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keanusbabydoll · 3 days ago

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neglected

paring: axl rose x fem!reader

warnings: 18+ content, unprotected sex, p in v, age gap (reader is 19, axl is 32), rough sex, spanking, fingering, licking, chocking, bondage, reader gets punished, degrading, praising, arguing, cussing, use of y/n, overstimulation, practically just kinky ass shit

wordcount: 5.7k

a/n: THE THINGS THIS MAN DOES TO ME!!!

NOT PROOFREAD

MDNI

ꨄ❦𖣔𖣘☼᯽☆᪥⁂☼᯽✰𖧷❁✞ఌ𑁍❥༄𖦹✪☼𖣔✯᯽★᪥❦

you had been pacing the spacious living room of axl’s penthouse apartment for the better part of an hour, your bare feet making soft taps against the marble floors. you had been counting down the days until axl came home from his short tour, imagining the way he’d sweep you up in his arms, kiss you with the intensity you missed, and you’d spend hours tangled up together, making up for lost time.

but that wasn’t what happened.

it had only been two days since axl returned, and he’d barely looked at you. sure, he had smiled when he walked in, kissed your cheek, and muttered something about being glad to be home, but after a brief exchange, he had locked himself away in his music room.

he had a one-track mind now, completely consumed by the success of Guns N�� Roses’ latest album Use Your Illusion, the one they had released just months ago. the sales were through the roof, the critics were hailing it as the rock album of the decade, and the fans couldn’t get enough. instead of basking in the success or spending time with you, axl had thrown himself even deeper into his work. he was obsessed, constantly scribbling down new lyrics, working through melodies, always striving for the next big thing.

you understood that his passion for music was what made him the genius he was, but you couldn’t help feeling neglected. after weeks of being apart, you had craved him, wanted his attention—wanted him. you needed his touch badly and this was frustrating you to the bones.

now, it was close to midnight. you sat on the plush couch, staring at the slightly ajar door to Axl’s music room, frustration bubbling up inside you. you wanted to storm in there, rip off his clothes and fuck him till you were the only thing he could think off. the sound of his pen scratching against paper had become a constant background noise these past few days, a reminder that he was always close yet miles away in his head.

with a sigh you marched down the hall and pushed the door to his music room open, leaning against the door frame. just for him, you wore his favorite pair of lingerie, hoping he would notice and stop with his work.

axl sat hunched over his desk, his messy auburn hair falling over his face as he concentrated, his hand moving furiously across a piece of paper. a crumpled pile of discarded lyrics littered the floor, proof of his frustration. he hadn’t even noticed you standing there, his mind too wrapped up in whatever thought was clawing at him.

you bit your lip, then sighed, calling out. "axl."

no reaction.

with a huff you strode over to him, the strong smell of cigarettes immediately filling your nose. you put your hands on his shoulders, leaning down to press a kiss to his cheek. he gave you the smallest glance, barely meeting your eyes before his attention returned to his notebook.

"axl." you tried again, irritation creeping into your voice. "you've been in here for days. don't you miss me?" he didn't even look up this time. "not now y/n. i'm working." you took a deep breath to stay as calm as possible but something inside you snapped. he didn't even notice your lingerie, didn't even spend a second to fully look at you. you moved swiftly, placing yourself on his lap, straddling him. you tried to stifle a moan when you felt your core pressing directly against his cock. your fingers ran over his chest, almost grazing his dick, as you leaned in close, your voice husky and low. "i need you daddy. please."

axl's eyes flared, his grip on his pen tightening as he scowled. he gripped your waist and shoved you off his lap, his tone dark and edged with frustration. "what the fuck, y/n? I don't have time for this right now. just let me finish this, alright?"

you crossed your arms, glaring at him. "you don't have time? axl, you've had plenty time the past days. you've barely even looked at me since you got home. I'm right here and all you care about are your stupid songs."

Axl's eyes narrowed. "you know how important this is to me. i don't need you coming in here, distracting me when i'm trying to work." his voice dripped with irritation, dismissive and cold. "or do you not get it?"

"I get it axl." you shot back, your voice shaking with anger. "but I won't just sit around, ignored like some groupie waiting for your attention."

"you're acting like a child." he muttered, returning to his work as if you weren't even there.

for a long moment, you stared at him, feeling a mixture of hurt and fury simmering inside you. you clenched your jaw and forced yoursefl to calm down, letting your face settle into a passive mask. "fine." you said, your tone cold, yet laced with an edge of defiance. you left the room, leaving the door open on purpose. if he could act like a asshole, then you could too.

you knew exactly what you were about to do and you knew he wouldn't like it.

you walked into the living room, just a few feet away from the music room, removed your bra and tossed it to the floor. next you let your thong slide down your legs before you settled on the couch, laying down comfortably.

if axl wouldn't give you the satisfaction you would have to do it yourself.

you spread your legs wide, letting a hand wander down your body, running your fingers along your thighs. slowly, one of your digits began to rub small, soft circles on your clit, your breaths already deliberately heavy. with your free hand you reached up to your breasts and squeezed them. the circles you drew on your nub began to fasten and you felt yourself getting wetter and wetter. you let your fingers inch down and you slowly pushed two of them inside your warm hole, a loud moan escaping your lips. you started to pump your fingers in and out of your walls in a fast pace, always brushing against your sweet spot. by now, your moans and whines were getting louder and more desperate.

and you knew axl could hear you.

within seconds, you heard the sharp sound of his chair scraping against the floor, followed by heavy footsteps. he stormed out of the music room, his face a mask of fury which darkened even more when he finally saw what was going on. "the fuck do you think you're doing?" his voice was low and rough, a warning edge slicing through the words, as he inched closer to your form.

"ah-just taking care of myself, since you're too busy." you looked up at him with innocent eyes, biting your lip but you didn’t stop. your moans grew louder, your movements more rough and deliberate.

axl's expression turned even darker and his hands shot out, grabbing both your wrists to stop you from pleasing yourself, eliciting a cry from you. with a great force, he pulled you to your feet, a hand immediately wrapping around your throat. but his eyes were burning with a possessive intensity that made your heart race.

now you got him.

"you want my attention?" he hissed, his grip tightened, almost cutting off your airways as he stepped closer, towering over you, his tone dropping to a low, dangerous murmur. a challenging smirk played on your lips, teasing him further.

"you think this is funny?“ he hissed, his voice thick with dominance. "you think you can tease me like this and get away with it?“

your breathing quickened, your core throbbed, a thrill rushed through your veins at his possessiveness, but you kept up your defiance.

"i wanted your attention." you whispered. "looks like i got it.“

axl‘s lips curled into a wicked, dark smirk, his hands on your body tightening as he leaned down to your level, his face inches from yours. "oh, now you’ve got my attention, sweetheart.“ he murmured, his voice rough, intimidating almost. "but you’re not going to like what happens next.“

without another word, axl pulled you close, his lips crushing against yours, forceful, leaving no room to protest. his hand on your waist tightened, pulling you against his body with a roughness that bordered on possessive fury. he didn't waste time, his hands exploring you as if reclaiming what was his, reminding you who was in control. you gasped against his mouth as he squeezed your throat stronger, making him slip his tongue inside your mouth.

your tongues were dancing, fighting for dominance which axl undoubtedly won. after a few seconds he pulled back before his lips traveled down your neck, sucking and licking your flesh. "is this what you wanted? to provoke me?" he snarled, leaving a fresh dark mark on your neck.

"maybe.“ you mumbled out, your lips trying to find his again.

"fucking brat.“

he didn’t wait for you to respond, in one swift motion, he lifted you up, making you wrap your legs around his torso. his lips captured yours again in an dominant kiss, claiming you. he strolled towards your bedroom.

your heart pounded in your chest, a mix of fear and excitement surging through you. you had pushed him and now you were going to pay the price. axl kicked the door shut behind you, throwing you on the bed with such a great force that left no room for argument. he immediately was on you, his eyes blazing with control. "you don’t get to act like a slut, y/n.“ he growled, his fingers gripping your chin as he forced you to look at him. "i’m in charge here. do you unterstand me.“

you nodded breathlessly, your body trembling with anticipation.

"say it.“

"you‘re in charge.“ you whispered, eyes glued to his lips.

"good girl.“ he muttered, his lips slightly brushing against yours. "you are mine, sweetheart. only i get to touch you.“

the way his words left his mouth, sent shivers down your spine. his dominance left you always nervous. he pushed himself off the bed, getting rid of his shirt, before returning his attention to you.

"lay down on your belly, ass up.“ he commanded sharply and you quickly did as you were told. your face was mushed up against the duvets and you were waiting for his next move.

you felt him sitting down next to you, gently caressing your ass cheeks. "count.“ he simply said and before you could even react, he landed a harsh spank on your ass. your body jumped forward at the sudden pain, a scream echoing off the walls.

"one.“

"good girl.“ smack. another rough hit came down on your flesh. "two.“ smack. and another one. "three.“ axl rubbed your already reddening ass again, his digits slowly wandering down to your pussy.

"you’re dripping. you fucking slut are enjoying this.“ he growled as he felt your wetness against his fingers. for that he landed two hits with all of his force on both your cheeks, making your core throb in anticipation. roughly, he grabbed the roots of your hair and pulled you into an kneeling position. "did you like that huh?“ he snarled in your ear. "do you like being punished, slut?“

"yes, sir.“ you whimpered, your breath hitching. "say thank you.“

"thank you for punishing me, sir.“ you mewled out, heart racing. axl chuckled darkly in reply before releasing his grip on you. "get back there.” he ordered, gesturing to the headboard. slowly, you crawled back and leaned against it. your eyes followed him as he walked up to his dresser and pulled out two pair of handcuffs. your breath quickened of the ideas what he would do with them. you guys never tried bondage or anything like that before.

with a devilish grin he turned around and made his way over to the bed, crawling up to you again. he trapped your body between his legs, one hand reaching out for your wrists. "i thought we’d try something new today.” he said, voice full of mischief.

you glared up at him with wide eyes, uncertainty glimmering in them. "oh baby, don’t be scared. i won’t go too rough.” axl uttered challenging. he closed one of the cuffs around your wrist, when you pulled slightly back.

"axl…” you stammered, you didn’t know what he was up to and the fact that he wanted to punish you made you a little bit nervous.

"do you trust me, y/n?” he whispered, looking at you with soft eyes. he still cared. he wanted you to be comfortable, doesn’t matter what.

"yes.” you whispered back, giving him a soft smile which he returned before he cuffed your wirst to the bed post. he reached out for the other one, cuffing it to the other wooden post. he glared down at you, his eyes gleaming with mischief when you tug helplessly on your cuffs.

you watched him, your heart beating rapidly, as he got off the bed and pulled down his pants and boxers, his red, swollen tip glistening with pre-cum. "i can’t wait to ruin that little body of yours.” he growled as he crawled back on the bed. he spread your legs, settling between them, before he hovered over you, his lips almost touching yours. your hands wanted to wrap around his neck out of instinct but when they didn’t move further and you heard the clinking sound of the cuffs, you whined out. you almost forgot that he had you cuffed to the bed.

axl smirked in reply, a low chuckle ringing through your ears. “please let me touch you.” you begged him.

“where would be the fun, if i’d let you? no chance, doll.” he pointed out challenging, earning a huff from you. his eyes flickered down to your lips, dark with desire, and you felt your own pulse racing when he finally leaned in, capturing your lips with a hunger that was undeniable. the familiar taste of cigarettes you loved so much, immediately touched your tongue when axl slipped his inside your mouth, exploring and tasting you feverishly. a muffled gasp left your lips as he let a hand glide up and down your inner thigh, igniting a spark.

you felt him grin into the kiss when you slightly buckled your hips to sign him that you needed more. slowly, his fingers inched closer to your core, barely grazing your slick lips. he was teasing you and he enjoyed it deeply. and the fact that you were cuffed and not able to do anything against it made it even more arousing to him.

with a sharp breath you pulled away from his lips, your eyes searching for his. “please axl.”

“do you think brats like you deserve to be touched?” he teased further, his digits drawing slow circles near your most sensitive part.

“i promise i’ll be a good girl. please touch me, daddy.” you whimpered out, your burning core screaming for his touch. “you can do better than that.” he replied, pressing a small peck to your lips. your lips pouted in frustration, your hands wrestling against the cuffs.

“please daddy, fuck me, do whatever you want with me. please, i need you. i’ll be your good girl.” you pleaded him, giving him the best puppy eyes you had. “whatever you say, doll.” he whispered right into your ear, his voice rough. you were relieved when you finally felt his fingers sliding up down your wet entrance, teasing your clit here and there. his lips found yours again before he easily slipped two of his digits inside your welcoming walls until he was knuckles deep. a heavy, muffled moan rattled against the wall when he began to slowly push in and out of you. his fingers expertly curled up and started to massage your g-spot, teasingly.

you needed more. his slow teasing was driving you insane and he knew that. with a groan, you ripped away from your kiss, taking deep breaths before looking up at him. "go faster axl."

he didn't reply, instead he pressed a line of kisses on your jaw and down to your neck, sucking on your flesh. but shock waves of pleasure shot through your whole body when he suddenly thrusted his fingers against your spot with such a great force that made you see stars. "oh fuck!" you managed to squeak out before your eyes closed, focusing on the pleasure he gave to you. axl abused your sweet spot with fever, bringing you closer to your release.

the squelching sounds of your pussy hung in the air and axl tried his best to hold himself back but it was almost impossible for him. "fuck it.“ he mumbled before he pulled away from your neck and removed his fingers from your cunt. a whine left your lips as your approaching orgasm faded away.

you knew that you were his weakness and that he was addicted to your little pussy. there was nothing he loved more than to be buried inside of you.

in a matter of seconds he got to his knees and put his hands on your hips before turning you around to lay on your belly. your wrists were uncomfortably twisted, making you hiss out. his hand reached under your waist and pulled your ass up in the air. he threw a harsh slap to your ass before he entered you in the blink of an eye. a pathetic whine hung in the air as he filled you to the brim, his size stretching your cunt painfully, immediately starting off with an fast and bruising pace.

axl couldn’t contain his own growls when he finally felt your walls wrapping tightly around his cock. his neck arched back, pounding into you with great desire, enjoying the warmth you gave to him. your moans grew louder as his thrusts became more relentlessly, your body already aching. "you feel so good baby.“ he groaned out, striking your ass again.

"can’t grow tired of fucking this tight little pussy.“ he continued, his hips clashing against your ass harder. the heavy smell of sex, your aching body, the sound your body’s made and axl‘s sexy growls made your mind all dizzy. all you could think off was axl‘s dick hammering into you without mercy.

"you like being fucked like slut?“ he sneered, grabbing your hair to force you to look at him. you frantically nodded your head, too lost in pleasure to actually answer him.

"speak when you’re spoken to.“ he uttered, slapping your ass two times with great strength. "yes daddy, i love it.“ you spluttered out, looking at him with hazy eyes. he smirked down at you devilishly before releasing his grip on your hair.

you tugged on your restraints, wanting to be freed from the painful pressure on your wrists. "don’t even try it baby.“ axl stated, making you cry out defeatedly.

you could feel his thrusts getting deeper and more erratic, his moans became louder and his dick pulsated inside of you heavily, signing you that he was close to his release. you wanted to cum as well but without any stimulation on your clit it was hard for you to reach your high.

and axl knew this too well.

he purposely didn’t give your clit any attention to punish you. usually, he would make you cum at least 6 times in one session.

"m‘gonna fill this little cunt up.“ he moaned out, going as fast as he could possibly go before spurting his seed deep inside of you. his tip twitched uncontrollably and you could feel his cum painting your walls. he continued to fuck into you, riding out his orgasm before stopping his movements. slowly he pulled his dick out of your hole, eliciting a whine from you.

exhaustedly, you turned your head to face him, staring up at him with puppy eyes, only to find him looking at you already. "axl…“ you stammered, a tear threatening to escape your eye. he knew exactly what you were referring to.

he didn’t make you cum.

and that made you sad.

"look at you. my little princess is crying because she didn’t get to cum.“ he mocked you, a smirk playing on his lips.

"you think you deserve to cum after the stunt you pulled earlier?“ he asked you, now completely serious.

"i- i‘m sorry daddy. i won’t do that again, i’ll be good.“ you stuttered, voice shaking.

he simply huffed out before he got off the bed, walking around the bed to open the drawer of his bedside table. you watched him closely as he pulled out a small key and kneeled on the bed again. he unlocked both of the cuffs that were wrapped around your wrists before placing the key back in the drawer.

your hands immediately massaged the sore spots, a forming bruise on both sides. "come on, lay on your back.“ he commanded, his voice now soft. your lip quivered slightly because of the slowly purple turning spots on your wrists and the denial of your orgasm.

axl must have noticed that you were upset and helped you getting comfortable in the new position. "everything’s okay princess.“ he mumbled, petting your head softly before crawling between your legs, kind of regretting that he was so rough with you.

the sight of his seed oozing out of your hole made him hard again, wanting to fuck you once more but he mentally slapped himself across the face.

now it was your turn to receive pleasure.

he spread your legs and bent your knees. you slightly propped yourself up on your elbows as you watched him gather his cum that was dripping out of your hole on his fingers before pushing them inside of you. a soft moan left your lips, finally having him inside you again. his fingers immediately found your g-spot again and he began to stimulate it with an delicious pace and pressure. not to rough, not too soft, simply just perfect. then, he wrapped his lips around your clit, letting his tongue flick around the puffy nub. you inhaled sharply, your head tossing back and the feeling. axl began to suck on your clit, creating an toe-curling vacuum, while still flicking it with his tongue.

your orgasm was building up quickly because of your already sensitive cunt and overstimulated g-spot. his fingers sped up a little and got rougher, getting you even closer. your hand found its way to his long hair, tugging on it harshly. "i’m close.“ you whimpered, eyes shut and focused on his movements.

as soon as the words left your mouth, axl sucked harder and fingered you faster. a pornographic moan rattled against the walls as your orgasm washed over you, finally experiencing your desired release. your legs were shaking, toes curling and your whole body felt like it was on fire. "fuck! axl!“ you yelled out as he continued his assault on your pussy, overstimulating you. he removed his mouth from you but his digits never stopped with their movements. again, he got on his knees, allowing him to fuck you with more strength.

the intense pressure on your spot was making you see stars but axl just got even rougher, determined to make you squirt.

