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ravenvsfox · 3 years

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Things Fall Apart; the Centre Cannot Hold

Summary: He keeps remembering the chafe of Ronan’s shoulder against his ribs as they got oriented in his little bed, the glisten of tears and nightwash wringing his lovely eyes, the lonely twist in his unguarded late-night voice over the phone, the one that Adam had almost liked, because it meant that he was indisputably missed. It was worse, that Ronan had been trying so hard for Adam, because it was easier to tell when he stopped.

(Adam's perspective throughout Mister Impossible, as his worry reaches a fever pitch, and the two versions of himself begin to converge)

Word Count: 9.5k

Warnings: mi spoilers, death/suicide mention

A/N: batshit middle books my beloveds. adam pov or bust 😌

Read on AO3

In high school, Gansey would very occasionally call Adam in the middle of the night.

He would speak low and fast, his panic pinched between thumb and forefinger and held at a respectable distance. Adam would smother the receiver with his palm and step outside of his family trailer, listening hard for movement at his back.

The news was always the same: Ronan Lynch was on his latest rampage or bender, exercising his dark talent for bullying his way into people’s lives and then breaking down all of their windows and doors trying to get out again.

Gansey would fret and apologize, guilty for luring Adam out of his wolf-den, guiltier for neglecting his duties as Ronan’s warden. Adam would wait tiredly on the line for Gansey’s anxiety to exhaust itself, and then dutifully join the search party.

He would step into his beaten tennis shoes and pry his bike from the fence, silencing the silvery shock of metal on metal, and avoiding the reedy whir of the spokes by holding the whole thing aloft until he reached the gravel road.

From there, he would venture out into the abandoned Henrietta streets, the crunch of his tires cutting clean through the woolly midnight silence. He often circled the perimeter of the park nearest Monmouth, stepped through the great dark portal into St. Agnes, and nipped under the old bridge, squinting into the darkness for the challenging shoulders, the oil-slick BMW gleam, the slump of a body or clatter of bottles.

This is a part of Gansey that I admire, he would think. And with equal fervour, this is a part of Gansey that I resent. This blood attachment to Ronan, who was not even attached to himself. The insomnia that seized two heads of the lopsided Cerberus that Adam, Ronan, and Gansey were all part of, a restlessness on either side of him that shook him awake over and over again.

He chased Ronan’s shadow, hating him. Hating his thoughtlessness, his privilege, his chokehold on Gansey’s interests, his purposefully and continuously ruined potential, and yet bristling with anxiety at the idea of finding him bleeding.

They hadn’t known then that he was a dreamer, but they’d felt the ear-popping pressure of his grief, glimpsed the hulking animal of his self-loathing, urged onwards by the twin spurs of Declan and Gansey, the past and the future, digging into his sides.

Adam had seen Ronan, teeth bared, hurling himself at rock bottom, and he had rubbed the sleep from his eyes and pulled him back by the collar.

Things are completely different now, but he still finds himself sleep-raw and petrified, reaching after Ronan in the dark.

He examines himself in the mirror of the communal bathroom in Thayer hall. The overhead lights are an unflattering yellow, the sink has a long dark hair stuck to its basin, and Adam’s face is gaunt and bruised with lack of sleep.

He’s losing it, a little bit.

He takes his own pulse, focusing on the faraway burble of the ley line. Everything, lately, seems far away.

As if through a stranger’s eyes, he slips from the seafoam tiling and bleach tang in Thayer’s North bathroom to the accordion door of the trailer toilet, the creaky cubicle shower, his gawky, hurt reflection in the burnt-out light. This version of Adam had to watch his best friend’s best friend escape suicide watch and get screaming drunk in public, treading mud and malicious dreams all over Monmouth manufacturing.

He can still smell the salt tang from teenaged Adam’s ocean of disdain.

Now that he loves Ronan, his irritation has only gotten sharper, more deadly. Ronan performs each perilous swan dive into the unknown, each foolhardy act of self-sacrifice, as if the people who care about him aren’t gasping spectators. It makes Adam furious.

Perhaps neither of them have changed as much as they wanted to believe. As Gillian keeps advising the crying club—with the confidence of a seasoned psychiatrist—progress isn’t linear.

He keeps remembering the chafe of Ronan’s shoulder against his ribs as they got oriented in his little bed, the glisten of tears and nightwash wringing his lovely eyes, the lonely twist in his unguarded late-night voice over the phone, the one that Adam had almost liked, because it meant that he was indisputably missed. It was worse, that Ronan had been trying so hard for Adam, because it was easier to tell when he stopped.

He slides fingers over his temples, smooths a knuckle over each eyebrow to ease the tension he always carries there. Sleep is a little knot of gristle lodged at the back of his throat; he can’t swallow it and he can’t spit it up. It never used to be this hard to put his problems to bed. He would worry the weight on his chest into small pieces, and go to sleep knowing that even the worst things about his life were organized correctly.

This time though, he’s out of sorts, divided, always busy but always spinning his wheels. He has a white-hot secret pressed to the roof of his mouth.

Every time he folds himself into bed, his subconscious helpfully reminds him that Ronan might be dead. And then a highlight reel plays in his head like an In Memoriam: Adam’s hand cupping Ronan’s nape, a barn silhouetted against a melancholy sky, a fistful of dreamt light, a dozen hard-won smiles and a hundred easy ones, a white handprint on a flushed thigh, a colourful joke to placate a brother, a kiss pressed to a dream’s forehead. All of that—gone. And Adam, at Harvard.

He highlights long patches of text in his sociology textbook, drinks a sensible amount of jack and coke at Eliot’s birthday party, declines Gansey’s calls by sending cheerful and conciliatory texts, and drifts through the library with his hand knotted in the strap of his satchel, looking for something that he can’t really articulate. He reads the same line of theory over and over and over and over, feeling like he’s scrying, like his focus isn’t his own.

He did all of this before Ronan went missing too, but now it’s a whole different class of performance. It used to be, I’m convincingly attentive, I’m sipping overpriced coffee on the way to class like a good Ivy leaguer, I’m making an impression on my professors, I’m forging friendships. Someday I will cash in these relationship tokens, and it all will have been worth it. It felt impossible that his life could be so simple and rewarding.

Now he thinks, I’m studying for finals and my boyfriend is being hunted by people whose job it is to kill him. I’m drinking a latte and the only people I’ve ever loved have left me, and I'm alone again. I’m putting my hand up in class and somewhere, Ronan’s life is changing, rapidly, dangerously, without me.

He lies to everyone, all the time, and tells himself that this life he’s building is more important than anything.

Once, as they cleared placemats and mugs full of stagnant coffee from the kitchen table, Ronan—still cobwebbed in his most recent dream—had detailed the sensation of hovering over himself afterwards. He was unable to manipulate his physical body or even really recognize it as his own, and his consciousness, detached, had its own limbs, its own intentions. He was like a parasite trying to wriggle back into its host.

Whenever Adam consults his double in a bit of glass, he imagines himself as a nimble dreamer, peering down, working to bring a fantasy to life. He can see his own outline, a slick college student with a flat, pleasant affect and a gaggle of soft-shelled friends. He plays his role impeccably well, but he can’t fit himself into it. If he passed himself in the hallway he would not stop.

Looking in the mirror now, he feels a red pang of fear, then a supercut of the ways he used to let himself love and be loved, then resentfulness hot on the heels of his worry.

His reflection withers, and he looks deliberately down at his hands. It’s a Tuesday, and he needs to sleep, or his tightly-scheduled Wednesday will be a misery. It’s a Tuesday, which means he hasn’t spoken to Ronan in—he stalls. Call me, he thinks, miserably. Just call me.

He can deal with a multitude of challenging and improbable situations if only he can see them clearly. Ronan is, for whatever reason, keeping him in the dark.

The not knowing is bad. It’s not how he functions. It’s not how they function. But instead of dwelling, he puts his back into the narrative that is now his reality: Impeccable student. Devoted friend-group. Tough break-up. Bright future.

Ronan isn’t here. Can’t ever be, physically, so far from the ley line. Adam has to be.

“Croissant, as ordered.” His gaze snaps up, connecting—not with his own image, but with clever, horn-rimmed Gillian. “They tried to foist it upon me without butter, if you can imagine that.” She deposits a crinkly brown and tan paper bag in front of him, and then two little plastic pots of butter. Adam regards the squashed shape of the bag’s contents with confusion.

It’s— “Is it Tuesday?”

“Wednesday,” Eliot corrects airily, licking jam from their thumb.

“My god, Adam. Whatever happened to your infallible circadian rhythm?” Fletcher asks. “You are the Swiss timepiece by which we measure our days.”

A terrible wave of vertigo strikes him, and he’s grateful to find himself sitting, at one of two conjoined wrought-iron tables in the courtyard near Thayer. He can feel the ley line breathing for the first time in a long time.

He must have gone to bed after his late-night breakdown in the bathroom. He must have. He hadn’t realized how exhausted he was. His hand strays to his hair. Wet. He’d woken, showered, and met his friends for breakfast, and he can barely remember it.

“Sorry,” he chokes. “Sleep deprivation is catching up to me, I think.”

“Aw, chicken,” Benjy says affectionately. “I’ve sung those end of term blues. The profs think we’re machines. Don’t even get me started on Dr. Fraundberg’s Lit Crit for assholes.”

“Whyever would we?” Eliot says. “We want to make it to class before noon.”

“Har-har. You wound me. Adam you’d better get a tissue ready, I’m about to tear up.”

“Also,” Gillian says, pointing her be-honeyed knife in Eliot’s direction. “Speak for yourself. I want to make it to class never.”

“Your presentation is going to be exceptional,” Fletcher tells her. “Your rough draft already drove me into paroxysms of jealousy. I don’t know why you’re so concerned.”

“I don’t just want to pass,” Gillian says. “I want to win.”

“Admirable,” Benjy sniffs.

“You’re being awfully quiet, Adam,” Eliot says, at length. He’s aware that they’re all trying very hard to act like they don’t notice how poorly composed he is.

“Can’t a man savour his pastry, Eli?” Fletcher rumbles.

“No, that’s fair,” Adam sighs. The four of them peer at him expectantly, eyebrows arranged into an array of benign and non-threatening shapes. “It’s possible I’m having a slight breakdown,” he says, adopting the grim hyperbole of a student for whom finals are the beginning and end of their emotional upset.

Everyone at the twin tables indulges in a bit of mild laughter.

“What a coincidence, so am I!”

“Well if it’s only slight, I’ll stow my concern.”

“Harvard or personal?”

He smiles faintly, and says, “kind of both. The personal is political, or something.”

He thinks he’s laying it on thick, but Gillian grins at him. “'Atta boy.”

Fletcher goes to take a sip of his tea, but chokes when his phone lights up with an incoming text message. “Criminy, is it eight already? Starting the day with a bang, as usual. I’ll meet you at Weld this evening, yes?” he asks, shaking out his tweed jacket and thrusting an arm through it, securing the remains of his bagel between his teeth with his other hand.

“Of course,” Adam says. Fletcher gives him a thumbs up, mouth charmingly stuffed, and sweeps away across the now bustling courtyard.

“Hey magic man,” Eliot says. “Will you do a reading for my sister tonight? The break-up with Margot is hitting her kind of hard. I’m pretty sure she just wants to be told she’ll find love again.”

Adam watches the juddering impact of Benjy kicking Eliot under the table.

He shrugs. “First come first serve, but I’ll give her the friends and family discount.”

“You’re a prince,” Eliot says, blowing him a kiss. Adam tries to imagine any of his friends from Henrietta doing such a thing, and can’t. “Come along Benjy. Bookstore or bust. They’re giving out discount computing textbook codes at sixty dollars a pop.”

A slip of paper for sixty American dollars. Adam’s head aches profoundly.

Gillian waggles her fingers at their friends as they depart, then she turns and fixes Adam with that familiar amateur therapist look.

“What?”

“Are you sleeping?” she asks bluntly.

“I’m a very good sleeper,” Adam says wryly. “Ask anyone.”

“But are you actually doing it?”

“Yes, Gillian.” Liar, liar. “Do you want me to keep a dream journal as evidence?”

“Oh, yes please.” That shark’s grin. “I’d pay to know what the fuck is going on up there.” She taps her own temple to indicate Adam's guarded mind.

He spreads his hands between them. “I’m an open book.”

She hums, only half-smiling now. “I dunno. That Southern charm. I’m never quite sure if I should trust a politeness that perfect.”

“On that note,” Adam says, standing. He’s relieved to find that he’s wearing matching socks, and his pant legs are rolled just so. There’s a tiny streak of yellow on one of his shoes, and with a jolt he realizes that it’s dream-crab guts. He presses on. “Thanks for the croissant. And the psychoanalysis. Send me the bill.”

She salutes him with her coffee cup. “You couldn’t afford me.”

He laughs, and turns, and then spends the whole walk to his 9 AM class trying to straighten all of the haywire compasses in his brain so they point due north.

His assignment is in his bag, pressed neatly into a navy blue folder. He has three classes today, a meeting with his supervisor at three, a study block set aside from four to six, then dinner, then tarot readings all evening—his phone rings. His treacherous heart leaps. Ronan.

He stops mid-stride, scrambling for his cell in the front pocket of his bag.

“Hello?”

“I—oh—Adam! I didn’t expect you to pick up. How on Earth are you?”

“Gansey.” He exhales through his nose. “I’m just on my way to class.”

“Fantastic to hear your voice. How’s—not that one, Jane, the I-90—exactly. How’s Harvard? Are you batting away job offers yet?”

“Constantly. How are your nature hikes and hippie communes? Contracted any backwoods diseases yet?”

“Charming. I’m actually in remarkably fine form, health-wise.”

“Is that a brag?”

A guffaw. “More of a curiosity. It’s actually part of the reason I’ve been trying to get in touch. Have you noticed any surges of power from the ley line lately? I mean, of course you have, but do you have any idea what’s causing them?”

He frowns, pinning his cellphone between his good ear and shoulder as he heaves open the ancient door to the physics building. “I could give you my best guess.”

A beat, and then, “I’m listening, Parrish.” Something about the way he says it makes homesickness pulse painfully in Adam’s chest.

He finds a semi-secluded stone slab bench behind an empty stairwell, and slings his belongings across it before he replies, “Dreamers.”

“Dreamers,” Gansey repeats, but it sounds like he’s saying of course! “Plural?”

“At least three.”

“Doing what?”

“I’m not one hundred percent sure yet.”

“Ronan hasn’t spoken to you,” Gansey guesses.

“Not—in a few days.”

“Is everything alright?”

He swallows, and is horrified to find tears burning at the back of his throat. There’s no pretending with Gansey. It’s why he never calls him.

“Adam,” he says quietly. “Is he in trouble?”

He struggles with his composure for several long seconds. “Possibly.”

A world-weary sigh. “I really wish you had called.”

“Yeah, well,” he says vaguely. He checks his watch. 8:23.

“So he’s playing with others. Why would Ronan want to do that?”

“I think—he’ll do anything not to feel powerless.” He understands as soon as he says it that it’s the pockmark in the windshield from which all of the damage is splintering outwards. “And people take advantage of that.”

Gansey makes a thoughtful noise, somewhere a thousand miles away, and it clicks in a lock and opens Adam’s shoulders up. Maybe he doesn’t have to be alone in this fight. How could he have forgotten careful, persistent Gansey?

“Well. He’s certainly not powerless. I almost feel back to my pre-Cabeswater self. Everything is pleasantly linear. And Blue is—lighting up.” In the background, he hears her say supercharged with relish. “I can only imagine what it’s like for full-blooded dream stuff, with all of that energy at their disposal.”

“I don’t know if I like it,” Adam says carefully. “It’s good for a while, helping all the Matthew’s of the world, and then what? Where does all of that diverted power end up? What makes dreamers qualified to harness it without their worst nightmares manifesting?”

“You’re worried about the Lace.”

The last time they spoke, Adam had told them briefly about his last scrying session, warning them to look out for the hateful, faceless thing that had pierced his cells and magnified all of his pain and fear until all he could possibly do was scream.

“I’m worried about Ronan. I know he’s in over his head, and I know he won’t believe it until it’s too late.”

“Sounds like someone I know. Don’t bite off more than you can chew with this, Adam. I know you’re enormously busy.”

