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talesfromlissom · 4 months ago

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TFP!OPTIMUS HEADCANNONS // Optimus x reader tidbits || Part 2

WARNINGS - Infertility/sterilization, some mentions of pregnancy(??) , mentions of genocide

A/N - I put down Elita-1 just because why not, but you can imagine this as an x reader instead. These are mostly Optimus headcanons. I have another post with headcanons about him before he became a Prime HERE. This also is alot longer than I thought it would be please help.

Elaborating on the previous bullet point about Optimus being the last of the data clerks. In the early stages of the war, the High Council ordered a mass extermination of miners after Megatron’s rise to fame. They blamed Orion for it, which caused Megatron to retaliate and order every data clerk to be killed. He was mostly successful.

After being anointed the next Prime, Optimus was confused. One of the main reasons he advocated for a peaceful resolution to the caste system problems is that he had seen what the Quintesson War had done. He had seen war at its worst and didn’t want that kind of violence put onto the planet again, hence the reason why he always advocated so strongly for peace.

After becoming the new Prime, he was isolated from the world. He wasn’t allowed to contact any of his friends unless supervised, but he would often sneak out to see them. He doesn’t remember why and thinks that it was because he was friends with many people who hated the caste system like he did.

If he wasn’t seeing them, then he was painting. He liked to do giant graffiti art murals the most, hence the reason why he has ‘steady hands’. He’d spend an entire night in some abandoned theater or an empty alleyway. You could probably find one if you looked hard enough during the war. He often left the citadel late at night to do this. .

After the war, most of his murals were knocked down or destroyed.

Nighttime seemed the only time he had to himself back then, so he’d stay up late doing whatever he wanted.

He always claimed to be a Prime of the people, not the government. This was reflected in his actions, as he would often donate large amounts of shanix to charities outside the High Council’s jurisdiction. He increasingly got frustrated by the high council’s lack of concern for their people and their refusal to listen to him.

The High Council eventually appointed him a Lord High Protector due to his increasingly ‘rebellious’ antics (could be the reader/Elita-1, depending on what suits your fancy, ;] )

He despised the Protector, as they felt more like a glorified babysitter than a bodyguard.

Eventually, the High Council got fed up with Optimus’ refusal to listen to them. At his last ceremony, to be officially inducted into the Primacy, they planned to give him a drink laced with sedatives so he’d be more accessible to shadowplay.

Optimus’ Lord High Protector found this out, contacted his friends, and helped him escape, which made him trust them more. He then went to find the Matrix of Leadership because Megatron’s war was starting to poison the planet. He could feel it somehow, though he couldn’t explain how or why. He still can’t.

He enjoys drawing A LOT. Given his size, he obviously can’t do graffiti art on earth, but when he goes on ‘patrols,’ half of it is him going somewhere to draw. However, he doesn’t do creative or fun drawings nowadays. It’s mostly art of the people in his life, nature, etc. So, it's primarily observational art. That datapad and pen are his most prized possessions, and he always carries them in his subspace. No, you cannot see it.

A MASSIVE touch of the ‘tism. He could talk for hours about ancient history, famous literature, or anything like that. He visibly gets more expressive when talking about these things, too (actually canon lmao). He enjoys learning about mythology from other cultures as well.

He hates group settings and despises oil. He most likely suffers from high empathy, but he tries to be empathetic towards people or animals only to mask this.

More on the high-functioning side of the spectrum.

He’s very aware of life and deeply existential. He always wonders how life came to be and related matters. He asks many questions and thinks of new ones every day. Hence, Agent Fowler and he are so close. He got stuck in a storage house with him once and asked so many questions about human life/purpose that Fowler aged 50 years.

His interest in history was easily hidden as just a plain interest in it. He was a data clerk, specifically a data clerk in the history-keeping field, so it’d make sense he’d know a lot about history. Not only that, but he’s also a Prime, so he has to know about the history of his own planet/people exceptionally well. It’s a good thing he already did before the primacy.

He tends to focus too much on things, almost becoming obsessive, for example, trying to repair his relationship with Megatron, nearly bordering on obsession with doing that very thing. There are times when he will be working at the console and he’ll be so wrapped up in his work that he’ll forget to eat, sleep, take a break, and do things like that.

He spaces out a lot more than people realize. He’s pretty good at making it look like he’s listening, but he does listen(partially), just not as much as people think he does. People think he’s quiet due to this (which he kind of is but yeah)

His audio finals move a lot, and he used them to stim. The only issue is that due to the energon shortages, many people had to shut down certain parts of their frame, and his fins ended up being one of them. He resolves this by tapping his fingers on his knees instead or letting his smokestacks shake, but this makes people think he’s angry, which confuses him because he’s not. This is probably due to the MASSIVE RBF he has.

Speaking of brain stuff, he also suffers from C-PTSD. If we’re going by the lore found in The Covenant of Primus, Optimus has been involved in two civil wars—one as a soldier and the other as a leader. Regardless, both of these wars are terrifying. I’d imagine that’s why he seemed to handle the war much better than others—he’s used to it. It doesn’t change the fact that he hated experiencing both of them.

He has most definitely stumbled upon sparklings once or twice. He usually contacts a neutral colony planet or ship to take them and does so quickly. He’s gotten attached to every sparkling or youngling he comes across, barely able to prevent any sire/carrier protocols from activating. And when I say attached, I mean EXTREMELY attached. You need a parental figure? Congratulations! He’s adopted you. No, you cannot go home; let’s decorate your bedroom together 😀

Speaking of children, he wants his own, but the Matrix is annoying. Most Transformers constantly drift to being hyper-fertile or sterile (I headcanon that the Allspark is primarily responsible for this, but I will probably go into that later. I have a whole process and everything), and Optimus is no exception.

However, the Matrix takes a lot of power from his frame, including his processor and other parts. It's very taxing. It’s rendered him completely sterile, no matter how potent the Allspark is. This is a sore spot for him, and due to how long the Matrix was in his frame, these effects have remained even after he was resurrected without it. Only Ratchet/Elita-1(or you) know this.

Jack, Miko, Raf, Bumble Bee, and Smokescreen are all registered under the sparkling category. Those are his kids; don’t touch them.

WORD COUNT - 1239

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#//my writing #optimus prime #tfp optimus prime #tfp #transformers #maccadam #tfp headcanons #optimus x reader #its tiny but its there

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inthedayswhenlandswerefew · 2 years ago

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North To The Future [Chapter 15: Drive] [Series Finale]

The year is now 2000. You are just beginning your veterinary practice in Juneau, Alaska. Aegon is a mysterious, troubled newcomer to town. You kind of hate him. You are also kind of obsessed with him. Falling for him might legitimately ruin your life…but can you help it? Oh, and there’s a serial killer on the loose known only as the Ice Fisher.

Chapter warnings: Language, alcoholism, addiction, murder, violence, character deaths.

Word count: 7.3k.

Link to chapter list (and all my writing): HERE.

Taglist: @elsolario @ladylannisterxo @doingfondue @tclegane @quartzs-posts @liathelioness @aemcndtargaryen @thelittleswanao3 @burningcoffeetimetravel @poohxlove @borikenlove @myspotofcraziness @travelingmypassion @graykageyama @skythighs @lauraneedstochill @darlingimafangirl @charenlie @thewew @eddies-bat-tattoos @minttea07 @joliettes @trifoliumviridi @bornbetter @flowerpotmage @thewitch-lives @tempt-ress @padfooteyes @teenagecriminalmastermind @chelsey01 @anditsmywholeheart @heliosscribbles @killerqueen-ofwillowgreen @narwhal-swimmingintheocean @tillyt04 @cicaspair418 @fan-goddess

A/N: This is the fic I almost never wrote because I didn’t think anyone would be interested in some random, angsty, 1990s, Alaskan, crime-thriller AU. Thank you for proving me wrong. I hope you enjoy the ending. 💜

Almost everything about your existence is pure chance; it’s the most freeing and horrifying truth imaginable. There’s the genetic lottery and corporate downsizing, revolutions and hurricanes, plagues, asteroids, famines, faulty airplanes and malignant blooms of cells and drunk drivers. There are 100 billion planets in this galaxy and your atoms ended up on the one called Earth. After all that, do you really think what you want matters? So make all the choices you like, all the nail-biting deliberations and promises and vows, weigh costs and benefits, do research, roll dice, ask astrologers and palm readers, start over every New Year because that’s something we tell ourselves is possible. The fact that you exist at all is one big cosmic coin flip. If you think you’re the one driving, you’re dead fucking wrong. You’re the speck of dust on a windshield, the spin of a roulette wheel. You’re a flash of silver in the universe’s pinball machine.

I spend a lot of my time thinking about chance, okay? My family is one of the wealthiest in the Western Hemisphere, and I didn’t do anything to earn that. I was born first, and I definitely didn’t do anything to earn that, Jesus Christ, what a chromosomal fuckup. I inherited an affliction that others get to live without. I can’t imagine what it feels like to wake up and not be horrified by myself, my shortcomings, my failures: too small, too stupid, too wild, too weak. And the first time someone says something like that to you, you want to apologize, you want to drop to your knees and cling to them and beg for absolution, maybe even the first hundred times, the first thousand. And then it just starts to piss you off. Yeah, I know, I’ve heard it all before, why would you expect anything different? Isn’t this getting old, Mom? Maybe you’re the stupid one, Dad, if you think you could cut me and anything but disappointments would fall out. I’m not horrified by the fact that I’m an addict. The horror came first. The horror is what led to all the rest of it.

