#Modern hair ken

[thelivesofourdolls]

Some of our older dolls.

[kay9leo]

#MCtober2024 - Week 3 Amortentia Potion pt 1

Based on @lamieboo's #MCtober2024 event (click on #MCtober for more info).

Amortentia Potion To Sebastian, Iñaki smells like the following:

1: Freshly Brewed Coffee/ Hot Chocolate

Iñaki is known to drink some coffee -or as she likes to say it- café con leche in the morning. Not so much because of her American culture and using it to wake her up like her British peers like to assume, but more so because of her Latino upbringing. Her Latino-ness shows more when she is drinking coffee at night with a small roll of bread and cheese to eat. No one knows how she can sleep at night after drinking coffee in the evening. Sebastian is rather shock to hear she's been drinking coffee since she was a toddler. If Iñaki isn't drinking café con leche, she is mostly likely enjoying a cold Scottish morning or evening with chocolate caliente - not the American style of coco powder and hot milk, but from a chocolate tablet she brought from her parents' homeland and hot water.

When she is drink either café con leche or chocolate caliente it's one of the few times Sebastian catches Iñaki being still, content and happy at Hogwarts. The hot beverages' scents is something that makes Sebastian think of her. 2. Mellowsweet

If no one has what is the canon smell of mellowsweet, I would like to imagine it smells like a sweet citrus mint with a dash of chamomile...like a chamomile mojito. Iñaki is always up doing Merlin trials and sometimes drags Sebastian with her, so she always carries mellowsweet around with her. It's one of the smells Sebastian always associates Iñaki with since she always has it on her. Iñaki sometimes likes to chew on it for the minty citrus taste it leaves in her mouth so after the two do have their first kiss at some point in the future, all Sebastian could taste is mellowsweet.

3. The Beach/Sea Air

Iñaki misses home, especially the beaches she went to on Long Island. Often Sebastian would find her hanging out in the beach portion of the vivarium in the Room of Requirements and would sit next to her, just listening to the waves. Or she would ask Sebastian if he wanted to go to the coastal beach in Scotland, despite how cold it can get. The beach always makes her feel like at home and it's where she would spill whatever is bothering her or her life secrets to him without any pushing. There's just something about the beach that relaxes her. It's also where she is the most happiest whenever she feels down. Sometimes the two would just sit in the vivarium beach, listening to the waves splash, the seagulls flying and wheeling as they watch the sunset (this is one memory both would later use for their patronus - moreso Sebastian than Iñaki). The one constant all beaches have is the salty tangy air that reminds Sebastian of Iñaki

...

More on Iñaki "MC" Martinez Cariaga

[streetfarterturdstrike]

I love that they made a point of putting body hair on Zangief and Rashid because it’s means the rest of the guys are getting waxed

[jellybonbons]

What You Need

Kenji Sato x fem!reader

CW: 18+ (mdni), sub!ken, dom!reader, established relationship, lots of pet names, pure filth, possessive behaviour, praise kink, handjob, fingering, strap-on blowjob, deep-throat, slight breath play, pegging, anal sex.

Words: 2.7k

AN: first ken fic and yes I spent my time making it visually pleasing cus why not

The Weeknd - What you need

Ken Sato radiates confidence and cockiness on screen, captivating audiences with his bold persona. However, behind closed doors, he reveals a much different side, far from the confident image people envision. Away from the spotlight, he’s just Kenji– an emotional, compassionate, and gentle guy.

After the exhausting press conference, Kenji finally retreats to his sanctuary. As he steps into his sleek, modern bedroom, the weight of the day settles on his shoulders. The room embraces a woody aesthetic, blending minimalist design with warm tones, natural textures, and soft ambient lighting that envelopes him in a calming atmosphere. Floor-to-ceiling windows frame a view of the night sky, allowing the stars to cast a serene glow inside, further enhancing the tranquil mood.

In the dimly lit room, you wait for him, lounging on his king-sized bed, dressed in a matching silk robe and nightgown, softly scrolling through your tablet. With your presence, Kenji’s facade melts away, revealing the vulnerability hidden beneath his public identity. Crossing the room, his tired eyes soften when they meet yours.

"Long day?" you ask softly, putting the tablet away on the nightstand.

Kenji nods, sinking onto the bed and resting his head on your lap. “You have no idea,” he murmurs against your thighs.

You gently run your fingers through his hair, the soft strands slipping between your fingertips. “Is there anything I can do to help?” you inquire, your voice fills with concern.

Kenji looks up at you with pleading eyes. “Just one thing,” he whispers, his voice barely audible.

“What is it?” you utter, leaning closer to hear him better.

“A kiss, please,” his lips pouting slightly.

Smiling fondly, you cup his face in your hands and press a soft, lingering kiss on his lips. “Better?”

Kenji chuckles softly, his eyes twinkling with mischief. “Actually, no,” he admits with a playful grin. “I think I need more.”

“You’re insatiable,” you tease, leaning in to give him another kiss, this time with passion.

Kenji sits up, pulling you closer into his arms. His hands gently caress your back as he whispers between kisses, “You spoil me, that’s why.” The intensity between you grows, turning into a full-blown make-out session, passion igniting between you both.

As the kiss deepens, Kenji pulls away slightly, his gaze locking with yours. His voice is filled with neediness and a hint of vulnerability as he murmurs, “Baby, I need you,” his words are a plea tinged with longing. You stroke his cheek tenderly, meeting his gaze with concern and affection.

“What do you need, darling?” your fingers tracing soothing circles on his cheek.

Kenji’s eyes soften, his hold tightening around you. “I want you to take care of me,” he whispers. He leans in, pressing his forehead against yours, seeking solace and closeness in your embrace.

From the way he holds you and the tremble in his voice, you understand exactly what he needs.

You stroke his cheek gently and grinning. “Let’s get you comfortable,” you murmur, planting a tender kiss on his forehead.

He nods silently, watching you with affectionate eyes as you rise from the bed. You walk over to his walk-in closet, your steps quiet in the dimly lit room. Opening the closet door, you glance back at him over your shoulder.

“Take your clothes off, Ken,” you say softly yet commandingly. “I’ll be there in a minute.”

“Yes, ma’am.”

Kenji's gaze lingers on you for a moment longer, filled with a mix of desire and anticipation. He begins by shrugging off his jacket, letting it slide off his shoulders and onto the floor with a soft thud. Next, he unclasps his watch and carefully sets it aside on the nightstand, the metal band cool against his skin. 

He peels off his T-shirt, revealing the strong lines of his chest and the subtle definition of his muscles. Each article of clothing he sheds seems to heighten the tension in the room; the air thick with longing. He unbuttons his jeans and steps out of them, standing in just his boxers briefs.

Inside the small room, you quickly secure the leather harness over your underwear, not bothering to undress further because you don’t want to waste any more time — Kenji needs you. Your nightgown is short enough that it won’t hinder any movement, allowing you to move freely. With practised efficiency, you adjust the straps to ensure they aren’t too tight. Finally, you attach the pink dildo to the harness, making sure everything is in place before stepping out to rejoin him.

As you step out of the closet, Kenji's eyes widen with a mix of surprise and arousal. His breath catches in his throat, and you can see the desire intensifying in his gaze. The sight of you, still wearing your nightgown with the harness and dildo securely in place, ignites a fire within him. He shifts slightly, unable to hide his growing excitement.

His vulnerability melts into raw need, and he reaches out for you, his hands trembling with anticipation. "You look incredible," Kenji breathes, his voice husky with desire. "Can’t believe you’re my woman.”

"I know, darling," you reply softly as you approach him. "And I’m all yours.”

Kenji nods eagerly, his eyes never leaving yours. "Please," he whispers, his voice filled with longing. "I’m so tired from today.”

You cup his face in your hands, leaning in to press a gentle kiss to his lips. "I've got you," you murmur reassuringly. "Just relax and I’ll take care of everything."

With a gentle but firm touch, you push him down onto the bed, guiding him until his back rests against the headboard. You climb onto the bed, straddling his lap, your eyes locking onto his with a mix of desire and tenderness. Leaning in, you capture his lips in a deep kiss. The kiss quickly intensifies, hands gripping his shoulders as you bite his lower lip, silently asking for entrance. 

Kenji parts his lips willingly, a soft gasp escaping him. Your tongue slips into his mouth with a blend of dominance and passion. His hands grip your waist, holding you close as you both lose yourselves in the kiss.

Breaking the kiss, you trail your lips along his jawline, nipping and planting soft kisses down to his neck. You can feel his pulse quicken under your touch. Kenji’s breath hitches, and his voice comes out in a needy whisper, “Hurry up and put it in already.”

You pause, looking into his eyes with a knowing grin. "Impatient, are we?" you tease gently, continuing to place kisses along his neck.

“Yes, been thinking ‘bout you,” he breathes, his eyes half-lidded with desire as he looks up at you. 

You chuckle softly, your manicured fingers tracing gentle patterns on his chest. "We can't rush things, Kenny," you murmur, your voice both soothing and commanding. "I haven’t prepped you yet."

Kenji lets out a frustrated, yet needy sigh, his hands gripping your waist tighter. With a tender smile, you press another kiss to his lips. "I promise, it will be worth the wait," you reassure him as your fingers trail lower.

Slowly, you pull his boxer briefs down. His aching cock springs free, standing proudly, the sight of it sending a thrill through you. You lick your lips at the sight, feeling the heat radiating from him.

You lean over to the nightstand, opening the drawer and searching for the lube. Your fingers brush against the nearly empty tube, and with a sigh of mild frustration, you pull it out. Determined to make it work, you squeeze out the remaining lube onto your fingers, carefully gathering every last drop.

Gently, you spread his legs, positioning yourself between them. You begin to massage the cold gel into his anus with careful strokes, your other hand slowly working up and down his length. The combination of sensations makes him gasp, his body shuddering under your touch.

You slide one finger inside him, feeling him tense momentarily before he relaxes into the intrusion. His breath comes in ragged gasps as you work a second finger in, stretching and preparing him. Leaning in, you capture his lips in a kiss, silencing his moans with your mouth. 

As you press a third finger inside, he groans into the kiss, the sound vibrating against your lips. He grips your silk robe tightly, his hands clutching the fabric with a mix of urgency and need. His body arches into yours as you take him to the brink of ecstasy.

Knowing his body so well, you sense he’s about to come, so you pull your hands away, eliciting a whine from him at the sudden absence of your touch. You glance at his hole and realise the gel isn’t quite enough for him to take you yet. A smirk curls your lips as you caress his jaw, an idea forming.

“Suck my dildo, baby.”

Kenji’s eyes widen with a mix of surprise and excitement. He nods eagerly, his breath coming in shallow pants as he anticipates what’s to come.

He pushes you to make space for him, his hands gripping your thighs as he leans forward, taking the pink dildo into his mouth. His lips and tongue work eagerly, coating it with saliva as you watch, your own arousal building with each movement.

“That’s it,” you coo, combing your fingers through his hair. “Make sure it’s nice and wet for you.”

Kenji fervently responds to your praise, his eyes shining with desire and appreciation. He gets off on your approval, each encouraging word making him suck harder, his mouth working expertly over the dildo. He moans around it, the vibrations adding to the growing heat between you both.

“You’re doing so well, Kenji. So eager to please me,” you purr, your fingers tightening in his hair. 

His eyes flicker up to meet yours as he redoubles his efforts, his tongue swirling around the tip,  lips sliding up and down the silicon shaft. The sight of him – the Ken Sato, so submissive and devoted – sends a wave of possessiveness through you.

You’re suddenly reminded of the press conference earlier, where one of the journalists had been flirting with him openly. The memory ignites a flicker of jealousy and anger within you, fueling your possessiveness. Without thinking, you push his head down onto the dildo, gripping his hair tightly.

"That's right," you say breathlessly, your voice edged with a mix of authority and jealousy. "No one else gets to have or see you like this."

Kenji's eyes widen slightly, but he doesn't resist. Instead, he works harder, his mouth moving more eagerly over the dildo, saliva dribbling onto the bedsheets.

"You’re my good boy," you murmur again, a possessive glint in your eye. "Only I can give you what you need.”

You push the dildo deeper into his mouth, watching as his nose brushes against the leather of your harness. Tears well up in his eyes, but he doesn't pull away, his hands gripping your thighs for support. You hold him there for a moment, savouring the power you have over him.

One…two…three…four…five…six…seven. 

Kenji's eyes look up at you, wide and glassy. His tears spill over as he struggles to breathe, but his desire to please you keeps him in place. You finally ease up after seven seconds, allowing him to take a gasping breath.

You wipe the saliva from his chin with a gentle touch. "You did great, Kenny. Proud of you.”

Kenji's breath hitches, his chest rising and falling with emotion. "Thank you," he manages with a hoarse voice. 

“You're welcome, sweetheart," you whisper, your voice firm yet tender. "Now, lay down on your back for me."

Kenji obeys without hesitation, shifting to lie back on the bed, his eyes never leaving yours. You grab a pillow and slide it under his hips, positioning him perfectly. You watch as he settles, his body displaying eagerness. You position yourself over him, eyes scanning his body, admiring his form as you prepare to continue.

You angle the dildo at his entrance, teasing the tip in first, watching his reaction. His eyes almost roll back, and a low groan escapes his lips. Slowly, you push yourself in, feeling the resistance give way as his body accepts the intrusion. The mixture of his saliva and the lube allows for a smooth glide.

He moans loudly as you fill him, the sound echoing in the dimly lit room. His hands grip the sheets, knuckles turning white as he adjusts to the sensation.

“You’re taking me so well, baby.”

His moans deepen, his body arching towards yours, seeking more of your touch. You lean down, your lips brushing against his ear. "Do you like that?" you whisper, your breath hot against his skin. "Tell me how it feels."

"Feels...so good," he pants. “Can you move, please?”

Without hesitation, you begin to thrust into him, your movements slow and deliberate at first. The friction builds as you move your hips against his, each thrust eliciting a gasp or moan from his parted lips. His hands find your hips, trying to pull you closer, deeper, as his need grows more urgent.

The room fills with the sounds of your bodies moving together, the soft creak of the bed, and his breathless whispers of encouragement. "More," he pleads, his voice thick with desire. "Please, more."

You quicken your pace, each thrust becoming more powerful and precise, hitting just the right spots to drive him wild. The look of pure ecstasy on his face fuels your own arousal, and you lean down to capture his lips in a searing kiss, muffling his cries of pleasure as you take him to the edge.

