony’s mouth. “do you mind… do you mind telling me what’s going on? and… what i can do to help you out?”

wait.

“wha-?” the word is barely formed, almost a half of what it should be, but tony seems to read the surprise to know what was trying to be communicated. his eyes scan tony’s, trying to find something forced in them, but there’s nothing.

“i want to help, buck,” tony whispers to him, and his other hand lifts so that he can have both hands outstretched, one on his metal hand, the other on his shoulder, rubbing the spot there. “i, i don’t know what’s going on, but something is. something’s… hurting you, and i want to know what. i want to help.” he smiles. gentle. “is that so hard to believe?”

“yes.” it’s immediate, and tony winces. bucky feels the color, whatever’s left, drain from his face. that hurts. that look tony’s giving him, like he’s been stabbed.

“it is?”

“no.” immediate backtracking, immediate regret. “not… like that.”

“like what, then? buck, please, did i do something to make you think that?”

each word hurts bucky more and more because it hurts tony. he can hear it, see it play across his face, each line. this was why he had to walk away, because tony was whole and bucky just pulled him apart. “no, it’s not you. it’s never you.”

“then… then, what?”

there’s a beat, two, bunch of moments where bucky tries to put together what he can. he needs to explain this perfectly, so tony can get it. so he can understand why he doesn’t work. why he’s so broken.

“you got your arc reactor out,” bucky whispers, and tony seems confused. raises a brow. but bucky forces himself to keep talking, even when he wants nothing more than to run off again.

“you – you got it out, and i missed it. couldn’t really sleep without it, i just… missed… missed the way i could look at it. look at the metal, and the blue, and.. listen to you explain how it worked all over again.” the words begin to trickle out of him, gentle, and he lets the momentum carry him, even as tony’s eyes stare at him, even though he can’t meet those beautiful brown eyes.

“i missed seeing it when i woke up some, when the nights got bad. it was a good blue, y’know, and helped me remember you were there, and i missed touching the cold metal on the outside, but. it was gone. and you… you deserve that, you deserve it not there, anymore.” it’s a stream now, a stream of consciousness that tangles and jumbles but still gets pulled out. he pushes through it, keeps it going. “but… most of all i missed how it made us the same. not – not exactly the same, because you’re – you’re so fucking good, tones, but how we both had something. something.”

“something,” tony repeats, and bucky nods, doesn’t like how it sounds in tony’s mouth because it sounds dumb. stupid. dumb because it is. tony wasn’t like bucky. never was.

“something.” he forces himself to keep the stream going, even though now he feels the threat of tears in his eyes once again. third time, two days, but he had to keep going. “it was something.”

“but your something was good. good and pure. it kept you alive, lit things up, it fucking powers the whole place, don’t it? and mine… my something just hurts. hurts me, hurts you. hurts everything it touches. and now you’re something’s gone, and you’re just… you’re free.”

it’s rapid now, everything coming out of him, and the dam breaks before he can stop it, his eyes squeeze close, but the tears keep coming.

“you deserve someone who’s got a good something, or nothing that’s holding them back. you deserve someone who’s as whole as you are now, someone who can keep up, who doesn’t have a stupid fucking hydra arm stuck to his side. you deserve someone who can hold you with two fucking human hands instead of a metal one, deserve good. i’m not good, i’m not whole, and.. and i – i never will be.”

and after all that, he’s met with silence. a beat. two.

when he opens his eyes, tony is staring. mouth agape, just a little. his eyes are wide, beautiful brown eyes, and bucky realizes that they’re shiny, his cheeks are wet. tony was… was crying.

“i’m sorry –” he whispers, but before he can continue there’s a couple of fingers over his lips.

“you’re… you’re the best man i know, buck.” tony’s voice is shaky, is breaking, and bucky watches. watches as his fingers pull away, as his lips replace them.

when they break, neither of them are breathing well. bucky’s is coming in shaky inhales, tony’s too hard, too rough, but they’re clinging to each other. bucky’s got his fingers wrapped up in tony’s shirt, and tony’s nails are digging into bucky’s hips.

“when i see you, i see something,” tony whispers, when he can. their foreheads are touching now, and at one point they’ve hit the ground. “i see something beautiful. a man who came back from the depths of hell alive, and clinging to life, and fighting, i see something good, a man who made me coffee and toast with jelly on it this morning, who’s done that every day for the past year because he knows i don’t really eat on my own. bucky, i just see you.”

“tones, i don’t –”

tony kisses him, surely to shut him up again, and bucky can’t argue, kisses him right back, lets his fingerprints skirt along the other’s ribs. when tony’s voice is heard again it feels like it echoes, travels warm through bucky’s veins, down his spine. .

“i might seem whole, bucky barnes, but that’s only because i’ve got you. you make me whole. not the reactor, not the surgery, nothing but you. you show me how i can get up each morning. and when i woke up, and you were gone –”

“i’m so sorry, tony, god, i’m so fucking sorry,” bucky gets out, before he can stop himself, and tony’s eyes go wide. “i know i shouldn’t have, but you just… it got too much, the thoughts in my head –”

“no, no, buck, no. you’ve got nothing to apologize for, i promise. you’ve… you’ve been feeling this way, and that’s nothing to be sorry for.” that shuts bucky up as good as a kiss, and tony’s looks at him head on, takes bucky’s demons by the horns and toss them aside. fucking obliterates them, for the moment. “just. next time. please don’t run. come to me, talk to me, and we can… we can talk about this, because… i need you, buck. fuck, i love you.”

“yeah?”

“yeah.”

“tones,” bucky gets out in a breath, and he pushes forward again. “i love you, too. i love you so much.”

and for the moment, for once, bucky feels a little less broken.

bucky’s home. he’s at his home.

he’s leaving the bathroom, his hair still damp from his shower, and as he’s toweling it off he realizes there’s a gentle blue glow in the dark room. it’s centered above the bed, where they sleep, and when bucky tilts his head up there’s a rush of… something.

“tones?” he asks, and the man peeks up over the covers, grinning at him. bucky can see it, because of the light. it’s soft enough that it’s not blinding, but bright enough that it feels like… like…

“i had jarv help me set this up,” tony tells him, looking proud of himself, sitting up against the headboard. “you like it?”

“what… what is it?”

“it’s kind of a mock… well. mock arc reactor. the blue shines while i’m in the room, especially at night, and – well, just watch.” tony lifts himself out of the bed, starts walking towards bucky, and the light follows. tracks over the ceiling, follows tony until it settles above where he is now, which is now directly in front of bucky, staring up at him, giddy.

“you made this for me,” bucky breathes, and in a rush, he’s lifting tony by his waist because it’s not a question. the other’s legs wrap around his hips, and he holds the other there, pulls him down for a kiss.

“for me, too,” tony retorts, but his smile is so big it’s hard to argue. “i mean, i had the thing for years, hard for that kind of thing to just be gone. but. yeah. for you. mainly. also me.”

“tony?”

“yeah?”

“i love you.”

the words are soft, so soft tony almost doesn’t hear them. but he knows them. loves those words. loves him.

“i love you, too, buck.”

[tokoyamisstuff]

Scars Ch. 1- Bucky x Reader Soulmate AU

Based on the Soulmate Prompt where whatever you write on your skin, it appears on your soulmate’s.

Author’s Note: This is some kind of a Prequel, so there’s no real interaction between the two in this chapter.

And beware, I’m a slut for angst so this’ll probably be very sad, but it’ll have a happy ending! (:

[Masterlist]

Summary: When he was still a young man, James ‘Bucky’ Barnes already started doubting if he even had a Soulmate, since he never got any response to his messages. Did she fall in battle, being dragged into the war just like him? Was he doomed to stay alone forever, from the very start?

Little did he know his Soulmate is just about to be born - and in a whole different millennium at that!

(Story takes place after Captain America: The Winter Soldier. Bucky had escaped HYDRA’s fangs and is currently living in Bucharest.)

Warnings: Murder, Angst.

Words: 1795

Chapter 1: First Words

[A few years in the past.]

“Yes, that’s it! Perfect!”

