#Scientists man can’t take ‘em anywhere | Explore Tumblr posts and blogs

moonlit-imagines · 4 years ago

Text

Headcanons for being Jane Foster’s child

Jane Foster x child!reader

Thor Odinson x Foster!child!reader

warnings:

a/n: no not a foster child, jane foster’s child 😌 also im so super glad you liked those!!! hope these are just as good!!! and im genuinely so sorry these took so long

prompt: anonymous: “Hey! I just read the Tony Stark x Potts!child!reader HC and I loved it! Would you do the same but with Thor and Jane? ❤️”

no babysitter = go to work with mom

dr. selvig gave you a rubik’s cube to keep you entertained

“fuck that! here, y/n, you can play my DS” -darcy

“can you not swear in front of my child?” -jane

you thought tonight would be boring, but then your mom and darcy collectively hit a homeless guy with a car!

“holy crap, we’re all going to jail!” -you

“don’t say ‘crap,’ y/n! we need to get him to a hospital!” -jane

ngl this dude was kinda funky

darcy used her taser and your mom covered your eyes, but you still peaked ;)

ride to the hospital

“don’t touch him, y/n”

“sorry, doc”

and the very next day you guys stole him 💕

“mr. thor, where are you from?”

“i am from asgard! it is much different from this realm, but your’s is adequate, i suppose”

“thanks?”

you could see the way your mom looked at him, though

he ate all the pop tarts >:(

she gave thor her ex boyfriends clothes

“yeah, donald was a real ass—” -you

“don’t say ‘ass.’ darcy curses too much” -jane

“sorry, mom...anyways, donald forgot to pick me up from soccer practice like, a dozen times. he sucked” -you

“this ‘donald’ doesn’t seem like a very good man...also, what is ‘soccer?’” -thor

you grabbed a soccer ball and tried to show him how to play but there was some other stuff the *scientists* had to take care of

you were a regular at izzy’s diner (well, mom was) and they always made you cute pancakes in different shapes!!

“ah, it’s a smiley face! that’s adorable!” -thor

“yeah! they like to surprise me whenever i come in. they’re pretty awesome” -you

*your mom literally beaming at how good thor is with you already*

you and thor were drawing on paper placemats

and then he broke a glass and you started giggling hdhshshs

but he had to leave

“no, thor, please don’t go!”

“i hope to meet you again one day, little one. hopefully fate sees it through”

:((((

no time to be sad bc ur mom’s lab got hijacked by the government

“hey, no fair! that’s my diary!” -you

“sorry, kid. there are constellation drawings we have to observe” -coulson

“aw, you draw constellations? wait, not now. you can’t just take all our stuff. especially that! that belongs to a child!” -jane

“sic ‘em, y/n!” -darcy

“don’t listen to darcy, y/n” -selvig

chilling in the trailer and missing thor bc he was the most interesting thing to happen to you and your mom in a while

and you wanted her to be happy even tho he was kind of crazy

“hey, mom? do you want to watch the stars tonight like we used to do? we could make s’mores?”

“that sounds like a great idea, baby! i’ve gotta go take care of some science stuff, so i’ll pick up some s’mores stuff while i’m out. love you!”

yeah she went to go see thor and he kinda got arrested but your mom came back home so you could watch the stars!

“so, do you like thor?” -you

“what? what makes you say that?” -jane

“it’s cool if you do, i think he’s awesome. a little weird, but at least he’s nice”

then thor and selvig came home and selvig was drunk as a skunk

*poking him while he giggles and tells you about thor*

“i wish your grandfather could have met that guy! he would have loved him...i wish you met your grandfather, too” -selvig

thor inviting you back outside

“i’d like you to teach me more about this ‘soccer’”

by the time you guys were done, it was 3am and you were too pumped to go to sleep

so thor told you stories of his home and battle and family

you didn’t want him to stop, you were fascinated by it all

and uhhhh yeah then earth kinda had some vikings show up

they told you that you’d “make a fine warrior one day”

and then yall got attacked by a ????? a what??? a destroyer???????

“get y/n out of here now! they shouldn’t have to see this!” -thor

you were still nearby and saw thor become thor again

after he was done fighting the destroyer, you ran to give him a hug

“that was awesome! can i hold your hammer?”

“maybe someday, little one”

then you didn’t see him for 2 years

which upset your mom a good bit, you had to help her through that episode. lots of sitting on the couch and eating ice cream together talking about how he wasn’t worth her time even tho you missed him too

but he came back! and then your mom sent everything flying bc she had an “infinity stone” inside her and thor took you two to asgard

“y/n! you’ve grown so much, i almost didn’t recognize you!” -thor

tbh you really digged the outfit they gave you, but also you were on another planet? thor insisted on giving you a tour (by flying you around)

“i do hope you’re having fun, little one!”

worrying about your mom simultaneously bc you overheard she was sick

but asgard got attacked and you and jane were confined to a room in the palace, which sucked because you wanted to see it all

but thor sent guards to bring you anything to keep you entertained

“maybe we’ll skip the mace for now, thank you” -jane

after several events that count as child endangerment, this chapter came to an end and your mom and thor finally made it official

loki called you a rodent and then saved your life so you were kinda iffy about him

about a year or two later, your mom had to travel a great deal in order to get some work done, so you were left in the care of thor, who took you to avengers tower

“oh, my girlfriend’s child is an angel! and they’re so intelligent, just like their mother!” -thor gushing to other partygoers

“yeah, thor, your ‘angel’ is sneaking drinks from the elderly” -tony

*sipping his beer* “they’re a growing teenager”

you did have an amazing time interacting with the avengers

and once they tried grabbing the hammer, you knew you had to get in on it (but you failed like the rest)

“don’t worry, my y/n, you have to be eighteen years of age to be able to lift mjölnir!” -thor

“oh, that makes sense!” -you, while thor aggressively shakes his head at the other avengers. he just wanted to make sure you didn’t feel bad you weren’t worthy yet :(

more child endangerment but really what did you expect?

thor went off world and your mom split it off w him but you did have his email so you were still in contact with him

swearing you saw odin on the street once or twice (fast forward)

and then your mom dusted and thor found you as soon as he possibly could, it was so good to see him

he took you in since you were alone now, you moved to new asgard and became prince(ss) of the new land by relation?? makes sense right

basically you and valkyrie made all the calls while thor grieved for years

but he still took care of you

“y/n, would you like to play video games with me? i think it may be a good bonding experience, what do you say?” -thor

“duh!”

uncle korg made you help him with fortnite while thor was asleep

you wished to wield stormbreaker one day

showing thor earth media! his favorite star wars character is r2-d2 dont ask why

he taught you asgardian recipes and you taught him...earth recipes?

when he was drunk he’d ramble on about his childhood and battle and enemies and jane and loki and hela and frigga and literally anything that came to mind

“y/n, could you please get me a beer? and get one for yourself, too” -thor

valkyrie most definitely gave you some battle training so you you blow off some steam, you were glad she taught you how to fight like a true warrior

thor wanted to teach you battle tactics so you could fight alongside him, but he never got around to it

a raccoon and bruce banner visited later on, proposing a way to get your family back, thor was an emotional wreck

his debriefing on the reality stone was tense when he started crying about your mom and everyone stared at you

“hey, don’t look at me. i don’t control the god, i just keep him company”

ending up waiting 1 second for the avengers to come back from their mission, resulting in you being stuck in the middle of a very heavy battle

“y/n, get out of here!” -thor

“don’t worry, thor! valkyrie taught me a few moves!”

“you make me incredibly proud, little one!”

“i’m not so little anymore, am i?”

“you will always be my little one, y/n. blood or not, that will not change!”

victory, but at what cost? it was a rough ride, you needed to get patched up, but your mom was finally home and thor...he decided it was time to leave earth again

“don’t worry, my y/n. i will see you again.” *tearing up* “i’m so glad i got the pleasure of raising you these past few years. i love you dearly, now go be with your mother”

you straight up wanted to bawl your eyes out right there

“well, y/n, you’re next in line for the throne of new asgard. what is your first command?” -valkyrie

“actually, i think you’d make a much better ruler than me. i’ve got to spend some time with my mother now that she’s home”

“you’re so much like him, you know that?”

staying with your mother, who was diagnosed with cancer not long after returning from the soul stone (a/n: jane getting cancer is canon in the comics and confirmed for thor 4)

“i missed five years of your life and now i’m sick, that’s just our luck, isn’t it?” -jane

she was understandably upset, but she also felt guilty

“mom, don’t beat yourself up. everything is okay, we’re still together right now. i won’t be going anywhere, i promise”

taglist: @alwaysananglophile // @rorybutnotgilmore // @locke-writes // @sweetheartliz07 // @queen-destenie // @natasha-danvers // @lokihiddles // @frostedgiantfavs // @emygirl // @lotsoffandomrecs // @johnmurphyisbisexual // @teenwaywardasgardian // @pappydaddy // @captainshazamerica // @freya-xo // @ravenmoore14 // @purpleskiesstorm // @ofthedewthesunlight // @canarypoint // @zoeyserpentluck //

#thor odinson x child!reader #thor odinson x reader #thor odinson imagine #thor odinson #thor #thor x reader #thor imagine #marvel #marvel x reader #marvel imagine #avengers x reader #avengers imagine #avengers #jane foster #jane foster x child!reader #jane foster x reader #jane foster imagine

307 notes · View notes

blackmissfrizzle · 5 years ago

Text

City Boy and His Country Girl

Characters: Erik x black!reader

Summary: Erik promises to help the reader navigate New York.

Request: "Country Girl goes to New York and meets a tough guy New Yorker who teaches her the ropes and then they get together"

Requested by @nervouspetsonanime

With a lot on your mind, you set your purse down on the table and went to refill your drink. The stress of the workday was getting to you and you were only midway through it. Before you went back to work you had to figure out a way to deal with some of your shady coworkers.

Making your way back to your booth, you saw two men standing there arguing. You were hesitant to go back and was about to find a new seat to avoid the scene but then you remembered your purse.

“Man, I’m telling you put that shit back or we gonna have a real problem here,” you heard, getting closer to the two.

“How about you mind your business?” The other guy asked, moving his arm behind his back. That’s when you noticed he had your purse in his hand. The dread head was trying to get this thief to put down your purse.

Noticing movement near him, your savior turned to you. Pointing to your bag, he asked, “Aye, lil mama is that your bag?”

Your mind short-circuited for a moment because of this man. He was so damn sexy. Tall, dark, and thick just like you liked em. He sorta reminded you of the guys back home except for the Oakland accent.

Finally, gathering your bearings you answered the man. “Yeah, that’s my bag and I don’t know why it’s in his hand.”

The Good Samaritan stared down the potential thief and pulled up his shirt to reveal his gun and v-cut you couldn’t keep your eyes off of. “You got 10 seconds to figure out if that purse is worth a hospital bill.”

Dropping your purse like a hot potato, the thief handed you your purse and ran out the restaurant. He wasn’t as tough as he thought.

“Next time don’t be leaving your shit hanging around.” The asshole told you before leaving.

Even though he was a little rude, you didn’t want him to leave. To stop him, you tried wrapping your hand around his bicep, but you were only able to cuff half of it. “At least let me buy you lunch as a thank you.”

He looked down at your hand and back to you. Quickly, you removed it, sensing he didn’t like being touched. “All right lil mama.”

His big body slid into the booth and you followed his suit. Stretching his hand across he introduced himself. “I’m Erik.”

“Y/N.” You took his hand to shake and his grip was tight, and you were thoroughly impressed. Your daddy always said you could tell a lot about a man by his handshake, especially when it was with a woman. A firm handshake with a woman said the man respected you, saw you as his equal.

“So, Y/N why you leaving your stuff where just any ole body can steal yo shit?” Erik took a sip of his drink and eyed you curiously.

Erik’s gaze made you hot and nervous. You had to train your eyes to look anywhere but him just to speak. “Well it wouldn’t have happened back at home and also my mind was elsewhere.”

The waitress brought both of your meals and y’all laughed at the identical plates, bacon cheeseburger with a side of onion rings.

“Ok then, what had you all messed up that almost got you robbed?”

Deciding you’ll probably never see this man again, you told Erik your office drama. “Basically, I’m the boss’ new favorite and my coworkers can’t stand it. God, sometimes I wish Tony Stark never found out about me.”

“Word? You work for Stark?” Erik raised an eyebrow, beginning to become more intrigued with this southern belle. He met Stark plenty of times before and respected his work as a scientist but couldn’t understand how someone could put up with him for hours on end.

“Yes sir,” you replied, making Erik shift in his seat at the mention of you using such a formal name for him. “My mentor who’s an old college buddy of Mr. Stark’s, sent my business management assignment to him and then the next morning, Mr. Stark was on my daddy’s porch offering me a job.”

Erik chuckled and stretched his fist out for you to dap him. He was proud of you, a black woman seemingly from a small town, working for the most renowned business mogul. “Oh, shit! That’s how you do it. Lemme guess your co-workers lack melanin?”

“Yes! And I really tried to work with them, but they hate my guts for whatever reason. But they have no problem taking credit for my ideas.” That’s why you were in a frenzy now. Cody (which btw was such a typical douchebag white boy name) pitched your idea of throwing a big gala to impress a fellow businessman for a potential partnership as his own to Mr. Stark and Ms. Potts. Then guess who he expected to do all the work? You, of course!

Finally getting the chance to vent felt good, so poor Erik had to hear all your frustrations. “And then don’t get me started on this stupid city. First off, people are rude! No one knows how to say excuse me and when I call someone ma’am, they look at me like I just called her a bitch. Second, rent is expensive! Thank you to sweet baby Jesus, for Mr. Stark hiring me, because I wouldn’t be able to afford living here. Do you know what kind of house I could buy back in Texas?”

Erik was amused at your rant. He enjoyed seeing you get all this passionate despite only knowing you for half an hour, so he decided to entertain you. “No, what kind?”

“A big ass house! Probably a ranch with all the damn animals already on it. And then this city has no good bbq. How is a girl suppose to live without some brisket!?”

Done with your rant, you took a bite on your burger and realized you just dumped your whole life story on a man who was basically a stranger. “I’m sorry, you had to hear all that. It just whenever I vent to my friends back home, they tell me I’m not appreciating this opportunity and I can’t tell my mama and daddy, because I’m paying their bills and I don’t want them to feel guilty.” Catching yourself offering up more information, you slapped your forehead. “Oh, there I go again oversharing. I’m sorry.”

Erik somewhat understood your situation. Adjusting to life in Wakanda was a culture shock and he had to figure out how to navigate in his father’s homeland. Grabbing the hand that hit your forehead, Erik massage it, focusing on the knuckles and the spaces between the fingers. “Nah, you good ma. But I do know what you need to do.”

“And what’s that,” you asked, leaned back amused.

“You need to toughen up, Texas.” Erik advised you.

Leaning on your elbows, you teased Erik with your own nickname. “Oh, really now? And how’s that gonna happen, Oakland?”

Immediately on the defense, scared that you were someone from his past, Erik asked, “How do you know I’m from Oakland?”

“Calm down, cowboy,” you patted his forearm to soothe him. “Your accent is a dead giveaway. You sound just like Marshawn Lynch.”

Erik kissed his teeth and crossed his arms. He liked Marshawn, even respected him, but when you mentioned him with practically heart eyes Marshawn became public enemy number 1. “That nigga a’ight. Anyway, imma toughen you up. Teach you how to survive these mean streets of New York and how to deal with these colonizers.”

Your eyebrows furrowed and you repeated Erik, “Colonizers?”

“White people,” he said as if he should understand his lingo.

“Oh okay, what a weird insult, but when do we start?” you asked anxiously, you were excited at the chance to spend more time with this diamond in the rough man.

“This weekend?” Erik tried his best to keep his cool, but he was so excited to see this country girl as soon as possible. He would’ve asked for tomorrow, but he didn’t want to come off clingy and he had too much work to do at the Outreach and Y/N would’ve been a major distraction.

Making yourself be still and hide your excitement, you replied, “That’s perfect. I had no plans but to do my laundry and catch up on some Netflix.”

Erik bit back a smile. “Cool. I gotta get back to the office, lil mama. Give me your number and you’ll hear from me very soon.”

You and Erik exchanged numbers. While you were putting your number in his phone, you didn’t notice Erik slyly pay the waitress for your meals. When you both were done exchanging numbers, you said your goodbyes and then Erik left, making you already crave his presence.

“Excuse me, miss, can I get the check?” You flagged down the waitress, digging into your purse for your wallet.

“Oh, your friend paid for it already. He said you had enough troubles today and that you didn’t need to worry about paying for him.” The young lady walked away and started cleaning your table as you stood there dumbfounded. Erik was a man full of surprises and you couldn’t wait to find out more.

Tagging: @twistedcharismaaa @marvelmaree @ladydragonpurplefire @l-auteuse @thehomierobbstark @titty-teetee @nerd-lovely @nervouspetsonanime @soufcakmistress @chaneajoyyy

#black!reader #erik stevens #erik stevens x reader #erik stevens x black!reader #erik x black!reader #erik x reader #killmonger x reader #killmonger x black!reader #erik killmonger #erik killmonger x reader #erik killmonger x black!reader #erik stevens fanfiction #marvel #marvel fanfiction #black panther fandom #black panther fanfiction #frizzlesfic #frizzlefic #city boy and his country girl series

518 notes · View notes

kelyon · 4 years ago

Text

Nephila Chapter 5: Everglades

The fic where the Stiltskin men are all giant spiders (and some people are into that.)

In which Emma Swan is Florida Woman

Trigger warning: Killian Jones

Read on AO3

“Parks department is gonna shoot us with their tranquilizer guns if they catch us out here, Swan.”

Emma rolled her eyes at Killian and kept steering her fishing boat through the swamp. This section of the glades was tricky to navigate. She couldn’t let his whining distract her.

They were in a flat-bottomed aluminum jon boat, ten feet long. It didn’t have a built-in engine. Normally Emma used a paddle to get her where she needed to go on the water. Since her plans today were taking her further out than normal, she had “borrowed” a portable Evinrude motor from her friend Penny. It would be fine though; Penny’s boat just got impounded, so she wasn’t gonna miss the motor.

“I never said you had to come, Jones.” She shielded her eyes from the bright Florida sun. Her glasses were dirty and scratched. The reflection on the water doubled the light and made it impossible to see. She shoulda brought a visor.