"Harder," he murmurs against your lips, his voice a desperate plea. The silk robe clings to your skin, becoming an annoyance in the heat of the moment. With a frustrated growl, you almost rip the delicate fabric off, tossing it aside without a second thought.

Now free of the robe, you feel the cool air against your heated skin, heightening your senses. You grip his hips firmly, your nails digging into his flesh as you increase the intensity of your thrusts. Each movement sends waves of pleasure coursing through both of you.

His hands clutch at your back, sliding the nightgown off your shoulders until it pools around your hips. His nails leave faint trails on your skin as he tries to ground himself in the overwhelming sensations. You lean down again, your breath hot against his ear, "Who’s making you feel good, hm?"

"Just you ma’am…please, don’t stop," his voice shaky with desire. 

Your movements become even more frenzied, driven by the sight of his pleasure and the sound of his desperate pleas. The nightgown, now bunched around your waist, adds tantalising friction as you thrust into him. His head tilts back, exposing his neck to your kisses and nips, each contact sending shivers through his body. 

You admire the marks blooming on his skin, every bite and hickey, a visible claim that he belongs to you. His eyes flutter shut at every thrust you make. “Eyes on me, pretty boy,” you command.

He struggles to comply, his eyes wide and glassy as they lock onto yours. He can feel himself getting closer, so you move your hand to his aching cock, helping him with his release. The combination of your touch on his cock and the way your dildo hits the right spot sends him into overdrive. 

Kenji's breathing becomes erratic, his body trembling under the intensity. With a final, powerful thrust, he comes hard, his release coating his torso in thick spurts. The room is filled with the sound of his cries of pleasure mingling with your heavy breaths.

As the waves of his climax subside, exhaustion quickly takes over. His eyes close, and he falls into a deep, satiated sleep. You chuckle softly, pressing a tender kiss to his forehead. Carefully, you pull out, eliciting an unconscious whimper from him, and begin to clean him up. You wipe away the sweat and arousal with wet wipes, ensuring he's comfortable and clean before pulling the covers over his body.

Watching him for a moment, a sense of satisfaction washes over you. You brush a few strands of hair from his forehead, “Rest well, darling,” you whisper then quietly leave the bed to deal with your own...problem.

[silentmoths]

A lick and a promise

Its been *squints* Seven months since i cooked.

god damn its been seven whole ass months CRIES

Boothill got me so fkn good i cant even BEGIN to explain why he's such a comfort character for me ok he just IS.

Boothill x Reader (fem but it's really only mentioned in regards to anatomy.)

NSFW

Enemies to Lovers (kinda?), Smut, Hurt/comfort (kinda?), Oral sex, fingering, boothill is a gd kendoll (sorry boothill genatalia nation i just...wanted to write this like he was a ken doll LEAVE ME-)

7k words, NOT PROOFREAD

The first time you run into the Galaxy Ranger known as Boothill, you’re not sure what to make of him.

You were just an unsuspecting casualty, the pilot, nothing more. Flying ships for the IPC had to beat minimum wage, right? This was your first real gig with them, something a little more secure.

If you managed to make it off pier point without having a gun aimed at you that is.

A…cowboy. You’d heard about them, of course, but seeing one in this day and age was almost unheard of unless you travelled to planets far out in the west, ones untouched by the IPC and their ‘modernizations’.

Yet this cowboy also seemed to be touched by said modernizations, considering almost all of him was made of metal. Hell, all of him might be synthetic, nanotechnology was a terrifying thing, it could eat away the organic and replace it with the inorganic, mimicking skin and its blemishes, hair and all its different shades, like the curtain of black and white you see before you. 

“Han’s where I can fudgin’ see em.” He warns quietly, pistol pointed directly between your eyes. You do as he asks, why wouldn’t you? You weren’t being paid enough to put your life on the line for…whatever the hell you were carrying, you didn’t know, the IPC didn’t enforce ledger-checks- You tell the cowboy as much when he asks.

“Yeah that tracks.” he mutters with a roll of his visible eye. “Lookit’ you, still wet behind the darned ears.” 

“D-do I get a pardon i-if I told you it was my first day on the job?” you manage to squeak out, a terrible habit really, opening your mouth in times you should really stay silent…but the cowboy cracks a grin, a very sharp-toothed grin.

“Ah heck, really?” He chuckles, shaking his head as he spins his pistol in his hand and tucks it away into its holster. “Look I aint’ got no beef with ya. ya ‘ aint even wearin’ an IPC uniform-” “C-contract work.” You cut in with your explanation, only scolding yourself after the fact for, once again, interrupting the one with the gun. “The IPC really gettin that desperate, huh?” He snorts, his robotic fingers flexing as he himself goes to check the ledger, it was obvious he’d done this a few times…perhaps thats why the IPC had started hiring a third party, someone new for him to kill.

And yet he doesn’t kill you. 

He ties you up, sure, but he’s not an entire ass about it, he even apologises when he pulls the rope a little too tight and you squint.

“S’a formality.” He mumbles as he ties the knot tight “y’understand.”

“I guess…Just…thanks for not killing me I guess, Mr.Cowboy.” You shrug, perhaps you were still in a little bit of shock, perhaps you were coping with humour and ‘funny’ comments…perhaps, inside, you wanted to cry because of course of all the times to be held at gunpoint it was your first day working for the IPC.

“Name’s Boothill.” He corrects. Boothill, huh? You’d read about that…some eons old name for gunslinging cowboys who should have been dead. 

After you had been discovered, set free, and promptly fired, you decide to look up this ‘Boothill’ character; you find little other than his bounty…whoever he was, he kept himself pretty closed off…made sense for a galaxy ranger.

-

The second time you encounter Boothill, you’re working on a satellite array. It’s a shit job, it was freezing cold out here, and the welding masks given to you and your coworkers by your bosses were cheap, low quality, offering little protection from the welding torch and its bright, concentrated glare.

After your firing from pier point, no other freighting company was willing to take you on, and in a desperate attempt to get some damned food into your belly, you’d taken this job on some far out meteorite, repairing this shitty, run down satellite so the IPC could extend their reach further.

If the bosses had bothered to do a background check, they would have seen the unfortunate mark next to your name.

’Banned from all positions within IPC jurisdiction’ 

But considering the shit pay, shit hours, and shit accommodation? The old hand’s out here didn’t really care much for the ‘official’ rules; so long as you weren’t being actively hunted.

There was no sun out here, so every few hours there was a mandatory UV break, in which you all got to return to the little sleeping pods that were nothing but glorified transport containers with a wall sectioning off one third to make a bathroom; just to sit beneath a UV bulb. 

Whoever had lived in this one before you had stuck up a picture of a beach on the wall you had to stare at beneath the lamp, and faintly, you wonder if they ever made it there- or had they just keeled over dead from overwork? That seemed more likely, considering nothing had been cleaned out of your pod when you’d arrived. 

As you bask in your shitty, simulated sun, an explosion wracks the entire facility, sending you toppling to the floor as the world spins, cracks apart, opens like the gnashing teeth of some horrific space creature.

Was it a space creature? Had the meteorite collided with something it shouldn’t have? You didn’t want to find out, but you sure as fuck weren’t about to stay here and probably die once the oxygen field around the place sputtered out. The emergency guide tape’s you’d been forced to watch are nothing to help against the real thing, a real emergency. There are sirens blaring, the stark white light’s had all died, replaced by that infuriatingly anxiety inducing red as you struggle to put your space suit on. 

Just make it to a shuttle, they weren’t far, thats all you had to do.

It’s a mantra you tell yourself as the ceiling above you begins to crack and crumble, your time here was up. 

As you wrench open the door to your pod, you collide with someone. Considering you yourself looked like a glorified marshmallow in the emergency suit, you certainly weren't expecting the person you collided with to be as…hard as they were, solid like steel to the point you’re sent toppling back and unceremoniously onto your back, like a turtle.

A familiar pistol is pointed at your helmet.

No fucking way.

Boothill stands there, grin on his face and a gun in yours as he looks you up and down before howling with laughter. “Now what in the hay is that?” he wheezes as you struggle, only to stop when you push the visor of your helmet up, revealing a face he recalls. “No fudgin’ way-”

“You again!” You screech, flailing your limbs as you attempt to stand in this…ungainly suit. “What the fuck are you doing here now!?”

“I could ask you the same mother forkin’ question!” He barks back, yet despite it all, he withdraws the pistol and even shows some mercy, reaching down to pull you back onto your feet “the fork you doin here?” 

“Well, someone got me fired from my last job!” you snark at him “and now it looks like I'm out of another, what did you do!?” “Blew up tha’ satellite!” He chuckles as if he’d just won at an arcade game and not caused millions of credits in damages. You open your mouth to…you don’t even know- Shout? Scold a wanted criminal? Beg for mercy? When the world tilts again, the sound of rock cracking and metal creaking fills your senses; resulting in you simply screaming out of fear. 

This was it, this was where you died. On a rock, in the middle of space, blown to smithereens by a cowboy. Except, the cowboy reaches down, and for a moment you think he’s going to kill you, just to stop the screaming. Instead, he grabs your arm and yanks you upright without a word, tugging you along behind him like you weighed nothing in this stupid marshmallow safety suit. (perhaps, to a cyborg, you didn’t weigh anything.)

Boothill cares little for the smoke and the flames, and you are just a leaf in his wind, guided through it all with scary precision until there is suddenly nothing and you realise what he’d just done.

This fucking cowboy galaxy ranger had just leaped off of the edge of the meteorite, dragging you along with him. 

Correction; this is how you die, once you left the gravitational field, you’d just be stuck…floating in the void of space forever…no one would ever find your body-

Before your thought can finish, you crash into something hard, a ship, you realise, you had fallen into the open loading hatch of a ship, unlike boothill who landed on his feet, you’re simply a pile on the floor.

You hear the cowboy laugh as he turns to look at you, and you thank the fact that you’re face down from keeping your likely red, teary face from his scrutiny. 

“Y’alright down there?” He asks.

“Peachy.” you mutter back, your muscles ached, but the adrenaline was already beginning to wane, suddenly the suit felt…heavy, impossibly heavy as you listen to the sound of the ship’s hatch closing. “Why’d you save me?”

Boothill thinks on it for a moment. Why had he saved you? It wasn’t really his M.O, saving people, especially when they worked for the IPC…he supposes a part of him felt a little bad… you hadn’t been working for them directly last time…and because of his stunt, you’d lost that job and had resorted to working for them in this backwater shithole of an array. 

“Eh, Y’aint worth killin.” he responds after a moment “S’not like you’re the mother fudger I’m looking for anyways.” 

Something about the way he says it…stings. Not worth killing? 

Slowly you sit up, a terribly ungraceful affair in this stupid space suit as you pull the helmet off entirely and toss it to the floor, there was no point hiding the tears anymore. 

“Wh- hey now! What’s got in yer’ boot?” Boothill balks at your teary face “what’s tha’ matter?”

You hate how stupid you must look, crying, red in the face…embarrassing really. But after the scare you’d just had, you don’t have the forwithall to keep your composure anymore.

“Whats the matter?” you mutter, staring at the cold, metal floor of the ship “what’s the matter is that you have single handedly managed to lose me not one, but TWO JOBS!” 

You don’t mean to shout, really, you should be thanking him for saving your life. 

“I’m BANNED from working for the IPC!” you cry “I wasn’t even meant to be working here! But where else am I meant to go!? EVERY job is somehow overseen by some division of the IPC, I can’t work anywhere else! Now you say I’m not even worth killing!?”

Boothill stares, the gears turning as he simply takes the emotional vitriol thrown his way. It had been…a long time since he’d found himself faced with this kind of problem.

“Aw shirt…” he mutters, realising his words had only worsened the situation. He takes a knee, pulling his hat off as he watches, he sees the way you’re shaking, your fingers flexing; he might be ‘old fashioned’, but he could recognize a panic attack. “C’mere, let's get this great forkin marshmallow suit off ya.” 

You don’t even have the faculties to push him away as cold, robotic fingers begin tugging away at the velcro, the zippers and the straps. Breathing was getting harder, everything ached. Only once the galaxy ranger had pulled you free of the confines of that damned suit could you expand your chest properly. Too small, you realised, the suit you’d been given was way too small.

“Easy, easy, easy.” Boothill mutters as he sits you down “jus’ breathe.” 

Easy for him to say, did a cybernetic cowboy even need to breathe?

He could see the struggle, but what the hell was he meant to do about it? It wasn’t wrong..the IPC had their fingers in so many pies… finding a job untouched by them? That’s like finding a needle in a haystack. 

It wasn’t often Boothill felt…guilty. But somehow…you’d managed it.

“Aw c’mon, don’t gimme the waterworks.” he sighs “Look…ah’ll admit I forked up your job prospects, I’ll fudgin’ take that responsibility… will ya at least lemme see if I can help?”

“What can you do!?” You cry at him “If the IPC catches wind that I’ve somehow been caught up with you again-”

“Lemme take ya to a planet the IPC don’t care ‘bout.” He cuts in suddenly, an idea forming in his mind. “Been there plenty, they’re good folk, they’ll help ya.. Ya just…gotta trust me.” A planet untouched by the IPC? That seemed like a pipe dream…

“Impossible.” you mutter “any planet the IPC finds, it conquers.”

Boothill grins, that same toothy grin you remember from your first encounter with him. “I know, right? But this one? This one’s special.”

Eyama II was a small planet with little in the way of resources the IPC wanted or needed, a dwarf planet no less, nothing but a speck of dust floating through their air filters. It was a self-sufficient, homely type place…if he was being honest with himself, it’s where he would want to retire if he ever saw his goal through…living the simple life he used to know before the IPC had ripped it from him. 

He knows it’s not the most…elegant solution, but he knew some fine folk there, some fine folk who might just be willing to help the poor outcast he’d created. -

It’s a long trip. It had to be if it was out of the IPC’s gaze…but that did mean a long trip with Boothill.

In a tiny two person at most ship.

You didn’t really know what to expect, if he’d just tie you up and put you in the corner…but as it turns out…he’s somewhat hospitable… ok more than somewhat.

After you’d calmed enough to be reasoned with, he’d handed you a bottle of nondescript nature. Without much thinking, you’d taken a swig, eyes widening at the distinctly alcoholic taste. It wasn't anything strong like whiskey, but it was enough of a shock.

“Malt juice.” He clarifies as he takes a seat at the helm, setting the warp drive “figured it’d help calm ya nerves.” You blink down at the bottle before slowly taking another, more temperate sip.

It…wasn’t bad…actually it was pretty good. It burned your throat just enough to keep you in the present.

