#amusing to me that i have only drawn ham once and its been as a human

[whaliiwatching]

no way!!! it's Other Characters!!!!!

[sabraeal]

Traffic Lights Are Burnin’

[Read on AO3]

Written in honor of @nebluus‘s birthday! She asked for some WFB, and of the options I gave she chose the next part of our Six Flags saga...only the beginning scene of that chapter ended up ballooning out into this so...it ended up being less Amusement Park Shenanigans and more Wholesome Boys Will Be Boys Content. I’M SURE MADI WILL BE JUST FINE WITH THAT TOO 😂

“Are you making an omelette?”

English is not, functionally, Mitsuhide’s first language. Not that he thinks of it like that-- first or second, third or fourth; there’s no ranking in his life, no moment in which one language followed another. There was English with Mama and quebecois with Papa; a plan quickly scuttled by Mitsuhide being the fifth Lowen sibling. Refusing to be pigeonholed into a single language no matter how many times Mama repeated consistency is key, his brothers mostly spoke a tossed salad of both and assumed he’d understand the lettuce.

Coupled with the fact that all his cousins lived in Toronto anyway, Mitsuhide had hardly begun talking himself before it became outside quebecois and inside English. Unless they left the province, in which case it was a free-for-all that left his few monolingual aunts and uncles dizzy.

Which is to say, Mitsuhide only becomes aware of the precise inner ranking of his languages in moments like this, where gut immediately kicks out a dry ‘j’essaie.’ The translation is vetoed on the grounds that although in quebecois he’s never met a word he couldn’t steep in sarcasm and smuggle in a sacre, he prefers to keep his English so clean it squeaks.

You’ve got it all backwards, Kihal had told him as he sweltered under the San Juan sun, English is fake, you can be as much of an asshole as you want it in, it doesn’t count.

It’s true, there’s something that’s more real to him in French, that’s more real about him, but, well-- there were far fewer cousins to tattle on his potty mouth this way. And now that he knows Obi...

Well, if Kiki ever made good on her threats to teach him any of his “church swears,” he’d probably never sleep easy again. So instead, he scrolls through his mental rolodex of possible appropriate replies before settling on, “Would you like one?”

Zen glances up from his array of pamphlets, glossy paper glaring beneath the overhead lamp. It matches the way Zen is looking at him. “We don’t have time for that.”

Mitsuhide frowns, giving his eggs one last vigorous whisk before pouring them into the pan. “There’s always time for breakfast. It’s the most important meal of the day.”

He glances over just in time to see Zen’s grimace. “Shirayuki really could be your sister.”

There’s really no reason he has to look so horrified by the idea. His brothers may all be broad shouldered, barrel-chested giants, but plenty of his cousins made pocket money in high school through catalogue modeling. And they’re all very nice girls.

He doesn’t mention it. A conversation never ends well if you have to whip out photos of female relatives to prove your point. “Would you like one?” he repeats instead, a safer tactic overall.

Zen’s nose wrinkles beneath some dubiously drawn eyebrows. “Are you putting spinach in there?”

“Kale,” he agrees. “And chicken.”

“In a breakfast omelette?” He clucks his tongue, just the way the Wisteria’s chef would when he attempted to cook at the estate. Quel dommage, he would say, sighing over the cutting board, why would you do that to perfectly good eggs? “Why would you do that?”

Because these muscles don’t come cheap; Mitsuhide chokes down a truly staggering amount of chicken in order to keep them. Roasted, of course-- boiled is technically better for protein, but even he has to draw the line somewhere. The eggs have less, but they are calorie efficient; he’d eat more of them if he could stomach the slimy, snake-like sensation of swallowing them down hard boiled.

But explaining his diet regime usually ended with glazed eyes, so he settles for, “I could always put something different in yours. There’s ham.”

Fancy ham, Obi calls it. It’s just from the deli counter, fresh sliced from whatever quality cut’s on sale, but considering how the first time Obi saw a charcuterie board, he shouted, Oh, Lunchables!--

Well, Mitsuhide can accept that maybe they have different benchmarks for fancy. And somehow just the simple act of calling it that does make it taste better. Or at least more satisfying when it’s shoved between a Hawaiian roll and deli cheese.

There’s a soft shuffle by the kitchen door, and a wild thatch of bristle peeps around the frame. Mitsuhide shakes his head with huff. That’s a new one-- just think the devil’s name and he appears.

Obi lopes into the kitchen, all long limbs and smooth movements, blurring right into the background without any effort at all. He’d gotten Mitsuhide a few times when he’d first moved in, popping up wherever it was sure to be the most inconvenient, grinning like a cat with feathers in its teeth. But once you knew the trick of it, well-- it’s no effort to keep the kid in his sights.

Which is why he has a full, uninterrupted view when Obi slips right up to Zen’s elbow, and asks, “Whatcha doing, chief?”

“Wah!” Pamphlets fly up, a glittering flock of wings swooping beneath the lamp. Zen slaps them down before they can skitter off the table’s edge. “Obi! Make noise for fuck’s sake!”

“Sorry,” he sing-songs, not a sincere note in it. Two long fingers pluck a pamphlet off the wood, twisting it between them. “What’s all this? They starting to put theme parks on exams now?”

“No.” Zen scowls, snatching it out of his hands. “I’m just making today’s itinerary.”

Mitsuhide slides his omelette onto a plate, turning just in time to catch the glance Obi sends him. It somehow says is he fucking with me while also implying I’ll hold him down if we gotta send him to the doctor. “An itinerary?”

He leans a hip against the island, fishing out a fork. What was it Obi always said? Dinner tastes better with a show. Time to find out whether it extends to breakfast too.

Zen fixes Obi with a look that could have had trenches with all its affront. “You can’t go to an amusement park without a plan. How else do you get on all the coasters?”

“It’s only Six Flags New England.” A week ago, the name alone made Obi flee like a cat from a bath, but now every syllable drips with derision, like a sommelier reviewing boxed wine. “They’ve got what? Superman?”

Mitsuhide shoves a corner of his omelette in his mouth. It’s not as good as a sausage, mushroom, and cheese, but, well, it’ll do. “Bizarro.”

“Bizarro.” Obi scoffs. “See? Nothing. Besides, I thought you were the kind of guy to spring for fast passes, boss.”

Zen’s always been sensitive; the sort of kid who tended to pop off when a situation came to a simmer instead of trying to turn down the heat. When Izana had been sitting president, he’s spent half his tenure fielding tense calls, sometimes even climbing into a towncar at a moment’s notice to be taken back east. The school, he’s always say, lifting a shoulder, my brother is proving to be a challenge, and my mother is...unreachable.

He’d thought this Zen kid must be like the ones he knew on the ice, punching first and asking questions later, complaining about being put in the box. All temper and no temperance, Mama used to say when she drove him home, can’t talk when you got plastic between your teeth.

But then he’d met him, undersized and stick-limbed, living in that house with people paid to be invisible. A kid with too much on his shoulders and too many eyes to watch him stumble under it. He’s come a long way from there.

So when Zen squirms in his chair, red already starting to lick up his neck, Mitsuhide doesn’t enjoy it. On the contrary, Zen’s discomfort is his discomfort, a failure of him to keep the watchful eye on him that Izana asked him to.

But it also doesn’t stop him from adding, “Shirayuki believes that waiting in line is part of the amusement park experience.”

Obi looks as though he’s just been told it’s his birthday and Christmas, all rolled into one. “Of course she does.” His mouth sharpens to a wicked grin. “So you’ll be lowering yourself to the peasant’s lines today, huh, Your Highness?”

“Don’t call me that,” he grumbles, swatting him away. “No one’s being lowered anywhere. We won’t be running into any of them so long as we get there early and hit the coasters in the right order.”

Obi coughs. Or at least, makes it sound like he is. “Uh-huh.”

“Where is Shirayuki anyway?” Zen glares at the empty doorway, brows heaving like thunderclouds over the bridge of his nose. “I thought you said you’d get her.”

“I did.” Obi twitches his shoulders; as good as a shrug, from him. “She’s getting ready.”

“It’s been fifteen minutes.” Zen’s glare changes target to him, thunder rolling in the tone of his voice. “Shirayuki doesn’t take this long to get ready.”

When Mitsuhide glances up, chewing around another stab of egg, kale, and chicken, Obi’s eyebrows are already there to meet him. His head tilts, just the barest degree; this is your show, big guy.

Mitsuhide coughs, trying to clear his throat of leaf bits. “Girls,” he starts, the ground sinking beneath him with each word, “like to look nice. Especially when they are on, uh, dates.”

“This isn’t a date,” Zen informs him, more than a little put out. “Obi’s going.”

The sound Obi makes can only be termed as distressed. “I didn’t want to.”

For exactly this reason, is what he doesn’t say. Doesn’t even show it on his face, though it has to be lurking beneath it, considering how he--

Well, considering nothing Mitsuhide knows for sure. But certainly a few things he reasonably suspects.

“Chief.” Obi flips the chair next to him, straddling it. “You know, I really thought it couldn’t be true. I really wanted to give you the benefit of the doubt. But to hear you now--” he leans in, one narrow brow raising the same time his voice drops-- “you really do chicken out when it comes to getting chummy with Doc.”

Mitsuhide nearly chokes on his chicken.

Zen’s red all over, like someone pulled him from a boiling pot and put him on a plate. “You don’t know that.”

“Sure I do,” he says, so easy. “Doc told me.”

“She said that?” His skin’s so flushed Mitsuhide’s half afraid he’ll pass out, but instead he just collapses against the ladderback, head buried in his arms. “Shirayuki?” 

“Pretty much.” Obi sighs, hands braced on the table. “I mean, is it so hard to say she looks nice when she dresses up? Or that you like her hair, or--” he stumbles, shaking his head-- “no, not the hair. Too loaded. But you know, one of her floaty little numbers. Her freckles. Something.”

“I have!”

Obi lifts a dubiously narrow eyebrow. “Like when?”

“Ah...” Whatever the answer is, it’s not helping his blood flow problem. Mitsuhide nearly opens his mouth, searching for a good way to make himself a target-- “The Big E.”

Well, there goes that plan.

Obi’s inquisition crumples into confusion. “What? When did you--”

Every word ekes into the air with the utmost resistance. “When she was wearing your hoodie.”

“When she was wearing my--?” Gold eyes round to coins. “Chief.”

For a solid minute, that’s the only reaction-- wide-eyed disbelief, earned from two sides. But Obi coughs, mouth twitching, and it’s a snort, a smirk, and--

And then Obi launches himself away from the table, both hands still gripping the edge as he falls apart utterly. The chair’s back keeps him from putting his head between his knees, but spiritually he’s there, tears tracking down his cheeks as his laughs wheeze out of him

One hand finally slaps the table, like he’s asking for a time out. Zen frowns down at him, red finally fading to a painful pink. “It’s not that funny.”

“It is,” Obi squeaks, and Mitsuhide has to shove his last bite of omelette into his mouth to stifle his own noises. It’s no good-- Zen whips around and gives him the same glare he’s been saving for Obi.

“If you don’t cut it out,” he says loftily, “I’m going to let a freshman stay in your room.”

Well, that brings Obi up. “Fine,” he coughs, voice still ragged from laughing. “But still. My hoodie.”

“The sleeves hung over her hands! It was cute.” Zen huffs, folding his arms over his chest. “Fine, if I’m so bad, why don’t you two show me how it’s done?”

There’s a pause, long and loaded; enough that Mitsuhide glances up from his plate to see just what tomfoolery he should brace himself to break up--

Only to find Zen staring at him.

Intellectually, Mitsuhide is aware that Zen is a Wisteria. He met him through Izana, after all; he’s been over to the manor, he’s even met their prodigal mother on one of her rare stopovers between vacations. But when he thinks of the name, it’s Izana who springs to mind, the gears churning behind his eyes.

It’s not often that Zen reminds him of his brother; Cookie’s always said that Izana takes after their mother with that long and lean model build, while Zen has always been Kain’s child. But now, now--

He sees it, and it sends a shiver right through him.

