#Stop trying to force me to use your frameworks! it's not gonna happen!

[who-is-page]

Stop inviting me, who has consciously been a multiple longer than some of you have been alive and who predates these fuckass frameworks in question, to join fucking anti-endo alterhuman communities.

[angryschnauzer]

Ok imma lil drunk rn but thats besides the point. Incant stop thinking about balconies. Back in my hoe~ing days I used to LOVE BALCONIES. And i cant stop.thinking about getting dicked donw by Henry on a balcony now

Darling, your wish is my command. Sorry this took so long

Room With A View

Summary: Whilst on holiday with Henry in Southern Italy, the sight of you on your hotel room’s balcony is just too much for Henry’s desires.

Pairing: Henry Cavill x Female Reader (no race or size mentioned)

Warnings: NSFW, 18+, Exhibitionism, Public Sex, Oral Sex, Biting, Unprotected Sex, Creampie.

I do not run a tag list, instead please follow @angryschnauzerwrites where all of my stories are posted as well. Masterlist got too big for tumblr so can be found on AO3

Resting your camera on the wall of the balcony, you looked over the gorgeous coastline as the sun was starting to set, the white walls of the town buildings shining bright in the oranges and pinks of the sky. A pollen drunk bee bounced from bloom to bloom on the bougainvillea vine that crept up the side of the building and around the balcony, and you watched as it slowly flew away. The warm breeze caressed the bare skin of your legs, your soft dress billowing in the wind as it moved gently around your thighs.

The sound of the shower shutting off brought your attention back to the present, a small smile forming as you thought to the leisurely day of shopping in the boutiques you’d done with Henry, followed by a rather impromptu game of basketball with some local kids in a courtyard when they’d recognised him and had invited him to show them a few moves. You had happily watched from the sidelines, after all your wedge sandals were hardly made for sports, but you had taken joy in seeing Henry work up a sweat despite his soft linen attire.

Upon your return to your hotel suite Henry had decided to take a shower before you went out for dinner, and as much as you’d have liked to join him, it would have taken you considerably longer to get ready afterwards, plus you wanted to get some shots of the sunset.

The view was stunning, snapping a few shots before glancing back at just the right moment to see Henry emerging from the small bathroom, towel tied dangerously low around his hips, skin still glistening as water droplets hung in his chest hair. You silently gnawed at your lip, squeezing your thighs together to try and stem the arousal that was rapidly growing between them, knowing that if you didn’t get the shots of the sunset at that very moment the sun would have set. You should however have known that they were going to be the last shots of the evening you would take, as seconds later his strong arms wrapped themselves around your waist and you felt his chest against your back;

“What’cha doing?” Henry’s deep voice held a timbre of mischief and before you could answer you felt his teeth nibbling against your bare shoulder. Leaning back against his firm body your ass nestled against his crotch and you could feel the tell-tale twitch that told you dinner plans were going to be later than expected. A deep hum of appreciation resonated through his chest, his hands slowly pulling your dress up as he started to fluidly rut his hardening length against your ass, his lips moving to your other shoulder where his sharp teeth started to playfully bite, the pressure increasing as he progressed.

Henry pulled his hips back just a little so he could lift your dress over your ass, a small whistle escaping his lips;

“You mean to tell me you’ve been walking around in this short dress with just this flimsy excuse for underwear on all day?” he hooked his finger beneath the elastic of your lacy thong, pulling it to the side before that same digit found its way to your lips. Another hum of appreciation rumbled through his chest as he found you wet, seeking out your clit and giving it a few circular strokes before trailing his hand down a little to push that finger into your velvet channel;

“Hmmmn, not quite ready for me yet”

Pulling his hand away he quickly spun you to face him, capturing your mouth for a fierce kiss before lifting you as if you weighed little more than a feather to let you sit on the stone surround of the balcony;

“Henry!” you hissed, knowing what he was planning as he quickly got to his knees. Those blue eyes sparkled like the sea that surrounded the peninsular, except there was far more danger in those eyes than the mediterreanan sea. Clinging to the edge of the stone wall you nibbled on your lip as he parted your legs and pressed soft kisses up your inner thighs, before taking hold of your underwear and with one swift tug snapped it at the gusset. His gaze only left yours as he took in your glistening petals, before the blue mischief was back upon you as his wide tongue swept through your folds. 

There was no way of being silent when Henry ate you out, his tongue was everywhere; wide and juicy, he didn’t hold back with his noises of appreciation at the feel and taste of you. For you your precarious position gave another element of excitement, and as you scrambled for something to anchor yourself on one hand found his still shower damp curls, the other grasped at the metal trellis beside you, the pink bougainvillea flowers resting against your hand as your fingers curled around the metal framework holding it up. The rub of his nose against your clit and the days stubble on your softest of skin helped to bring on your orgasm, his tongue deep within you as you soaked his face with your essence, the pleasure surging through you as he held you tight before pulling away just a little to grin at you. Sliding his hand between your legs he gently pushed two fingers inside you, before pulling them out and lifting them to your mouth;

“Taste how sweet you are”

Holding his wrist you took those fingers into your mouth, tasting yourself on his digits as you sucked at them. Looking down you saw how his towel had parted where his thighs were wide apart, his fat cock standing hard and proud from between the pristine white of the towel. With his fingers still in your mouth he stood and wriggled his hips just slightly to let the towel fall to the floor. Towering over you he made you feel tiny as you sat on the balcony wall, pulling his fingers from your mouth;

“Good girl. Now turn around and bend over”

There was no arguing or disagreeing, you wanted to do it and followed Henry’s firm command, gasping as he kicked your legs further apart and you felt the blunt tip of his weeping cock slide through your folds before catching on your empty hole. With a grunt he thrust into you, growling as your walls hugged his flesh so tight at the thick insertion parting your insides. 

“Oh fuck” you muttered, breathless as your body struggled to get used to being so full. No matter how many times the two of you had sex, each time felt like the first all over again, your body struggling to take his girth before it finally yielded and you felt pleasure like you’d never felt before.

Henry was a force of nature when he fucked you, the raw power in his body meant you had three orgasm’s for every one of his, your mind as fucked as your pussy would be from the amount of serotonin in your bloodstream where you would end up lust drunk afterwards. As he ploughed into your body you struggled to stifle the sounds of ecstasy bubbling from your lips, before with a grunt he pulled you flush with his chest, one hand wrapped around your ribcage as the other covered your mouth;

“So fucking good, your cunt feels so tight as you cum…” his teeth bit into your neck as his hips worked quickly, the pleasure pain signals hitting your brain drawing another orgasm from you as Henry started to chase his own. His hips slammed into your behind, the sound of flesh upon flesh making it painfully obvious to anyone within earshot what was happening on the shrouded balcony above them as they walked along the footpath below. Screaming into his hand you came again, and with one final thrust Henry pushed deep and you felt him release his thick load deep inside you. 

For the longest moment he just held you, pressing soft kisses to your shoulders whilst still nestled deep within you, before he softened and pulled out, turning you in his arms to just hold you tenderly;

“Still want to go out for dinner tonight? Or would you prefer room service”

“Just give me a moment to clean up then we can try that seafood bistro we passed this afternoon”

A few moments later you had emerged from the bathroom having cleaned up best you could, adding a touch of makeup before stepping into the room and grinning at Henry as you shimmied out of the ruined panties and tossed them in the wastebasket in the corner. Grabbing your purse you smiled at Henry and hooked your arm through his as he paused;

“You don’t want to put replacements on?”

“Nope” you grinned at him, knowing the thought of you going commando would drive him insane for the whole meal.

“You wicked woman. We’re gonna need to get a table with a cloth on it so people can’t see my dick getting hard at the thought of your cum soaked pussy bare for me”

With a grin you pulled him out of the door, knowing it would be a quick meal and you’d be back fucking in the room sooner than you expected.

[takaraphoenix]

Ship game!! What about Nico and Will?? It’s pretty popular, but I don’t think I’ve seen you write much of it…

That's an interesting one in that I have vocalized my reasons for disliking it way back when it first became popular but instead of just linking that, it has been years so I think it's time for an updated version.

Firstly: This post is gonna be properly tagged and not crosstagged so if any shipper comes across it and feels the need to bitch about it, just don't; your lack of curating your own tumblr experience is not my problem! ;D

Now, there are three key factors that play into my dislike of this ship: How it was written, what it represents, how the fandom around it acts.

1. It’s rushed and uncomfortable

In BoO, it was incredibly rushed. They had literally five sentences of interactions before they walked into the literal sunset together. Five. It was just entirely born from Riordan's Noah's Ark Complex, where he just can't let people be single. The series was ending and he needed Nico to have an endgame so he rushed into some random romance with zero build-up.

The way their interactions went down was also severely uncomfortable for me. Will was acting so offended by Nico not wanting to go to camp and be friends in an entitled way that he had no right to be, he downright guilt-tripped Nico about how he had wanted to be friends. Nico has been just so severely traumatized at such a young age and his coping mechanism, as unhealthy as it was, was to run away and hide. Will acted like Nico not wanting to form attachments to people who could potentially leave him again was somehow just an Edgy Emo Decision and not a direct reaction to his trauma. His entire approach to Nico was basically all these hippie posts of "Don't have depression!! Just go out into the sun and stop being depressed!", which is already a bad take with non-medical people but he's supposed to be a doctor (and let's not get into the shadiness of him technically being Nico's doctor).

There is also an inherent "I can fix him" angle to this ship and to me, only few ship dynamics are more uncomfortable than that. If you want to fundamentally change a person's behavior and personality, you... don't actually want to be with this person.

Now, here's where my points overlap, because the following parts of their writing that bothers me also stand for what this ship fundamentally represents.

2. Solangelo is a queer ship written by and for straights

I'm a queer woman and as a queer woman, I want queer wish-fulfillment, not what straights want out of queerness. I'm kind of tired of that, I've been sitting through it for enough decades now. That's, of course, not to say that no straight writer can give proper queer representation, but far too often do straight writers - even the most well-meaning ones - project straight desires of queerness into their queer representation.

Let me explain that closer through this ship.

Nico's been in love with Percy for years and I'm going to do my best to not hijack this post with some Percico agenda; that's not what this his about, this isn't some "my ship is better than your ship" ship-war nonsense. It's simply a canonical fact that Nico has had romantic feelings for another character for years.

A character who, in this medium, is heterosexual. And if you're queer, you've been there. In love with your straight best friend. It's a cliche, but it's a cliche for a reason.

We have also all been well-meaningly rejected by said straight friend.

And here's the straight desires for you: The queer person who was in love with a straight person just immediately stops having those feelings and will then as quickly as possible fall in love with the next queer person they meet to be happy and no longer uncomfortably in love with a straight person, because that thought makes the straights uncomfortable.

Queer wish-fulfillment would be for Percy to return those feelings, for the queer character to get his first love, to not be rejected. That thing queer teens always dreamed about for themselves.

Aside from the wish-fulfillment angle, the pacing is another problem. Let me repeat, Nico was in love for years. But a five sentence conversation with Will once causes a crush on Will and we see him physically turn away from Percy and toward Will just immediately to rebound and actually fall out of love with Percy and in love with Will. Anyone who's ever been unlucky in love will attest to just how unrealistic and ridiculous the pacing here is.

It's also straight queerness in another respect; Nico has been the first ever queer character we meet in that world. He loves a straight guy - and to get over that, we introduce the second queer character. Because heaven forbid there are multiple queers to pick from. No, in straight-written queer romances, there is always that one main queer and then they introduce a second one and the two just immediately hit it off and develop a romance like all a queer person needs to form attraction to someone is the confirmation that the other person shares your sexuality.

Also the notable gay guy on gay guy ship here, whereas the more queer-wish-fulfillment option would have also included more nuance to the queer experience, because Percy doesn't have to be heterosexual just because he has only been with girls so far. It's a very old-fashioned - think 90s and early 2000s - kind of straight-written queerness that there are only exactly two homosexuals and that those two homosexuals then pair up.

And, listen, I'm not immune to these outdated straight-written queers entirely, I have many such ships that I grew up with that I am still fond of because they were groundbreaking at that time and they weren't outdated yet back when they happened in said 90s and early 2000s. I am however a grown woman now and just like I have grown, so has queer rep so I am not as easily baited into falling onto my knees in gratitude for canon rep. You have to go with the times. And this ship, by all that is given to us, is just entirely outdated straight-written rep.

Which, I mention earlier that even straight-written rep can be good. If the author tries. Riordan doesn't really try though; he does the bare minimum when he writes any of his rep - and there have been many, many more qualified voices being very vocal about his depiction of people of color and, as a woman, I've been vocal about his depiction of women. I don't want to derail this post with all of that, but I do think that it bears mentioning that Riordan doing rep but only doing a bare minimum and not putting in the necessary work to deepen the representation he wants to give is a repeating pattern that has been pointed out many times by now.

(I’d also like to point out that no, it is not just the ship and not just the listed instances that make it straight-written rep for straights. It’s Nico’s entire queer arc, starting with his forced coming out. A severely traumatizing event that is completely brushed over because the straight author doesn’t understand the impact this has on queer people. Not to mention the framework; Nico’s coming out isn’t Nico’s story, it happens in Jason’s POV, it is given to us through the POV of the straight bystander who gets to be Best Ally by assuring Nico that being gay is okay. This kind of coming out is not a queer wish-fulfillment, it’s a straight wish-fulfillment of getting to be the straight savior, the ally to show the gay the light of acceptance. And, additional to the ridiculous pacing of how fast Nico gets over his love for Percy, Nico also gets over years of internalized homophobia just because of, I don’t know, Jason’s few encouraging words and the fact that Will paid attention to him? For a gay kid who was in the closet all his life, the nonchalant way in which he publicly confessed his crush to Percy at the end made absolutely no sense and was written as basically a joke, finished off with Nico literally high-fiving Percy’s girlfriend despite those two never having seen eye to eye before but this is straight wish-fulfillment so all straights are Super Allies, because that’s the way straights want to see themselves, even though Annabeth has shown before just how jealous she can be and she most definitely wouldn’t go around high-fiving people who confess to her boyfriend. Nothing about Nico’s queer arc in HoO felt natural or queer or satisfying.)

Sure, Solangelo on a surface level is big because it's a canon queer couple in a YA book-series and kudos for that and yay for the kids who get to grow up seeing queers in YA books, but I actually do think that kids growing up with books written in the 2010s shouldn't grow up with 1990s levels of representation, because the 2010s overall are actually at a far more nuanced and better level of representation when it comes to queerness. And I do reserve the right to quit on too straight-written and too outdated queer rep in a landscape where I can get more satisfying representation elsewhere; we don’t live in times anymore where you necessarily have to love every bit of rep because it’s the only one you get.

Now that we've gone through my first two gripes, let's wrap this up with the final point, because it also directly ties into this.

3. The new wave of antis hiding behind this ship

A huge part of the fandom is so busy kissing Riordan's ass solely for giving them queer rep at all they think that both the author and the ship are beyond flawless and that kind of attitude is not good. Just because an author includes rep doesn't make either perfect. Absolutely no one is beyond critique - especially not when said critique comes from the very people the author is representing. And even beyond any "valid" critique on the ship, quite frankly, someone should also be allowed to just not like it, without any reasons given at all.

But there is a certain... protective obsessiveness about this ship that doesn't allow a not liking. Very similar to how PJO bore this mindset around Perc/abeth already. It's okay to have OTPs, even OTPs that you have a blindspot for and just don't want to see any flaws in. It is however not okay to then go around attacking people who don't like the thing and mind their own business.

Solangelo's bred a new generation of antis in this fandom. And, particularly with the fact that this post too receives an "anti" tag, I feel like there needs to be a clarification (because tumblr likes to forget what actually makes an anti). Not liking something doesn't make you an anti, venting in properly tagged posts doesn't either; it's the people who harass others, who seek out the content they dislike to then complain that it even exists and who actively try to make others stop creating for it - those are antis.

And with Solangelo's popularity, there was a high rise in Percico antis, who sought it out, were unnecessarily nasty about it, harrassed creators and tried to enforce some kind of "Solangelo supremacy" that won't allow other ships for the characters.

I've been in fandom long enough to be perfectly aware that not all Solangelo shippers count into this category and that there are completely normal and nice Solangelo shippers, but this is a Venn diagram where the overlap between Solangelo shippers and antis is too large to not widely associate the nasty people with the ship itself. (I've been there myself, shipping the very ship behind which a fandom's antis all hid. The second-hand embarrassment of having these people give the ship a bad name is horrendous and I do feel bad for all the normal Solangelo shippers.)

The more often I encountered these people, who made Percico bad (sometimes in wildly ridiculous manners that bent and deliberately misinterpreted canon) and who in the same breath praised Solangelo high, the more tired I grew of that ship. It's a simple game of association, really. You see that linked to the gross and nasty behavior and you start associating the ship itself with that gross and nasty behavior - and with all the things I said before that already weighed into my dislike of the ship, this just was the final tipping point, really.

And that's it. That sums up why I dislike Solangelo. It was hastily rushed, uncomfortable in its execution, it is outdated rep that very much feels as straight-written as it factually is and it does not feel aimed at me as a queer person but rather at the straight audience and it has gathered a cult following of quite uncomfortable people who on their own would be reason enough to avoid it so you can avoid them.

Send me a ship and I will explain why I do or don't ship it

[agent-absinthe]

foreigner’s god pt. 1

marvel. bucky barnes/reader. canon divergent. heavy fic. 5k+

Blaire Briar gets through the day by telling herself that James Buchanan Barnes and the Winter Soldier are two different people.  It makes knowing he’s been pardoned and walking free easier for her to process.  Only when she’s forced to assist on a mission with him on the team roster her carefully constructed coping begins to crumble.  Forced to finally deal with their shared trauma Blaire and Bucky begin the difficult process of healing.  The process is made more difficult when Bucky realizes that despite everything he has feelings for her.

warnings: assault, rape/non-con, violence, blood, sexual content, language, No Snap AU

“Sir, I can’t take this assignment.”

Director Coulson looked up at the woman from his desk where he had been staring at the phone, currently on hold with Stark, a record 48 minutes now.

“That assignment requires your skill set, I would think after complaining of not feeling useful you’d be happy for the opportunity.”

“Sir,” she tried again- almost pleading, “I cannot take this.  Not with this team.”

He leaned back in the chair and considered the woman in front of him.  Special Agent Blaire Briar, who worked mainly as a grunt in Comms for recon teams.  Except when her special talent of Energy Vampirism brought her out into the field.  Although she wasn’t used often for the skill set, when it was needed she became invaluable.  Briar started out as an intern for Shield brought in by Maria Hill on a Stark recommendation- a series of personal traumas set off by Alexander Pierce led to her current position.

“The team was hand picked and is non negotiable.  Captain Rogers prefers to work with those he trusts and he says he needs you, this isn’t a request.”

“I have trauma with the Winter Soldier. I can’t-”

“Sergeant Barnes,” Coulson corrected feeling guilt at her desperate expression, “he was pardoned so as far as the government and all other agencies are concerned all reparations are paid.  Any personal feelings are just that- personal- and are to be dealt with in your own time.”

“And if I refuse?”

“You’ll be reprimanded and will most likely cost thousands of people their lives if not more.  I know that’s not something you want on your hands Agent, so just take the assignment.  You’ll be back in comms by the end of the weekend if all goes well.”

This was fucking bullshit. 

Blaire couldn’t see straight as she stomped down the hall back to comms, gripping the wall from a sudden bout of nausea that overtook her.  The folder was delivered to her in the afternoon by a security personnel and at first she had been thrilled to receive the assignment.  There were ruins on a small island off the coast of Ireland thought to contain a training base for Hydra recruits.  Files inside the base could provide names of remaining Hydra agents, contracts and agreements that the terrorist organization made, among other intel that could be incredibly useful.  It sounded interesting and she was itching to get out there and live a mission instead of listening in on one.

“Whoa, you ok?  Jesus, Blaire you look like you’re about to throw up.”  Hill’s voice sounded like it came from far away even when she put a concerned hand on her back.

“Tell me this job is worth it.”

“What?”

“I need you to keep me from walking the fuck outta here.  I can’t do this shit anymore, I can’t fucking do it.  I could be at Stark Industries or- or working with Strange or pouring goddamn drinks at Starbucks getting verbally abused by assholes.”

Her hands were on her knees now as she tried to focus on her breathing and stave off the panic attack building in her chest.  She was too young for this kind of stress.  Was any of this worth it?  The manilla folder containing her assignment was tossed to the floor, open on the team roster page so his name glared out at them. 

James Buchanan Barnes

When Maria saw the name she knew what was wrong immediately and knelt in front of Blaire, hands on her cheeks so she had to focus on her.

“Hey, hey, hey breathe for me, Briar.  That’s it.  Listen, they’re two different people- two completely different people.”

“I know that.  I know.”

“You can do this, you’re strong and I know for a fact that you’re too much of a bitch to let something stop you from doing your job, right?”

Briar laughed at that, the laughter dissolving into tears momentarily before she regained her composure, “right.” 

“You are the only one that can help them on that mission, you’re the one that’s gonna be calling the shots.  Now let’s go ahead and go down to development so we can get you measured for your gear.”

~

“Are you listening to me, James?”  Dr. Raynor asked with a forceful tap of her pen against the notepad to get his attention.

“Not really.”

She sighed and started writing waiting until he looked up with irritation before continuing, “I said done correctly this could be an opportunity for you to cross another name off the list.  Emphasis on done correctly.”

Bucky let out a breath he was holding in and turned to the window so he could pretend not to hear what Raynor was saying.  The therapist was right and so was Steve when he approached Bucky last week to let him know about who they needed for the recon.  He’d apologized to people he tried to kill easy enough, but it didn’t feel like there was a proper way to apologize for what he did to her.

“And what am I supposed to do when I see her?  Just walk up and say sorry?  It’s like you and Steve live in this perfect little world where forgiveness is just handed out the minute someone says sorry.”

“Steve and I live in the real world where we face our problems-”

“Oh, here we go.”

“-where we face our problems and hope that we can be forgiven for any harm caused.  You’ll be working with this girl so you will have to face it sooner or later, make sure Rogers is there when you do it if that will make you feel more comfortable.  That’ll be your homework until our next session- try to come to terms with what happened and make an effort to talk to Briar.”  

It was just the same shit Steve told him over and over.  Dr. Raynor sure as hell couldn’t know what he was going through even Steve didn’t understand this part of adjusting.  

Of atonement.  

When he closes his eyes and concentrates he can still see Pierce with a smile telling him about a “special” side mission, a “treat really”, that he wanted The Winter Soldier to complete.

Her apartment was quiet when he entered through the bedroom window to begin the first step of the mission.  Placing a small hidden camera in the framework of her gaming setup tucked in a corner across from the bed.  When he walked into the rest of the home he was stopped by a curious mew and looked down to find a fat, grey cat weaving between his legs.  The cat observed him for the rest of the camera placements and sweep of the apartment, disarming any weapons he found.  A loaded gun under the sink, a taser between couch cushions, and a knife on the bathroom vanity.  

“Your target’s not on her way yet so hang tight.  Fix the camera in the living room while you wait, I want it more focused on the couch and turn on your body camera.”  Pierce’s voice came over the earpiece sounding almost bored as he sat at his desk and looked through the new feeds.

He gravitated back to her bedroom when he wasn’t given another task finding that the room was pleasant to be in.  Warm and dim, smelling like the floral perfume bottle he inspected earlier.  The cat followed and jumped to the bed meowing at the soldier in annoyance when he didn’t pet him.  Something like muscle memory took over and Bucky lifted his flesh hand out to the cat who purred rubbing it’s face into the palm.

“Good cat.” He mumbled earning another meow and purr.

After a few more minutes of radio silence he sat, the mattress and box spring groaned under his weight and the softness felt foreign.  When another minute passed he leaned back in the unmade bed and didn’t move as a purring weight laid on his stomach.  It was all so...comforting.  Only when his eyes began to close did the earpiece screech on.

“Target’s in transit, be ready when she gets there-”

The front door opening interrupted Pierce, “Tikki!  Where is my fat little man?”

Tikki jumped off of him and he could hear the cat meowing to it’s owner as she walked to the kitchen, tossing her bags down on the way.  The woman looked normal enough to him, a little heavy for an agent but nothing he couldn’t handle.

“She’s worn out from training but we still don’t know how long her power can last.  You need to get the implant in her neck to block the absorption if she tries anything.”

Bucky fished in his utility belt for the dime sized, pronged disk and held it in his fist as he stalked closer to the kitchen.  She was singing to herself while stacking up dirty dishes to make room for a take out bag.

“Thank god I got there before they closed and yes they did give me some grilled chicken for you, Tikki.  Such a fat kitty, lucky you’re so cute.  Sure as hell don’t keep you around to pay rent, you’re a freeloader and you don’t even care!”

Pierce was telling him to proceed, but Bucky stood in the doorway and watched her set a small bowl down in front of Tikki who ignored it to eye him and meow louder, suddenly puffing up as if realizing that the strange man was now a threat.  

“What’s the matter you crazy cat?  That’s all you’re getting so deal with it.”  

