#I had to think about this one for a minute. I’ve been re watching Beyond Evil and all active brain space has been replaced with that

[brother-emperors]

Do you think that Antony would have killed Caesar himself anyway? And he was just annoyed that he didn't get to do it himself first ?

nah, Antony feels more like an opportunist. He was probably angling to be set up as Caesar’s heir, and would’ve kept with it since Caesar was the leading man in Rome and that’s the most advantageous partnership to maintain, but there’s a sort of undertone to some of his behavior that feels like he was starting to hedge his bets. This makes the conspiracy to kill Caesar a situation to take advantage of instead of something he personally would have initiated (especially since he turned down one from Trebonius but also “neglected” to mention the whole thing to Caesar)

but also I mostly read biographies on Antony for Herod the Great, so absolutely do not take my word for it: I’ve never even finished reading Plutarch’s biography on him

[thotsforvillainrights]

~Hesitation~

-Rikiya Yotsubashi smut-

Hesitation- the action of pausing or hesitating before saying or doing something.

You watched the food on the plate move around uneaten as you used your spoon to play with it boredly. The dull music of the restaurant was only helping you zone out of the conversation taking place in front of you right now. It had taken Chitose calling your name 3 times before you finally escaped your own overwhelming thoughts. “Y/N are you okay? You’ve just been pushing your food around for the past 38 minutes. You haven’t eaten a single bite since we got here.” She stared at you with concern riddled on both her and Hanabata’s face. Koku spoke up next. “Yeah, you’ve got that look on your face like you’re holding onto something really bad. You and grand commander have a fight recently?” Chitose glared at him and elbowed his stomach, making the man grunt and hold himself. “Hanabata, if they did argue then you can’t just bring it up like that.” She scolded him and he scoffed. “Oh please, they’ve been together long enough to have had an argument by now. It’s only natural. Ugh, I think you broke one of my ribs.” He complained and Chitose rolled her eyes. Finally you decided to speak up. “Not to be lewd or anything but I’m just dealing with some ideas of self doubt when it comes to the bedroom is all.” In an instant both of them perked up and paid close attention to you, no doubt eager for the juicy details. Out of everyone in the MLA they were your closest friends. You spoke about nearly everything with them but your bedroom lifestyle was extremely rare and you could tell they were beyond curious about finally hearing the details of it. Chitose pressed you to carry on and you’d be without judgement in return. You hesitated for a moment, unsure of whether or not you should really say something like this in front of them but finally you decided it was best to vent rather than holding onto the thoughts for too much longer. 

“As long as me and Rikiya have been together, we still haven’t...y’know...done the deed with each other yet.” Koku raised his eyebrows and took a sip of the wine from his cup while Chitose cleared her throat and prepared to navigate the subject at hand. “You mean sex? The two of you still haven’t had sex yet? Well why not?” You pouted at her question and shrugged your shoulders. “That’s what I wish I knew the answer to. I mean, in his defense I hadn’t initiated a single thing beyond a passionate kiss here and there. I’ve been waiting on him to get things moving but so far there’s been no sign of interest at all! Do you think there’s something wrong with me?” Both Hanabata and Chitose reached out to pat you on the shoulders. “No of course not!” This time Koku had spoken up. “I mean everyone moves at their own pace yknow? Perhaps the grand commander simply isn’t ready yet. I highly doubt he’s not attracted to you as a possibility. I mean, he’s complimented you numerous times in the past.” Hanabata had brought a few memories to surface. “Re Destro is not a big flirt from what I’ve seen. Certainly not anything like Hanabata here.” 

“Hey!” You laughed at the two of them bickering for a second. “Anyway Y/N, just don’t dwell on it okay? I’m sure Yotsubashi will come around soon enough.” Chitose reassured you with a gentle smile. “Yeah, she’s right.” Hanabata added. You nodded before pausing to think and look back up from your plate at the both of them. “Just make sure you don’t tell Rikiya any of this okay? Promise.” You said sternly, especially locking eyes with Chitose. She never kept her mouth shut when she deemed it unnecessary to do so. “We promise...”

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

“Anyway, that’s why I think personally that you need to go ahead and get the ball rolling on this whole thing.” Chitose played with the pens in the cup on Re Destro’s desk while the man sat shocked at everything she’d just told him. He didn’t take the time to even ask her if she was telling the truth about everything, nor did he take the time to tell her to stop sitting on his desk. Instead he immediately stood up and pushed his desk chair in before rummaging through his desk drawer for his car keys. “I’m heading home early for today. Alert the others and handle a few things here for me will you?” She smiled with a nod and watched him quickly pace out of the room no doubt on his way home to you. 

Meanwhile you were sitting in the office of the house while playing some mindless game on the computer when you heard the front door quickly unlock, open and shut. Part of you housed a bit of worry considering Rikiya was supposed to be at work today until later tonight, but you’d calmed down when you heard him call out to you. “Y/N are you home?” You heard plastic bags rustling along with familiar footsteps heading down the hallway. “Here in the office!” You smiled when he’d came inside and caught a glimpse of you. Your smile quickly faded into worry when you viewed that apologetic look on his face. “Is uh...is everything okay?” You tilted your head in confusion when he placed the plastic bag onto the ground and dropped to his knees in front of you. “What the Hell???” Confused was an understatement right now. You watched him hug tightly around your waist and kiss you multiple times on your hand as he apologized multiple times. Finally you’d had enough and decided to stop the madness in its tracks. “Rikiya why um...why are you apologizing again? I didn’t catch the memo.”

“My love, I’m sorry I’ve been neglecting your needs lately. I truly would never do such a thing on purpose.”

“What???”

“I’ve been trying to play the part of the gentleman for you for such a long time now and I seemed to have lost sight of the importance of desire in our relationship. My behavior has led you to believe that I have no interest in you. Let me assure you that it simply isn’t true. I desire you more and more each and every single day. Sometimes I have to fight with myself internally to keep myself from showing you this side of me. I want you and I want you in all the lewd ways I wouldn’t dare speak upon out loud. Your body hypnotizes me more often than you’d think. Your beautiful smile, those eyes of yours, if you’ll forgive me for saying such a thing...I’m going insane at the thought of being between those thighs. I’m so sorry I made you feel unwanted for so long.”

“What makes you say all of this so sudden if you don’t mind me asking?” You had an idea about the catalyst that set him off but you just wanted to make sure of your suspicions. “Chitose told me why you’ve been so distant lately.” You groaned and rolled your eyes. “Of course she did.”

I’m going to fucking get her...

“My love, if you’ll have me then I would love to show you what I feel for you through my actions. May I?” Although his words were still polite, there was still something depraved and desperate in those eyes of his. “Of course you can. I’ve been waiting on you for so long.” You gently rubbed his scalp and smiled sweetly at him. He returned your smile and quicky stood up from the ground. “It’s good to know you also want me as well, considering I wasn’t sure when to actually get around to this. I was worried it would still be too soon and I would scare you away or make you uncomfortable by accident.” He spoke as he loosened his tie and removed his suit jacket. “No no, you’re all good I swear it.” You replied while slipping out of your clothes as well. It was a funny sight to behold truly. In place of foreplay the two of you chatted with each other as any regular day while simultaneously slipping out of your clothes. It was a little awkward once you were both naked and staring each other down while your eyes refused to meet each other. Things finally picked up when you begun making out and letting you hands roam each others bodies. Each time his lips pulled away from yours he blessed you with a compliment here and there. He was madly in love with you and determined to put your doubts in yourself to rest little by little. Eventually he gained some confidence in his actions as his hands got a little rougher with their actions, gripping at your soft skin and pulling you toward him. He quickly lifted you up, making you yelp from the surprise of it all. Even in the middle of having sex for the first time, you both ended up laughing and kidding around like any other day. “You drop me and I’ll kill you.” You teased him and he chuckled as he carried you to the bedroom. “No need to worry my love, I’ll do no such thing.” He smiled mischievously before tossing you onto the bed and smirking at you. “You liar!” You laughed and he slipped out of the room to return with the plastic bag he’d come home with earlier. Digging after digging into the bag he’d pulled out three things:

1.) Your favorite snack

2.) A single candle with some matches

3.) A box of condoms

“What’s with the candle?” You asked as he struck a match and lit it before placing it carefully on the bedside table. “Hmm? Oh, I read that it sets the mood. Well...is the mood set?” He asked and you rolled your eyes. “Haha, sure. Now get over here and show me something?” A grin stretched across his face as he made his way to the bed. After fumbling a bit with the condom application (and promptly apologizing to you about 50 more times) he lined himself up with you and frowned before looking at you with burning eyes begging for permission. “Please Rikiya~” It was all he needed to hear before continuing. As soon as the tip of his cock entered he mentally cursed himself out for having ever convincing himself he needed to hold back from this for such a long time. He prayed he’d be able to last long enough to pleasure you properly but by the way he felt right now, he wasn’t sure he could carry through on that action. Slowly but surely he inched his cock into you as he savored each and every jolt of electricity rushing through his nerve endings and making him feel more alive than ever. His finger tips tingled, his cock twitched, and he felt his heart beating wildly in his chest. He wasn’t sure if it was the result of slight nervousness he felt or not. 

With each slow thrust he silently expressed his affections and adoration for you, not even missing a beat. “I love you, my God I love you Y/N. I love you, you feel so good. I love you, I love you, fuck~” He gasped, just as shocked as you were for letting such vulgarity leave his mouth. He cursed sometimes, but rarely did he ever say words like ‘fuck’. In fact, you weren’t even sure it was programmed into his vocabulary until he said it just now. You laughed before reaching behind his head and gently pulling it forward to kiss him. “Apologies.” He spoke out when his lips were freed from yours. “Haha, no need. You’re just getting into it is all. Now stop apologizing please Rikiya and fuck me.” He felt a rush of lust course through him when you’d returned that vulgarity right back onto him. Never did he think he’d hear ‘fuck me’ followed by his very own name leave your tongue. By God was he going to carry through with it. Partly he was concerned whether or not he was being too rough with you by picking up the pace in his thrusts, but the other half of him wanted to go faster and a little harder. So bit by bit he did, and he’d deemed worth it when he watched you writhing beneath him and begging for him to keep going...to keep doing what he was doing to you. For a moment, through the thicket of lust consuming his heart, he felt a twang of pride at knowing he was the one making you feel this way. 

Pleasure felt like a tightly wrapped rope knot tightening within him, building up bits of pressure and pulling/tugging at him internally. It felt good, better, better, more and more until he felt himself losing all control and throwing his inhibitions out the window while fucking you into completion. He felt just for a split second one more twang of pride knowing you’d came together as he rode out his high while holding you tightly against himself. He’d apologized through catching his breath for getting sweat all over you. He’d apologized once again in worry that he may have been a little too rough with you but you reassured him that everything was beyond perfect and by the time he was through with you, you’d never doubt if he wanted you ever again...

[grislyintentions]

Been a hot minute since I’ve asked anything! I’ve been wondering for a while, and was recently reminded: How do you think Keqing and Ei would interact? Would they get along? Or would there be some friction due to differences?

[Hello! I appreciate your insightful questions very much and hope that you are doing well ^^

The thing about Keqing and Ei are that they are both obstinate people with firm convictions BUT that doesn't mean they are not willing to shown another outcome or adapt once they see the results and make sense of things from their own perspective.

When Inazuma's borders opened up to others and innovation began to fluorish, I can see Ei thinking about Morax's decision to step down from his role as Archon while she watches over her own as part of her reflection into things.

She's learning to listen to the wishes and dreams of her people. Re-learning just what it is they need and allowing for their voices to be heard. But at the same time we mustn't forget that the horrors of the cataclysmic disaster stuck with her for an eternity (pun intended LOL). How she, at that point in time, thought human ambition to be the root cause for such a disaster.

Given how she had witnessed such devastation, it won't come as a surprise that she may be wary/unsure of whether or not her decision to open borders and encourage innovation is something that wouldn't place them at risk.

By personally travelling to Liyue to view how the Qixing ran things, to listen and experience how they resolve problems that are far beyond their scope of capabilities. It would build Ei's confidence and trust in her own people- for the Liyuens would have shown her that yes, mortals can be in charge of their own destinies/chase their own dreams. That things would be okay.

Having someone like Keqing to talk to would bring a new perspective for Ei. She isn't someone who would have any reservations with disagreeing. She's in the ideal position in fact to show her just what people can be capable of. Keqing would treat her as an equal - like with everyone else- she can trust her to speak her mind. She's not there to judge her. She could be genuinely supportive, although blunt. But that's just what Ei needs. A friend.

On the other hand, though Keqing has always been adamant about walking her own path on her own without the guidance of the divine, she has since grown a new sense of respect after realising the magnitude of responsibilities Rex Lapis has/had done for the people of Liyue in the wake of his 'death'.

This ability of hers to acknowledge that and turn her disdain for her vision into something that she "chooses" to use and adapt is a balanced approach that speaks highly of her character. By meeting Ei, she could gain more insight on just how heavy the responsibilities of an archon are and how similar they are to mortals, thereby shaping her perspective and future decisions further.

She could also listen to the past stories Ei could tell her about Rex Lapis. The both of them could discuss plans for the future and talk about things they can't really disclose to others. While they may disagree on certain things, I honestly feel like they could develop a connection with one another.

TLDR: I think they would forge a strong friendship from treating each other as equals.

[janis-1987]

This is probably gonna be the most self indulgent fanfic I’ve ever written. 

Based on these posts  X, X  by @bulkhummus

This is meant to take place after episode 227 but before the next episode. 

Tw: Violence

 Cecil coughs and spits out a tooth that had been knocked loose from the punch he had just endured from Dr. Jones. It was the last in a series of them from Dr. Lubelle’s team. 

 “Had enough?” Dr. Jones taunts, smirking down at Cecil, convinced that they had won. They had been going about this for a good 15 minutes now, and Cecil had just heard Lubelle take over his show, the man should be begging for mercy about now.

 Cecil can't help the smirk that appears on his face, “Please, my weekly re-education is worse than this.” He taunts his captor and current torturer. It was true after all, this was nothing. It hurt sure, but he had been through worse.   

 Dr. Jones sneers, getting in Cecil’s face, “We will break you Cecil. It is only a matter of time.” 

 Cecil scoffs, “I’d like to see you try.” 

 Dr. Jones glares at him, pulling his head up by his hair, Cecil groans slightly at the feeling but he refuses to say anything. “Is that a challenge?” 

 Cecil doesn't respond, not like he has the time to. Almost immediately after being asked, Dr. Jones lands another punch on his face, this time with brass knuckles, causing a gash in the side of Cecil’s face. Cecil yells out in pain but he will not crack so easily. 

  It takes hours of various torture methods before the scientists start to lose hope. They'd tased him, beat him practically senseless, water-bored him, everything and besides being obviously hurt, Cecil didn't seem any closer to breaking than when they started.

 Dr. Jones stomps his foot, "Ugh! Why won't you just give up already?! Hell, how are you even still alive?"

 Cecil offers no response, squaring his jaw as he prepares himself for whatever is next. He wouldn't give in, he couldn't. He needed to hold firm on this. He would not betray his town or himself.

 Dr. Jones runs his hand through his hair as he paces, frustrated beyond belief. He was almost tempted to let Cecil go. What else was there to do? Cecil didn't care at all what they did to him. There had to be something that would make him tick. Everyone had a weakness of some kind.

 It was then that he was brought back to the night at the Moonlight All Night Diner, the one thing that got under Cecil's skin. He looks to another scientist. "you know, maybe it's time we bring Carlos into this."

 Cecil's head snaps up to look at them and he struggles against his binds. "NO!" He roars, his voice filled with panic.

 Dr. Jones chuckles darkly, there it was, the reaction they'd been dying to get from him, "Ah, so there is something that gets to you."

 Cecil gives Dr. Jones the dirtiest look he's given anyone in his whole life and if looks could kill, Dr. Jones would be dead, "You leave Carlos out of this."

 "And why should I? You are so... Unresponsive to everything else. So the only logical option, would be to bring in the one person that's gotten a reaction from you." Dr. Jones asks with a tone of arrogance.

 Tears fall from Cecil's eyes, and he fights against the restraints violently, injuring his wrists as he does. "Don't you dare! If you bring Carlos into this I'll- I'll-"

 "You'll what? Come on Cecil, threaten me, stoop down to my level, I’m sure Carlos will love that.” He taunts the man before him as he watches him squirm and struggle more desperately than he had the entire time they had been torturing him. 

 Cecil falls silent at that, he can't help but think of his husband and how disappointed he would be in him if he did stoop down to his level, but it was so hard not to. His resolve was cracking now at the idea of his sweet husband, the love of his life, sitting across from him being treated the same way he was being treated, he couldn't let that happen, he wouldn't. Not to mention, what would they do with their son? Who would watch him? No. No, he couldn't spiral like this right now. Finally, he swallows nervously, “I’m being held against my will. I’m sure Sherif Sam would love to arrest you for that and assault.” He says, grasping desperately at straws, he was pretty sure he had said the right things.   Dr. Jones can't help but laugh, “Oh Cecil. Cecil, Cecil, Cecil, even if someone did tell him, they would still have to find you and they would have to get past our security. Face it, you're trapped. And soon, your husband will be too. Unless of course, you start to see things, our way.” He says with a smug smirk on his face.  He looks at the doctor that stands in front of him, his third eye the only one that remains open. he was battered and bruised and honestly exhausted. But he could handle all of that, What he couldn't handle was the idea of his husband, an innocent bystander in all this, being forced to endure this torture. He hangs his head in defeat. He couldn't believe it had come down to this. Betraying his town, the place he loved so dearly, the people he had grown up with, his friendly desert community. He didn't want to do this, but what choice did he have? He loved his town, but he loved his husband more. “Fine.”  Dr. Jones claps his hands together, “Excellent, first things first, we need to figure out that extra eye of yours.” 

[thymewayster]

Fixing the Mandalorian season 3: an outline rewrite

Now that the season is finished and I can see the whole picture...season 3 had a few issues. It had a lot of good moments and some great story potential, but I think it could have been executed a lot better.

So I’ve fixed it by making a few tweaks, rearranging some scenes, and letting this be two seasons rather than one. I am trying to use roughly the same resources and roughly the same plot beats as canon did while still having the spirit of the first two seasons.

One of my major goals is also to make sure each show is self-contained—aka, you do not have to have seen any other show other than the one you’re watching for things to make sense. (Although of course, if you have seen the other shows, you will know a lot more context.)

Also fair warning, this is staying platonic, but if you want to imagine more shippy details, feel free.

This might get a little long.

So. Let’s start with Book of Boba Fett.

BoBF: Din is not the main character, Boba Is

Grogu and Luke do not make an appearance at all.

Pretty much the entire storyline of BoBF needs fixing, but fixing Boba’s story is a different issue. This post is about fixing the Mandalorian, so I’m going to focus on the last couple episodes when Din appears.

Episode 5 (or 6, depending on how Boba’s story is fixed) opens in media res, action scene. Din is in the middle of killing/beating up a bunch of guys while on a bounty hunt. Din wins the fight, pushes forward, and…it is revealed that his bounty is a child who was kidnapped for ransom that Din has been hired to retrieve. 

Optional: Shots during this part that parallel the very first episode of season 1.

Din reunites child with grateful rich parent/client. There’s a moment of Din looking at them longingly and it’s clear that Din is angsting over watching the parent/child reunion. The pain of losing Grogu is still relatively fresh. 

After Din is paid, Fennec appears (in person or more likely via holocall). 

There is a two-line exchange: Fennec asking how Din’s search for his people is going, Din replying it’s not going well and that he hasn’t found anything in weeks/months. Thus establishing two things: 1) Din is looking for other Mandalorians. 2) It has been weeks/months since the season 2 finale.

Fennec says Boba has a job for Din. Din says he owes Boba and he’ll do it for free.

All of the above takes up maybe the first five minutes of the episode at most. 

This also works because it feeds Mandalorian fans while not requiring you to have seen the Mandalorian at all if you’re just here for the Boba Fett show. 

If you’re watching BoBF in a vacuum, then it establishes all you really need to know: Din is a Mandalorian/has similar armor to Boba, is an ally of Boba’s, and is a very good fighter. It makes perfect sense Boba would call him for help.

From a business standpoint, this also still promotes the Mandalorian show. (“Hey, if you think this guy is cool, he already has his own show!”)

If you have seen the Mandalorian then you know the context of why Din is angsting over a parent/child reunion and you are having FEELINGS.

We next see Din on Tatooine and he is present for the BoBF finale as part of Boba’s crew.

