#I have been thinking about this for the past five hours

[outtathisworld-imagines]

No fire without smoke

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Pairing: Bob Reynolds x F!Barnes!Reader

Warning: Smut! +18 MDNI!, intercourse (F & M rec), smoking, fingering, masterbation, he loves a good girl moment, spanking, voyeurism, dirty talk, swearing, unprotected sex- pls wrap before you tap. Not proofread

A.N: As inspired by this ask ‘*slides into your inbox oh so sweetly* i looooved bad habit but now im trying to imagine how bucky would react to finding out about reader and bob’

Please let me know what else you guys would like! I do have a few other fics on the back-burner (for now!) that I'll start to post soon and just let me know if you'd liked to be tagged in further works too ✨

——☀️——☀️——☀️——☀️——☀️——

You and Bob played a dangerous game during the two months after you shared your secret with each other.

You had both been practically glued at the hip during the day and grinding against each other’s hips each night. A shared cigarette between those moments.

He had risked it a few times in the tower, sneaking a quick peck or a hand on your ass every now and then, milliseconds before anyone came into a room. It was like he knew. He was playing with fire between the twirls of smoke.

You were both currently in the bedroom of your downtown apartment, somewhere you both often snuck away to, keeping any suspicions of the team at bay by telling them you were both going to a walk to ‘clear you minds’.

When in reality you were both filling your lungs and Bob was gladly filling up you.

You had bought the apartment after the world had fell apart - yours even more so with the sudden loss of your brother. Only for him to appear five years later. You kept it as a safe space, your own place to unwind. Now it was a space you and Bob could be with each other, and most importantly, be yourselves with each other.

He had you wrapped in his arms, the pair of you easing the post-sex haze by sharing a cigarette- like you often did. You took a long drag before bringing it to his lips with your fingers still holding it as he took a deep inhale. “I don’t wanna head back.” You quietly said, your feelings getting harder to control around him. Wanting to just be together more and more often.

Bob looked down at you, staying silent but feeling the same. You turned and stubbed out the dying end of the cigarette before rolling back onto his chest again. He smiled but it was laced with sadness. Bob placed a long lingering kiss to your forehead. “We’ll have our moments. We can make moments. We’ll always have the balcony between two and three in the morning,” he half joked, a hint of seriousness peaking through. A soft grin spread over your face, you leaned down and kissed his chest. It created a feeling inside him that not even all the cigarettes and drugs in the world could match. He opened his mouth and then stoped himself. It was moments like these when he almost slipped.

He had moments over the past week in particular. He almost slipped up in the kitchen when you handed him his breakfast, almost slipped up just before you left his bedroom in the early hours of the morning, nearly slipped up after he had the chance to capture your lips with his before Alexei walked into the living room.

Each time finding just enough restraint to stop himself.

“We should get going, it’s almost four,” you went to sit up but he pulled you back by your waist.

“Five more minutes,” he frantically peppered kisses all over your face causing you to laugh hysterically.

It almost caused him to slip up again.

—•—

The next day you slipped on your shoes and eagerly jogged to meet with Bob in the hall, both of you sneaking back to your appartment or ‘going for your walk’ as you told the team.

You were stopped short seeing your brother walking towards you. “Hey Bucky!” You sent him a small smile.

“Think I’ll join you guys today. Get out of this place for a bit.” He said, grimacing at the walls he had confined himself in over the last few days.

You blinked with a blank expression “Join us?”

Bucky shrugged “Yeah on your walk?” He stated as if it were the most obvious thing in the world. “Like the two of you do every day.” He gestured behind your shoulder as Bob approached.

“Yes…” you drawled out, nodding your head slowly. “Walk.”

“H-hey guys!” He timidly greeted, Bucky’s presence overshadowing you both. “Bucky, what’s up?”

“He’s joining us,” you told Bob who went wide eyed and you clarified “On our walk.” His brows returned to the normal location on his forehead.

Bucky was in between both you and Bob, Central Park filled with people. The distance between you and Bob now almost immeasurable when you compared it to what you’d both be usually doing around this time. How he’d be holding your hand, the praise, the moans dripping from his mouth like molten gold, the wisps of smoke surrounding you both afterwards.

“I don’t know how you can enjoy this,” Bucky complained, breaking you away from your thoughts. “So many people. So many bugs. How can you guys actually enjoy this?”

You and Bob shared a brief glance “I enjoy it,” you replied with your hands in your pockets, nervously toying with your box of matches that your brother was blithely unaware of. “I would enjoy it more without the complaining…” you said under your breath. Bucky sighed and you rolled your eyes. “I’m getting a coffee,” you snapped “Bob? Buck?” You motioned to the little coffee cart and they nodded as you trudged over.

Your body was slowly being deprived of nicotine and your fix of Bob causing your snappish outburst. It felt like withdrawal. Your body fighting against itself for more, urging it to succumb to your cravings. You ordered three coffees, hoping the caffeine would help a little. Bob and Bucky were casually chatting away about something while your fingers went back to the matchbox and you bit on the tip of your tongue to distract you. Another bad habit of yours.

You grabbed the coffees and took them back over to them both, practically tossing yours down your throat, not even flinching at the scalding heat.

You did another round by the pond and then decided to call it a day, dismally making your way back to the watchtower. A faint “You okay?” Bob’s gentle concerned tone pulled a smile from your scowling lips, you nodded, your selfish addiction to him almost fighting you to shake your head no.

But he felt the same. It had been hours but it felt like he had gone cold turkey and been without you for decades at this point.

When 2am rolled around you made your way out to the balcony in your white nightdress, stopping just at the knees and a perfectly plunging neckline that accentuated your breasts. The cool breeze caused your nipples to almost instantly harden, you pulled the cigarette tucked from behind your ear and brought it to your lips lighting it with your trusted matches.

Then waited.

It didn’t take you too long to figure out that Bob could see the balcony and that meant you could see Bob. He was dimly illuminated by his bedside lamp as his eyes glanced up and saw you in a hazy orange glow. You smirked seeing him frantically trying to organise himself to get to your little rendezvous spot.

That’s when you decided to tease him. You took a long inhale and sharply exhaled the smoke, a new fire burning inside you as he watched you slip your hand under your nightdress. The silky white material started to bunch up from your rhythmic actions, giving Bob full view as he watched you masterbating for him from his bedroom, his body almost aching at the sight. He was experiencing the craving to end all cravings watching you pleasure yourself outside on a cool night under the stars and surrounded by smoke.

He all but flew to the balcony in order to reach you, wanting you to not get any further forward without him, without the chance for him to pleasure you too. The sight of you slapped him right in the face just as much as the sudden gust of cold wind did.

The white dress almost made you look like a puritan, but the cigarette loosely being held by your lips and your fingers knuckle deep in your own pussy told him otherwise.

“Fuck, you started without me?” He playfully pouted. Bob approached you, snatched the cigarette from your mouth and took in a mouthful of smoke before slowly exhaling it over your face and neck, it draped over your skin for a moment before disappearing. “Getting that pussy warmed up for me? Let me feel baby.” His hand joined yours and you let out a breathy moan at the sensation. Bob smirked “You’re gonna wake everyone…here,” he placed the cigarette into your mouth again. “Suck on this until it’s done and then you can suck on my cock.”

Your eyes rolled back in pleasure, his words sending you into a frenzy. His fingers taking over from your own as you gripped onto his shoulders. You took the cigarette and let him take a quick drag before he picked you up by the thighs and took you back to his room. You were giggling so much you didn’t realise the end of the smouldering cigarette fell from your fingers and hit the floor. The embers burned away as you and Bob, blissfully unaware started your own fire.

You both fucked until the early yours in the morning, your legs weak as you quietly made your way back to your room just as the sun was rising.

Little did you or anyone else know the consequences that little burnt out cigarette end would have when someone who was enjoying some solitude with a coffee out on the balcony, found it by their feet the next day.

—•—

When the next evening rolled around, Bob was about to start his second cigarette when you snaked your arms around him and discreetly kissed his shoulder “Hey,” you greeted him and he turned around with a perfect smile. A cloud of smoke surrounding you both.

“Hey there,” his voice was rough, smoke from the cigarette dancing around his vocal cords. It sent a shiver down your spine.

He went into his jean pocket and got you a cigarette, you took it happily and then, to his surprise, pulled out the lighter from his other jean pocket. “Watch this,” you flicked the trigger and it lit first time. “Are you impressed or what?” You gloated as you lit your own and puffed away.

Bob smirked, exaggerating clapping his hands. “I am impressed,” he said “But then again, I’m always impressed with how skilled your hands are…” his voice turned from rough to sultry like it was operated with a switch, he took a deep inhale and then removed his just about finished cigarette, yours fizzling out too. His eyes looked you up and down, slowly and with complete intent. The oh-so-sweet cozy, knitted jumper you had on with a skirt he could easily hike up and then have his way with you taunted him.

You mirrored his actions and then you both met in the middle, your lips perfectly syncing with one another’s and with the faintest taste of smoke from them. Bob soon succumb to his own cravings as much as you did, the cigarettes had dwindled out as they had carried on burning as you both carried on passionately kissing. Your tongue swiped his bottom lip and he opened his mouth for you. At this point the two of you were at the stage of biblical levels of gluttony.

The greed that drowned both of you, the need, the want, the craving, the smoke and ultimately the fire. It all but consumed you both.

Bob growled when you playfully bit his lip whilst pressing the palm of your hand to his hardening cock. He pulled back, his eyes blown with lust and his lips swollen. Bob quickly turned you around by your upper arms and gently pushed your back down until you were bent over the railing, bent over in front of New York.

“B-Bob?!” You yelped being taken by complete surprise, hearing the harsh noise of his zipper going down and then the shuffling of fabric down to his knees.

His hands quickly lifted your skirt, almost cumming at the sight of you not wearing any underwear. “Good girl,” he slapped your ass and you yelped again and he effortlessly slid his cock inside you, you both moaned. “I want the world to watch me fuck the prettiest girl living on it.”

Your hands tightly gripped onto the railing as your moans cascaded over the city below. “F-fuck! Yes!” Your head craned back and you could see his face contort with pleasure as he rhythmically fucked you. “You fuck me so good, Bob! So good, baby!” You groaned, your grip becoming tighter.

“Feels so fucking good, you’re so fucking perfect!” Bob cried just as loud as you. His fingers sinking into your hips as he fucked you from behind, every inch of his body filling with sheer gratification. His eyes closed, his restraint unwinding before he eventually- “God, I love you!” He slipped.

You tensed feeling him suddenly stop a few seconds after he realised what he had said. “Are you okay?” You softly asked, the words longing around your bodies like the smoke. “Bob?”

His words became lodged in his throat and he pulled out from you, causing you to groan at the sudden loss of him. You quickly turned to see him with a shocked expression on his face and he pulled up his jeans. “I didn’t mean-“

“Don’t,” you placed a hand on his chest, freezing him in place. “Don’t say you didn’t mean it because I hope you did.” You said with a smile forming on your face. His shocked expression turned to one of relief and joy.

“I did. I really, really did,” he moved closer and pressed a gentle kiss to your lips. “I do, I do love you.”

“Good because I love you too,” you grinned, wrapping your arms around the back of his neck. He had a wide smile on his face and excitably kissed you, peppering kisses all over your face and neck before picking you up, a surprised shriek and giggle escaping from your lips.

Bobs lips never left yours as he effortlessly carried you to his room, closing the door with his foot before laying you gently on his bed. “Gonna show you how much I love you,” he traced his fingertips down your bare legs. That was before he grabbed the hem of your skirt and swiftly removed it. You removed your own top, filled with giddy delight as he stripped off too and lay on top of you. “I’m so lucky…” he softly spoke against your skin as he kissed it.

You looked in his eyes, cupping his cheek “I’m the lucky one, trust me.” He kissed you as he slid himself inside you once again.

The slow rhythmic thrusting of his hips soon turned fast, Bob sitting up slightly and grabbing you by the ankles before spreading them and fucking you like his life depended on it. Quickly becoming breathless- no thanks to the smoking- beads of sweat scattered across his forehead like stars in the sky. “So, so fucking perfect, the most perfect girl,” he strained as he finally burst. He came in you with a gristly scream, a release he didn’t even know he was craving until he had it.

“Fuck!” You cried out as you came over his cock, Bob moaning at the sensation of your pussy tightening around his cock. He collapsed on top of you, his room filling with the sound of you catching your breaths. You ran your hand through his hair as you closed your eyes.

“The sun is rising,” he said in a warning tone that was laced with sadness.

You looked out the window and then to him. Your bad habit gaining you a good outcome.

“I’ll stay, if that’s alright?” You said in a quiet voice. The two of you now crossing a boundary into unknown territory, like walking through flames.

Bob looked up to you “That’s more than alright.” He told you, holding your hand, the two of you bracing for a new journey together.

—•—

The next afternoon everyone was relaxing in the living room when the stomping of Bucky’s boots brought everyone’s attention to him.

“I found this on the balcony,” he said and harshly slammed it on the coffee table. A cigarette end. “Own up.”

You gulped, your eyes glancing over to Bob who swallowed equally as hard as he tried his best to avoid your gaze. You had been expecting this day since 1935.

“It was me,” you spoke up, finally coming clean after all these years. It was like the smoke had lifted from your life.

Bucky held out his hand. “No, no it isn’t you.” He dismissed and you blinked. You knew he still saw you as the girl in her cream and pink wool dress and pigtails, the days where he’d be fighting off everyone for you, doing what he could to protect you.

“It is.” You countered back. Bob still being painfully quiet while everyone watched on.

“It’s okay Y/N, don’t take the fall for someone else.” Bucky then glared at John.

He gasped and held out both his hands “Dude! It’s not me!”

“I-it’s actually me.” Bob stood up. Bucky snorted in amusement.

“You’re just as bad as Y/N, sit down. I know it wasn’t you.” Bob slowly sat, looking at you with a perplexed look, everyone else remained silent. “Fine, no one wants to admit? Well, I took the liberty of installing cameras outside to catch whoever it was! I haven’t seen this yet so let’s all take a look shall we?” He played the video.

Your heart stopped as well as Bob’s.

It had last nights date in the bottom corner.

The same night he railed you over the railing before admitting he loved you. “Buck I already told you-“

“Ah ah ah! Look here! It’s-“ his brows tightly knitted together. “Why are you out there Bob?” A pause, you tried to get the remote from him. “Why is Y/N out there with you?” Another pause, his voice getting tighter “Why is she hugging you?”

“Jesus enough!” You were on the verge of fighting with him to get the controller. It fell to the floor and cracked into what looked like a million pieces. Everyone was engrossed with the TV while you tried to stop the footage. The video continued.

Bucky gasped. “You’re both smoking?!” He yelled “Y/N!”

“Okay! I told you! We are the culprits!” You nervously laughed “How do we get this goddamn TV off now!” Your hands tried to find a button. Bob remained frozen on the spot. “Help would be appreciated…” you said to him through gritted teeth.

A scandalous ‘ohh’ echoed through the living room. Your eyes went wide, not as wide as your brothers however, when the footage showed you and Bob locked in a kiss.

Then, as you knew fine well, the kiss escalated.

The moans got louder. The scene more and more explicit with each passing second.

Yelena groaned and covered her eyes, Ava vanished, Alexei awkwardly turned away and tried to talk about something else and John snorted before clapping his hands, intently watching the scene unfold before him.

“Way to go Bob! Didn’t realise you had it in ya buddy!”

“Walker! Avert your eyes you absolute perv!” You stood in front of the TV, trying to cover it as best as you could with your body as Bob threw a pillow at him.

“Better than paying for it from a dodgy website.”

“Walker!” You yelled. “Bucky I-we-“ your voice was trembling.

The TV turned off, you couldn’t quite breathe a sigh of relief seeing your brother’s gaze was focused on the floor, his fists balling together.

“Well Bob,” he finally spoke “The smoking hasn’t killed you, but I’m sure as hell about to.”

[sugardollcurse]

Pathetic mustache Paul with a breeding kink please I need that man CARNALLY

ℎ𝑒𝑎𝑣𝑦 𝑖𝑠 𝑡ℎ𝑒 𝑐𝑟𝑜𝑤𝑛 | paul mccartney x reader

𐙚 contains ; nsfw! minors dni!, female anatomy, breeding kink, overstimulation, body worship, praise mixed with degradation

𐙚 summary ; nothing gets paul hotter than the idea of having you full and keeping it there.

𐙚 note ; bless you for requesting this bussanut

The bucket sloshed. Bleach-scented water slapped up the rim as you set it down with more force than necessary, slapping your palm down over the handle of the mop. The floor needed doing. Badly. And unless it had spontaneously developed the capacity for sentience and self-hygiene, it wasn’t going to get done unless someone did it. That someone was supposed to be Paul.

Where the hell was he?

You tipped your head to the side, listened, but the flat was eerily still. No heavy heel-toe pacing in socks. No wobbly hums or tuneless whistles. No sounds of him moving cups in the kitchen just to make noise. You squinted down the hall. His bass was still here, leaning against the wall like a sentry, unwatched and unplayed, but Paul himself was absent.

You swore he said he’d mop. He’d said it so breezily, too. Waggled his fingers when you raised an eyebrow, like, “Relax, love, I’ve got it.” With that awful toothy grin of his.

That was three hours ago.

You sighed hard and rolled your sleeves up. Fine. Whatever. You’d mop the fucking floor.

And you did. First with righteous fury, then with quieter resolve. The living room first, where Paul had left behind a series of scuffed half-moons from dragging his boots off with one foot, and then the kitchen, the hallway, and finally the tiled bathroom floor, where you had to get down on your knees and scrub.

You tried not to question it too hard.

Eventually, your muscles eased. The rhythm of moving the mop back and forth grew soothing, the slap and drag of damp cotton against tile hypnotic. The scent of pine cleaner wrapped around your nose like a warm towel, and when you finally sank back into the couch, the bucket emptied and the mop leaning in the tub to dry, the flat felt good. Quiet. Clean. Peaceful.

Still no Paul.

You glanced at the clock. Five past six. The sun was starting to turn the windows gold, and you knew the warm light would get in his eyes wherever he was hiding. You exhaled, long-suffering. If he was passed out on the roof again, you were going to kill him.

You didn’t want to be annoyed. He was beautiful, and you were foolish for him. But there was something uniquely infuriating about doing chores alone while your supposed partner in grime had gone ghost.

The hallway echoed with your footsteps as you hunted. You swung open doors.

He wasn't even pretending to hide. He was just… gone.

You stood in the middle of the lounge, and blew out a slow breath. That’s when the front door clicked.

And in he walked.

Shirt half-buttoned, hair windblown, and wearing those obscenely tight trousers that made you question every life choice that had led you to fall for a man with such fashion sense. That ridiculous mustache framed a mouth too smug for its own good.

"‘Ello, dove," he said, grinning like a criminal. “Thought I’d nip out for a smoke and a paper. Ended up gettin’ a coffee. Didn’t think you’d be up yet."

You blinked. Then pointed at your bleach-stained shirt. “I’ve been up for hours. I've been up since you left.”

Paul blinked back at you innocently, then tilted his head as though just now noticing the domestic battleground behind you, cleaning supplies strewn, towels draped over chairs, the faint smell of vinegar hanging in the air like disappointment.

He winced. “...Bugger. We were cleanin’ today... weren't we?”

You threw a sponge at him. It hit his chest with a wet slap and slid down slowly, leaving a streak of lemon-scented shame across his buttons.

Paul looked down at it, then back up at you. “I deserved that,” he said seriously.

You walked past him, ignoring the way his fingers brushed your hip as you did.

You heard the smile even if you didn’t turn around to see it. He was probably standing there with his weight on one foot like he always did, hands in his pockets, mouth twitching as if resisting the urge to be cheeky. It was impossible to stay mad at him for long. But that didn’t mean you were about to let him off the hook.

Back in the kitchen, you grabbed the mop and planted it in his hands the moment he followed you in.

“Earn your keep, McCartney.”

He saluted you with the handle, spinning it dramatically like it was a rifle on parade.

He swished it across the floor once. Then again. After a third pass, he leaned on it like a cane and watched you lower yourself into a squat again to tackle the baseboards.

“Y’know,” he mused, eyes traveling lazily down your back, “this domestic life suits you. All bent over like that, muscles workin’. S’very...”

You looked up, catching him staring.

“Careful,” you warned, “flattery doesn’t do dishes.”

He leaned against the counter, shameless. “No, but the sight of you gettin’ sudsy in my t-shirt does somethin’ terrible to me. I’m only human.”

“You’re a lazy human,” you said, pointing at the floor.

But there was something in the air now, buzzing just under the surface, heat that had nothing to do with the steam rising from the sink.

It clung to you like humidity, pressed behind your ears, curled low in your belly, made your hands still against the damp towel you’d been wringing dry. Paul was still leaning with both palms flat on the counter, watching you with a look far too molten for a man who'd just started half-assedly mopping half the kitchen. That mouth of his parted slightly, his tongue wetting his lower lip like it was an unconscious tick, like he was tasting the idea of you.

And then he straightened. Slowly.

You knew that look.

Like he was about to say something clever, but every inch of him was taut, hungry, waiting for an opening in the air between you where he could slip in with his hands and tongue and teeth. He approached you with that lazy, rolling gait he always had when he’d just made up his mind to ruin something. Or someone.

You blinked, and his fingers were curling around your hips.

“I’ve been thinkin’,” he murmured, thumb brushing just under the hem of your shirt, not quite pushing up, just making sure you felt the potential of it. “This whole cleaning thing’s got me feelin’... productive.”

“You only mopped for a second.”

“And yet,” he said, dipping his mouth close to your ear, breath hot and low and intentional, “I’m all revved up like I just ran a marathon.”

You swallowed. He smelled like coffee and salt, faint sweat and stubborn male arousal. The kind that didn’t go away with willpower or a cold shower. The kind that thickened and settled in the gut, waited for permission.

“You’re unbelievable,” you muttered.

“I am,” he agreed, pressing closer, the shape of him unmistakable now, thick behind the zip of his trousers, pushing against your hip like punctuation. “But you still let me kiss you.”

He tilted your chin. And kissed you.

Slow at first. Thorough. Like he was trying to taste your day, the lemon soap and effort, the mild resentment still clinging to your molars. His hands spread across your waist, dragging you flush to him. You could feel how hard he was, insistent and needy, not cocky like usual. Not yet.

When you didn’t pull away, he groaned into your mouth, low and scratchy, his fingers kneading your back through your shirt like he’d been aching to touch you all day and this was his first sip of water after a sunstroke. One hand drifted, down, around, gripping the softness just above the waistband of your pants, squeezing there with a reverence that made your thighs twitch.

Then he pulled back to look at you, lips kiss-slick, breath shaking.

“You really shouldn’t clean in that shirt,” he said, eyes dropping to your chest. “It’s soft and tight in all the wrong ways. And it keeps ridin’ up when you bend over. I swear to god I nearly passed out when I saw your back just now.”

“You could’ve helped clean instead of perving.”

“Didn’t have the blood to spare,” he said, then grabbed your hand. “Come on.”

“Where-”

But he was already dragging you toward the bedroom. Not rushed, not forceful. Just determined. Like he’d waited long enough. The mop forgotten. The dishes unwashed. The world irrelevant except for your hand in his and the glint in his eye as he kicked the bedroom door shut behind you.

