#and seeing how it's snowing outside it (in my work exhausted brain) made sense to put it my jack pocket

[stolligaseptember]

i've never felt so much like a victorian child as when i picked up a cookie from work and put it in my jack pocket on my way home

[yssjj]

Music played by gentlemen who try to make their living as cigarette salesmen, and post boys, and delivery boys and messenger boys

Ben smells like cigarettes when I lean into him. “Wow, you smell so good.” This is the first date. We’re basking in the glow of some pasta we whipped up and watching something on TV.

“Thank you!” I’m leaning against him fully at this point and he’s been lightly teasing me every time I go for body contact. “Hello,” when I pop up around him to “check on the pasta.” It makes me feel a little silly and wobbly.

“Hi,” he says now, this sweet, sweet smile on his face when I look up at him from my slight lean against him. He tastes like cigarettes, too, when I kiss him. His kisses are like pressing your face against a soft comforter. “You’re so attractive.” His voice breathes out those words. I’m rippling. It's been a single date and he’s looking at me with that soft shiny eyed smile and I’m thinking about buying tickets for the play so we can go see that a month from now so I can secure a ticket to hear his voice again.

Here’s a trick: you can open your eyes when you’re kissing to peek at the other person’s face and feel a little more special when you get to witness the moment they’re completely into you, or at least into kissing you. His eyes are closed and I feel warm all over.

He shows me how to smoke and I try my first cigarette with him, and he’s marveling at how it’s a first I’m sharing with him, and even though I’m not sentimental about firsts or lasts I can’t help but make it a little special too.

-

My brother and I are in Korea, it’s the summer after my freshman year, and we’re Americans in Seoul, soaking in the local culture, soft invisible particulates of tobacco smoke snowing lightly on us, carried by the wind. We watch a cloud of gray smoke rise into the air above the stone-paved corner of the park, both of us in awe of the casual consumption of dark tar cancerous growths sticky coughs by such a large group of random individuals.

To say something, I offer a conclusion: “I guess that makes sense, a post-lunch time smoke break.” Total culture shock for the both of us, American-made puritans. Is it because of our health values? Or maybe it’s because we’re more scared of the idea of the taboo? Would it have been the same if it were just people drinking? I don’t know how to feel about the fact that it smells sweet and good, but the brain automatically links the dark tar cancer smoke gray air and I watch the smoke in the air replenish itself, getting thicker and thinner and flowing in between.

“That’s so crazy. Isn’t that crazy?” My brother shook his head.

Korea smells like cigarettes and carbon dioxide and carbon monoxide and exhaust and wet concrete. It smells like breathing in car smoke and ventilation air. When I’m little and my brother and I imagine that our home is really in Korea, even though we’ve lived in America almost our entire lives, we go and catch the smell in America behind certain apartment buildings where it’s dim and the outgasses cling to the brick walls and asphalt ground, sticking to the pores in the cool darkness.

My dad is busy at work until 6pm, at which point he’ll probably go shut himself outside to smoke and then shut himself inside to work more. But my brother and I both count the time down anyway, silently counting the number of smoke clouds we see outside as we wander around on the large sidewalk blocks and metro stations, as lunch passes into late lunch into supper into early dinner.

-

He lights his cigarette by hunching over it, flicking his lighter on with one hand and cupping around the cigarette end with the other. Do you mind if I smoke in here? It’s your car, Ben. I don’t mind. I think of the way Al Pacino would say that as Michael Corleone in The Godfather, diplomacy, quiet politeness, words coming out like he’s sighing in monotone. I don’t mind. Does he want me to say that I do mind? I’m never sure what I should say. That question only comes up because I am in love with the way he holds the cigarette in his mouth and the cigarette end bobs up and down. What does he think he looks like when he’s smoking?

I’m clinging to his arm while he’s driving us to a bar. “You smell so good.” It’s automatic. I can’t stop myself from saying it. I watch the smoke whip itself into a cloud around his open mouth.