Crucially, nothing of actual plot importance happens with Din. It is not required to watch BoBF to understand season 3 of the Mandalorian. 

The focus of the show is on Boba, and Din is there to be a cameo/look cool/be Boba’s backup so we can have some cool side-by-side shots and give the Mandalorian fans a sliver of content without disrupting BoBF-only watchers’ experience. 

The scene where Din says “I’m with you until we both fall” can stay, complete with sending the majordomo out with a fake notice of surrender. (Because that was great, and a good character moment for Boba.)

There is no Grogu appearing in the middle of the fight. Grogu is not even mentioned beyond the implication that Din misses him.

After the battle, we can either see Boba thank Din and then Din leaves to a quick little motif of his theme song. Or, because this is Boba’s show and Din is a side character, we might not even see Din leave. The focus might be more on other cast members.

New Mando s3: Din and Grogu

The theme: Din and Grogu reuniting, Din redeeming himself and rebuilding in the wake of season 2, the covert

Episode 1: Canon BoBF episode, where it should be

Canon BoBF ep 5, with a few differences.

The entire dramatic bounty-hunting/fight scene in the freezer is perfect, nothing changes. It also serves to tell the audience that Din’s having issues wielding the darksaber.

Din tracks down not only the Armorer and Paz, but there are some other survivors as well. Paz/somebody heals him from his darksaber accident. 

Preferably that character is a new named Mando character who is basically the covert’s doctor/medic. Like they can fight but they actually specialize in combat medicine. (This is also a good opportunity for worldbuilding since we can go into a bit more detail on how they handle injuries. Do they all cauterize their wounds or was that just Din out in the field? How do they handle head injuries if they can’t remove their helmet??)

Optional: have a passing comment about how long it’s been since the fight with the Nevarro bounty guild, further establishing that some time has passed.

This is also a chance for a nice sprinkling of worldbuilding for what the covert is like, how Din interacts with other members, and what he misses about them. 

Some members of the covert actually ask him why he removed his helmet, and there is some debate on whether his removal was acceptable as it was in service of a foundling. 

This is a good chance to introduce a few more Mandalorian characters. They don’t have to be big/detailed roles, but it helps humanize the Mandos a bit to show that they aren’t all a monolith, and we can have some familiar faces/helmets in future episodes. (And now you have names to go with the Funko pop figures. Because this is Star Wars and Disney, and let’s face it a major part of the franchise is the merch. We gotta keep the studio execs happy and the investors rich or they’ll ax our show.) 

Maybe Paz is the hothead of the group, or maybe his personality is pretty typical for the group. Maybe Din is unusually quiet/private compared to the rest of the group. Maybe one person is even more strict about the Creed than Din is. Maybe one just straight up does not speak in Basic/English and needs subtitles, implying that under the helmet they’re some species that physically can’t speak Basic/English. etc. Give us some characters.

Optional: a passing line to indicate that even though the audience is hearing English (or whatever Earth language) with no subtitles, the Mandalorians including Din are actually all speaking Mando’a and we’re getting a direct translation.

Anyway so they’re all debating whether Din is an apostate or not. The Armorer points out that the Creed is clear on removing the helmet, but she sounds deeply sorrowful/regretful about it.

Some members think Din is now an apostate. Others think that Din’s removal was justified. 

Crucially, Din himself falls on the apostate side, and he believes he needs to be redeemed.

Optional: When the covert find out he has the darksaber, there is further debate on whether this redeems him or not. Din doesn’t think it does.

Like in canon, Paz challenges him for the darksaber. Din is not sure he wants to be leader, but he also isn’t willing to just hand it over. 

Paz is like, if you don’t want it, why are you fighting so hard for it? And Din points out that losing a fight on purpose is Not the Way. Paz points out that he is an apostate. Din still refuses to give up without a fight. (Same fight from canon, with other Mandos watching, Din wins.)

Optional: At some point we meet Ragnar and learn that he is Paz’s foundling/apprentice. He is training to swear the Creed. Bonus points if Din angsts over that too.

When covert members ask about Grogu, Din reveals that he has coordinates for Grogu. (It can be left vague whether Din found them himself or Luke gave them to him off-screen) But Din has not visited Grogu because he doesn’t want to interfere with Grogu’s training. 

Din decides he wants to go to Mandalore to bathe in the waters and redeem himself. The Armorer warns him that it is probably not possible since Mandalore was glassed, but Din is determined to try. 

The covert wishes him luck. The Armorer decides to give him a gift: some chainmail for Grogu. (can be made from the spear or not.) Din protests that he has returned Grogu to his people and will not jeopardize his training. The Armorer replies that it is the child’s birthright as a Mandalorian foundling. Even if Din does not see the child again, then the chainmail will serve as a reminder of what Din sacrificed so much for.

The Armorer also gives Din a cool new weapon, possibly a new amban rifle or something similar. 

Let’s face it, cool weapons are integral to his character's design, coolness factor, and marketability. Gotta have something to make new toys. If the spear is melted down, he’ll need a replacement cool weapon. Even if he keeps the spear, that means he has two cool melee weapons, the darksaber and the spear, and he needs a cool long-range weapon.

Din accepts the gifts.

The covert is discovered by bad guys (Imperials? Beskar hunters? a crime syndicate?), there is another action sequence while the Mandalorians fight off the intruders. Din assists the others in fighting the enemies off. (This is a good chance for further characterization and exploration of group dynamics. Does Din communicate well and fight in sync with his fellow covert members, or has his time away from the covert and his bounty hunting career made it so he tends to fight alone rather than working as a team?) 

The Mandalorians win easily, because this is a chance to show off Mandalorian combat. 

But because secrecy is their survival, the covert must now relocate.

Optional: a good father-son moment with Paz defending Ragnar. Bonus points if Din also sees Ragnar defend himself using something he learned in training earlier in the episode. (Because it reinforces to Din that training is important. He’s going to bring that up later.)

Din helps the covert acquire a ship to get off planet (possibly with some money he earned on his way here? Showing that he still thinks of himself as the covert's provider. Or maybe they steal one) 

The Armorer asks if he wishes to join them. Din shakes his head, doesn’t believe himself to be worthy. He feels he does not belong with them and is an apostate.

The Mandalorians part ways, with the covert off to find a new location, while Din is left alone, watching them leave. (Visually, this shows him at rock bottom. He is an apostate. He has no ship, he has no covert, he has no child. It’s just him, alone in the universe.)

Optional end stinger: We see Grogu, meditating on a rock. He is concentrating for a moment, then his eyes open. He looks sad (and adorable). Possibly reaches out a hand, reminiscent of s1 ep1’s ending moment, but there is no Din there to take his finger.

Episode 2: Din and Grogu reunite

This episode has two plots: Din’s plot and Grogu’s. We switch between them. 

Optional: No CGI Luke. I love that Mark Hamill got to come back, but CGI Luke is not good at emoting. It worked okay for the season 2 finale, because Luke was calm and not super emotionally involved, but by the time we get to season 3 we need him to be able to emote or he comes off as very flat. If necessary, we can use a little CGI to make a lookalike actor (Sebastian Stan? An unknown?) a little more Luke like. But remember Luke is a bit older, he doesn’t have to look exactly like he did in Return of the Jedi. 

Screw it, maybe he has a beard now or something. He had a beard in the Last Jedi, and Disney wants us to use this season to prop up the sequels, right? Just look at that continuity! And that might make it easier for makeup/a touch of CGI to make the actor look more like Mark Hamill.

A Plot

We see a montage of Grogu and Luke training. Pretty much the canon scenes from canon BoBF ep 6. The seasons change on the planet they are on during the training montage to indicate the passage of time. 

Grogu is doing well in his studies, but he is very easily distracted and almost always looks sad. It’s clear that he’s feeling very distracted/conflicted. Luke is concerned.

Optional: show that Grogu is not the only student being trained. He likes the other students, but it’s clear that he isn’t as focused as the others. (Maybe squeeze in a quick flashback to happy Grogu back in the Jedi creche with the other students to show the difference?)

B Plot

Switch to Din. Din’s plot is basically the non-covert parts of BoBF ep 5. Funny public transport sequence to Tatooine, the bundle of armor is shaped like Grogu’s head, Rodian child angst. Meets up with Pelli, gets N1. Pelli tells Din that fixing it would go faster if Din helped.

A Plot

Luke is concerned because Grogu is very gifted with the Force but it’s clear his feelings are conflicted. Luke meditates with Grogu, does the frog-lifting scene. Luke realizes that Grogu deeply misses Din, and Luke gently mentions that being a Jedi requires a lot more focus than Grogu is currently using.

Optional: Luke mentions he himself has struggled to find the balance between helping his friends and his Jedi training.

Luke consults Ahsoka by holocall or in person. (Possibly drop a hint at what Ahsoka’s doing. Looking for Ezra or fighting Thrawn or whatever she’s going to be doing in her show). 

Ahsoka points out Grogu’s attachment to Din, which is why she didn’t train him in the first place.

Luke and Ahsoka have a discussion about Jedi philosophy and attachment. Ahsoka points out the Jedi did not maintain family attachments. Luke points out that he certainly is still maintaining contact with his family/friends. 

Optional: Luke mentions he has found records of Jedi maintaining family relationships, anciently as well as recently. (Drop some KOTOR references?)

By the end of the discussion, they have clearly defined attachment/possessiveness for the audience. (Will this finally stop the endless discussion among fans about Anakin’s fall and whether the Jedi’s no-attachment rule caused it? Of course not, this is the Star Wars fandom lol.)

B Plot:

N1 repair montage. 

Pelli modifies the back seat for Grogu, even though Din sadly points out that Grogu is not traveling with him anymore. Pelli’s like, “You want me to put a droid in there then?” Din, with possibly the first non-sad emotion we’ve seen him have this season, says no, absolutely not. Then Pelli’s like “So it’ll be for visits then!” Din is silent after that. He is clearly still sad.

There is a more in-depth conversation where Pelli wants more information about where Grogu is now and Din mentions that he of course misses Grogu, but he is sure that getting this training is the best thing for him and he made the right decision.

The repair montage might be shorter than or the same length as the original, depending on the runtime of the episode. (This episode will be on the longer side for a Mando episode. Maybe like an hour. Tbh you could probably stretch this out to two episodes if you really wanted.)

The N1 is finished. Din takes it out for a spin, sees the Rodian kid again, escapes from the space cops, plays out like the original BoBF ep 5 did. 

After the test ride, he bids goodbye to Pelli and takes off to space.

In the N1 in space, Din has a quiet moment. Visual shots of space being huge and vast and beautiful, while Din’s ship is very small in comparison. While Din experienced a moment of happiness in rebuilding the N1, he is still very alone.

We see Din holding the armor bundle shaped like Grogu’s head and thinking. (This scene visually echoes the s1 ep3 scene where he contemplates the shifter knob and decides to rescue Grogu from the Imp compound instead of just leaving.)

After a moment of silent contemplation (and probably as the music builds), Din makes a decision. He jumps to hyperspace.

A Plot/B Plot:

Luke sits Grogu down and asks if Grogu would prefer to continue his Jedi training or to return to the Mandalorian. Luke points out that of course Grogu’s bond with Din is not a bad thing, but being a Jedi requires focus and commitment. The greater good and the Jedi code must come before all else. Luke also points out that a short time for Grogu is a long time for Din. 

Luke would love to train Grogu to be a great Jedi, but he will respect whatever Grogu chooses.

Grogu chooses Din, and Luke accepts this decision. 

Luke is just debating how they’re going to reach Din…when Din shows up!

Optional: still include the “Is that a bench?” scene with R2 lol.

Din is awkward and nervous and just wanted to stop by for a visit and give Grogu the armor, but Luke informs him of Grogu’s choice. 

Din takes a bit of convincing, because after all he sacrificed a lot to get Grogu his training. 

Luke mentions that Grogu has done well in his training, and although it is not finished, Grogu really does want to stay with Din.

Grogu does one of those delightfully ridiculous puppet baby flips into Din’s arms. 

Father and son have a happy possibly tearful reunion.

Optional: we get another helmetless scene here with just Din and Grogu. (but probably not if Din hasn’t even adopted him yet)

Episode 3: Visit to Nevarro

Din visits Nevarro because Greef wants to give him a job offer, to stay and be a marshal since Cara is (fired) off doing New Republic things. 

Din seriously considers the offer because it would provide stability for Grogu. He still wants to be redeemed, but going to Mandalore is a suicide mission and now he has the kid to think about. 

Kind of s1ep4 vibes on Sorgan. Now that Din has left his covert, he has another chance to settle down, have a relatively normal life. We should have lots of moments either through framing/acting or maybe conversations with Greef that indicate that Din is thinking about taking the offer, but he’s reluctant to give up his desire to be redeemed. Grogu also clearly likes it here.

Optional: They can have a nice moment with the IG-11 statue like the canon s3 ep1 did, but there’s no reviving yet.

The pirate encounter occurs, but it’s a bit more extended and action-y and there are many more pirates—a scouting invasion.

After the climax of the episode and defeating the pirates, Greef and the Nevarro citizens are sifting through the pirates’ loot when they discover a green shard with Mandalorian writing on it. Din is shook.

Din interrogates a surviving captured pirate and discovers that they got it after raiding some exploration vessels in the Mandalore system. Din is ecstatic. Mandalore might be visitable, which means redemption is possible.

He declines Greef’s job offer, at least until after he is redeemed.

Episode 4: If we must include build up for the sequels, then fine. Have a fun pirate fight.

Din decides he needs a droid to measure the air readings on Mandalore, and IG-11 is that droid. The IG-11 terminator / Anzellan scenes play out like canon s3 ep1.

They leave Nevarro and are pursued by the pirates. (Can make this as long or as short as runtime allows, depending on how long the Pershing bit needs to be.)

Since this is the most flexible episode that doesn’t have as many important plot points, the Pershing story goes here as a B plot. If it has to be as long as it is due to executive demands, fine. Otherwise, condense it. A lot. The worldbuilding is great but the story itself really didn’t need to be that long. Make sure you drop hints about Gideon escaping and being alive.

Din and Grogu escape pirates.

Show the pirates on their ship. The captain mentions the mysterious employer who hired them is not going to be happy, and they’ll have to try again.

Episode 5: Getting R5 and having a fun filler adventure

Din and Grogu have a pit stop on Tatooine and have a fun action-y adventure involving Pelli and maybe a BoBF cast cameo or a fun new side character. Pelli gives Din R5 so he can test whether Mandalore is safe. 

Din uses the darksaber in a fight at some point. He’s still struggling with it a bit, but he has gotten a bit better.

Grogu shows off his powers. Din is impressed and very proud of him.

Depending on how the runtime works out, either the end of this episode or the beginning of next episode is the bit from the original s3 ep1 where Din visits Bo-Katan on her depression throne and gets directions to the mines of Mandalore.

Episode 6: The Mines of Mandalore Revamped

This episode basically follows the original beats of s3 ep2. Grogu map lesson, Din captured, Grogu gets Bo-Katan, Bo-Katan saves Din, Grogu is powerful, Din is redeemed. 

But we’re going to use this opportunity to flesh out some Mandalore backstory/history. Bo is a returning side character in this episode, but we need to flesh her out a bit more for next season.

I do want to make a bit more of a deal about Din setting foot on Mandalore for the first time. Like a shot of his boot landing on the ground and a slow pan on his helmet looking around at the barren landscape or a comment to Grogu or something. It’d take like five seconds.

Bo-Katan is still Creed-agnostic/atheist but clearly does respect Din even if she thinks his Creed is kind of dumb.

After Din wakes up post-barbecue-rescue, he points out that Bo-Katan beat the trap monster that captured him, so does she want the Darksaber? Bo-Katan bitterly says no, she can’t take it, because it has to be won in battle and whatever other reasons. The story’s not good enough—because it’s not so much about the sword itself, per se, but how you got it.

When Bo talks about her father she also mentions her sister. We’re not going to go into a whole crash course on who Satine is, because you should be able to watch this show without watching TCW. But a little mention would be nice. (Even if it’s just point to some random destroyed structure and be like “That was constructed under my sister’s rule.”)

Mention of her family can segue into a bare-bones outline of history so that TCW isn’t required viewing for context. We don’t need a detailed breakdown of pacifism/New Mandos vs Death Watch and can keep this all fairly vague. But we have to establish a couple things.

Bo fought in the Mandalorian Civil Wars, and she did a lot of shady things she now regrets. (What exactly the shady things were can be left as vague as Disney requires, because I have a feeling partly why canon Bo didn’t get to talk about this much is because Disney didn’t want a protagonist with a villainous past.)

Bo had a sister who once ruled Mandalore, but thanks to Bo and her shady actions, the sister was killed. (Yeah, it was a lot more complicated than that, but this shows that in the intervening years Bo has reflected upon her actions in TCW and regrets a lot of it and at least partly blames herself for Satine’s death. Part of her redemption arc.)

Bo concludes if the Mandalorians, including herself, hadn’t been so busy fighting over what divided them, they might have been ready for the Empire when it came, and Mandalore might not have been destroyed.

Optional: When Bo’s talking about things she regrets, Din says something about how he can relate to that because he’s also done things he regrets (like turning in Grogu or whatever he was doing with Ran’s group). Bo’s like, is that why you’re so determined to be redeemed? Because you regret taking your helmet off? And Din’s like, I don’t regret that. (because it was for Grogu)

Optional: Also, the more parallels we can fit between Din being redeemed with Mandalore being redeemed, the better. Din’s getting a new start, and so will Mandalore (and Bo)

Din recites the Creed and goes in the water. Make it more clear whether Din fell in or was pulled. I prefer pulled, but either is fine.

Optional: Bo-Katan sees the Mythosaur, but Din does not. Bo-Katan is shook. She does have a moment where Din asks if she still plans to reunite Mandalore and is she sure she doesn’t want the darksaber and she vagues at Din “...I will have to find another way.” While looking at the water. Clearly talking about the Mythosaur, but Din is oblivious since he didn’t see the Mythosaur.

Din and Bo-Katan part ways as friends. Din tells Bo-Katan he is in her debt and owes her one. The Kryze castle is not destroyed…(yet). 

Episode 7: Reunion with the Covert

Din and Grogu return to the covert. Basically the original s3 ep4 with a couple differences. 

Ragnar’s Creed ceremony, the giant crocodile, and Din’s dramatic entrance from the canon s3 ep1 is moved here.

Bring in the concept of the foundling/apprentice ranking here. The Armorer addresses Ragnar as “Apprentice Ragnar” during the ceremony, implying that swearing the Creed is akin to a graduation ceremony going from apprentice to full Mandalorian.

Din is welcomed back to the covert with open arms, and Grogu is introduced to the other Mandos. Everyone is really happy for Din and excited when he says Mandalore is not exactly habitable, but also not completely inhabitable.

Grogu’s training scene versus Ragnar stays. Din is the one who helps Grogu put on the little dart shooter. Din calls Grogu his ward, but we’re going to elaborate on why Grogu isn’t his son officially yet. When Ragnar asks why Grogu doesn’t wear a helmet, Din says he can’t talk and is too young to swear the Creed and become an apprentice, so he is still a foundling. This makes it a little clearer why Grogu isn’t officially Din’s son, and adds some Mando worldbuilding. 

Optional: Ragnar is referred to as “Paz Ragnar” or something to establish the naming convention. (Unless Djarin truly is his given name. But I’m ignoring it. He’s always Din to me.) “Apprentice Paz Ragnar” in the ceremony?

Ragnar is still captured by the shriek hawk, but this is the first time this has happened. Shriek hawk might have attacked before, but it’s never carried off a child. (Literally all you have to do is just cut the line "it always gets away" or replace it with “it got away” because really??)

Paz chases after shriek hawk, jet pack runs out of fuel, but fortunately Din/other Mandalorians bring the bigger Mandalorian ship, pick him up. (And give him more jetpack fuel.)

They all immediately go to fight the shriek-hawk at its nest, fight goes down like it did in canon and Din saves Ragnar. Paz is grateful.

They still bring in the baby shriek-hawks because lol. Maybe drop the foundling joke though since it made it sound like they were sentient. 

Grogu still gets his rondlet and processes his Order 66 trauma. Ahmed Best still saves him in a flashback.

Also, fit in as many small moments of Paz/other Mandos character development as possible. By the end of this episode we should have at least a character sketch for a few other Mandos besides Paz and the Armorer.

End stinger: Pirates attack Nevarro, Greef sends out distress signal, tries to contact New Republic.

Teva gets message, Zeb cameo

Episode 8: Defending Nevarro

Basically the original s3 ep5, but bigger and better.