It stings, a little. “I’m still going to—I’m obviously still going to make time for him. Especially when he’s—“

“Struggling. Yes. I understand perfectly.” It occurs to Adam that, unlike his well-meaning Harvard friends, he actually might. A needling murmur in the background, and then, “listen, Blue’s telling me that you should get in touch with the psychics, and Mr. Gray.”

He nods. The rhythm of problem-solving is soothing his frazzled nerves. “I’ve been considering it. I’m also pretty sure that Declan has been keeping his own tabs on things.”

“My money’s on yes,” Gansey says. Adam half-smiles. His money has been on a lot of things. “Poke around when you can. See what turns up. I’ll give Ronan a call, not that it’s ever done me much good before.”

“I’m pretty sure he ditched his phone.” He checks his watch. 8:24. It feels like it’s been much, much longer than a minute. There is so much day ahead of him.

Ordinarily, he would be compartmentalizing better than this. No feverish Gansey phone calls directly before class. No pleasure with his business. No finesse when logic will do the job just as well. But the subterranean, black-eyed Adam is still within him, tethered to the ley line and to his friends, and he wants very badly to fix this.

��Ah, Ronan,” Gansey sighs. “It’s always got to be him, doesn’t it?”

“I know,” Adam says narrowly. “If he’s not looking for trouble it’s looking for him.”

“You sound like Declan.”

Adam makes an offended noise in the back of his throat. Blue must be leaning across Gansey, because she says “that’s a new low,” almost directly into the receiver.

“I’m hanging up now,” he says flatly.

“Update me if anything changes? We’ll come home the moment things go south.”

He resists the urge to check his watch again. “Don’t cut things short on my account.”

“Well. Don’t disrupt your studies on Ronan’s. I’ve never known you to put your future on hold for anything.”

“I’m not—“ he stops. “Ronan is a part of my future.”

“Good,” Gansey says warmly. A test, then. And like most tests, there was never even a possibility that Adam wouldn’t pass.

______

It’s easy to tell when a dreamer is suffering.

As the energy from the ley line ebbs, dreamt creations judder and bolt like horses loosed suddenly from the service of a carriage, galloping towards safer pastures. If the dreamer is in more immediate peril, the dream simply folds its limbs into an agreeable shape and passes into sleep.

In the wee hours of Thursday morning, Adam lies awake in bed, dangling his hand between the wall and his bed frame, feeling along the subtle unfilled crack in the plaster. A flagpole casualty, from the day that everything stopped being enough for Ronan, and he slipped away on a dreamt current like a dark Ophelia.

He’s being dramatic.

He feels the drywall flaking, and digs his thumbnail into the split, wanting to rip the whole wall open with his fingers.

He keeps picturing Matthew’s half-lidded eyes, cloudless and blue as a wide prairie sky. The slouch of his posture, the tarnished golden head, the body briefly without a pilot.

Matthew had looked—Adam turns in bed, taking his chalky hand from the wall and fisting it in the sheets. He had looked like a faded old pillow, tucked unobtrusively into the chair by the window. He wouldn’t respond to Declan’s call, fluttering his drowsy lashes, and Adam had thought, ah. This is how I find out. His heart slumped over in his chest, dizzy with sudden grief. The tarot cards in his hands were dead leaves.

This is what happens when your life is tied to my brother’s, Declan had said, diverting his horror into scorn as he often did. The death of any one member of his family ensured the destruction of another. It had always been that way.

Matthew eventually roused, and Adam had closed his eyes and turned his face towards the ceiling until he could be normal again. He felt suddenly foolish for peddling lies to college students when magic was so obviously in the room with him.

Earlier, he had called Maura over lunch, and she vaulted right over small talk to ask him, with concern, about his loosening grip on his psychic inclinations. She’d said, “You do know that the ley line isn’t the source of your problems, right? Give yourself some credit. You can fuck things up in a completely non-mystical way.”

She pulled the Magician, reversed, and the eight of wands, and then, without further comment, passed the phone to Mr. Gray.

Unexplained weaponry, he’d reported. The Lynch brothers loosed on two separate worlds at the same time. Buttoned-up Declan for the first time unbuttoned, schmoozing with an array of dangerous and connected people, trading in secrets just as his father had. Purposeless Ronan for the first time with a purpose, wading out from the murky waters of his dreamspace and bringing the tides with him.

Bryde, the name in the corner of everyone’s mouth, joined all at once by Ronan’s and Hennessy’s.

Renegades, liberators of dreams, scorchers of earth. He could see, easily, why this would appeal to Ronan. A mission, finally. A father figure to guide his hand. A world that wanted his dreams, and wouldn’t crumple under the weight of his unusual ambition.

When they were teenagers, Aglionby was just another one of Adam’s jobs, but it was one of Ronan’s nightmares. He would go to school, a hooded bird of prey, seething with resentment and squandered ability. He longed for the Barns because of what they represented: the childlike belief that his family would never die; the possibility for creatures like him to roam free; a landscape powered by unconditional love.

Bryde, Adam knows, must be offering him the same relief. Exquisite flight, after the cage.

It’s not possible, is the thing. It’s a pipe dream. A Niall Lynch fairytale.

Foresight has never been Ronan’s strong suit. He gets it into his head that a solution is right up until the point that it falls apart in his hands. He throws himself entirely into belief. It makes him an extraordinarily loyal and trusting person. It also makes him stubborn, rash, and susceptible to manipulation.

He believes in one facet of something, and the rest follows. He can’t just take a sip—he downs the bottle.

Adam is a boy on a bicycle in November, needing to find Ronan alive so that he can hate him without feeling guilty about it. He never stops oscillating between resentment and love, reality and unreality, understanding and disappointment. He wants to be normal so that he can choose to be abnormal. Sometimes he wants the cards without the magic.

He closes his eyes and remembers a slumbering mouse against an angular cheek. He imagines Matthew like that, perpetually immobile, perpetually innocent, like a taxidermied puppy. The pieces of Ronan’s consciousness that will linger after his death, statues in a graveyard. Tamquam—tamquam—

What would Ronan be without his dreams? Here, Adam thinks. He’d be here.

He stays in bed for another wasted hour, and then stands up, disoriented, in the dimness of the room. Fletcher is snoring softly. Someone outside their cracked window is shuffling over the concrete stoop. His upstairs neighbour is playing tinkling soundtracks while he sleeps. Adam can’t be here anymore.

He plucks Fletcher’s laptop silently from its charging station, tucks his bare feet into stiff leather shoes, drags the cardigan from his desk chair, and lets himself out into the hallway. The glare from the overhead light pins him against the wall for a moment.

He shuffles half-blind down the hall and upstairs to the solarium, nearly losing one of his unlaced shoes in the stairwell in the process. The lights are blessedly shut off up in the attic, and he feels his way to the nearest of the tables hunched in the shadows. Aching with fatigue, he sits, unfolds his stolen laptop, and gets quietly to work.

He’s never had the time nor means to be truly proficient with technology, but he extracted a handful of leads from Mr. Gray, and he’s been in touch with a friend of Benjy’s—a computer science grad student and hacking hobbyist.

He chases key phrases down rabbit holes and assembles news articles, tracking Ronan’s movement by his “unexplainable” signature (code for mind-fuckery, joyful innovation, and dark humour). Adam is a practiced note-taker and serial obsesser, so it’s barely a strain to find Ronan—whom he knows better than anyone—cropping up all over the continental United States.

“What are you doing,” Adam murmurs. The sky lightens gradually to periwinkle. He has work today, but his shift doesn’t start until noon. His mouth is bone-dry, and his head feels cotton-stuffed the way it always does when he’s pushing his body to its limit.

When it’s late enough in the morning to be socially acceptable, he messages Benjy’s friend with the bare bones of what he’s looking for: a project under wraps, a lonely last name, a suppressed pattern. They correspond, remotely, until Adam is reading government files over watery coffee, wearing sweatpants, dress shoes, and a cardigan with cracked elbow patches.

He pores over it all, cross-referencing dates, and ignoring the widening sink-hole in his chest.

Industrial espionage isn’t at all Ronan’s usual brand of destruction. Highly controlled, not much up-front gratification. A little more political than Ronan usually leans. A lot more ambitious. Whatever their agenda, ley energy is flowing more easily now that it's unobstructed on such a large scale. Adam has been feeling its effects rippling all the way out to Boston, a persistent background pressure, unavoidable as a migraine.

It’s clear that the Moderators are desperate to eliminate Bryde’s party. Their reports are a comedy of close calls.

Slowly, Adam begins to understand the scope of things.

Billions of dollars in damages, manmade structures ripped from their foundations. Magical fugitives hunted by a team that specializes in murdering the targets they call Zeds. Visionary headlights pointed towards certain apocalypse. A world that is always awake, but always, always feels like it’s dreaming.

It’s pretty much exactly as he feared. Night terrors. The Lace. Beasts and legends. Adam holds his head in his hands. It’s more than what Ronan must be imagining. It’s more than Aurora waking happily in Cabeswater, powered by the swaying trees. It’s the indiscriminate waking of every incredible thing that’s ever been dreamed.

He’s struck by a wave of hopelessness that rushes all around him and tears at his hair. Ronan, dreamer of baubles that dispense music and light, cars that go very fast, and menageries of curious creatures, recruited to a cause that transmutes creation into chaos. Ronan, promising to wait, and then running full tilt at a future that can’t possibly keep Adam in it.

His dream half is going to destroy his human half, and he’ll take everybody else down with him.

If he could just see him, maybe—

His jaw creaks, teeth clenched tight against the emotional groundswell. The late morning sunshine strikes him, and he feel more like a vague, pale shape than a person. Like a dream, maybe.

Alter idem.

If Adam can’t reach Ronan, maybe the Moderators should.

He feels the weight of that awful thought burning a hole through his stomach lining. He can’t think about it. He needs to go to work.

_____

The next evening, he experiences a surge of power so acute that it nearly puts him in a coma.

It’s another Wednesday night, and another batch of his peers hitch polite smiles to his heels as he passes them by, winding his way up into the high, arched sunroom at Weld hall. They’re all wishing for magical solutions for their mundane problems, the opposite of Adam in nearly every way.

He bumps knuckles with Benjy and Eliot in turn, pulls up his chair, and knocks his last reading from Persephone’s deck, mostly out of habit. He consults his phone idly as his friends try to make pleasant conversation, holding up a finger when he finds a new batch of texts from Gansey.

John Amos power plant in WV shut down Monday

Intense. maura said she could’ve brought HER dreams to life afterwards

no word from Ronan yet? Leads from Declan? pls advise

I’ll assume no news is good news

He puts his phone in his satchel and fastens it closed. Every new scrap of information he gets feels like a stroll through Ronan’s security system at the Barns—hopelessness compounding and compounding until he staggers out the far end weeping.

He needs to focus on something productive. He nods at Benjy to start letting people inside, straightening the notebook where he usually scribbles his observations. Here, he is an adjudicator: powerful, organized, and reserved, tallying points and offering constructive critique.

His curious audience starts pouring in then, amateur wiccans and wannabe believers, aggrieved last-resorters and skeptics following friends’ recommendations. It’s a brighter collection of characters than Aglionby could ever have hoped to foster.

Gillian texts him to say that she just passed Weld and his line-up was out the door. He is a prim and unobtrusive con artist, a false prophet, and business is booming.

Eventually, a bespectacled girl who looks anywhere from five to ten years his senior sits across from him, tucking a bag armoured to the teeth with candy-coloured enamel pins between her feet.

“Hi,” she says nervously. “Anna.” She stretches her hands out in front of her, then thinks better of it and drops them into her lap. “I’m not sure how this usually goes, so you might have to hold my hand a little bit.”

“No problem,” he says smoothly, passing his deck across the tabletop. “Just go ahead and shuffle. Concentrate on what you want to ask the cards.”

She does as directed, struggling a little to keep the papery stack in check. Not a natural born card sharp, then. He studies her neat black shirt, tucked precisely into a plaid skirt. A Marilyn mole drawn on just above the corner of her mouth. A pride flag pin he doesn’t recognize next to a cat wearing a cowboy hat, and the word “rude” in cursive.

She holds the deck fleetingly to her chest, eyes squeezed shut like a child making a birthday wish, and then plops it in the centre of the table. A card slips near the top, slightly uneven, and Adam plucks it free.

He hums thoughtfully. “Eight of cups. Okay. So you’re having some trouble with letting go.” She frowns and nods once, quick.

He lays out the rest of a simple five card spread neatly between them. A couple of stray swords, the chariot, a wand.

“It seems like things are stagnating in your personal life. Maybe your friend group used to feel like your family, but you feel like they’ve lost interest in you. And you love them, but Anna, if you’re being honest with yourself, you’re pretty sure you were done with them before they even started pulling away. Right now you’re kind of just going through the motions. A couple of years overdue to convocate, right? Everyone else moved on to greener pastures.” He taps his thumb thoughtfully against the bones of his opposite wrist. “It’s not even the loneliness that gets you. It’s the not knowing. Are you supposed to chase after them? Is there another community out there for you? There is, you know.”

He notices another card spilling loose, and he grabs it without thinking. The Magician again. He thinks, huh, caught in the coils and dust of Persephone’s overturned cards.

And then the waking world disappears.

Adam is airborne, tumbling up into the atmosphere on a geyser of ley energy, whipped by branches and light. He throws his arms out to stop himself, but he’s only a projection, so his momentum doesn’t slow.

Something—Lindenmere? The cosmos?—shows him a series of images: an upturned nose made from oil and turpentine, a coiled old tree stump, a red-haired woman grinning toothily and then exploding, a rose the colour of warm dark skin, a pale scar-split hand cradling a silky head, the animal haunch of something black, a terrible voice booming turn back—

He skitters away, panicked, and bumps into his own body. Or not his own body. A double, blinking confusedly in the bathroom mirror.

His doppelgänger turns to leave, and Adam reaches after him, through the mirror, following himself into a version of Thayer which is not Thayer. Everything is alive, in this reality. Energy sings and saws its fingers together.

It’s a memory, but it’s also the present, and it’s also a nightmare. Wake up!

Obediently, the city wakes.

He gasps, although he doesn’t have a mouth. It’s the heaving first breath of a sleeping witch, like Gwenllian turning in her grave.

Adam struggles against the current of wild power, thick and pungent as gasoline. Everything feels more intense near magical artifacts, dream stuff, supernatural fault lines, and it is with great effort that he hunts for something familiar, something heavy enough to bind him. He was unprepared for this, and although everything around him is bitingly familiar, he's lost. He wheels around and around, reaching for his most trusted tethers—Gansey, Ronan, Blue, Persephone—

Persephone.

He follows the lingering perfume of her intuition, feeling blindly for those old handholds in her tarot deck, that familiar grip, like the hilt of a trusted weapon.

And then he finds himself looking again at the girl, Anna, her fate bunched around her narrow shoulders. And then at his own empty body, a glowing card clamped between his fingers. As soon as he’s aware of looking at himself, he’s looking out of himself, and he stands up quickly, overturning his chair.

“—Adam? Jesus Christ, are you okay?”

“What on God’s green Earth was that?”

A palm between his shoulder blades.

“Don’t touch me,” he chokes.

The hand retreats. A murmur: I’ve never seen him like this.

“Is it—is it bad? Am I going to be okay? Is it bad?” Anna keeps asking, horrified.

“You’re fine,” he manages to say. “I’m sorry.” The ‘o’ in sorry comes out a little wide and swerving.

“You went blank,” Benjy says, voice high with residual panic. “For like—ten minutes. Beyond hyper-focus.”

“I thought it was a gimmick,” Eliot says. “But a ten minute gimmick? What is this, Las Vegas?”

“I got carried away. I have to,” he swallows. “I need a minute. I promise everything’s fine.”

“Do whatever you need to do,” Eliot says quickly. “But, fair warning, I’m going to ask you a hundred questions when you get back.”

“And then I’m going to ask another hundred,” Benjy says. “Magic man.”

“A riddle, inside an enigma, wrapped in a sweater vest,” Eliot muses. He can tell they’re still shaken. He’ll have to deal with that, later.

“I'll be right back,” Adam says, touching them very lightly on the shoulder as he passes. The ley line is bursting, and he feels so flushed with its vitality that it almost makes him sick.

