#KILL YOURSELF just call him a faggot at this point | Explore Tumblr Posts and Blogs

malereader-inserts · 4 years

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Even Though it Hurts

Fandom: Harry Potter Pairing: Remus Lupin & Son!Reader Summary: You have a will power than no other. Word Count: 2,032 Request: “ Hi, I love your writing so much. Can you do dad!Remus Lupin x son!reader, where the reader is in secret relationship with Seamus and Remus find out? Just some super angsty story, cuz I live for angst (I knew Remus will be supporting parent). Thank you✨” A/n: Okay, I tried my best to make it angsty. WARNING: homophobia, homophobic slur, anxiety

It’s not like you wanted your dad to know.

You didn’t really know what was going through your mind, really, because you know your old man. Your dad was a loving father, he supported you in anything you had interested in. If you were into potions, he would try and get to a little chemistry set - muggle kind that wouldn’t end up exploding the house. If you were into muggle history, he would take you to the museums wherever you lived at that moment.

If you were interested in quidditch, he would give you books about the history of quidditch and the rule book. He even tried to get to a broom with his own money, but he had to dip into your mother’s money (which was reserved for you and anything you wanted, it was open to Remus as well because before she died she really loved Remus.)

But, you weren’t sure if he would support you in a new revelation of yourself.

That included kissing pretty boys in the corners late at night.

Granted, when you spent a summer with Remus and Sirius, they talked about how they had a relationship before Remus got with your mother and Sirius whored about.

Still, it was something you were terribly scared of. Your best friends have tried convincing you and settle your racing mind that you were overthinking it and that Remus would love you no matter what you were or have done.

“You take your time, babe, but I don’t know why you’re stressin’. Your dad is sound and he’ll take the news fine!” Your boyfriend says as you sighed, closing your book.

“Everyone is saying that Seamus, but that doesn’t eliminate the slight possibility that he wouldn’t approve.”

“I think it does, (Y/n),” Seamus replied, giving you a pointed look, “Why are you so afraid?”

You stare at your boyfriend, “I’m going to bed.”

“Wha-?”

“Night.”

Seamus watches you tuck yourself in bed, moving the pillows around you so that your boyfriend could slip into bed with you. You flick your wand to turn off the lights as Seamus watches you dumbfounded.

You rubbed your hand as you make it to your next class, which was transfiguration, you smiled at your boyfriend - managing to give him a kiss on the cheek as he flushed red. You moved to stand with Ron and Harry as Dean teases Seamus.

“A minute to the hour, what took you so long?” Ron asked you as you shrugged your shoulder.

“Caught up in the library, sorry,” You replied as you sat down.

Harry was next to Ron as you sat down next to Seamus, who was jabbing you in the side trying to get your attention. McGonagall starts the lesson and Hermione randomly appearing out of nowhere. No one batted an eye throughout that lesson, it was a double before the end of the day.

So, when the lesson finishes, McGonagall calls you to stay behind. You tell Harry, Ron and Hermione not to fuss over you as you held Seamus’ hand a bit longer. Seamus was the last to leave, giving you a supportive look because as much as McGonagall was lovely - she sure can be intimidating.

“Mr Lupin,” she says, calling you over to her desk as you meekly pulled your shoulder bag further onto your shoulder as you walk towards her, “Have a biscuit.”

“I’m okay, Professor,” you replied.

She narrows her eyes, “What was the punishment she gave you.”

Of course, your head of the house would clock on. She had seen how happy you were at the end of the fourth year, how you were so comfortable with showing off that Seamus was yours. She could tell there was a behaviour change in you because as the fifth year started - she knew you weren’t stressed about the subjects.

You were a smart kid, but this was something concerning. You avoided being seen with Seamus unless it was in the privacy of the common room and the bedroom.

“Let me see your hand,” She held her hand out and you knew you had to comply because she wouldn’t let you out of the room.

You gave her your non-dominate hand as she examines the injury. She didn’t like how it was still red, it told her that it was a fresh open wound as bruises started to surround the vile words.

“(Y/n)...”

She looks up at you and you already had started to sob, it was almost her motherly instinct that kicked in as she abruptly stood up and beckoned you to sit down as she soothes your back.

“It wasn’t bad at first, you know?” You started to explain, “At first they were about dad and how he was a werewolf.”

McGonagall could see the scarring of the old sentence you had to write, “WEREWOLVES ARE VILE MONSTERS.”

She watches you cry harder as you started to hiccup, with a flick of her wand, a glass of water was starting to make way towards you.

“Catch your breathing, darling,” She says to you, rubbing your back, “I guess the wench found out about you and-?”

You chuckled, surprising her because honestly you hadn’t expected so much venom from a well-kept woman like Professor McGonagall and you weren’t expecting her to comfortably call Umbridge names.

“Yes, she called me in first, gave me the option to either take the punishment or let Seamus. I couldn’t let him do that, and then she told me not to say a word to dad because if she found out, she- she...”

McGonagall could and would throw her shit if she could. No-one should be able to harm the students at all cost, Hogwarts was a place of safety and inducing fear in the students was the last thing she wanted.

You hiccupped, “She would find where dad would be and make sure he would pay for his actions - I don’t know what she would charge my dad with, but, I can’t lose my dad like I have with my mother. He’s all I have left. I can’t hurt my dad, I can’t hurt my boyfriend, even if it kills me.”

She stares at you in silence, because a young teenager shouldn’t have to think like that.

“Alright, I’ll write you off for the rest of the week, and let me bandage your hand.”

Perhaps you were terrified to tell your dad about the punishment you have to endure, perhaps you were terrified how your dad would react that you rather endure pain and homophobia than tell him. You know that your dad would lose his cool.

McGonagall tends to your wound, she doesn’t want to see the nasty words on your hand and she knows full well you didn’t want to either.

You leave her classroom to go back to bed, luckily, it was nearing Christmas so Christmas break was soon to come.

You spent many days talking to McGonagall, she couldn’t stop you from going to detention, so no matter how many bandages you go through, you could feel the pain of two sentences branded on you.

“WEREWOLVES ARE VILES MONSTERS.”

“I AM A DISGUSTING FAGGOT.”

You managed to go home early due to the attack on the Wesley family, as you were considered part of their family as well as Hermione and Harry, they allowed you to go home - home as in the base of the Order.

You weren’t sure how to confront your dad as you tried spending your time sending letters to Seamus.

“You’ve been avoiding me.”

You slammed your hand down on the desk as your head the voice before meekly turning around to see your dad, raising a concerned eyebrow.

“You scared me,” You sighed out, putting your feather down into the ink, “Announce your presence at least dad!”

Your dad chuckled, “I apologise, next time I will knock before speaking.”

You smiled as you turn yourself to look at him as he slowly enters the room, he wonders why you were cooped up in the room. Hermione was often seen downstairs reading a book whilst Ron and Harry was busy with themselves. But, you, you rather stay in your room.

“Are you ill?”

“Partly,” You responded far too quickly, you were nervous for some reason - the same nerves that ran down your back when you were in Umbridge’s office.

When you were in “detention” she would rather have you answer quickly, you feared too much that you would reprimand. You pulled your sleeves down just to cover your hands.

“Running a bit of a fever, I’ll just sleep it off, dad.”

“(Y/n),” Remus narrowed his eyes at you, his chilled son that was much more of an anxious mess, “What’s going on? I’ve noticed that you’re sporting the same bandage as the twins and Harry.”

“Well-”

“And they told me it was because of Umbridge,” Remus continues, not meaning to interrupt you, “Son, what did she make you write?”

Remus hated the woman after she was the one to put up the suggestion on the law of werewolves, he would hate himself, but the tears confirmed his fears.

“I’m sorry!” You cried, looking down to cover your face with your hands.

“Shh, my boy,” Remus strides to give you a hug, he kneels in front of you as he lightly grabbed your hand, “May I?”

You sniffled and slightly nodded, you allowed your dad to wrap the greyish bandage. He didn’t know what he was expected, but the words that were scarred into you was worst than he thought. He wanted to throw up, he could understand the werewolf one - you are paying for his condition.

“Can you explain to me the other-?”

“Please don’t hate me!” That was your immediate response.

It wasn’t the confident response that Remus has in mind, he didn’t care if you were gay - you were still his son and he wouldn’t see you any differently. After all, he was a werewolf and you didn’t care at all - and he was considered a threat.

He hoped that if you ever had the need to come out to him, he was expecting you to send him a letter that you were bringing home your boyfriend to meet him because you were so confident that your dad would welcome him with open arms. But, not this.

“(Y/n), I would never hate you for being gay,” Remus spoke firmly, “I love you with all my heart and you liking boys wouldn’t change the fact.”

“But-”

“My darling boy,” He says softly, “Were you afraid of my reaction because of the fear that Umbridge had instilled in you?”

You didn’t respond but that was enough for him to understand the situation as he sighs, rubbing his thumb on your forehead before bringing it close to his lips, placing a family peck upon your temple.

“I’m not mad nor will ever be mad, okay?” You nodded, it doesn’t settle the anxiety in you and Remus knows that, “So, do you have a boyfriend?”

Remus changes the topic, get you to relax first before forwarding the situation with you and the fear you had. You looked at him confused at the sudden change of topic before softly smiling to yourself at the thought of your boyfriend.

“It’s Seamus.”

“Seamus?” Remus says, narrowing his eyes, “The pyromantic maniac?”

You nod.

“Well, I guess it’s not Draco,” Remus says as you smiled at your dad, who gives you the same loving smile, “Though, when we’re able to have visitors - we’re not allowing Seamus to use magic. I cannot risk having someone blowing up the house!”

“I mean, that is fair,” You agreed with him, Remus chuckles, “You promise you’re not mad?”

“There’s nothing to be mad about, son, now are you more comfortable to talk about your hand?”

You looked at him, it was now or later and you didn’t want to experience the dread of that conversation. You take a deep inhale and exhale before giving Remus a nod. Your dad perched himself on your bed, preparing to hear your story.

“I want to hear how you and Seamus got together first, actually.”

“Really dad?”

#Remus Lupin #remus lupin imagine #remus x reader #remus lupin x male reader #x male reader #platonic

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dreamsister81 · 3 years

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Jeff on high school:

What was it like for you growing up? Were you a misfit? Or were in the "in crowd?"

"I hated high school! I don't know, really wear it (being a misfit) as a badge of honor. My family would always be moving so I was always the new guy in town. Any school I went to, I would always be introduced to the class, (angrily)...which by the way, teachers, is a stupid thing to do. By being in front of the class, I would be judged at hand immediately. I could see which person wanted to kick my ass, which weren't the ones who got their asses kicked, and which ones did the ass-kicking. So, each time I had to start the process over and over again, and I was always singled out. Kids are cold and disgusting because they learn it all from their parents. The last place I ended up going to school was Orange County High...f-cking Orange Curtain! Hangin' outwith the good ol' Nazi youth! By then, I was skipping school to play clubs."-from Inside Edge

"High school was a joke. I knew it was completely superfluous when I stepped in. Not the information, but the people."-Raygun Magazine

"I've had run-ins with it on the very street level, just kids. Like, going to school with kids that are highly, highly diluted. I had a friend, for a long time, and we rode the bus together at high school and she said something about there were only two black people in the whole school and I'd been to so many different schools and lots of situations and finally, by some twist of fate I end up in Anaheim behind the Orange curtain and there were like two black kids in the whole school, two or three. And this girl said something that made me smell that she was kind of prejudice and I said, 'do you actually think that black people are inferior to white people?' and when she said 'yes,' I called her something I've never called any woman ever. I called her a 'cunt.' 'You stupid, fucking, blah blah blah. I can't believe that you...' and it wasn't her fault at that point, she was very young.

"At some point you really have to look at what it does. In every human being, in everything someone tells you, either they tell you they love you or they tell you they think that you're stupid or that you're ugly or you're wrong. And you can defend youself by saying, 'well, I'm not, you know. I'm worthy. People love me and there are people I love in my life,' but there's something that always listens. Something in there. So people that are hurling racial epitaphs, it still hurts on both sides, on any side. Wasp, spick, kike, whatever, faggot, john, bastard, every single human being and nobody's exempt. Not one person, not even Ghandhi. But he saw it in himself. The thing is, in order to be affected by it in other people you have to have it in yourself. Everybody has the same components it's just that certain things take the stage at certain given times in their character. So, a prominently, hate-oriented family is going to breed a real violent kid. There's honor in him and there's love in him but it's just that it's squanched down in the mix." UR Magazine, September, 1994

"I've always been a loner. I felt-I still feel-ackward, clumsy, ugly. So I didn't go out. Being alone was a way of not getting attached to a place or people: I could leave overnight without any regret. I was always a stranger who watches with disgust at guys his age talking like their fathers. I walked a lot, smoked a lot-all those things that took me away from my schoolwork. Suddenly, I decided to do nothing anymore at school. A teacher had explained to us the bell curve grading system, a kind of upward levelling. If I worked hard and got good grades on the exams, my success would benefit the dunces in my class, pull them up. It was inconceivable that I would do anything to help those fat bastards who were only thinking of beating me up at lunchtime. So I rested my arms, waiting for the first-class eggheads to kill themselves trying to raise the average. That didn't stop me from reading and learning at home. My great shame is that I was a class leader, that I represented these losers, that I compromised myself with the system. I had the longest hair in school, I was constantly called a faggot. One day, after a hockey game, I took the scissors and cut off my hair. My only regret is that I never told Ruth Wilcox-my European history teacher-how much she meant to me. They all hated me at my high school and I despised their ignorance. It was inconceivable to work with with these monsters, to live among them, to lead an existence identical to theirs."

Did you already write then ?

"At the time, I didn't even realize how frustrated I was. When I wrote, I felt good, safe. It was by writing that I realized how inadequate I was. I grew up in Anaheim, the city of Disneyland, a well-off Judeo-Christian suburb...God, did I hate those motherfuckers...and they made me pay dearly for it. Writing was a real pain because, little by little, I discovered myself. And it wasn't a pretty sight. I was immature, I was very disappointed in myself."-Les Inrockuptibles, October, 1994

“I was pretty much raised on marijuana and rock and roll,” he says. This would have made Buckley popular almost anywhere else, but he went to high school in conservative Orange County, California. “I had long, long hair and weird clothes,” he says. “the 'prize students’ called me fag and beat me up.”-Village Voice, November 14, 1994

"I grew up mainly in Southern California, mostly in little white trashville towns overrun by Burger Kings, malls, Bloods and Crips and high taxes," he remembers. "Just me, my mom, and my little brother, mainly, moving from one place to the next, depending on what relationship, job, break-up was happening at the time. We moved so often I just used to put all my stuff in paper bags. My childhood was pretty much marijuana and rock and roll," he says. "I had the longest hair and the weirdest clothes-the kids at my high school use to call me 'that faggot' and beat me up all the time."-Sky International, July, 1995

Loara 📷: me

#jeff buckley #jeff places #loara high school #mylove #supremebeing #favorite #music

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tlhrfanfic · 3 years

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[Analogical] Closest to Heaven

DAY TWO @analogicalweek

Prompt: Stars

Read on A03.

Warnings: Angst, Minor Character Death mention, Grief. (Don’t worry though! Super happy ending!)

———————————————–

Virgil ran out of the house through the back door, the arguing echoing even as he slammed the door shut. He wasn’t afraid of his parents. They weren’t scary or mean or anything like that… to him.

But to each other…

He used the sleeves of his hoodie to wipe away the stress tears that stubbornly continued to fall. He ran and kept running through the streets until he found a park where the lights weren’t as bright and trees framed the open expanse.

He sighed, catching his breath before trudging through the grass.

Virgil knew he should go home. At some point his parents would be looking for him.

But something caught his attention.

He wasn’t sure what it was at first but it had definitely been skyward and so he turned his six year old face to the sky and his jaw dropped.

At six, he had definitely seen stars before. But the dimmer lighting meant less lights masking the stars and here, in this park, it seemed there were millions of them. He remembered his best friend telling him that once. That there were millions of stars but most of the time they just couldn’t be seen.

He had never, ever seen them like this.

So clear, so bright.

So.

Many.

He stared up in awe at the vast number and before he could stop himself, Virgil laid out on the grass and continued to stare skyward.

I’d give up forever to touch you,

Cause I know that you feel me somehow.

You’re the closest to heaven that I’ll ever be,

And I don’t want to go home right now.

Virgil fell asleep there on the grass waking a little later as his mother’s voice startled him and, with one last glance at the sky, ran back to her.

“Mom… Mom, I saw stars! So many stars!”

“That’s nice, Virgil, but don’t you ever run out like that again. You scared me. Now, let’s get you home. It’s cold out here.”

Virgil glanced back at the stars, dim now that he was in a more brightly lit area, but for a moment he was certain that one star in particular shone just a little bit brighter, almost sparkling at him.