“I do need my arm to drive.” I let go of his arm. “And I think,” he says, “that what you said is probably Freudian.” What the hell is that supposed to mean? I look at his face to try to figure out the undercurrent of emotion in that statement, but I can’t see anything in his half smile overexposed by the sun glaring through the car window.

-

I’ve never actually seen him do it, but I’ve always known that my dad smokes. His apologetic explanation always follows the smell itself, but it was always a sweet smell when he picked me up.

My mom explained to me after he had gone and left that he would smoke near the dimly lit “basketball court” (asphalt with a single crooked basketball hoop) attached to the cul-de-sac we lived on by a set of large stairs made with mulch and square wooden frames, where I once felt my six-year-old feet unstoppably smush the unending flood of wooly bear caterpillars.

I will never see him as he walks up the stairs covered in black goop. I can only imagine the image through my mom’s voice, that he would go all the way over there to smoke because he didn’t want to do it near us. Also, she said as if it was an aside, also, our next door neighbor wouldn’t let him smoke near her house.

-

Why smoking? Smoking is opulent. It’s bad for you in every way with very little reward. There is some utility to smoking. Smoking calms you down, according to Ben. That would be in line with his depression. It wakes you up too. It’s an upper (also according to Ben). Also in line with his depression if we consider the idea of self medication. It seems a little nonsensical to smoke weed and then a cigarette, the way Ben does it, since it seems to negate the intentional slowness of the former. Or, another nonsensical combo, alcohol and cigarettes. But he says that antidepressants don’t work for him so he just makes do with what he can (which is a surprising statement from a psychology major, but hey, what do I know about cigarettes and drinking five beers a day and medication resistant depression, when my depression played nice to the first medication I was put on).

Also, it looks cool. I think most people smoke cigarettes because they think it looks cool. I think that at least Ben smokes partially because he thinks it looks cool. Men smoke. In Casino, after Robert De Niro explodes (really, before he explodes, if we want to get into storyline chronology), he lights his cigarette by taking out his lighter and flicking it open, holding the flame right up to the cigarette. We’re watching Casino together after Ben showed me his newly acquired VCR copy. I curl up on the corner of his sofa and listen to the VCR squeak. The beer is making me feel warm so I watch the silhouette of Robert De Niro’s cute pink suit (did they really wear those back in the day?) get into his car and explode. He flies through the air.

“No no no, for your first time watching it you have to be able to see all the details.” Ben grabs the remote and flips through his TV and breathlessly we’re on HDMI 2 we’re on the new TV interface that’s somehow connected to wifi we’re on youtube and he’s rented a copy of Casino, without asking me to pay and it’s playing and I try to say something about how I can pay him back but he’s watching the movie so I turn to watch it too.

I can now see the buttons on Robert De Niro’s pastel pink suit, the embossed details of his nice car that he climbs into. He explodes again. He flies through the air. He turns around before all of that happens in his reality within the screen and takes out his Zippo lighter and flicks it open and puts the flame to the end of his cigarette. He takes his cigarette out of his mouth and smoke pours out like fog flowing over a creek.

Ben thinks that’s hard as fuck. I can’t say that I don’t think so too.

-

The staircase was glowing faintly. I tiptoed down and saw my dad dimly lit by the tv through the grates of the staircase railing. I can’t smell him from over here.

“What are you doing up?” He was eating the snacks we had bought at Hmart. I didn’t know that he actually was the one eating all of those. My mom had said it and I thought of it as a mythology. I didn’t know that my dad ate snacks in general.

“I can’t sleep.” I looked at my dad through the grates of the staircase and imagined myself on the sofa.

“You should go back upstairs and try again.”

I went back up the stairs. The room next to mine, my brother’s, is silent.

-

In the opening of The Sopranos, Tony Soprano smokes a fat cigar on his way down the familiar looking highways of New Jersey. The highways look exactly as they do in Virginia on a rainy day when you’re somewhere that looks like the kind of miserable Annandale, which has successfully dodged development since the 80s after the first wave of post-Korean War immigrants, maybe trying to keep that feel of an older Korea that still smells like exhaust and concrete rather than the something shinier now.