"axl!!“ you cried out, collapsing back against the pillows.

"come on, i know you can do it.“ he growled, pressing his thumb against your clit. and before you could even comprehend it, the most powerful orgasm you ever had crushed through you, your juices squirting out of you, coating axl‘s hand and the duvet. your hands were gripping the blanket like your live depended on it and loud, high pitched cries and whimpers fell from your lips.

"good fucking girl.“ axl groaned out, pleased to see your liquid all over the bed. he pushed his fingers in and out of you a few more times before pulling them away. your mouth hung wide open and your eyes were closed, too caught up in the after waves of your orgasm. "oh shit.“ you whispered.

axl chuckled slightly before crawling up to you, laying down next to you. his arms wrapped around you, pulling you in his embrace. he pressed a kiss to your forehead, his hands gently stroking your body. "you did so good, princess.“

"you know that i love you, right?“ he asked you, kissing you again.

you exhaustedly nodded your head, leaning against his chest.

"i‘m sorry for not giving you any attention. it was stupid of me.“ he mumbled, his voice laced with regret.

"it’s fine axl. i love you.“ you replied, your tone just above a whisper. he gently grabbed your chin, tilting it up just enough to press his lips against yours, kissing you with such a softness that made you melt.

REQUESTS ARE OPENED <3

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centrally-unplanned · 18 hours ago

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The Swing Won't Save You

The "mainstream" account of the election results is one I generally endorse. Elections are thermostatic in the sense that they bounce around an equilibrium - these days the incumbent has a disadvantage, being blamed for the problems but not credited for the successes. Democrats lost because of things like the 2021-2023 inflation spike, or the immigration surge, and the next administration will be blamed for whatever problems the cycle of history throws upon us on top of the consequences of their own actions. That is just How It Be, and it isn't something internal reform can change.

This account is probably true, but this does not lead to some of the conclusions one is hoping it will. I see many taking this as a sort of dismal c'est la vie, assuming that you can just ride it out and win next time, then do good when you do. That therefore there really isn't any need to change all that much in the Dem party structure.

The miss here is that there are fundamental inequalities in the two parties. We just went through, quite handily, the most progressive democratic administration in decades. One that was maximally committed to the idea of "FDR reborn". And it did some good stuff! But I don't really think it lived up to the name, not even close. The democratic "win" - which occurred at the peak of the Covid Crisis in an era of nigh-unprecedented discontent against an incumbent president who was deeply unpopular - delivered a razor thin margin in the House and a literal tiebreaker Senate, itself only after a series of special elections.

The Biden administration spent its political capital on macroeconomic stabilization, one authentic Dem priority in the IRA bill, and then otherwise spent much of its time on a series of rearguard actions and failed attempts to appease coalition partners like unions (who broke away from Dems in record numbers in 2024). Bad policy ideas like student debt relief were themselves undone by the courts. They had four years to prosecute Trump for a blatantly obvious mountain of crimes, and could not get a single one of them across the finish line. And meanwhile, due to awful polling numbers, they felt forced to pursue a number of policies they didn't even really agree with to stave off future defeat. Which they, of course, did somewhat badly, for many reasons but "not really believing in them" is certainly a factor.

Meanwhile surveying the Republican Party's incoming administration, I of course cannot say what they will do with their probable quadfecta, so this is speculative. But through the dice of death they handily control the courts. More importantly, they play the dice to control the courts - we already have discourse on getting the two oldest Republican jurors in the SC to retire. Republican plans include debates around say abolishing the NLRB as unconstitutional, or mass scale deportations, and more you have certainly heard of. They will not do all of them, of course not. But "winning a court case to dismantle a regulatory capacity" is far, far easier than passing a congressional bill to reinstate it. You are not "un-deporting" anybody. The entire Republican agenda is structurally easier to pursue - tearing down is just easier than building up.

And meanwhile, the levers of power are themselves biased. The Supreme Court, of course, but more importantly the Senate, which has an awful map for the Dems. Even when you give Dems their best case scenarios where they win every competitive upcoming election, you are talking 52-48 seats up through ~2032. Meanwhile, the Republican ceiling is 60-40, and is not likely to dip out of the majority.

No one can predict the future of course - I just don't think this scenario and reality is getting the proper attention. A "swing" model where Dems win in 2028 at the same margins they won in say 2020, and then it swings back and so on, is a defeat for Democrats. Republicans will likely achieve X% of their agenda over the next two years, solidify court control, and then Dems will achieve X/2% or worse and otherwise play defense on their turn. It almost certainly isn't the apocalypse, it most likely is not the end of democracy - if you don't wanna care about politics, you don't have to, go live your life. But if you are trying to win at politics, if that is your goal - which for a political party it should be - this just ain't it.

The debate I see is over whether or not this election should be a "wake-up call" for Dems. Which is the wrong question, to me - the Biden administration should be a wake up call for Dems. Even if Harris squeaked out a win, it is a defeat to the party that they found themselves running a decaying man with sub-40 approval ratings for President, or found themselves taking a former senator in the top 1% of the leftwing voting record and running her as a centrist. It should be shameful that they took literally years to act on a "border crisis" that once they did act they found themselves perfectly capable of addressing, not because they authentically believed in increasing immigration and wanted to spend capital on that agenda (which they did not do), but because they were scared of the blowback that happened anyway. It is beyond the pale that Trump is not in jail because they think "politicizing the judicial branch" is somehow not their literal jobs as political actors. It is embarrassing that solidly blue Democratic cities are hemorrhaging population to purple and red states because the Democratic party is failing to govern them.

And I know, I am in the grand, august, tiresome tradition of using an election to repeat the same shit I always say. I have been on this beat since at least 2019. But it being tiresome doesn't mean it's wrong. It might not be right! Maybe Republicans will truly collapse into squabbling infighting and get nothing much done beyond tax cuts, their truest love. I don't know. But I think the odds matrix here is pretty ruthless - the opportunities to be a better party barely have downsides. They implement bad policy half the time even when they win! There is a fundamental disconnect between "what do we want to achieve as a party" and "how are we going to achieve that", a strategy void that infighting, paralysis, and special interest spoils-grabbing fills.

I am less confident on the solution for all this - at minimum we don't even have all the post-election data, that will take time. But the problem such solutions should be solving is that the Dems have been losing for 8 years. "Thermostatic swing in 2028" is not going to change that.

#2024 election takes

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malk1ns · 1 day ago

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november 11 2024 vs stars, 7-1 loss

yikes!

no soulbond verse for this game because like. what even. tw for breakups because they pissed me off and i'm taking it out on them this way.

Zhenya goes through the Dallas game in a haze.

They’re losing badly. He tries on the ice, but he’s distracted. He flubs shots and mistimes passes, and in between shifts he sits at the end of the bench and stares down at nothing, shrugging off teammates and coaches alike.

Sid keeps looking at him, peering around whoever is serving as a buffer between them to try and catch Zhenya’s eye, calling their line in before faceoffs when Sully sends them out together, but for all Zhenya listens to his plays and nods along, he won’t look directly at Sid.

He doesn’t know how he’d react right now, if Sid tried to talk to him like he had after practice yesterday, catching him right when Zhenya was about to make his escape to the locker rooms and talking earnestly at him about acting normal and making sure the team isn’t impacted.

Fuck the team, and fuck Sidney Crosby too. Right now, Zhenya couldn’t possibly care less.

He lets off some steam in the third, going after someone in a green and white jersey and cussing out the ref who leads him to the box, but by the time the final buzzer mercifully sounds even that fit of temper has passed, plunging him back into the hazy malaise he’s worn since Sid broke up with him after they landed in Pittsburgh on Friday night.

Zhenya had been exhausted after a long road trip, looking forward to bundling Sid back to his house and installing them both on his enormous bed to cuddle and watch TV until they wound down enough to sleep. Instead, Sid had paused by Zhenya’s car, taken his elbow, and earnestly told him that he felt like what they were doing, what they’d started up last spring after what felt like over a decade of slow-burn pining, was a distraction. Was a bad idea. Was bad for their hockey.

Well, Zhenya hopes Sid’s happy. His grand plan sure did a lot for the team and their hockey tonight.

Sully talks at them in the room after the game, voice raised and urgent. Zhenya tunes him out, wonders if he’ll be fired soon. Zhenya hasn’t talked much to Kyle, whose focus since he got hired has been pretty much exclusively on Sid, but surely after a game like this the front office is considering making moves.

Losing is one thing. Embarrassing themselves like that at home is another.

Zhenya wonders vaguely what Sid’s parents will have to say. They’ve been trailing the Penguins practically the whole season, waiting for Sid to hit his milestones, and Zhenya’s spent a lot of time with them as a result. He’s not entirely sure what Sid’s told them, but Trina’s been kind, caring in a way that made Zhenya miss his own mama fiercely, and Troy liked to bend Zhenya’s ear about international hockey. They’ve been around when Zhenya’s shown up after bad losses, late at night and seeking comfort from his boyfriend.

Sid will have to come up with some explanation for why Zhenya’s suddenly dropped out of their lives. Between that and this loss, Zhenya imagines it won’t be a pleasant conversation. He can’t even find joy in that.

At least Zhenya’s parents will only want to talk to him about that penalty he took in the third. He hasn’t breathed a word about Sid to them, not even when they were in almost constant contact all summer. He’d been scared, little-boy frightened of making his parents angry, and while at the time he’d felt guilty, like he was treating Sid like something shameful, he can’t help but be grateful for it now.

When Sully leaves, Zhenya stands and mechanically strips off his baselayers. The sooner he can get home, the better.

“G.” Sid’s suddenly standing next to him, clutching a towel and looking worried. “Bud, hey, can we talk?”

Zhenya, for the first time in his tenure on the Pittsburgh Penguins, shoulders past Sid without a single word or acknowledgement.

Sid can take his fake concern and shove it up his ass. It’s not his business anymore, how Zhenya’s feeling.

He’ll handle it on his own.

#sidgeno #hockey rpf #my writing #my fic #24-25 series #considering this a lil bit of an exercise for irreconcilable differences

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rambleonwaywardson · 2 days ago

Text

Clegan Astronaut AU - Epilogue

Masterpost Read on AO3

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

Author's Note: We made it. Thank you a million times over to every single one of you who has engaged with this story. It means a lot to have you along for the ride.

---

Something funny happens when you fly faster than the speed of sound, nothing but a hunk of metal separating you from the sky. Time doesn’t seem to work right anymore; everything can move slow and fast all at once. You take a breath. It feels peaceful, somehow. Sacred.

Even when you pull so many Gs that it presses a stone to your chest and strangles your lungs until they burn, as long as you can push through the tunnel vision and the dizziness, suddenly everything becomes clearer. Perspective, some might say. Others just call it exhilaration. Freedom. The feeling of being alive.

Bucky Egan is seriously addicted to that feeling. For months now, he’s gone without it. He spends more time than he should standing out at JSC’s Ellington Field, closing his eyes and breathing deeply as other astronauts perform flight tests and training exercises overhead. He listens to the rumbling sounds of the jets, wondering if he’ll ever be up there again. Free.

A jet, a prop plane, a space capsule. He’d take any one of them, really, if he can’t have all of them anymore.

Some things are written in stone. Bucky knew seemingly out of the womb that he wanted to fly. He wouldn’t settle for anything else, wouldn’t settle at all. He was going to become an Air Force pilot, and then – once he learned that there were real people flying aboard something called the Space Station, orbiting around the planet 16 times per day – he was going to become an astronaut. From the very second he even knew it was an option, he wanted his feet to be off of this Earth. He wanted to feel what it felt like. He wanted to see what it looked like. He wanted to hear what it sounded like.

He wanted all of it, and he never much minded the risk. Flight, after all, was his first love, and Bucky Egan will do just about anything for what he loves. A part of him always figured, if he had to die, he wanted it to be in the sky. If he had to die, it would be worth it, as long as flight was what claimed his life. Commit his soul to the stars, a supernova in the dark.

But then, of course, there was Gale.

The night they met, two young boys standing awkwardly in a college dorm, Gale told Bucky that he didn’t intend to be an astronaut. He had Bucky wrapped around his finger from that very first smile, but he wanted to become an engineer for the Air Force. Maybe, if he got lucky, work his way into NASA’s space program. Someone back home to keep his feet on the ground may have done John Egan some good. But, in the end, it was him that looked at Gale and told him that all of that was bull. It was Bucky that pulled him along with strings tied to their hearts, convinced him to just give it all a shot – what’d he have to lose? And here he is, nearly two decades later, an everyday flyboy.

This life they’ve built, orbiting one another like a binary star system, is greater than any adventure Bucky ever could have imagined. The way he’s lived it, he figures he’s lucky he’s made it as far as he has. He’s lucky to be alive after that little stunt on the moon. He’s lucky to have the most amazing husband this side of the universe. He’s damn lucky for all of it. Maybe he’s a fool to ask for more.

But he’s not ready to keep his feet on the ground.

Not yet.

—

July 17, 2026 Houston, TX

Admittedly, this was maybe not Bucky’s brightest plan, taking a video call in the dimly lit Orion cabin, where he has to lay on his back, legs elevated, staring up at a brightly lit screen. He can feel a bit of a headache coming on, and he isn’t sure if the vague throbbing in his leg is real or just a figment of his haywire imagination. He might be losing feeling in his feet; he isn’t really sure. Is he setting himself up for failure? Maybe. This afternoon he needs to be in top form, or at least as close to it as he can get. But he’s committed now, and he’s too stubborn to move.

So here he is in the mock-up, like any other mission sim, tucked into his commander’s seat. Or, really, he supposes it’s Gale’s now. The Artemis 4 crew has been doing their fair share of sims in recent months, and Gale has been pulling longer and longer hours as they get closer to launch, as Bucky needs him at his side less and less.

Maybe that’s exactly why Bucky’s sitting here now. To feel close to his husband during a time when their careers, as usual, tend to pull them apart. Or maybe he’s sitting here because he needs the reminder, a silent dedication to who he is, what he’s meant to be doing, what he so badly needs to keep striving for.

Or maybe, he’s only sitting here because the seat of a cockpit is always where he’s felt the safest.

Safe isn’t the right word.

In control, maybe. Most like himself. A cockpit is always where he’s best understood the world around him: sky above, Earth below, his heart strangled with a love for the unknown. The Orion capsule is another home to him. Things might go wrong – sometimes horribly, horribly wrong – but everything about it was constructed and tested with the singular goal of helping Bucky and his crew break boundaries, make history. Every single thing about it is so specific, so familiar, so carefully planned and crafted. John Egan knows this spacecraft better than he knows himself. In the chaos that is his life, it’s the capsule that carried him away from this planet that best keeps him grounded.

So he sits, laying on his back in the commander’s seat that once was his and is now Gale’s. He doesn’t really remember the process of getting here, but he remembers the intense need to be here, like he didn’t have a single other choice. When he first answered Gale’s video call, his husband stared at him for a long moment, then laughed and said something about “only John Egan has an emotional support spacecraft.” He didn’t say anything about how strange it is, considering Bucky almost died in this spacecraft. Maybe, in some weird, fucked up, convoluted way that he’ll have to talk to his therapist about later, that’s one reason he finds being in this tiny space so reassuring.

He’s not a psychologist. He’s hardly even an astronaut.

In any case, fully convinced that this was exactly where he needed to be to call his husband today – a day that has his nerves all shaken up like a can of soda – he duct taped his phone to the console above his head so that he can look at Gale without having to hold it up above his face the whole time. It fell and smacked him squarely on the nose once at the beginning of the call, but it’s been holding well enough since then.

He doesn’t know how long they’ve been talking. Surely it’s been longer than they’d scheduled for, and someone’s gotta be looking for him by now, grabbing onto unassuming JSC employees and asking in a mild panic “Have you seen Major Egan?” Gale’s crew is no doubt waiting for him, too, perhaps just out of view of the camera, reminding him that they have to get started on some task or another. A part of Bucky feels guilty for holding Gale up for so long, but the rest of him needs this desperately.

This is the first time since Bucky splashed down in the Pacific last November that they’ve been apart for more than even a day. Scratch that, for more than 12 hours. Gale has stayed at his side, for better or worse, since the night he first laid eyes on Bucky again in the hospital. It feels like forever ago, and yet it feels like yesterday. Sometimes Bucky still wakes up convinced he’s dying, convinced that his hands don’t work, phantom pain burning through his leg, unable to speak.

It was a long winter, and a long spring. Bucky has gaps admittedly, times when the brain fog whisked him away from reality, made it hard to stay in the moment, hard to figure out what was real. It all but disappeared with time, thankfully. He still has a moment here and there, especially when he first wakes up or if he’s stressed or nervous (not that he’ll admit to anyone but Gale that he’s even capable of being nervous), but they’re becoming less and less common.

Getting that leg to heal was a complete bitch. Turns out micro- and zero-gravity aren’t very kind to broken bones. Eventually the cast came off, and he progressed to a brace, walking with a cane, slowly, slowly working toward walking on his own again.

Gale was there the whole time. Holding him up, steadying him, cheering him on, taking the brunt of Bucky’s frustration and fear. No matter how many times Bucky lost his temper or wanted to give up or refused to get out of bed or go to PT or OT or his CT scans, Gale stayed. Gale didn’t give up on him. Gale loved him through it all.

It’s July now. Almost eight whole months since Bucky fell to this Earth, broken and barely breathing under a bright Pacific sky. It’s the dog days of summer, long and hot and busy as ever here at JSC. Gale has been gone for six whole days, training in Iceland with the Artemis 4 crew. Weirdly enough, the volcanic, rocky landscape of Iceland’s arctic desert is a perfect training ground for astronauts headed to the moon, and it has acted as such since the Apollo days. With Artemis in full swing, NASA has started sending the lunar crews out there again to conduct simulated missions that mimic what they’ll be faced with on the lunar surface.

Bucky misses those days, training and bonding with his crew – his best friends – as they bounded across the dark, eerie Icelandic rock in fake moon gear, out of their minds with excitement for what they were training to do. He’s spent much of this video call asking Gale about Iceland and their simulated missions, half wanting to relive it and half hoping maybe Gale would forget why Bucky wanted to call so bad in the first place. He can see on Gale’s face that he’s failing.