And then his mouth was on yours again, with less patience this time, tongue pushing past your lips, teeth grazing, his mustache catching faintly against your skin in a way that made your whole face feel kissed. He pressed you back until the backs of your knees hit the bed. You fell, and he followed, crawling over you with knees bracketing your hips, hands already at your waistband.

“Look at you,” he muttered, voice thick, northern vowels gone lazier now, drunk off lust and power, cock already straining against the zipper of those tight trousers like it couldn’t wait another second to be inside you. “All soft under me. Legs open. Knew you’d let me do this. Knew you’d be good for it.”

His fingers hooked the band of your pants and dragged them down with one long, deliberate pull, eyes locked on your hips, your belly, your thighs like he was memorizing how you looked without the clothes, like this was a ritual he couldn’t get tired of. One hand stayed at your waist, splayed wide over your stomach, thumb stroking lazy circles over your skin like it was his already.

“Christ,” he whispered, more to himself than to you. “You’re warm. All over. So fuckin’ soft, fuckin’ ready, aren’t you?”

“Paul…”

His head snapped up, curls falling into his eyes, and you could see it in his face, the shift. Obsessed. Ferocious in the quiet, focused way that only a man with a goal could be.

He leaned down and kissed your navel. Just a brush of lips. Then another. Then he lingered, eyes closed, like he could already feel the shape of himself inside you.

“Been thinkin’ about this all fuckin’ day,” he said, voice guttural. “You in this bed. On your back. And me…” His fingers tightened, one hand still palming your stomach. “Me makin’ it swell.”

Your pulse stuttered. The air went thick, cloying. There was no hiding from it now, not with the way his eyes were locked on you like you were prey, like you were purpose-built for his fantasies. You remembered it then, sudden and sharp, that very first time, when he’d come deep inside you and pulled out slow just to watch it drip. The way he’d said, ‘Wish I could leave it in you. Wish I could see what you’d look like full.’ He hadn’t meant just come. He hadn’t even pretended he did.

You whined, helpless beneath him. His mouth latched onto your nipple for a heartbeat before he pulled back and tugged your shirt off, tossing it somewhere behind him like it offended him for covering you.

His hands were on your hips now, holding you open, steadying himself like you might float away if he didn’t pin you. His thumbs dug in just enough to leave faint marks, and still that one hand kept drifting back to your stomach. Like he couldn’t resist it. Couldn’t help thinking about it. Dreaming about it rounding out.

“Bet you’d look beautiful carryin’,” he said, hand still spread over your belly like he was already picturing it, full and high and his.

He dipped lower again, mouth open over your inner thigh now, biting, then licking, then sucking like he meant to mark you there.

Your legs were trembling, open for him, aching for more, but Paul didn’t rush. Not yet. He was savouring. Drawing it out. Drawing you out.

“Know what I’d do?” he whispered against your thigh. “If you were carryin’? Wouldn’t stop touchin’ you. Wouldn’t leave your side. I’d fuck you soft every morning just to remind you it was mine that did it.”

“Paul-”

You breathed it more than said it, voice gone thin from all the blood rushing south, from the heat pooling in your gut, from the way he kissed so slow and sure that your body had already given in long before you could think to stop it. He didn’t answer, not out loud. Just lifted his head and looked at you, really looked.

And that was somehow worse.

His hair was already damp at the edges, little curls sticking to his temples from sweat and steam and tension. His mouth was red. Red from your skin. Red from wanting. He looked like he could ruin you without even trying, but he wasn’t in a rush.

His hand was still resting over your stomach, the weight of it grounding you like gravity, and his thumb was stroking slow, almost absent-minded circles. That simple touch had a tenderness to it that made your chest ache more than your cunt. Because it wasn’t just lust. It was something deeper, older. A quiet kind of claiming.

He didn’t have to say the words. You knew.

He was going to fuck you like he wanted something to stay.

“Look at you,” he murmured finally, voice rough and low like a secret rasped into a pillow. “Christ, you’re... fuckin’ beautiful.”

You reached up and cupped his face, thumb brushing his cheekbone, and he leaned into the touch like a man starved. Kissed your palm. Then your wrist. Then lowered his head to kiss your mouth again, slow and open and deep.

And this time, when he shifted to press inside you, it wasn’t frantic. It was worship.

Except, he still had his trousers on.

You blinked, dazed but coherent enough to frown slightly. Your legs were spread open for him, the backs of your knees already bracketing his hips, your cunt soaked and aching, but that familiar brush of fabric, that zipper dragging ever-so-faintly along your inner thigh, no.

“Paul,” you murmured, voice hoarse with want, hand drifting down to tap the back of his thigh, “you’ve still got your pants on.”

He paused, blinked once, and looked down like he was just now registering that he’d been trying to fuck you still mostly clothed. The trousers were halfway unbuttoned but still clinging to his hips. You could see the outline of him, pressed painfully against the inside of his boxers, twitching like it was furious to be ignored.

Paul exhaled a small laugh, breathless and crooked. “Jesus. You’ve got me all turned ‘round.”

He sat back on his heels between your thighs, hands moving to his fly like his fingers were fumbling through water. His cock strained against the fabric, the bulge obscene, the damp spot darkening at the tip where precome had already soaked through. You reached forward, tracing it with one finger, and he hissed.

“Don’t,” he said, voice strangled.

“Can’t help it.”

“You will if I finish in my pants like a teenager.”

You watched, breath catching, as he undid the last button, tugged the zipper down slow. His cock sprang out almost too fast, flushed, wet at the tip. Your thighs twitched in response, cunt clenching down on air in protest. He shoved his trousers down past his knees with a grunt, leaving them tangled there, not bothering to kick them off. It was lazy and impatient and utterly him.

Then he leaned back over you, cock in hand, guiding it to your slick, dripping entrance.

And this time, really, it was frantic. He pushed in.

Slow. Deep. Intent.

Paul fucked you like he was pouring himself into something that would keep him, something that would hold. Every thrust was deliberate, hips rolling in a rhythm built not for frenzy but for permanence, the heavy weight of him dragging along your soaked walls like he was trying to etch himself inside.

His hand never left your belly. He kept it there, pressing firm, fingers spread as if he could feel the shape of his cock from the outside, like he needed to touch both sides of you at once. Each slow drive forward made his palm rise with the motion, and he let out this soft, ragged sound, half groan, half reverent exhale, every time your body gave and took him deeper.

“God,” he breathed, voice unraveling. “You’re takin’ me so good.”

You moaned, legs hooked tighter around his hips, your nails raking lines down his back without thinking, just needing to grab something, to ground yourself against the molten stretch of him. The sound it drew from him, low and desperate, was almost pained.

He fucked you deeper.

You felt him shift, tilt his hips just so, and suddenly the head of his cock dragged against that sweet, aching spot inside you that made your mouth fall open.

He felt it. And he did it again. And again. And again.

Your back arched, hands flying to his shoulders, and he kissed you, sloppy, needy, tongue dragging slow over yours as he rolled his hips in deeper, deeper, until your breath came in choked little sobs and the wet sounds of your bodies filled the space between every half-whispered curse.

“Listen to that,” he rasped, mouth trailing down to your throat. “Fuckin’ soaked for me. You feel that? How much you’re giving me?”

You whimpered, and he laughed, quiet, ruined, so goddamn smug it made your thighs shake.

“Oh, I know what this is,” he murmured, nuzzling the underside of your jaw. “You want it. Want me to fuck you slow so it stays. Let it fill you up real nice. Hold it.”

Your whole body pulsed in response.

He ground in again, hips flush, and stayed there, buried.

“Say it,” he whispered, tongue dragging across your neck. “Say you want it.”

“I want it,” you breathed, panting.

“Yeah?” he pressed, voice hot in your ear, hips circling so his cock ground right against your most sensitive spot. “Want me to come inside? Stay there, warm and heavy and full for hours?”

You nodded, frantic.

He started to move again.

Slower. More purposeful.

And deeper.

He kept that pace, deep, grinding thrusts that hit so far inside it made your whole body curl forward against him, like your cunt was trying to pull him further in. Your legs wrapped tighter. Your breath stuttered. Your eyes rolled back.

He watched every second of it.

“Look at you,” he muttered, half-delirious, dragging his hand up your thigh, guiding your knee up until your pelvis tilted just right. “Takin’ me like you’re meant to. Built for this. This cunt’s made for me.”

He thrust hard then, and you cried out, nails digging into his arms.

“Shh,” he soothed, slowing again. “I got you. Not gonna stop. Not ‘til you’re full. Not ‘til you can feel it sittin’ right here-”

His hand pressed firm over your belly again, thumb stroking your skin, and that image hit you like lightning, his come staying, thick and hot and heavy, settling deep inside, the idea of it sticking. Of catching.

You moaned, loud and desperate, hips lifting to meet his next thrust.

“Y’like that?” he breathed. “Fuckin’ love the thought of it, don’t you? Being all messy after, too full to stand up. Leakin’ all down your thighs. But it won’t matter, will it?”

His rhythm faltered, the start of a tremble taking hold of his body.

“‘Cause I’m gonna give you so much,” he groaned, voice cracking, cock pulsing inside you already, “you’ll feel it for days.”

You came hard.

It hit fast, like a wave crashing up through your belly, pulsing out through your legs and spine, stealing the breath from your lungs. You clamped down around him, tight and slick and needy, crying out his name like it was the only word left in your body. Paul choked on a moan, hips jerking as he tried to keep fucking through it, but your cunt clenched so tight, so perfect, that he couldn’t last.

He gasped, face buried in your neck, hands fisting in the sheets beside your head.

And then he was coming.

He pushed in hard and held, cock throbbing, hips trembling, chest heaving as his orgasm tore through him. You felt it flooding you, thick and hot and so much, so much, like he was trying to make your body take all of it. His whole frame shuddered with each pulse of it, soft, ragged groans muffled against your skin as he emptied himself deep inside you.

It felt endless.

When it finally stilled, when his hips went slack and his breath turned to soft panting, he didn’t move. Didn’t even try.

His cock was still twitching faintly inside you. Still hard, still there, still keeping every drop where it belonged.

Paul kissed your jaw. Your cheek. The corner of your mouth.

Then he looked down at your belly again. Laid his hand there, slow and heavy. Let it rest.

His palm splayed wide, fingers gently tracing the curve of your skin, as if he were trying to feel it shift, feel it take. His breath had evened out, but the weight of him over you, around you, inside you hadn’t lessened. He was still nestled deep, cock softening only slightly, keeping the heat of him sealed where he’d spent it. And that hand... it stayed there. Possessive. Quietly reverent. Like he was afraid to take it away in case something might spill.

His thumb moved in slow circles, barely brushing back and forth, just over the center of your belly. Your skin twitched under the warmth of it, over-sensitive, but you didn’t ask him to stop. Because it didn’t feel like touching. It felt like marking.

His eyes flicked up, lashes damp and heavy. Still dazed, but focused. That rare Paul look, the one that usually came only with a guitar in hand or your name on his lips.

“Y’doin’ alright?” he asked softly, thumb pausing.

You hummed. Tired. Full. Wrecked. But yes.

His smile was small but real. One of those lazy, lopsided things that said mine without saying anything at all.

He leaned down and pressed his lips to the space just beneath his hand. Not your mouth. Not your neck. Not even your breast. Your belly. One kiss. Then another. And another.

He stayed there, mouthing silent, worshipful things against your skin, and the tension in your thighs curled up tight again without warning. You shifted, breath catching as you felt him twitching inside you, softening slowly, but not enough to keep him from stirring again. Still buried deep. Still wanting.

Paul pulled back slightly, just far enough to see your face.

Then he smiled.

That look.

“Think we should go again,” he said, casual as tea on a Tuesday. Like he wasn’t still inside you. Like you weren’t still dripping full of him. Like your legs weren’t trembling from the last orgasm, still twitching each time his cock shifted even a fraction.

You blinked at him. “Are you serious?”

He kissed your jaw, then nosed against your cheek like a cat.

“Reckon I didn’t get it all the first time. Just bein’ thorough.”

You stared.

taglist: @sharksausages, @wavvytin, @wimpyvamps, @finallyforgotten, @lennongirlieee, @alanangels, @wisepainterprince, @emz2092

[wordsofelie]

🍧just like that

bokuto koutarou x f!reader

words count: 1.2k

When you first met Bokuto, he was a teenager. Loud, awkward around girls, convinced he could win a fight against a bear if it came down to it. The kind that devoured bowls of rice bigger than his stomach and laughed like he was the only one in the room.

Still, you fell in love with him. It was in the way he was too honest with his emotions. In the way he treated strangers like friends and teammates like family. In the way he saw the world—great, kind, infinite.

You started dating in the final semester of your last year of high school. He asked you out on the festival day.

“I like your hair like that.” He declared out of the blue even though you were carrying heavy boxes. Your hair was up in a ponytail, and there was sweat dripping from your forehead. Your heart skipped a beat, and at this moment, you knew that if you turned him down, you would regret it for the rest of your life.  

He left for Osaka a few months after, while you stayed in Tokyo. Long distance was never a problem, not when the person on the other end always made sure to finish his calls with sweet words and loud ‘I love yous’. Despite starting his professional career and becoming a promising player,  Bokuto was the best boyfriend you could ask for.

Ten years have passed since then.

There have been highs and lows for sure, but nothing dramatic. You remember a few mismatched expectations, a handful of miscommunications, but that’s all. You moved in together two years ago and, for the most part, it had been easy. Soft. Full of delicious meals, long mornings in bed, shared clothes, and the certainty that this is what you want forever.

Simply perfect. Well—except for the past month.

You can’t say when or even how it started. Maybe it was your new job that drained you more than you expected. Or maybe it was Bokuto’s frustration after losing the world championship. Or maybe it was both.

Usually, you’d say you were each other’s anchors. Steady and always together. But lately, you’ve felt like you were tugging away, and at times you even wondered if you weren’t going in complete different directions.

You never imagined you'd really fight with Bokuto one day. Yes, he could be clumsy—mixing whites and colours in the laundry, deleting tax emails by mistake, showing up an hour late to medical appointments (even though you wrote it down on the fridge in bright letters!). But those things meant nothing compared to all the joy he gave you; those could even be endearing.

But what happened today wasn’t endearing.

You snapped for something you can’t even pinpoint now. He yelled back. You called him an asshole, and he slammed the front door on his way out.

You waited for him to come back only to find yourself alone for the last four or five hours. Tonight’s meal has turned cold, and you miss him now.

You’ve never gone this long without fixing things. The only times you didn’t hear from him for more than an hour were when he was having a game, or when he was on the plane. Never because you were mad at each other.

You don’t realise you’ve bitten your lips so much, your mouth tastes like metal. You’re slumped on the couch in his hoodie with a melting tub of ice cream on the coffee table. A thought goes through your mind, telling you how cliché and desperate you must look. It’s almost laughable. You’re even watching some k-drama about a girl chasing her childhood friend who doesn’t know she loves him.

“She should have told him,” you groan at the TV like an old lady getting angry at the news. “Before he left.”

You think you might cry at some point, for the fight or the silence or the fatigue that you have both been enduring. And you regret every word you said to him. Gosh, if only you could rewind the last hours. You never used to be so vulnerable, so raw with your feelings. You were the kind to keep everything locked tight, but Bokuto cracked you open over the years—gently, patiently. How are you supposed to feel better without him?

The door opens and it startles you.

You fumble for the remote to turn off the TV, but in the rush, you knock over your tub of ice cream. It drips down your jumper.

“Shit,” you whisper, pressing a hand to the stain.

“Oh—wait, I’ll…find something.” Bokuto’s voice sounds like he has been crying.

He kicks off his shoes and disappears into the kitchen. You hear the clatter of a drawer, the rush of the tap, then his hurried footsteps as he returns with a sponge.

He drops to his knees beside you. You catch a trail of waterdrops behind him, following the path he took. The sponge is the wrong one—this one is meant for scrubbing dishes, not cotton—but you don’t correct him. You just watch the way his hands tremble slightly, how his brows pull together in worry.

“It’s fine now Kou,” you tell him.

You pull the jumper over your head and toss it aside. He tries not to look at you, but fails. His cheeks turn red at your almost bare chest. You find it cute, the fact that, after nearly a decade, he still gets flustered like it’s your first summer together.

You’re not sure if you want to laugh or cry again.

So instead, you clear your throat, and he finally lifts his head to meet your eyes.

One of you has to talk first, yet you can’t seem to collect your thoughts to form a sentence, an apology. You feel stupid, so immature. How do people usually make up with each other? How do they regain one’s trust? And how are you supposed to show him how much he matters to you when you’ve let him down. All of a sudden, everything seems incredibly complex, too complicated—

“I like your hair like that,” he admits.

Your brain stops. The sentence is all it takes for your muscles to release. You move an inch towards him and fall into his arms; he steadies himself, and hugs you back—tight and warmly. His hand finds the back of your head, burying into your hair (messy, up in a quickly made ponytail).

“I’m sorry for calling you an asshole,” you whisper.

“And I’m sorry for leaving,” he says as he presses his lips to your temple. “I don’t ever want to leave like that again.”

“You better not,” you murmur with a pout.

Of course, making up with him is that simple. That evident. Like it’s always with him. How could you forget?

“What were you watching?” He asks after a few minutes.

You try to act as if you weren’t hooked on the series, as if you hadn’t been binge-watching the entire season. “Ahh… just some stupid k-drama.”

He reaches for the remote to turn it on again, “I’ll watch with you.”

“Wait, I’ll go warm up the food first.”

He smiles, and you kiss the corner of his lips. Just like that.

a/n: i went to ed sheeran concert and the song tenerife sea inspired me haha

[stellaspectral]

Sorry if the request is cringy but eh anyways asking doesn't hurt 😭 so what about rise donnie with reader who's completely overwhelmed with university finals, not understanding a single topica so donnie runs to the rescue and helps them out to study so kimda study date vibes? And also your writing is just *chefs kiss* 🤌 🫶

A/N: No worries, anon; this request isn’t cringey at all.

Though I wasn’t sure if you wanted Donnie and the reader to already be together or not. But I decided to write as if they’re friends, they like each other, but haven’t quite gotten to the point where they’ve confessed yet.

And thanks for the compliment! I hope you like this 💖

Not Just a Study Thing (fluff)

💜 ROTTMNT Donatello/Gender Neutral Reader 💜

CWs: Fluff, academic stress, and anxiety/feeling overwhelmed. All characters are aged-up.

Your dorm room is a disaster zone of discarded notes, empty coffee cups, and the growing weight of panic pressing in from every corner. The text in the book before you blurs into an indecipherable soup of academic jargon. It might as well all be alien hieroglyphics, you think, as your head drops to the open page.

“I don’t get it,” you mutter into the chapter on Advanced Quantum Thermodynamics. “I don’t get any of it.”

A groan escapes your lips as you try not to cry about the fact that the only thing you’ve successfully memorized is how close you are to a breakdown.

You’ve been wearing the same hoodie for three days. Beside you, a half-eaten bag of chips lay discarded next to piles of notes where your highlighters have bled through three pages. And you’ve re-read the same paragraph from your textbook five times in the past fifteen minutes—and it still feels like it’s written in ancient Greek.

You sit up, blinking hard, as if sheer willpower might make the equations on the page finally make sense. You reach for your phone, thinking maybe a quick scroll through social media will take the edge off. But the moment your screen lights up, a notification blares across the top: It’s a text from Donnie.

D 🐢💜: You still breathing?

You stare at the screen, thumbs hesitating, before replying:

You: Barely. I think academia is trying to murder me.

He doesn’t reply immediately. You slump further into your chair, your back aching from your poor posture resulting from hours hunched over textbooks. Just as you consider tossing your phone across the room, it vibrates again.

D 🐢💜: Need a study savior?

You don’t hesitate, your fingers flying over the screen before your brain catches up.

You: Honestly? I’m dying, Donnie. HELP.

D 🐢💜: Hang tight. Study hero incoming.

Your room’s a mess, but you don’t panic about the state of it; Donnie’s probably seen worse, considering he lives with three brothers and a father who’d rather be doing anything else but acknowledging his surroundings. So you decide to crawl into your bed and take a nap.

Eventually, there’s a familiar tap on your window. You rub your eyes, groggily rising from your cocoon of tangled blankets, and shuffle to the window. You peek through the blinds, seeing Donnie standing on the fire escape, and you slide the window up.

He enters, surveying the chaos with a raised brow as you flop back onto your bed. “Wow. This place could qualify as a Level 3 Disaster Zone. Should I call FEMA or just start a controlled burn?”

You half-heartedly throw a pillow at him, which he sidesteps effortlessly. “I told you. Academia is trying to kill me.”

He sets his tablet on your desk, sweeping aside an avalanche of loose papers. “Then allow me to counterattack. Let’s dismantle this quantum nightmare one equation at a time.”

Your heart skips at the sight of him. You pretend it’s the stress. Or the overabundance of caffeine. “I seriously don’t understand half this stuff,” you admit.

He pulls up your rickety desk chair, settling into it with that calm confidence he always exudes when he’s in problem-solving mode. “That’s okay. Understanding is kind of my thing. You just need to survive. I’ll do the rest.” He sits his backpack on the floor and unzips it, pulling out your favorite snack before tossing it to you.

You barely catch it, fumbling with it for a moment, which further deepens the flush on your cheeks. “T-thank you,” you stammer, trying to force a grin to cover up your awkwardness.

Donnie gives you a smirk, the kind that makes your stomach flutter. “You’re welcome,” he says casually, like he didn’t just show up like a knight in purple armor. “Now,” he claps his hands once and cracks open the textbook you abandoned, “let’s take a deep breath and start with the basics. Quantum Thermo’s just spooky physics with a heat problem. We can handle spooky.”

You move closer to the edge of the bed, still clutching the snack he gave you. “I’ve read this chapter like a dozen times. It’s all just … my brain going ‘nope.’”

He hums thoughtfully, scanning the page like it’s a casual morning comic strip. “Your brain’s probably doing the academic version of the blue screen of death.” He meets your eyes, tilting his head with a small smirk. “We’re gonna reboot it.”

You sigh, your shoulders slumping. “Can I just throw the whole thing into the metaphorical dumpster and walk away?”

“Tempting,” he replies with a grin. “But no. Come on, scoot over.”

You blink. “What?”

He points to the spare chair in the corner of the room. “I’m not letting you spiral alone.”

Your heart beats a little faster. But you grab the chair, put it beside his, and sit. He nudges your knee gently with his, just enough to ground you in the moment.

“Alright,” he says, eyes flicking from the textbook to your overwhelmed expression. “Step one: we’re not going to panic. Step two: we’re going to make this make sense. And step three, we’re going to keep you from exploding.”

You let out a weak laugh—more of an exhale, really—but it still feels like the first real breath you’ve taken all day. “You forgot step four,” you say, voice quiet.

“What’s step four?”

You glance at him. “Not letting me fail.”

He softens—and you think there’s something unspoken in the way he looks at you. “Not a chance,” he murmurs.

He slides the textbook a little closer to the two of you, flipping to the beginning of the chapter. As he reads, he grabs a nearby pen and starts scribbling on a clean sheet of paper. His handwriting is absurdly neat, his diagrams actually helpful instead of intimidating. He talks you through a problem slowly, explaining it in the most Donnie way possible, with the strangest metaphors.

And somehow, weirdly, it helps.

“Okay,” he says, pushing the paper toward you, “now you try.”

You stare at the problem, then at him. “What if I mess it up?”