He stumbles past them, all the way out of the building and into the street. The winter air tears at his thin shirtsleeves, nips at his sock-less ankles. He shields his eyes against the sun, watching a bird swoop low overhead. A silvery, seagull-sized thing, but with knobby legs that taper into—he squints. Hooves?

He keeps moving, propelled by the mad urge to catch the bird, to pin the wild magic down so he can understand it.

Adam walks for what feels like a long time, trying to find the source of all of this haemorrhaging power. He spots a couple of fidgety-looking students, a few more curious creatures. Somewhere, faraway, there’s music crooning, and it sounds exactly the way a hot shower feels.

He stops in the middle of Oxford street, head cocked towards the natural history museum across the way, the orderly buildings, the sparse evening foot traffic. Business as usual. All of it screaming with energy.

Out of the corner of his eye, he sees a parade of scuttling creatures marching towards an invisible destination. Frowning, Adam crosses the street, chasing the peacock blue shimmer from an unfurled wing. He slows, stooping in the alley to pick one of the strange insects from the stream. He peers through a nail-sized hole in its head. Its spindly legs wave fearfully for a moment, and then it goes limp in his hand.

The ley energy punches out of him, and he sits back on his ankles, winded.

Adam gazes down at the jewelled beetle in his palm, its siblings scattered out like shell casings around his knees. Dreams, all of them. Briefly, impossibly roused in a dead city. He stands, letting the beetle drop from his hand and bounce across the concrete. He kicks them all hurriedly behind a nearby bench, mind racing. Bugs from an exhibit next door, no doubt. Dormant animals, transplanted from their habitats and pinned in place for decades.

What kind of ecoterror was wrought to bring about a flash flood of energy in a drought? How must Ronan be feeling, out there in the world, wracked with waking dreams? What unimaginable monsters were just stirring in the shadows because of him? Is Bryde one of them?

His lives are merging. The distant rumbling of thunder is overhead now, and the downpour is rolling in. There’s no way he’ll be able to keep dry.

Standing in that alleyway by himself, drained and ordinary again, he feels terribly alone.

He weighs his feelings against his logic for several agonizing minutes, standing still and watchful as a predator. He recalls the jarringly clinical accounts of Ronan's most intimate dreams, the sparsely encoded language in those government files outlining the world-ending dangers of something Adam had, for a long time, shared a bed with.

If something happens to Ronan now, it might kill Adam. If something happens because of Ronan, it might kill everybody.

Another minute, and he has his phone out and ringing.

“Hello?” Declan answers. Oddly, it’s not his usual prickly greeting. He sounds almost jovial.

Adam looks out into the darkening street, feeling like a death omen, a shadow across someone’s doorstep. “We really need to talk about Bryde.”

______

It’s the worst possible time for Declan to be withholding information from him.

Adam had graciously tipped his hand and Declan was, infuriatingly, holding back, as if this was a low grade in Ronan’s high school algebra class, and not the cataclysmic fuck-up of a powerful dreamer.

Declan, so uncannily like his brother in vulnerable moments like this, had thought of Matthew first. A world where dreams could stay awake, he’d marvelled. As if they could afford to think so small.

Once, Adam had awoken to find his arm glued to the bedspread. Ronan had dreamt a bee-less hive in the night, and it was oozing a steady stream of honey into the sheets between them.

“Score,” Ronan had said, when he’d rolled back into his body. “Sting-free. Fucking vegan.”

“What happens when we don’t want any more honey?” Adam had asked, critically. Ingesting dreams always felt like a slippery subject. “Does it shut off like a faucet?”

It didn’t. Ronan filled a dozen amber jars full, and then abandoned the hive in a dusty kiddy pool in one of the barns near the back of his family property.

A month later, Opal had crept in through a window looking for trouble, and emerged, shrieking, in a viscous flood of syrup.

Combing the mess out of Opal’s fur, her little legs slung across his lap, Ronan had complained about the magnitude of the clean-up job he would have to do, the special honey hoover he would have to create, what a waste of a dream it would be. Adam reminded him of his faucet idea.

“Too late for that, Parrish,” he’d griped.

It was their pattern. A marvel, too good to be true. Adam, the skeptic. Ronan, too in love with creation to care about consequences.

Eventually, it will all be too late.

Ronan will pursue this liberation fantasy, this golden daydream, even if it never stops oozing. Even if it makes the whole world uninhabitable.

______

That night, Adam tries to scry for the first time in months.

He gently pushes the crying club—only tenuously placated after the tarot incident—to have drinks without him, claiming stress-induced fatigue. He leaves his study notes open and blinking on the bed, lights a sad little tea light, and casts himself out into the ether.

Straining hard, he searches for the familiar contours of Ronan’s dreamspace, plucking the distant strings of the ley line and listening for the particular timbre of Ronan’s consciousness.

He doesn’t like walking this tightrope without a net, but Harvard isn’t exactly flush with psychic spotters. He keeps a delicate balance, far from his body, inching closer and closer to Ronan’s mind, the safe plateau at the end of this rope.

Eventually, he finds himself in a grey bedroom. It's full to the gills with water, there's a toy sailboat bobbing past at chest height, and storm clouds huddling nervously on the ceiling. Adam’s hair plasters instantly to his scalp.

“Ronan?” he calls, sloshing through the curiously luminous water. It starts raining harder. A familiar, curly-headed child stares at him through the darkness, eyes sharpened into silver points in the moonlight. “Ronan?” he asks again, gently this time.

A muffled sentence, a sad, crumpled expression, and then Adam is staring at a closed door.

“What—let me in! Ronan!” He pounds at the door. “Come on!” He can still feel rainwater, unnaturally warm on his neck.

A voice in his head, not Ronan, whispers, turn back.

“No,” he snaps, knocking harder. “Just let me—“ A sudden gust of wind in his sails, and he’s ejected from the dream altogether.

He pinwheels for a horrifying, weightless moment, struggling to tune back in to the feeble light from his stubby candle, and then dragging himself, hand over fist, back to his dorm room.

“Fuck, Lynch,” he says, when he has a voice. “Don’t be stupid.” He recrosses his legs, shaking off the pointless, clinging feeling of rejection.

When he tries to reach out again, searching, searching, Ronan’s expecting him. He never makes it past the threshold.

Back in his body, he knocks his candle over, relishing the controlled destruction, the spill of wax, the sizzle of the squashed wick. A fire he can actually put out.

______

The next time Adam scrys, Ronan looks like himself. Maybe a little scruffier, with what looks like a tunnel piercing on his right ear, and a rare openness to his posture. He’s lounging in a pasture up against a sleeping cow, boots up.

As Adam watches, he tips his shaved head back into its mottled hide, and the sun makes his eyelashes into lit matchsticks. He loves him very much. He’d almost forgotten.

“Don’t lock me out,” he says quickly. Ronan opens his eyes, and when he sees him he smiles instinctively.

“Adam,” he says, vaguely. And then he locks him out.

“No,” he cries. “Would you listen to me.” He feels for the fissure in space and time, the pocket where Ronan is dreaming, sweetly and inaccessibly, about the only home Adam has ever known.

Nothing gives. Nobody replies. He crawls back to Harvard, weak with misery.

In the next dream, Ronan is older, driving a boxy jeep over a foreign landscape. Rolling Irish hills, skies humming with artificial energy. A woman who can only be Jordan Hennessy, chattering in the passenger seat.

Then it’s Ronan with his head in his dead mother’s lap, stroking the downy wing of a black swan.

Then Ronan and Hennessy again, opposite one another in a sunny gallery. One of them examining an impressionist portrait no bigger than a postcard, the other examining the exit.

Then Ronan, discovering Matthew’s corpse in a dim hallway, blinking furiously at the stranger crouched over his prone body. “What did you do?” He sounds like a kid reprimanding his sibling for getting them both in trouble.

Every time Adam gets close, some defence mechanism stops him, like a firm hand against his chest, pushing him away again and again.

He doesn't know what to do except keep trying.

______

Blankly, he looks down at a sink full of tinfoil and uneasy water. In pieces, he becomes aware of his surroundings—green stalls and laminate countertops, a row of hundred-watt lightbulbs, and somebody rattling the locked doorknob.

“Adam, are you in there?” Fletcher. “We’re going to be late. It’s nearly ten. Adam?”

“Just a minute, sorry,” Adam slurs. He stares closely at his face in the mirror until he recognizes his own features. He has an exam at 10:30. He glances down at his watch. 9:52. He had been so sure that he could just drift for a few minutes, maybe catch Ronan before he woke up. That was almost an hour ago.

He drains the sink, hands shaking, cuffs getting damp. The lightbulb filaments float behind his eyelids when he blinks. He throws his satchel over his shoulder, smooths his hair up and out of his eyes, and rubs the bags under his eyes until they hurt.

When he lets himself out of the bathroom, Fletcher is directly outside, tapping a nervous rhythm on his hips. His hands fly from his body and into the air at the sight of him.

“Adam! Thank god. I’ll cancel the search party.”

“I got lost in my notes,” Adam says, as they both make for the stairs.

“Of course you did,” Fletcher says warmly. “A supremely Adam move. I just hope you’re taking care of yourself. Gillian thinks you might be—well—not spiralling, but—“

“I’m handling it.” He takes several mental paces backwards. “Uh—poorly, clearly. I’m sorry Fletcher, I didn’t mean to snap.”

Fletcher, to his credit, recovers quickly. “I can’t imagine going through my first semester of college and a break-up at the same time. You’re a stronger man than I.”

Adam rather doubts that Fletcher can imagine going through a break-up at all, but he nods conspiratorially. They hop down the last few steps and out into the chilly sunshine together.

“You’d be amazed what one can do out of necessity.”

“Too true. We all have our hidden depths, don’t we,” Fletcher says thoughtfully. For a moment, Adam considers telling him—something, looping him into this tangled web with him, but then he says, “now, chapter twenty-three wasn’t on the outline, was it? I beg you to say no. Lie, if you must.”

And Adam is a student again. He doesn’t have out of body episodes. He doesn’t carry wads of tinfoil in his trouser pockets. He doesn’t keep deadly secrets from people whom he is mostly pretending to like and understand.

They walk onwards, towards a test which Adam will rouse himself for long enough to ace. Then he will think of the next thing, and the next. Appease these school acquaintances of his. Tinker with finicky car engines. Make flash cards. Drift into the beyond using one of Fletcher’s three-wick candles from pottery barn. Text Declan, who activates Ronan’s accountability in a way that Adam does not. Call Gansey, if he can bring himself to face his disappointment.

And clear away his feelings, which keep pouring out of him like so much honey.

______

Ronan hangs up on him, and Adam holds himself in the biting wind outside the library for a very long time.

He’d thought, if he could only speak to him, that he could begin to undo Bryde’s poisonous influence. They know each other. They’ve known each other. Ronan would listen to Adam’s fears as he always does. Adam would appeal to Ronan’s heart, which tends to ache for helpless things. They would see how lost they had become without each other. Adam would be allowed back into Ronan’s dreams, and Ronan would be allowed back into Adam’s future.

Why didn’t you text back?

As if they’ve been suspended in time since Ronan’s last tamquam, and none of it—the running away, warding his dreams against Adam, abandoning his phone, trusting a complete stranger over his friends and family—had ever happened.

It’s absurd. He should have expected it. Ronan was searching for a reason to stay, and when he looked for his reflection, his second self, Adam wasn’t there. For a single moment, he wasn’t there, and now he’s paying for it.

Impatient, wrathful Ronan. Leaping from the moving vehicle because Adam was going the speed limit. Going rogue, and then calling Adam with all of these stinging accusations, like he was the one who’d been abandoned.

He thinks again of Bryde manipulating Ronan, preying on his loneliness, his love for his brothers, his fear of himself. This big bad rumour, older and crueler than the Lace itself.

And Ronan letting himself be manipulated, putting on blinders, using Adam’s brief silence as an endorsement for a glorified joyride with unthinkable global ramifications. Self-destructing because things got a little too quiet.

Adam feels hot rage taking ahold of him with its sticky fingers.

Then he thinks of Ronan saying I need to see you, his thin, frightened voice finding Adam from somewhere out there in the city, and his anger goes clammy.

There’s no way Ronan will call again. Negotiations were off as soon as Adam refused to house them both from the Moderators.

And now, without Hennessy, Ronan is the last arrow in Bryde’s quiver. He’s going to be the explosive that brings everything down. He’s going to be buried at ground zero.

If I'd replied an hour sooner, would he really have waited? If I’d gone to school closer, would I have noticed him disintegrating? If I explained that my dream isn’t what I thought it would be either, that he’s the only thing that feels real, would he have said it back to me?

After everything that’s happened, am I going to be the one who gives up on Ronan Lynch?

Everything is so fucked.

He calls Declan.

He picks up on the first ring. “Parrish—”

“He hung up on me,” they both say at the same time.

“Mother of God,” Declan moans. “Then there’s no hope. He thinks I sold him out to the Mods.”

“Did you?”

“No. I did exactly as we discussed. I negotiated for his safety. I thought—I mean, you said it yourself, Adam. Being anti-apocalypse is a pretty solid platform.”

He shakes his head. “Ronan won’t see it that way. He’s not like us. He doesn’t want to be moderated even a little bit.”

“Believe me, I know that. The way he was talking—about the world screwing them over, all of them, dreamers. That’s not the way my brother thinks. That’s all Bryde. And now he’s taken him—Christ—Christ knows where.”

“He wanted to see me,” Adam feels compelled to say. “He was trying to come here.”

“He said that? That's good,” Declan says, relieved. “Where—“

“I let him get away,” Adam says, through numb lips. “I let him go.”

______

He texts Gansey, things have gone south, and then he turns his phone on silent.

His puts his fingertips to the floorboards, a knobbly hand on either side of a scrying tableau: the leaping flame of a candle, a well-organized pile of cards, his overturned phone and discarded tie. He’s just finished crying, and he feels volatile and ill-prepared even as he ties himself to the flickering light.

His mind races through the night like a skipped stone. Vaguely, he pictures a vast body of water and a glittering mountain range, with no horizon line in-between. Darkness reflected in darkness.

“Ronan,” he calls. The dreamspace whirs and grinds its gears and won’t reply. “You know this is wrong. You know, or you wouldn't be hiding from me.”

It’s all water out here in this sublime mirror-space, but it’s also warm, like the steam rising from a hot spring. Something is moving, changing things on a chemical level.

For a moment he thinks he sees himself, a wan doppelgänger with its hands raised. But it’s not Adam. It’s Bryde. Cool, sturdy, a pale Atlas holding the dream together on his back. He recognizes him instinctively.

Adam deliberately throws his mind closer, into the terrible heart of this fire Ronan is creating. Smoke whispers and catches all around him, and it’s even harder to tell the difference between things now. No horizon, no seam, no reality, no death.

What have you done? What are you doing?

The heat is quickly becoming unbearable. Adam is stretched too thin, and the fire is fraying him, eating through each fibre of his connection to reality.

Ronan, please, I need you to stop. I’m losing my grip. Listen to me.

And then, without any warning at all, he collapses on his dorm room floor.

He hacks and retches, lungs full of phantom smoke. Everything feels very wrong. He thinks for a second that he’s blind, but it’s not his vision, it’s another, less tangible sense, it’s—

He scrambles backwards on his hands, heaving. He tries to pull himself up onto his bed, head first, then chest, but he has to stop with his face buried in the comforter.

Ronan is—he must be—he’s—

“God, no, oh my god, no, no.”

He needs to throw up. He needs to call somebody. There’s complete silence in his head.

He was slingshotted back to Cambridge, swatted back along the zipline to his body, because there was nowhere else for him to go.

He’s sure, in a very non-magical, intuitive way, that every dream in the world has just collectively collapsed. Adam staggers to his feet. There’s a smoke alarm going off, somewhere. A background hum of electricity groaning as it shuts off. A high, scared voice.

As if in a trance, he goes to the window.

There are five dead lightbulbs in the nearest row of street lamps, what looks like a sleeping child out in the middle of the square, and a woman clutching her chest and sitting slowly on a bench.