A low growl and hiss.

“Jesus Christ, what?  Is there a fucking-”  She started and turned around only for her voice to die in her throat as they stared at one another.  

“Ok, Bucky?”  Dr. Raynor repeated.

“Ya ok.” 

~

This was it.  They were getting briefed this morning then they’d be flown out, Blaire could barely stand without shaking so she sat at her small cubicle in comms until it was time.  She should have known that Steve would try to play good guy and come find her.

“Hey, Blaire.”

“What do you want?”  

“Briefing is gonna start soon, thought we could walk down there together.”

“To make you feel better or me?”

The super soldier leaned against her desk and crossed his arms, “you know I wouldn’t put you in this position if I didn’t have to.  There’s no other way for us to get through those doors, trust me we’ve tried.”

“Let’s just get it over with.”  

She wasn’t trying to lash out at Rogers on purpose but it was hard to control her anger when she felt this shitty.  Steve and her used to be good friends, introduced by Tony who thought Blaire could make the soldier blush, they ended up balancing each other out nicely.  After what happened with the winter soldier and Shield they grew apart not talking unless Tony had a gathering they were both obligated to attend.  It was a loss on both ends when they stopped hanging out, the easy back and forth humor between them almost nonexistent now.  It was early enough in the morning that the pair walked in silence without many other agents around until Steve broke it.

“I know I don’t have any room to say this, but Bucky’s a good guy.  Begged me to find another way so you wouldn’t have to see him, tried to back out of the mission, he feels like shit about this and he wants to apologize to you.”

Blaire already knew where this was going, “and you’re the buffer?”

“His therapist suggested it.  Dr. Raynor.”

That wasn’t something she expected.  Therapy was a good sign, taking the therapist’s advice an even better one.  Blaire wasn’t stupid she knew that Barnes was under the influence of years of systematic abuse when he attacked her, practically brainwashed and nearly physically impossible for him to defy an order.  He was a victim too.  That’s what made being angry at him still so hard.

Her thoughts were interrupted by Steve opening the door to the conference room to see Barnes pacing.  The hair was shorter and the arm was new, but his body had the same heavy muscle and wide stance.  She found that she couldn’t look at him when they finally made eye contact, not directly anyway.  Focusing instead on the zipper of his gear or scruff on his chin.

He’s handsome.  Why the fuck does he have to be handsome? It wasn’t fair.  None of this was fair.  The world was playing some kind of fucked up joke for her to still be attracted to him.  That wasn’t new of course; she found him attractive since she first saw the winter soldier in photos and videos from the attack on Fury in Pierce’s office.  She had been standing there staring at the holograms when Pierce made an offhand remark about it, teasing her for her flushed cheeks.  Now that she knew he was the one who ordered the attack the memory made her boil with shame.

“Agent Briar.”  At least he was trying to be polite.

“Sergeant Barnes.”

“I-” he stopped, his adam’s apple bobbing with anxiety as he swallowed. “I am no longer The Winter Soldier, I am James Buchanan Barnes and you’re part of my effort to make amends-”

“Your therapist knows how to write a good script.”  Blaire interrupted.

Steve didn’t make a move to intervene and stayed off to the side sipping a coffee and watching.

“Look, I know that you were not in control of yourself when it happened and because of that you are also a victim in the situation,” she said it slowly trying to sound reasonable, “There isn’t a lot that you can apologize for.  Pierce is the one who owes me that and he’s been dead for a few years now so I doubt I’ll be getting it anytime soon.”

“Thank you for understanding, not a lot of people do, but I still have to tell you how sorry I am for the pain that I caused you.  I want to try to make things right or as right as they can be.”

“If you really want that then you’ll interact with me as little as possible.  Please understand that it’s not personal.  I just can’t fucking look at you.”

Barnes nodded quickly, the words cut him to the core in a way he had never experienced.  Yet he still apologized, still at least tried to make amends with Blaire and despite her blunt reaction he hoped Dr. Raynor would consider it a success.

“Yeah, of course.  I can do that.” 

Bucky thought he was doing a good job with it so far too.  He stayed in the flank of the group during the mission and got to see her work after she was able to duplicate an energy reading and get through to the bunker.  Three Hydra agents crumpled to the floor as soon as they rounded a corner to stop their progress, Briar released the pent up energy she absorbed from them at the next group they came across.  Leaving their bodies broken and bloody in a heap against a wall.  

“Hey, Cap why the hell did you drag me outta bed on a Saturday?  Looks to me like Miss Atom Bomb here’s got it covered.” 

“Miss Atom Bomb sounds like way too pretty of a hero name for me, Sam.”  She laughed tossing a smile back at the Falcon, “guys on the Strike team just used to call me Leech.”

“Those guys were assholes.”

“Ya, they were pretty awful most of the time.  M’not gonna be able to keep it up much longer though, I fill up on too much and I burn out quick.  I got a few more bursts in me before I start seeing doubles.”

The bunker ended up being an intel goldmine opening up several leads for the team to follow in their mission to eradicate Hydra once and for all.  Being part of that kind of adrenaline high in person had made Blaire even more dizzy than her burn out, no wonder field agents dreaded being behind a desk.  It wasn’t until they were strapped back in the plane with the sun rising that she was beginning to feel that same dread.  She was dirty and tired but helped more in this mission than she had almost her entire time in Communications.

“How ya feelin’, Briar?”

“Like shit, Romanoff.  How about you?”

Natasha laughed and handed her a rations bar, “good to see you out in the field.  Started feeling like the boy’s club for awhile.”

“How on Earth will you cope with my loss come Monday?”

“A quick word with Coulson and I won’t have to cope with anything.”  She offered.  Producing another rations bar from her pocket like a bribe.

“Nat, I can’t.  Look at me, I’m not fit for field work-”

“You just obliterated more than 50 guys in that bunker and I’ve seen your hand to hand combat, it’s not bad.”

“Ya but I’m about to fucking pass out now.  I mean- it’s complicated.”

The assassin stretched out and settled in next to Blaire trying to think of a way to talk her into it.  Wanda and Vision were off trying to live the domesticality that Tony now had, leaving their team bare bones.  There was no telling when or if Thor would show back up from trying to fix shit back home, they were missing a super and Blaire seemed the best fit.

“You wanna be in communication so bad then why don’t you be our guardian angel when we don’t absolutely need you in the field?  It would get you out of that cubicle more often anyway, sure we could talk Coulson into a pay raise too.  Plus you’ll get to listen to my voice and boss Steve around, what more could you want?”

“You’ve operated without a guide in HQ for so long.  No one’s gonna buy it.”

“They will if Golden Boy and Wings asks.”

Blaire took the second ration bar and rolled her eyes, “I’ll think about it.”

She ended up taking it of course once Nat wanted something she almost always got it, Blaire sure as shit wasn’t going to tell her no.  For the most part it started out really well with the exception of a few hiccups in finding her place on the field when it came to real action.  Off the field was a different story- Blaire knew how to operate a team in a way that both got the job done safely and felt like borderline workplace violence at the same time.  Bucky tended to be the target for the latter on most missions.

“You don’t listen!  Jesus fucking christ I am going to buy a goddamn adult tether backpack for you!  And ya know who’s gonna have to hold the leash?  Wilson!”

“Whoa, whoa, whoa don’t drag me into this.  I’m doin’ my job.”

Bucky wanted to dig out the earpiece and throw it, “I still took care of it, didn’t I?”

“You fight like you have handlers still, Barnes.  News flash, you don’t!  I’m the one who has to file all the paperwork when you go off course on your own and cause mayhem and destruction like its the fucking Winter Soldier Show.”

All Bucky did was ignore her suggestion to not engage with the hostiles ahead until Natasha and Steve followed suit.  There were only three guys from what he could see and a hostage was waiting for them with time running out so he did what he thought was best.  There ended up being six instead of three and the hostage received a minor injury when he wasn’t able to get to them fast enough.

“Well, it’s over and done with now so could you just shut up?”

Everyone on the line went dead silent for a few seconds.

“Quinjet is waiting at the extraction point for pick up.  Good job team, we look forward to your safe return to the hanger.  Briar signing off.”  Came the calm check out.

Sam landed next to Bucky with a satisfied chuckle, “oh you fucked up big time, buddy.”

“I hate you.”

She wasn’t waiting for them like she usually did when they landed, coming in a few minutes later with a small med team in tow to look over injuries.  Barnes waved off the attempts to dab blood off of his brow where he caught a stray punch and focused on getting his gear off.  Blaire wasn’t about to let him off the hook just yet, still too blinded by her rage to consider letting them both cool off before talking.

“That’s the third time you ignored me when I told you not to run blindly into enemy fire.  What’s your problem, Barnes?”

“I’m not the one with a problem.”

“Are you kidding?  It’s like you do this shit on purpose just to piss me off.”

“I do!”  He yelled, turning around to make eye contact with her.  “The only time you ever acknowledge me is when I get you riled up.”

“Oh, you poor baby do I not pay enough attention to you so you feel like you gotta act out?”

Bucky dropped the rest of his gear and started towards her, already feeling his energy dropping with each step from her defense.  He didn’t let it show and only stopped when he was in front of her.

“You’re the one with the problem here.  How am I supposed to fix this when you won’t talk to me?  You won’t even look at me dammit!  I’m the only one making an effort and I can’t let go of it if you won’t.”

Their voices boomed in the near empty hanger as Steve was making his way over to break it up after releasing the rescued hostage over to medical, fearing that he may be too late to salvage their already rocky relationship.

“What do you want, huh?  You wanna hit me?  Go on doll, take a shot and get it out of your system.”  Bucky continued leaning down to her height tauntingly.

“Maybe I do.”

“Great, let’s go.”

“I don’t think this is a good idea-”  Rogers started.

“Stay out of it, Steve!”  They shouted in near unison before Blaire turned on her heel and began speed walking to the exit with Bucky right behind her.

The night air was shockingly cold against their flushed skin and it made Bucky think a little more clearly as the door slammed shut behind him.  Only when he went to say something Blaire caught him by surprise with a haymaker to his cheek.  Her punch held more power than he would have thought, momentarily knocking him off balance enough for Blaire to ram him.  The impact of their bodies knocked both down to the wet grass as they struggled until she was on top raining half pulled punches down that she didn’t follow through with.  Her hits fueled by emotion slowly got weaker and weaker until she slid off of him sobbing. 

“I didn’t get mandated therapy.  I lost my dignity and my job and my will to live in the span of a fucking week.”  She choked out, nails digging into the artificial turf. “Then everyone found out it was Pierce that put out the hit and all that footage was just uploaded to the Hydra file.  Oh don’t worry Blaire it’s classified it’s so classified but no we can’t delete it or anything sorry.  I can get into it, I can see that file and I only have level green clearance.  It’s just sitting there for anyone to look at it.  My coworkers, bosses, the fuckin’ guys in coding.  They can just type in credentials and watch me get raped.”

This must have been what Dr. Raynor meant by coming to terms.  Pulling everything ugly out to the open so they didn’t have to dance around it any longer.

He looked strange without any of the guns and knives strapped to him, but it was still The Winter Soldier.  Blaire knew that in an instant from the face mask strapped to him like a muzzle and the silver arm shining against his black modified jacket.  She was frozen. Never in her life had she experienced Freeze instead of Fight, but then again she couldn’t remember the last time she was this scared.  Thoughts ticked off in rapid fire until Tikki jumped up on the counter with a hiss breaking the spell.  She threw the take out bowl of hot matzo ball soup that he easily dodged and turned around to feel under sink for the gun only to find it gone.  A hand clamped something down on the back of her neck, his metal one coming down around her mouth like a vice when she yelled out for help.

“Any of your neighbors try to help they die.”

No, that wasn’t right. He sounded local, like he was from New York.  That wasn’t possible.  The metal crushing her jaw came off when she threw her elbow back with full force catching his ribs.  It came darting back out immediately and shoved her to the kitchen floor on her stomach, his heavy weight on her lower back and ass was crushing as he straddled her.

“Fuck off!  Better kill me because I’m not saying shit about anything.”  She growled trying to buck him off.

There was no answer only his body going still like he wasn’t sure of the next move himself.  Then the weight was gone and for a second Blaire thought that maybe she could get away or at least get to her phone on the counter and send a message to Shield.  It was when she tried crawling away that she felt his fingers hook into her shorts and jerk them down.

“No!”  More panic now than before.  The prospect of death was always looming over her working where she did, but not this.  Please anything but this.

With the shorts off she was rolled to her back as he straddle her hips, his hands trying to catch her wrists again while she fought.  Nails raked down his face and neck, leaving rivets of red and tearing off his mask as they went.  When Blaire caught sight of his face she knew it was over.  There was no emotion there, just a slack jaw and blown out pupils.  He was going through the motions like someone was telling him what to do, a machine being controlled by someone else.  When the soldier did catch her wrists and pin them down with his metal hand he went still again, staring down at her as blood dripped off his face.

“I don’t wanna do this.”  He suddenly announced maybe to her or to no one.

“You don’t have to!  Just leave, just get up and leave.  It’s not too late.”

She could hear the faint static buzz of someone screaming from his earpiece and then the slack look was back and her thighs were being kneed open.  It was happening so fast and Blaire found herself completely powerless, he had done something to her to stop her energy absorption and without that she was just some intern with a little gun training.  No amount of fight, of pleading, would help her now.  Somehow that was more terrifying than anything else.

“Stop it! Get off me, get off!  I’ll fucking kill you!” 

The threats sizzled out into broken shrieks as he thrust into her hard enough to hurt both of them with no prep.  Tears pricked at the corner of her eyes from the pain and violation, droplets of his blood now falling faster onto her as he moved.  Blaire tried catching his hip with her heel to get him off and keep fighting but the metal squeezed her wrists tighter in warning til they gave way with a crunch, his pace never slowing and only growing sloppier.  The pain was too much for her to even scream for help, not that she’d want to.  Didn’t need poor Miss Hoffman coming in here waving her cane to the rescue only to end up dead.

She looked past his blank face to stare at her kitchen ceiling focusing on the water mark in the corner she kept meaning to paint over.  His flesh hand came up to her face to cover and turn it away as if he didn’t want her looking at him.  The kitchen filled with the scent of soldier’s blood making her mouth taste like pennies.  Droplets of it felt like scalding water as it fell on her check and neck.  How long would it take to scrub his scent off?   Her body couldn’t seem to adjust fast enough to allow her any relief but by the grace of whatever cruel god watched the display his hips stuttered and stopped.  A sob bubbled up from the sensation- too hot and too full, seeping out of her before he even pulled out.

There was always a point in his missions where the targets gave in and stopped fighting.  He watched that happen with this one after he stood.  Watched her curl in on herself as she laid there crying with his cum dripping out of her and down the back of her thighs.  Then he was back to her bedroom window without retrieving his mask or the blocking device, no longer listening to whatever was coming through the earpiece.  Mind going absolutely haywire and telling him he just needed to get out.

“I’m sorry, Blaire.  I didn’t know.”  Bucky sat up with his own chest beginning to tighten at what she was telling him, it made him sick.

She cried harder and shook her head, “it’s not your fault, Barnes.  No matter how much I want it to be so I wouldn’t feel so shitty for hating you.  It’s not your fault.”

Without thinking Bucky leaned over and wrapped an arm around Blaire pulling her to his chest.  She tensed at first but relaxed and returned the hug when she felt him begin to shake too.  So they sat together on the wet turf and cried until Steve managed to herd them back inside thankful they hadn’t killed each other. 

Bucky kept a hand on Briar’s shoulder as they entered, “Are we good?”

“Ya, we’re good.”  She clapped him on the back and then punched his arm as an after thought, “but if you ever tell me to shut up during a mission again I’ll tell your therapist and make sure you have to go to sensitivity training.  This doesn’t mean we’re friends.”

“I’ll only get a rise out of you when I want you to yell at me then.”

He watched her roll her eyes and could have sworn he saw the corner of her mouth turn up into a smile.  That made him smile too and Bucky felt a new sense of ease.  Unsurprisingly at his next session with Dr. Raynor he found it easier to open up.

[iheartkikixo]

Thoughts on the Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D series finale

********AOS SERIES FINALE SPOILERS AHEAD*********

********AGENTS OF S.H.I.E.L.D SERIES FINALE SPOILERS AHEAD*********

*******SERIOUSLY. IF YOU DON’T WANNA BE SPOILED STOP READING NOW********

You were warned.

Okay. So Agents of Shield is finished.

On the first watch I won’t lie, I was REALLY conflicted and bothered by the ending. I really couldn’t understand why they chose to go that route and I ended up pacing my house for like 30mins. However, after a couple hours of mulling it over, a rewatch and a nap. I understand why they ended it the way they did and actually have a newfound respect and maybe even love for the ending.

I know on first watch seeing everyone (especially May and Daisy) separated and alone initially feels depressing and possibly like the last 7 years of building this family was redundant, but if you look closer, it wasn’t...at all.

When we first met May, she wasn’t just alone, she was broken and self-isolated from everyone that she cared about and who cared about her. After the events of Bahrain, she closed herself down and became a shell of herself while her guilt and self-loathing threatened to eat her alive. The May we see in the final 3 episodes is so incredibly far from that. When Daisy throws Bahrain in her face in s2, the self loathing is still very present and she still can barely speak on it, she still feels like a monster for what happened and she retreats away from the team (to a degree) and back into herself. This reaction is so different to when Kora throws Bahrain in her face in 7x11. May is at a point where she fully realizes she wasn’t the monster in that story, she did what she did to save the innocent, and that at her very core is who she is, a protector of the innocent and those who can't protect themselves. And like she tells Kora, she’s “made peace with it”. In the last scene with May, yes there is a sadness that the team isn’t all together, but she’s not broken, unhappy or even alone. She’s found a new calling teaching at an Academy named after Coulson which upholds his legacy. She’s jovial when Flint comes and she laughs and jokes. It's so far removed from s1 May. Before Bahrain, May wanted kids and even when she was trying to save Katya, you could tell that she cared about kids a lot, this echoes to her protectiveness over the bus kids, and also extends into the Framework where kids being in danger was the thing that kinda brought her back to herself, and then also Robin, who she becomes a mother to. This is where the best of May comes out, she’s a mentor and a protector and in her last scene we see her happily being that to Flint and other students. So it’s full circle, she’s physically away from the team but not holed up alone in a cubicle in pain. She’s healed over these past several years and found a new purpose for her life, and her Shield family and time with them gave her that and made that possible.

The same with Daisy. When we meet her she is truly alone, she’s grown up alone, has nobody, she’s living in a van, she doesn’t even know her real name or date of birth, she’s searching for her family and searching for an identity and purpose. Throughout the last 7 seasons she’s found all of that and more. In this ending, like May, she’s not with the team, but she’s not truly without it either. She’s still in Shield, still doing missions, still in contact with the team, she still has them. If something goes wrong, there isn’t a doubt in my mind that they will come running as they always have, but after several years of fighting Hydra, Inhumans, ghosts, demons, LMDs, aliens, Chronicoms, being stranded on alien planets or at the bottom of the sea, being thrown into the future and then into the past, being mutilated or killed and resurrected or not, they all deserve some reprieve. They also can’t live under each other forever and they all deserve to actually live their lives. At the beginning of the series Daisy was lost and she didn’t know who she was, by the end neither of those are true anymore. She’s found her calling, she’s found family, she’s found relatives, she’s even found love. And now It’s like she’s paying it forward. Someone found her and gave her love, home, family and solid ground and now she’s doing the same for others (namely Daniel and Kora). Everything really goes back to the conversation her and Mack had where he tells her that even if the team dynamic shifts, it's okay and she’ll be okay. In real families we don’t all stay under the same roof forever, we branch out, take jobs in other cities or countries and start families of our own, but it doesn’t negate our original family and I don't think this ending does either. It doesn’t mean found families hold less weight than blood families, because with family (the people you’ve chosen to love and have chosen to love you back, blood or not), even when you’re not around them 24/7, distance and time change nothing. Based on the group conversation, they clearly have been in contact and will continue to be, Jemma saying she’ll email Daisy later about something they had earlier discussed, Mack and Yoyo still being together even though they’re on mission in different places at the moment, May telling Mack she has some names of recruits to send him, Coulson telling Daisy to give him a call once she gets back to Earth etc. It's not that they’re not family anymore or that they’re only gonna contact or see each other once a year, their life choices just have them spread out and busy, but they’re still family. Jemma saying they need to do the group meeting annually doesn’t mean it has to only happen once a year, nor does it mean they won’t interact individually whenever they can, it just means that despite how busy life gets they need to make sure they as a whole group isolate some time to be together however they can. That is the most family thing ever. Throughout the year ppl are busy and you see each other but not everyone together at the same time, but then you have something like Thanksgiving or Christmas where everyone makes it their business to find themselves under the same roof for a day. It feels like the same concept applies here. It only feels sad right now because it's new, but after a while it will be normal. They’ve spent the better part of a decade living under the same roof and now they’re not even on the same planet all the time, it's a weird adjustment, but they will adjust.

As far as Philinda goes. Philinda has been my AoS OTP since season 1 and while I was kinda sad initially that they didn’t end together, I get it. Phil is dead and PhilLMD is just that, an LMD. A robot. He’s not real and as such, while still having Philinda scenes makes me happy, I don’t think I want May to have to settle for a robot no matter how advanced. It’s not fair. Especially with her being an empath now, every time she touches Phil it's a reminder that he’s not real. He can’t grow old with her or be truly intimate because everything about him is coded into him. She deserves the chance and the space to move on and find something real with someone real and him being around her all the time would prevent that because she loves Phil, even though he’s not really here anymore. Phil was ready to go in season 5 as he felt like he had already been given a second chance and didn’t want to be greedy, which is why he didn’t seek out the cure in space. LMD!Phil who works solely off of Phil’s memories and feelings is echoing the same sentiments by contemplating shutting down. It's not fair for May to let herself explore this any deeper (especially now being an empath as she feels things more deeply), only for him to decide to shut down leaving her again, and it's not fair for them to explore this and him to force himself to stay operative until she dies as to not hurt her again, even though his Phil coding is telling him it's time to go. I feel like once everyone is comfortably settled into their new lives and he knows they’re all truly okay, he’ll shut down for good, until then he’s just around in case they need him.

I don’t think I need to speak too much on Fitzsimmons or Mackelena. With everything Fitz and Simmons have endured over the last 7 seasons, retirement (not sure if Simmons is fully retired too) seems beyond reasonable. We’ve watched them lose each other or themselves in one way or another every season, and like everyone else on the team they kept coming back for more when it would’ve been easier to walk away and most probably would have. But they're not most people, they are a family and refused to abandon the team while it was in need. So this ending with their super cute kid is just very deserved and great to see. Mackelena. I love that they’re still agents. I was also initially surprised Mack was still an agent as he seemed like the most likely to leave a couple seasons ago. Maybe the Adventures of Mack and The D gave him a new outlook, realizing that there are so many out there who want to and will do good if given the space and opportunity to. I also love that Piper asked for a Davis LMD and that he and Piper can argue like old times. I thought that was kinda cute.

Overall, I feel like this moment was necessary. Change sucks, but it's necessary for growth. I also think the messaging is great and applies to the cast, the fans and just the world in general. Change isn’t bad, people come into our lives for seasons and they teach us, love us, heal us and sometimes leave us, but that’s not the end. There are new people and new adventures waiting, and the same way people come into your lives for a reason, we also are destined to go into other people's lives and be that person who teaches, loves and heals them the way someone did for us. It’s a cycle. And that's one of the ways the world moves forward and gets better. Good people bringing out the best in other people, who move on to bring out the best in other people, creating more and more good people. Philindaisy will always hold the most special place in my heart in this show. Phil found May in her cubicle and Daisy in her van, and the three of them saved each other in so many ways and gave each other everything they needed as well unconditional, unwavering love and support which helped them move beyond their past traumas to the point where they were mentally healthy and strong enough to not just have the family they formed with each other, but also form their own families outside of the original family unit and do the same for others. That in itself is beautiful. This is the end of this particular part of their journey, but in no way do I think it's the end of the family that they all formed over the last 7 years, because you don’t go through all they went through and then just feel nothing. They will forever be a part of each other and they will forever pull from the lessons, experiences and love they have for and gave each other. And that’s life, and also what I’m taking away from this show.

[thefandomlesbian]

We’re All Born Naked (The Rest Is Drag)

Summary: A series of crimes at a gay club leaves the BAU scrambling for a way to locate the unsub before they have another victim. After a surprising revelation about Spencer, he's assigned duty on stage--performing as a drag queen so he has the opportunity to spot the killer from above. While undercover with Hotch, feelings develop.

Read it here on AO3!

...

“We're all born naked, and anything anybody wears at any time is drag.” -Tede Matthews

…

The heady air of the club before it opened collected in thick clouds around the team. Hotch spoke with the owner a few yards away from the others. Spencer watched their conversation, unable to hear what they said, but understanding from the exchange of nods that they were making some kind of deal regarding the club and its patrons.

For the past three weeks, every Friday night, a man from this club had gone missing and turned up disemboweled two days later.

