#West Coast Main Line
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eltristanexplicitcontent · 10 months ago
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South Kenton trainspotting
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8 trains in 40 seconds @traingifs
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haxanbroker · 1 month ago
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The North. Penrith Railway Station, Cumbria, September 2024.
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the-time-lord-oracle · 10 months ago
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Pioneer class AL1 electric locomotive No E3001 passes the Jodrell Bank telescope circa 1960. There's something very sci-fi about the appearance of the first-generation West Coast electrics. It's the raked-back cab fronts and electric blue livery that does it.
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feigeroman · 1 month ago
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Saturday Movie Night: Second Nature
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As I mentioned in a previous Saturday Movie Night, the West Coast Main Line was electrified in stages between 1959 and 1974, with work having been completed as far north as Crewe by 1966. This was covered by BTF many times, and this example looks at the work which had been done from the perspective of railwaymen and traffic controllers in the Rugby area.
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mjalford98 · 3 months ago
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British Rail class 50s no 50007 & 50049 double head a southbound train of InterCity carriages under the wires of the West Coast Main Line, passing over the River Penk on the approach to Penkridge with the returning "Grampian Highlander" railtour organised by Pathfinder.
I took these shots from the nearby road bridge, setting up my DJI gimbal camera on a tripod to film the train while I took the still images on my Fujifilm camera, whose annoying electronic shutter squeak can be heard in the video. This was also on a tripod, which was great for getting a full set of reasonably sharp images, from which I could then select the best composition - shame about the noise, but I'm not too bothered. I actually think the bit of noise helps make the shot feel like it might have been taken in the 1980s, when trains looked just like this, and of course the timeless landscape only lends more visual interest and period atmosphere to the scene. Good for prints, merchandise, and stock photo/video downloads, so I'm quite excited to have bagged these, even if I'm currently £50 poorer for it!
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barrymccaulkinem · 3 months ago
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if theres one thing the average tf2 player of today needs to improve on its protecting your medic #shitmedicmainssay
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supertrainstationh · 1 year ago
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Unexpected mega move by 1Z13 Studios Via Flickr: D6851 (37667) 'Flopsie' slowly drags a trio of Mk3 coaches through Coventry, one being the ex VT Pretendolino Buffet vechile. 5Z37 0954 Crewe H.S. to Eastleigh Arlington (Zg)
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januaryembrs · 6 months ago
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WHEN YOU KNOW, YOU KNOW | Spencer Reid x Sunshine!Reader
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Description: Sunshine rookie gets a boyfriend, and Spencer can’t help but think he would be so much better for her. But that definitely isn’t the jealousy talking, right?
Length: 8k
Warnings: nothing really, jealousy? talks of sex? embarrassment? Mention briefly of vomit because of allergic reaction.
main masterlist.
author’s note: I want to write for these two until my fingers are two little stubs and even then I’ll learn with my toes. Can be read as a stand alone!
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He thought he was going to be sick when he saw her that random Thursday, leaning against her desk, a sweet, bashful smile on her face. Or, more specifically, Spencer thought he was going to need to at least sit down when he saw the man standing next to her, tucking a strand of hair behind her ear, the little daisy earrings Penelope bought her for her birthday almost laughing at his gobsmacked expression. 
He liked Agent Taylor Bingley. He respected the fresh faced desk jockey from the third floor that swanned around their bullpen, usually discussing warm up routines with Luke. He was quick on his feet, a pretty decent shot. Never missed a report, never tardy, even offered his parking spot up to Spencer on more than one occasion because he didn’t mind the long walk from the other lot. He flew under the radar, and when he was noticed, it was because he was a particularly kind soul. 
Spencer didn’t think he’d ever seen him without those rosy cheeks that made him look almost always sunburnt, or that trademark boyish grin a handsome guy like him had down to a tea. So it really shouldn’t have been such a surprise to see him lingering around his sunshine girl. 
Except she wasn’t his, not by a mile. They just spent almost every second of the work day together.
“Check it out, rookie has an admirer,” Tara said, the heels clicking against the floor as she passed the door, where Spencer seemed to have stopped, his eyes narrowing at the happy couple, “Can’t say I blame him. She’s a pretty girl, don’t you think, Spence?”
She didn’t realise she was rubbing salt in a superficial wound, but Spencer felt his jaw feather with annoyance. Because she was beyond a pretty girl, she was honey and all the months of Spring and a hot drink on a rainy day and finishing a good book and the dessert your mom let you have on your tenth birthday. Not that he could admit that. So he just nodded, right as Taylor leaned over to kiss the apple of her cheek. 
She shied away, smiling to her lap and playing with her fingertips, not looking up from her little potted plant that sat next to her on her desk, and Spencer knew it was because she floundered when people gave her too much attention.
Like when Garcia had said her blouse and bun combo she’d worn the other day made her look like a sexy teaching assistant, she’d stammered something close to a thankyou and headed to the kitchenette to get herself a glass of water. Or when Rossi had said the bangs she had cut herself two weeks ago looked cute, that his daughter had been desperate to try something similar, she’d spilled her coffee down her front not even two seconds later because she had been so occupied telling the man it was no big deal. 
“Morning, Doctor Reid, Doctor Lewis,” Taylor said, his pearly white teeth gleaming with that West Coast, surfer boy tan that made Spencer want to huff. The man was insufferable. Well, correction, he was insufferably nice for someone Spencer was desperate to pick apart with faults the second he’d seen her preening over their sunshine rookie. 
“Morning, Agent Bingley,” Tara said civilly, smiling back at the Agent that passed them to head to the elevators. She caught a glimpse of Spencer, and was quick to make herself scarce in the interest of needing to check in with Penelope, because she knew what that stormy look in his eye and the way his lips pressed into a thin line meant, profiler or not. 
Spencer didn’t pay much attention to Lewis leaving his side, not that he was trying to be rude, his eyes were zeroed in on the way she fumbled around her desk, looking for imaginary mess to tidy, which included rearranging the pots of glitter pens and highlighters next to her monitor, only to put them back exactly how they were before. 
“Agent Bingley, that’s new,” Came a voice over her shoulder, that made her jump in her seat, and her expression was skittish when she swivelled around, Spencer towering over her with calculating eyes. Luke rolled his chair around the divider to lean in on the conversation, having witnessed the whole thing in high definition since her desk was right next to his. 
“Oh, Taylor?” She squeaked, and Spencer didn’t need to touch her face to know it had gone hot just by the way she simpered and fiddled with the hem of her knee length skirt, avoiding their gaze, “Yeah, he took me to the aquarium at the weekend and we got lunch. It’s not really serious or anything, I don’t think,” 
She seemed unsure, her lips pursed together and a tiny crease between her brow he hated, and it was then Luke’s deep laugh rumbled next to them. 
“Does he know that?” Luke asked, and she shot him a look, wide eyed and confused, as he cleared his throat, “I was thinking I could take you out again in that pretty red dress-”
She threw a wad of scrunched up notepaper at him, an embarrassed smile on her face as she shook her head at him, “You have spent way too much time with Penelope, you’re turning into gossiping school children,” 
But she seemed happy, like the thought of the conversation she’d had with Agent Bingley made her all the more girlish herself as she giggled lightly, her gaze meeting Spencer’s empty expression. He wished he could hide his jealousy better, perhaps even seem happy for her. She deserved someone soft and saccharine and humane like Bingley, not a rough shell of what once was a brilliant man. He knew he should feel somewhat pleased for her, at least now he had empirical, hard evidence on why he couldn’t have her, but he couldn’t. 
“All I’m saying, rookie, is if you got that man bringing you breakfast and sweet talking you after one date, you’ll have him wrapped around your pinky by the time he’s your boyfriend,” Luke chuckled, and Spencer thought he might just burst a vessel with how hard he clenched his jaw at that dreaded b word. 
Alvez had no idea just how much he had twisted a knife in Spencer’s gut, which was plunged even further when he saw that sparkle in her eye when she looked up at him. 
“Ignore him, he’s a busy body,” She chirped, her teeth peeking from her lips when she hid a grin, “You wanna get coffee later? Taylor brought me tea and I’m dying for the good stuff,” 
Spencer nodded with a small smile, because her attitude was infectious, and selfishly thinking that Bingley couldn’t be that perfect for her because she only ever wanted tea when she felt sick, usually towards the start of the month that he guessed was in correlation with her menstrual cycle but would never ask. She wouldn’t want tea for another two weeks, and would likely take an extra shot in her cappuccino today because this was when she felt the most lethargic.  
Swivelling back around in her chair to log onto her computer, she remained completely oblivious to his inner turmoil. 
For once, Spencer wished he’d been late to work.
Two months. They had been dating for two fucking months. As far as Spencer could tell, from Penelope’s need to chatter about their sunshine rookie and her hot, stud muffin of a boyfriend, things had only been official for about five weeks of that time, but it hadn’t stopped Spencer from wanting to swallow glass because that would likely be less inconvenient than seeing the two of them together. 
Taylor usually brought her breakfast whenever they would get back from a case, which infuriated Spencer because he always bought her tea. She was a people pleaser, Spencer knew it before he had ever thought of her as anything other than the shiny newbie with too much joy and doe eyes he’d never seen before. But now, knowing her better than anyone else in the office did because she practically shadowed his footsteps, it was blaringly obvious to him that she had either never told him she didn’t like tea first thing in the morning, or he had never bothered to take notice. 
Spencer felt an odd puddle of smugness and fury when on more than one occasion he saw her pouring it down the drain, cold after sitting there for hours until it was unbearable and she couldn’t force herself to drink anymore. It was obvious to him, so why wasn’t it obvious to her own boyfriend? Spencer thought bitterly. But then Agent Bingley did leave a sour taste in his mouth these days.
Speaking of which, Spencer felt that pang in his chest the way he always did when the happy couple walked into the office together. Her hand was usually in his, though she seemed to simper under the weight of the team's glances; knowing and teasing as he’d take her to her desk and whip out the to-go pastries that he’d bought them that morning. 
“Morning, Spence,” She skipped past his desk, Taylor trailing behind her like a dog, though she seemed not to mind keeping him waiting a moment as she spoke to her friend, “How was Doctor Who?”
He smiled despite his grudge, because she always remembered what he said. He’d told her once that Thursdays were his evening to watch the show, and every time Friday morning rolled around, she’d bound up to lean over his computer and ask. 
“It was okay, I’m excited to see what they do with a Female Doctor, even if I’ll miss Capaldi,” He replied earnestly, and her eyes filled with glee. 
“Did they give her a new one of the doo-hickies they have?” She asked, his chest butterflying with an aching sort of affection because she seemed to remember everything he ever told her. 
“Sonic Screwdriver?” She nodded her head, even though Spencer knew she didn’t quite understand the show entirely, “Yeah, I prefer Sarah Jane’s Sonic Lipstick however,” 
“I wish I had one of those, I could reapply and save the world, how cool would that be?” She said, and they laughed together a little, before Taylor popped his head over Spencer’s computer with that dentist white beam and his excitable eyes, bluer than any sea rolling onto shore. 
“Morning, Doctor Reid,” Agent Bingley said, and the smile withered from Spencer’s face, morphing into a civil nod, his expression unreadable. 
“Morning, Agent,” He said, his eyes tracking back to his screen as he suddenly found Emily’s group email about staff room fridge etiquette invigorating. 
Taylor must have taken it as a sign the Doctor Reid was busy and finally let him have a minutes peace, that is until she took a seat at her desk and he leaned next to her, handing her a warm bagel. 
Spencer heard them chatting for about ten minutes, of which he was trying anything to tune them out, including roping Luke into their own conversation. It wasn’t until there was a lapse in the chatter that Spencer’s ears pricked up, and he heard her stand up from her desk, eyes wide as she spat a mouthful out into a tissue. 
“Does this have coconut in it?” She asked somewhat fearfully, Spencer’s head whipping around to her little corner of the bullpen. Her little self help stickers dotted around her desktop stared back at him, her reminder to ‘drink water’ almost horribly ironic the second he’d heard her question. 
His stomach dropped when Taylor frowned, “Yeah, it’s coconut and raspberry, is-is that not okay?” 
Spencer was quick to stand up out of his own seat, rifling through his satchel to dig out his water bottle, making it to her desk in just two long paces and handing it to her without another word as she looked up at him worriedly. 
“If you need to puke, it’ll probably be for the best so that you can get the traces out of your stomach. You can’t have the steroids before you hurl or it won’t work,” He soothed, and she nodded, sipping on his water with shaky hands, and Spencer was quick to catch the way her skin had a slight sheen to it that hadn’t been there before. He put a hand on her shoulder, trying to gage if she was well enough to make it to the bathroom on her own or if he would need to drive her to the ER. Either way her expression worried him. 
“I-I thought it was white chocolate,” She peeped, looking extremely sorry for herself as she dumped the chewed up brownie in her bin, and Taylor almost appeared at her side, looking entirely lost as he stroked a hand down her hair. 