Panic is deadening his senses, crawling blackly into his mouth and nose and eyes. He thinks of Matthew sitting weakly by the window. Opal slumped over a stump in the woods. Chainsaw falling from the sky like a stone. Gansey’s Cabeswater heart decaying in his chest. Ronan, either dissolving into nightwash or felled by a Moderator’s bullet, dead, lost, or powerless.

Every morsel of magic, every innovation, every cherished friend, every sacred place, turned off like a faucet.

The world outside, drooping and disconnected, is now exactly as ordinary as Adam has been pretending it is.

The ley line is gone.

#mister impossible #the dreamer trilogy #mi spoilers #tdt #adam parrish #trc #trc fanfic #pynch #mine #my tfc besties...... soon #in the meantime. here's some adam pov please clap

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putas-in-suffering · 4 years

Text

Ego Boost

Pairing: Angel Reyes x Female Reader/You

Rating: Explicit, NSFW 18+ older

Warnings: Language, unprotected vaginal sex, mentions of bodily fluids, Angel’s muscles

Word Count: 2.6K

Summary: You get caught checking out your boyfriend so he decides to have some fun with you.

A/N: Angel Reyes is making his way to the main stage! This was inspired purely by that shirtless picture of Clayton. Ya’ll know the one. But if you don’t, don’t worry because we got you. We’ll post it below. The man is getting into shape and our minds couldn’t help but think of Angel and all the shirtless scenes we’re owed. Let’s manifest that shit for season three because we wanna see shirts off and asses out. Also, this fic can be looked at as a prequel to the drunk sex with Angel fic we posted awhile ago. It makes mention of this particular instance so if you wanna be in the know, check it out here. Enjoy and share with your fellow sucias! Feedback is the preferred drug for our addiction and greatly appreciated 💖💖

(Photo credit and this post belongs to @shadesalvarez)

You hummed to the faint melody playing on the radio, the volume muted by the rooms that separated you. You made your way to the source of the noise, cold beer in hand. You opened the door that led to the garage, the multitude of sounds now magnified without the barrier of wood to close them out. Your eyes took in the space. The large whirring fan, the half open garage door, the smooth metallic chrome of the motorcycle, and of course your boyfriend.

Angel was hunched over his bike, a pair of black basketball shorts sitting low on his hips. He was shirtless, the sinewy muscles of his arms and abdomen making you pause. You studied him for a long moment, as if seeing him for the first time. He looked bigger, more defined. The long lines of ink now ran over ridges of muscles and veins, the softness he’d once held now gone. His chest was chiseled and the very visible contours of a six-pack were now proudly displayed.

The sight made you swallow. Your mouth suddenly too dry and your panties suddenly too wet.

You knew Angel had taken up working out with EZ. He always made sure to stay in shape, but having his brother come out of prison looking like The Hulk had pushed Angel to train with his younger brother. You’d been surprised at first, but supportive nonetheless. Angel was perfect in your eyes, but you understood. So you’d supported him. And over time you’d noticed small changes here and there.

But today…today you were seeing the differences all at once. And it was noticeable.

You stepped into the garage, shutting the door behind you. Angel had yet to notice you and you took advantage of that as you watched him work. He was concentrating hard, brows furrowed as he fiddled with a part on his bike. His tongue poked out between his bearded lips and the gesture made your insides warm.

You wanted him. Right then. You wanted him in an animalistic way that made your insides clench and your nipples harden. You’d both indulged in some morning sex earlier that day, but it’d been slow and lazy, a statement of love rather than a primal desire. You wanted rough hands and deep thrusts you could feel all the way in your throat. You wanted the ache of his cock to be felt for days after he’d been there.

“Baby…”

You jumped when Angel touched your arm, almost causing you to drop the sweating bottle of beer. You focused your eyes back on the man that now stood less than two feet away from you, his chest showing hints of perspiration. Your tongue yearned to lick it from him.

“You okay? You zoned out.” Angel asked, concern lacing his gravelly voice. His deep chocolate eyes were running the length of you, searching for anything that may be out of place. It was cute.

“I’m good. Sorry, just got distracted.” You half-lied. By the look in his eye, Angel knew what that meant. Under the fullness of his beard you could see the playful smirk on his lips. He took the beer out of your hand and took a large pull, his eyes still not leaving yours. Only this time they said something entirely different.

“Distracted, huh?” He prompted once he’d wiped his mouth with the back of his hand. He set the beer on the floor near his bike, straightening and waiting for you to speak.

“You look…” You hesitated on how to articulate exactly what you’d been daydreaming about. You, for some unknown reason, were suddenly nervous around your boyfriend. The butterflies in your stomach grew stronger, their movement shifting from your middle to the lower half of your body.

He patiently waited for you to continue, his brow arched as if he knew exactly what had you all out of sorts. He reached for you, bringing your body flush with his as he settled his hands on your hips. They didn’t stay there for long though. Angel was never one to stay still, and making love was no exception. The man was always moving, always switching sensations before you could get used to one. His hands traveled to your ass, gripping the flesh in encouragement.

“I just noticed how different you look. You look good.” You finally answered meekly, still unwilling to let him fully see the storm that brewed within you.

Angel nodded, as if anticipating the words. You could see the enjoyment on his face, see the pleasure he got from your torture.

“Just good?” He urged, head bowing to bury his face against your neck. You grasped his naked biceps, silently marveling at the size of them. He felt so sturdy under your delicate touches. Felt like he could break you in two if he wanted to. The thought pushed a whimper from your lips, his own beginning to suckle at your flesh.

“Angel,” You whimpered, feeling his teeth dig into a spot he’d been working over. His hips pushed against yours, letting you feel the hardening muscle beneath his shorts.

“Tell me, baby.” He demanded into your ear, suckling the appendage. You shivered, rubbing yourself against his solid form in a weak attempt to entice him. He didn’t budge.

“Sexy…” You finally whispered, tugging at his thick locks. His mouth began to move towards your lips, peppering your face with soft kisses. His hands gently massaged your ass, his dexterous fingers slipping beneath the hem of your shorts to graze your skin.

“Yeah? What else?”

He continued to lock you in a series of delicate kisses, ensuring you stayed in the haze he’d built around you. You surrendered to it, giving every inch of yourself over to it and him.

“Strong.” You breathed into his mouth, gripping his forearms to feel the veins and muscles beneath your palm.

Angel growled, palming your ass with a more veracious grip. You entangled your tongue with his, feeling him begin to shift you backwards. You moved with him until you felt the hard edge of his steel workbench dig into your back. You used it for support, struggling to keep up with the rough hands that seared your flesh.

“Fuck, baby…you got me hard as fuck.”

Arousal flooded your thighs at his words, feeling the proof against your stomach. He began to move your tank top up and over your head, revealing the black bra you wore underneath. You took the initiative and unclasped the garment, carelessly flinging it off. Warm palms encased your naked breasts, kneading the supple flesh with an expertise that had you seeing stars. His entire hand covered you, the ink splashed across his skin making the sight all that more erotic. The only thing missing were his rings. He didn’t wear them around the house, but you found yourself yearning for that cool touch of metal against your nipple. Something you’d gotten used to.

“Angel, please…” You shamelessly begged, throwing your head back when his hungry mouth joined his hands. You arched into him as he licked and sucked, pulling a peaked nipple into his mouth like an impatient newborn. He went further, encasing more of your breast into his mouth and sucking. You whimpered at the force of it, nails digging into the sinewy ridges of his back. You were both slick with perspiration, the fan doing nothing to ease the heat of the day or the growing heat between you.

Angel didn’t verbally answer your plea, but he responded. He pushed your shorts down, taking your panties with them. You stepped out of them and kicked the balled up fabric away. His arms lifted you, seating you on the cool surface of the bench. You flinched at the sensation against your overheated flesh, but settled once his hands began to smooth up your thighs. He widened your legs, fitting his massive form against you. He surrounded you. He smelled of motor oil and the shower gel he’d used that morning. He tasted of the beer you’d brought him. His naked chest stuck to yours, the warm air of the garage making your bodies slide against one another.

“You wet?” He asked, finger already edging to the space between your thighs. You nodded, but he continued on his exploration, feeling your soaked lips. His finger slipped easily in, instantly engulfed by your desire.

“I don’t need it.” You insisted desperately, attempting to push his hand away. You were so far beyond foreplay. You just needed him. Needed the raw connection that only he could give.

He relented, pushing his shorts down enough to free himself. You immediately reached for him, stroking the one muscle that hadn’t changed. Angel had always been gifted in that regard. He was heavy and thick, excitement almost making him seem larger. You swallowed at the feel of him, remembering the moments he thrust himself down your throat. You could practically taste him against your tongue as the tip of him leaked with appreciation. His hips began to move in time with your hand, getting lost in the moment. He grunted and growled, his fingers pressing into your thighs with a pressure that bordered on painful.

“Querida…” He warned, halting your wrist. His eyes met yours as he shook his head, fully removing your hand from his body. He looked almost feral. His hair askew, his beard longer than usual, his eyes wild with simmering tension. Hell, he looked dangerous. All tattoos and muscles. It was an assault on your senses. A fire raged within you; one that you were sure had never burned as bright as it did right now.

“You want it?”

You nodded, uncaring of how eager you seemed. He caressed your cheek, bearded lips barely grazing yours as he rubbed himself against your core.

“How bad?”

You writhed in place as he teased you, slipping only the tip in before pulling away. You anchored yourself to his arms as you shifted your lower half closer to the edge of the bench.

“Angel, stop teasing.” You chastised, feeling the stretch of him as he once again entered you before backing off.

“I want you to tell me, baby…tell me how bad you need me. Tell me how bad it hurts without me inside you.”

Fuck, the man could tease. His words made your walls constrict, trying to squeeze around the phantom sensation of his cock inside you. You were paying for your ogling. Paying for the inflation of Angel’s ego. It was all worth it in the end, but damn did he play a dirty fucking game.

“Let me show you.” You insisted, licking the seam of his lips. He grunted in approval, keeping your gaze as he began to push fully in. You gasped at the familiar ache of him sliding home. Your entire body came alive with him sheathed inside you. Your spine twisted, your limbs wrapped around him, your breathing accelerated. It was a chaotic state of passion and love, but it was addictive. And your body constantly craved more.

He started slow, making you earn every gasp and moan. Your insides clutched at him in desperation, intent on having him stay this way forever. His eyes were trained on your joined bodies. Taking in the way you coated him for smooth passage. What had started out as a ravenous moment of desire had shifted to something more intimate. Something to be savored.

“Angel…you feel so good.” You marveled, closing your eyes when he made his hips flush with yours, forcing him further into your depths.

“Squeeze me.” He demanded as he remained unmoving. You complied, relishing the throb of him against you in return. “Fuck, like that.”

You did it again. And again. Letting him feel just how amazing he made you feel. His hips began to increase in speed, his patience wearing thin as you gripped him. Sweat droplets formed on his forehead as strands of hair shifted into his eyes. You rubbed at your clit, leaning back so that he could see. He licked his lips at the sight, his rhythm faltering. You were both close, the end just beyond reach. He no longer stroked your walls, but instead assaulted them. He no longer left your body as his thrusts became erratic and fast, forcing you to hold on.

The brightness of the day grew hotter. The fan whirring in the corner was drowned out by your hard and reckless coupling. The rattling of the tools littered along the bench echoed as each thrust sent the bench back into the wall. Soon, your body was matching the intensity of your surroundings, lifting you high and pitching you into space. You cried out as you shook and trembled with pleasure. The only word that escaped your lungs was a name.

“Angel…”

“I’m almost there, baby…”

And with that, he was.

Heat as warm as the day filled you. You widened your legs as Angel’s body spasmed with his climax. He thrust with every release of him inside you, continuing to ensure that you’d be filled to the brim for days after. The way he groaned into your ear made you wrap your legs tighter around his waist, locking him to you. His eyebrows furrowed and his eyes squeezed shut. He looked in pain, but you knew better. There was a flash of ecstasy and then it was gone, replaced with a calmness that you’d bared witness to a thousand times. When his muscles began to ease from the tension, you kissed him, running delicate fingers through his beard. His own ran up your back and over your spine, tickling you.

“You know,” He started once he’d pulled away from your lips, eyes now alight with mirth and satisfaction. “If I’d known bulking up was gonna get me this much ass, I woulda done it a long time ago.”

You shoved at his shoulder, laughter ravaging your body as he smirked down at you. “Not true. You get ass on the regular. Don’t even.”

He wrapped your arms around his neck, bringing his face a hair’s breadth away from yours. He rubbed his nose against your own, the action making you melt.

“Yeah, you are pretty generous. Gotta be with a super hot boyfriend and all.” He wiggled his eyebrows at you.

You scoffed, but laughed nonetheless. He wasn’t wrong.

“Okay, okay…you’re hot. Let’s move on.”

You tried to escape his hold, but he caught your wrists and pinned you to him.

“No, I wanna hear more. Tell me how hot I am.” He tickled your ribs as he spoke, forcing you to jerk away. You giggled when he followed, his mouth now nestled against your neck, rubbing his facial hair against your skin.

“Angel!”

You tried to wriggle away, but his Adonis-like body kept you immobile, along with his hardening cock still embedded inside you. You stopped struggling when he placed a hand to your neck, feeling your pulse jump against his palm. His face grew serious, the tendrils of lust starting to darken his irises all over again.

“Lay back, mama. I’m gonna return the favor.” He instructed, pushing against your chest. You followed his words and movements, letting him retreat from your body. He took hold of your thighs, leveling your lower half to his smirking mouth.

It only took two minutes before Angel had to close the garage door, your moans too loud for any passerby on a neighborhood street.

It took another five minutes for the cops to show up, claiming they got a domestic disturbance call in response to some questionable noises.

Angel had never looked so pleased with himself.

Tags:

@marvelmaree

@visintaes

@otomefromtheheart

@aquarius-smr-writing

@glimmerglittergirl

@arveeee

@fangirlingaesthetics

@maciiiofficial

@woahitslucyylu

#angel reyes #angel reyes x you #angel reyes x reader #angel reyes imagine #angel reyes fanfic #angel reyes fanfiction #mayans mc #mayans mc fx

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scapegrace74-blog · 4 years

Text

Halo

A/N Today the Metric Universe has a guest artist: Depeche Mode! This story takes place soon after Help! I’m Alive, which is going to require some creative liberties on my part. Depeche Mode did play London Stadium to a sold-out crowd (one of eight bands to ever do so), but in June 2017, not September.

All other parts of the Metric Universe are available on my AO3 page.

The song by Depeche Mode that inspired the title is here. Teenage Michelle listed to Violator on repeat, just like Claire and Jamie.

September 21, 2017, Spitalfields, England

Jamie’s patrol boots felt like concrete weights about his feet as he plodded down the hallway towards his flat. Most days, he loved his job. It filled a psychic need to contribute meaningfully to society and provided a loose camaraderie that acted as a substitute family. Physically and mentally taxing, on a bad day like today, it left him feeling wrung out and far older than his twenty-seven years. All that kept him moving was force of habit and the promise of a glass of whisky, a long shower and a comfortable bed.

A steady thump of bass throbbed from behind his door. Frowning, he fit the key in the lock and walked into a wall of sound. Claire was nowhere to be seen, but her iPhone sat on the coffee table, wirelessly connected to the tele’s surround sound system. He tapped the screen once and lowered the volume significantly.

The sudden lull drew his roommate from the kitchen, where she’d evidently been cleaning. She was wearing a tattered pair of jogging pants, a plain white tshirt and rubber gloves. Corkscrews of sweaty hair stuck to her temples.

“Jamie, hi. Sorry, I didn’t hear you come in.”

“Understandable. Depeche Mode, Sassenach?”

Her lips curled in a shape he knew was supposed to be a grin. Something was missing, however. A spark, a hint of magic, the ineffable quality he associated with Claire.

“Are ye alright, Claire? Ye seem... I dinna ken, but not yerself,” he inquired as he opened the liquor cabinet. Raising a nearly full bottle of Glenfiddich in silent query, he set about pouring two healthy glasses. When they met back at the sofa, Claire had removed her cleaning attire and tried to arrange her hair in a slightly neater bun.

“I could ask the same of you,” she countered. “You look done in. Rough day? Cheers,” she added, raising the amber liquid.

“Slainte,” he replied, letting the spicy heat coat his throat and settle like an ember in his belly.

“Do you ever...” Claire began before subsiding into silence.