With a quirk of his lips, Zen says, so like Izana that if he closed his eyes he wouldn’t know any different, “You first, Mitsuhide.”

Obi’s mouth curves into a leer. “Yeah, Big Guy. Show us the skills that got you Ms Kiki.”

This probably isn’t the time to tell them that it wasn’t him who got her; Mitsuhide hadn’t been trying to do anything more than be the friend she needed, to be a person she could confide in, could trust. People like that were thin on the ground for girls like her; heiress tended to make men see dollar signs instead of personality. But Kiki--

Well, she had other ideas. Ones he’d only cottoned onto when she climbed on top of him and shoved him against the couch cushions with her mouth.

“D-Don’t look at me!” he manages, trying to busy himself with anything. But there’s only a plate to be put in the sink, and a pan to be wiped. Not enough to fake a decent amount of responsibility. “I’m not--”

“Aw, c’mon, Big Man. Don’t leave us hanging.” Obi leans back, grin so wide it practically splits his face. “Lemme paint the scene. You’re single, Doc is adorable, and she’s waiting there--” he gestures to Zen, who flutters his eyelashes in precisely the way Shirayuki doesn’t-- “for you to make your move. Go!”

He could point out he’s not single, and that he doesn’t have any plans to change that anytime soon-- but that only ends in one way: a two-pronged mockery with additional ridicule provided by the impending arrival of his better half. He could also point out that of all the people in this room, he’s the only one who hasn’t wanted to date Shirayuki, but-- well, the problems with that one were obvious.

Instead, Mitsuhide takes in a deep breath, learns on the counter, and says, “Why, Shirayuki! You’re looking beautiful this morning. Those shorts really flatter your legs.”

There is a long silence, and then to everlasting embarrassment, they burst out laughing.

“Her shorts?” Zen’s hand is pressed to his chest, like he needs support to keep upright. “That’s all you can think of? Her shorts?”

“Well, Obi said not to do her hair,” he protests. “Complimenting her dress seemed like low hanging fruit. I was trying to be unique.”

Obi doesn’t even bother to remain horizontal, sprawling himself over the long forgotten maps. “So you went for her legs?”

“There’s nothing wrong with legs!”

“Oh, no, of course not,” Zen sputters out in an effort to keep his mouth straight. “Definitely a very neutral place to comment on.”

“Definitely not known for being attached to things like asses.” Obi’s mouth twitches, as much a sign for danger as thunder rolling in the distance. “Or puss--”

“I was not trying to comment on that.” He’d felt bad for Zen earlier, but the sentiment doesn’t seem mutual. “It’s not typical, sure, but Kiki never seems to mind when I compliment--”

“Kiki?” Zen squawks. “Kiki?”

“Well, I think we’re all learning a little too much about Big Guy today,” Obi wheezes. “Mainly that it’s Ms Kiki that chased him, and not the other way around.”

“Yeah.” Zen shakes his head, long and slow and solemn, like a doctor about to give a terminal diagnosis. “No game at all.”

Mitsuhide’s not a competitive man. Sure, he was forward on the ice, the kind of player that got sent to the box before the end of the first half and slid right into the captain spot when it was vacant. Aggression is part of the game, competition laced in every turn of his skate and lift of his stick, but that’s a different situation, a different language--

But it’s that part of him that surges beneath his skin right now, that makes him want to saunter over and put both hands on that rickety, painted wood until it creaks. That makes him want to take a full minute to bend down, showing off every centimeter of his one-ninety plus, and ask real low if either of them has made a girl beg on their cock lately, but--

He puts it in its place. That sort of talk always sounded better en français anyway.

Zen waves his hand, slipping his pamphlets out from under Obi. “Anyway, enough messing around. Are you still making omelettes, Mitsuhide?”

“Ohh, omelettes?” Obi spins to him with wide eyes. “Can I get mine with fancy ham?”

Mitsuhide blinks. “Wait, aren’t you going to do your take?”

“Nah.”

Zen shrugs. “Joke’s over.”

“So I just did that for no reason--?”

“I wouldn’t say no reason,” Zen wheedles. “It was very educational.”

Obi grins. “Mainly about how Big Guy likes legs--”

“Oh,” drawls a voice that makes his body go cold and hot at the same time. When he turns, it’s Kiki leaning against the jamb, a single elegant brow raised, excusing amusement and menace in equal measure. “Am I to take it that the show is over?”

“K-kiki,” he stammers. “How long--?”

“Hm.” She saunters over to the counter, slipping onto a stool with a casual grace that still leaves his mouth dry. “Long enough. I have to admit, I was looking forward to seeing a display of Obi’s fabled moves.”

“Ms Kiki,” Obi simpers, pressing a hand to his chest. “I’d be happy to give you a personal demonstration anytime.”

Both her brows raise. “Did I say I was desperate?”

He’s saved from Obi’s answer by Shirayuki padding into the kitchen, flushed and breathless. “Oh, you were right Kiki! Everyone is already ready. Sorry to make you wait.”

There’s a hesitation in the air, and Mitsuhide can’t figure it out, not until he sees-- she’s wearing shorts.

Shirayuki blinks. “Is something wrong?”

“Oh, I don’t know,” Kiki hums, sending him a gaze so wicked it should be illegal outside the bedroom. “Do you have anything to say to her, Mitsuhide?”

“No!” It comes out a little too harsh, a little too loud. “I mean, I, uh...like your sandals!”

“Sandals,” Obi snickers, a sound that’s only covered by Zen’s hushed, “Shut up.”

“Oh!” She blinks down. “Thank you. I got them at Payless. I, um, don’t think they make them in your size.”

“No,” he manages mildly. “I don’t imagine they would.”

“You do look real cute, Doc,” Obi chimes in, slinking out of his seat to circle around her. “Did you dress up for today?”

Zen makes a noise, somewhere between a choke and a gasp, but even with the pink brushing her cheeks, Shirayuki’s too used to his antics to do much more than sigh.

“Of course I did, Obi.” Her fists perch high on her hips, cocked as she talks to him. “It’s the last time we’re all going to be going out together, isn’t it? What could be more special than that?”

Mitsuhide may not be a competitive man, and especially isn’t a malicious one, but when Obi’s jaw goes slack, the tips of his ears darkening just the slightest bit, well-- he does indulge in the slightest bit of schadenfreude.

“Well,” Zen says, a little sharp. “Let’s get going.”

“Aw!” Obi whips around. “What about fancy ham?”

“I don’t think you need--”

“Oh, I haven’t had breakfast either!” Shirayuki adds, eyes wide. “Do we have time?”

Zen hesitates, and then with a sigh, relents. “We’ll stop at Dunkies.”

[ghostspideys-moved]

We’ll Have Tomorrow

Chapter Eight

A/N: It’s finally Christmas time this chapter! Since I have this all typed out already, I can say that we’re a few chapters away from finishing this series.

Pairings: Steve Harrington x OC, Nancy Wheeler x Jonathan Byers x OC (eventually)

Word Count: 3k

Summary: Christmas is finally here, and everyone is really just trying to have a good time after the chaos they endured together.

Hawthorne had been deep asleep until he felt someone shaking him awake, followed by the eager squealing of, “It’s Christmas!” It was El, and she had the brightest smile on her face, which he could just make out through bleary vision as he started to wake up. 

Once El ran out of his room, he groaned and dragged himself out of bed. Naturally, El and River were both sitting next to the Christmas tree already. From the looks of it, he hadn’t been the only one dragged out of bed seeing as Hopper was slowly making his way out of his room as well. 

Hawthorne sat near the tree, still partially half asleep. Of course, El was the most excited of the three of them. Not that he was too surprised considering this was her first proper Christmas. River and Hawthorne, at this point, hadn’t celebrated a whole lot of holidays in general seeing as their father hadn’t cared too much about them anymore. More than anything, both of them were just excited to do some sort of celebrating for once in a really long time. 

Hopper bought each of them a few presents, figuring none of them would really care too much so long as they got anything at all. Of course, he’d been right. Hawthorne now had some more books to add to his collection, and he’d definitely need them to help his reading. He wasn’t bad at it, but he certainly had some trouble here and there, so he needed the practice. 

There was a knock at the door, and River set down the Walkman she’d been looking at curiously before racing to open it. Steve came in with bags of more presents, which Hawthorne definitely hadn’t expected. But he wasn’t going to complain at this point.

El was more than excited to see Steve, but she was also drawn to the bags of presents, hoping a decent amount of them were for her. Steve ruffled her hair and brought everything in before he started handing out more presents. 

Hawthorne was more than surprised he’d even bought as much as he had, because he really didn’t have to. Of course, he kind of remembered River saying she’d invited him, but this was more than he would have expected from Steve. 

It occurred to Hawthorne that Steve had a decent amount of money, so that was probably why he’d even bought so many presents. 

Of course, most of El’s presents were a bunch of toys and other things she might have found interesting. Not that it was hard considering how new everything was to her, and therefore, everything was interesting to her. She’d given Steve a tight hug in response, a good enough indication for him that she more than appreciated the gesture. 

Hawthorne wasn’t really sure he’d known, but Steve gave him a book full of information on lots of different plants. Of course, he suspected he’d just asked River. Not very many people knew that he really loved plants. Gardening in general was a favorite of his, even if he hardly got to do it outside of the botany club he’d joined. Nonetheless, he appreciated it, and he even gave Steve a slight smile, which might as well have been Hawthorne’s version of a hug by his own standards.

River, of course, received more comics, which she was more than excited to read later. If she didn’t already have a lot of them before, she definitely did now. She seemed especially over the moon to have more Superman comics. 

At some point, there was another knock, but a shared look of confusion told Hawthorne that River didn’t know who it was either. He got up to answer it and was surprised to find Jonathan at the door. In fact, it wasn’t just him, but also Will and Joyce. He let them in, and it seemed they also brought a few presents. Not nearly as many as Steve, of course, seeing as they didn’t really have much money to go around, but it was still appreciated. 

Joyce immediately joined Hopper, who must have been the one to invite them. He could already see Joyce trying to help out with dinner, which was probably for the best. Hopper wasn’t a bad cook, or anything, but he didn’t do a whole lot of it, other than breakfast. 

Hawthorne took his spot back on the couch as El was flipping through channels nonchalantly with her powers, hoping to find a good Christmas movie. 

Jonathan took a seat next to him, neither of them really saying anything right away. Neither of them really seemed to know if they were supposed to talk or not, or what they’d even talk about. It was quite an awkward moment of silence, and Hawthorne decided to be the one to say something first. 

“How, um...how’s Will doing?” he asked quietly. The kid seemed okay so far. He was sitting next to El, debating over what to watch. Of course, he knew better than to think Will was totally okay after being possessed by the Mind Flayer. The kid didn’t seem to like people worrying over him too much, so he wouldn’t be too surprised if Will was doing his best to seem like he was okay. He didn’t particularly blame him either.

“Fine,” Jonathan replied. “Mostly. I mean, he hasn’t complained about feeling strange. He might still be a little...rattled, I guess.”

Hawthorne nodded, figuring that might be the case. “You know him better than anyone, but if there’s anything I can tell about him already, it’s that he bounces back quickly. At least to some degree.”

He’d never really talked to Will before, but he could already tell he was a tough kid considering half the shit he’d been through. Even if he didn’t know he kid well, it was easy to see he could hold his own well enough.

“Yeah, he’s a lot tougher than he looks.” Jonathan even offered a smile, which Hawthorne had to admit looked nice on him. Why didn’t he smile more?

Hawthorne smiled back and turned when El and Will had finally agreed on Rudolph the red nosed reindeer. 

What might have made this moment even better was finding out Steve knew all the words to the song, which almost made Hawthorne laugh. He wasn’t bad at singing at all, but it was hilarious watching him sing along dramatically, and River looked more than embarrassed by his theatrics. She was laughing, sure, but she also had an exasperated look on her face. Probably because of how loudly he was singing.

Steve certainly didn’t seem very ashamed, but then again, he might have been doing it to embarrass River even further. Hawthorne couldn’t say he wasn’t guilty of doing the same, and he was finding it very entertaining. 