“Mom.. what are stars?”

“Hmm?” She asked, taking his hand.

“Stars… what are they?”

She glanced at the stars and smiled down at Virgil.

“Well… some people say they are burning gas but I like to think they are guardian angels… keeping us safe.”

Virgil gasped looking back at the shiny star he had found and smiling.

»»————　☠　————««

Virgil sighed as he made his way toward the park. He had been going to this park when he needed space ever since he was a kid. Unfortunately, it had been cleaned up some so more people frequented it which left Virgil annoyed.

It’s not your park. You can’t keep people from being here.

He was just grateful that the city hadn’t thought to put in more lights. There had been plenty of petitions but the city had far bigger issues it needed the funding for at the moment.

Unfortunately, that also meant a lot of other teens came to this specific park when on dates to make out and cuddle. Making a face, Virgil rolled his eyes as he passed one such couple on his way to his favorite spot.

He was so happy that no matter when he came, his spot was never touched. He wasn’t sure how it was possible, as it was a prime spot for couples, but no matter what, it was always there.

Virgil had nearly reached it when a couple of teens came his way and started to sneer in his direction.

“Hey, faggot!” They called.

“Wanna suck my dick, pretty boy?”

“Hey, Emo! Doesn’t look like you’ve managed to kill yourself yet. Why don’t I choke you with my big cock?”

Virgil hissed lowly and turned toward the three.

“You couldn’t handle me, fucktards. But sure, come get a kiss.”

They recoiled at that and quickly ran off, calling him a freak and using other names he was used to hearing at this point. Honestly, he didn’t get it. It wasn’t like when his parents were kids. Why did so many people still have an issue with gay people?

If it wasn’t being gay or goth, they’d just find something else to torment you about, he told himself, sighing.

He kept watching them to make sure they weren’t coming back before continuing on. Reaching the spot, Virgil laid out his favorite purple-and-black plaid blanket. Laying out on it, he sighed as he was immersed in a relaxing feeling.

Putting his arms behind his neck, Virgil looked skyward and smiled, his eyes instantly finding his favorite star. He wasn’t sure how but it had seemed to grow brighter over the years. Tonight it was especially bright and, for a moment, Virgil allowed himself to believe that it was happy to see him.

A giggle caught his attention and he glanced over to see a couple holding each other and such intense emotions in their locked gazes that he could feel from where he was.

A groan escaped him and he looked skyward once more. As soon as his eyes met the star once more, it seemed to twinkle in and out for a few seconds. Virgil felt warmth and comfort.

Yes, if he just focused on the star—his star—everything would be just fine.

“I wish you were here… you’d make this… life... all more… bearable.”

And all I can taste is this moment

And all I can breathe is your life

And sooner or later, it's over

I just don't wanna miss you tonight

Virgil woke at some point after midnight. Swearing, he hurried to get up, knowing his mom would be worrying. Once he had his stuff gathered, he looked up at the sky once more, smiling.

»»————　☠　————««

Virgil sighed shakily as he pulled the knot of the tie, loosening it. It still felt like a noose around his neck so he took it off completely, tossing it to the ground as he kept walking.

He reached his spot… the same spot he had been returning to for most of his life. Unfortunately, this was the first day he had been here that he no longer had the one person in the world he cared for.

“Why did you let this happen?” he growled up at the sky, the angry look in his dark eyes seeming to burn at the star.

For a moment, it seemed like the star grew dimmer. Almost as if in response to Virgil’s words. He didn’t know why, but it put a sour taste in his mouth and made his insides drop.

“You… you’re right…” he said, not sure why he was talking to the star. “You… it’s not your fault… but… my mom… she’s gone.”

And you can't fight the tears that ain't coming

Or the moment of truth in your lies

When everything feels like the movies

Yeah, you bleed just to know, you're alive

Virgil suddenly fell to the ground, sobbing as he gripped into the earth beneath his hands. It grounded him and he looked up to see the star shining even more brightly, flickering every few seconds as if it was trying to say something.

“I don’t know what you’re saying… I don’t know what you want… maybe I’m crazy and this is selfish… but I want you here… or I want to be where you are…”

He laughed at himself, bringing a hand up to his eyes to wipe angrily at the still flowing tears.

“This is a mistake… I… I don’t think I can keep coming… I’m… I’m sorry… thank you for always being there for me… I won’t forget you.”

»»————　☠　————««

Virgil sighed shakily as he took one step onto the sweeping grass of the park. He bit his lip and took another step.

You are being ridiculous, V.

Pushing past his nerves—there was no reason to be nervous—Virgil strode with purpose past the larger lawn area in favor of returning to the spot that had gotten him through his childhood.

Reaching it now, Virgil smiled fondly.

He saw ghosts of his past. A little kid seeking security. A teenager seeking first love. A new adult seeking comfort.

Here he was once again… though this time it had been so much longer since he had been back.

Ten whole years, in fact.

Now a man of 31 and successful in life—he had gone to school to become a programmer, not that either mattered to him much.

Just like he had earlier in life, he sought more.

He yearned for a part of him that hadn’t been found. A part that could only be found in another soul.

Virgil didn’t believe in soulmates or anything like that. Still, he did believe—for himself, at least—that to be truly complete, he needed that special someone to share his life with.

Otherwise, what was it all for?

Sure, he was comfortable and healthy and relatively happy. None of that was the problem.

If he never found someone to share life with, he would be just fine.

But that wasn’t what he wanted.

And in searching for that, it had brought Virgil back to this special and sacred place. Sure, calling it sacred sounded a little dramatic, especially to him, but the feeling was there, just the same.

This place was sacred… to him.

That was all that mattered.

Allowing a little eyeroll and a smirk at his dramatics, Virgil allowed his eyes to finally move skyward.

For a moment, Virgil couldn’t find it. His heart beat rose and he felt a rush of dread but then his gaze caught it.

The star was a lot dimmer than he remembered but it was the right star. His star. He was sure of it.

At first, he felt a little silly. He almost didn’t want to speak but something urged him to, deep inside.

He told himself that if he was ever going to find what he needed, he had to make amends. Even if now he knew the star was just burning gas, it didn’t matter.

He needed to do this. He had to see it through.

“Hey… star… um… it’s Virgil.”

God, I feel so stupid.

He pushed past the embarrassment and insecurities and went on.

“I… I owe you an apology.”

He didn’t know why but the star seemed to brighten. He knew it was probably just a trick of the mind but it made him feel better. He hesitated before moving to sit on the ground. Pulling his legs up to him slightly and resting the weight of his upper body on his hands, he leaned back to look at the star.

For a moment, he just sat in silence.

And I don't want the world to see me

'Cause I don't think that they'd understand

“Look… I’m not sure what to even say and I know you’re not actually some being that can magically hear me or whatever but I still need to say this…” If I’m to ever move on… he finished in his head, too embarrassed to even think it.

When everything's made to be broken

I just want you to know who I am.

“I just… I want to thank you for everything you’ve done for me… everything you are to me… just… thank you. When mom died… I… I blamed you and that wasn’t fair… it wasn’t your fault… it’s just… life’s a dick… but yeah… thank you… for always being there…”

The star seemed to flicker and Virgil couldn’t help but beam up at it. It was almost as if ten years hadn’t come and gone.

He shifted to lay on the ground, his hands behind his head like he used to do as a kid. He sighed and let the comfort and nostalgia blanket him in warmth. He felt safe. He felt hope.

Virgil felt in that moment that anything was possible.

I just want you to know who I am.

“I wish… I wish you could be… a person… like me. An actual human I could hold and touch. Someone I could love for who and what they are, that could love me for who and what I am…”

He laughed softly, shaking his head, glancing away.

I just want you to know who I am.

“Silly, right?”

He snorted, looking up as if sharing an inside joke with the star. For a brief moment, he thought he was seeing things.

His star was gone.

At first he thought he had just misplaced it… or had looked in the wrong place. But no, he knew that star like he knew himself and that included where in the sky it resided.

“What the fuck?”

Virgil got up quickly, staring up at the sky. He then squinted as if that would help him.

“V-Virgil?”

Virgil spun on his heels and stared as a very attractive man dressed in slim fit slacks, a navy button down shirt patterned with stars, and rectangular metal framed glasses seemed to glide across the distance between them.

Virgil felt torn. His first instinct was to challenge the trespasser. He could be a serial killer or something. That feeling, however, was in complete contrast to the overwhelming feeling of familiarity

Had he gone to school with this guy or something?

No… I’d never have forgotten someone who looks like him.

That was true too. Virgil, being gay, found men attractive… that’s how it worked. But he had never been so attracted to anyone as he was to this man.

“I don’t know what your game is but uh… I’m not really in a mood to talk… you’re kinda interrupting my er… quiet time…”

The man tilted his head, looking confused. He then continued his walk toward him until he was standing a few feet away.

The feeling of familiarity tripled and he narrowed his eyes slightly.

“Did we go to school together or something? I swear I know you but I’ve never seen you before in my life… how’d you know my name? Please don’t be a stalker or something.”

Again, the man looked confused and also a little concerned. Then something seemed to click with him as his eyes brightened and he smiled.

“Oh… you don’t recognize me in this form.”

Virgil’s eyes widened.

Of course Mr. Perfect was clinically insane.

He sighed but before he could say anything, the man had closed the distance between them. Virgil jumped back.

“Personal bubble, dude!”

The man looked sad and Virgil felt a rush of guilt before remembering the guy was the one acting strange.

“I apologize… you had just asked me so many times to hold you… I’m afraid I just assumed…”

Virgil’s eyes widened at that. He quickly looked up at the spot where his star should be. It was as empty as it had been when he first noticed…

When this man had first shown up.

But that was impossible.

Stars didn’t just become people.

“I’m going crazy or I’ve died…”

The man gave him a concerned look.

“I can assure you that you are not dead, Virgil. I also wish you to understand… I did this…” He gestured at his body and bit his lip. “I did this for you.”

“Oh my fucking God… you are crazy. Stars don’t become people, dude! It doesn’t happen! Stars are gas! Not sentient beings!”

The man laughed softly and Virgil swore there was an almost twinkling sound to it. Not really what normal laughs sounded like. The man, he realized, also kind of glowed. It was so subtle though that he doubted anyone but him would notice.

Still, it couldn’t be… it was impossible.

Wasn’t it?

He slowly moved closer, hoping it wouldn’t bite him in the ass. He’d allow himself a little silliness… if it meant that this was real.

Could it really be? Is there any fucking way?

“I’ve wanted this for so long…” The man said now, just standing there and letting Virgil inspect him. He bit his lip, as if nervous. Could stars feel nervousness?

Well… he’s… he’s human now…

He held the other’s gaze. His eyes were brown but almost golden. There was such warmth and comfort there. Slowly, Virgil’s eyes widened.

“It is you!”

Ignoring the fact that this whole situation was feeling a bit too much like a Disney movie, Virgil threw his arms around the man.

“You’re here… you’re actually here… I can’t believe it… I don’t even give a fuck that it should be impossible… you… you came to me…”

Virgil looked up, ignoring the way happy tears streamed down his face. The main raised a hand, gentle fingers wiping them away.

“I am… I am sorry it took so long… I had tried to come sooner but as I was working on it… that one night… I worried you wouldn’t wish to see me… so I waited…”

He smiled so warmly and lovingly down at Virgil and Virgil blushed.

“I knew you would return one day and then I could be with you, if that was still what you wished.”

Virgil’s tears doubled as he laughed, nodding.

“You have no idea,” he said and with that he wrapped his arms around the other’s neck and kissed him desperately. He hated closing his eyes, worried that the man would vanish and the star would be back in the sky, but instinct won over his fear. Luckily, he still felt the other kissing him back.

Pulling away, Virgil blushed.

“I just realized… I don’t know what to call you… do you even have a name?”

The man nodded, smiling down at him as if he was the most precious thing in the world.

“My actual name you would not be able to pronounce. But I have chosen a new one for myself, now that I no longer have need for the other. You may know me as Logan.”

Virgil mouthed it and smiled.

It was the perfect name for his star.

“Logan,” he said and the man blushed but beamed. Virgil blushed as well but couldn’t stop smiling.

“Virgil,” Logan said, smiling back. He then glanced up at his old home. “It’s so much different… seeing it through these eyes… and thinking… so strange... but… if you’re here… and this is your home… then I want to share it with you… if that is something you would like.”

Virgil just threw his arms around him and buried his face into the crook of Logan’s neck. Long arms wrapped around him, embracing him. If he hadn’t quite been sure that this wasn’t all an elaborate dream, he was sure now.

Nothing in life had felt as safe and sound as his time with his star had and that was the exact feeling he felt now, in the other’s arms. He smiled and pressed closer.

“I love you, Logan.”

He didn’t know how, but he could feel rather than see Logan’s smile.

“I love you, Virgil.”

I just want you to know who I am.

———————————————–

Disclaimer: I am not affiliated with Thomas Sanders or Joan, nor the rest of their group. I do not own or make money off of these characters. I only own the story as it is written.

Super uber thanks to my beta reader for this fic @sunshineandteddybears and the two that preread my stuff to make sure its up to par: @romantichopelessly & @sunshineandteddybears.

#analogical #ts analogical #virgil sanders #logan sanders #tsart #ts virgil #ts logan #analogical week 2021 #tlhrfanfic #insanelycoolish #tlhr writing

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twink-frank · 3 years

Text

hi i’ve noticed the pencey prep gay conversation going on over on @awsugar and i have spent lots of time dissecting pencey prep lyrics and subjecting nathan @faggot-frank to my deranged ramblings so Here is my pencey prep super ultra mega gay lyrical analysis masterpost. it’s very long so its all under the cut but i will include a TL;DR for those who dont wanna read paragraphs of my deranged ramblings: Pencey prep uses lots of themes of: heartbreak, forbidden love, keeping love a secret, and toxic relationships. which none of that is gay on its own but combined with them almost never using gender indicators in their songs and the “nail in the coffin song” of 8th grade it ends up being a very Fruity Album.

I will be going through heart break in stereo in order and pointing out which lyrics and elements of certain songs jump out to me as Super Mega Gay and then summarizing my conclusions at the end <3

1 ) PS Don't Write

PS don't write is about leaving a toxic relationship, it has notes of moving on and leaving someone behind. "packed up all my shit / stole back all my tapes / left your spare key under the mat / this is not a joke / you'd better learn to take a hint / 'cause i'm not coming back / maybe you'll understand / when you're waking up alone / in a cold and empty bed." it has no gender indicators or pronouns which is the case in a lot of pencey prep songs, and something i'll bring up quite a bit. it also has general "coming of age" themes, something common in lots of pencey prep songs. which Yeah apply to straight people to but read in this context combined with future evidence can be pretty Fuckin Gay. "somewhere along the line / i found a hidden strength / i didn't know i had / standing on my own / cutting all the strings / that you used to control / surprise surprise / i am long gone / if you thought you could hold me down / by holding me up / you were wrong / you don't call the shots anymore." not to say only gay people can find inner strength and the room to love themselves but combined with other context it is a really poignant message about accepting yourself for who you are.

2) Yesterday

Yesterday is very repetitive and has a lot less to analyze, but the constant themes of wanting to "run away" strike me as very Fruity. once again, not saying gay people are the only people who can want to run away or escape from something But Combined With Other Context. and once again a song with no gender indicators, doesnt specify who the speaker is running away with or what they are running away from. just that they want to Leave. "i wanna run with you / i don't care what we do / gotta get out of this place / because it feels like yesterday." also saying "it feels like yesterday" could mean that the town feels backwards or old timey in its beliefs, implying homophobia. how the speaker wants to run away from an old fashioned town.

3) Don Quixote

i'm going to bring up the cultural significance of this title and literary reference first. Don Quixote is a classical novel by Cervantes which is about a crazy dude who thinks he's a knight, and goes on weird adventures with his best friend. It's typically used as a symbol of following your dreams and breaking free from what people expect of you. In the context of the song its used as a symbol of following your dreams with Someone. once again this someone is given no gender indicators. "you say it's not worth it / been burned too many times / if your spine's receding / you can borrow some of mine / don't go and quit right now / cause i'd follow you through hell." "you say so many things / and not a word of it was true / if you're still in that state of mind / i'd still vacation inside of you / cause i think you're worth every minute / and every dime that i spend / i'd spend all my time fighting dragons / just to keep you alive and talking." it's about wanting to spend time with someone, wanting to be with them no matter what. and its also about how this person feels unreachable, like being with them would be a fairytail but the speaker Still Reaches for it. "your imaginations running wild / round your deceptive heart / this is my crusade / and you're the unreachable star / but i'm reaching." talking about this person being unreachable and unattainble. which isnt gay By Itself but again combined with the other context. FRUIT BEHAVIOR.