Ben’s making me watch The Sopranos because he wants to watch it. When the opening plays, Ben bops his head back and forth and bounces with the beat. I imagine that he learned this in his local Pittsburgh band days in high school, where he was introduced to cocaine. His smile is this soft thing.

Bwa oo wa oo wa, I mimic the saxophone interjecting in. His smile is this soft thing, self-satisfied, sweetly happy. I can smell the sweet smell of cigarettes lingering on him from across the room.

-

��In high school I used to dig through ashtrays to find enough cigarettes to smoke.” The orange tip of Ben’s cigarette flickered with his oxygen intake. I wanted to kiss him. Maybe rather that I wanted him to want to kiss me so I just stood there, watching his cigarette flicker in the dark. He looked into the street. I imagined the high school Ben digging through the ashtray across the street in front of a fluorescent laundromat. I’m in high school and I’m seventeen years old, snapping rubber bands against my wrist because of fucking AP tests, of all things, what have I lived through that’s “real.” I think about how if Ben and I had met in high school we would be unrecognizable to each other. I feel stupid and small for thinking he would want to kiss me.

When he finished his cigarette he threw the butt into the road. Fluorescent orange circle hitting the ground and popping soundlessly. The dash of bright orange against the darkness made me smile so hard that he looked at me and asked me if I was against his littering. I shook my head no in what I hoped was a cute manner. We walk back into the bar I’m pretending to enjoy being at so I can stay next to him.

Later, two weeks after Ben stopped responding to my texts, I wrote:

I'm not talking about the good or bad of the action,

I'm just talking about the arc a lit cigarette makes in the dark

an orange arc that dashes itself against the dark asphalt smashing into a million little stars.

-

My brother and I, most of our conversations happen passively, as if we breathed in and what came out happened to be words, since we were next to each other anyway. Never much further than that. The real version of my brother is hidden behind the perfect invisible barrier, an uncrossable ocean of privacy. Maybe he’s more comfortable this way?

We’re in the car in the two front seats. In the car, he’ll pull something up on the aux and ask me if I’d ever heard of it before. It’s MF DOOM. “I like his production,” I’ll say, knowing that I won’t be able to pull the criticism even though it’s what I’ve hated the most about my mom, her constant criticism about the music I’d show her, “but his lyrics aren’t great.” I wonder if that hurts him. I don’t know why I can’t just not say it. But the criticism comes out like carbon dioxide, the unstoppable consequence of pulling in breath.

“I like Kendrick Lamar’s lyrics,” I say. I imagine everyone else who has listened to Kendrick Lamar before my ripe age of 21 and I feel stupid, again. I wonder how many of his friends at Brown know so much more about music than I know or ever will know.

“I just can’t get used to his voice,” he says.

“No, I get that, but you know the one that goes I got I got I got royalty got loyalty inside my DNA.”

“DNA,” he responds.

“That makes sense,” I say, feeling stupid again. “I like that one. You know the one that’s about being alright in the end? I like how his voice sounds in that one. You get used to it. He talks poetry, you know?”

I wonder what my brother’s inherited inner critic is saying about me and what I’ve said. Poetry. Who do I think I am?

-

Brisk cold. Bracing cold. I think about the feel of each cold temperature as I go out to meet the morning on my way into school and the night on my way out. The morning colds are often brisk in Pittsburgh compared to how they feel in Maryland. But sometimes the yellow sun is cold in the face of a bracing cold.

The night colds are usually bracing. Had I always felt this cold in the winter? Ben said that, that stupid fucking mimetic phrase that comes out of my mouth habitually, Ben said that his favorite days are cold winter days, smoking in snow fields.