The look of relief on River’s face when they were all called for dinner might have actually been funnier. 

At the table, food was being passed around, and there was some light conversation here and there. It was kind of nice, actually. Especially when compared to how horrible things had been only a month ago. They weren’t exactly trying to forget so much as they were trying to keep some sense of normalcy in their lives. For that, Hawthorne couldn’t blame anyone, and it wasn’t like he hadn’t been doing the same. 

As Hawthorne was eating, he listened more than he actually talked. 

“I thought you said you guys don’t celebrate Christmas?” Steve asked River, his brows furrowed in confusion.

“Technically, we don’t,” she answered. “But El was super excited about it, and we haven’t really celebrated Hanukkah properly in a really long time, so this is just as fun, honestly. It’s just less days of celebrating.”

“Wait, don’t you get presents all eight days during Hanukkah?” Will asked. “I think I remember someone in my class mentioning that.”

Steve gasped and turned to River and Hawthorne. “You mean this whole time, I could have been getting you guys presents?”

“You brought a whole bag of them. I think that more than makes up for it,” Hawthorne pointed out. “Besides, no one said you had to.”

“I say I had to. If I would have known that, I would have given you guys presents on all eight days.” He almost seemed a little sad that he hadn’t had the chance, which was amusing on its own. 

River shrugged. “We kind of didn’t really pay attention to the days while we were settling in, so I didn’t even realize, in all honesty,” she said. “So don’t worry about it all that much.”

Steve didn’t seem any less sad about it, but he let it go for now. At this rate, Hawthorne wouldn’t be that surprised if he tried to give it a shot next year.

“First I miss your birthdays, and now I missed a whole eight days of a holiday?” He shook his head and stuffed his mouth with ham. “Such a wasted opportunity,” he mumbled between bites.

“Well, if it makes you feel any better,” Hawthorne said as he finished his plate, “this year the last day of Hanukkah is tomorrow.”

“When did it even start?”

“Last Tuesday.”

“That means it was going during the Christmas Party!” Steve exclaimed, turning to River.

She sighed and gave an apologetic look. “I told you. I forgot.”

Steve shook his head. Hawthorne could practically see the gears in his head turning, which almost scared him. Whatever  Steve might be planning, he wasn't sure he wanted to be around for it. He might not know him too well, but Hawthorne was sure any plan of his was bound to be...interesting to say the least.

Dinner went by quickly, and while everyone was socializing, Hawthorne slipped outside. Even in the warm flannel he wore ninety percent of the time, it was freezing. He could feel the cold air biting at his nose. It had to be red even if he hadn't been out terribly long. Despite the cold, he stood on the porch, leaning against the rail as he let his mind wander.

Hawthorne hadn't even heard the door open. Admittedly, he nearly jumped when Jonathan suddenly joined him. 

"Shit, don't give me a heart attack like that," he mumbled.

Jonathan snorted and stuffed his hands in his pockets. "What are you doing out here?" he asked. "It's cold as shit out here."

"I could ask you the same."

"I asked first."

Hawthorne chuckled and shrugged. "Fair enough. I'm just not much of a social person," he said.

Jonathan nodded. "Yeah. I can't really say it's really my scene either."

Hawthorne offered a small smile. He found his eyes wandering over Jonathan's figure. There wasn't any particular reason why, and he wasn't entirely sure why he was having the thoughts he was having. He had to admit, Jonathan was surprisingly easy to talk to, or maybe that was just him, and he wasn't unattractive by any stretch of the imagination. Of course, Hawthorne's face grew red the moment he'd been caught.

"Do I have something on my face?" Jonathan asked, a slightly teasing tone in his voice. 

Hawthorne's mouth went dry for a moment. "What? Oh, no. Sorry I just...I was thinking," he said.

"About?"

Sighing, he crossed his arms, his gaze turning forward again.

"Do you think...do you think everything will go back to normal now that everything's over?" he blurted out. "You know, after the Demodogs, the lab." He hesitated for a moment, turning to face him again. "Everything with your brother."

Jonathan smiled weakly and huffed, his breath escaping in a visible cloud that quickly dissipated. 

"The first time this happened, it took awhile for everything to go back to normal," he answered. "And even then, it was never truly the same. By now, I think I've accepted that it never really will be."

Hawthorne rubbed the back of his neck. "I guess you'd be the expert in this situation."

"I don't know if I'd say that," Jonathan said. "But I think I'm definitely qualified to give some advice at least." He grinned, and it was quite possibly the most genuine look Hawthorne had ever seen him give. It was almost strange how weak that look almost made him feel.

Hawthorne turned away from him again, not wanting Jonathan to see just how red his face was. He might be able to easily blame it in the cold, but it wasn't worth the risk at this rate. He wasn't even sure why he was suddenly thinking the way he was. At any rate, it became clear to him that he was going to have a hard time focusing near Jonathan.

~

Christmas quickly came and went in a rush. Even after several days, at least half of the decorations were still up. The tree, of course, was still standing, though a number of the decorations had either been removed or came off before someone put them away.

Hawthorne was busying himself with making breakfast. At least this way he could keep El from eating more Eggos, at least until lunch rolled around anyways.

He placed a plate in front of El when there was a knock at the door. Unsure who it might be, they both shared a look before Hawthorne went to check. Of course, he logically assumed it had to be any of El's friends, or Jonathan, or anyone else who would actually know where they were.

When he opened the door, Steve was standing on the other side. He should have been surprised perhaps, but it wasn't much of a shocker at this point.

He stared at Steve for a moment before turning inside the house. "River, Steve's here." Hawthorne felt it was safe to assume he was here for her.

"Actually, I have a bit of a surprise for everyone," Steve cut in. Well, there was first for everything, including Hawthorne being proven wrong.

El perked up at the mention of a surprise, and River was just coming out of her room when she'd heard him.

"A surprise? What kind of surprise?" she asked.

Steve grinned and motioned for all of them to follow him. The three of them shared a confused look before following.

He led them out to his car and stopped them. "Okay, so I was thinking about how you guys didn't get to celebrate Hanukkah," he started, excitedly fidgeting. "And I thought, 'what makes up for eight days worth of presents?' So, I think I finally figured it out."

Of all the things Hawthorne was expecting when Steve opened the car door, a dog was certainly the last thing.

A German Shepherd hopped out and jumped up at Steve, scratching at his legs. He was small enough that he picked it up, the grin on his face never leaving.

"So, what do you think?" he asked.

Hawthorne's mouth fell open. "You...got us a dog?"

"Yeah! Pretty cool, huh? I figured I'd have to go big to make up for missing eight days," he said, as if that truly explained everything. "And don't worry, I bought food, a bed, all that other good stuff."

El seemed a little hesitant at first, but when Steve handed the dog over and it licked her face, she laughed and pet it.

"Steve, this seems like a lot to throw at us this early in the morning," River sighed.

"I know, I know. And I'm sorry about that. I just...I wanted it to be a surprise."

Hawthorne turned to the dog, still content to be in El's arms, its tail wagging wildly.

"He also doesn't have a name yet. I thought you guys might want the honor," Steve added.

The three of them shared a look, trying desperately to think of a name they could agree on. After some debate, El tossed in an idea they all seemed to like.

“Why don’t we call him Rexasaurus Rex?” she suggested.

Of course, they weren’t going to tell her that was a weird name, especially because she didn’t have any concept yet of how naming worked. That, and she was a kid. It was cute, at least.

"How about we call him Rex for short?" River chimed in.

El seemed more than happy with that, so they decided that was a good enough name. Hawthorne felt like that fit him well enough.

"Shit, we should probably see how Hopper feels about this?" Hawthorne realized.

Steve shrugged. "Don't worry. If he hesitates, I've been known to be persuasive."

They all went back inside where, luckily, Hopper was watching TV as he usual did on his days off. He looked up when he heard all of them, though he paused when he spotted Rex. 

“That’s a dog,” he said rather observantly.

“Yeah, about that. Steve bought us a dog,” River said. “We can keep him, right?”

Hopper seemed rather hesitant, but before he could refuse, El cut in. 

“We’ll take care of him ourselves.” She gave him a pleading look. Her big, brown eyes mixed with a pout were enough to crack anyone, even Hopper it seemed. 

He sighed and pinched the bridge of his nose. “Fine. But you guys will have to take care of him,” he said. “And we’ll have to set some rules, because he’s not allowed on the couch, for starters.”

They cheered and went to help Steve take in everything else. Hawthorne helped set up once it was decided Rex’s bed would go between their rooms. Once they were good to go, they let Rex sniff around a little as Steve was on his way out. He let them discuss how they were going to divide up their responsibilities, which, of course, took some debate.

It took a while, but eventually the three of them came to an agreement. The general agreement seemed to be that none of that they’d take turns with the different chores involved in taking care of a dog. They were also in agreement that the only thing they really cared about was that they actually had a dog now.

Hawthorne realized this was probably the most normal he’d felt in a long time, and he could definitely get used to it.

Taglist: @bravest-at-heart​ @musicalytrashpanda​ @queenofthehairharrington​

[exkernal]

Fanfic: The Life and Death of Hector Rivera

“Hector, mijo, pay attention!” was the constant refrain of his childhood. By seven, he’d lost count of how many times his abuelita, exasperated, let those words slip from her lips. For a time when he was six or so, he’d become half convinced that that was his full name and that everyone just called him Hector for short.

It wasn’t his fault. He tried to focus on his chores (boring as they were) or his lessons (mostly to avoid Senorita Garcia’s lethally sharp ruler) or mass (though, really, what was the point of paying attention when the priest spoke in Latin?) but his mind kept wandering away from him. He would find himself humming a tune or tapping his fingers against his calves in the perfect beat. He’d think, this could be a song, and then he was gone, creating the story in his mind, stringing the words and sounds together.

He couldn’t help it. It was just the way he was.

He grew up poor, but then, everyone was poor in Santa Cecilia. He didn’t have much family to speak of. He entered the world at a tumultuous time, and each year more and more men in his family disappeared to the revolution, or else the many diseases that ran rampant, snatching children from their families like a monster come to life. That was the fate of his cousins, his siblings, but strangely, it spared him. He’d had his mama once, but he couldn’t remember her. She died in childbirth, not with him, but a stillborn hermanito. This left Hector in the care of his aging, arthritic abuelita, who was forever lamenting Hector’s foolishness but still loved him fiercely, in her way.

Hector was drawn to the Mariachi Plaza. The music pulled him in, the timber of their voices, the sounds of the various instruments working together to create something magical. Was no one else hearing this? Yes, they enjoyed the music—he could see it in the way the townspeople danced, how they sang along—but it didn’t seem to move them like it did him.

It was no wonder, then, that he and Ernesto became friends. Ernesto understood. He was two years Hector’s senior, and came from a loving, doting family that was whole unlike Hector’s tattered one, yet he was the only other person in Santa Cecilia who loved music like Hector.

While the other boys were out in the streets playing football and tag (and Hector still joined them, some of the time, because he was still a boy, after all) he and Ernesto would often head to Mariachi Plaza to hear the music.

“Hey, Ernesto,” Hector said one summer day, as the two of them found shelter from the sun in the shade behind the fish vendor’s cart. “If I tell you something, do you swear you won’t tell anyone?”

“Of course, amigo,” Ernesto replied as he swatted at a particularly pesky gnat.

“I’m going to be a musician when I grow up.”

To his credit, Ernesto didn’t laugh. But he wasn’t enthusiastic either.

“Don’t you need to play an instrument to be a musician?”

“I’ll get an instrument. A guitar.” And already he could see it in his mind: the perfect guitar, bedazzled with diamonds in intricate designs, strapped across his chest.

This time Ernesto did laugh. “Where are you going to get the dinero?”

Both boys were currently wearing threadbare, patched up pants and shoes with worn down soles.

“I’ll find away,” Hector vowed. “Believe me, amigo, I’ll become a musician if it kills me.”

Ernesto pondered it. His voice broke into a smile. “Perhaps we could both be musicians,” he said, “and travel the world.”