Tonight, they intended to catch him in the act.

Hotch left the owner and approached the rest of the team. Spencer fidgeted with the sleeves of his shirt. In a few minutes, the club would be opening, and he wanted to be far out of here before people began to arrive. It wasn’t a risk he wanted to take. JJ shot him a sideways glance. “You alright, Spence?” He nodded.

Hotch inclined his eyebrows as he stopped in front of them. “The owner has agreed to let us bug the place. Reid, you’re undercover with me.”

Spencer gulped. “Er—I don’t think that’s such a good idea.” Hotch frowned. He kept fidgeting with his sleeves. “I’m… not sure that’s something I can do.” Defying a direct order? He never did that. Hotch had told him, not asked; refusing wasn’t an option.

Morgan pursed his lips. “C’mon, man, what gives? You fit the type. You’re gonna be a lot more helpful on the ground than the rest of us.”

“I know, I just—I have certain concerns that my ability to do this may, uh, may be compromised.”

Emily cocked her head. “Reid, are you… homophobic? ”

“No!” Spencer bristled. “No, I’m not homophobic, I just am worried about certain things—”

“What kind of things?”

Spencer opened his mouth to respond, but across the dance floor called a familiar voice, “Spencer!” that sent cold chills running down his spine. He closed his jaw with a quiet click and closed his eyes, willing the voice to go away, but it didn’t, and he could hear footsteps trotting up behind them. This kind of thing. Peter propped up an arm on Spencer’s shoulder. “Hey, buddy! I thought you said you had to work tonight! Listen, you are gonna be so excited— Damien B is back in town. Remember the last time he was here, I was too drunk to walk, so you went up to him and tucked that wad of cash into his G-string for me? Best night ever! Plus, the drag race is on. Are you gonna roll again? Runner up last time—you’ve got a real shot.” I wish I were the unsub’s last victim. Peter’s excitable grin did not fade as he looked up at the rest of the team. “And you got us some newcomers! C’mon.” He nudged Spencer pointedly. “Introduce me to your friends!”

Some part of Spencer prayed that if he willed it hard enough, the floor would open up and swallow him whole. He reluctantly opened his eyes, gauging the expressions on each of his teammates’ faces, ranging from shock and horror to Hotch’s completely impassive poker face (Spencer was quite grateful at least one of them had the grace to look like himself). He opened his mouth again, and again, Peter interrupted him. “Oh, who’s this tall drink of water?” He pushed into the circle of the BAU and brushed both of his hands down Hotch’s arms. Peter smirked and winked. “Who’s your daddy, big guy?”

Oh, please don’t hurt him, and please don’t hurt me. If he hadn’t been paralyzed to the spot, Spencer might’ve had the willpower to turn away and run, run out of the club, down the street, to the bus stop, and take the city bus all the way to Canada where he would change his name and never return. He cleared his throat. He could not move. That meant he had to speak. “Peter, these are… my… colleagues. We are working a case here.”

“Oh.” Peter blinked somewhat surprised. Then, he withdrew from Hotch. “Well, this one can arrest me any time. ” Spencer’s entire face and neck flushed maroon. “I’m Peter! Nice to meet you guys.”

Emily was the first to find her words. “So you two are…” She gestured between them with her index finger.

Peter’s eyes widened. “Us? Oh, no, ma’am. We’re just the twinks who have to try to find a ouija board to summon the top we both need. Right, Spencer? Up top!” Peter lifted up his hand. Spencer merely stared at his palm. “Oh, don’t leave me hanging!”

Hotch coughed, interrupting the shame circulating between all of them. “Thank you, Peter, but we really need to resume our investigation.”

“Oh, sure, sure. I’m gonna be hovering around the bar all night—and your drinks are on me.” Peter pointed at Hotch, and then he swung around and trotted back toward the bar.

Spencer released a long, pent-up sigh. “That. That’s my concern.”

Silence followed. Finally, JJ broke it. “You’re gay? ”

“Mhm.”

“Called it,” Rossi said, speaking for the first time in a few minutes. Spencer’s belly did a sick flip. “Morgan, you owe me.”

Emily tilted her head. “Were you ever going to tell us?”

“Honestly? No, I wasn’t.”

Morgan countered, “I don’t owe you anything. I called Emily, remember? We’re even now.”

JJ blinked incredulously. “You guys are taking bets on who’s not straight?”

“Yeah, princess, and my money says you and Emily bang it out before the end of the year,” Morgan countered. JJ’s cheeks flushed as red as Spencer’s.

Emily piped up, “So Rossi does owe you.” Morgan fist-pumped.

“Can we get back to work?” Hotch interrupted pointedly. Everyone fell silent and fell in line, looking back toward him. “Reid, you’re not on the floor anymore.”

Rossi snorted. “That’d be a bad idea. He might end up at the glory holes.”

Hotch shot Rossi a dark warning glance. Spencer flushed with warmth, but then Hotch continued, “I have a better idea.” His gaze swept the room, the flyers on the wall, taking heed of the layout, the speakers, the stage, the bar. “You’re on stage. You’ll have the best vantage point of the whole club from up there. You’ll see more than any of us can from the floor. Drag show starts at nine. Get dressed.”

I wish I were dead.  

…

In a skin-tight dress, five inch heels, and a poofy blonde wig, Spencer crossed his arms and stood beside the foot of the stage. The crowd had packed into the room. I deserve a raise for this. He looked up as Hotch parted the crowd, coming up to him. Hotch hadn’t changed, and frankly, he didn’t look like he belonged, with his suit and his tie and his too-nice shoes.

“I didn’t exactly ask if you were okay with this.”

Spencer shrugged. “Less okay things have happened. This is something I’ve done before.” He hadn’t expected his team to ever know about it, nor would he have wanted them to, but now that they did… well, at least he could catch a killer.

Hotch gave him a reassuring pat on the shoulder. “Well, if it makes you feel any better, so have I.” What? Spencer wanted to ask. How? Why? “You have a smudge in your lipstick. Hold still.” Hotch licked his thumb and wiped at it, framing Spencer's face between his two large hands, and Spencer's words died in his throat, unable to make a sound. The floodlights illuminated the room, casting Hotch's face in bright light and the rest of him in shadow, giving his hickory eyes an odd gleam, his brows drawn together as he worked at wiping away the smear of lipstick at the corner of Spencer's mouth.

When his hands pulled away, Spencer's belly flipped over. He somehow felt hot and cold at the same time. He parted his lips, wanting to ask something, wanting to say something, but he couldn't conceive of the correct words. “Um, thanks—” He tried to push the stammer out of his voice. He didn't think he succeeded.

The announcer called out, “Now introducing Miss Sparrow Wings!” and Hotch offered him a leg up, thrusting him onto the stage before he could ask another question.

Spencer’s heels clicked beneath him as he strolled down the runway. He had done this before, the costume makeup, the dress, the wig, everything—the performance and the anonymity that came with it was all part of the fun. But knowing that somewhere down there, Hotch watched him, gave him some strange and embarrassing thrill. The MC held out the microphone to him. I didn’t have time to prepare an act. The last time, he’d sung a song—badly, but still, it was better than it would’ve been if he had tried to do stand-up, which was his first choice when Peter talked him out of it.

Of course, he had public speaking skills. He could use them.

“Today, I’m going to talk to all of you about string theory.” The crowd cheered. Either they were too drunk to know what he had just said or they thought he was joking. “In summary, string theory is the framework in which the point-like particles of physics are replaced by one-dimensional objects known as strings. String theory describes how these strings propagate through space and interact with one another.” This time, they did not cheer. They mumbled in confusion. “On distance scales larger than the string scale, a string looks just like an ordinary particle, with its mass, charge, and other properties determined by the vibrational state of the string. In string theory, one of the many vibrational states of the string corresponds to the graviton, a quantum mechanical particle that carries gravitational force. Thus string theory is a theory of quantum gravity.”

He scanned the crowd, ignoring the ones sloshing beer at his feet. They had a profile to work with. The man they were looking for would hang back from the main crowd and charm the lone wolves he spotted, the ones whose friend groups had abandoned them, and eventually lead them away. He would not be among the men popping molly crowded around the front of the stage.

Hotch worked along the back walls, patrolling, failing to look inconspicuous. He chose a corner and hovered there with his arms crossed. A younger man approached him, grabbed him by the arm, and gestured in the direction of the glory holes. Spencer’s abdomen clenched with something—jealousy, perhaps?—at the sight, but he forced himself to tear his gaze away. He could not focus on Hotch right now. He was looking for a serial killer.

“Now, you may be asking yourself, how could something be one-dimensional? After all, everything we analyze in basic life is either three-dimensional—like me and you, like this feather boa—” Spencer took the feather boa off from around his neck and tossed it into the crowd. The guy who caught it stumbled and landed on his ass. “—and then there are things that are two dimensional, like the little heart patterns on my panties. You boys will see that if you’re lucky.” Like hell. It kept their attention, though, which was what he needed. “One dimensional objects exist in physics and mathematics. Like on a number line, every single spot on the number line can be indicated by a single digit.”

At the bar, he spotted Peter far below, chatting up the bartender. He sifted over the crowd with his eyes, eager to find anyone looking or acting suspicious. Anyone without friends, keeping to himself, watching the others too closely, approaching loners… There’s a handful of them down there. He spotted a tall man with dark hair clinging to the corner, sipping his own drink. This man wouldn’t be drinking. He wouldn’t compromise his own judgment. But there was every possibility he had a virgin drink to give the appearance of inebriation. It’s all part of the act. Spencer knew about the act.

“Now, the thing about these theoretical dimensions is that they’re difficult to conceive of without some kind of proof. Not easy to believe. But then again, tons of things are unbelievable…” Spencer flipped his wrists over and produced another feather boa, one that had been concealed under the jangly bands on his wrists. “If you believe in magic, the thing about theoretical physics is that everything is magical in its own right—because just like physics, magic always has a logical explanation.”

Spencer spilled a deck of cards over the floor from where he had hidden them. He watched the figure cross the floor to the bar, and he vanished into the crowd where Spencer could not spot him. Shoot. He couldn’t continue to track him like that. He checked the clock. Two more minutes. He could lecture about string theory for two more hours—but he preferred not to have to do it while he was working and appearing on stage in drag.

Running his mouth? That was his expertise.

When his time was over, he swung off the stage and headed toward the bar. Hotch intercepted him only a few steps through the crowd, pushing the surging men away from one another and away from Spencer. “What did you see?”

“Dark-haired white guy, wearing a blazer. He headed toward the bar and I lost him in the crowd.”

“He wouldn’t head into the crowd unless he’s chosen a victim.”

“Yeah, I know. Should we start canvassing?”

Hotch’s dark eyes darted around the room in the flashing lights. “No. If he spots us, he’ll startle and leave, and we’ll have lost our shot. We need to be discreet until we’re sure, and then get him away from this crowd. If we cause a panic, we’ll lose him.” Spencer’s eyes scanned Hotch’s face. “Let’s sit at the bar and wait for him.”

“Together?” Spencer questioned.

“You’re wearing six inch heels. You’re not exactly in position to give chase if we split up,” Hotch pointed out. Spencer mused on this, and then he nodded in agreement; he wouldn’t have very much luck making chase in these shoes, and he didn’t have a gun under this dress, or cuffs, either. Trying to apprehend a suspect in this getup would be ridiculous at best, downright dangerous at worst. He needed to stay with Hotch.

They sat side-by-side at the bar. Spencer reached up and disentangled the poofy, blonde, Dolly Parton-esque wig from his hair and let it fall to the counter with a dull thump. At the sight of it, Hotch gave a muted smile—or something Spencer could only describe as a smile. The disco lights reflected in his eyes, giving them a certain illustrious gleam which drew Spencer into their depths. “The wig suits you. You clean up well.” Clean up well? Spencer felt a lot of things right now, but clean wasn’t one of them. He sat in a seedy club with smoke clogging up the vents, too loud pop music, flashing lights that hurt his eyes, the stench of vomit and liquor and everything in between, and he wore an ill-fitting drag dress with six inch heels, gaudy costume makeup, and a heavy hot wig that someone else had certainly sweated in before him.

The whole thing struck Spencer as fairly bizarre—that Hotch offered him these compliments, the nature of them as a whole. Spencer wondered what, if anything, motivated him to speak in this way. If anything? Something had to be behind it. Hotch would never ordinarily speak to him this way. “Er, thanks,” Spencer said. “It gets really hot,” he admitted, “especially under the floodlights, and… well, this stuff isn’t mine, so I’m trying not to sweat in it.” He didn’t cart drag materials around to work with him in case he needed to go undercover; he’d borrowed everything from Peter, and lord knew who else Peter had loaned it out to over the years.

“I’m sure you wear it better than any of the other twinks that came before you.” Spencer’s face flushed at that. He fisted his hand in the wig on the table, trying to distract himself, and studied the men mulling behind them in the reflections of the glasses and the bottles as they passed by, trying to spot their subject. He went into the crowd around this area.

Every moment they sat here without seeing him was another moment of the possibility he had already chosen his victim, had already led him away, had already packed him up into his vehicle and driven him away to his final destination.

“See anything?” Spencer shook his head. Further down the bar, the distinct sound of Peter’s laughter crowed through the crowd, but Spencer couldn’t see him through the blur of people—nor did he particularly want to. Peter had already managed to humiliate him in front of Hotch once today (more than once, if he was being generous, since almost every word Peter had uttered had sunk Spencer to new depths of embarrassment), and Spencer didn’t care to repeat the event. “Tell me about your friend.”

Weird. Spencer knew they had to talk—they had to give the appearance that they were participating socially here. It wouldn’t look right if they sat here without speaking, and it could head someone off. “Peter? He’s… a lot.” Hotch could’ve asked him about anyone, and he asked him about Peter. Maybe… he’s interested in him? Spencer found that hard to believe, though; he found it difficult to think Hotch could ever be interested in someone like Peter. And besides, Peter had made it pretty clear that he was available for anything Hotch wanted. There was no need for Spencer to act as a liaison between the two of them. The mere thought made Spencer all hot and itchy and uncomfortable on the inside. “He’s not looking to settle down. He just wants to have as much fun as he can.” That was an accurate assessment of Peter.

“And you are? Looking to settle down.”

Spencer fidgeted with the jangly bracelets on his wrists. “Er… I don’t know. I don’t exactly have a settling down type of job, do I?” Hotch looked steadily back at him. This is a weird conversation. “I guess, if I found the right person… I just don’t see it happening, though.” What did Hotch have to gain from asking him these questions? They could’ve talked about anything and it would’ve kept up appearances. Even particle physics would’ve made Spencer more comfortable than he was right now, sharing intimate aspects of his personal life with Hotch at his request. I didn’t even want them to know I was gay.  

In a few short hours, he had gone from completely closeted to his entire team seeing him in drag from head to toe. He didn’t know how he felt about that yet. The ambivalence of the moment plagued him, the satisfaction from knowing he was doing something good to stop a killer, the shame… Oh, the shame. Logic told him he had nothing to be ashamed off, that being gay wasn’t a bad or embarrassing thing, that no one on the team would judge him, that their disparaging remarks were just jokes. But he didn’t want to face those disparaging marks anyway, no matter how teasing. And Morgan would undoubtedly dangle this over his head for the rest of his life, the moment when Sparrow Wings went on stage to spot a killer from above.

Hotch crossed his arms, resting his elbows on the counter in front of them. “You could’ve said something sooner,” he said.

“I know.” Spencer jangled his bracelets. “I didn’t want to.”

“Why not?”

He drummed his fingers on the counter and shrugged. “I don’t know. I guess… I guess JJ said it best, when she and Emily got together, that sometimes it’s easier not to have everyone up in their business. That we don’t really get to have secrets, so when there is something the rest of us don’t know about, it’s pretty sacred.” The rhythm of swinging the bands around his wrists grounded him in the moment. “And, I mean, Morgan is never going to let this go. He’s going to be making digs at me about this for the rest of our lives.”

Hotch inclined his eyebrows. “You’re right about that,” he confirmed grimly. “So you knew about JJ and Prentiss?”

Spencer nodded. “I was the only one who knew,” he said. “But… I didn’t know Rossi and Morgan were taking bets on, y’know, all of this.”

Hotch wore a somewhat grim look upon his face. “They still have one bet out on the rest of us.”

What? Spencer wanted to ask, and he jiggled his bracelets again, and finally, Hotch put his hand over Spencer’s wrist to still it and quiet the jingling. Spencer glanced down at where Hotch’s large hand covered his wrist. His stomach jumped and quivered at the sensation, the warmth of another skin pressing against his. The texture struck him, the roughness, the callouses on Hotch’s hands, the breadth of his grasp and his fingertips. His Adam’s apple bobbed in his throat. He gulped, trying to remember how to breathe and how to speak, because suddenly both of those things seemed incredibly difficult. “Sorry—” His voice sounded strangled, and he wasn’t sure why he apologized—for making the noise that had irritated Hotch, for this weird reaction, for something else, and why was Hotch still touching him?

“Don’t apologize.” Spencer’s lighter eyes darted up to Hotch’s in the shadows of the club. His tongue flitted out across his lips, wetting them. What can I say? Words failed Spencer, and he could only think of something he wanted to do, something which Hotch would almost certainly reject—

There. In the reflection of the wine bottle to Hotch’s right, Spencer saw him. He spun on the barstool, and Hotch whirled around after him. Spencer didn’t point. The man walked right past them. His gaze flicked to Spencer, and he smiled and winked a coy thing, and then he continued through the crowd. “You think that’s our guy?” Spencer asked.

“Yes.” Hotch hopped up from the barstool. “Stay close to him. He’s still rounding the floor, so he hasn’t picked a target yet. We can’t take him until we have evidence of wrongdoing.”

Spencer nodded. The crowd made room for him to pass through; after all, he was five inches taller than normal and wearing a sequin-strewn dress which made it difficult for him to miss. He stuck the blonde wig back on his head so he didn’t have to drag it around in his hand, stuffing it over his hair. The unsub stalked up behind a handful of guys chatting at the bar. Spencer grabbed the empty table directly across from them so they could keep a close eye on him—they wouldn’t risk losing him among the ocean of people again. Spencer’s jaw shifted in discomfort. “If he sees me again, he’s going to know something’s up. I’m too recognizable like this. He’s going to realize we’re following him.”

“We have to risk it.”

From the distance, they could not hear the unsub’s words or see the men he approached, nothing more than their silhouettes, but within a few minutes, it became clear he had targeted one man. He eased this man away from the others, placing himself between him and the rest of the group, secluding him. He waved his hand to the bartender and placed an order, and then his arm reached around the man’s waist, trailing over the small of his back. The unsuspecting victim sidled up close beside the unsub. He turned his head into his embrace. The flashing strobe lights of the club illuminated the victim’s silhouette. Spencer’s eyes widened. The man tossed his head back and laughed a familiar, braying laugh. Spencer upstarted from his seat—

Hotch’s arm coiled around his waist and anchored him to the spot. “Don’t.”

“That’s Peter! ” Spencer’s heart clenched in his chest.

“He’s safe. We’re watching him. They won’t get out of our line of sight.” Spencer tried to wriggle out from under Hotch’s arm, which fit all too well around his waist, like something familiar, like something meant to be there, like hundreds of millions of years of evolution had transpired just to lead to this moment where Hotch’s arm was meant to fit around his middle and hold him there, almost pressing their bodies against one another. “If you go now, you’ll blow our cover, he’ll pick a different club, and we’ll have more victims before we have a chance to catch him again. Do you want that to happen?”

Reluctantly, Spencer settled down in his chair, his face and stomach both churning. Everything inside of him constricted like a snake, tense and hot. Hotch did not withdraw his arm. “We can’t let them get out of this building.”

“And we won’t.” Hotch was making a promise—Spencer understood that. He prayed it wasn’t a promise he was going to break. “Can I trust you not to fling yourself at them like Norman Bates wearing his mother’s clothes, or do I need to keep holding you in place?”

Spencer’s face flamed. He sucked his front teeth. “Maybe,” he said softly, “you can trust me…” Or maybe I like this, the way it is right now.  

“Maybe?” Hotch arched an eyebrow, daring Spencer to say something else.

Spencer held his gaze. He did not fold. Sparrow Wings, after all, did not fold. She was a powerful woman, and she wouldn’t buckle, no matter how Hotch stared at her, and she would have no problem telling him exactly what she wanted—but she also didn’t give a flying fuck if Spencer was still employed tomorrow, so Spencer had to make some executive decisions on how much he allowed her influence to take over right now. “Or maybe… I think this is good for our undercover act. Maybe I think we blend right in, like this.”

The scent of Hotch’s cologne wafted off of his body from the proximity between them. In spite of Spencer’s layers of clothes and the heavy makeup and that damn wig (he left it on now, in case he needed to make a run for it and didn’t want to leave it behind), he craved the warmth bleeding through Hotch’s suit, the heat metabolized by Hotch’s blood and tissues through every minute of every day. Spencer found it intoxicating.

He didn’t imbibe any longer, but if he wanted to get drunk on anything, he thought he would start with the scent of Hotch’s cologne.

“Is that so?” Hotch asked, and his words sounded almost like a dare. “This is good for being undercover?” Spencer nodded. “Is that all?”

Spencer opened his mouth to respond, but the unsub began to turn, as if to glance behind him, and Spencer didn’t have a moment to think; at the first glimpse of movement, Hotch grabbed him, spun him around with his back to the unsub, and dragged him into a bruising, open-mouthed kiss. Spencer blinked hard, once, twice, This is a dream, this whole thing has been a weird dream, I’m going to wake up now and it’s going to make so much sense— Hotch’s hands intertwined in his wig, obscuring as much as his body from view as possible, and Spencer watched in the reflection of the wine glasses on the table as the unsub surveyed the room behind him and did not take note of Spencer, in spite of his colorful garb.

After all, two guys shoving their tongues down each other’s throats were pretty inconspicuous in the middle of a gay club.

The rough stubble from Hotch’s face scratched into Spencer’s, chin to chin, cheek to cheek. The unsub had turned around, but Hotch didn’t stop, molding Spencer’s mouth to his own like a potter over a lump of clay. Their tongues twisted and danced to the beat of the flashing lights and dropping bass, until Hotch pulled away and Spencer gasped for breath. His head spun. His limbs felt heavy. His stomach felt light. His head felt like butterflies had tossed out every piece of information he had ever known and now battered their wings against the inside of his skull, seeking a way out.

Arm around Peter’s back, the unsub pulled back from the bar, and they walked away from the bar, all wound up in one another. Hotch jumped up, hand wrapped around the inside of Spencer’s elbow, and jogged after them. “Do you know where they’re going?”

Spencer shook the delirium from the forefront of his mind. “Exit A, it’s the easiest way out without being spotted—”

“You stay on them, I’ll go around back, and we should be able to trap him.”

Before Spencer could say another word, Hotch vanished from sight, and Spencer trotted after the unsub and Peter, keeping them in his sights. He folded himself back between a pillar and the wall when the unsub glanced behind them, and when they rounded the corner, Spencer caught up to them, watching as they approached the exit.

The red lights from the sign marking the outlet illuminated their faces. “Before we go,” purred the unsub, “I’ve got a surprise for you.” He held his hands behind his back. Spencer spotted the refraction of light off of the blade of the knife he concealed. “Are you ready?” Peter nodded. “Close your eyes…”

“FBI!” Spencer ducked out from his hiding place in the shadows. “Put your hands up! You’re under arrest!” Hotch is right outside, he’s waiting right outside this door—

“Spencer, what the hell? We were just about to—” The knife clattered to the floor, and the door swung open. The unsub sprinted through the door out into the darkness of the night.

Spencer chased after him. “Stay right here!” he called over his shoulder to Peter.

The unsub vaulted himself over the railing of the short staircase and landed clumsily on the asphalt. Spencer hit the railing. He couldn’t climb over it—if he landed wrong in these shoes, he’d snap an ankle. Hotch rounded the corner. Spencer tore the shoes off his feet. “Where’s he going?”

Holding the heels in his left hand, Spencer jumped over the railing. “Around the block—you go that way, there’s an old plywood fence, he’ll come over that and meet you, I’ll stay behind him—”

His bare feet slapped the stony surface of the asphalt, kicking up old loose pebbles, splinters, and shattered glass, as again he and Hotch separated. In hot pursuit of the unsub, Spencer did not let the pain in his feet distract him. The shadow of the unsub up ahead circled the block, headed toward the fence, where Spencer had known he would try to climb to escape.

He flung himself up over the fence. Spencer stood there, watching him. From the other side, Hotch called, “FBI! Put your hands up!”

The unsub teetered there on top of the fence for a moment. He looked down at Hotch, then back at Spencer… and he dropped back onto Spencer’s side of the fence. Hotch discharged his weapon, but he missed. The bullet glanced off of the side of the brick wall beside them and ricocheted. Oh, shit. The unsub barreled toward Spencer.

Spencer didn’t have a weapon. He didn’t have handcuffs, or a taser, or a baton. He had himself, his wig, his bare feet, and the stilettos in his left hand—in his hand as he held up his hands to brace himself for impact as the unsub jumped on top of him.