Sure enough, after indulging him for longer than Bucky honestly expected, Gale sighs and tilts his head, raising an eyebrow. “How do you feel?”

Bucky doesn’t quite know what Gale means when he asks this. The implications have changed so much over the years.

In college, he’d ask Bucky How do you feel? when he woke up with a hangover after a night of drinking too much with their friends. Or that time he got terribly sick in the middle of midterm season and shoved through a Statics exam with a fever. When he pulled an all-nighter trying to finish a class project. When he passed Thermo by the skin of his teeth. From the first day of classes to the day they graduated.

How do you feel?

As young adults in the Air Force, or at NASA, he’d ask Bucky how he felt before going up for a mission or a training exercise. Or after survival training in the desert, wandering to the finish line dehydrated and sunburnt but alive and ahead of the rest of their astronaut class. He’d ask him after long training days or messy flights or after they’d been apart for days, weeks, months. He asked him when they both sat, shell-shocked, after losing a friend in the flames of a crash landing. How do you feel?

Before their wedding day, when Bucky was terrified of their future but knew without a doubt this was everything he ever wanted, Gale asked him, How do you feel?

During quarantine. Before the launch. On the pad. How do you feel?

Every day over CAPCOM or video call. Even when Bucky couldn’t hear him, couldn’t say anything back. How do you feel?

When Bucky came home, Gale would ask him that question several times a day. It was tough; there’s no use lying. There were times Bucky wanted to give up, couldn’t bring himself to leave the house or do much of anything. It was painful and it was confusing and it was messy, and sometimes all Bucky could do was stew in silence or, once or twice, tell Gale to fuck off. But every time his awareness drifted or he had to be moved with his bum leg, every time he woke up in pain or had to be left alone for any period of time, Gale, his voice gentle and concerned and so full of love, would ask him, How do you feel?

So what does he mean now?

Bucky doesn’t know how he feels. He should feel good. Excited. It’s about damn time this day came around. He’s John fucking Egan, not afraid of anything, born for the sky. He should feel as sure of himself as the day he climbed aboard the SLS.

So why doesn’t he?

He is excited. Don’t get him wrong. He’s been waiting for this since he woke up in a Houston hospital. But there’s a pit in his stomach and a weird, fluttery feeling in his chest and a weight settling over his shoulders that he can’t seem to shake.

He doesn’t know how he’s supposed to feel. He wants it to be the same as it was before. But it isn’t. It can’t be.

Not anymore.

“I’m fine.”

Gale frowns in that concerned, knowing way that he does. He looks so soft now, comfy in Bucky’s Yankees sweatshirt with his hair messy, no doubt fresh from debriefing after a ‘mission’ or about ready to get prepped for another. But Bucky squirms and looks away from his gaze; it sees right through him. It always has.

“Try again,” Gale insists.

“I’m…” Bucky feels a weird phantom twinge in his leg. Blinks and it goes away. He rolls his eyes. At the question? At himself? Get it together. “I’m fuckin’ nervous,” he admits uncomfortably. “Of course I’m fuckin’ nervous, Buck. What if I get out there and…”

What if I get out there and I can’t do it anymore? What if I can’t handle it? Physically. Mentally. What if today just proves what we were all so worried about months ago: Bucky Egan is grounded. For good.

“Fuck.” He can’t say any of it, can’t risk speaking the death of his career into existence. The melodramatic part of him thinks the bugler might as well start playing Taps right damn now if today doesn’t go his way. Fold up a flag and present it to Gale as the jets fly overhead.

He can only imagine the way Gale would frown and grit his teeth if Bucky said such a thing out loud.

His husband full well knows what Bucky means, though, and he’s quiet, thinking it over. Bucky can see half formed placations tumbling through his head like desperate dreams running on fumes. But eventually, he says, “it’s gonna be okay, John.” His voice is careful and easy, and he doesn’t even sound like he’s faking it.

It makes Bucky’s heart clench.

“Gale,” he whispers, and he hates how vulnerable his voice sounds. It rings in his ears, echoing back and forth and back and forth as he roughly scrubs a hand over his eyes, squeezing them shut tight.

He’s always felt most in control inside of a cockpit. He knows the way an aircraft moves better than he knows anything or anyone on this Earth, except maybe his husband. Flight makes him know who he is, gives him his metaphorical wings. And yet he’s also never felt more out of control than he has in a cockpit.

If he goes up there, he has no idea what’ll happen. He has no idea what his body will do when it gets crushed into the seat by several times the force of gravity. He has no idea if the thing that used to lift him up will carry him again, or if it’ll spit him onto the ground in a pathetic heap of has-been.

So how is he supposed to feel right now?

Starbursts of pain color Bucky’s vision. Skull-splitting. All-consuming. It’s burning him alive from the inside out like a physical force trying to rip him apart. He thinks falling into a black hole would hurt less.

He feels sick. The G forces are too much.

He can’t think a coherent thought that isn’t something along the lines of ‘please make it stop.’ Somewhere, deep in his brain that won’t work, he hates himself for that. Knows he should be better.

And out of all of that – this crushing, crunching, nausea-inducing pain that has Curt yelling at him not to throw up in his suit – the words that pop up into his head like a cartoon thought bubble are “the Big Crunch.”

It’s Gale’s favorite theory for how the universe might end. Because Gale is a space physics nerd that has a favorite theory for how the universe might end.

It’s like the opposite of the Big Bang – an exploding outward from an infinitesimal point, 0 to 73.3 kilometers per second per megaparsec in about a trillionth of a second flat. The Big Crunch would be an imploding inward, a collapsing into a single infinitesimal point at a similarly impossible to comprehend rate. Theoretically, this point could be anywhere in the universe.

John wonders if that would feel something like how he feels – crunching, disconnecting, reconnecting, blinding, unbearable. He sort of wishes it would just happen right now, with that point somewhere in this spacecraft. He’ll take the whole universe down with him. He doesn’t really mind, if it’ll make this stop.

“Gale?” He finds himself crying out the only word he can get past his lips. The only word that matters. The only word that can come remotely close to making any of this better.

“Gale?”

Why won’t it work? Why won’t Gale save him?

He’s getting more desperate. Please.

“Gale?”

“John? You with me?”

Bucky blinks. He looks back at his phone, sees Gale’s face, all worried and shit. It makes his heart sink, because Gale’s been looking at him like that a lot in recent months. Today is a big day, and Bucky knows Gale is worrying he won’t be able to handle it. He also knows that Gale feels guilty for worrying he can’t handle it.

But Bucky’s worried, too.

“I wish you were here.” He says these words so quietly he isn’t sure Gale will hear them. He isn’t sure he wants Gale to hear them. He looks away from the phone as he says it, feeling too vulnerable and too raw on this day when he’s supposed to be Major John Egan: cool, cocky, composed.

He can pretend for everyone else. Everyone besides Gale. He’ll tell them that he’s ready, even if he isn’t.

He won’t ever be ready until he does it anyway.

The lights are dim around him. In the glow of the console in front of his face, he strokes his fingers gently over the tactile buttons beside the screen. They feel so familiar; he thinks he could press one with his eyes closed and know exactly what it would do.

“I wish I was, too.” Gale’s voice comes back soft and real, bringing Bucky’s attention back to his phone screen. The way Gale’s face is so open and genuine – so unlike what the rest of the world gets to see of him, with a crooked half-smile half-frown accentuating the mix of emotions in his eyes, wide and searching Bucky’s for some answer he doesn’t have – makes Bucky want to pull him through the screen and hug him tight.

He wants Gale to hug him tight. He wants Gale to pull his feet back down to this planet and tell him he’s safe and protect him from everything that has hurt him so badly. He wants Gale to make sure the stars keep burning at night and the world keeps turning and the darkness doesn’t swallow them whole. He wants Gale to quiet the buzzing in his brain and the ringing in his ears. The little voice that’s telling him he can’t do it, can’t do any of it. He wants Gale to come home right damn now and make all of it go away.

But Gale won’t do that. Because he knows that, right this very moment, Bucky needs to climb the rest of the way up this mountain. He needs to stand at the top himself in order to understand that he can do it, he can make it. Gale can’t do anything but stand beside him.

“Do you think I’m ready?” Bucky asks. He says it with a mindless air, looking away as he traces his thumb over the bottom of the console, but there’s a jagged edge to his voice that gives him away. He doesn’t know if he wants Gale’s reply. There was a time when it didn’t matter what anyone else thought – even Buck. Bucky Egan would do what Bucky Egan wanted to do, whatever he convinced himself he was capable of doing.

Some things change. Sometimes forever, and sometimes only for a moment.

He makes tentative eye contact with his husband through the screen. Gale nods – a curt, somewhat hesitant little thing. “Maybe,” he says honestly. “You’re ready to at least try. But if it doesn’t go the way you want it to, you just keep workin’, and you’ll try again. You’re Bucky Egan. Nothing can keep your feet on the ground forever.”

Bucky is about to say something snarky and maybe self-deprecating back, but before he can, there’s a voice in the background of Gale’s side of the call. His eyes widen and he looks off screen, putting a hand up to whoever was trying to get his attention. He looks back at Bucky and sighs. “I gotta go, darlin’. You’ll be alright, hear me?”

Bucky forces a smile. “Yeah. Yeah, obviously.”

“I love you,” Gale says, shoving every bit of adoration he has into those words, and Bucky wants to bottle it up somehow, hold onto it for when he needs a reminder.

“I love you, too,” he says.

The corner of Gale’s mouth lifts into a shy smile. “Ad lunam, ad astra,” he says, and then he’s gone.

Alone again, Bucky reaches up to turn off his phone, and he lets his hand fall down to rest over his chest. He rubs his thumb over his wedding band, twists it around and around his finger. “Ad lunam, ad astra,” he whispers to himself.

When the master alarm starts blaring through the cabin seconds later, red lights flashing in Bucky’s eyes, his heart rate shoots up as he instinctively starts thinking through every single thing that could possibly be wrong. His eyes scan the console in front of him, searching for system statuses that aren’t there, and he blinks in confusion before he shakes his head, remembering that he isn’t in a training exercise. Someone’s tracked him down.

He turns off the alarm and lets silence fill the cabin again.

“You know, when you said you were gonna find somewhere quiet to flirt with your husband, we thought you meant your office or a shady tree or somethin’.”

Bucky turns his head awkwardly to see Rosie outside, his head ducked down to peek through the hatch at him.

“It was quiet before you came and scared me half to death,” Bucky retorts. He reaches up and rips his duct taped phone off the console, picking the tape off and rolling it into a ball.

“If that scares you, you’re in the wrong place,” Rosie quips. He freezes, just for a second, his eyes going that little bit wider, and Bucky sees the moment he realizes what he said. A harmless joke. A truth, if nothing else. Something that would’ve made Bucky throw a meaningless little insult right back at him a year ago.

Everyone’s been walking on eggshells for a while now. No one would dare even insinuate that John Egan doesn’t belong here, especially not while he’s working so hard to claw his way back.

But he takes Rosie’s words for what they are, rolls his eyes, and brushes a hand back through his hair. “If you ain’t a little scared you’re doin’ it wrong. Or you’re crazy.”

Rosie lets himself smile, shaking his head, and he crawls in through the hatch. He pulls himself into the seat beside Bucky, where Curt would usually sit. Bucky sticks the tape ball to his shoulder, and Rosie grabs it, shoves it into his pocket before Bucky can bug him with it any more.

“Man, can you believe we spent weeks cramped up in this thing?” he muses, his eyes skimming over the industrial walls of the tapered conical cabin. He’s talking about the real Orion capsule, not to mention the hundreds of hours logged in this very simulator.

Bucky glances around. This glorified minivan of a spacecraft is the stuff of his childhood dreams, like something straight from science fiction. “We’re astronauts, Rosie,” he points out, as if he doesn’t wonder every day how he managed to make it this far. “I can’t believe we left the planet at all.” Rosie scoffs, and they share a look, like neither of them are certain anything that’s happened in the last year was real.

Bucky shakes his head, adding, “not like we ain’t used to it.”

“At least on the station we got more than one cramped space.”

Bucky doesn’t ask the question that surges through his brain at the mention of the station: Do you think I’ll ever go back? He isn’t ready for the answer. And he doesn’t want to hear ‘I don’t know’ or ‘Of course you will’ or ‘You’re John Egan, you can do anything.’

John Egan couldn’t sign his own name with a pen a few months ago.

Instead he looks over at the fake window on the side of the fake capsule, assessing the distance from it to him. It’s so close. “Felt like that window was a world away during the return trip.” He remembers being led over to it. The feeling of Beary Egan’s fur between his fingers. The throbbing in his head. The unbearable burning in his leg. The nausea in his stomach. Everything spinning around him.

But out the window, stars. So many stars. And he was going to get to them one way or another.

Rosie looks at the window, then back at Bucky. The crew physician remembers all of it, all too well. Part of him wishes he could forget the worst parts, but another part of him feels a need to be the keeper of those memories. He thanks the universe everyday for guiding all of them home. “Everything seems further away when your body doesn’t know if it’ll make it to tomorrow.”

They’re quiet for a long time, just two crew members in a capsule mock-up. It has snapshot memories flashing through Bucky’s mind, and he rubs his thumb over his wedding ring again to ground himself. He thinks about Rosie’s words. “I made it,” he whispers.

“Yeah,” Rosie agrees. “Yes you fuckin’ did.”

It’s a truth that John has been trying to remind himself of every single day for months. He made it; he’s alive.

But is that enough?

What do you do when the best experience of your life was also your worst? What do you do when the thing you love nearly killed you? What do you do when all is said and done, when there’s nothing left to do but forgive, even though you will never, ever be able to forget?

What do you do when the universe tries to strip away your identity, leaving nothing but a trembling shell, the pieces strewn about for you to pick up one by one?

You rebuild yourself, step by step. And what do you do when the edges don’t fit anymore, rough corners scrubbing at wounds that won’t heal, nothing but sheer grit and determination gluing you together?

Is it enough? Do the pieces fit well enough for you to be whole again? Will time sand away the jagged edges, sew together the messy seams? Pieces lost and pieces gained, and all you can do is search in the dark for who you were and who you thought you were and who you still can be.

And you wonder, is it enough?

Bucky holds his hand up in front of his face. Out in zero G, there’s no up or down. You’re weightless, every part of you. Holding your hand up in the air takes no more effort than holding it out to the side or down or back or forward. On Earth, though, there’s good old gravity. 9.8 meters per second squared. 32 feet per second per second. A reliable force keeping your heels on the ground so you don’t just float away. With the way Orion’s seats are oriented, Bucky and Rosie lay on their backs, staring up at the tapered ceiling of the capsule and the screens set up in front of their faces.

Here on Earth, holding his hand up in front of his face takes effort. He’s not weightless down here, and as he experimentally pinches his fingers together, he watches the way they shake.

He bites his lip, takes a breath, closes his eyes. He doesn’t open them.

Gale once told him about the conversations he had with Dr. Huston – the fear that even if Bucky even made it home, he may never be the same. Now he wonders if that fear came true. Is he the same? Will he be the same? He doesn’t know.

He wonders if Gale does. He wonders what Gale sees now, when he looks at him.

He squeezes his eyes shut even tighter.

Ad lunam. Ad astra.

“You’re gonna be fine, John.” Rosie’s voice cuts through the ringing in Bucky’s ears, quieting it. “This is what you’re meant to do.”

Bucky swallows thickly, willing his voice not to come out a strangled mess. “What if… what if I’m not anymore? What if it doesn’t come back like it’s s’posed to?”

“You’ve been training.”

“What if I never...”

“Take a breath.”

Bucky does. There’s no room for panic. No room for doubt. Just him and the sky.

“Open your eyes.”

When Bucky releases himself from the darkness, his hand is perfectly still in front of him. He straightens his fingers, bends them again, straightens them. They don’t shake.

“You’re ready, John.”

—

The sun is bright over Ellington Field late that afternoon, and Bucky pushes his aviators up the bridge of his nose. He tugs at the collar of his flight suit as he strides down the runway, adjusting it beneath the straps of his parachute pack, and he squares his shoulders, lifting his chin. He feels the hard pavement beneath his boots, hears the beat of his footsteps. The ground crew waits for him.

When he stops in front of the Northrop T-38 Talon, he squints against the light reflecting off its sleek white side, and he feels his breath catch in his throat at the sight of this beautifully engineered machine that will launch him into the blue. He curls his fingers into a fist, spreads them out wide, and slowly, steadily, he presses his hand to the nose of the jet standing in front of him, just waiting to come to life. The T-38 jet trainers are used by NASA for training exercises and keeping the astronaut corps’ flying skills up to par. He knows this aircraft as well as he knows Orion, but he hasn’t flown it since last July, a whole year ago now.

“Hey there,” he whispers, letting his eyes roam over it – the fuselage, the engines, the wings, the tail, the wheels. A beautiful bird. It was designed long before Bucky was even born, but it doesn’t look it. “Long time no see.”

“Worried she won’t remember you?”

As Bucky’s eyes stay trained on the ground, studying the wheels, his hand still pressed to the nose, he feels someone else’s presence at his side. He looks up, pulling his hand away. Curt’s there, watching him with a teasing smile on his face. He’s wearing the same gear as Bucky: blue NASA flight suit, G-suit, parachute pack, a helmet tucked under his arm. His other hand grips the shoulder strap of his harness.

“Not one bit,” Bucky replies.

Curt chuckles and pulls Bucky into a tight one-armed hug, as if they haven’t seen each other in months even though Curt makes a point out of bugging him every day. “You ready?” he asks when he pulls away.

Bucky nods and grins in that wild, daring way, as if he hasn’t had a single doubt this whole time. As if he wasn’t just freaking out to Gale and Rosie over what he’s about to do. He brushes his hair back and gazes at the jet again. “Let’s see how well I remember her.”

After passing his sunglasses off to a ground crew member, he climbs the ladder leading to the Talon’s second seat, behind Curt’s. They each stow their procedure documents in the cockpit and hang their helmets on the rail before hopping back down for a walkaround inspection. This thing’s been checked at least twice over by ground crew already, but Curt and John don’t fly without giving their own seal of approval.