“Si, we could go to Guadalajara—”

“And Cuidad de Mexico—”

“And California—”

“And Cuba—”

“And Paris.”

They were both grinning ear to ear.

Hector found his chance when he was nine-years-old.

It was the Day of the Dead. After the visit to the cemetery (always Hector’s least favorite part. His abuelita became so emotional, but Hector couldn’t share her connection to relatives he had never known in life), he’d gone to listening to the performers in the plaza.

“Come on, mijo!” his abuelita called, “it’s been a long day, you need your rest.”

He’d gone to follow, reluctantly, when he crossed paths with a disgruntled singer, who nearly ran into Hector as he made his way to the dumpster.

“Bah! This piece of shit! What good is it?”

He heard the sound of something heavy crashing down. Hector waited until the man had gone, then dashed over towards the dumpster. There, amongst the garbage pile, was a guitar. It was the most beautiful thing Hector had ever seen. Sure, it was covered in trash, and the guitar itself wasn’t in the best condition with its peeling white paint and splintering handle, but it was workable. Fixable, for sure.

He used some tap to fix up the handle. It wasn’t perfect, but it wouldn’t break anytime soon. With a little shoe polish, he was able to cover over the peeling paint and various dirt stains, turning it into black and white designs, including a skull that he was rather proud of.

They didn’t have a teacher. No books to guide them. Hector and Ernesto essentially taught themselves to play through mimicking the sounds they heard, passing the guitar back and forth. It was slow at first. Hector’s fingers calloused and bled, and he messed up the notes more often than not, but he pressed on. He found time to sneak away for practice each day, sometimes with Ernesto and sometimes without. By the time he was twelve, he finally felt semi confident in his abilities.

He left school that year. The family needed him to work to help them get by. He didn’t mind. He could read and write, which was enough for him to put his lyrics to paper. His true education came from the plaza.

He worked a series of odd jobs, never quite sticking to one. His favorite, though, were the occasions that he and Ernesto were able to play at the plaza or the local tavern, and collected a coin or two as tip. Typically, Hector played the guitar and Ernesto sang lead, with Hector occasionally providing back up. Puberty had been kind to Ernesto: he was tall and broad while Hector was a perpetual string bean, with a chiseled, handsome face and dark, soulful eyes. Girls flocked to hear them play, swooning over the dashing, charming Ernesto de la Cruz. Hector wasn’t too hard on the eyes himself; he had his share of admirers, even if Ernesto had twice as many. Not that he cared. The music was what mattered.

In those early years, they stuck to playing old favorites. Folk songs, traditional, humorous little ditties that always got a laugh. Hector became well known for his rendition of “Juanita,” though he only ever played that for the men at the tavern, when he was sure that his abuelita wasn’t around.

He tried his hand at writing his own songs. Those first attempts would embarrass him, slightly, in the years to come. He drew inspiration from the things around him—one particularly memorable sunrise that filled his bedroom in an orange glow, the people that he encountered in Santa Cecilia. This got him in trouble from time to time. On one notable instance when he was fourteen he tried between gasped breaths to explain to Mariana Lopez’s ham-fisted older brothers that “Donkey-Faced Mariana” was about some other girl, one they’d never met before and so definitely couldn’t be related to them.

He was returning home from playing in the plaza, in the autumn of his fourteenth year, when he heard the most beautiful sound. A girl was singing somewhere just ahead of him. He recognized it as “La Llorona.” Each note captured the sheer tragedy and longing of the song, as if the girl had lived a thousand lifetimes, each with a fresh share of sorrows. He needed to find the owner of that voice.

After dashing ahead and turning a corner, he found her, the loveliest girl he’d ever seen. She was tall and slender, with a round, flawless face and black hair tied up in an elegant bun. She carried a basket of laundry in her arms and continued to sing, unaware of her new audience. Hector grinned. Carefully, he slid the guitar into his arms and began to play along.

“La LLorona, la Lloron—argh!” she jumped at the sight of him, dropping the laundry on the dirt road.

“I’m so sorry! Let me help you!” he said, scurrying to collect her now dirty clothes. He felt himself blush, and ducked his face down to hide it.

“What’s the matter with you?” the girl demanded. She was about his age, and clearly not someone to be messed with. “Who do you think you are, sneaking up on people like that?”

“I’m sorry,” he repeated, “I heard you singing and I had to follow. Senorita, you have the most beautiful voice I’ve ever heard.”

She scowled, but it didn’t hide the pinkish tinge that appeared on her cheeks. Hector took that as a good sign. “I know you. You’re that boy that plays in the plaza.”

“Hector,” he said, with a theatrical, and he hoped, charming bow.

She was not amused. “Imelda.”

“You should join me in the plaza, Imelda,” he said eagerly. “A voice like yours needs to be heard.”

“I don’t have time for that nonsense,” Imelda scoffed. “Not when there’s work that needs to be done.”

She sounded harsh, but Hector caught the look that flickered across her eyes. It was wistful, perhaps longing. Hector was half convinced that he already loved the girl.

“If you say so,” he said. “Here, let me carry that for you. It’s the least I can do after scaring you.”

“I wasn’t scared,” she said, but she didn’t protest when he reached for the basket, and let him walk her all the way back to her casa.

He saw Imelda a couple of times a week. They talked about nothing in particular, and after a while, sang together. She had older brothers like poor Marianna Lopez, unlike the hermonos Lopez, Felipe and Oscar were not very intimidating. It balanced out, for Imelda was intimidating enough for her entire family, and could ensure that his intentions were honorable. Not that Hector intended anything less! Ernesto could chase after their female fans all he wanted, but Hector’s heart belonged solely to Imelda.

His abuelita died when he was fifteen. Pneumonia, he thought it was. He buried her with all of the rites of the Roman Catholic Church and made a point of placing her photograph on the ofrenda. Although he ached for her (he even missed her nagging) it caused only minimal change to his life. He was a man now, or close enough. He still worked whatever jobs he could, still played with Ernesto, still courted Imelda. It was a simple life, but he enjoyed every minute of it.

His songwriting improved, too.

“Hector, mi amigo,” Ernesto aid one night, clasping him on the back. “Where do you get your inspiration? ‘Un Poco Loco’ is genius!”

Hector grinned. ‘Un Poco Loco’ had been a smashing success at the tavern that night. In fact, at that very moment, he could hear two drunks stumbling around the street, belting out their own version of the song, which missed half of the words but still got the gist right.

“Ay, Ernesto, I can’t tell you. I don’t want to get in trouble.”

“Come on, you know I wouldn’t—” realization dawned on his friend’s face. “It’s about Imelda, isn’t it?”

Hector tried to keep a straight face, but failed miserably. They broke up into a fit of laughter.

“I don’t understand how you two stay together the way you fight,” Ernesto said. “Mark my words, you won’t last another year!”

“We’ll see.”

It took nearly two years before Hector could finally persuade Imelda to join them on the plaza.

She was uncharacteristically quiet as they walked to the plaza, her skin as white as a ghost.

“It’s normal to have stage fright,” he said. “My first time in front of an audience, I almost threw up on my zapatos.”

“I do not have stage fright,” she said automatically.

“Oh, si, si, of course you don’t,” Hector said. “But what helped my stage fright was loosening up like this.”

He wiggled his arms, shoulders, then neck, exaggerating every moment. “See, querida?”

She laughed. “Hector, you look foolish.”

“Si, mi amor, but I feel wonderful.”

She rolled those gorgeous brown eyes, but she went along with it. Not quite with Hector’s enthusiasm, but she did it all the same.

“Feels better, no?” he smirked, elbowing her in the ribs (lightly, of course). She pushed his hand away, but she was smiling, too.

They never had to worry about stage fright again.

He loved Imelda with his heart and soul, but there was a reason why she inspired ‘Un Poco Loco.’ Their bickering was legendary. Their relationship seemed to swing between periods of blissful happiness and tumultuous fighting. None of their friends could understand it, but Hector knew that’s just how they were.

One such incident occurred when he was sixteen. He found Imelda in the garden behind the house she shared with her older brothers.

“Ay, mi amor! As beautiful as ever—”

He had only a split second to dodge the shoe she aimed his way.

“You idiot!” she cried.

“What was that for?” he asked, more baffled than anything else. Usually the reason behind her anger was clearer.

“Oh, what was that for, he asks,” Imelda said, throwing her hands in the air. “I’m pregnant, estupido.”

Hector’s heart skipped a beat. He must have misheard. There’s no way she could have said what he thought she said. Then came the panic. This can’t be happening, he thought. We’re too young, we’re not ready. How can I support a child? He peered into Imelda’s eyes and saw his own doubt and fears reflected back to him. He wanted to comfort her. Would it really be so bad? They could make it work. And he’d have a proper family—he and Imelda and the child they had made, all together.

“That’s wonderful, mi amor,” he said, and by the time he said it, he was half convinced that he actually meant it.

The night before his impromptu wedding (Imelda was starting to show, but they could still hide it with the right dresses), Hector sat at the tavern, surround by friends and well-wishers.

Ernesto led the toast. “To Hector!” he raised his glass. “It's this crazy bastard’s last night of freedom!”

“To Hector!” the others echoed, clanking their glasses and laughing. Hector felt pleasantly warm, and couldn’t keep the smile from his face.

“Congratulations, Hector, she’s a real beauty,” Diego said.

“Ay, but that temper,” Antonio said, elbowing him in the side. “You can keep her, amigo.”

“Having a wife and family changes everything,” said Elian, the only married man of their group.

“It won’t for me,” Hector said, “I’ll still be out here every night, playing ‘Juanita’ for you bastards.”

As the others laughed, Hector noticed, briefly, the look that came over Ernesto’s face. He couldn’t place it, not exactly, but it was serious, almost grave. Before Hector could dwell on it, the topic changed, and the party switched back to the same boisterous mood as before.

Imelda went into labor two weeks after Hector’s seventeenth birthday. He was banished from the casa by a stern-faced midwife, though that didn’t stop him from making seven attempts to sneak back in. He couldn’t stand to see his wife in such pain, especially when he was powerless to do anything about it. Apparently, she couldn’t stand to see him when in such pain, either, because the last time he tried, she looked him square in his eyes, her face layered with sweat, her black hair askew, and said, “You did this to me, you bastard!” It did not strike Hector as an appropriate time to point out that that technically they did this to her.

So he sat outside of the window (hearing every moan and cry of pain) and strummed his guitar. He played a medley of songs, some traditional and some his own invention, all gentle and soothing. He hoped she’d hear it and know that he was thinking of her.

His daughter was born just before sunset. She was perfect: looked just like her mama with big, soulful eyes and a tuft of black hair. He couldn’t quite believe it. Him, a father. He was the father of a beautiful, healthy, perfect baby girl. They named her Socorro, but everyone called her Coco for short.

If marriage was an adjustment, it was nothing compared with adding a baby to the mix. For the first month and a half, no one slept.

Hector loved his daughter dearly, but he also missed his sleep.

It was particularly bad one night when Coco was about a month old. He and Imelda sat up in their tiny bedroom, red eyed and so exhausted that they could barely think. Nothing could soothe the screaming baby, not rocking her, not changing her, not feeding her.

“Ay Dios mio,” Imelda groaned. “Go to sleep, mija, por favor.”

Hector, who had been rocking the wailing child in his arms, met Imelda’s eyes.

“Hey, Imelda,” he said, then motioned with his arms as if to mimic throwing the baby out of the window.

Imelda looked a second away from scolding him, but then her face crumpled into laughter. Hector joined in. Laughter felt so good to his weary body.

“Let me try something,” he said. He began to sing, “Oh mija please go to sleep/so mama and papa can sleep/because if you don’t go to sleep/ than mama will claw out papa’s eyes.”

Imelda snorted.

It didn’t work instantly, but after a few more minutes of adding nonsense versus, Coco’s eyelids grew heavy, and after nestling against Hector’s chest, she finally succumbed to sleep.

Hector never felt so proud in his life.

“The lyrics were terrible,” Imelda commented, “but the melody was sweet.”

She was right. He had something there, if he could just fix the words.