Teva goes to New Republic, they turn him down.

Teva tracks R5-D4, shows up at the Mandalorians’ compound.

Din and covert peeved, Din negotiates.

Din wants to help Greef, and also remembers Greef offered him a protection gig/land. Realizes this will solve the issue of being constantly attacked by wildlife.

The group meeting/holding the speaking hammer scene.

Din points out that Greef offered him a tract of land, and that sounds a lot better than a place where giant creatures almost eat their foundlings. Basically his canon speech.

Mandalorians go to Nevarro, wipe out the pirates in as much glorious carnage as Disney will let us get away with. These action sequences take up a third to a half of the episode. 

Optional: Mandos ride the baby shriek hawks in battle. (The babies are trying their best, but they haven’t quite gotten the hang of it yet, for some comic relief.)

Optional: Din uses the darksaber. He has gotten a lot better at wielding it. (Because he believes in himself and what he’s doing now.)

Pirates are defeated, Nevarro is grateful, Mandalorians take up new job as protectors of Nevarro.

End stinger: Teva ship scene, Gideon escaped, there’s beskar on the ship oh no! 

Switch to Gideon looking menacing and accepting a holocall from the lead pirate. Reveal that Gideon hired pirates. Pirates tell Gideon they failed to take Nevarro and they’re mad that Gideon didn’t tell them the planet was defended by Mandalorians. Gideon furious, stalks off from holocall dramatically, pan out a bit and we get a glimpse of the facility/beskar troopers/Gideon clones.

Season 4: Bo-Katan and Mandalore (but Din and Grogu are still the main characters)

Mostly about Bo-Katan, darksaber drama, reuniting Mandalorians. Gideon is main antagonist. Din is still the main character most of the time, but occasionally Bo takes over to further the main plotline.

Episode 1: Bo-Katan enters the chat

loosely based on canon s3ep3

We open with Bo-Katan in her childhood home. (possibly still on her depression throne lol but it’d also probably be good to see what she does with herself all day). Bonus points if there’s some kind of family portrait in the background that features Bo, Satine, and their parents. (and/or the theoretical third sister that birthed Korkie lol).

Optional: Have a moment where Bo actually looks at the painting wistfully to indicate where her head’s at.

She gets an alert of invading ships, takes off in her own ship to fight them. An action scene of dogfighting ships ensues.

They bomb/destroy her castle.

Furious, Bo-Katan chases after them, but realizes they are based on Mandalore and their forces are huge. 

Reluctantly, very frustrated, decides to retreat.

We switch to Nevarro. Establishing shots. Nevarro is thriving even more than the last time we saw it. Trade is bustling, more infrastructure. Mandalorians roam the street freely. Some are patrolling / being security, others are just there to shop/chill/socialize. Relationships are friendly.

Last establishing shot zeroes in on the Mandalorian land. Also busy and thriving. Children are playing in the sunlight…including Grogu. :)

When I say playing, I mean they’re totally sparring with and beating the crap out of each other because they’re Mandalorian kids. 

Grogu has also gotten a lot better in combat, and despite being tiny the other kids respect him as an equal. Grogu is thriving and seems much more at home than he did with the Jedi kids at Luke’s school.

Optional: Grogu and Ragnar are rivals/besties. 

Camera moves over to Din and Greef chatting about a growing threat. A larger group such as the Crimson Dawn / a new original crime syndicate is considering making a move on Nevarro since Nevarro is becoming even more of a wealthy trade hub and insists on maintaining its independence from the New Republic given how badly the NR failed them last time. 

Optional: the new syndicate is somehow led by Hondo Ohnaka, because that would be hilarious (although that also has the potential to ruin tension if not handled well.)

Din is a little concerned that if the enemy syndicate makes a move, they have enough numbers to possibly overwhelm the Mandalorians.

They are interrupted by an alert of a rapidly approaching invading spaceship that isn’t following landing protocol. 

Din and other Mandalorians jetpack off and/or rush to ships (yes, they have multiple ships now. More signs of growth.) to shoot it down, but Din gets a call from Bo-Katan. She’s the one in the ship, she’s homeless, there’s tons of bad guys on Mandalore, and she has nowhere else to go since her forces abandoned her and Din is her last friend.

(It’s not weird that she knows where Din/Mandalorians are. It’s public knowledge they’re on Nevarro.)

They let her land in Mandalorian territory. Her ship is badly damaged. (Maybe we see some Mando mechanics swarm to fix it!)

On Bo-Katan’s ship, we see Bo-Katan pause and think for a moment. She dons her helmet before disembarking to talk to the Mandos. (Din might comment on this later, and Bo-Katan says she thought it would help her case and get them to trust her. Din says that was probably a good idea.)

The Armorer points out that she’s not really a true follower of the Way, but because she saved Din’s life last season she is welcome to live among them.

From there the episode pivots to a slice-of-Mandalorian-life story. Bo-Katan, with Din as a guide since he’s the only one she’s sort of friends with, realizes that the covert she dismissed as a cult is actually not that bad.

They accepted her, in contrast to the forces that “melted away.” 

At the start of the episode, the other covert members are passive-aggressive against Bo-Katan since she is an apostate. By the end of the episode, as Bo-Katan grows to appreciate the covert’s ways, they grow to appreciate her and her ways. Mutual respect!

She notices that Din is not even the leader of his group despite owning the darksaber and Din reinforces that he and his people could not care less about the fancy sword. Honor and loyalty are more important. 

Optional: Since Din is friends with Greef he is basically the group’s diplomat (and/or military leader?) while the Armorer is social/political/religious leader. Din defers to her.

More Mandalorian worldbuilding. Have some of the Mando characters we met last season interact with Bo and/or Din so they are fleshed out a bit more. 

Optional: Paz Vizsla and Bo interaction. Do they have beef? Do they get along? Idk I just want Bo to react to seeing a Vizsla and vice versa

Bo-Katan has more large-scale military experience than anyone in the covert does, so she ends up contributing some ideas to better defend Nevarro against the enemy syndicate.

Grogu gets another piece of armor (vambrace?). Din is very proud of Grogu. We should get lots of little cute father-son moments threaded through the episode.

Optional: The Armorer is starting to sketch out some helmet concepts for Grogu

Optional: Grogu is clearly going to start talking soon, tries to say “This is the Way” when everybody else says it.

The enemy syndicate attacks. Partly thanks to Bo-Katan’s contributions, the Mandalorians successfully fight them off despite being vastly outnumbered.

Optional: bonus points if Grogu uses the Force to help somehow. More bonus points if Ragnar is also helping defend a bit.

Optional: Okay but what if they tasked Grogu (and maybe Ragnar) with defending the younger foundlings while the adults fight the syndicate? Because that would be cute and potentially hilarious. (Ragnar carefully and perfectly fights/shoots enemies. Grogu just yeets them.)

After syndicate is defeated, Bo-Katan feels great. She has actually used her talents for good. She laments if only other Mandalorians could reunite and take back their planet as well as they defended Nevarro.

Like canon, the Armorer notes Bo-Katan needs a repair and they go off in private. Bo-Katan confides she saw a mythosaur. Armorer and Bo-Katan have their “take off your helmet” scene. It’s less weird because it was always clear that Bo-Katan was wearing the helmet more out of a nicety than a belief. The Armorer tells her she has walked both worlds, and seeing the mythosaur likely signals a new age for Mandalore. 

The Armorer believes that Bo’s goal of taking back Mandalore, especially now that they know the planet isn’t deadly, is worthwhile. Reuniting with other Mandalorians sounds like a good idea (especially since she and the rest of the covert now see that Bo is not the traitorous apostate they thought her and other outsiders to be).

The whole helmetless walk is the same as canon, but at the end of it, Din asks Bo if she wants the darksaber for her quest.

Bo-Katan very much wants the darksaber, but she can’t accept. (This is practically a running joke by this point.)

Well since Din has the darksaber, does she want him to help her in her mission? Din does owe her a favor since she saved his life. (And Din lives for side quests to help his friends.)

Bo-Katan accepts.

I do see that this episode runs the risk of being a little repetitive from the new s3 finale. To differentiate, this episode’s fights should be more aerial/dogfight based since they have more ships. Also a great opportunity to show off some cool new ship models, now at a toy store near you.)

Episode 2: Din and Bo vs Axe

basically the canon s3ep 6. Was it silly? Yes. But I liked it fine, and I’m here for major plot beats. This whole show has been built on fun filler-y adventures.

Maybe clarify what the heck Christopher Lloyd’s motive was though.

Anyway at the end of the episode Bo confronts Axe Woves. Axe says his whole thing about Din not being Mandalorian and not having a drop of Mandalorian blood in his veins. 

Bo-Katan defends Din same as canon

Optional: Maybe also says that Din is far more Mandalorian than Axe is.

Din challenges Axe to a duel. Axe laughs and is like, you’re not Mandalorian, you can’t challenge me to a formal duel.

Optional: Din lights up  the darksaber, but Bo stops him.

Bo-Katan says, fine, then since you’re too much of a coward to fight him I challenge you on his behalf.

Axe accepts.

Din offers her the darksaber for the fight, but Bo-Katan turns him down.

Optional: “I don’t need that thing to take this insert Star Wars slur here down.”

Bo-Katan wipes the floor with Axe.

Then one of two options:

Option A: Din hands Bo Katan the darksaber with the same weak excuse as in canon (but since we’ve seen him repeatedly trying his best to get rid of it, this isn’t out of nowhere.)

Option B: Din mildly says to the whole group that he has the darksaber and he thinks Bo-Katan’s pretty great actually. And if they really need the darksaber to convince them of leadership, then that makes him their leader as the owner of the darksaber, and he’s putting Bo-Katan as his second in command so listen to her.

The other Mandalorians (possibly a little reluctantly) are now on Bo-Katan’s side, as is their giant fleet.

Episode 3A: Side Quest Shenanigans

a fun adventure-y episode where Din+Grogu go on a side quest in order to track down a third Mandalorian group. (Or a flex episode if the runtime for one of the others goes too long and needs to be split)

Optional: Bonus points for going to a planet we’ve never seen before 

Optional: Bonus points for introducing fun new one-off side characters

Optional: Bonus points for introducing new alien species

Optional: Bonus points for another space whale cameo

Din succeeds in his quest and gets coordinates for the Mandalorian group.

or

Episode 3B: It’s flashback time

Kind of a bottle episode with Din, Grogu, and some young Din flashbacks. 

A third Mando group has made contact. Bo-Katan’s busy doing leader-y things / organizing the fleet so she’s sending Din to go meet them, and Din of course is bringing Grogu. 

Another reason why Bo is sending Din specifically is that he has been to Mandalore and can attest that the planet is relatively habitable.

Optional: Yet another reason is because this third group possibly fought with her before and they don’t really trust her. Din’s going to be her hype man.

flashbacks reveal more about Din’s upbringing. Lots of worldbuilding. Probably a lot of TCW references. And addresses Din’s trainer (father?) and explains a bit more why Din has not formally adopted Grogu yet. 

Weave those flashbacks in with Din and Grogu having nice parallel moments

Young Din also fulfills Din’s face reveal quota for the season lol. 

End of the episode is them taking off to get the other group.

Episode 4: More Mandos

Din confronts third group of Mandos.

Optional: Bonus points if some Wrens are in the new Mandalorian group. (Probably not Sabine sadly, since she’s probably doing stuff on the Ahsoka show.)

Optional: Bonus points if any other familiar names/characters are included in the new Mandalorian group. Also a good chance for KOTOR easter eggs.

Another good chance for worldbuilding! How is this group similar/different from the two main groups (covert and Axe Woves’ group) that we’ve seen so far?

Din helps them with whatever the problem of the week is.

Din convinces the third group of Mandalorians to join them on Nevarro and take back Mandalore. (It helps that he’s actually been there. He should include that in his speech.)

Grogu continues to be adorable and powerful. Bonus points if he plays with or hangs out with this covert’s kids.

Optional: B plot where Bo does something leader-y.

Episode 5: So many Mandos

Mandos prepare for war. In order to take back Mandalore, all gathered groups of Mandalorians will need to work together.

Optional: Word has spread through the galaxy, and more Mandos have joined them. 

The Mandos have amassed a giant fleet but they still need more ships.

Bo-Katan leads Mandos (including Din) to forcefully take ships from the new crime syndicate. We see Bo actually doing a good job of leading the team.

Optional: More quick background bits of characterization for the named Mandos, especially Paz.

After the mission is over and the ships are obtained, Din gives Bo his loyalty speech from canon s3ep7. If Din didn’t give her the darksaber in episode 2, he gives it to her now, and she finally accepts.

Please fit in as many adorable Grogu training montages as possible.

At some point, Din can say goodbye to Greef, and Greef gives him a droid with the yes/no buttons for Grogu. 

Optional: The droid is not IG-11, because not enough of IG-11 survived in the first place. So a different kind of droid. I’m thinking something like a BB-8 type model or hollowed-out mind probe droid. It’d basically be a souped-up version of his orb cradle. Granted neither of those models have voice boxes..

Optional: Din informs Greef that most of the Mandos are about to leave, but they’ll leave a group behind to fulfill their defense contract. (Or they’re just leaving/saying goodbye. Now that the syndicate is defeated Nevarro shouldn’t have any major problems.) Greef tells Din to tell Bo that Nevarro and Mandalore officially have an alliance.

Episode 6: Scouting Mandalore

The plot of this episode is putting together a team and then going on a scout mission to figure out who is actually on Mandalore and how many there are. Basically an expanded first half of canon s3 ep7.

Personalities clash, old history is brought up (but somewhat glossed over. Enough that people who have seen TCW/Rebels know what they’re talking about, but a Mandalorian-only watcher still gets the general gist.) 

Like canon we do need Grogu to come along for plot reasons, but it doesn’t make a lot of sense for Din to bring him on this incredibly dangerous mission, so we’re going to tweak the scene a bit. 

Nobody’s volunteering for the scouting mission, so Din volunteers himself. Then Grogu makes a noise (or stands droid up and pushes the Yes button) indicating he volunteers as well. Din does a panicked double-take.

Axe immediately volunteers next, because he’s not about to be shown up by a not-even-blood-Mandalorian’s not-even-blood-Mandalorian baby. Then Paz volunteers, because he’s not about to be shown up by Axe. Then more people volunteer.

The scout team is a mix from each Mandalorian group. All (or most) of the covert characters we’ve met are on the team.

Din and Grogu have a moment where Din’s like, well you volunteered and you’re partly why everyone else agreed to come, so I guess you’re coming. But be very very very careful.

Back to canon, the scouting mission lands on Mandalore and finds the survivors. 

More Mandalore backstory from the survivors. (What happened on Mandalore during/right after the bombing?)

Option A: Part of why the survivors have survived is because after the initial bombings they surrendered/worked for the Empire (out of necessity for survival, to protect their kids, etc.) This causes a lot of outrage from the other groups, especially the third group who probably fought with Bo in Rebels. Bo-Katan admits she has done a lot of wrong things in her past, but she wants to make up for it. And it seems like these survivors do too. 

Option B: The survivors are heavily implied to be former New Mandalorians. Which causes a lot of tension between the Armorer/covert and survivors. Bonus points if there’s a line like “Concordia? So you were exiled?” 

Either way, it’s about to come to blows. Grogu gets his peacekeeping moment. (If Din says “He didn’t learn that from me,” Bo says “I doubt that.” Or Din just doesn’t say that at all. Like I’m guessing they were trying to imply that’s Grogu’s Jedi training kicking in, but come on, we’ve seen Din be a peacekeeper multiple times.)

Bo-Katan gives her Mandalorians are stronger together speech. She, the Armorer, and the leaders of the other two groups manage to maintain peace.

Since Disney seems to refuse to let the Mandos speak Mandoa, this will have to be in English/Basic. But in in Legends and the Mandoa dictionary, there’s this concept of cin vhetin, or clean slate. It means once you become Mandalorian, you leave your past behind and start fresh and are only judged on what you do from that point onward. 

Bo brings up this concept in her speech to the other Mandos. Says something along the lines of, we have all had our differences but in the end we are all Mandalorian. From this point on, we are as one faction, not many.

Also going to add a little addition. “You’ve trained your apprentice well.” “He’s not an apprentice yet.” “Seriously? You’re letting a foundling go on this mission?” Bo giving Din some serious side-eye. Din says nothing but is visibly stressed. Bonus points if it’s somehow mentioned that Din could totally stop him from going on the mission if he was Grogu’s parent. Also, this further illustrates the ranked system and that Din hasn’t adopted Grogu.

By the end of the episode, Mandalorians are united.

Episode 7: The Battle of Mandalore, Part I (Second half of canon s3ep7.)

Pretty much goes like canon, with a little more fleshed out since we have more time. The previous episodes should have done enough work that everything has much more of an emotional impact.

The Armorer bringing the survivors back to the fleet is now a nice character moment that shows the formerly fighting groups are united.

Now when Paz dies, it’s going to feel a lot more meaningful because we’ve built up his character more. (And I do think he should die. As much as I love him, he got the best final stand scene ever and it raised the stakes nicely.)

One tweak though is have Bo’s discussion with Paz about how he should escape with them comes before all the other Mandos have climbed out of the hole. That way it’s more clear that Paz’s sacrifice bought them all enough time to escape.

Din is still captured, we see more of Grogu’s reaction

Optional: Gideon takes off the helmet while Din is captured. I am so happy for Din that it stayed on, but it almost seems out of character to me that Gideon didn’t touch it or any of his armor. It would have been an easy, perfect way to demoralize Din and the other Mandos. Also I know you apparently somehow disabled the weapons in his vambraces but wouldn’t it be easier to just remove the vambraces?? Honestly though the fight scenes are so good I’m cool with overlooking this

Episode 8: The Battle of Mandalore of Mandalore, Part II

canon s3 ep8, pretty much untouched except for a few added shots of the Mando characters we have names for.

I realize the Volume has some limitations, but if we could add a little CGI or a practical effect to make it look like there’s thousands of Mandos gathered around the Forge, that would be great.

Din actually says the word “son” at some point after the adoption.

Now hopefully everything in this episode lands a lot better and has more emotional impact.

[kg-clark-inthedark]

Chapter 7 of Beyond the Spheres by kg_clark

I can recall only two moments in my life when I felt completely helpless. The first was the day that changed everything, seventeen years ago when I was suspended motionless in the air to watch Daud drive cold steel through Jessamine’s heart. The second was that horrifying realization that there was nothing I could do as Delilah cast my daughter in stone before my eyes. Now a third moment of powerlessness is coming glaringly into focus as I’m following Alastor into his apartment upon our return from the wedding and he suddenly just…vanishes.

One instant he’s leading me inside, smiling beautifully back at me, and the next he has disappeared into a plume of inky, fading smoke. It happens right in front of me with no warning, just like I had secretly feared it might. I’m not even quick enough to grab his hand, instead swiping the empty air where he had been just a moment ago.

For a few seconds I simply stare in disbelief. Surely I’m imagining things. This must be a cruel trick my mind is playing on me. If I blink a few times, Alastor will be standing before me again, won’t he?

But the seconds keep passing and my pulse begins to pound in my ears as the apartment remains empty and silent around me. Blood rushes through my head and I eventually stagger forward with a delayed gasp.

“Alastor?” I call out to nobody. My voice sounds so harsh and alarmed I barely recognize it as my own.

Please, no.

As I stand frozen, glancing feebly around the apartment, my fingers find the back of my left hand to seek comfort in my rising panic. An onslaught of questions begins, all rattling against one another inside my skull with potential answers too terrifying for me to fully face: What is happening? Was that the same Void-mist I watched Alastor materialize from and fade back into all those times as the Outsider? If so, he couldn’t have gone back to the Void…could’ve he? After all this time, like it’s nothing?

Another, more sinister thought arises as I begin involuntarily pacing the floor of the apartment. If it is the Void that Alastor disappeared to, I doubt he went with intention. He seemed…happy here. He told me the first day we saw each other at the bar that he was enjoying his freedom. He wanted nothing more than to be rid of that abyss for good. No, there’s no way he would’ve chosen to go back all of the sudden like this. He must have been pulled away against his will. In that case, will he be able to escape?

If I’m right, Alastor must be so frightened. It’s that thought, the notion of him trapped and scared with no way for me to help him, that mutates my panic into a sickening despair.

I’m usually shown some type of direction when I’m faced with situations like this. However I don’t know where to begin now. I no longer have any way of accessing the Void. Alastor and his runes were my points of entry. And it’s with uncertainty that I even theorize that’s where he’s gone. The only clue I have to his whereabouts is that fleeting moment of black mist that he left behind. If I had blinked I would have missed it entirely.