4) 10 Rings

another breakup song once again with no gender indicators, are you guys sensing a theme here? anyways this song is about someone cutting you off and then coming back suddenly wanting to talk again after breaking your heart. it has a sense of forbidden love, like this person Told the speaker they cant be together for Whatever Reason ;] and is now trying to come back and repair their mistake when the speaker is already hurt and reeling. "learn to live with decisions you make / i learned things from the break i can't forget / catch you doing drive-bys at 1 AM / it must kill you to know we can't be friends." "end of the summer you cut me off / i cut you out all the pictures i have." which this Isnt Gay By Itself. but bringing that phrase back with other context this is such a uniquely gay experience. being in love with someone and they cut you off Because theyre weirded out by that and then they try to come back, convince you it meant nothing.

5) The Secret Goldfish

my FAVORITE pencey song. this one has a lot. it's another breakup song about heartbreak and loss and im not even gonna dwell on the no gender indicators because yall see the theme now. it has themes of heartbreak and losing someone who is very close to you and having to let go of them and having to accept that this person cant be yours and you cant be with them. "land of the lost / i found myself in nothing / this time, promises broken find me / clutching to you for something / something that you're not / believing in what you say / it makes me lie awake at night / the truth, the truth is not what scares me / it's why you have to lie / all the time." here we see these themes of having to let someone go because they just Aren't The Same as you. "clutching to you for something / something that you're not." maybe like chasing after a straight boy and getting rejected? also the repetition of "heartbreak is forever" when you're young and gay losing that first person you felt some kind of love and attraction to can feel like the end of the world and can be a huge deal because of the lack of representation and guidance young gays get. and the themes of nothing lasting forever, the fact that gay people never get promised eternal love the same way straight people do.

6) 8th Grade

this song is the nail in penceys fucking coffin honestly. the rest of these songs have a lot of plausible deniability, just vague enough to maybe Not Be Gay. but framed in the context of 8th grade they all start to get a lil fruity. Im just gonna go through lyric by lyric for this one. "caught staring again / like a deer in the headlights / when you can't move fast enough / i take a hit for the team / pretty girl is blushing / i can't tell if she's disgusted / laughter starts to swell / someone gets the joke." this kid was staring at some cute boy ass and got caught and everyone is laughing at him for being gay. the "pretty girl" here is what most people think he's staring at but with the rest of the song it's obvious she's not the one he's looking at. "bells ring, i make my escape / helps a little, but doesn't save / beat downs a common thing / with us every day / maybe im just strange / cause i dont change schools / so maybe i like the abuse / or maybe i just like you." literally This is the nail in penceys fucking coffin. "maybe i like the abuse or maybe i just like you." this kid purposefully takes beatings from his bully who is Obviously male if you take into context the next verse. because he Likes Him. "maybe im just strange / cause i dont change schools" literally willingly taking beatings from his bully bc he has a crush. "another confrontation / you've got something to prove / your girl can't tell how tough you are / when you beat me up in the boys room." this just confirms that the subject of the song is a boy, and a tough macho boy with something to prove. maybe also hiding his own internalized homophobia through bullying? "well i made a big mistake / but i can't help who i like / this may not cost my life / but i am branded forever lame." LITERALLY ITS RIGHT IN YOUR FACE. "can't help who i like" "branded forever lame" do i even need to fucking explain this oh my god. he got outed as gay, he Can't Help Who He Likes and is now branded forever as "the gay kid." the rest of the song is general "im gonna get back at my bully" stuff but literally THIS. THIS is the song that brands all penceys other very vague songs as 100% verified super mega ultra gay.

7) 19

this song has a lot less, and is more about internal struggle than anything. but it is the only song with a "she" pronoun in it. but there is one thing i wanna mention. "I scream out loud / but no one hears a sound / i take my life with lack of sleep / i believe the things i feel / the things i see are fooling only me." this song is about not believing what the world shows you, believing what you think is true in your heart and what You feel. not what anyone else tells you. which is a gay experience. believing in yourself and your heart and your feelings, believing theyre right and theyre true and valid. Also this song has a significance in coming right after 8th grade on the album, going from being 13 to 19, from being unsure in your feelings and angry about the people who dont like you to lost and hopeless but somewhat grounded in yourself.

8) Trying To Escape The Inevitable

this song is about an abusive and toxic relationship, knowing you Need to escape it but being so infatuated with the person you literally cant. “i have this reoccurring dream / you make it hard for me to breathe / i gave you everything i could / i gave up everything i owned / and when you smile it’s not for me / you offer little sympathy / your grasp so far exceeds your reach / i wake up, this is not a dream.” “i have this reoccuring dream / where you admit that you’re not happy / i know that you will never leave / you’re here just to torment me.” which like again this isnt an exclusively gay experience but it is very interesting when framed that way. in that gay people are way more likely to throw themselves into abusive and toxic relationships because they dont feel like they can get anybody else. the repetition of “i know i should run” makes it seem like the speaker Knows he should get out but he just Cant because what if he never finds love again? and the little reprise in the middle “i have a new dream / and everything is perfect / the sky is pink, yellow, green, blue, and orange / and all the past has been forgotten / and we fell in love / and we fell in love / and we fell in love / and i fell into your trap.” implying that even if he escapes, even in his dreams he still falls for this person because he feels like he cant have anything else.

9) Lloyd Dobbler

another love song about wanting to have someone but not being able to because of Unspecified Forbidden Reasons. “why are you so far away / even when you’re standing next to me? / your eyes give you away / telling secrets your mouht don’t feel like talking.” falling in love with someone, maybe sensing that they like you too. that they Are Like You and that they have a Secret they dont want to vocalize. do i even need to explain it at this point? and in the chorus “That I’ll be your lloyd dobbler / with a boom box out in the street / and i’ll be there if you need someone / even if he isn’t me.” saying you’ll be there for someone even if that person isn’t you, also the use of Pronouns which is big for pencey prep. which yes the use of “even if he isnt me” could imply a straight girl ooorrr....Fruit Behavior. also this line “There’s a norman rockewll painting / of two kids sitting on a bench / it reminds me of all the stupid things / i’d like for us to share, but i dont care.” normal rockwell is a painter that paints traditionally “american” scenes. like the american ideal, that maybe he wants with this person. but he knows he cant have, but its stupid and domestic and he wants it but he Cant Have It because of FRUIT BEHAVIOR.

10) Florida Plates

another of my favorite pencey songs, and this one brings back those tragic “love but we cant have it” themes, except with a more somber tone. instead of being angry or resentful or spiteful in the face of adversity. its an Acceptance, of what they had and how good it was and how it just Cant Last. “kiss a mouth to open eyes / stall one last moment before goodbye / drive in different cars in different directions / never write all the letters full of good words, better intentions / it’s for the best although we don’t know it / paper words will cheapen the moments we shared / it’s better if i say nothing at all.” it’s about knowing you have to leave someone, even if having them in the moment is great they Can’t Stay and you can’t even talk or write about the moments you had. which do i even need to explain it at this point? forbidden love, not being able to have each other, not even being able to Talk about it. its a secret, and painful one but its beautiful while you have it. Conclusion alright!!! thank you so so much if you read all the way through that i Know it was long i Know it was a lot of repetition but i wanted to make my point. pencey prep has very big gay themes in their music. with forbidden love, letting go, heartbreak, keeping secrets, toxic realtionships. which none of it is gay on its own but in the context of: almost none of the songs having clear gender indicators and always speaking really vaguely about the subject and Eight Grade the “nail in the coffin song” you can see my point thank you and goodnight.

#adrian speaks #mcr #pencey prep #frank iero

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gayenerd · 4 years

Text

This comes from a 2004 interview Billie did with something called Instinct Magazine, a LGBTQ site/magazine, and it is not archived on their site because of course it isn’t.

IDIOT'S SAVANT

Thank You Billie Joe Armstrong & Co. For Speaking Out - And Letting Us Sing Along (To Your Nine-Minute Punk Rock Songs)

We couldn’t be more excited that, this past year, Green Day scored their first number one album with the widely praised and ambitious American Idiot. It quickly became one of our favorites of the year—especially when this country needed a punk-rock-boot kick to the arse. And we tracked down singer/guitarist Billie Joe Armstrong on the tour for the album, catching up with him in Boston just a day after the Red Sox had won the World Series.

INSTINCT: Hey, Billie. Let’s hope that Boston winning, especially over New York, means that Bush is on his way out. Boston was where the Democratic National Convention was, and New York the RNC.

BILLIE JOE ARMSTRONG: [Laughs] Yeah, we’re hoping it turns out that way.

On a scale of one to ten, ten being worst, what kind of shit do you think we’ll be in if Bush gets reelected?

Um, I’m gonna have to go with a solid 9.5. [Laughs] It would be a perfect 10 if we got hit by another terrorist attack—or if Bush croaked and Cheney became President. That’s a scary thought.

There are a few times on the new album where you use the word “fag” or “faggot.” Personally, I think you use those words correctly, where you say things like, “Maybe I’m the faggot America,” and “Kill all the fags that don’t agree.” You’re saying that you’d much rather be a “fag” than someone who is ignorant.

Well you know I’m not a redneck. I got called “faggot” in high school and really that word is thrown at people who are different or out of step with what’s popular. Gay people are not the only ones who get called that. But they’ve used it for empowerment, you know, and I do too.

You’re used to censorship of words or phrases from your songs. Did you get pissed that radio and MTV was bleeping out the word “faggot,” even though you were saying it with punk rock pride?

A little bit. I’m more surprised that they didn’t bleep out “redneck” from [the single, “American Idiot”]. It’s just using harsh language to prove a point and give power to those not in power. Except for a few rap songs, I think it might be the first mainstream rock song to ever use that word. Maybe that’s what scared them.

Okay, have you gotten any flack for it?

No. I think people are smart enough to figure out that I’m using it as an empowering word. Anything derogatory that has been used against me, the way I sort of looked at it was, “Yeah, you can call me whatever want.” It just makes me stronger.

Back in 1995, I saw Pansy Division, the biggest queer punk band at the time, open for you guys in your hometown of Oakland. The big difference being, of course, that instead of the Gilman, you were now playing for, like, 10,000 people after the success of Dookie. Since that was your first record for Warner Bros., did they freak out about you choice of an opening act, especially when they had songs like “Fuck Like Bunnies” and “Ring Of Joy”?

[Laughs] No, nobody said anything. For us, we wanted to bring someone out who truly defines what punk rock is and show some sort of diversity. It would have been to obvious to go out with a band like Pennywise. And considering where we came from, we felt like we owed it to the scene and to our original fans. We ended up getting letters from kids saying that Pansy Division opening for us changed their lives.

If you were a gay guy for a week, what would you do differently?

Hmm, I’d probably get laid a lot more, right?

That’s a stereotype and I’m totally offended! Actually, it’s true. But don’t tell anyone.

Yeah, I can only imagine that getting two guys together makes it a little easier. [Laughs]

Speaking of stereotypes, what would you consider your “gayest” traits?

Probably shopping. But in a punk rock, metrosexual kind of way. [Laughs]

What do you consider your least punk rock characteristic?

Shopping. [Laughs] Probably bathing.

What? Your hair looks like it hasn’t been washed in a month.

[Laughs] I know—let me think again. [Pauses] I own a house, and mortgages are not very punk rock. [Laughs] Owning anything is pretty much not punk rock. [Laughs again]

What questions from journalists have been annoying you the most lately?

Probably the ones where they ask me to explain the album, what American Idiot is about. It’s so long-winded, you know, and I’m, like, Just figure it out for yourself and write about it.

Did you guys know, when you were making the record, that it was going to be this successful and have this kind of impact?

We knew we were making something special to us. We’d never had a number-one record, so we didn’t really even entertain that idea. I don’t think that there has ever been a punk rock band that has gone to number one.

The term “punk rock” has obviously morphed. What does it mean to you when you use that phrase?

What I learned from punk rock is to be an individual and to do things your own way. And if you have rules, realize that rules are meant to be broken. You should still grow as a person and I think you do that best when you don’t limit yourself.

Speaking of individuality, how would you describe your dancing style?

[Laughs] My dancing style? Um, I guess Prince meets Pee-Wee Herman.

I can see that, although I thought that was more of your dress style. So you like to slither on the floor?

I do a little bit of slithering, yes, but with platform shoes on. [Laughs]

Okay, what would you really do different if you were a homo for a week?

[Pauses] I’d probably have more female friends. There’s sort of this boundary that comes across with platonic friendships with women.

So is it because of you or them that you don’t have more females as friends? What, do you just keep looking at their breasts?

[Laughs loudly] No, it gets scary out there. It’s more of a trust issue.

What do you think that straight guys need to do to strengthen their relationships with gay men? And you know you need to do this in order to have more relationships with women.

You know, with my gay friends, it was all about just hanging out and getting used to each other’s company. But the burden is definitely more on the straight guy: stop feeling so damn threatened.

#this is an awkward interview bc they treat him like a straight guy who has like never seen a queer person before?#but he also seems to go along with it #shruggie emoji #maybe this will get ppl to shut up about the f-slur #probably not tho #honestly ever since i first read this i've been haunted by #'i'd probably get laid a lot more'#interview #article #articles #billie joe armstrong

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catharrington · 4 years

Note

It’s swturdaaaaaauyyu and I’m here!! So ive sent a assload of prompts... and im gonna do it again!!! Because you’re yhe starry constelatyin I see in the telescope of life. I had a wonder what if billy is at the end of his rope after another round with niel and Steve fi nds him and right as billy would reaer back his fist to punchsteve just steps close and kissed him and billy cries angry because my baby needs outlet to vent

✨I love you honey ✨and thanks for the prompt ;) Here’s some fighting. Tw slurs. Tw suicidal thoughts.

“Leave me the fuck alone!” Billy scratched his fingernails down his own face. Wanting to rip across the skin. The irritated area around his eyes pulsates, the cut on his lip and his eyebrow churn more. Spill more blood. Red drips into his eye.

He turns and there’s Steve. Blurry with red. Flames coloring his wild hair poking up at every angle. There seems to be wind kicking it around. Or maybe it’s just Billy’s mean breath.

“Get over yourself!” Steve yells out, a slight panic to his voice, as he slams his hands down over the top of the Camaro.

They had been at the quarry, tossing empty beer cans into the water the night before. And Billy had stumbled home through his own window thinking he could get away with it. Thinking he could act up like a basic shitty teenager. He thought wrong.

Billy drove through the night of Hawkins in a rage, pressing the gas down until the petal threatened to break off. Skidding and burning rubber over the prissy streets of Hawkins.

Making marks into the ground like his farther carved marks into his face. Like his father’s boot left a footprint on his ribs.

According to Harrington, in all his own fast car ride and furious hair, Hopper got a call for speeding and recognized the lisense plate. He chose not to call it in or handle it himself. He thought it would be a good idea to send in Harrington, babysitter of the year, and ain’t that just angelic for the brown-nose doe-eyed motherfucker.

Metallica was still blasting from his speakers as Steve slammed his hands over the hood again. Made Billy’s head throb. “Are you trying to kill yourself going that fast, dumb shit? What the hell were you thinking?”

Billy let his head lull back, a mean smile on his face. A meaner laugh cackling up from the back of his throat.

“Ain’t no one in this town would miss me, Harrington. That’s what I was thinking.”

If Steve looked offended by the last name, and not some off the cuff nickname, he didn’t let the hurt flash over his pretty face for too long. He shook his head, shaking his whole body as he does it. Shivers in his jacket in the Indiana night. “That’s a lie,” he says as he starts walking around the car.

And fuck, he’s waking around the car. Billy has half the mind to go back inside the passengers seat. To take her out of park and zip right off the edge into the blackness of the water below. Like the crushed beer cans.

“No one would miss you? Jesus, how self absorbed can you be?” Steve’s closing in on Billy, his voice going quieter. “Your family would miss you- like, Max wouldn’t have a bother anymore. The party would loose their favorite berserker ogre for their freaky game. Hopper would loose what he loves doing every Saturday afternoon: trying to catch us drinking underage.”

“Fuck you, Harrington,” Billy cuts him off. Those pretty lips still moving but Billy now has his back to a tree. No escape. The gaping maw of the forest on one side with demons clawing out to him, and the other side the sweet release of the quarry’s water. One jump, that’s all it would take.

“Are you listening to me, Bill!” Steve shoves against his chest. The tree hurts Billy’s back.

“Fuck you, I hate you.” His voice doesn’t sound like his. It sounds like a lost coyote howl in the night. Alone, high pitched, and trembling. “I hate this whole god damn town. I hate my fucking step sister! She’s not my family, she’s better off with out me there! I’m the one who keeps being a fucking faggot and getting beat because of it!”