“You will,” he says simply. “That’s part of it. Just give it a shot.”

So you do. Hesitantly at first, mumbling through each step, but he doesn’t interrupt. He just watches, chin propped in one hand, the tiniest smile tugging at the corner of his mouth. When you finally finish, expecting him to correct you, he just nods.

“See? You didn’t spontaneously combust. Proud of you.”

You roll your eyes, but it’s hard not to smile. “Thanks, Donnie.”

He shrugs, but his tone is soft when he replies. “You don’t have to thank me. You’re important to me. I show up for my people.”

That makes your breath catch a little. You glance down at the page again, pretending to be more interested in what’s on it than the heat rising to your cheeks. You look at him, wondering if he realizes how easily he disarms your panic just by being here.

The study session stretches on. More problems, more snacks and caffeine—and more of Donnie casually dropping little encouragements like they aren’t melting your brain in the most pleasant of ways. Every time you falter, he’s there with a nudge in the right direction. Every time you get something right, he lights up like it’s a personal victory.

At some point, your head ends up resting on his shoulder as he reads out a confusing section. He doesn’t move. Doesn’t comment. Just shifts slightly so you’re more comfortable. You close your eyes for a moment, letting yourself breathe in his smell.

At some point, he pauses mid-sentence and glances at you. “Hey.”

“Hm?”

He gives you a crooked smile. “Next time you’re drowning in finals stress, call me before you go DEFCON 1, okay?”

You hum your agreement, not trusting your voice. His shoulder is warm beneath your cheek. He shifts again, careful not to jostle you too much, and continues reading. Eventually, you sit up, blinking yourself back into focus. “Sorry,” you mumble, rubbing at your face. “Didn’t mean to drool on you.”

“Not the first time someone’s fallen asleep during my explanation on thermodynamics,” Donnie says, deadpan. “But definitely the first time someone’s done it on my shoulder, though.”

You snort a laugh. “I think I needed that,” you admit. “The nap, the help. The … you.”

“Anytime,” he says. “Also, I believe you’re understanding the material now, at least.”

“Only because you’re basically a genius tutor with the patience of a saint.”

He chuckles softly, adjusting his arm so it rests lightly around your back. “Nah. I just care. A lot.”

You tilt your head, meeting his gaze. You open your mouth to say something—maybe something brave, maybe something vulnerable—but he beats you to it.

“You’re not alone in this, okay? Finals, stress, life—you’ve got me. Always.”

Your brain fizzles as you attempt to process his words.You stare at him, and for the first time today—maybe all week—your chest doesn’t feel so tight. “Donnie …” you start, your voice embarrassingly soft.

He raises a brow. “Yeah?”

You hesitate. You don’t know how to say ‘I think I like you’ without sounding like your brain short-circuited. So you settle for something safer. “I don’t think I could’ve made it through today without you.”

He exhales a quiet laugh. “Well, good thing you don’t have to.” Then, he clears his throat, like maybe this—this closeness—is affecting him just as much. “We can keep going. Or take a break. Your call.” His gaze is steady, but there’s a softness in his eyes you’ve only glimpsed before in rare, unguarded moments.

You take a deep breath, attempting to rein in your scattered thoughts. The responsible part of you, the one that actually wants to pass this monstrous final, screams, Study! The other part, the one currently replaying, ‘You’ve got me. Always’on an endless loop, just wants to stay near him, whatever you’re doing.

“Let’s … let’s keep going,” you decide. “Just a bit more.”

“Excellent.” He taps the textbook with a pen. “Now, where were we?”

His fingers trace lines in the book, then sketch new, surprisingly clear diagrams on the notepad. As you both lean over the limited desk space, his hand brushes yours occasionally. Each accidental touch sends a little jolt through you.

“Okay,” he says, after patiently breaking down a concept so dense you’d previously thought it was written in a dead language. “Your turn. This problem here.” He points to a question that, just a few hours ago, would have made you want to curl up under your blanket and weep.

You take a deep breath, pick up the pen, and look at the problem. Then you work through it, verbalizing your thought process. Donnie listens patiently, offering encouraging nods, interjecting with ‘mhm’ and ‘Good, what’s next?’ when you pause, his gaze focused and supportive.

Eventually, you reach an answer. You stare at it, then quickly double-check your work. “Is … is this right?” you ask.

Donnie leans in, his shoulder pressing against yours as he scans your calculations before he pulls back slightly. “Not only is it right,” he declares, his voice laced with satisfaction, “it’s elegantly solved. See? I told you you could do it.”

A wave of relief, so potent it’s almost dizzying, washes over you. You can’t stop the grin on your face, feeling ridiculously light. “Only because of you.”

He smiles, then glances at his phone, then back at you. “We’ve actually made some serious headway. How are you feeling? Brain still intact?”

“Surprisingly, yes. And a lot less like it’s about to liquefy and ooze out of my ears.” You look at the textbook, then at your notes filled with his neat handwriting and your own, now slightly more confident, scrawls. Then you look at him. “Thank you, Donnie. Seriously. You didn’t just help me study; you saved my sanity.”

“Anytime,” he says again, his voice softer this time, imbued with a sincerity that makes your chest feel warm. He gathers his things slowly, packing his tablet.

You watch him, a pang of something—disappointment?—hitting you squarely in the chest as he prepares to leave. The methodical zipping of his backpack is a mournful sound in the sudden quiet of your room. A knot forms in your stomach.

You don’t want him to go.

Before you can censor yourself, the words slip out. “Are you heading out already?”

He pauses, hand still on the bag, and turns fully towards you. “That was the plan,” he says, a hint of teasing in his voice. “However, we can adjust mission parameters. Have a counter-proposal?”

Your heart gives a hopeful little leap. “Well,” you begin, feeling a blush creep up your neck, “we did just conquer quantum thermodynamics … or at least, survive it. I thought maybe … that deserves a small celebration?”

“I was gonna head out to give you time to rest, but …” The corner of his mouth twitches upwards. “What did you have in mind?”

“Just … stay. Please.”

His hand, which had been resting on the zipper of his backpack, drops to his side. That one word—please—seems to land somewhere deep in him. His tone softens again. “Okay,” he murmurs. “Yeah. I can do that.”

You go over to your bed and sit. Donnie takes the hint, settling beside you. He doesn’t lean too close—not yet—but his presence fills the small space between you with something quiet and steady. For a few moments, there’s just silence. Then you lean back slightly, your shoulder brushing his. He doesn’t move away.

Instead, he shifts, easing both of you down so that you’re both laying beside each other on the mattress. You rest your head on his plastron while his fingers trail slow patterns along the base of your spine.

“I could fall asleep like this,” you say, voice drowsy, words laced with more honesty than you usually allow yourself.

“Good,” he replies. “I was kind of hoping you would.”

You look up at him. His expression is soft, open in a way he rarely shows. His arm wraps tighter around you as you settle in again, heart beating steadily beneath your ear.

“Donnie?”

“Hmm?”

You hesitate, then, “This … isn’t just a study thing, is it?”

He doesn’t answer right away—but you feel his breath hitch. He swallows, hand stilling briefly on your back. “No,” he says, voice barely a whisper. “Not for me.”

You nod against his chest, your fingers curling lightly into the fabric of his hoodie. “Good,” you murmur. “Me neither.”

As he begins to nod off, Donnie presses his chin lightly to the top of your head. “Sweet dreams, genius,” he whispers, brushing his thumb gently against your shoulder. “I’ve got you.”

You’re too exhausted to retort.

It isn’t long before you fall asleep like this—in his arms, your breath evening out into the soft, rhythmic sound of sleep.

He watches you for a long moment, his gaze tender. The worried lines that had etched themselves onto your forehead hours ago have smoothed out, replaced by a peacefulness he finds himself ridiculously fond of. Carefully, so as not to disturb you, he adjusts his hold, nestling you a fraction closer.

Mission accomplished, he thinks, not just the studying, but this too. This quiet moment, this feeling of you, safe and resting in his arms.

His own eyelids soon feel heavy. He rests his cheek against the top of your head again, your hair soft against his skin. His thoughts, usually racing, slow. With a final, contented sigh, his own breathing deepens, mirroring yours.

A soft smile graces his features as he, too, drifts off to sleep.

[spidermanstealyohoe]

real life || t.c.

“can't stay forever this way, i’ll break i won't be the same” - real life by the marias

calling u back {1} | hold it together {3}

__________

pairings: tara carpenter x gn reader

summary: in which tara wants you bad but you don’t give in because you’re not ready for commitment

warnings: language, angst, heavy drinking r

__________

__________

you barely remembered the ride back to the apartment.

just the muffled sound of chad nervously drumming his fingers on the window, ethan clearing his throat every five seconds, and tara breathing too quietly in the seat in front of you. mindy drove like she had something to prove, gripping the wheel like it was your neck she wanted to wring.

the weed and alcohol swirled together in your veins, buzzing behind your eyes, making the world soft and spinny. when you finally stumbled through the front door, everything felt heavier like even gravity had turned against you.

tara didn’t wait around.

she went straight to her room with her head down, not even sparing you a glance. she shut the door with a click that might as well have been a slam. you flinched like she’d hit you.

the others filtered off quietly. anika walking towards the living room and chad following as he flopped on the couch. ethan muttered something about water. but you?

you just stood there, walking towards the kitchen as you leaned against the counter like it was the only thing holding you upright.

mindy didn’t say anything at first. she just watched you.

then she sighed, pulled her hoodie off, and crossed the room until she was standing in front of you arms folded, jaw clenched, eyes sharp.

“you’re lucky she loves you,” she said finally. “because if it were up to me, i’d have left your dumb ass at that party.”

you scoffed, blinking slow. “don’t need a lecture right now, mindy.”

“yeah, you do.” her tone cut clean. “because you’re fucked out of your mind and still trying to convince yourself that you don’t care when everyone in this apartment knows you do.”

you rubbed your hands over your face. the high was getting muddy, dizzying, like a dream you couldn’t wake up from.

“it’s not that simple,”

“it is.”

she stepped closer. “you love her. she loves you. that’s the whole story but you’d rather drown it in weed and vodka than just admit you’re scared.”

you stared past her. your chest was too tight. the kitchen light was too bright. everything felt too much.

“you don’t know what it’s like in my head,” you said quietly. “you don’t know what loving someone costs me.”

mindy’s face softened. just a little.

“no i don’t but i know what it’s costing her.” she pointed toward tara’s room. “she’s in there thinking she’s not enough. thinking she’s the problem and all because you’re too afraid to try.”

you closed your eyes. your throat burned. mindy didn’t yell. she didn’t push. she just stepped back, letting her words settle.

“you don’t have to be perfect,” she said. “but you do have to be honest. and if you’re not ready to love her, fine. but don’t make her wait around like she’s your backup plan because she’s not.”

you didn’t move. you just breathed. shallow. uneven. mindy waited a beat, then turned and walked toward her room, leaving you alone in the kitchen still leaning, still too far gone, still breaking in a way you didn’t know how to fix.

and behind that closed door, tara curled into herself under the covers, tears hot against her cheeks, whispering your name like a prayer you never meant to answer.

but god, she still loved you. even now. even like this. and maybe that was the cruelest part of all.

the dorm smelled like cheap air freshener, leftover pizza, and denial. you’d made it back with chad and ethan a few hours after mindy’s lecture. no one said anything on the uber back to the dorm—just quiet footsteps and streetlights stretching shadows over everything. your buzz hadn’t worn off. if anything, it got worse. heavier. louder. like your thoughts were echoing inside your skull.

now, you stood in front of the tiny liquor cabinet you and chad had irresponsibly stocked at the beginning of the semester, pulling out whatever bottle your fingers landed on first.

rum.

vodka.

tequila.

didn’t matter. you unscrewed the cap and downed it like water.

your throat burned, your eyes watered, and your chest ached but that ache wasn’t the alcohol’s fault. it was hers. it was always her.

behind you, chad looked up from the floor, where he and ethan were half-heartedly watching a basketball game neither of them actually cared about.

“yo,” he said cautiously. “maybe slow down a little?” you ignored him. took another swig. this one longer.

“you good?” ethan asked, voice small, nervous. he never knew what to say when you got like this.

you laughed under your breath—dry and humorless.

“never better.”

“dude,” chad stood up now, walking over slowly. “is this about tara? because—”

“don’t.”

you didn’t need him saying her name. not when you were already drowning in it.

you reached for another bottle this one bourbon and took a gulp before the last one could even settle. the room spun, and maybe that was the point.

“you know,” you said bitterly, gesturing vaguely with the bottle, “it’s crazy how someone can look at you like you hung the stars, and you still find a way to ruin it.”

“i’m not built for that lovey dovey crap,” you muttered, leaning your head back against the wall. “she wants fairy tales and hand-holding and… and fuckin’ good morning texts. i don’t know how to be that.”

“she didn’t ask you to be perfect,” chad said, quieter now. “she just wanted you. the real you.”

you scoffed. “the real me? this is the real me… this is.” you lifted the bottle, the amber liquid sloshing around like your insides.

“the real me walks away when people get too close.”

silence.

for a moment, all you could hear was the announcer on the TV and the dull hum of your heart trying not to shatter.

“she still loves you, you know.” it was ethan this time. soft. careful.

you paused.

you didn’t say anything, but your fingers clenched a little tighter around the neck of the bottle.

of course she did. that was the problem.

you took one more long drink, hoping the burn would be enough to erase her name from your chest but it wasn’t because no matter how much you drank, no matter how much you ran,

tara carpenter was the one thing you couldn’t black out. and deep down, buried under every defense you built, you didn’t want to.

__________

the apartment was quiet in that eerie, sad kind of way. not peaceful just… heavy. like the walls were holding their breath.

tara sat curled up on her bed, wrapped in her comforter like armor, her eyes puffy and red-rimmed from crying harder than she ever wanted to admit. the room was dark, lit only by the dim glow of the streetlight bleeding through her blinds. the party dress she’d worn hours ago still clung to her like a ghost of a night that went completely wrong.

mindy and anika were still in the living room as mindy was pacing back and fourth. sam had come out of the shower ten minutes ago, towel-drying her hair, completely unaware of what had gone down. her brows were furrowed when she saw mindy pacing now like a frantic man looking for food.

“what happened?” sam asked flatly.

mindy didn’t sugarcoat. “your sister’s heart just got shattered. that’s what and y/n didn’t say anything just let her fall watched her do it.”

anika tried to cut in softly, ���mindy-“

sam’s jaw clenched. instantly. “what do you mean they just let her—” mindy started to explain everything that had gone down.

meanwhile, tara shut her eyes and buried her face deeper into the blanket. she hated that she couldn’t stop. hated that her chest still ached every time she thought of you just standing there… not following… not even trying and still god, she still wanted you.

her door creaked open.

“tara?” sam’s voice was soft, cautious. tara didn’t respond just sniffled and shifted further into herself.

she felt the mattress dip as her sister sat beside her. gentle fingers brushed through her hair, and for a second, tara let herself melt into the contact something safe, something familiar. but it wasn’t what she needed.

not really.

“mindy told me what happened,” sam said. “talk to me. please.”

tara shook her head.

“i don’t want to talk.”

“okay.” sam was patient. she always was when it mattered. “can i just sit with you then?”

silence.

and then, barely above a whisper: “i didn’t mean for it to go like that.”

sam waited.

“i dragged some random guy upstairs, just to make them jealous,” tara confessed, her voice cracking like glass. “and they didn’t even blink. they didn’t care.”

sam’s hand stilled in her hair. “i’m sure that’s not true.”

“it is.”

tara sat up now, wiping her cheeks with the sleeve of her hoodie. “they looked right through me. like i didn’t mean anything. like i was just… a girl at a party.”

sam’s brows furrowed, her chest clenching. she didn’t know what to say didn’t want to say the wrong thing.

“you’re not that kind of person, tara.”

“i know.” her voice broke. “but i love them. i love them so bad it hurts. and they just keep pushing me away. and no matter how much it breaks me, i still… want them.” her lips trembled, and her hands twisted in the blanket.

“i only want them.”

sam stared at her little sister her brave, stubborn, beautifully guarded little sister and felt something helpless crawl into her throat. she hated this. hated that someone had the power to do this to tara. hated that tara had let them in that deep.

but what she hated most… was that she could see it too. how much you meant to her. how much you didn’t even realize it.

“if they’re the reason you’re hurting like this,” sam said carefully, “maybe they’re not—”

“don’t say it,” tara cut in, shaking her head. “don’t. they’re not bad. they’re just scared. i know it.” and that’s what wrecked sam the most.

that even through the tears, even through the silence, and the bruised hope. tara still defended you. still chose you.

tara still wanted you even now. especially now. and whether you deserved it or not that kind of love didn’t just go away.

[colouredbyd]

Off-Script

chapter 1: scene 11, take 1

celebrity!sirius black x celebrity!reader

synopsis: in which one audition changes everything, and you find yourself growing up in the spotlight—alongside sirius black, a boy with a voice like smoke and a name the world won’t forget. the fame is loud, the rumors louder, and somewhere between the endless cameras and the harsh media, the lines begin to blur: between who you are and who you’re expected to be.

and, along the way, everything goes off-script.

warnings: anxiety, nervousness, cringe movie scripts (i tried my best), panic attacks, overthinking, and emotional vulnerability. disclaimer: this chapter features minors as characters since it’s intended as a flashback to how they first met; in later chapters, the characters will be older and adults.

wc: 4.8k next chapter

“Hi, I’m James Potter.”

Your head snaps up, eyes meeting a pair of round glasses and a grin so effortless it almost annoys you.

He’s tall, charming in that boyish way that makes you think he’s never had to try too hard at anything. And he’s holding out a hand like the two of you haven’t been sitting in the same holding room for the past hour, like you didn’t just watch him high-five every casting assistant and crack a joke with the lighting guy and befriend the green-screen lady.

You blink, gather your breath, and take his hand. “I’m Y/N—” 

You hesitate for half a second, but it’s more instinct than insecurity. 

“You look nervous,” he says, dropping into the seat beside you without waiting for an invitation.

He doesn’t say it unkindly—it’s more of an observation, like he’s stating the weather or that you’ve got a pen tucked behind your ear.

“I’m fine,” you say, but your thumb is still pressed against the margin of the script, smoothing over the same corner you’ve been folding and unfolding since you walked in.

“It’s the lines, isn’t it?” James leans over, peeking at your script.

“Everyone always gets stuck on that one monologue. It’s a beast. I couldn’t get through it without sounding like I was about to cry. Still can’t, but maybe that’s the point.”

You glance at him, surprised. “You struggled with it?”

“Oh, absolutely,” he says easily. “I’ve been in this industry since I was in diapers and I still choke on the heavy stuff. My parents keep trying to convince me it’s all about breathing and honesty. But I think sometimes it’s just about surviving the scene.”

You try not to look visibly shocked. Of course you know who he is. Everyone does. Euphemia and Fleamont Potter—famous for their string of Emmy-winning series and flawless box office runs—are the brains behind this very show. Stranger Things. The dark, nostalgic, terrifyingly brilliant project that people have already started calling “genre-defining.” The Potters are its creators, directors, and executive producers. And James? He’s practically royalty.

You wonder, briefly, if he knows how impossible it is for someone like you to be here.

Because you didn’t grow up on studio lots. You didn’t take acting classes at age three or have your face printed on casting calls by age six. You came from a town where dreams like this stayed dreams. No famous family. No connections. Just a voice in your head telling you to try.

Now you’re here. Sixteen years old, freshly cast as one of the leads in the most anticipated show of the year, with a role that’s raw and strange and full of psychic powers and bleeding noses. You’re not even sure how you got it.

They haven’t officially announced the cast yet. There’s still one final audition round left, but the assistant told you it’s more of a chemistry read—just to see how you and the others move together. Still, the thought of it makes your heart pound.

This isn’t just a dream come true. It’s a dream with teeth.

James nudges your elbow lightly. “You’re gonna be brilliant, by the way.”

You blink. “What?”

“The scene. The whole thing. I can tell.” His smile softens, less flashy now, more real. “You’ve got this look in your eyes. Like you’ve already lived it.”

You don’t know what to say to that. So you just nod, and for the first time since you arrived, the room feels a little less sharp. The walls stop closing in.

James grew up with cameras in his face and scripts in his hands. This is his normal.

But he doesn’t make you feel small. He doesn’t throw it around like it means more than your quiet, trembling hands or your desperate need to belong.

“Are you nervous?” you ask, half-joking.

He grins. “Always. That’s how I know it matters.”

You smile back, the knot in your stomach loosening just a little.

“You want to run lines?” he offers, already pulling out his own copy of the scene, edges covered in messy ink.

You nod.

And for the first time since you got the call, the weight lifts. A little.

You’re still the only one who didn’t come from a famous family. Still the only one whose name means nothing in a casting room.

But James Potter is sitting beside you, reading your name like it belongs here. And maybe that’s a start.

You and James run lines for what feels like both forever and no time at all.

He reads with an ease that doesn’t feel showy. There’s no smugness, no performance for the sake of impressing you—he just lives in the scene.

He trips over words sometimes, laughs at strange directions, makes faces when something doesn’t make sense. It makes you feel lighter, like maybe this isn’t so impossible after all. Like maybe you don’t have to be perfect to be good.

At some point, your shoulders stop tensing at every noise. The studio hallway grows louder as more crew members shuffle past—assistants with clipboards, stylists with tangled garment bags, someone dragging what looks like a lighting rig across the floor—but their movement blurs into the background. You’ve got a rhythm now. A steady back and forth between pages, voices, breath.

Then a voice cuts through the hallway: “Remus Lupin? Scene ten, take nine—you’re up.”

James looks up and grins. “You’ll like Remus. He’s good. Kind of freakishly good, actually.”

But you don’t really hear James. Because after Remus, it’ll be you.

You try not to stiffen, but your fingers tighten around the script in your lap. You glance toward the casting room door—the one they’ll call you through next—and suddenly it’s harder to breathe.

James must notice, because he bumps your shoulder lightly. “Hey. You’re fine. You’ve got, like, twenty minutes.”

You nod, swallowing hard. “I think I’ll step out for a bit. Get some air.”

“Good idea,” he says easily, already gathering the pages between his fingers. “Don’t go far, and don’t psych yourself out.”

You smile, but it doesn’t quite reach your eyes.

The hallway is more crowded than when you first arrived, a blur of unfamiliar faces and tangled equipment. You walk briskly, turning toward the exit sign at the far end—except when you get there, it leads to another corridor, not outside.

The studio’s layout is a maze of white-painted walls, steel beams, and swinging doors with production labels. Voices bounce from room to room. The air is warm with stage lights and static.

You try another hallway. No exit. Just more people—tech crew, assistants, actors already in costume. Someone offers you a bottled water. Another brushes past you with a headset and a frown.

Still no fresh air.

You keep moving, further from the noise, until you find a stairwell tucked between two heavy doors. You climb, following the scent of dust and metal, up past the wardrobe floor, past the locked rehearsal studios, up to a plain gray door that hums faintly with the wind behind it.

It opens to the rooftop.

It’s quieter here—distant sirens, a low hum from the city beyond the studio walls. The sky is overcast but soft, the kind of light that makes everything look washed in nostalgia. You step forward slowly, as if not to disturb it.

From up here, the lot looks small. Even the casting room—the one that holds your future inside its four thin walls—seems like it couldn't possibly contain something as heavy as your dream. You sit down against the ledge, script still in hand, the pages fluttering slightly in the breeze.