“Do I ever what?” he urged.

“Some days I just feel as though no matter what I do, the cosmic ledger is not going to balance, you know? That there isn’t enough good in me to balance out all the bad.”

He forced himself to mutely accept her statement, no matter how much he wanted to dispute it. She was exposing a chink in her formidable armour. His job was to listen, not debate. He couldn’t help wanting to peer past the small opening to the burning core within, though.

“I loved this album as a lad,” he offered instead. “Dark an’ moody an’ all about sex. My Mam hated Personal Jesus, complained twas blasphemous.”

Claire chuckled softly. She was looking at a point over his shoulder, visibly straining to reach some buried emotion.

“When things got horrific at Camp Bastion, the surgeons would listen to music, ridiculously loud music. Artillery fire, evac choppers, the wails of wounded soldiers, it drowned them all out. Or at least that was the idea. The camp only had an old portable stereo on its last legs, held together with suture wire. By the end of my year, Violator was the only tape that fucking thing hadn’t eaten. This is the soundtrack of the worst moments of my life.”

He could have asked why she would want to relive that personal hell, but he already knew the answer. It was the same reason he still rushed into a burning building, even as the memory of his accident played havoc with his PTSD. Survival was an act of redemption. You fought your demons because if you didn’t, the demons had already won.

They sat beside each other on the sofa listening to the melancholy songs on repeat. When her glass was empty, Jamie poured another two fingers unprompted. He didn’t ask what happened during her hospital shift to send her thoughts back to Afghanistan. He could guess. She didn’t ask why his uniform smelled of ashes and burnt flesh. She could guess. Sometimes the hurt didn’t need to be articulated. Sometimes silent complicity was the only cure.

***

October 20, 2017, London Stadium, England

She’d almost missed the envelope entirely. Bleary eyed after an overnight shift, her plan was to sleep through the rest of the day and wake up tomorrow in her thirties. Checking the surface of her desk for mail out of habit on her way to the shower, Jamie’s bold scrawl, black across ivory paper, caught her eye.

Happy Birthday, Claire.

Her finger shook as she unsealed the feather-light rectangle. A ticket stub was the only content. Her hand covered her mouth as she drew in a quivering lungful of air. She had no idea how he even knew it was her birthday, never mind how he happened upon the perfect gift.

After a rejuvenating nap, shower and thirty minutes trying on every outfit in her wardrobe, she now stood in an endless security lineup in the hulking shadow of London Stadium. A soft brush against her bare shoulder and a hint of his familiar scent were the cues that sent her heart beating against her ribs. She looked up into the sunrise of his warmest smile.

“G’d evenin’, Sassenach,” he greeted. “Fancy meetin’ ye here.”

She shook her head in mock exasperation.

“Really, Jamie. I can’t believe you. How ever did you even get tickets? It’s been sold out for months.”

“Och, twas nothin’. The sister of one of the lads on my engine works fer their record label,” he demurred, running a hand through his curls. She could see they were still damp. He must have showered at the station and come straight from work. The bright floodlights caught the blond tones of the stubble along his jaw. She looked away, feeling a lurch in her stomach that had nothing to do with missing dinner.

They chatted easily as they slowly advanced through the metal detectors and into the colossal stadium.

“I’ve never been inside,” she remarked, craning her head upwards. “It’s incredible, isn’t it?”

“Aye, tis. This way, birthday girl. We’re on the floor.” Jamie extended a courtly arm and shepherded her into the steadily growing crowd.

At concerts in her youth, she always started near the stage but was gradually pushed backwards by larger, rowdier fans. It took several songs for her to realize why that wasn’t happening. Jamie had planted himself directly behind her and was acting like a breakwater, parting the crowd with his tall, broad form before they could push up against her. She felt something vigilant loosen along her spine. Before long, she was dancing and singing along, completely lost in the moment.

Looking up over her shoulder at his proud, chiseled features as they were washed in multi-hued lights, she caught his eye and smiled. He bent close, his warm breath feathering her hair as he whisper-yelled into her ear.

“Happy birthday, Sassenach.”

Impulsively, she stood on tiptoe and placed a careful kiss near the corner of his mouth. Lying in bed that night with the echo of the music still ringing in her ears, it was the memory of his shyly delighted grin that lit her mind like a thousand stars.

#my stories #outlander

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hellzyeahthewebwieldingavenger · 4 years

Note

Could you expand on the idea that Peter is driven by responsibility, rather than guilt? I'm having a hard time articulating it since I've been out of the Spider-Man loop for quite a while.

if he’s about guilt it means that if he discovered ben’s death actually had nothing to do with him he’d lose his motivation.

If he’s about guilt then he isn’t really relatable or aspiration. he’s just a guy with major issues that have led him towards something dangerously self-destructive. A hero might risk self-destruction to do something positive but that’s very different to what Peter is if he does what he does out of guilt. it’s not exactly a death wish but it’s sort of similar in that superficially it looks like selfless heroism when it’s actually coming from a place of illness.*

Some comparisons.

If Batman fights crime because he wants revenge then he’s got unaddressed issues. But if he fights crime because he doesn’t want someone else to suffer as he did, he is a hero.

Barbra Gordon might’ve obtained the skills to become a info broker because she was paralyzed. But she chose to employ those skills altruistically because she is a hero

Bruce Banner might become the Hulk due to childhood trauma and rage issues but when he helps people in any persona it’s out of sincere altruism. the Green Savage Hulk subtextually helps others because as a little boy he was helpless against his father and couldn’t protect his mother from him, rendering him not dissimilar to Batman.

If we accept Peter does what he does out of guilt it means he is in essence selfish. It’s not about others it’s about making himself feel better and earning redemption.

Which in turn makes things worse because realistically he earned that redemption long ago but keeps on trying to earn it, he’s NEVER going to feel like he’s done enough.

When you have him risk his life and physical/mental health and screw up his personal relationships because he’s constantly seeking a redemption that’s never going to come then that isn’t a hero. At worst that’s a sympathetic villain in the making, but at best it’s just someone we should pity because they need the help.

It is in effect saying if peter got sufficient therapy and dealt with his issues he would either not be Spider-Man or else would need a new reason to be Spider-Man.

Or to put it another way, saying Spider-Man is ABOUT guilt, that guilt is THE motivator for him, the central theme and the moral of the story is essentially saying ‘Great Power=Great Resp’ is irrelevant.

Except it was blatantly the moral lesson of Peter’s first appearance and origin. Peter should have ALWAYS been using his powers selflessly and he learned that lesson from then on.

In contrast saying he’s all about responsibility fixes the problems I listed above.

Responsibility is a near universally applicable theme making it endlessly relatable. It’s a heroic virtue. It is actually far more flexible for creating story opportunities as life inevitably throws responsibilities at us and distinctly different ones as we age, laying the tracks for a natural progression for Peter’s character development.

Being irresponsible more naturally creates a contrast with Peter’s villains and in particular the 2 initial big ones, Doc ock and the Green Goblin. Otto had scientific genius on his side but became a mad scientist, a classic archetype of how science can go wrong if not tempered with ethics. Norman Osborn meanwhile was defined through the lens of parenthood, the ultimate responsibility that EVERYONE relates to because even if you aren’t a parent you HAD a parent even if they were never around. Their presence/absence inherently shaped who you are.

Responsibility also means Peter can naturally feel guilty about things too so you can still tell stories about guilt if you want.

But the distinction here is that it’s a guilt born from responsibility not vice versa.

Guilt makes Peter Parker a perennial victim.

Responsibility makes Peter Parker a hero.

*This brings to mind Eddie Brock from the Spec cartoon. Many fans misconstrued his wrestling the Lizard as an act of bravery when the intent was that he was in fact a little in love with death due to the death of his parents and the loneliness that ensued.

This was intended to contrast with Peter who walked away from his parents death (they died alongside Brock’s) with a respect for life

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we-stan-bruce-ban · 5 years

Note

18 or 14 for the prompt thing 👀👀👀👀

14: “Is everything alright?” “It is now that you’re here with me.” *Which I tweaked a bit but same general idea

-O-

Thor hadn’t had a phone for terribly long. He still had a lot to figure out, but over time he’d learned one thing for sure: late night texts from Tony were almost never a good thing.

[Tony]: Hey

[Tony]: Bad news

What a surprise.

[Thor]: What is it this time?

[Tony]: Bruce

Immediately, he felt his heart stop. Thor’s typically slow thumbs were a blur as he tapped out a message.

[Thor]: What happened? Is he ok?

[Tony]: Not…really

[Thor]: What does that mean?

[Tony]: He’s stuck

[Thor]: Stuck?

[Tony]: Yep

[Thor]: In what?

[Tony]: He’s stuck mid transformation between the hulk and himself

[Tony]: Like, kinda big kinda green, very distressed, and I think he and the hulk are sharing a mind? Idk he keeps yelling at himself every now and then

Thor honestly didn’t know what to say. He didn’t know Bruce could get stuck like that, but it sounded awful. He took a moment to figure out what he wanted to ask next.

[Thor]: Does he seem hurt? Physically?

[Tony]: No clue, its kinda hard to tell

[Thor]: I’m coming over.

[Tony]: Figured you would. On floor 14

[Thor]: Please keep watch over him while I’m on my way.

[Tony]: No I think Im just gonna go make myself a margarita while my best friend is tearing his own existence apart in ways we didnt even know where possible beforehand

[Tony]: Of course Ill watch him

Thor didn’t waste time replying to Tony’s trademark sarcasm. Within mere minutes, he was over at Stark Tower, standing in the freezing rain and harsh gusts of wind that were probably brought on by his own stress. The door opened for him and he slipped inside, making a beeline for the elevator. Thor rode all the way up to the fourteenth floor, trying to catch his breath. Before he even got out of the elevator, he could tell that there was a strange sort of tension in the air.

When he stepped out, Bruce was nowhere to be found. Tony was rubbing his temple, as if he had a headache. Thor neared him, his eyes darting around the lab.

“Where is he?”

“Asleep. Finally.”

“Asleep?”

“He eventually passed out. Over-exhaustion, probably.”

“Okay,” he nodded, pausing. “Is he okay, though?”

“I…don’t know.”

Thor sighed and looked up towards the ceiling, then back at Tony. “So, he’s both? Him and the Hulk? At the same time?”

“Basically,” he nodded. “As far as I can tell, anyways.”

“Gods, that must be awful for…for both of them, I guess.”

“I can’t imagine how shitty he must feel.”

“Tell me where he is.”

“We’ve got a hangout on this floor. It’s like…a makeshift bedroom, I guess. We spend so much time in here we figured we might as well have, like, a napping area,” he explained. “It’s a little room down the hall. Right side.”

Thor gave a sharp nod and hurried towards the door.

“Hey, be careful, okay?” Tony called after him.

“Of course I will be!”

Just like Tony said, the room was like the beginnings of a proper bedroom. There was a small bookshelf to one side, a few soft, yellow lights scattered about, and in the corner, a massive collection of pillows and duvets. There might have been a mattress beneath it, but it was hard to tell. Especially with the person curled up on top of it all.

All along his arms were patches of what looked like rashes, only a muddy green color. His veins bulged along his arms and neck. He was definitely taller than he should have been, and more built and muscular, too. Bruce (Hulk?) himself seemed more like he was knocked out rather than peacefully asleep. His dark eyebrows were furrowed in what seemed like distress or frustration, and he would twitch every now and then. Thor knelt beside him and ran a finger along one of the several tears in his tightened shirt.

“Hello, dear,” he whispered.

The being before him grumbled something incomprehensible. Then, his eyes snapped open. Thor took his hand back and watched intently.

“Bruce?” he asked carefully.

“Y-Yes,” he whispered, then smacked the side of his head. “No!”

Thor’s brow furrowed in concern. “Hey…”

“No! No Banner.” He shook his head frantically. A pained expression crossed his face. “Banner…sorry. I-I’m sorry…he’s…”

“Look at me,” he whispered, cupping his cheek. Thor pulled him into a gentle kiss, delicately playing with his hair. He pulled away and took a shaky breath. Thor frowned slightly and took his hands.

“Look at me, darling,” he whispered again. Bruce was hesitant to meet his eyes, but when they met each other, Thor gave him a warm smile.

“I just wanted to say I love you. So, so much.”

He nodded slowly. “L…love you…too.”

“Mhm.”

“Who…am I?” he whispered suddenly. Thor paused.

“I don’t know.”

“You don’t?”

He shook his head. “I mean…you aren’t exactly Hulk, but…but you aren’t fully Bruce either…”

“What am I?” The fear in his voice was more evident than before.

“I don’t know, my love,” he said apologetically. “Do you feel more like one of them than the other?”

After a moment of thought, he replied. “Bruce.”

“Are you sure?”

“…No. But…but I think I’m him…”

“Okay,” he said softly. “Then we’ll get you back to being your old self.”

“Promise?”

“I promise.” Thor gave him a smile. “How are you feeling?”

“Hurts…” Bruce sniffled.

“I’m so sorry, my love,” he whispered, looking over his trembling muscles. “Just…focus on me. Everything’s going to be okay.”

“Gonna be okay…” he repeated, squeezing his eyes shut. “Th–Thor…”

“Yes, dear?”

“He’s…I don’t want…” Bruce swallowed. “Make it stop…”

“I’m not sure how,” he admitted. “Try to…um, maybe think about things that help you relax?”

“Hugs,” he said quickly. “Hug me…”

Thor nodded and wrapped his arms around him. It was odd, since he was used to hugging a much smaller Bruce. The way he was now, their heights were just about matched. Nevertheless, Thor just pretended like it was a normal night. Just cuddling his boyfriend in bed, and nothing more.

“How’s this?” he murmured, rubbing his thumb against a rough patch of skin.

“Yes,” was all Bruce replied. Thor pressed a kiss just below his ear and hummed softly. It was an old Asgardian lullaby he remembered his mother singing to him as a child. Thor wasn’t the best singer, by any means, but he hoped it was calming.

Apparently it was, since he started to feel Bruce start to shrink in his arms. He whimpered as he curled in on himself, his body still shaking and jerking.

“Hush, hush, you’re alright, I’m here…” Thor whispered. Bruce took deep breaths. Everything had stopped. Thor looked down at him, trying to determine if he was fully back yet. The shirt he wore, while still ripped, seemed to fit him once more, and his skin was back to its usual color.

“Bruce?” he asked.

“Yeah…” Bruce turned to look at Thor. Tears streaked his face, but the look in his eyes was relief. He rolled over and hugged Thor tight.

“Fuck…fuck. Okay. I’m okay, I’m okay,” he rambled to himself. “It’s fine…”

Thor himself let out a sigh, happy that Bruce had come back to himself. “There. See? I told you we’d get you back.”

“That was…fuck.”

“Is everything alright, now?”

“Since you’re here,” he nodded.

“What was that?”

“I don’t know,” Bruce shook his head. “I don’t know and I hope I never experience it again.”

“Hopefully you never will.” Thor stroked his curls.��

“Yeah…shit. Yeah.” Bruce glanced up at him. “Thank you…”

“Don’t thank me. I just want you safe and happy.”

Bruce smiled faintly. “I love you. So much, more than I could ever tell you. I’m…shit with words. You know that.”

“I do. But I love it.” Thor grinned. “It makes you yourself.”

“See? I can’t do that,” he laughed softly. “Articulate words and all that…”

“Then just kiss me,” Thor mumbled.

Bruce did.

#ive had this idea floating around for a while #of bruce and hulk getting stuck or like twisted into one form lol #also thank you for the ask!!#much appreciated friendo #thruce #thorbruce #thulk #thor #thor odinson #bruce banner #hulk #my fics #drabble #fic prompt #body horror #not a ton but still

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beccarooni · 5 years

Text

Ice Planet - Chapter 4

(a.n: oof its been like 6 months since the last update ANYWAY enjoy the angst and love. for those of u not caught up, the boys are stranded on an ice planet, and thors powers have gone haywire and almost destroyed the ship.)

The two had made a careful camp, in the wake of the ship, and it was almost comforting in a weird sort of way. The ships wingspan protected them from the falling snow, and the fire that blazed in front of them from the small amount of wood they’d been able to gather was comforting.