You both talk…small things, you ask him how he knew of this planet, and tells you about all the planets he’d visited that weren’t under the IPC’s thumb, how all of them were nice, simple places.

He tells you that he thinks you’d like Eymaya II, he thinks everyone would like Eymaya II. It had rolling hills and green valley’s. The people were mostly farmers, ranchers, common folk just going through the motions to get by, but not in the same nihilistic sort of way most did. Good, honest living, as he says.

Part of you wonders if there ever was a time this ranger worked a good honest life, if this whole…cowboy thing was a facade, or if it was real, remnants of a past he couldn’t return to. You’re not sure if it’s his conversation, the malt juice, or both, but you eventually begin to open up, about your home life, about your terrible habit of cutting into conversations when you were nervous, all of it. 

And when you begin to fall asleep? Your head nodding slowly where you sat, you feel a cold, metal hand rest on your shoulder.

“C’mon, you need ta’ rest.” He tells you, guiding you to the cot that looked seldom, if at all used.

For a wanted criminal who had put you out of two jobs and nearly killed you both times…he was surprisingly kind.

-

He wasn’t wrong about this planet. It was beautiful, the air was fresher than you could ever recall, living in the city.

Apparently, the look on your face says as much. Boothill chuckles, tilting his head softly as he watches you take it all in. “Told ya ye’d like it.” He hums, something in his mechanical chest whirring with..pride perhaps? Satisfaction? He wasn’t entirely sure, but seeing a face that, so far, all he’d seen from was fear and upset finally show…wonder…it felt good. He wanted to see it more, perhaps even a smile one day. 

He takes you to the inn, sets you up with Jodie, an elderly woman who had been around the block quite a few times, she didn’t put up with Boothill’s antics, more like…a curmudgeonly aunt at first as she barks at him for not calling in sooner, only for it all to melt away into an almost familial warmth as the cowboy explains himself, explains you.

“now child I know you did not lose this poor thing not one but TWO jobs!” She scolds, hands on her hips. 

There is a lick of satisfaction as you watch boothill shrink beneath the innkeeper’s rage. 

“Donchu’ worry hon, we’ll getcha set up here, somewhere this block for brains can’t accidentally getchu fired. Only thing that’ll do that around here is laziness…you aint lazy, are you?” she asks, turning to you and squinting her beady, aged eyes at you, making you stiffen up as well.

“N-no ma'am!” you bark instantly “I-I promise to work hard and earn my keep!”

This atleast, seems to settle her some, and before you know it, you have a hot meal and an ice cold drink in front of you, and you want to cry again.

You actually feel…somewhat sad when boothill has to leave…anxiety twisting in your gut… would you really be okay here? Would you survive? 

But he pats you on the shoulder and grins, and something about it is…comforting.

Something about it made you want to try.

-

It’s five years until you see Boothill again.

Jodie had grown too old to continue running the inn, and somehow, against all odds, it was you who had taken over. The entire place was yours, and you were happy. 

Not a day goes by where you don’t wonder how you ended up here, but then you recall, the enigmatic cyborg cowboy who had hijacked your ship, and then blown up a satellite array.

Somehow, your outlook on him had turned from disdain to…a strange sort of affection. The frigid anger had melted away, and what replaced it was a sense of…thankfullnes for what he’d done for you. Working here, away from the almost all-encompassing reach of the IPC had opened your eyes to just how…corporate everything felt, and how it so desperately wasn't you. 

It’s a late evening, you’re closing up for the night, the bar had emptied of all it’s usual late-staying regulars, and those who had rooms rented for the evening had already retired. 

You’re polishing a few glasses when the door swings open.

“Well now, there’s a face I ain’t seen in a forkin long time.” 

The voice is familiar, and has you turning, a small smile tugging at your lip. A mixture of feelings racing through your chest.

“Well well, come to let me collect your bounty, Sir?” you snicker, placing the glass you’d just polished beneath the malt juice tap to pour him a glass.

Boothill laughs, sauntering in with the swagger you remember as he drops into the stool closest to you. “How’ve you been, Boothill?” you ask him, setting the glass in front of him and waving away his credits. You owed him one drink, atleast, “what’ve you been up to?”

The galaxy ranger snorts, throwing some of his long hair over his shoulder “How long ya’ got there, sweetheart? S’gonna be a long story.”

“I own the place now, and we’re closed, so all the time in the world.” you hum, deciding to pour yourself a glass as well after locking the door. “Shoot, really? What happened to ol’ jodie?” He asks, voice tinged with legitimate concern as you drop into the barstool beside him.

“She’s fine, she’s fine..just old is all.” You assure him, finding a little comfort in the relief that washes over his features.

“Ah, fork don't scare a guy like that.” He sighs, running a hand through his hair “thought Jodie had up n’ left us.”

“Nah, she’s got a while on her yet.” you snort, taking a sip of your drink.

The conversations run long into the night, catching up, listening to the thing’s he’d done, places he’d seen…IPC operations he’d torn apart at the seams. He listens to you too, as you tell him about how things have been here, catching him up on anyone he asked about. It was like talking to an old friend. You weren't sure…what boothill was to you…a friend? An acquaintance? It was…complicated. 

More malt juice enters your systems, you ask if it actually has an affect on him.

“You know…being a cyborg and all..” you mumble, feeling a distinct warm dusting to your cheeks as the malt settles. 

Instead of responding with words, the galaxy ranger reaches out and takes your hand into his. He feels…

Warm.

“You tell me, darlin.” He chuckles after a moment, watching you though half-lidded eyes. You barely even notice, more curious about how the alcohol affected him. Without even thinking, you run your fingers along his exposed arm; you weren’t going crazy, he was warm, almost humanly so. 

Your fingers continue to wander without much thought until they brush along his jawline; the sudden transition from steel to skin is what finally snaps you out of your own thoughts, pulling back with a squeak.

“O-Oh aeons I’m sorry!” you fluster at his face, his eyes are wide and his mouth slightly ajar. “I-I got carried away I’m-”

His hand reaches out again, clasping yours and pulling it back towards his face as he rests his cheek into your palm.

“Don't.” He murmurs, softly, softer than you’d heard him before. “Keep goin…please.”

A realisation settles across your mind.

“You…you can’t feel most touch…can you?” 

He doesn't look you in the eye, but he does sigh, only burying closer to your warm palm, worn after years of working hard…but still human.

“S’not that I can’t feel…I can…but..s’mtimes it’s so forkin dull I might as well not…but..my face is…”

“One of the few places you can feel.” You finish the sentence for him, feeling a pang of sympathy. You didn’t know how long Boothill had been like this, but you could wager long enough that he was more desperate for a kind touch than he probably even realised.

“Yeh…” he mutters, his lips turning down into a frown “sorry…ah know it’s probably-”

“Shut up.” you mutter, turning to face him fully, your other hand coming to rest on the other cheek as you watch this man, this gunslinging galaxy ranger, falter. His eyes widen before he shuts them entirely, leaning into it, starved of this type of affection.

“F’ya don’t stop this bullshirt m’gonna think you might have some feelin’s for me, darlin’..”

You didn’t know if thats what it was…but you didn’t want to stop either, a part of you wanting to sate you own selfish curiosity…another part wanting to do this for him.

“It must be a lonely existence, living like you do.” the murmur leaves your lips before you even notice you’d spoken out loud, thumbs stroking over his cheek bones. Boothill stares at you in silence for a long moment, his gaze calculating, probing. 

“I thought ya’ hated my forkin guts…” He mutters.

“Perhaps once, for a little bit, I did.” You admit “But then you brought me here, and I’ve never been happier..”

A beat passes, then another, and another. Boothill stares at you, the feel of your hands on his face something he wasn’t ready to give up just yet.

And then he leans forward, lips crash together and the taste of Malt juice and perhaps a little bit of oil is on your tongue.

You don’t pull back, if anything, you lean into it shamelessly. 

Robotic hands grip your waist as your own finally shift from his face to wrap around his shoulders. At some point his hat goes flying off elsewhere, but neither of you care; too strung tight, too wound up to care.

His teeth are as sharp as they look, but he’s careful with them as he nips at your bottom lip, swiping his tongue over the little beat of blood he manages to draw.

“Shirt-” He mutters against your lips, his eyes shut tight, you can hear his inner mechanics whirring, like a mechanical heart about to rabbit from his chest “fudge, if you don’t stop me now darlin I’m gonna keep taking-”

“Then take.” you mutter back at him, tangling your hands into his surprisingly silky hair and yanking. “Take what you want.”

“Oh trust me, I would but..” Boothill’s growl trails off, and for a moment he looks…embarrassed. You can’t for the life of you figure out why until he steps closer, your knee brushing between his legs- oh.

“Flat as a forkin’ brass tack.” he mumbles. 

You’re not sure why, it might just be the curse of your horrible humour, but your attempt at not giggling only sets you off into laughter that you attempt to muffle into his shoulder.

“Ey, watchu laughin at?” you expect boothill to be…mad at your outburst, but you can hear the amusement in his voice, feel the tremble of his own laughter “t’aint funny.”

“It kinda is.” you snicker out, pulling back to look him in the face. He looks a little sheepish, but thankfully, mostly just amused. “It’s okay…we’ll figure something out..”

His toothy grin settles back into a dangerous little smirk as the moment passes again, the kind of smirk that makes your belly twist a little. “Oh yeah, I got some other tricks up my sleeves.” 

Without much more to say, you find yourself being lifted, thrown over the cowboy’s shoulder- as you open your mouth to say something, you’re interrupted with a harsh slap to your ass, resulting in nothing but a squeak.

“Where’s yer room?” He snickers as you glare at him. 

You consider not telling him, being a brat, but the charming smile he returns to you is… yeah it does something stupid that goes right to your crotch. 

“Upstairs…first door on the left.” you mutter, flustering at the way his grin widens. 

If you didn’t know better you’d almost describe Boothill as practically skipping up the stairs, the angle for you however was a little trepidatious, and you find yourself clinging to him for a little more stability, right up until he carefully tosses you down onto the plush of your bed, landing with a soft thud.

He’s back on you, and your hands are back on him without him needing to ask; you can see the relief it brings, the way his eyelids flutter and his brow pinches as your fingers glide across his cheek, down his chest and along his arms, still warm, you note…

His lips return too, his own hands untucking your shirt just to get under it, metal fingers gliding over the smooth of your belly, up the your sides as he groans into your mouth. You wonder how much he can actually feel, if it was still dull, or if the alcohol had heightened his mechanical touch sensors somehow. You didn’t care, he looked happy, legitimately happy, like a dog being scratched behind the ears as you indulge him. 

His lips move from yours and he begins to nip and taste elsewhere, his nose brushing against your own as he leans in, nuzzling at your cheek, nipping at your jaw, revelling in the little sounds of pleasure he pulls out of you, especially when his wandering hands wrap behind your back and find the clasp of your bra, it comes undone with a surprisingly expert tug and you moan softly at it. 

(Who could blame you? You’d been wearing the damn thing all day.) 

You wished there was something you could do for him, something to pleasure him like he was doing for you, but you forced yourself to be content with touching him, running your hands through his hair, scratching at his scalp and tugging at the soft strands; running your thumbs over his cheeks, tracing the shells of his ears.

Boothill however, seemed just as hellbent on touching you, but he had far more room to move, to explore, to play. 

Metal thumbs find your nipples, embarrassingly hard and sensitive after being trapped in the confines of your bra all day, and you moan as he rolls them both, back and forth in a slow, methodical rhythm that leaves your breath light, and your stomach twisting in knots. 

Pointed teeth find your throat, nibbling and worshipping every inch of skin they could catch. You’d have to wear a scarf tomorrow if he kept that up, lest the regulars at the bar notice the strange bruising… but you don’t stop him; you were all in on…whatever this was now. 

A metal hand pulls away long enough to pop the buttons on your shirt, leaving the plane of your torso open and exposed to his gaze, nothing short of hungry as he stares down at you. 

“Fudge…” he mutters, his voice husky “That’s a nice view…” 

“Tease.” you huff.

“Tease? Oh ah’ll show you tease.” He snickers, his mouth returning to your skin, working lower, biting at the junction of neck and shoulder, nibbling along your collarbone before the cowboy shifts further, his tongue darting out to lap at one nipple whilst a hand works the other.

You gasp and moan, a hand quickly coming to muffle your cries, cheeks alight with embarrassment at the sudden outburst. Boothill only chuckles, his eyes trained to your face as he lays, settling between your legs as he rests atop you to continue his work, but at least he doesnt pull your hand away, too engrossed on what he could feel opposed to what he could see and hear. 

He switches breasts while his free hand trails down, over the soft plane of your belly and to your belt, unbuckling it with ease and sending the strap of leather flying across the room before those fingers return, popping the button of your work jeans and dragging the fly down. You groan softly in appreciation at the relief it brings, only to feel those metal fingers working the waistband down.

Just what was he planning? you wonder internally as he gives your nipple one last, harsh suck before releasing it, making you keen beneath your hand. 

“Feelin good, darlin?” he whispers. He sure sounded like he was feeling good as he nuzzles against your skin, nipping at your stomach and trailing lower, hands gripping at your jeans, pulling them and your underwear away in one swoop, leaving you open, exposed, and embarrassingly wet. “Y’sure look it..” he adds with a low whistle “aint that a sight.”

“B-boothill-” You mumble, an attempt at closing your legs out of embarrassment only sandwiching his head betwixt your thighs. He grins at you; it’s such an endearingly handsome thing, it makes you feel like this wasn’t a first time thing between you both, like he knew you, like he was comfortable with you, which only added to the heat in your belly.

“Aw don’t go gettin all fudgin’ coy on me now.” he snickers “After all those drinks’ ya’ gave me downstairs, I’m still kinda thirsty.” 

His metal hands part your measly human thighs with shameful ease as he leans in close; you squeal when you feel his hot tongue lave down your inner thigh, warm breath so achingly close to your cunt it was maddening.

But it seemed Boothill was just as desperate as you were, his mouth attaching to your cunt after only a moment, taking in your squeal as his teeth gently roll your clit, the added danger only serving to make you wetter. 

“F-fuck! Boothill-!” you moan out, forsaking keeping yourself silent as your own hands scramble across the sheets, searching for something, anything to ground yourself as his tongue laps at your folds with fever; they eventually find and settle in his hair before giving it a tug.

Boothill groans, the sting is only arbitrary, but he loves it, he loves being able to feel something. The warm plush of your thighs around his ears, the heat of your cunt as he sucks on your clit, only made sweeter by your cries. He’d missed this, he’d missed this a lot..