When Bucky climbs the ladder again and, at long last, settles into the tight cockpit of a real, flight-ready jet, adrenaline rises in his chest at the same time that a sense of belonging presses him into the seat. He sits back, and staring at the instrument panel just beyond his fingertips feels something like coming home. He can’t stop the grin that spreads over his face. The crew chief helps Curt and Bucky strap in and connect their G-suits, and then Bucky slides his helmet over his head so he can hook up to the oxygen supply and comms. He sighs deeply; for the duration of this test flight, this jet is a part of him, or he’s a part of it.

Ladders stowed and systems checks complete, Curt gives the signal for air, and the ground crewmen oblige, pumping life into the Talon’s engines. Once they’ve completed the last of their pre-flight checks, Bucky hears Curt’s voice buzzing in his ear. It crackles over the comms, a sound Bucky hasn’t heard coherently since he was bounding along the side of Shackleton crater.

“It feels damn good to fly with you again, Major.”

“Cut the crap, Biddick,” Bucky teases. “Without me around, you’re officially NASA’s best pilot.”

Curt scoffs at that, and Bucky imagines him rolling his eyes as he double checks the takeoff and landing data. “Should’ve left your ass on the moon… astrofag.”

Bucky rolls his eyes right back, but he can’t help but laugh. Whether he’ll admit it or not, the name is growing on him. He shrugs, reviewing the same numbers. “Only one way to get back there.”

Chick’s voice cuts in from the tower, and it makes Bucky feel something like relief to know Harding is here for this, rooting for him. “One step at a time, boys.”

As Curt starts taxiing, Bucky looks out over the side of the aircraft. The wings of the Talon and the still-open canopies shake as the tarmac rolls by beneath the wheels, bumping them along. He and Gale have taken their prop plane out a few times this month and last; Bucky even took over the controls for a while one time. But this, today, is his first time back in a supersonic jet trainer. He’s only flying second seat, leaving most of the piloting to Curt, but today is a major stepping stone toward feeling whole again: today he finds out if he can handle supersonic flight.

Since his neurologists cleared him for it a couple months ago, he’s been training for this day in earth-bound simulators. At first, the Gs were too much for him, leaving him feeling weak, pathetic, and discouraged as he passed out or started feeling sick at embarrassingly low G forces. But it’s been coming back to him in recent weeks.

The Talon – capable of flying at Mach 1.3 and climbing 30,000 feet in just one minute – can easily pull 7 Gs. Bucky thinks he’s ready. He wants so badly to be ready. He wouldn’t be flying today if anyone thought he wasn’t ready.

They’re at the end of the runway, staring down the length of it as Curt pivots the Talon so its nose points straight ahead. When Chick clears them, they lower their canopies, and Bucky feels the cabin pressurize. He blinks in surprise as they lurch forward, and then they’re barrelling ahead, faster, faster, faster, until they lift up off the ground, ascending into the clear sky.

He breathes deeply as they climb, picking up speed as they shoot up into their airspace, approaching 16,000 feet. They coast there for a minute, making sure everything is still in order up at altitude.

“Doin’ alright back there?” Curt asks as they both check their systems again.

“We’re go back here,” Bucky affirms. “Let’s fuckin’ do it.”

“Your wish is my command, Major,” Curt says. He lowers the nose of the jet, and they pick up speed as they drop again, getting up to about 500 knots, three-quarters of the speed of sound. Curt brings the stick back then, sharply pulling the Talon’s nose up, and Bucky watches the G-meter gradually kick up to 5 as they shoot upwards. The force presses him back into his seat, making it hard to breathe, and he clenches his muscles as he feels his G-suit get to work trying to keep the blood from draining away from his head. The needle creeps toward 6, goes a little over it. He grits his teeth hard, feeling his heart start to beat harder, faster as his vision starts to tunnel. His head feels funnier than he wishes it would, but he forces himself to focus, strains to breathe, determined to keep going.

“Fuck,” he mutters, tensing his lower body as he and his suit fight to prevent G-LOC.

Chick’s voice crackles in Bucky’s ears. “You’re doin’ fine, son.”

Curt keeps pulling back until they’re up around 20,000 feet and the nose passes vertical; they’re now flying inverted. The nose of the Talon is like an arrow, going wherever you point it, and currently it’s looping them over backward at Curt’s command, with the ground through the canopy where the sky should be. The G-meter starts to chill out, dropping again as they lose speed. Bucky’s vision clears as the blood returns to his head, and he breathes in deeply.

Through the canopy, he catches a glimpse of two lonely, fluffy clouds in the distant sky, and below, little buildings and invisible people and dark, sparkling bodies of water spread out across the Earth. Stardust, he thinks, smiling just a little bit as he watches the world around him, trying to see it through Gale’s eyes. Bucky’s always found it beautiful, but more than anything, he’s always cared about the flight, the adrenaline, the excitement. Gale cares about the beauty, the wonder, the imperfect perfection.

“You still with me, Bucky?”

“Yeah,” Bucky assures Curt. “I’m here.”

Curt expertly flips them around and levels back out, upright once again and coasting along at a smooth 400 knot clip. “You ready?” he asks after giving Bucky some time to recover.

“I didn’t come all this way not to be.”

“I don’t need the sass,” Curt shoots back, but it’s light, like normal. “You have the controls.” Bucky’s pretty sure he hears the word ‘asshole’ muttered at the end of that sentence, and it makes him smile.

He shakes the stick in confirmation, and suddenly he has all the power of the Talon right there in his hands. His eyes flick down to where his fingers grip the stick, his heart skipping a beat, but his hand is perfectly still. “I have the aircraft,” he says, and he hopes Chick is still listening.

He sends them into a roll, feeling giddy as his head gets snapped to the side and his body seems to remember exactly what it’s supposed to do. Flying this thing is ingrained within him, like riding a bike – a bike that’s 46 feet long with a 25 foot wingspan, 3,000 pounds of thrust, a 55,000 foot altitude ceiling, and a top speed of 858 miles per hour.

He asks the plane for a little more, a little more, pushing them higher, faster, forward. He hears Curt whoop loudly into the comms: “Come on baby! We’re fuckin’ back!” And Bucky hasn’t felt this alive since he was on the moon.

After a few minutes of unfiltered glee at the helm of his long-lost ship, feeling pieces of his soul sink back into him, he banks them around and hands the controls back over to Curt for the grand finale, their final test of the day. At about 32,000 feet, they enter a shallow dive, using it to increase their speed again. Bucky feels himself being pressed back, but with a more comfortable amount of force this time as the sky blurs by. He watches the airspeed indicator. Mach 0.92… 0.96… 0.98… 0.99. The indicator jumps, out of sync, as the bow shock passes.

Bucky nearly gasps as they hit Mach 1… 1.02… 1.06… 1.11.

A strange feeling of calm descends on him. They’re flying faster than the speed of sound; they’re flying faster than anything else on Earth. There’s a certain beauty to it that Bucky’s missed in the last eight months, and he blinks away stubborn tears as the world starts to make sense again. He looks out the window, sees nothing but blue skies, and he lets oxygen fill his lungs as he grins beneath his mask. He laughs, and he hears Curt laugh with him.

—

Back on the ground, once the canopies are up and Curt’s parked them squarely in the Talon’s hangar, the crew chief secures the ladders to the side of the aircraft, giving the pilots their exit. He asks Bucky if he feels alright, and Bucky nods once his helmet is off, leaving dark, sweaty hair sticking up in all directions. “Never better,” he says.

In his head is a steady mantra: I am an astronaut. I am an Air Force officer. I am a pilot.

He just proved it to himself, even if he still has more work to do. He is a pilot. He is all of those things. Not was… he is.

He climbs down slowly, gripping tight to the sides of the ladder in a way that has him second guessing how much brain power he needs to dedicate to his grip strength. Just a few months ago, his fingers wouldn’t listen well enough to do even this. But he studies his hands for just a split second, one foot on the rungs of the ladder and the other hanging mid-air, and he realizes that his fingers are working just fine right now. His legs feel a little weak as he steps down, down, down, and he holds his breath as he lowers himself the last big step to solid ground. His head goes just a little fuzzy, and for a nerve-wracking half second, he worries his knee might give out and send him crashing to the pavement, but his toes find contact, and he lets himself hop down. His head clears. He takes another deep breath.

His heart is beating fast; he still feels the adrenaline thrumming in his chest, and it makes him feel so goddamn alive. The world around him feels so unreal, the feeling of Curt clapping him on the shoulder so far away that it makes Bucky stumble to the side. He laughs and shakes his head before turning to press his hand to the jet one more time.

“Next stop, flyin’ her yourself,” Curt says.

For the first time in months, Bucky actually believes it might happen. It’s not even a half-truth said to the media, a manifesto spoken to shove him through PT, a dream to get him out of bed in the morning. It’s right here in front of him, just inches away, and he’s so close.

He doesn’t say any of it out loud, but he knows Curt can see it, too. They all can see it. Someday soon, John Egan won’t be grounded anymore.

He tucks his helmet under his arm and takes his aviators from the crew chief with a nod of thanks before putting them on. With a glance over at his best co-pilot as they walk away from the aircraft, out of the hangar, he ruffles Curt’s sweaty hair. “What the fuck?” Curt says, but he’s looking somewhere out ahead of them when he says it.

Bucky squints into the early evening summer sun at a small silhouette running fast toward them. After a second of confusion, he laughs and sinks down to his knees just in time for a wriggly husky to crash into his chest. “Pep!” A second one runs up to his side, licking at his ear before going after Curt. “And Meatball,” Bucky laughs. Pepper shoves her nose into his face, making him lean his head back, pushing her away even as he curls his fingers into her thick coat. “What the fuck are you doing here?”

“Flyin’ looks good on you major,” a voice calls out. Bucky’s heart skips a beat, and his head shoots up, his hands freezing in the middle of scratching Pepper’s ears. Meatball trots away, toward the group of people approaching them.

There’s Benny and Marge – here for support and for media updates respectively – as Bucky expected. Then there’s Chick, fresh from the tower and looking something like a proud father, or maybe just a relieved boss.

And then there’s Gale.

Bucky’s husband – the same one that Bucky was supposedly video calling in Iceland just hours ago – is now also in a NASA flight suit with his hair gelled back. He’s walking across the tarmac to him, illuminated by the sun.

“Holy shit, man!” Benny exclaims, giving Bucky a firm, excited side hug before slapping Curt on the shoulder. “Bucky Egan is back.”

“That’s right, you can’t get rid of me,” Bucky jokes as Marge comes forward to hug him. He knows she’ll want some pictures of him and Curt by the Talon in a minute, but for now she just whispers in his ear that she’s proud of him, and she squeezes him tight.

Chick pulls him into a rare hug, patting him on the back. “You did damn good,” he says. “Damn good.”

And then there’s Gale. He stands in front of Bucky, looking a little sheepish but tall and proud and beautiful. He raises an eyebrow, and Bucky can’t do anything but stare at him for a long moment. He stares, and stares some more, before finally he blinks and surges forward. Gale grunts at the force of Bucky’s body hitting his, but he firmly plants his feet and wraps his arms around him. “Hello to you, too.”

“Hey, angel,” Bucky whispers. He presses his nose into Gale’s hair, inhales the scent of his shampoo and product. He smells like Houston, like the gulf, like waking up to sunlight shining through the windows, like all the things Bucky loves. He smells like home. “All that about what you were doin’ in Iceland today was bullshit, huh?”

Gale shrugs. “Surprise?”

Bucky grips the fabric of Gale’s flight suit, twisting it in his fingers. “Were you… did you see?”

Gale nods. “I saw all of it.”

Bucky bites back a grin, hiding it against the side of Gale’s head. He hears Marge take their picture. It’ll be framed and on his desk within the week.

—

By the time the sun’s gone down, the Talon tucked away in its hangar and the ground crew gone for the day, Bucky is back at Ellington Field, sitting on the hard pavement of the runway. There’s the lightest breeze drifting around him, carried in off the bay to relieve Houston from the oppressive heat of the daylight. Major Egan is still in his flight suit, adorned with patches – his name, John Egan, written in neat script beneath a set of wings; the NASA logo; the U.S. flag; his ISS mission patch; and finally, Artemis III.

There’s a crescent moon peeking out of the darkness, set against a backdrop of dark blue-black sky pockmarked with the stars that have guided Bucky his entire life. He stares up at them, the moon and the stars, his mind jumping from one thing to the next. Running through his flight today, everything good and bad about it; thinking through how much further he still has to go until his body is 100% ready to fly alone again; wondering if Gale is looking for him, if he knows Bucky well enough to know where to find him. He’s remembering walking on that moon – every day he works to reconcile it all in his brain, what went wrong and what went right. He’s thinking about what it will be like when Gale goes up there in just a short four or so months.

He can hear footsteps walking over the pavement, and he breathes out in a huff. His husband knows him like the back of his own hand after all.

He spares a glance over as Gale settles on the ground beside him, pulling his knees to his chest in a way that Bucky thinks can’t possibly be comfortable anymore at their age. They sit, close enough that their arms brush, and they look up at the sky that has laid the path for their entire existence.

“Everyone’s headin’ to the Hundred Proof,” Gale says. “Thought you’d wanna drink to being back in the cockpit.”

Bucky hums. “Guess that’s somethin’ I oughta do.” Since he was released from the hospital last December, the Hundred Proof has become a place of celebration and camaraderie again, rather than one of collective grief and worry. His Artemis portrait went up on the walls of the bar just before the new year, along with Curt’s, Rosie’s, and Alex’s. Soon enough, Gale’s ISS portrait will be switched out for his Artemis 4 one, too. Buck and Bucky; one is never far behind the other.

Bucky crosses his legs and leans forward, resting his elbows on his knees, still looking up as if he can see the entire universe if he only squints hard enough. “We’ve been through a lot together, haven’t we?”

“Have we?”

Bucky looks over at Gale again, scoffing in disbelief, but he finds Gale hiding a smirk as he presses his cheek to his knee, watching Bucky. His hair is messy again from running his hand through it, the gel never holding for long, and Bucky rolls his eyes, reaching a hand out to ruffle it some more.

“It’s worth it,” he says matter of factly, letting his eyes drift back to the stars.

Gale scoots closer and lets his head fall against Bucky’s shoulder. “It’s our life,” he agrees. He doesn’t need to emphasize the our; it’s as if there was never any doubt in this universe that his life would be John’s and John’s would be his.

“Sometimes I can’t really believe I made it here.”

“You were never gonna take no for an answer.” Gale doesn’t know exactly which part of Bucky’s life they’re talking about. He wasn’t going to settle for less than the astronaut corps. And he wasn’t going to settle for less than Gale either.

“I said sometimes,” Bucky mutters, but there comes a point, no matter how badly you’ve always wanted something, where it doesn’t feel real anyways. He doesn’t quite know what he did right to make it to this very spot, even if he can trace his exact path, every single step and crossroads and difficult decision. Sometimes, all he feels is fucking lucky.

Gale scoffs and turns his head, pressing his nose against Bucky’s neck, above the collar of his flight suit. He kisses the delicate skin there. “I never had a doubt,” he whispers. “I’m proud of you.”

Bucky leans back, pulling Gale with him until they’re both laying on the hard ground. It’s uncomfortable as hell, but Gale curls against Bucky’s body anyway, shifting so his head lays right over his heart. Bucky’s fingers curl into his hair. They don’t shake. They don’t even hesitate.

“It’s a damn good life,” Bucky breathes out, the words floating up to the heavens and wrapping around them both. He means it with everything he has.

Gale hums in agreement. With his ear pressed to Bucky’s chest, he can hear his heartbeat, steady and strong. It’s a sound that he took for granted before, but he never, ever gets tired of it now. He squeezes his eyes shut and silently counts along. One. Two. Three. Four.

“You’ll come home, right?” Bucky asks. Few people in this world would be able to distinguish the slight tremble to his voice, the way it jumps almost imperceptibly, nerves twining through it. But Gale hears it loud and clear. With his cheek pressed to Bucky’s chest, he feels the rise and fall start to slow, feels the way Bucky is nearly holding his breath.

Gale closes his eyes, bites at his lower lip. He knows that Bucky knows better than to ask that question. Both of them know that their line of work has never, not once, come with guarantees. They know better than anyone that promises like that are as good as empty. And yet, without promises, what is there to keep them moving forward?

So Gale buries his face in Bucky’s chest and says the only thing he can say. “When have you ever known me not to come home?”

Bucky scoffs quietly at that, but Gale knows that’s all he wanted to hear. They both know that, technically, the odds of him making it home are high; the opposite outcome, statistically, has little to no standing. Bucky takes Gale’s hand, and he mindlessly fiddles with Gale’s fingers in a way that feels normal and domestic, like they’re just any other married couple in this funny little world. Like they’re just them – awkward teenagers and reckless young adults and newlyweds all at once.

Gale could count the days until he launches out of this planet’s orbit. The hours. The minutes. He could mentally tally them as they tick by, pulling them closer and closer to the next adventure, the next mission, the next dream. The clock is running.

But, despite it looming over them, with all of the excitement and adrenaline and worry that it entails, at this exact moment, beneath a sky full of stars, it feels far away. He could count down the seconds. He could feel the anticipation of it winding through his body with every beat of his heart.

But instead, he focuses on Bucky. He counts his husband’s heartbeats, the purest sign that they are both alive, that they are both exactly where they need to be. One. Two. Three. Four.

“Ad lunam, ad astra,” Bucky whispers into the night.

Gale hides a smile against the fabric of Bucky’s flight suit. It smells like flight – fuel and sweat. He focuses on that, on the rise and fall of Bucky’s chest, on the feeling of warmth between them, the sticky summer air drifting through their hair.

“To the moon, to the stars,” he repeats back. And with a soft smile, he lets himself breathe.