Oddly, it reminded him of home. The smell of smoke, and the warmth of a companion next to him. It was like his childhood had come back in full colour - the dark blue shade of the night sky, orange and yellow flames illuminating the underside of their faces. All they needed was a few good ghost stories, and they’d be set for the evening.

An evening that never seemed to end - Thor nibbled at his bottom lip as he glanced upwards towards the sky. Still dark. There hadn’t been a ray of sun since they’d gotten here, and he silently cursed himself for not paying more attention to the ships mapping system when he’d had the chance.

A planet with eternal darkness - that was probably a prominent clue as to where they were.

“It’s a pity Loki isn’t here,”

Thor rubbed his hands together over the flames, trying to coax some warmth back into them.

“He’d probably be able to figure out where we are in a heartbeat.”

“Or Angry Girl.”

Hulk sniffed, looking oddly endearing with his knees drawn up to his chest, and a blanket thrown over his shoulders.

Thor hummed his agreement, shuffling closer to the fire, ignoring the twinges of pain that any sort of movement seemed to be sending shooting down his spine.

Which, probably wasn’t good. This whole situation probably wasn’t good, no matter how much nostalgia he managed to cloak it in.

His lightning had never reacted like that before. No matter how temperamental it was, it was still his. It destroyed, it fixed, it did whatever it was meant to do - because he told it to. It didn’t disobey him. It wasn’t supposed to.

He frowned, studying the veins in his hand that had been alight with lightning just a few hours ago. Something had to have changed, but he couldn’t place his finger on what. Because what could be so powerful as to disarm him, The God of Thunder, from his element?

A large finger prodded into his cheek, and he looked up to see Hulk’s face peering down at him with concern.

“Gonna talk about it?”

“Talk about what?”

Hulk grunted, gesturing wildly with his hands out to the ship. To the lines of black, leftover scorch marks burned into blue metal from where his lightning had touched it. Hadn’t destroyed it, at least not completely, but had still been volatile enough to leave a mark.

“Dropped ship. Powers didn’t work, ” Hulk moved a little closer, lowering his voice as if he was telling a secret - despite there being no one but the howling wind to tell.

“Why?”

“If I had an answer for you, I would provide it. As of right now your guess is as good as mine.”

Hulk nodded, turning his face back up to the stars, letting out a soft sigh that was illuminated white against the darkness of the outdoors.

Thor wasn’t quite sure what compelled him to say what he did next. Maybe it was Hulk’s face, so rarely calm and yet now, it seemed he couldn’t be anything but. Seeing him like this, green skin smoothed with an odd sense of relaxation - if you didn’t know him, you’d think he was like this all the time. Just someone watching the stars, on an insignificant night, on an insignificant planet.

But, if you knew him, you’d understand how special this was. It wasn’t insignificant, at least, not in the dismissive way.

It had taken so long for Hulk to become something else, in Thor’s eyes. 2 whole years away from earth and suddenly, he wasn’t a big green mass of rage that operated only on fear.

He had a life. He had friends.

Thor could curse himself for not seeing it sooner.

“You know, I think we actually have a lot in common - you, me, and Bruce. I think we make quite a good team.”

Thor drew his hands back from the fire - not that he was getting much warmth from it, anyway - setting them behind him, so he could stare up at the sky.

Hulk stiffened at the mention of Bruce, a large hand idly reaching up to trace at the wound from yesterday - that was almost nothing but a scar by now.

“Thor changing the subject.”

“I just thought it was important for you to know. That you’re important.” He let out a soft grunt as he lowered himself down to his elbows, allowing his eyes to shut just for a few moments.

“You and Banner. It doesn’t have to be a competition.”

A few seconds of quiet passed, and Thor was a little worried he’d crossed a line, until he felt the warmth of a larger hand covering his own.

“Maybe,” Hulk shifted, linking his fingers with Thor’s.

“Don’t say it like that, though.”

“Like what?”

“Like goodbye. ”

Thor’s eye opened again, and Hulk had gotten somehow closer, a few inches away from his face.

And he was worried. Again.

The words ‘friend stay’ had been echoing around his skull as of late, and right now they had never seemed more relevant. He hadn’t meant to imply…whatever Hulk thought he was implying. He wasn’t going anywhere, at least, wasn’t planning on it.

But, things had been going wrong. And things had been going right, but in the wrong kind of way. The Norns clearly weren’t on his side, at least that much was clear.

Who’s to say what would happen once they returned to earth? Would earth even let them stay? And if they didn’t would Bruce and Hulk want to go with the Asgardians to someplace else??

Did Thor want them to go with him?

It seemed he had a habit of leaving people he cared about behind. Distance had driven he and Jane apart, and now it seemed that destiny wanted to repeat that.

Maybe he was destined to be alone.

“Hulk, I’m…I don’t want to go anywhere. Truly. You are..”

He paused, feeling his throat run dry, but the words seemed to be spilling out regardless, creating an uncomfortable tightness in his throat.

“You are special to me. You and Bruce, both.”

“Special how?”

Ah.

There it was.

The question that a thousand doubts and fears couldn’t overrun. And an answer that he didn’t know how to articulate - and he wished he could. He wished he wasn’t the only one in his family born without a silver tongue, because there was so much he wanted to say and so much he couldn’t.

How could you express that someone feels like home? That two people, sharing one body, have also found a second place deep within your heart?

Bruce was special. He was kind and thoughtful and so, so brilliant that he outshone the stars themselves. And Hulk was, for want of a word more befitting, sweet. Caring, in a gruff sort of way. A way that when thousands of planets away from home, forced into an alien gladiator arena, just the sight of him made him feel hopeful enough to yell and-

Oh dear.

“I don’t know. You just are, ok? You’re just special to me. In a way that means I don’t want to leave you, not really ever, actually and - why are you asking so many questions?”

Thor scrambled to his feet, which turned out to be a mistake, his vision swimming rapidly in front of his eyes. And that, of course, made Hulk stand up, and put his hands on Thor’s shoulders which was the kind of contact he’d been trying to avoid. It was too warm. Too real. Too close to igniting something and making him say something that could ruin things.

“Look, just uhm…I’m going to go explore, alright? Find some more firewood or something. And then we can talk about this back on the ship.”

“Why Thor being weird?

“I’m not! This is normal!”

“Nuh uh.”

Hulk planted both hands firmly back onto Thor’s shoulders, and this time he couldn’t wriggle out. Green eyes bored down into him, narrowing in suspicion.

“Thor off since ship crashed. Something wrong. Banner think so too.”

“You talked to Bruce about me?!” Thor couldn’t hide the sting of betrayal in his voice, no matter how petty and small he knew he sounded.

His voice was nothing, in the wake of the storm.

“Had to! Thor kept saying everything was fine, wouldn’t talk to Hulk properly!”

His expression softened, then, and his hands fell to Thor’s sides, holding him gently at the elbows.

“What happened?”

And there was another similarity.

Hulk was clever. He had to be, sharing a mind with the one and only Bruce Banner. People tended to forget that, sometimes. When he wanted to be, Hulk could be sharp. Attentive. When things were worth it, he could pay attention.

And apparently, Thor was worth it.

“Nothing happened.” Thor shook himself free of Hulk’s grip, shrugging his cape back over his shoulders.

“I’ll be back later.”

“Thor-”

“I’ll be back. Watch the ship.”

***

He figured he just needed to walk the feelings off. Clear his head, and all that. Lately he’d been too unfocused - and that was his fault. He hadn’t been on the ball, in fact he’d been so far off the ball that he wasn’t even in the same star system as said ball.

It didn’t help that Hulk was fretting over him like a worried mother hen. He didn’t need that - he was the God of Thunder. He was the one doing the protecting. That’s just how it went.

It didn’t matter that it felt nice to be held. What mattered was what was right. And what was right was for Thor to fly them both out of there, and that would be that.

Maybe once they were safe, Thor could figure out these feelings. Because there wasn’t any point in denying them anymore. He’d all but blurted out a full declaration of something back at the campfire, and now was not the place for…whatever this was. Flirting? Friendship? Camaraderie?

Naming his affection had never been his forte. Back on Asgard, he had time to practise these sorts of things. To write out the declarations of love, get the phrasing just so, and as such he’d had quite the reputation.

On instinct, however, he was significantly less eloquent.

Thor rounded a corner, the icy wind helping somewhat to lessen the burning feeling of shame in his face. Soft snow gave way to harsh rock, and he was so deep in thought that he almost missed the sight of a lone figure standing in the shadows of the cliff-face, starlight sparkling from ice-clad skin.

His eyes wandered over the clothing, the light markings etched onto dark blue skin, and his legs almost caved under him with the weight of the relief.

Because for the first time in quite a few days, he knew what that was. More importantly, he knew where that was. Where they, by extent, were. And how to get home. He could’ve hit himself for not realising it sooner. He was on a planet of ice, with skies full of snow and storms, barren trees and steep ravines scattered as far as the eye could see.

And standing in front of him, with their backs turned, was a frost giant.

Jotunheim. They had to be on Jotunheim.

“Hulk? Hulk, are you listening?” His hands, numb with cold, fumbled with the communicator, turning dials and pressing unfamiliar symbols until his friends deep grumble resounded on the other side.

“I’ve figured it out, we’re on Jotunheim! There’s a local here, I’m going to try to talk to them. See if we can’t find a way out of this mess.”

Without waiting for a response, Thor clipped the device back onto his belt, and began walking forward. He wasn’t so naive as to assume he’d be entirely welcome here. Not after last time, at least. But he figured he’d at least made some steps towards forgiveness. Saving them from the bifrost, for one. Saving them - and the universe - from the Convergence, for two. And by now he really wasn’t above apologising if that’s what it would take to get them out of here.

“Excuse me?” Thor approached the figure, raising his hand in what he hoped was a friendly greeting, trying to pull back on the lessons he’d had from Stark about appearing less like a terrifying elemental thunder god.

“Sorry to be a disturbance, but-”

“Foolish boy.”

“…Ah, right. Yes, I figured this might happen. Please, forgive my intrusion, I’m not here to cause trouble. Not even here on behalf of Asgard, actually. It got destroyed, if you could believe it. By my own sister which I didn’t even know I had and - I’m oversharing, sorry.”

Thor finally managed to catch his breath, shaking his head slightly to try and clear the fuzziness within it. He was definitely coming down with something. But, still, that was no reason not to focus. His mind was still as sharp as ever, cold or no. Still perfectly capable of negotiating an exit, even if the ice giant had been quiet for a rather long time now, and that feeling of unease was slowly beginning to creep it’s way back up into his chest.

“My friend and I crashed our ship. We just need help, until our people can transport us home.”

“Still so young, Odinson. Young, brash, and full of storms.” A low laugh escaped the figure, as the tall form began to turn, casting long shadows against the dark wall of the cliff.

“You haven’t changed.”

“I…what?” Thor narrowed his eyes, taking a few stumbled steps backwards. He hated how unsure he sounded, unauthoritative and unknowing, but the cold grip of doubt was beginning to tighten, making it fractionally harder to breathe.

He had to be imagining things. He could almost laugh at himself, really. Hulk would certainly have a field day with this when he finally caught up to them, because honestly, for a moment there Thor had actually considered that this might be -

The figure completed its turn, and the cold red eyes of Laufey stared back at him.

His voice died in his throat. Laufey. King of the Frost Giants, Laufey. The very Laufey who’d been murdered in his father’s bedroom while he’d been banished on earth.

He couldn’t be here.

He couldn’t.

“Poor, naive prince of Asgard.” Laufey’s voice echoed across stone, the grating of ice against cliffside scraping against his ears, somehow even worse than bruce’s chalk against a board could ever be.

“You’re not real.” Thor almost whispered, half drowned out by the noise of the ever-present gale that hadn’t faded since their arrival. He took a few more steps backward, pinching at the bridge of his nose, rubbing at his temples, his eyes - trying anything to be rid of this illusion.

“And why is that?”

“Because you’re dead! You died years ago. I was there, you -” He finally managed to look up, his one good eye longing for any kind of focus. “You can’t be here.”

Not-Laufey’s voice dropped to a murmur, as he regarded his hand with mild interest, red-eyed gaze flickering over where a spear of ice was quickly reaching a point.

“Just another life taken by your doing, Odinson. Just another kingdom unravelled under Asgard’s lust for war. For conquest. How many have followed me, I wonder?”

The wind picked up, pieces of grit and hail lashing his face like a thousand razor-sharp needles against his skin. He lifted his arms, torn between shielding himself and desperately trying to show that he didn’t mean harm. He didn’t want harm. He didn’t want, he didn’t, he didn’t.

“Was it your arrogance that caused your kingdoms downfall? Your sheer, stubborn belief that you could force the Norns hands if you so wanted?”

Thor clamped his hands over his ears, screwing his single eye shut against the burning heat of the tears that were forming. His head hurt, his lungs ached with each stinging breath of air he took in, and he felt ashamed.

“That’s not what I tried to do. I just wanted to prevent Ragnarok - I was saving us!”

“And in doing so, you opened the doors for Hela. Perhaps if you had stepped out of Surtur’s way, you wouldn’t have been touched with such tragedy.”

Not-Laufey’s hand wrapped around the hilt of his spear, and his footsteps increased, each fall pounding against his ears as if the giant was made out of stone.

“Perhaps you’d have more people left to mourn for you, when you die at my hand.”

The sound of a spear piercing metal was one that Thor knew all too well. He’d felt the point of a blade against his skin before, it had been commonplace since childhood. Yet no spear-head, no dagger, no weapon he knew of felt as truly wrong as Laufey’s spear entering his chest. It wasn’t a stinging pain, no. It was cold. A numbing ache, that seemed to seep down to his bones, to his soul. Tendrils of ice seized his muscles and seemed to freeze him where he stood.

He barely felt it when his knees hit the stone floors. Everything already felt so far away. Already, he felt the cold whispering to him. Already, he felt his vision begin to fail him. Laufey left, and so did the stone, and the cliffs, and the spear.

Only the barren trees filled his vision before darkness took him, and he let himself fall.

#ice planet fic #fanfic #multiple chapters #thor #hulk #thorhulk #thor whump #hurt/comfort #thunderscience #gammahammer #thorbruce #thulk #bruce banner

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perpetuallyfive · 5 years

Text

some thoughts on Endgame

I always find it a lot easier to write very long rants about things I dislike than praise about things that I like. It just feels like the good things are obvious, you know? So compiling them in lists feels a little pointless.

It’s why I haven’t written anything about Endgame yet. I honestly thought Infinity War was pretty average at best, so the fact that I fucking loved practically every single minute of Endgame kind of caught me by surprise. It checked so many of my boxes that it’s almost hard to even articulate.

So much of what was good about it honestly felt almost inevitable.

Mark me down as pretty confused then as I read some of the negative responses. Like... obviously, I’m just being dense. Nothing exists, especially on the internet, without some negative response. And I don’t even mean that in a pithy way. People are really different and what works for one person doesn’t work for everyone.

Which brings me back to my earlier point.

Just because I thought some of this stuff was obvious or amazing doesn’t mean everyone did, so here are a few observations, in an unordered list:

The way that time travel works in the movie is deliberately left a little vague, in my opinion, to allow wiggle room for the multiverse moving forward, especially as they expand into streaming services.

They do however clearly say that you cannot change your own past. Bruce says it. This means that Steve absolutely is not in our timeline, whatever the writers might say about it now. He’s not. In our timeline, he knew Peggy married someone else. That’s in his past. He cannot change his past in his own timeline. Therefor he cannot change who Peggy marries in his own timeline.

Seriously, he’s not in our timeline. They’re just wrong.

This means you have a million possibilities in fanfic for all the things Steve did that sent out ripples in his own new timeline or the many multiverses he could have created. It’s a fucking candy shop.

Try not to be too hard on the writers for having no idea what they’re talking about, I guess; it’s hard writing characters that are way smarter than you.

Am I less than charitable toward the writers because of their dumb takes on Natasha in defending why she’s not a part of the funeral at the end? Yes.

Just put a fucking second wreath there, god damn, would it have been so hard.

Framing Nebula’s storyline as a bad thing, which I’ve seen a few times now, is frankly insane to me. She isn’t, as the daily dot put it, killing herself. She missed her chance to save her sister five years ago and has regretted it every since. The second Gamora is at stake this time, she makes it clear that she would sacrifice anything (even someone who looked like her), to prevent losing her sister again. That’s great shit!