“No, you just said you were going to do something dangerous and stupid.” Killian lounged against the side of the boat and used both hands to swat at bugs. “You know I can’t resist a challenge.”

“Of course not. That’s why you keep hanging around me, even though I don’t wanna bang you.”

“You mean you don’t want to bang me yet!” He gave her the grin that had worked on every other girl in the tri-county area. “I remain hopeful.”

“You remain delusional.”

Every once in a while, Emma thought about sleeping with Killian just so he would get over it and stop bothering her. He was decent company when he wasn’t horny. He was the only person in their group who would go on crazy adventures with her, and he never minded letting her crash at his place. They’d gotten each other in and out of trouble at least a hundred times since she’d moved to Florida during her freshman year of high school.

That was part of the problem with Killian. She’d known him too long. When they’d met, he’d been zitty and awkward, tagging along after his older brother Liam. Killian hadn’t gotten hot until senior year when he started growing a beard. All that shaggy dark hair brought out his bright blue eyes and covered up his acne. He wasn’t bad looking. And he was almost smart. Growing up on a houseboat made him act like he knew everything about every kind of boat, so he was never afraid to act like a drunk pirate. A lot of girls were into that.

For herself, Emma had heard his voice crack too many times to ever think about him as a sexual option. And yet, ever since graduation, she had found herself at the top of his “to-do list.” It was putting a real strain on their friendship.

“Oh, come on, luv! You know I’ll do anything for you. But if I’m gonna get a hand bit off by a crocodile, I’d feel better about it if I knew there was gonna be some kind of reward for my trouble.”

“Sex isn’t a reward, dumbass.” Hand on the tiller of the motor, Emma steered them around a patch of sawgrass and into a free-flowing slough where the water could carry them. “And besides, there aren’t any crocodiles in Florida. It’s all gators. I only lived here five years and even I know that!”

“Ha!” Killian pointed a triumphant finger at her. “Well, I’ve lived on these waters all my life! And I know that the American Crocodile is the only crocodile that co-exists with alligators. It’s an endangered species and it only lives here in the Everglades!”

She narrowed her eyes. “You just heard that on the Internet.”

Killian shrugged. “Doesn’t mean it’s not true.”

Emma shook her head. Whether or not Killian should believe something he read on the Internet was an argument they had at least once a week. Going over it again wasn’t worth it.

“Point is,” she said. “We’re going to the part of the glades where there aren’t any gators or crocodiles.”

Killian made a face. “There’s no such place.”

“There sure is!”

He still didn’t believe her. “How do you know gators aren’t there?”

“Cuz there’s too much other stuff. There’s a billion more birds and bugs and lizards in this part of the swamp than there is anywhere else.”

“In the whole Everglades?”

“Yeah. I read an article about it. On the Internet.”

If Killian wanted to give her crap about her news source, he was going to have one hell of an argument. But he had just enough brains not to, so Emma got to explain.

“The article had all these science people talking about the ‘explosion of biodiversity’ in this one tiny section of the Glades. It’s probably been going on for a while, but they just noticed it a couple months ago. All the animals and things that you find one of in any other part of the Glades, you’ll find ten of ‘em in this part we’re going to now.”

“With all the animals there, why aren’t there any gators snapping them up?”

“That’s what the scientists wanted to know. They said it makes sense that there’s more little things crawling around when there aren’t any big things to eat ‘em. But it doesn’t make sense that all the gators, the ‘apex predators,’ just disappeared. They think something is killing the gators but letting everything else go. They’re real worried about it too. So I figure there might be some kinda reward for finding out what’s going on.”

“A reward?” Killian sat up so fast the boat rocked. “You didn’t say anything about a reward!”

“I just did,” Emma smirked. “But we gotta keep it secret. I don’t want anybody trying to edge in on our find.”

“Wait, what are you trying to find?”

“Didn’t you hear a word I said? I’m going to find whatever’s eating the gators!”

Killian’s jaw dropped. “Are you crazy? You think there’s something big enough to eat gators and the first thing you wanna do is go after it?”

“Mm-hmm.”

Emma turned back to the tiller. She pulled her phone out of her back pocket and unlocked the screen. The article she’d read had a dinky little drawing of a map where all the strange activity was going on. Emma had compared it to the real map on Google and taken a screenshot of where she wanted to go. They should be close.

Killian was still freaking out. At least he was smart enough not to move so much that it would tip the boat over. “What the fuck is wrong with you, Swan?”

“I told you I was gonna do something stupid and dangerous.”

“You know it’s probably just snakes, right? Them pythons people get as pets, then they get too big and people let ‘em loose in the swamp and they eat everything. My buddy Kaa had to do that once.”

“If it was just a bunch of snakes, the science people wouldn’t be so weirded out about it. It’s something they can’t explain.”

“For all you know it could be a giant fucking monster! Did you bring a gun or something? You know McLeach is good to hook us up.”

Emma shook her head. “This is just a fact-finding mission. I don’t need a gun, I’ve got this.” She held up a digital camera in a plastic zipper bag. “I told Hat Man the whole story and he let me use this to take pictures.”

Killian ran his hand over his face. “Of course he did. Hat Man is the only other person in all of Florida who’s as crazy as you!”

Emma threw up her hands. “There are lots of people who do dumber stuff than me or Hat Man ever tried!”

“Yeah, but none of them ever did something that’s gonna get me killed! I swear, Swan--”

“Would the two of you please shut up?” Some guy’s voice rang out over the water. “You’re bothering the monster!”

Emma cut the motor and stood up. The jon boat wobbled but steadied itself after a second. Pushing up her glasses, she scanned around the water. She couldn’t spot any other boats around all the sawgrass patches.

“Who the hell are you?” she shouted. “And how the fuck do you know about the monster?”

The voice chuckled. “Lady, I know more about monsters than you know about your own parents.”

Emma clenched her jaw and muttered. “You don’t know shit about my parents, jackass.”

Sitting on the bench seat closest to the front of the boat, Killian put his head in his hands. “Let’s get out of here, Swan. Whoever this asshole is, the gator-eater can go eat him.”

“The gator-eater can eat this guy, just so long as I get a picture.” She cupped her hands around her mouth and shouted. “Where are you? Can you see anything?”

“I’ve got so many eyes, I can see everything.” The voice wasn’t shouting anymore. It sounded close. Emma hadn’t heard a motor running. Was this guy in a canoe? This far out away from the shore?

Her head spun as she looked around, but she didn’t see anything besides sawgrass and dead tree limbs and a million birds and bugs. There was an extra glare on the water around here, some kinda gold light coming off the patches of land.

“Where are you?” she asked again.

“Over here.”

A head popped out of the nearest patch of sawgrass. This patch had the most of the weird light, so much gold it barely looked green at all. Squinting, she tried to see who she was looking at.

At first, Emma thought it was just a normal guy with a tan. Then she thought the guy had some killer tattoos, maybe jail tats. There were dark brown circles all over his face. Then, the circles blinked at her. Then the guy smiled--and his mouth was green. No, that was not a human mouth. He had fangs. He had pincers.

“Oh, Jesus,” Emma whispered.

She couldn’t move. This was the thing she was looking for, but she couldn’t move. The camera was right by her feet. Her phone was in her back pocket. The boat tiller was less than a foot away from her hand. But she couldn’t move.

From up on his mound of sawgrass, the guy--the thing, the monster--was still smiling. He waved at her.

Somehow, she could wave back.

Sitting down, Killian hadn’t seen what Emma was looking at. “Do you see him?” he asked as he stood up. “I wanna get a good look at our competit--holy shit!”

Everything happened at once. Emma could only think of things in freeze-frame. She saw one second of Killian panicking. One second of him falling over backwards into the water. One second of him toppling the whole boat on his way down. One second of Hat Man’s camera in its ziploc bag flying into the air.

One second of the water coming closer as she fell.

The water wasn’t deep--just deep enough that she didn’t hit her head on the ground. Her glasses almost flew up off her face, but she grabbed them just in time. Spitting and sputtering, Emma managed to get to her feet in the soft mud. This time of year was the dry season, so when she stood up, the water only came up to her chest. But that didn’t mean much for the phone in her pants pocket. By the time she thought to raise it up over her head, it was already soaked.

“Shit,” she swore. “You owe me a new phone, monster-guy!”

At least Hat Man’s camera was in a waterproof bag. But from where she was, six inches above the water’s surface, there was no way she was going to find it.

“Shit!” Emma swore again. “And if I don’t get that fucking camera back, you are gonna be in huge trouble!”

Laughter rang out over the swamp. It wasn’t Killian. It had to be the guy. That monster jackass was laughing at her!

“This isn’t fucking funny!” she shouted.

The thing kept laughing. “Yes it is. I mean, come on, lady. You gotta admit this is classic comedy.”

She could not believe this. She’d gone out on the water to find a monster, found out it was a smart-ass jerk, and then lost any way to prove it to anybody! That wasn’t funny, it was…

Okay, it was pretty funny. But she still had every right to be mad about it!

“Killian, can you believe this sh--” Emma stopped when she realized she had no idea where Killian was. She couldn’t see him or the boat. He hadn’t said anything since he had seen the monster. There were a million sounds coming from a million animals, but none of them sounded like a grown man swimming.

Or drowning.

“Shit!” The third time Emma said that word, it was with bone-deep dread. Her mouth went dry and for a second she panicked. God, Killian could not be dead. She would get in so much trouble!

“Hey, asshole!” she shouted as she began to wade towards the gold-covered island. “You with the eyes and the sense of humor!”

“Call me Neal!” the monster shouted back. He sounded like he was trying to be friendly.

Emma’s mouth dropped open, but then she closed it before a bug could fly in. Where did a monster get off having a name like Neal? She shook her head. It didn’t matter. What mattered was Killian.

“Okay, Neal. Sure. Listen, Neal, I need your help. I know I talked a lot of shit to you, but this is serious. Can you see my friend?”

“You mean the wannabe bad boy? Yeah, he’s getting eaten by crocodiles.”

“WHAT?” Emma shrieked.

“Nope. That was a joke. Bad taste, I guess. Actually, he looks fine. He was able to get the boat flipped over and he is motoring off to the horizon.”

“WHAT?” Now Emma was in a full-on bellow. Over the sound of blood pounding in her ears, she could hear the faint whine of an Evinrude outboard motor. “That son of a bitch stole my boat!”

Now that she knew Killian wasn’t dead, she was fully prepared to kill him. She staggered to the island that was covered in a haze of gold--it looked like a bunch of fancy spider webs, but that was the least of her concerns.

“Are you around here?” she yelled. “Neal?”

The same head and arms emerged from the grassy water. Up close, the face looked even weirder. There was a circle of brown eyes, all different sizes and all dark as buttons. She couldn’t tell if there was a nose or not. And the mouth was way too wide and way too fangy, especially when it looked like it was smiling. There were… things on either side of his smile, bright, shiny green things, a part of his mouth, she guessed.

Weirdest of all, over the monster’s human-looking chest and arms, he was wearing a Hawaiian shirt. It was green, with yellow flowers.

“My father always told me to help a human in need. What can I do for you?”

Right now, Emma was too angry to be confused. “Can you swim?”

Neal raised himself up a little higher out of the sawgrass and Emma saw what the rest of him looked like.

It was one of those half-man, half-horse things she’d seen in movies. Centaurs, that’s what they were called. Only it wasn’t a horse that Neal was half of. Too many legs for that. He was light brown and gray, so he blended in with all the mud and sticks. His legs looked kinda stubby, and they all came out of one place in front of… Emma didn’t have any other word for it but spider-butt.

Sweet Jesus’ birthday. The gator-eater was a goddamned spider-man!

Neal didn’t talk for a second. Emma figured he was letting her get used to him. But that was gonna take a while and Killian the rat bastard was getting further away by the second. Emma put her hands on her hips and looked this thing in its two biggest eyes.

“Did you hear what I said? Can you swim?”

“I’ve got so many legs, I can swim anywhere. You want me to catch up with your boat and teach that guy a lesson?”

“Hell no. I want you to take me to my boat so I can give that son of a bitch a black eye myself.”

Neal snorted--or maybe it was a snort. He sounded like he thought it was funny. “I can do that.” He smiled and lowered his spider-legs so his whole body was near the ground. “You wanna climb aboard?”

Emma wasn’t afraid to ride on the back of a spider-thing through the Everglades. She’d been riding jet-skis since she was ten. This couldn’t be that different. It’d probably be easier, since Neal would be able to do all the steering himself.

He was already mostly in the water, so she just kind of fell on top of him, with her legs on either side of his… Was it a waist? The lower part of his human half.

Short, prickly hairs grew all over the spider half. They came out when she moved her legs against them. Emma was glad she had decided to wear full pants today instead of shorts.

“Okay.” She grabbed the Hawaiian shirt with both hands and tugged. “Giddy-up.”

Neal tensed up and for a minute he didn’t say anything. Then he turned his head to talk to her. “What’s your name?”

“Emma,” she said. Oh crap, was he mad?

“Okay, Emma, listen up. I’m going to help you get your boat, because I am a helpful kind of individual. But if you ever treat me like an animal again, you will be swimming home. Understand?”

“Oh.” Emma let go of his shirt. “Crap, I’m sorry.”

He shrugged. “No big deal. I’m sure you’re not used to people like me. Now, let’s go retrieve some stolen property!”

Neal had four legs on either side, but he only used the front three to swim. His back legs dragged through the water to balance him out like a dead man’s float. The other legs pushed past the water, all working together. It almost looked like a bird flapping its wings against the wind. Was that what a butterfly stroke looked like? Or was this just a spider stroke?

All that mattered was that Neal was fast. And he knew this area better than Killian did. They caught up to him when he was trying to push his way through an area too shallow for the jon boat.

“Hey!” Emma shouted. “Are you fucking running my boat aground?”

She was too far away to see the expression on Killian’s face. All Emma saw was him looking at the tiller, looking up at her shouting at him from the back of a swimming spider, then looking at the motor again, frantically pulling at the line to get it started.

“Stop doing that, you’re gonna flood it!” Emma shouted again. Killian stopped, and she leaned forward to talk to Neal. “You can take it easy if you want. He’s not going anywhere.”

Chuckling, Neal reduced his speed. The strokes through the water were slower now, but they felt more powerful.

Now that she knew she’d be getting her boat back, Emma breathed a sigh of relief. She leaned back on her hands against the spider-butt and rested in the sun.

Neal must have noticed. “You enjoying the ride?”

Emma nodded, but then realized that he couldn’t see her. “I figured I been on these glades every way you could be except over ‘em in a helicopter. Never thought I’d get to see ‘em on the back of a spider.”

“Do you like it?”

“Yeah.”

They were getting closer to Killian. His freaking out kept getting louder, probably because he could see Neal in better detail. Or maybe because he knew Emma was going to beat seven kinds of crap out of him for stealing her boat and running away without her.

“He is such a dingus,” she muttered.

Neal chuckled again. “Listen,” he said. “If you ever wanna… find me again, I’ll try not to scare you next time.”

“Now that I know you, I don’t think you could scare me,” Emma said proudly. “But I might not be able to get out here again for a while. I’ll have to do a little hustle to get another phone. Plus, I gotta tell Hat Man I lost his camera. He might want me to pay for that too, so my weekends are probably gonna be booked.”

“Oh.” Was she crazy or did he sound disappointed?

They were within spitting distance of Killian now. It was a weird thing, but Emma almost didn’t want to stop swimming with Neal.

“Here’s your boyfriend,” he said as he swam up to the boat.

Killian’s terror had gotten to the stage where he was huddled in the furthest corner of the boat, white faced and wide eyed. Over and over he whispered, “What the fuck?”

Crawling off Neal’s back, Emma scrambled into her boat. Yep, Killian the pirate had run a ten-foot fishing boat into the only section of the Everglades that jutted up over the water. It was a miracle there wasn’t any damage to the hull that would make them take on water.

Neal was already swimming away, but Emma called out. “Don’t leave yet!”

He spun around. Was she crazy or had his eyes lit up?

“Can you do me another favor? Can you pull us away from this sandbar?”

Nodding, Neal grabbed the boat with his human hands. His hands and arms were the same weird color as his spider parts, kind of a muddy brown. The Hawaiian shirt covered his shoulders, but his chest was bare. Emma could see the muscles in his forearms. He looked… strong.

He swam out to a slough with the boat in tow. Killian looked like he was going to throw up.

“Thanks,” Emma said when Neal let go. She wanted to say more, but she didn’t know what.

“No problem,” he answered.

Treading water, all of Neal’s legs pumped like he was riding eight different unicycles. He bobbed up and down like a jellyfish. Emma got the feeling that he wanted to say more too.

“Jesus Christ,” Killian moaned. “Swan, can we please go home?”

“Now you be nice to Emma, okay dingus?” Neal swam around to that side of the boat. With his human hand, he reached up and ruffled Killian’s hair. “I bet if she wasn’t such a nice person, she’d push you out of the boat and leave you here with me.”

“Jesus Christ!” Killian squealed. He crawled backwards away from Neal like a panicked rat.

Emma tried not to laugh at her friend. She needed to get him home before he started crying. She started the engine and began to motor away.

“Thanks again, Neal,” she waved. “I’ll see you around!”

He waved back. “I hope so.”

****

Even when they got back to shore, Killian was still spooked. Emma had to talk him through every step of docking, even though they’d both done it a million times. At least they were able to sneak the Evinrude back into Penny's garage without getting caught. That was about the only thing that had gone right all day.

When they got back to the houseboat he lived in with his brother Liam, she plopped him down at his kitchen table. She put a cold beer in his hands and started to fry up some hot dogs for lunch.

He just stared at the bottle. “What was that, Swan?” he asked. “What the fuck was that thing?”

Standing in front of the two-burner stove, Emma shrugged. “He says his name is Neal.”

“‘He’?” Killian repeated. His head fell into his hands. “‘He says.’ He talks? Swan, this is insane!”

“Sure is.” Secretly, Emma was glad Killian was freaking out. It meant she didn’t have to. She could be the reasonable one in the face of all this fucked up shit.

They ate lunch in silence. Emma hated the taste of beer, but there was a hard lemonade in the fridge and she helped herself. Once they were done eating, Emma threw away the bottles and the paper plates. Killian and Liam never asked her to clean up for them, but she knew that if she didn’t, the garbage would stay on the table for the better part of a month.