“Talk to me, what’s wrong?” He asked, seafoam hues trailing down her sweating face in terror. 
“She’s allergic to coconut,” Spencer cut in, his tone a little harsher than needed, and her boyfriend’s expression wilted like a kicked puppy. 
“Shit! You never mentioned, I’m so- I’m so sorry, honey,” Taylor went pale, and she didn’t look much better as she pushed past the two of them, heading for the bathroom, Spencer a single pace behind her. 
“I got her, don’t worry,” He called over his shoulder to Agent Bingley standing there like a gaping fish, his hand running through his blonde sweep as he watched her all but running out of the office, Spencer’s long legs keeping up with her. 
“Is your skin getting prickly yet?” Spencer asked. Swouldn't go into anaphylaxis, at least not as far as they knew, but the large hives that would appear on her chest and neck and the vomiting was not ideal. She kept a tray of steroids in her desk incase an accidental cross contamination happened (and because Spencer had forced her to have some on hand), but seeing her panicked eyes as she tasted the chalky fruit had made him fawn over her like she was marked for the plague. 
“Neck is getting itchy,” She replied, tugging at her collar and pushing the door to the unisex bathrooms open, heading for the nearest stall, “You don’t have to stay for this bit, it’s not-”
He cut her off by sweeping her hair into a ponytail, as if to tell her to stop worrying about him, and he stroked a hand over her arm to let her know he was right there, because he knew she really hated anything gory and gross like that. 
He hushed her when she’d try to apologise, hand her his bottle of water in between moments where her whole body seized.
And for a minute, she thought that Spencer might be the only person who she’d ever let see her like this. Not Luke, or Garcia and certainly not Taylor. 
The thought of it kept her quiet for the rest of the morning. 
-
They seemed to move past the whole debacle quickly. Luke said Taylor had taken her to a fancy restaurant uptown to apologise, making a huge point to avoid the coconut banoffee pudding like it was an explosive. 
“You guys are so cute, you’re like Jane and he’s literally your Bingley. I swear your kids are going to be sweet enough I could drizzle them right next to ice cream,” Penelope said over the SUV console speaker, Spencer in the driving seat and her in the passenger, flicking through her files as they approached the victim’s house. 
The rookie blanched, “Woah, woah, kids?” She protested, and even Spencer felt himself nearly swerve the minute the bubbly IT geek said it. She looked shaken, awkwardly chuckling and reaching to tuck hair behind her ear, “Slow down, Garcia, we’ve not even- you know what, I think we’re talking about the wrong thing here-“ 
“You’ve not even what?” Penelope burst out, her need for the lastest gossip overwhelming the reading of the room. She swallowed heavily, shifting in her seat to face out of the window, her knees touching the door with a thud, “Have you guys not had sex yet?” 
“Penelope!” The woman screeched, her face hot and gobsmacked that she’d even said it out loud. 
But it was telling enough, and Spencer’s face whirled over the console to her, guilt written on her features. 
“I just assumed you guys had done it seeing as both of you are the hottest couple I know, I mean I wouldn’t be able to keep my hands off you if I was a guy-“ Penelope tried to save herself in the only way she knew how, by digging herself a deeper hole. 
Spencer’s hand shot out for the centre screen, “We’re losing you, Garcia, you’re breaking up, bye,” He pressed the end call button, and he didn’t need to look at the girl’s face to know she was the epitome of mortified. 
Spencer opened his mouth to say something, the awkward silence of the car killing him as much as he knew it was her, but he thought better of it and clamped his mouth shut. It took him a minute before he opened his mouth to speak again, if not to ask her if she wanted to stop at a drive thru for breakfast, but she beat him to it. 
“I was going to say we’ve not even said I love you yet,” She murmured, keeping her body entirely swivelled away from him, her arms crossed over her chest in an attempt to make herself smaller, as if she could just smush herself into the seat so he wouldn’t say anything. She cleared her throat, scratching her wrist nervously, “But I guess that’s also true too,” 
“Why not?” Her eyes snapped onto Spencer when he braved those two words, and he sensed he’d overstepped some sort of boundary before he realised it sounded like he’d been speaking about the latter, “Why haven’t you said it?” He clarified. 
She went quiet, her shoulders shrugging being the only sign that she’d heard him, gaze trailing back out her window. 
“He’s not said it yet either, and I don’t think I want him to. Not yet at least,” Her voice was soft, heavy as if every single one of them was coming from her heart, “Love is such a big emotion I think if he did say it, I wouldn’t know how to respond. Like, if I’m going to say it back to someone, I want to be sure I feel it otherwise it’s like I’m betraying everyone else’s version of love, you know?” 
He thought she might just be an angel bottled up and thrown into his life, and he sometimes wished he could take a look inside that head of hers because how she had protected her beautiful look on the world after seeing so much hurt staggered him. He had become cruel and cold and heavy where she looked at the lecherous shithole heading for disaster they called Earth and saw right to its soul, gave it a hug, told it she would care even when no one else would. 
He tore his eyes from the road, and took in the outline of her face, mindlessly watching the pedestrians on their daily commute to grab lunch, a dog peeing against a lamp post, a motorcyclist bobbing and weaving in between the midday traffic, her doe eyes never missing a trick.
Forcing his gaping expression back on the road, because he might just swerve and hit the damn rider off his bike if he let himself get lost in his little dreamscape that consisted of nothing but her and her face and her thoughts and her words, he cleared his throat, not sure how to add to the poetic, rose tint she seemed to see the world in.
“That’s good, that you’re taking things at your own pace, atleast,” He said, not particularly profound but at least it was something, “You shouldn’t do things just because someone else wants you to, even if you think it would make them happy,”
“But I like making people happy,” She countered, her expression troubled as she looked over at him with a quirked brow, “I like making you happy especially,”
“What makes you think I’m not happy?” Spencer asked, his mouth drying up, his stomach flipping in cartwheels when she giggled to herself like for once she was the smart one snd he was the one who needed teaching.
“It took you three and a half weeks to crack a smile when we first started working together,” His jaw clenched, because he was the one who counted the statistics. Perhaps he was rubbing off on her. “Honestly, I thought you hated me. I thought a seasoned agent like yourself probably would get frustrated teaching the dumb newbie the ABC’s, even ones that admire him. But then I thought, instead of getting so butt hurt about it all, I could just give you a reason to smile and you’d see that I’m not just a useless rookie learning to roll over for treats.”
Spencer’s throat bobbed. He’d hate himself forever for being so cruel to her those first few weeks, the clipped tones when she’d add something in a particularly chirpy voice, the way he would forget his manners sometimes when she’d bring him a coffee, because his head had been so deep in survival mode that being nice didn’t matter. Being nice had got him nowhere in Mexico, in fact it had shown his soft underbelly and drawn a target on it. 
“I never hated you,” His voice croaked out, weak and pathetic, and it's times like that he remembered ten years ago talking to her would have made him blush, pop a boner, and lose half his IQ all in one go. Coughing, his knuckles turned white at the wheel, and he avoids her gaze that feels like a pitfall trap, “It’s difficult to go back to how you used to be when you’ve got a thousand eyes on your back waiting for you to lower your guard,”
“I know, I know that now, I jus-” She floundered, worried she’d touched a nerve, but he stopped her by leaning over the console and putting a gentle hand on her kneecap.
“Relax, I know I wasn’t the most pleasant person to be around,” Spencer said, his timbre quiet but honest, “You were one of the few things I looked forward to, if I’m honest.”
“Really?” She said, agog, like she was waiting for him to turn around and say it had been a joke, “You didn’t think I’m too loud or, like, too much?”
“How can there be too much of you? If your body wasn’t in correct proportion, your organs wouldn't function-”
“Spencer,” She said, though he knew she was smiling even without having to look, “You know that’s not what I meant,”
“I know,” He replied, a smug little smile quirking on his own lips because he loved making her happy too, “No, I could never find you too much.”
She simpered under his words, his hand a stoked flame on her skin as she brought her fingers over the top of them to squeeze them together, before she changed the subject because she knew her cheeks might just explode if they heated anymore.
They were back from a long case, one that had made everyone tired and grumpy, especially because they needed to swing by the office for an hour of admin even Emily couldn’t wriggle them out of. 
And ofcourse, as he always was when Spencer was feeling like he was already about to strangle someone out of annoyance, Agent Bingley was right there when they entered the lobby.
She hadn’t slept well on the jet, despite Spence loaning her his jumper to use as a pillow, and she was in desperate need of coffee, the kind that Spencer and Penelope forced her to try instead of the cold caramel thing she liked. She’d even go for one of Luke’s zero sugar, zero milk atrocities right now.
“Hey guys, how was the flight?” Taylor jumped in to ask, and everyone gave some sort of variation of a groan because that was exactly how it had felt. His attention turned to her, as she pulled up the rear with Spencer attached her her hip because she had been practically sleepwalking the entire way there, “Hi honey,”
“Taylor, hi,” She said, her eyes perking up when he held out a hot take away cup for her, “You really didn’t have to,”
“Nonsense, herbal tea is supposed to alleviate headaches and help get you to sleep,” He replied, his other hand behind his back quickly whipping out to produce a bunch of flowers in front of her face.
She barely had time to flash him a grin to hide the disappointment that it was nowhere near as caffeinated as she’d like, nor that she didn’t even liked herbal tea, before a bunch of lilies were thrust her way.
“Lillies,” She said, her hand covering her chest at the touching sentiment, “Taylor, you shouldn’t have,”
“I know they’re your favourites,” The blonde replied, wrapping his arm around her shoulder and effectively putting a wall between her and Spencer, whether he meant to or not. Her expression wavered, and Spencer's eyes went straight to her, waiting for her to correct him. Because they weren’t her favourites, not even in her top five. Hyacinths were. Or Foxglove. Or Delphiniums. Not Lillies. 
She nodded wordlessly, and the three of them headed for the lift, where the rest of the team held the door for them, her expression tiptoeing between guilty and smiling, Taylor’s almost ecstatic to see her after her long few days away, and Spencer’s entirely pissed off that the sun kissed jerk couldn’t see every sign blaring in his face. 
“I might have to cut off the stamen when Ace comes over,” She queried, her eyes roving over the beautiful white petals opening towards her like a book.
“Ace? Who’s Ace?” He said, and Spencer and JJ exchanged a glance, because the whole elevator was now privy to their conversation as David pressed the six button. Taylor reached forward to push the three for himself.
“The dog I foster sometimes, the one I told you about. He helps me when I need to talk through some things. He’s a very good listener,,” She said with a dopey smile on her face, her eyes casting over her boyfriends face with a willing expression, because she knew for a fact she’d told him at lengths about the bouncy Spaniel that adored her, “He comes over for playdates, but the pollen inside lilies are poisonous to dogs,”
Taylor scrunched his nose up, “Ugh, I hate dogs, they’re so slobbery and the always seem to smell awful,” He commented, her face dropping the slightest in a way that made Spencer’s hand curl into a fist, because how dare Agent Bingley take that away from her, “I thought you were a cat person?”
“I like them both equally, but Ace is sweet. He curls up on my legs after we’ve gone for a walk,” Taylor still didn’t seem convinced, and she felt stupid for even mentioning it, well aware that the rest of her team were listening in on her childish description of the old dog that wanted nothing but love. 
“Why do you need a dog to talk anyway, babe? You have me,” Taylor said, in a way that was supposed to sound comforting but made Spencer want to shake him and tell him to listen to a damn word she was saying. Her eyes dimmed, and she looked at the lilies again, feeling entirely ungrateful for wishing they were something else, and the elevator doors opened onto the third floor. Taylor kissed her cheek and waltzed out of the lift with a quick goodbye to her team that was returned in murmurs. Turning to look at her, his body already in the anteroom of his own floor, he smiled sweetly at her, “I love you,”
JJ and Emily whipped their heads to her face, expecting to see some kind of puppy love blossom there, only to find wide-eyed panic, her smile slowly slipping. Rossi cleared his throat when she said nothing, the air turning stale as the team waited for her response, Taylor looking at her expectantly, and she wished the ground would open up then and there to swallow her whole, because that would probably be better than whatever this was.
Tara nudged her shoulder, waking her out of her daze, Luke scratching the back of his neck awkwardly, and it was then after a beat more of silence that Taylor opened his mouth again, “Babe, did you hear what I-”
She leaned forward to press the close door button, her doe hues in full flight mode, her fingers only picking up the pace when her boyfriend took a step closer towards the elevator, and Emily brought a hand over her mouth in muffled laughter when the doors slammed shut in front of him, their sunshine rookie entirely spooked and needing a quick exit.
The tiny metal box went silent, Spencer watching her face meld from alarm to horror, to sheer embarrassment.
“I mean, I’ll give it to you kid, that’s one way to do it,” Rossi said, patting her on the back and she shoved her face in her hands, the stems of the dove white flowers brushing against her cheek roughly.