Billy shuts his mouth with a click, he didn’t want to say that. Didn’t want to tell prissy fucking Harrington that of all people. His outside pool and tight fitting polo shirts, the spooky cellar of wine they stole a bottle from once and his nice BMW that cost more than a college education.

Didn’t want to tell Steve, with his pretty hair and pretty eyes, pretty lips and pretty laugh, didn’t want all that taken away.

But now Billy’s shot himself in the damn boot. Might as well drop off the cliff, now really there ain’t nothing to live for-

“You’re gay?” Steve asks. Just asks. Doesn’t point or laugh. Doesn’t wrap his hands round Billy’s neck and squeeze. Actually, fucking actually, lifts his hand off Billy’s chest and cups his cheek.

Billy notices for the first time through Steve’s fingers that he’s crying.

“Don’t,” Billy whispers. Don’t hate me, don’t leave me. “I don’t,” he struggles. I don’t want to die. I don’t want to miss you.

Steve curls his fingers over the back of Billy’s neck and pulls him while he leans down, meeting him halfway, their lips crushing in a kiss. Billy’s eyes are closed as he lets out a whimper. A desperate, sobbing whimper that contorts his whole face. Steve keeps kissing him right though it.

Billy lifts his hands to feebily push against Steve’s chest, gripping the fabric in a white knuckle grasp as if it were the only thing tethering him to the earth. He pushes Steve back just to gasp a breath, manages out a weak, “No,” he doesn’t really mean.

No, I don’t want to ruin you. No, I don’t want to drag you down. No, I don’t deserve someone as good as you.

But Steve doesn’t let go. He tilts his head to the side and deepens the kiss. Moves his lips gently, romantically, like they’re in love.

Billy sags againt the tree behind him, lets his body unfurl the tension he’s been carrying since he was eight years old in California and his mother left him crying on the phone. Begging, asking when is she going to come home. When is someone going to come help him.

Steve curls his other hand around Billy’s waist and pulls their bodies flush. It’s a possessive motion, making Billy feel safe and secure. He breaks the kiss off with a pained moan. Sobbing again.

“I’ve got you,” Steve breaths into existence the answer to all of Billy’s prayers. Running his pretty fingers through Billy’s sweat sticky hair. Cupping his hip like he loves him. Like he wants to help.

“I’ve got you, Bill.”

#harringrove #billy hargrove #steve harrington #harringrove fic #my fic #harringrove fanfic #steve/billy

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xmalereader · 4 years

Text

Thomas Shelby X Son! Reader

|| Masterlist ||

Summary: Reader is Thomas Shelby’s son who is hidden from the world, no one in town knows who he is so what happens when one of his uncles sees him with another man?

Warnings: Angst, anxiety, coming out, homophobia, child neglect.

—

He shouldn’t be here.

He could be seen, let alone be caught by one of his uncles. But this is his choice, he gets to decided what to do and what not to do, he’s been hidden from the world and locked away for years. Now is his time to do as he like, now that he’s of age he has the ability to leave whenever he wants.

It’s not like his father will follow him everywhere, he was too busy dealing other business that he never has time for him. He doesn’t know if he’ll ever have time for him ever again. He wasn’t a special boy, he was a disgrace and a failure. That’s who he was, his mother was a whore that Thomas had fucked and had a baby with, causing him to watch over the child.

Tommy’s love for y/n had stopped at such a young age, he was only ten when Thomas had started to ignore him, never speaking to him again as he slowly grew up. He wasn’t a Shelby, he was no one. He had no place in the Shelby family and no matter how many times his uncles try to cheer him up or get him involved into their business he just couldn’t.

He wouldn’t.

Now he’s eighteen, old enough to do as he pleases and theirs no doubt that his father will even care about him missing for a couple of hours, let alone a day.

Standing outside the ‘strange’ club he can’t help but hesitate, think twice about his decision. He shakes his head, fixing his cap as he enters the building that is hidden well from the public. It was against the law to be attracted to the same sex, many people found it strange that many were sent to prison or given death penalties. The world was a cruel place, but it was a chance he’d take, a chance to be hismelf for once in his life time.

Entering the club he glanced around to see many different couples laughing and dancing to the music, the room was filled with music and laughter. A sudden feeling of joy was filled inside his chest as he smiles.

He finds an empty table, removing his cap and coat. Setting them down on a chair as he looks around the place before feeling a hand on his shoulder. Gasping in shock he turns around quickly and reaches inside his pocket for his knife, thinking that someone had found him and is here to kill him. But once he sees who it is he relaxes and removes his hand from his pocket.

“Sorry, mate.” The strange male says as he removes his hand from him, giving y/n a small smile. “First time here?” He questions as y/n bites his lip and nods. “Y-yes...” he stutters out.

“Again, sorry for frightening you.” Said the stranger. “Just came over to introduce myself, your a very fine lad, waiting for someone?” He question.

Y/n stares at the man in shock. He had no idea who he was and even if he knew he would stay away from him because he’s a Shelby, but tonight he wasn’t going to be a Shelby and he doesn’t think he will ever be one.

Letting out a deep breath he relaxes, giving the man a small smile in return. “No, I’m not waiting for anyone.” He says, feeling proud of his own words as the man smirks at him. “Care for a dance?” He offers his hand to y/n, which he gladly takes.

He stumbles out of the building with a giddy smile on his face, leaning against the strange man that he had spent the night with. “Now darling, it’s best I get going.” Y/n pouts at the man. “Very well then.” He says back as he sighs. “Thank you for tonight, I—“ he blushes deeply and smiles. “It was worth remembering.”

The other chuckled at him and leans down to capture his lips into a deep kiss. Y/n melts into the kiss, gripping the mans shoulder before pulling away. “Night, love.” The other mumbles out before giving him one last kiss and heading towards a different direction.

Y/n watches the man disappear into the darkness. The smile on his face can only grow bigger as he heads back home, walking down the street as he fiddled with his cap. For the first time in his life he felt happiness, for the first time he felt free.

As he continues back home, he makes sure to enter the house quietly. Not wanting to wake anyone up.

As he closes the door behind him he sighs in relief until he turns around, coming face to face with his father and family.

He’s frozen in spot as he feels his family staring at him.

“Where were you?” Is the first thing that tommy asks as he lights a cigerette. Y/n looks down and grips the cap in his hands. “I just went out for awhile, needed some fresh air.” He responds.

“Fresh air?” He rasies a brow. “Fresh air as in outside or in another men’s bed?”

His eyes slowly widen at the realization.

“Don’t think we didn’t notice, we saw you lurking around in the other side of town, you were just leaving a whore house.” Said his uncle john as he looks away. Avoiding eye contact.

“It wasn’t a Whore House.” He whispers out.

“What was that?” Said Tommy.

Y/n speaks up. “It wasn’t a whore house, it—it was a club for—“

“For faggots like you.”

Y/n flinches at his uncle Arthur’s words.

“Y/n, what were you doing there and so late at night?”

He remains silent.

“I asked you a question!”

“What do you think.” Said y/n as he lifts his head up to lock eyes with his father. He can’t read his eyes, he doesn’t know if he’s angry or disappointed but does it really matter?

“It’s not like you care.”

“You watch your mouth boy.” Arthur steps you but John stops him.

“Or what?” Y/n shot back with a glare. “Why do you care about what I do? After ten years you finally notice me when I’ve been living here all my life!” He was shouting at this point not caring if the neighbors could hear him or not.

“All of a sudden, you see me coming out a club like this one and your suddenly worried about me? Fuck you, you never cared about me. You only held pity for me because of some whore you fucked, leaving me with you! I was never your son because I was never treated like one , I was always casted out and no one took notice of me. Hell, you probably don’t even remember the first time I rode a horse or when I learned how to shot a gun. You weren’t their for any of that and now that I’m all grown up you suddenly care?” Y/n shakes his head.

“Your not my father—“ he tosses the cap on the table. “Neither am I a Shelby.” He passes by them and heads upstairs to his bedroom, closing the door behind him as he locks it. He sits on his bed, holding his head between his hands as he finally lets the tears slip.

The next day couldn’t be any worse. Once he stepped inside the kitchen, everyone’s conversation had gone silent. He avoided everyone’s gazes as he simply takes a sliced piece of a bread and heads back upstairs to his bedroom, not wanting to face anyone.

This continued on for a week, he couldn’t stand the silent stares anymore. He knows that his own family was judging him, why was he even staying here still? He shouldn’t even be here anymore. So, one early morning he heads to the train station. Buying hismelf a ticket to London, far away from Birmingham.

Once he returned he makes sure that he isn’t seen as he heads to his bedroom to pack up his things, putting everything inside a suit case as he placed his ticket inside, closing it up he slides the case under his bed and waits until tomorrow morning, that’s when he’ll leave and disappear forever. Maybe he can start over in London, strip his old life away and start a new one with a fresh new start. He couldn’t help but feel excited about leaving. All his life he’s been neglected and now he can start over, to make up for the years that we’re wasted away.

Instead of waiting around he decides to head out, wanting to pass the time quickly so that night could fall and bring him the next day. He spent the majority of his time at the club, drinking his problems away as he danced with other men, keeping himself relaxed and distracted until night fall.

Returning back home he noticed how quiet it was and how everyone must be asleep by now. Sighing to hismelf he heads upstairs to his room to get ready for tomorrow. As he reaches the last step up he noticed his bedroom door was opened and a candle was lit in his room.

He slowly approaches the door and pushed it open to see Thomas sitting on his bed, holding the train ticket in his hand. His suit case was open on top of his bed.

“Your leaving.” Tommy murmurs out as y/n slips his coat off and drapes it over one of the chairs. “Yeah.” He whispers out as he glanced over his shoulder to see tommy hunching over his bed still.

You can’t leave.”

“You have no right.” Said y/n.

“You’re my son.” Tommy cuts in.

Y/n glares at him in anger. “I was never your son.” He spits out, feeling angrier at Tommy. “I was just a boy who was forced into your care, I spent my whole life learning how to survive with this so-called family, so don’t you dare say that I am your son.”

Tommy sighs and tosses the ticket onto the bed before standing up. He walks over to y/n who slowly backs up against the wall. “I didn’t take you in because I had pity for you, I took you in because you are my son and you belong to the Shelby family.”

Y/n scoffs. “Fuck you and your family, I would’ve be better off living in the streets then being here.” He crosses his arms over his chest as tommy sends him a glare.

“I’m leaving and I won’t be coming back. So forget that I ever existed, forget about me.” He brushes past him, grabbing his suit case and train ticket. He closes it and sets it down next to his bed, hearing shuffling in the background as tommy watches him.

“It’s dangerous in London, you can get yourself hurt.”

“You didn’t think I’ve been hurt enough just living here?!” He shouts, throwing his hands in frustration. “Everyday was the same with this family! I was only ten years old when I tried to get your attention again but all I got was the cold shoulder. You have no idea how many times I blamed myself for your attitude, I always thought I was doing something wrong to make you feel that way so I stayed away—I stopped trying, really.”

Tommy noticed the tears streaming down y/n’s face as he continued to rant. Y/n chuckles out a sob, “You didn’t even know I was there, everyday I suffered and you didn’t even notice.” He bites his lips.

Tommy licks his lips and slips his hands into his pockets. “I did.” He says softly. “I did notice you y/n, I always did but what I do in my life is dangerous. I just wanted to keep you safe.”

“Well congratulations, your safety for me turned into neglect. I hope that makes you happy.” He cleans his tears away. “Just leave, I have a train to catch tomorrow.” He whispers as he lies down on his bed, facing his back to tommy.

Tommy stays standing by the doorway, giving his son one last look and leaves.

#male reader #peaky blinders #thomas shelby #thomas shelby x male reader #thomas shelby x son reader #cillian murphy #cillian murphy x male reader

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maxwell-grant · 3 years

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Downfall of a Dark Avenger Part 2: Shadows of Manhattan

Having finished reading Al Ewing’s El Sombra trilogy and having had enough time to digest it, I’d like to talk about the trajectory of it’s titular protagonist, the character and series’s relationship with it’s influences. Relating to The Shadow and Zorro and general pulp archetypes, and also the way it incorporates Astro Boy’s Pluto into the mix.

This part is focused on Gods of Manhattan and El Sombra’s first appearences in Pax Omega and the ways in which the urban vigilante manifests itself in the books.

In Gods of Manhattan, El Sombra takes a backseat to it’s central players, Doc Thunder and The Blood-Spider. I’ve mentioned how Thunder, while ostensibly a Doc Savage/Superman amalgam, also combines aspects that allow the character to condense the entire history of the superman into a single being, but to a character very much centered on the future and in progressive ideals, described in the book as someone considered both the city’s ultimate savior as well as viewed as "a faggot, a liberal and a miscegenationist”. In that regard, the Blood-Spider becomes his opposite. Perhaps the most comprehensive savaging of the dark detective/The Shadow ever put on paper, that has a larger point behind the questions and criticisms it brings up to what this kind of figure can be.

"You can hardly have a war on crime unless you are the one defining what a crime is. First rule of the war on crime: everyone is guilty or something"

Us am vigilantes! Am us not men? Us use violence to effect social change! Am us not men? Us bring terror to underclass, make streets safer for overclass! Am us not men? Am us not men?

Making them loved rather than feared. Having them fight crime, or the right kind of crime, at least. Created a persona designed to appeal to the worst in people, to bring the citizens of New York around to his cause, his war on crime, which would, of course, then become a war against ‘urban crime’. Or some other little euphemism. ‘Inhuman’, for example. Sounds a lot more relatable than subhuman, doesn’t it? Comes to the same thing, though.

Although The Blood-Spider is an evil take on The Shadow, most of his character traits are taken from characters that followed him. He’s got the moniker, savagery, fright tactics and branded murders of The Spider, he climbs buildings and has a civilian identity akin to Spider-Man’s, with constant name references to characters like Stacey, Jonah and a redhead named Mary Watson, with him sharing a name with Peter Parker as well as Batman villain Jonathan Crane, he’s got Rorschach monologues that are echoed by his associates past his demise in white supremacist organizations dedicated to carrying off Spider’s legacy, predating HBO Watchmen’s take on Rorschach legacy. If Doc Thunder is all about taking the superhero’s past to create a better future with it, Blood-Spider takes the future of the urban vigilante and uses it as a conduit to enact a barbaric and reactionary agenda in service of undoing everything Thunder stands for, even before he’s revealed to be a Nazi agent.

Blood-Spider is what happens when the absolute worst aspects of said characters are brought to the forefront and twisted by a dose of reality. He’s to The Shadow what Plutonian is to Superman, the most sour way said character and legend can be twisted into something horrendous. He’s the Doutrinador in a fedora, everything I vehemently argue that The Shadow wasn’t, and yet seems sadly ever closer to as more and more comics dehumanize the character. He’s Howard Chaykin’s Shadow, naked and raw and exposed for what it ultimately is. An insult and a wake-up call, if a necessary one.

In fact, said poisoning of a legend is explicitly a plot point in the book, because the book establishes that, before The Blood-Spider, the city’s main vigilante used to be a man by the name of Blue Ghost, friend of Doc Thunder and, although a mysterious public figure, still firmly on the side of good. Unfortunately, moral victories aside, “good” alone doesn’t cut it in the world of El Sombra.

You took a look at the Blue Ghost - mysterious masked avenger, operatives all over the place, big fan-following with the working classes, and you figured...we need one of those. Just take away the Japanese orphan kid and replace him with a foxy Aryan chick.

Blue Ghost is almost a textbook Spirit analogue, even defined as being beat up a lot as his main asset, except here, he’s placed as Doc’s counterpart that died before the story began and is now replaced by a darker and more horrendous counterpart, and because The Spirit was influenced by The Shadow, it opens a roundabout connection. You can read this as a comparison between the shift from Adam West’s Batman to Frank Miller’s Batman, or a comparison between The Shadow and earlier more straightforward pulp vigilantes like Jimmie Dale, or a comparison between the pulp/radio Shadow and later iterations of him or analogues to his archetype that upped the nastier aspects. Again, nothing in El Sombra is ever quite just one thing.

And at last we come to El Sombra, who spends much of the book caught in between the duels of Doc, Untergang and players in between. And it’s interesting that here, while El Sombra’s final victories over the story’s major conflict lie in his willingness to team up with Doc, despite knowing of his origins as a Nazi weapon, his victories over Blood-Spider instead come from turning tricks of The Shadow against him. First, when he discovers Spider’s true nature, spying on him by pulling a Fritz the Janitor. And then in the finale, when he schools Spider on what a real shadowy avenger looks like.

"Amigo...that's my sword"

The voice came from the darkness above them, where the gaslight did not reach. The Spider's blood ran cold for a long moment, and then he grabbed hold of his other gun, tearing it from its holster and raising it to fire a volley of bullets into the darkness. "Where are you? Show yourself!" he hissed, turning in place, the gun raised to fire at the slightest sound or movement.