One day when I was in 10th Grade—I was slumped way down in my chair and drinking vodka out of an Evian water bottle—my American History teacher, purely by chance, assigned me to make a poster about Juneau, Alaska. Some other kid got Los Angeles (Hollywood! The Whisky a Go Go!) and another got Chicago (the Mob!) and another got Nashville (Johnny Cash!) and some jock moron I hated got Baltimore (um, crabs? the War of 1812…?), but I got fucking Juneau, Alaska. I thought this was so unjust that I never forgot it, the fact that I had to get up in front of the class with my pathetic Crayolas-and-magazine-cutouts poster and pretend that Juneau was a place that mattered, that microscopic cloud-covered relic of a late-1800s gold mining settlement on the shores of the Gastineau Channel. Juneau was never on my list of cities to run to. It just wasn’t. It didn’t have anything I wanted. But when I started thinking about places where I could really disappear, where no one would ever bother looking, where days are short and dark and incurious and irrelevant…well, that sounds like Juneau, right?

Let me tell you something about the night I left. I’ve been more messed up, yeah, and I’ve hurt people worse, and I’ve been closer to death, I’ve been one more powder-white gram on the scale away from oblivion; but I’ve never felt that fucking low. I can’t decide if I wish I’d never gone to Juneau at all. I can’t decide if it was a blessing or a curse.

My flight is a red-eye with a layover in Ketchikan, American Airlines, bound for Seattle. Sunfyre has the window seat. He’s wearing the bright red Service Dog vest that I once stole for him specifically for such occasions. My dog fly with the cargo? My dog?! Bill Clinton will be elected pope first. Sunfyre is chewing contently on Milk-Bones and watching the sun rise over the Pacific Ocean. He knows the drill. We’ll touchdown and deplane, and then…and then…

And then we’ll start over again somewhere new. I’ll find a flight board and pick a destination; Seattle is a hub, with spokes leading everywhere. I could go south, to Galveston, Lafayette, Biloxi, someplace where it gets hot, someplace where I can sweat her out of me, purge every cell that still remembers what she felt like. I could go west, fading into mountains or cornfields, vapid infinitesimal towns in Montana, Iowa, Idaho, Nebraska. I could go to New England or the Great Lakes or freaking Hawaii, sleep in hammocks, swim with sea turtles, drink my rum and Cokes out of coconut shells. But the more I think about it, the more I realize that nowhere really sounds good to me. My legs are suddenly tired of running. There’s an ache that rattles down to the bone.

I don’t have to tell you that I love her, right? It’s not so easy for me to say. But it’s true, and it’s beautiful, and it’s torture, and it’s a dream. It’s pain that flays you alive and then builds you back again, layers of fresh muscle and tendons and veins growing over ribs and vertebrae like a trellis thick with ivy. It’s not a high. It’s just the best life can get down here on earth. It’s the ocean, it’s the Northern Lights.

I’m swimming in a black hoodie that is three sizes too big; I haven’t slept and I’m pale and raccoon-eyed, looking like death, feeling worse. When the stewardess rolls by with her clattering cart just slim enough to fit through the aisle, I order a cup of water for Sunfyre and a double rum and Coke for myself. It arrives with two blood-red cherries bobbing in a caramel-dark carbonated sea. The guy in the next seat over gives me a judgmental little eyebrow raise.

“That doesn’t look like breakfast,” he says.

I bite off both cherries—juice dribbling down my chin, wiped away with a sleeve—and throw the stems over my shoulder. The lady sitting behind me yelps in disgust. “Because it’s dessert.”

The man smiles and shakes his head, one of those I shouldn’t find it funny but I do sort of looks. I inspire a lot of those. He’s maybe mid-thirties, long hair and ripped jeans, very punk rock, cool as hell. There is a constellation of pins on his denim jacket. One of them has a roman numeral 10 on it, a stark X nestled inside a triangle. Unity, Service, Recovery, the gold letters say. To Thine Own Self Be True. It’s an Alcoholics Anonymous pin. What are the chances?

He catches me staring, and I ask: “Does it really make you a better man?”

“It doesn’t make you better. It just makes you real.” He smiles again, patient and kind. “It makes your emotions and experiences real, your relationships real. And so you become whatever version of yourself you were always supposed to be. But you have to want it. Not your wife, not your parents or your kids, not your pastor, not your friends, not your parole officer. You.”

I speak without knowing what I’m going to say. “I want it.”

“Yes, I think you do.”

He sees a lot, I think, as the plane descends into the grey fogbank of Seattle. 20/20.

When we land, the man squeezes into a cab with me and Sunfyre—he sniffles into a Kleenex for a while before reluctantly admitting that he’s allergic to dogs—and pays the fare. The cab’s worn brakes squeal to a stop outside a residential treatment center on the banks of the Puget Sound. When we step out onto the sidewalk, I ask the man if he’s going to take me to get one last drink first. He laughs in my face. Fucking jerk.

He pulls out a black Sharpie and rummages through his pockets, his wallet. He can’t find a scrap of paper. He writes his phone number on the underside of my arm instead. “You call me, okay?” he says. “Call me when you get out. Call me before you get out, if you need to. I don’t care if it’s in five minutes, I don’t care if it’s at 2 a.m. You just make sure you call.”

“Why would you do this? I mean, you don’t even know me. You have no idea who I am.”

“Because once, years ago, someone did the same thing for me, and someone did it for her too. Maybe one day you’ll be able to pay it forward. I don’t care who you are or where you’ve been. It doesn’t matter to me. I’d like to think that we’re all more than the worst thing we’ve ever done.”

And then he waits for me to go inside. He doesn’t leave until he watches me check in at reception on the other side of the rain-flecked glass. Outside, a brand new day is beginning. A misty sun rises as pieces of the sky fall.

Sunfyre trots into the lobby alongside me, panting cheerfully, shaking the perpetual Seattle drizzle from his fur. There’s a girl at the front desk, just a girl, and that’s the other thing that’s different now. She’s not a maybe-future-one-of-my-girls. She’s just like anyone else. I already have a girl. I mean, I don’t anymore, not really. But I still do.

I throw my things onto the counter: my single suitcase, my tattered wallet, my bundle of cash held together with rubber bands, my scraped-up electric guitar.

“Checking in?” the girl asks.

“Yeah.”

“For how long?”

“As long as it takes, I guess.”

She opens my wallet, reads my license, blinks in bewilderment. “Aegon…?”

I sigh dramatically. “It’s Greek.”

~~~~~~~~~~

You dream of him; and when you do, he’s always smiling. He’s reading your palm in an empty Taco Bell, he’s kissing you under the Northern Lights, he’s regaling your parents with stories—of lobster fishing in Portland, of cattle ranching in Denver—all through Thanksgiving dinner, he’s undressing you in his moonlit apartment, he’s climbing into your bed. He’s not angry, he’s not ruined, he’s not running away. He’s exactly as you remember him in his best moments. He’s all chaotic white-blond hair and weightless light, sharp laughter and bright eyes. And each morning there’s a splinter-thin moment before you remember that he’s gone. That’s the worst part, really. You always knew it would be. You can’t even begin to forget him.

Your friends want to help you, but they don’t know how. Neither do your parents. Your dad gets an atlas from the study, throws it down on the dining room table, and opens it to a map of the world. “Pick anyplace and we’ll go there,” he says. “We’ll close the vet clinic for two weeks and we’ll all go.” But you can’t give him a single name: not Athens, or Paris, or Buenos Ares, or Cairo, or New York City, or Rome, or Tokyo, or anywhere else for that matter. It’s the strangest thing. All your life you’ve been waiting to get out of Juneau, but now nowhere sounds good to you. And maybe that’s a lesson you wish you’d never learned: sometimes freedom is less about places than it is about people.

The blood on the equipment recovered from Trent’s apartment matches DNA from the first three victims. He is charged with eight counts of first-degree murder and held awaiting trial in the Lemon Creek Correctional Center. His family visits him faithfully each week. His lawyer is exasperated that he won’t plead guilty and spare his parents the humiliation and expense of a protracted court battle. But Trent’s story never changes: he’s innocent, he’s never killed anybody, he doesn’t understand how the blood could have been found on his belongings. He wants to know exactly what items the police tested; he and his lawyer are still waiting for the prosecutor to turn over all the details during discovery. In the midst of the scandal, the upheaval, you fade into the backdrop like the stars behind fog. People talk around you and through you. They offer gaps that you don’t care enough to fill in. Drinks clink, whispers fly, conspiracies are exchanged between pool shots. You watch the days grow longer and wait for the future to arrive. You don’t know what it will look like, you can’t even begin to fathom it. But surely there must be a future. Life goes on. It did for your mom after Jesse. It will for you too.

A week after Aegon leaves, there is a knock at your parents’ front door. You open it to find Aemond standing there in the muted amber-pink afternoon light. His hair is long and loose, his Armani suit immaculately tailored, his BlackBerry nestled in his right hand. He glances up from it at you and his jaw falls open. And only then do you realize how awful you must look.

You tell Aemond, your voice hushed and heavy, ankles in quick-drying cement: “I don’t know where he is.”

“No, I can see that,” Aemond replies, dull horror in his blue eye. Then he turns around and strides halfway down the driveway towards the street, where a cab idles as it waits for him, engine exhaust pouring into the air like smoke from a firepit.

“How’s your dad?” you call after him when you get your bearings.

He pauses under the dwindling light. “Alive. For now.” And then Aemond considers you for a while. “I suppose if I ever want to find you again, I know where to look.”

You nod. “I’ll be here.”

I’ll always be here.

A month crawls by like a wounded animal, dead leaves snared in the fur of its belly. The flesh on your thigh knits back together. The things that Aegon ordered show up in Juneau, packages left on the front porch and stuffed into the moose-shaped mailbox like Christmas gifts in a stocking. You pack these remnants of him—Zoobooks and cooking accessories, knives and Chia Pets—into a cardboard box and tuck it away in a dusty, cobwebbed corner of the attic, and you’re aware the entire time that this has happened before, almost exactly twenty years ago. When your dad puts a Third Eye Blind or Red Hot Chili Peppers or Oasis album on his record player, you find some excuse to leave the room. When you tack magazine cutouts of beaches and cityscapes to your bedroom walls, all you can think about is where Aegon might be now. You wonder where he works during the day, a surf shop or a construction site or a farm or a fishing boat; you wonder who he spends his nights with.

I’ll always be here. Even if I leave, I’ll always be here.