#I feel so many feelings about this ending #can't believe we've made it this far tbh #I love these gay space boys #And I'm glad you love them too #Thank you #ad lunam ad astra #clegan #clegan astronaut au #to the moon and back #mota #masters of the air #my gay space boys #john egan #gale cleven #clegan fic #buck x bucky #bucky egan #buck cleven #mota fic

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readerstories · 16 hours ago

Text

Our Alpha - Poolverine x male reader

Someone was talking about A/B/O on my dash, and for some reason my brain took it, ran away with it, and came back with this fic. (AO3)

Warnings/tags: a/b/o dynamics, male reader, porn without much plot, anal, fingering, oral, knotting, friends to lovers

Wordcount: 4935

Summary: Wade and Logan accidentally trigger on of you ruts. Fuckery ensues. (Reader is about the same height as Logan and Wade, has hair, and is clean shaven. Age wise he has had ruts for more than a decade.)

When you first met Logan, you had been surprised that he’s not an alpha. All about him screams alpha, the posturing, caring, the strength. But, after Wade had explained to you that Logan came from a universe where alphas, betas, and omegas are not a thing at all, it made a lot more sense. He’s just Logan, not anything else.

Logan is a great addition to your friend group, even though he takes up a spot you had wanted for a good while, that being the one of Wade’s partner. You have known Wade for years, and he had always been in love with Vanessa, even when they had broken up. So you had long since settled for just being near Wade, and now near Wade and Logan.

Sometimes you will have movie nights over at their apartment, just the three of you. It’s almost a sweet kind of torture, being so close to them with no on else around, but you will take what you can get in just about any context.

Which is why you find yourself in front of their apartment door, ringing the doorbell, bag of snacks in hand.

When Wade opens the door, you are about to greet him like usual, but the words die on your tongue as the smell hits you.

Wade’s blood. Logan’s blood. The lingering scent of sex. Sex between Wade and Logan.

It’s not like you have never smelt any of these scents before, but they’ve never hit you all at once, and so FRESH.

They’ve clearly just come back from a job, Wade is still in a torn up suit without his mask on, Logan much the same as he steps next to Wade since he’s still just holding the door open.

“You okay?” Wade asks, worry on his face.

Your mind has stopped working, all you can clearly hear is the blood rushing in your ears. All you can feel is your gut stirring alongside your cock.

Fuck, you are going into a rut.

Your first unplanned one in about a decade.

FUCK.

“I- I- I’m sorry!” You drop the bag and turn on your heel, booking it down the hallway. Fuck, fuck, fuck, you need to get home and fucking deal with this.

How fucking embarrasing.

—---

You get home and change immediately, only putting on a loose set of pants and a t-shirt. You’ll want the clothes off soon enough, but for now you keep them on as you pace you living room, cursing yourself for being sent into a rut by your fucking crushes. You are too old for that kind of shit. You have more control than that.

Your doorbell rings. You ignore it.

There’s hard knocks on your door. You ignore it.

Your door is kicked in, this you can’t ignore, finding yourself on your feet in seconds.

You growl, feeling your canines grow as the sound spills from your open mouth. Your mouth snaps shut as Wade steps into your apartment. He has changed, he’s now wearing some grey sweatpants, sneakers, and a red hoodie.

But he clearly hasn’t showered, because he still smells like blood and sex, which is making your head swim. Logan is much the same as he follows just behind Wade, a black flannel instead of a hoodie covering his torso. He closes the door behind them both, leaning back against it, keeping some distance while Wade stands just a few steps away from you.

Omega, beta, omega, beta, protect, fuck, scent. Your rut-brain not very helpfully screams.

“You can’t go running like that and not make us think something is super wrong.” The scent of them both is maddening, and it’s only growing thicker with every second they spend it in your apartment. You swallow, clenching your hands at your sides, ignoring the urge to drag the omega Wade closer.

“Nothing is wrong.” You grit out between clenched teeth.

“Liar, liar, pants on fire.” Speaking of pants, you are glad you are wearing loose ones, so at least your hard cock isn’t as obvious as it feels. What is obvious however, is the scent of a rut rolling off you in waves. You wonder how Wade hasn’t noticed it yet as he keeps looking at you, for once showing that he can be patient, waiting for you to speak.

Logan notices though, taking a few deep sniffs, then pushes off the door. Your eyes snap to him, but he doesn’t return the look, grabbing Wade’s shoulder, making him look at Logan too.

“Wade, what is that smell?” He asks Wade, and your face burns. Of course Logan hasn’t actually smelt a rut before, but with his heightened senses he picks up that something has changed.

“What?” The skin where Wade’s brows should be scrunches up before he takes a few deep breaths.

Then his head whips towards you, a grin spreading over his face and delight filling up his brown and beautiful eyes.

“Someone’s going into ~rut~" Wade almost sings as he keeps grinning. You are breathing heavily, though you stutter as Wade licks his lips, and all your mind supplies you with is how good they would feel on you.

“Don’t think I’ve ever smelt that on you during the time we’ve known each other.” That had been on purpose, you always stayed away from Wade around your ruts, always able to find some excuse that never made him question it, at least not to your face. “What made that change?” Your eyes flicker between him and Logan, taking in how they are both paying full attention to you. It makes the alpha in you purr in satisfaction, you resist the urge to let the noise out, suppressing the urge to preen under their shared attention. Wade gasps, taking your looks and silence as an answer.

“Logan? Well done peanut, didn’t think you had it in you!” He turns around and squishes Logan’s face in his hands. The shifting of their attention away from you to just each other almost makes you growl, but instead of a noise out of your mouth, you manage to find a few words.

“Both of you.” Wade’s head whips around again, and he grins.

“Ohhh, greedy little alpha.” This time you let out a growl. If he’s going to be an ass about this, you rather not have him near, even as much as all your instincts are screaming at you to grab them both and show them who the alpha is. Their alpha.

“Just leave.” The words feel wrong leaving your mouth, like ash covering your tongue when all you want to feel is the heat of the men in front of you.

You blink slowly as Wade invades your personal space, throwing his arms around your neck, but he doesn’t touch anymore of your body. Your mind screams to grab his hips so you can have him fully against you, but the little self control you have left makes your arms stay at your side. His scent is strong this close, you want more of it, so you close your eyes, letting yourself at least have that. His smell is familiar to you, burnt sugar, leather, and gunpowder, all with an undercurrent of omega. Your omega.

He chuckles, fingers treading through the hair on the back of your neck.

“Come on, what would you rather do? Spend the next however many days stuck with just your own hands and a knotting fleshlight for company, or do you rather want two hot sets of hands and two hot bodies on you at all times?” Your eyes open to first look at Wade, then at Logan, who’s still standing a few steps away.

“Two? When did I get dragged into this?” He tilts his head, you see Wade grin in the corner of your eye as you and Logan look at each other.

“Like you haven’t looked and thought about it.” Logan shrugs just as a hand hooks itself under your chin, and your gaze is redirected back to Wade.

“So, what do you say?” You are not going to say anything, but you are definitely going to do something as the little control you had slips through your fingers.

You grab Wade’s hips and pull him flush against you, swallowing the little noise he lets out as you press your lips against his. They are softer than you thought, if a little bumpier than other people that you’ve kissed before. Not that anyone else matters right now, as the hand in your hair tightens as you deepen the kiss, stealing breaths as your lips move against one another.

Your tongue brushes against his lips, asking for entry, which Wade gladly gives with a little noise you try to chase with your tongue. The inside of his mouth is soft and warm, an untouched part of his skin. Your fingers push his hoodie up just enough to feel the skin on his stomach and hips while your tongue dances with his, making him let out these little gasps you take in greedily.

Wade is the one that breaks the kisses, which you make a sound at that you will forever deny is a whimper, but at least it gives you the opportunity to kiss down the side of his neck instead as your fingers press into Wade’s bare hips.

“Come on peanut, your turn.” You lick over his neck as he speaks, feeling his pulse under your tongue. You see movement in the corner of your eye, which makes you look to the side, mouth still on Wade’s neck as you see Logan step closer.

Everything about him screams alpha to your brain, your mind not all there in the warmth of your rut. The growl starts low in your chest, which makes Logan raise an impressive brow where he now stands next to you and Wade.

“No, bad dog!” Wade slaps your chest, making you stop kissing his neck, directing your attention back to his face. The growl dies in your chest, but you huff at him. “Don’t you fucking start, just smell him.” Wade reaches out and grabs Logan, yanking him close, pressing him against the side of your bodies with just a small grunt of protest from Logan. Your eyes flicker between them, the alpha in you wanting to satisfy your omega, so you move just slightly, just enough that you can push your nose against Logan’s neck while keeping your hold on Wade.

You take a deep breath in, letting Logan’s scent wash over you. He smells like he always does, pine, tobacco, and coffee, but now with a delicious add-on of sweat, blood, Wade, and sex. A noise starts up in your chest again, but this time it’s a purr as you lick over the warm skin under your mouth, drinking in Logan’s scent and taste. He startles as the first touch of your tongue, but tilts his head to the side to give you more access, and a warm hand settles on your hip.

“Fuck, that’s hot.” Wade mutters, the purr in your chest just deepens as he lets out a little laugh. “I’ve always called Logan kitty because of his hair, but all along it’s been you that's the kitty.” You lean back from Logan, replacing your mouth on his neck with a hand. You lean in to kiss Wade again, but is stopped by his hand over your mouth. Your purring stops as you look at him with confusion.

“As much as I will let you ravage me anywhere in the future, let's move this to a bed?” You do not like being stopped, but the word future and all its implications you do, so you must concede that the idea of soft sheets under you is a great one.

So, you do the next logical step, letting go of them both so you can bend down and throw Wade over your shoulder. He yelps in surprise, but relaxes as you grab Logan’s hand and start to walk towards your bedroom.

“Great view from up here.” A hand grabs at your ass, which makes Logan snort behind you, and the alpha part of your brain happy with how you are doing well with your mates.

You throw Wade down on your bed, he settles after a little bounce, not having time to do anything else besides opening his legs as you crawl up onto the bed and settle between them. He grabs your hair and tries to pull you into a kiss, but your mouth descends on his neck instead.

“Oh, yeah, this was worth those many words of build up.” You roll your hips against him, your hard cock sliding deliciously against his quickly hardening one. The smart thing would have been to get both of your clothes off before getting into bed, but all you want is to be pressed close, no time for anything else.

Wade doesn’t quite seem to agree though, as his hands push at your waistband. Your main focus is on his neck, tongue licking over his textured skin, tasting the slight salt of sweat mixed with Wade’s scent, and the sweet aroma of omega. Your omega.

“Come on honey badger, little help here?” The bed dips next to you, and then there’s a second set of hands pushing at your pants. They slide down easily until they hit the bend of your knees, which you are gently encouraged to lift, one at the time. Your mouth keeps working over Wade’s neck, over what you can reach while he has his hoodie on. You pull on the collar of it, a thought forming of trying to just rip it off him, but the thought is quickly gone as hands push at your chest. You growl, not wanting to take your mouth of Wade for even a second.

You are made to do so however, as you’re yanked back by the collar of your t-shirt, which is then quickly pulled over your head. You snarl at Logan, who just throws your t-shirt to the side and raises an unimpressed brow at you. The alpha in you craves control, so grab his hair and pull him into a kiss.

He’s quick to return it, giving as good as he gets. Slightly chapped lips opening for you so willingly as your tongue presses against his lips, his own tongue meeting yours in a way that makes electricity zip down your spine. You feel your cock leak pre-cum, even though Logan’s hands are only on your shoulders.

You keep his head still with your grip in his hair, licking into his mouth between deep breaths and scenting the air. Arousal rolls of him, making him smell stronger, and more and more right by the second.

You are just about to twist sound fully and push him onto his back so you can crawl over him, your hands moving to his still clothed chest ready to do so, but you are distracted by a textured hand grasping your cock.

You break your kiss with Logan, looking down at Wade, who has during your kisses with Logan undressed fully. He’s hairless all over, all lean muscle rippling as he shifts. His legs are splayed open, his hard cock standing at attention, slick leaking slowly from between his thighs. His hand pumps your cock slowly, grinning as both of you look at him, and your mouth fills with drool as you take a few deep breaths to fill your nose with the scent of him too.

“Was starting to feel left out.” You let go of Logan, who immediately starts to unbutton his flannel as you fall back between Wade’s open legs. One of your hands slips down to his cock, giving it a few strokes, mirroring his hand on your cock. His hand not on your cock tugs at your hair, his knees pressing into the side of your hips.

“Hmmm, hey there alpha.” The title runs off Wade’s tongue so easily, it sounds so right, so your purr starts up again as you move your hand from his cock to between his legs where slick leaks out of him. His breath hitches as you slip two fingers into him, the digits sinking in with ease as he tilts his head back, putting his neck on display for you.

You lean in to kiss over it, letting teeth dance over the skin in a tease of a bite. He rocks down onto your hand as you slip a third finger inside, his hand around your cock tightening and making you grunt.

You need to get inside him soon, or this round might be over too quick for anyone's liking.

You pull your fingers out from Wade, turning your head as you hold them out towards Logan, who was just about to pull his pants off. He pauses, glances as Wade, before he looks at you. He then leans forwards as keeps eye contact with you, sliding your fingers into his mouth. He sucks and licks at your digits, tasting Wade on you, making you and Wade groan in unison. You from the tight feeling of his mouth around your fingers which makes you imagine it going elsewhere, Wade from how good Logan looks with his mouth occupied.

“Fucking hell peanut.” Logan grins, pulling off your fingers with an obscene pop. You lean on your elbows over Wade as you watch Logan take his pants off, leaving him fully nude too. He’s a lot hairier and bulkier than Wade, a beautiful contrast. He’s fully hard as well, kneeling next to you and Wade. One of his hands brushes over one of Wade’s legs where it’s pressed against your side.

You turn your head back towards Wade, leaning down and rubbing your face over his neck and shoulders, purring again. His head shifts, and then there’s the sound of kissing above you. Your purr only stutters with a growl for a second before a solid hand joins Wade’s on your cock, and guides you against Wade’s hole.

The hands fall away, and with a single thrust you are fully seated inside Wade, balls resting against him. You feel him gush around you as he moans loudly, hand in your hair tightening for a moment before it loosens.

“There you go alpha, come on.” Wade’s hands dance over your back as you lick over his neck. He’s so warm and wet around your cock, so perfect, like he was made for you. For the moment you just grind down against him, pressing him into the bed with your full weight. It traps his cock between the two of you, making him leak all over your stomachs.

Your grinding doesn’t last for long however, as you pull your hips back so you can start fucking into Wade. Small movements at first, barely moving as you keep your mouth on his neck, sucking hickeys into textured skin that disappear in seconds. It irritates part of you that it won’t stay, but part of you also is happy with the neverending space to make new marks on him.

Your head swirls with the thought of mate mate mate mate, arousal building with every second, making you speed up, and Wade moans loudly as you do so.

“Yes, yes, alpha” Wade's breath stutters at a particularly hard thrust. “Give me your knot.” You growl in satisfaction, hearing your omega beg while his hands grasps over your back is just how it should be.

“Knot?” Logan’s voice talks over Wade’s little moans and groans, and the wet sound of you filling Wade with your cock over and over again.

“Oh yeah, this is like a new sex ed for you. Rememb- AH, fuck -I told you, alpha’s has knots- shit, shit, shit- makes their dick swell and makes them stuck inside- Inside! Ah! -their partner. It’s an evolut~ion~ thing, to make it really have an opportunity to stick. I- I- I- can’t actually get kids, buT I don’t think that’s go-go-gonna stop our little greeeeeedy alpha here from try-ing!” Hearing Wade struggling to explain to Logan while you fuck him makes you grin against his skin. You shift up to kiss him, to steal his moans and grunts right out of his mouth. He clutches as you, knees pressing hard enough against your side that you are sure you are going to bruise your hips. You keep fucking into him, but push at one leg so he folds it up. Logan pushes at the other leg, making Wade fold in half underneath you. The two of you hold him in place as you pound into him, chasing your orgasm.

Another wet sound joins the cacophony of wonderful sounds in the room, which makes you stop kissing Wade and lean back a little. Wade keeps his eyes closed, and moans loudly and arches his back as soon as his lips are free. You look at Logan, who has the hand not on Wade around his own cock. You slow down your thrusts into Wade ever so minutely, making him whimper and open his eyes, looking at you first, then glancing at Logan. Wade whimpers again as you growl.

“Stop touching.” It’s the first words you’ve said during this whole thing, you don’t know if that is what makes Logan listen, or if it’s the scent of alpha you can feel rolling off you as your hips keep rolling into Wade. You know the scent is strong, especially for someone with his nose.

“Fucking hell, hot as hell, alpha, alpha!” Wade splutters, hole fluttering around your cock.

“Mine.” You growl, shifting so you can lean down and take Logan’s cock into your throat as you keep fucking into Wade. They moan in unison, making your head scream the word mine over and over and over again. Your head swims with arousal, the scent and taste of them pushing you closer and closer with each passing second.

Logan is heavy on your tongue, leaking precum as you swallow around him, tongue stroking over veins as you bob your head up and down.

Wade is moaning below you, clutching and pulling at you, each snap of your hips against him making him leak against his stomach.

Your own cock is leaking inside Wade, your precum mixing beautifully with his slick. You can feel that you’re close, so close. You need your mouth back on Wade, but you also need Logan in it. You groan around him, making your throat vibrate around his cock in your throat. One of your hands moves to grasp at his cock, pumping it as you suckle on his head.

A barely there graze of your teeth on your next suck is what sends him over the edge. His hands are in your hair, but he doesn’t push as you drink him down.

Swallowing the last remnants of his cum, you shift your focus fully to Wade. Your hands push at his thighs, mouth going to his shoulder. This time it’s not a hickey you make, instead you mark him with your teeth as your canines grow and you bite down hard enough to taste blood. It explodes over your tongue, mixing with the taste of Logan’s cum in your mouth.

“ALPHA!” Wade yells as loudly as he comes all over your stomachs. It makes him tighten around you, and you feel your own orgasm coming. Your teeth let go of his shoulder, but you keep your mouth on him to lick over the quickly healing skin.

Your orgasm hits you hard, cum pumping into Wade with each move of your hips, which soon slows as you feel your knot expand, trapping you and Wade together.

You catch your breath, panting against Wade’s neck, licking your lips as you take breaths, tasting the scent of sex in the air.

You start purring, rubbing your face against any part of Wade you can reach without jostling the two of you too much. He smells so much of you already, but you can’t help yourself. He lets out a breathless little laugh as he threads a hand through your hair, his other stroking over your back is slow motions.