"You're not the only one who can hide in the shadows, my friend. I've got very good at it, over the years."

"Show yourself!" Another volley of shots, with no result. Was he throwing his voice? Was he everywhere at once? Was he a shadow himself? A ghost?

The voice echoed from another place now, continuing his speech exactly where he had left off. And still that mocking voice echoed from the shadows above.

"See, I didn't know if you were a good guy or a bad guy. I mean, sure, you killed people, and you were kind of a dick about it, you know? But I didn't know if you were one of the bastards. I didn't know if you needed to die or not, amigo."

The gun clicked empty. He was out of bullets. He turned again, and there was the man in the red mask. Just standing there, in the middle of the concourse. His smile didn't look human. And his eyes. Oh, his terrible eyes...

"Stay back." The Spider whispered, and his voice sounded in his ears like a frightened, animal thing, waiting to curl up and die in its hole.

The man in the red mask only laughed. A rich, deep, joyous laugh, a laugh that echoed and filled the whole station, bouncing from pillar to pillar, careening through the great vaulted arches. Such a laugh!

Then the laughter stopped, and he fixed the Blood-Spider with a look that would freeze the fires of Hell.

And suddenly - quite suddenly - there was no Blood-Spider. There was only Parker Crane, the Nazi. Parker Crane, the traitor. Who thought he could destroy America, and only managed to destroy himself. Parker Crane. Just a man wearing a mask. He ran, and left the sword behind him.

"Nice trick," Doc murmured, turning to the masked man. "Throwing your sword from up on the balcony - good aim, by the way - then throwing your voice and a little mental suggestion to make him think you were up in the arches where he'd been. Where did you learn that?"

The masked man shrugged, lifting up his weapon. "In the desert. You can learn a lot in the desert, if you put your mind to it."

By the story’s end, once Lars Lomax, Thunder’s arch-enemy and Lex Luthor, takes center stage as it’s ultimate threat, Parker Crane is left a traumatized, broken shell unable to even move, utterly stripped of any mystique or power that his mask and guns may have brought him. And in the end, El Sombra finds him, neutralized and no longer a threat to anyone. And he makes his choice.

El Sombra knew what it was to hate, to hate so hard and so long that you knew nothing else, to hate so strongly that it crossed that line into something beyond reason.

He lifted his sword, resting the blade in his palm for a moment, considering. Crane only stared, weeping and making his soft, mad noises. El Sombra sighed, shaking his head. "You know, I don't know if I can kill a guy who's already dead. Even if he is one of the bastards."

"Don't let him in here." Murmured Crane, his eyes wide.

"Shhh, I won't let him in," smiled El Sombra in response, trying to be reassuring. "You'll never have to face him again. I promise. It's okay, amigo. It's okay."

It was strange. He knew he should feel hate for Parker Crane. It was Djego's job to bear things like pity and doubt, to feel sorrow and shame. That was Djego's role in their team of one. El Sombra was there to take never-ending revenge and to laugh and to never look back. But to know that his murder of Heinrich Donner - his righteous kill - had resulted in so much harm coming to so many... and now to see the leader of Undergang, the man he'd come to New York to kill, just an empty, broken madman, a shell of a person... El Sombra wondered if he was changing.

"Don't," whispered Crane, a tear rolling down his cheek. "Don't let him back in."

El Sombra smiled, placing a hand on his shoulder. "It's okay, amigo. I'm going to go and make sure nobody ever needs to see him again. And I couldn't have done it without you." He squeezed lightly. "You didn't mean to, but you did some good. Remember that."

Then, gently, he pushed the tip of the sword through the front of Crane's skull and into his brain.

He was not incapable of pity. But he was who he was, and he did what he did.

And broken or not, the bastards had to die.

We’ve seen El Sombra struggle and be faced with choices, choices between Djego and El Sombra, choices between kindness and violence, between peace and conflict. We’ve seen the conflict in his soul between things that he knows are right, because Djego is a good man with a good soul who wants good things for himself and others, and things he knows he must do, because he is El Sombra and El Sombra was created to kill the bastards that brought his world to ruin and therefore it’s what he must always do. And in the end, El Sombra is simply stronger. He has to be. But strength and violence and hatred can only get one so far.

Gods of Manhattan is the trilogy’s moral compass, the book that most clearly defines the morality the series operates on. And in between the spectrums of justice embodied by Doc and Crane’s approach, between the two urban avengers in The Blue Ghost and Blood-Spider, El Sombra made his choice. And it’s the first choice that dooms him.

Enter Pax Omega, and we learn that, 4 years since the previous book's events, El Sombra joined a squad of agents called Yankee Bravo Seven, who work for an organization named STEAM, who enact missions against Nazis to turn the tides of war. He is joined by several other types of characters, including The Blood Widow, Crane’s former assistant Marlene Lang now having taken up the moniker (just as Nita van Sloan did for The Spider, even with the “Widow” prefix). We see that El Sombra has joined a team of bantering heroes and even formed a friendly rivalry with a man named Savate, modeled after Batroc the Leaper.

But we see that the hunger for vengeance still burns, still burns beyond reason, restless because it’s been 4 years and the war still isn’t over and Hitler still isn’t dead by his sword. And it’s that restlessness that again dooms him, when he once again makes the wrong choice and betrays leader Jack Scorpio, Scorpio who had personally brought him on board and gave him the best shot he ever had at getting to Hitler.

El Sombra frowned. "We need to make our move now."

Scorpio shook his head. "Not yet."

"What?" El Sombra looked incredulous.

"Wait for my signal, I said! Damn it, I need you to trust me!" Jack Scorpio reached up to brush the back of his finger across his forehead, and realised he was sweating.

Through his special glasses, El Sombra's aura was glowing an angry, pulsing red, like a throbbing vein. "Just...trust me. I'm asking you to hold back for just five minutes. There's more going on here than you know."

El Sombra just stared at him, his lips pulling back from his teeth in a cold snarl.

"Trust me. That's all I ask." Jack Scorpio looked into the blazing eyes behind the bloodstained mask, and spoke softly, soothingly, almost desperately. "Can you just hold back for one minute?"

The eyes behind the mask narrowed.

"Can you?"

PERSONNEL FILE: DJEGO "EL SOMBRA". TO EYES ONLY: THIS INDIVIDUAL IS HIGHLY DANGEROUS. IT IS STRONGLY RECOMMENDED HE NOT BE INCLUDED IN ANY OPERATIONS CLASSIFIED ABOVE TOP SECRET OR HIGHER. (I'll take the risk - J.S)

El Sombra spat in Scorpio's face.

"Chinga tu madre."

Then he drew his sword and leaped down into the fray.

After the mission is over, with the base destroyed and a major victory secured, although with Jack Scorpio having been killed, the team disbands. El Sombra continues to wander the forests near the Luftwaffe base for about two weeks, killing as many Nazis as he can, until an explosion blast hits near him, knocking away his mask and portions of his leg and arm, and rendering him unconscious for 8 months. By the time he wakes up, the war has ended, and so has El Sombra for the past 7 years.

Djego was afforded the best of medical care at the hospital in Venice. El Sombra was nowhere to be found.

His mask had been torn off in the explosion, along with some of the meat of his leg and arm. He walked stiffly, now, with a pronounced limp, and his left arm was all but useless, hanging limply at his side. The Wildcat crew had salvaged his sword, but Djego had little interest in using it.

Gradually, he regained his mobility. The back of his head itched constantly, and he suffered from horrendous mood swings, when he would rage against the Fuhrer and the bastards, or weep helplessly, like a child. But gradually, he found his personality stabilising in the gentle, antiseptic atmosphere of the hospital. He found that Djego - so long despised as a weakling, a coward and a fool - was capable of a kind of gentle, melancholic wit that made him popular.

Djego healed and grew, and the itch in the back of his skull began to subside, as El Sombra relinquished his grip.

Djego felt his heart seize in his chest. The cloth was missing a scrap at the end, and there was mud ground into the fabric along with the old bloodstains; but it had two evenly-spaced holes in it, and was unmistakably a mask. It seemed to be looking at him.

He takes up gardening and establishes himself in the city of Brandenberg, he becomes a fixture of the city and a friend of it, he enters a relationship, and El Sombra never appears again.

Until a mysterious stranger named Leonard Lorraine, walks through his door one day, saying he’s got a mission to fulfill, and hands him his mask. And, once again, El Sombra is simply stronger, and he makes the wrong choice again.

Djego shook his head and tried to step back from it, but his legs wouldn't move.

"No," he whispered. "No. Please"

"I was happy," pleaded Djego. "Doesn't that matter to you?" He picked up the cloth in trembling fingers, looking into the empty eyeholds. "Doesn't that mean anything?"

There was no answer. The patrons of the bierkeller did not even notice anything was happening.

"I was happy," Djego choked, and then, in one spasmodic motion, he pulled the mask onto his face, and secured it tightly, so that the knot once again rested in the back of his head, where it belonged: so tightly that it might never come off again.

El Sombra looked at his hands.

He prodded his belly, amused at the rounded shape of it, and took a couple of steps back from the bar. The limp was gone.

He laughed, very softly, so as not to disturb the patrons.

Djego and Lorraine walk through the desolate streets of Berlin, which in the years since has completely sealed itself from the outside world through an impossibly thick dome, and Djego discovers the city completely bereft of life, with only a few lobotomized robotic citizens aimlessly wandering and chewing on the mountains of corpses in the city, as their Nazi ideology reached it’s inevitable outcome of total annihilation of any and all that the party could find an excuse to slaughter in the name of purity, which eventually included it’s few remaining members. In this world, Hitler has been a brain inside a robotic contraption ever since 1945, and it’s amidst this scenario that El Sombra, while thinking about how his final confrontation with Hitler would play out, eventually finds what’s left of Hitler.

All around them, there were the sounds of machinery, but the Mecha-Fuhrer was completely silent, utterly motionless. In the centre of its chest rested a tank of toxic green fluid, and on the surface of the fluid, a human brain floated, like the corpse of a goldfish.

It was quite dead.

El Sombra stared at the Fuhrer for a long moment. Eventually, he spoke, and his voice was cracked and raw, and choked with rage. "Is...is this a joke?"

De Lareine smiled his terrible smile. "The Fuhrer's body needed a great deal of maintenance and repair, you know. After two years, one of the processes delivering oxygen to his brain failed...and there was nobody left to repair it. He died, slowly." There would have been some pain, at the end".

El Sombra slammed his fist into the great iron throne on which the massive body sat, shattering his knuckles and tearing the skin from them. He didn't seem to notice. "Some pain," he choked, through gritted teeth."

El Sombra was still staring into the empty, dead eyes of the Fuhrer.

El Sombra again chooses poorly. It’s this moment, above all else, that truly damns him to his fate, as we come to see what is it exactly that a persona created for the purpose of vengeance has, when said vengeance is robbed from it. Like Parker Crane, his persona crumbles completely to expose the petty, ugly little feelings that drove it to such grandstanding antics in the first place, and the allmighty El Sombra is exposed for the all-too human failings that damned him once and for all.

"This isn't right," he said, eventually, in a strangled voice. "How...how can it end like this?"

"Why shouldn't it?" De Lareine shrugged. "Here's a thought. Maybe, despite his twenty-year tantrum and all his dressing up, spoilt little Djego is not the centre of the universe -"

El Sombra turned, face red, tears streaming from his eyes, and charged at De Lareine, slashing his sword. El Sombra crashed down onto the floor, into the soot scattered about, as De Lareine walked around him.

"Did you really believe Adolf Hitler would wait around for your sword? Did you not imagine that it might be better for him to seal himself off in a hole to die, instead of murdering and enslaving continents until you finally got around to him? Did you think you were the hero of your own little story, El Sombra, with your mask and your laugh and your-"

"Shut up!" El Sombra cried out, scrambling to his feet, the sword shaking in his hand, tears and snot running down his face. "He was mine! He was mine to kill!" He lifted the sword, the tip trembling. "Bring him back," he screamed, "do you hear me? Bring him back to life!"

De Lareine had to laugh at that.

And in the end, El Sombra is crushed, spiritually and physically as his spine is shattered by Lareine, who begins to experiment on him as he lays dying, ready to fulfill fate’s greater purpose for El Sombra. Ready to become not just the perfect machine Pasito’s conquerors intended, but a superior design. Ready to abandon his former life, ready to abandon everything that defined him, ready to shed any and all traces of Zorro and Shadow and pulp hero in his system, because the age of pulp heroes and superheroes has passed.

The metal man emerged from his hole, dragging the corpse of the Fuhrer behind him.

The brain in the metal man's chest would, perhaps, live for thousands of years. He wondered how he would spend the time.

He remembered little of his former life; he had been a man named El Sombra, or perhaps Djego. He had been stupid - he realised that now - but that was something he would never be again.

Apart from that, there was only a succession of faces, the memory of laughter and of a final, awful betrayal that had destroyed him. But there was also the sense that a great and terrible mission had ended at last, and it was time for a new life to begin.

The metal man took a last look back at the great dome of Fortress Berlin. Somewhere in there, the Leopard Man was hunting, freed from his own mission. And in the Fuhrer's old office, the empty, lifeless clay of El Sombra - or was it Djego? - lay, discarded, like a butterfly's cocoon.

The metal man thought on this, as the Fuhrer rusted at his feet and the tanks began to approach from over the hills ahead.

He would need a new name.

It’s now the age of Pluto.

#replies tag #pulp heroes #al ewing #el sombra #pluto

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thoughtfullyyoungduck · 4 years

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And he said, I hope you know how to swim

A/N: this is for the gift exchange from @itfandomprompts! My giftee is @iheartthoreau who asked for shy skinny dipping lovers and jealous Eddie. I’m sorry it’s out so late, I hope you enjoy it anyway!

Summary: The Derry midnight breeze is freezing, Eddie notes, still dressed in a shirt and pants and dreading having to get rid of them. He’s bare foot now, standing on top of the quarry and peering down into the glinting lake. Next to him, also bare foot, Richie looks over his shoulder, and laughs, bright and innocent.

warnings: skinny dipping, mentioned of nudity (but nothing graphic)

read on a3o

The atmosphere of six best friends who’ve just moved past the worst stages in their life cackles in Eddie’s brain.

He’s buzzed up, energized beyond all logic by the laughter and loving gestures so carelessly tossed around in their group. Pennywise is dead, and with it the looming threat following each of them around and the teasing unhappiness hinting at what they were missing but not giving any clues as to what.

It’s all over now, and a road full of new opportunities lays ahead of them. Everyone is acting loose, ecstatic with the weight that fell off their shoulders. Eddie’s feeling a tad guilty too, for calling Myra and informing her that way about their upcoming divorce that he’s going to set in motion as soon as he’s had a good night sleep, but he felt so brave after surviving a literal killer clown, that he wanted to get it over with as soon as possible.

A part of him was also frightful that he’d lose his courage, between now and getting home, that he’d look around his house and accept that this was all he was destined for, a mediocre life with a wife he didn’t love and a job that sucked the joy out of all employees. Myra deserved better though, and that’s why Eddie’s guilty eyeing his phone, debating on calling her back. He won’t take back what he said, because he’s relieved to have put it out in the open, but he’s unsure if he should have been more empathetic towards her feelings in all of this. If he should have ended the call after telling her to take care.

Bev notices his wandering eyes from where she seated beside him on the couch, the woman still laughing a stitch, shifting forward and hiding his phone in between seat cushions. Out of sight out of mind so to speak.

‘We’ve got time to worry about it tomorrow Eddie.’ She says, and she’s right. Tomorrow both him and Bev will have to deal with the intricacies of divorce and separating a company and a home. Tonight is reserved for the losers only.

‘Yeah Eds, and here I was assuming that after twenty years we’d have some stuff to catch up on.’

Richie regards him from the floor, legs tossed up upon the couch with his body upside down. His glasses are sliding off, but he’s lazy to fix them, so he looks like even more of a goofball than normal. If Eddie could, if he didn’t feel like his intentions would be even more noticeable if he did, he’d scoot over to Richie, adjusting his glasses and letting his fingers trail his cheek and bask in the skin to skin contact.

‘You never did anything interesting before we went to college, what makes you think you’ve done something interesting after?’ Eddie’s tongue is sharp, a façade he builds to stop speculation about his feelings towards Richie, though the truth is that he is intrigued and he craves to know every small detail about his life outside of Derry.

‘No you guys are not starting this again. I’m sick of your bickering,’ Bill interjects, rolling his eyes at the pair.

‘I reject that big Bill, we’re hilarious, you can’t be sick of us bickering when you haven’t had the pleasure of hearing it for the last twenty years. Michael, back me up here buddy.’

‘Sorry Rich, I’m not getting involved in the slightest.’

‘Yeah guys come on, can’t we have one quiet night in?’