I walk into the dark today and feel the bracing cold. Bitter cold. I take out my third cigarette out of the yellow pack and fail to light it three times in a row, the wind is blowing so hard. The cigarette lights and then goes out again. Another click click click now facing away from the wind and the cherry stays in this time. Ben said it was called a cherry. Cherry sounds bad and a little slimy. It’s orange, anyway. The cigarette does nothing to warm me up and it instead makes my hands start hurting with cold in the bracing and bitter cold of the nighttime. The dark makes my hands feel more miserable. What a fucking liar Ben is. Nothing good about cigarettes in the cold and I smoke only half of it before it pisses me off and I put it out on the ground, crouching, smushing the butt into the asphalt and then getting up and stepping on it for good measure. I pick it back up and put the half cigarette in my pocket.

-

The image of Ben cupping his hand around the end of his cigarette suddenly released itself and floated away like a balloon going to touch the sky. I still watch movies and think about what he might have said about the camera angle and split diopter shots because everything he said in those moments were true and pure and from somewhere deep inside of him. But the Ben who threw me onto the bed and called me gorgeous and kissed the back of my neck, the Ben who couldn’t stop repeating how attractive I was to him, the Ben who texted me if he could give me a ride to my friend’s place just because he wanted to see me, that Ben flattened.

Most of the men I hook up with put on some sort of pleasant character that they think I or a general someone will like. Just projections of what they think is a character that’s realer or truer than they can be. It’s polite of them, I guess. Is it like if I have something to offer them, they feel obligated to be nice to me? It’s almost like sales, to lie and swim slow circles around the eventual wake of the waves. Maybe that’s what being a boy is, constant image projection. Those boys and their images blot out of my mind, but I say blot out like it’s something I do consciously, when it’s more like they leave my house and a wet fog has dampened the lines that they left in my house and their marks will fade away with the water evaporating in the morning sunlight. I wonder what my brother would think if he knew I did these things he would disapprove of, like hooking up with guys with this kind of fake exterior and smoking cigarettes, what a shitty third parent I turned out to be.

Why would you lie about being into someone? Because you weren’t lying but the attraction was just brutally short, because for him it’s not about meeting someone you actually like, it’s about having power over someone else in a small window of time, because he wanted to believe it.

More and more my dad fades from my field of view too, fading from the day that I smelled the stale cigarette smoke from his polo shirt in Korea, meeting my brother and I during my 4th grade, his 3rd grade summer visit, a surprise arrival, both my brother and I knowing that the consequences of his appearance would be a disappearance from the rest of our lives. Now all I see of him is images on Youtube and TV, images that are just surface projections of him, the banking institute professor, the PhD in economics he earned in the US that ruined him so much that he had to run from the US as a whole (according to my mom, he’s never said that to me). Does he ever think of my brother when he makes these videos? Imagine the boy who asked my dad all of these questions about his job in economics and going to graduate school and what kind of jobs there are, my dad seeing this boy for the first time in four years because he refuses to visit us in the US, so this boy traveled miles and miles and spent thousands of dollars for his tickets and mine. Does he actually think about the boy who I watched over and who watched over me when we flew internationally for the first time, a 3rd and 4th grader trying to handle passports and tickets and baggage all by themselves, dealing with a stranger grandma trying to convert us to Christianity, both of us maybe more scared for each other’s lives than for our own…

-

“Your dad smells bad, right?” My dad picks me up, all of me in a single armful. I shook my head no and felt his stubble on my cheeks. He had gotten me chocolate covered strawberries, my favorite. The blunt hairs felt like a million pencil leads. It was itchy. The smell was sweet. I wished I could handle the itchiness for a little longer but I wiggled and he pulled away.

-

One of my favorite things to do is to just sit behind my brother while he’s doing whatever on his computer, watching Youtube videos on the hottest restaurants in New York City (where he goes whenever he can), reading about expensive watches he’ll never ever let me buy for him regardless of my earning power, playing video games. I sit behind him, a couple feet of empty space separating us. He doesn’t turn around.

“What are you playing?”

“Just ARAM. Just something casual.”

“With who?”

“Brian and Jason.”

“How are they doing?”

“Good.”