Seconds turn to minutes with me pacing the small space and eventually becoming so overwhelmed by what-ifs that I find myself sinking to the floor in distress. I hold my head in my hands. What am I supposed to do here?

I think about earlier today and the shift in our relationship that occurred. All I’ve been able to think about since the moment I found him is getting to the point that we got to today. Today brought certainty, a certainty I’ve been lacking ever since I lost his mark two years ago. Now the future of it all has suddenly been brought right back into question.

I was never a man of faith even before I fell into the Outsider’s favor. Growing up the way I did, losing my father young and needing to fight for a decent life, the teachings of the Abbey of the Everyman always came off as too pious and out of touch for me to include them in my personal beliefs. I’ve watched too many rely on the Abbey for guidance instead of bothering to come to any true understanding about themselves or their situations. However, in moments like this when I am entirely at a loss, I feel myself aching for external guidance. I used to turn to Alastor himself all those years, but now…

I’m drawn over to the window to look out at the night sky. Much like an overseer studying cosmological signs, I search the stars’ shimmering lights for clues. Sokolov described them as guide points in a perilous, black, howling chaos.

Taking a steadying breath, I let go of my pride and ask the cosmos above to bring him back to me. A prayer of sorts. Whatever the endless blanket of fireballs and spheres truly is, whatever its motivations may be, I beg its mercy for the first time.

Please, bring him back.

Continue reading on Archive of Our Own

[castielmacleod]

Her last name is Dar, not Desai. Ackles didn’t create her, Robbie did. He formed her character and fleshed her out with Nida’s input. And there’s no stereotype I’ve seen in her portrayal…? Unless you mean because she’s Smart and Asian, which are just two qualities she has. It’s fine that you’re not watching, but it’d help to at least read media coverage on her to know this rather than diminish (so far) good rep into nothing worth batting an eyelash at. Fandom loves to play contrarian and then not even be informed on what they say.

Oh wow lol okay first of all….. I’m not sure if you are aware but I, am Indian (I’m biracial) and that is quite literally 100% of my interest in Latika. I mean, her “so far good” rep is repping me! Forgive me because I have no idea if you yourself are desi or not since you’re on anon but like. I am very much allowed to talk about this character. And the stereotype associated with her, courtesy of Jensen AckIes. Just to get that out of the way.

Second of all…. “and then not even be informed on what they say” well I suppose I’ll inform you, then, that media coverage is literally where all the information you’re concerned with has come from..😭 I have been reading about this show since it was announced!

Regarding Latika’s name, I had understood it to be Desai from this article.

That understanding was re-enforced by the sheer amount of people on here using the Latika Desai tag to talk about her since before the premiere and literally right up to this day still. I came to realise that her name had at some point been changed to Dar when I looked her up on the spn wiki not 5 minutes before receiving this ask so.. I hope you can forgive me for not updating the tags on my post in time for you, random citizen, to see it!

Regarding the stereotyping, I was referring to this quote from Mr Ackles himself, from this article.

I’m not going to explain why this statement is shitty and racist to both Latika and Carlos and I very much hope you don’t need me to.“It just made sense” oh please white Texas man, tell me more about why it made so much sense to you. Lol.

Anyway that particular article didn’t mention Robbie Thompson at all, unfortunately, so I was unaware he was the one to actually create the character. My apologies. I’m not sure if you’d like me to expand my frustration toward the lazy stereotyped racism expressed in this quote past Jensen AckIes to include Robbie Thompson as well? Because personally I’m glad to hear that he worked closely with the actor to improve on the stereotype they may have began with, or at least the stereotype that Jensen had in mind (or god forfend projected onto the character Robbie had already written). I’m pleased to know Nida had a say! And relieved. Robbie has a good track record with involving underrepresented actors directly in their characters (such as working so closely and brilliantly with Shoshannah to ensure Eileen’s Deafness was properly represented) so that’s definitely a little less harrowing than the situation I’d imagined.

But regardless of any of that……. my request on the post I assume you’re here from was quite literally me asking people who have actually seen the show for MORE DETAIL about her, as in BEYOND the book-smart British Indian trope that I read literally from an interview with CW The Winchesters Executive Producer Jensen Ross AckIes. I honestly think that asking for details beyond the apparent stereotype of a character is the opposite of diminishing said character to a stereotype. I mean if anyone is diminishing her it’d have to be Jensen. I very much looked at his comment, thought “oh that’s so lazy and reductive”, and then asked the good people who have actually seen the show if they could tell me what Latika is like in the actual show! Quirks, traits, minor details, little things that make her a fully rounded character. I WANT to understand her beyond the inane stereotyping that seems to be all Jensen AckIes’ tiny smooth mind could manage to comment on. I literally want to write her into my fics and finally explore the spn universe from a desi perspective! Since I’m not much of an oc guy, I’m thrilled at the opportunity for that! I am very much batting an eyelash at her, to be clear!

Anyway as you noted and as I’ve I said I’m really not interested in this show, I will never watch it, I’m just interested in Latika since spn never had a desi character other than Kali (who appeared in one episode, and that one episode was INORDINATELY racist) and I feel compelled to steal Lata for my secret good canon and writing. I was just hoping to learn a bit more about her before adopting her entirely, and there is absolutely nothing on the wiki for her yet, so I ran the risk of reaching out into spnblr for anyone willing to share. That’s all!

Clearly my post and tags caught you in something of a unfortunate mood. I apologise if I offended you, but I hope now you might understand me and where I’m coming from a little better, and you’ll get that I’m actually NOT just talking out of my arse here 😭

And if you deign to forgive me and you feel like writing back and actually answering my request for Latika lore, then you are by all means welcome to. Thanks!

[estellamiraiauthor]

The Stars May Rise and Fall: The Annotated Re-read (Chapter 9)

Welcome back to Chapter 9 of my probably-way-over-annotated annotation of The Stars May Rise and Fall--a queer retelling of Phantom of the Opera set in the visual kei subculture in turn-of-the-millennium Tokyo! (Buy it here, or order the paperback from your local indie bookstore.)

As always (and I think there are going to be a lot in this chapter), spoilers are fair game, including spoilers for chapters beyond this one. If you are cool with that, please read on.

I love the way this chapter opens. It takes about 12 minutes to get from Shinjuku (where the last chapter took place) to Meguro (where Rei lives) on the train, and Rei’s apartment is about a 10 minute walk from the station (for Teru), so Teru has given Rei less than half an hour to get ready, and he comes to the door in faded sweats.

I LOVE the idea of these boys being all comfortable and casual together. I would love to have fanart of them just chilling in pajamas or whatever, if anyone is interested in making my wishes come true.

ANYWAY. Aside from this just being a really nice mental image, it’s sort of telling, I guess, that Rei DOES come to the door--he never has before--and that even though he hasn’t had time to change clothes or anything, the mask isn’t a millimeter out of place. “Teru wondered if he’d been wearing it, even alone,” and... I don’t really know. Maybe. Either he was, or that was just his first priority when Teru called him. He REALLY doesn’t want to show his face, either way.

Otherwise, though, he’s relaxed quite a bit, and while he always wears long pants and long sleeves, he does at least take off the cloak in the really really freaking hot and humid Tokyo summer.

Teru’s just drunk enough to ask some of the things he wanted to ask but couldn’t work up the courage to while sober. He asks “Does it hurt?” (referring most obviously to Rei’s flail arm), and Rei says “Immensely” and then changes the subject to business. I’m pretty sure that “Immensely” was there from the first draft, and I love it. Like, Teru, what the hell kind of answer did you THINK you were going to get? (I mean, he was drunk, so he probably wasn’t really thinking that deeply at all, but still. Give a brutally honest answer and then change the subject... it’s a perfect response.)

Rei lists off a bunch of stores where he wants to sell the CD. These are all plays on the names of real music stores, but I sadly don’t remember what all of them were. “Tesla Coil” is Like an Edison... cause Edison and Tesla, right? Tesla the car company did not exist when I wrote this, and Like an Edison (surprisingly?) still exists today. Rock Amour is (quite uncreatively) Rock Love, which used to have two Harajuku locations that got cut down to one, and then disappeared entirely. Rock Love was my favorite. :(

Rei mentions a shop in Niigata, which is where Teru is from. I made Teru from Sanjo, Niigata because I used to date a guy who was from there, and I’ve been to Niigata City and Nagaoka, the second-biggest city in Niigata Prefecture a few times. I didn’t want to pick a place I didn’t know ANYTHING about, but also didn’t want to pick something like the place where I actually live or my husband’s hometown or anything. Also, different areas had different styles of visual kei, and Niigata bands tended to keep the 80s/90s style after it had gone out of fashion in Tokyo. This is one of the bands I used to follow, in 2001: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CMRwUf6l7rk

So that kind of opens up the conversation to things that are not about music. Rei has already said that he’s not having a great day... probably mostly in terms of pain, but also in terms of “the guy I like was on a date with a girl,” and Teru admits that his date didn’t go so well, either. Again, I know I shouldn’t regret things about a book I’m mostly proud of, but I cut SO much “filler” in the name of trying to get this thing under the word count that mainstream publishers wanted that there aren’t many “fluff” scenes of the two of them just kind of being happy together... they’re not really HAPPY here, but just kind of hanging out. I wish I’d left in more scenes like this after they were actually in a relationship.

Rei lets Teru hear another song he wrote... more on this in Chapter 11, I think? At the moment it really just leads into Teru realizing that it’s too late for him to get home on the train, and Rei offering to let him spend the night, and steering the conversation away from music.

At the beginning of this encounter, Teru, who knows he’s already drunk, just kind of sips at the whisky Rei gives him, but at this point he downs an entire glass--liquid courage? (Again, NOT MEANT TO BE A ROLE MODEL JUST A FLAWED HUMAN, THANKS.) And then he asks Rei what happened to him.

Rei still doesn’t really give the whole story here. (Can you tell I really like characters having secret pasts and Big Reveals?) But he does tell Teru that it was a car accident, that it happened during the tour that was supposed to lead to his band getting a record deal, and that the rest of his band died. It happened on the Tohoku Expressway near Sendai, because there is this awful, twisty stretch of road up there where everyone goes 120km/hr and it’s TERRIFYING.

He doesn’t go into a great deal of detail, but he tells Teru a little bit about his injuries, about how he was told he would never use his arm again, and then how he asked for a mirror, and Teru asks him to show him his face. In the very, very, VERY first draft, I was trying to write this to be the unmasking scene. But I never actually wrote it that way because it felt so... non-consensual? And it IS non-consensual in so many versions of the Phantom story. The most famous image is probably of Mary Philbin’s Christine sneaking up behind Lon Cheney’s Phantom and tearing off his mask. Christine does the same thing in the Lloyd Webber musical. And originally I was going for something like that, too, but when it came time to write it, I couldn’t have Teru just... VIOLATE Rei like that.

And I think Teru kind of realises the same thing, that what he thinks he’s about to do is really not OK... and so they end up kissing instead.

Now, I don’t think this is a unilateral kiss. I don’t think either of them kisses the other without permission. It just... happens. But as soon as he’s done it, Rei regrets it and pulls away.

I think this is mostly guilt. He’s promised to be loyal to Saki. Teru doesn’t know that, yet, but Rei feels like he’s betrayed Saki here, because they never broke up. It’s not breaking up if one of you DIES. So he feels like he’s betrayed Saki, and like he doesn’t deserve to be happy or to fall in love with anyone else, because he feels like he KILLED Saki, and so he just immediately pulls away, tells Teru he has to work... and poor Teru I think just doesn’t know what he’s done wrong, because it seemed mutual in the moment.

Final random detail for this chapter, Rei tells Teru that the first train is at 4:33. I’m not sure why he has that memorized, but at least when I first drafted this chapter way back in 2005, it was for some reason still possible to look up the train schedule for a Sunday in July 2000 online. I’m not sure if it still is, but I was really particular about looking up things like that when and where I could. So the first train actually was at 4:33.

[krystynasierbien]

Up and Down in Ireland

I’ve lived in the same city in Northern Ireland for over three months now, and the only friend I’ve made thusfar is a convicted and unrepentant paedophile who apparently committed his crimes while he and a then 13 year old girl watched rolling news about the 2005 London bombings.

I worked briefly in Kenmare prior to that, staying with a twice married Apache pizza delivery driver and seasoned fisherman called Robert a few weeks later, circumventing one of the many “work for free, stay for free” websites in a village called Kilgarvan, which is about thirty minute’s ride from Killarney. Angling for a tour of the Ring of Kerry and beyond, Robert was thankfully only too happy to oblige, having not visited many of the destinations he had in mind for years. He knew the winding roads and all the best beaches — hidden jewels reminiscent of the Maldives when the weather was just so — like the back of his hand, and his driving skills were impressive. And so we meandered, sometimes sped, towards myriad sea-facing dead ends, chatting with numerous V-Loggers filming and frolicking beside their camper-vans along trails Google Maps leaves largely undocumented as we went.

There’s something beautiful about all this, I thought to myself at the time. The old and the new, the clean-living youthful adverturism outriding the digitised world from which they had sprung, and which invariably helps fund their expeditions, in tandem with a County Kerry lifer revisiting old haunts and friends with a wayward 30-something drunk like myself. Campervans and coming of age road trips aren’t new of course however the Van-life trend — aside from adventure and travel — is about elaborate interiors, twinkly V-log music accompaniment, and tactile video editing as opposed to the rudimentary clothes, drugs, and occasional music event pastiche I’d been used to. Robert let me take a spin in his rickety old manual along the Banna Strand strip one afternoon, a well established beach spot for excitable learner drivers, many of whom seemed to be attempting to re-enact scenes from the Fast and Furious films. I appreciated for the very first time just how anxiety-inducing driving can be.

I cooked food, cleaned his house and cars, took calls from middle-class French mothers trying to book a holiday slot with Robert’s fishing trip business. “We must catch a salmon” they almost universally insisted, perhaps trying to offset the cost of the fishing trip in their heads as Robert perhaps dutifully paid the high-summer Irish rod license fee in anticipation of the trip at the local Post Office. I even spruced up an old hot dog stand sat rusting in his front garden one morning, with a vague plan to start trading in Bantry later that week (no herbs, no spices, no pickle, just fried onion with a choice of either mustard OR ketchup, Robert repeatedly insisted.)

No matter what I did or suggested though, I just couldn’t measure up to the Japanese student who’d boarded with him the previous winter. Forty quality wreaths she had constructed in one day alone to sell at Robert’s numerous Christmas Market haunts that season he exclaimed wistfully one evening as we watched an RTE documentary about Greenland’s slower-than-most transition to social and cultural modernity, mumbling something about ‘Japanese work ethic’ before woefully burying his head in his hands. I thought back to our trip to the Yusuf Spice Halal Shop in Killarney one morning, where Robert seemingly pays cash on a monthly basis to be wired to a young woman living in the Philippines to fund her university studies and who he had first communicated with via Facebook. There was definitely something on his mind, but I think he was missing his son too — a hippy type now living off grid elsewhere, who seemed familiar somehow, and whose photograph stood atop the dresser in the room I slept.

Torc Waterfall, White and Banna Strand, Castle Cove, The Olde Forge trail through to County Cork, Killarney National Park, Waterville. One glorious day, we met two old friends of Robert’s from the hills, at the Lady Madonna statue for Sailors Lost, who he hadn’t seen in a decade. One brought two calves with him to entertain coach-trip passengers stretching their legs and buying ice cream, while the other played the accordion out the back of his van, singing hilarious English gibberish whilst thumping his foot upon a sheet of tin he had placed on the ground.

The hotdog vendor business may never have materialised, however Robert did one balmy late summer’s day take me to visit a friend of his in Bantry: A beady eyed, bespeckled, crutch clutching, pliable faced 73-year-old with a pet cat and a penchant for the Dropkick Murphys named Patrick Guilfoyle. Patrick lived comfortably in a detached shack, rammed elegantly somehow into a tiny space along a hilled street lined with otherwise uniform post-war terraced housing. He had made all of the thoughtful, utilitarian touches that seem to characterise the reduced space, fold-out Dali-an playpens many major city-based millennials and Gen Z-ers have become accustomed to (a velcrowed strip of wall for the TV remote and his various medications, the table that doubled up as a seat for guests, the elaborate kitchenette area.) I didn’t ask why his shack had been built where it so proudly but strangely stood, like some compressed Alpine wooden thumb. I just assumed the previous property had either collapsed, burnt down, or had been ceremoniously demolished for one potentially horrifying reason or another.

I’d been told all about Patrick before I met him, his concern for the safety of women, following a phone-call between the two Irishmen — Robert initiated the conversation by telling me about the Troubles as he had experienced things in Belfast as a young man, living amongst and at times having to work with the kind of gangsters who’d slip cyanide into a comrade’s orange squash before toddling carefree down the road to shoot up a family home. Who’d admonish a person’s commitment to and pride in not only themselves but also their family, friends and country for refusing to subscribe to a culture in which organ harvesting could be construed as a justified norm and would naturally be used as a threat against anyone attempting to thwart them — bringing with us that damned packet of gravy Robert had for some strange reason insisted we fetch for him on the journey. Patrick, in spite of his casual, out-of-the-blue, possibly faux-homophobia, in spite of his genuine affection for his cat and his grandchildren,was a former IRA bomb maker. Dubbed the ‘Bungling Bomber’ by the press, Patrick once accidently blew up a flat in 1970’s Manchester where he and his co-conspirators were constructing various explosive devices at the time whilst smoking a cigarette, and before the police finally caught up with them so too the entrance to a marked Birmingham court house. The remnants of Patrick’s former high-risk pursuits I could see manifested in the nimble modifications he was in the process of making to his I-Pad sleeve with a segmentable switchblade knife when Robert and I first arrived.

Oddly — and in my eyes terrifyingly, tellingly — enough, as we first drove through Bantry I saw a man I’d recently been researching leaning against a wall, working diligently on carving his wooden bowls next to an organic food shop. It was Ian Bailey — qualified lawyer, poet, pub musician, journalist, market trader and erstwhile prime and convicted suspect in the horrific murder of French film-maker Sophie Toscan du Plantier in Dreenane back in 1996. I’d recently been in contact with a witness in the case that turned out to be a third cousin of the same name, who had the following to say:

I know Ian personally, and I see him essentially as a narcissist who walked into the crosshairs of the Gardai who were aware of how much they had messed up the investigation and were glad to be presented with a ‘likely suspect’. (Another theory doing the rounds some time back was that it was a Garda from Bantry who had killed Sophie, and his colleagues were prepared to go to any lengths to cover this up. It is fairly far-fetched, but then look at the deeply shocking corruption of members of the force in another part of the country as highlighted in the Morris Tribunal of 2002.) Ian’s narcissism, of course, has kept him in the limelight, which has not served him well. Another thing that makes him ‘tick’, so to speak, is a certain mindset that prevails among a few English people living here (and I must emphasise ‘few’) — that they are living with the ‘mere’ Irish and feel they can say and do things that they would not get away with at home. This is probably more unconscious than anything else, but his cavalier mangling of the Irish language, thinking no one will notice, says a lot, as does his belief about the worth of his poems (he may not have killed Sophie Toscan du Plantier, but he is certainly guilty of murdering poetry).

My initial thoughts were that Ian Bailey must have been involved — how couldn’t he be, having seen and reported on details of the crime scene 48 hours prior yet being so jovial, knee deep in Schull Pier water as if baptizing himself, reciting poetry and belly laughing at the annual Christmas Day swimming event? Perhaps he was reflexively basking in the knowledge he’d been the first and perhaps only journalist that day to report on what he knew would inevitably become such a huge story. And yet, turning up in that Ford Fiesta with Jules (the progeny of a very wealthy Welsh family, who may or may not own Belfast International Airport), apparently the same model as Sophie’s hire-car that fateful visit, if he (and/or she) had murdered Sophie a few hours earlier, would certainly make the investigator’s jobs more difficult, if not at the immediate scene then definitely along the various lanes and walking routes leading towards it, weather and terrain permitting. Then again standard issue Garda vehicles in 1996 were all Ford Fiestas too, and annual Christmas Day swimming events are generally places of joy.

Bailey allegedly admitted to his crimes to several people over the years. He also has a history of severe domestic violence as confirmed by police reports and a thrice hospitalised Jules Thomas, for which it seems no further police action was ever taken. For these reasons, and many more, including an attempt to set an EAW precedent through an Napoleonic era law and request for extradition to France which was ultimately denied by the Irish High Court on grounds of a lack of sufficient and admissible evidence, he was in 2019 found guilty in absentia and sentenced to 25 years in prison at the Cour d’Assises, Paris. Should Ian Bailey ever attempt to visit France or any other country willing to comply with the extradition order he would be detained and likely transferred to a French prison.