‘What so Eddie can just call me boring and I’m supposed to let it slide? Me? I’m the fireworks on the Fourth of July, the highest roller coaster in the park and the whipped cream on strawberries, but I am not boring.’ Richie changes positions, almost accidentally knocking over his beer bottle. He theatrically waves his arms back and forth, trying to animate his words and add conviction.

‘Okay, okay you’re not boring, but don’t overrate yourself either. The most adventurous thing you ever did in high school was skip a class to read a comic book in the school’s bathroom. Not exactly daredevil behavior.’

Bev sips from her whiskey, winking at Richie whose face turns beet red for a reason Eddie can’t decipher. It’s not until Bev conspicuously blows out a gust of air with her lips puckered that Eddie connects the dots.

‘Didn’t you say you ditched because you were smoking with Beverly? Dude did you fucking lie about that? I was worried you’d die and get cancer ever since that day you piece of shit.’

‘No I definitely did smoke. I swear.’

‘You’re not kidding anyone Rich, I vouched for you all those years ago, but I’m not doing it again. Little Richie was a comic book nerd who just pretended to be really cool. We never ever smoked together.’

The losers all holler, clapping their hands together and cheering on the exposure of their foulmouthed friend, debunking all the story Richie apparently made up where he and Be had to sneak out at night to smoke inconspicuously, with the exception of Eddie and Richie. Eddie, because he’s busy glaring at Richie and Richie because he’s busy tapping Bill’s hand away, teasingly disheveling his hair.

Eddie wishes he was brave enough to give these little affections to his friend, especially after witnessing how soothed Richie got when Eddie hugged him after Neibolt, when he had dropped his face into the nape of Eddie’s neck and stayed there, swaying on his feet of exhaustion. It would only make him a good friend, a best friend, but Eddie is still so damn afraid.

He might have had the power to separate from his wife and kill an abstract form of his deepest fears, but Bowers angry yelled words, such as fairy and faggot, swung to his head any time he and Richie graveted closer while walking, haunt him even now.

Touching is off limits the words tell him, so he shows affection the only way he’s ever known towards Richie, by bickering and pulling pigtails.

‘I should have expected that.’ Eddie nods vehemently, laughing as Richie’s mouth drops open in a shocked manner.

‘Are you kidding me? Eddie Spaghetti is the one telling me I’m a loser?’

Eddie flips him off, ignoring Mike’s whispered; ‘he’s got a point’, in favor of levitating his full attention on Richie. The giggling in the room elevates an octave higher.

‘You all laugh’, Richie addresses the entire group, ‘but was I not the one who came up with the idea for the list?’

Abruptly, all sounds snap off, as everyone is snapped back to the past. Even Richie is, at face value, confused about the word he spoke, until the concept and creation of the list is brought to the forefront of everyone’s mind.

‘Holy shit.’

‘Oh my god Mike please tell me you still have it.’

Mike shakes his head with a far-off look. ‘Sorry guys, I don’t know who had it last but I never found it again.’ He’s saddened by it, like he did them all an injustice by not holding on to a flimsy piece of paper.

The List, capital L, was nothing more but a checklist, composed with all the fun and dangerous things the losers all had hopes of doing after graduating high school. Eddie remembers now, the hushed laughter and uncompromisable joy that came with the simple idea of these things, how everyone pitched in and added dare after dare while him and Stan exchanged glances and hoped to god that some things would never be executed.

‘That’s okay Mike, I’m just happy we can all remember making it.’ Ben smiles reassuringly Mike’s way, who smiles back and takes a deep breath.

‘Wait, I think I can recall some of the things we wrote on there. Hold on’, Bev squeezes her eyes shut and snaps her finger in the hope it will get to her faster. ‘Oh’, she exclaims, startling Bill who chokes on his own saliva, ‘we were going to visit Europe, do a high rope parkour, rock climb and some other things I can’t remember right now.’

‘Didn’t we also agree to volunteer in a hospital and go camping in the national forest?’ Ben asks, awaiting confirmation.

‘Yeah we did, Stan was throwing a fit over going camping because of the environment and the dirt, but we were well on our way to convince him.’

‘Wow,’ Richie breathes, chest puffing up and head dropping back into the couch so his face isn’t visible to the rest. ‘I forgot all about that, but come to think of it, I’m pretty sure I did most of those things with Bryan.’

And who the fuck is Bryan? Certainly not Eddie, sweating in fear from the things that were being listed, searching for the most extreme dares he’d seen happen on tv to suggest, doing anything he could to impress Richie. Eddie was terrified of most of the activities on the list, like Bev’s idea to waterski in the ocean, or Mike’s zip lining idea, but he would have done them if it meant he could bask in Richie’s attention, impress Richie to rid himself of scared baby Eddie was so sure he must have been in Richie’s eyes. So who the hell was this Bryan stealing his thunder like that?

‘Who’s Bryan?’ Bev inquires with a smirk, winking at Richie blush ridden face. Eddie’s jealousy rears its ugly head, flaring up and making his head woozy. He simultaneously both considers choking Bev and thanking her for the question.

With Richie’s secret fresh on his mind, the way he’d so shamefully admitted that he was gay and they were the first people he’d ever found the courage to tell, Eddie wondered if Bryan was perhaps someone Richie had been romantically involved with.

Richie would have deserved it, Eddie argues in his mind, to at least for a short period of time have someone love him back as fiercely as he dons it out, but Eddie’s also furious that he stole Richie out from under his nose.

Which is illogical, because even if he and Richie had managed to stay in touch, and Eddie confessed – not much chance there, as Eddie didn’t even tell anyone he was gay when Richie did - there was no guaranty that Richie would’ve reciprocated.

‘No one snoopy’, Richie argues with a jittery leg, ’just some guy I hung out with for a while.’

Bev appears unconvinced, but she’s also respectful towards Richie's decision to not say anything. ‘So which ones did you complete?’

‘I went to Europa senior year of college, smoked a bunch of weed, went zip lining. The normal kind of stuff.’

Zip-lining, or smoking weed for that matter, causes Eddie skin to crawl, not that he’d ever admit it. He hates that that’s not the case for Bryan.

‘Well thanks Rich, none of us ever did anything on the list without the other losers. I guess you didn’t miss us too much.’ It’s not fair, of course it’s not. He can tell by the eagerness to spend time together that Richie was very lonely, and experienced the same aching emptiness where his friends were supposed to be as the rest of them.

The bitter tone of Eddie's speech, and the way Richie’s eyes turn a little dimmer extinguishes the fire of Eddie’s envy. Richie deserves better than him in every way. An apology lies at the tip of his tongue, ready to jump into the open and hopefully aid the wounds before they’re fully developed.

Sensing the impending hurricane of trouble on the horizon Mike is eager to intervene, playing mediator for two forces that are about to collide. ‘Well I mean, we probably wouldn’t have gone through with most of them anyway.’

‘Speak for yourself’, Eddie waves him off, spiteful that Mike has a good point. He would have found a way to undermine their plans and make it so that he could back out without appearing like a meek lamb, for at least half of the activities. If he had known about Bryan’s existence though, he would have done anything. He feels ready now to do anything, to one up him and establish his spot as Richie’s number one.

‘Prove it,’ Bill dares with a lopsided smirk, certain he’s got Eddie beat. He sustains eye contact, reaching for the bag of chips on the table and gnawing on it with the most smug aura Eddie has ever witnessed him having.

‘I would’, Eddie defends fiercely, ‘but we can’t do any of the things in Derry.’

‘Sounds like a cop out to me.’

‘Yeah, sure Big Bill, because you can easily find a zip line here in Derry. The town that refused to spend money on renewing the library back in the eighties is no doubt going to have that installed by now.’

‘What about skinny dipping?’ Ben proposes innocently, having no idea the kind of strain he’s putting Eddie under.

‘That’s a great idea Ben, I forgot we put that one on the list.’ Beverly acknowledges despite Eddie’s frantic head shaking. The room temperature drops down and rises back up steadily, at least according to Eddie. He’s starting to sweat, something he never does and takes pride in – in the office he’s the level headed one, and that’s saying something – and he pulls at his collar to allow some air to ventilate.

Everything except that. A swim in a dirty lake that was most likely infected was a whole plate of different bacteria, and being naked in front of the man he’s in love with is not something Eddie is particularly fond of. He almost asks for a different thing to do, but that would truly be a cop out, and he both refuses to back down in front of Richie and give Bill the satisfaction of being right.

‘Good luck with that Eds, question before this all goes down, am I allowed to use this in my next bit?’

‘Actually,’ Bev interrupts, ‘I think you should join him too.’

‘Hey I wasn’t the one that said I’d be willing to do anything.’

‘No, but you were the one who added it on the list in the first place. C’mon Richie, It’ll be fun. For us, not for you guys, but we’ll get a good laugh out of it.’

Richie is hesitant, same as Eddie, readjusting his glasses again. Eddie is sure that if he says the word Richie will tell everyone to back down for him. He wouldn’t even make fun of Eddie for it, should Eddie give any indication that he wouldn’t want him too. He thinks back to Bryan, and how he wouldn’t have backed down for such a thing, and how in awe Richie must have been seeing the man abandon all safety precaution and go for it, Eddie’s mind is made up instantly.

‘Let’s do it.’ He says without leaving room for argument, nodding at Richie as he looks to him. He hopes Richie will go with it, but is also confident that of course he will. As kids they followed each other everywhere, and surely that hasn’t changed.

‘Really? I mean yeah – sure I guess. Bring it on.’

-----

The Derry midnight breeze is freezing, Eddie notes, still dressed in a shirt and pants and dreading having to get rid of them. He’s barefoot now, standing on top of the quarry and peering down into the glinting lake. Eddie’s jumping from one foot to the other, annoyed that dirt is clinging to his skin and branches are piercing his soles, even more aggravated at the idea of cleaning them in infection filled lake water. Bev better keep her end of the promise, and be waiting near the end of the lake with a pair of fresh pressed towels.

Next to him, also bare foot, Richie looks over his shoulder, and laughs, bright and innocent.

‘I forgot how high this was.’

It is high up, but they’ve done this jump at least a hundred times before, so Eddie’s not worried about the plunge. He’d assume Richie isn’t either, but the man keeps glances towards the path they took to get up here, uncharacteristically silent.

‘It’s okay if you're too scared to go through with it Eduardo, I won’t tell the others.’ Richie smirks when he notices Eddie’s glance, crossing his arms over his chest.

The movement makes his shoulders bulk, highlighting just how much bigger Richie is compared to Eddie. Eddie’s mouth waters, and he starts to worry about how he’s going to have to get through seeing Richie’s naked shoulders in the flesh.

‘Just get undressed will you? Hurry up.’

‘Why? Eager to see my bare ass?’

‘Yeah, because who doesn’t think jumping naked into a lake they frequented as kids is the epitome of sexiness? No you self-centered idiot, I want to get it over with so I can go back to the Inn and grab a warm shower.’

With one last peek, Eddie moves backwards, standing away from the ledge and begins to unbutton his shirt, before thinking better off it. Richie picks up on his hesitation, shifting backwards too and motioning his head towards the ridge.

‘Do you want me to show you how it’s done?’

‘No,’ Eddie objects, ‘I’ll go first.’

‘Why? I’m not going to stare at your junk while you're jumping in if that’s what you're worried about Eddie. I’m not that kind of gay.’ Rarely does Richie toss aside an opportunity to grant Eddie another humorous nickname, so the use of his real name spooks Eddie just enough that he opens his mouth to apologize without even realizing what he’s apologizing for.

Richie’s facial expression, set in a grimace and squinting his eyes defensively, are a dead give away that Eddie’s words are being taken the wrong way. If only Richie knew that Eddie wanted him to go in first so he could avoid the same temptation Richie thought he was forcing on him.

‘Richie no, that’s not what I meant I-.’ Heartfelt compliments are not something Eddie has had a lot of practice for these last few years, and he’s not doing a good job catching up on them either. Therefore he sighs and hopes that he can find another way to prove to Richie he’d never accuse him of something like that. ‘Whatever, just go first already.’

‘Fine but turn around okay?’

Eddie listens to him, back towards Richie and the jump off, though he doesn’t really understand the request. With Richie comes a lot of flair, and he was more or less been prepared for a joke about how Eddie got to confirm how big his dick is in reality.

He waits and listens carefully for the sounds of clothes being dropped on the ground, and he can’t stop his mind from secretly imagining how Richie looks like without them once he distinguishes it. Eddie shakes his head, scolding his own mind.

The next few moments are filled with raspy breaths originating from Richie, footstep sounding further away and then closer again in an erratic pattern. He must be scared of the jump. Under normal circumstances, Eddie would ask to jump in at the same time, but since Richie asked Eddie not to turn around, he won’t.

‘If you don’t jump in the next five minutes,’ Eddie teases, the way Richie used to tease him, ‘I’ll push you in.’ A second later Eddie hears Richie’s loud whooping as he plunges down into the dark water.

Eddie spins, the only thing greeting him the dark with very little light clearing up his path, from the moon. He’s having a hard time to even see where the cliff ends, and he can’t disguise Richie in the water at all.

‘I’m coming in’, he yells to the void, in case Richie can’t discern his body in time and needs to move out of the way. He takes off his clothes, goosebumps erupting on his skin, and folds his pants and t-shirt up neatly, touching the ground with his hands to find a dry spot to lay them on. The air is cold, and so Eddie refuses to linger on top any longer than he has to.

He jogs up to the ledge and darts off before his mind can conjure up the thousands of things that can go wrong from swimming in the dark this late at night. His body flies through the air and connects with the water in one swoop, a pit of glee bursting in Eddie’s stomach. Jumping from the quarry equals freedom, a hot summer day and love for all of his friends, but in particular Richie.

Eddie keeps his head underwater until his lungs burn, eyes closed and allowing himself to just feel all the sensations. Then, something tickles the back of his leg, and the peaceful moment is over. He kicks back the surface, away from the spot where he could swear something touched him, and searches around for Richie.

Richie, with his wet black hair clinging to his forehead, strands of it sticking out in every direction, and his droplet covered glasses, roving more of Eddie’s heart each minute they’re near each other. He’s never looked more beautiful, and Eddie has never had to fight the urge to kiss him as much as he does now.

‘See, I told you I wouldn’t stare Eds, I can’t even see anything with all these splatters on my glasses.’

The moon reflects on the water, so that it’s impenetrable, and neither Rich nor Eddie can look down and see their lower body parts.

What Eddie can see is enough anyway, Richie’s shoulders and part of his chest hold Eddie’s attention, and he forgets to respond to Richie’s comment.

His eyes land on a dark bruise, just on the bottom of Richie’s neck, a remnant of their fight with Pennywise earlier that day. Without thinking, without standing still on the consequences of such an action, Eddie swims closer, stretches his arm out, and lingers his fingertips over the bruise. He carefully positions his body to not touch any other body part of Richie’s except for his fingers on his neck.

He makes an inquisitive noise, thumb stroking over the injury in what he hopes to be a calming matter. He physically can’t pull away, entranced with the way he moves and responds to him, trying but failing to get his fill of Richie clenched.

‘Eddie’, Richie whispers, scared to break the silence and the intimate moment. ‘It’ll be fine. And hey, at least he didn’t do anything to my dick.’

‘Yeah, would have been a shame if it were to become even smaller.’

Richie snorts, retaliating the jest with a wave of dirty water aimed at Eddie.

Eddie gasps, spitting out a bit of water that managed to sneak into his mouth. ‘Oh you’re on.’

The two of them chase each other, and if it weren’t for the fact that they were both naked, Eddie would have thrown his entire body weight in the game to push Richie underwater. As it stands, they just splash back and forth until they’re exhausted and the remnants of their laughter dies out, barely enough energy left to stay afloat side by side.

‘Did you have this much fun with Bryan?’ Eddie asks, a bit envious. He hates how he’s still stuck on the Bryan thing, hates that his mind keeps popping images of them doing the exact same thing only to end it with a kiss.

‘What?’

‘With Bryan, the guy you did all that other stuff with?’

‘Oh no, me and Bryan – we were never together like that.’ Back at the hotel room, Eddie figured that that was a ploy to distract Bev, something Richie just said because he couldn’t comfortably admit the real intent of their relationship. But he’s never lied to Eddie, and his eyes, magnified by his glasses, seem so sincere, Eddie has no other option but to believe him. ‘I-I’m- some other guy already has that place all taken up.’

Eddie stupid, oblivious and dense and everything in between. He knows Richie isn’t talking about him, he knows he could never be the guy Richie would hold all hope out for – he also secretly hopes it’s none of the losers -, but he wants to be so bad. Just one time, just one kiss and he’d be sated enough to let go of his feral behavior towards any potential love interest Richie might have. Just one time.