~~~~~~~~~~

Twenty years ago to the day, almost to the hour, a man fell into the Gastineau Channel and drowned. They found water in his lungs, though the autopsy was only a formality, an afterthought; Jesse had a reputation in Juneau, and no one was particularly surprised to see how his story ended. There were abrasions on his back and shoulders, contusions on his wrists, but so what? He probably tripped half a dozen times before he tumbled over some guardrail and into the frigid black water. There was a bloody mess of an impact wound on the side of his face, but who cares? The blood alcohol concentration doesn’t lie. The man was wasted, and more than that he was a waste. If his premature demise hadn’t been then, it would have been later, in a week or a month or a year. And when someone like that goes, there’s a sigh of relief that accompanies the misery, isn’t there? There’s the sense of a weight being lifted from a scale.

You’re sitting in Ursa Minor at the usual booth, but the bar is practically empty. It’s Valentine’s Day. Joyce is with Rob, Kimmie is with Brad; Heather’s parents have spirited her away on a short vacation to Sitka to try to take their minds off Trent’s imminent lifelong incarceration. Your mom and dad’s February 14th tradition is cooking a homemade Italian dinner together—pasta, bread with herbs and olive oil, caprese salad, tiramisu—and then settling in for a romantic Blockbuster rental. This year, it’s Runaway Bride. Your mom loves Julia Roberts. They didn’t ask for privacy, but you gave it to them anyway. Kimmie offered to drop you off at Ursa Minor and then drive you home after her date with Brad so you could drink away your sorrows without having to worry about calling a ride. So now Kimmie is getting wined, dined, and plied with boxed chocolates at the Red Dog Saloon while you drain appletinis and flip through one of Jesse’s journals, not knowing what you’re looking for.

Dale is washing pint glasses in the sink behind the bar and humming cheerfully along to a Cake CD. It’s just you and him tonight; evidently, Dale doesn’t have a hot date either. It was nice of him to eschew the usual Shania Twain or Sheryl Crow soundtrack. He’s trying to spare you from any crooning love songs. He must have forgotten that Cake has its own little slice of relevance in your memories of Aegon, those memories that refuse to fade, ink in your skin as dark as night.

Your fingerprints trace Jesse’s scrawling, handwritten letters. It’s his very last journal, the last words he ever wrote. His final entry is unremarkable, a lucid recollection of his latest woodcarving project: it’s a family of tiny bears, three of them. He says he wants the cub to have the same slope of your cheeks, the shape of your eyes. And it’s just like your mom said. It really did seem like he was getting better.

You flip to the next page, blank. The heading reads: Thursday, February 14th, 1980.

You go back a few days. And your gaze catches on words that you’ve read before, months ago, back when the journals were a new discovery like striking oil. The entry is from Saturday the 9th. It ends with an unceremonious bullet point of a reminder: dinner w/ Dale on Thursday.

You leaf forward to Thursday, to the blank page that tells you nothing. Back to the 9th, forward to the 14th, again, again. Valentine’s Day 1980, before Dale had married his wife, after your mom had stopped trying to make plans with Jesse, maybe even rebelled against them; just two unromantic, discarded men with a vacant slot in their calendars and troubles to drink into submission. Except that Jesse never came home.

Dinner with Dale, you think dizzily. Dinner with Dale on the night he died.

The opening notes of The Distance shout from the stereo. Everything suddenly feels very loud.

Reluctantly crouched at the starting line,

Engines pumping and thumping in time…

What had Aegon said about that song before you sang it together, stomping and staggering across the hardwood floor? It’s not about NASCAR, it’s about a journey!

Outside, it’s a rare clear night in Juneau. The Northern Lights are a kaleidoscopic ribbon against indigo night, the sky a mausoleum of stars. And you remember when Aegon sang Everlong, when he grabbed your hand, led you upstairs to the roof, kissed you for the first time under the ethereal, shimmering curtain of green and purple and blue…before Heather had interrupted to tell you that Dale was closing the bar. He was irritable, he was tired; he wanted to go home.

The arena is empty except for one man,

Still driving and striving as fast as he can…

And then they found a body, didn’t they? Yes, you can remember being in Aegon’s apartment and hearing the police cars zoom by. You remember the red-and-blue flashes on his face. You remember thinking they looked like sapphires and rubies, the ocean and blood.

The sun has gone down and the moon has come up

And long ago somebody left with the cup,

But he’s driving and striving and hugging the turns

And thinking of someone for whom he still burns…

Icy claws glide down the length of your spine. Memories play back with a focused clarity that you didn’t have before: Dale groggy and yawning just before they found the fifth victim at Christmas, and again before they found the eighth the same night Trent dragged you—shrieking, bleeding, virtually naked—out of your Jeep. You remember Dale at your parents’ New Year’s Eve party talking about how maybe the killer was an athlete with brain damage from CTE. You remember him offering to give Trent a box of his old equipment from when he was a park ranger. You remember him watching as Trent towered over you here in Ursa Minor with a cue stick clenched in his fist, demanding to know where you had been the night before, Dale’s eyes gleaming with disapproval and fascination and…and…oh god, opportunity.

He’s going the distance,

He’s going for speed,

She’s all alone (all alone)

All alone in her time of need…

And now Aegon’s long gone, but you’re still here. And so is the Ice Fisher.

You’re staring at Dale, eyes huge and glossy with terror. He glances up, gives you a brief casual smile, looks down at the pint glasses again. And then his eyes come back to you. He sees you and you see him, really see him, and it’s the first time in your life that you can recall him being a centerpiece instead of an ornament for gazes to skate over like ice, wallpaper or taxidermy deer heads or a mirror. And you watch as the thing that lives inside Dale stirs awake. It is a shadow with fangs, talons, barbs down its spine, a weblike scribble of a brain loud with the echoes of screams; and it unfurls and fills him completely, all the way to his fingerprints. It possesses him, it eclipses him.

It’s Dale, you realize like a bullet slicing through an aorta, spilling an ocean of hot blood. It was him twenty years ago and it’s him now.

You gasp and fumble for the cannister of bear mace still clipped to your purse. Dale crosses the room with staggering swiftness, like a wolf, like a storm, one pint glass still gripped in his hand. He reaches you just as your thumb presses down on the cannister’s release tab. The rust-colored mist spews not directly into his face but into the room; Dale is hacking and rasping, you both are, but he isn’t in too much pain to haul you out of the booth and onto the floor. You’re screaming, you’re clawing at him, your eyes feel like they’re on fire, tiny pinpoint infernos that drill down to the bone. You can feel the ice-cold juice and schnapps and vodka of your appletini, knocked off the table when you fell, soaking through the back of your sweater. You can feel pebbles of glass as they burrow into your flesh. You are dimly aware of a barstool tumbling over as you struggle with Dale.

“No!” you cry into the monstrous hand that he clamps over your mouth. “No—!”

Dale brings the bottom of the pint glass down on your head. The Distance lyrics—she’s hoping in time that her memories will fade—swirl around inside your fractured skull.