“Good thing you’re clean shaven, or else I would have some serious beard burns.” You hum, feeling your brain turn a little clearer with every second that passes. You feel another hand join Wade’s on your back, and you look to your side, where Logan is sitting, legs stretched out and leaning on one hand while the other dances lightly over your sweaty skin.

Mind a little bit more with you, you shift more onto your knees, and with some careful maneuvering, you manage to get you and Wade on your sides, your back pressing against one of Logan’s outstretched legs with Wade’s around your waist. The movement causes you both to let out a little moan, which makes you want to start purring again, but you don’t for the moment.

“How long will this last?” Logan asks from above you, hand moving from you back to your hair as Wade scratches both of his down your back now.

“My knot should go down in half an hour or so.” You lean forward to catch Wade’s lips in a brief kiss. “My ruts tend to last about three days.” You look up at Logan, eye flicking to his lips, which gets the message across. He leans down and places a light kiss on your lips. You can’t help the little content hum that slips out of you. Everyone is satisfied for the moment, and it’s really hard to not start purring again, but some part of you should actually try to talk a little now that you have your non-rut brain back for a little bit. But Wade beats you to it, of course.

“We are going to need to order so much takeaway, I’m guessing you don’t have a rut stash.” His hands knead into your shoulders, wonderful pressure that makes you sigh and close your eyes.

“I don’t, I wasn’t supposed to have another one for a few more months.” You feel your cheeks heat up at the admission, but should you really be embarrassed when this has been the outcome?

“Rut stash?” Another question from above you. Oh yeah, Logan doesn’t know this, though earlier it had sounded like Wade had at least tried to explain some aspects of all of this.

“Well, when one is fucking like rabbits, you use a lot of energy peanut, and that has to come from somewhere. A fuckton of food and water mostly.” Logan’s hand in your hair massages your scalp, between him and Wade’s motions you feel almost ready to fall asleep, so it’s with great effort that you open your eyes. You tilt your head back to look at Logan, licking your lips to gather your thoughts, somehow managing to stay focused even as Wade moves forward just enough to bury his nose against your throat.

“It’s normal to have a stash since ruts tend to be somewhat regular, just like heats, though they can be triggered. For example, an alpha’s omega going into heat.”

“Wade’s not in heat though?” Logan tilts his head and Wade chuckles against your skin.

“Which is why I thought it was you that triggered the rut first, but no, our alpha is just greedy.” Hearing Wade so casually and no longer in the moment referring to you as their alpha makes your heart beat faster, and your cock leak, which in turn makes Wade let out a little satisfied groan as he clenches down on your knot. Which makes you moan again.

“It’s like a feedback loop.” Logan mutters above you, looking down to where you are trapped inside Wade, and will be for a while.

“Better to do it from behind normally, easier to spoon.” Wade says, a little breathlessly as he clenches down on you with purpose, making you growl a warning. He chuckles, booping your nose.

Logan is still looking down at where you are joined, which Wade takes notice of with a grin. So he can’t help but tease.

“Think you could take it? You might need a little more prep but…” Wade lets the words hang in the air, making both you and Logan imagine it.

Fuck, Logan on back or even on his knees, begging for your cock, begging for your knot? Knowing he would need more effort, more desperation? It makes your cock leak inside Wade, who’s breath hitches as he feels you, and then your breath hitches as you see Logan’s spent cock give a minute little twitch.

“Fuck, my beautiful little perverts.” Wade teases, making you roll your eyes, and Logan snorts out a little laugh.

“Pot calling the kettle.” Logan swats at Wade’s thigh, which makes him move, which in turn makes him clench around you again.

“Careful.” You grunt out, grabbing Logan’s hand. He grins down at you, bringing your hand up to his mouth to kiss it.

“No promises.” He lets go of your hand, you swat at his thigh in return.

“Go get us some water or something since we are stuck here. The two of you are going to be the death of me.” Logan rolls his eyes, but gets up anyway.

“Ohhh, that we can promise, pookie.” Wade grins, clenching around you on purpose again, making you grunt and Logan glance over his shoulder just before leaving the room.

You can hardly wait for whatever happens next.

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afteredenn · 2 days ago

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fic idea: modern non-magical au starring girlmoms! agathario to nicole “scratch” harkness-vidal, a feisty agatha mini-me. part of agatha’s desire to have a kid is to prove that she’s better than evanora was, but it leads to tension between her and her daughter. she loves nicole fiercely, but is quickly frustrated whenever she behaves in ways agatha doesn’t understand, and many of their interactions are tinged with agatha’s debilitating fear of eventually becoming her own mother. their fights are explosive and end in neither apologizing. meanwhile, rio tempers agatha’s severity by falling into a mediating role. she’s softer on nicole, but it’s easier for her because she works longer hours than agatha and is less involved in the minutiae of nicole’s life. agatha sometimes resents how easy and loving rio and nicole’s relationship is, but rio always reminds her how different their baggage is and how far agatha is from being the horrible mother that evanora was.

some headcanons:

rio is really bad at saying no to nicole, mostly because nicole inherited agatha’s entire face alongside her mannerisms, which rio is obviously weak for. she frequently abuses the phrase “ask your mother”. rio and agatha sometimes fight over agatha being forced to take the bad-cop role. this usually ends in rio sleeping on the couch, only to wake up in the middle of the night to find agatha curled around her, having tucked a blanket over them both.

nicole and agatha have a tradition of going to see a musical every year— sans rio, who plays it off as disinterest but actually just wants them to have their own thing. wicked has been nicole’s favorite since she was young. one time, they made the mistake of seeing heathers, an experience agatha wishes to forget completely (specifically dead girl walking).

rio and agatha first met in an all-girls catholic highschool. they were two grades apart and their very short-lived tryst ended after evanora caught them and forced agatha to switch schools. a decade later, they find themselves in the same city— rio in medical residency, agatha working in upper-management at a publishing house à la sandra bullock in the proposal. agatha is very bent on staying career-focused and not dating. she doesn’t realize that their initially “casual” situation has devolved into rio having u-hauled into her apartment until she accidentally goes to work wearing a pair of rio’s slacks instead of her own, at which she has a proper meltdown. rio is very smug when agatha finally grudgingly admits they’ve been dating for months.

evanora harkness was an awful bible thumper who sent a teenaged agatha to conversion therapy, disowned her when it became clear the conversion therapy did nothing, then actually died of a heart attack when she recieved agatha and rio’s wedding invitation in the mail. agatha is still furious over evanora’s last act being to sully the best thing to happen to her (apart from nicole), whereas rio understands her wife’s anger but secretly finds the whole ordeal very funny.

#agathario #agatha all along #agatha harkness #rio vidal #evanora harkness #should i write this… it’s so tempting

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tethrras · 13 hours ago

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a soft place to land

vittoria de riva x lucanis dellamorte. 2.7k. fluff, hurt/comfort, flirting. click here to read on ao3.

Vittoria is no stranger to loneliness.

It keeps her bed cold and her nights quiet. Sometimes she’s grateful for it and other times the longing for something more, the same longing she’s felt since childhood, threatens to strangle her. But she’s a Crow, and Crows can’t afford connections like that, so she doesn’t complain and instead spends long nights sharpening her blades in silence. Sharpening blades or, when she feels longing’s hands tightening around her neck, sitting in the window of her apartment in the canal district and watching the civilians of the city go about their lives.

“Her” apartment isn’t her apartment at all. It’s an abandoned apartment overlooking the market that no one has lived in for what seems like a decade, if not longer. She found it after one of her first contracts, and it’s the only place in Treviso that she can escape to without feeling the need to look over her shoulder for Viago. On nights she can’t sleep and doesn’t want to think or train, she scales the surface of the tower and settles in the window, letting the heartbeat of Treviso lull her into something that might resemble sleep. Visiting the apartment is what she misses most about home, and after seeing what happened to Minrathous, after hearing about what's happening in the South, she wants to visit it again. Who knows if - who knows when - it’ll be the last time?

She intends to head for the Eluvian with little fanfare - the others don’t need to know about her trip - but when she reaches the bottom of the staircase in the library, she finds Lucanis sitting on a chair with a cup of coffee in his hand and a book open in his lap. He looks up at her as her footsteps slow to a stop.

“De Riva.”

“Dellamorte.”

Vittoria shifts her weight from one foot to the other as a slight smile creases Lucanis’s lips.

“You’re going out.” He appraises her armor with a raised brow. She should’ve cleaned it earlier like she had meant to…

“I am.” Vittoria rests her hand on the hilt of her sword. “But I won’t be gone for long.”

“Where to?”

“Home,” she answers, then, “Treviso. Ever since we got back from Minrathous…”

He glances down at his lap then. “I know.”

She can tell he feels as she does - guilt for what happened to Minrathous, to the Shadow Dragons, to Neve, but gratefulness that the same - or worse - didn’t happen to Treviso. It’s a poor consolation, but consolation at all is priceless in times like this.

Vittoria clears her throat. “Would you…”

“Would I what?”

“Um. Nothing,” she insists, shaking her head. Of course he wouldn’t want to come with her - he’s clearly in the middle of something. She’s not sure she wants company, either. “Anyway, I won’t be long. If anyone asks for me -”

“Were you going to ask me if I’d like to come with you?”

“... No.”

“Then what were you going to ask?”

She knows very well that Lucanis didn’t know who she was before she rescued him from the Ossuary, despite the two decades that she has spent with the Crows. It continues to surprise her that he understands her better than Viago ever has after only a month or two. No wonder he’s such a good assassin - he’s very good at reading his mark. She clears her throat. “Alright,” she confesses. “I was.”

“I thought so.” He stands up, takes a long sip from his teacup, and then places it down on the saucer. “Let me get my things. I will meet you at the Eluvian.”

He doesn’t leave her waiting long, and they travel home through the Crossroads in companionable silence. Vittoria can’t help but glance over at him from time to time. While he didn’t notice her in the past, she certainly noticed him - she even thought she had been in love with him once, though she’s sure now that she didn’t know what love meant. Or means. But he and Illario had a life that all Crow recruits wanted for themselves, and Vittoria had been one of them. The acclaim. The attention from the Talons. The inherent talent. When she was younger, she thought that having the attention of someone like Lucanis would’ve made her life easier - easier than the attention from Viago, anyway - and she strove for years to get that attention. She grew out of it eventually, and then, of course, he died, and whatever leftover feelings she might have had died with him. But now, the fact that not only is he alive, but that she was the one to save him… Sometimes it doesn’t feel real, and she always catches herself looking at him to make sure he’s really here.

“We’re not going to the Diamond,” she says when the two of them reach the Treviso Eluvian. “If you wanted to check in with Teia and Viago...”

“Hm. Then where are we going?”

“I have a place in the city that I go to. I consider it… well… a home. Of sorts. I wanted to make sure it was still standing, after…”

Lucanis nods. “I understand. But maybe we can check in with Teia and Viago while we’re here…” At Vittoria’s wince, he gives her a smile. “Or not.”

“Thank you.” There is a part of her that loves Viago, however complicated and repressed that part is, but the last thing she needs right now is a lecture.

“Of course. No one understands the desire to avoid Viago as well as I do, believe me.”

She steps through the Eluvian with Lucanis on her heels.

Most of the Crows are asleep for the night, so the two of them meet no resistance at the Casino, and from there she leads him through the familiar streets in silence. It’s a short walk, though, and soon enough she’s standing at the base of the apartment building and refreshing herself on her usual footholds. She hasn’t been here since before she saved Varric all those months ago, and she would hate to fall to her death from the building that she’s scaled more than any other - in front of Lucanis, no less. To her relief, the tower doesn’t seem to have suffered in the face of the dragon attack. She glances back at her companion, who is staring up at the surface of the building the same way she had been moments ago.

“It’s not as tall as it looks,” she reassures him.

He meets her gaze. “Good thing I have wings.”

Vittoria has been climbing her whole life. As a child, she would spend hours scaling trees until she reached the top and could settle down in the branches with a book or wooden toy that she had stolen from one of her siblings. By the time she was six, she could scale the tallest tree on her family’s farm in one breath. When she first arrived in Antiva, it was the only thing that made her suited to the life of a Crow - everything else, the fighting and the thick skin and the iron stomach, came later. So climbing is second nature to her, and in no time, she’s heaving herself through the window and rolling onto the floor of her apartment. Lucanis follows. They stand up from the ground, dust themselves off, and meet each other’s eyes.

“This is it.” She says it more awkwardly than she’d meant to, and winces at herself. She thought she’d gotten over her infatuation with him - she doesn’t dwell on those old feelings when they’re working together side-by-side, killing Antaam and Venatori and Sentinels - but now that it’s the two of them, alone in an abandoned apartment with no gods or dragons for miles around, that soft spot of her heart feels rubbed raw. She turns away from him. “I’ve been coming here for years,” she says again. “I’m glad to see it’s still standing.”

Lucanis looks around curiously, and Vittoria does, too, to familiarize herself with the apartment again. There’s a bookshelf with a few books in it - books that she bought from the market herself, but can’t remember the contents of now - and a collection of knives sitting on a stool next to a well-worn whetstone. Above the stool is a series of scratches on the wall, each scratch representing one of her successful contracts. There must be more than a hundred scratches, but she’s not sure if he’d consider that a high or low number, so she resists the urge to call attention to it.

On one side of the room is the window from which she can see the market, and on the wall opposite is the window from which she can see the whole of Treviso spilling over the hills on the horizon, its silver spires sparkling in the moonlight. Lucanis lingers here, standing still for a long moment. When he speaks, it shatters the silence.

“I have never seen Treviso like this.”

“I haven’t seen it like this for a long time.”

She brushes past him and sits on the edge of the window. It’s what she would do if she were alone, after all, and that’s what she had been coming here to do - to be alone, to calm herself and soothe her nerves of steel. Even though she knows she won’t be able to do those things now that he’s here with her, she’s still going to pretend that she can. And it’s easy, because for a long, long moment, neither of them move. It's only when she turns her head to look at him that he sits down on the windowsill across from her, stretching his legs out until his feet are nearly in her lap.

She used to dream of this. Of sitting across from Lucanis, fighting alongside him, of him knowing her name and… knowing even more than that. When she was little, she always imagined what she would tell someone if they asked her about her childhood in Ferelden, and for some reason, sitting across from him, she feels the words leaving her mouth before she can think about it. “When I arrived in Antiva, all I could think about was how different it was from Ferelden. I hated it at first.” But even the word hate doesn’t capture her feelings, because she spent most nights in the year or two after she arrived sobbing in her bed until the other recruits realized that hitting her hard enough could convince her to be quiet. “But I can’t remember what Ferelden looks like anymore. I can’t remember my family. All I know is Antiva, Treviso, Salle. The Crows. Viago. If Ghilan’nain’s dragon had…”

Vittoria glances over at Lucanis. He seems focused on something in the distance, but she notices him shift in his seat and straighten up when she looks for long enough.

“Did you recognize me?” She doesn’t know why she asks him this, but she does. “In the Ossuary?”

Lucanis shakes his head. “I didn’t. I’m sorry.”

“Don’t be. I didn’t think you did.”

“But I wish that I had.” He turns to face her. “I don’t know how I never noticed you before, truthfully.”

“And why is that?”

He smiles again, and she resists the urge to glance back out the window. “You are an impressive woman, Vittoria.”

“Well.” She clears her throat. She doesn’t know what “impressive” means to him, if it means what she thinks it means or what it should mean or if it means something else, but her face flushes nevertheless. “I’ve worked hard to be.”

At that, his smile sours. “You know… You take very good care of us. Of the team. But I hope you don’t think that we can’t be there for you the way that you - ”

“I didn’t invite you here to give me a motivational speech.”

“Ah. You didn’t invite me at all, remember? I had to tease it out of you.”

Her face flushes even more at the word “tease”.

“I just mean that… If there is anything I can do for you, any difficulties you might be facing that I don’t know about… please tell me.” He sighs. “I know that I can’t do much, all things considered, but I can try to ease some of the weight off your shoulders if you let me. I have wings, you know. I can take it.”

“Please.” Vittoria waves her hand at him to dismiss the thought. “You keep me fed - that’s enough.”

“Mm.” He crosses his arms over his chest and nods. “And you do eat a lot more than the others, that’s true…”

“Hey!” She kicks his foot. “What’s that supposed to mean?”

“Nothing, nothing! It was merely an observation.”

“Watch it, Dellamorte.” She gestures to the open window. “You’d hit the ground before Spite realized what was happening.”

“Please don’t say his name right now. I don’t want him to ruin the moment.”

There it is - another word that might mean something to him but also might mean nothing. She didn’t realize that whatever’s happening between them right now could be considered a moment… but at the same time, she has started to notice that he’s been giving her more attention since she saved him and the Crows from the dragon. He sits beside her at dinner, keeps close to her side in fights and in their travels through the Crossroads… and what had he been doing tonight, sitting in the library of the Lighthouse instead of the kitchen?

She tells herself that it doesn’t mean anything, though. It can’t mean anything. Vittoria could never live at Lucanis’s side. He’s in line to become First Talon, and his family has been a part of the Crows for hundreds and hundreds of years. No matter how much training she does, no matter what she does, Vittoria won’t ever feel like she belongs to the Crows or like the Crows belong to her. She doesn’t think she’ll ever rid herself of the fear that one wrong move will be the end of it - of her life here, or of her life at all. And she feels the same about Lucanis. If she pushes her luck too far, who can she trust to watch her back the way she trusts him? She needs to focus on finding allies right now. Not a lover.

If he was interested in her at all. Which he isn’t. He can’t be.

“We don’t have to talk, you know,” she tells him, more for her sake than his. If her face flushes any more tonight, she might burst into flames. “We can just sit here and… look out at our city.”

“Our city.” Lucanis turns away from her and rests his head against the window frame, settling in and looking more at ease than she’s ever seen him. And while watching him in motion is enough to drive her to madness, seeing him at ease might be even worse. Watching his chest rise and fall with long, measured breaths. Watching his eyelashes flutter like he’s trying to keep himself awake. He is a beautiful thing, Lucanis. She’s sure being loved by him would be a beautiful thing, too.