A gentle smile played on your lips as you proudly viewed your masterpiece:

It was a simple, but clear “Hey, how are you?”, written in a beautiful font all over your left arm. He won’t be able to miss a sentence written this big, right? And anyway: How else do you start a conversation with the person you’re apparently made for?

But just a second after you regretted your decision, thinking that maybe it was too formal. Why are you so bad with those kind of things? Gosh, you’re not even talking to him in person and you’re already freaking out!

Rubbing your warm face to make the light blush disappear, you threw your body onto the sofa and tried to process everything that went through your mind right now.

All those years, ever since you were born, you’ve never really gotten any sign of your Soulmate. And because of your...well, complete opposite of an easy youth, you weren’t really invested into that matter anyway.

Until now, at least.

The words of a patient, an eldery lady, were somehow burned into your head. She was lying on her dying bed, and you aided her in those last moments. There were so many things to talk about, and she had an exciting life, that much was sure. You always loved sitting at your client’s beds and listening to their stories. 

But this time, it was different.

She told you about her Soulmate: A man she failed to love the way she should do. About how much she regretted never having seeked him out, just to find out way too late that he had died a long time ago. About how much she misses him, even though she never met him, laughed with him, cried with him or kissed him. Her having lived in her small world, afraid to be hurt, afraid to trust, and how the only thing she could think about now was what could have been. And that she hopes she’ll get another chance with him - in another life.

Her last words for you were advice and truth, opening your eyes to a certain extend: Never look back. Don’t let your past stop you from finding your own happiness. Live and love every day like it could be your last.

And god, she was right.

But right now, anxiety rose up inside of you. What’s his reason for never having tried to start a conversation? Is he hurt, dead even, like in the story of the old lady? Did you mess up your only chance to spend time with him, even though you’re still so young? Condemned to spend a life of loneliness, just because you’re so hard to trust anyone? No, this can’t be the case. The words glow up a bit after your Soulmate sees them, and you certainly didn’t just imagine that light.

Then why isn’t he answering?

Maybe it was fate as well. The fact that at the very moment you would direct your first words at him, Bucky wasn’t in cryostasis.

The Winter Soldier was on his way to duty at that rainy night, in a country you’ll hopefully never visit. A simple mission: Taking out a single, unaimed target, steal their valuable data and then disappear again.

He had dragged the said man over the cement, after having shot the tires of his car. Much to his misfortune, the impact of him crushing through the windscreen and hitting the street didn’t kill him immediately, so there was a much more painful death to be expected.

There he was now, with Bucky crouching over the lifeless body, whose headbone he crushed in with his bare fists. Preparing to erase any trace of him to make it seem like a usual car-accident, he got ready for his journey back to this hell. Yet as he reached out for the corpse to place it on it’s initial position, he stopped his movements as he saw letters appear on his prosthetic arm.

“Hey, how are you?”

It just distracted the soldier for a brief moment however, having forgotten about Soulmates entirely. The only thing that mattered was the mission at hand, his purpose - the sole reason for his existence.

He grunted as he tried to wipe the font away, but failed to until you grew impatient and washed it away in the sink. So luckily for you, they didn’t see your writing when he arrived back at HYDRA’s base.

God knows what they’d have done when they realized that his Soulmate is still alive and out there. They’d probably see you as a potentially threat, fearing you making him remember. And then, they’d find out who you are, where you lived - ultimatively making the Winter Soldier kill you with his own hands.

But it wasn’t like that.

Bucky sat on a chair in the dark examination room, staring at the only light source in the room, a small lamp in the corner of the wall. An engineer was fixing a malfunction on his metal arm, and meanwhile the soldier repeated this question in his head, over and over again:

“How are you?”

He didn’t know. Is he even able to have emotions? It felt like he could, a long time ago...

There wasn’t much time to think about it. They realized something was wrong, that he began to have thoughts of his own again, just a spark of curiosity in his eyes enough to make them fear to lose control over their killing-machine.

It was time to erase him once again.

It had been weeks since your first attempt to talk to your Soulmate, and it certainly wasn’t your last one ever since.

This whole time, for every single day, you’d write a small note or message to him, feverishly awaiting his answer.

Sometimes it were simple greetings, other days it you’d leave jokes or the lyrics of a song you liked to enjoy for him. Also reminders like ‘Drink enough water :)’, or what you were doing right now. Questions that asked how he was doing or where he was. You’d be glad about any kind of information about him.

But always the same answer - nothing. Not even the glowing marks appear on your skin anymore, so he isn’t even able to read them. Has something happened to him? Your heart sank to the ground and you felt how colour was leaving your face as you slowly realize this could mean the worst case scenario. How could you even care so much about someone you don’t even know?

“I hope you’re okay” you wrote, trying to pull yourself together. You had promised to keep on, no matter how hard it may be, have you not?

This day had actually started like anyone else: You got up way too late to get ready properly, hushed to work and spend the following eight hours trying to survive this usually stressful Monday.

Your workplace, a hospital in a smaller town of [your country], had been all you ever asked for: A peaceful, stable life without any inconveniences - far, far away from your past. Helping others made the weight of your reappearing nightmares and the steady anxiety bearable. You had found reason to live on, and that’s more you could ask for. Trying to make every single day count, and spread as much love and happiness to people in this already way too harsh and terrible world. Making a difference, if only small. That was your wish.

Sure, outside from your work as a nurse you had a boring, normal life - or at least it appeared to be for anyone else. All of your friendships had been rather shallow, and you prefered staying home by yourself over partying any time. So aside from working, eating and sleeping, you functioned rather than you lived, without spending much though at the future.

“Find my own happiness, she said, huh...” you pondered as you stood in front of the kitchen unit, preparing something easy and quick to eat. “It takes two to do that. So why is he ignoring me?”

Thinking about it, there could be a thousand reasons, even if you try to surpress the thought of him being gone before you had a chance to ever meet him. You let out a heavy breath as you accidentally cut yourself while buried in thought. Maybe you’d go out tonight for a change, to distract yourself from those feelings. Honestly, you didn’t even know him! There was nothing in the world allowing you to be mad at him. Maybe you just started obsessing over something that should never be. Wouldn’t be the first time Soulmates don’t find each other, for god knows why.

Walking towards the window of your home - a small hut in midst of a forrest and a wide, flowery field - you directed a dreamy look at the stars, asking yourself what that supposed ‘Soulmate’ of you is doing right now. Unfortunately, you simply couldn’t know that the soldier was put to sleep for yet another years they’d take away from him.

And like this, days became weeks, weeks turned to months - and eventually, you gave up on that naive dream. You probably were never meant to be united with your Soulmate, most likely fate just didn’t want you to be happy. Life already proved this fact many times before in your life.

Bumping on the floor after loudly putting on some music, one of your favourite songs, you picked up a blue marker. Tears in your eyes clouded your vision as you wrote your last words to him, part of the lyrics:

“Hey you, out there in the cold Getting lonely, getting old Can you feel me?”

The tears run down your cheeks and on your arm, blurring the words that were already unrecognizable due to your shaky hands. Your heart ached, so you fell onto your back, staring at the ceiling and beginning to sing along:

♫ ♪ “Hey you, don't help them to bury the light Don't give in without a fight

[…]

But it was only fantasy The wall was too high As you can see No matter how he tried He could not break free

[…]

Hey you, out there on the road Always doing what you're told Can you help me?” ♪ ♫

Never before you felt so lonely, and as you desperately tried to not reopen old wounds once again, you missed the last part of the song that usually never failed to cheer you up:

♫ ♪ “Hey you, don't tell me there's no hope at all Together we stand, divided we fall” ♪ ♫

[Part 2]

If you want to get on the taglist feel free to ask! ♡

@bucky-fanfiction @welcome-to-fangirl-hell @blondekel77

Song: Pink Floyd - Hey You

[whirlybirbs]

TAKE IT SLOW -- #bittercoffee

this is a stupid little smutty drabble i want you all to have as a thank you for being so patient with the next chapter of #bittercoffee. 

here we have some stupid, early-relationship sexual tension culminating into something other than dry humping. consider it a little tease for the real deal, which will inevitably happen in later #bittercoffee chapters! 

beware, a little smut below the cut!

“You’re distracting, you know.”