“Y’aint seen nothin’ yet, darlin.” He growls low and loving against your thigh in the brief moment of reprieve he gives you. You stare down at him with hooded eyes,your knees already trembling from his vicious onslaught; he nips the soft, sensitive flesh of your thigh with a cheeky smirk, holding up a pair of fingers, watching your face as he slowly drags them through your wet folds, collecting your slick; you gulp. “Like a’ said, I got a few fun lil’ tricks up my sleeves.” His mouth returns, lapping and pulling you right back into the overwhelming, wonderful pleasure as a slick metal finger circles your entrance, slow, methodical, torturous. You nearly sob with relief when he finally presses the digit inside, the metal actually making it easier. He hums his approval at how easily his finger is sucked in, pumping it slowly in and out, in and out; taking things at his pace- perfect.

After a little while, you feel that finger beginning to probe, to prod and search for your G-spot, and before long he finds it, signalled by a loud gasp and a sharp tug at his hair, only pulling his mouth closer, his tongue working away at your clit like he wasn’t driving you absolutely mad with pleasure.

Once he’d found the spot, he retreats, slowly adding the second finger and beginning the cycle again, stretching you, filling you stupidly well; it was an absolute tragedy that he didn’t have a dick…at this point you were so stupidly horny, you would have climbed on top of him just for a chance to ride him.

(somewhere in the back of your mind, the saying ‘save a horse, ride a cowboy’ reverberates) 

As you’re right at the height, right at the edge, he suddenly stops, his fingers cease their movements and he pulls his head away, resting his chin on your naval as he stares up at you with such a stupidly loving look that it makes your heart twist; his chin was absolutely drenched in your slick, but he looked so very content.

But you weren’t.

“B-boothillllll-” you whimper, tugging at his hair again, why had he stopped!? Now of all times? You could feel his metal fingers pressed against your G-spot, but unmoving, they did little to pleasure you. You clench around them, but that too, yields little results.

“Sorry sweetheart, just wanted to see your face when I did it.” He chuckles, his smile twitching up in the corner.

“D-do whAT-” your question cuts off abruptly when the fingers inside you suddenly burst to life with vibrations, the strength of which you’d never experienced before. Your body coils and you nearly scream as he rams those fingers into your G-spot, stars exploding behind your eyes whilst pleasure cuts through your belly like glass. 

“That.” He hums, satisfied as he returns that sinful mouth of his to your clit, adding another layer of pleasure. His fingers were harsh and rough, crooking into your G-spot one second, and then splaying out the next, dragging rough and harsh against your walls; his tongue however was soft, gentle, slowly and carefully rolling circles around your poor little nub. You were going to go crazy, he was going to drive you insane and you were absolutely letting him. Your body reacts on its own, thighs squeezing hard around his head, spine arched upward; your hips prevented from bucking thanks to one of his arms, wrapped solidly around your thigh and holding you down to the sheets, forcing you to lay there and take it.

You knew the walls here were decently soundproof, but even you began to question if they could muffle out your cries, made worse when Boothill suddenly sits up, pulling you up along with him, practically folding you in half as he continues to feast on your pussy like he hadn’t eaten in centuries, his vibrating fingers plunging somehow deeper.

At first you struggle for air with the new position, your knees almost at your chest, but then he switches the angle of his fingers and aeons-, you didn’t think it could get worse than this. But the pleasure this new angle brings, it’s new, its terrifying and you don’t quite know how to articulate that to the galaxy ranger causing it all. Your hands scramble clawing and tugging at any part of him you could get ahold of, his name falling from your lips along with incoherent babble, desperation and worry all balling into one feeling you couldn’t describe as he continues to piston those fingers into you, hitting your G-spot with such accuracy, the flame in your gut turning from a high heat to a near-volcanic overload as you jerk and struggle.

The final straw is when you crack open an eye, catching sight of him, staring back at you with such…love, such unbridled affection.

You scream his name as you cum, harder than you’ve ever cum in your life. Your faintly feel yourself make an absolute mess of his face, arms, your back and the sheets below you as your world turns white.

–

A soft, damp cloth carefully rubbing over your skin slowly pulls you back into reality, rousing you from the soft and gauzy subspace of post-orgasmic bliss. You try to shift, to sit up…to…something- but a hand carefully manoeuvres you to lay back down on a thankfully, dry patch of sheets.

“Easy, darlin’” Boothill’s familiar southern drawl hushes you down “Nearly done.”

You crack an eye to find him carefully cleaning you off with said damp towel. Methodical but careful. You’re trembling from the exertion, but boothill looks absolutely fine, the bastard. 

In fact, he looks better than fine. A smile plastered on his stupid face as he works away, wiping sweat and other…fluids, off of you. 

When he was done with that, he wraps you in a clean sheet and lifts you, sitting you down on the trunk at the end of your bed, just so he could change the set you’d obliterated with your unexpectedly rough orgasm. You sit there, watching him, half asleep and pleasantly dozy before he pulls you back into bed, pulling you into his side. A glass of water is pressed against your lips as he encourages a few sips into you. 

You spend the night sleeping with him curled around you; the quiet whirr of his mechanical body providing a pleasing, soft white noise while hands stroke through your hair.

–

“Do you have to go so soon?” You ask as he reaches for his hat.

He’d been here a week, and it had been…for lack of a better word; wonderful. 

But all good things had to come to an end you supposed. The look on his face was enough to tell you what you didn’t want to hear.

“I gotta. I ain’t done yet.” He tells you quietly, despite this, he holds out a hand, a silent request for you to walk with him…the inn and the bar would be fine for a little while.

“I’d ask ya t��come with me, but that’d be the biggest forkin mistake I could ever make.” the cowboy admits. He wanted you to, he’d never felt so content as he had in this week, but bringing you meant putting you in danger…aeons know he’d done that enough already.

“Will you…at least come and visit me?” 

Boothill snorts as they meander their way towards his ship “O’course I will.”

“How often?”

“S’often as I forkin can.” 

You both stop beside the ship, it had a few more dings and dents than you remember, but it was still in surprisingly good condition.

“Well…” you mumble “at least you know you’ll always have a room at the inn while I still run it.”

“Y’mean yer’ room?” He snickers. “I forkin hope you intend on running the place as long as possible, I pulled in a good favor from jodie to get ya yer’ start ‘ere.”

You smile at him. Boothill thanks every aeon in existence that his cybernetic eyes had a camera function, so he could save that face and look back on it when he was drifting through the universe.

Slowly, he pulls his hat from his head, holding it to his chest as he leans down to press his lips to yours, one last time for the road.

“I’ll be back as soon and as often as I forkin can…y’hear?” He murmurs, you nod; fighting away the sting behind your eyes as you step back.

“I hear…and…Boothill?” you ask as he turns around to step onto his ship, looking at you over his shoulder. 

“Thank you.”

Taglist: @stygianoir @meimeimeirin @ainescribe @dustofthedailylife @rjssierjrie @crystalflygeo @angel-of-requiem @asoulsreverie @zomzomb1e @moraxsthrone @mysnowmanandmebaby @inlustris-is-slowly-dying @pvbbyb0y Want to be added to the list? shoot me an ask~

[lovebugism]

Halloween is not really a big thing in my country so our october is as lame as every other month 😭

What do you think about sunshine/ditzy!reader planning her all on pink Halloween costume and eddie trying to convince her to go as something from one of his fav horror movies, or something silly like as a gremlin.

I love everything you write so I'll be happy with anything really

ily <333

ty angel! hope you like it! — eddie and his ditzy gf have trouble deciding on matching costumes (established relationship, fluff, ditzy!reader, can be read as a modern!au, 0.8k)

fictober (㇏(•̀ᵥᵥ•́)ノ)

“You don’t like my costume?” you wonder, all pouty in your pretty pink leotard and biker short duo. 

You’ve mastered the Barbie look — at least from what Eddie can remember. You’re only missing the neon rollerblades and matching yellow kneepads. You’re the prettiest, most vibrantly colored ball of sunshine he’s ever seen in his life.

“I love your costume, babe, don’t get me wrong…” Eddie assures as he rises from the couch, flashing you a rosy grin as he shakes his head. “But I am not wearing tights.”

Your pout deepens at his refusal to match with you. He was the Ken to your Barbie, after all — even if he wears so much black he basically absorbs all the light in any given room. “But why?” you ask in an unabashed whine.

“‘Cause if I knew I’d be wearing biker shorts for Halloween, I would’ve started doing squats three months ago.”

“But you’d make such a nice Ken!”

Eddie’s chocolate eyes narrow. “Do I look like Ken to you?”

“Well… No,” you answer, faltering only slightly when your gaze darts across the pale features of your wild-haired, metalhead boyfriend. “But it’s not like I look like Elvira!”

Eddie’s face twists like he’s tasted something sour, he’s that offended by your words.

His matching costume idea was the total opposite of your bright pink and sporty one. He wanted you to be a beautiful, shadowy thing hanging on his side in all black — the Mistress of the Dark to his Prince of Darkness. He still gets a little giddy thinking about it.

“Are you serious?” Eddie scoffs, playfully insulted and loud with it. His voice booms across the trailer as he takes you in his arms, curling his calloused fingers around your elbows. “You’re a total smoke show, babe— you’re killer. That’s, like, the only prerequisite.”

You roll your eyes at his compliment, though it has you blushing something fierce. 

Self-loathing was always hard with Eddie around ‘cause he thinks you’re the prettiest thing that’s ever walked the Earth. You’re not quite as certain as he is about it, but he says it with so much confidence that it’s hard to disagree.

“I do have a great set of boobs…” you lilt quietly, eyes flitted to the ceiling as you imagine yourself as the bombshell from Eddie’s favorite movie.

Your quoting of the film, along with your subtle reconsideration, has him grinning. “Yes, you do,” he affirms with a rapid and boyish nod. 

His gaze falls to your breasts, squeezed tight by the spandex fabric clinging to you like it was made to do it. His face heats with embarrassment when he notices he’s all but ogling at you. Then he realizes he doesn’t have to be embarrassed because you’re his girlfriend. It’s his job to ogle at you. It’s fucking metal.

“And an incredible pair of legs…”

“Exactly.”

“…But I still wanna be Barbie.”

Eddie’s grin never wavers. “Figured.”

“But you don’t have to be Ken if you don’t want!” you affirm quickly, eyes as wide as your glittering smile. “You can still be that weird, freaky singer guy that bit the head off that bat that one time.”

“Ozzy Osbourne,” he corrects.

“Yeah! We can just compromise. Easy peasy.”

Eddie deflates with a dramatic huff. His features twist in a puppy-like pout as he pulls you closer to him. “But you know I hate not getting my way,” he whines, mostly playful.

“I know,” you hum with a sympathetic smile. You gravitate towards him without thinking twice, arms wrapping around his shoulders as you press your chest to his. “But it makes sense, right? I’ve always been like Barbie, and you always liked me anyway… Right?”

He hates that you’re even asking — like he hasn’t been head over heels for you and stumbling all over himself since the day he met you. “I mean, obviously.”

“And you’ve always been a freak! And I’m, like, fucking obsessed with you—” you ramble, as bright as sunshine, until you realize the weight of your words. You grow abruptly serious. “No offense.”

He keeps on beaming like a lovesick idiot. “None taken.”

“And Halloween’s a cool way to represent that, right? Like, yeah, we’re different and we’re hot. Screw couples’ costumes!”

Eddie grows so suddenly fond. His chest warms and sparkles with it, like his dark eyes that melt for you. “Yeah. You’re probably right.”

“I know,” you shrug, still smiling. “I usually am.”

He grins wide before pressing a kiss to your smart mouth. It’s an innocuous peck — a meshing of plush lips and a lingering there. A quiet smack fills the tiny trailer when he parts from you just to pout, “You know I’m gonna have to walk behind you all night to keep people from staring at you, right?”

You giggle when his warm, calloused palms smooth over the outsides of your hips. “You do that anyway, Eds.”

“Well, yeah,” he responds, shrugging like it’s obvious. “‘Cause the view’s so nice.”

[dr-spencer-reids-queen]

Leap of Faith

Pairing: Spencer Reid x Female!Reader

Word Count: ~1k

Warnings: fluff

Summary: You use Halloween as an excuse to tell Spencer how you feel.

Square Filled: costume party (2022) for @cmbingo

Author’s Note: any and all comments are appreciated <3

x

You tighten your pigtails so that they sit high on your head. You turn to look at how good your ass looks in the short shorts you bought on Amazon. The fishnet stockings are itchy on your skin but you’re going to be too drunk to care in about an hour. Usually, you make sure your makeup is perfect before leaving the house but this time, you make sure it’s messy and smudges at the corners of your lips.

You’ve been invited to a Halloween party at Rossi’s place where everyone else is going to be. Your costume is a sexy Harley Quinn. She is one of your favorite superheroes and Margot Robbie does an amazing job at playing her. It’s cliche and cheesy to add “sexy” in front of a costume but this time, you wanted it to be like that. You have someone to impress and it’s not gonna happen if your costume isn’t sexy.

You even dyed your hair blonde so you can dye the ends pink and blue. It’s a decision you made knowing you were gonna love it even after Halloween was over. Your shirt says “Daddy’s Lil Monster” which ends right below your breasts. If you raise your arms, you’ll definitely show some underboob. Your entire midsection is showing since your shorts hang low on your hips. You don’t care who sees you like this since you’re pretty confident in your own skin whether you’re one hundred pounds or three hundred.

You blow yourself a kiss and leave the bedroom, making sure to grab your metal bat on the way to the living room where your best friend is. JJ and Will decided to dress up as Barbie and Ken from the new Barbie movie. You haven’t seen it yet but you know the scene where Barbie and Ken are rollerblading through the town in bright neon outfits.

“Ready?”

Will and JJ turn you when they hear you come in. Will immediately looks away from you while JJ whistles.

“Spencer is going to go feral when he sees you.”

“You think?” you grin.

“For sure.”

“I call shotgun!” you shout as you run toward the car.

“No, you had it last time!” Will runs after you.

JJ smiles at the dynamic between you and her husband. You two became fast friends which makes her happy. You’re her best friend and he’s her husband. It all works out in the end. She walks to the car to see you in the front seat with a smug smile while Will is pouting playfully in the back. The drive to Rossi’s house isn’t long since she lives close to him, and when you get there, you see Derek’s car. If he’s here, that means Spencer is. They do everything together. The only car you don’t see here is Hotch’s. It’s normal for him to be fashionably late for these kinds of events.