“I gotta go see Hat Man,” she announced. “Better tell him now what happened to his camera.”

“I’m coming with you,” Killian said with more life than he had put into anything for the past hour. “I don’t want to be alone right now.”

Emma nodded, and they started walking.

****

Geoffrey “Hat Man” Jefferson was the closest thing to an adult that either Emma or Killian trusted. He told them once that his family used to be rich, that a hundred years ago finding feathers for hats in the Everglades was a big business. His great-grandparents bought a lot of land and built a big fancy house on the water. Hat Man still owned the land, and he still wore fancy hats. But the big house had gotten flooded so many times no one could live there anymore. Now he lived in a trailer and spent most of his time getting high on magic mushrooms.

He was a pretty chill guy. Emma didn’t think he would get mad about the camera, but that just made her feel worse about losing it. Hat Man had done her a favor and she had fucked it up.

Story of her life.

When they got to the trailer, Emma and Killian found Hat Man and the usual group in the front yard by the road. It looked like they had taken the dining room table from the big house and set it up outside. All their friends were sitting in the dining room chairs, drinking from China teacups and saucers. Margot and Tilly were holding hands and singing to themselves. McLeach was drinking tea with his pinky up and his rifle slung over the back of his chair.

The table was set with all kinds of pretty platters and bowls--though the menu seemed to be made up of whatever could be snuck out of a gas station convenience store. A red-headed kid named Oliver held out a crystal serving dish of Flamin’ Hot Cheetos to Dodger, who was using a pair of silver tongs to place them, one by one, on his plate. The lace tablecloth fluttered in the breeze and got tangled in the tall grass.

If these were Emma and Killian’s friends, maybe they weren’t actually good judges of what was or was not crazy.

Hat Man noticed them, and raised his teacup in greeting. “Salutations!” he called. “Far-flung comrades, come back to join us in the fold!”

Everyone at the table looked at them. Without anyone saying anything, they all moved around and adjusted their chairs so Emma and Killian could both have seats. Killian found refuge between McLeach and a girl named Vixie--though Vixie seemed a lot more interested in Todd. Todd was a new guy to the group, and had never lived away from his momma before getting dumped here.

Emma sat down next to Hat Man, who handed her a three-level cookie tray loaded with Ding Dongs.

“How mellifluous to see you on this fair day, Mademoiselle Swan! To what honor do I owe the occasion?”

Today Hat Man was wearing black tuxedo pants and a silk purple vest with no shirt underneath. The brim of his battered top hat shadowed his eyes, so Emma couldn’t see exactly how blasted out he was. It appeared to be a lot.

“Actually…” Nervously, Emma fiddled with her glasses until Hat Man, very gently, pulled them off her face and placed them into a glass pitcher of blue slurpee.

“You see better when you don’t have stuff in front of your eyes,” he explained.

“That’s true,” Tilly nodded from across the table. Unlike everyone else at the table, Tilly had drugs that she should be taking, but wasn’t.

Emma actually saw much worse without her glasses, but that wasn’t anything worth caring about now. Even without them on, she still kept touching her face.

“Hat Man, do you remember the digital camera you let me borrow?”

“I recall it with the utmost vividity!” he said. His mouth was full of a burrito that appeared to still be frozen.

“Well, I’m super sorry but, it’s gone.”

He patted at his mouth with a cloth napkin. “Desiccation and decay is the way of all flesh, Emmy-wemmy. And all the goods we horde will crumble into dust or be swallowed by the somnambulatory sea.” He took off his hat and solemnly placed it over his heart. “Adieu, O photographic device of mine! May your memory be a blessing unto the next generation.”

The only other person paying attention was Tilly. She had tears in her eyes as she nodded along with what Hat Man was saying.

“So you’re not mad?” Emma said.

“Very mad, but not at all angry.” Jefferson took a burnt Pizza Roll off a silver platter, threw it into the air and caught it in his mouth. “What happened to it, anyway?”

“I…” she didn’t know how to start. “I wanna say you’re not gonna believe this, but I think you’re the only person who will.”

In hushed tones, she told him the whole story. The news article, the missing alligators, the island of gold thread--Neal. Hat Man listened politely, nodded and asked questions, but in the end he shook his head and said that the whole thing was poppycock.

“What?” Emma said. “But I saw the whole thing! And Killian was there, you can ask him!”

“Don’t be farcical,” Hat Man took a sip of… well, it was in a teacup, but it probably wasn’t tea. “How on earth could such a creature get here from Australia?”

Emma frowned. “I didn’t say anything about Australia.”

“Indubitably,” he said. Emma had no idea what he meant by that. “But Australia is the only place where I’ve ever witnessed such a creature before.”

#nephila #swanfire #Belle and Rumple will be back soon #ouat

3 notes · View notes

goodlawman · 4 years ago

Note

HH: Have you an' Boyd evah been more'n friends? Sometimes ya looka each other an' is got a feel to it dat ain't about diggin' coal.

The rule was all toys were picked up before bedtime but since it was Raylan’s shin meeting the edge of his daughter’s table that caused the chaotic cascade of Legos, well, that was on him. A brief detour from Willa’s bedroom upstairs to the kitchen where the two adults figured on bills for the month and who got what. The joys of being old enough to own property and work a job. Willa’s table sat off to the side but with Raylan’s height and a tiny table, he missed it entirely as he went to close the living room blinds.

He’d yet to figure out if Beth’s small feet and light walk truly made for sneakiness of which a ninja would be jealous or if he was losing his edge. Raylan hoped it was the former rather than the latter, figuring it would be a compliment to them both. Either way, he didn’t realize her presence migrated from kitchen to living room until he heard her voice reminiscent of ocean waves rolling up on shore while the world quieted respectfully as night drew round.

Raylan scooped up one last handful of Legos and dumped it into one of the plastic bins beneath the table. As he did so, he picked up a set of small rectangular magnets from the junior scientist kit Art and Leslie Mullins sent for Willa’s fifth birthday. “Left that letter mixed up in the bills, huh? I’m gonna have to get one of those agendas like the school gives the kids just to keep track of myself anymore.” Raylan and Winona were blessed with an active child but with that activity came enough scheduling that made Raylan wonder how he got by before.

Right. The question. Raylan appreciated the way Beth found things to ask that were not usual, questions that led to long nights and a bottle of Wild Turkey, honest thoughts and civil debate. She didn’t take it easy on him and he appreciated she never had. Still it was one that didn’t see much time outside of his mind, something he chose to tuck away and not idle on too much once he found an explanation that suited him. Them. Him and Boyd. She would pick up on the hesitation but given the serious nature of their relationship, he did see how she was owed an answer given the presence of the other man even peripherally by written correspondence he left laying haphazardly behind.

“First year at Vanderbilt, one of the classes I was required to take involved the philosophy of thinking critically. Of course they scheduled it for early on a Monday so it does cast a suspicious light on how much they expected out of us,” Raylan said as he leaned back against the doorframe, the corner of his mouth moving up slightly in amusement. “One morning Professor Goodnote comes in and without any preamble, he settles on his desk at the front of this class and says, ‘I want all of you to name famous soulmates’. People are shouting out names like Cleopatra and Marc Antony, Romeo and Juliet, Buttercup and Wesley, types like that. After it starts quieting down, people running out of ‘em, Goodnote asks us to think on the names we just heard and consider what makes ‘em so. It was quiet for a while but someone finally says one thing: ‘romance’.”

Raylan held up a finger. “Now Goodnote, that’s the answer he was expecting. So he gets up, writes those two words on the board. Soulmates and romance. Then he asks, ‘what makes soulmates specifically romantic?’” A high school English teacher with no room for another interpretation and likely to fail you for doing so in Raylan’s case but at the time, he was sure that wasn’t the case of everyone. “Someone else finally speaks up, saying that no matter what, no matter who tried to come between them or what tried to pull them apart, their bond was stronger and they found a way back. Goodnote looked satisfied with the answer until he asked us another question: ‘why can’t that apply to any kind of bond?’

One small rectangular magnet in each hand, Raylan held them up for Beth. “Both the same, right? Got their positive and negative poles, became magnets by the same process. Alike in a lot of ways except...” He trailed off, turning the positive poles towards each other and then the negative ones. Each time the magnets resisted each other the closer they got. Then he turned one so the positive pole faced the negative. The two magnets clacked together, firmly stuck on one another.

“There is a lot Boyd and I got in common. I have never been ignorant of that. Dirt poor and criminal fathers, raised hands and harsh words, escaping our little holler in the pages of a book, our ticket to anywhere else being knowledge. Past that, the men we became, we shaped ourselves with the realization that no one had to live in the skin we did except for us.” He held the joined magnets out to Beth, looking past them to meet her gaze. “No matter what happened to us along the way, we still came from the same place and we had a lot in common. We dug coal together, spent long hours down in those mines at each other’s back. Ultimately we drew from the same pool of life experiences and we made our choices were we were headed. Had we headed to the same place, well, story might’ve ended there.”

Raylan fell silent for a moment, the past weighing heavy in that moment. “That was never meant to be. Instead the outlaw and the lawman grew up together. Different paths but ones that nonetheless bring us back to the other over and over again. A bond that won’t break.”

#v;; road less travelled #p;; interrogation #brooklynislandgirl

2 notes · View notes

orionblood · 4 years ago

Text

@biirdbone sent → o-okay but can i have All of the voicemails . .. . .

ask and you shall receive.

a happy voicemail

[ This message is slightly muffled, the sounds of the park in the background. ] “Emma, baby --- you --- you should have seen what Wook just -- just did. It -- it was so cute, I wish I was filmin’. Oh, man. Anyways, uh, call --- call me when --- when you get a sec. I--- I’ve had a nap, I’m feelin’ --- uh, feelin’ pretty good, maybe we --- we should go out for dinner tonight, huh? Oh--okay, I love you, bye.”

a loving voicemail

[ This voicemail is low, quiet. A secret just for her. ] “Hey, beautiful. I -- I was just thinkin’ about you. Why’d you have to --- to leave so early this, uh, this mornin’, huh? This bed is all empty ah --- and lonely without you. I -- I miss you. Have -- have I told you how -- how much I love you lately? You --- you’re my whole world, baby. I -- I think you should just blow off --- off work and come back here so --- so I can squish those cute --- cute little cheeks of yours. I --- I love you.”

a goofy voicemail

[ This voicemail starts after a few solid minutes of silence. ] “H---hello? Oh, shit --- how --- how long has this been recordin’? Oh --- my god, how did I even manage to butt-dial you? How -- how is that even possible? Uh --- okay. Um. Did -- did you know dolphins have -- have names for each other? Who -- who knew? Okay, um. Love you, bye.”

a disappointed voicemail

[ There is a sigh at the start of this voicemail. ] “Okay, I’m --- I’m not angry, I’m just --- just disappointed. You -- you promised you would be --- be home in time so we could watch the --- the whole trilogy and, uh -- well, you’re not -- not here, and you know the -- the trilogy takes ages to --- to watch. Where are you?”

a sad voicemail

[ This voicemails starts with a sniffle, he’s been crying. ] “Did you -- you know that there is a whale out there, that --- that scientists first discovered in like, the---the nineties, and it -- it’s song is like, way --- way above the normal hertz for -- for a whale, so --- so this dude just like, can’t talk to any -- any of the other whales. The world’s loneliest, uh, whale. When -- when are you gonna be home, I need --- I need a hug.”

a worried voicemail

[ This is the ninety-sixth voicemail left in three days. ] “Hey, Ems. Um. Give --- give me a call back when you --- you get this, uh. It’s --- it’s been a couple of days ---- I’m just --- checkin’ in. Okay, um. Please --- please?”

an angry voicemail

[ The sound of Ben’s teeth grinding together are basically audible in this message. ] “Are you --- you seriously just gonna ignore my -- my calls? Answer your -- your fuckin’ phone, Emma. You --- you can’t just walk out mid-fight, that --- that’s not fair. You -- you can be so fuckin’ stubborn sometimes, you--you know that? Fuck, whatever, I --- I don’t care, be mad then.”

an embarrassing voicemail

[ There is the sound of a happy Wookie bark in the background, and splashes of water. ] “Okay, I --- I need you --- you to not ask any questions, and just --- just come pick me up, okay? And --- and when you --- you get here, no questions, okay? Just --- can you --- you bring me a fresh set of clothes, too?”

a scared voicemail

[ This message is left early morning, a few months before Ben’s return. ] “Emma? I --- I don’t ---- I don’t know what to say. I’m ---- ….. I miss you. I just --- uh. I just wanted you -- you to know that --- that I love you. Uh. I -- I gotta go.”

a surprised voicemail

[ This is a returned call. They haven’t spoken in a few months. ] “Oh, hey. I --- I’m sorry I missed your call, I was --- I was sleepin’. Um. I guess we’re playin’ --- uh, phone tag, huh? Ha. Oh, well. I’m free --- free all afternoon, if you -- you get a chance to call me back.”

a sleepy voicemail

[ This voicemail is left while Ben is out of town. He doesn’t leave as much anymore, but when he does, he misses her very much. ] “Hmm, this bed isn’t --- isn’t anywhere near as nice as our one at home. It’s very -- uh, very empty without you. But --- [ he yawns ] -- damn, I had --- had such a busy day. I just --- I was hopin’ to -- to catch you before I went to sleep but I’m --- hmm, so --- sleepy --- I --- just ----” [ the voicemail doesn’t end for a few more minutes, and most of that time is filled with gentle snoring. ]

a drunk voicemail

[ There is a lot of noise in the background of this voicemail. ] “Babe, where -- where did --- did you go? I’m --- you were --- just there, and now --- oh, haha, oh my god --- you’re --- you’re standin’ right next to me. Aw, hello gorgeous, you -- you’re so cute. Look at that face, I -- I’m gonna just --- oooh, I’m gonna eat you -- you up ---” [ there is a scuffle against the phone as Emma reaches to take the phone away from him and hang up, laughing. ]

#answered » only times and places. only names and ghosts.#biirdbone

2 notes · View notes

surveys-at-your-service · 4 years ago

Text

Survey #304

“she’s got a hold on me / maybe she is just what they want me to be”