“Please tell me that didn’t just happen,” She groaned through her fingers, JJ chuckling as the doors to their own floor opened up.
“Oh honey,” She said, rubbing the girl’s back gently, leading her out onto the BAU carpet that felt harsher against the souls of her shoes than it ever had before, “I think what you need is a coffee and a long talk with someone who isn’t a dog,”
Spencer watched her shuffle to slump down behind her desk, her expression still rattled and lost, JJ’s eyes flicking to him every now and then in a way that urged him to be the one to do just that because it was obvious by now who she talked the most openly to in the office.
But by the time he’d braved walking over to her desk, she’d already rushed through her report, excusing herself home for the day, and he knew her well enough to know she needed some breathing room before he could approach the subject, otherwise she would shut the doors on him too.
He hated the spiteful part of him that revelled in Taylor’s expression when that metal screen had slammed in his face.
It was three days later, and she had enforced a strict ban on talking about that day in the office. For once she didn’t look like she was going to break her resolve either, since every time someone tried to weasel information of her she would either pretend she hadn’t heard, or would excuse herself to make her fifth coffee of the day, or even had thrown her paperwork on the floor when Luke had pushed her for an answer just for an excuse to avoid the topic.
In fact, Spencer himself had been tempted to get her alone because he knew she would crack without much pressure from him, though the thought of using her trusting nature against her seemed wicked, and so he stopped himself and settled for curiosity.
It wasn’t until they were away on a case and they were shoved in a room together that the subject of Taylor was even brought up, and even then it was entirely out of his control.
“I’ll take the couch,” Spencer said, his eyes falling on the double bed in the centre of the room, striding over the other side of the room to throw his to go bag down on the two seater sofa that would wreck his back.
“Don’t be silly, we can just share the bed.” She said, as if it was the most obvious solution, which it was, “I sleep talk a little, but just give me a shove and I’ll shut up,” 
Spencer paused, watching her fumbling around her bag for her toothbrush and paste.
“Won’t your boyfriend mind?” He asked, his palms clammy because he worried for a moment it was wrong to bring it up, and his chest butterflied when she froze, “Sorry, I know you didn’t want to talk about it, I just thought I wouldn’t like my girlfriend sharing a bed-”
“We broke up,” She said, taking pulling a large pink shirt out her bag and some strawberry printed shorts, her toiletries stuffed in her pockets, “So don’t worry about any of that stuff, we can share,”
And she waltzed into the bathroom without any more explanation, the lock clicking behind her and leaving Spencer alone with his thoughts.
They had broken up? Was it because of what happened in the elevator? Was it because of what Penelope said in the car? Was she the one to break up with him or the other way around?
Spencer felt like a gossip, even though his thoughts had gone no further than his cranium, and by the time she emerged from the bathroom, fresh faced and in her pyjamas, he had already changed himself, tucked himself under the cover in the hope she understood they didn’t need to talk about it if she didn’t want to.
She smiled at him, tucking her dirty clothes back in her bag and heading for the bed, slipping under the plush duvet with a soft ooft. 
“Light on or off?” She asked, her finger hovering over the switch beside their bed.
“On, if that’s okay?” He replied and she nodded wordlessly, shuffling down under the covers, pulling them up to just below her armpits. Crossing her arms over her stomach like she was snow white waiting to fall into a poison-laced slumber, her eyes bore holes into the ceiling, and his thoughts banged loudly against his temple. The silence of the room seemed to only turn their avoidance tactics into a cacophony they couldn’t ignore.
“If you’re going to ask questions, I might as well tell you before we get back to Quantico.” She said finally, her sigh heavy and exhausted and she looked over at him, his brunette locks splaying over the pillow in waves, his facial hair scratching against the sheet when he flicked his head over to her too. 
Hazel had never been such a pretty colour than when they sat in silence for a moment, staring at one another, almost daring the other to speak first. He swallowed, his mouth watering at how she looked, tucked under the sheets, her body lax and soft under her pyjamas, her hands skimming over her stomach nervously.
“Is it because of the day in the elevator?” Spencer asked after a few minutes, breaths suddenly becoming difficult to regulate naturally unless he forced them to be, because he was so close to her under the covers, his entire body too long and gangly for just a twin bed, he could smell her shampoo and conditioning combo in full force. Her spearmint tongue rolled words around her mouth for a minute, dropping down to his Star Wars shirt he felt childish for wearing the minute he saw her looking at it.
“Kind of, he just wanted us to move so fast, it just kinda made me nervous, but I always thought being nervous was supposed to be good, you know?” She sighed, forgetting to breathe in between her splurge of words that had been building up inside her for weeks, “Like you said the feeling of excitement and fear are almost identical so I think I just convinced myself I was being dumb and I was being a bad person for not just giving him what he wanted. I’m supposed to love him, right? Being his girlfriend and all that,”
He had said that; because scientifically that was exactly correct. The hormones released during love and during fear were, down to their core, chemical matches, and it felt funny she’d remembered that fact considering she made him feel somewhere in between too. He knew she was special, just as much as he knew the idea of tainting her with his core terrified him. Like he secreted some kind of radiation that would ruin her if she got too close for too long. But he couldn’t help it. How do you stop yourself from wanting something good? It was just science. A Pavlovian response. 
“You’re not supposed to do anything. There’s no timeline for how you feel, and you can’t force yourself to feel something any quicker or stronger than you do,” He said, shaking his head when she bit her lip, her fingertips playing with one another ontop of the sheets.
“He wanted to know when I was ready to have…” She swallowed, her cheeks heating, “Intimacy with him. A-and it’s not like I’ve not done it before, I had a boyfriend in high school, but I just felt like with him…”
“He didn’t pressure you, did he?” Spencer asked, his brows furrowing as he felt a surge of annoyance flash through his blood that she had wound herself up so much just because of some guy who couldn’t keep it in his pants for a few months. 
Her eyes widened, taking in the storm brewing in that beautiful woodland gaze of his, and she shook her head quickly, “No, no, nothing like that. This was all on me, it was all just me being dumb,”
“You’re not being dumb just because some guy didn’t like the answer you gave,” He corrected, exhaling deeply and letting his frown drop, because he knew she hated when he did that, “Why didn’t you want to, if you don’t mind me asking?”
She shrugged, looking back up at the dusty lamp shade hanging from the ceiling, the cobwebs that smattered around the wooden panels.
“I don’t know, I just kind of never saw the two of us.. becoming intimate, you know?” She said, her tone sheepish like she was in confession and he was a priest sat on the other side of the divide. He looked over at her, scanning the outline of her face, but she seemed adamant on avoiding his gaze, because she knew she would spill everything the minute she looked at him. With Spencer, there were no secrets, and that was entirely the problem. 
Spencer’s lips pursed, thinking of exactly the right thing to say to such a delicate soul when she was laying herself hypothetically bare for him. 
“You don’t have to be intimate in a relationship if you don’t want to. No one who loves you should ever make you feel like there’s an expectation or like you owe them that,” Spencer explained softly, edging his pinky finger out the tiniest bit to catch the back of her hand that now lay flat on the bed, her head turning up to meet his round forest hues that looked down at her with more softness than he’d felt in a long time. 
He wished he could stay here with her forever. In the quiet of this room, they were just the two of them, not Doctor Reid and the Special Agent he had a huge hopeless crush on that was years his junior and thought she could fix everything wrong with the world. 
“I know,” She sighs, and his heart caught in his throat when her pinky raises up to meet his own, the tips of their fingers brushing against one another like they were meeting each other for a slow dance. He had touched her many times before, but there was something illicit about this time. Like their skin had become oppositely charged and was pulling the other one in with an electric crackle, “He never pressured me but I felt like I could have tried harder to want it.”
“If you don’t want it, you don’t ever have to have it. A lot of people reach your age when your frontal cortex is developed and realise they might be asexual, it’s not a bad thing-” He tried reassuring her, but she was quick to shake her head again, bashfully ripping her eyes away from him to look at their caressing fingertips. 
“No, no. It’s not that I never want to be intimate ever, I just never really felt comfortable around him enough to let myself want it. Like I couldn’t just be me with him, I was just being what he wanted me to be. Like he never really knew the real me,” She explained, and she rolled over onto her side to face him, her other finger coming up to absentmindedly trace over the prominent vein that ran up his arm, stopping just below where his old needle scars were at the crook of his elbow. If she saw them, she didn’t say a word, but Spencer felt like she was trailing a flame over his skin. He thought if she took his manhood in her hand she’d probably get the exact same response from him, because with every invisible swirl and line she drew over his skin, he felt a heat ripping through his loins. “Does that make sense? Like I didn’t think he would like the ikky parts of me so I ended up putting on a charade,” 
“Y-yeah,” He replied, and his stammer made her look up, eyes wide and innocent as she watched him all but falling apart under a single fingertip. God he was pathetic. Mid thirties and nearly finishing in his boxers over a pretty girl touching his arm. Only it wasn’t just a pretty girl. It was her. His sunshine girl. “But I don’t think you have any ikky parts, to be honest,”
Her eyes deepened into pools of awe, and he watched her trail a glance down his nose to his mouth vulnerably.
“Spencer, you’re being too kind,” She whispered, and he swore his chest lurched.
He cleared his throat, and moved to roll over towards her too, hoping to disperse some of the energy that was clogging between them, only for it to become dialled to a hundred, trapping them in a tiny box where they were looking at one another, laying on the bed they were being forced to share and almost holding hands, because committing to full thing was scary like they were ten years old in a playground. 
“Of course that makes sense. It’s much healthier to form intimate relationships with people we trust and feel safe with than rushing into things,” Spencer tried to breeze past the tension, but her breath was fanning over his face, almost tripping him over his words, because she was still looking at him like he knew all the answers. Because he usually did. Except for this time. This time, he felt like he was walking blind towards his point, “Not that one night stands should be shamed or anything, but it’s much better to engage in sexual intercourse with someone when it feels right,”
She breathed out deeply, licking her lips, and her finger movements stopped. 
“So it’s just a when you know, you know, kind of thing?” She asked, her brows pulling together in a saddened frown, “I’m not, like, broken or anything?” 
He sat up on his elbow, grabbing her wrist tight enough she would listen the minute he said it to her, because he never wanted to hear her say that again, “There is nothing wrong with you, you hear me?” She looked up at him with glassy eyes, wide and shocked to see him so desperately insistent over her, “You feeling secure is more important than any guy out there, no matter how nice they are, got it?” 
She nodded after a beat, because she thought her brain might have stopped working with the way he was leaned over her, looking down at her with a glimmer of the harshness he’d been drowning in when she first met him. These days he seemed to have mellowed out the tiniest bit, except the straightforward tone he held with everyone else who wasn’t her, or the general heavy handedness he didn’t seem to realise he was capable of. Like in the way his warm, rough hands gripped the skin of her wrist, his expression somewhat frustrated though not with her as he looked down at where she was half beneath him.
“Spence?” She whispered into the electricity between them, her eyes trailing over his nose again and ghosting over his half attempt at facial hair. They were just whisps, but they suited him embarrassingly well. He didn’t reply, just stared at her to wait for her response, “I feel safe with you, you know that?” 
He swore his heart was thumping out of his chest. She looked divine under his hand, sweet like a pudding begging him to taste, and he couldn’t help it when his thumb trailed up the side of her jaw, brushing just under her bottom lip, and she seemed to press herself further into his touch, a cat being scratched behind velvet ears.
“You’d tell me if you ever wanted me to stop, wouldn’t you?” He murmured, gooseflesh crawling up his arm when she nodded, her eyes boring holes into his soul when she looked up at him like that.  
“Always,” She answered honestly, blinking at him once, twice, before she took a deep breath for courage, “But what if I never wanted you to stop?”
Spencer nearly moaned when he crashed their lips together, and he heard her squeak in delight beneath him, his large hand cupping her jaw, weaving into her hair, tugging her closer. She felt like her was consuming her whole, and she had no qualms about it, not when she reached a hand up to his shoulder and tugged him even more on top of her, the weight of him on her chest comforting and achingly right. 
He pulled away to breathe for a moment, but she was chasing his lips, her touch maddening and he swore his brain switched off when she ran a hand up his spine, slipping under his shirt and tracing over every one of his vertebrae making him shiver. Her lips were stronger than any craving he had ever felt, the instant dopamine rush embarrassing for a man of his age, so hardened by the world reduced to putty, ready to beg for more because now he’d had a taste of her ambrosia, he didn’t think he could ever think straight again. A man sent crazy by forbidden wine.
He pushed her hair away from her face, using his long fingers to wrap around the back of her head and pull her impossibly closer to him, his other arm skirting down to her clothed waist and pressing their bodies together. She whined in his mouth, and Spencer thought he could finally die happy.
He pulled away to let her catch a gasp, her fingers carding through his long, brown curls, scratching against his scalp in a way that drew a low growl from his throat. He needed more, needed her, more than the air he gulped down ravenously and he found himself kissing at her soft neck, her head tipped back in bliss as he kissed every inch he could.