Penelope and Spencer must have volunteered to decorate Rossi’s place because this looks amazing. Rossi is not the one to go out and decorate to this degree. You three walk up to the door and knock, and Rossi opens it slowly. He’s a modern Dracula without the fangs. He hates the feeling of things on his teeth. The years he wore braces were the worst.

“Welcome. Nice costumes.”

You step inside and see Derek texting someone by the front door. He’s dressed as a cop because he waited until the last minute to put something together. He still had his old uniform from when he was a beat cop and decided to use that. When he hears people enter, he puts the phone away to mingle. He whistles when he sees you, and he brings you in for a friendly hug.

“Damn, Y/N. Who are you trying to impress?”

“You know who. Where is he?”

“In the kitchen. He booked it in there as soon as he heard there were cupcakes.”

You pat his shoulder as you walk away from them, dragging your bat behind you. Spencer is by the kitchen island eating a cupcake when you enter. Halloween is his favorite holiday because he loves decorating and dressing up. He’s dressed in a puffy white clown costume. His face is painted ghostly white to match the color of the costume with dramatic eyebrows drawn on and a painted red smile. Even he can make something so creepy look cute.

“You gonna save some for the rest of us?” you ask. Spencer looks up and starts choking as soon as he sees you in your costume. He grabs a water bottle and chugs half of it to get the food out of his throat. Once he’s calmed down, he rakes his eyes down your entire costume. “I’ll take that as a good sign.”

“Wow, you look great,” he stutters.

“Thank you. I love your costume.”

“I made this,” he smiles proudly.

“I know. This is all you’ve been talking about for the past couple of weeks.” Spencer grabs another cupcake and tears off the paper before taking a bite. Some of the frosting gets on his upper lip which he licks away, but there is still some left behind. This is it. This is your chance. You walk up to him and reach up to his face. “You got a little something.” You wipe his top lip with your thumb and place the pad of your thumb in your mouth. “Delicious.”

Spencer is staring at your mouth and thinking he’d love it if your lips were on his instead. You can see the lust in his eyes so you take the leap of faith.

“You got some more. Come here.”

You pull Spencer close and kiss him to take the frosting off that isn’t there. Spencer grips your hips and pulls you closer as he kisses you back.

“Wait,” you pull away from him, “is this okay?”

“More than.”

You two meet halfway and kiss some more, not caring if you have an audience by the entrance into the kitchen.

“She made the first move. All of you owe me ten bucks,” JJ grins.

x

Follow my library blog @aqueenslibrary​​​​​​ where I reblog all my stories, so you can put notifications on there without the extra stuff :)

[kyotospartyart]

Cosmic friendship ⭐

This is a commission that is also a present for a friend! I'm not personally involved with these characters and their story but my two friends have been roleplaying them for six years and I have seen them grow, which is very special. I agreed to draw modern clothes so you can imagine how much I love them.

The man with black hair and an eyepatch is Adrièn, he's a sniper but otherwise the most normal man in the universe.

The woman with white hair and monster hands is Nimueh, she's uh... I wouldn't dare explaining what she is. They're a bit like that Barbie slogan that goes "She's everything, he's just Ken"

I hope you like this piece! I put a lot of effort and so much love into it >:)

[sassenach77yle]

There was a soft whoof! noise, then a louder whoomp! as the ether in the surgery ignited, and suddenly we were standing in a pool of fire. For a fraction of a second, I felt nothing, and then a burst of searing heat. Jamie seized my arm and hurled me toward the door; I staggered out, fell into the blackberry bushes, and rolled through them, thrashing and flailing at my smoking skirts. Panicked and still uncoordinated from the ether, I struggled with the strings of my apron, finally managing to rip loose the strings and wriggle out of it. My linen petticoats were singed, but not charred. I crouched panting in the dead weeds of the dooryard, unable to do anything for the moment but breathe. The smell of smoke was strong and pungent. Mrs. Bug was on the back porch on her knees, jerking off her cap, which was on fire.

Men erupted through the back door, beating at their clothes and hair. Rollo was in the yard, barking hysterically, and on the other side of the house, I could hear the screams of frightened horses. Someone had got Arch Bug out—he was stretched at full length in the dead grass, most of his hair and eyebrows gone, but evidently still alive. My legs were red and blistered, but I wasn’t badly burned—thank God for layers of linen and cotton, which burn slowly, I thought groggily. Had I been wearing something modern like rayon, I should have gone up like a torch. The thought made me look back toward the house. It was full dark by now, and all the windows on the lower floor were alight. Flame danced in the open door. The place looked like an immense jack-o’-lantern. “Ye’re Mistress Fraser, I suppose?” The squat, bearded person bent over me, speaking in a soft Scottish burr. “Yes,” I said, coming gradually to myself. “Who are you, and where’s Jamie?” “Here, Sassenach.” Jamie stumbled out of the dark and sat down heavily beside me. He waved a hand at the Scotsman. “May I present Mr. Alexander Cameron, known more generally as Scotchee?” “Your servant, ma’am,” he said politely. I was feeling gingerly at my hair. Clumps of it had been singed to crispy thread, but at least I still had some. I felt, rather than saw, Jamie look up at the house. I followed the direction of his glance, and saw a dark figure at the window upstairs, framed in the dim glow from the burning downstairs. He shouted something in the incomprehensible tongue, and began throwing things out of the window. “Who’s that?” I asked, feeling more than slightly surreal. “Oh.” Jamie rubbed at his face. “That would be Goose.”

“Of course it would,” I said, nodding. “He’ll be a cooked goose, if he stays in there.” This struck me as wildly hilarious, and I doubled up in laughter. Evidently, it wasn’t quite as witty as I’d thought; no one else seemed to think it funny. Jamie stood up and shouted something at the dark figure, who waved nonchalantly and turned back into the room. “There’s a ladder in the barn,” Jamie said calmly to Scotchee, and they moved off into the darkness. The house burned fairly slowly for a while; there weren’t a lot of easily flammable objects down below, bar the books and papers in Jamie’s study. A tall figure belted out of the back door, shirt pulled up over his nose with one hand, the tail of his shirt held up with the other to form a bag. Ian came to a stop beside me, dropped to his knees, gasping, and let down his shirttail, releasing a pile of small objects. “That’s all I could get, I’m afraid, Auntie.” He coughed a few times, waving his hand in front of his face. “D’ye ken what happened?” “It’s not important,” I said. The heat was becoming more intense, and I struggled to my knees. “Come on; we’ll need to get Arch further away.” The effects of the ether had mostly worn off, but I was still conscious of a strong sense of unreality. I hadn’t anything but cold well water with which to treat burns, but bathed Arch’s neck and hands, which had been badly blistered. Mrs. Bug’s hair had been singed, but she, like me, had been largely protected by her heavy skirts. Neither she nor Arch said a word. Amy McCallum came running up, face pale in the fiery glow; I told her to take the Bugs to Brianna’s cabin—hers now—and for God’s sake, keep the little boys safe away. She nodded and went, she and Mrs. Bug supporting Arch’s tall form between them.

No one made any effort to bring out the bodies of Donner and his companions. I could see when the fire took hold in the stairwell; there was a sudden strong glow in the upstairs windows, and shortly thereafter, I could see flames in the heart of the house. Snow began to fall, in thick, heavy, silent flakes. Within half an hour, the ground, trees, and bushes were dusted with white. The flames glowed red and gold, and the white snow reflected a soft reddish glow; the whole clearing seemed filled with the light of the fire. Somewhere around midnight, the roof fell in, with a crash of glowing timbers and a tremendous shower of sparks that fountained high into the night. The sight was so beautiful that everyone watching went “Oooooh!” in involuntary awe. Jamie’s arm tightened round me. We could not look away.

What’s the date today?” I asked suddenly.

He frowned for a moment, thinking, then said,“December twenty-first.”

“And we aren’t dead, either. Bloody newspapers,” I said. “They never get anything right.”

For some reason, he thought that was very funny indeed, and laughed until he had to sit down on the ground.

123 RETURN OF THE NATIVE~ A Breath of Snow and Ashes

[helaenatargaryencore]

𝐇𝐨𝐰 𝐈 𝐭𝐡𝐢𝐧𝐤 𝐭𝐡𝐞 𝐓𝐚𝐫𝐠𝐚𝐫𝐲𝐞𝐧/𝐇𝐢𝐠𝐡𝐭𝐨𝐰𝐞𝐫 𝐬𝐢𝐛𝐥𝐢𝐧𝐠𝐬 𝐰𝐨𝐮𝐥𝐝 𝐛𝐞 𝐥𝐢𝐤𝐞 𝐭𝐨𝐝𝐚𝐲 𝐢𝐧 𝐭𝐡𝐞 𝐦𝐨𝐝𝐞𝐫𝐧 𝐰𝐨𝐫𝐥𝐝

(This is just my opinion feel free to disagree but please be respectful!)

Rhaenyra Targaryen

Now in the modern day I feel like royalty wouldn’t be such a big thing for the Targaryen’s so like yeah they might have the biggest business that runs Westeros and it’s seven cities but no throne would be involved so basically her and her younger siblings would not really be rivals at all, she actually is quite fond of all four of them and has her own fashion line/ or I do see her building up her own business but I see Rhaenyra Targaryen the best dressed woman in Westeros since she was a child being a huge fashion icon and designer, now in modern day she of course would neither need Viserys to choose her husband so evidently I see her meeting Harwin when she has a drunken run in with the police when she is 19 and he takes her home instead of going down to the station so we have that, they get married a few years later and have exactly 6 kids, yup six with Jace, Luke, Joff, Aegon, Viserys, and Visenya. Now I see Rhaenyra being a cool mom like allowing the kids to have friends over she would provide the best snacks and order food, clothing wise I see her dressed in wine and crimson reds, black, and I see her in maroon/dark purples, she feels comfortable in pantsuits mostly she also enjoys braiding her silver long hair extravagantly and she is totally a sip on wine and charcuterie board girlie, she also owns this cute cat named Syrax who is spoiled and lazy but serves like her owner.

Aegon Targaryen

Now Aegon is nothing like in the show (because I say so!) but he is a little immature and he cannot be trusted with his adult money at all, like he will spend it all. Definitely has a man cave and his house/apartment gives off Ken’s mojo dojo casa energy, I don’t see much of a paternal bone in his body but he is great with the kids! (In his own way) and no incest here it is not normalized in the modern world(or at all but anyways) everything he wears is definitely brand named and he is a shoe head I purely believe that, drank a lot in college but went to rehab and got better, hasn’t touched a drink in forever, got himself a golden retriever rescue which he named Sunfyre. He has never had a serious relationship, he hasn’t tried to either so I believe in him somewhat.

Helaena Targaryen

She is like a modern Stevie Nicks/fairy aesthetic like girlie, she is also a single mom to three (no man deserves this perfect girl :( she definitely is a cool momma, she owns a doggy named Dreamfyre, Jaehaerys got his own pup which he named Shykros and Jaehaera is a little different and got a small lizard (Helaena is all for a bigger reptile but Haerys opposed and Alicent said she would no longer visit if a huge reptile was in their home) and Maelor got a kitten of his own (I cannot think of a name he would give it) I see hel wearing lots of blues and yellows, whites even and she definitely wears crystal rings/ jewelry in general, she also loves to use different colored eyeshadows and liner and it just gives her an ethereal look, definitely is her thing and all of Westeros tries it because of her<3 she loves insects and has cute little insect decor in her home like cute little embroided pieces and paintings, loves going to cute cafe’s and bakeries with her babies and taking nice pictures🩵 and def uses the blue heart emoji the most. Definitely closest to Rhaenyra and Aemond (also Daeron maybe) definitely owns her own little book/crystal shop where she sells all the best books, candles, trinkets, anything to do with crystals, knitted scarfs that are so cute, needle work and knitting supplies and it definitely gives off cottage/fairy/insect core

Aemond Targaryen

Definitely has a hair care routine, I said it, also all his clothing is dark colored, dark reds and greens, loads of black clothing and grey clothing too, definitely wears a good ol sneaker (Converse/Vans) mostly the classic black and white ones, owns doc martins for sure, was the top of his classes all throughout high-school, college, and university, wears rings and chains but not excessively, knows how to style himself correctly, will either be covered in tattoos or have discreet ones no in between! Definitely runs one of the fam businesses and that’s when Viserys sees all the potential he has. He has this dark kinda aura to him and also is very serious but a complete gentleman, he did lose his eye and yes to Luke but I headcannon that they played with the family heirloom dagger and when Luke was swinging it he sliced Aemond, the family kinda separated but Rhaenyra paid for all medical costs and even wanted to pay for a prosthetic eye (she did) it took a while for the family to go back to normal but it did happen. Definitely goes to the sept (equivalent to a church) with Alicent so she doesn’t go alone or feel alone but he isn’t too close with the faith anymore. I see him owning a Doberman or Great Dane named Vhagar. Adores his nieces, Visenya and Jaehaera are his biggest prides.

Daeron Targaryen

He is def the youngest like in his teen years, is a genius academically and socially can be a little clueless but he still gets it mostly, owns a beautiful dog named Tessarion. On the school soccer team for sure and he definitely has a job in retail with friends, definitely loves video games and would walk into the kitchen with his headset and controller in hand to get chips while Alicent tells him to wait until after dinner, has a entire closet dedicated to hoodies of all colors/brands. Closest with Hel, mommas boy 100%.

Alicent Hightower

Isn’t a sibling but she is mother! Now modern wise she isn’t as intense as in the show, obviously she doesn’t hate Rhaenyra either and no they were not friends she actually was a few (very few) years older than her when she married Viserys, she hates her husband though, her frontal lobe wasn’t even developed when she married him but she formed an unlikely alliance with Rhae, she is religious but not as much as in the show, she you know wears the seven pointed star and visits the septs, definitely is a queen at hosting events and holidays. Great at sowing and alternating clothes, does fundraisers and huge donations to charities also does charity for the sept, MILF! Oh I’m sorry what who said that 😏, is a fashion icon and dresses in greens/blacks/ even reds. Has the best hair in Westeros! And she wasn’t fond of animals but made a friend in Balerion the dog Viserys has but doesn’t take care of, he rests at her feet while she sews/reads, Also speaking of reading she loves classic literature, sips wine while she cooks and does yoga and meditation you cannot convince me that she doesn’t.

So these are pretty much headcannons I have for the modern Targ/towers and I will do a part two for Hels kids and Rhae’s kids including Baela and Rhaena, hope you all enjoyed this little blurb I put together 💗

@madame-fear a little first work 💗

[missjashin]

Modern time Robin, Steve and Eddie would all agree to dress up from Barbie movie for Halloween but they would not coordinate who would wear what.