How many foreign friends do you have? Only one that I know of that actually immigrated into America in their life. I think. In which countries do they live? She was born in Asia, either China or Japan. What was your dream birthday party as a kid? I either wanted to go to the skating rink or Chuck E. Cheese. Have you ever come up with your own game? As a kid, definitely. Whose hand did you hold last? Probably my niece's or nephew's if they were taking me somewhere. What was the last thing you planted? Habaneros, I think. Do you have a green thumb or are you all thumbs with plants? I don't really try with plants because I'm not interested in the maintenance. What or who was the last thing you gossiped about? Does telling your therapist about another person and what they do to stress you out count? lol Any books on your night stand? Wings of Fire: The Brightest Night. Would you ever consider going vegetarian? I was briefly one, but I had to introduce meat back into my diet because I just hate too many foods needed to keep me healthy without meat. I would love love LOVE to go vegan, but I just can't. When's the last time you helped a senior citizen somehow? Probably holding open a door for someone in a wheelchair. What's the most selfless act you have done? I don't know... Maybe letting my mother use all my Christmas and birthday money (which was a lot) to take care of bills to keep us from being evicted and losing the car. She was going to pay me back, but then cancer happened. Have you ever intentionally fed a house spider? No. What makes you feel lucky? The fact I have a roof over my head, food on the table, access to water... That kind of stuff. Never take it for granted. How many Lidls are there in your town? One. Last time you went to Ikea, what did you buy? I don't believe we've ever bought anything from there? But I wouldn't really know. How do you like your favorite beverage? Really cold in a can, heeeeell yeah. What's your big family secret? We don't really have one. What did you think you were good at, until you saw someone else do it? I remember thinking I was the "gifted" artist in school until I met my acquaintance Cailin in the 5th grade, lol. She is SO talented. What is something nice going on in your life right now? My partial hospitalization program is going well. I'm getting more comfortable with talking via things like Zoom, it's a good opportunity for me to socialize with like-minded people almost every day, and I ADORE one of the teachers so much so that I want him to be my normal therapist. I have never in the entirety of my life felt less judged and more cared for from any therapist before him, and it's almost supernatural how easily this man reads people. You could twitch a certain way and he picks it up. I'm ready for him to teach more of the sessions. What was the pinnacle of wealth to you as a child? The idea of owning one of those toy crane machines, haha. If I saw one in a store, I would like beeeeg for it. I remember I cried once when I came across one I adored, it was just too expensive, lol. I did eventually get a little one, I think. What's something that you hate, but can't live without? My meds. What skill do you not talk about, because you feel it sounds like bragging? I don't really brag about anything I think I'm good at because I feel bad about it and don't wanna emit a "better than you" vibe. Who's the worst person you've encountered on the Internet? Ahhh, a lovely "friend" nicknamed Shakes. God she hated me. If death wasn't a consequence, what would you try? Probably ride a motorcycle. I'm too scared to risk the possibility of crashing, and those wrecks are nasty. What's the dumbest thing you've heard someone say? There's this one video of a TV show host thinking the moon was a planet and it was just- What is the worst smell you can remember? This smell was forever branded into my memory as if it was fuckin trauma. When my late dog Teddy had a massive, infected cyst near his ~you know~ and also wore diapers because of incontinence with his age (also keep in mind he had a UTI we couldn't afford to fix, and that smells bad enough), changing the diaper he would wear overnight could, swear to God, be enough to make you puke. It literally came to a point that I personally could no longer do it. It sounds so so bad and selfish, and it probably is, but Mom had to do it before she left and came home from work; she's way less fazed by stuff like that than me. Yes, when we had the money, we got the cyst removed. What song gets better the louder it gets? Only like, every song I enjoy. The louder the better until it becomes obnoxious to others. What's the biggest inconvenience that does NOT ruin your day? Having to pee at like an unnatural frequency? haha What's something everybody should know how to do? Cook... which I don't know how to do. What is a great movie no one knows about? I'unno. I don't really know the success level of most movies unless you see stuff about it everywhere. What type of person could the world use less of? Rapists, pedophiles, monsters like that. What makes you tingle? I have this odd reaction to rubbing my hand while someone is holding it???? idk why????? What’s the best Wi-Fi name you’ve seen? Oh MAN, I wish I could remember 'em all. I've seen some goodies. What's easy to learn, but hard to master? God, it's pathetic that my immediate response is related to a video game, haha. Then again it's such a common idea that it's basically a meme in the World of Warcraft community. So, playing hunters in the game. They're argued to be one of the - if not the - easiest classes in the game that requires little to no skill, while as a hunter main, I disagree with the second part firmly. I don't know about the other specializations because I don't play them, but at least in beast mastery, it takes focus and thinking ahead to master your rotation for optimal damage and just to generally be a skilled player of the class. Not to mention you need to watch your pet(s), too. What's something you've changed your opinion on? Wow, LOTS. Tons of political ideas, like my stance on gay rights, transgender folks, etc... If you had a refilling bowl, what would you want it to contain? For some reason my mind immediately jumped to fresh strawberries. I'm picky with the firmness of fruit, so I won't eat them if they're older because ew. If your bedroom had three portals to anywhere, where would they lead? I mean this in the least creepy way possible, but Sara's house so we could actually hang out, Dad's house so I could see him more, and then uhhh South Africa to regularly see meerkitties. You can ask any author one question about their story. What do you ask? Oh, I dunno. I've got some for writers of other media, but I guess by "author," you mean this is for books exclusively. If you have caffeine late in the day, does it cause you to struggle with your sleep? Shit, I wouldn't even know because I essentially always have caffeine in my system. I don't believe it affects me. When you struggle to sleep, what do you do instead? Keep trying to sleep, or more common than not, I do exactly what you shouldn't do and get back on the laptop for a while. Who was the last person you spoke to for the first time? How did you come to speak to this person? My most recent therapist in the PHP. I love love love him. The therapists rotate the days they teach, and he was the last one I met. Are there any TV shows from your childhood that you still watch today? I'm not opposed to it if I actually watched television. Do you enjoy buying gifts for other people, or do you never know what to buy them? If I actually have the money to, omg yes. I honestly do think I create or buy very thoughtful gifts, and I just really enjoy reminding other people that I love and think about them. Who were you with the last time you went out for a meal? My sisters, Mom, and I went to the Cheesecake Factory for my birthday dinner. That place has come to oust Olive Garden as my favorite restaurant, haha. What’s the last thing you watched on TV? Is this a programme you watch regularly? I believe it was this amateur cooking show called Nailed It!, I think it was, with my mom when I sat in the living room with her for dinner one night. Do you have a favorite documentary subject (eg. nature, celebrities, history, crime)? Absolutely animals. Does having to wear a mask stop you from doing anything, just because you dislike them or find them uncomfortable? Do not fucking talk to me if you're anti-mask. If I set foot in public, I'm wearing a mask like a goddamn considerate human being. Do you prefer zip-up or overhead hoodies? Overhead. I really dislike the appearance of zippers on them. If you have a yard or garden, how much time do you spend out there? N/A When was the last time someone bought you flowers? What was the occasion? I think it was the first time Tyler came to my house. This was quite a few years ago. When was the last time you stayed overnight away from home? Was this with friends, family or in a hotel somewhere? What was the occasion? Hell, I'm pretty sure I haven't slept over anywhere since the last time I was visiting Sara, which was like, two years ago. What’s your favorite period to learn about in history? What got you interested in this particular era? The Renaissance; I always found it to be an attractive subject, art being in its "glory days" and all. My Art History course in college really hooked me in. What is the smallest thing you lose your temper over instantly? Homophobic bullshit. What's a job that doesn't get enough respect? As others have said before me, teachers might just top the list. The shit they gotta put up with for so little pay... What did you take for granted until you visited another country? I've never left America, so I wouldn't know. Who is your favorite scientist and why? I don't have a favorite; I don't know nearly enough about any. Do you prefer emoticons or emoji? I'm from the emoticons era, so I'm biased, haha. How did you meet your pet? Roman was the kitten of one of my sister's mother-in-law's females. They have quite a cat problem and wanted to adopt the kittens out, and Mom knew I desperately wanted a cat, so there we go. One day when we were over there, she showed me the kittens, and Roman caught my eye instantly with his beautiful blue eyes. Venus, I "met" via the Morph Market, a reptile hub website for selling, as the name implies, reptiles that are generally morphs of their species. I was clicking through the genes, keeping my price ceiling in mind, and really fell in love with champagnes, and I thought Venus in specific was just absolutely beautiful. I officially met her as a little thing mailed to me, and she was and still is just the sweetest. I wanna point out that when I chose Venus, I hadn't the slightest idea that champagnes harbored "the spider gene," as otherwise I would have avoided adopting her and feeding the market. Regardless, I love her to death and wouldn't trade her out. Did/Do you have any PEZ dispensers? I did as a kiddo, yeah. Do you enjoy erotic stories? If so, do you read them or write them? No; they make me really uncomfortable. When writing RP, some scenes can get sexual, but I have my limits for sure and know when to stop writing and just time-skip. If you had to choose, which one would you rather have: a pet or a baby? Keep the baby away from me. Gimme a plains hognose or tarantula, please. ^Why did you choose the one you chose? I don't want kids at all but would love the mentioned animals as pets. Do you live with your parents or on your own/with a partner? I live with my mother. What's the car of your dreams? I don't have a "dream car." Have you ever witnessed something or someone die? Animals, yes. Has anyone ever told you that you snore or talk in your sleep? I don't snore, but I talk a LOT. Do you have any houseplants? No. Are you more on a laptop or a desktop computer? I only have a laptop, and I prefer them for portability's sake. If you could do absolutely anything, what would you like to do the most? Entirely leave behind my anxiety, probably. Or PTSD. Do you think your parents raised you well? Yeah. Dad didn't really take much part in "raising" us/enforcing rules and stuff, but hey, my sisters and I wound up being good people. Do you have a Facebook? Yeah. Do you know any of your neighbors? Definitely not well. We haven't lived here long at all. Does/did any of your relatives have an interesting, nowadays unusual job? I'm sure somebody does. Have you met your ideal partner yet? I think so. Have you had a serious relationship yet? If so, how many? Yeah, two. Do you enjoy books, magazines or comic books the most? Books. Are your parents old-fashioned or up-to-date about certain things? Dad is more old-fashioned I think, while Mom is pretty up-to-date. Do you or did you at some point keep a diary? I very briefly did on a few occasions. I always had a journal I wrote in during all my hospital stays. Have you ever upcycled trash into useful items? I remember I once followed this craft idea on Animal Planet where you turn a milk jug into a bird house. We never got any birds in it, though. Which color Skittle do you like best? The only right answer is red. What’s your favorite element? Of the classic four, fire. If you had your own radio show, what would it be like? YIKES, I don't want one. Don't make me talk in front of (through a radio or not) people. What has been the biggest surprise you’ve ever gotten? An "impossible" breakup over Facebook Messenger lmaoooo. Is there a holiday you can’t stand at all? There aren't any that I "can't stand," but I do hold at least some degree of dislike of ones bastardized by religion. It's disrespectful as fuck. Who is your favorite person in the whole world? My mom. Has there ever been an activity you became obsessed with? I was definitely obsessed with RPing in my early teens. Like, I ALWAYS wanted to be writing it. What has been the strangest place you ran into someone from your past? I can't think of an occurance. What is something people tend to come to you about? Anything related to English and grammar. If applicable, what's the furthest you've traveled because of a hobby? For purely a hobby, definitely not very far, partially because I can't drive or afford travelling via plane or whatever. Do you have souvenirs from other countries? If so, what and from where? N/A What do you do when someone is talking to you about something you don't care about? Pretend to be interested to avoid being rude. Do you have Photoshop installed on your computer? Yeah. Do you put lotion on after you get out of the shower? No, but I need to. Has anyone ever given you a promise ring? No. Do you have any bruises on you? Yeah, on my shin. When getting in Ash's van the other day, I hit it against the thing that helps you step up into the vehicle. Because of my muscle atrophy, I, and I am not kidding, can barely manage to absolutely yank myself up there. And mind you, her van isn't even very high up at all. My legs are just that damn weak. Any changes in appearance lately? Gaining weight is fucking lovely. Who was the last person to call you babe or baby? Probably a gal friend commenting on a selfie or something on Facebook. Do you hate the person you fell hardest for? Sometimes. Do you actually care about other's problems? Probably too much for my own good. Have you ever gotten a teddy bear from someone? Besides my mom, I don't think so.

#survey #surveys #questions #lyrics: ''big bad wolf'' by in this moment

3 notes · View notes

s-trawberryv-eins · 5 years ago

Text

Lonely Hearts Club

NOT MY GIF

Summary: In retrospect, she should’ve figured it would end badly. It was fun at first, the flirting. Fruitless and innocent. Never taken too seriously, a line carefully toed. A sort of 'take each day as it comes’ arrangement. But eventually, as anyone could've predicted, she crossed the line and fell. Hard.

Warnings: Angst, alcohol, implications of smut

Please read here before reading

Stark! OC x Bucky Barnes

Word count: 1573

AVENGERS COMPOUND

UPSTATE NEW YORK

In retrospect, she should’ve figured it would end badly. It was fun at first, the flirting. Fruitless and innocent. Never taken too seriously, a line carefully toed. A sort of 'take each day as it comes’ arrangement. But eventually, as anyone could've predicted, she crossed the line and fell. Hard. For Bucky Barnes, of all people.

Thor arrived home with tales of outer space, his travels with the Guardians of the Galaxy coming to a brief stop to visit his Midgardian friends. “Revels!” His booming voice all but shook the compound as he announced his need for a party. "We shall engage in revels this coming Friday!” Turning to face her with a happy grin on his face, Caroline took that as her cue to begin the planning.

“I see no reason to deny Thor of a party, so I'll be in my lab spending my inheritance if anybody needs me."

And engage in revels they did. It was obvious to anybody who entered the room that this party was that of a Stark. Lavish, few expenses spared. Caroline found it to be a welcome distraction from her current predicament; should she tell Barnes how she felt, or not? She was fairly certain that her feelings were reciprocated, but it wasn't impossible that she had misread him.

Dressed to the nines in a nude top and midi skirt, she raked her fingers through her newly straightened hair and greeted her guests. Thor, Steve, and Bucky stood on the balcony, watching the large crowd forming in the vast open space. Decorated with black and gold balloons, music pumping through the air, and a seemingly never-ending supply of alcohol.

“Hello, gentlemen. Impressed?” Red lips curling up into a smile, she graciously accepted a glass of champagne from one of the waiters making rounds of the event. Coming to stand between Thor and Mr America himself, she offered her glass up to cheers. The four glasses met with a ‘clink’, and Caroline’s smile grew. Any effort to keep herself from making direct eye contact with the super soldier went out of the window when he spoke up.

“You've out done yourself. It looks wonderful. As do you, Caroline." The light pink dusting that appeared on her cheeks pulled a smirk from Barnes, but it disappeared as Thor placed a gentle kiss on her knuckles, also commenting on her work.

“Your father would be proud. And you do look ravishing, Miss Stark.” Pursing her lips slightly to hold back a giggle, she thanked the three avengers and made her way down the stairs.

“You need to make your move, pal. A girl like that's gotta have ‘em all after her.” Steve jabbed his friend with his elbow, as the three pairs of eyes followed the Stark girl down the stairs.

"It’s all a mess in my head. Can’t do it, Steve.” Bucky sighed, pushing himself away from the balcony and heading down to the bar. Neither Barnes nor Stark tried to mask their feelings for one another, and their flirtatious nature was obvious to everybody they lived with. It was hard for them to watch. Steve had noticed days ago the way Caroline’s face dropped when Barnes left her hanging, the way her gazed lingered. The evidence that this ran deeper than flirty banter right in front of him.

As the party drew to a close, Caroline took in the sight before her. Balloons and streamers littered the floor, glasses and bottles on every available surface. Having abandoned her heels long ago, the drunk doctor ran off in search of the object of her affection. But he was nowhere to be found.

“He’s left already, Care.” Steve’s voice was soft, sympathy drowning his blue eyes. Disappointment graced her features for a second before deciding she'd go to his room. “Care, don’t. He’s not alone.”

She was a strong girl, being an avenger required physical strength, but no training could have prepared her for the sudden weight that was her heart. It plummeted to her feet, cracking as it hit the concrete beneath her toes.

“Oh,” she tried and failed catastrophically to cover up how she felt. "Can you please tell Natasha and Wanda that I've gone to bed? And inform the staff that they're to expect a tip first thing tomorrow. Goodnight, Steve.” Turning on her heel, she tried towards the door but stumbled as a hand closed around her wrist.

“He’s a fool, Caroline. I’m sorry.“ With teary eyes and half a smile, she excused herself.

Tinkering away at her latest creation, Caroline was in a world of her own. Not noticing the presence of a visitor, she kept at it.

“What’s that?" The question startled her, and she jumped away from her project as if caught with her hand in the cookie jar.

“It’s, uh,” composing herself, she gestured to the tech in front of her “it’s from Shuri. She’s been working on a new model for your arm and wanted suggestions.” The blush in her cheeks was evident, and he couldn’t help but stare. The spell was broken, however, when she cleared her throat slightly.

“Do you need something, Sergeant?” Taken aback by the sudden formalities, his brow drew together in confusion.

“I just came for a chat. You know, like usual?" His voice was soft, and his movements became shy and timid.

“I’m tired of usual, Bucky. I know you have feelings for me. I know that I’m not crazy. I can feel it, Buck." The scientist felt brave in the moment, but his reaction hit her right in the gut. He merely rolled his eyes and chuckled drily.

“Come off it, Caroline. You know we’re just messin’ about. I thought you knew that, anyway. Don’t, uh" tearing her eyes away from him, she felt the tears form as he spoke. "Don't read into it.”

“Is that a joke? Am I a joke to you? Why are you pretending that you don't know what I'm talking about, Bucky?"

“Listen, Care, I’m kinda seeing someone. I don't know if I gave you the wrong impression or what, but there's nothing between us. There never will be.”

He didn’t stick around for a response.

Having spent all night working from her laptop on a new comms system for the team, Caroline had nodded off on the sofa in the common room, laptop still placed firmly by her feet. Hearing quiet whispers and the shutting of a door, she was pulled from her dreamless sleep, and was listening nosily, trying to figure out who disturbed her.

“Sam, cut it. I’m not doing this again."

“Oh, shut up, dude. It’s obvious you have serious feelings for the girl. What is the issue?” Recognising the voices as Bucky and Sam, she froze. Not daring to move from the couch, she closed her eyes and prayed they didn't come any closer. This conversation was not meant for her, despite how much she wanted to hear the rest. The doctor had been hoping to avoid Barnes since their horrible confrontation in the lab.

“Shut up, you’ll wake her up.” Bucky’s voice was tired and irritated, obviously not in the mood for his friends’ antics. “So what if she has feelings for me? I don’t care.” Biting down hard on her bottom lip, Caroline wished to be anywhere else. "And I don’t actually feel anything for the girl. It's never gonna happen." Heavy footsteps indicated his departure, but Sam managed to have the last word.

“Bull. Shit. You’re scared, and you feel guilty because she’s Tony’s kid. Get outta here, man. Deserves better than your lousy ass anyway.” Earning a grunt and a half-slammed door in response, Sam only sighed. Confident that Bucky had left, Caroline made her presence known to Sam. Shock painted his features for a brief second, before sympathy settled on his face.

“I guess that’s that then.”

A month had passed since the Stark girl overheard the two boys in the kitchen. Contact had been brief between the scientist and the sergeant, a series off stiff hellos and tight-lipped smiles. Truthfully, she wasn’t entirely sure what’d happened. If Sam mentioned to Bucky that she was awake through their conversation, she didn’t know. Despite making her feelings towards him blatantly obvious, it seemed he’d never care whilst he held onto the guilt of his relationship with her father.

As if hearing his name in her thoughts, the super soldier waltzed into the common room, a smile on his face. "Everyone, there’s someone I want you to meet.” Caroline assumed it was a lie. She thought he was trying to save face, trying to knock her down when he said he’d been seeing somebody. But as the pretty blonde stepped out from behind him, she felt her heart fall once more.

“This is Izzie. My girlfriend.” Proud beaming smiles on both of their faces, whilst Caroline felt as though the air had been sucked out of the room entirely. The Avengers all jumped up, polite introductions and pleasantries were exchanged. Snapping back into the moment, Caroline forced herself up and out of her seat.

Her voice was sweet. Light and feminine. A brilliant actress, really. The crack in her voice almost impossible to detect. Unless you’re Natasha Romanoff, of course, who was waiting by the door for her friends impending departure.

“I’m Caroline. It’s really wonderful to meet you.”

66 notes · View notes

mlqcimagines · 5 years ago

Note

MLQC boys reacting to MC’s twin (looks exactly like MC but is the total opposite personality) if they were to switch places for the day as a prank? (PS love this blog)

Lmao this is so interesting! I always wanted to do this, too bad I’m an only child.

Victor -

The first time he realizes something is off is when he calls your twin “Dummy” and… instead of blushing they just? Laugh?

Um. Victor.exe has temporarily stopped working, do you wish to close the program?

It escalates as he notices how much bolder “your” behavior has gotten. You don’t rise to his bait, you fire back at him, you even do the exact opposite of what he asks.

“Dude pls don’t lose me my job” You text your twin.

The straw that breaks the camel’s back?

You look at his special, homemade pudding, and wrinkle your nose.

He stops dead in his tracks, and the rest of the world stops with him.

“Who are you, and what have you done with my MC?”

Your twin just loses it, collapsing into a chair, laughing as hard as anyone he’s ever seen. They ignore Victor’s furious look, whipping out their phone and firing off a quick text.

“Just a second, Mr. CEO” they say mockingly, “And all will be revealed.”

Why did your voice turn different? What is going on?

Just then you burst in the doors of his office, stopping dead as his face drains of all its color.

“Oh Victor, I’m sorry, we just had to! I wanted you to meet my twin for so long!”

Surprisingly, he’s ok with it, chuckling and gently knocking a knuckle against your forehead.

“If they’re important to you, they’re important to me MC.”

Lucien -

First notices when “You” seem disinterested in one of his lectures.

It’s not unusual for you to fall asleep, but for you to sit on your phone the whole time? And looking up to smirk at him?

He tries to go about it logically.

Had you started a new routine? Taken a new class? Been affected by an Evol?

One day he “pops over” to borrow some tea from you.

It’s a moment before you let him into the apartment, which is very odd.

So when he comes in he starts snooping.