Silence descends like a curtain, shadows in, lights out.

~~~~~~~~~~

I knock, and he opens the door. The house smells like fresh bread and alfredo sauce, rosemary and crushed garlic. My rental—a Toyota 4Runner, I remember what she said about the Nova being a bad idea in Alaska—is parked in the driveway behind her Jeep. Sunfyre is standing beside me, eyes sparkling, smiling with that unburdened-by-intellect innocence that dogs have. There’s a bouquet of blue-dyed roses in my left hand, cool melancholy blooms of life like seawater, like bruises.

“Hi,” I say to her dad as he stands in the doorway. “It’s good to see you again.”

“It’s good to see you too, Aegon.” He’s not just staring at me in the artificial front porch light; he’s gawking, he’s damn near speechless. “Wow. Wow. It’s really good to see you.”

Yeah, I know I look different. The dark rings around my eyes have vanished, my face is less puffy, my hair is trimmed and healthy and mostly out of my face, I stand taller. I’m wearing a white turtleneck sweater and a leather jacket, black skinny jeans, my combat boots. I have a red chip in my pocket that I can’t fucking wait to show her: 1 month sober. On the first day, you think you’re going to die, and on the second day you wish you would. But you don’t. You live, and that starts out as a grisly inconvenience, and then you get a taste for it. “You can probably guess who I’m looking for.”

“Yeah, I reckon I can,” her dad says. “But she’s not here right now. She went to Ursa Minor.”

I grin, a crooked little curl of the lips. “I think I remember how to get there.”

I hop back into the 4Runner with Sunfyre and pull out into the street, snow and ice chomping under the tires. I had missed driving, I realize now. I got so used to almost never being able to do it that I forgot how good it feels to turn the wheel yourself, to watch the speedometer ramp up when you decide you want to fly. Ten minutes later, I swerve into Ursa Minor’s deserted parking lot and screech to a stop across three separate spaces.

“Oh, what the fuck!” I choke out as I step into the bar, coughing into my sleeve. The blue roses tumble out of my hand. Ursa Minor is empty, but there’s something in the air, something invisible that drives scorching, stinging needles into my eyes and my sinuses. Tears stream down my face; my exposed skin prickles and burns. Sunfyre sneezes over and over again and lingers in the doorway, gulping in fresh night wind from outside. There’s shattered glass and green liquid on the hardwood floor. There’s an upturned barstool. The stereo is playing Cake’s cover of Perhaps, Perhaps, Perhaps.

What the hell happened here—?

And then I see it: the cannister of bear mace that had rolled under the booth, the same one she and her friends always sat in.

She used the bear mace. She finally used it. But why?

There’s blood on the floor. There’s blood on the table too. There’s a tattered, olive-green journal opened to a blank page. The pieces slide closer and closer and then link together, an explosion in my mind like fireworks.

I bolt outside and study the snow-covered parking lot. There are fresh tire tracks there under the murky luminescence of the streetlights; they lead out to the main road and then north towards the lakes.

“No,” I whisper to no one but the fierce wind, the sky threaded with the opalescent Northern Lights. “No, no, no…”

I sprint back inside Ursa Minor, get the phone Dale keeps behind the bar, and call the cops. “Stay where you are,” the 911 dispatcher instructs me sternly. “Wait for the police, do not attempt to investigate yourself, do not attempt to intervene—”

“Yeah, fuck that,” I say, and slam the receiver into the cradle. Then I swipe the black 8 ball off the pool table.

I load Sunfyre into the 4Runner and spin out of the parking lot, following the parallel lines of tire tracks like the etching of veins beneath skin.

~~~~~~~~~~

There’s a sound, rough and grating; and then you realize that it’s you being dragged across the ice. When your eyes flutter open, you see the uninterrupted sky: indigo night, distant stars, the Northern Lights. Your clothes are wet with snow; it’s so cold that the fabric is freezing, stiff and crackling when you try to move. Dale is lugging you over the frozen lake by the collar of your sweater. It’s choking you, but of course that doesn’t matter much. He’s about to kill you anyway.

“It’s not right,” Dale mutters, and you’re aware through the disorientation and the fog-like cloud of pain that he’s not really talking to you. “Your mom’s a nice lady. It’s not right that she had to lose two people this way, she doesn’t deserve that. Oh well. It can’t be helped now, can it?”

You whimper something, disjointed helpless words. Please, hurts, don’t, please.

“It’s not me,” Dale says, as if it’s perfectly logical. “I mean, not really. It’s this part of me that I can’t cut out. I can only feed it so it goes away for a while. It quiets down sometimes, it hibernates like a bear in the winter…but it always comes back. And my god, is it hungry.”

You smack clumsily, futilely at his hands as he hauls you over the ice. Dale doesn’t seem to notice.

“You have to make it look like an accident. That’s the ticket, if you don’t want anybody to know. You shove a hiker from a ledge, a drunk into the ocean. I did that for a long time, never raised suspicion. Never pinged on anyone’s radar. Jesse was the hardest, though. Good lord, did he fight. Had to pour a bottle of Everclear down his throat. Had to make it look like he was drinking that night. He wasn’t, which was unusual. Kept saying he wanted to turn things around. I think you had something to do with that. Now this? You were never supposed to be here, ladybug. What a shame. What a goddamn shame.”

Consciousness is a river that you dip in and out of; blackness crumbles around the edges of your vision, collapses in, recedes, swells again like a wave. You moan, you beg, you struggle as much as you can. It’s not much. It might as well be nothing.

“Things were easier after I got married,” Dale continues. He has a large hiking backpack slung over his broad shoulders, you see now. It jostles from side to side as he drags you. You know what’s in there: a chisel to break the ice, fishing line to strangle you. “Having someone else there all the time, it was a distraction. And it kept that thing inside me…not tame, no, I wouldn’t say that. But chained up down in the basement, maybe. Now I’m alone again. And when the chains start rattling, there’s nothing to stop me from hearing them.”

You get your feet under you, twist around, and slam your fists into Dale’s chest as hard as you can. He laughs in a baritone rumble and shoves you back down onto the ice; your head hits the ground, and you can feel yourself fading again, the last wisps of sunlight at dusk.

“Sometimes you want to hide,” Dale says. “And sometimes you don’t. I was ready to stop hiding. I can’t tell you what a high it was every time they found a body. The news, the ceaseless chattering around town, the name they gave me…incredible. Exhilarating. I couldn’t sleep for days after each kill. I’d toss and turn all night imagining what the headlines would be. Let me tell you, ladybug. I’ve never tried heroin, and I never need to. It can’t possibly be better than this.”

What will happen to my parents? you think, heartbreak gutting you, dull knifes rearranging your organs. What will happen to Heather and Kimmie and Joyce? What will happen when Aegon finds out he left too soon?

“I knew I needed someone to pin it on,” Dale informs you calmly. “Didn’t take anyone who went to the bar, didn’t take anyone who could be traced back to me. And still, I knew they’d figure it out eventually if I didn’t give them another suspect. At first, I was thinking I might use Aegon. He was a little small, sure, but he showed up around the right time and he was an outsider. Then I saw the way Trent was with you…aggressive, menacing…and I knew it had to be him. It was almost too easy. I planted the seeds, and good lord did they grow.”

“They’ll know,” you croak. “If you kill me, the police will find my body and they’ll know Trent’s not the Ice Fisher.”

Hideously, horribly, Dale smiles down at you. “Oh, ladybug, I don’t think they’ll ever find you. They found the others because I wanted them to. And no one is looking for victims anymore. Once you sink, I’ll cover up the hole with ice and snow. No blood, no signs. People will assume you’re a runaway. It was just too much, wasn’t it? Trent getting arrested, Aegon leaving town. Maybe you ran off after him. Maybe you threw yourself in the channel. Who could say? No, your bones will become silt, your name will slowly disappear from Juneau. And in ten or twenty years, your parents will have you declared dead in absentia. That’s my best guess. That’s how it will go.”

“No,” you sob, battling against the hands knotted into the collar of your sweater. “No—!”

His knuckles bash the side of your head, and a black silence rolls in like high tide, engulfs you, drowns you. When you swim back up into consciousness again, Dale is a few yards from you and drilling a hole in the ice with his chisel. You try to crawl away and promptly collapse, frail and boneless. He glances over at you, chuckles pleasantly, and then begins using a hatchet to widen the opening.

No, you think, hooking your fingers into the snow and dragging yourself towards the forest. No, no, no…

Dale’s ready for you. He walks over, grabs both of your ankles, tugs you with terrifying ease to the hole in the ice. Then he has a length of fishing line in his hands, and he’s looping it around your throat again and again, and he’s tightening it until the needle-thin nylon wire bites into your flesh, spilling tendrils of blood. You know you don’t have a chance, but you try; you owe it to your parents to try. You claw at the fishing line and you struggle and you cry out in hoarse, useless screams—

And then you hear something that doesn’t make any sense. Through the darkness, through the wind, there are the barks of a dog. Sunfyre rockets into your dimming field of vision and jumps on Dale, snarling and growling and snapping at his hands, his face. Dale flings the dog away, and as he’s distracted, Aegon arrives. He’s holding—ludicrously—a black 8 ball from a pool table, and he smashes it into Dale’s head. A sick, wet, crushing sound ricochets, cracked bone cushioned by flesh, and Dale howls as he rolls onto his side and covers his head with his hands.

He peers up at Aegon, furious and pained and stunned. “You?!”

“Me.” Aegon’s voice is dark and low like thunder, like the iron gale of storms over the ocean. “And I’m a killer.”

He lunges at Dale, still wielding the 8 ball. Dale’s massive hand juts out and closes around Aegon’s wrist, and then he yanks him to the ground. They’re grappling on the snow and ice, they’re striking out with knuckles and elbows, they’re ripping at each other with their bare hands. You’re trying to unravel the fishing line still coiled around your throat, panting in deep, frantic breaths so you can see and think clearly, so you can scramble to your feet, so you can help Aegon. And then Dale gets away from him just long enough to grab you again, to wrap the ends of the fishing line around his fingers. He delivers one last macerating blow to your skull, pulls you by your throat to the gaping hole in the ice, and shoves you through.