You close your eyes for a moment, just to remember how it feels to breathe when no one is watching.

You close your eyes for a moment, just to remember how it feels to breathe when no one is watching.

But when you open them again, you realize you aren’t alone.

There’s a figure already at the far end of the rooftop, perched at the edge, his back to you. His legs dangle over open air, casually swinging like the hundred-foot drop beneath him means nothing.

You blink, startled. He hadn’t made a sound—not even the creak of movement on the metal ledge.

Your breath catches. “Hey—careful, you’ll fall off.”

The boy doesn’t move. For a second, you think maybe he didn’t hear you.

But then he sighs—loud and pointed—and turns his head slightly, just enough for you to catch a glimpse of his face.

His eyes are red. Not tired, not irritated—red. The kind that only happens when someone’s been crying for a long time and didn’t have time to fix it before being seen.

“I’m fine,” he says flatly. Not annoyed. Not grateful. Just… blunt.

You take a step closer, slowly, like you’re trying not to spook a wounded animal. “You’re not really supposed to be sitting like that.”

“Then don’t look,” he mutters, eyes flicking back toward the skyline. His voice isn’t sharp, but it cuts anyway.

He’s dressed like someone who was supposed to be somewhere important earlier—pressed shirt, blazer half-slipped off one shoulder, tie loose and crooked. But his hair’s a little messy, and there’s a scuff on one of his shoes, and he looks like he got into a fight with the day and lost.

“I just—” You hesitate, but the words come anyway. “I didn’t think anyone would be up here.”

“Clearly.”

You bristle, despite yourself. There’s a part of you that wants to walk away. Let him stew in his rooftop silence and whatever disaster he’s currently avoiding. But there’s something in his posture—how rigid his shoulders are, how he won’t look at you—that stops you.

So instead of stepping back, you step forward. Right up to the ledge.

And then you climb onto it.

His head snaps toward you. “What are you doing?”

You settle beside him with more stubbornness than grace, gripping the edge for balance as your legs dangle beside his. “If you get to sit here, so do I.”

He frowns, the sharp line of his jaw tightening, a muscle twitching as if caught between restraint and something more volatile. “You could fall.”

“So could you,” you answer without hesitation, your voice calm but firm.

“That’s different.”

“Is it?” you tilt your head, meeting his eyes. “How?”

He opens his mouth like he has the answer ready—like he always does—but nothing comes. His jaw locks again, and for a moment, silence stretches between you, taut as wire.

“Because—” he starts, and then falters. The words catch in his throat. And when he speaks again, it’s thinner, almost like fear is threading through it. “Because I’ve been up here before. I know where the edge is.”

You glance out at the city skyline, the wind brushing against your cheek like a warning, and then back at him. “Then show me.”

He looks at you for a long second, a storm flickering in his gaze. Like he’s weighing the urge to lash out, to say something cold or careless to make you leave.

But something in your expression stops him. Because you’re not backing down. And maybe that’s what makes him pause. Maybe that’s when he sees it—the same quiet storm behind your eyes that mirrors his own. That same mix of anger and aching, of being brave when all you want to do is run.

His shoulders drop slightly, the tension bleeding out in a slow, reluctant breath. When he speaks again, it’s not angry anymore.

“You shouldn’t have done that.”

“You shouldn’t be up here alone,” you say, your voice soft but unwavering.

He huffs, a half-laugh that doesn’t reach his eyes. Still, he doesn’t look away. “You’re impossible,” he mutters under his breath, shaking his head.

“And you’re not?” you counter, the corners of your mouth tugging upward just a little.

His eyes flick to you again, sharper this time. Curious. Like he’s trying to make sense of you, to figure out why you keep showing up in all the places he thought he’d locked away for himself.

“What are you even doing up here?” he finally asks, voice low, frayed at the edges.

You shrug, trying to keep your tone casual even though your hands are starting to feel numb from the wind. “Auditions. I needed air.”

That gets his attention. He turns to you more fully, brows pulling together. “Wait—you’re here for Stranger Things?”

You nod. “Yeah.”

His stare sharpens. “Who are you cast as?”

You hesitate, just for a breath. “The girl. With the powers.”

His mouth drops open slightly. “Fuck.”

You blink. “What?”

He lets out a humorless laugh and rubs a hand over his face. “Just… of course. Of course it’s you.”

You narrow your eyes. “Why? What’s that supposed to mean?”

He doesn’t answer right away, just tips his head back toward the sky like it might answer for him. Then, with a sigh, he mutters, “I’m her love interest, Mike.”

There’s a beat of silence. A breeze cuts through, and suddenly you’re hyper-aware of how close you’re sitting, how this rooftop feels like a stage you didn’t mean to step onto.

“Wait,” you say, squinting at him. “So… who are you?”

He pauses for just a second too long. “Sirius. Sirius Black.”

You blink again, harder this time.

“You’re—Sirius Black?”

He grimaces. “Unfortunately.”

And that’s when it hits you. The name. The face. The headlines.

The Sirius Black. Probably the most well-known teen actor of his generation. Star of a dozen indie films, two major franchises, and one Oscar-buzz drama that made everyone collectively lose their minds when he was fourteen.

His mother, Walburga Black, hosts one of the most watched reality TV empires in the country, her name basically synonymous with Hollywood gossip.

His father, Orion Black, was once a golden boy actor in the 80s, now the executive force behind Black Pictures—one of the biggest production companies in the industry. The entire family reads like a film credits list. His uncles are actors. His aunts are Oscar-nominated. His godfather is the face of an entire perfume brand.

And you… you had to pick this rooftop.

“Oh,” you say faintly, the word barely brushing past your lips. “That makes sense.”

He snorts, bitter and tired. “Does it?”

You look at him again—really look. There’s a glassiness to his eyes, a kind of weight that doesn’t come from call sheets or cameras but from something older, quieter, and heavier. And for a moment, you’re not sure if he’s laughing at you or at himself.

“I mean,” you murmur, gaze steady, “it explains the dramatics.”

That earns the faintest twitch of a smile—subtle, almost like it slips through before he can stop it. “You’ve got guts,” he says, the words curling just slightly at the edges, “I’ll give you that.”

You don’t know who laughs first.

Maybe it’s him—Sirius Black, perched on the edge of a rooftop like it’s just another stage, muttering something dry that slices through the silence and all your tension with it.

Or maybe it’s you—because everything suddenly feels absurd. The audition, the pressure, the hours spent holding your breath, the way the city breathes beneath your feet.

You glance at him. He’s not smiling wide, not beaming, but there’s something there now—something pulled from beneath the stormcloud eyes and sharp cheekbones. A warmth that could almost be mistaken for light.

And then it hits you.

Your entire body jolts with the realization.

“Shit,” you breathe, the word tumbling out before you can stop it.

He glances over, one eyebrow lifting. “What now?”

“My audition,” you murmur, eyes already darting to the crumpled script poking out of your dress pocket. “Your name’s on my pages.”

He stares at you. “What?”

“You’re in the scene I’m auditioning with.” You fumble for the paper, smoothing it open between your hands. “It’s the one with the girl and the boy in the woods—the flashlight, the whole speech about being scared and doing it anyway.”

He leans slightly to peek at the page, and then groans. “Oh, that one.”

You nod. “That’s you.”

He shrugs, utterly unfazed. “Great. You’ve got it covered.”

“No, I don’t. I need to run it, with you.”

“I don’t rehearse,” he says simply, like it’s a personal philosophy.

You blink. “I’m sorry?”

“I don’t rehearse,” he repeats, dragging a hand through his hair. “Never really needed to. I show up, hit the mark, say the lines. People seem to like it.”

You just stare at him.

“Sirius fucking Black,” you mutter under your breath, turning toward him with a look that could split the moon in half. “You are going to rehearse with me.”

He looks almost amused. “Am I?”

You’re already climbing off the ledge, your white dress catching in the wind as you move fast, fueled by panic and adrenaline and something that feels dangerously close to raw determination.

“Whoa, whoa—hey!”

Before you can plant your feet back on the gravel safely, a hand grabs your wrist—tight, steady, pulling you back just enough.

“Fuck, be careful, angel,” he mutters, the words rushed and low like they’ve leapt out of him uninvited.

You pause.

Not because of the nickname (though it sparks something strange in your chest), but because he said it like he meant it. Like for half a second, the idea of you falling scared him more than anything else in this moment.

He’s still holding your wrist when you look at him.

“I’m fine,” you say, softer now. “I’ve got it.”

He lets go, slowly.

And then you square your shoulders, adjust the pages in your hand, and lift your chin. “We’re doing this scene.”

“I just said—”

“You are going to rehearse with me!” you repeat, voice sharper now.

“Because I am going to get this fuckass role. I don’t care how many Emmys your uncle has, or how many magazine covers your face is on.  I didn’t crawl my way into this building to have some nepotism prince brush me off like I’m decoration!”

His eyes go wide, a flicker of something wild and admiring sparking in them.

And then he bursts out laughing.

Full, deep laughter. The kind that echoes off the rooftop walls and makes your blood boil.

“Stop laughing!” you snap.

He just keeps laughing, wheezing now, hands on his knees. “You—you just said fuckass role.”

“I’m serious!”

“No, I’m Sirius.”

You groan, glaring.

He holds up his hands in mock surrender, still grinning. “Okay, okay. You’re terrifying.”

“Good.”

He straightens up, brushing off the edge of his jeans. “Fine. Let’s rehearse. But only because you threatened me.”

You cross your arms. “I did no such thing.”

“You dragged me off a ledge like some kind of homicidal fairy.”

You shrug. ��Desperate times.”

He looks at you for a long moment. The wind plays with the edge of your dress, your hair, the papers clutched in your hand. And you swear he softens—just slightly. The edge in him easing, curiosity replacing arrogance.

“All right.” He tugs a folded script from the inside pocket of his leather jacket and waves it in the air. “Let’s see if you’re any good, then.”

Your eyes narrow. “I’m excellent.”

“We’ll see.”

You step back, flipping to the right scene, clearing your throat. The wind tugs at the corners of your script and your dress, but your hands are steady now. He leans against the ledge, eyes half-lidded and unreadable, and waits for you to begin.

The rooftop isn’t a stage. The city doesn’t quiet for your lines. No one’s watching.

But you speak like someone’s listening.

And when you finish the scene—when the last word hangs between you, raw and electric—Sirius doesn’t say anything for a long time.

He just looks at you.

Like he sees something he didn’t expect.

Like maybe, you belong here after all.

Sirius taps the edge of your script with a knuckle. “Alright, angel. Scene 10. Let’s see what you’ve got.”

You raise a brow. “Just like that?”

“Just like that,” he says, dropping into an easy stance like he’s done this a thousand times before.

His posture shifts, the smirk tucks itself away, and suddenly he’s someone else entirely—Mike, the boy trying to hold a flashlight steady while the world around him falls apart.

You take one breath, then another, then step into the moment.

Scene 10. Forest. Mike and Eleven, side by side in the dark.

The lines you’ve memorized a dozen times spill out, but this time they don’t feel rehearsed. Sirius listens like he’s never heard them before, and when he speaks, it’s with a weight that grounds the scene.

The words aren’t magic—but they do something close. The space between you vibrates with the rhythm of shared silence, tension, emotion. It’s short, but by the time you reach the last line—“It’s not about what we lost. It’s about what we’ve still got.”—the quiet that follows feels earned.

Sirius exhales and gives you a crooked smile. “You’ve got timing.”

You shrug, but your heart beats louder than before.

Without a word, he grabs the scripts from your hands and plops down cross-legged on the rooftop floor. “Let me see.”

You raise an eyebrow. “Are you always this—”

“Collaborative,” he cuts in, uncapping a marker from his jacket pocket. “Now sit. We’ve got work to do.”

His annotations are a mess of arrows and looping words. He circles beats, draws dashes for pauses, and jots little notes like don’t rush this or breathe here. His handwriting is barely legible, but the edits are precise, focused.

“Pause here. This line’s too heavy to throw away,” he murmurs. “And this? Keep your voice low. Not scared—just… holding back.”

You watch him, amused. “You always direct your scene partners?”

“Only when they can actually act,” he says, glancing up.

You snort. “Is that a compliment?”

“Don’t push it.”

The corner of your mouth quirks, and he flips to the next page.

Scene 11.

He hums. “Ah. That one.”

You know immediately. The basement scene. The one where Mike—Sirius’s character—fake proposes to Eleven, your role, just to get her to talk again. You’ve read it so many times that the dialogue is practically carved into your bones.

He reads over the first few lines and chuckles. “This is so dumb.”

“It’s not dumb,” you argue lightly. “It’s sweet. In a stupid, manipulative way.”

Sirius makes a face. “Exactly.”

Still, he stands, brushing dust off his jeans. “Come on, then. Let’s get this over with.”

You both take position, scripts half-forgotten at your feet.

He steps into the part quickly, voice shifting into something earnest and awkward—Mike trying to coax Eleven out of silence with a ring made from a candy wrapper and desperation.

“Okay,” he says, kneeling dramatically. “Since you clearly won’t talk to me like a normal person… I guess there’s only one thing left to do. I hereby propose. Like—on one knee and everything.”

You fold your arms. Stay silent.

“Wow. Rejected without mercy,” he mutters, then softens. “You haven’t talked to me in. Do you hate me?”

You look down, breathe. “No.”

“You’re mad?”

“No.”

“Then why—”

“Because I’m scared.”

The words slip out soft, but true. And Sirius looks at you differently this time—more like Mike, less like the boy who called you angel and handed you his marker.

A silence follows that isn’t awkward, only real.

Then Sirius lets out a low whistle. “Damn. You’ve got this.”

You let yourself smile. “You’re not so bad yourself.”

“Please,” he grins. “I’m Sirius Black.”

You roll your eyes, but something in your chest loosens. For the first time, the role doesn’t feel like something you're chasing. It feels like something already yours.

Sirius plucks your script off the ground again, flipping back to Scene 11 like he isn’t still grinning from your fake rejection five minutes ago.

“Well, angel,” he says, stretching out on the rooftop like it’s his living room, “if you’re gonna turn me down, at least let me immortalize it.”

He grabs his marker—still uncapped, still bleeding slightly at the edges—and scribbles something in the margin next to your line: SAY IT LIKE YOU’RE LYING TO YOURSELF.

“What’s that supposed to mean?” you ask, leaning over his shoulder.

He shrugs. “Exactly what it sounds like. Don’t act like you’re scared of him—act like you’re scared of what he means.”

You blink at him. “Since when are you an actor and a psychologist?”

He grins, toothy and easy. “Since five minutes ago. I’m multitalented.”

You’re still laughing when the rooftop door slams open behind you.

A crew member stands in the doorway, breathless and wide-eyed. “There you are—we’ve been looking for you for ten minutes! Are you out of your minds? You’re both up next!”

Your stomach drops.

Sirius just stretches, calmly dusting off his jeans. “We got a little carried away. It’s fine.”

“It is not fine!” the woman shouts, already dialing someone on her headset. “Come on, let’s go!”

You scramble to your feet, panic rising like a tide you can’t swim against. Ten minutes. That’s forever in this world—enough time for a casting director to change their mind, to offer your role to someone shinier, someone with the right last name.

You clutch your script to your chest as you follow Sirius down the narrow stairwell, and your thoughts spiral with every step—they’re going to hate me, I ruined it, I lost it, I lost it—

“Hey.” Sirius’s voice cuts through the static, and then—his hand on your wrist.

He stops midway down the stairs, turning you to face him. “Hey. Look at me.”

You do. His eyes are steadier than you’ve seen them all day, quiet in a way that feels almost reverent.

“You’re fine. You haven’t lost anything. Just breathe, alright?”

You shake your head, heart pounding too loud in your ears. “They’re going to be mad. They’re going to say I’m unprofessional—”

“Shh.” He shifts his grip, then with his free hand, pulls the marker from his pocket again.

And slowly, gently, he starts drawing stars along the inside of your wrist—five-pointed, slightly smudged, looping together like constellations only he can see.

It takes you a second to notice that your breathing’s slowed.

The panic eases.

You glance down at the ink-dusted trail of stars blooming across your skin. “How did you… know to do that?”

Sirius freezes for a beat too long.

Then he looks away, tucking the marker back into his pocket. “My brother. Sometimes he… gets like that.”

You want to ask more, but something in his expression tells you not to. His shoulders stiffen, the familiar armor sliding back into place. The charm, the cool detachment—it’s all back by the time you reach the studio door.

But the stars stay on your wrist.

The second the studio doors swing open, chaos swallows you whole.

It’s brighter than you expect—overhead lights casting a sterile glow across the soundstage, voices overlapping as crew members rush to and from set, someone shouting about blocking, someone else dragging a lighting rig across the floor. You blink against it all, suddenly unsure where to look, where to stand, how to exist.

And then—

“There you are!” James.

He jogs over, looking mildly out of breath, strands of his messy hair falling over his glasses. Relief flashes across his face when he sees you, and then it shifts—warms—when his eyes land just beyond your shoulder.

“Sirius,” James breathes.

And Sirius lights up.

Like a switch flipped. The edges of him soften, melt. That cool indifference disappears entirely as he grins, almost boyishly, and throws his arms around James in a way that’s too fast to think about and too real to be scripted.

“God, I haven’t seen you in forever,” Sirius mutters into James’s shoulder, and you swear—for half a second—he sounds like a different person.

“Thought you were ditching the project,” James teases, clapping him on the back.

“Almost did.”

James pulls away, looking over at you. “You met Y/N, yeah? She’s playing the girl with powers. She’s incredible.”

You smile, shy under the weight of his praise. But before you can say anything—

“Hello, darling.”

A voice, smooth and warm and unmistakably in charge, cuts through the air. A woman strides over, sharp black heels clicking on the floor. Her hair is pinned up perfectly, lips a red that looks expensive, and the way everyone parts around her—it tells you everything you need to know.

Euphemia Potter. The director.

She reaches for your hand like you’ve already earned the role and says your name like she’s been waiting to meet you for months.

“I’ve heard about you,” she says, voice honeyed. “And I just want you to know—don’t worry about a thing. You’re here because you belong here. Okay?”

You nod, not trusting your voice. But something in your chest eases.

“And this,” she says, glancing over her shoulder, “is my husband, Fleamont. Producer. He’ll pretend he’s not a softie, but he cried over Scene 9.”

He gives you a polite smile and a knowing wink.

Before you can process any more, a crew member in a headset appears beside you, clipboard in one hand, clapperboard in the other.

He looks between you and Sirius, then lifts the board slowly.

“Alright,” he calls out, voice carrying across the set, grounding the room in sudden stillness.

A spotlight clicks on overhead.

The crew goes quiet. Everyone freezes.

You take your mark. Sirius takes his.

And the board rises. 

“Scene 11, take 1.” Snap.

The clap cuts through the silence, sharp and final.

And in that breathless second after the sound dies—everything begins.

Sirius turns to face you in the darkened basement set, his expression already shifting. The cameras roll, the lights hum, and the line between fiction and reality dissolves like sugar in water.

And just like that, the scene begins.

-

a/n: idk why i cringed so much writing this (i promise pt 2 is much better) anyways, thoughts?

oh and, before anyone comments it; no reader won't be bald like eleven, she has hair.

[sexisbetteronthemoon]

Keith LOOKS like he’d be a freak who only orders black coffee, lance thinks it’s disgusting. BUT may I suggest Keith having the biggest sweet tooth? Like Hunk made jelly donuts, turns around, any mysteriously four are gone, and Keith is skedaddling out of the kitchen with a plate

lol you can suggest anything you want! :)

i don't see him as a sweets guy, but! i do see him as a guy who will eat literally anything and everything he can get his hands on, regardless of whether or not he likes it or if it's bad for him.

my hc is that after his dad died, Keith grew up food insecure until Shiro came along. so when presented with food, he ate it even if he didn't like it.

so, if he's hungry, and he sees jelly donuts? down the hatch. chew quickly and swallow.

milk slightly past its expiration date? smells funky but no visible lumps. don't breathe and down the hatch.

bread with mold? pick it off and eat it.

and while this should mean he constantly gets food poisoning, i think his galra side has saved his ass countless times and only given him indigestion.

then there's the other things. things Lance notices once he starts paying attention.

Keith eats like he's being chased. he tends to inhale his food, barely savoring it. he keeps one arm on the table, nearly hugging his plate to himself, and he hunches over like he's hiding it.

Lance doesn't ask about it.

Lance cooks different things, and he watches.

he cooks sweet, sour, savory, bitter etc and he takes note on what Keith slows down for. he cooks more of that. he cooks less of other things that Keith doesn't pause to briefly savor. he also makes sure to stock up on things Keith likes, putting his own things further into cabinets so Keith reaches for what's in front first.

the day it takes Keith more than five minutes to clear a plate nearly makes him cry.

but Keith still eats too fast.

Lance decides to take a more hands-on approach to see if he can slow Keith down.

so one day, he serves a single plate of finger foods and sits on Keith's lap.

Keith stares at him, intrigued. he knows something is coming, and he's excited about it, but he probably can't guess what Lance means to do.

and when Lance starts feeding him a bite at a time, spacing them with kisses and sweet words, Keith still doesn't get the point of the game. he starts to think this is a reward and not a game at all. he doesn't know what he did tho. he decides he'll ask later what he's being rewarded for.

distracted by Lance and Lance's kisses, it takes Keith nearly half an hour to finish his food. and when he's done, Lance says, “Good boy.”

that gives Keith pause and a boner.

it was a game, not a reward. Lance only calls him a good boy when they're playing. tho it hadn't felt like a game. what had Lance been testing?

he doesn't ask. it's more fun to him when he doesn't know the rules of the game. figuring them out is part of the fun.

Lance does this more and more, and Keith isn't complaining a whit. then, after a week, Lance sits beside him and not in his lap. Keith misses him, but they're holding hands, and he still gets kisses between bites.

after another week, Lance has Keith feed himself, and makes sure to give him kisses between bites.

Keith notices that Lance tends to squeeze his hand during the kiss.

he doesn't think anything of it.

the next week, Lance doesn't kiss him, but Keith finds he takes a little longer to finish his food than usual.

the next week is the same, and this time, he notices that Lance is squeezing his hand between eat bite, making him pause to chew more thoroughly before he tries for the next bite.

Keith puts down his fork and glances over.

“did you pavlov me?” he asks.

“yes,” Lance says, not even trying to deny it.

“why?” Keith asks, baffled.

“to make you slow down.  how's your stomach lately?”

and Keith thinks about it. he has been getting less indigestion.

he leans over and kisses Lance.

“thanks, beautiful,” he says, and Lance gives him a kiss for that too.

[intrepidacious]

time after time [9]

series summary: After what starts out as a fairly normal mission, you find yourself stuck in a time loop. Which would already be bad enough in itself if it didn’t also mean having to watch Bucky die over and over again.

pairing: bucky barnes x f!reader

word count: 12.9k

chapter warnings: suicidal ideation in a time loop context; general angst; in many ways, this is a callback chapter but also a step forward; is exposition a warning? please note that my blog is rated 18+. minors dni. ageless/empty blogs will be blocked without warning.

a/n: i wasn't sure i was gonna post tonight until like an hour ago but hey, it's friday 13th and i'm feeling lucky 🫶🏼 we're in the home stretch now folks

series masterlist | main masterlist | read on ao3

nine: out of the past

Home smelled like dish soap and warm cookies.