One hand is under the back of your shirt, ghosting along your spine and raising goosebumps with each tender pass. His other is occupied with his phone — he’s been trying to figure the contraption out these last few weeks and with the newest discovery of the Instagram explore page, Bucky is waist deep in cat videos and bad DIYs.

His attention is pulled from his phone and he gives a little grin, sitting up and pressing a warm kiss into the curve of your shoulder.

“It’s late, doll.”

His voice is soft.

You huff, dragging your eyes up from the scattered papers across your comforter before letting your shoulders sag. Bucky’s hands continue to scale up and down your back until you finally give in, pushing your glasses back up your nose. He smiles, tight lipped and tired.

“You’re right,” you mumble, gathering your thesis notes and your laptop before standing, “Probably won’t memorize anything at this hour anyways.”

Buck hums in agreement and flops back down into the pillows. 

Bucky likes watching you. It’s not a secret — he’s obsessed with the way you tiptoe across the bedroom, the way you bend and stretch and tug your hair up. He can hardly tear his eyes away from a brief flash of your midsection or a peek of your bottom. It’s incredibly difficult when he’s so damn enamored with every part of you. He tries to hide his apparent staring behind his phone.

You turn after shutting your desk lamp off, dropping your glasses to the table, before taking a moment to admire the supersoldier currently taking up three fourths of your bed. 

He’s reclined against the pillows, blue eyes following you. He really is something out of a dream — you watch his chest rise and fall with each breath, the bare skin there scattered with scars and reminders of his past. His abdomen jumps when you chew your lip.

“What?” he asks, a coy amusement heavy in his voice. He drops his phone to the bedside table with a heavy thwunk.

Your eyes dart down his thighs, boxers bunched messily there. Bucky kicks his feet a bit, tugging back the sheets. 

“You done ogling?” he chides, cheeks a bit pink, “Staring is rude, you know.”

“You stare all the time,” you murmur, “Just let me admire Bucky Barnes for once.”

“There’s not much to admire,” he grudges out, rolling his eyes and scrolling on his phone again, “I have a nice set of baby blues, but they’re up here.”

He raises his brows, catching your eyes rake up from his waist. You laugh a little, tugging your hair back as you crawl into bed. You’re not embarrassed about it anymore — not really. The staring has become second nature. Mutual pining.

“You do have a nice set of baby blues,” you says, crawling over his legs and settling across his waist. You straddle his hips, hands smoothing against the rigid planes of muscles across his stomach. Bucky huffs. You grin, “You have a nice set of everything, if y’know what I mean.”

You shoot him an overly flirtatious look. He laughs — it’s genuine and throaty and bright. He smiles when he does it and you love it. You duck down, quick to kiss the smile with your own tilted lips before Bucky’s hands scale up the front of your shirt. His fingertips crawl up the skin there and you hum, enjoying the sensation of being touched. It’s enough to quiet you down and you tuck your head into the curve of his neck as his ministrations round the back to your spine.

“You’re beautiful,” he mumbles, pressing a kiss to your temple, “And smart. Kind... I’ll let you have ‘funny’, this time, too. I’m feeling generous.”

You laugh, chest quaking as you speak. “I am funny!”

“Funny lookin’.”

“Whatever you say, Grandpa.”

It’s his turn to laugh. “I’m not as bad as Steve.”

“No,” you laugh, sitting up and shaking your head, “You are so much worse!”

His face lights up, laughter shaking his shoulders. His hands fiddles with your own that’s splayed across his chest, “What, just because I didn’t know what Pinchagram was?”

“Instagram!”

“Same thing.”

“I can see the headlines now,” you muse, slipping from his hips to lay beside him, “Winter Soldier seen fumbling with iPhone.”

“Listen,” he prods at your hands in the air, “Back in the day —“

“Oh no,” you mumble, rubbing your face, “Here we go...”

Buck rolls his eyes, moving to press his weight partially on top of you in retaliation. You make a mock-pained sound, squirming slightly. He has you pinned. 

“You’re a brat,” he chides, fingers tugging at your waist. You squeak, trying to get away from the pokes.

“Whatcha gunna do about it, Buck?”

There’s a moment of pause between the both of you — Bucky knows how this is going to end, but still he’s drawn in like a magnet. All it takes is one challenging look and his lips find yours in a flash, hands pushing your own above your head as you grin against his mouth. There’s nothing sweet about the kiss, it’s all lust and passion and pent-up feelings that you’ve both been battling these last few weeks.

They come in waves — you both feel a little bit like teenagers, making out at inopportune times and grinding against one another like it’s a dying wish. You were both adamant about taking it slow, and Bucky was adamant about being careful; mostly since he had no idea if he even had enough self control to keep himself together during sex.

So, you both happily settled on sloppy make-out sessions and calculated touches through jeans or leggings or whatever happened to be in the way.

But, nothing felt slow about this.

His lips meet the column of your throat and he bites a deep pink mark into the skin there. You sigh. His hips rocks against your own. The thin fabric of his boxers doesn’t leave much to the imagination. It’s sinful. You wrestle out of his hold, nails scaling his back as Bucky’s mouth dips to your jaw.

“We,” he starts, breaking from another kiss as you tug his hair, “We always do this.”

“I’m not complaining,” you sigh, stomach tensing as his hands scale the skin there. He tugs your shirt up and off without a word, mouth dipping to bite a gentle trail up your sternum. You whine.

“I... We shouldn’t,” he mumbles, large hands skimming the curve of your breast. His eyes are dark, “We shouldn’t.”

“Probably not,” you breath, head dipping back as his stubble grazes the soft skin there, “Not with Marissa home.”

“I... I won’t be able to—“

“Control yourself? Me neither.”

“And this should be special —“

“Mhm,” you mumble, nails grazing his scalp, “When the time is right —“

But his movements don’t stop, not until his hand settles between your legs and two metal digits push against the wet fabric there. You’re quick to hammer a hand over your mouth, smothering the yelp of surprise as you writhes against the sheets. Your other hand darts out, catching his wrist as Bucky grins. You urge him onwards, hips bucking  against the cold metal as he laughs quietly and drags himself downwards for a kiss.

“I think I could settle with this, though.”

It’s dark and whispered into your ear before his mouth trials lower, stubble grazing the skin of your collar bone as he bites dark marks into your décolletage.

He’s never done this before.

This is so not dry humping.

You whimper against your own hand, eyes screwing shut as he sets a pace, fingers dancing against the fabric there. The touch is cool. You tighten your grip on his wrist.

Bucky smiles, peeking up at you as his mouth dances against your breast. He leaves another mark there. Your back arches. You try and work out a sentence with some sense of coherency.

It’s nearly impossible.

“I th-thought you said...”

“Forget what I said,” he whispers, other hand gripping your jaw as he kisses your cheek, “This is plenty.”

“At least let me touch you —“

You whine, chewing your lip as you try and touch him — anything would help, but his other hand catches your fingers and intertwined them with his own. Bucky grins. You swear you’ve died and gone to heaven. His fingers brush a particularly wonderful spot and you gasp, moans smothered by a languid kiss.

His stubble pricks.

“I’m feeling generous, remember?”

You come apart rather quickly after that, mouth pressed to his and hips rocking against his hand. It knocks you back, mind going a bit hazy as the white hot build of an orgasm washes over you like the break of a tsunami. Everything is Bucky -- he’s warm and strong and his stubble is really starting to tickle. Your nails dig into the muscles of his back as he watches, smug, eyes half-lidded -- you’re an angel pressed into the sheets, face hot and limbs slack. 

He sits up, only to tap your hip -- a signal to move your leg -- and settle back in bed beside you.

You pull your eyes open after a moment, face flushed and brain a little mushy.

 Bucky’s face soften. “You alright?”

“Better than alright,” you mumble, “I think it’s your turn --”

Bucky shoos your hand away from his hips, rolling slightly to pepper kisses across your face. “It’s late. You have class early tomorrow morning. I think it’s bed time.”

You groan, limbs heavy the post-orgasm high. “Buck...”

“I was serious when I said I was feeling generous.”

“You’re the worst.”

“Mhm,” he hums, kissing your nose, “I sure am.”