“The reason I didn’t want it with Taylor,” She choked between manic breaths, her hands holding onto him so tight he knew she didn’t have any intention of asking him to stop, “Was because it didn’t feel like this,”
Spencer wove their fingers together, pushing her hand above her head as the other came up to tilt her face towards him, looking into her bleary eyes for a second, their noses ghosting past one another, her mint breath delicious on his lips.
“It never feels like this, baby,” He whispered, their foreheads pressing together before he gave into her again and pressed his lips against hers so hard she whimpered into his mouth.
And she believed him.
--
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emo-batboy · 1 year ago
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Battinson Guest Starring on TV Shows
SO
For someone who holds the title of Richest Man in the World, Bruce doesn’t do a lot of traveling.
Which is to say he does a LOT of traveling, but he always tries to find a way out of it.
(Are there bat-related reasons for this? Are there people-related reasons for this? Are there anxiety-related reasons for this? Who knows?)
But partners and sponsors aren’t always going to tolerate his hermit-like tendencies. So once every month or so, Alfred wrangles Bruce into a private jet and sends him off to who knows where so he can represent the company.
Usually, it’s somewhere close on the East Coast, maybe it’s across the pond, even Asia isn’t off the table, but the rarest place to spot Bruce Wayne is actually the West Coast of the US.
One day, it is announced that Bruce Wayne will be spending two (count ‘em, 2) consecutive weeks in California with his kids for some grand business convention.
The West Coast media goes feral with the news, ESPECIALLY interviewers. And because Bruce kicks up such a fuss this time, Alfred has the gall to sign him up for FOUR TV appearances.
Here are these appearances :)
RuPaul’s Drag Race
Drag Queens, especially Drag Race all-stars, contribute to a wide variety of charities
So on a new episode, the queens are challenged to design and shoot a promotional ad for their own charity
And who better to act as a guest judge for this episode than the show’s largest benefactor, CEO of the Wayne Foundation, Bruce Wayne?!
Physically? He’s older than half of the contestants. But spiritually? He screams Baby Gay.
Fifteen minutes into the episode, Bruce is welcomed into the werkroom where he gives them pointers on their campaign. He’s in his cute little three-piece suit (Alfred’s idea) with the intention of looking put-together and knowledgeable. But that’s not the only outcome.
They all flirt with him. Everyone, single or taken. The confessionals are so thirsty.
“He’s lucky the cameras are on. Otherwise, I’d eat him up faster than a bachelorette party in a buffet line.”
“My celebrity crush is talking to me, and all I can focus on are his gorgeous eyes. How am I supposed to know what he's saying?”
Of course, they shoot their shot, but most of it is joking since they don't know he's bi yet.
“Are you single, honey?” Bruce blushes. “It’s complicated.” “Well, I’ll make it simple for you.”
We all know this man can't handle being flirted with. We saw how he froze when Selina did it. It’s like he mentally bluescreens when someone calls him a pet name.
Only THEN do they learn he's bi
One of the queens jokingly asks him, “Ever been with a man before?” thinking it would be a firm no, but Bruce says, “Actually, yes.” “Oh shit, really?” And to Bruce’s embarrassment, the whole room hears him.
The flirting is thus taken up a notch.
On the main stage, Bruce has a lot of great constructive criticism. He talks about how to find the right audience, the importance of a good slogan, and even goes on a little rant about logo design.
(You cannot convince me that Bruce hasn’t hyperfixated on the business of charity work before. Or the science of marketing. They’re his favorite business topics.)
After about three minutes of him complimenting one contestant for their Drag Library pitch, he stops himself mid-sentence and says, “Oh sorry, am I talking too much?” “No, please! Keep talking, sweetheart.” Bruce covers his face to hide his blush. “Why is everyone flirting with me?” “Baby, have you seen yourself?”
While the judges deliberate, RuPaul mentions Charisma, Uniqueness, Nerve, and Talent. Bruce nods along for a while then suddenly just blurts out, “Wait, does it spell ****?”
The judges pause then burst out laughing. “Oh no, we’ve traumatized him!" Bruce is blushing up a storm. “I just never thought about it like that!” “Sweet, innocent Bruce. We’re so sorry.”
It’s later revealed that Bruce offered to help some of the queens launch their charity projects through the Wayne Foundation.
It’s v cute 🥰
Nailed It!
I love Nicole Byer.
She is Mother.
In all seriousness, she’s so fucking funny and she’s personable enough to pull Bruce out of his shell a bit.
The theme for this episode is Found Family. Three pairs of family members compete together—a gay father and his adopted son, an aunt who adopted her niece, and a stepfather and stepdaughter.
Because Bruce Wayne famously adopted two children, he is invited to guest judge.
So Nicole opens the episode with a zinger, the contestants are introduced, and Bruce is welcomed onto the judge’s panel beside Nicole and Jacques.
(Yes, Bruce does speak French. Yes, Nicole makes a joke about it being hot.)
Nicole: “We were surprised you accepted our invitation, Mr. Wayne. You’re notorious for staying on the East Coast. What brought you to the Nailed It! Studio?” Bruce: “My children love this show. They always tell me I should be on it since I’m so bad at baking.” Nicole: “Really? Maybe we should do a celebrity season of Nailed It! and have you compete.” Bruce: “No, you should not.”
Nicole: “So, Bruce, I know you have a butler at home who bakes for you. But what’s the grossest thing you’ve eaten? Escargot? Bad caviar?” Bruce: “I drank olive oil straight from the bottle once.” Nicole: “…What?”
The problem for Bruce is he can’t say anything bad. It just feels mean :(
(And he would rather jump into oncoming traffic than gamble with a social interaction)
For the first challenge, the contestants make cake pops. But when Bruce tries the first one, there is a sickening crunch. Bruce’s eyes widen for a second and he slowly chews.
Nicole: “What was that? Bruce, are you okay?” Bruce, clearly struggling: “It’s…good.”
“Bruce, you can spit it out. It’s okay.” “I already swallowed it.” “Oh, you poor thing.” Bruce chokes for a second, and Nicole pats his back. “Please don’t die. We can’t afford it.”
For the big challenge, production has a surprise in store for Bruce.
Dick (9) and Jason (7) run onto the set and smother Bruce with a hug.
It’s adorable. Bruce no longer cares about paying attention, okay? His kids are here :D
The two boys read from cue cards to announce the second challenge: a three-tiered Gotcha Day cake. And as per tradition, the winner of the first challenge gets a leg-up.
This time, it’s a Helping Hands Button. When they hit the button, Dick and Jason will run over and help them for three minutes. (While being supervised, of course.)
As the contestants bake, Nicole says hello to Dick and Jason, who are clambering all over Bruce like a jungle gym. They both shake her hand and talk about how they love the show.
Nicole looks pointedly at the two empty chairs beside Bruce. “You know, we brought these chairs for you two to sit in.” Dick, on Bruce’s shoulders: “We’re fine, Ms. Byer!” Nicole: “Ms. Byer? Oh, you’re a cutie, aren’t you?”
Just ten minutes before the challenge is over, the Helping Hands button is pressed, and Dick and Jason are given stools so they can help the aunt and niece stack their cake tiers.
Two minutes in, the aunt instructs them to let go of the cake. But the moment Jason pulls his hands away, the cake topples over and covers him in frosting. Jason, whispering: “Oh f*ck.” Bruce: “Jason!” Jason: “I didn’t say that! Dick did!” Nicole: *cackling as Bruce buried his face in his hands*
Jason gets cleaned up, and Dick helps them stack what can still be salvaged.
When Wes brings out the trophy, he’s dressed as Batman. Dick and Jason gets a kick out of that.
Celebrity Family Feud
Bruce was invited to the show after his SNL skit went viral a few months ago
This episode, the teams are split up by cities they grew up in. Gotham v. Star City. Naturally, his team is playing for the Wayne Foundation.
It’s a pretty odd cast of people, most of them having moved to LA or Hollywood. Bruce is the only one to still live in Gotham.
They have fun, though, despite their limited common ground. The audience has a few good laughs.
(Some at Bruce's expense)
Harvey: You're a very wealthy man, Mr. Wayne. What do you really do in that tower all day? Bruce: I, uh…business? Harvey: …You business. Bruce: ……Wait-
All in good fun. Bruce just vibes in his little corner until he needs to answer a question. It's pretty chill.
For exactly half of the episode.
Then it happens.
Steve Harvey takes two people from each team up to the buzzer and says, “We asked 100 people: Name something your parents always told you as a kid.”
What the production failed to consider is how this particular question might be a sensitive topic for some contestants.
Bruce’s team gets the question, and Steve saunters up to Bruce, completely oblivious.
“Alright, Bruce Wayne!” Bruce nods awkwardly. “Hi, Steve.” “Bruce, what’s wrong? You’re looking a bit uncomfortable.” “…I don’t like this question, Steve.” “Why not?” Bruce just gives him a desperate look, and it clicks. “Oh! Oh my gosh!”
Let’s be real. Bruce is awkward enough, but Steve Harvey cannot save an awkward moment for his life either.
But he tries his best anyway and asks, “Are you okay with answering this question, or would you like to pass?” Bruce nods frantically. “I can answer. ‘I love you.’” “I love you too, Mr. Wayne.” “No, uh, my answer is ‘I love you.’” “Oh! That’s a good one.”
Thankfully, the audience erupts in laughter. That little interaction cuts the tension, and Bruce’s answer ends up on the board.
And by god, the memes
“I love you too, Mr. Wayne” is the new “Enjoy your meal.” “You too.”
The audio clip of “I don’t like this question, Steve” goes viral on TikTok
Someone gets a pic of Bruce and Steve looking at each other with palpable fear in their eyes, and it makes its rounds all over Twitter
10/10 never again
Running Wild with Bear Grylls
Now this is the most challenging. Not because it’s difficult, of course. But because Bruce has to look stupid enough to maintain his Brucie Wayne persona but smart enough to keep himself safe.
For this episode, Bear takes Bruce to the California desert.
“How much do you know about survival, Bruce?” Bear asks. Bruce nods carefully. “I did some survival training once with a friend from boarding school.” “Oh really, how did you do?” “Fine, I think.”
This is, of course, his way of saying I trained with a league of assassins for years, but Bear can’t know that! And that’s how most of the episode goes.
Thank god Bruce's fear of being caught is mistaken for being scared of the physical challenge because every time Bear points out how well he’s doing, he breaks into a sweat.
Bear: For a businessman, you’re surprisingly fit. Bruce, sweating bullets: Oh, this is all just for show.
Bear: Wow, you’re a natural. Are you sure you’ve never set up a zip-line before? Bruce, gripping his equipment so tight he gets rope burn: I think it’s just the survival instincts.
Of course, he pretends to be out of breath a few times. The Drama.
Bruce, pretending to slip and fall: Ouch! Who knew the outdoors were so dangerous? Bear, you are crazy. Bruce, internally: How much longer are we doing this?
Bruce being a vegetarian is actually a point of contention. You see, Bear always makes their celebrity guests do something crazy for food like skin a snake or eat a mouse. Scavenging for berries just doesn’t grab the audience’s attention.
But do you know what is vegetarian?
Bear: Now, in extreme cases of survival, it’s not rare for humans to resort to drinking their own pee. That’s what we’ll be doing in a moment. Are you up for it? Bruce, visibly repulsed: I’ve had Gotham tap water. I’ll be fine.
How on God’s Green Earth did Alfred convince him to do this?
To get to the extraction point, Bear takes Bruce down a cliffside.
Bear shows Bruce the meticulous process of properly belaying from the top of a cliff, and Bruce, who has done this over 100 times is like, “Wow that’s so dangerous :( Will we be okay?”
He really tries to ramp up his acting skills this time.
(Little does he know that’s not necessary.)
Bruce goes down first as Bear belays with a cameraman filming from the top. Halfway down, Bruce hears a scuffle, and the cameraman yells, “F*ck!”
Bruce looks up, arms already out for protection, and he sees a small disk falling towards him. It’s the lens cap. He catches it on instinct.
For a second, he thinks, “Shit, was that too skilled? That’s not enough to make people think I’m Batman, right? I just caught it in midair while dangling from a cliff. That’s totally not weird and suspicious. Normal people do that—“
Then Bear yells, “Bruce, drop it!” Bruce looks up at Bear, confused. “Why?” “There's a scorpion!” That’s when Bruce looks at the lens cap and sees a black scorpion perched on top with its tail ready to strike.
They don’t have those in Gotham.
Bruce jumps in his harness and flings the cap at the rocky cliffside. He hears a crunch, and the scorpion and cap tumble to the ground. Bruce frowns. Can a scorpion survive that drop?
“You just killed a scorpion, mate!” Bear cries. Bruce looks up in horror. “I killed it?!” “Hell yeah!” Bruce’s face falls. “No!”
Because oh. shit.
Bruce just killed something. The sad, orphaned vegetarian just killed a scorpion.
Bruce has a meltdown.