From your childhood, you remembered that sweet scent wafting from the kitchen to every adjourning room until it knocked on the front door from the inside, welcoming you in its embrace. You never appreciated it as much as you should have, then; maybe children never did. But when the bad days found you, later, you recalled that smell, and it offered a bit of comfort to you, no matter how dismal your surroundings actually were.

At the Compound, smells didn’t linger. No matter how many trays were left out to cool, the air purifier kicked in way too soon and got rid of all sugary traces that tried to stick. It did break your heart a little, but you didn’t know enough about vents to try to mess with them.

The Tower was different, though; a lot of its functions hadn’t been overhauled since 2016, and because all FRIDAY systems were still getting regular service updates, it was simple enough to make minor adjustments to the rest of the set-up. Not that you were baking a lot these days. It was nice to think about it, though. To return from a grueling closing shift and let your nose guide your way home.

Today, it guided your way towards disaster, instead.

"Why are you trying to burn down my kitchen?"

"I got bored," Bucky said, reaching into the oven with his bare hand. You flung up your arms automatically before you realized it was the left one.

You quickly crossed them in front of your chest instead, squinting at the smoking tray. "What are you doing?"

"Making an offering," he muttered distractedly, slapping the crisp pastries with your only good dish towel. "What’s it look like."

You were going to kill him.

"Did your landlord take away your oven for safety reasons or why exactly aren’t these charcoals Made in Brooklyn?" You still hadn't changed the door codes, so you couldn't exactly accuse him of breaking in. It was deeply annoying. "Do you know what time it is?" you said instead.

"Twenty-two forty-five," he said, completely ignoring your first question and not really answering the second. "So you don’t want rugelach?"

"Love rugelach. Prefer them edible."

Maybe you could salvage this. It’d been a long day already, but you’d had quite a lot of coffee and a few minutes should suffice to stop most of the smoke, right?

Otherwise, it’d just linger.

You let out a sigh. "Gimme a sec."

"Could you not—"

With one swift, practiced move, you reached behind and pulled on the thread, teasing time backwards little by little. You watched Bucky return the cursed tray to the oven, his motions jerking, like an old tape that’d been rewound too many times. You found yourself moving into the hallway again, backwards, your shoes returning to your feet, your bag—

Your grip slipped, and you tumbled straight into the coatrack, pulling several hangers noisily down with you. Your ankle twisted with a cracking noise that made tears well up in your eyes.

Great. Just great. Exactly how you’d wanted your evening to go.

"What the hell are you doing?"

Grimacing, you glanced at the time on your phone. You’d barely made it back four minutes. You’d been aiming for six.

"Just take your damn rugelach out of the oven, idiot," you called out sharply.

They still smelled kind of burnt, but not as bad as before. Wincing, you threw your sneaker at the wall to gently roll your foot. It had already started swelling, but at least it didn’t seem broken.

With a relieved sigh, you wiped your cheeks and leaned against the wall to catch your breath. When you opened your eyes again, you flinched backwards, bumping your head.

Today was a dumpster fire.

"What?" you said through gritted teeth when Bucky kept staring at you with raised eyebrows. "This was your fault."

"I magically pushed you into the wall?"

"You just demonstrated your impeccable baking skills. Ow, fuck." Maybe you should just spend the night on the floor. It seemed like the best idea right now. "Why are you bored?"

You didn’t really expect him to answer, but it was the most interesting tidbit of your reset conversation, and you’d promised to share those things.

"Did I say that?" he asked, squatting in front of you. He looked tired as well. There was a long tear through his shirt that you hadn’t noticed earlier. "Why’d you keep your fall?"

"I didn’t keep it," you said disdainfully. "That was a one-time occasion. I overestimated how much energy I had left for my reset."

His frown deepened. "Does that happen a lot?"

"Sometimes," you shrugged. "It’s not like I have a floating health bar I can check every time, you know."

"Sounds impractical."

You huffed. "For once, I agree with you."

He had a pensive look on his face, and you didn’t know what to make of it. Finally, he blinked back into the present and held out his hand. "Come on, Twelve. You should go to bed."

You were too exhausted and aching to question any of it, then. The fact that in all this time since you were introduced, he’d never offered to help you before; or that this was the first time he’d given you that nickname. You didn’t want to ask when you did notice, afterwards, and you couldn’t come up with an explanation on your own until you got a little more used to his military speak, and you remembered what he’d said to Sam.

I’m keeping an eye on her.

You were the danger that was standing right in front of him, and he knew it. He made sure to keep reminding you of the fact that you weren’t to be trusted; that he was watching you.

Then, you remembered telling him about your longest jump backwards being eleven minutes, and you started resenting the nickname a little more. Because no matter which reason was the right one, deep down, you couldn’t fault him for thinking that you weren’t, could never, be good enough.

That was later, though. Right then, you just took his hand.

* * * * *

It doesn’t make any sense.

His hands are still wrapped around your wrists, a light pressure on your pulse. His touch is the only thing tethering you here, cold and warm fingers, and that look of his that you can’t even begin to describe.

I never hit the ground.

"What do you mean," you say quietly, barely a question. "I saw you fall. The loop reset."

That’s how it goes, no matter what else happens. No matter what you do.

"But it reset before I hit the ground," he interrupts your looping thoughts, and there it is again. That awful, useless hope in his eyes. "I don’t remember dying. It didn’t hurt."

You freeze, unable to look away from it. From him. "So, this past week, you always …"

Up until this moment, it hadn’t truly sunk in that Bucky becoming aware of the loops would also mean he’d recall dying; every aspect of it. The pain, the frenzy, the desperation.

Your unwillingness to witness his last moments any longer.

"Doesn’t matter now," you hear him say through a layer of fog and nausea, and how the fuck does he keep doing this? You crave getting that glimmer of optimism back, the sense that there’s another option to explore, a new angle to twist things around in your favor. "We found our loophole."

You blink several times. "What do you mean?"

"Think about it." His thumb swipes across your wrist, gently, and the band tingles. "No more pointless missions that put you and Sam in danger. No more wasting time on trying to save me when it never works out. I can reset us on my own terms."

It’s like something cracks inside you, releasing a cold rush of dread into your bloodstream. "No," you say, "no, that could’ve just been a glitch, we don’t know what’s going on. We have no control over any of this."

Bucky’s face hardens, the triumph that split his mouth into a grin only moments ago a distant memory. "You mean, you don’t."

"Didn’t you just tell me that suicidal behavior can’t be our solution?" you say, unable to hide the bitter edge in your voice.

"That’s different." He drops your hands, finally, as if he’s just noticing he’s been holding onto them this whole time. "You know it’s different."

You can recognize the self-loathing radiating off him all too easily. Useless.

"Forget it," you say, shaking your head. "I won’t let you."

"You won’t let me?" Somehow, he still sounds vaguely amused, and it’s making your blood boil. "Then what’s the alternative, we keep meandering around while I continue to get myself shot every day?"

"I don’t know! Let’s think about this for, like, five seconds."

"I’ve thought about it. And if my options both lead to the same result, anyways, I’d rather choose the one where I at least get somewhat of a say."

Your nails dig into your palms, a sharp, familiar pain. "So you want to, what, pick a time of day where you’re just calling it quits and you plummet to your death?"

"And why not?"

You let out a shrill sort of laugh. "What if it doesn’t work more than once?"

"And what if it does?"

Again, again, he looks at you and something in his gaze shatters. You hate this, and you hate yourself, but you’ve been here before. Hope is the thing that kills him.

"Right," he continues. "You’d rather we keep pretending that nothing’s wrong, like we don’t already know how this day is going to end."

"That’s not fair."

"Nothing about this is fair."

You notice it, then: the fury quietly burning behind his eyes; not with you, necessarily, though you wouldn’t blame him for that, either. No, this is a different kind of rage, one that simmers in the background and hides in the darkest corners, constantly rattling to be let out of its cage. His hands are balled into tight fists now, a single concession to this emotion. It doesn’t seem enough.

Now that you think about it, you wonder if you’ve ever actually seen Bucky Barnes angry.

Annoyed, yes. Frustrated. Pissed off. But those are surface feelings, bubbling up quickly, comparatively easy to live with; nothing like the raw anger that you’ve just caught a glimpse of.

That’s the kind of feeling that, when continually swallowed down, eats you up alive.

So you raise your chin, and you say, "Fight me."

He reflexively moves backwards. "Excuse me?"

"You heard me." You get up slowly, wiping some more blood from your nose. The band around your wrist is still tingling. "Or are you scared?"

In all those months you’ve known him, Bucky’s refused to spar with either of you, even though you know for a fact that Sam’s asked several times. He’s not even bothered to come up with a flimsy excuse, just stared blankly and said, "Nope."

"He knows I’d wipe the floor with him again," Sam’s told you in a whisper loud enough to be heard across the living room. If you recall correctly, that was the same night he found white cat hairs all over his bed and had to do laundry at midnight.

Now, Bucky watches you stretch, his gaze intense, calculating. "I don’t want to fight you," he says, but there’s some leftover edge to his voice; more than that, there’s curiosity.

"Bullshit," you reply lowly, tilting your head.

He unlaces his shoes and you smirk.

"Fine." He climbs into the ring, rolling his neck. "What do I get when I win?"

You circle each other on the mat, eyes never leaving each other’s faces. Bucky’s eyebrow is still raised in amusement, a silent challenge for you to make the first move.

"In your dreams, Barnes," you say, and then you do.

He sidesteps your first kicks as easily as a gust of wind, a grin twitching in the corner of his mouth when you follow them with a punch that’s aimed at his stomach but lands on his right arm without much force. The next one doesn’t even graze him, his movements too quick for you to do any damage.

Despite that, he lets you herd him to the other side of the ring, even though you feel it’s more him leading you. Like he’s waiting to see what you’re going to do and is left continually unsurprised. No matter the swirl of confused feelings in your gut, you want to wipe the increasingly smug look off his face.

"Come on, wolf boy," you huff as your foot hits empty space once more. "You’re not gonna hurt me."

His stance changes in a split second, and you barely manage to duck away from his first swing. He’s still holding himself back, you can tell, but the way he holds himself changes from casual defense to downright predatory. You swallow heavily.

"I wouldn’t be so sure about that," he says.

In one quick move he slaps your fist to the side again before his vibranium fingers curl around your neck. He doesn’t put any pressure on it, but your spine still goes rigid as he holds you there for a moment, his gaze slowly dropping down every inch of your body in a way that feels familiar. His thumb twitches with a flutter of your pulse.

He leans in until he hovers right next to your ear and your breath hitches. "And it’s White Wolf."

With a twist, you move out of his hold and aim another kick behind you. It’s not hard enough to hurt—honestly, you’re a little too distracted to put much force into it right now—but he does let go of you with a low chuckle.

Even after that, it’s useless. Every single move you try, Bucky seems to anticipate. It’s like he’s able to tell where you’re about to try to hit him before you even know it yourself.

"Your posture’s terrible," he remarks, blocking your foot again. It sends a jolt of a memory through you.

With the right training, you can use your own weight to your advantage in a fight.

You don’t think you’ve had the right training, exactly, but you’ve certainly never been in better physical shape in your life.

"Thanks," you say, and you think, what the hell.

You feign a punch down, and when he lowers his torso to follow your movement, you turn it into a wonky handstand, yelping as your momentum sends your legs flying forward quicker than anticipated. You feel one of them collide with Bucky’s back, and he huffs in surprise as he staggers, his arms wrapping around you like he’s not sure whether to stop your fall or get you off him. Either way, you both plummet over and into the mat.

There’s a groan from underneath you. "Y’alright, doll?"

"Great," you pant, untangling your legs from his neck but not moving off him quite yet. Instead, you lean forward and press his shoulders to the ground. "One—two—three, yay, I win!"

He gives a short, disbelieving snort of a laugh, and something hot rushes through you again.

The next moment, he flips you both over, catching one of your hands and pinning it to the mat while the other is pressed down by his elbow. Your head is spinning, Bucky’s grin wicked and so close to your face you can feel his breaths fan over your mouth.

"You were saying?"

Your brain short-circuits.

He seems to recognize something is off, because the naked glee in his eyes is slowly, gradually replaced with something else, something you can’t quite name because there’s not a single coherent thought left in your head. You’re acutely aware of the dried blood under your nose. Of a freckle next to his upper lip.

Inhale. Exhale.

And then—

"Am I interrupting something?"

Another rush of heat washes down your body as Bucky takes another couple of seconds to look at you, frowning, like he’s just remembering that you were fighting before all this. Then, he rolls off to the side.

"Go shower, Twelve."

And just like that, the moment has passed.

You push up to your elbows and watch as he ducks out of the ring without so much as another glance at you, an avalanche of your thoughts returning all at once. When you turn to look at Sam, his arms are crossed and his expression seems way too stern and cap-like for this time of day.

"A word?" he says when Bucky shoulders past him, and for some reason you feel like you’re in trouble.

* * *

You stay in the shower until the mirrors fog up and your fingers turn wrinkly, trying and failing to scrub away whatever just happened. It’s like you can still feel him only inches away from your face, hovering, searching. Almost as if he’s waiting for something.

I’m guessing you’ve tried the Groundhog Day option?

Fucking hell, you need to get a hold of yourself right now.

This … training session was a mistake, a miscalculation on your part. Maybe you’ve started losing your mind a little bit after the first couple dozen loops. Lesson learned: find another way to get Bucky to let out his well-earned ire.

One that doesn’t involve him on top of you.

Think you could handle my charm, Y/L/N?

You let the water hit that tense knot at the back of your neck and let out a long sigh. This iteration of today has barely even started and you’re ready to delete it from existence.

Of course, you realize, then, that won’t be quite so easy this time around.

There’s a certain numbness that, according to the heaps of time loop media you’ve consumed early on during all this, seems inevitable when you’re always, always the only person in the world to continually remember the things that happen. Maybe it’s even worse for you, since there once was a time where reversing uncomfortable situations was something you did on the regular. Looking back, those little corrections seem like a preamble for what you’re going through now. Today is a video tape that keeps skipping on the rewind, reliable only in its endless monotony.

It makes you stop considering the long-term consequences of your actions, since there never are any; everything is bound to repeat, with no regard to what you may have done or said that one time during loop number eighty-whatever. Who would remember, except you?

Or so you’ve thought.

The green band around your wrist catches the light and you stare at it for a long time. It shimmers in the steam of the shower, an almost beautiful sort of gleam to it, like it’s gleeful in reminding you of your latest disastrous mistake.

I’m getting Bucky out of this.

As usual, you didn’t do your job as well as you should’ve, and now you’re having to face the consequences of that.

Real stubborn fucking consequences with distractingly blue eyes, that are apparently intent on driving you batshit—

"What was that?"

"Nothing," you mumble, crossing your arms in front of your chest, tapping your fingers one by one. Bucky rolls his eyes for the twenty-eighth time in as many minutes.

Which you know for a fact, since you’ve not let him out of your sight once. Not as he’s rummaged through the fridge with his usual scowl, not as he’s channel-hopped through a couple of lackluster morning shows, not as he’s spent a couple of minutes playing with Alpine before she hopped off his lap to go do whatever cats do. You don’t particularly care today.

If he's so keen on dying, fine, that's his prerogative; but not yet. Not on your watch.

You just need to come up with another solution before he can do anything stupid.

"Are you gonna spend your whole day like this?" he asks, irritated. Good. He doesn’t have a monopoly on staring.

"Depends," you reply. "Got any plans this morning?"

Twenty-nine. That has to be some sort of record.

"Not if I'm gonna be trailed by an overeager barn owl."

"How dare you. And that's Miss Barn Owl to you." You're aiming for lucky number thirty, but no luck. Instead, he lets out a huff.

"I'm not gonna change my mind just because you're annoying, you know."

"When have you ever," you mumble. If only your useless mind could draw anything but a blank.

Endless loop. Saving each other. Threaten Loki. Blow yourselves up. Upon the wielder’s death, the timeline will—

"Twelve …"

You shake your head, your nails biting into your skin, and Bucky cuts himself off, a muscle in his jaw feathering.

Your gaze wanders. He's all sharp angles this morning in his gloves and the leather jacket, like he’s dressed in black armor concealing all the parts that should be gone, bruised, bloodied, broken. A mundane shield anyone else wouldn't even take conscious notice of, because this is just what he does.

Not lately, though. Not at home, not on Friday.

So how many weapons is he hiding right now?

"Okay, we are getting into Annabelle territory."

Out of the corner of your eye, it looks like Sam’s lost some of the ramrod Captain America energy he was radiating earlier. Bucky’s not told you what kind of words were exchanged, so you’re left to chalk it up to another TAG.

That doesn’t calm you even a little bit.

"How's your nose?" Sam asks, leaning against the back of Bucky’s couch.

"Mostly in shape, I think." You dab at your nostrils and it still hurts a little, but there’s no more blood. "How’s your speech?"

"Mostly in shape, I think," he echoes with a lopsided grin that unexpectedly stings.

Again, you can’t help but yearn for a timeline more permanent than this one. Every day Sam writes that speech, and every day he frets about the details for hours and you can’t tell him that he’s always going to end up smashing it. That’s not how this is supposed to go.

"Have I told you lately that I really appreciate you?" you tell him instead.

His eyebrows raise in mild amusement. "Did you take the good painkillers?"

"I’m serious," you protest, even though you may have. "You’re a good friend and a good cap, and you should be told more often."

Sam blinks, glancing at Bucky as if he’s waiting for the other shoe to drop.

"Don’t look at me, bud," he replies. "She’s right."

There’s a couple of moments before Sam shakes his head. "Y’all are Looney Tunes today and I think it’s some sorta ploy, so I’m gonna finish this speech and you’re gonna leave."

"Are you kicking us out?" you ask.

"Yup."

"It’s our apartment," Bucky says.

"I don’t care. Shoo. Come back when you’re normal."

Bucky doesn’t move an inch, even as he has to hide a grin when Sam keeps shoving his shoulder, mumbling to himself about needing room to think, and you have an idea. A bad one, perhaps, but it might just work for your purposes.

"I know what we’re gonna do," you tell Bucky and get up from your couch and grabbing your bag.

"That so?"

You hum, pressing the button for the elevator. "But first, we’ll have to steal a car."

* * *

It’s odd to be back.

Everything about it feels wrong.

You used to know this place like the back of your hand and now it’s like you’re looking at it through fun mirrors, making the image all twisted. The Compound is both bigger and smaller than you remember, and the reality of it makes your heart twinge.

Rubble lines the driveway. You’re both silent as the borrowed car shakily bumps around the curve leading up to where the main building used to be. Your fingers drum a nervous rhythm against the dashboard as you look outside. The branches that used to hang low and cast a soft shade over your head now litter the ground.

New ones are already sprouting, though.

Time hasn’t stopped, not even for this battlefield, and that fact makes you feel better and worse at the same time.

Through the open window, the air smells like hot grass and cement. No one’s working today, of course, but the repair work’s been going slow, anyway. There are no new Avengers to house, and Pepper Potts has had more pressing things to do. You wonder if Morgan’s old enough to be in kindergarten yet.

The car slows until Bucky turns the engine off, parked next to a particularly large piece of debris. You take a deep breath before you trust your legs not to buckle underneath you when you climb outside.

The one and only other time you were here after it all happened, you were still amped up on morphine and grief and you barely felt anything at all at the sight of your home of almost five years lying in ruins. Now, you have to grind your teeth, hugging your arms around yourself in a sorry attempt at comfort.

You used to spend hours reading underneath that tree that’s been cleaved in half. If you squint, you could still point your gaze to where your windows would have been.

Yours.

"This feels strange."

You turn to look at Bucky and find him staring at a spot near the tree line, looking out at the lake.

"Yeah," you say, clearing your throat. "Me too."

The look that passes his face is one you haven’t seen in a while, oddly similar to the one you recall him giving you on your bathroom floor. It’s gone within seconds, but it leaves its trace.

The big hall that had housed the time machine is still mostly rubble, and you’re glad for it. You don’t know how Bruce ever managed to get the pieces out and make them work again; you don’t like thinking about it and you would bet Bucky doesn’t either.

You inhale your grief once more and let it out in one long, shaky exhale. Then, you roll your aching shoulders. "Alright," you tell yourself, lifting your chin up to blink against the bright July sun.

It should be autumn by now.

Every step towards the Campus ruins makes something coil inside your chest, something painful and hot and angry. Good, you think. That’s why you’ve come, after all.

"Remember that game Sam used to play?" you ask and your voice comes out both sharper and softer than you expect. "If you could go any place, any time?"

Bucky doesn’t answer immediately, and for one shocking moment you wonder whether you’d jumped away all of Sam’s terrible attempts of camaraderie.

"My ma used to say that home’s not really a place."

It’s a peace offering, you think, or maybe just his way of showing that he understands what you’re trying to say. Of course he does.

You bite the inside of your cheek harder. "Smart woman."

The site in the center of the former entry hall seems as good as any. No reinstalled roof that could cave your heads in, no loose cables lying around to fry certain jinxed super-soldiers to death.

"She was." Bucky stops a couple of steps behind you as you scan your surroundings for what you’re going to need. Luckily, whoever’s responsible for this part of the site isn’t as cleanly as the ULTIMATUM lab guys; everything’s been left right where someone was using it on Thursday. "So, what are we doing here, exactly?"

You blow the cement dust off a pair of slightly singed safety glasses and hand them to him. "Fuck shit up."

He stares at you. "Sorry?"

"Nope." You continue rummaging through the work tools that are lying about. "No more apologizing. That’s the point. We’re stuck in a damn time loop and absolutely nothing we do matters, so we’re going to fuck some shit up."

"Is this you telling me you’ve finally lost your marbles?"

You pull out a crowbar. "I’m telling you I’m furious and I need to break something, and I think you do, too."

He crosses his arms in front of his chest. "Yeah, I don’t think so."

"Come on, Barnes. You must’ve had the urge to just destroy something before." You swing your lever around for emphasis. "What’s the worst that could happen?"

You wince right after you say it, recalling the last time someone’s said that to the both of you. Bucky’s face stays blank, unreadable.

"Someone gets hurt," he says quietly, making it sound like a prediction. Haunted.

"No one’s gonna get hurt," you say, putting on a second pair of glasses. "Look around! No one here except us. And you know what—helmet." You adjust your hair and plop it onto your head. "See?"

"You look ridiculous," he says dryly.

"Thank you." Perhaps your appeal would be more effective if you weren’t already struggling to close the damn latch of your helmet. Unfortunately, your safety glasses are making everything fit a little funky, and you can’t seem to find the right—

"Geez, let me—just hold still for a sec."

You swallow and tilt your head up, trying not to look at his face when Bucky takes a step closer. His fingers brush the tips of your ears as he readjusts the damn goggles, trailing down to your chin. You suppress the urge to shiver when you realize he’s finally taken his gloves off again.

His touch is rough and light and way too close to your pulse point.

The helmet clicks into place and you shake yourself out of your stupor. You hold up your crowbar like a challenge.

"How about we make a game out of it?"

He deliberates, his mouth set in a thin line, slightly blurred by the polycarbonate. "What do you have in mind?"

"Pry of truth," you say. "You name the thing that gets your hackles up, you get to smash something. And you’re not allowed to say me."

"I don’t like that rule."

"That’s a shame. I’ll go first, then."