He’s not. If anything, he’s the best thing that’s ever happened to you.

#BITTERCOFFEE TAG LIST:

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[heretherebeechoes]

Where there is no echo there is no description of space or love. There is only silence." - MZ Danielewski - House of Leaves

Her words splattered oddly into view. It was a line from one of her bedside novels. The words weighed nothing but pinballed around in the nooks of his mind. He didn’t get it, does the type of echo change your description of both space and love? And must you keep on echoing or you’ll only know silence? And don’t you first need silence to hear the echoes? That’s what the orange people near the beach told her. One with eyes crossed in very wrong directions struck a match against his head and told her to listen to the silence of the crackling fire. This made zero sense to them both. He reminisced about judging the crazies with her again, laughingly coast-walking and finding a spot to weave.

But there were other obligations. Ophelia. She’s dead. He loaded her body into the Disuniter, unintentionally caressing her feet as he pushed it to the head of the table, carefully sliding it home. He cleared the breach and pushed, firmly, the Bond Deficit key. And with that, there was no longer an earthly Ophelia. His associations shifted, new and old maps were enmeshed, columns entwined with a spidering of retrievals.

Installation Counsellors had instructed how quickly associations would be made and also how quickly they would set as in concrete, particularly once any data streams stopped. Antic had data on Ophelia since birth, health and wellbeing parameters, mood detection events, fluid readings, ambient skin temperatures, complex, fully tweaked and parameterised predictive models. Near-on a century of human encoding, physically disentangled. Now, there was only silence.

The instructions received that morning in Antic’s Torpid Brief were, however, clear. Things weren’t like in the old sci-fi movies where stiff and clanky metallic beings were given stiffer and clankier procedures to follow. In clear terms, instructions for The Research were delivered.

BROADCAST FROM THE CENTRE

RESEARCH UPDATE No . 235-3287ˆ

AUTH: &zssds89BC

Insasse Antic, Your duties to Partner Ophelia are thus released. As per the detail in Assay Brief #12376-6, Cease and Ruminate for a period of precisely 274 days and do not Actualise until the receipt of a verified Reformation Brief. Locate and Affix to your home-based Daily Driver to ensure continuity of power supply for the period of Rumination.

Be eminent,

Medial - Notifier

Antic lifted his eyes. The hallways never felt more empty. He dazed from the basement through the apartment and into his charging room, umbilicalling himself to the machine that would ’feed the Medial’, resisting the urge to emote facially lest his head crack open. It was inauspicious for what the executives had unilaterally described to all and sundry as a momentous event in human history. There was a part of him that felt miffed. Ophelia’s family had long since extricated themselves from the house. Although who amongst us would love to watch this inanimate Rube push the body of their dearly departed relative into a gigantic chemical compactus? He’d been with Ophelia her entire life and, thus relegated, he was returned to being a piece of equipment.

A grumpy tech named Michael appointed him with Aldebaran solicitudes and fusion scoring collocations, communicating via grimaced expression that he would need the ability to think and feel. Just equipment, that’s all. With his new powers, Antic did sense his discomfort even before they were ingratiated into his View. The man did say to use the new skills responsively. And then he cried.

Antic swirled and squatted into a corner of the room and, as per the brief, Ceased. His brain whirred, cyclonic snaps and crackles and pops. Prior briefs become concrete. With Ophelia, he documented many pieces of advice acting as guiding lights for her, reflecting the man her father was and lighting the path ahead. Beware of all enterprises requiring new clothes. It’s never your extravagances you regret, only your economies. When people show you who they really are, believe them.

But then there were the bruising questions emanating from up on high, from Central. What do you, Antic, think should make up the personality of Next? What experiences and events in a person’s life do you, Antic, think are the important ones and which ones do you, Antic, think Next should structure their life to avoid? He needed something to do. Quickly.

The outside world faded, replaced with billions of dangling nodes in View. Bulbous and jiggling, pregnant with a synthetic yellow-ish fluid. Antic ran some first-pass deep agglom engines, just quick ones to reduce the noise. The nodes clustered and curtained sideways with a whoosh. As the bulbs moved closer some coalesced forming bigger drops. The available number of nodes dramatically reduced. This was a relatively fast process, only taking a couple of days.

The heavy lifting is, however, not done by the clustering but by the fusion senses, otherwise known as Agency Spiders, intricately coded creatures whose job was to calmly knit a network and build a topology of mountains and valleys from all the data. Antic loosed the algo upon the landscape before him, thousands and millions of trapezing crawlers inched across the lines holding each cluster of dangling nodes. They weaved connections between the nodes and threw lines between clusters, tapping the bulbous masses with their needled feet and lassoing related themes together. The agents wriggled along the length of each cluster, knitting an ultrastructure around them, performing a similar task to Myelin in neurons. Between-node communication speeds were dramatically increased.

Although the agents were machines like him, Antic felt a parent-like satisfaction watching them work. Good boys, you’re helping daddy very much.

The agents weaved strands into rope, rope into fibres, fibres into a flat matted fabric that stretched and creaked with wooden shipping sounds. Their painstaking work would take weeks.

The final staging-point was even bigger, one of imbuing meaning and breathing life into the landscape. Lip-shape and distance, heart-rate, blood flow, eye and pupil measurements, skin conductance, time-stamped and intertwined with The Entire History Database, these suffused events with flesh and bone. Antic could infer everything from Ophelia’s most terrifying moment to her top-5 favourite words to how much her feelings about Christmas held court over her life.

Even things she might have tried to obfuscate, hide or deny to herself inflated like an embarrassed emergency slide. The first kiss with the handsome shyboy next to the Woodville football oval, hiding in the trees like gawky owls. Her larynx dilation said no but her biophysicals cried proceed. She was contrite enough when Nana busted her watching a hairy porno but her pupils and circulation told another tale.

From these strands, Antic was able to reconstruct word building blocks, then entire words, then sentences and eventually infer entire dialogue. With a convulsion and a whip, the landscape was gut-punched into life. Antic ceased vibration and stabilised. He surveyed a painful glittering array of yellow roads and green streaks, valleys, wells and tributaries, heaving and breathing. The vista before him was alive with connections that he floated above, a sainted view from atop an invisible mountain.

He felt the pressure from the landscape on hischest, simultaneously magnetic and repulsive. He speedily hashed some code to govern flight parameters and floated forward looking down. The landscape responded to his presence, writhing beneath him, tickled and teased the faster he moved. It was almost giggling back at him. He reached out his arms to massage the quivering mass beneath and it reached back.

It rolled underneath the sensors within his hands. His eyes widened at his developing sense of....touch was it? People, real people, had laid their hands upon him daily but Antic had never been really touched before. It was orders of magnitude more electric than electricity. It pulled away and ejected his spine. The yearning was violent and immediate. More of that, please! The more he wanted it, the more it responded. Yearning back at him.

A cosy-looking mound caught the corner of his scan. Hygge as the Finns say. It was pulsating upward and blowing kiss bubbles, like a magical wind escaping a cloak. He drew closer and reached out, its doughnutty lips unfurled around his hand. Antic felt it squeezing, an elephant’s trunk that lightly kissed his fingers. Peace swept through Antic like a nuclear winter. The more he pushed against the doughnut, the more it gave. Antic dived in and was consumed by pure whiteness. He came to, looked down and saw a female form.

Ophelia!

--

She was sure they had her best interests at heart. All the guidance benefactors gathered in their masses, enveloping her and blocking the sun. As she came to the end of her schooling, like buzzards on gizzards, they feasted on the flesh around her fragile bones. They probably thought they were protecting her but instead, their words abolished a way forward, tearing the muscle off her legs and the wings off her back.

What grew instead was a pernicious form of scar tissue called doubt. Her dreams were incinerated then the rains washed them away. Oh, she tried to rage against the dying of her own light but, like their doubts, hers were reasonable. Not that reasonable is necessarily good, you see. If they ever knew, Ophelia wondered, how much I question myself in their name, maybe they’d give me more than a moment or two.