He didn’t mean to kill it!!!! Oh no, he just killed an innocent little creature. Yeah, he punches people for fun sometimes, and he definitely put a few violent criminals in the hospital, but he’s never committed MURDER!!
This poor little scorpion died due to his own negligence, and he feels so so so bad about it.
Bruce is a mess as he climbs the rest of the way down.
Bruce, cradling the scorpion’s body: I don’t know how to perform CPR on a scorpion! Bear: Bruce, you took its head clean off. Bruce: *sad noises*
Legit inconsolable. To him, it’s like he just murdered a puppy
Once they're out, Bear is trying to cheer him up. Bless him.
Bear: We’ve conquered the wild! Haven’t we, Bruce? Bruce, head between his legs, still mourning the scorpion: I’m never going outside again.
Yeah, no one’s going to think he’s Batman after that.
And that's all four of Bruce's TV appearances from the West Coast :) Dick and Jason never let him live any of it down. Alfred is almost sorry. (He is not sorry.)
Let me know your thoughts! What other TV shows do you think Battinson would appear on as a guest?
Okie dokie :D Love y'all! Have a good day <3
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inthedayswhenlandswerefew · 2 months ago
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Where Will All The Martyrs Go [Chapter 13: The Regrets Are Useless] [Series Finale]
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A/N: Below are your final predictions. Let's see how you did... 🥰
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Series summary: In the midst of the zombie apocalypse, both you and Aemond (and your respective travel companions) find yourselves headed for the West Coast. It’s the 2024 version of the Oregon Trail, but with less dysentery and more undead antagonists. Watch out for snakes! 😉🐍
Series warnings: Language, sexual content (18+ readers only), violence, bodily injury, med school Aemond, character deaths, nature, drinking, smoking, drugs, Adventures With Aegon™️, pregnancy and childbirth, the U.S. Navy, road trip vibes.
Series title is a lyric from: “Letterbomb” by Green Day.
Chapter title is a lyric from: “Whatsername” by Green Day.
Word count: 6.1k
💜 All my writing can be found HERE! 💜
Rain pours outside the cabin, mist-shrouded pine trees and still dark water, a place in southern Oregon called Lake of the Woods. The twin-sized bed with a thin foam mattress was once used by kids attending summer camp, capture the flag and s’mores, hikes and scary stories, but now the children are ghosts and the monsters are real, stumbling down streets and lurking in dark places, licking blood from what’s left of their lips.
Aemond is here but he’s also not, a castaway on an island where the world never ended, his hands in your hair as you straddle him, your hips moving tentatively, his lips and teeth at your throat, the sharp points of his canines like fangs.
“Am I doing this right?” you murmur doubtfully. “I feel like I’m definitely not doing this right…”
“Shh, you’re great, you’re incredible.”
“I’m sorry I don’t know how to do everything already, I’m sorry you have to teach me—”
“Stop,” Aemond commands, a sharp sigh through your hair. “I love this. I love you. I want to teach you things until the day I die.”
The nervous tension in your muscles unravels—peddles thrown into water, campfire smoke vanishing into indigo night—and now his hands are on your hips, steadying you, guiding you. You link your fingers around the back of his neck and try to find a cadence that isn’t uncomfortable, ungainly, effortful. You wanted to try this. You want to experience everything with him.
“Take your time,” Aemond is saying like it’s difficult for him to keep a train of thought, his eye closed, his cheeks flushed, blood-colored blooms like a dusk sky. “I’m fine down here, don’t worry about me…”
Rain drums against the windows; lightning flashes in the sky and thunder growls. From the front porch of one of the other cabins, you can hear the indistinct droning of conversations and Aegon strumming the acoustic guitar he brought from the beach house. It’s something you’ve overheard him singing before, one of his strange midcentury darlings, a song that should be too old for him to know the words to.
“All you big and burly men who roll the trucks along
Better listen, you’ll be thankful when you hear my song
You have really got it made if you’re haulin’ goods
Any place on earth but those Haynesville Woods…”
Your skin gleams with a cool sheen of sweat; there is a draft through the cabin walls that makes you shiver as you cling to Aemond. You roll your hips a certain way and he moans—suddenly, involuntarily—and you know you’ve found the right rhythm.
“It’s a stretch of road up north in Maine
That’s never ever ever seen a smile
If they’d buried all them truckers lost in them woods
There’d be a tombstone every mile
Count ‘em off, there’d be a tombstone every mile…”
Aemond is kissing you deeply, desperately, trembling hands and gasping shallow breaths. And there is not just euphoria written into the lines of his face; there is disorientation, there is wonder. He barely manages: “Alright…um…if you want me to last longer than about thirty more seconds, you should probably slow down…”
“No,” you tease, grinning as you bite at his full lips.
“When you’re loaded with potatoes and you’re headed down
You’ve got to drive the woods to get to Boston town
When it’s winter up in Maine, better check it over twice
That Haynesville road is just a ribbon of ice…”
Aemond cries out, louder than you’ve ever heard him before—you’ve never had privacy, you’ve never truly been alone—and then again, a helpless ecstatic sound, pleasure so overwhelming it almost starts to feel like pain.
“Quiet!” you whisper, giggling, touching two fingers to his mouth. “Everyone’s going to hear you.”
“Oh my God,” Aemond says. He falls back onto the mattress and brings you with him, his arms wrapped around you, kissing your cheeks and your forehead as the two of you lie there panting and entangled, his blue eye astonished. “Okay, okay, I need a minute. I think I just burst an aneurysm.”
“I killed you?” you purr with feigned distress, basking in your conquest.
“You can kill me whenever you want. You can kill me five times a day.”
“When you’re talking to a trucker that’s been haulin’ goods
Down that stretch of road in Maine they call the Haynesville Woods
He’ll tell you that dying and going down below
Won’t be half as bad as driving on that road of ice and snow…”
Aemond stares up at the ceiling—a steep gable roof, a motionless fan—and now you can tell he’s thinking about his family again, discorporate screams, misplaced trust. Otto Hightower’s bones were found in the shower, meaning he likely died before or not long after their power failed and water would have run out in the municipal system. They were probably killed before you and Aemond ever met, distant galaxies lightyears away, remote long-dead stars. And so all the blood you paid to get to California was wasted.
“Do you ever think about the people you have saved?” you ask gently as your fingertips trace the ridge of his scar. “You stitched yourself back together. You healed Aegon’s burns. You sutured Cregan’s arm. You got me and Rio down from that transmission tower.”
“I guess I did,” Aemond says, but his voice is ambivalent, as if none of these things count. He has not found someplace safe for you yet. His job is not finished; his triumphs may only be temporary.
“Aemond…back in Pennsylvania…why did you decide to help us?”
“Luke spotted you guys, and we all talked it over. If it had just been Rio, honestly, I wouldn’t have taken the chance. A man his size, and possibly armed…could be trouble, you know? But I figured since he was traveling with a woman and you seemed to be with him by choice, he was probably okay. And then when we first met, he was so protective of you…didn’t want me touching you, didn’t leave you alone…I realized he had to be a good guy.”
“He was,” you say solemnly. I was supposed to remind him about the racks. I was supposed to warn him. But you didn’t warn Rio about what was waiting to kill him in that sand-swept grocery store in Winnemucca, just like you didn’t warn Jace about radiation or Baela about the way the rungs of the ladder that ran up the side of the grain bin were rusted and creaking, and maybe there is more than enough blame to go around.
“And then after Battle Mountain, as soon as we found the gasoline and ammo, I knew we had to go back for you. It hit me all at once. I couldn’t protect you by leaving you with Rio and Cregan. And I couldn’t let you go. I’ve never had something like this before. I didn’t know it existed. I told the others we were turning around, and Aegon said: Thank fucking God. Rhaena took off sprinting towards the car.” Then Aemond kisses you again, but tenderly this time, slowly, like you’ll have forever and there’s no need to rush. “I’m going to get you to Odessa. I’m going to take you somewhere safe.”
The rain is stopping; there are still a few hours of daylight left.
~~~~~~~~~~
“Hey, Chip Skylark. Check it out,” Aegon says, grinning at you from where he’s sprawled on the wet dock and smoking a cigarette, wearing his neon green plastic sunglasses, his left leg finally freed from its bandages and on full display. You’re all wearing the same things, stolen t-shirts and shorts, sweatshirts at night when it gets cold, sneakers you can walk hundreds of miles in; but Aegon won’t give up his Sperry Bahamas. “It’s nature’s tattoo.”
You sit down beside him and admire the scar tissue, red knots and white cords, jagged terrain like a mountain range, organic highways and bridges and trails. “It’s a roadmap.”
“That’s appropriate.”
You’ve been traveling on foot for two weeks since Criston’s white Tahoe ran out of gas and was abandoned in the town of Mad River, California. Now you are only about ten miles from Odessa, close enough to reach in half a day but too far to get into town before nightfall. This time tomorrow you’ll be there, and it will either be a haven or a wasteland, and if Rio’s parents’ community in Odessa has disappeared then so has your last idea for where to go. Absentmindedly, you skate your fingerprints over the bumps and grooves of Aegon’s leg like a blind man reading braille. He shifts and clears his throat; you’ve made him uncomfortable somehow. You lift your hand away.
“I’m sorry, does that hurt?”
“Nah. I can’t really feel anything besides pressure. The nerve endings got fried.”
“Oh.” But now you don’t know what you did to upset him. Aegon doesn’t provide an explanation. Down the dock a ways towards the shore, Rhaena is reading The Ballad of Songbirds and Snakes and listening to the pink Sony Walkman formerly owned by a little girl named Ava. Inside whirls Green Day’s 2004 album American Idiot, which Aegon took from his bedroom at the beach house to add to his CD collection, a cultural archive, a gift for posterity. Cregan is teaching Daeron to fish with poles he found in one of the cabins; Helaena is bringing them worms. Aemond and Luke are gathering things dry enough to burn—books and wooden chairs from inside the cabins—and piling them up so Cregan can cook dinner once it’s caught.
“So,” Aegon says, changing the subject, scrutinizing you as he puffs on a Marlboro Gold. “Everything going okay?”
You know what he means; he must have heard Aemond earlier. “Yup.”
“Got it all figured out?”
“Sure did.”
“Great. I’m happy for you,” Aegon says, and yet there’s a twinge of melancholy he’s trying to hide. It must be hard for him; he and Daeron are the only single ones.
“We’ll find you some suitable candidates for your harem when we get to Odessa.”
He chuckles. “Oh, come on.”
“Guys, girls? Do you have a preference?”
He’s smiling wistfully down into the water, a dark rippling mirror. “I have too specific a preference, that’s the problem.”
“Yacht girls in bikinis. Golf cheerleaders.”
“There are no cheerleaders in golf, you yokel.”
“Okay, well…I’m sure you’ll be very popular with the lonely, traumatized, widowed women of the apocalypse.”
Aegon gazes morosely out over the lake. He pitches the end of his cigarette into the water, and your eyes catch briefly on the black ink of the tattoo on his forearm: It’s not over ‘til you’re underground. “I don’t know. I’ve been sober for two weeks and now everything is annoyingly clear.”
“What’s bothering you?”
He waits a while before he answers, evasive. “I’ve never been good at anything.”
“Everyone feels that way sometimes. Luke thinks he’s not good at anything either.”
“But Luke’s nice. I’m a rat bastard.”
You laugh. “You’re kind of nice, Aegon.”
“Yeah right.”
“No, seriously. I like being around you. You make me feel better. You’re like…” You ponder how to word it. “I feel like I could tell you whatever and not worry about being judged for it.”
He snorts. “As if you’ve ever done anything judgeable.”
You shrug, peering out over the lake. “I abandoned my family. I stopped sending them money, I stopped calling. And when everything happened…the zombies, the world ending…I didn’t even consider going back to Kentucky to try to help them. I went west with Rio instead. And now they’re probably all dead and it’s my fault. That’s evil. I couldn’t have gotten away with that level of betrayal. I must be cursed.”
Aegon is watching you, eyebrows raised. He has never heard this before. “But your family sucked, right?”
“Yeah,” you admit. “I think it would be hard to argue they didn’t.”
“So fuck ‘em,” Aegon says simply.
You smile at him, touched, grateful. “Okay. Fuck ‘em.”
“I’m relieved my family’s gone,” Aegon confesses, something so brutal he’d never tell anyone else. “I mean…I feel kind of bad about my mom and Criston. But as long as they were alive, I’d always be the person they raised. And if I could bring someone back, it wouldn’t be any of them. I’d pick Rio.”
“I would too,” you say softly, staring down at the faint burn marks on your palms from when you were stranded on that transmission tower with him, talking him out of suicide, so adamant that both of you were going to make it to Oregon. And you were wrong.
“So if you’re cursed, Pita Chips, sign me up because I’m right there with you.”
Rhaena pulls out an earbud and says to Aegon: “I don’t get this album.”
“What?!” he exclaims.