The coroner’s report is truly harrowing, more so than most relating to a murder. Sophie had been bludgeoned repeatedly, mercilessly, with the kind of ferocity usually only attributable to a deeply personal grievance or intended as a stark warning and deterrent to anyone with similar motivations or knowledge as she may have had. Sophie wasn’t strangled to death, true, but her head and face were bashed in to the point of unrecognisability, even to her parents when faced with the grim task of identifying her body, with an ‘unknown utensil’ and a concrete breeze-block instrumentalised at the scene in the laneway outside her holiday home. Could this, or rather how could this not belie an intense hatred, an insatiable jealousy of Sophie; intelligent, defiant, talented, attractive, observant, inquisitive, well-known — feminist? Journalist Veronica Guerin had been murdered six months prior to Sophie in Dublin by drug-gang lackies, Robert tersely reminded me, and from what I can gather she’d have likely found Guerin’s cause, and bravery in execution, inspirational, to the point of attempting to enact action of her own in a similar vein maybe, suspicions dependent, in an area well known for international trafficking routes from Europe and the Americas, resultant of Sophie’s frequent walks along the coastline, her recent or indeed future work, and the people she may have met along the way.

Because there really were several abnormalities during Sophie’s final trip to West Cork. Things were more last minute than usual; as noted by  housekeeper, Josie. She was vague, not just about her itinerary that stay but also her departure date, and for the first time she had travelled to Ireland alone. Various people she knew had been made aware Sophie was convinced the house was being utilised for one reason or another while it stood empty. But for what reason who knows? Perhaps she wanted to determine once and for all what had been going on by process of elimination, catching whoever it was red-handed or confronting those she may have readily suspected on the back foot. She may have been expecting the arrival of someone, or had simply fallen prey through her inquisitive nature to a gaggle of bullshit artists, one of whom turned ruthlessly violent for reasons we may never know but which the author of Murder at Roaringwater concludes boils down to a drunk Ian Bailey, and Sophie’s refusal to hand over a bottle of vintage French red wine, lobbed unopened into nearby shrubbery and found only several months after her murder.

We’ll only never know.

[searidings]

this is what happens when @ekingston and i get our hands on the prompt “that's my wife!” and agree that she'll draw my idea for it and i'll write hers (aka hearing kara call it out as she watches lena being wheeled down a hospital corridor)

“Excuse me, you can't go through there!”

Kara growls. The woman blocking her path is short and gently rounded, the kind lines of her face drooping in disapproval above her nurse's scrubs. “No visitor access beyond this point, dear. Immediate family only.”

“Immediate— you're joking, right?” Kara cranes her head, peering through the closing doors to catch a last glimpse of Lena's gurney as it rounds the corner at the end of the hall. “That's my wife!”

The nurse gapes at her. “Your—?”

Kara growls again, louder. It's a good thing she'd blown out her powers twenty minutes ago, or she would not be held responsible for the Kryptonian-shaped hole in NC Memorial Hospital's expensive surgery doors. “Yes, my wi—”

Her snarl is cut off by a hand clamping down firmly over her mouth from behind. Kara's first instinct is to bite it. She resists, narrowly, as the familiar scent of shea butter moisturiser registers in her adrenaline-fogged brain.

“You sure about that?” Alex squeaks around a nervous laugh, voice pitched a half-octave too high. She removes her hand from Kara's mouth, wiping her damp palm on her pants with a wrinkled nose. “Get hit on the head during that fight, did you?”

Kara whirls on her sister, eyes blazing. “Am I sure?” she parrots incredulously. Alex cowers a little beneath the force of her stare. “Unless you're trying to tell me I hallucinated my entire wedding—”

“Supergirl isn't married,” Alex stage-whispers loud enough to be heard in Florida, glancing pointedly down at Kara's ash-caked body and oh yeah, she's still wearing her supersuit.

Right, right.

The nurse – Rosemary, her badge reads – finally picks her jaw up off the floor long enough to speak. Her eyes are wide, sparkling with sudden glee. “So Lena Luthor and Su—”

Kara's hackles rise at the suggestion in her tone. “Lena Luthor and Kara Danvers are happily married,” she interrupts sternly. “You might have seen the wedding photos in last month's Vogue.”

The nurse smirks. At her elbow, Alex drops her head into her hands.

“Kara Danvers, hm? Amazing what a pair of glasses do for you, dear.” Rosemary's brow quirks with impish satisfaction and, oh. Whoops. It would appear that in her haste to quash any potential rumours of Lena's infidelity behind the back of her very recent, very publicly human wife, she'd forgotten about the other delicate matter at hand.

Alex sighs so long and so heavy Kara legitimately marvels that she doesn't pass out from the strain. “I knew keeping a spare NDA in my back pocket would pay off,” her sister groans, thrusting an official-looking, if crumpled, contract beneath the nurse's nose.

“Sorry,” Kara murmurs sheepishly as Rosemary signs away page after page of her right to ever disclose Supergirl's identity in any capacity. “I wasn't thinking, I can't— Alex, it's Lena.”  

“I know, I know,” her sister soothes, frustration dissipating as she reaches out to pull Kara into her side, ignoring the soot and grit that smear across her jacket at the contact. “She's gonna be okay.”

“But what if she's not?” Kara asks and the sobs arrive then, the last remnants of the fight or flight response that had propelled her this far dissipating beneath the weight of her terror. “She stepped right in front of that bullet, Alex! Of all the stupid, reckless—”

“If I recall, she was pushing you back after you shoved her out of the way in the first place,” Alex hums thoughtfully. Kara's tear-filled eyes snap to her face, incredulous, and her sister grimaces. “Right, right. Not the time.”

“She has to be okay,” she gasps, clutching hard at her sister's jacket as her knees threaten to give out beneath her. “She has to, I can't— I feel like I can't breathe. Like my heart's been ripped out.”

Alex clicks her tongue in sympathy, wrapping a firm arm round Kara's waist and guiding her to a nearby row of chairs. Rosemary deposits the signed NDA wordlessly on the hard plastic beside them, reaching into her scrubs to produce a pack of tissues.

Alex accepts, extracting one to dab at Kara's snotty, tear-stained face with her free hand. “Welcome to married life, kid,” she chuckles, pressing a kiss to Kara's matted hair. “It can be a real bitch.”

-

It's a long night.  

It's a long night, a night of anxious waiting and barely-restrained nausea and vending machine coffee so bad even Nia won't drink it. Her family, their family, crowd the waiting room, dozing across the rows of seats as the hours drag on and on.

Alex tries her best, at varying intervals, to force her back to the Tower for a stint under the sun lamps. Every time without fail, Kara sets her jaw, then sets her feet in the middle of the surgical wing waiting room and refuses to budge.

This leads to several arguments, and a lot of impassioned shoving.  

“What if she needs me?” Kara laments tearily, pout activated and puppy dog eyes firmly in place. Alex, mid-football tackle with her arms and right shoulder braced against Kara's torso as she attempts to use her entire bodyweight to force her sister toward the exit, only grunts with exertion. Behind them, J’onn dozes in the corner. Brainy and Kelly and Nia continue their conversation without batting an eyelid.

“No, scratch that, she does need me,” Kara corrects, unaffected by her sister's NFL-worthy body slam. “She's been shot. I'm not going anywhere.”

Alex, perhaps finally sensing defeat after her fourth unsuccessful attempt, gives one final shove with all her strength. Kara doesn't so much as wobble, and her sister releases her with a huff. “Fine. But for the love of God, change your clothes before you start shouting about your wife again,” she pants, red-faced and sweating as she collapses into a nearby chair. “That was my last NDA.”

That's a compromise she can make. Kara accepts the bundle of clothes Nia presents her with, stripping out of her dirt-caked suit and re-donning her glasses. Thankfully, the only person around to witness Kara entering the bathroom as a superhero and re-emerging as a Catco reporter is Rosemary.  

The updates on Lena's condition are sporadic at best. By the time the first surgeon emerges to say the bullet has been removed from Lena's chest cavity Kara's accidentally cracked three plastic chairs, advanced all the way to Lollipop Land on Alex's Candy Crush, and worn a groove into the waiting room linoleum with her nervous pacing.

When another doctor emerges three hours later to tell them Lena had developed a tension pneumothorax and needs additional treatment, Kara's made it to Rainbow Reef and chewed her bottom lip bloody.

When, at five in the morning, yet another doctor appears to inform them that Lena is being placed on anti-radiation medication to counter the Kryptonite that had coated the bullet, Kara's finished all nine thousand nine hundred and thirty-five levels of the damn game. The doctor leaves, promising to be back with more news soon, and Kara squeezes her sister's hand so hard poor Nurse Rosemary has to be called to administer an ice pack for the bruising, solar flare be damned.

Dawn breaks to find Kara scratchy-eyed and grumpy, worn ragged with worry. The waiting room begins to fill up around them, new patients and their relatives coming and going, and still there's nothing new on Lena. Every time another scrub-clad surgeon pushes through the doors Kara's heart skips a beat, all of them sitting up straighter in their seats, but every time the doctor passes them by.

Kara's just wolfed down six cold breakfast sandwiches procured by Brainy on his sojourn to the hospital cafeteria and is debating the relative merits of starting Candy Crush over from scratch when another young doctor appears. Her scrub cap has avocados on it. Kara likes her already.

“Family of Ms Luthor?” she calls, looking around, and Kara pushes up hard from her chair to the resounding snap of cracking plastic. Whoops.

“It's Luthor-Danvers,” she gabbles as she bounds over to the surgeon, palms sweating. No matter how many times she hears it, it never loses its thrill. “I'm, I'm her wife.”

The young doctor's features soften. “Of course. I've come to let you know that it looks like Ms Luthor-Danvers is out of the woods. She's sedated and still on an anti-radiation drip, but she's through the worst of it.” She appraises Kara, gaze lingering on her chewed-raw lips and clenching fingers, then leans closer conspiratorially. “It's not general visiting hours yet, but you can see her, if you'd like.”

“Yes!” Kara's shouting almost before the surgeon has finished speaking. “Yes, please, yes.”

She hugs them all, Alex and Brainy and Nia and Kelly and J’onn, and leaves them in the waiting room as she follows the doctor's sunshine-yellow crocs down the hall.

They round corner after corner, an interminable maze. Powerless as she is, she can't hear Lena’s heartbeat, and the absence of the steady beat that has become the soundtrack to her existence sets her even more on edge.  

But at last they turn a corner, and there she is. She's pale and bandaged and her eyes are closed, creamy skin streaked with dirt and bruises, but she's there, she's alive, she's Lena.  

The surgeon holds the door open for her with a smile and Kara's across the room in a heartbeat, smoothing a hand over Lena's warm cheek and pressing kiss after kiss to her forehead and hair.  

“I love you, I love you,” she whisper-cries against Lena's temple, tucking her matted curls behind her ears. The smell of blood and dirt and antiseptic is almost overwhelming, but beneath the dust and debris caught up in her hair Lena's scalp smells the same as always. Kara presses her face to the crown of her head and inhales deeply, soaking it in.  

“Why'd you have to be so damn brave?” she whispers, nuzzling her cheek against silky softness. “I love you so much. Please don't step in front of any more bullets. Please learn to be a coward, occasionally.”

The singular relief of having Lena living and breathing and in her arms again is so complete, so compounded by the fear and the adrenaline and the sleepless night and the solar flare, that she feels suddenly that she may crumple to the ground from the force of it all.

Unwilling to relinquish her hold for even a second she appraises the bandages covering Lena's right side, then crawls onto the hospital bed on her left, careful to avoid her many wires and monitors. She tucks herself in beside her on the wide mattress, chin hooked over Lena's shoulder and face pressed to the side of her neck, and lets the tears that haven't really stopped falling since that bullet had left its chamber fall for just a little longer.

Nothing matters outside of the two of them, outside of the warmth of Lena's body and the softness of her skin beneath Kara's lips and the steady thud of her heart beneath Kara's palm. Nothing else in the world exists, so when an unfamiliar male voice sounds from the doorway it takes her a moment to register the intrusion.

“Excuse me, ma’am, you really can't be on the bed with her,” the strange, disembodied voice calls from behind her and Kara frowns tiredly, unable and unwilling to acknowledge anything outside of the woman in her arms.

But before she's even managed to raise her head another voice sounds, the soft tones of a young surgeon in an avocado scrub cap.  

“Oh, honestly, Peter,” the kindly doctor says with gentle reproach, a quiet calm washing over the room as the door is pulled closed and she and Lena are left alone. “Leave them be. That's her wife.”

[fett-djarin]

Stress Relief

Here it is! This is entirely self indulgent and filthy! Im a wh*re for the croissant guards

Also I headcanon Fox looking like how amikoroyoaiart draws him. her art is so good!

Commander Fox x f!reader

Crossposted on ao3

Rating: 18+

Length: 3.9k

Warnings/Tags: Oral (m receiving), that good sloppy toppy, office sex, cursing, light grinding, making out

NSFW BELOW THE CUT

Bringing the Guard their morning caf had become a tradition, of sorts. You knew the caf in the mess wasn’t good--in fact, it was barely even palatable. When you first started as a new secretary, it had been your timid way of offering friendship to the imposing troopers who worked so hard to keep the planet safe. They warmed to you quickly. Thire was the first to remove his helmet in front of you, plonking it down on your desk and taking a long pull of caf barely a second after you handed it to him. At your stunned look, he had just raised a brow and said, “Long patrol last night,” with a shrug.

As the others had become more comfortable with you, you had seen most of them without their buckets at some point--except for Fox. He always took his caf with a polite “Thank you, ma’am,” and retreated to his office. You knew it was against regulation for them to remove their helmets while they were on duty. But even when you dropped off the caf in his office, he was at his desk with his helmet on.

“He keeps it on so you can’t tell if he’s actually asleep,” Thorn told you one day. “I suspect he even does it while we’re standing guard sometimes.” You laughed aloud at that. The serious Commander Fox, asleep standing up. He was right though, you never would be able to tell.

The first time Fox removed his helmet in front of you, you hadn’t expected the gray dusting his temples, but honestly you weren’t surprised. The poor man was stressed beyond belief and worked half to death. You were more surprised that he finally did it in the first place. Fox sighed, running a hand through his unruly curls, before taking the caf and giving you a tired smile. He thanked you by name that time. You tried to ignore the butterflies in your stomach.

From then on, he had been without it more when you went into his office. You even caught him sleeping once--head resting on his folded arms, bucket set next to him--and had done your best to deliver the caf without waking him. Maker knew he needed the sleep more than he needed hot caf--if Thorn hadn’t told you he snuck naps with the helmet on, you would think he ran off caf and stubborn will alone.

One morning, after you had passed out caf to the others--and a little cup of whipped cream for Grizzer--Fox hadn’t made an appearance, so you made your way to his office to drop it off. You knocked lightly on the door. “Come in,” his gruff voice called, and the door slid aside. You smiled at him, noting the way his shoulders visibly relaxed at seeing it was just you. You set the cup down on his desk. You had just turned when a touch on your wrist stopped you.

Fox was looking up at you, helmet cocked to the side. “You know you don’t have to bring us caf every time you work, right? The boys better not be nagging you for it.”

“I know,” you said. “I enjoy doing it. And it’s the least I could do.”

“The least you could do?”

“You all work so hard. You deserve more, even if it’s just better caf.”

He squeezed your wrist gently. “You don’t owe us anything. It is our duty to the Republic--”

“I know, Fox,” you tried to hide your grin, and failed. “But you’re also my friends.”

That seemed to surprise him, hand falling from your wrist as he sat back in his chair and regarded you curiously. You made your way back to the door, pausing in the entryway and looking back over your shoulder.

“Have a good morning, Commander.”

“...You as well, ma’am.”

The door slid shut behind you. Fox slipped his helmet off, setting it on his desk and staring hard at the door you had disappeared through. His eyes flicked to the paper cup of steaming caf, brows furrowed.

It was the first time you had called him by his name.

Friends?

----

After that day, Fox seemed to be trying to talk to you more. Instead of taking his caf and running off, he would stay, either to chat or just hang around for a minute with you and the other Guards. Stone nudged Thire, who nudged Thorn, and they all looked over to where Fox leaned his hip casually against your desk and you were laughing at something he said.

“Did someone replace Fox while we weren’t looking?” Thire questioned under his breath.

“I’ve never seen him so...cheery,” Stone said.

You smiled up at Fox, worrying your bottom lip with your teeth. They watched as your fingers grazed the back of his hand where it rested on your desk. “Think something’s goin’ on between those two?” Thorn asked, gesturing vaguely over towards you and Fox with his cup.

“Absolutely.” Thire didn’t hesitate to answer.

The three quickly snapped to attention as Fox excused himself, heading their direction. You gave them a small wave. Thorn was about to wave back before Thire thumped him in the arm.

“Don’t you have duties to attend to?” Fox grumbled as he passed them, heading to his office. “Get to it.” You hid your laugh behind your hand seeing the three Commanders scramble to disperse.

Evening rolled around, and you cocked your head side to side, stretching your neck and shoulders. You had been going over forms all day, datapad after datapad, organizing reports and requests for the Chancellor and the Senate. Your shift was almost over, and you were getting ready to go home for the night.

Various members of the Guard had come and gone, leaving and returning from patrols. Senators and representatives had filtered through; less and less as the evening progressed. You were just getting ready to leave when Fox stalked through, back from his rounds, tense and practically vibrating with irritation. He didn't even spare you a glance as he disappeared into his office. If the doors weren't automatic, he likely would have slammed it shut.

You knew he had a thankless job--a job he had no say in having, either. Usually it was something to do with the Chancellor that got him so worked up. Half the time you thought Fox would strangle the man himself if he could. Maybe you should take Fox out to one of the cafes nearby, just for a second to breathe and not carry the weight of the Guard on his shoulders. Was that against regulation? It might be better to invite him back to your apartment. Or did that imply too much?

You pushed yourself up from your chair, mind made up. He could always say no. You wouldn’t be offended.

You paused outside the door to his office, listening carefully. You couldn’t hear anything from the other side. So, you knocked.

“What.” Fox’s biting tone surprised you, but you didn’t take it personally.

“Commander? I...It’s me,” you said hesitantly, and then wanted to smack yourself. Confidence. “Is everything alright?”

No response. You took the silence as a sign that he wasn’t interested in talking. That was fine. You didn’t want to impose if he needed time to himself. The door slid open just as you had stepped back, intending to leave. Fox sighed, jerking his head to direct you inside.

The door shut behind you, and Fox sat heavily in his chair at the desk. Another deep sigh, and his shoulders slumped. He pulled his helmet off, setting it aside, and you caught a glimpse of the dark circles under his eyes before he put his head in his hands.

“Commander Fox?” You took a tentative step forward, so you were close enough to reach out and touch his shoulder.

He looked up at you. There was still tension lining his shoulders, hands flexing into fists and then relaxing. Stress. He opened his mouth to say something, frowned, and then closed it again. He cleared his throat. “Did you need something?” You could tell he was making an effort to soften his voice, likely as to not snap at you again.

“I just wanted to check in, sir,” you said, coming around the desk to stand next to him, leaning your weight against it. “It looked like something was bothering you.”

He waved his hand in the air vaguely, brows pinched. “You don’t have to call me ‘sir,’ you’re not one of my men.” He looked like he was debating saying more, so you waited patiently, quietly, hoping he recognized that you were here to listen if he so needed.

“As you likely know, there’s a gala coming up. Senators, politicians, ambassadors, Jedi….” Fox huffed, pinching the bridge of his nose. “It’s going to be a security nightmare. And the Chancellor,” he spat, venom in his voice, “has been on my case about patrols and the Guard. Always demanding more. We’re spread too thin, and not getting the support we need--” he cut himself off. He was getting himself worked up again.

You placed your hand over his where it was clenched into a fist on the desk. It relaxed under your touch. Fox heaved another sigh mixed with a groan. “I’m behind on paperwork too,” he glared at the stack of datapads sitting to the side. “I don’t know where I’m supposed to find the time to do everything.”

“Hmm,” you reached over and picked up one of the datapads, skimming through it, hopping up so you were now sitting on the desk. It was just a patrol report that needed Fox’s signature before being filed. “What’s your CC number?”

“CC-1010,” he answered instantly, then regarded you with suspicion. “Why?”

You signed the bottom of the form: CC-1010, “Fox,” and submitted it.