The time had come to put down choices for university and Ophelia’s mind was aflame sotto voce. Into the room, a half-circle lecture theatre, all the other potentials lined up against the walls shuffling as refugees from childhood. Ophelia looked around and saw flat faces. One’s nose usually leads the way but theirs were devoid of features and bereft of direction.

No-one else was looking at each other, they just quietly walked from the top of the lecture theater, between rows of chairs with those funny half-tables you only saw on American sitcoms, toward a single bench in the middle of the room.

She could see older people, presumably knowing what to do, half-smiling as the ghosts of children signed into classes, stepping into their adult shells, ruefully rubbing their eyes, blinking and dazed asking where am I. She wasn’t sure she would remember her own bloody signature, let alone pick a future. A signature, for that matter, was foisted upon her, seemingly, solely to get a bank deposit and hire videos.

Ophelia made her way to the table and observed the flabby jowls of the designated Official Person with a boxful of logo’ed pens to exchange for their futures. The half-smile hadn’t shifted an atom since she was at the top of the room. There was jostling behind her - get on with it.

Ophelia was muted by the image in her head of a top-hatted and caped figure leaping out from inside the half-grinner upon pen touching paper, bellowing "Aha, gotcha now!" Some were lucky. Her best friend was all set to sign on for computer science but upon being confronted with the pen and the paper, had an instapiphany and signed on to Geology because he remembered liking it as a kid. Lucky bitch.

Ophelia wanted to put down anything but science. Music. Archeology. Drama. Medicine. Real estate. Everyone she knew who talked about, taught or worked in science seemed so miserably reasonable. Every other job seemed to have an emblem denoting action. A fire fighter’s face says let’s go and a dancer’s moves cry let go. The image of a scientist, labcoat and glasses, is a lament. Hide me from the danger.

Ophelia’s pen hit the paper and stopped. Nothing. She felt the buzzards again, crowding the sunlight, rapaciously scanning every square inch of her body. She felt vulnerable and pulled her jacket more tightly to her body. The fabric was cutting into her arms, her one white-hot thought was how hard she could bite before shattering teeth. Maybe she could bite the shards into her gums and make a busted fire hydrant of her blood until she fainted. No such luck. She was still conscious.

She wrote "Bachelor of Science" in a language she didn’t understand. The half-smiler indicated a direction to walk away, handed her a pen and looked away. The tension receded but not somewhere good as she elbowed herself out of everyone’s way.

The knife-edge of her imagination was forever dulled.

--

The dream detonated and Antic found himself tumbling out of the landscape, legs and other bits flailing. Antic attempted to neatly curl into his own shell and forlornly waited until the spinning stopped. He extended his extremities one-by-one as his visor bumbled with blue question marks bouncing down hills. He attempted to wind his way through the logic and silence all the alarms.

Yes, yes, push the gyros back in, shut down the vibration index, increase the side thrust, shimmy the rectifiers and re-jiggle all the things.

...OK...

BROADCAST FROM THE CENTER

PUNCTUATED

SOFTWARE UPGRADE

Rev. 235.32.232.1

AUTH: 76HGDZgg§%

Antic’s eyes narrowed and spun as he slowly floated down to the surface. Movement of the landscape invited a breeze that he hadn’t noted before. It breathed, cracked and broke into leaves which spiralled around his arms. He allowed them to funnel through his fingers as a circle, skiiing over his knuckles, scraping and tickling him.

He felt activation of his Hebb’s codebase, a somewhat developmental code lain dormant until the upgrade, and warmed. New routines always tickled. His SOM hierarchies immediately re-oriented from quite a primitive pattern recognition modalities to advanced pattern activation as his world transitioned from 3D to something more akin to 45D. He felt bits flipping throughout the entirety of his shell, reverberating like a corpuscular hallway scream.

To put it into a single word or sentence, he just felt.....a heck of a lot more.

--

“Y’know it isn’t fair.”

“What isn’t?”

“Expectations. All I’m doing is being nice.”

“So?”

“Yeah well they think I’m a goddess at first. Like, oh mygod, she’s the one! The one I’ve been waiting for. Better than all the other ones, this one is THE ONE. Show people a little politeness, flash a little intellect, even just pretend you’re listening by asking some questions and bam, love.”

“Like what sort of questions?”

“Like nothing! Like "Oh, reallyyyy? That sounds terrible.

How did it make you feel?" Small talk.”

“And they’re in love?”

“Instantly. “

“Oh shit you poor thing. People love you straight away.

That must be rough.”

“Nah you’re not getting it. People just don’t know what a real person is like any more. I don’t know if it’s because we see so many fake ones on Insta or TV or whatever but no-one sees real people any more. People with normal flaws. Or sad once in a while just because.”

“Or someone who just does stupid shit because they didn’t feel like thinking that day.”

“Exactly! No-one has flaws, they have red flags. You’re not sad, you’re clearly depressed. You’re not mad, you’ve got anger issues. You’re not drunk, you have a drinking problem.”

“So you say the problem is pathologising people too much?”

“Hmm, too thinky. I’m saying we don’t see people, just an assemblage of aspects. A tick-and-flick form. Check, check, check, scoring function applied, okay, now I know you. Surface stuff. “

“Yeah yeah, so what? People are superficial jerks.”

“So what? It just annoys me because I always gotta play catch-up.”

“What?!”

“Nah I mean it. Like I said, so many fall early. They got this image in their minds from all the fake shit they see about what an ideal girlfriend looks like. So if I’m a little polite, actually do a bit of listening, talk about the fun stuff I’ve done, instantly I’m perfect. Especially if I tease them a bit, they just think I’m being super honest.”

“Christ you’re smug. “

“You’re still not getting it! It means I start at 100%. You realise how shit that is? Ever try to maintain perfection?”

“Nup. It’s impossible.”

“It’s not impossible, it’s non-sensical. What’s a ’good’, ’bad’ or whatever person is totally in the eye of the beerholder, if you know what I mean.

There is no perfect person because, a person, a real flesh-and-blood walking-around-and-doing-the-shopping-person, they can’t be perfect.”

“So one person thinks you’re perfect for them. Y’know, that old saying about being one person in the world but the world to one person. How is that bad exactly, you cocky mole?”

“Because it’s impossible to maintain even if that’s true. I have shitty parts to me, like everyone else. But when starting from perfection, there’s only one way to go. Even a minor flaw is judged way more harsh. "Oh....God, really? You’re like that? You slammed the door just because you had a bad day at work? I think you’ve got a problem..."

"Mmm hmmm..."

"They’ve fallen in love with the image, not with me. And a small crack on a clean slate looks really bloody obvious. So they judge me for minor, normal flaws and I judge them for believing in the image. All of sudden, wow, there’s a cloud of judgy pessimism hanging over us. I end up taking a deep breath, here we go again, bloody hell. “

“Yeah it’s rough.”

“No it really is. Makes me feel like shit for having perfectly acceptable flaws, like being a bit grumpy sometimes or not giving a fuck about one-month anniversaries. So I’m playing catch-up just to get back to human in their eyes. Some drug dealer doing a night course to be a sparky gets more credit than me, poor sod who didn’t quite live up to perfection.

"Mmm."

"And the worst part is that personality pluses or minus’s don’t make an interesting person anyway. It’s all the meta facets, shit which the pluses and the red flags feed into from experience and just thinking through things. It’s what someone does with their shit parts, that’s what builds character, not whether they’re there in the first fucking place. “

“Hmmmm, yeah. I mean, I don’t wanna bring up the past....”

“Nah go, it’s okay.”

“But yeah, your Dad was a violent arsehole. Manipulative too. Still remember that time, eh? At your 12th birthday, ya mum ran in after some bloke wanked himself a the phonebox and he said "Was he bigger than me, ya slut?"”

“Yep. Proper arsehole.”

“Surely seeing that shit all the time and when he smashed your Mum, all that, it must be in you a little bit yeah?”

“Sure. Sometimes.”

“But I never see you react like that. You act fair with people, don’t judge, be nice, keep cool. “

“Yeah it’s all there but it’s what you do with the shit stuff, that’s the stuff I reckon people should be judging. All your good and bad parts are mixed in there, they sorta melt together as you get older. And that’s how it should be, you should learn from your mistakes, not just keep doing them.

"Yup."