[slugmanslime]

Coming Undone (Ch. 3)

As previously mentioned, this is a re-write of Cant Get Enough, all leading up to the final chapter, soon to be posted! If you’ve read the original story, you might be able to tell where I changed or edited things– hopefully for the better! My betas have told me that the pace and flow is much improved! 

You can also find all the chapters of this story and more on my AO3 and FF.net accounts ^~^

Chapter Three: Cut Your Losses

Pairings: past!Son Goku/ChiChi, Piccolo/ChiChi Warnings: Mentions of MC Death, Male/Female Violence, Blood Mention, Things are Heating Up ™, Faint DubCon Fic Type: Multi-Chapter 3 /4 Word Count: 2,647

She wrapped her grubby fingers around his wrist, holding his hand in place as if she didn’t want her episode to drive him away as she fought for control over her subsiding giggles. Once in control again, ChiChi shot him an apologetic look, her lips still crooked upwards as she took in the bafflement etched into his features.

Slowly, she disentangled his fingers from her hair, and his stomach dropped. This was it, this was going to be round two. When she withdrew, leaving his skin cooler than normal, she was still smirking but at least looked abashed, brushing loose strands of hair from her face. By the time ChiChi made direct eye contact with him, the despair she had been fighting earlier had lessened but was still ever present. Piccolo’s bold display of physical comfort left her simultaneously yearning for more and disgusted with herself. She was still married!… Wasn’t she?

“Goodness gracious, Piccolo… I would hope that ain’t how you comfort all of yer friends…” Chichi teased him, hoping to mask her own discomfort and unease with the turn that the night had taken. He responded by flashing his fangs, a sneer lingering on his face as he dragged a clawed appendage over the blood tracks from his busted lip.

A bloody gob of spit landed near her right, a back-handed affront that needed no explanation. “I don’t have any friends to comfort. Besides, I just slipped, accidents happen.” That was a total lie, and they both knew it, but the fact that she was willing to injure his pride to salvage hers wasn’t worth the argument it would erupt into.

“You… slipped? Piccolo, don’t be childish.”

“Me? The childish one? Says the woman who can’t have a rational talk about emotions without bashing someone’s head in. Goten can discuss his feelings better than you can.” With a flurry of fabric, Piccolo towers over her, casting a bleaker darkness over the spot in which she knelt with his broad shoulders. That youthful malcontent ChiChi had noted earlier in the evening was back with a vengeance, and it suddenly dawned on her just what it was Piccolo was doing.

When was the last time he had engaged in a meaningful conversation with anyone about emotions? How much practice did he have in exerting empathy or sympathy for others? This process was most likely just as awkward and painful for him as it was for her, and here she was, riling him up like a hunting dog on the scent of game. His inexperience was the ham hock on the cutting block, and she held the cleaver—which was how she usually liked it, but somehow, right now, it felt… wrong, almost rude. She had been awful to him tonight, the only person who she could count on consistently to look after not only her family but herself included. Oh Kami… ChiChi wilted under the weight of her own thoughts, her doubts and fears swirling inside her mind like a hurricane. There was no way she could apologize now, the damage had been done.

For a moment, the harsh, brooding Namekian that had practically adopted her sons and trained them, guided them, had opened himself up to her. Piccolo had been vulnerable with her for a split second, and ChiChi stomped all over him. Not only did she just rebuff his attempts at being an outlet for her internalized agony and self-depreciating loneliness, but he was… openly affectionate. It made her chest constrict painfully, thinking of how Goku rarely kissed her, or held her. She knew he loved her when it counted—she had two beautiful sons thanks to him—but to be around for them, and to give her company when she needed it most? She had Piccolo to thank for that. ChiChi felt sick.

A cold sweat broke out on her skin, dewing in the chilled night air. Her epiphany ran through her mind lightning quick, although it felt like it took her ages to connect the dots. Disdain fell away in the face of mortification, and ChiChi blinked, wringing her hands abashedly as she searched for the right words. “Look, Piccolo, I… I appreciate what yer doin’ here and all, but I…”

“You what, ChiChi? I refuse to let myself be embarrassed here. If you lie, I can lie too. You don’t need any help? Then I slipped.” With every syllable his voice slipped closer and closer to a hiss, arms wrapped tightly across his chest. After a moment of clambering, ChiChi stood as well, fists clenched at her sides while she floundered for an appropriate response that didn’t involve an outright apology.

“You got me tah admit that I was scared, at least! Whadya you want, a medal or something?” Angry fists splayed out into exasperated jazz hands as ChiChi threw out her arms, expectant for some kind of validation for such a simple act. After a brief moment, her posture slumped, arms falling back to her side once more.

Shining fangs peeked out from Piccolo’s scoff, resentment burning like bile in the back of his throat; this wasn’t his ChiChi, pathetic and shaken. His ChiChi was strong, determined, kind and loving and above all understanding. She was the stubborn current guiding the people she loved in the right direction even when they tried to stray. Now here she was, floundering in the spray, unable to determine up from down.

“You shouldn’t have allowed it to get this bad, ChiChi. Look at you.” A single, thick finger curls under her dimpled chin, tilting her face upwards. Her brow was puckered, her embarrassed frown out of place on her expression; she chewed her lip as he spoke, nervous about his proximity. “You’re gonna let Goku make you grey before your prime, and he’s been buried for years now. Isn’t it time you let him be in peace?”

Of course, at the mention of her deceased husband, a light flickered on in her eyes, her lips drawing up into something feral; Piccolo set off yet another landmine. In the back of his mind he wondered when the day will come that he managed to catch a break from these Sons. They had too many damn emotions for him to deal with and get out alive.

Any other thoughts he could have had are drawn short as hands, tiny compared to his own, shoved at his diaphragm; not chest, exactly, ChiChi wasn’t quite tall enough, but her palms jammed into the space right below his ribcage once, then twice, and thrice with increasing force. Another gust of warm summer wind rustled through the clearing, pushing errant wisps of long hair into both of their faces as she glared up at him, hands still splayed on his midsection while her chest heaved.

The moon had reached its crescendo in the sky while the pair drug on their stare down, both unwilling to move a muscle let alone blink. ChiChi’s palms were pinpricks of warmth against the cool, rough fabric of Piccolo’s gi, digits twitching every few seconds as she battled against pulling away. Toads bellowed in the distance, their croaking mimicking the rhythm of her heartbeat. Whether it meant he won or lost, Piccolo was the first to move; one massive hand snaked atop both of her own, effectively pinning her in place. Her stunned and mildly offended expression was enough to crack his hard veneer, a smirk quirking on his lips, before his fingers curled around her hands and he pulled upwards. ChiChi, unsuspecting of such callous behavior, was yanked against his chest abruptly, a startled noise spilling from her lips crossly.

“Now jus’ what do you think yer doin’? If you want to fight, then let me go and hit me like a real—” Piccolo used his grip on her hands to jostle her, the shake he gave her wiggling her down to her toes and summarily shutting her up for a moment.

“When are you going to let go, ChiChi? Goku did what he could with his life, and now it’s your turn. You get to make your own decisions, and live your own life how you want to.”

His grip is bordering on bruising, his aim not to hurt so much as to get her attention, and while ChiChi understood, she didn’t have to like it. She writhed in his grip, twisting this way and that as she groused at him. “I know that! Why won’t yah let this go? Why does it bother you so badly?” It was kind of amusing, watching her wiggle and fuss in his grip, like a snake in the talons of a falcon. What wasn’t so amusing is when ChiChi kicked him in his poor, unguarded shin with all her might.

Piccolo uttered a guttural growl and released his grip on her almost immediately, shoving her away with a fraction of the power he actually possessed, yanking up his leg to hold the offended calf. ChiChi hit the ground with a soft ‘oof’, catching herself before she sprawled on the ground and sitting on her rump, fingers spread out to her sides as they pressed into the wet dirt.

When the line shifted from an argument back to the fight was unclear, but aggression was mounting, tension crackling in the air. Piccolo stooped with a whirl of his cape to crouch atop the smaller woman, soaking the knees of his pants in dewy patch of grass they were flopped on. His broad chest blocked out any watery moonlight that could have allowed her a better view, and yet, the darkness where his eyes would be was all she could focus on. A heavy white drape formed around the duo, Piccolo’s cape creating a cocoon and trapping their simmering emotions. ChiChi wasn’t going to take that laying down of course, and wriggled beneath him, shoving at his chest and kicking her legs with little snarls and stinging curses.

His agitation mounting, Piccolo fisted a hand in her hair, not pulling enough to hurt her but definitely tugging it enough to put them face to face.

He quietly observed her writhing beneath him, pawing at his chest, fingers scrabbling in the fabric of his gi while her eyes squeezed shut; he knew that after their earlier fight, she was going to wear herself out sooner or later and well… he liked the view. It was an out of body ordeal, something he would never admit to of course; there was just something so intoxicating about the expressions she made, the breathy rasping groans she released into the space between them, her hand’s frantic search for purchase against his skin.

“ChiChi…” Piccolo’s usual gravelly baritone was an uneven whisper, stunning his own ears. His grip slacked fractionally, enough for his captive to open those stunning, flaming eyes and glare up at him with enough fury to set a weaker man ablaze. Of course, he would deny the open way he gazed down at her, soaking in every minute detail of her face, glowing with anger and a youth he remembered from so long ago.

What Piccolo couldn’t deny was the way his lips felt pressed against hers. Anxious and harsh, there was no finesse to the way he mashed their mouths together, breathing harshly through his nose. And it was the last thing ChiChi was wanting or expecting at that very second.

Calloused hands shoved at his face, blunt nails digging into his cheeks, but they found no purchase against the residual spit and blood coating his cheeks. Something akin to an enraged howl bubbled in her throat and spilled hotly against his lips. It did not serve its intended purpose to dissuade the dogged Namekian; instead, it elicited a much fiercer growl from him, reverberating in the space between them. Heat washed over her body, lighting all her senses on fire—her scalp was aching, lips and skin tingling, hands sweating as they balled into the Piccolo’s gi… and pulled him closer.

Stunned by her sudden attitude adjustment, Piccolo’s lips retreated from hers by a hair, their shared panting mingling in the space left between. There was no light, no way to see, but he didn’t need light to know exactly how she looked, he could feel it. Their noses, one small and blunt, the other large and curved at the tip, skimmed each other, the unconscious trembling caused by the adrenaline that had flooded their systems going by unnoticed.

“I spent my life waiting on him… Now he ain’t comin’ back.” If not for his incredible hearing, Piccolo would have missed her whispered confession. Her fists were clenching and unclenching in his gi, pulling the fabric taut across his back every so often. “It wasn’t supposed to be like this…”

“As if you could control anything, ChiChi. This isn’t your fault.” Piccolo sent a silent thanks to Kami for the brief swell of compassion he felt. Feather-light and nervous, wide, flat lips brushed against plump, chapped ones—more of a silent query than the brutish demand he exerted earlier. ChiChi responded with a peck, a press of lips followed by a retreat. She was being… shy? After everything that just happened?

“Piccolo, you never answered me. What are you doin’?”

“You said you were lonely. I’m… I’m proving you wrong.” That was a smaller truth, one he felt comfortable admitting. Of course, it felt like his chest was going to explode, but how was he supposed to tell her that if he didn’t kiss her he would combust? If he ended up making something awkward, or if he said something callous, he would just have to deal with it. “Being the mate of a Saiyan has worn you down to this pitiful state. But I’ve known you long enough to be sure that this isn’t who you are.” Years had come and gone, battles and wounds, heartache and happiness and family, and Piccolo had always been there, an unwilling fixture in ChiChi’s life since the day Son Goku asked her to be his wife.

“You think yah know me so well, don’t yah?” Her nose drew up in a scrunch, he could feel her skin sliding against his own. In the darkness, his mouth drew up into an rare genuine smile—one that she couldn’t possibly see.

“I’d say so. The ChiChi I know is a fighter—I thought I saw her earlier when you were handing my ass to me.”