Robin would show up in Ken’s cowboy costume, Eddie in Ken’s Mojo Dojo Casa House look (because this man would not pass on the opportunity to wear over the top fur coat) and Steve would come in Barbie’s cowgirl look (because even when not coordinating, he and Robin will still match)

Steve might get little upset because he thought they were all going as Barbies and now he is the only one. He even dyed blond highlights to his hair..

But you know, he’ll get over it.

[brotherwtf]

Fem!Jhon sounds absolutely delicious!!! I imagine she would be the one to pursue Gale but Gale would be so head over heels for her 🔥 will treat her like queen

FEM JOHN FEM JOHN GIVE IT UP FOR FEM JOHN (a singular person starts clapping)

shoving this into a modern au bcs it makes the most sense to me, but she would totally be the baddiest of baddies, tall and curvy with thick thighs and great ass, thinking she's very athletic and strong so she's just a very large woman in general

maybe she's a soccer player or smth like that, imagining Gale as a bartender or barista or smth, and Bucky (we're calling her that idk what her name should be) and she runs into him after practices, instantly makes it her mission to get this guy to fall in love with her

she's flirting with him any chance she can get, being obnoxious and stupidly charming as always, and she can tell that Gale is already hopelessly smitten with her

Bucky doesn't want to make the first move, so she plays it out until Gale finally folds and asks her on a date, goes back to her team triumphantly with Gale's number in her phone

their first date is classic romcom shit, Gale is literally speechless when he sees Bucky in a dress and heels, simply cannot tear his eyes away from how damn hot she looks

their relationship dynamic is very "she's everything and he's just ken" bcs Bucky is very outgoing while Gale just watches everything she does with heart eyes and the stupidest lovesick impression on his face at all times

Gale loves to worship her body, takes his time kissing every inch of skin he can find, leaving beautiful red marks on her breasts and thighs, loves to make Bucky slowly come undone beneath his touch, until she's arching into him with a prolonged moan

Gale is such a goddamn munch though, would spend hours between Gale's thighs if he could, is one of those guys that basically begs their girlfriends to sit on their face. Bucky's like "what if I kill you" and Gale's like "what a helluva way to die, amen" and Bucky can't help but smile

Gale spoils Bucky so much, even when she doesn't ask for things. Makes her breakfast, helps with her hair, kisses her every second of the day when he can. He just loves his girlfriend so much :((

might write a drabble for this, lmk what y'all want to see for fem!John !!

[rambleonwaywardson]

Clegan Astronaut AU - Part 10

Masterpost Read on AO3

AU Summary: the boys as modern day NASA astronauts. Taking place in 2025, Bucky is about to head to the moon as mission commander of Artemis III while Buck is CAPCOM at NASA. Established relationship (obnoxiously in love).

Author's Note: Since some of you were interested in exactly how accurate some of this is, fyi the experiments Curt and Bucky implement here, LEAF and LDA, are real experiment proposals that have been selected to fly on Artemis III. Not much info is available on them though, so much of their installation processes are made up by yours truly.

---

November 18, mission day 12 Ridge near Shackleton Crater, Artemis 3 Landing Site

It’s raining. 

At least, Bucky imagines it is. He imagines that there’s dark clouds rolling in overhead, pops of electricity jumping across them, flashing through the sky. He imagines he can hear thunder rumbling, a breeze ruffling through his hair the same way it did on launch day, when he stood outside and stared at the sky, no one to say goodbye to. He imagines big, fat drops of rain hitting his face, splattering on the tip of his nose and streaking down his cheeks. 

He can almost smell it, the damp earth scent of a hurricane mixing with the salty air blowing in from the gulf. Home. He can almost feel it, just out of reach.

Bucky opens his eyes. He has half a mind to close them again when faced with the reality that it is not, in fact, raining. But he sighs, deciding he can’t really complain, even if he misses something so simple as weather. The lunar horizon is a decent trade-off. He just kind of wishes it wasn’t so still all the time. It reminds him of survival training in the desert, when the only movement was the heat radiating up from the ground, creating a teasing mirage to goad his dehydrated brain. Except here, there’s not an atmosphere to do even that.

It’s their third full day on the lunar surface.

“Is it raining in Houston, Benny?”

There’s a brief pause. “Is that… some sort of code, or…?” 

Bucky thinks for a moment, and then realizes that his words did, in fact, sound similar to ‘are the flowers blooming in Houston,’ a coded transmission from Apollo 13. That’s what Commander Jim Lovell said in order to ask Ken Mattingly, on CAPCOM, if he’d contracted the measles, exposure to which had caused Mattingly to be scrubbed from 13 at the last minute.

“No,” Bucky clarifies. “Just wanna know if it’s raining.”

There’s another brief silence while, Bucky assumes, Benny asks if anyone knows the weather outside of their windowless Mission Control room. He doesn’t bother to ask Bucky why he wants to know. All the CAPCOMs have quickly figured out it’s easier just to answer whatever bullshit question the astronauts ask. “No. It’s colder than usual, though. Only 46 degrees now.”

Bucky’s satisfied with that answer, and he’s not really sure why. He imagines Gale, who at this moment is probably just waking up in their home on the bay. Since it’s cold, he’ll be bundled in flannel pants and Bucky’s Yankees sweatshirt, which is just the slightest bit too big for him and hangs off his frame in a way that makes Bucky want to wrap him up tight in his arms. He might even have a throw blanket pulled around his shoulders as he wanders groggily through the house. Bucky doesn’t know how that man doesn’t overheat, but he knows all too well that Gale’s hands are always freezing. Bucky usually takes it upon himself to warm them up.

Two huskies are probably trailing at Gale’s heels. Bucky hopes they keep his hands warm.

He wonders if that’s a weird thing to think about. He decides it’s not. He mindlessly grabs at the wedding ring dangling from his neck, only to remember that he’s in an EVA suit. His ring is in Starship.

“Quit whatever the fuck you’re doin’ and help me out over here, Bucky.” 

Bucky blinks and tries to turn his head to look at Curt, and then remembers that that doesn’t work in the suit either. He awkwardly turns his whole body before bounding several steps towards his crewmate, who is standing beside their rover. That’s the only way to move on the moon, bounding. Bucky used to mimic the movement as a kid, pretending to be Neil Armstrong in his backyard. But he’s learned in the past few days that it’s actually, literally, the only way to get anywhere in these bulky suits with almost no gravity to hold them down. Especially while they’re still early on in the EVA. The pressure in the suit is almost as high as it goes and inhibits their range of motion.

“What’s up?” Bucky stops in front of the open, unpressurized rover. They may be the first Artemis crew members on the moon, but as far as transportation goes, they drew the short straw. Starting with Artemis 4, surface crews will have a fully pressurized rover for long-distance drives. Bucky and Curt get basically the same piece of shit (sorry, NASA) that Apollo got, but bigger and supposedly less shoddy.

That last qualification has yet to be proven. Curt drops to his knees by the front left wheel. “Hold the damn tire while I replace the lug nuts.”

Bucky joins him on the ground and holds the tire in place. During their EVA yesterday, they took the rover on its inaugural drive, and that damn wheel is already causing them problems. But hey, at least they have the equivalent of a truck bed for hauling things.

Except, you need functioning wheels to haul things.

He grumbles about it the whole time, but Curt manages to get the wheel secured, though he’s still suspicious of it. “Well, good as we’re gonna get.”

Bucky stands back and stares at the wheel, agreeing that it’s still not quite right. But whatever it is is beyond what they can fix at the moment. So Bucky steps onto the rover, turns it on, and drives it forward. Curt takes a couple of bounding steps to catch up, jumps on beside Bucky, and they get on their way. It’s drivable, so they’ll take it.

–

“Oh shit. Fuck. Shit.” Bucky tries to reverse the rover, then tries to go forward again. Reverse, forward, reverse, forward. “Fuck.”

“Shit?” Rosie’s voice buzzes in Bucky’s ear. He and Alex are well on their way into deep space, approaching the furthest point in their orbit. 

“Why the fuck are you here? Don’t ya have observations or somethin’ you could be doin'?”

“This is so much more interesting.”

Bucky has gotten the front left wheel of the rover stuck between two rocks. They’re not even very big rocks, so it’s embarrassing in that same kind of way as when you get your hand into a small space but then can’t get it back out.

It’s also the same wheel that he and Curt just fixed. Curt looks on, judgmentally. “If you break that wheel again I’ll murder you with a hammer.”

Brutal. Bucky’s mouth moves on autopilot, like a parrot repeating something unhelpful, as he conducts a pathetic million-point turn, shifting the angle of the tire by mere degrees every time he changes gears. “If iron can kill a star it sure as hell can kill you.”

There’s a pretty lengthy silence as Bucky continues his sad attempt at getting out of this predicament. Personally, he’s thinking about how, at this point, it would be faster to walk to their destination. Everyone else, however, is still hung up on his little proverb.

“What the hell does that mean?” Alex finally asks. Oh great, he’s here, too. Witnessing Bucky’s failure.

“It’s something Buck says,” Benny offers helpfully. “Something about stars dying when they start fusing iron.”

There’s a chorus of understanding hums that rise and then trail off as everyone realizes that it still doesn’t really make sense. 

Alex: “Is that… a threat?”

Curt: “Can it be a threat if no one knows what he’s sayin’?”

Rosie: “Kinda makes it more of a threat, doesn’t it?”

Alex: “I don’t usually know what Buck is sayin’.”

Curt: “That’s just cause he don’t say much.”

Alex: “Or he’s too smart for us.” The others make noises of agreement. Major Gale Cleven. Mr. High school valedictorian, graduated summa cum laude with a degree in aerospace engineering and a minor in physics. Whatever.

Bucky: “Got it!”

The rover lurches forward, nearly throwing Curt, completely unprepared, off the side. He reaches out at the last second to grab Bucky’s arm, and for a moment it seems like they both might take a dirt bath on the moon, but Bucky holds tight to the steering wheel and keeps them both on their feet as he drives triumphantly into the distance.

They’re heading in a straight line towards the sun on the horizon, and in Bucky’s mind they’re cruising at high speed like Thelma and Louise (though, ideally, not off a cliff). In reality, they’re bumping along pretty slowly towards a little greenhouse that’s going to house their little plants for their cute little moon experiment.

Bucky parks the rover outside of the greenhouse. They spent much of the day yesterday setting it up, flipping NASA’s assembly directions this way and that as they tried to make sense of them like a piece of IKEA furniture. It’s kind of laughable, how such an unassuming little structure can look so damn out of place. It’s not even pressurized, having to do nothing but stay standing and block some of the solar radiation. It reminds Bucky of the Wizard of Oz, as if a tornado just picked a greenhouse up off the Earth’s surface and deposited it in the middle of the moonscape, where it sticks out like a sore thumb. 

He steps down off the rover and walks around the back, where their first experimental payload is sitting on the bed. “LEAF” is printed across it in huge letters, and underneath, “Lunar Effects on Agricultural Flora.” 

Curt meets Bucky at the back of the rover and pulls down the little cart they’d brought with them. Together, they heave LEAF off the bed and onto the cart and wheel it, inelegantly and with a lot of swearing, to the door of the greenhouse.

“Okay, you go in, I’ll cover you.” Curt steps aside and presses his back to the greenhouse wall, holding his hands together in front of him in what Bucky assumes is supposed to be an approximation of a handgun. The effect is lost with the EVA gloves. 

Bucky glares at him – though that effect is also lost through an EVA helmet – as he opens the door and struggles to drag the cart over the threshold. “You’re an idiot.”

“I’m your idiot.”

Benny chuckles over coms. “Don’t let Buck hear you say that.”

“Buck ain’t here,” Curt says.

There’s a crackle, and then a warm, tired drawl. “Buck’s right here.” Bucky’s got no idea what time it is – that’ll happen when the sun stays basically in the same spot all day – but Mission Control must be in the middle of a shift change. 

Curt: “Shit, our cover’s blown.” He lowers his hands and steps away from the wall. 

Bucky: “Hey babe.”

Gale: “I’m watching you, Curt… Hi, John.” John smiles. It’s not darling or babe, but he grudgingly accepts Gale’s insistence on trying to speak professionally on shift. Even if Bucky refuses to do so.

Curt: “Actually, you’re only listenin’ to me.”

Benny: “That’s my cue to leave, boys. Have fun with your plants.”

Curt: “I will, thank you very much.”

Curt finally decides he’s had enough of watching Bucky struggle on his own and grabs onto the back of the cart, giving it a good shove that sends it the rest of the way into the greenhouse, narrowly avoiding knocking Bucky on his ass.

Curt: “Hey, Buck, wanna know what else I’ll have fun with?”

Gale: “No.”

Curt: “Bein’ Bucky’s big spoon since you ain’t here.”

Bucky: “Buck’s the little spoon. So that means you gotta be my little spoon.”

Silence.

Bucky wonders how hard Gale is blushing, and how many people just turned to stare at him in Mission Control. He wonders how many of them will start calling him Little Spoon, at least for the day. He feels a little bad. But only a little. Everyone’s always told him that he doesn’t have a filter, so it isn’t his fault that Gale married him anyways. 

Gale: “I want you to know, the only reason I’m not gonna give you both the silent treatment is because it’s my job to keep you alive.”

It’s a good thing Bucky won’t be home for dinner tonight, or any night in the near future, because he’s pretty sure Gale “everything you say is being transcribed” Cleven would give him the silent treatment for embarrassing him like that.

Gale: “Get to work, boys.”

Bucky’s not sure exactly how LEAF works, but they’ve been tasked with it anyways. It’s a little space-age terrarium straight out of a sci-fi movie that’s being housed within the greenhouse structure. Inside is an enclosed growth chamber, in which a few different crop species that Bucky has quite frankly never heard of are supposed to grow hydroponically. The chamber protects them from the lunar environment, allowing NASA to study the effects of space radiation and partial gravity on plant growth and stress.

Bucky and Curt have been instructed to give the seeds inside LEAF water and nutrients through some elaborate external insertion mechanism as well as monitor their progress every day. By the end of the week, they’ll hopefully be able to harvest some of the faster-growing plants.

Once LEAF is in place, Curt sets to work ripping strips of duct tape off the roll he keeps strapped to his EVA suit. He sticks them on the glass above each crop species and labels them: Duckweed, Field Mustard, and Thale-Cress. Bucky is setting up the cameras and sensors they were instructed to deploy around it. Gale is grudgingly forced to speak to them – and act nice about it – so he can relay instructions on what the fuck they’re supposed to do. 