The water is so cold it’s paralyzing. There is a thought that seizes you—so overwhelming, so strangely rational—that says all you have to do is stay where you are, to wait a little longer, and then you’ll never hurt again, you’ll never be disappointed or caged, you’ll never be anything. And you think of all the lives you could have lived, all the places you could have gone: cities and beaches and deserts and valleys, gardens and rivers, ruins and glass. You were always so afraid of really going after them. What the hell were you so afraid of? Everything worth fearing is right here in Juneau.

I can still do those things. I can still live. And I can still help Aegon.

You jolt out of your inertia and clamber madly for the surface. But you don’t hit frigid open air; you hit ice, ice too thick to break through, ice too thick for more than a murmur of light to penetrate. Your palms press against the semitransparent wall; bubbles of carbon dioxide spurt from your nose and mouth. You feel for the opening that Dale made, but you don’t know where it is. You are lost beneath the ice, running out of air, fading rapidly. Then you hear Jesse—and you aren’t sure how you know what his voice sounds like, but you do—speaking softly and kindly to you, comforting you, telling you which way to go.

I’m sorry that no one knows the truth, you say without speaking. I’m sorry we thought you destroyed yourself. I’m sorry you never got the chance to truly live.

You were all better off without me anyway, he answers, without any bitterness at all. And that’s true, isn’t it?

There is a great disruption that rocks through the water. New currents stir into existence, fresh waves spring out of the darkness. And then someone takes your hand and draws you towards a noise, muffled through the ice and water: a dog barking, you realize. Then your palms find the opening and you inhale brutally cold air into your aching lungs, the best you’ve ever tasted. Aegon helps pull you through the hole and out of the lake, out of the jaws of oblivion.

You lie together on the ice, breathing in gasps that turn to mist in the night wind. Dale’s body is sprawled several yards away. The hatchet he’d used to break up the ice is buried in his neck, spine severed, eyes slick and vacant. You can see reflections of the Northern Lights flickering in them.

“You came back,” you whisper to Aegon as whirling police sirens approach, the lights dancing on his face: blue like the ocean, red like fire and blood.