“What are you doing?” his voice seemed to have kicked up an octave.

“Helping you with your work. I deal with paperwork and holoforms all the time,” you said, picking up another datapad and scanning through the information. “Most of the time it’s to make sure there’s a document trail. Most of these probably don’t need an in-depth review, they’re not important. They just go in the archives and are never looked at again.”

“I--you--that’s illegal,” he sputtered. But he seemed more surprised than serious.

You raised a brow at him, signing his designation and name once again before submitting the next form. “Are you going to arrest me?”

“No,” he didn’t hesitate. Interesting. Then he had a thought. “Your handwriting doesn’t even look like mine.”

“Doesn’t it?” you showed him where you had signed. It was almost identical to his scrawling script. His eyes flicked between the form and your face, incredulity on his features.

“How…?”

You shrugged. “It’s something I’ve always been good at. Saved me a lot of trouble as a kid when I needed my parents to sign for something at school. Especially when it was a disciplinary note.” Fox barked a disbelieving laugh at that and you couldn’t help your sly smile. “Even if I didn’t mimic your signature, no one would notice. Or care. You could mark the lines with an X and it would go through; it’s only the acknowledgement they care about. You can even draw a loth-cat face and have that be in the archive forever as a signature.”

“Don’t you dare,” he threatened with a chuckle. “Some of these aren’t just patrol reports though. I actually have to read through the more important ones.”

You handed him a holopad as you picked up your third. “How’s this: we work on these together; if I find one that has important information or requires more than a signature, I’ll give it to you.”

He regarded you for a long moment, debating your offer. Some of the weight had lifted from his shoulders; he looked less tense, less overwhelmed, even less exhausted. Then he slowly nodded. “All right,” he said. “But you have to let me buy you coffee for once.”

“You don’t have to do that--”

“We’re friends. Right?”

That stopped you short. You did consider him and the other guards friends, but to hear him say that he also considered you one...it was nice. It made a pleasant warmth flutter in your stomach, and you couldn’t help your shy smile at his words. “Right,” you agreed. The soft upturn of his lips made your breath hitch. He looked so young when he smiled.

The two of you worked in companionable silence, steadily making your way through the stack of datapads. You had been correct--most of them were unimportant; standard reports and forms that required a signature purely for protocol. Every once in a while you handed one over to Fox for him to read through. Slowly, your free hands had crept together, and Fox hoped to the Maker that you didn’t notice how warm his cheeks had gotten. 

Your thumb rubbed soothing circles over the back of his hand, and he didn’t notice he was staring at the way your fingers moved rather than reading through the form you handed him until you cleared your throat. “Fox?” you asked quietly. His gaze landed on your lips. He wanted you to keep saying his name, he wanted to hear it again and again--

You brushed a stray curl back from his forehead. A tug on your arm had you stumbling forward off-balance, and you would have fallen if strong arms had not wrapped around you and pulled you into an armored chest. Heat rushed to your face at the new position you found yourself in: sat in Fox’s lap, his hand still entwined with yours.

Then he kissed you.

It was gentle, soft. His lips pressed to yours chastely, far more gently than you expected him to be, and you felt the datapad fall from your hand. The sharp clatter of it hitting the ground made Fox pull back, but then you grasped the back of his neck, twining your fingers in his curls, and pulled him back to your mouth. He tossed his own back on the desk with a groan as your lips met again.

You licked the seam of his lips, and he opened for you. Fox was content to let you lead. His hand gripped your hip, and he sighed into your kisses, melting from your affection. You don’t know how long the two of you stayed like that--tasting, breathing each other in, sharing languid kisses full of pent-up desire.

His wild curls were soft in your fingers, and he all but purred when you lightly scratched your nails along his scalp. The hard plastoid of his thigh plates was uncomfortable underneath you, and you shifted your hips slightly in an effort to find a more comfortable spot. The breath hissed out through Fox's teeth, and your face flushed with warmth realizing you had brushed against his codpiece. His fingers tightened on your hip and thigh, pulling you towards him, encouraging your hips to roll against him again.

It was an awkward angle, with you sitting with your legs thrown over his lap, but from the hitch in Fox’s breathing it was doing something for him. You hummed into his mouth before pushing yourself up, holding onto his broad shoulders for support as you swung one leg over so you were now straddling him, chest to chest.

“Better?” he rumbled, nipping your bottom lip before soothing the sting with his tongue. You squeaked as his palms cupped and squeezed your ass, tugging you closer. Both of you basked in each other's eager little breaths and soft noises, hungry and wanting for more.

"Mhmm." The new position allowed you to feel the firmness of Fox's codpiece against your center when you pressed your hips into his. Fox really appreciated the new position, with your tits against his chest and free access to grope your ass. He almost whined into your mouth at the steady slow grind you started against him.

You wanted to hear that noise again. An idea struck you. You wanted to taste him. One more deep kiss, then you shimmied back off his lap. Fox made a noise of protest and tried to pull you back to him, but you just grinned and shooed his hands away. The floor was cold on your knees as you settled between his spread legs.

“What are you--oh,” he cut off with a harsh breath as your deft fingers unclasped his codpiece and tossed it away. Immediately, your palm cupped the warm bulge at the front of his blacks. He shifted in his seat, and you noticed his cheeks and ears had flushed a shade darker. How cute.

“Commander,” you purred, slowly stroking him through the fabric.

“Y-yes, cyare?” His hands flexed at the arms of his chair. He was struggling to not reach out and pull you back on his lap. Normally so composed, Fox now looked wrecked with his lips slightly parted, kiss-swollen, and hair mussed.

“Will you let me suck your cock?”

Fox spluttered and fumbled at your bluntness. You bit your bottom lip, looking up at him from beneath your lashes, still slowly stroking him over his blacks. You could see him fighting with himself. Maker, he wanted it. He wanted to see your pretty lips wrapped around his length. But he also didn’t want you to feel like you had to--he also desperately wanted to pleasure you.

“Please?” you leaned forward and mouthed at his clothed erection, letting your spit soak the fabric. Your eyes locked with his, looking up at him with your best faux-innocent look, like you had no idea what you were doing to him. But Maker, you were hungry. You wanted him.

“Fuck,” the word sounded as if it had been punched out of him. His pupils were blown wide, black swallowing the rich brown of his irises. “Fuck, yes--”

You wasted no time in tugging the band of his blacks down. A shiver worked its way through him; seeing you on your knees in front of him was a dream--a dirty little fantasy he would never admit to. Many nights alone in his quarters or in the showers he had roughly fisted his cock to the thought of you in situations that were most definitely unprofessional, biting the back of his hand to keep his noises at bay. And now here you were, the sweet secretary, making his dreams become reality.

The sliver of warm skin revealed to you made you instantly want more, and you couldn’t stop from pressing a light kiss to his hip. Then you eased his leaking cock from his blacks. Fox hissed in a breath through his teeth as your hand loosely wrapped around him, pumping his length slowly. The precum that dribbled from the tip slicked your grip. He was thick and firm in your hand, like velvet-wrapped durasteel.

The first stroke of your tongue against his cock made him curse. You licked slowly, working your way from tip to base and back, tracing the pulsing vein that ran along the underside. Taking the head of his cock in your mouth, you tasted the salty tang of the precum that leaked from him. When you hummed around him, his hand shot to your hair, fingers winding through the strands. He didn’t push you down or pull you away; instead, he merely just...held on.

Fox’s breathing kicked up watching you worship his cock with your tongue and hands. You enjoyed watching him try to hold himself together, slowly making him fall apart piece by piece. Your head bobbed up and down his length, each time taking more of him. Your hand continued to pump and work the rest you hadn’t fit in your mouth. He breathed out a string of words in a language you didn’t understand, but from the tone it sounded like he was praising you.

All his little noises were making the heat coil in your core. Wetness pooled between your legs, and you clenched your thighs together for the slightest bit of relief. You closed your eyes to concentrate, focusing on the weight of his cock on your tongue, the heat of his body. You slowly took more of him in your mouth until you felt his tip bump the back of your throat. Breathe through your nose. Fighting off your gag reflex, you swallowed around him.

“Shit! Shit, mesh’la--” Fox cried out above you, feeling your throat constrict around his length. He tugged gently on your hair, and you pulled off him with a gasp. “Fuck, if you keep doing that I’m gonna cum in your mouth.” It was meant to be a warning, but he sounded too breathless for it to carry any weight.

“But Commander,” you looked up at him, enveloping the tip of his cock in the heat of your mouth and gently sucking. His thighs twitched under your hands, cock throbbing, and you pulled off with an obscene pop. “That’s the best part.”

You were messy, letting saliva drip from your mouth and down his cock. You sucked, licked, and kissed every inch of his length until it was sopping. When you ducked down to take his balls in your mouth, his breath hitched, hand tightening in your hair, and a low moan came from him.

“Gedet’ye, mesh’la, gedet’ye--” Fox choked out.

“Hm?” You pulled back, hand wrapped around his cock and continued to pump him tightly. You twisted your wrist when your hand brushed over his head. He was panting lightly, and looked deliciously wrecked.

“Gedet’ye,” he said again, “please.”

You smiled at him, and he felt his heart jump. You looked filthy, lipstick--Coruscant guard red?--smeared, lips and chin wet with spit. “I want you to cum in my mouth, Fox.” Then you brought your mouth back to his cock and sucked, laving your tongue over the sensitive head as one hand stroked the base. The other came up to cradle his balls, and he was done for.

Fox cursed up a storm in both Basic and Mando’a, nearly doubling over as his orgasm was wrenched out of him by your clever mouth. You kept your gaze connected with his, eyes hazy and half-lidded. Warm spurts of his release filled your mouth and you eagerly swallowed it down, milking his cock until he had nothing left. Subtly, you rubbed your thighs together, so turned on it nearly hurt. Seeing Fox fall apart for you stoked the fire of arousal in your core.

He had an arm thrown over his eyes as he slumped in his chair, chest heaving for breath. “Stars above, you’re going to kill me,” he said. You giggled, hands running soothing motions over his thigh plates, even though he couldn’t feel it through the plastoid. He looked boneless and sated, which was exactly your intention--well, part of your intention.

Then he was guiding you back up, cupping your cheek and kissing you hard. It was desperate, deep, filled with so much emotion that you couldn’t decipher it, you only knew that you felt the same. You moaned into his mouth. He broke the kiss, and you noticed the glint in his eye and his sly grin before he kissed you again, standing and guiding you back to sit on his desk.

“Now it’s my turn.”

[spilledkauffie]

Meet Cute

Pairing: Bucky Barnes x DogMom!Reader Word Count: 1.8k T/W: fluffyyyy A/N: I know it’s a trope, but I love it!

Can you imagine Bucky with a puppy?!?!

Managing six dogs at once wasn’t exactly easy, but you did it rather gracefully, at least most of the time. Today however, you fumbled with your keys at your apartment door when two dogs suddenly, and swiftly wrapped around you, pulling opposite directions. With a small shocked squeak at being squeezed, you accidentally dropped both your keys and a leash, one out of six wasn’t bad, but it was still a loose puppy, trotting around the apartment hall like he owned the place. 

“Peanut!” You yelled out of sheer concern as the baby dachshund gallivanted towards the stairs, as if it were his prison break at last, “Peanut, sweetie, come here!” You called again, eyebrows furrowing during your attempt to untwist the other leashed from around you, as he got closer and closer to that first step which was far too steep for him to comfortably and safely make wihtout tumbling down the rest. 

You watched in sheer panic as his short stout front legs took the leap of faith with ears flying freely in the air like he was Dumbo. You anticipated the little yelp that would absolutely break your heart— Thankfully there was a soft landing platform neither of you had prepared for. Underneath Peanut appeared two hands covered in black gloves. The small dog fit perfectly in the hands as he wagged his tail, beyond proud of the heart attack he nearly gave you. Sighing, you leaned into the door of your apartment for support. 

“Whoa there,” the saviour said, bringing the pup up with him as he stood, having had to dip to catch the pup on the stairs, after glancing at the shining silver bone shaped name tag he met the dog’s eye line, “Peanut, was it?”

As the stranger made his way up the last few steps, you couldn’t take your eyes off him. While you didn’t know him personally, you had seen him around the apartment complex before. Heart still pounding, you shook your head at the pup who was plenty happy in the hands of his rescuer. 

“Peanut Butter Brittle Biscuit,” you full named the dog, causing him to tuck his tail, still wagging it though. Setting your hand, which was still being tugged on by the other five other dogs, on your hip, “you know better than to just run into strangers, it's rude.”

“Well, Peanut,” he looked to the pup in all seriousness, “I’m Bucky. There, we aren’t strangers anymore,” he affirmed, shaking the dogs tiny little paw gently, “and so we’re not strangers,” he looked to you, “I’m Bucky, and you are?” You smiled at his flirty tone, “unless you’d like to go by 4C? Keep it professional?”

“Four- C?” You gave a puzzled look.

Bucky pointed above and behind your head, with the hand he was not literally cradling Peanut with. Quickly glancing you realized it was your apartment number. Now feeling a flush of embarrassment, you took a moment to face him again, squeezing your eyes closed. 

“Oh yeah,” you nervously laughed, before giving him your name as well, you liked the way he repeated it to himself, “and you’re 2E, right?”

“Do we know each other?” he asked, tilting his head with a smirk.

“Oh no, I just, sometimes I see Yori go down there, and- I’m not stalking you, I promise,” you frantically explained, waving your hand, wrapped in dog leashes. 

“No,” Bucky smiled, letting you know that was not what he was thinking, “I think I’d hear you if you were though,” he looked down and around at the literal pack of dogs sitting and standing around you. The pack ranged from a German Shepherd to a Golden Retriever to a Dachshund to a Pomeranian to a Corgi to, lastly, a dopey Great Dane.

“Most definitely,” you laughed, trying to calm your nerves, “we’re not the most graceful bunch, you had a display of that just a moment ago, which thank you so, so much.” You placed your hand over your chest, as an expression of relief. 

“No problem,” he said with a sincere nod and smile, petting back the dog’s ears, “looks like Peanut here is a real daredevil.”

“You have no idea,” you glanced at the puppy, “he’s a troublemaker and thinks he’s invincible.”

With that Peanut interjected giving the most babyish attempt at a deep roo, sassily from where Bucky held him still.

“Talker too, huh?” Bucky gave a shocked glance at the Dachshund who was still resting comfortably with his chest being cradled by Bucky's hand.

“Yeah, well we’re 40 minutes late to D I N N E R,” you spelled out the last word in a whisper, “Fridays are always long days,” you gestured around you to the bigger dogs with toys covered in drool, they just stared up at you, sighing you collected yourself, “they’re park days.” 

“Ohh, I see,” Bucky nodded, “I'd hate to keep you any longer then.” 

With a soft ‘okay’ and a smile, you held your hands out to take Peanut back. There was a brief moment in the exchange where your hands touched his and he gave a ‘sorry’ knowing it was probably cold against your skin. As Peanut hovered with both your hands on his chubby little sides. Your Dane tugged one way again, while the Retriever was determined to go the other, pulling you and Bucky closer together. Practically chest to chest, save Peanut being the barrier between the two of you.

“Oh my gosh,” you whispered, looking down immediately, even though there was hardly room between you two to do so, literally feeling the heat rise to your cheeks, you closed your eyes, “this is not happening.”

“I’ve been in worse situations,” Bucky remarked cooly, keeping his gaze focused on you, finding it surprisingly cute at how flustered you were around him. It’d been a long time since he had felt someone had real genuine human emotions regarding him. 

Neither of you took your hands away from the other’s. Standing there you bit in your lip, calming your rising pulse as you were now close enough to smell his cologne. 

“I’m-” you started, finally looking up, “so sorry.” 

“It’s really okay,” Bucky chuckled, not wanting you to feel as worried as you were, but you just knit your brows together and gave another apologetic look, “honestly, I could- I could do this all day.” There was a pause, then you smiled, ducking your head to hide your face against Peanut who was really becoming a star matchmaker, “I think Peanut and I are going to be very good friends by the end of this.”

Lifting your head with a nod, you sighed, stroking the pup’s ear, for a moment before you guided the other dogs around to give you some more space. Bucky respectfully took a step back, somehow still holding Peanut after all that. You opened your apartment door and the dogs rushed in, you let each leash fall off your hand as they entered. You said their name with each one to keep track of them.

“And lastly,” you exhaled, reaching your arms out again for the troublemaker of whom Bucky surrendered, though he was getting fairly fond of him, “well, at least let me invite you in? Have a drink on me? Something?”

“That’d be great,” Bucky said, gesturing for you to lead the way. 

Once you were both in and Bucky shut the door behind him, you let Peanut loose and immediately he ran to his dinner bowl, waiting in anticipation. Offering Bucky to sit at the bar, you set two cold bottles on top of the counter, but before you joined him you got out six dog bowls, making him smile.

“How long have you had them?” Bucky asked, opening his bottle relaxedly with his hand.

“They vary, some for years, but the most recent,” you nodded to Peanut, “only a few months.”

“So uh, why so many?” Bucky inquired. 

You squeezed your shoulders up, looking around at all of them, “they needed a home,” you said, soft smile, “each of them came from a broken place, of hurt and pain. That’s all they knew before I took them in, and,” you shook your head smiling wider, looking over to Bucky, “if I could be a part of their healing, I knew I had to be. I can’t think of leaving something to suffer if there’s something that can be done to help.”

“That’s-” Bucky looked to the floor as you rounded the counter, to sit next to him on another bar stool, having just set all the bowls down, “that’s a really great mindset.” 

“What about you?” you took a sip, “any pets?”

He swallowed shaking his head, “no, I have a weird work schedule,” he squinted at his own reasoning, hoping it didn’t sound too dumb.

“Oh gotcha,” you nodded, before gesturing with the top of the bottle, “well Rodgers seems to like you.”

Your gesture drew Bucky to look down, sure enough set atop his thigh was your German Shepherd's head, looking up with big eyes and slowly wagging his tail. Bucky pet the dog’s ear, “Rodgers?”

“Yeah, you know after Captain America? He’s ex-military himself so I thought it was fitting,” you bent down to pet the dog yourself.

There was a quietness, Bucky looked away from the dogs and you for a moment. Biting the inside of his lip he felt something he hadn’t in a long time, though he tried to repress it. A part of him felt it was a sign, another part of him told himself to ignore it. Takin another swig, he made his choice

“Hey, if you ever. . . need help with them, I’m,” he hesitated, “I’m usually free Fridays, or- park days.”

“I’d love that,” you smiled leaning back up, “how bout I get your number so we can plan a da-,” you quickly changed your sentence, “a park day.”

While you got up to grab your phone, he flipped open his, seeing the very few contacts and the messages from only one person. Wincing he was a little nervous, this meant opening up. You returned, asking for his number, to which he willingly gave you. Finishing the drinks he said he really should head home, you completely understood, already surprised that he stuck around that long after the incident earlier. 

With casual goodbyes, you shut your door and he headed back downstairs. Taking his gloves off, he suddenly felt his phone vibrate. Sitting on his couch he took it out of his pocket. Seeing your name pop up with a “hi 4C here, texting you like I said I would” and a smiley face with a dog emoji made him smile to himself. 

He opened it-- it was time to start answering messages, it was time he found his healing.

[mikkomacko]

So not sure if you’re going to understand this but here’s my idea: the team not knowing that the reader is dating both Bucky and Steve (Stucky) and they confront her and say some awful things like she’s using them, a cheating wh*re etc. and she just starts crying and runs and locks herself in their room (or whatever you’d like). Then Stucky comes back or out from somewhere looking for her and then they ask the team and the team tells them that she was “cheating” on both of them with each other and then they’re like no we’re all dating each other and the team feels all bad and you can end it how you want lol. You don’t have to do this and sorry if it’s bad.

A/n: Sorry it took so long! Hope it's ok! <3

~

Two Avengers dating would cause enough gossip in itself, but three Avengers? Two of which have been best friends since the 40s? She can't imagine what kind of reaction that would get out of Sam or Nat who have always teased Steve and Bucky about being really good friends.

So when y/n, Bucky, and Steve made their relationship official, they kept it as low-key as possible. Anything beyond cuddling was reserved for the privacy of their rooms, flirting had to be subtle, and all dates were far from the Avengers compound.

They just had to pray they could follow the rules and keep their hands to themselves when others were around.

~

Drumming her fingers on the folder, y/n heads up HR to submit her latest mission report. It was simple surveillance mission, nothing exciting to report on but she'd been gone for over a week and wanted to get the report in asap so it could be done with. Dropping it off on the incoming desk, she promptly turns on her heel to head to lunch but is stopped just outside of the doorway by a hand on her bicep. She's tugged into the hidden corner before she can even react, two strong arms caging her against the cool wall.