“Is it working now?” Bucky asks. He’s spent far too long trying to get this one specific camera in front of the growth chamber to record.

“No,” Gale answers. “Did you turn it on?”

“Yes I fuckin’ turned it on.” Bucky crouches in front of the camera and gets as close to it as his helmet will allow. “Wait. wait wait wait.” He presses another button. “Okay now it’s on.”

Gale stays quiet for a moment, presumably waiting for video feed to pop up in Mission Control. “We see it now, Bucky.”

“Alright,” Curt says. “Let’s grow some moon plants!”

–

Thankfully, Gale doesn’t follow through with his threat of the silent treatment even after he finishes his shift and hands the console over to Helen. Thirty minutes after leaving Mission Control, he’s tucked into a small room at Johnson Space Center that they’ve designated “the Family Room,” where NASA has a direct two-way audio/video line set up for Artemis astronauts to talk to their family members, even on the moon. His tie is loose, top buttons undone, and his hair gel has given up. Exhausted, he takes a sip of his coffee. His… fourth? Fifth? Of the day? Maybe? 

Bucky has told him time and again that if he drank alcohol the same way he drinks coffee, he wouldn’t be sober a day in his life.

With Curt off in another corner of the lander, headphones on as he watches a movie downloaded on his NASA-issued computer, Bucky is in his commander’s seat. He’s looking back at Gale through the webcam on his own computer, for once able to talk to each other with some semblance of privacy. And they can see each other.

When the video call first connected, the first words out of Bucky’s mouth were that Gale looked like shit. Gale glared at him until Bucky rolled his eyes and gave him a more appropriate greeting. Then, and only then, did Gale drop the iciness and take the opportunity to talk to his husband.

“So you know how in The Martian they say once you grow crops somewhere you’ve colonized it?” Gale’s not entirely sure what part of their present conversation – about their elderly neighbor, Mrs. Mason’s suspected torrid affair – caused Bucky to ask this question.

To be honest, though, the ability, as CAPCOM, to disregard the why of an astronaut’s question and simply follow up without a second thought, is a trained skill. And Bucky has always been the only training Gale needs. “Pretty sure that’s not just from The Martian.”

Bucky narrows his eyes and shrugs. “Okay. But yeah?”

Gale nods. “Okay.”

“Are we colonizing the moon?”

“No.”

Bucky eyes Gale suspiciously and leans closer to the camera. “Why?”

Gale sighs and leans back in his chair, thinking about it for a moment. “Shouldn’t the plants be in the lunar soil to call it colonized? Yours are growing hydroponically above the surface. And they haven’t grown yet.”

“Are you just sayin’ that cause you’re still mad at me?” Bucky knew he wouldn’t escape his ‘little spoon’ comment unscathed.

Gale lifts his coffee cup and takes a sip to hide his smile. 

They sit in a familiar and comfortable silence for a moment before Bucky runs a hand through his hair and leans back. “I wish you could see this, Buck. I wish you were here with me.”

“I’m with you,” Gale reminds him.

“You know what I mean.”

Bucky glances out the window of Starship, and he looks so wistful and beautiful. His eyes are wide with love and wonder, at the beautiful alien world around him on one side of the camera and at the wonderful man that keeps his world turning on the other. He looks excited with a child-like awe, just like he looked on the station. Just like he looks every time he flies a plane. Just like he looked so often in college when Gale was still falling in love with him bit by bit. And just like he looked on their wedding day. That same wild wanderlust and love for the universe that has always blown Gale away. 

When Bucky looks at him again, Gale says, “Tell me about it.” He’s been right there with the crew almost every step of the way. He knows the mission plan inside and out. He’s seen the footage they’ve taken and he’s heard their reactions to almost every milestone. But he wants to hear it from Bucky. Not from Mission Commander Major John Egan.  

Bucky grins at him. “It’s like a dream, Buck. Like… nothing I’ve ever seen. It’s better than I thought it would be.”

“Even the whole being stuck in a space capsule and you die if you leave it without a suit thing?”

Bucky shrugs. “If I had to die, the moon isn’t a bad place to do it.”

He knows he made a mistake the moment the words are out of his mouth, and he’s not usually one to admit that. But he watches Gale deflate, his brow crinkle as he works his jaw and looks away from the camera. “Don’t say that,” Gale whispers at the same time that Bucky raises his hand and says “Sorry, not the time.”

Bucky knows that Gale is a little scared, no matter how much he tries to hide it from everyone else. He won’t say it out loud, and he would hate it if Bucky did. So Bucky doesn’t. He’d be afraid, too, if the roles were switched. And one day they will be. Gale gives a curt nod to his apology, and they don’t speak of it again.  

“The sun is always so low in the sky,” Bucky says instead. “Like you’re always waitin’ for it to rise but it never does. The shadows are something out of a nightmare, I swear to God. They’re huge and fuckin’ dark. We use flashlights to walk through them. You know that.” He tells Gale every detail he can think of about what it’s like on the moon. The way the shadows streak the landscape like spilled ink. The way the soil feels under his boots, sinking and crunching at the same time like the sharpest grains of sand. The way Earth looks so small and unassuming, how peaceful it seems even though they know it’s anything but, a little blue oasis in the middle of a dark universe. He tells Gale that he looks at that planet in the lunar sky every night before he sleeps, and he thinks about him. Gale was right, after all. He is sappy. At least about his husband. 

He tells him about the parts of the EVAs that Gale missed, when Benny was CAPCOM instead. He talks about the rover breaking not even a full day into its life cycle, the tire somehow coming clean off when it got caught on a rock and causing Bucky to tumble into the dirt (“I’m fine! Gale, I’m fine. Benny would’ve told you if I wasn’t fine”). He talks about the strange rock formation that he and Curt found yesterday morning – several giant boulders stacked on top of one another in a way that doesn’t look a) natural, or b) balanced. Then they start discussing the other experimental payloads that Curt and Bucky are scheduled to install in the coming days, but they quickly agree that talking shop can wait until they’re actually working.

When Gale yawns and rubs his eyes, looking distractedly off to the side, Bucky frowns. “Hey, doll, look at me.” Gale blinks and then does as he’s told, lazily tilting his head and raising his eyebrow in a way that says ‘happy?’ Bucky wants to reach through the screen and brush back the loose strands of hair that have fallen over his forehead. “You’d tell me if you weren’t okay, right?”

Gale huffs and nods, allowing the smallest smile. “Yeah, darlin’. I’d tell you. Just tired as hell.” 

“Promise?”

“Cross my heart.”

As their call comes to an end, they spend a minute or two simply staring at each other, taking each other in. Neither of them know when, or if, they’ll be able to schedule another call like this during the mission. 

“Stay safe out there,” Gale finally says. “Don’t do anything stupid.”

Bucky wants to say ‘don’t count on it,’ flash a shit-eating grin, like they used to before either of them did anything remotely dangerous. It’s their little morbid joke. Their way of dealing with the uncertainty and worry without having to think too much about it.

But he knows this time is different. This mission isn’t like the others, and there’s no use pretending it is. Looking at Gale, seeing how exhausted he is and knowing how tirelessly he’s working on the ground, how much sleep he’s probably losing between his job and worrying about Bucky… hell, Bucky can’t bring himself to say it. He doesn’t want to risk making his husband’s face fall again today.

So instead, he says a quiet, “I miss you.” It makes the corner of Gale’s mouth pull up in a sweet little smile, and Bucky thinks he did something right.

Gale presses his fingers to the corner of the camera. “I love you.”

“Talk to you tomorrow, angel.”

–

When Gale gets home that evening, he grabs the mail out of their mailbox. Flipping through the various advertisements and envelopes, he stops short at the front door. Tucked into the middle is a piece of paper with unfamiliar, messy handwriting scrawled across it.

“Praying the queer dies on the moon.” 

Gale stares down at the message, then glances up and down their quiet, friendly neighborhood street. They’ve lived here for a few years now, since before Gale’s ISS mission. They’ve gotten to know their neighbors well. Other than Benny, who lives at the end of the road, it’s mostly a collection of young families – many of which are associated with the space center in some way – and retirees who have never been anything but kind to Gale and John. Everyone has always been very neighborly, and Gale would go so far as to call most of them friends. They have dinners together, throw a block party here and there, do the usual neighborly favors for one another. Hell, Gale’s even babysat for some of the families from time to time. John taught a couple of the kids how to ride a bike.

Certainly, none of them have ever expressed something like this, and Gale doesn’t believe for a moment that this message came from anyone around here. He has half a mind to go next door and ask Mrs. Mason if she saw anyone stick this in his mailbox. Aside from the fact that Gale is fairly certain the widow is having an affair with a much younger married man, she’s always looked out for him and John. She also takes it upon herself to play neighborhood watch and always seems to know everything about everyone on their street. If anyone saw this happen, it’s her. But he doesn’t want to worry her, and he certainly doesn’t want her telling their other neighbors about it.

He’s done a decent job of avoiding the worst comments on social media, mostly because he barely goes on social media unless Marge tells him he needs to keep up his online presence. He knows the naysayers are still out there, though. And now it’s crossed the digital line. 

If we’re lucky, the fag…

Disgusted, Gale grits his teeth, crumples the paper, and tosses it straight into the recycle bin with the rest of the junk mail. He takes a breath and tries to push down the anger. Then he walks into his house, the one he shares with his wonderful, brave husband, and he laughs as the dogs rush to greet him.

–

November 19

It’s close to 3am in Houston. Benny’s desk is littered with empty coffee cups, gum wrappers, and an empty takeout container from what he supposes is technically lunch. Meals don’t make as much sense when your work schedule is from midnight to 8am. Nothing makes as much sense when your work schedule is from midnight to 8am. He finds it funny: he used to eat tacos at 3am when he was in college, but that was a product of burning the candle at both ends rather than working the night shift. Night shift for NASA Mission Control.

Except, it’s not technically night shift either, because according to GMT, the time zone that Mission Control and the crew operate on, it’s actually nearing 8am. Which is a far less acceptable time for eating tacos.

The crew has been awake for two hours now. This morning’s wake-up alarm on Starship was Hot To Go by Chappell Roan. No one has admitted to choosing that song yet, but most people are betting on Curt. Benny, however, thinks it was all Bucky. He has to admit, there are few things funnier at 1am than a room full of extensively trained, highly professional, and terribly exhausted flight controllers in business clothes singing “H-O-T-T-O-G-O, You can take me hot to go” over and over.

“Missing the wife, Egan?” Benny asked once Bucky had shut off the alarm. There was quiet snickering from the flight controllers behind him. Bucky didn’t dignify that with a response.

Gale really doesn’t know what he’s missing with these wake-up calls. 

While Rosie and Alex are nearing apolune, the point in their orbit farthest from the moon, Bucky and Curt are now out on the lunar surface once again. They’re just about 15 minutes into their morning EVA, which is scheduled for 5 hours. Their first stop is checking in on LEAF.

Bucky: “Is that…”

Curt: “Yes.”

Bucky: “Hi there.”

The flight controllers look at the video feed in awe. 

Inside the growth chamber, two little seedlings have sprouted, tiny green leaves reaching up towards the sunlight. No matter how small, there’s something about seeing life take root in an environment designed to take life away that feels extraordinary. 

–

40 minutes in, and Curt and Bucky have driven the rover further out from Starship than they’ve gone thus far. That busted wheel is holding, but they’ve brought a repair kit with them, not liking the way it rattles here and there over the uneven terrain. “Ain’t no Triple A on the moon,” Curt had said as he tossed the kit into the rover. Then he looked at Bucky a little too pointedly. “But don’t think for a second that this is permission to do somethin’ stupid.” 

Either way, they made it to the other side of the connecting ridge next to Shackleton, and the rover is still intact. They’re surveying the surface, trying to hash out where they should install their second of three scientific instruments. The Lunar Dielectric Analyzer (LDA) is meant to use electric currents in the soil to detect the presence of water ice below the surface. The astronauts are also collecting soil samples for the geologists back home, dumping dusty regolith into bags and labeling them with their coordinates.

In the pitch black shadow of the connecting ridge, they have to work by flashlight. They were instructed to check a variety of sites, both light and dark, but they’re starting with the ones that receive less sunlight, since they’re colder and more likely to have the right conditions for ice to exist. Shackleton itself was identified by scientists as having ice deposits, making the ridge an ideal mission site. However, short of rappelling into the crater, which they will not be doing, this is the closest they can get to those known deposits at the moment. Bucky is closer to the crater, up on an incline with the rover, while Curt is further down, about 60 or 70 yards away.

“Note,” Bucky says. “Site B, sharp gray dust that won’t get the fuck off my gloves.”

“Hey, that’s what I have at site C!” Curt exclaims. He pops up in the distance, shining his flashlight up towards Bucky. Bucky shines his back, and Curt waves.

Bucky: “Houston, site B doesn’t seem any more promising than A, and I don’t like this incline. Thinkin’ we should stick to flatter surfaces.”

Benny: “Roger. We will eliminate site B as an option.”

Bucky: “Okay, I’m gonna head back down to Curt.”

Bucky steps up onto the rover and turns it on, waiting for the headlights to flicker to life. Then he eases into drive, and starts to slowly descend the slope. 

–

Benny sips on his coffee and jots down a few notes about the LDA candidate sites. They’ll have to make a decision in the next hour or so in order to stay on track with the EVA schedule. But with the issues they’ve been having with the rover, he doesn’t want to rush them along too much.

“Bucky, how’s that rover wheel doin’?”

“Seems fine,” Bucky replies, but Benny doesn’t like the hint of uncertainty coming through. “Still seems off, but goin’ smoother than it was.”

“I’ll check it when you get down here,” Curt says. “Might just need tightened again.”

Benny makes a note for Red Shift that they’ll have to build in time to troubleshoot that wheel a little better during the afternoon EVA. He relays the thought to Red Bowman, the Blue Shift flight director. He agrees.

“Alright Bucky,” Benny says. “We’ll get you guys some time to work on that wheel this afternoon. For now just take it easy and-”

“Fuck!” 

“Bucky?”

Benny hears Bucky’s breath catch, followed by a few aggravated grunts, and then silence.

What the fuck just happened?

“Bucky?” Benny glances around the room. Red and several of the other flight controllers are doing the same, many looking right at him. He blinks and looks at his console. His own heart rate is creeping up. “John? John, do you copy?”

Nothing.

He pushes his chair back and gets to his feet. He doesn’t know why, but he can’t stand sitting down all of a sudden. He tries to keep his voice steady as he watches the seconds tick by on the mission clock. “John, come in John.”