‘Richie’, Eddie starts, biting his bottom lip hard enough to draw blood. He’s taking a huge risk, by foreseeing a rejection but hoping that Richie won’t drop him as a friend because of this. If Eddie doesn’t do this, he’ll never stop wondering what it feels for their lips to meet. He’ll never get over Richie because he never got to experience any with him.

‘Can I kiss you?’ He risks releasing his lip.

Richie is visibly shocked. ‘What? What the fuck? Eddie is this a joke?’

The joke is, as usual, all on Eddie who regrets ever opening his mouth in the first place. He could try to laugh it off, say that it was a joke, but that would mean that he pretends to make a jest out of something Richie has struggled with for his entire life. He’s stuck between a rock and a hard place. Left with no other options but to further dig his own grave, Eddie decides to be honest. At least that means he gets to keep part of his integrity.

‘No Richie of course not, I wouldn’t do that to you. I’m sorry. Look I like you but it’s obviously one sided and I just wanted to know what it felt like to kiss you but it was a stupid request and I shouldn’t have asked you that. Oh god, I never even asked if you were dating someone –‘

‘Eds?’

‘- Fuck can we please forget I said anything so we can still hang out?’

‘Eddie?’

‘What?’

‘Yes. Please kiss me.’

Eddie gapes with his mouth open, struggling for breath and for words. He’s half convinced he misinterpreted the words, but his tilted head proves otherwise. Eddie doesn’t question it further, counting his lucky start for once, and leaning in to his emotions and Richie, breaching the water to get to him.

Their kiss is surprisingly gentle for the ungovernable lead up prior to it. Richie’s lips taste like lake water, but deeper underneath lies a tang of something distinctively Richie. Eddie can’t wait to devour him whole once he’s cleaned up. Their lips move together in tandem, a perfect harmony that for once neither are willing to break.

They pull back, Richie’s arms circling Eddie’s waist, and he smiles. His smile mixed with the love stricken gleam in his eyes, mysteriously tells Eddie that Richie feels the exact same way he does. His chest caves with happiness.

‘I like you too, if it wasn’t obvious. A lot more than Bryan.’

‘For the love of God can we never mention that again? It’s embarrassing. No, Hush’, Eddie says urgently, covering Richie’s mouth with his palm when he opens his mouth to conjure up another joke.

‘Fine,’ Richie says while pulling away from Eddie’s hand. ‘How about we talk about something else then? How the fuck are we supposed to get to our clothes?’

#my writing #reddie imagine #reddie fic #reddie #richie tozier #eddie kaspbrack #richie and eddie #adult losers #it chapter two imagine #eddie x richie

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eyeofthedrgn · 3 years

Text

Abomination - Chapter 2

Trigger Warning: depression, language/derogatory slurs, anxiety, anxiety attacks, cutting/self harm, coming out, suicidal thoughts, betrayal

Word count: 2929

Chapter 2

"You're disgusting. I never want to see you again. Fucking faggot!" Rowan yelled at Lorcan.

"It's not true! I'm not gay! I have a girlfriend! Please Rowan!"

Rowan opened his eyes, his breathing was harsh. He put a hand over his face, and did his best to hide a small cry. He knew he would never say such a hurtful thing to Lorcan, but the fact that his subconscious thought up that terrible nightmare…

After several minutes of finding it hard to breathe through the tears, Rowan finally got some semblance of control over his body. Thankfully, Aelin didn't wake up. He didn't want to have to explain.

He grabbed his phone and carefully got out of bed and went to the kitchen. After getting a glass of water, he found himself curled on the couch, head on the armrest. Every instance he could remember directing a derogatory word at Lorcan flashed through his mind. Each time, it stung more and more because somehow, Rowan had still unknowingly stolen the heart of his best friend.

Rowan looked at his phone, he needed a distraction from the spiral his mind was going down. There was a reply from Lorcan. So much for a distraction.

Lorcan: Just pretend to forget about it then. I don't want your fucking pity. And if you tell anyone, I will fucking kill you.

He dropped his phone onto the coffee table and sighed into his hands. Sleep wasn't going to come to him tonight, so he decided to grab a tall glass of whiskey, his laptop and just start work early. Really early.

---

Lorcan called into work again. He kept glancing at the bottle of pain meds on his nightstand, wondering how many it would take. Maybe he could crunch them up and snort them, that would work faster, right? Couple that with a fifth of whiskey and you got yourself a suicide. Right? Would that be enough?

Just in case, maybe throwing in a few of his antidepressants that he never took.

But Elide… she would come home and find him. That wasn't fair to her. If he was going to take his life, it would have to be elsewhere. Somewhere far away where no one would find him. So, instead of ending his life, he started drafting a letter. All of them were shit and made him sound like a whiny asshole. He yelled as he threw the latest crumpled up piece of paper across the room. His hands went to his hair and pulled as he yelled again. Why was life so unfair? Hellas he wanted to just die, to just stop existing! Erase himself from history so no one would be the wiser that poor closeted Lorcan Salvaterre ever existed.

Hate wasn't a strong enough word for what he felt about himself. Neither was loathe. No word was strong enough for the complete disgust and hatred he had for his existence. So, he did what any self loathing person would. He went to the kitchen and grabbed a bottle of whiskey, went to the junk drawer and grabbed a new razor blade then locked himself in his bathroom. He sat in the tub still in just his boxers, took a few swigs of whiskey before dragging the blade across the skin of his thighs. It wasn't the first time he had done this. There were a few scars that littered the skin that never saw daylight. He cut his thighs so no one would know that he had suicidal thoughts. He only made the mistake of cutting his wrist once.

At least he could feel in control for a little bit. Right now, he could control the pain, ground himself in the feel of the cold blade against his skin. Focus on the sting as his skin comes apart and the trickle of blood that drips into the tub. He didn't know how long he laid there, periodically bringing the bottle to his lips and feeling the burn of alcohol down his throat and feeling semigrounded in the hazy pain in his legs and the alcohol numbing his mind. The cuts were drying up. At some point he fell asleep because he was startled awake by a banging on the door.

"Lor! Are you okay?" Elide sounded worried. "Lor, please!" How long had she been trying to get his attention?

Fuck.

Lorcan swallowed, his mouth felt like it was full of cotton. Somehow, he managed to respond, "I'm fine, El." He heard a soft thud against the wood, he assumed she rested her forehead against it.

"Don't fucking do that to me! I thought you…" he could hear her sniffle through the door. He had wanted to be cleaned up before she got home. The guilt immediately courses through his veins again. Hellas, he was such a useless waste of a human. Slowly, he managed to get up, quietly hissing as the cuts twisted and reopened. He wrapped a towel around his waist before he opened the door so she wouldn't see and worry even more. Lorcan looked at her face, her eyes were puffy as she looked up at him and wiped her nose on her sleeve.

"I'm sorry I worried you," he said softly.

She nodded. "I brought pizza. Put some clothes on and join me." He just nodded before she walked away.

They sat on the couch and watched cartoons and ate pizza. They didn't talk. Just shared each other's company. It was enough for now. Lorcan knew he couldn't take his life. Seeing Elide's face after he opened the bathroom door had solidified that. He couldn't hurt her like that. He would just have to continue to suffer in the prison, the living Hel, that he had made for himself.

He went to work the next day. It was time to pretend everything was normal. Everything was fine. Pretend that he hadn't dropped a life-changing bomb on his best friend. He could do this. He could pretend he was the same as before, pretend he wasn't gay and that everything was still the same. He had to. There was no other way.

Lorcan met up with everyone at the bar that night. Everything was fine. Elide never left his side, that was fine, though a little out of the norm. But it was okay. He noticed Rowan wasn't as clingy towards his fiancé as usual which was strange, and somehow not helpful. He drank his beer and listened to everyone talk, his leg bounced all night. That seemed to be the one thing he couldn't control. Throughout the night, he would catch Rowan's unreadable stare. The man didn't talk much that night and when he did, it was short and to the point. Nobody mentioned the tension between the two and that he was thankful for. He wouldn't have been able to explain it without possibly outing himself and fucking shit up even more.

After a few hours, he left. That was enough pretending for one day. Elide stayed, she didn't have work the next day and wanted to drink away the last couple days. He couldn't blame her. As Lorcan made his way home, he walked past a bar with a rainbow flag hanging in the window. He stuffed his hands in his pockets and continued walking even though he wanted to go in, wanted to see what it was like to be a little carefree. Maybe over the weekend, he could sneak away. Maybe Elide would want to go with him. Maybe he could meet someone and forget about his feelings for Rowan. Forget ten years of pining and affection. Maybe…

Instead, he entered the liquor store across the street and bought a new bottle of whiskey since he had finished the bottle yesterday.

---

Lorcan had barely looked at him the whole night. Nor did they say a word to each other. It was painfully obvious to him that something was off, but no one else seemed to care or notice. Though, he remembered most of the group only really put up with Lorcan because he was Rowan's best friend. Lorcan wasn't the most likeable person, but he wished they at least tried to include him in conversations a little more. He was a good person when you got to know him, when he peeled away the steely exterior and you saw the man who would do anything for you, who was kind and gentle, even cuddly.

Rowan realized then that he missed their movie nights and game nights. He hadn't watched a stupid, ridiculously bad action movie in a year or so because he stopped going to Lorcan's on Sunday night to watch them. He missed playing seemingly easy, but actually really tough and strategic board games that took hours to play. He missed yelling at the TV while playing video games with his best friend. All of that slowly stopped after he started seeing Aelin. She took up all of his time. No wonder Lorcan had been skipping on bar nights, texting less and less, because he wasn't putting in the effort either.

He still wasn't sure how to feel about Lorcan being in love with him. But he needed to put more effort into their relationship if he wanted to keep Lorcan in his life. Hopefully, Lorcan still wanted to be in his life.

Sunday finally came around and Rowan had made the decision to invite himself over to movie night, ignoring that maybe he should give his friend some time. He parked in front of Lorcan's place, grabbed the six-pack and box of pizza out of the back seat and started up the walkway. Balancing everything in one hand, he fumbled with his keys and unlocked the door.

"El?" He heard Lorcan holler before peeking out into the foyer. The man's brows furrowed when he spotted Rowan.

"I brought beer and pizza for movie night." Rowan tried to sound confident, but he knew Lorcan would see right through him so he gave him a small smile. They just stood there for what felt like eternity before Lorcan went back into the living room, not inviting him to follow, but also not telling him to leave either. So, Rowan followed, setting the beer and pizza on the coffee table. He saw the half empty bottle of whiskey. No glass. Lorcan curled up in the corner of the couch with a blanket and hit play on the remote. Rowan wondered how much he was drowning his feelings.

After drinking a beer and eating a couple slices of pizza, Rowan glanced over at Lorcan. He wasn't even watching the movie. His gaze was on the ground in front of the TV, he seemed to be focusing solely on keeping his breathing even.

"Do you want me to go?" He waited a beat before continuing. "I didn't mean to make you uncomfortable. I just realized at the bar last week that I missed hanging out with you and that I've let our friendship kind of fall apart since I started seeing Aelin." Another pause. "I'm sorry, Lor. For a lot of things."

"I wish I never said what I said to you. It ruined everything." Lorcan curled in tighter on himself, his voice was so quiet.

"It didn't ruin anything. And I wish… I wish you felt safe enough to tell me sooner." Rowan reached over and hit pause on the remote, the movie was too distracting to have this conversation. "I'm incredibly sorry for the homophobic slurs I used to use. I'm sorry I directed them at you." Lorcan turned his face away. "I know just saying sorry isn't going to fix a whole lot, but I do mean it. I am so sorry. I still want you in my life, Lorcan. You're my best friend." A tear slipped down his cheek. Lorcan's body shook, Rowan knew he was crying. "Can I hug you? Please?"

Lorcan took a deep breath. "I don't think that's a good idea," his voice was wet. He wouldn't look at Rowan. "You should probably just go. I don't even know why you're here, you haven't come over for movie night in over a year."

He was right of course. Rowan spent most of his free time with Aelin. "I know. I realized recently that I have been neglecting our friendship and I wanted to make it up to you. And I know, one movie night isn't going to make up for everything, but I want to do better."

Lorcan finally looked at him, anguish written all over his tear stained cheeks. "Rowan. What the fuck?! I admit my deepest secret, and now you fucking care? Somehow me having feelings for you is pulling you closer, I don't fucking get it!" He threw his arms in the air. Tears were falling down his cheeks again, his cheeks flushed, and panting. "Just fucking leave." He got up and left. A door slammed a few seconds later causing Rowan to flinch. Fucking shit.

After several deep breaths, Rowan put the pizza in the fridge, along with the rest of the beers. If Lorcan didn't eat it, Elide would. He would need to text her before he left to apologize for putting Lorcan in a mood. He always felt bad leaving Elide to deal with Lorcan when he got like this, especially when it was his fault. But he wouldn't need to message her, she had snuck in when he was lost in thought, just standing in the kitchen staring at the counter.

"Ro? What are you doing here?" She set her bag on the counter, curiosity lacing her features.

"I decided to just show up for movie night. I realized that I have been a bad friend for the last year or so. But I think I made a mistake. I shouldn't have just invited myself over." Elide shook her head. "I need to give him space, don't I?" He looked at her with sad, guilty eyes.

She reached her hand up and cupped his cheek. "That's probably for the best." She gave him a tight smile.

"Can you let me know…" he wasn't sure what he wanted. He shrugged, defeated.

"I'll let you know when he improves." She dropped her arm.

He nodded. "There's some pizza and beer in the fridge."

"Thanks, Ro. Give Aelin a hug for me," she said as she walked him to the door.

"I will. Bye El."

---

Lorcan was so confused by Rowan's actions. He had assumed Rowan would avoid him like the plague. He honestly didn't know how to feel about Rowan just showing up tonight like old times. In a way, it was nice, but the longer they sat there, the more his anxiety grew. The more confused he got. The more he couldn't handle just sitting next to Rowan. He had really wanted the hug Rowan offered, but he felt like it would have been too much for his aching gay heart.

He heard Elide in the kitchen, so he left his room to join her. He really needed a hug. She had just taken a bite of pizza when he walked in. "Need a hug?" She asked around the food in her mouth. He responded by swallowing her up in his arms. Her arms snaked around his middle. "I love you, Lor," she said into his chest after she swallowed. He gave her a small squeeze in return, cheek resting on the top of her head.

"Have you, uh…" Elide started rubbing his back in encouragement. "Have you been to the bar across the way from the liquor store?" He swallowed, almost embarrassed at asking. She pulled back just enough to look up at his face, she pressed her lips together to try not to smile at his embarrassment.

"I have." She had a feeling he wanted to go, but she wanted him to ask.

"Can," he sighed. "Can you take me sometime?" He started biting on his lip.

"Of course, love. I'd love to. Wanna go this weekend?" Her eyebrows raised in question and bounced a little on her heels.

"Sure."

She smiled brightly at him before stretching onto her toes and planting a kiss to his cheek. "Hungry?" She handed him a cold slice of pizza.

As he took the slice, he asked, "Movie?"

She smiled and picked up the pizza box and beer from the counter and bounded into the living room before restarting the movie Lorcan had attempted to watch earlier. After Lorcan sat down on the couch, Elide snuggled into his side.

Sometimes he really wished neither of them were queer. They really did fit together well. To strangers and their friends, they were a great couple. They bickered, but always made up. They gave each other touches with a frequency normal for a long-term relationship. They finished each other's thoughts. If only they were attracted to each other in a way that was less plutonic. Early on in their faux relationship, they had tried to have sex together, but it didn't get very far. Both of them just noped right out of it after tentatively making out for a few minutes. But cuddling was always on the table. Elide and Lorcan were cuddle whores. Growing up, they were both touch starved so they both agreed that cuddles were a must, but sex was a definite no.

"This movie is terrible! Where do you find these?" She laughed at some ridiculous action that made absolutely no sense. He just chuckled at her as he shrugged.

____

Thanks for reading. Let me know if you'd like to be tagged.