Bucky, dressed for a training session, stands before her, blue eyes sparkling and lips smiling. Immediately, her guard falls, lips widening into a smile that reflects the same love shining through Bucky's.

"Careful Barnes," she teases, "next time I won't be so kind about ya pawing at me."

He clicks his tongue. "Wouldn't be pawing if you'd come to see me as soon as you got back."

"Paperwork waits for no one. Not even Cap and Sarge."

He sighs playfully. "Damn doll, that hurts. Think ya should kiss it better."

So she does. Cupping his jaw between two soft palms, y/n seals their mouths together in a tender kiss, completely blind to Bruce and Tony who have just caught sight of them from down the hall.

~

Bucky heads down to the gym and y/n heads to room to clean up before lunch, ignoring his pleas for her to join him. She's technically on recovery from her last mission and she's definitely going to milk that for a day off. She's approaching her door when one just down the hall opens, a familiar blond head of hair coming into view.

She pauses, leaning her shoulder against the doorway and smiles at him. "Hey Cap, fancy seeing you here."

He lifts his head, soft blue eyes meeting hers and he smiles that cute little smirk only Steve Rogers could smile. "Hey, heard you got back early this morning."

"Yeah, way early." She laughs, tilting her chin up as he moves closer.

"How'd it go?"

He stops in front of her, crossing his arms over his chest and tilting his head. It's his typical go-ahead-I'm-listening stance but by the way he's eyeing her mouth she knows he doesn't actually want to hear it right now. Steve always tries to hide the fact that he's just as clingy as Bucky.

"Is that really what you're going to ask me, Rogers? After being gone for so long you want my mission run down right now?"

He chuckles, dipping his head and lightly shaking it. "No not really."

"So what's your real question?"

Bashful, he meets her eyes again. "Can I have a hello?"

Y/n laughs, butterflies fluttering in her chest as she rises on her tiptoes to kiss him. He gently grips her waist, pulling her just the slightest bit closer and humming in content. She throws her arms around his neck, fingertips shifting into the hair at the base of his neck, once again too caught up in her boyfriend to notice Nat and Sam have just spotted them from the end of the corridor.

~

"You'll never believe what we just saw!" Sam shouts, hightailing it into the kitchen with Natasha hot on his heels. Bruce and Tony both startle in their seats at the table, water sloshing over the edge of Bruce's mug.

"Nuh-uh, we're first." Tony says, shaking his head.

"No we are." Sam insists, Tony opening his mouth to continue the argument but Natasha cuts him off.

"Rogers and y/n are together."

And that makes Tony and Bruce pause. Sam whoops proudly, smirking at the two as they share looks of confusion.

"Steve and y/n?" Bruce confirms, eyebrows pinching together when Nat nods firmly.

Tony sighs. "Well that puts us in a bit of pickle because we saw Barnes with his tongue down her throat."

Sam's jaw drops. "What? When?"

"Earlier today!" Bruce exclaims, motioning towards the HR department. "She was dropping off paperwork and he just grabbed her and kissed her."

"Well we just watched Steve pin her against a door and kiss her not even ten minutes ago." Nat exclaims, anger building up in her veins. "Which means we've got a problem."

Sam turns to her, just as angry. "Damn right we do!"

~

Bottom lip between her teeth, y/n attempts to hide the giddy smile that's been plastered on her face since her reunion with her boys. It's a weak attempt because she's practically as bright as a ray of sunshine but she doesn't really care. She's happy. She's so incredibly happy and she wants it to last forever.

Unfortunately for her, the feeling is cut short far too soon because as soon as she enters the kitchen, 4 pairs of eyes are glaring at her.

"Hey everyone," she says tentatively, slowing to a stop. "what's going on?"

Sam scoffs, crossing his arms over his chest. "Why don't you tell us what's going on?" He says coldly, "You know besides you macking on our friends."

Macking on his friends? Oh god, Steve and Bucky! They found out about their relationship...

Her jaw drops, cut-off guard. "Wait! I can explain-"

"Cheaters don't get an explanation." Nat cuts off, eyes mean and piercing. Y/n heart sinks into her stomach. Cheating? She'd never cheat in her life, especially not on Bucky and Steve.

"Cheating? I'm not-"

Tony rises from his seat. "Save it y/n. We know you're cheating on Bucky and Steve with each other. How could you do that? They're like brothers and your just using them-"

"No I'm not!" She insists, panicking under the hateful gazes. "You guys don't understand. Just let me-"

"No!" Sam cuts off. "Bucky and Steve have both gone through so much. Do you realize how difficult it must have been for them to open up to you? And you thew it all away. You hurt them. You're a bitch y/n, full honestly."

Tears sting her eyes. Sam's never said anything like that to her let alone anyone they know. He's always been so kind and welcoming so to hear such hurtful words from him has her stunned. She can't even think of anything to say to defend herself.

"Y-you really think that lowly of me?" She sniffles, "That I would do something like that?"

"We saw it, y/n." Banner responds, nose scrunched in disgust. "Now get outta here before we throw you out."

Insulted and insecure, she shakes her head. "I can't believe you all." Then she turns on her heel, running to the safety of her room.

~

Bucky's spotting Steve on the bench press when the foursome of Avengers walk in, somber looks on their faces.

"Steve," Bucky says, gaining his attention. Immediately the super soldier is setting down his weights, sitting up to look at their friends.

"What's going on? Is someone hurt?" Steve asks, rising to his feet. Sam shakes his head, smiling sympathetically.

"No one's hurt," he assures "but we've got something to tell you."

Bucky swallows nervously, something in him going on high alert. He knows that this is about y/n, that something's happened and it makes him anxious. Where is she?

"What?" Bucky asks, noticing the lingering anger in Nat's eyes.

"It's y/n," she says "she-"

"She what?" Bucky interrupts quickly, readying himself to sprint upstairs.

"She's cheating," Tony says, eyes flickering between the two men. "On you two. With each other."

Oh, Bucky wasn't expecting that. He turns to Steve, the two sharing a silent conversation between themselves. They know? Looks like it pal. How'd that happen? I told you to be careful...

"Don't worry, we already gave her a piece of our minds-"

"You what?!" Steve suddenly asks, finally realizing what they're saying. They think y/n cheated on them because they don't know they're all three dating each other. And they confronted her about it.

"What did you say?" Bucky asks lowly.

"The truth," Sam says proudly. "that she's a bitch for using you both."

Before anyone can react Bucky is rushing towards the doors, abandoning his belongings in favor of checking on y/n. Steve doesn't mind, knowing that when it comes to being emotional and open, Bucky is typically the one she leans on. He's good at being a comforting shoulder.

"Oh god Sam," Steve sighs. "Y/n isn't cheating-"

"Yeah-"

"No she's not!" He shouts, startling them. "She's not. For the past few months we've been dating. The three of us."

The silence is almost amusing if Steve wasn't too busy thinking of his girl upstairs, upset.

"Like a throuple?" Bruce asks, confused.

Steve nods shortly. "Thanks for accusing her instead of talking it out. Appreciate it." He says icily, pushing around them. Stalking towards the exit, he calls over his shoulder. "Now if you'll excuse me, I've got a girl to go check on."

~

Bucky has wrapped her up like a burrito in the comforter from his bed on the floor of her room, leaning back against the side of the matress with her sat between his parted thighs. Her eyes are still wet and swollen but she's giggling through her sniffles, a spoon hanging out of her mouth and a bowl of soup in her lap. They both look up when he enters the room, Y/n smiling shyly and Bucky relieved.

"We ok sweetheart?" He asks, waiting for her nod before looking to Bucky.

"We're good Steve," he promises, sweeping her hair over her shoulder with his hand and brushing his fingers through it. "She was just frustrated. Didn't know they could think she'd do something like that."

"That's because she wouldn't," Steve says firmly, sitting on the floor next to them. "and we know that y/n. We know you'd never hurt us like that."

"I love you Steve," she swears, resting her head on his shoulder. "And I love you Buck. Thanks for doing this for me."

"Course doll," Bucky says, kissing the side of her head. "Don't have to thank us for loving you." Steve hums his agreement.

"But..."Bucky quickly adds, "you can thank me after I beat Sam's ass for calling you that."

Steve sighs, rolling his eyes. "Buck..." He says warningly but he doesn't even finish the scolding thought because their boyfriend's threat has made y/n smile and that's all they could ever ask for.

[some-kindofgnome]

now everything is easy

do not interact with this post if you are under 18.

Katsuki wakes next to you the morning after your heat reaches its peak.

c: katsuki bakugou x reader

wc: 3.7k

cw: smut (18+), morning sex, subtle alpha/beta/omega dynamics (knotting, heat cycles,  descriptions of scent & slick), vaginal & oral sex, aftercare if you squint, katsuki is like lovingly disgruntled through most of this but he adores you i promise

notes: Bakugou lovers, what’s up? It’s been a minute... 😅I can’t BELIEVE how long it’s been since I’ve written about Bakugou. But I signed up to write him for a few collabs over the summer, so here’s my warmup. I think I did this trope wrong but he goes down on u so like that’s fun, right? 👀

(MASTERLIST)

Morning comes hot and sticky, drizzling like honey into Katsuki’s slowly waking mind.

For a long time, waking slowly like this seemed little more than a far-off dream, for the man who could never be caught off guard. Most days his eyes still spring open, fully alert to the sound of his six o’clock alarm. But when she needs him, he loses himself easily to her.

To you.

He’s not sure what time it is exactly, only that midmorning sun splashes obscenely across the mussed bedclothes, lighting up the soft green of the worn linen and the buttery eggshell-painted wall beyond. His muscles settle into a dutiful ache. His thighs are still a little stuck together. He kind of needs to piss.

But you, fragile and perfect with the dew of your leftover heat drying on your spine, are worth lingering for.

You’re still fast asleep as he rolls onto one hip, fresh scratches pulling and stinging in the muscles of his back. The sheet’s tucked haphazardly over the curve of your hip, but you’re sprawled on your side with your torso left carelessly bare.

He can’t help himself, leaning forward to bury his nose against your scent glands, pulling the strong reek of you into his head. Your scent is so easy to read- maple-sweet, fragrant like orange blossom and deliciously mingled with his own. Last night, he fucked you both into sheer exhaustion, and the sheets still waft puffs of your mingled scents with every shift of his body.

Still, you’ll be wanting more soon. He gives your petal-soft skin a devilish little nip, rolling away to stretch yesterday’s exertion from his tendons.

Before he can even shift to climb out of bed for the bathroom, you’re squirming beside him.

Too late.

Those long, peaceful breaths of sleepy silence quickly give way to strained little whimpers as your senses come back to you. Last night, your heat cycle had reached its peak. But after a full measure of sleep- and eight hours without the fill of your alpha- he knew this was coming.

“Alpha,” you keen, struggling with even one coherent word. Katsuki’s instincts flare to life while you wake up, fresh waves of your needy scent filling his head and bringing his alpha to the surface. His cock stirs greedily against one thigh, stiffening traitorously in response to your voice.

He sighs harshly, flopping back against the pillows. His jaw ticks, letting firm throbs of desire swell in his gut.

“Couldn’t even wait for me to take a piss, could you?” He growls, no shortage of affection in his rough tone. You’re already rolling over, tangling clumsy, slick thighs in the soiled sheets.

“Please,” you sigh. “One more. I need one more.”

“C’mere,” he grunts, palming your ass to bring you close. “Let me see you.”

Your flesh is hot and sticky beneath his touch, and he knows how badly you need him but he can’t help indulging. Not now, when you’re so pliable and needy for him. It’s cruel to think so, but he loves you most when you’re desperate like this. His mean streak doesn’t come for you very often, but he can’t help it. You’re so easy to tease, and so much cuter when you want something.

He slips between your thighs to quell your squirming, letting you settle onto your back. You spread your legs as far as they’ll go, staring up at him with that wide, vulnerable, irresistible expression you always get at this time in your cycle. It’s how can tell your heat’s coming, far before the changes to your scent. The first time you look up at him like this every season, he knows it’s all over.

Your thighs are still crusted with last night’s slick and dried remnants of cum, but when you spread them, long strings of fresh fluid break and drip onto the mattress. The warm slip of your sex is glistening already.

Katsuki decides in that moment that he’s going to take his time with you, whether you’re ready to wait for it or not.

“You feeling patient?” he chuckles, lip curling as he flicks his eyes back to yours. You’re still staring up at him like that, an extra flash of panic lighting your eyes when the word patient reaches your ears.

“W-what,” you plead. “N-no, please, just- now, just do it now…”

Your voice trails into a strangled little squeak of pleasure when he dips his head between your thighs and seals his mouth to your dripping cunt. The familiar sweet musk of you pours into his mouth, cocktailed with the overwhelmingly heady flavor of your heat slick. The tightness in his balls is getting blurry now, half-full-bladder, half-swelling desire. But he can hold it, if it means he gets to pull more of those little cries from your needy throat.

He glides the flat of his tongue up between your folds, knowing that it makes you squeal without actually pushing you any closer to the edge. As he predicted, your thigh twitches by his left ear and your toes curl, but the whine that leaves you is not a satisfied one.

“K-katsuki,” you beg. The shape of his name on your lips comes as a surprise to him, and he glances up at you with a flinch of his brow. While there’s nothing quite like the way you shout “alpha” in the throes of your heat, when you’re all sleepy and sticky and half-conscious like this, his name feels good, too, hanging in the bleary air between you.

It sounds nice.

He rewards you with a lift of his chin, bringing the fat press of his tongue over your swollen clit just once. The sharp flick of it makes you yelp and flinch, slamming your hips into his face so hard he nearly bites his lip.

“Fuck,” he curses without pulling away, “cut it out.” He flattens one palm over the low plane of your pelvis, pressing weight into his wrist and pinning your wriggling hips to the mattress. The angle’s a little more awkward like this, but your toes are starting to twitch and he can tell you’re losing yourself to the pleasure.

He presses one finger to the weeping silk of your slippery folds, nudging it forward to find your needing hole and pushing smoothly inside.

“Jesus, sweetheart,” he croons into your cunt, “y’re fuckin’ grabbing me already.”

Your walls flutter in near-instant reaction to his touch, closing down hard around his middle finger. You squeeze so tightly he can barely draw back out of you again, curling the pad of his finger to find the spongy flesh near your entrance. It’s the tenderest part of you, and when he rubs it just right, you’ll descend into the kind of shivers that’ll make it hard to hold back.

It’s worth it every time, though, to watch you lose your mind under his diligent hands.

Katsuki refreshes the weight in his palm, pinning you freshly down while he re-adjusts to the slick pull of your clutching depths. He cups his tongue against your clit, feeling the heat in its swollen ridge, and dips his ring finger into you, alongside the first. His cock’s fully hard now, drooling wet preek into the sheets and burning with bright, hot tension.

Fuck, it’s going to feel good to get you on his knot again.

He focuses once more on the task at hand, finished revelling in your taste and ready to focus on your pleasure. You like it when he flutters his tongue quick and sharp against your clit, and your cunt’s most sensitive in the shallow parts near your slit. He curls his fingers, rubbing all along the hottest planes. He can practically feel the spots where your nerves sit closest to your skin, making your body spasm when he pins them under his fingers.

“Kah!” The first syllable of his name flies from your lips. He knows you sense his intent now, and your body’s already beginning to stiffen with the promise of climax. He knows you have to tense up a little to make it happen, so when you tense your core beneath the press of his free hand, he knows you’re getting close.

“Close,” you pant anyway, slipping one hand between your thighs and raking your fingers into his hair. When you grab the longest strands at his crown and pull, it sends an unexpected little shock of pleasure to his dick that pulls the air from his chest.

You’re already starting to pitch and shake, but he knows better than to let up now. He keeps the pleasure coming steady and strong, pushing out out a solid rhythm between his tongue and his fingers as he feels you pass the point of no return.

“Right there,” comes your desperate voice, crawling into your upper register. “Yeah, yeah, yeah, that’s it, y-you’re-“

It’s kind of beautiful, how easy to read you’ve become. He’s pretty sure he could satisfy you like this by feel alone at this point, blindfolded with his ears stuffed full of cotton.

A heartbeat and a half later you’re falling, tense muscles suddenly going slack as you dig your heels into the mattress and arch your back off the bed and contract so tight around his fingers he almost busts it right there, trying not to think about how maddening you’re going to feel around his cock in a few seconds. You let out one, long, hushed draw of his name, a “Katsuki,” that wafts by his ears like a fragrant breeze. Then you’re collapsing between his hands, fitful and whimpering and fighting him off.

“Better?” he grunts, sitting back on his heels. He wipes his mouth off with the back of one hand, dipping the pad of his thumb into the corners as he licks your heat-slick from his lips.

The look you give him suggests everything he intended. Better after a peak, perhaps, but there’s only one thing that’s going to satisfy you enough to function today.

Fuck, his knot’s already starting to swell a little when he closes his fingers around himself. He grits his teeth, ignoring the flush of heat that creeps down the back of his neck and willing it to stay small enough to fuck you properly.

He looks up at you again, and your scent crashes into his mind, filling every hollow of his blurry mind. You’re already gushing fresh slick, reaching for him to grab him by the face and pull him back down to your level.

He probably shouldn’t have teased you so long.

He lets you tug him against you, bracing his hands at either side of your head to drop his mouth to yours. He laves his tongue affectionately across your teeth, tasting notes of his scent in the lingering flavour of you. The hint of his own musk serves as a pleasant memory from the night before, when he’d poured his scent into every hollow of your body, claiming you as wholly as you’d given yourself to him.

You’re already humping your hips down against his, with his cock pressing up into the crook of your thigh. Katsuki groans long and low into your mouth, fitting one hand between you to bring his weeping tip to the hot gush of your cunt.

“That’s what you want?” He grunts, dipping his mouth from yours, tucking it against the shell of your ear.

“Katsuki, hmmm,” you whine, dragging your hard nipples against his chest. When he doesn’t move right away you whine again, clutching at his back and trying to rock yourself down onto him.

“Alpha, plea-hah!”

Katsuki delights in the way he can still startle you, after all this time. He cuts off your begging by snapping his hips sharply forward, bottoming out in one clean thrust. He’s never pretended to have the biggest cock in the world. But he’ll be damned if you’re not satisfied by it anyway.

“That’s right,” he pants, closing his eyes against the crook of your neck. “I got what you need.”

He pets a hand down your sternum as he straightens up a little, thumbing the tender swell of one nipple. He slides his fingers into the dip of your waist to brace at the curve of your hip, digging the pads of his fingers into your flesh as he rolls smoothly in and out of your clingy heat.

He closes his eyes again, overcome by the feelings he swallowed to tease you earlier. You are still tender and gooey from last night, molded perfectly to the size of him and sucking him forward every time he tries to pull away. Your slick leaks out around the edges of his cock with every push of his hips, and the quiet, satisfied cries from beneath him send pulses of deep affection into the hollows of his chest.

There’s nothing quite like this, the physical manifestation of the intimacy that lies between you. He is the only one who can do this for you anymore, the only person in the world who can quell the trembling tides of your heat.

He’s not gonna last long at all, getting sweet on you in his head like this.

Determined to make use of the time that he has, he slides his fingers into the back of your knee, pushing your thigh up toward your torso until he can reach up and grab you by the ankle. Slowly, deftly, he straightens your leg, gliding his palm down the length of your shin and guiding the curve of your heel into the crook of his shoulder.

“Pretty like this,” he croons without thinking, turning his head and feathering a quiet little kiss to the inside of your ankle. He spies your reaction out of the corner of his eye, a blissful little sleepy smile that paints your warmed features. Affection clutches low and hot in his belly, a feeling he’s only now grown used to embracing. Tenderly, he wraps his arm around your leg, braces it against his chest, and begins to thrust.

He takes up a slow, heady pace, pulling slowly out of you and then slamming forward with a harsh snap of his hips, revelling in the way your body jerks every time. He can feel the breath rattle against his palate as he sucks it in through his clenched teeth, losing himself in the maddening grip of you. It’s woven into the very fabric of him, loving you. He doesn’t have to say it anymore, not when he can practically read it out of your skin. But he’s promised himself, more fiercely than anything, to take care of you.

He promises you in the way he fucks you through this, muscles stretched thin, balls aching. Worn out on a weeknight’s worth of sleep, calling out of work for the second day in a row, undoubtedly leaving you in bed to put together a decent meal from the fridge he’d stocked this time last week, when you started looking at him Like That and he couldn’t even bring himself to dread it.