You narrow your eyes at an old glass bottle sitting on a bench next to the site. "I’ll never be able to listen to any song by the fucking All-American Rejects ever again."

The bottle smashes beautifully and a rush of adrenaline charges through your veins.

"Your turn, Buck."

You look over your shoulder and freeze for a moment, because he’s shrugged off his jacket, putting it on a work table nearby. Smart, you belatedly think, giving himself a bigger range of movement and you the opportunity to ignore his bare arms.

Get a damn grip.

You hold out the crowbar. "Time to get angry."

"You won’t like me angry." He takes it anyway, and you huff.

"Whether I like you or not has never stopped you before."

His jaw twitches. He mutters something to himself before the pry lightly hits the bench and the whole thing flies away. A startled laugh escapes you.

"Out loud, next time."

"My bad," Bucky says, throwing you the crowbar.

"You’re a cheat," you shake your head, pulling back for another swing. "I’m fucking sick of this weather."

More glass shatters when a bunch of tools and containers go flying off the work table with a couple of strikes.

"I already knew that."

"My bad."

There’s a moment where Bucky flashes a quick grin at you, but you recognize something ignite in him. He slams his vibranium fist into some of the brick stones piled up nearby and they fly into little pieces.

He flexes his fingers slowly, a lost look on his face. "Sometimes I can almost forget that this isn’t …"

You swallow, gripping your crowbar more tightly. "I want nothing more than to stop this loop for good, but it also terrifies me."

Crash. Tools and parts and leftover items smash on the rubble ground as you strike them over and over again, splinters flying off in all directions. You ignore the pain when they hit you, and the sounds of more things breaking behind your back, focused only on the next thing in front of you. Each small destruction that’s under your control.

When you’re done, your breaths come out fast and shallow, your anger at yourself, at your situation, escaping you in desperate pants. Because this is your worst secret yet, isn’t it? More terrible than any growing feelings and long-forgotten truths, this nagging fear of what’s next.

As terrible as the loop has been, it’s at least predictable. Who’s to say that what’s after isn’t worse than this one day? What of every other way the future could break your heart, kill those you care about, burn this world to the ground? If nothing else, Friday is the devil you know.

But you can’t stay; and you wouldn’t want to, anyway. That’s the contradiction you’re stuck in.

Your fingers are wrapped around the pry so tightly it hurts, and you force yourself to take a deep, shuddering breath. Then, you turn around, and your eyes widen.

Bucky’s moved farther away from you, as if to make sure not to put you in his path of destruction. In it, no stone’s been left unturned. Work tables are flipped, machines dented and cracked; the newly put-up drywall a couple of yards ahead has several cracks and holes running through it.

He’s a swirling storm of piled up fury and anguish, and you’re the sole witness to his wreckage. It’s quiet, in a way, with a finality to the brunt of each throw, each hit. Like he’s been waiting for this implicit permission to let go a very long time.

Slowly, the dust settles, leaving him alone at the center of it all, the only thing still standing among broken pieces.

"I keep—" he starts, his head still lowered, shaking. "I keep telling myself that I’m no longer the Winter Soldier, but I don’t think it’s true."

You don’t respond immediately; you’re not sure he’d want you to. Taking off your protective gear is a lot easier than putting it on, and you blink against the sun behind him. It leaves his face in shadows.

"What do you mean?"

"Look at me," he spits, every syllable ringing with despair.

"I am," you say quietly, and you are, you are, you are.

And right then, you feel yourself slip, because the truth is that seeing him like this doesn’t make you like him any less than you do seeing him with relaxed shoulders and sun spots across his chest. It’s just a moment or two before you catch yourself, but you’re sure that if he’d looked at you right then, he’d know.

He hesitates, his jaw tight. "I still hear his voice. I keep thinking like him, wanting to act like he would. What if I do? What if one day, I can’t control it?"

You clear your throat. "Can I say something?"

He nods.

"Of course you still have parts of him in you. It’s your past. You can’t get rid of that. That’s, unfortunately, not how it works." You take a couple of steps closer, your shoes dragging on the rubble. "But it doesn’t make you a bad person, either. It wasn’t your fault."

"I’m supposed to stay in control."

"Aren’t you?" you ask. "I mean, you hear the voice, but do you ever act on it?"

He meets your eyes, then, vehemently. "I would never do that."

You nod, not surprised in the slightest. "What does your therapist think?"

He scoffs. "Not much. He called it intrusive thoughts."

"Hm. That’s really concerning," you say, tilting your head. "You’re being a normal human."

Bucky frowns when you come to a stop in front of him, his eyes swimming with confusion.

"Everyone has those thoughts sometimes," you continue, holding up the crowbar again. "Like, I could hit myself with this. Or you. That doesn’t mean I’m gonna do it. Your thoughts just happen to have a particular flavor to them."

He grinds his teeth. "What if I like being him? When I have these thoughts, my mind is clear. Quiet. Focused. That’s why—"

"What?"

He shakes his head, looking behind you at the rubble surrounding you both. His shoulders deflate at the wasteland before him, and you desperately want to reach for him.

"You’re one of the good ones, Buck," you say, not moving an inch. "Despite your past. Because of your past. It doesn’t make you any less …" Loveable. "You know that, right?"

A beat passes.

"Keep remindin’ me and I might." He clears his throat. "Your turn, Twelve."

It still stings, unexpectedly so. You half-heartedly throw the pry at a couple of bricks, missing by a mile and not caring one bit. You’re out of anger for now.

"I really hate it when you call me that," you admit.

"Why?" he asks, the surprise in his voice genuine.

"Because it makes me … you know how I feel about my powers. It’s like you’re reminding me how I’m not good enough, every time you say that."

Bucky’s gaze on you burns in your neck. "That’s what you think?"

"What else am I supposed to think?" you ask, rolling your eyes. "You said you wanted to keep an eye on me, back when—”

"I think you’re better than you’re telling yourself."

You twist your rings around your fingers, one by one. The space on your pinky is still empty. "No, I’m not."

"Yes. You are." His boots crunch as he takes a step closer. "You told me eleven minutes on your best days? That’s bullshit."

"It’s not," you huff.

"Remember Marylebone? How much did you jump then?"

London seems like years ago, with July getting stuck. It was another extraction mission, and it went well enough—if you ignored Redwing getting shot to bits, that is. Which you usually did.

"Maybe three minutes," you mumble. Not exactly a span of time to write home about.

"But how many times did you do that?" Bucky insists. "How many times did you hold time still during that?"

Your skin prickles. "That’s different—”

"Not really. Not according to your rings, it’s not. They’re just different aspects of your powers. Also, you made a fucking time loop out of nothing."

"One that I have no control over, remember?"

"Not yet."

You shake your head, pulling your arms around yourself. "How did this turn into you giving me a pep talk?"

"You’re …" He sighs and drags a hand through his hair. Little pieces of dust get stuck in it, and you find yourself wanting to brush them out.

"Likewise." How could he be so positive about all the things you disliked about yourself most while not doing the same for himself?

Bucky picks up another brick from the pile next to you, weighing it in his hand, and something about the movement catches your eye, the sunlight just so that …

"Wait!" you say.

He freezes.

You drop to your knees and start digging through the rubble, pushing the bricks aside and ignoring the cuts you get on your hands until—

"Holy shit," you whisper.

"What’s that?"

It’s stuck underneath a pile of debris, the accumulation of nearly two years of being stuck and forgotten, but somehow, it’s still here. Covered in dirt and a little tattered at the edges when you finally manage to pull it out, but still.

"That’s my invisibility cape."

"You have an invisibility cape?"

"Had," you correct, inspecting it more closely. "I didn’t know it survived."

"For the love of—d’you think you might’ve mentioned this before?"

"I didn’t think it was important."

"Twe—" He pinches his nose with two fingers and lets out a long, slow breath. "Does it still work?"

"I don’t know."

"Well, go on then."

You flap it a few times to get the worst of the dust off, then pull it over your head and watch your body disappear. It’s as much of a journey to the past as you’ve managed throughout this loop, and an incredulous giggle escapes you.

Bucky has a peculiar look on his face as he looks just to the right of where you are.

"You trust me, right?" he says pensively.

It occurs to you that he’s never asked you that before, and so you nod even though he can’t see. "I trust you."

"I have an idea."

* * *

"For the record, I hate your ideas."

"Noted," Bucky replies out of the corner of his mouth, tucking his cap deeper into his face.

You nervously tap your foot, peering at the building on the other side of the street. Bleecker Street isn’t all that busy at this time of day, and even though you're fully hidden by your cape, you can’t help but wish for more of a crowd to hide in. You reach for the amulet around your neck.

"What if something goes wrong?" you murmur.

"It won’t," he says calmly. "You said Sam’s already tried and no one’s there today. Plus, we have more or less infinite tries for this, remember?"

You do, unfortunately. Even though you’d really prefer a better, more elaborate plan to break into the New York Sanctum in much the same way as you did the public library, you don’t think they have a Supreme burglar alarm or anything of the sort. Picking the front door lock, it is.

Annoyingly, Bucky even knows you well enough to understand you don’t want to be seen within a hundred yards of any time wizard territory; hence, the game-changing cape.

You wish you’d kept the damn thing in the dirt.

"You don’t know what they’re capable of," you say quietly.

"True, I don’t. But you do." He waits for a couple of people to pass by before risking a glance in your general direction. "Come on. I would never let anything happen to you in there."

You hate these sunglasses. They make it impossible to tell how he means that.

Before you can voice another reason why you should better head back and go get ice cream somewhere, Bucky’s already moving across the street. Cursing under your breath, you rush to follow him, bumping against his arm to make your presence known.

The tiniest grin flickers in the corner of his mouth, and for a moment you enjoy getting to stare at it without him noticing. Then, you take another step and the air around you changes.

If there was any kind of active warning system, you can pinpoint the exact moment it would have alerted. It’s like you’re entering an invisible bubble that surrounds the building, the air growing just a fraction colder. It’s not the temperature that makes you shiver, though.

Magic hums within the very walls of the house. This energy is different to what you remember, but still similar enough you have to bite your cheek hard to keep concentrating on the task at hand.

You swallow down the bile in your mouth and turn your back on the heavy oak door to make sure no one notices that Bucky isn’t, in fact, struggling with a key but instead breaking and entering in broad daylight.

I knew you’d be back, a voice just behind your shoulder seems to whisper, and you flinch. All those years, and still …

Finally, you hear a quiet click and the door creaks open.

"You with me?" Bucky mutters.

Your nails dig into the palms of your hands. "Let’s do this."

177A Bleecker Street is quite a lot bigger on the inside. In many ways, it looks just as you expected, solemn and intricate, all wooden paneling and marble floors that block the sounds from the street outside. Heavy couches sit along the far walls, framed by doorways. A gigantic staircase leads to the upper floors, spreading out into a gallery.

However, something about it feels … unexpected. The energy you’ve already noticed outside is sparkling like electricity, like a fuse ready to be lit, like fireworks waiting to explode, unprecedented and ever changing. Alive.

For some reason, it’s not all that scary.

Pure magic fills your lungs with every breath, and yet it’s just a house. Dust particles are dancing in the blurry light. Your shoes squeak a little on the stone floors.

Bucky takes off his sunglasses, blinking to readjust to the dim light in here. He takes stock of his surroundings much more quickly than you do, zeroing in on the upper levels.

You hold your hood with one hand as you crane your neck. From your position hovering just behind him in the entrance, you can make out the shapes of a few large shelves.

Bingo.

You’ve agreed that despite Strange’s flakiness, he’s already shown you the books most relevant to your situation that the Sanctum library has to offer. Therefore, if not a reading room, you’re looking for any other magical items that might give you a helping hand, maybe some sort of power boost.

To be honest, you’re hoping for a portal to simply step through and finally leave this day behind for good, but you’d settle for a clue.

Bucky’s fingers twitch ever so slightly by his side. Without thinking, you reach out and wrap your pinkie around his. He doesn’t look at you, but he gently squeezes your finger before pulling away, putting his hands back into his jacket pockets.

He left his gloves in the stolen car.

The stairs creak when you sneak up behind him, but the house remains silent. There’s only the omnipresent hum of electric magic, which gets even stronger when you get closer to the shelves you’ve spotted. It’s calling out to you, but not in the way it did outside; this is a softer whisper, more alluring, more curious. Could it be? it says. I’ve waited so long.

You find yourself trailing off, moving a few paces towards the far wall, your heart pounding a wild rhythm. The shelves are made of glass-paneled dark wood, arranged in a spiral pattern. Their contents look rather unassuming in the pale sunlight falling in from the large circular window, museum-like if not for the absence of proper labeling: a couple of old daggers and wands, dull gemstones, shards of pottery, all carefully bedded on crimson velvet and then left for dust.

None of it screams Gateway Out of Here.

Maybe, you think, you could try to hold a few of these gems in your hand and see what happens, do a couple of gestures to coax your powers back. If only there was one of those rings that—

Behind you, shots are fired, and then something heavy crashes to the floor with a resounding shatter. The thrall breaks.

Stupid, stupid, stupid, to think you’d be safe just because you couldn’t be seen. To think that Bucky would be fine waltzing into a place like this without any real protection, just because you’ve been led to assume it’d be abandoned. You’ve stepped right into the trap, and it’s snapped shut immediately.

You spin around, your hands flying up automatically as if there’s a damn thing you can do.

Time doesn’t freeze, but you wish it would.

Bucky’s tangled in a web of rust-colored twines that curl around his arms, his torso, his neck, cutting off his air flow. His gaze is wild, flitting around the room, searching for you even in your invisibility, a silent command in his eyes: Run.

His gun’s dropped to the floor at his feet, right underneath the tendrils winding their way up his struggling legs. You fall towards it, reaching out right as you’re yanked backwards and the eldritch magic catches hold of you, too. Their otherworldly glow makes shadows dance across the dark shelves, ghostly and distorted.

"I suggest you show your face now," a voice says right behind you.

You can tell the hood is ripped off your head because Bucky throws himself against his bindings again. They tighten even more around him, and he chokes, his eyes still glued to you.

He does it again.

"Please don’t," you cry, "not like this, please stop it!" You’re not even sure who you’re pleading to, your fingers twitching, but there’s nothing you can reach out to, the magic in this place forsaking you again.

"You," the voice behind you says sharply.

Any moment, you should wake up. Wake up. Wake up.

You’re slung backwards and you scream because you can’t see Bucky anymore, can’t do anything except hang there, helpless, eye to eye with the Sorcerer Supreme.

"Zealot," he says, venom in every syllable. "I thought you’d died."

"I’m not," you gasp, the very word stinging. "Please, you need to let go of him."

"I don’t think so. I ought to banish you to the Dark Dimension like the rest of you."

The magic around you starts spinning, surrounding you in a dizzying blur of orange and gold. Your blood rushes in your ears as you feel something pull at your very consciousness, harsh and terrifying, and you’re not waking up, you have to wake up, you—

"We’re facing an Incursion!" you shout, hoping anyone can hear you over the mad cacophony of energy. "Please, there’s no time, call Stephen Strange!"

And then, with a final sputter of color, everything goes black.

* * *

The last time you woke with the smell of Sanctum magic in your lungs was the day Thanos snapped.

Wait. Rewind for context.

Your mother used to call it a gift, but for most of your life, your powers had felt more like a curse.

Sure, they had their uses, sometimes, but at what cost? Most of the time, you couldn’t control them, so when you got older, you tried to hide them instead, as best as you could, to pretend they weren’t there at all. You just wanted to be normal.

But your powers didn’t like that.

Ignorance was a vicious circle: The more you tried to suppress the magic coursing through your blood, the more unpredictable it became, flinging you through the timeline without any regard to your sanity. It was a struggle to control even a fraction of what was happening to you.

You knew you needed help.

The London Sanctum was the only one you were aware of, then, the one safe haven for people who were struggling with things beyond their control. Your mother had told you about it many times.

One can never be too wary of their promises, though, honey, she’d close the story every time. They like to forget them when it’s more convenient.

You never asked how she knew so much about the Sanctum and its inhabitants. Mothers just know things when you’re a child.

Maybe you should’ve listened to her warning more closely, but you were young and overwhelmed and out of options, and so you left familiar faces behind and traded them for a silver lining. For the hope of finally controlling this power that was set on destroying your life.

Time itself.

That first day, you were sitting in the Sanctum's courtyard, looking at the other recruits with wide eyes, to the glimmering portals that, they told you, could bring you to the other side of the world in a single step. For the first time in your life, you were surrounded by magic; it wasn't just your secret burden to bear, it was all around you.

Like an offering, they brought the stone to you that day, suspicion clear in their eyes, and you trembled in your bones knowing that everything would finally be fixed, now. Surely, everything would be fixed. You could feel the energies pulsating from that unassuming little gem, mixing with your own powers, sending apprehensive shivers down your spine.

Yes, you thought, stepping closer to it with your hand outstretched. You can fix this.

It was the one and only time you could recall not remembering anything at all.

You'd lost a few seconds at most, but when you blinked back into consciousness, your head was pounding and the time stone had been snatched away from you once again, safe in its golden cage. You'd never see it again.

How peculiar, you caught a whisper, then another, like voices born out of every nightmare you'd ever had, and you tried jumping back to find out what you'd missed, but your powers didn't obey you.

You let yourself get soothed by the empty promises you'd been warned of, but magic would never seem that light or gentle to you again as it did during that first afternoon.

For a while, things got better anyway.

You studied with the Masters of the Mystic Arts while they studied you. They provided you with all sorts of amulets and cuffs that kept the random jumps under control, but they either couldn’t figure out how your powers came to possess you, of all people, or they just didn’t want to tell you.

Time is sacred, they used to teach, and your very existence went against that premise. You were unpredictable, a variable that could never fit into their precious calculations and theories of the grand, sacred timeline, no matter how hard they tried. You found yourself using your powers even less than before, just to stop them from talking over you.

Impossible girl, the Ancient One used to call you, and you hated it.

Of course, she wasn’t making a reference. She just thought you impossible, along with everyone else.

You went along with it for a couple of months or so before you got tired of trying to do something, anything, and you wanted to go home. That was when things shifted.

You’re not a prisoner, they kept telling you, and it was true, in a way. The doors were always open, and your cuffs weren’t shackles. There were just certain rules to learning, particularly in these important early stages of the process. Rules to who goes where, and what to do, and what to wear at every hour of every day, and also the food all tasted the same, like sad mash of whatever vegetables they were able to find that week, but no. You weren’t a prisoner.

That was just life, here, and everyone else seemed fine with it, so what was your problem, exactly?

You were tired and terrified, and everyone told you that there was something about you that just didn’t make sense, which you could’ve told them from the start if only someone listened to you. Everything seemed pointless.

It was no wonder, then, that when Kaecilius and his band of lunatics offered to take you under their wing, to give you a cause and a reason to use your powers, you thought your luck might finally turn.

You’re such a special girl, they’d tell you. Such a special, clever girl. This is a great thing, you know. It’s your talent to make things right, make them the way they should be. You, my dear, are invaluable.

If it sounded too good to be true, that’s because it was.

Kaecililus’ definition of help, it turned out, meant subjugation; or at least the attempt of it. Do as I tell you. For once, your strangling limits turned out to be a blessing in disguise.

What a disappointment you are.

There were no grand speeches. No fanfare, no declaring you a nuisance; you felt the sentiment, anyway. The special, clever girl was a useless waste of time, after all, and was left behind as such. Never good enough. Not deserving of everlasting life.

Not that you wanted any part of that.

You faded back into oblivion again, unable to leave and unable to stay, stuck somewhere in between in the background where you were met with endless whispers and suspicion, doing your part and eating your mush without complaint. What else were you to do? People didn’t leave this place, after all, not before they understood what they came here to find.

Unless they suddenly started applying to your situation, you were fantastically uninterested in any more lectures.

It took a very long time for you to figure out that you could limit the random time jumps by using your powers as much as you could, small skips and halts to the point of exhaustion. If there was nothing left to use, you reasoned, your body couldn’t act without permission. Slowly, you were able to return their trinkets one by one until the only piece you had left was the one you’d brought from home; silver and black tourmaline. Putting it on again was a small relief.

You were still in London when the world was decimated.

The air was heavy and burnt with dust. It was all that was left of so many. The cries of those left behind dried up quickly, leaving a deafening silence in their wake. That was the part you most remembered in years to come: the smell, and the silence.

You were ready to disappear, too, and when whatever fate there was decided to spare you, you took matters into your own hands. The confusion and panic had raised your adrenaline, and the world stopped easily at your command.

It didn’t take you long to grab the few belongings you had left, to shove them into the wooden box every room was outfitted with, and to turn your back on your prison. You found the portal that would take you closest to home, and you stepped through.

You’d never been lucky for long, though. When you arrived, the front door was locked from the inside, and the television was still running, day and night, with no one left to turn it off. You shouted and knocked and rang the doorbell anyway, until your knuckles hurt and your voice got hoarse, and then you noticed that the name above the door was wrong. Time had once again passed unexpectedly, and this place you'd once called home did not belong to you anymore.

You were a nobody now, just like you’d wanted.

Right?

Right.

…

Anyway.

The first time you met Natasha Romanoff in person, a few weeks after the Snap, she only had to look at you for a couple of seconds to be able to read you like a book.

* * *

When you’re finally done, your voice is hoarse and your palms are bloody. You can tell both Wong and Strange are staring at you, but the only person you look at is Bucky.

He’s leaning against the invisible wall of his cell in the Sanctum’s undercroft, meeting your gaze in grim, unreadable silence. He hasn’t looked away from you once during your whole monologue.

You feel drained, turned completely inside out, presenting your most vulnerable parts for everyone to see; and yet, you keep looking at the one person in this room who’s going to remember any of it, calmly and unwaveringly. It makes your head swim, but you can’t keep looking away.

That me then, you think, your hands tapping a quiet rhythm on the cool stone floor. Disappointed?

A pity, you suppose, that you never did get an answer to that particular question.

To your surprise, Strange is the first to break the silence. "Well, then. You think that’s enough to let them out of there?"

Wong mutters a response you don’t understand, but something flickers in front of you for just a moment, and one blink later, Bucky’s in front of you. He wordlessly holds out his hand.

You don’t hesitate before you take it.

Time slows in a way that’s entirely imaginary as he pulls you back to your feet. Every inch of your skin that’s touching him turns hot and cold at the same time.

If it had been his right hand, you wouldn’t have dared to gently squeeze it before finally letting go.

Bucky looks like he wants to say something, but before he gets a chance to even open his mouth, Strange clears his throat. Not for the first time, you want to set his cloak on fire.

"It’s a good thing you came here."

"Oh, yes," you say. "Thanks again for the warm welcome. What fun we’ve had."

"You did break in," Wong says. "Over the past couple of months, we’ve had to be particularly careful when it comes to unexpected visitors. For what it’s worth, though," he adds, "I am sorry."

There’s an honesty to his voice that you appreciate, though not as much as Bucky staying a half-step in front of you during this whole conversation.

Strange claps his hands. Out of the corner of your eye, you see a tea set appear on the sad old desk that’s been pushed against one of the dungeon walls. "Best not to dwell on it," he says, his cloak gently flapping at you. "May we take a look at your necklace?"

You hesitate. You’ve not taken it off in years, not even to sleep or train. It’s been what’s successfully hidden you away from anyone trying to find you or your powers.

Now that you’ve revealed all of yourself, though, you suppose there’s no point in denying him.