ChiChi scoffed. “Of course, I’m still a fighter! The rascals I hang around keep me on my toes, no matter how much I want a simple life.” Her grip relaxed, releasing the fabric and instead she clasped her hands around his neck, arms hanging limp. She wondered if he could tell that her glare lacked any heat. Who was he to assume that just because she was down on her luck that she’d lost herself?

“Oh yeah?” Was he… was he laughing at her? She might not have been able to see him, but there was a kind of humor in his voice that was unmistakable—she heard it in Gohan’s all the time. Just when she managed to get her heart rate back under control, it stumbled inside her chest thinking of Piccolo’s devilish toothy smile—the one he liked to hide but she was so fond of. Fumbling as it was, when he spoke again, ChiChi’s heart did a faceplant.

“I think you miss the adventure sometimes, even with your simple life. Maybe I can help you with that?”

A pert, pink tongue darted out to wet her lips before she responded. “And just how do yah plan on doin’ that?”

Piccolo hummed thoughtfully, sending shivers of gooseflesh up her spine as he nosed the shell of her ear. “Why don’t I start by showing you what it feels like to not be lonely?”

[bombshellsandbluebells]

Avengers Fic: The Man Who Knew Everything

A canon-divergent Endgame fic I wrote before Captain Marvel and Endgame were written that has been totally jossed now.

Fandom: Avengers Characters: Nick Fury, Tony Stark, Carol Danvers, Phil Coulson Relationships: Nick Fury & Tony Stark Description: A man visits Nick Fury in 1990 and tells him about the future. AKA Nick Fury already knew everything that was going to happen in the MCU.

(read on ao3)

1990

“So you planning to stick around for a bit?” Nick asks, after it’s all over. He’s sitting on the edge of a building, Carol beside him. Heat radiates from her even like this, casual and exhausted and eating a sandwich from the bodega below them. It’s like sitting inches from a roaring fire. Nick has to shrug out of his jacket, feeling sweat beading on his forehead despite the heavy chill in the New York fall air.

He’s also tired and hungry, probably looking just as worse for wear as her, and his mind is still reeling. Aliens. Shapeshifting aliens.

It’s strange to realize that the general public will never know. Their entire existence had been threatened and saved in the span of a week by a handful of individuals who will fade into the shadows of history, nameless and unknown.

He remembers his first day at SHIELD. He’d been young and eager, seated amongst a room of equally green recruits, hanging onto Director Carter’s every word as she’d told them, “If you’re looking for fame or recognition, you will not find yourself satisfied here. What we do is very important; we are the last line of defense between the world and the unusual forces that would threaten it. But it must remain unknown.”

It had been the secrecy that had rankled him. When he’d signed on he’d been prepared to give up his name to history; he just hadn’t realized what else he’d been signing away with it. A life. Friends and family.

When it was just stopping a few lingering HYDRA cells or scientists too smart and dangerous for their own good, that hadn’t felt like a worthy sacrifice to him. For months he’d been nibbling on the idea of turning in his badge and walking back into the world an honest and open man, and the more he’d chewed on it, the sweeter it had tasted.

But then an alien crash landed into his life, and he’d helped saved the world.

The thought of leaving tastes just a little less sweet. He's not sure he'd even be able to sleep at night, knowing what he knows now.

“Hmm?” Carol hums, cheeks bulging with ham and salami and whatever the hell else she had stuffed in her overpacked sandwich. There’s mustard on her cheek. Nick grins at the sight of it. The defender of Earth, everyone.

“You gonna stay?” he repeats. “Get to know your home planet again?”

Carol pauses. She swallows, scrubs her hand over her mouth, managing to completely miss the mustard, then grins back at him. “Nah. It doesn’t even really feel like home anymore. And there’s still so much in space I want to see. I always kind of stuck with the Kree, but there’s a whole galaxy out there.” She looks up into the sky. It’s getting late, and the sun is beginning to sink below the line of skyscrapers, giving way to what would be the nighttime stars if they were anywhere but New York. When she speaks again, her voice is soft, almost reverent. “I want to see all of it.”

The disappointment that settles in Nick’s gut is heavier than he expected it to be. He'll miss her. “Well, if you ever come back to visit, feel free to find me. I’ll take you to the best burger joint in the city.”

Carol smiles at him, less the sharp, reckless grin she usually wears, and instead something softer. Sincere. “You have my number, Mr. Agent Man. Give me a call if you ever need me.”

They finish their sandwiches in silence. Afterwards, Carol takes off into the sky, growing smaller and smaller until she looks like nothing but a far-away shooting star half-hidden by the city lights. Nick watches until she disappears completely. And then he heads home.

----

There’s a footprint, faint but definitely new, on the floor of Nick’s apartment. The entry is too clean to be common thief; there's no sign of force, no broken lock. Nothing but the floor looks touched.

Silently, he draws his gun and creeps further into the house.

“Nick Fury,” a male voice rings out, and he spins, his gun leading the movement towards the corner where the shape of a man sits in the shadows. There’s some kind of light hovering where his chest should be, bathing his face in a dim, blue glow. It’s not much, but with it Nick can make out a goatee and enough of the face to know with certainty he's never before seen this man.

A lamp flicks on. Nick squints into the sudden light. The intruder is older than he is, maybe in his 50s, though it’s hard to say what’s actually age and what’s stress. Cheekbones protrude from a gaunt face drawn with wrinkles and discolored by a Jackson Pollock-like smattering of bruises. The eyes sunken into his tired face are brown and dark and remind Nick of the pictures he's seen of soldiers returning from war, traumatized and broken.

The light in his chest turns out to be just that – something electrical and glowing with no clear purpose, stuck straight in the middle of his sternum. The paranoia that SHIELD helped foster yells weapon, and Nick coils tighter.

“Who the hell are you?” he demands. It’s impossible to determine if the man is Skrull or human without Carol here to tell him, but he knows once he shoots it, the color of the blood will give him his answer.

The man hardly spares the gun a second glance. His sits up, leaning forward with his elbows on his knees and his hands clasped together, a barely noticeable line of tension running through his body.

“I’m here to talk to you about the Avengers Initiative.” The words are heavy as they settle into the air. Nick can feel their importance.

He digests them, waits for them to make some sort of sense. They don’t. “What they hell is that?”

The man’s grave manner shatters. He bursts into laughter, the deep kind that leaves your stomach aching afterwards, but there’s a sharp edge to it that makes Nick weary.

“Look, I’ve had a bit of a trying week, and all I want to do is go to bed. So if you could explain why the fuck you’re in my apartment, I would really appreciate it.”

“Sorry, sorry,” the man gasps out, struggling to reign in his laughter. “Inside joke. You’ll get it in about 20 years.”

“You have five seconds to tell me who the hell you are,” Nick barks.

“Alright, alright.” The man raises his hands in surrender, smothering the laughter, though his grin remains. “My name is Tony Stark.”

“Howard’s kid?” Nick clarifies, knowing it’s impossible even as he asks. He knows Tony Stark. It’s hard not to, with the way the kid ends up in the tabloids for something or other every week or so. Even if he didn’t pay attention to the self-destructive scandals of a spoiled rich kid, it was hard to work for SHIELD and not know the name Stark. Howard might have passed most of the day-to-day operations off to Carter a couple years ago, but he’s still a big name at SHIELD, and while Nick guesses his family doesn’t know about his secret side project, SHIELD definitely knows about Howard’s family.

Which means it’s impossible for Nick to not know that Tony Stark is currently twenty years old, baby-faced and still clean shaven and certainly not the man sitting before him – even if they do, he’ll admit, share a striking resemblance.

The man’s mouth quirks, sharp against the earlier amusement like a dissonant cord. “Yeah, Howard’s kid. Give or take thirty years.”

Nick’s fingers twitch on the trigger when the man makes a move for his pocket, and its only years and years of discipline and training that keep him from shooting. There’s a look in the man’s eyes like he knows it; he holds his left hand up and open in surrender while his right pulls something free of his pocket, then opens his hand, palm facing upward, to reveal a small, green stone that glows and hovers, suspended in midair, inches above the skin of his palm.

An overwhelming want fills Nick the minute he sees it – a pull deep in his gut that begs him closer, to reach out and take it, whispering promises of fixing every mistake and regret he’s ever had. Wouldn’t you like the chance to do things over? He feels the offer more than he actually hears the words, tickling along his consciousness and settling into his very being.

“This is called an Infinity Stone.” The man’s voice breaks Nick’s trance. He looks down at the stone in his hand as he talks, his expression curdling like milk in the hot sun, festering with hatred. “There’s six of them, all controlling different things, but all very, very powerful. This bad boy’s called the Time Stone. I think you can probably figure out what I used it to do.”

Even as his mind connects the dots, Nick wants to deny it. One earth-shattering revelation in a week is plenty; he’s not quite prepared to tackle the reality of time travel just yet, even as the Stone itself promises him that what Tony says is true. There’s no way to fake that unnatural knowledge that had filled his thoughts – or that overwhelming desire.

He wants a drink.

The gun seems useless now; it hadn’t worked as a threat and he’s starting to think it probably isn’t one, not to a guy holding something as powerful and reality shattering as that stone. Nick pockets it as he heads towards the kitchen and unearths a half-empty bottle of cheap whiskey from one of his cabinets. “You want some?” he asks Tony, gesturing towards him with the bottle.

Tony flinches, though he hides it pretty well. “No thanks,” he says, tone deceptively light. “Had to go cold turkey a couple months ago. Not ready to pick the habit back up.”

Nick takes that as an excuse to forgo a glass. He brings only the bottle back with him as he reenters the living room, sinking into the couch across from Tony and taking a long sip. Tony’s eyes follow the movement like a starving man, before he rubs his free hand roughly over his dirty face and glances away.

“Alright,” Nick says after the whiskey makes its way down. “Explain.”

Tony shakes his head slightly and turns back to face him. For a minute, he doesn’t seem to know where to start, lost for words in a way Nick guesses he rarely is. “The Avengers,” he says finally. “It’s a team you put together – or,” he pauses, eyes widening. His lips twist in a wry grin. “Well, that I put together, I guess. Huh. How about that.”

“Of SHIELD agents?”

“Some. Mostly just really powerful people. I think the new term is metahumans, but I haven’t really been paying attention to the news lately.”

“Like Carol?”

“No, I guess she was in space the first time around. We probably could have used her, though.” Tony moves the Stone back into his pocket; as it disappears, so does the alien throb of desire, and Nick feels his body automatically relax, tension he didn’t realize was even there fading away.

Tony pulls something new from his pocket and tosses it across the room, where Nick catches it easily and turns it in his hands. It’s not much larger than the stone, slim and rectangular and silver. “What’s this?”

“Files. Everything you need to know about all of us – and what’s coming.”

“No, I mean, what the hell is this?” He holds it up for emphasis as he asks.

Tony’s face falls; then he rolls his eyes towards the ceiling and expels a deep, resigned sigh. “Oh fuck, it’s 1990. I forgot. What, you guys still using floppy disks?” He doesn’t give Nick a chance to answer before he’s waving his hand dismissively and saying, “It’s something you plug into a computer and store information on. Hold onto it until the technology catches up. I guess I’ll just give you the run-down.”

And he does. While Nick slowly works his way through the bottle, Tony tells him about two agents he hasn’t heard of but surely will soon enough, of a graduate student who isn’t currently of concern but will be, and of another alien powerhouse like Carol who Nick won’t need to seek out, but will show up just when he’s needed.

“And Captain America,” Tony adds at last, something ugly twisting in his face even as he tries to keep up a calm façade.

“They give the name to someone else?” Nick asks. That shouldn’t be the most shocking thing he’s heard tonight, but somehow it’s the piece he has the hardest time accepting. From what he’s gathered, the Captain was something like a sweetheart for Carter back in the day, and he can’t imagine her letting anyone else run around in the uniform. Maybe that means Carter’s dead by then.

“No. The original model.”

Nick stares at him. “You go back in time and pick him up, too?”

Tony snorts. “No, this one wasn’t magic. Just good old-fashioned science. Well, weird super soldier science, but still science. Which reminds me.” He grabs a discarded phone bill sitting on the coffee table and a pen and jots down a series of numbers before sliding it over towards Nick. They look like coordinates.