And lbr we all know he’s not above going through your stuff

But there’s nothing amiss, except you seem to have changed purses? Before he can start rummaging through the new one though, “you” walk out of the kitchen, tea in hand.

It was Earl Grey.

You knew he didn’t like Earl Grey. He was a chamomile man, through and through, caffeine made him jittery.

“You’re not MC are you?”

Your twin rolls their eyes.

“Finally, I thought you were supposed to be some brilliant scientist? MC, HE FINALLY GOT IT!”

You bound out of the room where you’d been hiding, and run up to throw your arms around Lucien. You’re giggling nonstop.

“Professor, I’d like you to meet my twin!”

Lucien is struck to silence for a second before regaining his footing.

“It’s a pleasure to meet you.”

You pout a little, Mr. Professor was too smooth for his own good. But you’re very happy that your twin and Lucien got to meet.

And meanwhile, the wheels in Lucien’s head are turning.

Gavin -

He’s done a little background digging on you, of course.

So he knows you have a twin.

“The challenge here is to see how long it takes him to catch on, to see how well he knows you!”

And so it begins. When you and your twin put your minds to it you can really imitate each other perfectly.

After a week, when Birdcop doesn’t seem to notice, your twin starts to throw a few wrinkles into the mix.

They’ll occasionally order something that Gavin knows you don’t like but he still? Doesn’t React? What????

You get kind of depressed about it, you can’t lie.

One night you and your twin are sitting in your apartment, commiserating about Gavin’s apparent obliviousness when you hear a tapping on the window!

The CUrTainS ArE oPeN!

He has the biggest grin on his face, and while it’s your twin to goes to let him in, he passes them right by and heads straight for you.

“Gotcha” He says softly, and gathers you into a big hug.

You’re laughing and crying a little bit, but you really are happy.

Your twin can’t believe it - “How long have you known?”

“Oh, right from the beginning. Mc has a tiny scar on the knuckle of her right index finger. You don’t have that. I’m pleased to meet you for real though!”

Oh Gavin, you beautiful, frustrating, surprising man.

Kiro -

This one starts because your twin won’t stop begging you to meet Kiro. It’s their idea to switch places when you say you feel a little weird about using your connection to him to get them a meet and greet.

But you never could say no to them, so when they suggest switching places you can’t help but say yes.

Kiro stares at your twin quizzically for a moment the first time they meet, and they hold their breath.

But it seems to go well.

So your twin spends the day with Kiro at a street fair, sampling all sorts of yummy food.

Luckily your twin is just like you, a bit of a bottomless pit, so no issues there.

At the end of the day they come back to his studio, and you surreptitiously let yourself in behind them, contenting yourself with hiding in the coat closet. He makes “you” a cup of tea.

A little smirk crosses his face when he sees your twin wrinkle their nose a bit.

“Have I ever told you about my best friend, MC?”

What????? No?

“Mmm. Nope.” Your twin says, smiling at him. “Tell me all about em though.”

“Well.” Kiro stops here, and smiles, gripping his tea tightly, letting it warm his hands. “They’re the most amazing person I’ve ever met. They’re always kind, they love the same things I do, and they’re incredibly brave.”

In the closet, you’re blushing furiously.

“They can do anything they set their minds to, because they’re so determined,” He says, getting up, and you hear footsteps coming towards the closet. Oh no!

Your twin jumps up, trying to get in front of him, but the man has long legs, and before they can intercept, Kiro pulls open the door to find you, blushing and with tears in the corner of your eyes.

“And I want them to know how much I love them.”

You can’t even bother asking how he knew because you’re too busy jumping into his arms, and he picks you up and swings you around, planting little kisses on your face.

Your twin groans though, hurriedly explaining how it was all their idea, because they wanted to meet him so bad.

“It’s ok, I understand. But I’d know my MC anywhere, you’ll never be able to fool me!”

You and your twin glance at each other.

Is that a challenge?

#mlqc #mr love queens choice #mlqc victor #mlqc lucien #mlqc gavin #mlqc kiro #love and producer #hope you like it!

262 notes · View notes

trashcatsnark · 4 years ago

Text

FC5 GFH: Deputy Dahlia Hale

I was tagged by the awesome @shallow-gravy, to do this uhhhhhh a while ago, but this took a lot of time. I will be tagging @enchantedbythebidders and @kizucute and @madsismad if any of you want to, and anyone who wants to do it please do!

TW: A dark humor jokey mention of suicide, cause my baby is a depressed dumbass

Selected as GFH:

“Coming your way, mon cher.”

“You got it.”

“Won’t let you down.”

Combat

Seeing Threat:

“Peggies, up ahead.”

“Careful, enemy spotted.”

“Watch out, cultists.”

Stealth/being told to go stealth:

“Good thinkin’”

“Stay low.”

“We got this.”

In Combat with Peggies:

“Fuck oFF!”

“Is that all you got?”

“C’mon, you can do better than that.”

Pushing an Enemy Down:

“Stay down.”

“Eat shit.”

“Pathetic.”

Killing an Enemy:

“Where’s your god, now?”

“I told you not to fuck with me.”

“Lights out, motherfucker!”

Post Combat:

“Just what I needed, more blood on my hands.”

“Well, that was exciting.”

“I need a smoke...”

When she’s hurt/dying:

“Fuck fuck fuck fuck fuck.”

“I’m fine, I’m fine, I’m okay,shit,fuck.”

“No pressure, but I’m kinda dying here!”

Thanking Player:

“Fuck, I owe you one.”

“Seriously, thanks.”

“Anything I can do to thank ya?”

Reviving Player:

“No dying on me, mon cher.”

“Stay strong, we can do this.”

“C’mon, we can’t do this without you.”

Player Points Weapon at her;

“You got a fuckin’ problem with me?”

“Put that down, before I make you.”

“If you’re looking for a fight, I’ll give you one.”

Player Attacks her:

“We’re on the same side, asswipe.”

“Fine, you know what, let’s go, asshole!”

“You really think you can take me?”

Has to Kill Player:

“Traitor.”

“I thought we were friends…”

“I didn’t want to do this.”

Idle:

“Everyone looks at me weird when I call them mon cher, but I swear it’s just a thing we say in Louisiana, at least where I’m from.”

“People keep talking about when things are back to normal. But, that’s not how it works. Trauma lingers, trust me, none of us are gonna be the same after this.”

“Quite frankly, I don’t give a damn if the world is ending. If the world dies, I’ll die with it. Better than living in some freak’s bunker.”

“Guns are cool and all, but nothing beats a proper fist fight, knife fights are a close second though.”

“I wanna smoke so bad, but everywhere smell like gasoline and I don’t wanna go up in flames, at least not right now.”

Holland Valley:

“John’s real fucked in the head, but when he loses his cool is when he starts making mistakes, he’ll get sloppy and we can take the valley back.”

“Something about John never sat right with me, he’s so fake, feels more like a mannequin than a real person. Pissing him off is pretty fun though.”

“John’s capture parties are annoying, but they aren’t as well trained as Jacob’s hunters, I managed to dodge the fuckers for days. Actually? Are they still after me?”

Henbane River:

“God I fucking hate this place, the way it fucks with your head is just ugh. Damn that Church Mouse.”

“Like, how does this shit even make sense? I know Bliss fucks up your head, but how can they control what we see? Like, not everyone on an LSD trip sees the same thing. Is it the power of suggestion or, I mean Faith can’t be an actual siren, can she?”

“You know, I use to not get why everyone was so fixated on how pretty Faith was, too delicate for my taste I guess. But now that I know she can kick ass, not gonna lie, little more into it. Uh, don’t tell anyone I said that though, please.”

Whitetail Mountains:

“You think Jacob quotes that alpha omega wolf bullshit? I bet he does, shit ain’t even true, scientist who said it took it back.”

“Jakey Boy’s gonna pay for what he’s doing to Pratt and I’m gonna make damn sure of it.”

“Big Red out here is obsessed with creating soldiers, the ultimate tools, he uses people like it’s nothing. If you’re not careful, he’ll get in your head and use you like a puppet.”

Joseph’s Compound:

“Where it all began, blegh, I wish I could have kicked Joe’s ass right then.”

“You know I came here for church once, just to check it out, I puked behind the church. Hope that fucker stepped in it.”

“Joseph preaches this bullshit about welcoming misfits, outcasts, pariahs of society. Every peggie is someone who didn’t feel like they belonged anywhere else, they think he saved them. But, you wanna know the truth? Joseph Seed preyed on them. He saw they were vulnerable and he swooped in like a fucking vulture to eat ‘em alive. And they thank him for it.”

Dutch’s Island:

“Dutch is ornery old man, makes me wonder why he ain’t out here fighting with us.”

“Bunker man Dutch knows everything about everyone, also got camera all around, it’d be creepy if he wasn’t such a cool guy.”

Falls End:

“Mary May is a grade-A badass, don’t let the baby face fool ya.”

“Hudson, Pratt, and I use to hang out at The Spread Eagle after work, almost every day, it’s weird going there without them now.”

“Jerome is officially the only holy man I trust, everyone else can get fucked.”

Wolfs Den:

“Eli is incredible, seriously, I don’t know what we’d do without him. He’s just, so fuckin’ awesome, I-uh, that sounds weirdly gushy doesn’t it. It’s not like, I just- He’s a cool dude, shut up!”

“Every time Eli compliments me, I could scream, like in a good way.”

“You think we could hook up the beacons to blast Wheaty’s music? Be better than those weird animal moans for sure.”

Hope County Jail:

“May sound weird coming from a deputy, but, uh, I kinda figured I’d be in jail someday.”

“Whitehorse has always been like the station’s dad, having him here means a lot.”

“Virgil means well, but I’m pretty sure he’s on Tracey’s last nerve.”

With Boomer;

*in cutesy voice* “Who’s the cutest boy in the whole wide world, that’s right, you are!~”

“Any peggies hurt Boomer and they’re gonna get my boot up their ass.”

“Sorry, bud, I ain’t got any treats on me.”

With Peaches:

“You wanna see me carry a cougar?”

“Ahhh, she’s so fuckin’ cute, she could claw my face off and I’d thank her.”

*Meows back at Peaches*

With Cheeseburger:

“Awwwwwwwww, you’re so cute, so beautiful, what a precious boy!~”

“Do you think I could pick him up?”

“What’s new, Paddington?” *Cheeseburger growsl* “Oh, I’m sorry bro, that’s rough.”

When paired with Sharky:

“He is the fire boy; he is the one ignites. That was a dumb joke, please ignore me.”

“Set me on fire and we’re gonna have problems, Boshaw.”

“Wait, you had a job, Sharky?! Uh, that sounded mean, didn’t it? Sorry…”

When paired with Adelaide: (anytime Addie says anything sexual) “Please stop, please stop, please stop, please stop.”

“Any hole? What the hell does that mea-I don’t wanna know, do I?”

“I still don’t get what you saw in Hurk Sr, but I’m damn glad you got out of that mess.”

When paired with Hurk Jr.:

“So, not a stealth mission, got ya.”

“I’m gonna kill you, Hurk, seriously.”

“Why do you smell like beer? Are you drinking right now? Seriously!?”

When paired with Jess: “Arrows are cool and all, but being able to beat the fuck out of a peggie is way more satisfying, you can fight me on that, mon cher.”

“Hey, Jess, you think any of these stores have working slushie machines?”

“You got any idea what you’re gonna do after all this? Pff, me neither.”

When paired with Grace:

“I never got to meet your dad, but he sounds like an incredible man.”

“You know a lot about PTSD, right? We’re all gonna be fucked up after this, aren’t we?”

“Could I theoretically pay you to blow my brains out? Yeah, yeah, not funny, I know.”

When paired with Nick:

“Don’t do anything dumb, man. Kim and that baby need you.”

“One more pun and I’m climbing in that plane to kick your ass.”

“You and Kim are adorable, seriously.”

#far cry 5 #fc5 #dahlia hale

7 notes · View notes

distractedhistotech · 5 years ago

Text

Before MSA + 1: Finding Kin

Lance had been having a pretty normal day before he got a phone call at 1:13PM.

“Hello, may I speak to Lance Kingsman?” asked the man on the other side.

“Speaking.”

“This is Child Protection Services.” He was a bachelor with no kids. “Are you related to an Arthur Kingsman?”

Lance paused. “No idea.” It had been a while since he’d spoken to the rest of his family. “I got a cousin living in the states.”

“Percival Kingsman?”

Lance nodded. “Yeah.”

“We determined Percival Kingsman is the name of Arthur’s father, but when we suggested reuniting Arthur with the rest of his family, he had a panic attack. We checked the records and found your name listed as a relative. Do you have any idea if Percival might be abusing Arthur?”

Lance shrugged. “Can’t say. I haven’t seen Percy in 20 years, but he did have a bit of a temper. I lost touch with him after he joined that cult.”

“Yes, the Return to God Movement…” The agent seemed rather unsure. Not that Lance could blame her. He found the whole concept confusing.

“So, what’s gonna happen to Arthur?” asked Lance.

“Well, he’s being evaluated. If he’s mentally stable, he will be placed in foster care.”

Lance briefly wondered why the kid’s sanity was in question before deciding it was unimportant. Then he made another important decision. “Nah, I can look after him.”

“That’s…allowed,” admitted the officer. “But you just found out about Arthur. Are you even prepared to look after a child?”

“No idea, but I intend to give it a try,” said Lance. Maybe it seemed to come out of the blue to the case worker, but Lance’s father and uncle had been trying to get Percy out of that cult almost as soon as he joined and had made plans and preparations in case he left. When they’d gotten old and become sicker, they’d asked Lance to take over in case Percy or anyone else got out.

Lance hadn’t actually been expecting to keep that promise, but he wasn’t going to just abandon his kin. “Now, where is he?”

“Calhoun, Mississippi.”

After exchanging a bit more information, Lance promised to be there tomorrow and hung up to go get ready. He threw his things into an overnight bag, made some calls to customers to let them know he’d have to delay some repairs, and cleaned up the guest room. He called in a guest room, but it was more like a storage room that someone had shoved a bed into for some reason. He’d have to find somewhere else to keep the boxes now.

Most of them ended up in Lance’s room. He decided this was fine for now, got into his truck, and started driving.

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

Lance got to Calhoun with no problems and went to the CPS building first thing in the morning. He introduced himself to the secretary, was taken to a large room in the back, and sat down to wait.

After several minutes of waiting, the door opened to a middle-aged woman with a clipboard. She smiled at Lance. “Hello, I’m Wanda Byrd.”

Lance nodded in greeting. “Lance Kingsman.”

Wanda nodded back before looking behind her. “C’mon. One foot in front of the other.”

A kid, 11 or 12 shuffled in. He was hunched over and hugging himself. He glanced at Lance nervously before looking away. Lance noticed that he had the Kingsman hair: Orange hair that quickly faded to bright yellow with a black lock at the front. The kid also had the odd orange-brown eyes that sometimes popped up in their family.

“Hey kid.” Lance got up off the chair, noting he was about the same size as the kid. “It’s Arthur, right?”

Arthur nodded. “Yes sir.”

“Right, I’m gonna be honest. I have no idea how to do this,” admitted Lance. That got Arthur to look at Lance again. “I have no experience with kids. I’m making this up as I go along. I might say something that upsets you, but it’s not intentional. I’m just blunter than most people.”

Arthur blinked in confusion.

“Now, we don’t know each other. That’s not your fault. It’s not my fault.” Personally, Lance thought it was Percy’s fault, but he wasn’t going to say that within the first five minutes of meeting the man’s son. “But we are kin, and I would like to get to know you and help you. I’m not sure how much I can help you, but I’m certainly going to try to do as much as I can.”

Arthur shuffled. “I…Why is everyone trying to help me?”

Wanda smiled at Arthur. “I know the leaders of your community said that the world is full of horrible people, but most people are genuinely good. People who will do what they can to help others.”

Arthur looked away. “But I killed-”

“Someone who was going to hurt you,” finished Wanda.

Lance’s eyebrows rose to his hairline. Seems that someone had forgotten to share that piece of information with him. Arthur’s eyes darted towards Lance. “I’m not gonna judge ya.” He turned to the Wanda. “So, how are we gonna do this?”

“Well, we need to see how the two of you interact with each other. Then we have to determine if you’ll be able to deal with Arthur’s particular needs.”

Right. Kid probably needed therapy. Lance had some money saved up. They should be okay. He just needed to be sure the kid liked him. He still wasn’t sure how to go about that, but he figured they could at least sit down while they got to know each other and pulled out the chair at the nearby table. It took a few moments for Arthur to follow his example with the caseworker right behind him.

“So, what do you like to do?” asked Lance.

“I…” Arthur paused. He looked lost. “I don’t know.”

“…” Okay, this was just wrong. Lance turned to Wanda. “Do we have to do this here or can it be anywhere in the city?”

“As long as the two of you have supervision.”

Lance nodded. Seemed reasonable. “You got any arcades around here?”

Wanda winced. “Arthur doesn’t seem comfortable around crowds yet.”

“Ah, sorry, didn’t think of that.” Lance thought a bit more. “What about a comic store? One with chairs?”

Surprisingly, the center listed three comic stores like this. Lance asked if any were near restaurants. That narrowed it down to one. Lance loaded them up into his truck and they were at the store roughly 20 minutes later.

“If you see something that looks interesting, go ahead and grab it,” said Lance as he looked for anything he might like. Lance wasn’t a huge comic fan, but he had read some as a kid. And comics had come a long way since then. Some comics were serious and had plots that were genuinely interesting even to adults. He should be able to find something he can read.

Arthur was just staring at the various comics in confusion. “Which comes first?”

Lance paused. “Most of these comics have been running for decades.”

Arthur stared. “But-how does anyone know what’s going on?”

Aw Hell. This might be more complicated than Lance had thought. He looked around for maybe a graphic novel or a one shot and noticed several thick books that were the first volume of various Marvel titles. That ought to work. “Try these. They’re the first few issues from the 60’s.”

Arthur stared at the thicker volumes in confusion for several minutes. He eventually picked up The Incredible Hulk and cautiously read the first few pages. He frowned. “Science doesn’t work like this.”

“Hm?”