@thenerdandfandoms @starlightorstarfire

#lorcan salvaterre #rowan whitethorn #rowcan #elorcan #elide lochan #throne of glass #crackship #abomination

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ginnyggginny · 4 years

Text

Francoise Gilot painted “Adam Forcing Eve to Eat An Apple” in 1946, the year she moved in with Picasso to become his young muse. In a New York Times article, Alexandra Schwartz quotes Gilot saying that this is no accident. The painting depicts a woman looking at the viewer with an apple forced into her mouth by an angry man with furrowed brows, and the Biblical title implies a sense of lost innocence and hindsight realization of her own unfortunate situation. The description of a “forced” act calls to mind descriptions of sexual assault, a nonconsensual penetration. Gilot is keenly aware of this connection, as she compares Picasso to the monstrous pirate Bluebeard, who

… didn’t cut the heads [of his wives] completely off… he preferred to have life go on and to have all those women who shared his life at one moment or another still letting out little peeps and cries of joy or pain and making a few gestures like disjointed dolls, just to prove that there was some life left in them, that it hung by a thread, and that he held the other end of the thread. (Schwartz)

Gilot clearly delineates the emotionally manipulative tactics that Picasso used, with his desire to keep all his women at arm’s length. Her description of him keeping his muses “hung by a thread” (Schwartz), which he holds in his hand, shows the way Picasso treated her and others as doll-like objects that he could use however and whenever he wanted, and that he had a sense of entitlement towards their bodies, due to a successful career and an inflated career. Even today Picasso is cited as one of the most famous artists in the world, with Guernica and Weeping Woman being some of his most well-known. It is worth noting that Francoise Gilot was a painter in her own right, and she became a muse in an effort to make connections within the art world that would improve her own career by association. She expected that working with Picasso would bring her artistic opportunities, though likely did not expect the mistreatment she received. And yet she is not famous. The tradition of the muse is named after the Greek goddesses who blessed men with inspiration, but it is most famously used referring to the women who posed for portraits, dating back to the Renaissance when classical-style realistic paintings came back into fashion. The essay “Sexual Violence: Baroque to Surrealist” by John Loughery claims that the proliferation of nearly-nude women in Renaissance painting, so ubiquitous in art museums, comes from a more sinister tradition, describing that the paintings “speak volumes about the power factor inherent in the post-Renaissance tradition of the female nude, and, with their riveting straightforward glance, they point ahead to Manet’s Olympia, Zola’s Nana, and an avalanche of prose and imagery that affirms women’s comfort with their own sexuality, or male projections about that level of comfort” (Loughery 299). This essay sees these centuries-old masterpieces not as ethereal works of art that transcend sexuality, but as works of pornography that were designed to titillate the viewer and bypass the highly religious era they came from with their classical setting. Putting aside the oil brushstrokes, Edouard Manet-- and Pablo Picasso-- are simply depicting the nude body of a young woman. While in many cases this situation may have been consensual, Loughery claims that it would be hard to put aside the inherent power dynamic. Like a high-ranking executive of a film company taking advantage of a young woman, a famous and well-connected artist would certainly hold sway over an ambitious young girl. It would be hard to ignore the age difference between the muse and the artist, the often married man and the often-underage ingenue. Also, the idea that “male projections about that level of comfort” discounts the assumption that the women involved would be comfortable with her depiction. Women are often expected to be beautiful and available, Andrea Pino-Silva argues in the essay “I Believe You, Como Eres”, with their “success determined by the boys we charmed at our quinceaneras, of the lengths we took to prepare ourselves to be wives (Pino-Silva)”. There is a clear gender division, visible in every situation from a muse sitting for a portrait to a girl in a ball gown at a quinceanera. The man is expected to have power, he is masculine, the one who asks the girl to dance, the one who moves his model into the position he wants to paint. The woman is just beautiful and must work to keep herself that way. Not only can the artist use his own power and position to take advantage of the muse, he can choose to make her appear however he wants, like a posable doll-- he can make her look like she deserves whatever attention she gets.

Nowadays, the world of artist-and-muse shows itself differently, as the prominent art forms have shifted with time. The familiar story of a man exploiting a woman for creative gain is now most often associated with the film industry, in particular with director Harvey Weinstein and his actress victims. In the case of Weinstein, this is put in a very sinister light with Salma Hayek, who wanted to star in a movie about the artist Frida Kahlo but was forced to include sexual scenes in order to appease Weinstein’s own sexual desires. The muse and the model are very similar, in age and in public perception-- being a beautiful woman paid to look good and inspire works of art. One such model/muse is Kaori, a sitter for the Japanese photographer Araki Hirohiko. During the time of the #MeToo Movement in 2018 and 2019, when millions of women came out with their stories of sexual harassment and assault, Kaori told her story to the New York Times, describing how the photographer emotionally abused her. She describes Araki as treating her “like an object (Kaori)”, when “he asked [her] to do abnormal things, and [she] did them as though they were normal. (Kaori)” Kaori described an incident in which the photographer took nude photos of her, and then published and distributed them without her permission, as described within the New York Times article . It is clear that Araki has taken advantage of his position of power, both as an elderly man in a patriarchal Japanese culture, and in his successful career as an artist allowing him to take liberties with the normal steps of asking for permission and consulting her. This is an extremely similar scenario to Salma Hayek’s experience with Harvey Weinstein, as along with his sexual harassment, Hayek endured extreme emotional abuse. Hayek states in her op-ed for the New York Times that “the range of his persuasion tactics went from sweet-talking me to that one time when, in an attack of fury, he said the terrifying words, ‘I will kill you, don’t think I can’t.’” Like Picasso pushing the apple into Gilot’s mouth, and treating her like a poseable doll rather than a real woman, Kaori and Hayek face emotional abuse from creative men. In fact, the distribution of Kaori’s images could be compared to revenge porn, in which images that have been captured with consent of the body depicted are released without permission, usually for spiteful reasons. Revenge porn is considered a Class A misdemeanor in many states and is considered a form of sexual harassment. The fact that this is such a widespread problem, to the extent where it has been banned by Ireland, shows that the idea of distributing non-consensual nude images has evolved far beyond the Victorian boudoir images of young women resting in nothing but a necklace-- the “male projections about level of comfort” that Loughery mentioned, where male pleasure in viewing a woman’s body is more important than her own comfort and consent.

Women throughout history are often disbelieved, ignored, and left to their own anger and rage. Francoise Gilot channeled her anger into her own Cubist paintings, following a tradition started by Artemisia Gentileschi among other underappreciated female artists who suffered from sexual abuse. Gentileschi is best known for the iconic painting Judith Beheading Holofernes, another example of a Biblical motif being used to convey another meaning. In this image, Judith is bent over the man’s helpless body, her sleeves rolled up over her elbows. muscles outstretched to drag the sword through his neck. Blood spurts out gorily, as Judith is attended by her maidservant. Though the woman in the painting is Judith, it is likely Gentileschi as well-- a woman who was raped by her father’s friend as a teenager, and who was subjected to a humiliating rape trial, according to John Loughery’s essay. The story of Artemisia Gentileschi’s life shows how little her life differs from that of a modern-day rape victim, although Judith was finished in 1621. The painting becomes a revenge fantasy, a way for Gentileschi to release her pent-up rage, visible catharsis as Holofernes becomes her rapist, and her maidservant holding the basket for his severed head becomes a metaphor for the women who unite over a shared enemy. Pablo Picasso and Gentileschi’s rapist were both artists who took advantage of their success and power, in addition to their position as creative men-- as art has been considered a feminine pursuit, creative men may compensate for their choice of career by acting with masculine bravado. Rebecca Solnit writes about the patriarchy’s discomfort with women, and desire to erase feminine attributes among men.

If emotion must be killed, this is work that can make women targets. Less decent men hunt out vulnerability, because if being a man means learning to hate vulnerability, then you hate it in yourself and in the gender that has been carrying it for you. Girl and pussy have long been key insults used against boys and men, along with gay and faggot; a man must not be a woman. (Solnit 30)

#stuff i wrote for shcool

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lokihzra · 3 years

Text

My Heart’s On Fire For Your Love

Chapter 7: I don’t have a voice

Summary: Only a lucky few happen to find their soulmates. It was so rare that it became a myth. So why did Tony find an L on his wrist a couple hours after Loki threw him out a window and why did he agree to Loki and Thor moving in the tower?

Tony couldn’t deny his heart shattering in his chest, the shards cutting open his lungs in the process. He wanted to freak out, he wanted to yell, yell at Thor for not knowing, he wanted to go to Asgard and poke out Odin’s good eye but he didn’t, instead his eyes well up with tears as he mumbles out “what?”

Tony didn’t think one name would make him sober up completely. Like that time he was wasted after promising Pepper he would stop drinking and she fucking caught him. He sobered up in an instant at her pained expression, now they’re broken up all because of alcohol.

“yep” Loki hums before sitting back down and going back to his book, completely ignoring Tony’s presence like he was never there.

“why? why the fuck would he do this to you?” Tony asks a bit louder, not caring that his voice shakes because Loki doesn’t fucking do anything other than flip a page of his book “Loki why would he do this to you?”

Nothing.

No reaction.

“it wasn’t because of the invasion right?” Tony can’t help but ask “I mean he’s your da-“ Tony tries to make sense of why Odin wouldn’t do this but Loki catches him off guard by interrupting him.

“he’s not my father”

“I know but he raised you-“

Loki speaks louder this time “raising me does not make him my father, loving me and caring for me would make him my father and he’s never done either”

Tony frowns because that’s the exact reasoning he uses to disown Howard before he snaps out of it and realizes this is what Loki wants, to distract him from the real reason he’s here “Jesus you really do know how to use your tongue” Tony states “I almost forgot what we were talking about”

Loki sighs loudly, looking back at his books he says “I hate that you’re intelligent”

“well thanks and I hate that you actually live up to Silvertongue”

Loki looks up at Tony through his eyelashes “you have no clue Stark” Loki says lowly, his tone suggestive and it almost works as Tony's mind flickers over the possibilities.

He’s smarter than Loki thinks, he knows Lokis game “don’t flirt with me to try and make me forget about the fucking cuts all over your back from Odin”

Loki sighs loudly, placing his book on the bed beside him, Loki really does not want to say anything but Tony is fucking persistent and he could use this to his advantage. “promise not to tell Thor”

Tony frowns at that “he’s your brother”

“he’ll tell my mother and my sister and it will just go to shit after that”

“stop swearing” Tony complains with a groan and in reply Loki spits “fuck you, do you promise to keep it to yourself or not? ”

Tony hates promises just as much as he hates breaking them but there’s likely no other way he can get the God of Manipulation to tell him “I promise I won’t say anything”

Loki is quiet for a moment, taking in Tony’s clenched fists and jaw, his tapping foot and quick breathing “I called him Argr after I yelled at him for lying to me, being a terrible father and treating us all horribly, told him that he didn’t deserve us or Asgard” Tony won’t tell and if he does Loki will just throw him off the building.

“you’re not wrong about that” Tony says without missing a beat but quickly asks “what’s Argear?”

“Argr” Loki corrects “worst insult in the Norse language, I’m lucky he didn’t kill me”

“what the fuck is Asgard?”

Loki ignores him and continues “calling someone Argr results in a battle between the accused and accuser, if the accused proves himself a man then he can decide if the accuser dies or lives”

“so what does Argr mean?”

“unmanly, coward, informally it means having relations with a man”

Tony frowns, trying to wrap his head around it “so it’s like Asgard's equivalent of faggot?” Tony asks because it’s the only thing he can compare it to, except that shit doesn’t result in a fucking fight to the death.

You don’t know that

“if it is then why are you saying it?” Loki retorts quickly, hopefully shifting the conversation.

Without missing a beat Tony says “I’ve fucked with men as much as I’ve fucked with women”

“and you’re proudly telling me this?”

Tony shrugs “not in Asgard, people are free to love who they want here”

Loki huffs out a bitter laugh “I see why people like you”

Tony doesn’t ask. Loki wouldn’t tell him anyway. “people like me until they meet the real me” the only people that still like him after knowing him are Happy, Pepper and Rhodey. His own uncle can’t even stand him, Tony doesn’t blame him for that though, he did kill his son, even if it was self-defence.

“When will I meet him?” Loki asks with a raised brow.

Tony can’t help his eyebrows shooting up, he thought Loki would be smart enough to notice the shift “you’re talking to him”

Loki scans him for a moment before nodding with a hum “I like this Stark better” Loki states

Tony's brain short circuits “well I’m going to bed I guess”

“don’t tell anybody” Loki reminds him as he walks out and Tony calls out a quick yeah before heading to Thor's room.

There’s a promise not to say anything.

There’s no promise keeping him from writing it.

Tony backed out. He wouldn’t want Loki to do that shit to him so Tony couldn’t do it, he couldn’t break his promise, he can’t tell anyone. So how can he get them to know without Tony physically telling them? He can’t show them, he can’t write it, it’s the same as telling someone. Fuck he’s supposed to be a genius.

“Stark”

Tony snaps out of it to find Thor heading out to the helipad “when my brother wakes up can you tell him I will return tomorrow”

“of course” he replies too quickly and Thor frowns, noticing his bouncing leg and fidgeting hands.

“is something bothering you?” Thor asks “anything I can do to ease your anguish?”

Tony frowns even harder, his leg bouncing faster. How can he tell Thor, how can he make Thor figure it out? “the trail, Loki’s trail” he mutters “what happened?”

Thor frowns harder “is something wrong with my brother?”

“no no I’m just-“

“maybe I should stay” Thor nearly whispers

Tony’s eyes widen as he sits up “no no Thor, Loki is okay I just wanted to know what-“ Tony stops as it finally hits him “I gotta go”

“do what?” Thor asks as Tony gets up and walks to the elevator.

“ya know work stuff, sign papers, look over footage, make some calls, that boring stuff” he lies easily and he can tell Thor doesn’t buy it as the elevator doors close.

Thank god he’s catching on.

Turns out Thor didn’t catch on.

Tony was in the lab all day watching footage of the tower. Loki had the cuts since the day they showed up to the tower so it confirmed Tony's suspicions of it happening after the trial when Thor came to earth ahead of Loki to inform them of the situation. Loki has magic so that explains why he wasn’t weak or covered in blood.

But why the fuck is he hiding it?

May 19th, 2012

It happened accidentally.

Tony fell asleep during a movie on the couch in the living room. He fell asleep staring at the pictures of his back. So when Steve came in and went to wake him up, Steve freaked out before he could, making Tony literally fall off the couch from flinching so hard.

“what the fuck?” Steve yells

“no no Steve shhh” Tony hushes him loudly as he scrambles to his feet and snatches his phone out of Steve's hand before anything else.

“who the hell did that Tony?” Steve hisses, pointing at the phone in Tony's hand and on instinct the latter shoves it in his back pocket.

“Steve I’m fine” Tony almost yells as he turns around and lifts the back of his shirt a bit “see? I’m fine so stop fucking yelling” he demands and turns back around to face the superhuman.

Steves face hardens before he asks lowly “who did that?”

“It wasn’t done to me ” he says slowly, not knowing how to explain it to Steve without flat out saying it, knowing Steve likes things to be sugar-coated.

“what?”

“the bond” Tony says, hoping Steve could figure it out on his own.

“Loki, you got those from Loki?” he snarls, ready to go fuck him up but Tony quickly says “no Loki didn’t give them to me the bond did”

“What?” Steve frowns before his arms fold together and he asks lowly “does Thor know?”

“No” Tony admits and Steve immediately turns to the elevator. “no no no no Steve please don’t” Tony begs as he steps in front of the man “I promised Loki and-“ he trails off, almost mentioning Odin.

Steve’s gaze hardens as he swerves around Tony and marches out, ignoring Tony’s pleas.

Tony was anxious as shit. He was pacing, biting his nails and constantly checking the time to see how long it took for Loki to come and kill him.

Bruce and Natasha simply sat and watched until a glow of green lights up the room for a split second and Loki appears out of nowhere yelling “you fucking told them?”

Tony holds his hands up in a submissive manner as he steps behind the bar “no I didn’t tell-“

“so what did you write it?” Loki roars as he marches over to Tony and thankfully doesn’t join him behind the bar,

“no Loki-“

“you said you wouldn’t say anything”

“and I didn’t”

“I trusted you with this-” Loki yells even louder because he never trusts anyone, ever “-what if I told them about-“ Loki trails off with a groan, running his hands through his hair. Loki wouldn’t go that low, Stark may go that low but Loki won't. “now my whole fucking family is gonna split up because of me”

“because of Odin” Tony corrects, stunning Loki into silence “it’s not your damn fault he can’t take a fucking insult”

Loki drops his hand from his hair with a sigh and says “my sister will most likely show up with my brother”

“Yeah I heard the Bifrost” Tony mumbles

“you don’t know how badly I want to smash this glass-“ Loki points to the window beside them “-with your head”

“get used to it” Tony retorts without missing a beat.

"seriously you're going to have to" Natasha butts in "I've known him for a little over a year and the urge is still as strong as ever" she says lightheartedly.

"I think I might like you" Loki states, Natashas jaw falling open and he resists smiling by turning back to Tony and asking “if you didn’t tell them then how does Rogers know?”

Tony presses his lips together as he digs out his phone, Loki watching silently as he scrolls through it until Tony throws it down on the counter, the phone nearly sliding off the edge but Loki quickly catches it.

Loki ignores his stomach throbbing with his heartbeat as he stares down at the phone showcasing wounds on Tony's smooth tan back. He simply slides it back across the counter “delete that and don’t show my brother and especially not my sister” he demands before walking to the stairs.

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