“Of course I came back, Appletini,” he says, laughing with frenzied relief, kissing your cheeks and forehead over and over again, lake water dripping from his hair. Sunfyre jumps around you both, yapping ecstatically, his tail wagging. “I couldn’t leave without my Juneau girl.”

~~~~~~~~~~

There’s wind, but it isn’t sharp like a blade. There’s a sky, but it isn’t cloaked in cloud cover or fog. The boats that bob in the surf are sailboats and cruisers, not fishing vessels. Dolphins crest out of the sun-speckled waves like someone coming up from a dream.

It’s June 9th, and you’re soaring down the Pacific Coast Highway in the red Ford Mustang convertible you rented after the plane touched down in Seattle. Aegon is in the driver’s seat, black sunglasses and white T-shirt, his hair whipping in the breeze. He has one hand on the wheel and the other behind your headrest. Sunfyre is in the backseat, grinning like only dogs can. You turn up the song on the radio: Drive by Incubus.

You and Aegon had stayed in Juneau long enough for your skull to heal, and for your parents to find someone else to take over the vet clinic. They settled on a 32-year-old from Detroit: Justin McNair, a former Marine like your dad, and he either has no family or a bad one because he never wants to talk about them. Perhaps it doesn’t really matter which it is; perhaps sometimes they’re just about the same thing. Your parents have already basically adopted him. He eats dinner with them three times a week and calls your dad when he needs help with house maintenance or scaring a moose away from his truck. And just before you went south, Aegon showed him how to make the world’s best hot chocolate.

You send postcards back to Juneau from each town you stop in. Heather’s bon voyage gift to you had been an indecently revealing swimsuit. Joyce appeared with—what else?—a stack of books fit for leisurely beach reading. And Kimmie gave you, however bizarrely, a compass. So you don’t get lost, she had said with an innocuous little smile. You honestly couldn’t tell if she was joking.

During his one month in jail, Trent learned how to meditate and do yoga. He’s still kind of a dumbass, but he’s also a supposedly devout vegan Buddhist, and he had the decency to leave you alone aside from an apology letter that he slid into the moose-shaped mailbox: handwritten, six pages, lots of spelling and grammatical errors. Oh, and he finally got that job with the Forest Service, probably mostly due to his high-profile wrongful detainment. Now hikers get to swoon over his muscles and hair flips.

You’ll go back to Juneau, of course. Maybe just for visits, maybe for more than that someday. But it will never feel like a cage again.

Aegon calls Aemond every two or three days, a habit he started when he was in rehab. At first it was by necessity—he needed someone to pay the $30,000 bill—but now you think he secretly looks forward to it. He updates Aemond about how the road trip is going and reassures him that the plan hasn’t changed: south to San Diego, and then cutting east across the country to Miami. You don’t know what exactly life will look like there, and neither does Aegon. That’s not the important thing about going. Part of AA is making amends, and Aegon has a lot of work to do in that respect. He wants to go back to Miami, he says. He’s ready to go back.

San Diego is exactly like Aegon once told you it would be. You weave through the rust-colored peaks of the Laguna Mountains and there’s the Pacific Ocean, glittering and sapphire-blue, peppered with surfers and sea lions. It’s hot and it’s beautiful beyond words and everything grows there: ivy, cactuses, palm trees, calla lilies, roses. And for the first time that you can remember, the world feels breathtakingly, impossibly big. You get carryout from an unassuming restaurant called The Taco Stand, and then Aegon parks the convertible in La Jolla. You walk down the steps carved into the cliffside, paper bags in your hands full of tacos and churros, Aegon carrying Sunfyre so the dog won’t slip.

You sit together on the golden sand and watch the 8:00 p.m. sun sink into the waves, Aegon’s arm around your waist, your fingers tucking his lock of silvery hair behind his ear. And then he takes your hand, kneads it until it’s sinuous and relaxed, and reads the lines of your palm in the amber dusk like firelight.

“It says you’re happy,” he tells you. “And that you’re free.”

“I am,” you reply, smiling as the ocean stretches out like the arm of a galaxy: the ancient past, the infinite future.

#aegon ii #aegon targaryen x reader #aegon targaryen ii #aegon x reader #aegon targaryen #aegon ii targaryen #aegon x y/n #aegon x you #nttf #north to the future

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starvels · 3 months ago

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starvels' Dark Recs for @cap-ironman Steve/Tony Fic Rec Week 2024

For Dark Recs, enjoy these doves, free for lunch and scrupulously foul. Please remember to leave a comment, add a kudos, hit a reblog on a fic post in order to show your gleeful appreciation of such dark gems.

Check out all of starvels' Cap-IM 2024 Rec Lists [here].

Hypnagogic by CaughtAGhost (ghosthan) @ghosthan

Tags: AI Tony Stark, Hydra Steve Rogers, Secret Empire, Alternate Ending, Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Guilt, Murder, Angst, seriously this is miserable turn back now, Suicidal Thoughts, Blood and Gore, Body Horror, KIND OF I GUESS, unreality Summary: [Hypnagogic state: the period immediately before sleep, or between wakefulness and sleep, during which hallucinations can occur.] “Fine. You want an enemy?” Steve says, bloody saliva dripping from the corner of his mouth, “I’ll give you someone to hate.” Notes: A take on a gory end to the AI Tony/Hydra Steve story that is perfectly evocative and desolate, like scooping your stomach out with a snowy hand.

lent by starvels

Tags: Rape/Noncon, Violence, Major Character Death, Canon Divergence, Comic Book Science, Comic: Superior Iron Man Vol 1. (2015), Old Steve Rogers, SIM Style Eugenics, Sexual Slavery, Sexual Violence, Non-Consensual Body Modification, Body Horror, Torture, Cock Warming, Public Humiliation, Objectification, Gags, Public Sex, Cock Slapping, Genital Torture, Collars Leashes, Anal Plug, Erotic Electrostimulation of a non consensual type, Extremis, Transhumanism, Suicidal Thoughts Unhappy Ending Summary: After being successfully reverted back to his normal moral self, Tony Stark is tasked with trying to prevent the next incursion in an entirely new way. One that requires magic, infiltration, and of course, his former best friend who wants nothing to do with him. Reluctantly together, Steve and Tony enter incursion planet Earth-6006. But the Earth-6006 they discover is a grotesque mirror of Earth-616, one that neither Steve, nor Tony may find themselves capable of escaping. In fact, they may just carry it back home with themselves. Notes: Where Steve and Tony go, the monsters wear their own faces and want to be told just how pretty they look, using those faces to eat every soul in sight.

-↘↘↘-

Go Down For Your Gold by Kiyaar @kiyaar

Tags: Marvel Comic Event: Siege (2009), Extremis, Infidelity, Angst, Disability, predatory prenups, Commander Rogers, Transhumanism, Grief, Not A Fix-It, Abuse, light dubcon, background alcoholism, Suicidal Thoughts Summary: Steve comes back from the dead to find Tony married to Tiberius Stone. Thing is, it shouldn't hurt this much. It shouldn't. Tony was never his to begin with. Notes: Wrap your fingers around this exquisitely sharp, serrated blade nestled in the reeds of canon and watch Steve and Tony writhe in a web they and others are ever weaving.

this, too, by your hand by oluka (lomku) and welcoming_disaster @oluka @welcomingdisaster

Tags: Post-Civil War, Canon Temporary Character Death, Torture, Psychological Torture, Rescue, Extremis, Hurt/Comfort, But don't get me wrong much more hurt than comfort, Love Confessions, Ambiguous/Open Ending, Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Hurt Steve Rogers, Angst Summary: Six months after Steve's death, Tony finds himself caught in the middle of Hydra plot to resurrect the Red Skull using Steve's body. Hopeful he can save his former friend, he interferes. But their troubles are only just beginning. Notes: This story builds like a mighty, unrepentant thunderstorm, distant digital screeching through Extremis and minute shifts in the wind of worldbuilding and the building darkness of torture and CAP-tivity and comic book horror.

sacrifical anode by Rowantreeisme @the-faultofdaedalus

Tags: AI Tony Stark, Pepper Potts Happy Hogan, Angst, AU, Heart Attacks, Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Character Death Summary: Sacrificial anode (n.) An easily corroded materials deliberately installed in a pipe or tank to be sacrificed to corrosion, leaving the rest of the system relatively corrosion free. It had asked, before. Why it should not have a separate power source, why a copy of the chestplate that kept him alive could not be made. The answer still lived in its memories, held there like a beacon, one of the first parts of its mind that it had made itself. Notes: Devastatingly gripping and meticulously detailed take on Tony, AI Tony and the nature of sacrificial lambs drawn in ASCII 1s and 0s, so to say.

No Consolation by valtyr

Tags: Major Character Death, Necrophilia Summary: Extremis lies to Tony. Notes: What more to say. Here's the rusty tin. Peel it open and discover exactly what it says is within.

blue oleander by starvels

Tags: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Alternate Universe - Post-Apocalypse, Survival Horror, PTSD, Space Opera, Mental Instability, Science Fiction, Steve Rogers with a sword, Janet Van Dyne with brass knuckles, Implied/Referenced Torture, Ambiguous/Open Ending, Body Horror Summary: It's been seven years since Earth was destroyed. What remains of humanity, of the superhero community, is on a ship, half-lost in the deep of space. But they're not alone. And what crawls through the portals in the aft cargo bay, day after day, is about as human as Steve feels anymore. Notes: Steve and Jan are in a survival horror FPS, except Steve stopped playing a while ago. Too bad the game hasn't stopped playing with him.

lover, leave me alone and bury the ruins by lomku @oluka

Tags: Civil Warrior, Civil War, Not A Fix-It, Holy Shit What Happened To Tony, AI Tony Stark, Angst, Civil Warrior Steve Rogers, Multiverse, Unreliable Narrator, Dubious Morality, Horror, Dark Summary: Steve swipes the rag across the shield. He knows Tony's listening. “You don’t understand what I’m doing, why this is necessary. What happened to me, what I did, needs to be stopped at all costs. It destroyed the superhero community, destroyed everything we stand for. I know you’re angry, but if you knew what I knew, then you’d agree with me. I know you. I’ve seen a hundred, a thousand of you. You do what needs to be done. You think big. You plan, and you see the future. Well. I’ve been the future, and I know what I can do to stop it. We’re on the same side.” He lets the rag drop, satisfied. His shield is gleaming, not a scratch in sight, not even a single drop of blood left. Notes: Exemplar unfolding of the complex, messed up object that Civil Warrior is, complete with released ghosts that simply love haunting the narrative in bone-chilling ways.

A Borrowed Body by dirigibleplumbing @dirigibleplumbing

Tags: Rape/Non-ConSteve, Superior Iron Man Vol 1. (2015), Dark Tony Stark, Extremis, San Francisco, Bondage, Gags, Anal Sex, Blow Jobs, Angst, Dark, Dead Dove: Do Not Eat, Crying, Objectification, Orgy, Old Man Steve makes a brief appearance, Brief Tony/others and Steve/others, Dubious Consent Summary: After Steve shows up in San Francisco, Tony uses Extremis to make him strong and beautiful again. Tony wants sex in return, and Steve gives it to him—he owes this body to Tony, after all. Every month after that, he visits Tony to keep up his end of the bargain. That will just have to be enough for him. Notes: Lean into the horror tessellated in mundanity with this deftly brutal unreliable narration of what exactly would happen if Old Man Steve approached Superior Iron Man for a way to be young again.

PURPLE by lindenwaverly

Tags: Angst, Dom/sub, Alcohol Abuse/Alcoholism, Alcoholic Relapse, Mind Control, Flashbacks to Rape/Noncon, Implied/Referenced Child Abuse, Implied/Referenced Suicide, Suicidal Thoughts, Avengers Team Summary: Sometimes things just can't be fixed. Killgrave broke the Avengers. He broke Steve and Tony. Steve's just trying to claw something out of the mess. Notes: Just because something is WIP doesn't mean it isn't completely capable of effectively wrenching your gut. Let this submerge you in the way that trauma ebbs and flows in tidal waves.

tenenbaum by starvels