You clench, shifting your foot against his shoulder and lifting your hips into his. The tight little ripple around the base of his cock shoots all the way to the base of his spine, and with a sharp little grunt Katsuki slips his free hand down your belly, stretching his thumb over your tender clit. He can already feel his knot beginning to swell again, pleasure spiking hard when he traps your clit under his thumb and starts to stroke, making you cry out and tense into him all over again.

“Kat…suki, I’m.. g-gonna,” you plead, like he can’t already feel it happening again. Even your scent fluctuates when you’re about to cum, rippled with a sharp little spice that peters into sweetness all over again when you bleed down from that high.

“I gotcha,” he promises gently, hooking his arm more firmly around your calf. “Come on, baby. I gotcha. Come on.”

He dips his hips as low as he can, paying extra attention to the beginning and end of every thrust, to overstimulate those tender spots that line your entrance. It works, because before long you’re digging your heel into the meat of his shoulder and convulsing around his pounding length and gushing hot slick that drips down his balls and coats his pelvis and smears across the low end of his stomach.

“Fuck.” The word hisses from his throat, his body taking the green light of your waning climax long before his brain clues in. He digs his fingers into your thigh and leans forward, stretching it up toward your chest and lets himself go, shoving his hips madly against yours and milking every cruel draw of pleasure from his own body until his thighs are shaking with the resistance of it. When the ecstasy finally boils over he slams his hips as far forward as they’ll go, squeezing his eyes shut and shooting long spurts of cum up into your belly. Your walls stretch eagerly around him as his knot expands completely, sealing his pelvis to yours.

Finally, he shrugs your ankle down his arm, gently straightening your leg out over his thigh as you catch your breath. He’s a little winded, too, never quite ready for the overwhelming sensations of taking you.

“That’s never gonna get old,” he mumbles, bowing over your supine form to rest his dewy forehead on yours.

You’re still panting hard, but you laugh airily, eyelashes fluttering against his cheeks. His eyes are closed again but he can feel you grinning and it’s too contagious not to crack a little smile. He ducks his forehead away from yours to nose against the shell of your ear, mouthing gently at your jaw and sliding both hands up and down either side of your torso.

“Better?” he asks, sincere this time. And, sincerely soothed this time, you nod.

“Much better.”

He knows you’re telling the truth, but it doesn’t change the fact that he’s going to be on you all day. He can’t keep himself off of you when you’re coming down from the worst of it, all sweet and pliable and soft in a way that you most certainly are not for the other days in your cycle. You kick his ass without hesitation, and he loves you for it. But you’re irresistible like this.

“Now,” he grunts, still nosing his way down your neck, tonguing the sweet hollow of your scent glands, “hurry up and calm down. I gotta take a leak.”

That urge hasn’t gone anywhere fast, growing shallow and tight in the pit of his groin. But it’s not urgent. Not when he’s locked so sweetly (and securely) into your relaxing depths.

“You’re the one that needs to calm down,” you retort in good humour, glancing down for a heartbeat.

“Say that again and I might not bother waiting,” he threatens easily. The noise that escapes your throat is enough to make him snort, pillowing his head in the crook of your shoulder as you turn sharply to find his eyes.

“Don’t. You. Dare.”

“You gonna stop me?” He regrets challenging you immediately when you flail instinctively beneath him, wrenching on the base of his knot and drawing a strangled, pained little wheeze from his chest.

“Fuck, I was kidding,” he scolds, pinning your shoulders to the mattress. “Jesus. Welcome back.”

You’re getting your fire back early. Maybe he’s kind of missed it, after all.  

He keeps himself curled over you like that until his knot’s gone down almost all the way, cock softening out of you and letting fresh drips of slick and cum leak onto his thighs. Finally he pulls himself away from you, padding blindly into the bathroom and flipping on the harsh fluorescent light.

He braces one hand on the wall over the toilet as he relieves himself, still half-hard and wavering on his overworked thighs. After he’s washed his hands he wagers a look in the mirror, turning his back and twisting to look over his shoulder and examine the damage.

He goes back to bed smirking, thinking of the long, angry scratches while the memory of their infliction is still fresh.

You are already half-asleep again when he finds you, so he just pulls the sheets up around your shoulders and drops a kiss to your temple. You’re going to want coffee soon, and you’re going to need breakfast. Neither of you have had a proper meal in longer than he’d care to calculate.

When he steps into some undershorts and eases into the open space that makes up the rest of your apartment, he opens the kitchen windows, since you’ll want fresh air when you come out to join him. He’d stopped by the bagel shop on the corner by the agency the last time he was there, leaving work early to come home to you, because he knew you’d want fried eggs on your favourite sesame bagel when you were finally coherent enough to crave food again.

The routines that make up his devotion to you aren’t the things he learned about in health class. They weren’t written down in the books that were unceremoniously shoved at him after he’d presented, nor did the details of your post-heat care list appear on any neatly packaged powerpoint presentation.

He’s picked them up slowly, the hard way, by messing up over and over and over again. They’re things he never even realized he knew about you, until he looks down at his hands and he’s flipping his own egg every few seconds to keep it from browning but leaving yours in the pan to get crisp around the edges.

It feels good to know you so deeply. Even when, sometimes, the flipside is still a little too vulnerable and scary. Even when he’s still harsh and mean, when he still messes up, when he still catches himself on the edge of fury so often.

You picked him anyway, and he’ll be damned if he’s not going to let that mean something.

[omgreally]

Hi there!

Could I please make a little request for Din?

"I didn't know where else to go"

Thank you, hope you're doing ok today! ❤

Hey lovely! First off, I am SO SORRY this took so long. I know it's been months and I have nothing but terrible excuses. Hopefully this makes up for it at least a little?

Shelter M, Din Djarin/Smuggler F!Reader, 2.1k words Warnings: Angst, drinking, unhealthy coping mechanisms, swearing, Helmetless!Din, lil bit of making out, brief almost-but-not-quite questionable consent, unresolved sexual tension (but who knows, maybe I'll do a Part II?) Summary: Mando has nothing left, nowhere to go. Except to you.

He stands on your doorstep, a soaking wet mass of metal and muscle. The rain falls in rolling sheets, sliding through his hair, down the back of his neck, underneath his cloak and in shining rivulets over his Beskar breastplate.

Without the helm, the Mandalorian looks...smaller, somehow, deflated, but maybe that’s just the defeated look lurking in the dark space behind his eyes.

He looks drained. Empty.

It’s him, though - nobody can fake pure Beskar armor, much less the set he wears. It’s mirror-finish, reflecting your stunned expression in rain-blurred steel.

You open your mouth to say something, but fail to find the words. They all seem so inadequate to address Mando standing in front of you, maskless.

He’s not quite looking at you, his gaze alternating between the ground and somewhere beyond your left ear. You resist the urge to glance behind you, instead taking him in, cataloguing the changes since you last saw him.

It’s been months, but it usually is. His circuitous route of bounty hunting doesn’t intersect with your parts of the Rim very much, which is fine; this way your businesses don’t overlap. As a smuggler, you’re far too likely to be on the wrong end of a tracking fob, so you stay away and so does he.

Once, you were a useful connection. You’re not sure when you crossed the line into ‘ally’, much less ‘friend’. Yet here he is, staring at you through the pouring rain. Helmet off, tucked almost protectively underneath his arm.

“I didn’t know where else to go,” he says, dully, and his voice sounds so different yet familiar that you experience a sense of disorientation, of the planet’s surface tilting beneath your feet as you re-orient yourself to this strange new reality where the Mandalorian comes to you for help.

Once, you would have asked for credits first. Now, all you say as you recover from your shock is, “Are you all right?” He shakes his head mutely as you step back and allow him access into your planetside flat.

It’s small, so small that his arm brushes you as he steps over the threshold. You resist the odd urge to put a hand on his shoulder; you’ve never had to comfort him before, save for buying him a round at some space dive or other after a job gone bad. This is something different. This is something else entirely.

You don’t ask what happened. You doubt he’ll give you a straight answer anyway. And you don’t ask about the helmet. He takes a seat at the kitchenette counter and sets it down on the counter in front of him. The black, empty visor stares at you silently as you fetch a bottle of something cheap and strong and hand it to him, knowing he won’t need a glass.

Mando uncaps it and takes a long drag without a word. He makes a face - so strange to see the expressions that are usually hidden by the mask of the helmet - and suppresses a cough as he hands the bottle back to you. You shake your head and set it down next to the Beskar headpiece.

You’re not known for your empathy, and neither is he, so you settle on practicality which you know he appreciates. “Are you injured?” you ask, businesslike as you examine his face a little closer. There’s the bloom of a bruise on one temple, underneath the damp plaster of his dark hair.

“Not permanently,” he says, that trace of dry sardonicism that you usually find irresistibly hilarious now making you frown. “I’m fine,” he adds gruffly as he reads your expression. You huff, crossing your arms, but he says nothing more. Just picks up the bottle again and swigs with an audible “Ahh,” from his throat.

“Why are you here?” you ask, at last, after watching him drink for a minute in silence. Mando looks at you, at your eyes, and holds your gaze for a long, uncomfortable moment before he finally answers.

“I lost him.”

“The kid?” It feels like you’ve been hit, the air punched from your lungs. You assumed he was back on the Crest, asleep, not - gone.

You had only met the little gremlin twice, once when Mando needed fuel and ammo on the cheap, another for a place to lay low for a day or two. The weird green creature...grew on you, like a very cute fungus. His nonsensical babbling, insatiable appetite, and obvious love for the Mandalorian was infectious. You admit it; you were weak. You got fond. And, in turn, fonder of Mando himself.

And now…

“You found his people?” you manage, and it comes out in a croak. You clear your throat and Mando offers you the bottle. You take it, tossing your head back for a deep swig. It burns going down and warms the suddenly-cold cavity inside your chest.

“Yeah,” Mando says. “He’s...he’s safe, now.” The he was never safe with me is unspoken but you hear it anyway. You pass the bottle back to him.

“I’m sorry,” you say, and mean it. “I know...I know it was never a permanent arrangement, but he clearly meant a lot to you.”

“Yeah,” he says, looking down at his helmet before fitting the rim of the bottle to his lips, tossing his head back and draining the rest of its contents in several long gulps.

You watch the shape of his throat bob in his neck above the wet snarl of his cloak and look away quickly. A buzz is building in your veins already and he’s had most of the bottle - you’re surprised he’s still upright.

“You holing up in your junker tonight?” you wonder, after casting around for a change of subject. An expression of pain crosses Mando’s face, a grimace not caused by the alcohol, for just a second before it’s gone.

“The Crest is gone. Melted to slag and dust.” He says it without inflection, and that’s how you know it’s hurting him.

“Fuck,” you summarize elegantly. Mando nods.

“I haven’t got anything left,” he states. “No ship. No credits. No more favors to call in. Nothing.”

You reach out, more out of anger than anything else, and grab his hand, squeezing so tightly that the wet leather squelches. “Stop it,” you say harshly. “You have everything you need. You’re a kriffing Mandalorian.”

He snorts, pulling his hand away - with some effort. “Not anymore.” He stares down at his helmet, and beneath the scruff and fuzz and rain, his lips press together in a tight line.

“What the fuck does that mean?”

“I broke my Creed,” he shrugs, setting a hand atop the smooth dome of Beskar. “More than once. Didn’t matter at the time. All that mattered...was saving the kid. Making sure he was safe.”

“Mission fucking accomplished, then,” you say, shaking your head. “You pick yourself up. You rebuild. You move on.”

“How can I?” He meets your gaze, and you flinch at the dark intensity of his - something molten, furious there that you’re suddenly afraid of. You haven’t forgotten the promise of violence coiled in his every limb. “I have nothing to go back to. Nowhere to go. That’s why I’m here.” He waves a gloved hand with obvious disgust, and for some reason, that hurts, a sting behind your breastbone like something almost physical.

Mando must see the look on your face, for he wilts like damp lettuce. “I didn’t mean-”

“It’s fine. I get it,” you say brusquely, your words clipped. You take the empty bottle from the counter, your fingers curling around the neck and squeezing, hard. “You come in here, beaten-up, drink my alcohol and drip all over my floors - but I’m the last place you’d go. I get it.”

He rises to his feet, and you forgot how tall he is, how broad. And despite - ormaybe because of - the unfamiliarity of his helmetless appearance, Mando is still intimidating. You don’t shrink back, though; you square your shoulders and your jaw and lift your chin in challenge.

“You’re the last person I’d put in danger,” he says in a low voice, a voice that stirs a strange sensation in the pit of your guts that you haven’t felt in a very, very long time.

“You forget what I do for a living?” you manage, your mouth suddenly dry. You swallow past it, tasting the aftertaste of alcohol and your own misplaced nervousness.

“I’ve been hunted from one end of the galaxy to the other,” he continues in that same husky baritone that makes your knuckles go white. “I wasn’t going to bring that down on you.”

“I appreciate that,” you manage, diplomatically - but he’s not having it, staring you down like his life depends on keeping eye contact. “But I’m a big girl. I can handle things myself.”

He looks you up and down - just once - but with such practiced ease that it makes you wonder how many times he’s done the same thing from beneath the visor. You shiver despite yourself.

“I know,” he says, and then before you can move or react or think, he lunges into your space and kisses you.

If you were shocked by Mando’s sudden appearance, you’re fucking floored by this. You don’t know how to react at first but he proves quickly to be competent enough at this to coax your lips apart with his and get you to kiss him back.

He tastes like a distant hint of blood and smoke and his body is solid as his arm snakes round your waist without you noticing and he pulls you to him. He holds you so that you’ll have to twist away to escape and with the confidence that says he knows you won’t want to. 

And you don’t.

Instead you let the bottle fall and it clatters forgotten to the ground as you grab him by the pauldrons and let him lick into your mouth with the answering surge of your tongue and your hips pressing to his.

Mando kisses you like he needs to, and you realize that he’s half-hard already, impatiently nudging a knee between your thighs and pressing you to the wall. You break from his mouth to breathe and wonder if he’s ever had anything but this - a wild, fervid fumble of hurriedly-parted clothes and tangled limbs.

You don’t want to be this for him - a receptacle for his despair, his rage. You have too much of your own to deal with. But you can’t deny that you’ve thought about this, imagined something similar to this very scenario - but you never counted on the weight of emotion that comes with it.

“Stop, Mando,” you say as he sucks bruises into your neck, the edges of his teeth making your breath catch on nothing. He goes still, but his hands are tight on your hips, holding you to him. You can feel his breath, heavy and warm in your ear.

“Not like this,” you tell him. “You can stay, but we’re not doing this. Not like this.”

At first you think he’s not going to let you go, and the thrill that passes through you from the thought is unconscionable. But then his grip loosens and his leg withdraws and he steps back, out of your space. You rub your face with hands you can’t admit are shaking before finally looking up at him.

He looks wrecked. Broken. Staring at the ground, damp hair hanging over his forehead, and you catch the trembling twitch of his bottom lip even as he ducks his head to try to hide it.

“You can take my bunk,” you tell him. “We’ll talk in the morning. Okay?”

For a second you think he’s going to argue, or just...walk out. Relief blooms in you as he nods. He turns without a word to retrieve his helmet before he retreats down the hall.

You watch him go, and the slump to his shoulders breaks your heart. But he’s staying, and that’s something.

You never thought you’d have a broken Mandalorian sleeping in your bunk. 

And you’re not sure if you regret the fact that you’re not there next to him.

[lilac-5ky]

Takasugi reading headcanon

A/N: Takasugi strikes me as someone who could appreciate books. Also it’s late and when it’s late I think of him so…yeah! Fluff Headcanon for him! Also, it took a while for me to settle on the kind of book Takasugi would read, but I think he’d find Machiavelli interesting enough. I’ve read this book a loooong time ago, meaning I had to search for specific bits from it to include in this headcanon.

Warning: No warnings, dig in

After losing his left eye, reading turned out to be a much more daunting task for Takasugi. Especially during the first couple of years following the war, adjusting to his condition didn't come easily and so, he steered completely off books.

Things got better as time went by and he was able to go back to reading. However, the longer his eye stayed glue to his book, the more uncomfortable it felt for him. His sessions were cut short more often than not and always occurred away from prying eyes, with the sole exception of you.

Naturally, he'd never admit his issue. He was too prideful to do that. Besides, he is one to keep his frustrations to himself. It was only after you noticed him repeatedly squinting his eye, that you began to figure it out. In spite of the troubled expression of his face, you hadn’t heard him flip a single page in over ten minutes. He simply stayed idle, pretending to be in deep thought, oblivious to the fact that you’d been watching him.

Determined to help him, you took a seat on the couch he was sitting, scooting closer to him until you could comfortably peek into the contents of his book.

"Hm?" Takasugi glanced at you from between the pages.

"What are you reading?"

Rather than answering you, he flipped the book close, allowing you to read the label. The title read "The Prince", a book you had never heard before, but then again, your had a completely different taste when it came to literature.

"Is that a fairytale?" He smiled, hinting at your incorrect assumption.

"Then... can I read too?" Before he could reject your offer, you grabbed the book off his hands. In a flash, you threw your body onto the couch, resting your head against his lap. He appeared to be slightly perplexed, yet once you raised the book before your eyes, he understood what you were trying to do.

"Let's see... 'The lion cannot protect himself from traps, and the fox cannot defend himself from wolves. One must therefore be a fox to recognize traps, and a lion to frighten wolves.'" You read through the first sentence of the page. "A lion... fox?" Even after going through it once more, the sentence seemed as incomprehensible as it did the first time.

Placing his hand on top of your head, Takasugi caressed you softly, moving a couple of loose strands out of the way. "One needs to be in possession of both strength and cunning in order to rule." He explained.

You nodded, reading through the rest of the page out loud, before moving onto the next one.

" 'How we live is so different from how we ought to live that he who studies what ought to be done rather than what is done will learn the way to his downfall rather than to his preservation.' "

Once again, you were clueless as to what the author meant to say. Perhaps the book was smarter than you, or perhaps you were too stupid to begin with. Either way, this wasn't about you. Whether you understood or not, it didn't matter as long as he was enjoying it.

Just as you were about to flip onto the next page, Takasugi moved his other hand onto your fingers as to stop you.

"It means that reality is different than ideals. Unless you are able to put them into practice, you will fail. It's no good to dwell on something impractical."

Seeing your eyes lighten up, Takasugi removed his hand from the book, all the while he kept his fingers entangled with your hair, absentmindedly toying with them. It felt so soothing that you could easily fall asleep on him. The way he explained things to you, the way he pet you, even the way he looked at you was beyond comforting.

You kept on reading the book for him, catching him close his eye as he leaned back against the couch. Whenever you stumbled upon a concept that was hard to understand, he took his time to explain it thoroughly, making sure you got to properly experience the book together. Though it wasn't something you'd pick up on your own, reading to him turned out to be much more fun than anticipated, as much for you as it was for Takasugi.

After a while of going without asking any questions, you came across a quote that piqued your interest.

" 'Since love and fear can hardly exist together, if we must choose between them, it is far safer to be feared than loved.' "

"You don't get that?” He hummed softly.

“No, it’s not that… I just disagree. I’d rather be loved than feared.” You declared, earning a delighted chuckle from him.

“Of course you’d say that. Y/N, you are so easy to read.” Takasugi smirked.

“You disagree?” You asked with a pout.

His smirk widened into a smile as he leaned closer to you, pulling the book away from your face. He tilted his head in amusement, capturing your chin between his index and his thumb, with your eyes following his ever move.

"When did I ever play safe?"

Bringing your face closer to his, Takasugi gently pressed his lips against yours, cautiously relishing the sweet taste they had to offer. You closed your eyes, feeling warmth spread throughout your body. Even when the answer he gave you wasn’t a verbal one, you were still content with it. After all, it was in moments like this that you knew your feelings were reciprocated, whether he expressed such with words, or not.

"Thank you." He mumbled before shifting back to his previous position.

Despite being aware of your ruse, he played along without turning down your act of kindness. Even if the book said fear and love couldn’t coexist, at the time you felt both; your love for him warming you up, with the fear of him ever letting go enough to bring chills down your spine.

You remained smiling at one another for a bit, until your fingers found their way back onto the pages of the book. More words about rulers and power plays followed, with the words twisting your tongue and your brain. Eventually, you paused, a certain piece catching your eye once again.

"Oh, this one suits you!” You exclaimed, tugging onto his sleeve. “ ‘Everyone sees what you appear to be, few experience what you really are.' I feel really lucky to have experienced you, Shinsuke.”