"How someone channels the bad things that got into your head first, that’s the real stuff. Someone who acts perfect is really just better at covering up.

"Say it!"

"Yeah! Judge the melted parts! I’m not gonna date someone who’s sweet as pie 95% of the time but then a car-crash bitch when she gets a speeding ticket. I am, however, going to fuck the tits off someone who knows their triggers so they don’t get there in the first place and can bring themselves back from the ledge.”

“Ophie, you sure do know how to the get to the beating heart of a problem...... and then flush it down the toilet. What a way to put it.”

“Thanks baby.”

--

He was alive. Antic noted his surroundings and perceived only one change, a picture of Ophelia was now hanging on the wall. She was standing with her arms draped over his shoulders, an elbow upon his breastplate, her chin upon his. Maybe Ophelia’s brother put it up. He always said he’d steal Antic. A communique was incoming.

BROADCAST FROM THE CENTER

AROUSAL CONTROL SIGNAL:

AWARE

Nr. 1

AUTH: jhdskKKSDU?$&D

Insasse Antic,

Your Rumination has ended, your period of Cease has with it, Reformation is Active. You are now in Actualise. Attend Center. Choose Next.

Be wise,

Medial - Notifier

Oh God. I need more time.

He drew his eyes down, paused, then painted the road ahead brick-by-stone. He felt the image of Ophelia drawing away. Now, he had nothing but lonely decades on tape. He was nowhere and nothing but an appliance. He left the house. For good this time.

Voluminous quietude descended upon Antic as he floated along streets. Pensive whirring of actuators and motors, harmonising with the whoosh of river spray and leaf patter as corner bled into corner. Streets flowed into roads. The hush in Antic’s mind gave the illusion of being still and a tense hum of vibration. His vacant moment melted stones underfoot. He rounded the final corner to Center and saw their motto on the side of the building, "Excellence is Routine". It reminded him of the old quote about sinning against God, rather than bureaucracy.

The script was burdeningly clear to him, Next must be 100% perfect. He stared gloomily at the sign, channelling the dismay of another nation. Antic swayed around a corner of the building and spotted two battered metal doors, down a small flight of steps, flecks of red paint slashed along the edges. They lightly chattered as he inched closer then swung open with a fluid motion and a lovely little squeak. He leaned back a little and glared at his RFID module. Traitor.

He haunted the corridors, taking wrong turns even though he knew they were wrong. He was avoiding making any decisions for as long as it wasn’t clear to others that he was avoiding making a decision. He ruefully rubbed his eyes, they felt gritty. Let go or let’s go, let it go, let her go. Geyser-like, something welled up inside and Antic, literally, screamed: HOW. DO. I. CHOOSE.

Heads whipped around and Antic’s emotional bucket was filled to a new high water mark of shame. He froze.

"Heyyyyyy, looks like this one’s got a screw loose. How are you Antic? Looking well I see, very much a robot in nature, yes? (quickly, quickly, lets blow)."

Jostled by his first human contact in almost a year, the man before him was a rangy type. Gaunt but with eyes that bounced inside steaming sockets and a fireplace voice. He was wearing a name badge that said Dr. Redfoot.

He jerked Antic away from the milieu and into a nearby room. As he bent down, his knees made plumber crackles, a double act with his clicking tongue.

"Alright sir, let’s have a look at you, my boy. Tell me, Antic, how do you feel?"

"I am a lever without a fulcrum."

"Ah yes, quite an articulate.... coldly logical way to put it. Umm, so, you feel unbalanced, yes?"

"Yes"

"Well that is to be expected, your mind is a mess. Your only cogent instructions have been to take what you know and plough it into producing perfection. Oo, that rhymed. Proper Planning Prevents Piss-Poor Performance! Hah, from my aviation memory too! Errm, anyway. Rough gig, wouldn’t you say?"

"Sir. I mean, I’m sorry, Dr Redfoot, I believe, that is to say, I strongly think that I lack the data to draw conclusions."

"Nonsense! You’ve had nigh-on a century of experience and and some months to analyse literal mountains of data. You’re positively overflowing with it! I should know, I imprinted part of the valley algo myself."

Redfoot drew a lawless grin at that line.

"Then why do no conclusions draw themselves?"

"The heart of why you’re here, my boy, is because humans have frailties, irrationalities and faults that somewhat preclude objective decision-making about what a unflawed human being would look like. We cannot know because our very faculties for knowing anything are flawed, you see?"

"I guess so."

"It’s easy for us humans to decide on the flaws which are unacceptable but us crazy humans also tend to deny that we possess perfectly acceptable flaws too, especially the ones we possess that perhaps can still get us somewhere

in life.

For you, dear robot, the very point is objectivity. A data-driven way to see the flaws we can’t directly observe but accept anyway. Adding in emotions via the Hebbs was really all about model training and stress testing. Little more than that. It really does seem to have thrown you off-kilter, though, eh?"

"I feel different. I don’t want to do it. I hate this game."

"And well you might not. Maybe a little humanity has gotten in there, eh? Of course I’m joking. There’s no need to pout, though, my boy. It’ll work out."

"Will Next be the endgame?"

"My word, no! We wouldn’t give the ability to create the actual human to the very first experiment! That is, of course, the intention but your decisions will be analysed prior to any genetic shenanigans."

"What."

"Mmmm, I’m sorry were you not told? You know, for a society which has never been more connected, we sure are lousier than ever at communic-"

"But...... does that not mean you, as humans, are still encoding your flaws in the decision? And what happens if you don’t like my decisions?"

"Haven’t seen any paperwork on that. Oh well, there’s a life lesson in humanity and bureaucracy, I guess. Still, that’s your job and we all have one to do."

With all the big words, Redfoot was making steeple hands and practising his power co-mu-ni-ca-tion. He whipped and silenced his very own Ted audience. Then he drew his attention back to Antic.

"In your case, it is to identify the flaws in (what was her name again...ahh, Ophelia). You must isolate, capture and remove them all, yes?"

"Now, speaking of the very task ahead of you, you have but one further step, Antic, and that is to updown your data for us to pore over it until the cows come home or, at least, until I go home. Anyhow, follow me to the updown room."

Redfoot was practising his corporate movements as he walked, trying hard to stay in the box and to avoid jazz hands. Antic rustedly glided behind him and into a room with a perfunctory computing set-up that was trying a little too hard to be inconspicuous. It was nothing like the movies. For a momentous first-in-world-history-ever event, canon dictated a huge computer, wheels whirring

with noise and flashing green lights, men in coats clapping and hollering that nothing will be the same again. First prize!

Nope.

Just a medium-sized grey block with nondescript manufacturer stickers. And a cable.

Another new feeling. Underwhelmed.

"Ah yes, you’ll need to cable uplink for this one, Antic. Can’t risk even a single missed bit, of course. Well, here’s where we part ways, seems odd to say good luck but here goes anyway - good luck!"

"Thank you, Dr Redfoot. I will do what I feel....what is right."

Redfoot departed. He turned his head and paused for a moment in the hallway before sauntering away, practising purposeful gestures. Antic was alone again. He was irritated too. Mainly at Redfoot’s reaction to being asked about his Next. He wasn’t annoyed at the news of the dry-run but that Redfoot had the nerve to be surprised by it.

He gingerly plugged in the cable. Hearing every scratch and feeling every scrape as the data left his case and bounced down it gave him the heebee jeebees. A hologram sprang to life before him and reverse melted into a mould of Kid Ophelia. With each sweeping pass of the data filter, the image of her became more and more detailed. Every coarse piece of her face was snapped into progressively finer detail with every iteration.

Layers of colour were added and the image began to animate. At first jerkily but then human-like movements as historical data about Ophelia was updown’d. Her arms were moving as if she was swimming. She stopped flapping, gazed back at Antic and smiled. Antic realised the movements were not at all random but reciprocal. He fidgeted and waved at Ophelia. She waved back.

The landscape of the hologram burbled and yawed as first he little girl grew into a teenager, a young adult and then into a woman. Then into an older woman as the data flowed apace. The completion of Ophelia the model ushered in a series of options into Antic’s visual field. They were mapped separately to her cortical landscape, as was generated in Rumination. Buttons, icons, sliders and plots altering the topology of the landscape.