The man intended to knock Spencer down and keep going. Spencer grabbed onto him, hands fisting into his clothes, dragging him to the asphalt. Spencer’s dress tore where it caught under his feet. “Don’t go anywhere!” Spencer couldn’t overpower him, but he could stall him long enough for Hotch to get over the fence and help.

An elbow shoved across Spencer’s face. Pain shot through his nose. White light blinded him. He tasted blood. A hand clawed its way into his mouth. He snapped his teeth together. He tasted more blood. “Get off me, you stupid fairy!” The man thrashed. Spencer took his left hand, the one with the shoes, and smacked him in the face.

The resulting shriek of agony shook the alleyway. The brick walls trembled with the power of it. Spencer, blinking through the pain, landed on top of the unsub with both knees between his shoulder blades, hands pinning the man’s arms to the ground, but he didn’t try to fight anymore. Now, he only tried to curl up into a ball, hands reaching for his own face, where the heel of one of Spencer’s stilettos had penetrated his eye, the shoe still fixed there and dangling.

Hotch vaulted himself over the fence. “What the hell, Reid?” Spencer wiped a smear of blood away from his nose, sliding off of the unsub when Hotch took him and cuffed him. “What’s the matter with you?”

Spencer stiffened. “I don’t have a gun. I had to improvise.” I didn’t exactly intend to impale his eye with my high heel, but it stopped him.

“So you weaponized stilettos ?” Hotch repeated, aghast. “Why aren’t you concealed carrying?”

“Do you see anywhere for me to conceal a weapon in this outfit?”

Hotch scanned Spencer, his heavy costume makeup sweating off, his blonde wig all askew, his skintight dress torn, many of his jangly bracelets lost in the chase, his bare feet cut and bloodied from racing along the glass-littered pavement, blood trickling down his nose. His gaze lingered on Spencer in an almost affectionate way. “Not the kind of weapon we use.”

Spencer’s whole body flushed.

The unsub turned his head from where Hotch pressed his face into the concrete. “It hurts! ” he wailed desperately. “My eye! You ugly fag, my eye —”

Hotch pressed one broad hand to the column of his throat. “If you call him that again, I’ll finish the job with the other shoe.”

A tingle rushed through Spencer as the unsub squeaked and fell into silence.

…

At Quantico, Spencer looked at himself in the mirror of the men’s bathroom, his face still dirty and stained from wrestling the unsub on the ground. His feet had pressure wrappings around them where they fit in his shoes; the paramedics had painstakingly dug the glass out of the soles of his feet and then treated the wounds. With gauze stuffed up the bleeding nostril of his nose, he looked worse for wear, though he had returned to his preferred clothes—his pants, his sweater vest, his long-sleeved shirt.

He stared at his reflection, hair all dirty and messy, face beginning to break out from the low quality makeup. Huh, he thought as he looked at himself. The whole thing felt so surreal. Had Hotch really kissed him? Had Hotch really put an arm around his body to hold him in place? Had Hotch really planted the heel of his hand against a man’s throat and threatened to blind him if he said another word against Spencer?

Was Hotch really entering the bathroom right now, silently nearing him, reaching for the paper towels, wetting one with warm water, pressing it to Spencer’s face, wiping away the itchy makeup and the dirt?

“You alright?” Hotch’s voice breached the calm. He smoothed the paper towel down Spencer’s face, not enough to hurt him, but firmly enough to take away most of the heavy makeup and dirt. When he’d soiled one paper towel, he wetted another one.

In the mirror, as Hotch stripped the layers of grime from his face, the rash underneath became more apparent. “Yeah,” Spencer replied. “I’m fine.” He looked away from his reflection in the mirror and glimpsed at Hotch’s face, afraid to let his gaze linger for too long—afraid of what he would or wouldn’t see. “Can I ask you something?” Hotch gave a noncommittal hum of agreement. “Why are you still here? Everyone else went home.”

Hotch ceased his ministrations, having gotten the most grime off of Spencer’s face, and he returned his gaze, a surprisingly tender expression on his face. “You made a pretty big sacrifice to catch this guy, and I owe it to you to make sure you’re okay.” Spencer grunted in response. He wondered if Hotch had something else to say. “Have you talked to Peter?”

Oh. Right. Again, Hotch expressed interest in Peter, and again, Spencer wondered if he meant to suggest something else. “Yeah. Yeah, he’s—he’s shaken up, but he’ll be alright. I think he’s thinking about taking a break from the club, though.” Hotch opened a tube of cream—anti-itch cream, Spencer noted. He squirted a small amount onto his fingertips and applied it to the rash covering Spencer’s face. “How did you…”

“You always get sun poisoning when we’re in the field,” Hotch said. The intimacy of this moment took Spencer aback, his face in Hotch’s hands as Hotch massaged a soothing lotion into his skin. “I thought the cosmetics might irritate your skin.” Spencer didn’t know what to say in response. “When will I get the opportunity to see Sparrow Wings again?” he asked as he capped the tube of lotion, having rubbed the cream into Spencer’s skin completely, leaving no residue.

Spencer puffed a short breath from his nose. “I think Sparrow Wings is retired permanently.” He spun his watch around his wrist. It didn’t jangle annoyingly like the bracelets had. “Everybody’s going to know she’s an undercover cop now. Gay people don’t like it when cops invade their spaces. The last time it happened, there was this big riot. You may have heard about it.” He crossed his arms, guarding himself—from what, he wasn’t quite sure. Was Hotch just mocking him in some elaborate joke? Asking about his drag persona, asking about Peter, cleaning his face, applying the medicated lotion, was it all some farce?

Spencer didn’t think so, but he also knew better than to trust anyone’s intentions.

A small, easy smile spread across Hotch’s face. “Then maybe I could arrange a private show.”

Spencer studied Hotch’s face in the strange, fluorescent light of the bathroom, seeking any hint of deception upon him, but he found nothing—nothing but the same steady and forthright look in those hickory eyes. Spencer’s Adam’s apple bobbed. “Are you…” He didn’t know how to finish the sentence, the question, any of it.

Yet, Hotch still understood. “I am.” Hotch kissed him again. Now, Spencer understood, too. Hotch severed the kiss. “If you are—”

“I am.”

Hotch breathed a short sigh of relief. “Rossi and Morgan break even again.”

Spencer paused. “What?”

“The last bet. Rossi’s money is on this.”

Spencer blinked in surprise. Then, he shrugged. “Guess it’s better if they don’t owe each other.” He followed Hotch out of the bathroom, feeling lighter than he had felt in years.

[artificialqueens]

A Road to Somewhere, Chapter 1 (Adore Delaska) - Puppy

A/N: So, I’ve been wanting to write a Spirited Away AU for some time, so here we are. Spirited Away is my favorite Studio Ghibli film (plus the first one I ever saw) and I thought it would work in this setting.

I would like to thank @thackeryisatop and @chaoticnachokitten for helping me beta. Also thanks to @chaoticnachokitten for helping me with final casting.

I hope you all enjoy reading this as much as I enjoyed writing this first chapter.

Chapter 1

Spanish Translations for Chapter 1:

“Ojalá que sobrevivan” - “I hope they survive”

“Puedo abrir la ventana?” - Can I open the window?

“Mierda” - “shit”

“Mija” - “my daughter”

~~

The jolts of the car startled her out of possibly one of the best naps she’d ever taken. Besides, it was the snake dream again, so it wasn’t anything new. Adore blinked herself awake and stared out the window and directly into the sun. It was so bright that she could barely see a thing. She couldn’t tell if they had left California or not, and she didn’t want to ask her mother if they were there yet. That kind of shit doesn’t fly now that she was a thirteen year old girl, practically an adult in her perspective. From the likes of it, it seemed that they had driven for 5 hours, yet the drive didn’t feel like it was getting any shorter.

Her phone was nearly dead and her mom had the charger at the moment, so there wasn’t any use trying to get some more juice on it. No one wanted to look at her updates on the trip. Heck, even Ganja was probably too busy with Gia and couldn’t be bothered with their own things to pay attention to her. They’ve probably been to San Francisco before; it wasn’t anything new. In the meantime, she just stared at the bouquet of flowers Laganja was thoughtful enough to buy.

“I’ll miss you, Adore. Until we meet again.” The messages on the card read with Laganja’s signature following it.

She appreciated the sentiment. She really did, but it seemed to her that they could’ve done more than just carnations. She was almost surprised that the flowers had survived this long considering the heat. The whirring of the engines and the occasional voice from the GPS kept her from napping any longer. “Moooom?” Adore groggily maneuvered herself within earshot of the woman driving the car.

“We have about an hour left. I think you can handle it. Now get back in the back, Dory.”

She sighed and sulked in her original spot. “I really don’t see why now was a good time to move. Azusa was, like, the bomb.”

“Me neither, but think on the bright side. There won’t be as many knife fights and we might get a cat at the new house. And your cousin says the middle school is great. You’d fit in well, I hear.”

“But Ganja won’t be there…” She whined, leaning back a little farther and scaring herself with the crinkling of plastic. “FUCK!”

“Watch your language.”

She whined. “SHIT! They’re all sad now.”

Bonnie glanced in the rearview mirror at her daughter and a newly crumpled bouquet of flowers. “Maybe you shouldn’t have smothered them.”

“Someone finally sends me flowers, and it’s for this. Great. They’re probably gonna die before we even get there.” Adore never doubted the California heat; that was an apt excuse for her pessimism, right? On top of everything else that had happened today, her gift wilting away into nothingness would be a perfect ending to this already hellish day.

“Ojalá que sobrevivan. We’ll put them in water as soon as we can.”

“Ma? ¿Puedo abrir la ventana?”

“Sure,” Bonnie responded. “Hold onto the card,” she shouted over the sounds of the wind blasting into the small car, “You don’t wanna lose it!” Her daughter took that word to heart and shoved the note in her jean shorts’ pocket. They’d be at the new house sooner than later if she took another nap, but it felt like something out there was keeping her awake.

It must have been that same force that subtly influenced Bonnie to avoid the GPS and swerve into a wrong turn, thrusting the seat belt-less Adore to the other side of the car. Thankfully, she was unharmed.

Bonnie cursed in Spanish before slowing down her drive. “I must’ve missed the turn. Mierda. On the bright side, I think there’s a rest stop up ahead so you can stretch your legs or do whatever it is you need to.”

“What’s with all those rocks? They look like houses.” Adore poked her head out of the window to get a better view, her Ariel red hair whipping behind her.

“Never mind. At least we made it.” Her mother parked the car and stepped out. The more the two looked around, the less it seemed like a normal rest stop. There weren’t any park benches or vending machines; hell, there weren’t any other people besides them. It was simply the Delanos, the forest, the road, and the structure ahead of them. “Ah… now I got it. This probably used to be some tourist trap in the early eighties.”

“Why’d people stopped coming?” Adore wondered as she observed the framework of the building. Maybe it’s the fact it’s in the middle of the fucking woods, Adore. She blinked as a voice in the back of her head answered her rhetorical question. “Y’know what? Screw it, I’m going in!”

Bonnie grabbed her hand, halting her daughter in the process of rushing through the entrance. “No you’re not.”

“Come on, I just wanna look at it. Only for a few minutes!” The redhead whined as she wiggled her hand out of her mother’s grasp. “I’ll be, like, right there and back…”

“I’m… gonna call the movers. Tell them we’re gonna be late and-” Before she could finish her sentence, Adore ran into the tunnel. “Let’s hope they have a key.”

The teen stopped and looked behind her. She could barely see her mother on the phone as she was washed out by a pool of light. The tunnel felt longer than she expected, as she never fully felt like she reached the middle. A breeze blew behind her, urging her to go forward. It may have been strong enough to blow her over, but it felt gentle in places too. If Adore was to fall, the wind would probably catch her and set her on her way. She scoffed and went on her way, faster as the wind pushed her.

This place wasn’t like any other tourist trap that she had encountered before. It was mostly a field with a small collection of buildings far off in the distance. From what Adore could see of the buildings, they were foreign in nature - Japanese, probably considering California’s history. An old straw hut struggled to stay upright at the wind, decorated with dandelion seeds from a far off field. The cobblestone she was standing on eventually gave way to a dirt path towards the infrastructure. A clock tower stood on top of the structure behind her: dormant, yet imposing. A little farther down the path, there was a collection of rocks. Bonnie shortly caught up to her and they both took in the view.

“Damn… we should’ve brought a picnic.” Adore muttered off-handedly. As if on cue, a savory smell wafted through the air.

“Come to think of it, I am starving. Let’s see if there’s something up ahead.” The two women went on their way down the path and towards the little uphill town. “They were probably going to put a river there,” Her mother pointed to the rocks, “Would’ve been neat.”

Adore followed suit, becoming more aware of the noise of the footsteps. The more she traveled down that path, the less she wanted to stay. The less she felt wanted. However, she hadn’t eaten in a couple of hours so it was worth it. She had enough energy to hop up the stairs without tripping.

When they entered the town, it was mostly deserted. There were definitely sounds of action and evidence that people had been there before. Occasional piles of bones stacked on top of plates from previous customers and some orange peels had been scattered around the ground. “Are any of these still open? It’d be a dick move to come in, like, fifteen minutes before they close.” Adore wondered aloud before, as if by magic, the two arrived at a buffet. There were a few catches though. From what they could see, there was no one at the kitchen or at the cashier’s. “Maybe they’re on a break?” she continued, but her mother ignored her.

“Mija, you’ve got to try this!” Bonnie shoved a forkful towards her daughter, who stepped away

“I don’t think I oughta. Also… vegetarian, remember?.” Her mother ignored her as she scarfed down whatever was in front of her. Adore didn’t care how good it looked, she didn’t want to eat it.

“This is the only time we’re gonna have anything of quality before we get to the house. Come on, you’ve gotta have something… When was the last time we ate? Breakfast?”

“Yes, but isn’t this, like, kinda stealing? There’s nowhere that specifically says ‘all-you-can-eat’!”

“Don’t worry about it,” Bonnie said with a mouthful of chicken, “I’ve got credit cards and cash. I’ll pay when someone gets back.”

Adore just scoffed and wandered off while her mother engorged herself with whatever was in front of her. They were going to be here for a while, so she’d might as well get a feel for the place. She glanced at the empty shops as she walked, hoping that another one that was more her speed was open and manned properly; however, she had no money so she was basically screwed. The redhead trudged her way up another flight of stairs towards a sign. She couldn’t quite make out what it said, but it didn’t really matter. She turned to her left and gasped, noticing a building she hadn’t seen before.

“Wha?” Adore blinked to see if she was seeing it correctly. It looked like a traditional bathhouse. There was some steam or smoke coming from a chimney-stack, so there had to be some people inhabiting this ghost town. “That’s strange…” she pondered. If so, why weren’t they out and about? What was so great about the saunas that everything else needed to be neglected? She grabbed a ponytail holder and put her hair up into a messy updo and approached the bathhouse.

As soon as she was about halfway across, she was startled by a sudden rumbling of the bridge and a crossing train, or at least the sound of it. “I… guess there’s a station nearby.” She talked to herself before speed-walking to the other side to see it cross. She hopped up onto a railing and leaned forward to get a better look. The farther the train was out of sight, the more cautious she was becoming. It was as if someone, or something, was watching her every move the moment she came to the bridge. When Adore stepped down from the railing, her suspicions were confirmed.

A girl who looked about her age (perhaps a little older) stared at her, gasping as Adore made eye contact with her. It was as if she had run into an old friend. She had blonde hair that went to her mid-back and was slightly taller than her with a fairer complexion than her. There was something definitely odd about the lady, but she couldn’t quite place it. The two stared at each other for a bit as the sun began to sit behind them. There was something familiar about her, but too familiar. There was no time to focus on formalities though.

“You shouldn’t be here, you know,” The blonde charged towards Adore.

“Wait what? Why?”

“No time to explain. It’s getting dark.” She increasingly grew more panicked, pushing Adore farther and farther down the bridge. “You should leave. NOW.” It was nearly too late for words now. The sun was setting faster by the second and lamps began to light behind them. She collected herself for a moment and whispered in Adore’s ear, “I’m sorry, but I have to do this. I’ll distract them so you can get away faster. The woman then pushed her towards the last stretch of the bridge at the edge of the staircase.

Adore looked back at the woman. She couldn’t quite understand what she was doing, but she noticed something come from the other girl’s hands. They looked like flower petals… or scales, perhaps. She wasn’t close enough to fully determine the material. “Bitch didn’t have to push me though…” she mumbled to herself before running off to find her mother again.

She called her as loud and as frequently as she could. Her voice could’ve given out at any moment without hesitation. Thankfully, the redhead was able to determine her location; it seemed like anyone could hear the sounds of her chewing no matter where they were. “Ma! Ma! Ma! Ma! Ma! Ma!” She tugged on her mother’s arm, but she didn’t budge, “We gotta go! We gotta go! It’s getting dark! I don’t wanna be here anymore! I’m-” Before she could apologize any more, she witnessed the hand she was holding turn into a cloven hoof. The face that then faced her wasn’t human. Adore stared at her mother’s bovine features as she stepped back. “Mom…” She remained frozen in place as the pig that sat in her mother’s face continued to gobble at whatever was in front of her.

There was something grotesque about her mother being treated like that. A frog-like spirit appeared from behind the counter and beat the pig with a flyswatter as if she was some common pest. Adore covered her ears as she heard the pleading squeals from the sow that used to be her mother. She jumped when Bonnie eventually fell down. There was nothing she could have done at this point. Many more spirits surrounded Adore, signalling the human to run for her life. She had clearly seen enough in one day.

The girl remembered her path the best that she could. She spotted the clock tower in the distance; she knew the exit was closer than she thought. Adore ran down the steps, nearly tripping over her own feet. She could have been seriously injured if not for the body of water that caught her. For a split second, she wished she could have sunk to the bottom of the makeshift lake, or at least she’d become a mermaid and swim to safety. Alas, she couldn’t swim that fast and she couldn’t even drive yet. She was simply stuck.

She came face to face with an oncoming riverboat. For all she knew, it could have been manned by ghosts as well. She was able to make out a few figures at it reared closer to shore. It was almost like Noah’s Ark in a sense that the inhabitants were mostly animal spirits. They were conversing; she could overhear bits of small talk. It was like they couldn’t even notice the sopping wet human off in the distance.

Adore crouched down and curled herself into a ball. This had to be a dream, right? She hoped she was still in the car drooling over her shirt and covered in the petals from Laganja’s wilting flowers. She and her human mother would be at the house by now, and she’d get around to settling in her room with a phone at full charge. She rocked back and forth with her head in her hand. “Fuck fuck fuck fuck fuck! Wake up, goddammit!” Adore slapped herself. “Just go away…” She muttered after calming down. She realized soon enough how poor of a word choice that was.

As she attempted to shield her eyes from the boat’s lights, it was all in vain. She could see the boat through her hand. In time, the boat docked and the animals disembarked while continuing their conversations. As soon as they touched the land, something strange happened. They transformed into more humanoid states. Some of the spirits still had hints of their true forms though. There were ones with beaks and webbed fingers; some still had their original ears and tails as well.

Adore quickly backed away into a corner, hoping to not be noticed. Although it wasn’t like she was going to due to her current state. She crawled up a hill when she was fully out of the procession’s line of sight. When she went to a haven of safety, she crawled back into a ball. All she felt like doing more than anything was to fully disappear into the nothingness that surrounded her. She was taken out of her daze by someone tapping on her shoulder. Adore jumped slightly and turned towards the touch; it was the girl again.

“Don’t worry. I’m trying to help here.” She shoved a berry towards Adore’s lips. “Please. Eat this. You need to eat something from this world in order to stay in this world.”

“Aren’t you gonna apologize for fucking pushing me?” Adore tried to push her back in retaliation, but it was no use. She had simply passed through.

“Alright, I might have been a bit harsh. Are you going to eat this or not? I promise it won’t turn you into a pig.”

The redhead opened her mouth, letting the berry fall into her mouth. She chewed as her face twisted, reacting to the taste. It was a little tart for her taste and not very filling, but if she needed to eat to save her life, then so be it. Her shoulders dropped, becoming less tense. She didn’t know why, but she felt so much calmer around this stranger.

“There we go,” The blonde held her hand and squeezed it lightly, “You’re here. You’re alive. You’re okay.” Her touch felt strange to Adore. Her hands were rough, but not calloused. It was as if they were covered in something other than skin. Scales perhaps? She was cautious enough not to rub the wrong way.

“I’m okay,” she parroted back at the woman.

“You see? Now, come with me.”

“Wait!” Adore yanked the standing girl’s arm, bringing her back down to eye-level. The blonde sat down and listened attentively. “What about my mom? She didn’t really turn into a pig, right?” She asked as if she didn’t see her transform in front of her. Hopefully, this was merely a trick of the eye or her brain was making her see things from fatigue. It had already been a long enough day; the last thing she wanted to do was cry.

“You’ll get to see her soon enough, but not right now.” She put a hand on her shoulder, but quickly stopped herself. There was danger lurking around and she could sense it. “Fuck,” she muttered under her breath, pulling the human into her and shielding her body from the force that followed her. “Don’t move.” Adore couldn’t help but stare upward.

There was a large black bird, no bigger than a vulture, circling the area. The strangest thing about it was the head. Instead of a beak and feathers, it was a shrunken human head. She couldn’t quite make out what or who the head was supposed to resemble, but the face didn’t seem happy. After a few more swoops, she clung to the person, enjoying her protective nature and the touches.

“I think we’re good. Let’s go.” The woman attempted to bring the young human to her feet, but couldn’t. It was like her legs refused to move.

“Oh no oh no oh no oh no oh no oh no…” Adore hyperventilated, but was quickly shushed.

“Calm down. Take a breath. Can you do that for me?” Adore nodded her head while the mysterious woman smiled. “Lemme… do this real quick. In the name of the waters and earth beneath me, unbind this girl from the land.” Her hands glowed a radiant white and Adore stood up, as if by magic.

“That thing is probably after you. We have to get you out. Now.” Before she could properly thank her rescuer, the magical woman gripped her palm and started to run.

And off they went.

[monaisme]

Day 16: broken bones

Day 16: broken bones

The leg felt wrong. It didn’t matter what the diagnostic was saying, Rhodey knew. He’d landed on it wrong after one of the trainees had zigged when he should have zagged, all at Ross’s behest... and now the suit was acting up.

Tony was going to kill him.

“Colonel Rhodes,” Ross’s voice thundered through the air and all of the trainees stilled. “In order to maintain the integrity of this training exercise, all participants are to give 150%. If you cannot properly engage during said exercises, we will have wasted an entire weekend of these soldiers free time and we do not want that, do we gentlemen?”

“SIR, NO, SIR!” A chorus of well trained Army Rangers answered for him from their positions in the training room.

“Damn it,” Rhodey muttered under his breath and then requested a private channel in his suit. “Give me a minute, Ross. The suit is giving me grief and I don’t know why.”

Ross snickered in reply, “Are you telling me that the great Tony Stark has made an inferior suit?” Ross waited for Rhodey to answer. When none came, he boomed through the suit’s audio, “Look Colonel Rhodes, you are fully aware that this training has been mandated by the Accords. If you are trying to get out of this without giving it the effort expected or demanded of you, the Avengers will be sanctioned. Do you understand me?” He waited again for a reply.

A million thoughts ran through Rhodey’s head.

“Colonel Rhodes, I said, Do you understand me?”

He finally bit out a, “Yes, sir.”

“Good,” Man, how pleasant that asshat sounded when he was playing the intimidation game.

“Sir, I will still need a few moments to check my gear.”

Ross didn’t reply directly to him, instead heading directly to the open channel, “Take ten, troops,” he ordered. “War Machine needs a breather.”

It was only years of military service that kept Rhodey from blushing in embarrassment. With a muttered, “Asshole,” Rhodey stepped out of the gym and headed to the conference room he’d commandeered to use as his office.

The Avengers had cringed at the need to be available to train with specific international military units, but they got it. After Lagos and Sokovia, it made sense. Tasking oversight of United States Military Coordinated Operations to Thaddeus Ross, however, did not. Rhodey couldn’t understand how, after all of the history and chaos behind Ross’s relationship with the Avengers, the U.N. had chosen him.

But they did, and Rhodey just needed to shake it off. “Contact Tony Stank,” he requested of his system.

Complying immediately, it was only a few seconds before Rhodey heard the dulcet sound of his best friend. “Platypus! It’s been barely eighteen hours. Do NOT tell me that you need help hiding a body already!”

“Funny Tones, not yet, but we still have another day to go. I may need to borrow a shovel, yet.”

“For you, Honey Bear, anything—but that’s not why you’re calling. What’s up?”

“Actually, Buddy, I think something’s wrong with the suit. I know you’d chop my fingers off for even thinking about playing with it at all so I’m wondering if you can do a more in-depth diagnostic from your system there. Is that a thing?”

Tony scoffed, “Of course it’s a thing, except that... my diagnostic is showing that your suit is a go. No issues, Buddy. Tell me what the problem is.”