“It’s so good!” you concur. On the shore, Cregan is spearing several gutted rainbow trout on sticks so they can be roasted over the fire. Ice is gleefully gulping down fish organs.
Aegon continues: “Whatsername! St. Jimmy! Jesus of Suburbia!”
Rhaena blinks, glancing between you and Aegon. “But neither of you grew up in the suburbs.”
“It’s not about the suburbs, Rhaena!” Aegon replies with frenetic hand gestures. “It’s about being disillusioned and angry and failed by all the adults in your life, and self-medicating, and losing love every time you get a taste of it, and wanting to burn everything down and start over. It’s about hating the world and the world hating you back.”
“Okay, sure. I still don’t get it.”
You say: “You might have had too happy a childhood.” And you and Aegon burst out laughing.
“You guys are so weird,” Rhaena says, but she’s smiling. She stands up, gives Aegon back his Walkman, and walks to the end of the dock where Cregan is cooking the rainbow trout. Aemond and Daeron are gathering up the aluminum buckets found at the campground and set outside earlier today to collect rainwater. There is one five-pound bag of trail mix left to share, and then all the food is gone. If Cregan doesn’t kill something, you won’t eat.
“We should go help them with dinner,” you tell Aegon.
He groans. “Should we really?”
“Yeah. We should.”
“Fine.” He takes your hand when you offer it and struggles to his feet. Then you inhale a lungful of the scent of roasting trout, and startlingly powerful nausea punches through your stomach, so repellant you have to clamp a hand over your mouth to stop yourself from retching.
There has to be something wrong with the fish. It’s never smelled like that before.
Aegon seems baffled. “What? What’s wrong?”
“Does the trout smell right to you?”
Aegon sniffs the air like a labrador. “I guess…? I barely smell anything.”
“Well you probably destroyed your nose cells with all the coke.”
“That’s discriminatory. Addiction is a disease.” But his brow is furrowed with concern. “Seriously, are you okay? You look awful. Not like that. You know what I mean.”
“I’m fine.” You don’t feel fine; but everyone down by the fire is chatting and joking around nonchalantly, and surely if there actually was something wrong they would have noticed. “I’ll be back in a second.”
“Sure,” Aegon says, perplexed.
You hurry past the others and take refuge in the cabin you’re sharing with Aemond. Inside the trout smell isn’t so strong. You sit at the edge of the bed and suck in several deep breaths, trying to calm down, willing the confounding wave of nausea to pass.
Did I eat something bad, did I get bit by a spider or something…?
You are checking your arms and legs for little raised bitemarks when Helaena enters the cabin and shuts the door behind her. When she opens her burlap messenger bag to root around inside, you glimpse photographs she must have taken from the beach house, the frames left empty on the mantle of the fireplace. Then Helaena pulls out a pregnancy test, just one, Clearblue.
You gawk at it. “What are you doing?”
“You look sick,” Helaena says matter-of-factly.
“Yeah, but I don’t think it’s that.”
She is puzzled, wide innocent blue eyes. “Why not?”
“Well…I mean…that would be freakishly quick, wouldn’t it? Like…quick as in immediately. People can’t get pregnant the first time they have sex, right?”
“Huh. They really don’t have sex ed in Kentucky,” Helaena says, and leaves you alone with your pregnancy test. You don’t feel so nauseous anymore, but you sneak around the back of the cabin to take it anyway, because now you’re thinking about the possibility with a vividness you’ve never experienced before: a round blossoming belly and tiny handprints and Aemond cradling his child in his arms. And by the time you get the result, you aren’t even shocked. It feels like something that’s supposed to happen.
You and Aemond don’t have a moment alone together until after dark, sitting on the porch swing outside your cabin for first watch, everyone else asleep, Ice dozing serenely by your feet. The only sounds are the breeze through the pine trees, cool and damp, and the hoots of owls, and the chirping of crickets and cicadas.
“So guess what,” you say casually as moonbeams float rippling and fractured on the surface of the black-glass lake.
Aemond smiles drowsily, not expecting anything. “What?”
“In approximately eight months, I might be having your baby.”
At first, he doesn’t speak; he only studies the test when you hand it to him, and then looks at you like he’s not convinced you aren’t angry, like he can’t quite bring himself to believe that you’d want this with someone like him. “Are you afraid?”
“No,” you answer honestly. Maybe you should be, but you aren’t. “I’m hopeful. I feel like as soon as I realized it, everything got brighter. And now I’m thinking about the future instead of the past.” They’re not going to grow up like I did. They’re never going to think they aren’t loved. “What should we name it?”
“Not Otter.”
You laugh, trying to muffle it so you don’t wake anyone. Ice lifts her head and stares at you curiously, her shaggy grey ears straight up.
“I don’t know, I’m terrible with names,” Aemond says; and now he’s smiling again, a wide radiant smile, and you know he’s thinking about the future too. “Hope or Peace or something. Something happy. Something about starting over.”
You take his hand. “I can’t wait to start over with you.”
“Just one more day,” Aemond says.
One more day.
~~~~~~~~~~
“So what am I going to do in Odessa?” Luke asks as the eight of you—nine, if you count Ice—trek eastbound on Route 140. You are about five miles from Lake of the Woods and halfway to your destination. It’s only 80 degrees and overcast, good walking weather, although there is a looming threat of rain, occasional rogue drops and far-off rumbles of thunder. “Everyone has valuable skills except me. Chips has great aim and can build things, Daeron has his compound bow, Aemond is basically a doctor, Rhaena is learning how to shoot guns and treat injuries…”
“Aegon has skills?” Cregan jokes, casting him a good-natured grin. Aegon acts like he’s going to whack Cregan with his golf club, which he’s spinning around haphazardly. Both his Marlin .22 and acoustic guitar are slung across his back. There aren’t many bullets left, but everyone has a few.
“Aegon can navigate,” Luke says. “And probably impregnate ten women a day. Very useful during a population crisis.”
“We don’t need that in the gene pool,” Rhaena notes.
“You wrote stories in college, right?” you ask Luke.
“Screenplays, yeah,” he says hesitantly. “But I wouldn’t say I was super talented or anything.”
Aegon claps him on the shoulder “Well I’ve got good news for you, kid. A big chunk of the world’s screenwriters are probably dead now. So you’ll look so much better in comparison!”
“Thanks…?” Luke says.
“What I mean is,” you continue. “You could write books for people to read, since there aren’t really libraries or Barnes & Nobles anymore. And you could interview people to get their life stories and then record them so they aren’t lost forever. The next generation should know what the world was like before the zombies.”
“Yeah,” Aegon says as he pets Ice. “Someone has to tell them about blue raspberry Icees, right Blue Raspberry Icee?”
“Maybe,” Luke says thoughtfully, and you notice that he’s smiling a little.
Ice begins whining, and there is a rustling in the woods to the north, low-hanging branches of bigleaf maple and dogwood and Douglas fir trees being forced aside. “Zombie!” Aegon announces, pointing. Immediately, Daeron nocks an arrow and then releases it, and the figure draped in the shifting shadows of foliage drops to the ground.
“Hey Aegon,” Daeron says after a few seconds.
“Yeah?”
“That was actually a zombie, right?”
“Totally,” Aegon replies, but he doesn’t sound certain.
Aemond turns to his older brother accusingly. “How sure are you?”
“Like…50%.”
“Aegon!” Rhaena cries, petrified, and everyone rushes off the road to investigate.
Blessedly, the felled creature is long-dead, a former park ranger whose tan uniform hangs in gore-stained tatters. The nametag reads: Underwood. The arrow pierced its soft rotting skull and remains lodged there until Daeron pulls it out to be used again, giving Aegon an impatient scowl as he does.
“Close call,” Aegon tells him. “Think they would have charged you as an adult?”
“Lord almighty, that gave me a scare,” Cregan says, chuckling. Helaena spies a blackberry bush and begins picking a handful, and Cregan goes over to join her. Rhaena and Luke are telling Aegon that he needs to be more responsible and should have waited for Luke to confirm it was a zombie with his binoculars. You exchange a glance with Aegon: he rolls his eyes, you offer a smirk of commiseration. Ice is already trotting back towards Oregon Route 140.
You haven’t told anyone else that you’re pregnant yet, but eventually they’re going to notice that Aemond won’t leave your side. He sighs and asks you: “Have you had enough of this little field trip?”
“Definitely.” You head for the road. Aemond walks with you, placing you not on his left side but on his right where he can see you. You ask, smiling: “You don’t trust me to watch your blind side anymore, huh?”
“I prefer the view the way it is.”
You are only a few steps from the black artery of pavement that cuts through the Cascade-Siskiyou National Monument, a 114,000-acre preserve of wilderness that somehow—although it is 2,500 miles away—reminds you a bit of eastern Kentucky, endless emerald forests, the omnipotent shadows of mountains. And because you are on Aemond’s right side, he can look down and see something just in front of you on the earth strewn with knobby roots and pine needles and dead leaves.
“Don’t!” he shouts, snatching your forearm and yanking you backwards, and he’s never touched you like this before—so forcefully, so violently—and you stumble and almost fall, and your arm burns and aches where he grabbed you, and people are asking what’s going on, and you peer up at Aemond with confusion, fear, mistrust.
“Why…?”
And then you hear it rustling from the same place where you were standing a moment ago. The others yelp and dash out of the way as the snake escapes into the woods, a drab spotted olive green, a rattling tail, an angular skull like an arrowhead.
“Aemond?” you say, because he hasn’t moved, hasn’t made a sound. He looks down, and your gaze follows his. On his right calf, just a few inches above his ankle, are two small puncture wounds from the snake’s fangs, each dribbling a thin river of blood.
“Northern Pacific rattlesnake,” Helaena says, her voice shaking, tears welling up in her horrified eyes. “Venomous.”
~~~~~~~~~~
Aemond has one arm draped across Cregan’s shoulders, the other over Aegon’s. He’s moving slower, or is that just your imagination? His steps are less steady, his breathing more labored. His leg is swelling, a deep blue phantom of a bruise spreading beneath his skin, so tight it looks like it might split open.
“We’re almost there,” you say; you keep saying it, because hopefully that will make it true. “We’re only a few miles from Odessa, and we’ll find people who can help us.”
“Aemond, you’re a doctor,” Luke says.
Aemond’s voice is weak, pained, hazy. “I’m not a doctor.”
“You know what I mean!” Luke yells, frantic. “How do we fix you? What can we do?”
“Nothing,” Aemond says listlessly. “There’s nothing you can do without a hospital. I’ll either get better or I won’t.”
“People in Odessa will know how to help,” you insist. “They’re outside all the time, they hike, they hunt, they fish, they’ve seen snakebites before. They must have. They’ll have treatments.”
“Aemond,” Rhaena breathes, and you turn to see there is blood running from his nostrils. You scream, and Aemond touches his fingers to his face and then watches as they come away bloody.
“Put me down,” he tells Cregan and Aegon.
“No—” you begin, but then his knees buckle and he’s on the pavement anyway, blood pouring from his nose and his lips, blood filling up his right eye. Cregan walks to the shoulder of the highway, his head in his hands. Aegon stays beside Aemond, and you’re kneeling there with him, both of you using anything you have to clean the blood from Aemond’s face: the corners of your shirts, your bare hands.
He’s covered in blood, you think. Just like Jace, Baela, Rio.
“Can’t clot,” Aemond is murmuring. “The venom causes coagulotoxicity. Internal bleeding too. I feel like…like there’s all this pressure inside…”
Rhaena is taking Aemond’s pulse like he taught her to, fingers on the underside of his wrist. “It’s really faint,” she says quietly.
You grab a plastic Gatorade bottle filled with rainwater out of your backpack and tilt it against Aemond’s crimson-stained lips. He manages to swallow some of it. “Aemond, listen to me,” you say as calmly as you can. “You’re so close. We’re almost there. I need you to hang on a little longer.”
He shakes his head, slow dizzy motions. “It doesn’t matter.”
“They might have doctors in Odessa.” This is a fantasy, but you can’t resist it.
“Even if they do, there won’t be any antivenom. And it’s too late anyway.”
“No,” you say savagely, a sob ripping through your throat. “We didn’t cross 3,000 miles so you could die here. I won’t let you. It doesn’t make any sense. It’s not fair.”
“Aegon,” Aemond says, reaching for him, drained and fumbling.
Aegon catches his hand. “I’m here.”
His eye—crystalline blue corrupted with red, blood in clear water—drifts to his brother. “You have to get her to Odessa. You have to help take care of everyone.”
Aegon is weeping. “Man, it’s supposed to be you. How can I still be here if you aren’t?”
“You can do this,” Aemond says.
“I’ll try.”
“I love you.”
“I love you, Aemond,” Aegon says, then crawls away on his hands and knees and collapses on the pavement, gutted, inconsolable, hemorrhaging grief instead of gore.