Tags: Canon Divergence, Extremis, Body Horror, Memory Alteration, Transhumanism, Established Relationship, Erotic Electrostimulation, Top Tony Stark, Dom/sub, Power Play, Manipulation, Anal Sex, Armor Kink, Dubious Morality, Superhero Realism, holy shit what's happened to Tony?, Unreliable Narrator, Psychological Horror, Unhealthy Relationships, Body Modification, Ambiguous Ending Summary: “Did you choose this?” Steve asks. He looks over Tony’s face like the undersheath will grow to cover Tony’s lips suddenly, and choke him to oblivion. He searches Tony’s shoulder and forearms for any trace of the ports, like they’re going to magically open and swallow him whole. It is not magic, Tony wants to tell him. It’s better. It’s science. It’s a nano-network of superconductors hopped up on peptide-peptide logic. It’s an adaptive mimetic artifact. It’s an utter innovation in pan-spectrum stimuli reflex response. It’s an end and a beginning and both and neither of those at once. It’s him now, Tony_Stark_V.2.01. not an it. “I choose it now,” Tony says, finally. Notes: Extremis like a mask that slowly suffocates the wearer -- except, what if its really just teaching Tony how to live, without breathing? How far would it go, with Tony inside it?

take the ground in style by welcoming_disaster @welcomingdisaster

Tags: Civil Warrior, 1872, Angst, Implied Sexual Content, Blood and Injury, Canonical Character Death, Bittersweet Ending, Unhappy Ending, Grief, Implied/Referenced Alcohol Abuse/Alcoholism Summary: In 1873, an unusual visitor with an uncanny resemblance to the former Sheriff crash lands in Timely. Notes: Desolation is a landscape in this 1872 piece where grief is Tony's constant companion and we tune in to their grotesque romance like sifting through a cathode-ray-tube TV's physical static.

- Control by Ironlawyer @ironlawyer

Tags: Rape/Non-Con, Consent Issues, Trauma, Unsafe Sex, Sex Work, Oral Sex, Angst, Dark, Ambiguous/Open Ending, Unhealthy Coping Mechanisms, Self-Hatred, Character Study, Rape Aftermath Summary: Tony has unhealthy coping mechanisms. Notes: Like looking through a kaleidoscope, turn this over and over in your hands and admire all the warped shapes of Tony trapped within.

as a siren sings you to shipwreck by meidui @meidui

Tags: Iron Man Vol 1. (2015), Canon Divergence, Pining, Not Actually Unrequited Love, Emotional Manipulation, Captivity, Blowjobs, Hand Jobs, Edging, San Francisco, Angst with a Happy Ending, Past Alcohol Abuse/Alcoholism Summary: Steve stands there in front of him, faint traces of Matt’s blood still smeared across the floors beneath his combat boots. Tony holds his gaze, hyperaware of the way his heart picks up speed because it's the first time he’s seen Steve since, well. He is a pleasing sight, exactly the way Tony remembers him. Beautiful, intelligent, healthy, immortal. “Did Pepper send you?” Tony asks, feverish bright blue eyes boring into him. “You look the same, Steve. Haven't you taken a sip of water since you got to San Francisco?” “Extremis is a virus,” Steve says steadily. “I can’t get sick.” A lot is different. A lot will never be the same. But Tony Stark will always love Steve Rogers. Notes: Choices are twisted and exaggerated in this divergent diamond with manipulation on two sides and moral degradation on one side and murder on the last. Spin it and see where it lands!

what lips my lips have kissed by WhenasInSilks @whenas-in-silks

Tags: Alcohol Abuse/Alcoholism, canonical terminal illness, Drunk Sex, Sexual Dysfunction, Internalized Homophobia, Angst, the two loneliest men in new york comprehensively fail to give each other any comfort Summary: The first time Tony tried to take Steve to bed was the same night Steve found out Tony was dying. Looking back, that more or less set the tone for everything that followed. Notes: On the lighter end of dark, but rife with desolation and loneliness and that good old Ultimates brand internalized homophobia. The quiet at the end is only acceptable as a secret, only as a last resort.

make(damn)sure by msermesth @mserm

Tags: Namor the Sub-Mariner/Steve Rogers, Comic: Invaders Vol. 3 (2019), Comic: Avengers Vol. 8 (2018), Jealous Tony Stark, Choking, Autoerotic Asphyxiation, Whipping, Post-Marvel Comic Event: Secret Empire (2017), Bottom Steve Rogers, assumed infidelity, Humiliation, Crying, Masochist Steve Rogers, Shame, Impact Play, Non-consensual Exhibitionism, Voyeurism, Dubious Consent, Not Safe Not Sane and Barely Consensual, Dead Dove: Do Not Eat Summary: When Steve refuses to tell Tony his plan to find Namor’s bomb, Tony decides to find out what he's up to. He’s not going to like what he sees. Notes: Just how far Steve will go is always an experiment worth seeing out and here, Tony sees it with us and the seeing is oh so deliciously bitter and stark.

Cubicles by Loran_Arameri @loraneldin

Tags: Not A Fix-It, hickmanvengers, Superior Iron Man, Old Man Steve Rogers, Hurt, Angst, Time Runs Out Summary: After the Illumnati and Sue Storm have captured Steve, they put him in the glass cube next to Tony, instead of trying to work with him Notes: An issue tag that answers a question you maybe didn't know you had and the answer is even sadder than you imagined. And that's delicious.

Compilation Error by Anonymous

Tags: Major Character Death, Angst, Unhappy Ending, Civil War, Reality manipulation, holy shit what's happened to Tony?, Contest of Champions, Suicidal Ideation Summary: The first time Tony Stark kills Steve Rogers is an accident. Notes: Scenes here flick past bare skin like paint, like knives leaving bleeding scrapes. Intericately woven and final as slamming a last comic issue closed.

That's all folks!

Thanks for reading and make sure to kudos and comments fics you explore! Fandom is a circle and we are all passing it forward.

#stevetony #cap-im events #fic rec #616 #ultimates #mcu #my fic #capimrec2024 #cap-ironman

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221bshrlocked · 3 months ago

Text

Saw This Coming

Pairing: Captain Rex x Jedi AFAB!Reader

Words: 3790

Warnings: It's angsty but there's fluff in the end. Mention of blood and violence. Reader is a little bit of a Gray Jedi so if that makes you uncomfortable, don't read ahead. Some angsty confessions. One kiss. Happ ending :)

Prompt: “Each time I look at you // I'm limp as a glove // And feeling like someone in love.” (Like Someone In Love, Ella Fitzgerald)

A/N: This is for @sinfulsalutations who is partaking of this Song Fic Exchange. I hope you like this friend. As always, I would like to thank @cloneficgiftexchange for being the only person who is keeping me writing until now. I have no ability to write whatsoever except when you hold these exchanges and even though the stories may not be my best, I am happy that I can still find the energy and interest to write.

He couldn’t see anything, let alone feel what was unfolding around him. There was only chaos, the kind of madness that was reminiscent of his years at the GAR. For a moment, he thinks that the war is over, but as his senses slowly return to him, he pieces together where he was and what he was meant to be doing. His eyes blink tiredly, and as he tries to get out of bed, a hand shoots quickly and pushes him back. He flinches hard, only to realize that it’s not his body that’s shaking but the earth beneath him.

“Stay down Rex,” your voice pulls him away from the battle raging around him, and he turns his head to the side, eyes blown wide open and brows furrowing in anger at the sight that meets him. It takes him far too long to accept that you are crouching beside him, and his expression must be intense because you avoid his gaze and look out the cave you’ve managed to pull him into for shelter.

“How…how are you here?” His voice breaks, in turn making you wince at the hurt laced in his question. Even though you still have your hand resting against his sternum, Rex ignores the faint warmth seeping through his clothes and sits up, barely managing to hold back from screaming in agony at the pain that shoots through his shoulder. You take notice of the deep grimace on his features and turn your full attention to him.

“Could you, for once, listen to me?” You make the mistake of meeting his eyes then, the rest of your lecture dying in your throat when you see tears threatening to roll down his dirt-stained cheeks. He says nothing else, and you hate how miserable he looks, mostly because you know it has nothing to do with the physical pain draining his energy and everything to do with how things turned out between the two of you.

“We need to lay low until Hunter gets here.” A sudden silence fills the space in between the two of you, and you can tell that he is shocked by your casual mention of his brother’s name, maybe even ask how Hunter knows where you are but he chooses against it. Again, you glance at the opening of the cave, watching the stormtroopers run around while two AT-ATs fire into the distance and continue to destroy everything that comes in their line of sight. There’s so much you want to ask Rex, perhaps even yell at him about. But you know this is neither the time nor the place to lecture him about how he shouldn’t have come to an Empire-infested planet, let alone with only a handful of other rebels.

The explosions only increase as minutes go by, and you hate having to wait beside Rex instead of fighting, but you know you can’t leave him by himself, especially since he was hurt and barely able to move. You sneak a look at him every once in a while, wanting to make sure that he was still awake and breathing. When the sounds of destruction grow near, you leave him in the back of the cave and make your way to the front, wanting to check whether there was anyone nearby. There are less stormtroopers walking nearby, and you notice that one of the transports stopped firing altogether. Thinking they must have realized there weren’t more rebels that attacked their camp, you make your way back inside the cave to tell Rex that you’re safe for the time being.

Except as soon as you get there, your heart drops at the sight that meets you. You hand shoots to your lightsaber instantly, but the two stormtroopers point their guns instantly, one at you and the other at Rex.

“Don’t even think about it.”

You don’t move a muscle, afraid they’d get a shot right once and take his life then and there.

“How did you get in?” You ask calmly, knowing not to make any sudden movements for his sake. They don’t answer your question, but you’re counting on one of them saying more than he intends. You glance at Rex and find his chest rising and falling much slower than before, his eyes barely managing to keep your gaze.

“We knew you were coming and knew where you could hide.” Rex perks at the response, and you notice the smirk on his face, letting you know that they may have just revealed something they shouldn’t have.

“I’m going to give you one chance to walk away. It would be wise to listen to me.” There is false confidence and serenity in your voice, but you try to remain as calm as possible, unsure of whether or not your plan will work.

“Don’t be stupid. You’re outnumbered, and he’s injured. This is an easy kill.” One of them responds with a laugh and you instantly know whom you will kill first.

“I’m sorry.” You know that Rex hears the apology because he looks at you the same way he's gazed at you the last time you were in a similar situation. You’re not sure if it’s a look of disappointment or anger, but you know well you’ll never be able to forget it.

“You should-” Before the armed man can finish his sentence, you ignite your lightsaber and send it swirling through the air, managing to cut his hand off before forcing it to go through the other’s torso. Both bodies drop to the ground, except one of them is dead while the other attempts to scream in agony. You don’t give him a chance to let out a single sound, running to him and taking the helmet off instantly to avoid unwanted visitors. Your hand is on his mouth immediately, a warning of what could happen if he decides to make any noise.

You stand up, and retrieve your lightsaber near the dead body, walking back to the stormtrooper laying beside Rex. You crouch down and stare at him, never once breaking eye contact to let him know that you were serious about your suggestion.

“You should have taken the warning.”

“I- I thought Jedi don’t kill unarmed men.” His voice shakes with fear, and you hate the power that courses through your veins with each little, unsure breath he takes.

“Haven’t you heard? All the Jedi are dead.” Not wanting to make this last any longer, you light your saber one last time and watch as life drains from his eyes, the buzzing sound of your weapon ringing through the cave for a moment before you shut it off. You turn around and bite into your lower lip nervously when you see the way Rex is staring at you. He winces when he tries to sit up again and you crouch beside him, not bothering to explain yourself as you check his wound.

“Sit still, this will feel a little strange.” You rip the fabric down his chest, ignoring the harsh grasp he has on your forearm. It’s only when you place both of your palms atop his wound that his hold increases.

“You c-can’t.” His voice is hoarse, making you wish this was all a nightmare.

“Rex, they might be close but they’re not close enough. Let me heal you.”

“If you heal me, you…you won’t be able to protect yourself.” You cringe at the way he breathes the last word, and a part of you wants to shake him awake, tell him that you couldn’t care any less about yourself and only care for him. But you say nothing, shaking your head at the absurdity of his beliefs before shutting your eyes.

Before either of you can say anything, you fall over against Rex, breathing a sigh of relief when his arms wrap around you and keep you in his embrace.