“Radiation poisoning does not give people special abilities. It causes random mutations that vary cell by cell and causes the body to break down rapidly to the point where organs break down. If one somehow survives, they would definitely suffer from various types of cancers. Besides that, Dr. Banner breaks the Law of Conservation of Mass. Perhaps energy could be converted into mass, but that would only be possible during the explosion, and changing back into his normal form would cause some sort of release of energy. And the physics are all wrong…”

“They care more about the story than the science,” interrupted Lance. Arthur abruptly seemed to shrink back from him. Lance mentally kicked himself. “Sorry, that came out wrong.” Arthur gave him a surprised look. “What I mean is…people don’t read ‘em for the science. It’s to see people overcome odds that they normally wouldn’t be able to, and powers make it so that they are more capable of that. Yeah, some of ‘em don’t make sense. The writers aren’t scientists so they have to do some guesswork. It’s just good fun.”

“Fun…” Arthur stared at the comic. “I…Can I have fun?”

Lance nodded. “Yeah, you just have to figure out what you enjoy doing. You sounded pretty passionate about science just now. Want to tell me a bit more about what the writers got wrong?”

Arthur glanced between Lance and the comic a bit more before hesitantly nodding. The three of them sat down at one of the tables with their purchases. Arthur took a few minutes before he found something else that bothered him and started talking about it, showing more knowledge on the subjects than Lance would have expected from a kid his age.

Lance made a note that Arthur was probably smarter than him.

Around noon, Lance decided it was time for lunch and hustled everyone to a burger restaurant.

Arthur stared at the burger and fries and milkshake like he’d never seen something like them before. Maybe he hadn’t. “What do you usually eat?”

“Roasted meat. Cooked vegetables. Bread.” Arthur picked up a fry. “What is it?”

“Hamburgers are beef between a couple of slices of bread basically,” said Lance. “You can add things like tomatoes and lettuce and onions to them.” He pointed at the fries. “French fries are potatoes sliced and fried in oil and salted.” He pointed at the milkshake. “That’s ice cream blended with milk. Ice cream is cream mixed with sugar and some other flavors and then frozen.” Lance took a bite of his own hamburger. “Just take one bite of each and we won’t nag you about it.”

Arthur cautiously bit a fry in half. He blinked in surprise as he chewed it and decided to eat the rest of the fry. Then he ate a few more. He took a cautious sip from his milkshake and blinked in surprise. He took another sip. He ate the rest of his fries. He drank some more of his milkshake. He studied his hamburger and took a bite, less cautious than before. He ate about half of his burger before Lance noticed Arthur was starting to look a bit sick. “You don’t have to eat it all.”

Arthur winced. “But…you can’t waste food.”

“You shouldn’t,” agreed Lance. “But accidents happen. As long as you don’t make a habit of it, don’t feel too bad about it.”

Arthur gulped but stopped eating at least. Lance decided to count it as a win.

Lance wasn’t entirely sure what to do after lunch. He considered a movie, but thought maybe it would be better if Arthur got his first movie experience in a controlled environment.

They ended up going to a library instead. Books were practically the same as movies except you had to come up with the pictures yourself.

Arthur seemed a lot more comfortable in the library than anywhere else they’d been. He went straight for…the nonfiction section? Arthur studied where various subjects could be found and headed for one particular shelf where he grabbed a book on robotics.

Lance took a moment to grab a book on refurbishing cars and glanced towards Wanda. She just shrugged. Fine.

They went to a set of chairs where Lance and Arthur started reading. Lance occasionally glanced towards Arthur. Arthur seemed engrossed in his book. “So, you like robots?”

“Oh, uh, I like mechanical stuff,” explained Arthur. “And I’ve never gotten the chance to learn about robots before.”

Lance nodded. “I’m pretty fond of mechanical stuff too. Even repair cars for a living.”

Arthur looked up. “Really? What’s that like?”

It was the first time Arthur had asked about Lance’s life, and Lance was relieved to answer. “It’s more fulfilling than you’d think. Been doing it since I was a kid. Got a junker of a car to fix up when it was getting around time for me to get a car. It was a lot harder than I thought it would be. More expensive too, but I didn’t give up. Asked local mechanics for advice. Read some books. Eventually, I got it running again, and I enjoyed working on it, so I thought I ‘d see if I could make a career out of it. It was hard work, and it took a while to pay off my student loans, but I can’t see myself doing anything else.”

Arthur turned around the book he was reading so that a robot arm was showing. “Could you make an arm?”

Lance chuckled. “That’s a bit outside my area of expertise. I mostly work on cars. I know enough do some repairs around the house, like the air conditioning unit or the oven. That’s…” He pointed at the picture. “…a lot more complicated.”

Arthur frowned and turned the book around to look at the picture. “I wanted to build robots, but we didn’t have anything like that.”

“That’s…specific,” said Lance. He wasn’t sure what Arthur could do with that, but with how many things were automated nowadays he could probably find something. “Well, I don’t think you’ll be able to take any mechanical courses until high school, but I can get you started on the basics when I have some free time.”

Arthur gave Lance a startled look. “What do you mean?”

Now Lance was a bit confused. “You like robots?” Arthur nodded. “You like science?” Arthur nodded again. “Would you like to make a living building robots?” Arthur nodded. “Then you’ll need to take the proper courses to get into college and learn how to do that.”

Arthur gaped at Lance. “You-you’re okay with me making robots for a living?”

Lance nodded. “The way things are going it’ll be a good field to get into, and even if you decide robots aren’t for you, you’ll still be pretty good at fixing things, and things’ll always need fixing.” Arthur was still staring. “Okay, I’m thinking I’m missing something. What’s got you so gobsmacked?”

“You’re letting me choose what to do!” exclaimed Arthur, getting a few hushes.

Lance grunted. “’Course I am. It’s your life. You should get to choose how to live it.” He paused. “Well, as long as you’re not hurting yourself or anyone else. No drugs or stealing or the like.”

Arthur nodded, still looking shocked. “Are children always allowed to choose what to become?”

“Well, they might change their mind. Can’t grow up to be a dinosaur.” That got a snort from Arthur. “And well, you shouldn’t encourage someone who wants to join a gang or the like. Still, it’s best to let people choose what they want to be on their own. Most people want to do what they enjoy, and that makes sense. If you enjoy something, you do it when you have free time, and you become good at it. And people want jobs done well and correctly the first time since it saves everyone time and money.”

Arthur blinked. “Huh. I never thought about it like that. I was always told my role would be chosen by my commander when I was old enough.”

Lance snorted and shook his head. “Stupid.”

Arthur bit his lip. “So, you would be all right with me pursuing a career in making robots? Even if it was unrealistic?”

“I don’t think it’s unrealistic,” said Lance. “And even if it was, I’d at least let you give it a try while making sure you had useful skills for a backup job.”

“Like fixing cars?” suggested Arthur.

Lance nodded. “Or cooking or child care. Things that will always be in demand.”

“I’m not allowed near children,” said Arthur rather nervously.

“Why?”

Arthur’s eyes widened. “I, uh, I wasn’t…They didn’t…” Arthur trailed off. “I don’t want to talk about it.”

“Fair enough.” Arthur would talk about it when he was ready.

“So, um, you want me to live with you?” asked Arthur. Lance nodded. “And you don’t mind me doing what I want as long as no one gets hurt?” Lance nodded. “Including working with robots when I grow up?” Lance nodded. “Even though we’ve never met.” Lance nodded. “Just because we happen to be related.”

“It’s more than that,” said Lance. “You need help. Have needed help for a while from the sound of it, and no one would step up. Now, a lot of people could help you. Would you trust them?” Arthur shook his head? “Do you trust me?” Arthur shook his head. “Didn’t think so. Can’t really blame ya either. But I know a thing or two about our family. Like the fact that’s your natural hair color. Your family had a Knights of the Round Table naming theme.” He gave Arthur a pointed look. “That your old man had a short temper and refused to believe anything was his fault.” Arthur winced. “Yeah, and I bet the sort of people he fell in with were pretty similar to him.” Arthur nodded. “That’s all the reason I need.”

Arthur looked down in thought for several moments before finally looking up and looking Lance in the eye. “Okay. I’ll…I’ll try to make this work.”

Lance chuckled. “That’s my line.” He glanced towards Wanda, who gave him a nod and a smile.

Looks like he was getting a kid then.

#Lance Kingsman #Arthur Kingsman #Mystery skulls animated #msa + 1 #au

12 notes · View notes

shineefivebyyourside · 6 years ago

Text

Hounds of Love, Part 1

starcourt mall isn’t the only new arrival in hawkins.

a disclaimer: i know hounds of love didn’t come out until september 1985. this is obviously set before then. but! this whole fic was heavily inspired by that song, and a summer setting felt important, so here we are. i acknowledge that i didn’t solve that conundrum. let’s just suspend our disbelief, shall we?

tw: mild swearing i’m sorry if i left anything out here. please kindly let me know if i did, and i’ll fix it.

this is the first fic i’ve ever written, and thus, most definitely the first fic i’ve ever posted to tumblr (or anywhere). hope you enjoy reading it as much as i’m enjoying writing it!

———————————————————————————————————

I found a fox Caught by dogs He let me take him in my hands His little heart It beats so fast And I'm ashamed of running away From nothing real I just can't deal with this But I'm still afraid to be there

Wind whipped through Frankie’s hair as her ’66 Special slid down the highway, past blurred trees and quiet farmland, carrying her further and further into her memories, into her past, back down the rabbit hole, through the mirror…

I feel your arms surround me…

The drive from Chicago to Hawkins wasn’t that far, and Frankie’d already belted her way through almost two full albums at what felt like an alarming rate. Maybe she earned a break.

One full tank and a snack. Let’s do this.

The afternoon sun blazed high in the cloudless sky, and the late-spring breeze bore harbingers of midwestern summer: freshly mowed grass, wet dirt, and earthy hay. The distant familiarity of her surroundings left Frankie feeling a bit listless. The welling-up after her father’s first call, the cracks in the dam growing with each visit to the library, the urgency after the flood, strategically packing a new life into her car while everything held tightly in her chest burst forth with such gut wrenching force… All the wild emotions leading up to this journey, this moment, subsided - almost unnervingly so - as she sat enveloped by the calm rustle of the middle of nowhere. Frankie pulled her knees up and leaned forward, her strawberry popsicle plopping bright, sticky drops onto the Buick’s warm, beige hood. She slurped up the last sweet juice and squinted off at nothing in particular, chewing absently on the wooden stick. A giant Van Halen t-shirt and cutoffs didn’t necessarily scream poised and groomed. She’d have to make one more stop before reaching Hawkins limits.

Hopefully somewhere with an actual bathroom. She scoffed.

Frankie hopped off the hood, took one last sighing stretch, and ducked back into the drivers seat.

One more hour until I’m someone else.

———————————————————————————————————

“Steve, honey, did you bring those bowls in from outside?”

“Yeah, mom, they’re on the island.”

“Ok, when you get a chance, will you take the decorations down? Your father has to stop by the office, and I have some errands to run before tonight.”

“Yeah, mom, I’ll get ‘em. What’s tonight?”

Mrs. Harrington appeared at the top of the stairs, in the middle of changing her earrings.

“Honey, I know we just had your graduation party, but we’re having dinner tonight, remember? With that exchange student, or whatever. You’re father’s got business in California next week, so we need to make sure everything is set up before we leave.”

“But I told Dustin I’d take him to the arcade later.”

“Well, I’m sorry Steven, but you’ll have to call and cancel. Tonight’s not negotiable. They arrive this evening, and I won’t have you missing dinner with a guest,” and with that, she disappeared back into the upstairs hall.

Steve sighed and made his way back to the kitchen. It’s not that he didn’t have fun this afternoon. He got to see some cousins, and a few of his classmates stopped by, mostly encouraged by their parents. Of course, his close friends and their families came, but it was different with his parents around. Stuffier. Lots of small talk about the future. His future. If Steve was honest, he didn’t even want to have a party, the whole idea soured last Halloween. He didn’t want to talk or even think about the future. He didn’t want to hear about the new mall, or let on that he’d be working there as soon as it opened. What he wanted was to take Dustin to the arcade later. With any luck, Jon would show up with Mike and Will, and they could all get pizza after. That sounded like a much better celebration to Steve.

But now I have to be at this stupid dinner. Of course we can’t have family dinner, like, with just our family. It’s always gotta be when they’re trying to show off to someone. What the hell.

Once his parents were gone and all the streamers thrown in the trash, Steve turned on the TV and flopped down by the phone.

“Henderson residence.”

“Hey, man, it’s Steve.”

“Steve! Hey! Is it cool if Max and Lucas come tonight? They said they could ride bikes, but maybe you could pick them up, and we could all get pizza after? I can use some of my graduation money so you don’t have to pay for my pizza. Or-”

“Hey, buddy, listen, I’m not gonna be able to take you guys tonight.”

“What? Why? You said earlier that you could!”

“I know, man, I’m sorry.” Steve draped his arm across his forehead. “My parents are hosting this exchange student for the summer, and with graduation and everything, I totally forgot.”

“Oh, yeeeeah. What are they studying? Is it, like, something cool? Probably not if they’re coming here, right? Unless it’s, like, science or something, and they get to work with Mr. Clarke-”

“Honestly, I don’t know. My parents want me to be there for dinner tonight when they get in, though, so.”

“Well, that sucks, but hopefully they’re cool. You’ll let me know if they’re cool, right? Maybe they’ll be some, like, crazy scientist, and they’ll blow your house up!”

The dark pressure Steve created over his face and Dustin’s familiar chatter, coupled with the plush sofa cushions… Well, this was starting to feel like the recipe for a nap. Steve chuckled sleepily and yawned over his words. “Sure, bud. I’ll let you know.”

———————————————————————————————————

Gravel crunched and twigs popped as Frankie pulled off the road. Tentatively, she exited the Buey and approached the construction fence. Her heart slammed against her ribcage, shallow breaths shaky and quick. A wide building loomed just ahead, dark and ominous, blocking out the late orange sun. Frankie whipped her head around and froze at a rustle from the trees behind her. She listened. A deep exhale escaped her lips. She melted, heavily leaning on her knees, letting her head dangle.

Jesus, Frank, calm down. As far as we know, it’s gone. She huffed. Some squirrel, huh?

Once she lifted her gaze, though, every fiber of her being was struck once more with overwhelming panic. She immediately gasped and stumbled backward, eyes wide and unblinking. Sickly, dripping vines covered the new mall, now decrepit and crumbling. Ethereal dust hung in the air, and a putrid stench emanated from the site. Francine’s breath swirled forth in white plumes, a damp, unsettling cold sweeping over her. She rolled over, desperate to find the safety of her driver’s seat, but to her horror, the vines enveloped it, too. There was no way she could drive out of here in that, no way to escape the nightmare she thought was over. She scrambled to her feet just as a car door slammed beside her.

“‘O, there.”

Frankie’s shivering quieted as warm, glowing sunlight washed over her. She stared in utter confusion as a police officer slowly approached.

“Got a call about some kids in a strange car heading back here. You got friends with you?”

Frankie shook her head and tried to catch her breath.

“N- no, sir. Just me. Just- just taking a look at the- the new mall site, sir.”

“You sure? Haven’t been drinking out here, or anything?” The tall man nodded his chin at something just beyond Francine’s feet. A few crushed beer cans lay strewn among the foliage.

“No. No, sir. That wasn’t me. I’m driving,” Francine averred a glance at her car. Shadows of high-up leaves danced on the hood. Just as she’d left it.

Jim surveyed the scene. She seemed innocent enough.

“Chicago, huh?” A beat.

“Uuuuhhh, yeah. Yes! Sir.”

“You got family here, or something?”

Frankie took a deep breath and settled her gaze on the officer’s badge.

“I did. A long time ago.”

“Yeah? What’s your name, kid?”

“…Pine. Josie Pine.”

Jim squinted and leaned back on the door of his truck. “Don’t think I know anyone by that name. They live here long?”

“Um, no. No, not really.” Frankie shifted uncomfortably. She felt like she’d been standing there too long, out in the open, nothing to hold onto or shift the focus. Here was this giant man, leaning cooly on his junker of a cop car, while she fidgeted with her watch and dusted her clothes, skittish like the squirrel she heard earlier.

“Is it alright…? Can I…?” Francine motioned toward the Special. “I was just here to check out the new mall. I should probably get going.”

“You drove all the way from Chicago to look at a mall that’s still under construction?” Jim peered over his sunglasses at her, eyebrows raised in skepticism. She seemed innocent enough.

Frankie laughed nervously. “No. No, it’s just- it’s been a long time. I’m just taking it all in.”

A long silence elapsed between the two strangers. Jim trying to work out why exactly this random girl was rolling around alone behind a closed off construction site - if her story really checked out; Francine alternating between studying her hands and the man before her, carefully considering her next moves.

“Actually, officer… Hopper?”

“It’s chief, but go on.”

“Chief… I’m… here for an internship. For college next year. And like I said, it’s been since I was really little… Do you think you could point me in the direction of my host family’s house?”

———————————————————————————————————

The doorbell rang just after 6:30. From his bed, Steve could hear his mother shuffling things around downstairs and scurrying to the front hall.

Alright. Let get this over with.

“Hello! It’s so nice to meet you. Welcome! Come in, come in! My name is Margaret, and this is my husband, David…”

Mrs. Harrington’s syrupy voice greeted a rather wide-eyed and flustered girl holding several bags. She blinked a few times and shook her head, smiling apprehensively as she shuffled through the door.

“Here, my son can help you with your luggage. Steve, will you get- Oh, I’m so sorry, dear, what’s your name?”

“Josie. It’s Josie Pine. It’s nice to meet you Mr. and Mrs. Harrington.”

Steve watched from above as Josie untangled herself from her belongings before hopping down the stairs and grabbing two small suitcases.

“Steve can show you where the guest room is and everything. You go ahead and get settled in and just come down when you’re ready. Dinner should be done soon.”

“Thanks, Mrs. Harrington. It smells great.” Josie shot her another tight-lipped smile before following her luggage upstairs.

Steve carried the suitcases into the guest room and set them near the closet. Josie bustled in after him, dropping her bags immediately inside the door and heaving a great sigh. And then she just stood there… looking around. It took Steve a minute to realize he, too, was just standing there. Staring at her. In the dark.

“Oh, shit! Sorry, um. Lemme get- uh. There’s a light switch behind you.” He started towards it, just as Josie turned and flipped it on.

She blinked at him in the sudden brightness… There was that smile, again. The one that said, “I don’t know who the fuck you people are, and I feel too awkward to actually talk to you yet.”