Everyone is crying and touching Aemond—his face, his hands—saying goodbye, accepting tasks, and they come away stained with red, and rain has begun to fall from a dark sky growling with thunder. Rhaena takes his medical kit. Helaena takes his Glock and stows it away in her messenger mag. Then Aemond looks for you, and now you are alone with him here in the middle of the highway, two golden lines on black asphalt, and with your thumbprint you whisk away the rivulet of blood that is spilling from his eye.
“You’re going to be okay,” he whispers as his heart fails, as his lungs fill with blood instead of air, as his pores leak rust and ruin. “Odessa will be everything we hoped for. I just won’t be there with you.”
“You can’t leave me,” you’re saying as rain patters against the road. I left my family and now my family is leaving me.
“Love,” he sighs, almost too softly to hear. “I don’t want to.”
You lie down on the pavement with him and rest your head on his chest, feel it rise and fall beneath you as the rain descends in sheets. And then Aemond exhales, deep and rattling, and he never tastes oxygen again, never speaks, never touches you. You don’t move from where you’re lying. You’re there until you’re drenched to the bones with rain and the world is a cold mist of pine trees, of wilderness, and you can never go back to any of the places you’ve been before, you can never get back the people you’ve left there.
Aegon is shaking you. “We have to keep moving,” he chokes out through tears.
You reply without looking at him. “I’m giving up now.”
“No you’re fucking not. We have to walk to Odessa.”
“Everyone’s dead in Odessa. Everyone’s dead everywhere. I don’t want to be here anymore. I don’t want to stay in a world like this.”
On the periphery of your vision, you can see Aegon glancing at the others, standing just off the highway and under the canopy of the pine trees. He seems defeated, he seems lost.
Then suddenly Aegon turns back to you. “Hey!” he screams, so loudly you jolt upright, your palms on wet pavement, rain dripping from your hair. “I’m still alive. You’re still alive. This isn’t over yet. I said I would get you to Odessa, so that’s where we’re going. Stand up. Right now.”
Aegon holds out his hand. Thunder booms, lightning strobes, and then you take it. He pulls you to your feet and hesitates, as if he didn’t think he would get this far. Then he throws his arms around you, a crushing desperate embrace, a wordless devotion, a silent vow, sobbing into the curve of your neck, tasting the copper and iron of his brother’s blood on your skin.
“We have to keep moving,” he says again, like an apology, like he understands how impossible it feels. “The storm’s getting worse. It’ll be too dark to see soon.”
“We can’t leave him alone like this.”
“That’s not Aemond anymore,” Aegon pleads. “Aemond’s gone. And he would want us to live.”
Now the others are here on the road too: Daeron, Helaena, Cregan, Rhaena, Luke, Ice whimpering and licking scarlet stains of blood off your hands. You’re all holding each other; you’re all any of you have left. Cregan carries Aemond off the pavement and on a patch of grass alongside Route 140, the seven of you cover his body with branches of pine needles and white petals from dogwood trees. Rhaena is the first person to begin walking again, heading east. One by one you follow her. The downpour is torrential; if you are attacked now, you are nearly blind. Aegon stays beside you no matter how slow your steps are. You think if he disappears, you will too; the strings that tie you to the earth will fray and unweave and your bones will turn to mist, your voice will only be the wind howling down mountainsides. You have no way of knowing how long you’ve been walking or how many miles are left. You wonder what will happen to Aemond’s child if there is nothing for you in Odessa.
The rain is stopping. Now you can hear crows, woodpeckers, formations of geese honking in a foggy sky and squirrels scrabbling up tree trunks. Falcons perch watchfully on dead power lines. Rare aisles of sunlight are breaking through dissipating clouds.
They rise up out of the verdant jungle, a tangle of Pacific ninebark and blue elderberry: four figures in green camouflage, two men and two women, all wearing tactical sunglasses and wielding assault rifles, M16s you’re fairly sure, automatic and with 20-round magazines. Daeron moves to nock an arrow and then stops when he sees you’ve put up your hands. The others follow your lead: palms empty, willingly surrendering.
It’s them, you think dazedly. The people in Odessa. They’re alive, they’re real.
“Please cooperate and hand over all your weapons,” one of the women says, fifties, muscular, alert hawkish eyes.
No one moves. Then you unholster your Beretta M9—received from the U.S. Navy almost exactly five years ago, a different lifetime, a different world—and hold it out to the woman in your open palm. And now everybody else is giving their weapons over too: Aegon and Luke’s .22s, Rhaena’s Ruger, the spare Ruger and Aemond’s Glock hidden in Helaena’s burlap messenger bag, Daeron’s compound bow, Cregan’s axe. Ice peers up at Cregan anxiously, her yellowish eyes wide, but she wags her tail when he runs one of his large, calloused hands over her rain-soaked fur.
Aegon is still clutching his golf club. One of the men stares at him, incredulous. “You can keep that, son,” he says.
The woman nods to the men. “Nick and Glen will escort you five miles up the road, and then return your weapons. We ask that you keep moving and do not turn around. We don’t want trouble, but we can defend ourselves. Don’t think you can double back tomorrow and try to loot us or anything. This is your only warning. Do you understand?”
Aegon nudges your hand with his knuckles, then taps you harder when at first you’re too shellshocked to notice. You have to explain. You have to tell them why you’re here.
“I…I…” You begin, unable to make the words leave your lips, rats from a sinking ship, plummeting bodies from a burning building. Here you stand on a precipice, and with so many other people to save. “I served in the Navy with Bryan Osorio. We left Saratoga Springs together. He told me it would be safe here.”
Now they are interested. Slowly, the woman lowers her M16. “You know the Osorios?”
“I do.” I’ve known them for half a decade.
“Could any of them identify you and verify what you’re saying?”
“His wife, Sophie. She’s blonde, and she likes elephants, and she had a baby recently.”
The woman is scanning the faces behind you. “And where’s Bryan?”
“He’s not here anymore,” you say, and now you’re sobbing again. Aegon is squeezing your shoulder, his head bowed. “I’m sorry. I wanted to help him get home. I was supposed to warn him, I was supposed to stop it from biting him, but I didn’t and now he’s gone—”
“Okay, okay.” The woman motions for you to calm down, but her voice is kind. “Who are these guys? Your colleagues, your friends?”
“They’re my family.”
“You can vouch for them?”
“Yes.”
“You’ll all submit to searches for bitemarks?”
“Yes.”
The woman turns to the men she called Nick and Glen. “Take them inside, will you? Get the ID verified and then we’ll process everyone.”
“Got it,” the older man says. And then, to you and your companions: “Follow me.”
Nick and Glen lead you into the forest, the canopy of pine needles so thick the daylight turns to dusk, and you think of lightning bugs, of firelight, of drinking Guinness on the beach with Rio on Diego Garcia. There are several patrols, groups of four or five, that approach to stop you until they see Nick and Glen and wave you through. Then the trees open into a meadow of buttercups and daisies and pink fawn lilies, and beyond that an immense village, some houses decades old, others currently being constructed with logs from pine trees. There are hundreds of people tending to livestock, hanging up laundry to dry on clotheslines, digging in gardens, making candles and soap and butter. There are children playing without fear, giggling as they chase after scampering dogs, challenging each other to games of kickball and Uno.
In front of one of the houses that predates the apocalypse, brick with a screened-in porch, there is a small blonde woman standing in a garden, smiling and chatting with a middle-aged couple. The baby she carries against her chest in a blue sling has dark curly hair like Rio’s.
Sophie and the baby are here. They’ve been alive the whole time.
You rest a palm on your belly without realizing you’re doing it. “What happens now?” you ask Aegon.
“The rest of our lives.”
It is unimaginable, it is impossible, it is so full of luminous potential you feel like the light will spill out of your pores like blood, it’s an oasis, it’s a second chance, it’s an island in the vast lethal untamed blue of the Indian Ocean.
“Let’s go,” Aegon says softly, taking your hand and leading you across the field of wildflowers, kaleidoscopic blooms in the last days of summer.
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the-queen-of-hell-666 · 2 months ago
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Yours
Kinktober 2024 - Day 7
Pairing: Possessive!Bucky Barnes x Avenger!Fem!Reader
Kink: Biting/Marking
Word Count: 1000+
Summary: Some recruit tries to hit on you and Bucky doesn't like it.
Warnings: explicit language, explicit sexual content (unprotected vaginal sex, vaginal sex, biting, hickies, rough sex, jealous sex), jealous!Bucky, pushy!recruit, slight angst, fluff
a/n: Here's day 7! I had to rewrite this a few times cause I swear the inside of my brain is always jumbled. I hope you enjoy!
Banners by @vase-of-lilies
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You were one of the trainers for the Avenger’s compound. It was your job to train the recruits that were hand picked by the main team. You were also an Avenger but you were only brought on the field when needed so you started using your talents at the recruitment center. You had a new class that was being brought in today, brand new from the west coast. They all came in with stone faces and all in a side by side line. You walked in with a clipboard and in your Avenger’s issued jumpsuit with your name on it. You quickly took roll call of everyone then started the training. Day one was always the easiest when it came to training but it was still as brutal. Bucky always said you worked them harder than any other trainer but you always joked that if they couldn’t survive day one then they couldn’t survive. 
The day was done for the training but tradition was that every new recruit had to buy a round for the team. So everyone showered and changed then made their way to the bar about ten minutes from the compound. Little dive bar but the drinks were cheap and gave everyone an excuse to leave. You were sitting in a booth waiting for Bucky to bring you your drink when one of the new recruits came over, he had two beers, one in each hand. He had a smirk on his face as he sat across from you. 
“Y/n, right?” He asked, you thought his name was Josh or Jake something like that. 
You nodded, “Yep. What can I do for you?” You asked bored with the conversation already. 
“Wondering if you wanted to have a beer with me? Rookies buy the first round, right?” He hummed as he slid the open beer towards you. 
“Sorry, can’t” You faked a frown and slid it back to him. 
“Why not, honey? It’s just one beer.” He shrugged and tried to slide it back but you blocked it with your abilities. 
“Because pushy men means an insecure man, which is quite the turn off.” You fake pouted and his smirk was wiped from his face and a scowl replaced it. 
His face got red and he began to insult you, “You little-” 
Bucky stopped him with his metal hand on the guy's shoulder, “I wouldn’t finish that sentence if I was you.” He growled at the young man and yanked him up from the booth, then shoved him away. Bucky grabbed the two beers and shoved them at him. “Take your cheap beers and put your sweaty moves on someone else.” The young man scrambled away and Bucky turned to me with a huff as he sat next to you. 
He handed you your Jack and Coke and you smiled up at him. “Thank you, baby.” You said as you kissed his cheek softly. 
“Fuckin’ idiot.” Bucky grumbled as he sipped his beer making you giggle softly. 
“He’s just a dumb ass kid. He’ll learn, maybe with some life lessons and a clean pair of underwear.” You joked as you linked your fingers through his, he squeezed your hand softly and kissed your head. 
He chuckled softly, “I hope he learned somewhat of a lesson, but believe me, tonight I’ll make sure he never mistakes you as single again.” He growled against your ear making a shiver go down your spine.
Later that night, Bucky and you make it back to your room in the compound. He pressed you against the door and kissed you deeply. You moaned softly against his lips and his hands gripped at your hips and squeezed them tight as he picked you up. You wrapped your arms around his neck and pulled him closer to you. He fumbled for the hand to your door making him break away from the kiss and turn to the door handle. You giggled softly feeling the effects of the alcohol in your bloodstream. He managed to get the door open and he carried you into the room, kicking the door shut behind you two. 
He gently tossed you on the bed making you smile and you started stripping off your blouse and pencil skirt. He tossed his jacket off and pulled his t-shirt off before climbing back on top of you. Your lips found his again and you wrapped your arms around his shoulders and ran them along the lines of his toned back and shoulders. His hands went behind you to undo your bra and toss it away before his lips moved to your neck. He sucked marks and bruises into your skin and down to your chest, making sure that you were marked with bruises from his lips and teeth. 
“That fuckin’ kid. Thought he could have you.” He growled against your collarbone and his hands moved down to your thighs and yanked them up and around his hips. You moved your hands down to undo his belt and jeans. He quickly shuffled out of his pants, revealing his throbbing and hard cock to you. You reached a hand down and stroked him slowly, starting at the base and moving up. He groaned softly and nuzzled into your chest. 
You moved your hands down to the hem of your panties and pulled them down. Bucky was quick to help you and toss them away before he lined up to your weeping cunt. He stroked himself slowly before lining up to your hole and slowly pushing in. You moaned loudly and clawed at his back, leaving long red scratches on his skin. “B-Bucky! Fuck, you’re so big.” You whined as he bottomed out in you. The tip kissed your cervix making your back arch. 
“So warm and tight.” He grunted before he started thrusting in and out of your hole. He kept your hips pinned to the bed as he pounded in and out of you. You wrapped your legs around his hips and grabbed his shoulders tight. He rested his forehead against yours, “You’re mine.” He grunted as he felt your walls squeezed around him. 