That’s all I know to ask. I wish I knew what to ask more, but maybe this is what I do best for him. Sitting behind him and watching silently, like how dads do on the images I see on the internet. Giving their silent audience and hoping that their son can feel the warm sweet smell of someone watching over him for the brief moment they can.

[tokoyamisstuff]

Dark Side Of The Moon Ch. 1 - Dark! Loki x Reader

Chapter 1: Speak to Me/Breathe

Chapter Summary: The last thing you remember was being mortally wounded, now having woken up in a completely different reality. And you’d soon need to face the horrors of who would seek you out...

Warnings: Violence, Blood, Suicide Attempt, Graphic Descriptions of Death, Dark! Loki, Spoiler you kinda die but kinda don't

Words: approx. 3800

[Story Masterlist]

Masterlist to my other works right ->Here<-

Lyrics used from the Song: Kina ft. Snow - Get You The Moon

“Y/N, look out!”

The piercing sounds of gunfire nearby made your eardrums ring, yet Steve’s words got through to you nonetheless.

But you were determined to end this, here and now.

Tony was the first one at your side, catching you in his arms before you hit the floor. However, you could only do so much as whimper a silent apology to your friends, who now had to live with the consequences of your actions.

“Why did you do this?!” you heared Dr. Strange yell as he unsucessfully tried to close the deep cut in your gut. Too afraid of what you might see if you’d look at the wound, your glare was locked on the beautiful sky - yes, the sun was almost setting, and it was somehow calming to you that this would most likely the last thing you’d set eyes upon.

“There was no reason to be this reckless!” Steve followed close by, his scolding soon turning into desperate screams. “Fuck. FUCK!” If Captain America himself is cussing, then it’s as severe as you thought it to be.

Your wounds were lethal, that much was sure.

And of course they were right, as always: You didn’t need to play the martyr here, throwing yourself into danger to shield your comrades - well, you did anyway, and there was no going back now.

On the other hand, they were the ones taking a gravely depressed widow onto a dangerous mission. But you did not want your precious friends to blame themselves for that, for it was your own wish.

Dying in an honorable battle was what would send you to Valhalla, after all - where you could finally meet him again, hopefully.

The only one not having spoken a single word up until now was Thor, very well knowing what all this was about. It was no secret that you were sick and tired of how your life had turned out to be, ever since the Infinity War.

You felt empty. Incomplete. Desperate. Hallow.

The God of Thunder had turned his back to you, yet there was still agony radiating from that already broken man. Your almost-brother-in-law was the only one who could possibly understand your pain. Thor Odinson had lost everything: His homeland, most of his tribe, his family and best friend - and soon, you as well.

All this time, you wanted to be strong. For them, who had also lost so much!

But at some point things just got out of control.

“You can’t leave me alone, Lady Y/N! Not you too!” Thor finally whimpered as he fell onto his knees, softly squeezing your hand. “You’re the only thing I have left from him!

So this is what dying feels like.

The bloodloss caused your limps to go limp, and when the pain began to stop and got replaced by numbness, you knew it would soon be time. Your brain lost the remaining control over your body, and you found yourself encoated by pure nothingless.

Only able to listen by their screams, cries and kind words - at least you’d die surrounded by those marvellous people. It sure was a privilege knowing them.

You weren’t afraid - all in all, it had been a good life, after all. 

There were no regrets.

“Shh” you hushed them, using your last bit of strenght so your lips formed somewhat of a most broken smile, forming words between gurling on your own blood.

“It’s alright, I-” you cut yourself off, trying to scream as a last, torturing pain shot through your whole system. “I-I-I’ll-- meet him again...you know?”

“I’m no-not strong enough, please...” Thor cried out like you had never seen him before, feeling a tide of guilt wash over you. “Loki wouldn’t have wanted you to go like this! He told me to protect you, so you could lead a long and happy life!”

Without him? Impossible!

“You gave me a shoulder when I needed it

You showed me love when I wasn’t feeling it

You helped me fight when I was giving in

And you made me laugh when I was losing it”

Yes, indeed: You had been to selfish to keep on living just for the sake of your friends, burdening them with yet another loss.