“Mesh’la, please.” The petname nearly makes you sob but you tune him out, wanting to prioritize his safety over your own desires. You don’t respond to him, focusing on the slow beat of his heart in an attempt to match your own with it. It’s not faint, but it concerns you, scares you enough that you don’t follow your late master’s advice on what is necessary to be done when healing another. It happens quickly, much faster than it should, but you feel the Force twist and turn within your body until it moves into him. It’s not as it should be, but you continue regardless, knowing there was no other option, no other way to ensure his safety. Only when you feel his grip soften on your skin do you finally open your eyes and look down at his shoulder. It’s completely healed, but the skin is still inflamed, making you wish you were a little more patient.

“What have you done, sweetheart?” His voice is soothing now, not as angry or hurt as before, and you hate that it’s only because he feels guilty for making you expand your energy for him. You smile at him, marveling at how captivating his hazel gray eyes can be after all those years of knowing him. But the thought slowly dies out as you watch everything turn dark. If there is a confession that shocks you to your core, you don’t really register it, too busy surrendering to the warmth engulfing you.

It seems unfairly short, the heat that allowed you to rest for a moment suddenly getting ripped away from you. It goes as quickly as it comes, and you force your eyes to open in search for it, only to find yourself in an empty room, riddled with nothing but a handful of scraps.

You study the small sleeping area, and only when you turn behind you do you finally realize where you are, whose room you’re in. The helmet looks back at you, a reminder of where this journey began, how long you’ve been carrying this secret. A part of you wishes you could tell him, but you’re not sure where you can even begin, or if he would feel the same way. You’d always had an inclination, but you didn’t want to meet the consequences should your intuition be wrong.

The sound of the door sliding open catches your attention and you already know who it is before you can look at him. You expect him to ask where you’ve been, or even how you knew where he was. You’re even waiting for him to discuss why Hunter knew where you were all along and he didn’t. But he says none of that. In fact, he says nothing at all as he takes a seat on his cot, instantly taking your hand in between his own and rubbing your wrist.

The two of you breathe in unison, as if you’ve both been waiting for this moment for so long. You look down to where he’s touching you, and you wonder if you’ll ever feel anything remotely as intimate as this instance.

The softness with which he touches you, along with his sweet, concerned voice, makes you want to tug him beneath the covers and forget the galaxy around you. But you reel back your emotions, and clear your throat in an attempt to keep yourself under control, afraid he could see right through you.

“How are you feeling?”

“Okay. You?” Rex smiles at your concern, remembering all those times you were bloodied and beaten but still prioritized his safety.

“I’m good…thanks to you.” His thumb circles around the skin of your hand, the sensation feeling like a heated rod rubbing against your joints. A small part of you wishes to remove your palm from his hands, but you don’t want to upset him, or have him misunderstand why you can’t bear his touch all of a sudden. It’s only later that you’d come to realize why you really didn’t want to stop touching him, but for now, you convince yourself it’s to avoid hurting his feelings and not because you can’t find it in yourself to let go of him. It’s difficult to focus on anything else, but as he continues to massage strange figures across the back of your hand, you figure this may be the only time you’ll be able to apologize for what you’ve done all those months ago.

“I’m sorry.” The two words are enough to snap Rex out of whatever haze he’s fallen under. He slowly looks up at you, stopping the circular patterns but continuing to hold your hand in between his. His gaze doesn’t waver for a moment and you know he’s silently asking you to elaborate on the strange outburst.

“Rex, I’m so sorry. For everything.” His impassive expression shifts then, and you swallow the lump in your throat when you see his eyebrows twitch in irritation before resting once more.

“What happened on Corijn wasn’t your fault.” Rex finally breaks his silence, and you shake your head impatiently, annoyed that he knew what you’re referring to but was choosing to take the higher road for your sake.

“That’s not what I mean.” You attempt to take your hand away then, but Rex doesn’t let you move another inch, keeping a tight hold on you and tugging you closer to him. You’re not sure if he’s intentionally trying to drag this out or was simply refusing to blame you for what you’ve done.

“Tell me.” You hate how calm he sounds, how caring and patient he’s being with you when he should be angry with you for knowingly hurting him.

“I’m sorry for…leaving without an explanation. For ignoring your messages.” A sigh of relief leaves your lips, but is quickly interrupted when you understand that there is something much more important you should be apologizing for. You look away for a moment to collect your bearings, and when you think you can handle looking into his sad eyes again, you turn your attention back to him and finally let go of your pride.

“For showing you what I’m capable of.” If you think he’d say anything to confirm your hunch, he disappoints you and remains silent. But as the seconds roll by, you learn that his quietness was not out of judgment but out of meditation. The thought makes you uncomfortable because even though he owed you nothing, he was still trying to choose his words carefully so he doesn’t end up saying something that upsets you.

“I never meant for you to…see what you have seen. To know that I can take life so easily and without hesitation.” Whatever you thought Rex’s reaction would be, you never expected him to let go of you as if you’ve burned him, let alone frown at you in sheer anger. You sit up slowly when you see him take a few steps back and face the opposite wall, and you don’t dare say anything else until you figure out what exactly pissed him off so much.

“Is that what you think I care about?” His voice is calm, but you can practically feel his wrath radiating off of him like deadly waves, as if he was barely managing the facade he was putting up. You’re confused at the abrupt and dramatic response, and only when his response registers in your mind that you finally lose control and snap at him in return.

“Rex, don’t look at me and tell me you don’t care because I know you do. I cared…or used to at least.” He turns around then, and you hate the way he’s looking at you, as if you had stabbed him with a vibroblade and twisted it. He walks back to you and grabs your shoulders, pulling you towards him so you can focus on nothing but his words.

“I only ever cared about you. You- you threw yourself into harm’s way for me, as if your life wasn’t more precious.” Like before, you’re shocked by his response and look at him with a confused expression.

“It’s not.” You answer instantly, and Rex curses beneath his breath at how adamant you are, how wholeheartedly you believe your own thoughts and continue to ignore his own.

“Cyare, please. I- I’ve lost everyone I love. My brothers are broken, and so am I. Do you think I could survive your death too?” You shake your head at him, once again attempting to push him away from you. But Rex slips his hold around your wrists and tugs you even closer, until you’re both breathing the same air. His chest rises and falls rapidly, mirroring your own in fear and anger. For a moment, you see his eyes shift down to your lips and only when you let out a quiet sob does he return his attention to your gaze once more.

“You don’t understand how much I changed.” The confession is whispered with wariness, and you look away from him, too embarrassed to explain to him why you were so much different than the Jedi he once knew.

“So your lightsaber is orange. That means nothing to me.” The mention of your weapon steals the air out of your lungs, and you don’t notice you’re crying until you feel Rex’s calloused fingers wipe away the tears rolling down your cheeks.

“The color means so much more than you realize.” You can barely stand at this point, and Rex must notice the toll this conversation is taking on you because he pushes you back to his cot and sits you down with ease, remaining in your space in an attempt to calm your mind. He parts his lips to relay a confession of his own, but when he sees you avoiding meeting his eyes again, he cups your jaw and pushes it up until he’s in your line of sight.

“I know what it means. I know why it changed, and I don’t care. You’re so much more to me.”

Rex would tell you later that it took you way too long to understand what he was trying to tell you at this moment. You look at him closely, trying to come to terms with the reality of what he just said. Time seems to stand still as you blink confusingly at him, and it’s only when his other hand cups your cheek as well that you truly comprehend the revelation he’s just thrust upon you.

“You don’t mean-” Your voice cracks, and it’s the first time in ages that you feel shy in front of Rex. Not embarrassed, or awkward. Just shy and hopeful.

“Each time I look at you,” he leans forward and shuts his eyes, nudging your nose with his own as he takes in a deep breath to commit this moment to memory, “I’m limp as a glove.” The ease with which he murmurs those words sets you mind at ease, and you allow yourself to disregard everything horrible that transpired before this second.

“I’m desperate for you cyare,” Rex shakes with anticipation as he feels your hands finally reach for him, grabbing onto his forearms to make sure that this was real, and he was telling you what you’ve yearned to hear from him ever since you first laid eyes on him all those years ago.

“And feeling like someone in love.” A shudder courses through your body, sending you into Rex’s embrace and forcing you to break down in his arms. You wrap yourself around him, afraid this is all a dream and that you’d wake up all alone on your ship. Rex lets out a chuckle, one that lets you know he understands the striking reaction to his confession.

“I can’t go through life without you, not anymore.” He whispers into your ear, praying to the Force that you finally allow yourself to believe how much you matter to him, or at the very least, trust his judgment.

“Trust me baby, that’s all I’m asking of you. Trust me to know what I want…what I need to keep doing this.” The reassuring sentiments wash over you like the early morning dew, managing to send you into a state of serenity you have not known in a long time. You want to say so much to him, describe what he makes you feel, or even how often you think of him. But your throat is dry from the intensity of the conversation, so you figure you can put him at ease for the time being, until you are brave enough to tell how much you love him.

“Okay.”

Neither of you say anything else for what feels like hours, relishing the comfortable silence that replaced years of heartache and unspoken feelings. It’s only when you wipe your nose thatRex figures he can joke a little with you.

“And for kriff’s sake, don’t drop off the face of the galaxy again.”You giggle at the sudden outburst but pull back to look into his eyes as you make him a new promise.

“I won’t.”

The two of you smile at each other, but you notice the hazel in his eyes quickly become overshadowed with much darker pupils. The easy expressions turn heated, and before you know it, you’re pushing forward and molding your lips with his. It’s a chaste kiss, one that took wars to finally come into existence, and you decide then and there that you’d like to begin and end each day with the touch of his lips. Rex parts his bruised lips to deepen the kiss, smiling to himself when you let out a little gasp and give him a chance to grow even closer to you.

Your hands twist in his clothes, muscles relaxing as you feel his hands comb into your hair and tug a little. He pulls your head away to give you a chance to breathe, and when your eyes flutter open, he lets out a sigh of relief at seeing them just as dazed as he his heart feels.

“Kriff…I’ve wanted to do that for years.” Rex mutters against your lips, giving you a quick peck on the lips before pulling you back into his arms. You’re about to tell him that you probably wanted to kiss him long before him when you sense a pair of eyes staring at you.

“Well, the whole of the Rebellion saw this coming.” Gregor laughs when the two of you jump at his laugh, and you can’t help but giggle at Rex when you turn to him and watch as his cheeks turn different shades of red.

“Took you long enough.” Hunter shakes his head before saluting the two of you and walking away, wondering how long it’s been since he’s seen either of you smiling so peacefully.

#SFE24 #captain rex/reader #captain rex x reader #captain rex #str wars #the clone wars #rebels #rex/reader #rex x reader

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