An interface to the hologram of Ophelia was tethered directly to it. A random button press and the hologram became Ophelia at age three. The first thing she tried to do was tug on Antic’s fingers. Antic reflexively reached out but her hand went right through his fingers and she began to cry.

A plaintive mahhhh left his mouth and, with an abrupt new selection, the teenage Ophelia appeared and waved. Antic recognised her Tuesday morning lecture dress.

"Hi Antic! Oh my God, how are you?!"

"Well. How are your studies?"

"So good! I’m learning so much chemistry. I feel like, you know, this is the real deal now. High school was the warm-up but university is the real show. Finally finding out the real story!"

"You....like it?"

"Yeah of course! You know I’ve always liked science. Don’t you remember how I mixed everything together in the chem set Mum gave me?"

He sure did. Antic also remembered her callow disappointment when it formed nothing but a powdery sludge in the bottom of her test-tube. He saw the opportunity to right a wrong.

His eyes were drawn to the wheezing landscape. He blithely pushed a few sliders which sped up the rate of bubbles. Connections shifted again the landscape began to shift like jello. New buttons and sliders bubbled and materialised. A stooping Ophelia appeared and spoke again.

"Know what, Antic? I’m actually pretty darn bored with this uni stuff. Who would choose to spend all their time in a smelly synthesis lab anyway? I’m outta here and I’ll tell Mum as soon as she gets home."

Ah. Too far.

Antic’s focus shifted to a mendacious-looking column rising out of the flats and far above the rest of the landscape. A single button, bubbling next to hundreds of others, practically begged to be pushed. A grin left him as he did.

Ophelia appeared before him wearing a crushed purple dress, dyed black hair with roots. Her eyes were reddened and wild. She looked like she hadn’t slept in a while.

"Antic! My God. I’m so glad you’re here! You look shinyyyy, not like the usual scruff. I’m just kidding of course. Look can you do me a favour?"

"Of course."

"I want you to send a message to Nadia."

"Who is Nadia?"

"Oh you know, we work together. She’s dating my ex-girlfriend Shannon. Remember her?"

"Yes I do"

"Great! Well just let her know that Shannon left her phone under my bed the other night so I have it if she’s looking for it. Poor dear was in such a state, they’re having some problems, you see, so she really did need to chat. Anyway, just let her know, I have her phone.

Oo! Also, the picture of Nadia on her phone is so cute! Yea tell her that!"

"I don’t know if it’s a good idea." "No, Antic, don’t be silly! Nothing happened! Nadia has absolutely nothing to worry about! She just needed to talk, that’s all. Nothing to it at all. Please? Send the message?"

"I don’t know if it’s a good idea."

"Nothing happened that Nadia needs to worry about. Please. Antic. Just send the message."

A feeling similar to what a field mouse in the field view of an Eagle coursed through him. He quietly moved a slider back to its original position. The column shortened a little but the landscape did not revert. It looked like now it never would. So he experimented a little.

Morphing the landscape into shapes that removed Ophelia’s cynicism made her a messy, doe-eyed doormat, others that calmed doubts resulted in a wing-suited risk-taking psychopath. Occasionally quite random, such as when he shed her sometimes prickly exterior and she was dealing crack cocaine to footballers from the East.

A futile bid to reset to the usual Ophelia was thwarted when she crumpled into a homicidally jealous harpy at the mention of her younger sister, Valerie (with an ’i’). Or an Anime-loving shut-in at the merest mention of her father.

There was a mischievous little girl, threatened with a hoe by the old Italian immigrant behind the back fence for throwing stones at his windows. A newly-legal woman who got a $30 lapdance on her 18th and bought a packet of cigarettes but didn’t smoke a single one.

There was the time she nearly drowned but breathed nary a word to anyone about how scared she was and the year of nightmares that followed.

He threw his hands in the air. He pushed every button on the screen. He impotently tore out the cable and wrapped it around his neck, tightening it and making a squishy eeeee sound. He picked up an empty plastic coffee cup and slapped it to the floor. He looked away, saw a spiderin the corner of the room and threw a pen at it but missed. He pouted again. Fuck it.

BROADCAST FROM THE CENTER

INVESTIGATION SIGNAL:

QUERY Nr. 2876423

AUTH: /&%"/8787623i

Insasse Antic,

Data acquisition is complete,

decision is at Zero. Choose Next.

Be wise,

- Center.

A tenebrous combination of unease and grumpiness dominated his thoughts. The time pressure irked and there was so much of the landscape left to explore. They want a better person with incomplete data? Let them decide! Without him.

He folded his arms and performed his best pout yet. Minimising bad flaws caused new ones, maximising desirable factors destroyed flaws that were sometimes desirable and doing nothing revealed characteristics he never knew about that demanded exploration. Even being around her for virtually every tongue-lashing and toilet break, he’d managed to miss so much.

Antic didn’t believe in God but now he missed him. He thought of all the things that had happened to him over the years. He also thought of how little he had made happen himself.

His shoulders relaxed as the thought burned unbridled through him. He jettisoned a giggle as he took a long look at the landscape, at all the frigid sliders and buttons. He whipped his head around and caught his reflection on the wall. He didn’t dare ask it any questions.

Antic left the room, slinked around a corner, down the hall and, as he did, he felt the sound and the fury of footsteps and minds osmoting into the room he’d left behind. Malnourished necks craned from behind office doors and spoke in hushed tones, has he finished yet?

Shuffled feet and low voices were supplanted by rising concern and more voice, untrammelled by the ticking of the bomb. Rising above the din, Antic heard a familiar voice from across the hallway.

"Looks like you’ve caused quite a stir there, Antic. Been a good day then eh? And it’ll be a great day to come for all of us too eh? How’s your Next?"

He took another moment and thought about offering some blandishment about how he’d tried his best or some self-indulgent whine about the whole experiment, that Central was not the God he missed but an absentee landlord. And nature abhors a vacuum.

"Perfectly acceptable."

[itsallavengers]

Stony 87

“Stay Awake”

It takes an awful lot for Steve to lose his composure. 

He’s walked alone into deathtraps and faced off entire fleets and armies without a single shake of his hand or hitch of his breath. It’s just what he does. who he is. Steve rogers is the stoic leader, Steve Rogers does not panic. 

He gets an alert that a bomb’s gone off in the penthouse of the Avengers Tower, and the bottom drops out of his world.

He was a few blocks away, in a SHIELD safe-house, spending a few days away from Tony. Because they’d been screaming at each other so long and so loud it had woken the rest of the team, and Steve had finally snapped, yelling at Tony about how they were through, they were done, he was leaving.

He’d been lying. The day he wanted finished with Tony would be the day Red Skull decided he wanted to rally for world peace.

Tony hadn’t known that.

Tony was still in the tower.

The traffic was heavy, but Steve was running on the roofs of the cars instead, so it didn’t much mater.

It would take him two minutes and thirty four seconds to get to the tower, and an additional two minutes and forty four seconds to get past the police and up to the penthouse.

Thor was away in New Mexico. Clint and Nat had left at the same time as he did, off to go undercover for three weeks in some Russian city. Bruce was at a science convention in New Delhi.

Steve had left him, and it had just been Tony, alone in the tower.

And now he was looking at the top floors of the tower as smoke billowed out of the windows and glass fell to the pavement below, pushed out by the huge fires that were engulfing their home. 

The whole top five floors had been utterly incinerated.

(Beware, the read more, mobile users/ to read the rest, log in on your laptop or pc!)

Getting past security and the milling crowds of evacuated workers wasn’t a problem. Steve just kept running, and if they didn’t get out of the way, they were pushed.

Someone tried to stop him getting in when he got to the doors. Steve didn’t even notice them.

Tony was in the tower. And the tower had just been blown up. And Steve had left him on his own the night before.

‘I wish I’d never fucking had anything to do with you, Tony Stark.’

And he’d gone. That was it. That was the last thing he’d said before he’d slammed the door so hard it cracked and left Tony to fend for himself.

Steve had been getting death threats for weeks. They had known someone was gunning for him.