I am bummed we don’t get original Gamora back, but I’m also intrigued by the soft reset this does on her relationship with everyone in the Guardians. I wonder what their plans are with that in Vol 3. In many ways, her healing process away from Thanos was sidelined in the first two films and this allows the possibility of reframing that as more central to the focus in the third. Fingers crossed.

More Gamora and Nebula in general but especially in Guardians 3 please; I might threaten to retroactively like this movie less if this is the last we get of this much attention on their relationship, please and thank you.

The problem with the MCU crossover movies is they have to exist as two things at once. They have to be a movie that works as its own thing with good timing, pacing, structure, and an end that feels conclusive. They also have to pay off minor characters that mainstream audiences might not care about, as part of larger world building and the stories shared across an entire universe. Endgame, in my opinion, did a much better job of it than Infinity War or Ultron. (it’s hard to compare it with Avengers, when the scale was much more intimate.)

No but really, I don’t think a lot of us in fandom have an appreciation for how many people don’t know any of this shit we take for granted. A shocking number of the people I have spoken to IRL who are entirely apart from fandom didn’t even know what “on your left” was a reference to and were actually a little confused by that moment.

Just think about that and understand the levels this movie has to operate on at all times. It’s almost enough to make me feel bad for the writers, except they still said dumb shit about Nat, so I’m good.

I did actually love all the more subtle callbacks, like Natasha’s necklace and T’Challa knowing Clint’s name, but the direct quotes were pretty great too, especially Steve’s reaction to “I could do this all day.” Super charming.

Another awkward thing about the crossovers is they have to try to level the playing field slightly and there are some Avengers who are just way more powerful than others. Carol was disappointingly absent, but she’s also insanely OP. It’s why Thor got depressed and it’s why the Russos now say that Hulk will have limited use of one arm. They nerfed some of the classic Avengers, but kept Carol full powered just off in space. That’s preferable, so long as she gets more screen time later and jesus please fix the wig. Or just do the actual haircut now that it doesn’t have to be a secret.

Please dear god the hair is great in concept but seriously if there’s anything about the straight agenda ruining Endgame it’s how borderline soccer mom they managed to make that hair look.

Natasha deserved better and I think we can all agree on that, but here’s hoping that her prequel is deliberately designed to echo the destination we know she’s headed toward and to give her a better resolution more in line with what she deserved. I want to believe that they didn’t give her a full ending entirely because they knew she still had a movie coming up and didn’t want to create that sense of finality that might keep audiences from seeing it. Here’s hoping they can make it work.

Like specifically with very different writers, please. Hopefully a woman. You’ve maybe heard of them before, one of them wrote Guardians, the movie that nobody thought could work and fucking made it work. Yeah.

Tony and Steve were always headed in opposing directions at the end of their arc. This has been covered. Tony went from living selfishly to living selflessly. He went from a playboy bachelor, to a husband, to a father. His one priority when he decided he had to save the world wasn’t even himself, it was specifically keeping his daughter in existence. He went from a selfish dick with daddy issues to someone whose only priority was being a dad.

it was perfect. Like people can say otherwise... but they’re wrong.

I’m an expert on this, clearly. Tony’s death was perfect.

THEY FINALLY GAVE ME RESCUE. I loved everything about it, from Tony planning it carefully for a long time -- like obviously I think it’s because he was customizing the design to be more in line with Pepper’s wants and values, like it is in the comics -- to the fact that it actually does look more defensively focused but still super capable in battle. I want to watch this movie a billion times, honestly, but this scene in particular. I need to know everything about what her suit can do.

Steve was always going to end up settling down. We don’t actually know what he did in his own timeline -- again, IT’S NOT OURS -- so there’s a chance he was still a bit of a troublemaker, but honestly the five years seemed to take a lot out of him. He doesn’t always need a war, and that actually is forward momentum and growth. I get that some people are against the idea and think that getting to be with Peggy was somehow a step back, but I’m not sure I buy that.

Tony taking out the arc reaction at the end of IM3 wasn’t actually about him erasing his trauma or leaving it behind, and Steve getting to be with Peggy doesn’t erase his growth. It was part of it.

Theoretically Sharon was always an option, except the audience (and fandom) response to her was pretty terrible, so actually she wasn’t.

And not to just keep harping on points made in an article that I think is frankly pretty terrible, but Steve going back to the past instead of settling in the present wasn’t about compulsory heterosexuality so much as it was about a franchise that is going to keep making movies needing to keep the next decade of films in mind.

If Steve is still around in the now, that will always linger as a nagging question. The same way that people can’t shut up about where Carol was for the last decade, Steve hanging around in retirement refusing to help would hang over the next phases of movies like a cloud. Putting him in the past lets him live (which he deserves) and clears the slate.

Let Steve rest but, more than that, dear god won’t you please let Chris Evans rest too.

This goes back to how these movies, especially the crossovers, have to work on almost too many levels and it’s frankly shocking that they manage to do it and still have moments of sincere humanity and sweetness.

Like I’m not going to try to oversell it, but seriously fucking think about the fact that one of the most successful blockbuster movies of all time actually has quiet moments where people talk about trauma, loss, parental abuse or neglect, failure, and depression.

Hey remember when the movie gave us acknowledgement of Rhodey and Nebula’s disabilities? In the possibly going to be most successful movie of all time, they had characters with disabilities say how they’re different now but it’s okay, they work with what they got, and they bonded over that and it was so fucking shocking for me and BEAUTIFUL. Just a reminder for us all that THAT happened in the movie that may actually pass Avatar to become the MOST SUCCESSFUL FILM OF ALL TIME.

Just allowing another moment to let that sink in while I try to wrap this up (for now).

ps I can’t believe this movie made me have nice thoughts on Ultron, which I fucking despise with most of my being.

Actually I might have to take back every nice thing I said, just because of the Ultron thing. How dare you, film.

But still lol at the fact that even talking about Ultron for a few seconds was enough to make Tony Stark pass the fuck out. Hard same, Tony.

LOOK OBVIOUSLY I LOVED MORGAN STARK. I AM EXCITED ABOUT MORGAN STARK. SHE IS A PRECIOUS PERFECT ANGEL AND I LOVE HER.

SHIT.

So this is a totally incomplete list but here you go. Some of my thoughts on Endgame.

#avengers 4 spoilers #avengers endgame #avengers endgame spoilers #marvel

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athena1138 · 4 years

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🌹 🌹 🌹 🌹 🌹 🌹 🌹 🌹 🌹 🌹 🌹 🌹 🌹 🌹 🌹 🌹 🌹 🌹 🌹 🌹 🌹 🌹 🌹 🌹 🌹 🌹 🌹 🌹 🌹 🌹 🌹 🌹 🌹 🌹 🌹 🌹 🌹 🌹 🌹 🌹 🌹 🌹 🌹 🌹 🌹 🌹 🌹 🌹 🌹 🌹 🌹 🌹 🌹 🌹 🌹 🌹 🌹 🌹 🌹 🌹 (I love your writing so much you only have to do one though I just got excited)

😭😭😭😭😭😭😭😭😭😭 You just made me so happy omg. You get all 51 lines lmao. Thank you, sweetie!!! This is from one of the later chapters of my Cullen fic that I’ll eventually some day manage to start posting. You know. Once I get past chapter fucking 3

Everyone except Cullen had left for the night. The spot on her back where Bull had gently patted her still warmed her, grounding her to the here and now. Since she’d eaten, she’d begun to sober up a bit, surprised to find she felt better all around.

It would be dawn soon. The earliest birds had begun stirring in their trees, their quiet chirping and the fire the only sounds in the tavern.

Cullen had been quiet for a while, perhaps too tired or too deep in thought to make conversation. She couldn’t blame him. Her own body was heavy with exhaustion, her mind well beyond that, but this silence was far beyond companionable. Once her mind had cleared enough, she put her chin atop her folded hands and tilted her head towards him. “Cullen.”

He nearly jolted, perhaps surprised to hear her speak after so long. A blush dusted his cheeks as he turned his head to look at her. “Yes?”

She cleared her throat, watching the color redden his skin for perhaps too long. “I’m sorry.” How she managed to keep her voice smooth was beyond her. She must’ve been more tired than she thought.

His amber eyes scanned her face for a time, considering his words. She waited patiently having learned long ago that it takes him time to formulate his sentences. Maker, was he always this pretty? His eyes had lightened over the years, now a gentle honey-colored where they’d been almost aggressively golden those many years ago. She’d noticed before, but the way they nearly glowed from the firelight reflecting within them, she found herself more comfortable than she’d been in a long time, even before the mess at Adamant. Finally, he opened his mouth to speak, drawing her eyes to the scar on his lip. Idly she wondered how he’d gotten it as it had not been there when she’d seen him in Kirkwall. “You…” To her surprise, a breadth of emotion screwed up his face almost as if in anguish at a passing thought. With a sigh, he turned his gaze away from her and tried to solidify himself against them. “You scared me tonight, Alena.”

The way he whispered her name might’ve brought tears to her eyes if she still had tears left to cry. What could she say to that? How could she explain what had been going through her mind? Did she even know what had been going through her mind? She straightened up and put her hands on the table in front of her, clasped together while she considered it, analyzed it. She could understand what it must have looked like, but that was far from reality. She’d climbed up there to escape it all, to put herself above everything and just stare into the wide, open sky and let herself be free again. How could she articulate such a complex emotion to him, especially given their history? Would he understand now, after so long removed from it, that she felt like a prisoner in the circles? Would he understand the correlation from that to now, how she feels a prisoner with her title, the expectations of her? Did he have any sort of comparison for which to establish a mutual understanding of how she has felt a prisoner all her life?

He seemed to mistake her silence as something other than pensiveness because he sighed softly. His hand slipped into hers, taking her completely by surprise, but he did not look at her. “Just…” He sighed again and squeezed her hand. “Please know, Alena, I may not fully understand what you have been going through nor what you have gone through, but…” His eyes flicked over to her for an instant. “Know that I am here for you.” Her eyebrows raised despite herself, a warm blush darkening her cheeks at the pure tenderness in his voice. He must’ve heard it, too, because he snatched his hand away and used it to rub his neck. “W-That is we-we’re-uh-we’re all h-here for you.”

Looking at him now, a bumbling, blushing hulk of a man, it was as if she’d been transported back to The Circle, he a sputtering 18-year-old lovesick puppy and she an awkward 16-year-old whose idea of danger was being discovered visiting her best friend in isolation. Thinking of it now, of everything she had been through in the past twenty years, of everything resting on her shoulders, the idea that they could sit here together in this bar and produce such strong feelings of nostalgia within her was nothing short of ludicrous. A giggle bubbled up in her chest before it spilled over and grew into a full-blown, belly-jiggling laugh that had her double over at the strain. He watched her incredulously, his face turning a red as she assumed was humanly possible, forcing the laughter out of her harder. “W-What are you laughing at?”

She shook her head as she took gasping gulps, trying to get air in but her laughter was too much. She leaned against him, her arm slinging across his back and her forehead pressing against his shoulder. He stiffened at first, confused at the touch most likely but relaxed enough to let her know it was not unwelcome. As quickly as her fit had come on, it turned even quicker, her gasping laughter turning almost instantaneously into pained sobs. Cullen was taken aback by the sudden turn of events so, not knowing what else to do or say to help, he simply moved his arm about her and pulled her closer, his hand rubbing along her arm.

#becca writes #shut up becca #cullen #cullavellan #faded to be together #alena #my ocs #Anonymous

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satans-helper · 5 years

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give me nick cave & the bad seeds song recs! i want to start listening to them!!!

oh gosh okay omgomg

If I were to recommend you an entire album as your jumping off point, I’m going to recommend you listen to Skeleton Tree. While it’s very recent (2016), I think it’s a good starting place. Truly a masterpiece–tumultuous and devastating, hauntingly beautiful and at times, quite gut-wrenching. Its whole sensation and sound is so unique, both to the band’s discography and to rock itself. I think that album is such a fantastic testament to the talent of the entire band. It’s immersive. It’s heavy.

As for individual songs to get a more varied taste:

If you haven’t already heard it, Red Right Hand is a cult favorite and with good reason, apart from being in Peaky Blinders. Talk about unique! This song is fucking crazy.

Brompton Oratory. If you are in the mood to yearn, put on The Boatman’s Call. It took me so long to really value it but my god. So sad, so lovely. I particularly like this song, it has such an interesting flow to it. It’s something you could dance to but it would be so heartbreaking, and you’d be dancing alone.

Loverman. I’ve mentioned this song so many times but holy fuck, this song is absolutely insane. Nothing else like it. Completely chaotic, disturbing, guttural, alpha energy. I’ve never heard any other song like this one.

From Her To Eternity. We’re taking it back now to the debut album. I fucking love this song. It’s so dark and that pounding piano is almost dreadful–like, what’s coming? Oh, this insane, lovesick and deranged man’s screaming!

The Ship Song. This one really hurts but I welcome it. It’s very easy on the ears, Nick’s vocals are smooth and rich and it just flows really well. But those lyrics…”We talk about it all night long / we define our moral ground / but when I crawl into your arms / everything comes tumbling town.”

Deanna. Another early song. Fucking crazy Nick Cave. I love the story in this song–a lot of his earlier/early-ish work is very much storytelling and this is a good example. It’s another completely chaotic and bizarre song but it gives me so much pep. We’re gonna kill a guy? Okay, I’m ready!

Higgs Boson Blues. Dude. Dude, this song. Fuck. So much of it goes over my head lyrically but Nick’s voice and the gentle strumming of the guitar going along so smoothly and then the absolute explosion. Here’s a good fan video of a live performance because the live performance really exemplifies the energy and gut-wrenching emotion of this song. Also, one of my favorite lyrics: “Can you feel my heartbeat?”

Jubilee Street. I’m starting to feel as though this is what death will actually be like. This song tears me apart the second I hear it. Nick sang this with just himself and his piano when I saw him in September and I started to silently weep immediately. It pushes everything to the surface, it just claws its way inside yet wraps its fingers around my heart like it’s trying to save me as it kills me.

Tupelo. As a huge Elvis lover, this song is absolutely wild to me. Very dark, very ominous and has a great, hulking bass. Whenever I think of Elvis’ birth story now, I hear this song.

There She Goes, My Beautiful World. How many times have I mentioned this? Not enough! A brilliant song articulating the pain and turmoil of being an artist, grasping at anything to be able to create, that frantic desperation that is always aching. It’s gorgeous. This entire album–Abattoir Blues–is tremendous. Lots of gospel influence and sound, it’s fucking glorious.

My personal favorite albums:

Let Love In

Abattoir Blues

Ghosteen

Skeleton Tree

Alright so…I am so sorry if this is overwhelming. I’m very passionate about Nick Cave LOL let me know your thoughts!!

#we stan nick cave in this house #ask

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brucenat · 5 years

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Happy Brucenat Week

Day 4 Prompt: Black and white

ENDGAME SPOILERS BELOW.

I feel like I need to explain where the heck my wild mind went with this prompt. So, originally, I was going to go with an AU set in the early 1900s, but that didn’t fit quite right into a drabble or vignette. Then I juggled a bunch of other ideas until finally harking back to Natasha’s Endgame promo poster in greyscale. Aside from the initial exasperation, that got me thinking about the many, many infuriating, nonsensical things about the movie. I settled on one that’s been bothering me as a big Bruce fan: Professor Hulk.

So here’s my fix it for that atrocity, because that should’ve never happened (not with the way Bruce has been set up in the MCU).

It’s Always You

This would not happen to her again. She’s done losing, done witnessing loved ones suffer, even if that’s at their own hand. Especially if it’s at their own hand. As long as she’s alive and kicking, that’s not going to happen.

Bruce isn’t going to do this. Not again. Not to her. Not to himself.

For someone adept at going off the grid, he’s remarkably easy to find. It takes only a couple hours via plane and car to track down the research center he’s retreated to. According to her findings—and inquiries to Tony—the Californian university is one of the few labs still operating with gamma radiation following The Decimation. Its continued work isn’t the problem; Bruce being here is.