“I-I don’t wanna go...this was a mistake, I- please...”

How badly did you want to soothe them right now, telling them that everything would be alright and you’d meet them again, eventually?

It was too late now.

Your body gave up earlier than your soul, which had endured and kept on all this time, even in it’s shattered state.

And when Tony’s palm gently closed your eyes, making it easier for you to embrace the cold darkness, the last thing you heared before your senses gave up were startling you enough to almost bring you back to life:

“I’m so sorry, Y/N.”

That voice was familiar, yet it didn’t belong to Loki. Dr. Strange, no- Stephen Strange, your friend and mentor of the mystic arts.

“I don’t have the heart to allow this to happen” he stated frantic, making you wonder if that was a dream of your hypoxic brain or if you were still able to hear them? People tend to say the sense of hearing dies last, after all. “She still has a pulse, even though weak. Hurry!”

Their voices were far in the back, words way too far out of your reach to understand. As if you were an outsider, only observing from a distance.

Your friends were fighting, or maybe discussing something. That much you could make up from their tone, but your mind was too exhausted to make sense of anything.

It felt as if you were already without a body, floating through the unknown like a feather in the wind - not knowing where fate would lead you to next.

Everything was numb - even your pain. It was soothing, somehow.

Because you had been a ghost way before, when you were alive even. An empty shell of a human, acting like they weren’t dead on the inside.

Coherent thoughts, memories, emotions...even the fractions of your own past you had both collected and surpressed. Right now, they were all restrained and pushed far in the back of your very core, where you were finally able to evaluate them without earthly bondings.

Was this heaven, hell - or maybe both or none or them?

____

"Be aware of the limits this tactic has. It’s a very drastic measurement that can most likely be used only once in your lifetime, and it is not guaranteed to work either.”

Stephen’s voice again. You recall that scene, it’s been long in the past...but why are you remembering it now?

Yes, this was familiar. All of you had been invited to the Sanctum Sanctorum, a fitting place to teach about this ancient knowledge.

You clearly remembered that Loki was absent in any of the Doctor’s lessons, feeling that a “puny human” was “unworthy” to teach him, and “it would be nothing new anyway, Y/N, I am a god and the way better wizard, I know it all already.”

What he was about to tell you back then was some kind of crazy emergency-plan: Dangerous, unpredictable and escpecially untested.

“I’ve only read about this tactic up until now” the mage pondered loudly as he picked at his goatee, earning some childish giggles by you and Tony. “So I cannot promise that it will function as planned. The Multiverse is dangerous and acts in unforseen ways.”

“Very reassuring” you had mocked at the time, not really biding the topic any importance or thought ever again.

But now...

The trick sounded way simpler than it actually was, being as complex as it is only natural for something like that, costing a huge prize at that:

Dr. Strange would send any of you who were on the brink of death through a portal, thus leading you into a random dimension of this endless Multiverse.

That dimension, in which your alternate self has most likely died, will gladly accept you as a “replacement”. Some kind of what Peter Parker called a “glitch” will occur, instantly healing all of your wounds - even fatal ones, so you could remain in the timeline that was missing you. 

Yet the consequences of this maneuvre would be unspeakable.

_____

“That bastard...” you gnarled internally, finally realizing why you would remember this of all things after apparently having just taken your dying breath. “He didn’t just-”

Eventually, you realized having escaped death’s grip, slowly beginning to regain your senses - yet still refusing to open your eyes.

“I don’t want to leave this place. My friends -- will I never see them again? No. NO! Life is meaningless. Just let me be with him. Please! Loki...”

“’Cause you are, you are

The reason why I’m still hanging on

‘Cause you are, you are

The reason why my head is still above water

And if I could I’d get you the moon

And give it to you

And if death was coming for you

I’d give my life for you”

Another part of Strange’s lesson echoed in your head, revealing that you were now in fact up on your own.