“Uh… Well, this is your room for… however long you’re staying here.” Steve gestured vaguely to the room around them and slowly backed up.

“Yeah, here it is. I’ll be here until August.”

Steve gaped at her. The hand unconsciously rubbing the back of his neck stilled.

“Woah. That’s, like, the whole summer. What’re you doing for that long?” He leaned in the doorway, trying to be casual - trying to make his guest, or maybe just himself, feel comfortable.

“I’m here for an internship.” Short and crisp. Josie began to rifle through her bags, dragging them onto the bed, chewing the inside of her cheeks and furtively glancing around.

“Cool, cool…”

Steve stayed for a minute or two longer, watching Josie unpack. She wore a black and white polo with white slacks and a skinny black belt. Simple earrings, watch on her left wrist, a pair of smart burgundy loafers discarded at the foot of the bed. All the other clothes she pulled from her suitcases were similarly tidy. Neat and prim and professional. She moved with swift decisiveness, despite the slightly troubled look on her face.

“Well, I’ll let you get settled. See you downstairs.”

Josie gasped and jumped a little bit, as though she’d already forgotten Steve’s presence.

“Yeah, I’ll come down. Thanks for carrying these.” She waved a shirt over the luggage.

“Yeah, of course. No worries.” Steve flopped his hand in a vague summation of a wave as he trudged out of the room.

Mom is gonna love her. Fuck.

———————————————————————————————————

“So, Josie, what is it you’re studying this summer?”

“Oh, I’m not really here to study, per se. I have an internship helping with some research and lab work at a doctor’s office. Hoping to get some solid experience before the school year starts.”

“Well, we’re honored to have an aspiring medical student in our home! All the way from Chicago!”

Mrs. Harrington was a nice woman, she really was, but all Frankie wanted in that moment was for her to disappear. The dinner, the small talk, the questions - it was all far more than she had bargained for. When the doctor overseeing her project said he knew of an unassuming family who frequently left town, she jumped at the chance to stay in their house. But this… This seemed like a family who wanted her to be a lovely summer guest, someone to entertain and dote upon.

“Oh, um, well, I’m actually going into forensics. Forensic science.”

“Do you hear that, Steven?” The youngest Harrington barely acknowledged his father as he shoveled mashed potatoes into his face. “You’ve certainly got some high aspirations, young lady. Maybe you can teach our son here a thing or two about ambition and the importance of an education.”

Steve paused his shoveling and shot Mr. Harrington an indignant look. “Dad…”

Francine busied her fork with some peas and slowly took a bite of the chewiest thing on her plate while the Harrington’s bickered as politely as possible. Who would’ve thought she’d be relieved by some dysfunctional family dynamics? Fuck it. I’ll take this. Just… please. Please talk amongst yourselves.

———————————————————————————————————

The Harrington’s left a few days later on a business trip (Or was it a vacation? Francine wasn’t sure). She worried for her privacy when their son - who albeit wasn’t nearly as nosy - stayed behind, but relief quickly set in when she realized he was almost never home. Steve kept himself occupied watching over a bunch of fourteen year olds and didn’t expect to spend much “quality time getting to know each other” in the evenings. Even when he started a summer job sometime during the second week, their schedules stayed different enough, and Frankie was thankful she didn't have to search for alone time. She just had to make sure she was in the guest room, undisturbed, before he waltzed in. Easy. She could probably keep this up all summer and complete her mission without a hitch, even if she did have to endure a couple awkward dinners along the way.

Francine felt delightfully full as she put in her nose ring one night around the beginning of week three. The Harringtons kept their fridge pretty stocked, despite their prolonged absence, and Frankie was more than happy to keep the food from going to waste. This particular night, she even set aside some leftovers for Steve. It was the least she could do, considering how standoffish she had to be in his presence. It felt good to do something immediately nice for someone. Not be so focused on the longterm for a change. Especially someone so genuinely sweet as Steve seemed.

Frankie pulled the plush comforter up to her chin and allowed her body to sink into the mattress. She knew at some point she would have to acknowledge what happened that first afternoon. But not right now. She pushed the thought to the back of her mind and allowed some much needed sleep to overtake her.

Nothing even remotely close has happened since then, Frank. It was probably just a flashback. Nothing but a horrible daydream.

@thechickvic @strawberryicecreamm

#stranger things #stranger things fic #st #steve harrington #steve harrington x reader #steve harrington x oc #steve harrington x original character #steve harrington fic #stranger things fan fiction #steve harrington fanfic #stranger things fanfic #steve harrington fan fiction

41 notes · View notes

thebibliomancer · 6 years ago

Text

Essential Avengers: Avengers #203: Night of the Crawlers

January, 1981

Okay so this is a weird one.

And I’m not just talking about Wonder Man and Beast tussling with Puanepsion from Biscuit Hammer.

So Wonder Man and Beast were absent last issue, probably to better sync up the paperback novel and the comic adaptation.

Jocasta wasn’t able to locate them due to Ultron’s jamming and they never came back to the mansion after Wonder Man got fired from his shitty TV job. So where did they go?

It was kind of inevitable that we fill in that narrative gap but it didn’t necessarily have to be in Avengers. It might have been in another book and the only explanation readers of only Avengers would have gotten is ‘Check out this month’s Tales To Delight And Wow, true believers! ‘Nuff said!’

But obviously, that filling in happens here in Avengers. And its weird that it has all of the feeling of being a fill-in or filler issue when its written by the current Avengers writer David Michelinie.

I’ll get into why it feels like filler but damn this is a weird one.

I’ve covered most of the LAST TIME stuff so we start with the Avengers returning via giant windowed Quinjet to the mansion after their Ultron adventure.

After all that nonsense all they want are hot baths, cool drinks, and then to pass the hell out.

I guess the design for the Quinjet has stabilized because this is what its been looking like for a while.

After landing, the Avengers discuss some of the recent-

DEAR LORD VISION WHATS WRONG WITH YOUR FACE?

It looks like one of the yaranaika faces!

And Wanda, your tiara points are pointier than Batman’s ears OR shoulders!

Jocasta, you’ve sprouted some rivets!

Okay so the writer may be the same but we’ve gone from George Perez to Carmine Infantino and Carmine evidently has different ideas on how to draw the characters. I.e. they all kind of look off model.

Which contributes to the weird feeling that this book has so well done?

Anyway, where was I?

Iron Man and Captain America discuss how they just fucking left Ultron in the heavy metal plant. I mean sure he’s stuck under a blobby Ultron shaped shell of solid adamantium and can’t go anywhere but still.

Dig a hole and plant him in the hole!

He has a molecular rearranger that he uses to manipulate his own adamantium so maybe he can do something and escape! I don’t actually know how he gets out of this one but better safe than sorry! You’ll be sorry either way but you’ll be sorrier if it was something easily preventable rather than comic book nonsense like him having hypnotized Tony Stark off-panel!

Cap, pointy Wanda, and yaranaika Vision all head off to sleep until 7 in the afternoon.

No rest for the unintentionally wicked as Iron Man decides to use his downtime repairing the damage he did to Jocasta under Ultron’s influence.

But he discovers that Jocasta is already up and about, having been repaired by Jarvis.

Which sounds implausible but Jocasta wasn’t totally incapacitated by Iron Man’s hypnotized treachery so she was able to walk Jarvis through repairing her.

You go, Jocasta! Get by with a little help with your friends!

She and Jarvis do regret that she wasn’t fixed in time to either helped in battle or tracked down Wonder Man and Beast to bring them in as reinforcements.

Which makes Wasp wonder where those two are?

Now lets imagine the scene gets all wiggly as we go for a SCENE TRANSITION AND FLASHBACK COMBO.

Surprisingly, Beast and Wonder Man were not off getting crazy drunk like last time, right before the Red Ronin stuff.

They just... got lost somehow. On the way back from the studio.

Beast, a lifelong inhabitant of New York apparently and also the streets are numbered, has managed to get so turned around that he doesn’t even recognize a single landmark.

But he spots some street toughs loitering while carrying baseball bats and chains and thinks ‘hey those types always know their way around’ and asks them for directions.

The armed youths are also apparently jumpy, call Beast a ‘Crawler’ and start hitting him with a chain.

Now apparently Crawler is not a new slur for mutants. They’ve just completely mistaken Beast for something that looks nothing like him and does not in fact talk or ask for directions to an uptown bus.

That’s how jumpy they are.

The fight wouldn’t have been much of a fight had either of the heroes fought for real or if Wonder Man had done anything other than just lift up two of the toughs by their collars. But the ‘fight’ ends when Wonder Man calls Beast Beast and the toughs realize that these aren’t Crawlers, obviously. OBVIOUSLY. They’re Avengers!

They apologize for the violence, saying that things have been tense around the neighborhood since the Crawlers showed up.

And since the word has been thrown around a few times, Beast asks what a Crawler even is.

Lenny, the street tough: “A Crawler is scum, mister, that’s what it is. Scum that don’t even walk like a man. Scum that steals things, like food, an’ blankets... an’ children!”

Street tough Deuce asks Lenny whether they should get these Avengers to help them but Lenny dismisses the idea. They already asked for the police’s help and the cops laughed right in their faces.

So clearly they have to take care of their own neighborhood clearly.

And they head off into the night to loiter on other street corners and accidentally assault other people, I presume.

Before Beast and Wonder Man can absorb any of what just happened, a small child approaches them.

She introduces herself as Juanita Lopez, sister of Hugo, the kid taken by the Crawlers.

She explains that she and her brother are very close because their parents didn’t approve of them having friends. But about a week or two ago, Hugo began going off to play by himself. And around that same time there were a lot of break-ins at stores and markets. This was when rumors started of monsters that moved heavily and close to the ground - the Crawlers.

Juanita was worried about Hugo so she followed him, as ya do, and found him hanging out with a Crawler in a derelict building.

She screamed, as ya do, and the Crawler ran down a manhole.

Juanita took Hugo home but that night... he disappeared!

And then Juanita’s mom shows up and slaps her one for talking to strangers.

Juanita’s mom: “Hugo has run away. He will return when he gets hungry. Now come, you’ve work to do!”

And then the mom drags Juanita off into the fog. Which has been an ever present thing and maybe why the street toughs mistook Beast for a Crawler.

Anyway, with how odd everything is, Beast suggests that he and Wonder Man go wading through the sewers looking for trouble.

But first Beast undresses down to only his underwear. Because why ruin a perfectly good outfit? And also because aesthetic.

They soon discover a hole in the sewer wall where someone or something broke through.

Possibly turtles but that's unsubstantiated.

And heading through the hole they discover someone has placed torches along the walls lighting the way.

Curious and also more curious.

AND THEN THEY ARE SUDDENLY JUMPED BY CRAWLERS

but only for a panel so its all cool.

Hugo tells the Crawlers to “leave the anglos alone!” and then recognizes them as Avengers. Which is super cool to a kid who lives in a sewer. Real superheroes! Wow!

Hugo takes the two Avengers back to his sweet sewer pad and offers them sodas but Wonder Man just wants a tall refreshing drink of ‘will someone explain whats going on here?’

Prompted no doubt by a Crawler manspreading right in his peripheral vision.

So Hugo explains it all.

So some scientists were working on creating anaerobic life that could colonize space without needing air. But science is hard (and Hugo speculates that maybe they weren’t too bright) so they just dumped all of their chemicals down the drain because this was a super illegal operation. And then the anaerobic chemicals mixed with other illegally dumped chemicals and somehow this chemical mix created the Crawlers.

SCIENCE!

Or something that resembles it if you squint and are maybe also high.

Is mixing together random chemicals really the best way to create a brand new life form to colonize space for you?

It is with SCIENCE!

Anyway. Per Hugo at least, the Crawlers were smart and realized that they couldn’t live where the people are so made a home down in the sewers.

Not specified is whether they hung out with the Morlocks, Ninja Turtles, or any of the MANY inhabitants of New York’s sewers.

At night they would sneak up topside to steal things they needed like food and candles. Because they may not need to breath but apparently they needed food. Despite the lack of mouths.

One night while stealing they ran into Hugo and they instantly felt some kind of connection. Loneliness, probably.

So then Hugo and the Crawlers became best friends! Oh how they frolicked in the sewer water!

Hugo: “Anyway, the Crawlers, hey treated me real good, an’ we had a lot o’ fun together. We was simpatico, y’know? So I decided to come live with ‘em, an’ what’s wrong wit’ that?”

Live your own truth, man.

Wonder Man asks the very pertinent question of how Hugo knows all this about the Crawlers when they don’t even have mouths. But apparently “Crawlers don’t need mouths -- they talk wit’ their minds!”

Yeah.

Suddenly the street toughs burst in to ‘save’ Hugo and ‘violence’ the Crawlers.

Or the ‘street dudes’ as Beast dubs them.

The street dudes aren’t actually that effective a vigilante gang because the Crawlers just start kicking their collective asses.

They were bred to cope with all kinds of gravity, Beast speculates based on no evidence.

They weren’t bred for anything. They were random chemicals dumped into a sewer that mixed with other random chemicals. Its a wonder that any part of their original design manifested.

But kicking the asses of the street dudes has the Crawlers in such a frenzy that Beast grabs Hugo and runs off. Wonder Man skedaddles too. As do the street dudes.

Hugo protests that the Crawlers would never hurt him but when a blue gorilla man tells you to git you git.

The two Avengers bring Hugo back home and we instantly see why Hugo thought living in the sewer was preferable.

Hugo’s mom: “I will tell you what is happening, jovencito! You are going to do the chores you have not done for the three days you have been hiding! And then you will go to bed without your supper!”

Hugo: “But, mamacita! I wasn’t -- !”

Hugo’s mom: “Mocoso! Don’t you dispute my word!”

And then she slaps him.

And then she calls Beast and Wonder Man freaks and tells them to gtfo.

Beast: “Sheesh. It’s a wonder Hugo didn’t take off before he did!”

Wonder Man: “I know, Beast. This isn’t exactly what you’d call a happy ending.”

Meanwhile and confusingly, we see the street dudes marching down the streets carrying dynamite and fire bombs that they stole from the construction company Lenny works at. And now that they know where the Crawlers live, they can “skrag those slimy grubs for good!”

Meanwhile, Wonder Man complains about how unreal this whole evening has been as the fog renders things in weird colors.

Beast: “I know what you mean. I almost expect Rod Serling to step out of the fog any minute and say --”

Juanita: “Help! P-please!”

Apparently right after the two Avengers left, Hugo climbed out a window and ran away again because why wouldn’t he?

Juanita is worried that the Crawlers will think Hugo an enemy and hurt him.

So time to go sloshing around in the sewer again, I guess.

Geez. If Beast had dried-in sewer stink in his fur no wonder Hugo and Juanita’s mom told him to gtfo. Smelling like that.

Meanwhile, the street dudes go swimming in the gross scum-crusted river.

As you know, street dudes have an impeccable sense of direction so they locate the drainage tunnel that’s adjacent to the Crawler’s lair and plan a bundle of TNT on it with a long enough fuse that they can go into the sewers and herd the Crawlers near the explosion.

Meanwhile, inside the sewers Juanita tries to convince Hugo to return home instead of, y’know, living in a sewer with monsters.

But Hugo flips the script.

Hugo: “Ah, my sister, still you do not understand. This place is a sewer, si -- but is it any filthier, or any less kind, than the world above? Why don’t you stay here with me? The Crawlers do not yell, they do not hurt. This could be our new home, Juanita. Please, say you’ll stay?”

And she looks like she’s seriously considering it when the street dudes burst in and start throwing explosives and yelling about how they’ll rescue the kids.

Holy shit I think they killed that Crawler. I can see Crawler chunks flying...

Beast tries to punch some sense into the dudes but they are beyond logic punches and continue throwing molotov cocktails which ignites the chemical in the water.

Hugo has to watch as his Crawler friends burn alive.

Traumatizing.

But not for long. Because the explosives set outside blow a hole in the sewer drawing all of the sewer water into the equally gross river.

The Crawlers get swept out but so does Hugo.

Juanita begs him to hold onto her but he lets go and is swept out.

Hugo: “Juanita, I... I cannot! These are my friends... and I belong with them. I’m going home, Juanita. Good-byyyyye...”

Okay. So that child is super dead.

The dudes and the Avengers and Juanita climb out of the sewer where they are confronted by Mrs Lopez who yells at Juanita for sneaking off without telling her.

Juanita tries to tell her that Hugo is not coming back but Mrs Lopez just says “Good riddance.”

Well.

Beast threatens to punch her in the face but Juanita asks him not to.

Juanita: “No, senor, please! There are some things that you cannot change! So do not mourn for me -- rejoice for Hugo. For he, senors... is the fortunate one.”

Bleak.

With the thick mists casting everything in weird psychedelic shades, Beast contemplates what just happened.

Beast: “What kind of world is it when a little kid is better off floating out to sea with those monsters instead of going home with his own family!”

Wonder Man: “I don’t know what kind of world it is, Beast. I don’t even know what place this is. Maybe we can find out after we get these punks to the local precinct house and --”

But the street dudes have vanished and Beast suggests that they two likewise.

As the sun rises, the fog and/or mist finally dissipates and Beast and Wonder Man find their way out of labyrinthine backstreets to a familiar intersection.

They even spot a cop and run towards him, which you can do when you are 1) in a comic book, 2) a superhero, and 3) not overly bothered by bullets.

They tell him that they can explain the explosion and fire by the river a little while ago but the cop hasn’t heard of any explosion or fire. And Beast... isn’t explaining it very lucidly.

Beast: “Y’see, there were these anaerobic mutations called “Crawlers” who lived in the sewer, and they were attacked by this mob of street punks who disappeared into thin air and--”

Out of respect for Beast being an Avenger and a large furry blue man, the cop does call to check with dispatch but they say that there have been no disturbances called in from that area.

You’d think that just on the strength of the Avengers’ words, the cop would go check out the story.

If an Avenger tells you an explosion happened they probably know what they’re talking about. Avenger life is like 70% explosions.

Beast wonders loudly right in front of a cop that a kid died tonight and they’re the only ones that know about it. Wonder Man just muses that maybe that’s just the way it’s supposed to be and bids the cop adieu.

The cop doesn’t at all react to Beast talking about dead kids. I figure he’s coming off the graveyard shift and in that state of exhaustion where if something doesn’t happen right in front of him it doesn’t exist.