“The left leg isn’t moving right.” Rhodey tried to explain. “At first I figured there was an issue with the hydraulics, but you’re not finding anything either, so maybe it’s the framework, itself?”

He could practically hear the gears turning in Tony’s head. “Look, I can use a break here, and you obviously need me there so how’s about I head on over with my tool kit and we figure it out. I wouldn’t want you to damage anything and all.”

Rhodey was about to agree when a thought struck, “Hold on. Pepper is expecting you in a meeting right now, isn’t she?”

The silence at the other end of the line spoke volumes.

“Tony! C’mon! Pepper would have my head if I was the reason you missed another meeting. Seriously! Are you trying to get me killed, man!?”

“Hey, hey, hey! Hear me out!” Tony pleaded. “If I do this, then I’m working on something Accords related and Pepper can’t murder me!”

“Yeah, because she’ll murder ME!”

A knock sounded at the conference room door.

“Enter.” Rhodey flipped open his visor and called out, assuming Tony would understand what was happening.

A cadet popped his head inside the door. “I heard screaming, Sir, and wanted to make sure you were okay?”

He smiled back politely, “I’m fine, Cadet, simply having a conversation with a madman.”

The cadet nodded his head in acknowledgement, gave a “Very well, Sir,” and backed out of the room.

Rhodey sighed. “Tony, you’re making me look like a crazy person! The kid didn’t even ask to be dismissed!”

“Rhodey, you like keeping people off balance. Just consider this a crossover to your work life, finally!”  

“No, Tony. That’s you, and all of this can wait until after your meeting. I promise. There’s no panic.”

Rhodey caught a whisper of Pepper in the background. “Hey, Tones, you’ve got to go. Tell Pepper I said ‘hi’ and that I was the responsible one that made you go to your meeting, okay?”

Tony must have muted, but then popped back onto the call. “Pepper says ‘thank you for helping to keep me in line’... and for the record, I do not say thank you. It’s a budget meeting, Platypus. You’re making me go to a budget meeting.”

Rhodey laughed. “We all have our burdens to bear, Tones. You’ll be just fine.”

Tony scoffed, “Not if I die from boredom. Who’s gonna fix your suit then, huh?”

“Look, just make it through the meeting and when you’re done, grab your tool kit and head on over, okay? We should be done for the day by then and we can do dinner after you take a peek at the suit.”

Apparently Tony was feeling a little petulant. He huffed out a, “Fine. Just be careful. You know, if we were at the compound, I’d be benching you to make sure everything was up to par, at least.”

“I know, man, but this is Ross’s sandbox, and I can’t be the one to make that call—even though, I swear, Tony, there’s a guy out there that needs stitches.”

“We all know that Ross is a sociopath, Buddy, so there’s nothing to do but grin and bear it.”

Rhodey grinned, “Just like your budget meeting, right?”

“Smart ass.” *click*  

And the call ended.

Someone knocked on the conference room door again.

“Enter.” Rhodey was already heading to the door when it opened, and the same cadet spoke, “Sir, with apologies for the intrusion, U.S. Secretary Ross is asking if you’re ready to rejoin the rest of the men in the training room.”

“I somehow doubt that that’s what he said, Cadet, but yes, I’m done for now and I’m just walking out. Don’t bother passing that along.” He clapped the young man on the shoulder and ushered him out of the room. “I’ll tell him myself.”

“Yessir, Colonel, sir.”

And he did.

* * * * * *

It was three hours later that Ross finally declared that training was done for the day.

If Rhodey was being honest, he wasn’t feeling that great, and not just about how things had gone, what with the leg not performing at optimum capacity. The day’s session was done and tomorrow would be the day everything either pulled together or didn’t. A wonky leg wasn’t going to change it now.

“Colonel Rhodes,” Ross bellowed from where he was having a conversation with one of the Team Leaders, “Please wait so we can walk out together.”

He cringed. He’d hit his limit with this man for the day... hell, a lifetime! But Ross was the one filling out the reports to the U.N. and they needed to say that the Avengers played nice.

So Rhodey played nice—

—And then Ross made Rhodey wait for ten minutes.

Rhodey was waiting at the doorway for the man when he finally decided to bless Rhodey with his presence.

“Sorry about that. Just needed to cover some logistics for tomorrow.” He clapped his hand on Rhodey’s shoulder like they were old buddies, “You know what it’s like, right?”

Rhodey smiled, “Yes, sir, I do. Now, did you have something to discuss with me, because I have plans I’d like to get to, if you don’t mind.”

Ross smiled, “That’s what I wanted to talk to you about. I was observing and saw what you were talking about regarding the suit. Something is definitely wrong with it, and I’m assuming the plans you’re talking about are with Tony Stark regarding repair, correct?”

“That’s correct, sir.”

“Good, I’d like to be a part of that meeting.”

Rhodey blanked for a second, “Sir?”

“As a U.N. representative, I must insist on verifying the ‘seaworthiness,’ if you will, of any Accords related equipment.”

Rhodey cringed at the implication on Tony’s behalf and then went in for the kill. “Sir, equipment gets damaged, and as you saw during the exercise, I was forced to act. We were not made aware that concussive weaponry was being used during the training exercise, though I don’t regret my manoeuvre. Your Ranger panicked, sir. If I hadn’t covered him, you’d be dealing with more than paperwork and a damaged suit.”

Ross flinched.

Good.

“So if you’ll excuse me, sir, I have some repairs to deal with and then dinner with my friend now that I’m officially off duty and free to leave base.” Rhodey made his way down the hall.  

Ross refused the rebuff and followed after the man. “Regardless of your plans, I insist on being present for the suit repair.”  

“Suit yourself then. You know I can’t stop you, but I’m pretty sure there is no section in the Accords about infringing on private time after training hours are done. This could be considered a major overstepping of boundaries... but I’m sure you’ll include it all in your report.” Rhodey walked past his temporary office, and toward the visitor quarters where he was hunkering down for the weekend.

He prayed that Tony was already there and waiting for him.

* * * * * *

Rhodey opened the door to his room, only to find Tony Stark lounging on his bed and fiddling with Rhodey’s cell phone.

“Will I need to worry about bugs?” Rhodey asked as he smiled at his friend’s tinkering.

“Nah! You should worry about all of your photos automatically forwarding to me, so be careful with—“ Tony stopped talking as he noted the additional person entering the room.

“Tony Stark.” U.S. Secretary Ross said.

“Tad.” Tony Stark replied.

Ross smiled. “Good to see you’re still an asshole, Stark.”

Tony smiled back, “It is not good to see that you’re still an asshole. In fact, it’s downright tragic.” Tony turned his attention to Rhodey as he got up off the bed. “Rhodey? Why is the bad man here?”

Rhodey moved to address Ross. “Sir, am I on personal time now, sir?”

Ross sniffed and nodded, ‘yes.’

“And I can speak freely?”

Ross waved Rhodey off, “Of course.”

Rhodey nodded in return, “Thank you, sir,” and then shifted to face Tony again.  

“Tony, I swear on my life, all I want is five minutes away from this guy and he’s insisting that his overseeing repairs to the suit is his “duty,” yes, Rhodey air quoted, “as a U.N. advisor.”

Tony glared at Ross, “Isn’t this a violation of doctor/patient privilege?”

Ross shook his head. “You’re no doctor, Stark.”

“Actually, he has three doctorates, so...” Rhodey retorted.  

Ross sighed and raised his hand to stop them. “Look, I’ve explained why I am here to Colonel Rhodes. If you could just shut up for two minutes and run the diagnostic so I can include the issue in my report, then I can be on my way and you two can do whatever it is that you want to do.”

Tony looked at Rhodey who was suddenly exhausted. The rush of the day was catching up to him, he guessed, so for the sake of haste, he agreed. “Let’s just get this over with.”

Tony was pulling his trademark Stark sunglasses on, and activating Friday immediately. “Scan it all, Baby Girl.”

It seemed that no one wanted Ross to linger.

And then Tony blanched. “Oh, shit.”

Ross perked up, practically salivating at the idea of a problem. “What’s wrong? Please tell me the great Tony Stark has somehow messed up!”

Rhodey jumped right in. “Hold up! What happened to U.N. reports and all that shit? That sounded pretty personal to me, sir.” Rhodey piped up.

Ross smirked. “I’m just a man, Colonel. I can still revel in someone I’d sooner set on fire than save failing at something they’re supposed to be genius in.” He shrugged. “Sue me.”

Tony glared at him, “Maybe I will? ‘Cause, seriously? Just no. I’m not dealing with someone who can’t even pretend to be a good person for five damned minutes.” He pointed to the door. “You have to get out.”

“I’m not leaving until—“

The Iron Man gauntlet had encased Tony’s arm and was aimed at the man before Ross could finish the sentence. “Get out. We’ll send you a copy of the report we’ll be filing with the U.N.- yada, yada—now go. You’re done here.”

Ross looked to Rhodey was just as confused as he was, but shook his head in all seriousness, “I’m off the clock now, Tad. I’d do what he says. He was at a budget meeting before this.”

Ross looked between the two men and shook his head in frustration. “One day, I will have my way with the two of you.”

Tony grimaced, “I’m engaged, Mr. Secretary. Please don’t talk like that to me or I’ll have to include that in the letter I’m already composing.” The repulsor whined to life. “Seriously, Ross, this is unrelated to the suit. Get out.”

“If you think I believe that—“

The repulsor blast skimmed Ross’s shoulder, close enough to warm the man’s cheek, but do no damage. “Ross, my friend here is injured as a result of YOUR overzealous and dangerous training operations. You can read about it in the report I will be submitting, or I will contact the U.N. now and have YOU arrested and charged for whatever they feel they can make stick. Get. Out. Now.”

Ross nodded, turned, and left the room without another word.

Rhodey turned and grinned big at Tony, “Dude, I love it when you get creative, man! —and I’m also totally jealous that you’re not duty bound by the Oath of Enlistment to listen to that blowhard. Let me take the suit off so we can—“

Tony just shook his head. “Keep the suit on Rhodey, please. Our plans for the evening have changed, ‘cause I wasn’t lying.”

“What?”

“Rhodey, FRIDAY scanned it all. Literally. Both the suit, and you.”

“Okay? I’m still not getting it?”

Tony was upset, there was no questioning that. “Rhodey, the reason your suit isn’t working is because the electrodes in the suit are not lining up properly with the electrodes on the brace components you wear on your legs.”

“And...? What does that mean?”

“Honey Bear, the suit really is perfectly fine. They’re not lining up correctly because your leg is broken in two spots, right now. You’d get some response from the suit on that side because of the partial connection, but...”

Rhodey looked at Tony. “My leg is broken.”

Tony nodded, ‘yes.’

“And I’ve been using it for approximately four hours?”

“Yes.”

Rhodey looked down at himself, and sighed. “So now what?”

Tony cleared his throat, “Now I call Helen and fill her in. You stay right where you are until I figure out if you’re safe to fly.”

Rhody didn’t say anything while Tony made the call—thank goodness it was brief, thought irritatingly one-sided and uninformative for all of the ‘okay’s’ and ‘uh-huh’s.’

“Alright, we have a good news, bad news, good news situation here, Sour Patch.” Tony announced.

Rhodey closed his eyes and braced himself. “Lay it on me.”

“Okay, good news first. Helen is convinced that with how the War Machine shell is built to support your limbs, that you’ve probably not done any further damage to the leg beyond the initial break from impact and minimal movement.”

“yaaay.” Rhodey sarcastically cheered.

“And the bad news—she’s not sure that you flying at a high altitude or speed would be beneficial. She’s concerned about clots and all sorts of nasty stuff, so it looks like we’re road trippin’ it home... which won’t be awful, if you think about it!”

Rhodey could see Tony trying to spin it.

“I’ll hook FRIDAY up to the rental, we can listen to some tunes... it’ll be like back when we were at MIT and driving back to your house in Philly for Thanksgiving!”

Rhodey smiled sadly at Tony for all of his trying and started moving around the room collecting his things while Tony ducked into the bathroom to help out. Damn, Ross was going to whine about this—until Tony actually wrote up that report. “Hey, you never said what the second bit of good news was, unless you were lying to me to make me feel better.”

Tony popped his head out, “Oh! Helen thinks she can calibrate the Cradle to deal with the bone breaks—she’ll know for sure by the time we hit New York, but if she can, you get a weekend of movies and pizza on the couch with yours truly and are back in the saddle by Monday morning—unless you want to milk it and make Ross feel bad.

Rhodey choked out a laugh. “Tony, you know that man has no soul. I’ll milk it so it looks worse for the U.N. mucky-mucks.”

“That’s what I’m talkin’ about!” Tony stepped back into the room to toss a shaving kit and shampoo into the bag Rhodey was filling. “And we’ll be sure to post how you couldn’t attend some fundraiser due to a training accident all over social media. Ross will look like a monster!” He cackled with glee, “It will be amazing!”

Struggling not to get stuck in his own head, Rhodey nodded. “It will be, Tones.” And then with a smile, “Maybe you can convince Pepper to make that taco dip for us?”

“That, my friend,” Tony grasped Rhodey’s shoulder and gave it a playful shake, “is the best idea ever. I think we have ourselves a date.”

* * * * * *

Helen Cho, as always, was a rock star. By the time they’d reached the Compound, she was waiting at the entrance with a wheelchair and a promise of one of Spider-Man’s suckers if Rhodey was a good patient.

The Cradle was a work of genius and after five and three-quarter hours, an exhausted Rhodey was stretched out in the med bay, heparin shots administered as a precaution, and looking keenly at the selection of candies available.

Blue raspberry was the best.

* * * * * *

Tony was a man of his word, and the weekend was filled with cheesy 90s movies, like Johnny Mnemonic and Total Recall, because they were the best... and Peter wasn’t around to insist on something in a galaxy far, far, away.

And so a weekend relegated to the couch it was.

Rhodey took a break from his braces, and even the crutches at Helen’s insistence, not wanting to risk accidental weight on the limb. It would give the fractures a chance to fuse and decidedly solidify over the week. Rhodey thought it was overkill, but she had faith that it would only help, and had the science to back it up. Everyone just wanted to be careful.

If he thought about it, it was all good. The heparin he’d taken had caused such extreme bruising that Rhodey almost couldn’t bear the idea of making more marks.

What Ross and his training had done was enough—

Damned useless legs.

How had he not known?

Damned Thaddeus Ross.

And his wheelchair was fine.

It was only temporary.

Yeah. It was only temporary.

And he knew it was—but the doubt he was feeling about himself? He knew this was a small setback. He knew that he’d be up and running in no time. But suddenly he knew there WOULD be a next time. That he’d never be the guy to shake off an injury. He’d never be same again.

How had he not figured it out before?

And how was he going to move beyond this?

He played his part over the weekend— fooled his oldest friend and fiancée. They didn’t need to be caught up in his head, too. Tony had enough demons of his own.

Then Tony and Pepper went back to work on the Monday—because, believe it or not, the man actually did show up at Stark Industries and do office things every once in a while... and to file the U.N. paperwork.

Rhodey decided, after they’d left for the day, that he’d head back up to his quarters. He’d inconvenienced the two of them enough so it was best that he sneak away before they could fight him on it—because they would.

He knew the trip would be easy. The compound had been made with 100% accessibility in mind and Rhodey had managed a wheelchair before. It was no biggie—until his trek turned disaster and Bucky Barnes was windmilling to keep from falling onto the floor like the trays of coffee that he’d only just been balancing with his vibranium arm.

“Oh, shit!” Rhodey yelled as Bucky finally committed to staying upright. “I am so sorry—I didn’t mean to get in the way!” – because he’d always be in the way.

“No, no, no! My bad,” Bucky declared as he flicked the coffee from his fingers and surveyed the devastation. “I can wield any make or model of weaponry on the planet—and off, but I can’t balance a couple of trays of coffee without making like a bumbling idiot.”

Rhodey couldn’t let him keep on like that. “C’mon, Bucky. You know you’d have been fine if I’d have been paying attention.”

Bucky bent over to collect the now empty cups. “I think I can say the exact same thing.”

Rhodey smiled in understanding. “Well, I guess we’ll agree to disagree, then.” He looked at the mess. “Where were you heading anyways with all that caffeine?”

Bucky blushed.

Rhodey had to process that for a second.

James Buchanan Barnes had blushed.

And Rhodey was concerned. “Hey, you don’t have to tell me if you don’t want to but...”

Bucky shook his head. “Nah, it’s fine. I’m not embarrassed or anything, it’s just Sam decided it would be a good idea to set up a group—“he rubbed uncomfortably at the back of his head. “He set up a group for anyone who needed a place to be...”

Rhodey could see him struggling for words.

“... I guess a place to be ‘not okay?’”

Rhodey smiled. “In a place like this, that would explain why you had so much coffee.”

“Oh, I have no idea how many of us will be there, never do. I just grab a load from the commissary and hope for the best. If Sam isn’t running behind, there should be donuts, too, which will be good as I’m not sure I’m up for trying another coffee run.” He chuckled at his own joke.

While Rhodey wanted nothing more than to make his way upstairs to his quarters, he wasn’t gonna hang a teammate out to dry. He sighed on the inside and said, “If you want, I can help you out, Bucky. I have a lap, which would definitely reduce your load, if you promise we won’t hit any bumps on the way back.”

Rhodey was pretty sure he’d never seen Bucky smile so big, “You’d do that for me? That would be awesome! Thank you!”

Okay. That’s weird.

They made their way back to the commissary where Bucky grabbed another dozen coffees, trayed them up and looked awkwardly at Rhodey. “Um, do you want to balance some of them and go on your own? Carry all of them and then I’ll push? It’s your call, and I don’t want to overstep any boundaries.”

He appreciated the consideration but Rhodey just laughed. “Give’em here, and don’t hit any cyclists on the way, ‘kay?”

Bucky nodded in agreement, gave Rhodey the coffee tower and they were on their way.

After a few minutes of silence, Rhodey had to say it, “You know, if you ever need to talk, you can always come and find me if Sam or Steve aren’t around.”

Bucky smiled, even if Rhodey couldn’t see, and stayed quiet.

For some reason, it left Rhodey feeling unsettled. He needed to fill the void. “I mean, I know you and I aren’t best buds or anything, but we’re a team, and if you need someone to talk to or just hang out with until you’re okay, well, I’m here for that.”

“That’s kind of you, Rhodey.” He replied.

Rhodey thought more, in the stillness, then blurted out, “Yeah, and sometimes it’s easier to talk to someone that isn’t so invested in every part of your life so... yeah. I get that.”

‘M-hm.”

They reached the elevator, the scene of the crime, when Bucky spoke again. “It’s funny that you should say that, ‘cause I get how hard that is for someone who is a part of everything, sees how your struggling and can’t figure out how to help. I know I wish I could keep more from Steve—and it definitely doesn’t help that Sam is teaching me about sharing my feelings and all that shit.” He laughed. “Man, I was like a steel trap. Shared nothing—and you know what, I’m so glad I’m changing that. And I know that Steve is glad, too.”

The elevator arrived and Bucky expertly manoeuvred them both in. It was Rhodey’s turn to be quiet now.

The elevator arrived at their floor and soon they were at the entry to Bucky’s group room.

Rhodey didn’t move.

Bucky crouched in front of him. “Sometimes, though, it helps to be surrounded by people who understand you and will let you sit quiet with your thoughts.”

Rhodey nodded, then carefully lifted the stack of coffees to hand to Bucky, who smiled back in thanks.

Rhodey wheeled himself around, facing the hallway they’d just come down before doing a quick about face. “Bucky?”

Bucky hadn’t moved from his spot, like he’d been waiting. “Yeah?”

“Do you think there’s enough coffee for me?”

“Rhodey, I’m sure there is, but if I’m wrong, I will go and get another one just for you.”

Rhodey felt awkward as he rolled past Bucky and into the room. He whispered a quiet, “Thanks, man.”

And as Bucky turned to enter in after him, he gave a pointed look to the security camera along with a definitive nod—and slowly entered behind his team mate.

 @febuwhump

[orangeoctopi7]

History Repeats Itself

: Chapter 1 : Chapter 2 : Chapter 3 : Chapter 4 : Chapter 5 : Chapter 6 :

The boys resumed working on the Time Tape right away. Ford showed his brother how to carefully use the tiny file to grind off the excess bits of metal from the miniscule framework of circuitry. Once Stan got started on his own, the young genius got to work taking apart the Time Tape’s casing, and preparing to replace the circuitry. As they worked, the only sound was the scraping of the file and their mother taking the occasional call for her phone psychic business downstairs. 

Ford was trying to tease the damaged circuits out of their casing with the tweezers he’d used to clean the sand off the new circuits. After a few failed attempts, he threw them down in frustration.

“Where are my needle-nosed pliers!?” He shuffled through all the tools and parts that had accumulated on his desk.

Stan shrugged, then winced as his arm throbbed again.

When another few minutes of exasperated searching didn’t turn up anything, Ford decided to head back downstairs and see if there was a pair among their father’s tools.

“Hey, gimme another ice pack while you’re down there?” Stan requested. The ice bag he’d been using had become nothing more than a sweaty bag of lukewarm water.

“Sure.” Ford nodded as he left the room.

Since the bag no longer soothed his aching arm, Stan picked it up and plopped it into their trash bin before resuming his task of filing down the new circuitry. The water from the bag coated his fingers, making his grip slippery. The next time his right arm throbbed with pain, his fingers twitched, and the file slipped out of his hand. He instinctively grabbed it with his left hand… and snapped the circuitry he was holding in half in the process.

Stan just stared down at his hands blankly for a couple of seconds before what he’d done sunk in. “...Crap…” he breathed. His stomach twisted and his heart rate skyrocketed. Way to go, screw-up, you’ve ruined one of your brother’s important projects yet again!

No. No, this wasn’t going to be like that. Stan looked around frantically, for a place to hide the evidence, for an escape route, he wasn’t sure. Then his eyes fell on the soldering iron. Of course! After thirty years of rebuilding the Portal, he knew how to use one of those! He could still fix it! Sure, Ford had said it was too big for such delicate work, but Stan was willing to try anything at this point.

He laid the circuitry back down in the sand mold as carefully as his shaking hands would allow. It wasn’t a perfect fit, many of the sand grains had been picked away by the first molding, but it would have to do for now. He held the soldering spool and the hot iron just a few millimeters above the first break in the circuitry. He tried to hold his hands steady as a molten drop of metal dripped into the sand, but his emotions were running away with him. His thoughts kept on circling, screw-up, screw-up, screw-up, repeating on an endless loop in his head. His breath was coming in irregular gasps, and his vision was blurring. Instead of sealing the break, the drop of metal was just a couple of millimeters off target.

“C-c’mon!” Stan grunted, sticking the tip of the soldering iron into the molten drop and dragging it to the break in the circuit, like one would drag a fountain pen through a drop of ink. All he ended up doing was melting the metal on either side of the break.

“No. No! No no no!” Stan’s frustration and fear bloomed into anger, and he slammed the soldering iron down on the desk, leaving a scorch mark in the hard plastic surface and snapping the tip of the iron right off. He stared mutely at the smoldering tip as it slowly burned a hole in the carpet. How could things have gone so wrong so quickly?

His instincts were telling him to run, but what good would that do? He was still trapped in the past with Stanford, and he’d just sabotaged their chances of fixing the thing they needed to get home. How would Ford react when he found out?

It won’t be like with the science fair. The logical part of Stan’s brain reasoned. You’ve both learned from your mistakes and grown since then.

But Stan had never been very good at listening to the logical part of his brain. The rest of his brain could only remember all the times he’d messed up before, and how his life always seemed to start a death spiral from there.

He heard footsteps coming up the stairs, and froze. He’d run out of time.

“I’ve got your ice pack. Sorry I took so long, the needle-nosed pliers were all the way down in the pawn shop. I guess dad needed them to work on an old clock someone--” Ford stopped short when he took in the devastated expression on his brother’s face. “What happened?”

“I--I--” Stan stammered, struggling to form coherent words, much less describe what he’d done. “I’m sorry-- my hand slipped-- I didn’t mean to-- no, no excuses-- I tried to fix it, I swear!”

“Hey… hey, it’s ok.” Ford rushed forward and wrapped his brother in a hug.

“It’s not ok!” Stan cried. “We need to go home, and I just ruined the thing we need to do that!”

Ford glanced over his brother’s shoulder and took in the broken circuitry and the snapped soldering iron. He quickly unplugged the iron before it caught anything on fire, but then returned to comforting his brother. 

“Stanley, it’s ok, it was just an accident.”

Stan frowned down at the ground. “It’s always an accident.”

Ford gently took his brother by the shoulders. “It was delicate, I could have snapped it just as easily.”

“Yeah, but you didn’t. You didn’t break the iron either.” Stan held his head in his hands and gave a hollow laugh. “I could’ve burned the house down. That’d be a new low, even for me.”

“You need to stop beating yourself up so much. Nothing was broken that can’t be fixed.” Ford assured him. “I told you I can form the circuits again, it’ll only take a couple of days and a new soldering iron.”

Stan groaned. “Yeah, nothing that can’t be fixed except the school's property.”