Getting in proves to be a far simpler task than it should. Human security is minimal. Her biggest impediment—aside from what she plans to say—is restricted keycard access. That, she surpasses by passing herself off as a researcher from McGill—another one of the universities still on its feet. She catches a grad student on her way back from a late lunch and finds the young woman more than willing to provide assistance.

Her guide offers a loaner lab coat from the department’s stock of spares and, thankfully, doesn’t inquire about the science Natasha claims to conduct. The questions that come are much easier to answer and, in some odd way, don’t taste like sour deception when she responds. The woman inquires about the relief of finding out about Bruce’s survival, comments on how the world was shaken and will never settle the same, asks—really asks—how Natasha’s handling everything.

“I’m taking things one day at a time,” Natasha tells her as they swipe into a buffer room between the hallway and lab.

“I think that’s the best any of us can do right now. Baby steps forward.” Melancholy dampens the woman’s grin to something bittersweet. She averts her gaze, gestures to the locked lab door and says with a tinge of sheepishness, “I don’t have access to his lab specifically, but I’m sure if you knock he’ll—oh.” She looks at the barrier as though it’s interrupted her. “I suppose I could’ve knocked for you. I’m sorry.”

“No. Thank you.” No matter how strained it might be, she tries to muster a slight smile for this woman and the kindness she’s spared. That’s the very least she can do in recompensing the suffering earth.

Her escort returns the gesture with a little nod and exits from the way they came. Before one door has closed, Natasha’s banging on the other. If this had been another time—something prior to five years ago—she’d think her force excessive. There’s surely a more efficient way in—there usually is when there’s a locked door—however…

Hell, if this had happened even a year ago, she wouldn’t be here in the first place. She wouldn’t have the option. But she does now and, dammit, she’s cursing herself for standing in a borrowed lab coat and not just breaking in to begin with—

A lock clicks and the metal barricade yields. In its vacancy, she finds Bruce.

Sleeplessness stains the undersides of his eyes in a faint purple, the color of an almost-faded bruise. Despite not losing any weight, his cheeks sink inward, as though the world slowly siphons his energy for its strength. He must see the same reflecting from her to him. They’re both a wreck, but they’re both here. It came so close to not being that way.

“How long were you planning on hiding here?” It’s intended as a tease but feels heavier on her tongue, like metal.

“Um…” He casts a worried look over his shoulder, toward the machines that loom like dragons guarding their keep. He emerges from the windowless lair into the narrow room with her and shuts the beasts away. “I’d invite you in, but I don’t want to expose you to anything.”

That’s not incredibly concerning. Not at all.

Staving off an accusational tone, she asks, “Is it gamma?”

The twist of his lips and avoidance of his eyes is the loudest confirmation she could get.

“Why are you doing this?” She wants to hold him, feel his face between her hands and stay still until she memorizes his pulse and the way he sees her, how he doesn’t just look at her but for her. She could also smack him for what he’s doing, but that’s a marginally weaker impulse.

“Half the world was wiped out. Billions of people.”

“I know.” All too well, she knows.

“And you’re doing something about it.” He counters. “Rocket’s doing something about it. Rhodey, Carol, Okoye, Wakanda—they’re all doing something. I’m a bystander. I’m useless.”

“Bullshit.” The curses comes out of her like wildfire, and she lets it simmer and burn freely. “You don’t need to sacrifice yourself for the safety of everyone else. That won’t bring anyone back. That’s not how this works.”

“I know,” he says. “But what kind of person am I if I don’t try to at least make things better? Someone has to clean up after Thanos—”

“Not like this.” Her gaze bores into him. He needs to hear what she isn’t saying—the things she isn’t sure how to say or translate from feeling to articulation.

“I don’t know how else to do it.” Surrender veils the edges of his face, deepens the shadows in his brown eyes.

She does everything but physically reach for him. “You’ll figure it out. There are labs—there’s a shortage of doctors. There’s the facility…” Her head flickers back to the last time they were there together—three weeks ago. It feels like two years, the same span of time she went without him after he left her the first time, except this absence has felt worse. She now knows what it’s like to sleep through the night after hell has scorched the earth, to drift into a transient nothing and awaken to him beside her and have that—not guilt, not suffocation, not persistent terror, but him—as the first thing in the day. With him, she’s experienced what a new day feels like after the world as they know it ends.

He stares into the space separating them. She snaps back to the present, where he’s in front of her yet just out of reach.

“You can still help people.” She resists the canyon of disbelief dividing them.

He directs his response to the tile floor, “This might be the best way I have.”

“It’s not.” He must be afraid to look at her, to see the truth in what she knows is a fact. “You’re capable of so much, and that’s not because of the other guy.” The backs of her hands itch for the feel of him. She clenches them, releases, continues, “I didn’t come here because of him. I came here for you, Bruce. You’re the one people need—not Hulk.”

“There could be a way to have both.” He says this as though it’s a solution and not the pain it inflicts upon him, the pain that crinkles his expression when he stares up at her.

“Or you could die trying, and we’d lose you. Maybe Hulk comes out and doesn’t go away. Then I lose you and I can’t—” The emotion slipped off her tongue, caught in the racing current that’s built within her. Regret doesn’t follow, but hot guilt does. This isn’t the time to be selfish. She recenters. “The world can’t handle another loss like that. Not now.”

She cuts herself off there. Now that she’s slipped a little, her whole grip shakes. What’s unsaid sits in her throat, a lodged hunk of something unchewed.

“I’m sorry.” He tells her this, that he’s gone, she’s lost him. The clutch of choking shoots up her throat, encloses on her.

And then he pulls her in. He hugs her. He’s hugging her and not letting go, not turning away. He wraps her into him, cocoons her, and there’s not an ounce of shame anywhere. This is the steadiest she’s felt in weeks and that should be wrong, but it doesn’t feel that way at all. So she wraps her arms around him too.

He murmurs again, “I’m so sorry.”

Her eyelids slide shut in the giving of herself to this feeling. She says, “Let’s just go.” But they don’t part. They don’t move to leave this room. For just a few moments longer, they linger. This isn’t nearly enough to fix their world, but it’s a start.

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maladaptive-ninja-returns · 6 years

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Blame It on Your Beats (3)

Bucky x Reader Series

Chapter Content: Fluff

Summary: A brush with the underworld leads you on a run, away from what was supposedly your normal life, with Bucky Barnes. You two do not seem to be in sync as Bucky tries to keep you alive, trying your best not to kill each other. Or that’s what you think you are doing.

Series: contains smut, adult content in there somewhere in the future chapters so please look at the chapter content and warnings before you proceed.

Chapter Warnings: Explosion, misleading promise, creeps *shudders*.

A/N: This series is written for @littledarlinhavefaithinme ‘s MK Writing Challenge. Thank you so much for hosting. I am having a lot of fun with the prompts. I hope I can do justice to them and put the entire series up before the deadline. :D

Tags for this fic are open

MASTERLIST

Fuck, I’m going to die here, you thought you told yourself internally.

“No, you’re not,” Stark assured you in your ear. “Get behind Banner’s desk. That thing’s practically indestructible even when he hulks out and stay with me on the comms, okay Y/N?”

“I am hiding behind the desk,” you asserted, jumping in your hiding spot as a loud bang followed.

The men outside were spraying some other chemical concoction on the heated glass before testing its current fragility with their huge hammers.

“You’ve got three minutes left sweet thing,” the guy from before shouted, now almost invisible behind the devouring flames. “Too bad, I would have loved to take you out...both ways.”

Between Stark’s instructions and that guy’s threat, you were the one feeling the heat and the chills behind the sturdy metal desk being used as a shield.

A disturbance came from somewhere inside the lab, making you pause your breathing to find the source.

Someone was already inside.

The thumping grew a little louder before it abruptly stopped, bringing back the cracking sound of the glass.

Your hands clenched at the only thing you thought could make an impact on the person- your laptop- making your arms ready for an attack.

Out of nowhere heated touch grew on your shoulder, sending your body in a flurry as your arms swung wildly to hit the person wherever you could, finding yourself hitting Bucky right in the face.

“Oh shi-” your laptop slipped through your fingers as they turned into fists and went near your mouth in strong denial.

A growl left Bucky as he felt the impact making his head turn at the mean swing, his body falling back before he steadied himself on his arm to get through the pain that stung.

“What? What happened?” Stark’s pitch grew a little higher.

“I-I’m so sorry Sergeant Barnes. I thought you were one of the bad guys.”

A deadly silence passed throughout as Bucky looked at you with an irritated glare before realising he was seeing you for the first time, trying to control any action he would take in that pain.

“Did...did you just hit Barnes?” Clint’s voice crackled in your ears.

“Holy shi-” Sam’s elated voice came too, “I want to meet this girl. Barnes, you better keep her alive.”

The sound of the cracks grew louder, making both you and Bucky snap out into the horrid reality of a dozen men waiting to attack you the moment those walls shattered.

Bucky’s blazing blue eyes turned towards you, all the frustration and irritation gone, as he presented his hand to you.

“Come on.”

You swivelled your backpack over your shoulder and took his hand, realising him directing you to smack in the middle of the room that was reflecting the yellow blaze everywhere.

Getting up on the table, your lungs nearly wanted to shout at the man to watch his step as his muddy boots soiled your research work, only to realise there was no point in doing so.

His hands came again for you, catching your arms in their strong grasp as he picked you up and helped you land on the table.

“I’m going to hoist you up into the vents. Start moving towards your right. Clint will guide you,” he stated, his face never even giving a flicker of emotion.

“Wait, what about you?” you heard yourself asking the soldier, watching him crease his brows for a second.

“I’ll be right behind you,” he added, “now come on.”

His hands came for your waist, making your insides flinch at the foreign touch as you tried your level best not to jump and make the soldier question your intentions of ever getting out of here.

You were quite sure you were heavy but Bucky made your weight seem next to nothing as he eased you up into the metal tunnels in one smooth motion.

Clint’s voice directed you through the labyrinth, which seemed to be growing wider by the distance, making it easier for you to stand up and walk- jog, rather- towards whatever exit he was sending you to.

An explosion reverberated through the shafts you’d come out from, making you turn back into the direction for an instant as your feet went cold.

“Keep moving, Y/N. You are almost there,” Clint’s dad-voice came over the comms, “that was nothing you should be worried about.”

“But sergeant Barnes?!” you nearly shouted.

The crackle of the distorted signal was the only thing you heard from the other side, making you think of all the worst scenarios- nothing ever being worse than imagining the person who was sent to rescue you to be taken down because of you.

“Kid,” Tony muttered after a few seconds in a quiet tone, making your dreadful thoughts seem not that far from reality.

“I’m here,” his husky voice came over the comms, “keep moving. I’m right behind you.”

__________

“Is that water? Do I hear water? I think I hear water.”

“Aren’t you talkative today. How’re you feeling, kid?”

“A man just told me he’d love to take me out both ways. How do you think I should be feeling?”

You tried to snap back at Clint but all it came out as was a shivering squeak while you jogged through the tunnels, keeping your ears open for any movement that was alien to you.

“No one’s taking you out anywhere except Barnes and these tunnels,” he articulated.

“How romantic,” you muttered, “I’m at the split, Clint. Where to next?”

“Follow the water’s sound. It’s coming from the right-”

“The right.” You walked down the path, the only thing lighting up the tunnel being your phone’s torchlight.

“How do you know all of these tunnels?” you wondered out loud, getting a groan and curses by other people on the line, to your utter surprise.

“He’s been pranking us using vents since ages,” Tony responded, “he practically lives there.”

A laugh broke out of you, astonishing not only you but the Avengers as well. “Are you serious?”

“You have no idea,” Natasha disclosed, “how we have lived with this bird crawling through the vents and coming at you with anything you can and cannot imagine.”

Your chest felt a little lighter on hearing Clint argue with Natasha while everyone laughed or had something of their own to add, helping you walk with a light step towards the end, which was a hatch to the other side.

Seems like we’re out of danger now.

Placing the phone down, you turned the wheel with whatever strength you had left, opening it with a loud creak, jumping into a little victory dance, picking up your phone and stepping outside. The crisp air touching your lungs felt good.

For an instant.

All the positive rush you had felt a few moments ago slowly receded as your eyes adjusted to the view, calculated the scheme of events and felt your blood rush out of your head and limbs as you realised what you had been heading for all this time.

“No.” it came out as a whisper at first.

“Hmm? What is it?” Natasha asked with a light in her voice.

“No,” you repeated, a little louder this time.

“Wha-”

“No, Clint, no. I am not doing this.” You were shaking your head vigorously for some spectator out there as your fingers clenched the edge of the rock behind you.

“Not doing what, kid?” Clint sounded so oblivious to something you were staring at, making you scoff and clench your teeth.

“I am NOT,” you announced, your voice echoing in the cave around you, looking questioningly at the forty feet drop, “going to jump into that lake.”

“Y/N, that’s the only way out.”

You huffed, stepping back inside the tunnel, “Yeah, well I guess I’d rather die by bullets then.”

A repeated stomp through the other side increased and you saw a familiar shadow running towards you, the tunnels behind him lighting up for some reason.

“Get out!” Bucky shouted in your direction.

“No!” you shouted back, “I am not jump-”

“Do you have a death wish?” Bucky skid to a halt near you as he took your arm in his strong grip and pushed you out of the tunnel.

“Does it look like I’m being given options where I can survive?” You tried to break your arm through his rock-solid hold but failed miserably, only flailing your limbs wildly in all directions.

“They are coming so you better jump-”

“Oh, for the love of-I don’t know how to swim, you dolt!” you declared, taking both you and Bucky by surprise.

The haunting wind whispering through the caves around you playing with his hair, teasing it as he looked at you with an expression you were not able to read so well.

“Y/N-”

“How did you get here? Not by the lake, that’s for sure!” You quipped, your eyes getting moist as your heartbeat quickened at the sounds of threatening footsteps and voice behind you.

“Y/N, you two are surrounded there’s no-”

“I got this, Sam,” Bucky claimed, turning himself towards you, taking in a lungful as his piercing yet soft gaze met yours- which was terrified to the core.

“Y/N-”

“James I don’t know how to swim. I am not jumping down to death,” you whispered, trying to stretch the gravity of your situation to the man standing in front of you.

“Alright, fine. Then let’s switch the tunnels and find another way out. I promise you I’ll get you out of here.”

There seemed to be no lie in his eyes as he spoke the last sentence. You nodded and turned back to step into the tunnel, feeling Bucky’s strong arm graze by your stomach, his hold tightening around your waist. He never gave you time to assimilate as he picked you and jumped down, making you scream out his name and clench on to his body for your dear life.

“Take in one huge breath and stay calm when you hit the water,” you heard him whisper in your ear through your hair flailing wildly everywhere, positioning you on his chest as he took out his gun to aim at the figure that now stood at the top, aiming his machine gun at the two of you.

A shot through Bucky’s barrel made you wrap your arms tighter around his frame, take in a lungful of breath and close your eyes as the liquid surface seemed to get closer to you, bracing yourself for the impact, telling your brain to stay calm like he ordered.

The figure standing on top watched you two go down with a resonating splash, letting his rifle go from his hold as he kept staring for at the ripples, waiting for your figure to turn up above the water.

“Dexter,” the expressionless guy came over, “the facility’s been taken back. We have to get out. Boss wants to know the status.” He handed over his phone to Dexter and moved back as a rumble began somewhere inside the caves.

“I have seen the package,” Dexter went straight to business as soon as he put the device to his ear, “I’ll have the location within twenty-four hours and the package will be in your care within next seventy-two hours. Yes, boss, all the hurdles will be taken care of.”

He turned inside the tunnel as the first explosion killed the rocks above him, forcing the cave to collapse on itself. “Don’t you worry, boss.”

He closed the hatch with a soft smile gracing his lips and walked in the other direction, his partner sending the casualty report of their crew that got taken down in the explosion inside the main building.

“I will take care of the girl myself.”

Continued here

TAGLIST

Permanent

@magiclolipopqueen @choke-me-sweet-pea @smexylemony @hazzastyles2471 @lokis-lady-death @lokixme @l0kisbitch @tarithenurse @hiddlestonstansworld @itheoneofmanyfandomsi @nalokoniloki @fuckidontknow @qualitynerdwasteland @cryinglots @unipanda1006 @literalangels @meganlikesfandoms @kcd15

BIOYB

@klmpun

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