“You’re going to want SHIELD to start digging there. Straight down until you find him.”

Nick lets the complete ridiculousness of that go for a minute to focus on something else. “I don’t have that kind of authority.”

Tony quirks an eyebrow, surprised. “Really? Not top dog yet?”

“I was planning to quit, actually.”

Tony scoffs. “Well, new plan then. Get to a position where you do have that authority and then get SHIELD to dig up a sleeping super soldier. Much as I hate to say it, we’re gonna need him.”

“Last week I was thinking my work at SHIELD was pointless. Then an alien invasion happened and changed my mind. Now I got a guy from the future telling me to become director. Kind of feels like the universe is telling me something.”

“Yeah, it’s saying don’t quit,” Tony snarks. Then he tilts his head. “Wait, you dealt with an alien invasion before New York, and I’m just finding out about it now? I know you’re the king of secrets, but that seems important to know.”

“How? What is all this for? What are the Avengers for?”

“For when humanity needed them most to fight the battles that they never could,” Tony quips, the words dull as if he’s repeating something. He’s rolling his eyes even as he says it, and Nick thinks it kind of odd he seems so dismissive of the Avengers team even as he’s going to such great lengths to ensure its creation. “But mostly – there’s something big coming. I don’t know how big this last alien invasion was, but this is bigger. Universe-ending kind of big. The first wave comes in 2012, and we manage to push it back, miraculously. Sort of a dues ex machina situation. I fly a nuke into a wormhole.” And then he shrugs, casually, like that isn’t a big deal, even as his knuckles turn white where they’re gripping the arms of his seat. “Which reminds me – when you hear about the nuke, tell me first.”

“Sure,” Nick agrees, like that means anything to him. “The second wave?” he prompts.

“2018. We – “ Tony’s voice falters. He coughs to clear it. A hand has moved up to the device on his chest, tapping out a nervous rhythm on the casing absentmindedly. He glances away from Nick, into the empty air, where those haunted eyes catch on something miles away. “We don’t manage to push it back.”

“So you’re here to stop it. To change things.”

“Not quite,” Tony admits. “I have it on good authority we only get one shot at this, and something he said makes me think it had to happen this way first. And besides, it’s kind of in the name, isn’t it? We don’t stop things.” His mouth quirks in a humorless grin. “We avenge them.”

“So what’s that mean?” Nick asks, feeling frustration burn in his throat harder than the whiskey. He doesn’t want to be a part of helping the apocalypse happen if there’s a chance to stop it. Was that not what that Stone had promised Tony to bring him here? “You’re playing damage control?”

“It means we need the right players in position to go through the worst possible ending to get to the best,” Tony says, like that makes any more sense of it. “I don’t think we’re supposed to stop Thanos the first time. Hell, I don’t even think we can, even if we start trying to track him down now. We need to get him after he thinks he’s won – when he thinks he’s in the clear. And to do that, we need the Avengers. We need them assembled.” He pauses. His mouth twitches in an almost-grin. “Together.”

The word hangs heavy. There’s a power to it that Nick isn’t privy to – something that hasn’t happened yet.

And then Tony blinks out of his reverie and looks up at him. “And that’s up to you. You’re the one bringing all the pieces together so that years later, we can fix this mess.”

Nick doesn’t believe in fate. He doesn’t believe in omnipotent beings pulling the strings, directing humanity where to go. And yet, here he is, being singled out by fate with the task of carrying out events that need to happen so that one day humanity will be safe. The whiskey churns uneasy in his stomach.

It’s too much. How does he shoulder the responsibility of ensuring the future? What kind of man is the Nick Fury that Tony knows?

“What about you?” he asks, as it dawns on him the other man never said. “How are you involved in all this?”

Tony snorts a sort of bitter laugh. He resumes his tapping on the machinery in his chest. “I’m too involved. I think I probably helped it along in a few ways. Which is why I’m helping put it right again.” He seems to realize that isn’t an answer when he sees Nick’s face and hurries to add, “I’m one of the team. The first one outside of SHIELD that you came to about all this.”

“When?”

“Definitely not now. I don’t even remember what I was doing in 1990, but I know it involved a lot of booze and a lot of coke, and if you came to me talking about superheroes and aliens, I’d probably just think someone laced my shit with acid. No, in a little over a decade I’m going to go to Afghanistan,” he falters on the word, before pushing forward, “and I’m going to go missing for a while. When I get back – that’s when you come to me. Got it?”

Nick wants to argue. Against all of this – fate and time travel and promises that seem unfounded. Wants to call Tony a madman and force him from his apartment and pretend none of this ever happened. Kind of still wants to shoot him just to make sure he doesn’t bleed green. But he knows he’ll listen. He’s always been an over-prepared paranoid bastard. Somehow, knowing what’s coming, even if it sounds awful, is almost a relief. He can feel the thing Tony gave him burning a hole in his pocket and wonders how many years it will be until he can open it and get the full story.

“Sure, Stark,” he says, saluting him with the whiskey bottle.

Tony grins. A little bit of the haunted look has gone, as if with Nick to help shoulder the knowledge of what’s coming, it’s grown a little lighter for him. “Well, guess that’s goodbye for now. See you in the future, Nick.”

And just like that, he’s gone.

---

2008

Nick does keep his promise.

All of them. He climbs the ranks at SHILED until he’s director and starts a dig in the Antarctic for a dead man. When the technology catches up, he pulls out the USB drive and devours the information inside of it, reading the profiles of the scientist who has only just recently popped up on SHIELD’s radar, the god that hasn’t seen Earth in hundreds of years, and the two agents he’s been keeping an eye on.

And when Tony Stark comes home from a three-month stint in Afghanistan, he sends one of his most trusted agents to check the situation out. Coulson comes back with a detailed report of a mechanized, flying armor suit, one he’d already known the name of long before the general public settled on Iron Man and Tony himself paraded it on live television, and Nick knows it’s time to pay the man a visit himself.

He feels almost giddy as he breaks into Stark’s place, taking a seat in the dark house after dismantling JARVIS and settling in to wait.

He can’t deny that he’s excited to see Tony face to face again, because despite all the work he’s been doing the past 18 years, meeting Tony for the first time – or second, he supposes, depending on who you ask – feels like the first real step in all of this, this great, grand plan of Cosmic design he’s somehow become a key player in. This is where everything starts.

Tony won’t know him, of course, but seeing Tony and that light in his chest will make all of this truly real in a way it hasn’t been before.

And if Nick’s being truly honest with himself, he’s excited to be the one in on the joke this time.

In fact, he already knows what he's going to say.

--

2010

Tony could have warned him that his past self would have absolutely zero interest in helping Nick form the Avengers. Somehow he thinks not warning him, and forcing him to keep chasing Tony like an unwanted telemarketer, might have been intentional. Maybe Tony was trying to get him back for hounding him in the first place. Or for sending in Natasha to write a report on him that Nick knows he’ll just ignore anyways. Or even just to mess with him for the hell of it, because that seems like his style.

Whatever the reason, Nick dutifully plays his role, following Tony to the donut shop and trying not to get a kick out of how adamant the man is that he’ll never join Nick’s team. This younger Tony – like the one he met in 2008 right after the Iron Monger mess – is different than the one he met in the past. It’s not just that he’s younger, but even with the fresh trauma of Afghanistan or the pain of literally dying, he seems less burdened than the battle-worn, haunted man that sat across from him and told him about the end of the world.

It’s sickening to know that the man across from him hasn’t even begun to face all the horrors he will in his lifetime, even though he thinks he has. It’s a difficult secret to swallow down, even if he knows he must.

He can’t tell Tony the future. There’s no way that Tony would let things play out the way they do if he knew, and the Tony that had met him in the past had been certain they must. But what he can do is make sure the man stays alive – and not just out of a sense of obligation for the fate of the world. Damn the man, but his terrible sense of humor is growing on him.

It isn’t hard to find Howard’s old research or the boxes he left for Tony to inherit one day. SHIELD never threw them away after his death, and Nick��s been keeping a close eye on them since he became director. So he hands them over to their rightful owner and lets Tony do the rest, just as he knows he will.

Tony never thanks him for the help. Not in words, at least. But a few weeks after the Vanko incident gets cleaned up, Nick finds a box of donuts on his desk.

---

2012

It’s reassuring to know from the start that the Avengers Initiative does work – eventually. Nick holds onto that reminder as he watches them spend their first few hours together bickering like children, alternating between yelling at each other and yelling at him. And if it takes a bit of manipulation and a pack of bloody cards to help them along, then so be it. He’s never claimed to be above manipulation if it works. And it does work.

He might not be an honest man, but he keeps his promises. When the WSC launches a missile at New York City, Nick tells Stark first.

And even as he knows the man will live, he hangs his head in defeat. Meeting Stark was the beginning. But this moment – as Stark flies a missile straight into Thanos’s neighborhood – this is the beginning of the end.

---

2019

The Avengers compound feels like a tomb. It has for the past two years, actually, ever since one document drew up sides and shattered the team from within – but the lingering ghosts of the dead feel stronger now, coating everything. The air inside feels thick and full of dust; Tony feels it in his throat when he breathes, though he’s checked the air filtration systems five times already and knows it’s only in his head.

The remaining Avengers – the original six, actually, which feels like a bad joke – keep mostly to themselves in far corners of the place, old wounds still raw and unbearable even in the face of such tragedy. After finding a welcoming team on the lawn when he came back to Earth, Tony has done his best to avoid them, hiding himself mostly in a random room that hadn’t yet been transformed into anything, wasting his days away repeating the battle in his head and trying not to think of Peter.

He can’t stomach his lab, because the pieces of Iron Man littering the place only serve as a reminder that for all the worrying and panicking he’s done for six years, he still didn’t do enough.

But the empty room is a neutral space. There are no items left from missing teammates. No reminders of the way they first broke apart over two years ago. No sign of the symbol that had once meant his redemption and now only means his failure. Just a blank slate, perfect for wasting away in.

He’s in the unused room when he gets a knock on the door, and he’s so surprised that someone is actually seeking him out that he calls for them to enter before he has time to regret it. He’s expecting Rhodey or Bruce.

He isn’t expecting a ghost.

“Long time no see,” Coulson says easily, in that calm manner he’d always had, while Tony tries to process how a man who’s been dead for five years manages to still look so unruffled.

He’s too tired to even register the betrayal. It slides right off of him, as if he’s built up an immunity with enough exposure. “You’re looking good for a dead man,” he says finally.

“I’m sorry,” Coulson says as he walks closer. And damn it all, he actually looks like he means it. “I wanted to tell you, but I couldn’t.”

“What have you been doing since you’ve died, then? Kicking it on a beach somewhere? Taking up yoga? That suit sure doesn’t scream retirement.”

Coulson smiles. Tony’s surprised to realize just how much he’s missed him. Life has taken so much away; it’s a pleasant change for it to give him something back. “Not quite. I’ve been forming my own team. Well, I had been before Thanos.”

The implication is clear.

“Did they –?” He can’t bring himself to finish the sentence. As if he could just pretend it hadn’t happened if he doesn’t say it. It’s an uncharacteristic form of willing naivety, but one he’s been clinging to lately.

Coulson’s smile doesn’t move, but it doesn’t hide the pain in his eyes. “All but two of us. I’m hoping we can get them back.”

Tony scoffs. When he laughs, it tears at his throat. You had too much faith in us, he wants to say. The Avengers was always a tragedy in the making.

Coulson pulls a letter from his jacket pocket. Tony sees his name written on it, and while the handwriting looks familiar, he can’t quite place it. “It’s a bit funny,” Coulson says, looking down at the letter. “After SHIELD was dismantled and Fury stepped down, he gave me this. Told me to hold onto it and give it to you after the end of the world happened. It’s almost like he knew what would happen.”

Tony scoffs. “Well, he always acted like he was one step ahead of everyone.”

“Maybe he was,” Coulson says. And he holds the letter out for him to take.

Tony doesn’t want to admit that he’s afraid to. What parting words could Nick Fury have for him? Perhaps it’s the same words Tony hears every night in his dreams: why didn't you do more?