Ford scoffed. “I literally could not care less about the school’s property.”

“And your desk.”

“Trust me, I’ve burnt plenty of holes of my own in that desk.”

Stan just swallowed back tears and leaned into his brother’s shoulder.

Ford patted his back awkwardly. “I’m not mad at you. I’m sorry I always got so irate all those other times, but I’ve learned my lesson since then.”

Stan was maybe on the verge of feeling better when they both heard the familiar sound of an oldsmobile pulling into the parking space behind the pawn shop. Filbrick was home, with his usual sense of timing. Ford could feel his brother tense in his arms.

“...Maybe he went out for drinks with the coach and he’ll just go straight to bed.” The young genius hoped. Thankfully their father was more of a sleepy drunk than an angry drunk.

The heavy footfalls coming up the stairs didn’t sound like a tired, drunken stagger. They heard a muted conversation between their parents, and then the footsteps continued up the second flight of stairs to their attic bedroom.

Ford held the ice pack up to Stan’s face.

“Wha-- Ford, what the heck?”

“It’ll mask any swelling or redness from… your hormone-induced emotional outburst.” They didn’t have time to argue over whether or not Stan had just been crying.

The heavy footsteps stopped, and the door swung open. Filbrick was barely an inch taller than them at this point, and yet his impassive face loomed over them like a colossus. 

“You two left without tellin’ me. Do you have any idea how worried I was?”

“Not worried enough to come looking for us, apparently.” Ford answered flippantly. 

“I had to go use the payphone to call your Ma when neither of you came back in time for the Somners fight!” He informed them. “So not only did I spend money I shouldn’t’ve had to, I cut into her precious client time. You know she can’t take customers during the day anymore because of the baby!”

“Oh…” Ford had forgotten about that particular detail. “Sorry.” He was mostly sorry for his mother. “It was my fault, I was really anxious to get back to my science fair project.”

“And you,” Filbrick turned to Stan, who quickly lowered the ice from his face. “You left without collectin’ your pay! What kind of imbecile does that!? I had to collect it for you.”

“Oh, heh, whoops!” Stan forced on his best con man smile. “Guess I must’ve hit my head one too many times in the ring.”

“How many times have I got to tell you boys?” Filbrick shook his head. “All the brains or charm in the world can’t buy you a meal in your stomach or a roof over your head. What’s it gonna take for you two to man up and start takin’ your futures seriously?”

The two brothers remained silent, both knowing better than to try and answer this rhetorical question. Still, the irony was not lost on them. 

“Well, since you’re obviously not responsible enough to handle this money on your own, I think I’ll hang onto those winnings I picked up for you. Taking out the cost of the payphone, any potential revenu your mother might’ve lost while I was on the phone with her, and a holder’s fee, there should be just enough left for me to pay off your parking ticket.”

“Th-thanks, dad.” Stan said meekly.

“Don’t thank him, he’s taking money that’s rightfully yours!” Ford said indignantly.

“Ford!” Stan hissed, elbowing his brother hard in the ribs. He cast a wary glance up at their father. “H-he didn’t mean it!”

Filbrick stared down his rebellious son, his expression as unreadable as ever behind his dark glasses. Ford glared right back, unwavering.

“Let me clear something up for you, smart guy.” Fibrick growled. “You live under my roof. My sons. My dependents. So until you two turn 18, any money either of you make is technically mine. You’re just lucky me and your Ma make enough that we don’t need to take any of it from you.”

Stan squeezed his brother’s arm tightly and whispered in his ear. “Ford, please, don’t. Just let it go. Please.” He wasn’t sure if he was pleading with his brother not to correct their father’s grammar, or his understanding of how parental stewardship and dependents worked. Thankfully, Ford lowered his gaze and nodded.

Filbrick nodded stoically back. “And clean this room up, it smells like burnt plastic in here.”

[whetstonefires]

director's cut top guide? I don't have a section in specific pick your favorite I guess I love the whole thing

Awwwww thank you. 💗😊 For the compliment, the interest, and the guidance.  Additionally thanks because I just discovered I didn’t update this fic in October like I thought I did! It’s still in the status it had in July. So uh. I’ll be getting right on that. ˋ( ° ▽、° )

I think I’m gonna go with a passage back near the start, in the first half of chapter 4, the one where Tifa’s getting Vincent out of his coffin. I like how it came out and it’s pretty important, and if I’ve rambled about it at all, it wasn’t recently.

-

There’s a push-pull effect fundamental to this scene–first physically, with Tifa moving and destroying actual barriers, and Vincent repeatedly attempting to withdraw. But also on the level of Tifa attempting a series of verbal sallies, which Vincent initially rebuffs and then ignores by vampirically pulling the covers over his head and generally putting the passive in passive-aggressive.

But after telling her to go ahead and set the building on fire with him in it, Vincent gets his lid on and settles on being inert, and Tifa gets to do a monologue.

There are a lot of speeches in this fic, honestly, because of the precedent set by canon/the kinds of characters I’m working with, but most of them are nowhere near this long, and even though Tifa’s trying to achieve a specific rhetorical objective here, they’re generally not quite this honest.

“It’s easy to decide to die,” she told him, at length. “It’s easy to stop fighting when there doesn’t seem to be any hope. I know.

“But you’ll always regret it. You know that. If you’d been brave enough to choose Lucrecia over the Turks before Hojo got his grubby claws into her, maybe none of this would ever have happened. If she’d been brave enough to choose you sooner, it might have been okay. Not choosing is almost always a bad choice. If you come out of hiding, more things will happen—things that can’t unhappen. I know that’s frightening. But things happen without you, too. When you’re not there. When you do nothing.”

Tifa rocked back on her heels. “You can’t make the world go back to the way it was before, get back the same happiness or hope from your memories…not even if you could wind back time.”

Here Tifa is combining her intimate knowledge of Vincent’s circumstances with her own situation to create a sort of…weaponized empathy.

She can’t afford for Vincent to not listen to her, because she refuses to either give up on her mission or kill him, so when the normal approach fails she falls back on contingency and proceeds to run absolutely roughshod over all his personal boundaries.

Now, being able to wield future information against people this way is one of the major features of this general genre of time travel story, particularly when (like Tifa here) the traveler had level-ups, but didn’t get to carry them into New Game Plus. Tifa later uses it against Tseng with no artfulness whatsoever.

But that kind of blunt, bludgeoning use of intimate knowledge is a power game; it’s not how you treat a friend. So Tifa spends a lot of this speech, especially the opening, drawing connections between her experience and Vincent’s, exposing herself emotionally as much as can reasonably be managed without going off on any Tifa-centric tangents.

Being displaced in time and separated from everything you cared about is relevant, here. And she’s also able to bring her personal experience with feeling helpless and trapped–not by the sort of clear antagonistic obstacle you can batter down with your fists but by the certainty that every possible course of action is Terrible and Wrong and so you can’t act, because you can’t choose–she specifically frames it in terms of having to decide between binary options, because that’s how we’ve seen her experience it wrt i.e. ‘talking to Cloud about how his brain is weird.’

The experience is similar enough to Vincent’s, especially his not-initiating of important relationship conversations with Lucretia at the beginning, for these terms to work for communication purposes, but it’s very definitely Tifa’s experience being mapped onto Vincent’s here, and proffered to ameliorate the inherent violence of what she’s doing.

Her coping mechanism for that trapped feeling, though, is to distract herself with Doing Something Constructive that allows her to avoid the issue without feeling like she’s stuck.

There’s a certain extent to which allowing time to process or grieve is important, and Tifa is bad at allowing it, largely I think because she’s very aware of the danger of getting mired in paralysis and ruminating on the bad thing until it’s all that exists. Vincent more than anyone else in the cast is defined by his choice to identify with his trauma, and while Aerith is the one most defined by trying not to do that, Tifa’s far enough to that end to create a conflict in viewpoint even when nothing vitally important is at stake.

I also included a dialogue ping to the place where she talks about this in the Advent Children movie, though if you’ve been following my opinions on ffvii any time at all you probably know I have so many problems with thedecisions made with Tifa in that film. Even the parts that areconsonant with her established characterization require her to have rolled back mostof her development from the OG.

The part where she doesn’t come with Cloud on the rescue mission shebullies him into is so utterly backward and the opposite of her establishedbehavior and values and just basic logic that I have to sort of write around it,because I can’t accept that it happened. But if we ignore that bit, and the amount of self-centeredness in the harangue, some elementsof the interaction have potential.

Because if nothing else it’s the most explicit verbal treatment in the Compilation of the recurring theme of people being ‘stuck.’ Not by bars and walls and certain death, but by the prisons inside their heads.

“But…there are still possibilities. Still things you can do to make the world better. Her choices…they weren’t your fault. But whatever you’re blaming yourself for right now…lying here until you die won’t make it better. The biggest sin of all, to me, is not trying to make things better.

“You aren’t a monster, Vincent. Nothing Hojo did to your body, nothing Lucrecia did to bring you back, could make you one. As long as you have your mind, you decide. And it’s what you decide to do that makes the difference between a human and anything else.”

She’s hitting hard, here: call to action, absolution, extremely targeted personal affirmation, clarification that she really does know what’s up with him, new information that Lucrecia was involved with his current status, and finally, optimistic conceptual framework imposed on the situation, since Vincent certainly isn’t capable of that himself.

This treatment of Vincent’s situation vis-a-vis humanity is, of course, also very relevant to the ensuing plot-central question of what Sephiroth is, and whether he has the power to make good life choices. Which Tifa is not nearly as sure of as with Vincent, since while she stands by the principle that it’s a matter of choice she knows for a fact that Vincent can make good ones, but has certainly never seen evidence with Sephiroth.

And then of course there’s Genesis, who would love to get everyone to accept that his sins are a function of what rather than who he is, and drag down with him anyone he can reach, and who by his very effort to sell the idea makes it seem less likely.

I’ve excerpted only Tifa’s dialogue and some of the tags from the rest of the passage, because her narration gets lengthier and isn’t what I’m focusing on for this commentary.

She waited. But the man in the box didn’t move, and he didn’t speak. “Lucrecia is still alive,” she told him. “Preserved in crystal. Hidden away. You two really are a pair, aren’t you? And maybe you’re both right to be concerned—she’s got Jenova in her, and you’ve got those things that replaced your Limit Breaks. But they don’t control you.”

[…]

“They don’t control you,” she repeated. “Hojo doesn’t control you. You can choose to do nothing for the rest of your long life if that’s what you really want. But it’s not your destiny. And it’s not what’s right.”

‘It’s not what’s right’ is an interesting line in retrospect, because Tifa’s saying it within a framework of denying Vincent’s reasoning that there’s something somehow virtuous about closing himself off from the world, so he can’t do any more harm. Specifically in the context of assuring him that he has control over his actions, and his Limit Break things don’t.

But in the overall argument, about how his power of self-determination relates to responsibility to the world, it can also be read as a moral condemnation, the suggestion that there is a specific thing that’s right, and Vincent isn’t doing it.

“Sephiroth is an adult now,” she said [….] “They put him in the Shinra military. Made him a General.”

[…] “If Hojo and Jenova have their way, he’ll become a monster soon,” she confided in the coffin. “Maybe there’s no way to change that. Maybe it’s too late for him. Maybe it’s his destiny. But it’s not too late for the rest of the world, not yet. I know that much. Everyone who has the power to fight him has a responsibility to try.”

That’s where her speech winds up–rather abrupt return to her earlier, blown-off argument about Sephiroth imminently killing everybody and how Vincent should help. He doesn’t do anything. He continues to be a box.

So then she punches her way into the coffin.

“What are you?”

She knew it wasn’t her feat of strength that had impressed him, though he probably appreciated the rhetorical force of it.

I really like this line. Describing ‘punching open the box someone’s hiding in at the climax of an inspirational speech’ as a rhetorical device is the kind of thing I find very funny, and I got characterization of both of them and story advancement into the sentence too.

“Tifa,” she said. “Tifa Lockhart.” She held out her right hand. “Get up, Vincent Valentine. The world isn’t done with you yet.”

He let her pull him up onto his feet.

Some obvious symbolism there, fitted into the very important fact that this worked.

Getting Vincent out of his coffin has been the only thing Tifa’s attempted so far in the story that has turned out more or less exactly as planned. Not entirely easily, and not following a step-by-step plot because that’s not Tifa, but without random factors interceding and requiring her to recalculate wildly, make decisions entirely on the fly, and draw up a new set of plans in the aftermath, either.

In a way, the Vincent recruitment section microcosms the fight Tifa’s having with the universe throughout the fic, in her efforts to make things line up so she can get a better outcome to this nightmare scenario she’s been pitched back into: direct, physical actions are persistently vital and necessary, but her real success must always hinge on her particular knowledge, and ability to apply it.

Apply it specifically, thus far, mostly to getting people to take her seriously and do as she says. Because she’s been placed in a position where as useful and important as her personal power is, it’s not the right tool to rely on for her central task. That has to be tackled via community building, in a context that intensely disinclines her to attempt such overtures.

Which in turn invokes one of the several great dichotomies of Tifa’s in-game characterization–the periodic tension between her social impulses, to bind and soothe and promote bonding, and her…reactive impulses, to seize the world in both hands and find something to fight and do and change, so she doesn’t feel helpless in the face of all that is evil.

The parts of her character arc in the game that aren’t actively about Cloud seem to center around being forced to face that both these behavior patterns (especially in their role as coping mechanisms) are capable of being not only inadequate but actively, harmfully inappropriate to particular situations.

And then coping with this fact, and continuing to inhabit these parts of her identity in ways that turn out constructive. E.g., choose caring for Cloud over leading party to do anti-Shinra things that have only the vaguest prospect of actually averting the apocalypse; successfully retrieve his mind from the Lifestream. Help punch Sephiroth to death and stop him from holding back Holy; world saved.

If you try really hard to get a personal moral for Tifa out of the OG that isn’t pretty sexist, it might come down to something like: realize that you might be acting wrongly; then, act. Stay afraid, but do it anyway.

And, optimistically: perhaps you do not have to choose between your faces. Perhaps they are both allowed. Perhaps all of you is allowed. Perhaps you are enough.

One of the things Tifa and Cloud share is needing so desperately to be enough.

In a way that’s a feeling that unites the entire party, in their various ways, except maybe Aerith, depending on how you interpret her relationship to the obligations of being the Last Ancient. But Tifa and Cloud are about the same age and come from the same context and share a major trauma, so it looks particularly similar in them.

And of course there are also ways it looks especially similar between Tifa and Vincent, because they’re the most hopeless romantics in the party. 😆

[qedavathegrey]

Untangling The Witch

I have seen things and I have things to say. It’s generally not my policy to be inflammatory (even if doing so is justified), because this is the internet and I know some of y’all don’t listen, can’t read, and love to argue, but on this day I’m gonna say my piece. If you’re trying to start anything but constructive discussion, know that you are not worth my time, I’m am the manager and the customer is not always right. That being said — and in keeping with the (loose) topic of this blog — we need to talk about witchcraft, namely the term “witch” and its definition. That’s where we’re starting anyway. I’ll add that I’m not a scholar of witchcraft specifically (though I do have an applicable degree), I’m not infallible nor do I claim to be. But I do know some things. I’ve been around the proverbial block. And I’m familiar with some of modern witchcraft’s confusing nature. We’re not going to touch on all of that (it would merit a class, this is only a lesson), but we’re gonna broach the surface.

Let’s start with The Witch, uppercase.

Who is The Witch, you ask?

Historically and cross-culturally, The Witch is a scapegoat: the one who sows discord and misfortune. Your cows mysteriously stop producing milk, your garden withers and dies, your children fall ill with fever or seizures? That’s The Witch, up to their old tricks. In this capacity, The Witch is a (semi-)mythical figure, always defined by the culture which produces it. That being said, how The Witch is dealt with varies: sometimes charms or wards are remedy enough (as with most unsavory spirits), but some would seek The Witch amongst themselves, demand responsibility. They would root The Witch out, have them punished for their “imagined” transgressions, force personal responsibility and demand they face the appropriate consequences or make their reparations. That’s the most basic and encompassing breakdown, nonspecific because in this case it doesn’t need to be. I know what you’re thinking: “Wait a minute, so you’re saying The Witch doesn’t exist as a real flesh and blood person, only a mythical scapegoat?” A good, valid question. Yes and no. Yes, The Witch is mythical, but does that mean those who practiced magic did not engage in summoning up blights and misfortunes on their bastard neighbors? Unlikely. Was everyone accused of being a Witch engaging in malicious magic? Absolutely not. Did some? Almost certainly. To be clear, however, what we’re not discussing here is the Witch Trails. The Church complicates matters (shocking) and we’ll touch on that briefly later. Instead, we change course now so that I might make my most important point:

Any user of magic does not a Witch make.

In fact, the aforementioned process of rooting out a Witch usually employs magic in some capacity, be it shooting an effigy with a silver bullet or putting the victim’s urine in a jar (two methods that are culturally specific). The witchmaster — to use a specific term broadly; one whose function is to discover and undo witchcraft — is, obviously, not a Witch, despite his or her magical proficiency. Nor those who practice folk magic, folk medicine, etc. That is until the rise of the Catholic Church, undoubtedly the origin of the conflation we see today (then expounded by Gardner and his various successors). Why is this such an important fact? Besides erasing nuance and betraying a misunderstanding of the term historically, it can be offensive and often times racist. Someone who practices Hoodoo, Curanderismo, or any specific cultural practice is not a Witch (or “witch” lowercase, for that matter) and to deem them such erases the history which produced not only the practice itself, but those who have dedicated themselves to it. These practices are borne from folk magic, often allowing for the survival of those maligned and thus underserved by their oppressors. They are largely passed orally and as such are preserved from unwanted influence. That is not to suggest they are static or unchanging, but curated by the knowledgeable and shared with those who are invited and trusted to put in the labor required. Even those practices which borrow from the magics of Europe and folk Catholicism (popular during the colonial period amongst commoners and thus, transported to the New and Old World alike), are not Witchcraft. During the Inquisition, the distinction between magic and witchcraft was upheld (to an extent that was convenient for the Church). See the Sicilian trials, where the Church bitterly shrugged when they couldn’t place the Devil in their folk practice. In fact, the Church maintained a disbelief in magic and only when they could insert the Devil did they bother with formal prosecution. That, however, is not something I’m going to unpack. Do know that Witchcraft was and is often used to excuse persecution: it is invisible and convenient. Remember, not only The Witch is a scapegoat, but so too the one accused. This does not extend to modern witchcraft, but many of the aforementioned folk traditions are unjustly maligned because of their presumed association with Witchcraft. All the more reason not to include them in your discussions of witchcraft.

But this does bring me to another important point:

Religion is not Witchcraft.

Vodun is not Witchcraft, Santeria is not Witchcraft, just as Hinduism and Islam are not Witchcraft. They are religions, they have frameworks which define all that happens within and without, and without understanding that framework, what magic they produce is not for your consumption. Period. And reading half-baked internet breakdowns will not make you an expert, in the same way watching Jimmy Swaggart or Joel Osteen won’t make you a priest. Have some respect. And while I’m on the topic, please refrain from calling anything belonging to an extant religion “mythology.” The difference between religion and mythology is only one of assigned validity: “religion” is always valid while “mythology” has become coded to mean “interesting, but ultimately primitive ignorance.” Indigenous religions exist, are valid, and attempts to confine them to the past is insensitive, please be mindful. Additionally, the concept of “mythology” only works if you believe the myth (see what I did there) that we are somehow culturally superior to those foreign to us, separated by either space or time (or both). That’s ethnocentrism, baby. Check yourself. That goes for things like Greek, Kemetic and Mesopotamian “mythology,” as well. They were state religions and even if it is not as damaging to the living to refer to them as “mythology,” it does paint a misleading picture and is no less founded on ignorance. Not to mention many such religions have been reconstructed to varying degrees and are being practiced again with what information is at their disposal.

So then, if I can’t call anyone or anything I don’t understand a Witch or Witchcraft, who can I? This one is easy: Anyone who wants to be called a witch. And notice how I didn’t capitalize it this time. I’m distinguishing the modern definition from the historical one. As mentioned above, at this time “witch” has come to mean one who practices “witchcraft,” a sort of magical catchall consisting of traditional folk magic (predominately European, but not exclusively), ceremonial magic, New-Age rituals, etc. For this reason, further distinctions are often made, i.e. I call myself a Red Witch, but my definition varies from others who call themselves the same. In something as varied as modern witchcraft, even specific terms have little weight. Ultimately, “witch” is what we call ourselves because it captures our position well enough without requiring further definition. People understand it (and misunderstand it) universally enough. It’s there, and by looking back we can understand how it came to be the term used. That being said, simply because it has come to be a catchall does not give anyone permission to force the label on those who refuse it. Just because someone does magic does not mean they’re a witch, even if that’s how you’ve come to understand the term or even how the term has been fed to you. And given the reimagining of the definition as the result of ignorance and a series of misunderstandings, they have no responsibility to explain why they would choose to refuse the moniker. Instead, we — witches — have more a responsibility when it comes to outlining our use of the term and explaining ourselves. Or at least those of us who do not corrupt livestock, put blights on our neighbors, or sow inconvenience at our every turn. What justification have we other than its easy, familiar, subversive? Is that enough? You can decide for yourself and leave it at that. If you want to call yourself a witch, then do so, but recognize it is not your position to assign the term as you see fit to those who continue to be harmed by such insouciant associations.

And know that I write this because I have been guilty of all of the above. I’m sharing so that my own transgressions are ones you need not make. It’s called growth and I’m providing a foundation for you to learn the “easy” way. I have learned, I have resolved to be better, so can you. Life’s a journey, knowledge is power, yadda yadda, cliche cliche, don’t disappoint me.Be conscious, be mindful, recognize your privilege and check when your entitlement is showing. That’s what growth is about. It’s work, sometimes hard but rarely as hard as you think. So do it. 

[dorminchu]

re: Mr. Robot’s twist

Currently plotting out a Mr. Robot AU that focuses on 4x11-4x13 but borrows elements more-so from seasons 1 and 2, and a bit of three, as well as a TON of introspection. I did start it around December, but neglected it because I wasn’t sure where to take it after the series ended.

I do have a bone to pick with the lack of details surrounding 4x07′s twist--as I felt like all the pieces were there to make it work, but some got lost or forgotten along the way, and as is it, the reveal feels kind of unearned despite the framework and delivery being solid.

This is really more of a meta post. I might continue it if there is interest. For now, massive spoilers (where Elliot is concerned) below the cut.

Disclaimer: This is purely speculation on Mr. Robot’s narrative structure involving the protagonist’s childhood abuse, not the subject of abuse in real life. I’m not a trained professional, these are just my thoughts. I adore Mr. Robot the series, so this isn’t meant to come from a place of negativity.

With that said: I can certainly believe Elliot (and Darlene!) suffered abuse at the hands of their parents--the mother, more obviously--but in Elliot’s case I did not walk away convinced that his father molested him. Neglected him, absolutely. But it could have been a friend of the dad’s from work or a teacher at school that preyed on Elliot, for all the difference it seems to make on the narrative.

To understand what I mean, let’s talk about Edward Alderson. We see a lot of evidence that the father was an irresponsible parent as demonstrated in flashbacks, most notably taking his eight year-old son to see movies that a kid of that age probably shouldn’t be watching (Reservoir Dogs, Time Cop, Shallow Grave etc.) and there’s that other scene where Elliot steals the customer’s money, I suppose.

In all of these flashbacks, as well as in the pictures Elliot unearths on the computer, there is no example of behavior I would classify as inappropriate or irredeemable on its own. Moreover, not all the pictures are of Elliot; there are a good number of the father alone, presumably before he got married. He seems to have a larger house than we see in Elliot’s memories of his childhood, and also appears to own a dog, and a Playstation console; so he’s well-off. I would be more inclined at this point to label Edward a narcissist than a pedophile.

Now, it’s true that Elliot is a woefully unreliable narrator, but that can only go so far before it stops making logical sense and just becomes a crutch for the plot. Elliot could have simply been the dad’s “favorite” kid; i.e. Edward wanted a friend more than a son, but despite his apparent selfishness he never would have dreamed of harming him or Darlene. It’s not as though we don’t have any examples of him acting like a parent ought to, either; Elliot’s favorite movie being Back to the Future II holds some thematic relevance, but it also seems a bit more appropriate for a kid to be interested in, and it’s presumably his father who introduced him to it, given the photo collection.

One could argue that this was “all for show”, but I don’t know if I believe that. Elliot clearly has some nicer memories of his father when he acted more like a parent should, and without counting the upcoming twist in 4x07, it’s also clear that his father was not perfect. Darlene hardly ever mentions him.

Now, we do get a few ominous lines regarding the window incident throughout the series; one of the more notable exchanges coming from Elliot and Darlene at the end of Season 3. 3x10, to be exact:

(italics added for emphasis)

DARLENE: Why did you bring up Kevin McCallister? The snowman. When we were in Coney Island, you asked me if I remembered. What was that all about? It felt so random.

ELLIOT: That was the day Dad pushed me out the window.