You place the necklace in his palm and he murmurs something. It starts glowing in gentle amber colors.

"It should do," he says to Wong. "Do you want the honors?"

"Here’s what I don’t understand," Wong says, ignoring him. "All of this could’ve been avoided with a few controlled time slips."

"A few what now?" you say.

"It’s the act of reversing time not for the whole universe, but for one small part of it. Even he could do it after just a few months," he says, nodding his head at Strange, who lifts an eyebrow.

"Look at you condoning going against the laws of nature."

"Shut up and do your job. Away from my carpets, this time."

"Your carpets, is it?" Strange says, his cloak flapping impatiently. His gray eyes bore into you one final time, assessing you, you think, or maybe silently telling you something you don’t understand. Then he turns and starts ascending the stairs again.

You wrap your arms around yourself. "I’ve not had months of training," you remind Wong.

"Not that first time," he replies. "From what you’ve told us, though, your training in the astral plane has progressed immensely. You should have much more control over your powers than you ever have before."

"So you’re saying I could do it now?"

"I’m saying there’s at least a chance. May I?"

You fiercely ignore Bucky glancing at you, holding out your arm. The symbols around your wrist buzz and glimmer when Wong murmurs something, his hands hovering over your skin. The smell of magic grows more potent as gentle wisps of light travel along your arm, poking at the loop.

Warm fingers wrap around your other hand this time, and you realize you’ve been shaking.

"With the time anomaly persisting, it will continue getting stronger with every repeat of this day," Wong continues out loud as he’s working. "It will eat away at the fabric between realities until things start to slip through, and then it’s only a matter of time until this one collapses entirely."

You swallow. "What things?"

"People. Places. Memories meant for other timelines. Playing with the fabric of everything is a dangerous pastime."

"It’s not like we’re doing it on purpose," Bucky speaks up for the first time. Your hold on his hand tightens.

Wong glances up at him. "Unfortunately, Sergeant Barnes, there are some rules that don’t care about intent."

"So what if it does?" you say. "Collapse, I mean. You know about me now, can you not portal or time slip us to another reality, let this one disintegrate? It’s cursed, anyway."

"Apart from the fact that that’s not how portals work," Wong says dryly, "that’s a reckless idea. All realities are connected in one way or another. One imploding like this might have disastrous consequences on the entire multiverse."

"This is about the whole sacred timeline thing again, isn’t it?" You roll your eyes. "Who came up with that, anyway? What makes our existence so damn special? I mean, there are endless possibilities out there, aren’t there? An infinite number of realities. Who’s to say we’re more real than the rest of them?"

"Magic, as a whole, is always a balancing act." The symbols return to their place just above your skin, tingling. Wong rubs his hands, looking at you. "Ask your actual question."

"I’m not supposed to exist here, am I?" You’re grateful for the fact that Bucky is still holding your hand, even though you don’t know why he would. It anchors you. "I switch between realities every time I jump back in time, right? So this one isn’t actually mine at all."

"Has anyone ever taught you about the Infinity Stones?"

Had they? You’d learned more about the stones at Campus than you ever had during your time at the Sanctum, but even then—knowing how to find a thing and understanding it aren’t the same thing.

You shake your head.

"The powers held by the stones are interconnected. You don’t just control time, your powers have an influence on space and reality by their very nature as well. You can’t just separate one from the other. Tea?"

You stay silent as he pours it into several mugs and offers you one. It’s steaming hot, and it smells almost exactly like the one you were offered in the astral plane; only with a dash of cinnamon.

"The thing is," Wong continues, blowing on his tea, "in a way, we all hold the same kind of power. These other worlds, they exist alongside this one, all the time, and each time we make a decision, our consciousness merely slips between them. That doesn’t make the ones we left behind more or less ours."

"But the stones got destroyed in our reality," Bucky says.

"There’s that thing called the first law of thermodynamics."

Bucky’s thumb traces an absentminded line along the back of your hand, and you have to hide a shiver. "Energy can’t be created or destroyed, it can only change its form."

"That’s exactly right. So you see, even though the stones may be turned to dust, they’re not gone. Otherwise, our reality—or any like it, in fact—wouldn’t continue to exist."

"That wasn’t my question, though," you argue. "The power of the stones still exists, whatever that means. That’s great. What does that have to do with me? Or with this loop, for that matter."

"You draw from the time stone’s energy more than the other’s," Wong replies. "Since the stones don’t exist in their physical form anymore in our reality, you are pulling the necessary energy from others in which they are still intact, at the moment of using your powers. You’ve been able to jump greater temporal distances more easily before, am I right? Before the stone was crushed into pieces?"

You’re about to deny it, but then he adds, gently, "When you were a child, maybe?"

Memories of repeated accidental time jumps rush through your mind. Memories of getting stuck in the same couple of minutes for hours on end, finally getting out of it after what had felt like years and yet not feeling any different at all.

It’d never made you feel so exhausted, then.

You’d never put it together consciously because the first time you tried using your powers after the Snap, you you’d already been exhausted for so long. You’d blame a lack of practice, of proper technique or attention or adequateness; a lack of freedom to use them however you wanted without feeling prying eyes watch your every move.

Later, you’d mostly blame yourself.

Bucky’s hand slips out of yours and you are brought back to the present again. The tea has gone tepid in your cup when you take a sip; it makes your eyes water with its bitter sting.

"What I’m trying to say is this," Wong continues. "There’s no right or wrong answer to whether you actually belong in this reality, because we all shift between related realities constantly. What you’re doing is unusual, yes, but not unheard of. And it certainly doesn’t mean you shouldn’t exist. Quite the contrary. I’ve found that everything and everyone of us has a purpose here."

You nod, your throat still clogged up.

"The loop," Bucky says. "How do we go about undoing it?"

We.

"It comes back to how it was created in the first place. With internalized magic like yours, the kind used on yourself instead of externally, it comes back to the emotions we feel when we reach out to the stones. They’re essential in what they help create."

Your mind replays the first time you’ve watched Bucky die in front of you. To that desperation, the guilt, the shame. And hidden underneath, still unnoticed, still pushed down, perhaps …

"Here you go," Strange says, returning your necklace. The tourmaline is warm to the touch, humming with newly imbued magic. "Whenever you’re ready, this should do the trick. You might get a bit light-headed."

You both stare at him. "This gets us out?" you ask, your voice cracking.

Strange frowns. "What? No."

"I told you," Wong says with an edge of impatience, "that’s not how portals work."

"Technically not a portal," you mumble, putting the pendant on again, feeling it pulsate warmly against your chest.

True to Strange’s words, you immediately feel a little dizzy with a rush of concentrated magic that has nowhere to go. Even though you’re seated, you have to grasp for Bucky’s arm to keep your balance.

"I’ve imbued the necklace with some of my own powers and linked it more closely to your person," Strange continues, and you dig the nails of your unoccupied hand into your palm to pay attention. "It should help you focus your powers more directly once you’re back in the astral plane and allow you to break the loop in time. Mind you, it’s merely an amplifier, not a quick fix. It might still take a while."

"How much time do we still have before the loop starts to disintegrate?" Bucky asks. Smart question. He’s so smart.

"You’re already past that point, Sergeant Barnes," Wong says, and it sends a chill through you. "But we’ll do our best to help as much as we can. I will set up some wards that should bypass my own consciousness and buy you some more time."

"Thank you," you say quietly, blinking quite a lot. "For all of this."

He nods, slowly, measuring you up, but not in the way you’re used to; for once, you appear to meet expectations. "Good luck, Miss Y/L/N. Let us know how these matters resolve."

"You doing okay, doll?" Bucky chuckles on your way up the stairs. It’s the first time he’s smiled even a little bit all afternoon. He should do it more. Why doesn’t he do it more?

It takes you a bit to notice you’re still holding onto his sleeve. "I’m great," you say. "Superb, really. Did the floor sway like that earlier? Seems like a safety issue. What time is it? I hope Sam’s alright."

"Maybe you should take that thing off again, hm?"

"No no no," you say quickly, immediately tripping over your own feet. Before you plant on your face in the middle of the entrance hall, Bucky manages to hold out his other arm to catch you. "Whoops."

"Very convincing," he says dryly, but there’s something akin to fondness in his eyes when he looks at you.

"You have the prettiest eyes," you tell him with a sigh, "did you know?"

"And you are quite literally drunk on power." A fascinating shadow falls over his face as he steadies you; it mostly reaches his cheeks. "Let’s hope that’ll fade once you get back to the astral plane or else you might just as well kill me yourself."

"I never want to do that. I don’t want that. Do you think I want to kill you?"

"If you did, now’s your chance." He huffs. "Wouldn’t blame ya."

You stare at him, at his oddly bright blue eyes and his self-deprecating scowl and at the way he’s still holding you upright, and then your lightheadedness makes you do something very, incredibly, outrageously stupid.

You kiss him.

It barely takes a moment to make you realize, like a shock of cold water, what it is you’re doing. Bucky freezes when your lips brush against his. They’re so soft.

You immediately jolt your head back, your heartbeat loud enough to reverberate in your ears, "Fuck!"

His eyes are so wide and so blue and he’s still holding your elbow, and so you yank your arms away and tumble backwards just as he says, "You’re not—"

But you’re still falling.

And then, with a start, you wake up.

* * * * *

"You have a lot of empty rooms," Sam said when he found you on one of the couches in the living room area, curled up to watch some Netflix.

You shrugged. "Guess Stark anticipated more people’d be left to use them after … everything."

"And it’s just you?"

You let the question sit for a moment, for some reason looking at your dish towel. "Yup," you replied finally. "Just me."

Sam nodded, apparently lost in thought.

"So yeah," you continued for some reason, "if you’re in the city and need a place, feel free, I guess."

You didn’t expect much to come of it. After all, Sam had his own apartment all the way over in D.C., and you honestly didn’t expect to see him much once this mission was over.

You told yourself that for the first five missions before you accepted that maybe he’d continue asking you to tag along.

In the end, it hadn’t been him who needed a place, anyway. It was Bucky.

He didn’t tell you the particulars about why he had to leave his Brooklyn apartment; you assumed he’d had to leave, because there was truly no other explanation why he’d choose to move in with you, of all people.

Then again, you hardly ever saw him, and if you hadn’t seen him bring an overnight bag and a withering houseplant on the weekend he’d settled in one of the upstairs bedrooms, you wouldn’t have known another person was living in the Tower at all.

Well, that and the food mysteriously disappearing from your fridge now.

Sam was the one most weirded out by your living situation, even though you were absolutely positive it’d been his idea in the first place.

"What did you expect?" you asked, handing him his usual coffee cup. "That we’d immediately become besties just because we share a kitchen?"

"It’s unnatural," he shook his head. "Do you communicate with each other at all?"

"Sure. Sometimes I leave post-its on the fridge and when I come back, they’re in the trash."

"One day, one of you is gonna outweird the other. I just hope I’m out of town." He bit into a rugelach and started coughing. "Jesus, what did you put in these?"

"Ask Bucky. He’s doing a whole midnight baking thing at the moment. I think he’s trying to take the Tower for himself by smoking me out."

Sam decidedly pushes the cookie tin farther away from him. "You’ve not asked him, then?"

"Again, he doesn’t respond to my post-its."

Truthfully, you were still mad at him. How were you supposed to wallow in peace if someone was constantly ignoring your personal space? There were only so many times you could flee into the blissful loneliness of the void.

In other words, you didn’t notice for a very long time that you didn’t seek out the quiet nearly as much anymore these days.

"Hey, Ratatouille," Sam said. "I was gonna tell you both, actually."

It was good progress that made you not flinch quite as much anymore when a cupboard opened just behind you. In fact, you didn’t even move a muscle.

On your second try.

"I was gonna tell you both, actually," Sam said again, taking a sip of coffee. "CIA wants us to quit the ULTIMATUM case."

"What?" you both said at the same time.

"Why?" Bucky asked irritably. "Sharon already sick of your face again?"

Sam throws a piece of rugelach at him. "I don’t think it was her call. But it means I gotta head to Virginia for a while and give them a full debrief so they can do their own 'internal investigation', whatever that’s supposed to mean. After that, we’re on our own."

"I don’t like this," Bucky said.

"Neither do I," Sam replied. "But I’m hoping to get some information out of them while I’m down there."

"So that’s just it?" you said. "They tell us to stop and we just have to drop everything?"

"Officially, yes."

Bucky crossed his arms. "When you say 'we’re on our own' …"

"I don’t trust these people," Sam said. "I want to know what they’re trying to keep hush. But you," he nods at Bucky, "have been pardoned for less than a year, and you," he nods at you, "don’t officially exist. I can’t guarantee either of these things will stay that way if we go against official government orders. So if you want an out, this is it."

You looked at Bucky, and for the first time, you didn’t find any challenge in his eyes. He simply looked at you, letting you make the call first.

Maybe it was a dare in and of itself, but you couldn’t help yourself. Your curiosity had been sparked.

"If you’re waiting for me to chicken out …"

For a fraction of a second, something like a smile made his mouth twitch. "Wouldn’t dream of it."

chapter ten

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[invisibleicewands]

Michael Sheen: my dad’s last words — and how they inspire me

The actor talks movingly about the recent death of his father, Meyrick, setting up a new Welsh National Theatre and why he’s given away most of his money

For years, long before his father, Meyrick, was diagnosed with Alzheimer’s, Michael Sheen would imagine the final conversation the two men would have. He assumed that it would be the time to say what had been unsaid. Meyrick died last month. He was 85 and Sheen was at his deathbed, with his mother, Irene, and his sister, Joanne. They all knew the journey they were on — “It had one destination” — and, as such, Sheen had time to prepare what he might say, sitting with Meyrick in his final days.

“But, ultimately, it just gets very simple,” says Sheen, a 56-year-old with a full ruffle of hair and beard, who seems a little more sombre than usual, as if shrunk by the flying away of friendly ghosts. “You just say, ‘I love you.’ And that’s it, really. When I was growing up, I used to measure who I was by how different I was to my father, but as I’ve got older, I measure who I am by how similar I am to him.”

Tributes poured in for Meyrick, a local hero in his hometown of Port Talbot, where Sheen was also brought up and near which he now lives. Meyrick worked in the steel industry and enjoyed a side hustle as a Jack Nicholson impersonator, but spent many years engaging and supporting local projects in the struggling community. In Port Talbot, up on Forge Road, there is a mural of Sheen, and the day after Meyrick died a local artist added his image. The family drove past it on the way to Meyrick’s funeral.

“It is amazing to have that,” says Sheen, adding that the mural is handy for his children to remember their grandfather by. Sheen has a 26-year-old daughter, Lily, from his relationship with the actress Kate Beckinsale, and, Lyra, five, and Mabli, three, with his partner, the actress Anna Lundberg, 30. “Lyra thinks that when people die, they become gravestones,” Sheen says. “There was no way I was going to be able to explain that my dad is now ashes in an urn, but I can take them to that mural and they can engage with him through that. And so can my mother, who met him when she was 14 and lost him when she was 83.”

I ask what Meyrick was most proud of, if there is a particular role by Sheen he admired above all others? Sheen smiles. “He always talked about a Steven Berkoff play, Harry’s Christmas, that I did in the summer holidays when at drama school,” Sheen says. “Dad took a bit of time off from work to watch me doing it and called my mum and said, ‘Irene, you have got to go and see this!’

“But the last thing he said to me was about Port Talbot,” Sheen says. “By the end, he was confusing and conflating things, but the spirit was clear. I was telling him about the possibility of a project in town and he wasn’t able to say very much, but the last thing he said to me wasn’t about acting. He was so passionate about his community, where he grew up and lived all his life, so communicating that to me was the most important thing to him at the end. It was very telling. He just said, ‘Get it done, Michael. Get it done.’”

Sheen’s life changed in 2011. Before then, he was simply Hollywood’s favourite Welsh actor, living in Los Angeles, the star of Frost/Nixon, The Queen and The Damned United. There was acclaimed TV work and theatre too, but then, 14 years ago, came The Passion, a 72-hour immersive play with professionals and locals that took over the streets of Port Talbot. He never looked back. That experience meant Sheen returned to Wales and became what he is now, partly an actor, but mostly a restless campaigner, much like Meyrick, for the arts and the people he feels have been left behind.

“I’ve got no control over what people remember once I’m not around; legacy is for other people,” he argues when I ask if this pivot to philanthropy was fuelled by wanting to leave behind more than roles. “But I can do something about now — using whatever resources I have, financial or my platform. So yes, I want to be the best actor I can, but it has also become increasingly meaningful to me that people respond to the other work I do.”

The work he has done, with his own money, includes restoring local venues; funding the Homeless World Cup in Cardiff; backing Port Talbot Town FC; helping working-class voices access the arts; and fronting Michael Sheen’s Secret Million Pound Giveaway on Channel 4, which assisted 900 people caught up in the grip of debt. Now, he has co-written a children’s book, A Home for Spark the Dragon, about a homeless dragon. Every book sold will raise £1 for Shelter.

Which makes Sheen very unusual. Does he think more well-off peers should follow his lead? “Well, I’m acutely aware there is a possibility that what I am doing causes more damage than good,” he explains. How so? “Because if you blunder in with good intentions but low knowledge into areas where people have all sorts of vulnerabilities, it might do harm. So I would not just try to get people to put money into things. Most people I know, actors or anybody with money, do care, but not everyone has the same opportunity to engage in a way I do and so feel they might make an idiot of themselves. So I would hope that other people would get more involved, but I don’t in any way judge people who don’t.”

Yet Sheen is hardly a ten-Marvel-movies-in-the-bank sort of actor. Yes, he did a few Twilight films that paid handsomely. Yes, he is well off. But how can he afford to spend the thousands he does? “It’s interesting when people talk about me as a multimillionaire,” he says, smiling. “Because no — I don’t have that much money. I mean, I have money compared to lots of people, but this is about juggling debt. I’m still paying off the Homeless World Cup. It’s not like I have all this spare cash. And there are times I can put money into things and times when I can’t.”

Which brings us to the arts — specifically Welsh National Theatre, the body that Sheen helped to found in January, as artistic director, to replace National Theatre Wales after it lost £1.6 million in funding from Arts Council of Wales. Reports say that Sheen is funding the new project. The co-production model, whereby the theatre will team up with other theatres, helps but other than that is the money really all coming from him? “Arts Council Wales gave National Theatre Wales transitional funding to either wrap up or come up with a plan for the future,” Sheen says. “And that plan ended up being me running the new organisation. There was an argument if any of that transitional funding should come with us and that’s now been resolved, so we will be in receipt of around £200,000. I am paying for everything else.”

And he wants to be ambitious. Nye, the play in which he stars as the Labour politician Aneurin “Nye” Bevan, returns to the National Theatre in London next month before a run at the Wales Millennium Centre in Cardiff. Tim Price’s play tackles a serious subject, the NHS, in an innovative but mainstream way — which is exactly what Sheen wants.

“When the current seems to be going in one direction,” he says, “it appeals to me to not let yourself be swept away by it, but turn your shoulder into the current and go the other way. So it’s not just us saying, with theatre, ‘We’re going to hang on!’ We’ll be more ambitious. We’ll be bolder.”

One of Welsh National Theatre’s first plays is Owain & Henry, about Owain Glyndwr’s rebellion against Henry IV of England. Which feels mischievous. Sheen is barely able to contain his glee. “The subtitle is ‘The End of England’. Cheeky is the wrong word — it’s audacious, challenging. I love that about it.”

There is a sense, though, that when it comes to the arts Sheen is just papering over the cracks. Backing Welsh National Theatre is one thing, but the list of financial crises in Wales extends to the National Museum Wales, Welsh National Opera, the Royal Welsh College of Music and Drama, St David’s Hall in Cardiff and many more.

It is more than one actor can solve, surely? “Well, clearly the system doesn’t work,” Sheen says with a sigh. “It’s f***ed! And what really exercises me is that some people are making massive amounts of money, but over the last 50 years we’ve been told about efficiency, how technology will save costs. Yet the majority of communities get less and less. It is not working, is it? Everything gets cut. I am not just talking about the arts. That should be the context within which we talk about anything.

“And then in that context,” he continues, on a mellifluous roll, “we get told: ‘Well, if it’s money going to your theatre or to nurses, what do you think we should do?’ That is a nonsense argument that reveals something about our society and values. It should not be the case where you have to decide between giving money to the NHS or the arts. All that reveals an attitude towards the arts as some sort of luxury add-on, which is a fundamental misunderstanding of who we are as human beings. Something is fundamentally wrong.”

It can be easy to forget Sheen is an actor, but he has hardly stopped his day job. As well the return of Nye, there is the potential return of Good Omens, the fantasy show he made with his friend David Tennant that was due a third series before sexual assault allegations arose against its creator Neil Gaiman. Sheen and Tennant filmed a feature-length finale instead of a run of episodes. “But I really don’t know what’s going to happen with it,” Sheen says. “We were both relieved we finished the story, but that’s within this really difficult, complicated, disturbing context. I hope people get to see it, but that, to a large extent, is out of our hands.”

Something that’s very much in his control is A Home for Spark the Dragon, which he wrote because having his two youngest children has thrust him back into the world of bedtime stories. He wanted to tackle a difficult subject and help parents to talk to children about homelessness.

Once, in north London, Sheen had started to talking to a homeless man whom he one night introduced to his family. “It clearly meant a huge amount to him,” Sheen says. “And made me realise, on a basic level, that we need food and drink to stay alive, but need connection as well. One of the hardest things about being on the streets is the feeling you’re just not seen.” He pauses. “But the book has to be engaging,” he insists. “If there’s a whiff of worthiness, it’s dead in the water.”

I wonder though — does Sheen show other parents up? Surely, when doing a bedtime read, he is all-in on the actorly voices? “My kids just don’t know what they’re getting,” he bellows. “Like, this is peak quality kids’ book reading and they take it completely for granted.” Could he charge them? “Well, we’ll see — I mean, they pay in one way or another, don’t they?”

He laughs. He was inspired to write Spark — which he would like to turn into a series — after reading to his girls The Invisible String by Patrice Karst. It is a children’s book that does not shy from tough conversations he thinks we should be having with our children.

“There’s a boy and a girl in this storm and they run scared into their mother, who tells them about the invisible string that connects them,” he says. “Even when they’re not together, they still feel it. Then, later, the kids ask, ‘What about Uncle Billy?’ Who is clearly dead. And it’s then you realise how hard it is to talk about this stuff, how much as a culture we avoid it. When I lost my father, it became a question of how we tell the girls.” He smiles rather sweetly. “And in the book? For Uncle Billy? Well, the mother says, ‘Yes. Yes, you’re still connected to him, by this invisible string …’”

[bullet-prooflove]

Plastics: Peter Benton x Reader

Tagging: @kmc1989

Summary: Peter has never had a high opinion of plastics surgeons.

The joke about the Plastics Residency is the duality of it. It’s the least serious of all the surgery specialities however it’s often the most sort after because the career brings money and prestige.

It’s well known that the residents that go into it chase the elective surgeries. They focus on face lifts, breast augmentations, rhinoplasties, all of the things they can make a killing on when they eventually defect from County to private clinics.

It’s the same every year and it makes Peter’s job insufferable because it means he has to fill in when it comes to plastics traumas, stuff like reattaching severed limbs, addressing burns, restoring functionality. It steals away his focus away from the procedures he should be doing for his own specialty, something he finds beyond infuriating.