You panted and whined as he pounded you into the mattress, your thighs shaking as they squeezed his hips, “All yours.”
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merpmonde · 2 months ago
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60 Years of the Tokaido Shinkansen!
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On 1 October 1964, a railway line like no other opened. Connecting Tôkyô and Ôsaka, paralleling an existing main line, the Tôkaidô New Trunk Line had minimal curves, lots of bridges, zero level crossings. Striking white and blue electric multiple units, with noses shaped like bullets some would say, started zooming between the two cities as at the unheard-of speed of 210 km/h.
This was the start of the Shinkansen, inaugurating the age of high-speed rail.
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The trains, with noses actually inspired by the aircraft of the time, originally didn't have a name, they were just "Shinkansen trains", as they couldn't mingle with other types anyway due to the difference in gauge between the Shinkansen (standard gauge, 1435 mm between rails) and the rest of the network (3'6" gauge, or 1067 mm between rails). The class would officially become the "0 Series" when new trains appeared in the 1980s, first the very similar 200 Series for the second new line, the Tôhoku Shinkansen, then the jet-age 100 Series. Yes, the 200 came first, as it was decided that trains heading North-East from Tôkyô would be given even first numbers, and trains heading West would have odd first numbers (0 is even, but never mind).
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Hence the next new type to appear on the Tôkaidô Shinkansen was the 300 Series (second from left), designed by the privatised JR Tôkai to overcome some shortcomings of the line. Indeed, the curves on the Tôkaidô were still too pronounced to allow speeds to be increased, while all other new lines had been built ready for 300 km/h operations. But a revolution in train design allowed speeds to be raised from 220 km/h in the 80s to 285 km/h today, with lightweight construction (on the 300), active suspension (introduced on the 700 Series, left) and slight tilting (standard on the current N700 types).
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Examples of five generations of train used on the Tôkaidô Shinkansen are preserved at JR Tôkai's museum, the SCMaglev & Railway Park, in Nagoya, with the N700 prototype lead car outdoors. It's striking to see how far high-speed train technology has come in Japan in 60 years. The network itself covers the country almost end-to-end, with a nearly continuous line from Kyûshû to Hokkaidô along the Pacific coast (no through trains at Tôkyô), and four branch lines inland and to the North coast, one of which recently got extended.
東海道新幹線、お誕生日おめでおう!
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haxanbroker · 2 years ago
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Penrith station, Cumbria, October 2017.
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the-time-lord-oracle · 5 months ago
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Of my expansive collection of Video 125 driver's eye view DVDs, my personal favourite has got to be The Royal Scot. Filmed in 1995/96, this DEV covers the West Coast Main Line from London Euston to Glasgow Central aboard a class 87 electric locomotive in the last years of BR, when sectorised liveries were the order of the day, most WCML expresses were still loco-hauled and the route still had much of it's steam-era character. All of this makes the DEV an interesting time capsule 29 years later, as the total route modernisation the route was subjected to in the 2000's has completely changed the character of the line. One thing to note about the DEV is that it's split into two parts, with part 1 covering Euston to Preston, running non-stop, while part 2 covers Preston to Glasgow, with intermediate stops at Oxenholme and Carlisle. The split nature of the DEV stems from it originally being released on two separate VHS tapes in 1995 and 96 respectively. They were combined on one DVD released in 2003. The split nature is handy if you just want to watch part of the DEV, or need a break.
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feigeroman · 4 months ago
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Saturday Movie Night: Wires Over The Border (1974)
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One of the biggest challenges in BR's modernization plan was the full electrification of the West Coast Main Line. This had been carried out in stages, and by 1966, the wires had gone up as far north as Crewe, and the secondary lines to Liverpool and Manchester. In 1970, BR gained permission to electrify the northern portion, between Crewe and Glasgow. This they did over the next four years, and as always, BTF sent their cameras up to film everything.
Wires Over the Border signifies all the things BR was proud of in the 70s - the last stage of electrification between Euston and Glasgow complete, 100mph running for the majority and a pure British grin and bear it sense of achievement. Some of the wildest, coldest and wettest weather was experienced during filming, particularly on the stretch running over Shap Summit.
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lizzaneia-elizalde · 1 year ago
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Yandere! Jock x fem! Reader
OKAY SO, I accidentally published the draft I was writing for 🌼 Anon's ask, and in panic, I deleted it. So the ask got deleted too. I am--
This was the reason the ask got delayed in being published 😭
Anyways, 🌼 Anon asked for a:
WHAT IF: Reader is not an honor student, but a black belter in Martial Arts?
I noticed there was also a specification for the reader's gender this time, so the reader is for the fem girlies!
This is gonna be interesting :3
For those who hasn't read Damon's main fic, I suggest to read it first to understand his character more.
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Damon, as a jock whose apparent only one braincell ticks around for sports, he never needed a tutor or a mentor or something like that.
He naturally doesn't need any kind of training when doing any kinds of physical activities. He's naturally gifted that way.
But how did y/n and Damon met this time around when y/n is not going to tutor Damon in academics?
⚽⚾🏀🏐🏉
"Damon! Do you think you could join us in the martial arts club?" One person appeared beside Damon, who just got from his basketball practice. At first, he was irritated but calmed himself down and reminded himself that he's supposed to be s nice guy.
"There's a martial arts club? That's so cool!" Damon excitedly said, his smile wide. 'Tch. What do they mean martial arts club? That's too broad.'
As Damon gave a fake, excited smile, the person faltered from how excited Damon is and fumbled through their bag, picking up a flyer.
"H-here! We just recently got recognized so, please give us a try." The person said, their voice high pitched and nervous before bowing and running away.
Damon made sure the coast is clear before dropping his himbo persona and scowling at the paper he's holding.
"West Street, the Physical Education building." Damon read the location.
Should he?
He pocketed the flyer and started walking towards West Street, looking to kill time.
He never tried Martial Arts. Maybe this would be a good activity to add to the roster.
Once Damon found the PE building, he saw some people loitering outside with the same flyer in their active wear. Some also wore various martial arts uniforms. Confused as to what martial arts are included in the club.
Damon rolled his eyes. Surely it couldn't take a handful of taps on the keyboard to include the martial arts they were housing?
Damon shook his head and slapped his cheeks, before sporting a boyish smile he knows all too well.
"What's up?!" Damon greeted his 'friends' from the different sports club he was forced to join. The people jumped at his loud voice before smiling.
"Hey Damon! Nice, you're here also?"
"Heyya Dam! Interested in Martial Arts?"
"Another sports to your experience? Wait, is martial arts a sport?"
"is it?"
Damon laughed and slung his arms over them.
"Yep, I'm really excited. This one looks fun." Damon mused, genuine this time.
Before they were about to talk once more though, a whistle silenced the whole group of loitering people.
A man, probably the head of the club, cleared his throat.
"welcome to Martial Arts club! Here, we give opportunities for artists to Excel in their field! May it be escrima, Taekwondo, Karate, Muay Thai, even those Arts that aren't as well known! We will support you all the way!" The man said, a naive and enthusiastic tone on his voice.
Damon frowned. As if a club can support such a diverse and broad reach.
The man cleared his throat once more and explained the audition process. Damon couldn't give a damn though, and looked around the facility while humming. He licked his lips, dried and a bit cracked.
He was bored. He needed something to stimulate his senses.
Then, he flinched when he heard another whistle.
The people started segregating to different lines. the person in front the line had signs up of different popular martial arts and then one at the end with "Others". Damon pursed his lips at the blatant disregard of the other arts and the unpreparedness.
He decided to go in line in the taekwondo line.
He licked his lips more, now slightly wet and moisturized.
As the line slowly dwindled, his big frame met with yours.
Significantly smaller (also he was a very tall man), at first, he didn't pay attention to you. He only grabbed the pen you offered and signed his name on the clipboard.
Then, the people who signed up went to a separate room in the PE building, where there are mats laid out on the ground.
There are people wearing doboks with different colored belts that Damon doesn't know the meaning, but he knows the black belt was the highest.
"Okay, let's see how you guys fare in fighting our players! In this case, we will allow you to pick a player to fight with." The head announced, making the auditionees whisper to themselves.
Damon pouted and tilted his head to the side while looking bored.
Well, he is an amazing man with an amazing physique. Very gifted in different sports too.
So martial arts shouldn't be that difficult.
People started to trickle in inside the ring with their chosen player. Majority chose a purple belter. Some going green, the occasional blue, the rare brown. None chose the red belters, the ones with black stripes, or the singular black belter.
Damon smirked as he eyed up your form. His eyes sweeping down your dobok which was a bit skewed and clumsily put together. You look bored too, seemingly rushed to wear your uniform.
Damon smirked and licked his lips again. The cracks now gone.
"Yo, sensei!" Damon said once it was his turn to bout.
"That's Japanese."
"So I have to pick who to fight huh?"
"It's called a spar."
"Hmm, I don't know, who should I pick?"
"Aren't you confident."
Damon glared at you, who kept making side comments at his words. His himbo facade cracking a bit.
He walked up to you and looked down.
"Well." Damon gave a big smile. "I choose you!"
"I'm not a pokemon." You frowned and tied your hair up. "Alright. If that's what you want."
Damon smirked and got the spare dobok from the hands of a player, thanking them before slipping them on.
It's a bit tight, but it works out anyways.
After he finished wearing his dobok, he got on the mat and faced you.
You bowed to him, and Damon clumsily followed before following your lead and also bowing to the instructors.
Damon's body tensed up as you assumed position, your eyes suddenly sharpening as you swiftly approached and performed an Ap Chagi, or a snap kick, to his chest.
This took Damon aback who stumbled back a bit.
'I didn't saw her move!' Damon yelled at himself as he took a stance once more and tried kicking you also, but you blocked it and did a Yeop Chagi (side kick) to his waist.
Damon trembled at the shockwave of pain sent to his body as he doubled over, holding his waist. His eyes shook as he looked up.
Your left leg raised up high, ankle facing the top of his back.
An Axe kick straight to the center of both of his shoulder blades, and he fell down face first to the mat.
Everyone who knew Damon trembled.
That easy?
The Damon?
They all shook in fear as you cracked your neck and glared at Damon who also shook in place.
"You got too arrogant and fought a black belter." You whispered, crouching at his height. "How about starting at a white belter, huh? It seems that, that's the only belter you can defeat."
Damon flushed from embarrassment as rage flowed in his veins.
His eyes found yours, hatred seeping through but he bit his tongue when he finally saw your face up close.
'pretty...' he thought to himself, words choking him as he admired your sharp eyes.
And as you scoffed, a deep shiver ran down his spine down to his core.
Oh, he's gonna enjoy going to this club.
[][][][][][][][][][][][][][][]
Damon panted, the sunset light filtering through the window and onto his body.
He rolled over, his tongue sweeping over his lips. Cracked open with blood tinting it.
He trembled as he tried sitting up, a flush on his face. Bruises decorated his body as he looked up at you, triumphant and belittling him.
He bit back a moan.
He's now a purple belter, after months of trying to catch up to you. It was really quick, considering the fact that he was a newbie.
But, he's also Damon, the man who people thought that his brain just revolves in Physical activities.
But it also involved you, his master.
"Sensei... That was amazing!" Damon laughed, his voice breathy as he tried to hide the twitching excitement down there in his pants. His eyes wide with arousal and obsession, he giggled to himself. "One more!"
Unaware of his thoughts, you rolled your eyes and scoffed. "Again, that's Japanese, you dingus."
You took off your belt and slung it over your shoulder. "Sorry, but I got to go somewhere. You go freshen and heal up."
He frowned. Are you going on a date? With whom?
Fickle jealous thoughts infiltrated his mind.
"Where to, sensei?" "Again, that's Japanese"
"Well, I'm gonna have my black belt 1st dan promotion." You told him while getting your bag. "So practice by yourself."
Without any more words, you left him aching on the mat.
"Aw... But I love that about you, leaving me like that." Damon facepalmed, his grin wide. "Ah fuck... I'm so far gone."
He heard his phone beep. An application told him that you're too far from him.
Your location was being tracked by him.
"But seriously..." He whispered, irritation welling up inside him. "Ah, i'm so envious. Is there sparring in the dan promotion? If so..."
He imagined your beautiful, strong and toned legs hitting, bruising somebody other than him and irrational jealousy filled him.
He took off his top and shivered, a shaky sigh leaving his lips.
He looked at the mirror and saw himself and his torso being decorated with bruises that you inflicted on him.
To him, you were marking your place on his body.
It may not be permanent, but he knew it was enough.
For now.
His member twitched again, imagining you putting him back in his place once more.
He looked around and locked the door before excitably letting his imagination run wild.
And, as he pleased himself in the sanctuary of the PE building, in a room which only you and him use, he knew he have to have you.
His precious sensei.
He hears your voice once more correcting him.
"Ah... Hah... Hmmf..."
He bit his lip, tasting the dried blood. His face flushed and sweaty.
"Mine..."
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