DARLENE: What are you... What do you mean, Dad pushed you out the window?

ELLIOT: He was mad that I told Mom about his cancer, and he pushed me out the window. You were young. I guess I never told you.

DARLENE:  What are you talking about, Elliot? I was there. We were in your room looking for a camera when Dad came home. For some reason you freaked out and told me to go hide in the closet. Then Dad came in the room, and all of the sudden you... I don't know, you just... snapped. You started swinging your baseball bat, hitting everything. 

ELLIOT: No. That's not what happened.

DARLENE: Trust me, I remember. You took your baseball bat and you smashed the window, and then you kept telling Dad you were gonna jump. Elliot, you weren't pushed. You jumped.

The most odd of these exchanges, in my opinion, is from 1x08, between Mr. Robot and Elliot. The argument reads as follows :

ELLIOT: This is where it happened, isn't it?

ROBOT: What? Where what happened?

ELLIOT: You remember anything about that window?

ROBOT: Come on, Elliot. Like I said, we should go. Elliot, what are you doing? Calm down--

(Elliot proceeds to break the window using Mr. Robot’s body and is now dangling him half-way over the edge)

ELLIOT: You pushed me out this window.

ROBOT: Elliot...

ELLIOT: You pushed me off the boardwalk.

ROBOT: Hey, come on.

ELLIOT: No. Maybe you're the one who needs some pushing now.

ROBOT: Calm down. It was an accident.

ELLIOT: Bullshit! I was eight years old. And you thought I deserved it. That's what you said, isn't it?

ROBOT: No, no.

ELLIOT: Yeah, right before you pushed me again!

ROBOT: No, no, no, Elliot, you thought you deserved it. You felt guilty about this your whole life, about telling people my secret. This anger was never at me. It was at you. Please, Elliot, you don't have to be angry at yourself any more. Just let it go. Please let it go.

ELLIOT: You're right. I was angry. I was angry at myself. I hated myself, for doing what I did to you. I'm ready to let go.

Elliot hated himself--for doing what? What did Mr. Robot (Edward?) think he deserved? Why is Elliot ready to let go when he’s clearly very angry? And what was Mr. Robot’s (or Edward’s) secret?

Well, with foresight, this could have something to do with Mr. Robot having to stand in for Elliot’s suffered abuse. But all this seems to prove is that the father was not around to protect Elliot rather than the one who directly facilitated the abuse.

But not necessarily. Recall Mr. Robot’s monologue from 1x01:

My dad was a petty thief. Never could hold down a job.

So, he just robbed, convenience stores, shops, small-time stuff. One time, he sat me down, he told me something I never forgot. He said, "Everyone steals. That's how it works. You think people out there are getting exactly what they deserve? No. They're getting paid over or under, but someone in the chain always gets bamboozled. I steal, son, but I don't get caught. That's my contract with society. Now if you can catch me stealing, I'll go to jail. But if you can't, then I've earned the money."

I respected that, man. I thought that shit was cool as a little kid. A few years after that, they finally caught him. Sent him to jail. Dies five years later. My respect goes with him. I thought he was free doing what he did, but he wasn't. He was in prison. Just like you are now, Elliot. But I'm gonna break you out.

Now with that in mind, going into Season 2, we get the window flashback. 

EDWARD: Oh, my God.

MAGDA: This is your fault! It's your fault!

EDWARD: I'm sorry! I'm so sorry. I'm so sorry!

MAGDA: What did you do, you son of a bitch? He's bleeding!

EDWARD: It was an accident.

MAGDA: God says there are no accidents!

EDWARD: Son, son, please talk to me. Talk to me please.

MAGDA: God help us, he's bleeding. The neighbors are looking. This is embarrassing.

EDWARD: Son, son, wake up. Wake up!

MAGDA: God, is he okay? Ask if he's okay!

EDWARD: Can't you see he's not responding, Magda?

MAGDA: It's your fault, it's your fault!

EDWARD: It was an accident.

MAGDA: God says there are no accidents.

EDWARD: I'm so sorry. Please call an ambulance! Call an ambulance!

And then, in the doctor’s office...

DOCTOR: As you can see by the images, everything appears to be normal, which is good news because there were no lesions from the scan, no hemorrhaging or bleeding, mild concussion, a few stitches. The forearm, however, is broken, so that will require a cast.

MAGDA: How much will that be?

DOCTOR: Excuse me?

MAGDA: How much will the co-pay be?

DOCTOR: Well, that's something you need to discuss with the billing department.

EDWARD: We'll talk about that later...

MAGDA: Shut up. You've lost your job. We have no money. How are we supposed to pay for this on top of all your other bills? Don't touch me.

EDWARD: I told you, there won't be any bills--

DOCTOR: Mr. and Mrs. Alderson, please, I'm going to have to ask you to step outside for a second. I'd like to talk to Elliot alone.

It’s clear that Elliot has been traumatized, but once again there’s nothing concrete beyond his lack of response. We don’t yet know what caused this reaction. His parents seem to be acting as expected, given their previous characterization; however, Magda is more concerned about the (recent?) loss of the father’s job, whereas Edward is trying to keep everything under control. Was he indeed a petty thief, as Mr. Robot alluded to in 1x01? Is that why the family has so many bills? (I’m also intrigued by the mother’s invocation of God--”God says there are no accidents!”--and the role God, or faith, subsequently plays in the therapy group and how it affects Elliot | Mr. Robot, but the series never brings up his mother’s faith again, as far as I am aware.)

Moreover, this is the point where Mr. Robot becomes this relentless, antagonistic force in Elliot’s life, at least up until 2x06. We’ve caught glimpses of this dangerous proclivity in Season 1, but now all Robot seems to want is for Elliot to get out of prison and back to work, and he’s more than happy to shoot him in the head, and (in the book at least) constantly sabotaging him(self) to accomplish this.

On my initial viewing, I wondered if this was representative of Elliot’s relationship with his late dad; a person he wanted to protect him, but who was unable (or unwilling) to for undisclosed reasons.

Elliot explicitly mentions Mr. Robot’s purpose in 2x07:

Mr. Robot was a part of me that I created because of my pain. So now we have a chance to start again. Our handshake negotiated us as partners.

In 2x06, Robot takes the punches from Ray’s guys, and we see the damage done to Elliot in the aftermath of his dissociation.

In 2x07 Robot takes the punches again, but vanishes just before Elliot is about to be raped, which is kind of interesting (note: I could be reading too much into this) as it appears to suggest a limitation of sorts; Mr. Robot can only protect Elliot from so much.

This idea of limitation was further exemplified to a lesser extent during Season 3, where Mr. Robot is largely absent, and completely vanishes after the E Corp incident. Later on in Season 4, he is no longer the aggressor (ironically, Elliot is far harsher throughout the first half of Season 4), vanishing after a certain point during 4x07 and he doesn’t resurface for almost the entirety of 4x08. It should also be noted that Robot does not vanish permanently in any of these cases--at least, until 4x13, when he’s no longer needed.

That’s all I’ve got, for now. 

[fulcrumahsokaamidala]

Fan Fic Catch Up: One-shot

Hello, everyone!!! So this is me thanking awesome fanfic writers for their amazing work and all the time they put into their fics. ♥️ I want to recommend spectacular fanfic stories I’ve read since my last spectacular Saturday post! ♥️ Which was last November!!! Saturday spectacular post will resume this Saturday. Will still be tagged as #saturday spectacular fic rec

This is the second of three catch up posts.

Completed multi-chapter fics

WIP fic

One-shots

cook with love (to make food for the soul) by @inlovewithimpossibillity | Arrow | One-shot

Summary: ‘I don’t really cook.’ ‘That makes sense.’

An expansion on the beginning sequence of 8x05 within which Oliver takes it upon himself to try and remedy a gap in Mia’s education. The kitchen.

these faultlines in our guard by @alexiablackbriar13 | Arrow | One-shot

Summary: Instead of forcing Mia into doing the initiation bell exercise, the Bratva use more extreme measures to try and extract information from Oliver, using his daughter. Mia is left trying to deal with the physical and emotional aftermath of being tortured in front of her father while he dials his overprotective instincts from 10 up to 11.

Viscount Hood’s Return by @hope-for-olicity | Arrow | One-shot

Summary: Lady Felicity Smoak attends a Yuletide Ball and is surprised to discover Viscount Hood.

A Perfect Holiday Getaway by @blondeeoneexox | Arrow | One-shot

Summary: This fic is just a whole lot of holiday Olicity fluff.

no I don’t hardly know her (but I think I could love her) by vickovac | Brooklyn Nine-Nine | One-shot

Summary: 'I’m in the library doing extra-credit work and you’re working on a term paper due tomorrow’/'you accidentally took my coffee’ 'you really drink that?’/'I took the flyer for the society you were handing out because you’re so pretty but I have no idea what we actually do’ AU

or Amy Santiago, like any normal college student, has a routine. Naturally, her class rival, Jake Peralta, disrupts it…in the best way possible.

Boyfriends From College by Impossibly_Izzy | Brooklyn Nine-Nine & One Day at a TIme | One-shot

Summary: Jake dated two guys in college, but doesn’t realize until he introduces one of them to Amy.

Into the B99-Verse by ThatOneSmolFangirl | Brooklyn Nine-Nine & Into the Spider-Verse | One-shot

Summary: that title was so bad ANYWHO, our favorite boy, Miles Morales, finds himself in the Brooklyn-99 precinct. Him interacting with everyone and generally having a good time. Based off that one tumblr post

Are You Wearing My Shirt? by @green-arrows-of-karamel | Arrow | One-shot

Summary: Felicity has a little accident and borrows Oliver’s shirt.

Not The Last Time by CSM | Arrow | One-shot

Summary: Post 804. Mia desperately wants to see her mother and there is no stopping her, so Oliver and William accompany her to Bloomfield to see a surprised Felicity and baby Mia.No association with my other season 8 fic

Big Belly Reprieve by @inlovewithimpossibillity | Arrow | One-shot

Summary: Bored in the bunker waiting for their parents to finish at the gala, FTA head to Big Belly to introduce Mia to the food of their childhood. [Set in 8x06: Reset]

Merry and Bright by @inlovewithimpossibillity | Arrow | One-shot

Summary: The 2013 Queen Consolidated Holiday Office Party sneaks up on CEO, Oliver Queen, but if he’s learnt one thing this year, it’s that anything’s possible when he has Felicity Smoak by his side. (For the 'Olicity Holiday Tropes Challenge’ prompt: Office Party)

The Little Green Secret by @green-arrows-of-karamel | Arrow | One-shot

Summary: This is not how Oliver imagined New Year’s Eve was going to be.

A Heart Full of Love by @inlovewithimpossibillity | Arrow | One-shot

Summary: With Christmas upon them now, Felicity has to admit that she’s incredibly excited as well to do something other than eat takeout and watch Disney movies with her baby girl. Sharing the Queen’s traditions with them is just another move towards them becoming a more cohesive family and she’ll always be excited for that. [A Christmas morning fic set within my Single Parents AU 'Welcome to Starling Prep Elementary’ around a year later]

sugar and smoke rings by @inlovewithimpossibillity | Arrow | One-shot

Summary: He never would have believed the full story if it hadn’t come directly from the lips of the man he trusts most in the world. The legendary vigilantes Green Arrow and Overwatch had a daughter no one knew about?[How Connor meets Mia, pre-s7 flashforwards]

kissing death and losing my breath by fbismoak (midwestwind) | Arrow | One-shot

Summary: “In the grand scheme of things, she figures she’s probably due for a mental break anyway.“Picks up immediately after the end of 2x07.

A Late Christmas Present by @alanna-the-lionheart | Arrow | One-shot

Summary: When Oliver and Felicity’s friends send their wedding gift back to them, the two of them feel quite differently about it. Oliver tamps down his frustrations in an effort to make Felicity feel better, and together, the two of them turn an unpleasant situation on its head.

a father should be great by @inlovewithimpossibillity | Arrow | One-shot

Summary: Two conversations, thirty years apart. A seven-year-old Felicity and a nine-year-old Mia. Both two scared girls wondering why their fathers are no longer with them. Both seeking the comfort of their mothers.

Everything by WinnieTherPooh | Agents of SHIELD | One-shot

Summary: Jemma tries to reconcile the Doctor of the Framework with her Fitz. Set immediately post-Framework (in a world where the space adventure doesn’t happen, or at least doesn’t begin right away).

hot chocolate conversations by riverwoodhills | Arrow | One-shot

Summary: Walter stumbles upon a distraught Oliver being consoled by his Executive Assistant in his office, a hot chocolate being passed subconsciously between them.

open up the door for you by @inlovewithimpossibillity | Arrow | One-shot

Summary: A random evening with a little too much whiskey leads to Mia opening up to Connor about where she comes from and a little bit more.

gentle lady, your knight is here ready  by @alexiablackbriar13 | Arrow | One-shot

Summary: Set in S2. A collection of missing scenes. The five times Oliver took care of Felicity and the one time she took care of him.

(drop everything) meet me in the moonlight by @inlovewithimpossibillity | Arrow | One-shot

Summary: Oliver is working late one summer’s night in the mayoral office when a text from Felicity alerts him that everything is not alright with his beautiful, blonde ex-fiancée partner. (or post-s4, Felicity’s trying desperately to deal with the guilt of Havenrock and reaches out to Oliver one night when it’s all a little too much.)

we do, but friends don’t by @inlovewithimpossibillity | Arrow | One-shot

Summary: Detective Billy Malone learns many things early on in his relationship with Felicity Smoak but his most important finding is just how close she seems to be with her ex-fiancé, newly appointed Mayor Queen.[a (semi-)outside perspective on olicity, just before the start of s5]

Life was Full of Surprises - and Oliver Queen was the Best One byaponderingcharming | Arrow | One-shot

Summary: Set sometime in Season 2. After a rough night, Oliver gets drunk and Felicity is left to take care of him. After some fluff and a heartwarming moment of honesty, Felicity notes a shift in their relationship.

kneel by 101places | Agents of SHIELD | One-shot

Summary: Simmons has a bad reaction to an episode of Doctor Who.

a dance or two to escape the gloom by @alexiablackbriar13 | Arrow | One-shot

Summary: Queen Incorporated’s Oliver Queen and Felicity Smoak of Smoak Technologies, rival CEOs, dance with each other at a holiday gala to avoid their exes.

New Year’s Eve by @alexiablackbriar13 | Arrow | One-shot

Summary: William pulls a 5x20 on Connor and Mia, locking them inside the bunker on New Year’s Eve with Indian food and wine. Of course, things escalate.  

Regret by Altum_Videtur  | Star Wars: The Clone Wars | One-shot

Summary: In the aftermath of the Battle of Ryloth, Ahsoka comes to terms with being responsible for other people’s lives. Set right after Storm Over Ryloth.

The Subtleties of Fashion by FrostOnGalway | Star Wars: The Clone Wars | One-shot Summary: Can we all agree that Ahsoka’s first outfit with the tube-top and mini-skirt is terrible for so many reasons? Anakin thinks so, and he’s gonna take a stand against stupid costume designers. The only problem is, how does he do that without hurting Ahsoka? When faced with a crisis of fashion (or most crises, really) the obvious solution is to go to Padmé for help. AKA The story of how Ahsoka gets her new outfit in Season 3. AKA The Fashion and the Arts (of Subtlety) Remix

you put your arms around me (and i’m home) by @inlovewithimpossibillity​ | Arrow | One-shot

Summary: The bunker is filled with people, Mia had been right about that, and there are many faces she recognizes staring back at her in shock but Mia is only interested in one of them.[An 8x10 spec-fic based off of the promo stills wherein Adult Mia meets 2020 Felicity]

no one will win this time by @alexiablackbriar13​ | Arrow | One-shot

Summary: Canon divergent from COIE Part 5.Instead of targeting the Paragons, the pissed-off Anti-Monitor sends shadow demons after Oliver’s loved ones. Realizing two of the people Oliver loves most are vulnerable currently out in Bloomfield, dealing with the archer’s death, Sara rushes to protect Felicity and baby Mia, and bring them back to Star City so they can keep them safe.

The Next Right Thing by @inlovewithimpossibillity​ | Arrow | One-shot

Summary: A cabin. A wife. A teenager. A baby. Felicity Smoak is shaken to her core after the events of Crisis but she must come together for her son and daughter now. For Oliver, and for the true reason he sacrificed so much.

Take Your Daughter Into Battle Day by @alexiablackbriar13​ | Arrow | One-shot

Summary: Oliver and Mia are trying to keep her identity secret from the other superheroes as Crisis begins, saying that she’s a Green Arrow from E-20 called Maya. But after their first huge team battle, Barry and Kara quickly notice something is up between them - and the truth unfolds.

Let me know if you want to be tagged!

@hope-for-olicity @emdee8907 @malafle @laxit21 @icannotbelieveiamhere

[realityhelixcreates]

Beta, Theta, and Me Chapter 8: Civil Disobedience

Chapters: 8/?

Fandom: Thor (Movies), Avengers (Movies) Marvel Cinematic Universe

Rating: PG

Warnings: Relationships: Loki x Reader (But not right now),

Characters: Loki(Marvel) Additional Tags:  A/B/O, Sorta, More Of An Exploration Of Life And Self Expression Within An A/B/O Framework, Loki Does What He Wants, But Loki Does Not Actually Do What He Wants, Antagonistic Bosses, Loki Has A Throne Now, But It’s Not What He Wanted

Summary:  In direct defiance of Loki’s orders, you make life easier for him.

“Like he got mad that you were asking questions?” Stark asked over the phone. “If he starts getting like that, you don't have to keep asking.”

“No, not like that at all!” You exclaimed, back to the door, trying to speak over the sound of cursing and thumping from the penthouse outside. “He wanted to tell me! He was trying to, but it was like something clamped his mouth shut, and he couldn't get it out. Looked like it really hurt.”

“Damn. That's way worse than just withholding the information. What the hell is even with this guy? If it's not one weird thing, it's some other weird thing. Okay, well don't put yourself in danger if you don't have to.”

“Yeah. I'm just...hanging out now.” You said nervously. The crashing was still going on. “Gonna be fine though.”

“Are you sure?”

“Yeah, yeah! It's fine! Talk to ya later, boss!” You hung up the phone. You didn't want Stark to hear the disturbance. You definitely didn't want him sending anyone up here to 'calm things down'; that would only end badly for everyone involved, but probably Loki most of all.

He was still injured. And this tantrum couldn't be helping, with all the expended magic, and undue stress on his neck.

And you didn't actually want to leave yet. You knew this wouldn't last forever. Logically, you knew. Loki would heal, and you would move on. It was inevitable. Nothing stayed.

But you didn't want it to be over yet. You didn't want him to be carted off to the hospital or jail just yet. You didn't want to be relocated or let go yet. There were other factors at play now. The territorial desire for a place to call your home. The pride that wouldn't allow you to admit failure, even if you hadn't actually failed anything. The burning curiosity. Now, more than ever, you wanted to know what had happened to him! But obviously you couldn't just come out and ask him about it.

The shouting and crashing had died down outside your door, replaced by coughing. You cracked your door and peeked out.

You could just barely see Loki, red-faced and clutching his armrests tightly. His teeth were bared in a gritted snarl, but the coughing was a rhythmic sound repeating itself as though he was laughing. After a moment you realized that wasn't it. He was sobbing.  

He had told you-ordered you-not to come back today.

But you were out in the hall anyway, grabbing up a box of tissues on your way to him.

“Insubordinate fool.” He gasped. “How dare you defy me?”

“Mhm.” You began carefully blotting up his tears.

“I could kill you. Instantly.”

“Any second.”

“And still you disobey! I should punish you most severely for this.”

“Yeah. You should really bring out your worst.”

You found yourself in his lap somehow; it was really the only position you could be in, in order to reach his face and stroke his hair, offer him the comfort he had obviously been craving for so long.

“You cannot imagine the frustration!” He raged, and you clucked, and cooed, and agreed. You probably didn't really understand. Something had obviously been done to him that was far and away from the trauma you had experienced. So you continued to caress his cheeks and let him get his ranting out.

“I deeply wish you had not seen that.” He admitted, once he had a better grip on himself.

“I'm a servant, right?” You said. “I don't really have any impact on your reputation. Besides, I'm your omni-servant, aren't I? She who does all? Didn't you have, like, councilors on Asgard?”

“Of course. But it was...unseemly...for someone of my station...and then it was too late.”

Sheer force of will kept you from rolling your eyes. Of course there was a stigma against him getting the help he needed. Because he was a prince, or an Alpha, or a man. It was just one more stupid flaw of Alpha-run societies. It was just the same here on Earth.

“How is your neck?” You asked. “Do you need any painkillers or anything?”

“Uncomfortable, and no.” He answered, letting you stand once again. “Your drugs are useless to me. And we do not profane our bodies with such anyway. It's an insult to our physical purity.”

“Oh my god, Loki. Are you an anti-vaxxer?”

“A what? No, it's just that Asgardians are impervious to viruses, and so am I. And there is no pain so great that I cannot endure it. Think me weak, simply because of this?” He gestured to his neck brace. “My pain is pure. I do not need to do anything about it, save endure.”

“Not weak, just that there's nothing wrong with-”

“I do not require that kind of sympathy.” He interrupted. “Your comfort was a gift, but you need not press it further.”

“All right, all right!” You said. Was this some kind of Asgardian thing? “No painkillers, I get it. How is it though? Is it still broken, or is that even what happened in the first place?”

He stared at you with the wariness of a wild animal. “It was...” He paused. Nothing happened. “It was broken.”

“How?” Who could do that to a god?

He hissed in pain.

“I mean, how did you survive?” You amended swiftly. Whatever had done it must be tied to whatever was enforcing his silence.

“I...I...was in space. In a sort of torpor. It has happened before. So too, was my brother. A ship came, ostensibly in response to our distress call, but more realistically to salvage any valuables from the wreck. They found Thor, and something possessed them to bring him aboard. He woke there, and for once-for once-he refused to leave me behind.

Their captain came out to find me. He is human, and a sentimental fool, like all your kind. When he saw that my neck was wrong...I do not know what it is about your people that drives them to do such things without even thinking about it...like some kind of strange instinct...he straightened my head. Damn fool has phenomenal luck. He got it just right. I woke up right out there in space with him, mostly unable to move. He went back immediately to get me an old style of space helmet; it was so thick and bulky that it acted as a makeshift brace just long enough for them to put together a real one.

The whole crew of that ship is irrevocably insane, lunatics, all of them. But I owe my life to human sentimentality.”

“So we aren't all bad, huh?” That was a heck of a story, if you'd ever heard one. He was right though; that was incredibly lucky. How easily he could have died.

“You are exhausting. Well. You specifically are not. But that crew was. Whoever heard of an Omega captaining such a ship? He was such an odd one. Already claimed, of course, not that he was my type.”

“How long do you think it will take to heal? Did a doctor look at you when you got here?”

“Yes, a human doctor saw to me. Tried to pierce my skin with a needle. Tried to give me a dose of something called 'morphine'! I informed him of his impertinence when the needle broke. Idiot. His tools could do nothing. To injure me took the power of an inf-fi-fff-AHG!”

He broke off, gagging.

“Loki! Loki, Loki, shhh, shhhh, I get it, he couldn't help you. Okay.”

A few moments passed while Loki caught his breath.

“The nature...of my injury...slows its healing. As does my use of magic, as does my distance from Asgard, as does the constant strain of just living my life.” He wheezed.

The nightmares. The curse, or whatever it was that hurt him when he tried to talk about it. All of those stresses must be constantly re-injuring him, keeping him from healing properly.

“What can I do?” You asked. In the back of your head, you were yelling at yourself not to get any further involved, not to offer any more of yourself, but you didn't take it back.

“You? You can do nothing, what do you think you could possibly do?” Loki scoffed. “You already take some pressure off. I do not have to use as much magic with you around.”

“Is there anything else I can do? So you can use less magic? Is there anything left of Asgard that can be brought here? Do you think, I dunno, lullabies or warm milk before bed would help with the nightmares? I can learn to sing better!”

He stared at you, expression severe and hard to read. Maybe you had overstepped again.

“I'll think about it.” He said. “For now, I am tired...warm milk? Really? Am I an infant?”

“No milk? Not even with cinnamon?”

Loki's lip curled. “Disgusting.”

“Man, you really are a picky eater.”

He had you leave him by the fireplace with is books, and prepare dinner. You went with pot roast this time, dumping all the ingredients into a slow cooker, and washing the prep dishes, while thinking to yourself.

You were so done with suffering. It had been all around you for so long, inescapable, the greater portion of your lived experience. There had to be something else. You'd caught tantalizing glimpses of another way of life, like peeking through the slats of a fence. But every time you thought you had found a way to slip through, somebody boarded it up. Even now, when the sun was out, and things were looking up, you couldn't help but look at this man, and see the rich, velvety layers of misery he was swaddled in.

Perhaps it was just another symptom of the human sentimentality he so scorned. To see someone in pain, and instinctively want to alleviate it. It was so integral to the core of humanity that your people had to be bombarded with a constant blitz of propaganda designed specifically to erode your compassion and empathy, just so you would stop. But it didn't stop you, not all of you. There were still protests, and strikes, and mutual aid, and community action. The urge was still there; it could not be stripped from all of you.