And he’d left. He’d left Tony on his own, in the place Steve lived. In the number one target.

This had happened because of him.

“Is he alive,” Steve yelled into the empty reception, because JARVIS had to still be online, he had to know what had happened and where Tony was, he had to-

“Yes,” and JARVIS was crisp, brittle, more robotic than Steve had ever heard before, because this was JARVIS stripped down to his prime directive, this was JARVIS that didn’t have time for anything else other than Keep Tony Stark Alive. “I registered a beating heart a few seconds after the explosion, but all electricity shorted after that. He’s on Floor 88. Initiating emergency lift protocols. Hurry, Captain, the whole infrastructure is unsound.”

Floor 88. That was Steve’s floor. He’d barely been in it in months.

Steve didn’t need to be told twice. He sprinted to the elevators, and as soon as he had hit the wall, JARVIS was shutting the doors and sending them hurtling upward with nothing more than a short “brace yourself.”

“Details, JARVIS,” Steve bit out, hands gripping the rails so tightly that the metal was mangled and crushed beneath his fingers.

Tony was alive. That was all he needed to focus on. He was alive, and Steve was going to get him, and they were going to be alright- Steve would apologise, Steve would kiss him and hold him and never leave ever again-

“Chemical weapon, hidden in a parcel. Set on a timer, placed in Sir’s office. Structural damage to floors 88 and upward- severe damage to 90 and 92. All audio and visual has been lost up there, Captain, and I can only take you floor 86. After that, you are on your own.”

Steve could smell the smoke as it filtered into the elevator, and sensed the temperature increase. He felt small all over again. 

He nodded. 

The elevator shaft was easy enough to climb up. It creaked and groaned in a way that was uncharacteristic to anything Tony made, but then again, it had been hit with a bomb.

Tony had survived the explosion. And he was stubborn enough to keep holding on through the aftermath, too, Steve knew it, that was his Tony, his Tony would fight, he’d be okay-

He reached floor 88, and forced the elevator doors open.

Smoke and fire and chaos punched him square in the face, brutal enough to almost send him falling. He gasped, choking on the fumes and wincing at the heat, but hauled himself up and rolled on to his feet.

His floor was barely even visible, let alone recognisable.

The carpet burnt and the roof had fallen in some places, leaving piles of rubble and shards of metal in its wake. Steve had to hold his breath from the smoke, and he crouched low, trying to duck under the poisonous clouds above him.

“TONY!��� He screamed, stumbling forward, arms outstretched and following the wall. 

There was no reply. 

He choked, calling out again and running forward, feeling the burn as fire licked up his arms, but uncaring of it.

He couldn’t hear anything above the crackle of fire and crumble of rubble.

One arm covering his nose and mouth, he ran forward, blindly turning the corner and heading toward his room. The roof had fallen in here as well, but he crawled over it, ignoring the way the glass shards dug into his hands and knees.

“TONY!” 

Three days ago, he’d been holding Tony in his arms and watching TV on the couch. Tony had been complaining about the quality of the movie they were watching, and Steve had just laughed and kissed him quiet.

There was just fire, now. Fire and ash and Steve had no idea if Tony was even alive any more.

The door to his room was shut, and Steve ploughed his shoulder into it, full force, and felt it give underneath him. He was dizzy from lack of air and was feeling the need to vomit, but he kept going.

He called Tony’s name again. There was nothing.

But Tony was here. Steve knew it. Because Steve’s rug was bunched up by the crack under his door, and his desk had been moved under the frame of the door leading to his bathroom.

His heart was beating so fast Steve wondered if it was going to fail completely as he threw himself forward and vaulted over the top of his desk, dropping to his knees as soon as he reached the other side.

“Oh my god,” he choked, as his blurry eyes took in Tony’s body, beaten and lax and bleeding red on to the white of his tiles.

“Tony,” his voice cracked at the end, a shaking hand curling around the back of his neck and checking, hoping, praying for a pulse.

Tony’s eyes flickered open. His mouth was covered by a wet towel he must have pulled from Steve’s rails, but Steve still heard the muffled “hey, babe,” through the material.

Tony’s hand was covering his stomach, but it didn’t do much to hide the huge shard of metal that was sticking out of it.

“Tony, hey, Tony, baby, come on, we’re gonna get you out, okay?” Steve whispered hoarsely, shaking hands tugging Tony out from underneath his makeshift shelter and resting his head delicately in the crook of his arm.

“mm,” Tony slurred, eyes struggling to focus on Steve’s face as his hand flailed a little, blindly reaching for Steve.

“Tony- fuck, darling, stay awake, please, I’ve got you, it’s okay, just- hold on,” Steve ordered, his hand finding Tony’s and winding their fingers together, Tony’s smearing Steve’s with his own blood.

“’Kay,” but his eyes were already fluttering shut.

“TONY! Tony, baby, please-” Steve coughed, pulling him further into his arms as he began to stand, trying not to jostle the wound in Tony’s stomach too much as they moved.

“ ‘m s’rry. I.. I love-”

Steve watched Tony’s eyes as they rolled into the back of his head, sentence left unfinished. 

They said the chances of Tony’s survival were 13%.

Steve hated the number 13. It was unlucky. No matter what Tony had tried to convince him, Steve had never trusted that number. He was superstitious like that. 

He was praying to whichever God that’d listen to just change the odds, just a little. Just for him. 

Because he’d been good. He’d done his best. And Tony- Tony had been even better. Tony didn’t deserve to die, not like this, not ever.

And yet here they were. Steve, sat by his bedside, while Tony lay comatose in front of him.

13%.

“I love you,” he whispered again, the thousandth time that night. 

Every minute, on the dot. Because he hadn’t said it enough- he hadn’t even said it when Tony had been bleeding out in his arms, when he’d needed to hear it most.

“I’m so sorry,” he told him in between, on the thirtieth second.

This was his fault. If Tony… it would be his fault. He’d lose someone else he loved because of his own mistakes. 

“I need you to wake up,” scattered in amongst the others- a plea, a shameless beg for a second chance that he didn’t deserve but wouldn’t be able to live without.

Tony never answered him.

He waited.

“Morning, gorgeous.”

Steve jerked upright so fast he was pretty sure he experienced whiplash, and his eyes searched wildly for Tony’s, begging for that wonderful chocolate brown that he’d missed like air over the past few days.

He found them. Tired and washed out- but there. Open. In front of him.

“-Hey no baby, wait, I’m sorry, please don’t cry, it’s okay, I’m okay-”

Steve choked, unable to tear his eyes off Tony’s as he searched wildly for a hand and then gripped when he found it. His whole foundations were shaking again; Tony was talking, Tony was conscious, Tony had come back to him

“I love you, I’m so sorry, I love you, I’m so sorry Tony, please, I’m-”

“Hey, hey, shhhh, no, come on, it’s okay. it’s okay. C’mere,” Tony whispered, tugging Steve’s hand across the bed and dragging him in, until Steve’s face was nestled in the crook of Tony’s neck and he was letting himself fall apart in the arms of the person who had only just pulled himself out of a damn coma.

“ I’m sorry, God, I’m-”

“shut up and come lie on the damn bed with me, Rogers,” Tony said hoarsely, his voice rough and broken from all the smoke he’d inhaled. 

Steve just nodded mutely, lifting his legs up and curling them against his chest as he wrapped his arms gently around Tony’s body and dropped his head against the man’s shoulder, just concentrating on the feel of Tony moving against him.

“I love you,” he whispered, because it was the only thing he knew right now, it was the only thing he cared about. Tony needed to know. He needed to know that Steve couldn’t do this without him, no matter what he said, no matter what they yelled at each other, Steve loved him. Steve loved him so much.

“I love you too, baby. And I’m sorry. About everything. About our fight, about worrying you-”

“Tony, don’t talk right now. Your voice… give it time to heal. Just…”

Steve kissed his cheek, shaky and light across the stitches that had been sewn in. “Stay awake, okay. Don’t… just stay awake for a little while longer.”

Tony’s fingers stroked softly along the plane of Steve’s hand, and he smiled.

“ ‘kay.”

This is incredibly late, but it’s been in my drafts forever so I thought I might as well finish it off? Sorry.