“Not even I can tell just how much this timeline will differ from what you know. Of course I will search for you right away, but considering the countless possibilities, it might very well be that we’ll never meet again. But you’re alive, and hopefully safe. That’s all that counts.”

Grass tickled your palm as you twitched your fingers, testing the limits of your body, which had literally just tricked death. Suddenly, you felt a stinging pain, almost like lightning boring into your temportal. The origin of this pain remained unknown.

When you finally found the courage to sit up, your flesh still feeling as heavy as lead, you realized that Stephen was most likely wrong: He assumed that you’d find yourself in a place you had a deep connection with, yet that place was unrecognizable to you.

Then why were you here of all places?

Actually, this location was incredibly beautiful, managing to stop the aching in your heart, if only for the fraction of a second.

Your former lover would’ve loved this place.

“'Cause you are, you are

The reason why I’m still hanging on

'Cause you are, you are

The reason why my head is still above water

And if I could I’d get you the moon

And give it to you

And if death was coming for you

I’d give my life for you”

Even though not all of Dr. Strange’s speculations were correct, you decided to stick to his emergency plan: Find as much information about this “new” earth as possible, point out the differences to your initial one, and then contact the Dr. Strange of this dimension.

Two mages working on crossing each other’s path would at least higher the stakes to find your original timeline.

Well, no one could guarantee you that the Avenger’s existed on this timeline, and they could as well be evil in this one...what a weird and horrifying imagination.

Knowledge really was power - that was another thing Loki had taught you a long time ago, and it would prove valuable, especially in this situation.

As you wandered this surprisingly extensive garden and getting lost in admiring the beauty of it’s nature, you found yourself devoid of any weapons. That fact made you slightly uncomfortable, even though your current location seemed absent of any ememies, making a peaceful impression. 

Seemingly there weren’t any evil schemes going on in this dimension.

It basically were only minor differences, at least that was your first impression. At least there were no changes in natural laws or something as big.

“I miss the days where magic and science didn’t mix up like this” you whispered, mainly to yourself as you examined the new, large scar on your abdomen - the only memory left of your “almost-suicide-mission”.

To be more precize: The only thing left from your former life, now leaving you able to start completely anew, wether you wanted it or not.

Sun had almost drowned behind the horizon, diving the sky in a deep orange. Your eyes were still adjusting, yet you could’ve sworn to see the silhouette of a person. It was far away, at the entrance on what appeared to be a palace belonging to this garden.

Apparently, you had invaded someone’s propery, and you could only pray that it was noone important - or worse, a owner who would defend their ground with violence.

You don’t think your earth had a place this...flashy. The castle was way bigger than any you knew on the other timeline. The first difference you had figured out, yet it was only a minor one.

Maybe the headache you were experiencing was from someone making you  out as an intruder?

One thing was sure: You had been noticed, and you immediately were on high alert.

Where to run to or at least hide?

There was a maze made out of bushed parting you and the palace, and since there was no better option, you’d enter it. Talking to that person and convincing them of your goodwill would make it way easier to gain information.

“You may come out” you declared as you made your way, unable to evaluate the situation properly. “I mean no harm. I’m just lost.”

Was it dangerous to be here? Obviously, you were not allowed to be here anyway.

However, when you had finally found the escape to that maze, only several hundret meters away from the building, the person was already gone.

Had your mind just played a dirty trick on you again? Wouldn’t be the firt time it’d betray you like this...

No. You clearly felt someone watching you.

And as soon as your senses had sharpened to your usual self again, you instantly jumped back, gaining some distance to the Citauri that had just appeared behing you.

Shit! You weren’t ready to fight again just yet. Not like this.

And where one of those vile beasts were, many others would appear. You knew that much.

Had Thanos invaded this earth? Oh god, not again...not him. You were so damn tired of those fights, escapes and especially the pain that always inevitable followed after.

Just when it was about to swing it’s weapon at your head, you felt dizziness crawl up your nerves, making you collapse on the floor. Lucky for you, because only like that, the stike didn’t hit you.