You returned to his side while waiting for dinner to cook. It would be a few hours yet, in which you didn't have much to do, so you sank down on the cushion he had taken to leaving near the fireside for you. Loki was staring into the sparks, as if trying to glean meaning from their dance.

“Would it offend your sensibilities overmuch to help me dress?” He asked. “It would reduce my magic use by a small amount.”

“Yeah, I could probably do that.” You said. That wouldn't be so bad, especially since he was mostly wearing robes during his convalescence. The underthings would be a challenge, simply because of the basic embarrassment that nudity always brought on. But if you could get past the awkwardness, it shouldn't be difficult.

“Are you certain? You will be exposed to certain things that could dishonor you.” He said.

“Dishonor?” You snorted. “What's there to dishonor? You already said you weren't gonna do anything to me.”

“Ah, but I do not wish to make you suffer the temptation.”

“Not gonna be a problem, trust me.” You said. Embarrassment, maybe. Temptation? Never. It was an advantage, you told yourself. Over and over again, you told yourself. At the back of every man who walked out your door, you told yourself. It was an advantage. The pheromones didn't effect you. It made you free.

But Loki frowned slightly. “Very well.” He said, slightly miffed. “You can bathe me as well, if it means so little to you.”

And there it was again. The pride always bruised like an overripe pear.

“I probably can, yeah.” You said, holding on to feigned nonchalance. That was somewhat more difficult, because it meant you would have to be physically touching more of him than you would by just dressing him. But cleaning himself probably took a lot more magic that getting dressed did. And the touch would just be kind of inconvenient, and then there was the brace...

“What do I do about the brace?” How would you wash his hair and face without getting it wet? How would you wash his neck?

“Unfortunately, I will have to use a little bit of magic to keep it dry.” Loki admitted. “Still, it will be less than before. Are you truly sure about this?”

“Never know if I don't try.” You said.

“Strange little thing. To be so cavalier. Well, we shall see how brave you are when the time comes.”

                                                                          ******

The time had come, and now you knew why Loki's tub was so damn big. It was built to accommodate his incredibly long legs, as well as any helpers he might require.

And probably a bit of debauchery as well. You couldn't discount that possibility, unlikely as it was that he would have partners over any time soon.

You stood in hot water just up to your thighs, wielding a soapy scrubbing pad, while Loki lounged submerged nearly to his shoulders. Things were going well so far.

Stripping him down hadn't actually been so bad; the man was built like a Geefs sculpture, like a statue of the Devil so beautiful it had to be removed from the church. He had done almost nothing to hide his privates from your view, almost challenging you, but it didn't matter. That wasn't what drew your eyes.

No, your gaze was held by the roadmap of scars that meandered across his torso, around his back, over his shoulders. A hundred human lifetimes of cuts and stabs, of burns and gashes. A cicatrix as long as your hand just to the side of his sternum caught and trapped your attention. What could do that? What could do that to him? It had a brother, a twin less than an inch from his spine. It must have been a blade. It must have severed ribs.

“It was an abomination, since you are wondering.” Loki had said, catching your horrified stare. “Like legends of old, we became each other's demise.”

“But...”

“Does it disgust you? Am I so ugly to you now that you have seen all of me?”

“No! You're just...” Like an exaltation of form that had inspired artists for millennia. An expression of beauty that could be appreciated so much farther than just the carnal. Even the marks that scrawled across his body like a cuneiform tablet only added to the story of him. The tantalizing story of a being ages old and aeons away.

He'd sunk slowly into the water with an appreciative moan, shameless, ruling the moment like the prince he was.

He'd given you a different uniform for this activity. It was basically a one-piece bathing suit, but it retained the aesthetic of your Asgardian uniform. How did he just have these things? It wasn't an immodest garment by any means, but you felt almost as revealed as he was while wearing it.

The soap was definitely something special; luxurious and sudsy, it was actually moisturizing, and smelled like a forest in Autumn. You kept your little exfoliating pad frothy with it, and used it to limit the amount of physical contact with him. He wasn't making it easy; he kept stretching out and posing, leaning into your touch, moaning at your gentle ministrations. You were being gentle, even though you just wanted to scrub him off and get this over with, but he was clearly in a roguish mood.

He flicked water at you in playful little splashes.

“Why are you trying so hard to stay dry, you prim little thing? There is plenty of room. You can relax too, just as long as you do your job.”

You shied away from the water droplets. “It's bad luck to mix work and play. Always comes back to bite me.”

“I don't bite that hard, do I?” He asked.

“Don't want to find out. You already threatened to drink my blood once, remember?”

He gave a fake frown. “That was before I realized how sour you were. No respectable bloodsucker would be able to stand two drops of you.”

“Then I'll keep my precious blood to myself. Now show me your back.”

“With pleasure.” He stood up to turn around, deliberately giving you a view of his marble ass. You were tempted to give it a hard pinch. After all, if he was going to act like an exasperating child, you might as well treat him like one. However, you also felt it was more likely that you would break your fingers squeezing before he even felt the slightest sting.

He paused a moment before sitting back down, just making sure you got a good eye full. What a brat. Was he like this as a kid? You couldn't imagine what kind of royal terror he must have been, with his tempers and his tricks. He didn't seem terribly hard to please though.

You set about scrubbing his back, taking note of the many scars there. Many of them seemed similar to each other, as if they had all been inflicted by the same awful weapon. Long, thin, and criss-crossed. You didn't know what could have caused them, but he flinched the first time you touched them, quickly regaining control.

“Does that hurt?” You asked. They didn't look fresh, but that didn't mean anything. “What made these?”

“Lash.” He said, but cut you off with a sharp hand gesture when you started to ask more questions.

Was it related to the things he couldn't say, or just another bad memory? A whip? There were so many of those marks.

You carefully washed his hair, probably the least stressful part of the whole affair, though you did watch his face carefully for any signs of discomfort regarding his neck.

You were just about to declare him clean and step out of the tub, when his hand shot out and caught you by the wrist.

“Aren't you forgetting something?” He asked. You noticed the suppressed mirth in his voice and didn't know if you liked it.

“Don't think I am, no.” You said. He gestured to the water. Specifically, he gestured to the water that was currently covering his crotch.

Oh, it was going to be like that? A challenge? Bratty to the last.

“How could I have possibly forgotten?” You drawled sarcastically. You reached down into the water and grabbed him without any ceremony or gentleness. He went instantly hard in your hand.

Perhaps this had been a bad idea.

But as you held up the rough scrubbing pad and saw the merriment drain from his expression at the realization of what was coming, vengeful satisfaction settled in your soul. He barely had time to protest before you plunged the pad underwater and gave the whole area the cleaning he'd demanded.

When you were done, and his muffled yelps had subsided, you tossed the pad aside, and climbed out of the water.

“All done!” You announced with fake cheer.

Loki glared at you, his lips pressed so tight, they almost disappeared. There wasn't any anger in his gaze, but you slipped out of the bathing room quickly, lest the heat of it bore into your back.  

[cupidmarwani-archive]

Do My Hands Deceive Me (4/5)

It’s a blur. Crockett doesn’t remember most of it right now, but he can easily out together the pieces. Sitting on the edge of a hospital bed. A shock blanket on his shoulders. Blood on his hands. He does remember loud noises, and he definitely remembers Ethan. Staring up at the sky. Unresponsive. Empty. Crockett’s head hurts but that’s nothing because Ethan got really hurt, and it’s all his fault.

He watches the hospital in front of him, but doesn’t process most of it. He’s cold all over. Eventually, his mother arrives. She’s talking but he doesn’t hear her, holding him but he doesn’t feel her. He’s empty. 

And in truth, he isn’t sure what to do with himself in a hospital. He’s done a lot of things, been through a lot of things, but he doesn’t think he’s been to the emergency room since he was young and broke his arm playing with his friends. Something about it leaves him feeling so weak. He’s not weak. Although he’d very much like to get high right now to try and fight back against the pain threatening to burst out of him, explode and coat these sanitized walls in his anger and his fear and his worry for Ethan.

“Ethan,” he says finally. His voice is hollow. “I wanna see Ethan.”

His routine has been disrupted and, although he doesn’t want to admit it, he’s scared. He has structure to his life, although it doesn’t seem so, and without that framework to rely upon, he’s lost. The best place to start is where he strayed. With Ethan. With Ethan, who bled beneath him. That’s where the stains on his hands came from.

He might be crying.

“He’s not awake yet,” his mother says.

Crockett shakes his head. “I wanna see him.”

Whatever the fuck it takes, he wants to see him. It feels like the way to regain his footing and maybe ease some of his fear that Ethan is dead and gone, killed trying to protect him. From what, Crockett doesn’t remember. He doesn’t even remember being scared. Just that there was a gun and whoever had it fired first. Ethan fired in retaliation. He wants to be near him and hear his heart to make sure it’s still beating.

So his mother calls a nurse, who arrives with a wheelchair and helps ease Crockett into it. He wants to say he can walk just fine, but he’s also not sure if that’s true and doesn’t want to find out for certain, just in case. So he allows it, and holds his shock blanket tightly in his bloody hands as the nurse wheels him away, his mother beside him. They don’t talk much. Maybe they should. 

They have to go up two floors, to what Crockett realizes is a recovery area for people who’ve just come out of surgery. There’s a man with a heart pillow beside him, a woman with her head wrapped in bandages. They’re awake. When they reach Ethan, he isn’t. He’s just laying there in a thin hospital gown. There’s those little oxygen nubs in his nose, and three different IVs set up on a steady drip into his arm. Two of them are clear, but one is dark red. Blood. There had been a lot of blood. Crockett looks down at his hands again. This blood is Ethan’s. 

He reaches out slowly, carefully. Frightened, almost, of what might happen.

Nothing does. Crockett takes Ethan’s calloused hand, cold, and holds it tightly, but there’s no response. He’s limp. Unconscious. He probably wouldn’t let Crockett hold his hand if he was awake, because he’s been so stiff. Rebuffing every advance. Treating Crockett like he’s a person, like he’s more than a prop or a picture. Worth knowing.

“Is he going to be okay?”

The nurse picks up the chart hanging on the foot of the hospital bed and scans it briefly. “The bullet went through and through, and missed his lungs and heart, but it did break a couple of his ribs.” She puts the chart back. “It’ll be a slow process, but he should make a full recovery.”

Should is a word Crockett can’t trust. He learned that a long time ago. But he does want to believe that Ethan is going to be okay, because he doesn’t know what it means if Ethan never recovers. If he dies. He doesn’t want him to die.

Little patches and pieces of the blood on his hands flake off onto the white sheets, onto Ethan’s palms. They’re rough, but Crockett likes to imagine they’d be gentle if they touch him. Ethan defended him- twice- and probably wouldn’t hit him, wouldn’t choke him until he passes out. Even if Crockett asked him to.

“Honey, we should probably get you checked out,” his mother says. “The doctors-”

“I’m not leaving him.”

And he means it. Crockett doesn’t want to leave Ethan’s side, not when this is all his fault.

“You were drugged. And we still don’t know who did it, or why.”

“I don’t care.”

True to his word, Crockett stays there, sitting in a wheelchair and exhausted, holding Ethan’s hand, until long after the sun rises over the next morning. A rotating shift of hospital security guards keep an eye on him. He doesn’t think he sleeps. It’s hard to tell when the world is just the shake in each of his tense muscles at the onset of withdrawal, and the world is just him and Ethan.

It’s mid morning when Ethan wakes up, groaning as he shifts beneath the crisp sheets. Alive. He looks around his little recovery suite slowly, his eyes eventually resting on Crockett’s face and staring through him for a long moment before seeming to recognize him. It’s heartbreaking. 

“Ethan?” he says softly, squeezing his hand.

Ethan squeezes back and rubs a hand over his face. “I- are- are you okay?”

His voice is all rough and breathy. Wheezing As soon as he stops talking, he clutches his chest and hisses through his teeth. Broken ribs. Right. But he’s awake again and he hasn’t pulled away from Crockett’s touch.

“I’m okay.” Crockett’s pretty sure he isn’t, though. He feels like crawling into a hole and dying. “You got shot for me.”

Ethan looks down at his body. He pulls at the edge of his gown, revealing the bandage on his chest. There’s a small stain where the blood seeped through. At least it doesn’t seem to be actively bleeding anymore. Crockett thinks that’s a good sign. He’s not a doctor. 

“It’s part of the job.”

It shouldn’t be. Crockett forces out a laugh. Fake. Ethan is hurt because of him and the world has changed. Right now, Ethan is smiling at him so softly, and Crockett isn’t high, and he thinks his chest might explode. He gets out of the chair, legs weak, and hoists himself over the edge of the bed. Immediately, Ethan lets go of his hand to wrap an arm around him, stabilizing him and keeping him close. Held. Close. Safe. Crockett rests his head against Ethan’s shoulder, careful of his chest because it has to hurt, even with the morphine they must have given him.

“I’m sorry,” he says.

“It’s not your fault.”

Except for the fact that it is. If not for Crockett, for his recklessness and naivety, Ethan would have never been shot. He doesn’t argue, but he feels it in his blood, just as he feels the steady rise and fall of Ethan’s chest, hears the rasp of his breath. He’s hurt. And Crockett watches Ethan find the little remote attached to his IV with several buttons. One to call a nurse. One to give him a fresh hit of morphine. One to raise his bed, one to lower. Plenty that aren’t labelled. Ethan’s thumb finds the painkiller button and presses down hard, once and then twice.

“Going to resign now?”

Ethan laughs, nowhere near as full as it used to be when he would acknowledge a joke or a flirt. It’s shallow. Maybe he really will give up, which Crockett really ought to have expected, but hurts more than he wants to admit. Whoever comes next will be worse. Crockett has gotten used to how protective and kind Ethan is. He doesn’t want to lose him.

“No, but I’m gonna be out of commission for a while.” He coughs and winces. “Just until I heal up.”

He’s not leaving. But he will be gone, and Crockett doesn’t trust people promising to come back. They never do. He winds up alone, hurt, bruised. Those marks from his last night of partying before the attack are beginning to fade, but they’re still all too visible and normally would fade only to be replaced by new ones.

“Promise me you’ll come back.”

“I’m not going anywhere.”

And Ethan starts to fall asleep again as the morphine kicks in, going dead to the world. But his heart still beats, and Crockett lays with him as a nurse comes to check in. She tells him to move. He doesn’t. He won’t. Just rests with him, not caring about doctors that come and go, security guards that change shifts, and various efforts to get him to eat or drink something.

Nothing else matters.

Just Ethan and the fact that he’s here and he said he wouldn’t leave.

-

@proceduralpassion @sextonsharpwinhalstead @ebug2002 @bipeteypie

[kingofthewilderwest]

I totally get what you're saying about fandom and canon (or at least I think I do) and that what's really important is a love of the material, and I agree to that respect, but personally, reading the words "canon doesn't matter" kind of rustles my jimmies, because for some people (like me) and in some spaces, canon is extremely important. 1/?

People will find importance in canon for whatever reasons that are individual to them, and I think it’s important to consider that. There are also spaces where discussion of canon IS important, like when it comes to issues of representation. I think you’ve read my post about the phrase “there is no heterosexual explanation for this” and my rebuttal of “not every emotionally intimate relationship between two characters of the same gender is inherently gay” in response to people claiming that 2/

certain same gender pairings are “obviously” “gay for each other”, when there’s nothing in the canon that points to anything beyond an emotionally intimate relationship. One of the people who commented on it made a really good point that while it’s fine to ship something regardless of canon, it’s a different thing entirely to claim that something IS canon when there’s no evidence for it, or evidence that’s up to too much interpretation, because claiming that such a relationship IS canon 3/?

when in fact it’s barely hinted at and interpretable at best, it means that it’s much more difficult to call for better representation, when someone who is against representation can go “see? look at all the people who say [interpretable pairing] is canon. they don’t need anything more explicit!” 4/?

I think that there ARE spaces in fandom where that’s an important discussion to have. So I disagree with you that canon doesn’t matter, because there are places for it, and for individual people, it’s very important. But I agree entirely that there shouldn’t be arguments in fandom about what is or is not canon that basically involves gatekeeping “canon” or being mean to others because of what they think is or is not canon. 5/?

In a perfect world, people would be willing to agree to disagree about what is or is not canon and accept that other people have different opinions of how far canon goes. Unfortunately, that’s not the case, so I definitely agree that it’s bad for people to assert that their view of canon is the “correct” view, and - if I may be so audacious as to assume intent - is really the point you’re trying to make. 6/? (I think?)

I think that not caring about canon has its place in certain fandom contexts, but not all of them. It’s kind of like it’s a different analytical framework, one that’s useful sometimes but not other times. 7/? 

And certainly, I think canon has importance in places that exist at the boundaries of fandom, like when canon is considered in historical studies or in literature reviews. Though that’s also getting into discussions of where fandom ends and other disciplines begin, so it’s probably a moot point, and probably depends on someone’s perspective and intent. 9/? (or 8?)

I’m gonna stop myself here from going into literary theory/criticism/whatever about when and where canon matters, but I think I’ve made my point that while I agree with the sentiment of what you’re saying, I disagree with the statement that “canon doesn’t matter” in fandom. Because I think it does, but just not in every context. 10/10 (or whatever number)

From this.

As always, you’ve got a wealth of thoughtful and well-worded discussion here. You’re a brilliant human being, and one of the reasons I love talking to you is because of your deep analytical perspectives. I think another reason I jive with you as a friend is because we tend to hold similar perspectives. It’s fun, because we both entertain creative or emotional discussions extrapolated from source materials, and we both acknowledge what canon objectively contains. 

I apologize: I thought I’d been more clear with the context of what I was criticizing regarding fandom’s relationship with canon. I think I also banked on followers knowing I’m a logically centered individual who cares deeply about facts and not just heart. I suppose not, and I’m sorry if I were misleading. My mistake! How you disagree with my phrase “canon doesn’t matter” is not what I was intending to suggest and it’s not the values I have regarding canon. That one sentence wasn’t meant to stand on its own that much. We do in truth consider canon’s importance the same way!

My critique intended to be about the discussion of “What are the canon materials?” rather than “What information is in the canon?” As I read it, your response goes through both, and where you say you disagreed is mostly when you looked at the latter (but I was intentionally honing in only on the former). Maybe it’s a good idea for us to separate these concepts rather than conflate it into a large debate of “what is canon?” from too broad an angle.

My critique was about how fans police others’ engagement for things like Watsonian interpretations, headcanons, speculative meta, and fanfiction writing. If people want to analyze Edward Elric’s personality only from FMAB, or if they want to include minor tie-ins (ex: Prince of the Dawn, Sacred Star of Milos, omake, etc.), either perspective provides interesting analytical angles. They’re both valid ways of handling the character’s personality.

Especially since I experience the “What is canon materials?” conversation with the HTTYD fandom, I tend to see the debate centered on continuity and OOC/IC interactions. Also, at times, how “big” a material is - like video games being “less authoritative” than the films. These conversations are more about how people do or don’t emotionally reject RTTE for their personal headcanon/discussion space. These are people who acknowledge the show’s implications rather than deny RTTE’s existence or the implications of the content. It’s exactly because people engage and examine its contents, that some people might like to talk about Hiccup through RTTE lenses, and others will never entertain such speculations. 

(You know this stuff, I’m sure, but I’m spelling it all out to be clear, and for other readers to follow.)

What I’m saying is that in angles like these, what is or is not canon doesn’t matter, because we have the right to recreationally interact with Hiccup through some of the officially licensed materials, or through all of them. We have the right to completely ignore ALL canon and imagine him as something else, too!

That discussion that I focused on is about what people accept as “the most official materials” versus “unofficial materials.” Your focus for the majority of your message looks to me like a nuanced angle on something else - the other “spaces,” “places,” “frameworks” you bring up. That’s about whether or not people acknowledge what’s inside those materials. It’s about whether or not people are able to acknowledge that things happen in official materials, or are able to correctly discern objective versus subjective information within that media. That’s not something I was covering in that conversation because it wasn’t contextually relevant, but yes, you’re absolutely right that these distinctions are important!

The viral post you mentioned is one I’ll never forget from you, because I agree with it 100%. It’s the same frustration I hold, so it was so enthralling to see it put to words. It’s poor thinking for fans to subjectively interpret canon materials and try to push it as The One Truth… when it is not objectively what the source material contains. Feel free to tie things together how you want for funsies, that doesn’t make it what the source ACTUALLY says.

This is why I mentioned, at the start of my discussion, that I get uncomfortable when people dismiss officially licensed materials as “fanfiction” or “not real.” These exist whether we like them to or not. The reason it’s important to distinguish fandom from canon is because canon is what feeds us, and is what provides authority for what the franchise is. Whether or not you like the materials or engage with them for things like headcanoning, they’re there, and you have to be able to acknowledge: these materials exist. The companies gave them to us.

Because a product exists, you can’t say “bye” to the consequences of its existence. You have to know it exists, and what it does/doesn’t contain. It’s poor thinking for individuals to extrapolate materials from canon that were objectively not intended by the creators, but fans still try to push it as “the true story.” What the source material objectively contains cannot be replaced by emotional wants or denials. That’s where things like representation or romance come into play, as you mentioned: it’s (usually) fine to relate to and interpret the characters as you want, so long as you can separate that from the objective reality of the source material. You have to be able to acknowledge what the source material contains.

I want to make it very clear:

There’s an enormous difference between emotionally deciding which canonical materials you engage with for your creative frameworking…

…versus denying the existence of what officially licensed products contain, or insisting that your subjective interpretation is objectively true. 

For the former: canon doesn’t matter. That’s my discussion of the previous post. Policing fans by telling them one source is canon and one isn’t… when it’s all licensed materials… is forcing people to engage with canon a certain way. We all have the right to engage with all licensed materials to the depth we want. If I want to accept RTTE and analyze Hiccup from RTTE to GOTNF to THW… let me enjoy that! Don’t tell me to quit analyzing RTTE!Hiccup because it doesn’t feel like he’s IC to you (and ergo, outside of your own mental “canon”). It’s fiiiiine! I can write analyses about RTTE!Hiccup!

For something like the “what is canon materials?” discussion you mentioned as far as academic documentation of a body of works, that is a REALLY interesting discussion, but yeah, as you pointed out, a little outside the boundaries of this current conversation. But I’d love to talk to you sometime about it!!!

For the latter: you better be able to know what the licensed materials actually contain. You shouldn’t deny something exists. Whether or not you call it “canon,” you should be able to acknowledge it’s an official product and not something a fan put on AO3. You should be able to objectively understand what’s in officially released products. If the books have problematic elements, if a show lacks explicit queer representation, if there’s a racial stereotype that’s handled poorly, that’s a truth that you can’t imagine your way out of! You can reinterpret characters for fun in your fandom discussions, but you can’t deny the reality of what the creators produced. Ignoring the truth of these issues, or making your interpretations “reality” you force on others… is dangerous illogical thought that has severe consequences for how you interact with the world and its issues.

As you say, there’s value in all these discussions. We’ve known each other a long time, so I know you know I’m a logic-oriented individual, someone who isn’t going to say “everything is okay!” and let subjectivity fly over objective information in source materials. When I say “canon doesn’t matter,” it’s not about subjectively letting our feelings erase what is objectively presented on screen / on paper. When I say “canon doesn’t matter,” it’s about whether or not someone wants to talk about tie-ins, or only select portions of officially released products. But when I say “canon doesn’t matter,” it is also with the assumption people are smart enough to distinguish subjective interpretation from objective observation, the angle which you brought up with the nuanced discussion we’ve seen. Thanks for speaking with such finesse again on why we can’t lets fans’ desires get in the way of what they call “truth.”

I love to both discuss things from a creative speculative angle and let my imagination wander or reinterpret characters… or discuss materials from a Doylist acknowledgement of how something gets sociologically presented. Hell, I hold such a huge value to official products and canon materials that I engage with almost no fandom content (fanfictions, comics, etc.). So yeah! I also believe that canon is very, very important, and is something to be talked about! 

I think it’s important to understand the impacts that official materials have, and I get frustrated when people pretend something DreamWorks or Disney officially sanctioned is “fanfiction.” I think it’s important for fans to discuss back and forth about what they think objectively happened when there’s a lack of clarity. For the romance thing, again, as you said, it’s a good discussion to have of “what is WITHIN canon?” when looking at whether or not it’s obviously queer, or if you’re reading into it. 

I also love to create synthesized interpretations for what characters are like and I get frustrated when people try to police me on what I can/can’t include into my canon analyses. 

I just have no patience for laypersons who debate “what is canon MATERIAL?” when looking at whether or not a video game should be considered “okay” to synthesize with a movie, and gatekeeping in the sense of what fans can include in our creative engagements. Whether or not X is “as canon” as Y doesn’t matter at the end of the day if you disagree with [insert username here]. It’s your recreation. It’s still a franchise product. Know it exists, know the objective materials, and move on. Do with it as you will and let your friends do with it as they will.