A half hour later, Wasp and Hawkeye enjoy coffee and donuts when Jarvis comes into the kitchen to let them know that Beast and Wonder Man have returned and are currently resting in the ground-level lounge. Y’know, to differentiate from the other lounges this literal mansion has.

Wasp and Hawkeye go to rub in the fact that they got to fight Ultron but they find that Beast and Wonder Man are sound asleep on the couch. They’re even sort of sleeping on each other. Kind of cute.

Wasp: “Well, how do you like that? We save the world, and they act like it was them who’d had the great adventure!”

Hawkeye: “Yeah, I guess some people just don’t know when they’ve got it easy...!”

Hahahahahahahahahaha, well then!

Beast, why are your solo-ish filler-ish stories such bonkers ridiculousness? Between this and the Martyr Perplex, I’m thinking maybe we need to forbid you from ever having adventures away from a team.

What even happened here? All the events of this issue were just kind of debunked on the penultimate page so we don’t even know if any of it happened.

And with the weird mist painting everything in psychedelic colors and things just happening, there's this feeling of unreality over all of it.

It doesn’t feel like a dream because it lacks a dream logic. And we see stuff from the perspective of not Beast and Wonder Man.

It does feel like maybe something that happened once. Events seem to proceed as they would with little input from Beast and Wonder Man who are pulled along for the ride, like a young boy dragged out of a sewer.

There’s this feeling I get that events would have gone as they did even if the Avengers never got involved.

My best guess is that they experienced something like a ghost story, a tragedy that did occur once upon a time.

But there’s not really support for that. There’s not really support for anything except that a weird sequence of events happened and nobody but Beast and Wonder Man experienced it.

Or hey maybe there were just psychotropic drugs in that weird omnipresent fog mist. That’s equally likely!

I don’t know why this story was told. Michelinie evidently wanted to fill in where Beast and Wonder Man were during the Ultron story and I guess credit where its due for writing something truly unique instead of just... some other stock superhero adventure like foiling a bank robbery or something.

Its just so goddamn weird and its such an inconsequential issue that I couldn’t find anyone else really talking about it.

Next time, things are uncomfortable in a different way as we get a two-parter of the Avengers fighting a yellow peril villain from the ‘50s, the Yellow Claw.

Why?

Follow @essential-avengers. Because you think I’m a nice, interesting person or maybe because you like reading about someone reading about Avengers.

#Avengers #technically #Beast #Wonder Man #the Crawlers #this is a weird one #i've been stewing on this about a week longer than i should have #i still don't know what to make of it #Essential Avengers #Essential marvel liveblogging

7 notes · View notes

missanthropicprinciple · 7 years ago

Text

Super-long rant-review post about Werewolf of London (1935) with images and spoilers...

I love Werewolf of London, this 83-year-old film. It’s got some problems typical of 1930s Hollywood, but I still find a lot of value in it.

The setting, the moonlit hills of Tibet. Accuracy? not so much.

Apparently the “Tibetans” are actually speaking Cantonese...and the white actors are clearly not speaking anything. 30 years before Star Wars and it honestly sounds like they’re speaking Ewok...but it’s just gibberish. I think the only realistic part of this scene is the fact that there actually are bactrian camels in Tibet. At least it’s quite well filmed.

The sequence where Dr. Glendon (Henry Hull) is attacked by the werewolf is really eerie and holds up well.

The actual bite is so quick but if you screencap that second it’s creepy AF.

Despite the attack, Dr. Glendon gets his coveted “Mariphasa Lupina Lumina” flower (sadly, completely fictitious) and heads back to England.

In his lab, Dr. Glendon lives out his mad-scientist aesthetic surrounded by some high tech equipment. He even gets buzzed by his wife on what is basically an old-timey FaceTime device that lacks audio. Even though we know it’s superimposed footage it’s fairly seamless.

Next we get a little portrait of a marriage. He’s working on an experiment with flowering and artificial light and his wife Lisa (Valerie Hobson) wants to know what the hell he’s up to. He’s secretive and she’s understandably annoyed. But she calls him “dear old bear” which is quite sweet but ironically hints at the animalistic transformation to follow. He says that after the experiment he will try to be more “human” but we know that ain’t gonna happen.

Henry Hull’s accent. It needs its own paragraph. It’s not bad for someone from Louisville, Kentucky, and in fact sometimes it’s really amazing, but other moments it crosses your mind that the dialect coach was out sick that day of shooting. He enunciates very strongly. His jaws much have hurt him a bit. He’s fun to listen to though and you gotta give the guy credit because he doesn’t shy away from being über-Brit.

Enter Lisa’s old childhood sweetheart Paul, played by the adorkable yet suave Lester Matthews. He and Lisa, whom he refers to as “Lee”, reminisce about their joint childhood exploits.

Cue Dr. Glendon’s jealousy:

Understandably, Dr. Glendon is quietly dying inside because he hates all the socializing that comes with being a world-renowned botanist. Seeing another man making his wife smile does not help his mood.

Lookit ‘em; holding hands for heaven’s sake. Aunt Ettie also likes to stir up trouble and add to Glendon’s jealously which isn’t very nice of her.

Side note, Dr. Glendon has some tricked-out plants:

Now we meet Dr. Yogami (Warner Oland).

Warner Oland, who was often cast as Asian characters because he “looked Asian”, was actually Swedish. (One would think that 80 years later this casting of white actors in non-white roles would have come to an end but we’re still dealing with this crap.) While Oland is a fairly good actor, he’s still NOT Asian and it would have been so much better if they had cast Sessue Hayakawa as Yogami as he was not only gorgeous but a better actor.

However, Yogami is implied to be Chinese or Tibetan and Hayakawa is Japanese. Still, if the character was stated as Japanese it would have been perfect. Ironically, later on in the film Aunt Ettie keeps calling him Yokohama which is the second largest city in Japan. And I can’t find the surname Yogami anywhere. I can find Yagami and that’s a Japanese surname, not Chinese or Tibetan as far as I can tell. Oh, Old Hollywood and your stomach-churning whitewashing.

Dr. Yogami says that they met before in Tibet...in the dark. He’s giving him a really big hint that he’s the one who bit him (...either that or he’s implying they met for an evening liaison). Dr. Glendon is trying to piece it together.

Dr. Yogami says, “The medical term is ‘lycanthrophobia’.” WRONG. The medical term is lycanthropy, if being a werewolf was actually real. (The uncommon thing were people grow all the excess facial hair is hypertrichosis.) Clinical lycanthropy is a rare psychological condition that is linked to schizophrenia, bipolar disorder and/or clinical depression. (More on that later.)

Here’s a cap of Dr. Yogami intimately stroking Dr. Glendon’s injured arm while making hella awkward eye contact. As modern viewers we may or may not have a strong impulse to read this as somewhat sexual, or maybe as an identification of repressed homosexual desire. Lycanthropy in literature and film mythology has occasionally been used or identified as a metaphor for homosexuality.

In a world where stabbing yourself with a plant gets rid of monthly hair growth. I’m curious to know why it looks like his stabbing it into a dorsal metacarpal vein and not the palmar (inside) side of wrist....medical side of Tumblr help me out here. Maybe they just wanted to feature the hairy hand.

Dr. Yogami essentially asks Dr. Glendon for a blossom of the glow-in-the-dark flower to save his soul (and his fellow botanist as well), albeit in a cryptic way. He says “But remember this Dr. Glendon, the werewolf instinctively seeks to kill the thing it loves best.” Sadly, Dr. Glendon thinks he’s full of crap and ignores his warnings despite knowing that stabbing himself with this rare flower magically makes his moon-grown hand-hair disappear. Dumb or in denial?

So of course Dr. Yogami steals not one, but two flowers. For two of the four nights of the full moon. Technically there is only one night of full moon at any given time but I’m going to give this a pass. Maybe during the time that the moon is still almost full, though waning, it still have the power to change man into the “satanic creature.”

Meanwhile, skeptical Dr. Glendon does a little lycanthropic research:

Lisa drops by and asks him to join her and Paul at a society party but he pegs out or course, and then adds a jibe about not wanting to hear anymore childhood memories. Is the werewolf infection making him bitchy or is he just like that? Hard to tell.

Lisa is hurt. But he says she should go out and enjoy herself. She tries to show him this brocade he bought her but he flips out when she turns on the lights. Presumably being a werewolf makes you sensitive to light.

He responds with the “I put some medicine in my eyes” routine and they clearly don’t buy it.

Seems fake, but ok.

I feel like this is one of many allusions to depression in this film: sensitive to light, wanting to be alone, disliking small-talk and society parties, general introversion and distrust of others. We get a sense that he’s kind of this way anyway at the core of his personality but the werewolf contamination has made that all worse.

Dr. Glendon may be a jerk but it’s hard not to feel sympathy for him. He really does love her. She’s still too annoyed to reciprocate.

Even his cat’s pissed at him.

When animals start rejecting you, ya know you got problems.

And lo, he thought, “oh shit.”

The moonlight transformation sequence is quite simple by today’s standards of physical and special effects, but it’s still effective. Using the shadows to break up the footage isn’t fooling anyone, especially nowadays, yet it has a kind of fluidity that makes it oddly very evocative.

A word about Jack Pierce’s makeup. Believe it or not it was originally going to look like this:

Oink oink. Thank heavens someone talked Jack into a more minimalist look. Jack Pierce, known for his incredible work on films like Frankenstein (1931), The Mummy (1932), and The Wolf Man (1941), to name but a few, appears to have been a tad stubborn depending on the actor he worked with. He had a great relationship with Boris Karloff as far as I’m aware but the harmony working with Hull didn’t last long. There was a rumor going around that Hull was super vain and didn’t want the makeup to obscure his face. The truth of it was there are a couple scenes when Lisa and Paul both recognize him and if the werewolf makeup was applied too heavily, this part of the plot just wouldn’t work. Apparently Hull went over Pierce’s stubborn head straight to Carl Laemmle to fix the problem. The book Universal Horrors: The Studio’s Classic Films, 1931–1946 by Tom Weaver and John Brunas has more on this. (And in the Svengoolie intro to the film featured on ME TV.) The incident paid off because the final makeup was stellar.

That awkward moment when someone steals your flowers:

Suddenly filled with jealous rage...

...but wait lemme just put my hat and coat on first. If he does that when he’s full-on werewolf can you imagine how much time it takes for him to get ready normally? Diva.

The obligatory party scene...

...with a comic interlude from Aunt Ettie who drunkenly says to “Dr. Yokohama” as she calls him, pointing to a dodgy district visible from her flat, that people there would “knife you for a shilling.” But then they hear the howl of a “lost soul” which is the chilling call of Dr. Glendon and it’s time to go inside.

Drunk lady trope scene. No point in rescuing her she already made a fool out of herself but off they run:

There is a ring of sadness to Aunt Ettie’s drunk scene because she says “she gets so nervous.” Hello social anxiety. She is a tad obnoxious as a character but this part makes her seem so much more sympathetic.

“A-woooooooooooo!”

Ok, that’s not a dog.

Dr. Yogami is quaking in his spats at this point.

Even though you know that this is Dr. Glendon, this remains creepy. Who hasn’t thought of a monster clawing their way into your bedroom late at night? They really milk the suspense in this scene.

Lisa is offended by Dr. Yogami’s seemingly sexist and controlling behavior but in reality he’s trying to save her life. He knows that Dr. Glendon is on the loose and can probably smell her and will likely kill her. But she goes up to comfort her friend anyway.

Cue the “you just had a bad dream” scene. For once Ettie isn’t full of hogwash.

Poor Ettie. Seeing a werewolf will sober you up pretty quick.

Mr. Hyde? Oh wait, wrong movie.

Apparently all young women of a lower class looked like Hollywood starlets back then. Pretty stylish.

This is why I don’t have a Tinder.

Dr. Yogami executes an A+ facepalm. His wrist-leaning skills are classic. 10/10:

I mean, what did he think was going to happen? You can’t blackmail a guy who’s in denial about being a werewolf, it doesn’t work. But then, if he left one flower there you wouldn’t have a second act.

Paul says that it might be a werewolf attack. He’s almost joking but he makes the suggestion anyway. His uncle, head of Scotland Yard no less (now that’s convenient) thinks this is ridiculous.

Meanwhile Dr. Glendon reads about how he accidentally murdered a woman last night:

“You’re being utterly hateful, Wilfred.” She sees that he’s not happy and we all know that he’s past the point of no return. Someone has already died. His bitterness at her relationship with Paul is exacerbated by this revelation. But he doesn’t storm from the room or hurt her. He actually acts like an adult, says he’s sorry, and says that he will go out horseback riding with her after all. A lot of reviewers don’t like his character but I find him continually sympathetic.

Again, it’s a realistic portrayal of a marriage. Dr. Glendon “forbids” his wife to go out on a midnight horseback ride with her ex. As sexist as his I’m-the-man-putting-my-foot-down-with-the-wife routine is, he has a couple genuine reasons for acting this way. He’s worried about her safety cause he knows the moon is gonna make him crazy and he could unintentionally kill her in a fit of jealous rage. And of course he’s ticked off that Lisa is galavanting around with another man. She in turn is appropriately angry with his controlling remarks without having good reason for his concern...plus she wants to prove a point that he’s not making enough time for her in their marriage.

Mrs. Moncaster explains how decking her “dearest friend” Mrs. Whack was an appropriate action to take in the sake of business.

Dr. Glendon calls himself “Singularly single, madam. More single than I ever realised it was possible for a human being to be...” Which seems to evoke qualities of his situation and depression. He feels so isolated.

He prays that this transformation won’t happen again but it does.

“If I ran the zoo I'd let all the animals go” - Dr. Seuss. This is Glendon’s way of causing a distraction so that he can attack another woman but it’s also symbolic of him releasing his inner animalistic nature.

Ya gotta appreciate the special effects:

Dr. Yogmai hails from the University of Carpathia. Here to represent.....an institution that I’m fairly certain doesn’t exist. Unless they mean Vasyl Stefanyk Precarpathian National University but that wasn’t established until 1940. Still, he’s a professor of botany so that’s cool. Kind of like Professor Lupin.

Presumably, Dr. Yogami goes to Paul because he’s well connected and he wants to prevent Dr. Glendon from doing anymore damage.

A+ usage of the scary uplighting effect.

Dr. Glendon instructs a servant to lock him in until sunrise. Oh the upper-classes and their odd demands.

Paul still loves her. Duh. She can’t reciprocate because she’s married.

Those bars are toast.

Henry Hull does a great job of prowling with just the right balance between animal and man.

Now that’s a scream:

Paul to the rescue.

Paul recognizes Dr. Glendon. (Thanks, Mr. Hull.)

Dr. Yogami’s rooms “smelled like a kennel" when they found the mutilated maid. Yuck. Did he pee all over the room? Not something anyone likes to think about for too long. Especially the head of Scotland Yard. Just look at his face.

Paul digs through the trash and finds the discarded flowers.

Maybe Paul should work for Scotland Yard instead of his uncle.

Hey how was your trip? So, Hawkins (J.M. Kerrigan) doesn’t think it’s odd that Dr. Glendon is hiding from the police? Does he even know why? Did Glendon tell him “hey I’m a werewolf and I accidentally killed people?” or does Hawkins just give him a pass like “it’s his life and none of my business.”? Well, as the scene suggests, Hawkins clearly does not know because he’s confused by how important this damn flower is to Dr. G.

I have to say, I get this excited about my sweet peas every year so I totally identify with his reaction. #humor

How does he even get into the lab?! Dr. Glendon needs better security or just, ya know, locks.

Somehow Glendon doesn’t see Yogami tip-toeing down the steps. How bad does your peripheral vision have to be?!

"You brought this on me that night in Tibet!” (You don’t say.)

The problem with stealing a plant that only blooms as the moon emerges is that the werewolf might kill you mid-transformation. Exhibit A:

They were both doomed anyway.

Dr. Glendon goes looking for Lisa.

Lycanthropy makes Dr. Glendon strong. Those chintz curtains and flimsy doors are no match for him.

Paul also lacks clear peripheral vision, apparently. Funny how ya don’t see a werewolf perched above a door you’re about to go into.

With all that jumping off buildings, werewolves must be prime candidates for knee replacement surgery.

More great uplighting to do justice to some remarkable makeup:

“It’s Lisa!”

Who the hell is Lisa?

Maybe he remembers at this point. Hard to tell.

A regular bullet does the job. The myth that a werewolf can only be killed by a silver bullet most likely dates back to the legend of the Beast of Gévaudan, in which a humungous wolf is killed by a hunter named "Argent" which is Latin for silver, who uses a gun loaded with silver bullets. The filmmakers clearly don’t feel that this is a necessary part of this movie’s mythology. And in a way, this is a good decision because it makes the werewolf more pitiable and certainly less mythological. If a werewolf has most of the same vulnerabilities as a human, most of the same human rules of existence apply because werewolves are not semi-indestructible. It also just makes werewolves more human and more sympathetic. Werewolf!Glendon is basically afflicted with a kind of disease that could hypothetically be explained by medical science; he isn’t some mythological beast.

We can presume his soul is saved. “Thanks...thanks for the bullet. It was the only way. In a few moments now, I shall know why all of this had to be.”

“Good-bye, Lisa. Lisa – good-bye...I’m sorry...I couldn’t have made you...happier...”

(This is immediately followed by the sound of my heart breaking.) Seriously, this isn’t a guilt trip like he thinks Lisa is some overly-needy wife. He knows that he’s not always equip to give Lisa what she needs out of a relationship. He genuinely feels bad. It isn’t because of the lycanthropy, he was like this before, as a scientist. Did he have depression anyway? He might have. He really does love her and they have an understanding. This is probably some of the best acting in the film, the way that Hull delivers his lines and the look on Valerie Hobson’s face tells you so much.

Thankfully, his death means that he is free of lycanthropy.

The sun comes up.

A plane is in the air, presumably Paul and Lisa are off to California.

And then we get a nice transition into the Universal Studios plane.

What a trip. Hope you enjoyed my rambling. Until next time.

#Werewolf of London #this took me a month to compile #1935 #Henry Hull #Warner Oland #Valerie Hobson #Lester Matthews #old hollywood #whitewashing #classic hollywood #Jack Pierce #werewolves #film reviews #my reviews #long post #movies #films

28 notes · View notes