“Before we stop talking, then, let me say one last thing: thank you for saving our city.” His voice is softer than a whisper, so soft that she has to lean in to hear what comes next. “And even though I didn’t know you before, I am glad that I know you now.”

As allies. As friends. As teammates. While she knows that’s all he means, it’s still something. Vittoria smiles at him. “Me too.”

True to his word, Lucanis doesn’t speak again for the rest of the night. Neither does Vittoria. (Neither does Spite.) They watch the sun rise over the mountains surrounding their home and then decide that it’s time to return to the Lighthouse to rest before they see the First Warden. But if things go well, if she somehow figures out a way to stop the gods, then she might bring him back here and tell him all the things that no one has ever thought to ask her about. He might even want to know.

#oc: vittoria #pairing: vittoria x lucanis #my writing #my ocs #it's been a long time since i've finished and posted a FULL da fic so i'm feeling super rusty #and admittedly i know this is not my best work #but i am trying to be one of the first of everyone's mutuals to post datv fic so.#LKSJDFLJSDKFJDSL #I DO IT FOR MY FOMO <3 I DO IT FOR THE RECOGNITION <3 #anyway i think i wrote lucanis pretty faithfully here but we don't see enough of him to know slkjfklsd #i'm still trying to get a grasp on him he's a lot squishier than i thought he would be #but alas and alack and etc....#datv spoilers #rook x lucanis #rookcanis #dragon age the veilguard fic #datv fic

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animasola86 · 3 days ago

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or: how I see werewolves and how I made them fit into the universe A Night to Remember is set in

Bear, the werewolf featured in A Knot to Remember and A Hug to Remember, comes from a long line of shapeshifters, allowing him to turn into a large black bear, a big wolf or a fox (if he's feeling playful) on his own will.

He was cursed with lycanthropy by a shaman.

He can't control turning into a werewolf, which happens only one week a month (from three days before to three days after a full moon) and only during the active hours of the moon (between moonrise and moonset*).

(*While writing my A Night to Remember series, I did not properly research when the moon rises and sets in late October, so you'll find that the moon is actually present during the night which isn't possible as it set around 5pm on Halloween (if I look at the 2024 data), but as a reminder: I write fantasy stories and I didn't know any better, and I might do the same mistake again because it'll fit the plot better. So, uh, yeah.)

He learned to control his urges over the years/decades (age is undisclosed, but he's older than you think).

He used to be a ravenous beast, unable to control himself, but managed to find and ground himself with meditation and herbs/teas/drugs?

He can't turn others into werewolves, as it's part of his curse, forcing him to live alone.

(The curse came from an angry shaman. His family used to take care of a large piece of land. When others came, they built a house on their grounds, forcing them to either leave or work for them. They settled for the role of groundskeeper, but some of his tribe were against it. The shaman cursed the house to slip in and out of existence, trapping the inhabitants inside, and his family to turn into monsters (werewolves) to further keep people away from the land.)

He can still make someone his mate, marking them, and other supernatural beings (e.g. vampires) will know that particular human is taken.

(By the way, the vampires living in the cemetery near the house were also cursed. They used to belong to the house but weren't inside when the curse hit, so they turned into the bloodsuckers the shaman thought they were.)

Bear is the last of his kind and is very focused on producing heirs (though it's not clear if he's even fertile, the curse may have taken that away as well – only one way to find out, right?)

Disclaimer: I don't claim to be an expert in folklore or history or geography (or even moon phases apparently), I basically know nothing and I do not mean to offend anyone's beliefs or customs or traditions. I just take snippets from all the things I've heard and read and seen, and build them into my own little Frankenstein's monster-esque lore. Just as I see fit. You may see things differently, and that's completely fine. But I am the author of these little stories and this is how my brain works. And I hope this list helped you understand it a little better. Thank you for giving me your time!

See below for some visuals!

Bear's werewolf form:

large, tall, muscular, dark/black fur/skin, humanoid body except for wolfish hind legs and long bushy tail, feet and hands are paws/paw-like with long black claws, wolf head, black eyes (when horny), yellow eyes (when on the hunt/normal)

Bear's human form:

tall, muscular, short curly black hair, brown eyes, full beard, tan skin (no picture necessary, just imagine him as you like with those details)

Bear's bear form:

large black bear with light brown snout and black eyes

Bear's other forms:

black wolf: black fur with patches of gray and brown, yellow eyes

gray fox:

(Images found all through Google. The werewolf ones are probably AI generated...)

#werewolf #werewolves #werewolf lore #werewolf au #werewolf headcanons #headcanons #shapeshifter #monster #monster smut #monsterfucker #monster fucker #monster lover #terato #teratophillia #terat0philliac

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ninyard · 15 hours ago

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HI HELLO YES.

the swiftness in which kevin goes from blank to not even capable of coherent thought is truly a blink of an eye. it's years, over a DECADE of agonizing grief crashing together like several waves in one singular moment, and kevin is only human. he's got his PR masks and his athlete mask and his nobodycanknowwhattheydotome mask, but there isn't room for putting on any kind of front. it's just pure, raw static

idk if i'd call it paranoia considering kevin had every right to be terrified the moriyamas would come after him, but this sort of agony and fear??? would absolutely create the world's fastest wall between the foxes and his father and abby and everyone there and him. in a moment's notice, kevin is on an island he occupied with his brother, his best friend, his identity mirrored back in him in another boy with the number 1 on his cheek written in sharpie

how long until kevin can see anyone else in the room as anything other than an enemy hellbent on taking him away from his family? how long until kevin stops screaming, begging, pleading to go home, to go back in time, to just apologize to riko?

how long until kevin goes silent, unreachable for days and unable to be left alone while they all whisper around him about what to do?

how crazy is it that the only time kevin might brutally fight the foxes to get back to riko is when riko's not even waiting for him anymore?

i could go on for eons, truly

-childhood in the nest anon

"how crazy is it that the only time kevin might brutally fight the foxes to get back to riko is when riko's not even waiting for him anymore?" INSANE INSANE INSANE

Like god can we even comprehend how it must've felt for him to hear that??? His whole world just got flipped upside down and the chemicals in his brain don't even know what they're supposed to be doing bc one minute he's on top of the world celebrating their win and the next thing you know half of his identity is just. gone. just like that. The sudden drop from "We just won the finals," to "Riko is dead," must've been such a horrible feeling for him to live with. Such a violent and instant fall off a cliff you know. I'd short circuit if that was me and I fully believe Kevin was not a functioning human for a couple days if not weeks afterwards

#ask

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kebriones · 3 months ago

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And good morning to you, random ass panic attack!

I love just sitting there having breakfast and my brain deciding we should get The Dread along with our coffee today.

#But worry not #after over a decade of living with this thing #i have become an expert at managing it and recognizing it when it starts #so it's alright just unpleasant and scary.#but when it happens completely out of nowhere it's also STUPID

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thosewildcharms · 6 months ago

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How insane it is that she’s been raising 2 kids alone and running, protecting a community but hasn’t felt safe in near a decade. And the one man that gives her security was pushing her away

me when rick said he wasn't going home:

i'm so glad danai gurira is the genius she is and that both she and andy are the actors they are because in less talented hands rick's behavior may have been unforgivable. because what the FUCK rick?? i'm probably rick grimes' number one apologist and even I wanted to smack him, even while feeling incredibly sad for him. hell I'm pretty sure he'd go back in time and punch himself in the face for hurting her like that if he could. LUCKILY FOR US THOUGH towl (and 1x04 in particular) is fucking great and all of this just made them stronger :')

but yeah, it's honestly devastating when you think about how michonne went through all of that grief and pain and suffering for years, suffered even more trying to find him, all the while thinking everything would be okay again once she got him back. because it really is only when he's around that she doesn't feel like she has to be so strong all the time, doesn't have to be so self-reliant, can be vulnerable and soft because she knows she has a real partner who will protect her and their kids and will help her carry the weight of everything they have to deal with. for years she didn't have that anymore and had to go back to being hard and hyper vigilant, constantly. only to find him and instead of finally being able to let her guard down again, had to fight him for him. because all of his strength had been replaced by fear.

like, that really is the love of her life and he must really be worth it, really must make her feel safe on a level so profound that she was literally wiling to do anything to get him back because my god, anyone else really would have walked. anyone else wouldn't have tried to find him in the first place. she really is the strongest woman alive. and for what it's worth i don't think there's any question that rick knows this and is gonna spend the rest of his life making it up to her and living up to who she deserves him to be.

#richonne #the ones who live #i love rick and i wasn't really mad at him because i could see where he was coming from but DUDE. BRUH #she raised your kids. she never moved on in almost a decade #suffered horrible traumas of her own THAT YOU CAN SEE THE PHYSICAL EVIDENCE OF #she saved your LIFE #almost died herself trying to get to you and then you have the AUDACITY to not only refuse to go home with her #but to throw the fact that she left her kids (yet another thing you can see she is in pain over) in her face??#CHOKE!!#i'm glad she left and made him chase after her on his old man legs it's what he deserved lmao

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vidavalor · 2 days ago

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Amazing question & I absolutely think they saw one another because there's stuff that suggests that they did. While I love the fanfic, the idea of a massive breakup that lasted decades between 1862 and 1941 goes against other stuff presented in the show already & doesn't sit right to me with these characters and what we've seen of their love and their history.

-The script book says that Crowley & Aziraphale haven't spoken "for a hundred years" in 1941 but that violates S1's canon because it would mean the early 1840s was the last time they spoke... but we saw them speak in 1862. So, it's already not literal-- it's the figure of speech use of "for a hundred years", which just means "for awhile." Script books aren't the final canon anyway as stuff can change from script to screen as production happens.

When someone says they haven't seen or spoken to someone "for a hundred years", it just means for what they consider to be a long time-- which is wildly subjective. For some people, that might be years. For others, it could be just too long by their own mutual standards.

So, the real question would be: how long is "for a hundred years" to Crowley and Aziraphale prior to 1941?

Other scenes we've already seen indicate that this is not very long at all:

-In 1601, the dialogue at the start of the scene indicates that, while Aziraphale picked the location, Crowley is the one who asked to meet. During the course of the scene, he and Aziraphale find out that they've both been assigned to Edinburgh the following week. While they both knew they each had been assigned there, neither of them knew that the other one had been assigned to Edinburgh... not until the conversation we watch unfold at The Globe Theatre. This means that setting up the one-of-them-doing-both-of-their-work-assignments thing-- that aspect of The Arrangement-- wasn't the reason why Crowley wanted to meet and wasn't what Aziraphale was thinking when he agreed to do so. So...

...since Crowley is the one who asked Aziraphale to meet, when he says this...

...he's saying that he found out he had to go to Scotland for a work assignment in a few days and messaged Aziraphale because he wanted to see him before he left for the trip. They both have assignments that are within the following/upcoming week, which means that they are seeing one another regularly enough by 1601 that finding out that one of them soon has to be away on Heaven or Hell business and might not be able to the other for even just a few days means wanting to see one another before they do.

-Then, Aziraphale's journal in 1827 is worded in such a way that, when you match it with the date Aziraphale writes, it is saying that Crowley was gone for less than a month after he was dragged to Hell in Edinburgh before Aziraphale next saw him again and Aziraphale considered that "quite some time" gone by without seeing him. So, in the 1800s, they are down to trying to see one another at least once a week, unless one of them is on assignment. They have the bookshop by this point so that makes sense, as it's a little easier to manage meeting-- which is one of the reasons why Aziraphale built the shop in the first place-- and while they are struggling a bit by 1862, they're still meeting up and still together.

In the 2008/2019/2023 in S1 & S2, they are seeing one another with the same frequency as they were in much of the 1800s and the few centuries prior to that, if not even more so. By S2, it appears to be daily with Crowley basically living in the shop, per Aziraphale's "plenty of use" comment. The bandstand breakup lasted, like, a couple of hours lol and Crowley was back at the bookshop within the same day as the argument over Gabriel in 2.01. The 1862 Holy Water Argument might have been a really bad divorce-- it could have lasted 3, maybe 4 whole days-- but they seem to be colossally bad at really breaking up with one another and that's very sweet.

I also think that saying that they broke up for decades after 1862 when Aziraphale knew that Crowley was depressed to a point that Aziraphale thought him potentially suicidal seems unlikely. Storming off in a huff in a fight, sure, but I just can't see Aziraphale thinking Crowley might be wanting to harm himself and then just not talking to him. I feel like they would have actually talked, agreed to disagree about holy water, and continued seeing one another for the decades that followed and I think there's enough already to suggest that that's what they did.

-Aziraphale wanting to dance with Crowley in S2 then retrospectively hints at him learning to gavotte with that idea in mind. That was the 1880s-- just 20-ish years after the holy water scene in 1862. If they were still broken up by then, why would Aziraphale be having romantic dreams about dancing with Crowley? Not to mention why have the 19th century euphemistic speak in The Meeting Ball? Yes, it was Jane Austen-centric and prior to 1827 but if the 1800s were a complete disaster for them after Edinburgh, it'd hardly be the most romantic thing to make that era a center point of a romantic night that we all know was designed more with Crowley in mind than Maggie and Nina.

-In 2008, Aziraphale mentions the dozen cases of Chateauneuf-de-Pape that he picked up in 1921 for their "special occasions." Why would Aziraphale be buying 144 bottles worth of wine for the two of them in 1921 if they weren't still seeing one another regularly? This is the very early 1920s and would then mean they were together in at least the 1910s, if not also prior to that.

-Maggie's great-grandmother & her shop in the 1920s... Plenty of theories exist about this but it's unlikely that Crowley doesn't have a role in this story. (He has a rather sizable role in this story if you are someone who thinks he and Aziraphale are Maggie's great-grandparents.) When you factor in the 1921 Chateauneuf-de-Pape purchase, it's even more likely that Crowley was around in the 1920s. Plus, Aziraphale was not missing flapper Crowley, ok? No argument would be worth that much. 😉

-The 1930s are mentioned in S2 twice in relation to Crowley & Aziraphale: Shax first hearing the rumor about them "80, 90 years ago", which puts it prior to 1941 in the 1930s, and Aziraphale referring to being licensed to drive The Bentley since the 1930s. Yeah, that scene is euphemistic as all holy hell lol but it's also a reference to Aziraphale being around when Crowley bought The Bentley in the 1930s and of course he was because can we even imagine Crowley getting that car and not immediately showing up to take Aziraphale for a ride in it? Aziraphale is also not surprised by The Bentley in 1941 (or Crowley's hat, which was also in style in the 1930s and which, based on how he kept leaving it on when alone with Aziraphale in Part 2, he wore that night because he knew Aziraphale was into it.)

-"A Nightingale Sang in Berkeley Square" was written & first performed in a bar in Le Lavandou, France in 1939. There are suggestions in a couple of places that Aziraphale might be the true lyricist in the Good Omens universe. It might be that what people are waiting to see happen with this song in 1941 is actually connected to 1939... which is only two years prior to 1941. It could be that we end up seeing not only a Part 3 to 1941 but also a 1939 scene that gives context to what of 1941 we've already seen.

The "hundred years ago" in 1941 could wind up being not more than a couple of months, or even less. That's especially true when you consider that nothing in the tone of 1941, Part One suggests that they haven't seen each other in decades-- the opposite is actually true.

If you go in the opposite direction, too, and look at the later time gap of 1967-2008? The gap in which the only things that exist so far seem to be the Disco Tony flashbacks? There's that Crowley's answering machine is from the early 1980s but we see in the 2019 present of S1 that Aziraphale has never heard it go to voicemail before. Crowley wouldn't have had a cell phone until sometime circa 2000-2004-ish so that's 20 years right there of not only Crowley always picking up within a few rings of Aziraphale calling him but likely with Aziraphale not having to call him that much at all because he saw him so frequently.

Add in the Into the Woods playbill mentioned in 2008 in 1.01 and the first night performance Crowley's referring to was in San Diego in 1986. (At that other Globe Theatre. 😊) The implication in the scene is that Crowley and Aziraphale were at that performance together, so that puts them as being together during the 1980s and suggests they just continued it through what we saw in 2008 and beyond.

They have ups and downs and disagreements and makeups like everyone else but there's likely enough already to suggest that they've never actually really stopped being together in secret with any real sense of permanence. They've had periods of depression and fasting a bit but they've never really left each other. They had an argument in 1862, not a break up. I think there's enough suggestion already to say that they saw one another through every year of at least the last few hundred years.

Good Omens season 3 finale movie thought of the day:

Do you think there was another time that the Ineffables saw each other between Crowley asking for holy water, and then saving Aziraphale at the church in 1941? If yes, do you think we’ll get a flashback to it in season 3? (Edit: again this was written weeks ago before the finale announcement and then queued. I do not think we’ll get this kind of flashback now) Or was that the last time they saw each other between those two moments?

Personally I think they caught up during the roaring twenties. Because honestly how could they not have.

#good omens #good omens meta #ineffable husbands #crowley #aziraphale #aziracrow

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polysyndetonaddictsupportgroup · 1 year ago

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hii 📓

Okay so the thing is that I wanted a “the Zenin raised Megumi instead of Gojo” fic but the thing is that I’m absolutely convinced that if the Zenin were the ones that took Megumi they wouldn’t actually take tsumiki too. The fandom consensus I’ve personally seen has been that she would have been taken and mistreated by zenin for being a female non sorcerer but I personally think they would have just straight up left her behind.

They only bought Megumi. They keep non sorcerers and women as servants in their compound but all of them are Zenin themselves. Tsumiki isn’t related and I couldn’t really see any reason why they’d want her. Which turned this into a fic where Tsumiki loses her brother, but she’s trying to find him again, she swears. I think of it as my “siblings doomed by the narrative desperately try to write a new one where they can be together” fic.

The thing is that Tsumikis mom was one of those people who thought love and consumption were synonymous. She had a habit of getting caught up with assholes and just… having both of them chew on each other for a while until it turns into this horrible fucking bloodbath.

Tojis just another loser her mom got caught up in, but he’s Tsumiki’s favorite out of all the losers, because he gave her her brother. Her mom marries this random guy she barley knows and Tsumikis pretty sure she does it so they can both ditch their kids twice as much, secure in the knowledge that there’s supposedly another person checking in. It works out great for them, because they both stop coming entirely. It’s fine, because Tsumiki has Megumi and Megumi has Tsumiki and they don’t need anything else.