He takes the letter. When he opens it, a stone he never thought he’d see again rolls into his lap, and Fury’s words stare back at him.

Tony,  

Things had to happen this way.

When the time comes, use it. 1990. Bring this.

---

After the end of the End of the World

In the aftermath, a worn and weary soldier in a battered suit of armor sits beside a tired, old man. For a moment, they're both content to sit in silence, watching a hundred tearful reunions play out in front of them.

Finally, the tired, old man speaks. “I ever tell you about the time I helped fight off an alien invasion in 1990?”

The solider laughs. His eyes shine with tears. “No,” he says, shaking his head, eyes locked on the shape of teenage boy in the distance gesturing excitedly to the woman beside him. “I don’t think I’ve heard that one yet.”

---

Tony: I can’t believe you said I wasn’t recommended for the team I put together.

Fury: You put together? Your adventures in time make your ego bigger, Stark? Just because you told me about it doesn’t mean you put the team together.

Tony: Actually, considering I gave you the idea to even form the team in the first place, I’m pretty sure that means that I created the Avengers. And you made me a consultant. Unbelievable.

Like I said, written before CM and Endgame and then thoroughly jossed. I lost a bit of steam while writing this after Captain Marvel came out and so the ending is a bit rushed. Honestly don't have an explanation for how Fury had the stone at the end to give to Tony. Just roll with it.

[honestlogic]

Absurdism a paradigm

Although my work is surface level about climates change.  I have found myself drawn to the concept, philosophy and aesthetic of absurdism throughout the entire process of making. 

adjective

wildly unreasonable, illogical, or inappropriate."the allegations are patently absurd"Similar:preposterousridiculousludicrousfarcicallaughablerisibleidioticstupidfoolishsillyinaneimbecilicinsaneharebrainedunreasonableirrationalillogicalnonsensicalpointlesssenselessoutrageousshockingastonishingmonstrousfantasticincongruousgrotesqueunbelievableincredibleunthinkableimplausiblecrazybarmydaftOpposite:reasonablesensible

arousing amusement or derision; ridiculous."it may look absurd, but having a treadmill desk could improve your attention span"

“From childhoods hour, I have not been as others were, I have not seen as others saw” e.a . poe

noun

1.intentionally ridiculous or bizarre behavior or character."the absurdism of the Dada movement"

2.the belief that human beings exist in a purposeless, chaotic universe.

mid 16th century: from Latin absurdus ‘out of tune’, hence ‘irrational’; related to surdus ‘deaf, dull’.

Human behavior has always mystified me. Not just our own compulsions but on a sociological scale. Why mass hysteria? Why “societal” norms? From my own line of questioning came my own frustrations. There has yet to been good reasons for illogical human behaviors of mob mentality- or even more simple feelings of awkwardness and helplessness. I have frequently felt like an alien experiencing the world without a guide to the local culture.

from this space, the work of Nathan Pyle has interested me. In his comics little aliens perform commonplace human tasks whilst describing them at their most basic level. From this stance pyle portrays the same feelings of confusion and amusement I too have felt during my life.

   In my body of work, this feeling of not only otherness- but amusement at common behaviors and traditional beliefs presents its self as ironic juxtapositions of objects and forms .

a state of affairs or an event that seems deliberately contrary to what one expects and is often amusing as a result.

In the peice “Suffer-age” , I created a suffragette silhouette from a fabric that had been printed with all the reasons women “shouldn't vote” . In Moire, The corseted figure is exaggerated to just be an hourglass with arms. Although these pieces are more ham handed with their idealogy, that base level of ironic and absurd nature were vital in the creation of the work.

I constantly found myself questioning not just the societal thought- but the constant maintenance of these behaviors. In the “Study of masculinity” I combined ideals of “masculine” dress forcibly into one form. At each respective time, these items were thought to be the pinnacle of masculinity yet the have their own absurd natures and illogical impositions. furthermore, why is so much of this identity created by a piece of cloth? The more I questioned, the more I realized that there were no answers.

As I dove deeper into my research, I found that there are 3 commonly accepted methods of dealing with “the absurd”.  suicide, a leap of faith, or recognition. All three were postulated by the philosopher John Camus. 

Once one realizes that life has no logic or meaning, one can either kill themselves to escape, seek religion or some other method of thought in order to give life meaning OR one can accept the absurd. This method means that you must make peace with the fact that their is no logic and no binding force to the universe, find other avenues to amuse yourself - yet maintain the irony/ cognitive distance in that you find peace and meaning with the fact that there is no meaning. 

Acceptance of the Absurd - more specifically, the examinations in which human beings accept the absurd, seems to be my calling. 

Once I made my peace with the lack of definitive answers to my questions, I decided to continue to explore the relationships between societal reactions and customs 

[anneedmonds]

Life Update: End of the Baby Era

A fleeting break from tradition with this life update because I’m going to be talking mostly about me. My favourite subject. (Joke: I hate talking about myself unless I’ve had too much wine. In fact, I tend to stop people in their tracks when they try to ask me what I do for a living – I usually tell them that I work with computers and they are too bored to ask more!)

I’m talking mostly about me because I feel as though I’m at a weird old juncture in my life, one that has me wondering who the hell I am and what an earth I’m going to do next. I think that shopping for Angelica’s school uniform triggered it all off, this sense of being a bit lost and wondering about what the future holds, but in fact it’s a strange feeling that’s been bubbling away beneath the surface ever since we made the big move to Somerset.

I think it stems from being the sort of person that always has to be doing something, planning the Next Big Thing, working on a project, being so busy that I live in a state of perpetual low-key chaos and stress. Having two babies quite close together (18 months apart, not planned that way!) has been the most intense time imaginable, especially with work being the most busy it has ever been, and I think I worry that when school starts in September, and Ted starts a few mornings at nursery, I won’t quite know what to do with the extra time.

Actually that’s a lie; if I was entirely honest, my problem with September and the new starts is that I am forced to evaluate the era that is just about to come to a close. The baby era. I find myself tentatively asking myself how did I do? Could I have done better? In those rare moments of quiet, when I just sit and mull things over, I wonder whether I worked too much or should have worked more, whether I should have pulled in more help to save my sanity or turned down more jobs in order to be a completely full time Mum. I tick off the things I didn’t do: I haven’t taken them swimming once. I didn’t make gingerbread with them and get it all over the floor. I didn’t get enough photos of me with babies perched on my hip, or me asleep in a tangled nest of sheets with a newborn spreadeagled on top of my chest. I ask myself whether I was ever really present, in the moment, because I really can’t remember much at all.

I could do a huge list of the things we have done, including almost daily trips to the zoo and adventure park, walks with the dog, holidays in the car to Cornwall and Devon and London and Dorset, crazy chases around the house every afternoon (it’s a great house for running and hiding), discos, picnics, dressing up, shop games, hotel games, vet games, hospital games, early wake-ups every morning, drawn-out bedtimes every night, middle-of-the-night cuddling sessions, countless dribbles of Calpol over the bedsheets, endless tense exchanges between the adults as to where the in-ear thermometer is and who had it last…

I’ve been away from home for less than 2.5 percent of the time I’ve been a Mum, but I still fret that I could have done better and that I would do it better if I did it all over again. Maybe that’s why some people have another baby (I’m not, don’t get excited!), because there’s always the feeling that next time you will finally get it right.

Well. That was borderline depressing wasn’t it? Sorry about that! I don’t actively regret any part of what I did during the baby stage, I’m just sad that it’s pretty much over. It’s like a klaxon has sounded to tell me my time is up.

“FNARRRRRRR! Put down the flour, mothers! You’re about to make homemade play-dough, or bake cookies for the first time, but it’s TOO BLOODY LATE! You want to take them for a walk instead of plonking them down in front of Peppa Pig so that you can print, sign and scan the mortgage documents in peace? TOO LATE! They’re old enough to just amuse themselves anyway! They don’t need you anymore and they wouldn’t go on a walk with you anyway unless you bribe them with sweets! FNARRRRRRR!”

Talking of bribery, Angelica has cottoned on to the whole you-scratch-my-back-I’ll-scratch-yours system remarkably well. Maybe she will grow up to be a negotiator. Or a politician. (God.) Either way, she knows the value of her cooperation, especially when Ted is kicking off about his apple not being cut in the correct manner (ie: not cut up at all, he likes them whole, but he carries the bloody thing about for an hour and the dog almost always ends up getting it off him so I usually try to make him eat it chopped up in a bowl and he hates it) and there are two things that she has firmly planted on her demands list: games on the iPhone and sweets from Daddy’s retro sweet shop box.

Mr AMR got a huge box of sweets for his birthday last month and they’re all retro chews and sherbet dips and so on from the seventies and eighties – Angelica is obsessed. It’s like another world, one where Pom Bears and organic dried apple rings don’t exist. The games on the iPhone thing has had to be curbed, for the moment, because she got really into playing on these Toca Boca apps that let you play at being a vet or a train driver or a doctor. They’re a bit like Sims but for toddlers and she gets really immersed, carrying supplies through the hospital and visiting the patients and feeding them their lunch. She started waking up early just so she could ask to play on my phone, so that has been nipped in the bud. The phone games started as a lazy thing because I could go back to sleep for half an hour and she just carried out her doctor rounds, probably doing things like administering morphine and delivering tricky babies and amputating gangrenous legs using a selection of power tools. But the games are no more. It’s too early. Both in the day and in life.

I say that officially, in case Mr AMR is reading, but unofficially I let her play at grooming the Toca Boca horses last night when I was trying to wrestle Ted into his back-to-front Gro Bag and stop him from throwing his mattress out of the cot.

Ted has become Hulk Ted Smash over the course of the last month. Not only does he thrash about in his sleep, knocking into the bars of the cot so that it sounds as though a minotaur is trying to ride through the wall of the house, he likes to dismantle his sleeping arrangements over and over again between the hours of 7 and 9pm. It used to be that he stripped himself, did a wee on the mattress and then called for help, but now he is trapped in his back-to-front sleeping bag (thanks for that tip, readers!) and can’t unzip it, so he amuses himself by taking off the sheets and folding the mattress in half (actually quite a phenomenally difficult thing to achieve) and then sticking both legs through the bottom slats. Before calling for help.

Whoo, bedtimes are still the most testing time of the day. I think (still) that it’s because you really feel as though you’re finally owed a bit of a bloody break, thanks very much, and your brain sees 7pm (or whatever time, 5pm would be idea, hohoho) as the cut-and-dry deadline for any child-related shenanigans. The other night, when Ted was still going at it with his mattress-bending at 9.15pm I ended up bellowing this is Mummy’s time now! I’m not available! 

He just stared at me blankly and said, “ham?”

Ted is saying “ham” a lot at the moment. I have no idea why, other than that he really likes ham. But the more he says it, especially in answer to completely unrelated questions, the more we all laugh and the more he thinks it’s funny. He’s chatting away like the clappers, now, and if I read a story to him he copies every single word. Which is sweet, but at the same time it makes it really hard to read – it’s like having an echo that makes no sense.

In other news, Ted did something the other day that was both highly convenient and potentially disastrous, all at the same time. I knew something was up because things had gone quiet in the living room and then, when I called him, he said “coming Mama!” and arrived in the kitchen holding his (very full) nappy between forefinger and thumb. He had done a poo, carefully taken off the nappy pants and walked to the kitchen without dropping any of the poo onto the floor. To be frank, it’s almost more than I can do and I’m thirty-six years older than him. Not that I wear nappy pants, you understand.

Oh God, I must dash! Angelica has had her taster morning at school and I’ve just realised that the time they’ve said to pick up is actually the time when they’ll be coming out of the gates! Not like in nursery when you just saunter in between x time and y time and everyone’s all chilled out and “here’s a painting with some twigs and dirty feathers glued to it, it’s a duck, yes that’s an acorn representing its one eye”. I have a drawer full of those paintings. Ah, such excruciatingly happy days, tinged with such anxiety that time keeps flying by too fast! Why is being a parent such a bloody emotional rollercoaster?

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