Hence why he doesn’t have much faith in the current Plastics resident sitting in the armchair in the Doctor’s Lounge, flicking through a medical journal, dog earing the articles.

He’s seen you around, hell, he even thought you were attractive for a nanosecond before he realised you were in Plastics. It’s an immediate turn off because every single one of those residents comes with an unhealthy degree of superiority and unnerving obsession with achieving physical perfection.

“Must be quiet up there.” Peter remarks, heading directly to the coffeepot. He doesn’t like having another surgeon in his territory, especially one that that’s not here to help lighten the load. He knows what’s going to happen, you’re going to sit there, cherry picking your procedures to fill the look book they give you, the one you’ll take with you when some aesthetics clinic inevitably poaches you. “Noone to give double DDs to today?”

“Nope.” You counter as he picks up the pot and pours the coffee into his Bulls mug. “But I could do that penile lengthening you’ve been asking for if you’re looking to help me fill my day.”

He almost drops his fucking coffee cup. It takes him a second to regain his composure, just long enough for him to retort with. “Trust me length is not the problem.”

“Can do a girth enhancement too.” You shoot back, snapping your fingers. “You can go from pencil to coke can just like that.”

“Is that what they’ve been teaching you up there?” He ponders as he slumps down onto the couch, his lower back aching from the five hour surgery he’s just undertaken. His gaze fixates on the telenovela that’s playing on the TV, the one he’s been trying to follow over the past couple of days.

“You would be surprised how many men it’s a problem for.” You say distracted, your teeth biting your lower lip as you study something in the med journal in front of you. “Part of the reason I’m down here is because I want to be working actual traumas and reconstruction, not assuaging some rich guy’s neuroses about whether his mistress thinks his dick is too small.”

“Out of curiosity…” Peter begins and the edges of your mouth twitch up as you lower the journal and hold up your little finger.

“Micro penis.” You tell him and he pulls a face. “3 inches.”

“That poor man.” He mutters, staring at the outline of his own crotch trying to gauge the measurement. “Like erect?”

“Apparently.” You say, shrugging your shoulders. “I only saw it in its natural state.”

He looks at you then, really looks at you. You’re clad in sky blue surgical scrubs with the v in the centre, hair pulled back into a neat brad. His gaze lingers on the tiny patch of rumpled skin that peeks out from underneath the neckline. A burn scar, he realises, a bad one.

Your gaze flickers up to meet his.

“A house fire.” You say as you pull the fabric away from your collarbone so he can see more of it. It’s gnarly, one of the worst he’s seen but the graft work, it’s superb. “Now do you understand I’m not like the other assholes up on that floor?”

“Yeah.” He says, looking at you in a new light. “Yeah I think do.”

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[greenlantern94to04]

Zero Hour 30th Anniversary Special #1 (October 2024)

OH NO! A residual time vortex left over from Zero Hour has transported us from October 1994 to October 2024! Before a Linear Man comes to take us back to our proper time and/or shoot us with a giant gun, let's look at the Zero Hour 30th Anniversary special that came out this month, and absolutely nothing else. (Not because I don't wanna learn too much about the future to protect the integrity of the timestream, but just because it looks kinda depressing...)

The issue starts with the Kyle Rayner of 2024, who looks exactly like the '94 model, right down to being drawn by Darryl Banks. I'm gonna take this to mean that no dramatic events have happened in Green Lantern comics during the past 30 years and the status quo is pretty much the same.

The one difference seems to be that Kyle can't access Sector 2814 or Earth, for some reason, so he's stuck Green Lanterning in alien planets. He's in one of those planets when a portal opens in front of him and Wally "Flash" West (or a version of him, anyway) comes out, begging for Kyle's help with some sort of universe-destroying threat.

Wally pulls Kyle into the portal, which leads them to a reality where there's a big statue of Batman in front of Wayne Manor. Apparently, they've landed in Earth "Bruce Wayne Doesn't Give a Shit If Anyone Figures It Out." Wally says something about a "Crisis-level event" coming -- which is confirmed when two members of the Fatal Five (the 31st century supervillain team) show up, kill him, and peace out.

Yep, that's a Crisis alright.

In the next section (drawn by Kelley Jones), Kyle has a run-in with Gotham City's protector: Batgirl, who's kind of a gritty badass in this reality and gives Kyle a beatdown because she thinks he killed Wally. However, no amount of prep time can make Batgirl more powerful than a ring that can create anything you want, so Kyle easily traps her in a green bubble and flies her back to Wayne Manor to figure out what the hell's going on. There, they meet a version of Bruce Wayne who never recovered from that little "Bane" incident in 1993, meaning he's still crippled and depressed. But hey, on the upside, he now owns a cool sci-fi wheelchair and sports an even cooler beard.

Kyle ditches the belligerent Bat-people and heads to Metropolis to look for Superman. And sure enough, he finds Superman... 's grave, because, in this world, he never came back after Doomsday killed him. You might notice a pattern emerging here. (This section is drawn by Tom Grummett, who has some experience drawing dead Supes.)

Instead, Kyle meets Supergirl, who's wearing a very "Reign of the Supermen" black costume and immediately starts punching him. We learn that Batgirl called every hero she knows and told them that this green weirdo killed Flash and is probably to blame for the fact that reality seems to be collapsing around them. Supergirl is joined by Azrael, The Ray, and Wonder Woman -- a.k.a. Donna Troy, who, we're told, is someone Kyle once dated (uh, spoilers for post-1994 GL comics!). Donna has no idea who Kyle is, but at least her Lasso of Truth establishes that he's not some Flash-killing reality destroyer.

Obsidian, son of the Golden Age Green Lantern, joins the party. He tells everyone that he (somehow) used his shadow powers to peek across time and found out that other eras have been erased, from Viking times to the Middle Ages to the 1940s. This provides a convenient excuse for this section's artist, the legendary Jerry Ordway, to draw the Justice Society of America for the 1940th time.

The far-future has also been destroyed completely, except for exactly five baddies who escaped in a time bubble (the previously seen Fatal Five). At this point, Kyle should have said "Hey, that's just like in Zero Hour!" but he still doesn't understand what's going on. Thankfully, he gets a little nudge in the form of... oh shit, it's Hal Jordan as Parallax!!! (Please pretend you didn't see him on the cover.)

After seeing Parallax, Kyle finally starts putting things together: looks like this is the "perfect world" Hal wanted to create in Zero Hour, where Coast City was never destroyed... but all the other '90s calamities still happened to the other heroes, because screw those guys. Now this universe is decaying, but Hal thinks he can keep it going if Kyle hands over his GL ring. Kyle doesn't wanna, so it's Lantern vs. Lantern time (as drawn by Paul Pelletier, who'd be great on a storyline featuring GLs fighting GLs, hypothetically speaking).

Hal sics his new lackeys, the Fatal Five, on Kyle. More '90s heroes show up to help: Connor "Green Arrow" Hawke, Jack "Starman" Knight (who I really hope is being used with James Robinson's blessing; presumably Tony Harris is okay with it, since he has a pinup in this issue), and Guy "Guy Gardner" Gardner (in his red armor, which probably hasn't been seen in non-flashback form since the '90s).

Meanwhile, Supergirl reluctantly visits her asshole ex, Lex, to ask him how to stop their universe from decaying (I wish they'd used his long-haired Lex Luthor Jr. look, but I guess that was ruled out because it ended right before Zero Hour). Lex confirms what Parallax is saying: they have to give him Kyle's ring.

So, Supergirl joins Hal's side, while Donna sticks by Kyle and other heroes stand around wondering what to do. Soon enough, Hal manages to get his hands on Kyle's ring, something he claims would be "next to impossible for most." Yeah, Kyle losing his ring to a villain? When has that ever happened?

Now that he has double the power, Hal saves this universe by... screwing Kyle's. As in, he takes all that entropy that's eating this reality and channels it to the regular DCU via the portal that brought Kyle here. The heroes aren't sure how they feel about that, but Kyle argues that their universe is less important than his multiverse because it's smaller. Also, that unimportant universe has a name now: Splinterverse! Not to be confused with the Earth where everyone is a martial artist rat.

(Also also, Howard Porter is the artist now!)

You might wonder where Linear Men, the time police, are during this whole mess. The answer is "trapped in a cube." Turns out Waverider found out about this Splinterverse at some point and traveled here to deal with it, but Hal imprisoned him in said cube. Luckily, Wavey's found by the Legion of Super-Heroes' Invisible Kid, who stowed away in the Fatal Five's time bubble by... being invisible. Before he's freed by Invisible Kid, Waverider delivers some (Dan Jurgens and Brett Breeding-drawn!) exposition that reveals the precise moment when the Splinterverse was created: the part at the end of Zero Hour #0 when he slipped the heroes back into the timestream, at which point Hal sneakily dispatched "a splinter aspect of himself" to create a smaller-scale version of his "perfect world."

Waverider helps convince the conflicted heroes that it's worth it to let their little universe die so that trillions more people can live. Even Guy Gardner, who was initially going "screw you, I'm saving myself" and punched Kyle, begrudgingly stands down. With Starman and Obsidian's assistance, Kyle is able to get his ring back from Hal, causing the entropy to flood back into the Splinterverse. Kyle is convinced that there must be some way to save this place, but Waverider is like "nope" and drags him back to the DCU as the Splinterverse is erased. The only thing that remains of it is a nice necklace that Wonder Donna gave Kyle to remember her by.

Kyle is mighty pissed at Waverider for not even trying to save the Splinterverse, but at least they're back home and it's all over... or is it? The special ends with the revelation that something Kyle did in this issue somehow freed some sort of big, yellow space bug. Wonder what that's about. Looking forward to reading the resolution to that cliffhanger in 30 more years!

As a '90s kid, I am physically incapable of disliking this special, which was aimed squarely at me. The 14-year-old Kyle/Donna shipper in me especially appreciates the focus on those two, with Kyle even mentioning that he doesn't really understand why she was suddenly written out of his life (the answer is "because John Byrne").

However, I think there are several missed opportunities here:

The Splinterverse doesn't look a whole lot like the "perfect world" Hal wanted to create in Zero Hour. Coast City is there, but it only appears for a few panels and doesn't really play any role in the story. Everyone else is kinda angry and miserable, or pretty much the same as in the DCU. It would have been interesting to see if the utopia Hal had promised, where no tragedies happen and one needs to grow old or die, would have been sustainable over time.

I really hoped the female Time Trapper from the end of ZH #0 would be addressed, but nope. Dan Jurgens has said that he intended that to be the alternate timeline Batgirl who died in ZH, which I find a really intriguing idea. On that note, the Batgirl in this issue is clearly not the one who died in ZH, not just because, well, she's alive, but also because she acts like a totally different character and makes no reference to anything in ZH.

I was gonna say that I'd hoped the Hal/Parallax in this issue would be the one that was left as a loose end at the end of Convergence, especially since Jurgens was also involved in that series. However, the DC wiki informs me that this version has actually appeared in other comics since then, as recently as 2023, and his further misadventures sound a bit confusing from the write-up there, so I can't really blame Jurgens and Ron Marz for looking at that and saying "You know, let's just make another one."

One thing I did like is that, on top of reuniting Kyle Rayner creators Ron Marz and Darryl Banks, this special also features so many classic '90s Superman artists -- in fact, my friend and @superman86to99 co-runner Don Sparrow had a lot to say about the art in this issue in that blog, so head there for more!

[carpesabrina]

She rose an eyebrow as he spoke, shaking her head. “Do you feel the same about your video from when you were five singing on the Rosie show?” She asked him. But she was Sure he didn’t give two shits about it. That was his whole personality. And it was why she loved him. She had always cared about things and just people in general. Btu she was constantly getting better at not doing that, and stop caring what others say or think about her. “Oh yeah, our babies are going to be spoiled. Moreso from our parents than us.” She laughed. She already knew her mom would spoil any grandkids that she got. And she was sure Nina would end up being the same way. “I hope they’re kind. But I also hope they can stand up and be mean when they need to be. I want them to be the perfect mix of our personalities.” She knew that Max didn’t want their kids to be like him. He didn’t want his ADD to get passed onto them. She let out a small laugh, “I know you would hurt anyone that hurts our kids. But you also can’t bitch slap a child.” She pointed out, but she was sure he was trying to lighten the mood. Getting her mind off of her own pain and heartbreak over the years. The need to want to protect her children from getting hurt in all the same ways she had, and even the ways that Max had. Neither had pretty upbringings when it came to their peers. “Agreed. I thought about a courthouse wedding for a minute. But I’d much rather have a big wedding with our family and friends. Walk down the aisle to you in some big fancy dress. Plus, it’ll be our first and only wedding. We both deserve the best wedding we can get.” He had been engaged before, but never married. This was her first engagement. She wanted them both to get their dream wedding since neither were planning on the marriage to end. First and only marriage for the both of them, and she loved that thought. It brought butterflies to her stomach whenever she thought about growing old with Max. Having him there for all the important things in her personal and career life. Just like she was planning on being there for everything when it came to him. “I don’t blame you. If I was you, I’d be touching me all day and night.” She knew she was hot, she was confident in herself. She closed her eyes, a small sigh escaping as she felt his lips against her neck. “We can. We’ll have all night to make love.” She murmured as she turned around once he started lathering her body with soap. She never turned this down, she loved when he took care of her. She dried off once they got out, and then she sat in front of the mirror. She blew dried her hair, tossing it up into a claw clip once it was dried. She got dressed and then followed Max out of the room. She said bye to the animals before she grabbed her phone, slipping it into the back pocket of her jeans. She looked up at Max, nodding. “Yes, you will drive.” She teased, patting his chest as she walked past him. The whole no driving thing was something she easily got use to. She only drove in LA and that was if he wasn’t going with her someplace. When she was in New York, she only ever used town cars. So she enjoyed being with someone who could tackle the busy roads. She got into the passenger seat of the car, and then typed the first address into the gps. “We’re doing Long Island first, and then we’ll get into the city.” It was an hour Long drive to the city, so it made sense to get where they were at done first, especially if they ended up loving one of the venues there.

It didn’t take too long before he pulled up at the first venue, the Lannin. Getting out of the car, she took Max’s hand and walked into the building and to the little reception desk. “Hi. I’m Sabrina. I called earlier about touring the venue for my wedding." The older lady nodded, obviously not knowing who Sabrina was. She called someone ont he phone and about a second later, another woman came out of a different door. "Hi, Ms. Carpenter, Mr. Friedman." This lady obviously knew who the couple was as Sabrina never mentioned her last name, or even Max's name. But she wasn't making it a big deal, and acted like the couple was just a normal couple. "I'm Georgia, the director of the venue. We'll do a quick tour and let you know what we offer and don't offer." She said as she motioned of them to follow her. "We have the option for indoor or outdoor cermemonies. Is there one you would prefer?" She asked, looking over at Sabrina. "Our wedding is in December so preferably indoor." She nodded and then brought them to their indoor ceremony space. It was a big room, with chairs and tables all over. Sabrina had let go of Max's hand and walked further into the room, going towards where she assumed they would be married. "Our indoor space can have up to 450 guests." Georgia started as she started talking about other things in the room. How they could change things around to fit their wedding. they could move the chairs from the tables, so people were sitting in rows to watch the ceremony.

God she was adorable even without trying to be. "They are not baby. They're a part of you and your life. You are so stinkin' cute and still are." Sure Sabrina was sexy as hell but there was also a cuteness to her and an innocence that remained even after all she had been through in her life. Maybe no one else could see that part of her but Max could. "I can't wait to see them and raise them with you. Little minature Brina and Max's. They're going to be spoiled no doubt but we'll also make sure they're kind like you." Max would never call himself kind but he was to her and those he loved. Sabrina was more a people person and more tactful then he was but she did have Disney training to help her along the way. "Little heartbreakers is what they're going to be." He paused a second thinking how Sab was always the one getting her heart broken and his lips tightened. "And no one is ever going to hurt them or I'll beat their asses." His eyes flickered back up to hers and he gave her a small smile. Her days of being hurt were over and he would make sure she always felt loved. He had taken to leaving little notes on her keyboard that said "I love you or I'm thinking about you" Even leaving roses on top of her piano or her bedside table to wake up to. Small things to remind her how loved and important she was. "It will be perfect but no courthouse for you. You're getting your dream wedding, kitten. You deserve nothing but the best and that's what you're getting." He laughs shaking his head at her. "Okay maybe, I'll give you this one but can you blame me? Look at you." His eyes staring her her as she undressed. "You're so fuckin' sexy." Max stepped in behind her and kissed her neck. "No funny business. We can make love when we get back but I will help you and wash your hair." Slowly he soaped her body up and ran the loofah over her skin before letting her rinse off. As she rinsed the suds off of her, he got the shampoo and as she turned he began to shampoo her hair then rinsed the shampoo out. " All clean he told her and once they were done he grabbed the towels and wrapped one around her and the other around himself. It didn't take long to dry off and get dressed. "Okay, we're all set. I'll drive." He grabbed his keys and held the door so she could exit and tell him where they were going.

[sillycicle]

must... make.... the sea beast oc.... must.... make.. httyd oc.... must make.... pirate

[microwave-core]

thank you for feeding the lesbians with your works :3 don't die pls

-lesbian

anon do you want to get married

Thank you for serious anon, it means a lot :)

I'm not dead yet, prommy, i just. haven't written anything. Woops. It's not that I don't want to, I just tell myself I'll do it later and then I check the calendar and realize it's been a month since my last piece. Like, what do you mean my Cogita piece was made a month ago. Hello?

[certifiedmaidenlessblog]

Okay literally nobody asked but since I am procrastinating AND restless:

My final thoughts/ranking of the Eternal mini:

(warning this is a full on yap sesh and I have next to no knowledge of music except for the very basics feel very very free to ignore)

1. Deja vu: I have feelings for this song. So gorgeous, dreamy and ethereal. Smiling so big because this song exists blah blah. Anyway the way I thought this song would be #chillvibes from the album preview snippet but then it turned out to be #nochill kajskajsj even tho there is definitely a lethargic quality to the song. I was so gagged but despite the tables turning on me I loved it immediately. Also the very random (but very well incorporated) tabla in the bridge? Slay. Initially I was mad that this wasn't the tt but with all the melodrama and orchestral arrangement, it has a similar vibe to guilty so I get it. But this song is ten fold of what guilty wanted to be (to me, that is). And I think this song remaining as a b-side to be occasionally performed instead of it being dragged through the promotional cycle and losing all the weight and impact of the song is a good choice too (the song itself is not very promotion cycle friendly either). I can't wait to see what the choreo looks like.

2. Horizon: Very kibumcore as a lot of people have also said, I think so too!! A very unexpected sound for a taemin song but he delivered sooo well. I do wish the song was longer tho. Don't know what being the second title track on this album means as of now but it's worthy of the position I'm sure.

3. Crush: Extremely shineecore! A cute and funky little number! Got me moving! The layers in the instrumentals are neat. I got exactly what was promised on the album preview. Well executed. No other notes. Other than the funky vibe there isn't really any standout element so I might get bored of it quickly tho.

Can't decide between ranks 4 and 5 so I'm calling it a tie.

4/5. Sexy in the air: I definitely should have let my brain soak this in a bit more before complaining about it cause now I literally can't stop listening to it helpppaksnakms cause Damn... This is crazy. What am I gonna do now?? Jaksjksks My first ranking for this song was literally second last (in a derogatory way) and now here we are. Also I held off from watching the mv first because I'm a very visual creature and I get easily swayed that way so I was trying to be #unbiased or whatever. I still think that the second verse is a bit meh, specially because of the English lyrics (i don't even know why I was so pissed off by the "turn me down" that was obviously supposed to be "turn me on", it wasn't even that serious 😭) but I was definitely being too harsh and it's not even as bad as I made it out to be and it doesn't stick out enough to get in the way of me enjoying the rest of the song. The switch up after the beat change is soooo good I've been obsessed with that part (the horny choreo definitely helps :D).

The good things about this song being the title track are: it's produced by dem jointz (the production is interesting and immaculate), the mastering of this song is better than most tracks on this album, it is performance oriented/friendly, both halves of the song are tied together so neatly that honestly the beat change doesn't even seem that unnatural even if it's shocking, tm devoured this track in a way that only he can, tm freak lore continues!!!! but most importantly it's bold!!! and it's a statement!!! (instead of playing it safe like he did with guilty imo lol, musically i mean). My only real grievance with this song is probably the fact that it wasn't allowed to go full freak nasty the way it was originally envisioned to be because we live in a society or whatever. Tm was moaning and groaning and saying fuck in the studio only for it to be muffled and be barely audible on the track. The dem jointz trademark of an addictive repeated word/phrase being distorted because otherwise tm would be put in horny jail fr (horny gay jail even because its so crazy that they had another man moaning on the track like skdkksksjdkd). Some of the lyrics being altered hastily (like "turn me down" ksjsjsks).This song being called sexy in the air instead of sex is in the air kajskaksksks. Sad. Because if anyone can pull off something like this without being cringe, it's tm. But it's okay I get it. Also notably this song has one of the veeery few ethical uses of that infamous bed creak sample (by ethical i mean relevant to the song at hand in a way that maximizes the slay of the song).

4/5. Say Less: Very pretty, short and sweet, could have been longer. A solid closer for this album and definitely stands it's own ground despite being on the track list after Deja vu. Which is lowkey a feat of its own. The instrumentals are infact drowning out his voice a bit but I don't think it bothers me as much as I had feared. Reminds me of Truth a bit.

6. The Unknown Sea: I don't have particularly strong opinions on ballads but I do generally only listen to ballads if I'm already super into the idol. And I do like most of the other ballads from tm. However. He's singing his ass off here but the vocal processing.... specially in the chorus his voice sounds very tinny. When I first heard the song I thought it wasn't that big of a deal but now it is definitely getting in the way of me enjoying this song. Beautiful bridge tho, definitely the highlight of the song for me.

7. G.O.A.T.: This instrumental is so fucking nasty I'm obsessedddd. Unfortunately the instrumental might just be the saving grace of this song. I went into this track thinking I was not even gonna be able to listen to this but thankfully it's not thaaaaaat bad. But we definitely need to get tm off his rapping agenda. Even after listening to this a bunch of times it's not sitting that well with me. (Which is crazy because after first listen I thought his voice was more well suited to GOAT than SITA???) I do understand that this song was meant to be a bit tongue in cheek like yeah the goat bleating sounds are hilarious in a good way but tm is Not giving the hardass aura that he thought he was going for and um. that's enough for me to be like :/ which is such a shame cause even the arrangement of this song is so interesting. But yeah whatever this track needed vocally is not in tm's strengths so. I'll wait for someone to upload the instrumental tho so that I can download it and play it with the rest of the album jksjsksksjsjs

I think it's a good choice to drop an album that's just him coming out swinging after such a drastic career altering decision. There's no more room for regrets or dilly dallying and he's confident. Which is a good thing. Because it definitely makes the statement he wants to make. The album as a whole is interesting, all the tracks differ from each other but that doesn't take away from the cohesiveness of the soundscape of the album. There is a clear logic in the way the tracklisting was done, the transition from one song to the next makes sense (even if I can't explain it properly).

That being said, yes the production and the mixing is a bit lacking (along with the other downsides of a low budget) but I don't think sm has songs like this in their vault anymore so... You win some you lose some idk.

Overall I do see this as a win. Yapping over and out.

[aidenwaites]

Man. It's only been three months