It’s one of those things where they were in really unhealthy circumstances and it made their relationship a little bit unhealthy but not necessarily bad. They both had to grow up way too fast and deal with way too much too soon and become codependent on each other because they are, in the most literal way possible, dependent on one another. Neither of them know how to love in a way that doesn’t involve sacrificing themselves for their sibling, mostly because they don’t have a way that doesn’t involve that.

They’re in a sinking ship and tsumiki knows it. Their parents aren’t coming back. The money is going to run out sooner or later. Their problems are stacking up.

Megumi has confessed to her that he sees things that no one else does. When she asks him how he knows no one else sees them, he explains that they’d say something if they did and won’t say anything else. And she doesn’t know what to believe but she refuses to call him crazy. He tells her that monsters cling to her back and he fights them off for her. She patches up his bruises and cuts and tells him he’s brave and tries to figure out if she’s just imagining that her back feels lighter after. He tells her that there are dogs that only he can see that have started following him around, and she tells him she believes him and can never remember, later, if she meant it or was just saying it.

The last time Toji came by, he left them more money than tsumikis ever seen in her life, took them to ice cream, told them that he was sorry he was so shit at this and that the money was Megumi’s share in a payment. It was for something he was going to help daddy with later. Tsumiki and him were to use it to take care of themselves and be healthy, because Megumi couldn’t help him later if he wasn’t. And tsumiki was always afraid of what he meant by that, but in the end, she let it slip her mind. After all, Toji hadn’t been by in ages. He probably wouldn’t come by at all.

And he didn’t. But others did. Two men she’s never met before are waiting outside their building one day, and when they see Megumi, they laugh. But the thing that Tsumiki can never get out of her mind later is that she swears they weren’t looking at Megumi directly. They were looking at his dogs.

Tsumiki basically tries to get Megumi and powerwalk past them, but they’re a lot bigger and a lot stronger and there’s nothing she can do, really. They have a brief conversation about whether they should take her too, before one decides that Toji only sold him his kid and to leave the other behind. This makes both of them try to run, but there’s nothing either of them can do to overpower the men, and the men say that “Naobito would go ballistic if they left the ten shadows behind” so they take Megumi and leave her.

They put Megumi in a car and shove Tsumiki to the curb outside of it, and she tried to hold onto his hand, she swears. She grabbed at the car door even when the car started moving, and she banged on the windows, and she watched as Megumi kicked and punched and screamed inside, until one of them hit him and he went still. She ends up falling and hitting her head when the car picks up speed, and when she wakes up again, the cars gone and she has no idea where it went.

And it becomes a foundational moment for who she is. I think she was just intensely lonely before Megumi and poured a lot of herself into this idea of a family together. Tsumikis never able to shake the moment of her being outside the car and Megumi being on the inside, and not being able to get into him. She can never again get what she felt in that moment out of her head.

She goes to the police and tells them that it’s her little brother, his dad sold him but she wants him back, and they’re like “…”. The issue is that apparently her mom can pick up the damn phone if the police call and she shows up, spins some lie about how her and the stepdad split up and he took the kid with him, they never adopted each others kids so it was within his rights, Tsumiki was taking the separation hard and acting out. She lies, basically, because toji hadn’t kept up his end of the deal and dropped in to check in (neither had she) and his kid wasn’t her responsibility, he could do what he wanted with him. She doesn’t want the police poking around the way she lives. Just let the kid go because he’s probably dead and not her real brother anyway.

Tsumiki refuses to give up on him. They were both kids who no one cared about but they cared about each other and that had to be enough. But she’s seven with no support and zero idea on how to find him. She starts skipping school to look for him in random streets, puts up flyers, can’t go outside without looking for him. She gets held back a year in school because of how much she skips and she can’t bring herself to care. She buys him gifts on every birthday and writes him letters she can’t post because she’s going to find her brother and she’s going to prove to him that she never once stopped looking for him. She just. She needs him to know that she never stopped looking for him. She needs to find him and be able to honestly tell him she never stopped trying.

One day her mom comes back in clothes she can’t afford and comes with movers they shouldn’t be able to afford and announces a move they definitely can’t afford. Tsumikis absolutely opposed to going because if her brother comes to look for her, she needs to be in their old apartment so he can find her. She doesn’t have much of a choice in the matter. They have mysterious new benefactors who are setting up a trust to take care of tsumiki with a very generous stipend for her mom but they have to move to Sendai as a stipulation of getting the money.

It’s not until the attorney who’s managing her trust hands her a set of glittery blue butterfly hairpins that tsumiki realizes her mom sold her brother a second time.

The thing is that tsumiki had this one cheap set of butterfly hairpins she’d always stopped to look at in the store when she took Megumi to go grocery shopping. Shed never buy them, because they couldn’t afford it, but it was the thing she wanted most openly in front of him. She was always secretly really insecure about her hair, because they were the kind of poor where bar soap was a luxury they could only sometimes afford and kids at school made fun of how her hair was dirty and frayed. Megumi was the only one who ever saw how badly she wanted those stupid hair clips. If they had to give her a set of butterfly hair clips, it’s because he demanded that they did.

It’s basically implied that the Zenin are the ones paying for her care and upkeep due to an unspecified deal they cut with Megumi, but when they approached her mom with it, they added the caveat that Tsumiki had to be moved to a new city entirely and there could be no forwarding address left anywhere.

The zenins stance on tsumiki is, effectively, that she’s a weakness Megumi needs to be weaned off of. They honestly assumed he’d just like, forget she ever existed and he. Did not do that. He actually pitched a total bitch fit. Tried to scale the compound walls. Bit multiple people including the clan leader. But he’s got the ten shadows, he’s heir to the clan, and he can’t be caught up on some random non sorcerer who isn’t even a Zenin. They end up agreeing to pay for her to live very comfortably if he starts cooperating more but they want to make sure that he can’t ever find her again if he does ever succeed in running away.

Tsumiki is at once full of hope and hopeless, because on one hand, the butterfly clips prove that Megumi still loves her and remembers her, at least in her mind. But at the same time, she’s being moved to Sendai and doesn’t know how they’ll ever find each other again. She doesn’t honestly know if they’d recognize each other if they saw each other again. She wears the butterfly clips every day, even when she gets too old for the style, because she’s more confident about her brother recognizing them than her.

The thing about tsumiki is that she doesn’t understand hate. She just doesn’t. Her mom and toji always got caught up in these perceived slights and revenge and never once let go of the past. They’d destroy themselves if it meant taking down the people they hated with them. She never wanted that. She wanted to live with the people she loved and she’d happily turn around and forget everything, all the pain, all the searching, if it just meant she could go back to being megumis sister.

This isn’t about hate. This is about that moment outside the car, where her brother was inside and she couldn’t get in to him. This is about how helpless and small she felt when they shoved her to the curb and ripped megumis hand out of hers. She needs to make sure that when she finds Megumi, she can take him home again. So she decides she needs to learn how to fight.

Itadori Yuuji has the constitution of an ox and the strength to match it, and he is known for getting in fights with bullies and trouncing them so thoroughly that it’s never a question of who wins when the fight starts. He’s insanely physically capable and can hold his own in a fight with ease. He’s also nice and kind and Tsumiki’s comfortable enough asking him to teach her how to throw a punch or two.

She is bad at it.

So fucking bad at it.

But she never gives up, and Itadori is nice enough to keep teaching her despite how embarrassingly horrible she is at it all. He always asks her why she wants to learn so bad, she doesn’t seem to like it all, and she never answers his question honestly.

In their last year of middle school, their class has a trip to Kyoto. She, Itadori, and the rest of their group walk into some random restaurant in the city and have barely sat down when someone comes inside, starts searching every booth in the restaurant while shouting Tsumikis name.

And oh. They could recognize each other after all.

She looked for Megumi in every crowd she was ever in, but she didn’t consider that he was doing the same. Or that he would see her first.

Her brother grew up without her seeing it. Hes older, dressed in strange, expensive clothes, has a slightly bruised up face and split lip, but his eyes are the same, and he looks like the brother she remembered.

But a lot more nervous than Megumi ever was. He was a tiny, stoic child who didn’t take any shit and never showed fear, even when there were monsters that only he could see. But he’s nervous when he tells her that she probably doesn’t recognize him or remember him, but when she was a lot younger, he—

Megumi. He’s her little brother. Of course she remembers him. She’s been looking for him everywhere.

Megumi didn’t smile much as a child, but he smiles at her then. He tells her he doesn’t have a lot of time and she tells him that they can leave out the back, and he never let her hold his hand as a child but he takes her hand so easily in that second. And just for a second, she’s his sister again, and it’s everything she wanted.

They never make it out the back.

Two men come in. Megumi calls one of them uncle, and he goes stiff and flat the second he sees him. His uncle apologizes for his nephew, tells everyone that he always makes scenes when they’re out in public, tells him to apologize to the nice people and leave. Megumi was mistaken.

Tsumiki tríes to keep ahold of his hand. Really, she does. She tries to tell people to call the police. But megumis “uncle” steps towards her and Megumi slams him into a table, and then suddenly Megumi’s the one insisting that they leave immediately. They can go. It’s fine. They’re leaving. She loses ahold of his hand.

She tries to follow, but the other man restrains her. She learns that she’s better at slamming plates into peoples heads than she is at punching, and at this point itadoris Friend In Danger Override has been triggered and he fucking tackles the dude, which gives tsumiki the clearing that she needs to chase outside after her brother. She gets out just in time to see him be pushed into a car, and she’s had years to think about the last time this happened and figure out what to do differently. She throws herself in front of the car and refuses to move.

See her entire stance is that she’ll sooner get run over and killed in the street than let them do this a second time, but she also can see Megumi trying to fucking punch the drivers head in from behind because he’s about to hit his sister. His uncles trying to restrain him, and just for a second, she sees his hands make the shape of the shadow puppets he used to show her as children. Something invisible slams her out of the way just as his uncle knocks him out.

She picks up a rock and tries to smash in the fucking window with it, and itadori has to pull her out of the way to keep her from getting her feet run over when the car finally tears out of the parking lot. She goes ballistic on him for stopping her because her brother was right there and she lost him again and she didn’t even get the license plate. He was right there.

The police basically do jack all again. There’s no license plate, no names they can follow up on, and they’re still half convinced this is a settled custody issue even though tsumiki insists her brother was sold by his dad and is very plainly getting hurt wherever he is. Itadori is now a devoted advocate of finding tsumikis brother and reuniting them, and both basically kind of end up becoming really close to the other? He’s taking care of himself and his grandpa alone, she’s alone while her moms awol again, and they both become the others support system.

At one point, there’s this random girl and boy who doesn’t speak who shows up to their school for indeterminate reasons. The girl is bored and twirling her glasses in one hand while the person in a suit that they’re with asks the principal questions, and when tsumikis eyes catch at the right angle, she sees an invisible monster clinging to a classmates back through them. She realizes it’s exactly what Megumi always talked about and still remembers that the people who took him could see his dogs. She corners the two others in a room and tries to demand information about the invisible monsters or see if they know her brother or the people who took him, and immediately gets blown off. The fight escalates until the girl tells him that actually, yeah. She knows tsumikis brother. He is a very special person to some very powerful people, and the only way she can ever help him is to tell him that she’s let go of him and that he needs to do the same to her. That’s the only message that the people who have him would ever let get through, and his life would get a lot better as soon as he got it.

The people who have him would give him anything in the world, except for her. He could be a lot happier and healthier than he is right now if he just agreed to stop trying to find tsumiki. If she really wants to help her brother, then she needs to let him go.

Tsumiki nails her in the back of the head with a milk carton when she tries to walk away. It sloshes out on her. Tsumiki did not intend this. She cannot admit that fact. There are some actions you just have to own when you do them. She tells the girl that he’s her brother and she’s never letting go of him. She’s going to find him. They can’t keep him from her forever. She doesn’t care how long it takes her.

For a second, tsumiki really thinks this girl is going to kick her ass, but she doesn’t. She wishes her luck and tells her she’ll need it, and it’s only later that tsumiki realizes she slipped the eyeglasses into her pocket.

And as it turns out, her brothers monsters were real all along.

There was a knife that toji left in the frame of his bed. Tsumiki confiscated it from Megumi as soon as he found it, and it was odd and strange and gave her bad feelings when she held it, and it can kill the things that gather on her back. When she follows Itadori to their local high school and joins the occult club in an attempt to find more people involved in this world of invisible monsters, she wears the eyeglasses and keeps the knife hidden in her bag.

It comes in handy when her senpais are trying to open this thing and suddenly there’s like a fucking portal opening and Actually Let’s Not Oh Too Late Let’s Run Let’s Fucking Run.

They run.

Meanwhile at the hospital Megumi found out in very quick succession that his sister has fucking sukunas finger and also that there’s a very over enthusiastic himbo who is the self appointed vice president of the Find Fushiguro Megumi And Bring Him Home Club who absolutely fucking refuses to leave his side. Sorry who are you. Why are you so enthusiastic about finding him. Megumi sort of was the one doing the finding there was a whole tracking situation and him waiting dramatically in the shadows like they just did it.

Anyway they run very very quickly to tsumikis school where she is dodging she is serpentining this is a fuckton of monsters oh holy fuck is that her brother?

The fight goes bad.

Tsumiki manages to follow itadori and her brother out at a much slower pace because she’s not a freak of nature like itadori and shows up just in time to see her brother shouting at itadori to not eat the fucking finger while itadori is absolutely trying to eat the fucking finger.

She chucks her shoe at him. The finger goes flying.

Then the monster eats it instead.

Tsumiki: :o

Yuuji: :o

Megumi: fuck

Now there’s a bigger monster and the fight goes even worse. There’s a lot of shouting. Itadori ends up with her knife. Then he ends up getting eaten and they’re down both a knife and itadori, who’s probably fucking dead. Then megumis insisting she run and she’s insisting he shut the fuck up because it’s sort of taken a decade to get this close to him again and she’s not fumbling the bag now because of a monster on the rampage. Have a sense of fucking priorities here.

Then itadori bursts out of the monsters stomach with the knife like the fucking Kool Aid Man and the fight is suddenly very over. Good job, team.

Gojo rolls up to his most stoic and eternally pissed off student having a dramatic and emotional reunion with his sister.

Yuuji, in a very bad whisper: no no so like she’s been looking for him for years but he saw her in the restaurant

Gojo: :o go on

Yuuji: and then he got caught by like, I don’t know, he said he was his uncle or something but the dude acted so weird and creepy and they put him in a car and Tsumiki tried to stop the car but they got away

Gojo: *gasp* what no

Yuuji: I know! Anyway then I start helping her look for him but we can’t find him anywhere until I’m at the hospital and he just walks up to me right?? And I’m like “dude I have been looking everywhere for you” and he’s like “I have no idea who you are, I’m here about that fucked up demon finger” and I’m like—

Megumi, really trying to have a moment here: we can both hear you

And megumis like “this is uh. My new teacher. I guess. I am his only student. And he is uh. Enthusiastic. Do not linger in conversation with him.”

Tsumiki is lingering. She needs fucking intel so he can’t disappear again. Where does he go to school and can she transfer there. It’s fucking wizard school? Will they take her even though she’s not a wizard? She cannot emphasize enough that she will study any fucking subject they want so that way she can be close with her brother again she does not care if it’s applicable to her education or life. She can throw things at people itadori tell the man tell him how enthusiastically she will throw things at monsters for their weird fucking wizard school.

Itadori: she hit me in the face with her shoe like five minutes ago

Tsumiki: see???

Megumi keeps trying to forbid her from wizard school but she’s technically the older sister so she has override rights. She will go to wizard school. How does she get wizard school to accept her.

And Gojos just really weird and off and keeps looking at Megumi and saying that he “didn’t know he had a sister.”

He really didn’t know that Megumi had a sister he wanted to stay with.

And then suddenly it’s like a switch is flipped and he’s back to his normal self telling them to leave everything to him, because he’ll make sure tsumiki can come back with them. And uh? Itadori? Weirdly physically capable kid who will apparently eat anything? Is he going to be good getting home after all this?

Itadori: actually if it’s not too much trouble can I go to wizard school too my grandpa sort of died half an hour ago and I don’t have plans for the rest of my life. Tsumikis kind of my best friend and I’d like to make sure she’s all good at wizard school. I’m a really good fighter and I stabbed the last monster so like can I come too because you know. Dead grandpa. No family or future to speak of. Haha.

Gojo:

Megumi:

Tsumiki, softly: dude

There’s more after they make it to jujutsu high but this is already really long so we leave it here

#ask games #jjk #jujutsu kaisen #continuing my streak of becoming obsessed with minor background characters #other highlights include itadori trying to platonically wingman for tsumiki with her brother (because it’s been like a decade and she knows #nothing about him and he knows nothing about her and she’s terrified he won’t like her once they get to know each other again) so that way #itadori can be the one asking the get to know you questions and tsumiki doesn’t have to admit out loud that she and her brother know nothing #about each other only the inherent problem is that her brother is actually unfairly pretty and has a sort of dry wit and is reserved but #when you get to know him he’s such a genuine dude and oh fuck oh no he’s in trouble this is his best friends long lost brother he has to be #violating some kind of code here. Kugisaki stop laughing at him this is a crisis.#gojo basically backed out of teenage fatherhood when he saw Megumi walking around with the divine dogs because it’s one thing to butt heads #with a major clan over an outcast member it’s another to do it for their most sacred technique #he thought that Megumi would be better taken care of than anyone else in the clan as the person with the ten shadows and that he’d probably #be better off than with an emotionally broken seventeen year old who works at least 28 days a month and has no idea how to raise a child #he never realized that Megumi had a sister he wanted to stay with who the Zenin separated him from #he tells himself he would have intervened if he had known because he’s been secretly worried and guilty about not taking in Megumi after all #since Maki showed up and said some worrying things about the clan heir and his standard of living and got the confirmation when he met #tsumiki and realized that he could have kept them together all those years ago and didnt. megumi and tsumiki kind of haunt him with lost #potential because not only could they have grown up a family but they could have grown up his family. megumi doesn’t know why satoru gojo #of all people is being so weirdly helpful and intense about about sponsoring tsumiki and keeping her close to him

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