“Flight?” Smokey, the Blue Shift flight surgeon, looks first to Red, and then to Benny. All three of them are on their feet, forming a triangle that stretches across Mission Control as they stare at each other in alarm. The rest of the room is silent.

Smokey looks down at his console. “Major Egan’s vitals are all over the place. His suit pressure-”

Benny is suddenly aware of a very faint beeping noise coming in over Bucky’s coms. A suit alarm.

He’s very worried, just for a moment, that he might pass out.

–

From where he’s kneeling in the darkness of the ridge, Curt can hardly see anything. Since the moon has no atmosphere for sound to travel through, he also can’t hear anything other than the voices over coms. He scrambles to his feet the moment he hears Bucky yell “Fuck.” One word, but the tone in which it’s said is all too familiar to Curt, a fellow pilot. It’s a tone that’s, all at once, as horrified as it is resigned. The moment you know you’re going down and there’s essentially nothing you can do about it.

His flashlight beam barely goes far enough for him to make anything out for certain, but he can see glinting metal flashing through the darkness. Its pattern isn’t consistent enough to be the rover easing down the slope like it’s supposed to.

He squints, watching it for a few more seconds, before he says “Oh god.” The rover is tumbling end over end down the slope, and part of him can’t help but think how wrong it is that there’s no crashing sounds, no sound of metal banging and bending. It’s just quiet. Like a silent movie. Benny’s in his ear, trying to get John to respond, and Curt realizes that, wherever John is, he can’t respond. John’s not going to respond. And he knows he needs to tell Mission Control what he’s seeing, but there’s not enough room in his brain for that. All he can think is run. 

So he fucking runs. 

His boots slip and slide in the regolith as he takes awkward, bounding steps up the slope, too much effort for not enough gain. His suit is still stiff, keeping him from bending his joints enough to run, but he has to. He has to. 

Smokey must note that his heart rate is spiking, because Benny’s saying “Curt, are you okay? You’re using too much oxygen.”

“I’m not concerned about my fuckin’ oxygen,” he growls. The slope is getting steeper, and he starts stumbling over his own feet after about 20 yards. The beam of his flashlight is shaking uncontrollably, but he can see the metal of the rover somewhere ahead, reflecting the light. It’s finally come to a stop, about 15 more yards away.

He hears Benny ask, “Curt, do you have visual?”

“Uh huh.” That’s all he gives them, trudging on even as the loose dust and rock under his feet falls away, making it near impossible to get anywhere. He’s practically running in place like a damn cartoon. He slips and goes down on his knees, catching himself with his hands. His flashlight tumbles away and he lunges to grab it before he gets himself lost in the darkness. “Fuck fuck fuck.” 

He rips a piece of duct tape off the roll looped to his EVA suit and uses it to secure the flashlight to his shoulder. He adds a few more pieces over top, ensuring it’ll stay, and then he drags himself to his feet again. He’s breathing too hard. He knows with sudden clarity that if he doesn’t get himself under control, he won’t have enough oxygen to get back, just like Benny said. And if he can’t get back, he can’t save John.

He takes one more deep breath and then forces himself to calm down.

Benny is still saying John’s name. 

When Curt finally makes it to the rover, though, he knows there isn’t going to be an answer. All there is is a quiet beeping noise buzzing around Curt’s brain like a fly. 

The rover is on its side but, somehow, miraculously, still on, headlights shining into the shadowed unknown. That stupid left wheel is laying flat on the ground right beside it. All of the materials they’d packed, including the LDA payload and the repair kit, are scattered across the slope, and Bucky…

Bucky is lying on the ground, face up and half under the rover. When Curt gets to him, he drops to his knees and puts one hand on Bucky’s shoulder. With the other hand, he rips the duct taped flashlight off his suit and shines it on his commander’s face. “Bucky?” he whispers, even though he knows it’s useless. 

Bucky’s eyes are closed, and Curt can’t tell if he’s breathing or not. He realizes that the quiet, incessant beeping he’s hearing over coms is an alarm from Bucky’s EVA suit. In the glow of the flashlight, he sees something dark glistening inside Bucky’s helmet, above and behind his head. After a second, he realizes that it’s blood, seeping through his com cap. It's smeared across his forehead, too, trailing down his temple.

For all the oxygen he was using before, Curt can barely breathe, now. “Benny?”

“Is he awake, Curt?” 

Curt freezes, trying to sort through that question. Is he awake means he’s not dead. Houston still has his vitals. He’s not dead. 

Curt swallows and clenches his jaw. “Benny, we have a big, big problem.”

–

Alive. He’s alive. He’s alive.

For how much longer?

Benny is forced to remain calm, something he’s familiar with as a pilot. It’s just, usually, as a pilot, your crew members aren’t on another planetary body hundreds of thousands of miles away.

But he works through it anyway. Work the problem. Work the fucking problem.

He guides Curt through getting the rover righted, through pulling Bucky’s unconscious body away from the wreckage, through tracking down the repair kit, through reattaching the wheel. He’ll barely remember any of this by tomorrow. He barely remembers any of it now. 

He looks at Red across the room as a horrible, urgent thought strikes him right in the chest. “We have to tell Gale before Red Shift comes in.”

Usually, when an astronaut gets hurt on the moon, they wait until the situation is under control to contact the family. It’s just, usually, when there’s an astronaut involved, the family members aren’t scheduled to come in for a Mission Control shift in two hours.

Red's eyes lock on him, and Benny sees them widen almost imperceptibly. He nods. They both know: it has to be Benny. There’s no other choice. Red turns to the nearest flight controller and grabs them by the arm. “Get Helen here. Now.”

–

It’s raining. 

Fat, heavy drops pounding on the roof of the house in Nassau Bay. Pops of electricity flash through the sky, jumping from cloud to cloud, and the smell of damp Earth mixes with the salty air blowing in from the Gulf. 

But none of these are what wake Gale Cleven. 

It’s not even the dogs, with their wet noses and hopeful eyes and insistent whines. Instead, it’s a gentle hand shaking his shoulder. John?  

No, not John. Can’t be John. 

“Buck, wake up.” The voice is calm and low and yet… sad. There’s only two other people with a key to this house. One of them is Marge, and the other… shouldn’t be here either. 

Gale opens his eyes and stares out the window into the eerie, rainy night. Slowly, he turns his head to squint at Benny in the dim light of his bedside lamp. “Benny? Why…? Am I-” 

Why are you here? Am I late? Did I oversleep? That’s not like myself. It’s still dark outside.

These are all thoughts that don’t make it out of his mouth, stuck in the quicksand of his brain as he groggily turns his head and looks at the clock on the bedside table. It’s only 5am. He wasn’t even planning to get up until 5:30.

He stares blankly at the time for a few solid seconds, trying to understand, before his entire world comes to a screeching halt. If Benny’s here… 

Benny would’ve told you if I wasn’t okay. 

Gale’s heart starts pounding before he feels like it drops clear out of his chest, nausea rising to take its place. His lungs stop taking in air, and his hands scramble at the bedsheets as he tries to sit up straight.

No. 

Benny’s hand slides off Gale’s shoulder in his panicked movement, and the disappearance of that warm, comforting touch is another shock to Gale’s system. He’s untethered. A feeling of loss swells through him as he looks up at his friend. 

Benny is looking down at the floor, though, avoiding eye contact. He isn’t saying anything.

The room spins.

No. 

When Benny looks up again, Gale is staring back at him with the widest, most horror-stricken eyes, sitting there, looking exhausted and confused and wrecked and frightened, gripping too hard at the fabric of the old Yankees sweatshirt that Benny knows doesn't smell like Bucky anymore. Benny’s own heart breaks into pieces. He wants to fall apart right there and then, but he can’t. It's his job not to. Instead, he sits there calmly on the edge of the bed, puts his hand back on Gale’s shoulder, and he realizes that there’s a faint trembling there.

He takes a deep breath as he looks Gale in the eye. 

“No,” Gale whispers. He shakes his head. His breath starts coming back in slow and shallow spurts, like his body is trying to boycott oxygen until he knows that his other half is still breathing, too. “Is- Is he-”

Talk to you tomorrow, angel.

If we’re lucky the fag will die up there.

Praying the queer dies on the moon.

I love you.

If I had to die, the moon isn’t a bad place to do it. 

Don’t count on it don’t count on it don’t count on it... 

“He’s alive.”

Gale makes a terrible noise somewhere between a gasp and a sob, his heart and lungs going back to work in fast-forward as he bows his head, clutching it in his hands.

Benny swallows. “But it’s bad, Buck. It’s bad.”

…

…

Part 11

[dollsahoy]

I had this 1962 Ken head that I really wanted to get onto a body, but one of the bodies I had seemed right--mostly too large and very far off in skin tone.

So i was thrilled when I was able to get a secondhand Hasbro Disney Descendants Carlos body, with its smaller stature and muted skin tone, that I knew would work with this Ken head.

A disadvantage was that that Descendants body had no wrist joints, so I cut off the hands and drilled the wrists and attached some vintage action figure style hands (I'd originally tried some fairly realistic modern action figure hands--even though the skin tone match was better, the style was so so wrong for this doll)

I painted his hair blue and altered his eyes to not only be brown, but also side glance. And then I dressed him like that.

[samwisethewitch]

15 Days of Freyja Devotion

Day 3: Symbols and Attributes

Some of Freyja's Symbols are:

Cats. She is said to ride in a chariot pulled by cats, but these wouldn't have been domesticated housecats. To Freyja's earliest worshipers, cats were wild animals and fierce predators that could pose a serious threat. However, many modern worshipers associate Freyja with housecats as well -- myself included.

Boar. Both Freyja and her brother Freyr are associated with boar. Freyja rides a boar named Hildisvini ("battle swine"). Freyja may be associated with pigs more generally, since one of her names is Syr, "sow."

Falcons. Freyja has a cloak made of falcon feathers that gives the one wearing it the ability to change shape and fly. I personally associate Freyja with falcons and hawks.

Gold. "Gold" is used to describe the Aesir and the things associated with them in the Poetic Edda, but Freyja especially is associated with gold. Gold is sometimes called "Freyja's tears" as a kenning.

Amber is also associated with Freyja, possibly because of a shared connection to the ocean (amber sometimes washes up on the shore in Scandinavia).

The distaff and other spinning tools are associated with Freyja and with the goddess Frigg. Spinning was a very important part of Norse womanhood, and on one level, the distaff probably just shows that Freyja is a goddess of women. On the other hand, there seems to be some sort of connection between spinning and magic in Norse culture, so this may also represent Freyja as a goddess of magic.

The seidr staff is also associated with Freyja. Seidr staves weren't literally distaves, but they did look similar and some scholars argue that seidr staves were intentionally made to resemble spinning staves. Whatever the case, both types of staff are associated with Freyja.

Apples are associated with Freyja, and in Swedish folk practices people left some ripe apples in the trees as an offering to her.

Maidenhair, Adiantum capillus-veneris, was called "Freyja's Hair" in Iceland.

Common milkwort, Polygala vulgaris, was originally also called "Freyja's Hair" in Scandinavia but was renamed after the Virgin Mary during the Conversion period.

Orchids were also associated with Freyja before the conversion. While this was specifically a Northern European species of orchid, I personally associate all orchid flowers with her.

Rye is connected to Freyja in Sweden, where Freyja is said to oversee the ripening of rye.

Sheet lightning is said to be a symbol of Freyja's rage in Sweden.

The constellation we call Orion's Belt was called "Freyja's Distaff" or "Frigg's Distaff" in Sweden.

[telekinetictrait]

"A happy ending was imperative. I shouldn't have bothered to write otherwise. I was determined that in fiction anyway two men should fall in love and remain in it for the ever and ever that fiction allows." (Maurice – E.M. Forester, written in 1913, published posthumously in 1971)

i forgot to do a full body screenshot of the second 1920s look :( but the headshot will be under the cut! argh!!!!!!

23 years left :)

1800s directory / 1900s directory

cc links under the cut!

see my resources page for genetics

keaton : get together hat / base game hair / get famous suit + shoes

kit : base game hair / chere-indolente's newlyn fisherman cableknit / cyber-frog-cc's modern man trousers / seasons boots

levin : coeurdavide's boaters for the boys / i don't remember where the hair is from sorry :( / cyber-frog-cc's modern man shirt and trousers / mmoutfitters' fancy feet shoes recolor

lonnie : i don't remember where the hair is from sorry :( / linzlu's 1910's mens set (download here) / get together shoes

maxwell : historysims4's mr hat + antoine hair + not so formal outfit

neil : happylifesims' 1930's fedora hat / twentiethcenturysims' swan suit / base game shoes

norris : cottage living hat + outfit / seasons boots

oberon : johnnysimmer's kyrie hair / vroshii's vintage vest and pants / get together shoes

odie : johnnysimmer's kyrie hair / twentiethcenturysims' tommy knicker suit / get famous socks / vintage glamour shoes

patrick : base game hair / wyattssims' tucked button up with long sleeves / simstrouble's robby trousers / base game socks + shoes

phocas : all base game!

reiner : johnnysimmer's ramdi hair / madameriasims4's retro polo / wyattssims' high rolled pants with rope belt / base game socks + shoes

ryland : paranormal hair / happylifesims' harold lloyd turtleneck / paranormal pants / base game shoes

shelton : sheabuttyr's andre afro / paranormal open suit / makesims' rolled corduroys / i don't remember what pack the shoes are from but i know they're from a pack

sylvain : qrqr19's moonstone hair / base game earrings / serenity-cc's faux fur coat + terra jeans / discover university shoes??

terell : ceeproductions' sponge curls / aniraklova's vice city shirt / base game pants + shoes

tyodor : dbasiasimbr's afro mohawk / base game earrings + necklace (magic earring ken, anyone??) / bustedpixels' decades glam rock conversion / wistfulpoltergeist’s night city gloves / vampires leather pants / base game boots

ulrich : okruee's adonis hair + flowers / base game necklace / definitely not grunge revival top + pants + sneakers

upton : johnnysimmer's will hair / bustedpixels' vintage adidas jacket / nucrests' comfy loose joggers / base game sneakers

thank you to @chere-indolente @cyber-frog-cc @coeurdavide @mmoutfitters @linzlu @historysims4 @happylifesimsreblogs @twentiethcenturysims @johnnysimmer @vroshii @wyattssims @simstrouble @madameriasims4 @sheabuttyr @makesims @qrqr19 @serenity-cc @ceeproductions @aniraklova @dbasiasimbr @bustedpixels @wistfulpoltergeist @okruee @mossylane and @nucrests !!!

as promised, heres what would have been the second 20s look (miles)