Even though having been taught basic magic skills, that certain kind of spell you were unable to fight against - only true masters of the art were able to perform a sorcery that well.

The Chitauri had left your line of sight, yet the other figure from before reappeared in a pace so fast that your eyes couldn’t follow. They sweeped you off the floor just before your head would meet the hard pavement.

“And now you will answer to me, shapeshifter.”

Once again someone robbed you of the control of your life and body, leaving you without a free will.

How long had you been passed out now? You didn’t know and honestly didn’t care either - since you had nothing to lose anymore.

In the meantime, the owner of those lands had dismissed his guards, not wanting to be disturbed as he was left alone with you in the giant throne room.

The apparent ruler of that unclassified location was sitting on his throne, warily observing you from above. You were lying to his feet at the bare floor, every piece of clothing robbed from you and restrained by a pile of chains. He watched every twitch, all breaths you’d take or groans escaping your mouth until you would finally awake.

Oh, how you really were just like he remembered you, with every little detail he had adored.

At long last, you would finally open your lids again, blinking heavily as you took in your surroundings - but when your eyes met certain emerald ones, they immediately sprung wide open, the emptiness in your heart being filled with all kinds of emotions once again.

The man - it was him!

“'Cause you are, you are

Oh, you are

Oh, you are

You are'Cause you are, you are

The reason why I’m still hanging on

'Cause you are, you are

The reason why my head is still above water

And if I could I’d get you the moon

And give it to you”

“Loki!” you screamed from the bottom of your heart. Without a single coherent thought, your legs would carry on their own as your weakened body stumbled in their attempt to climb those stairs.

For both of you, that momend of reuinion had waited far too long.

The god was temptated to approach you, his trembling hands already reaching out to catch your fragile body should you fall - but suddenly, you felt his knuckles digging into your cheekbone.

“Stay away from me, you fake!” Loki yelled furiously as you hit the ground, rubbing your cheek as you tried to understand what just happened.

Yeah, that sure brought you back to reality again, after such a short high.

Right.

That isn’t your Earth - and not your Loki either.

You couldn’t even be sure this world’s Y/N and Loki had the same kind of relationship the two of you had back in your timeline! The only thing you knew was that he knew you from his past, but as it seemed not pleasantly.

Now that you looked closely, he even had less scars, almost looking untouched and pure - like a true, invincible god. Maybe life here had treat him well, unlike his counterpart from your timeline.

He was still wearing that excessive outfit with the golden horns, and much to both your amazement and fear, it seemed that he still possessed theTesseract.

Could it be...

Before you could connect the dots, the king would soon interrupt your string of thoughts. “Drop that disguise, scum!”

Loki kept on degrading you as he paced in front of his throne, brow sinking deeper and deeper. “Don’t think you can somehow appeal to those pathetic sentiments” he explained, “I’ve freed myself from them long ago. Just stop making a fool out of yourself, and maybe I’ll reward it with a quicker death.”

Yet when he saw your most innocent smile, even this Loki would stand frozen in place, deeply in shock.

How he yearned to see it, all those years - to tell you just how sorry he was for everthing he’s done.

No.

He had left all of this behind - to claim his birthright and rule.

“I-I’m deeply so-sorry...that is a mistake” you whimmered with a broken voice, wiping a tear of joy out of your face. “My feelings overwhelmed me, I guess. I’ve never thought to see you again, even if you’re not the same Loki I know.”

Still cowering on the floor, you looked up to him with compassionate eyes, as if he had not just beat you before. You did not dare to make any more, wanting for Loki to try and understand himself.

“A variant?” he gnarled, just like you did when he realized.

No force in the world had allowed him to access other parts of the Multiverse, no matter how desperately he tried - and now fate had literally dropped you in front of his door.

Loki balled his fists in anger, making you flinch as you anticipated yet another blow.

“Dear, I-”

“Shut up!” the God of Mischief shoutet, causing his magic to break free. The walls of the palace were shaking, most windows and furniture having been destroyed. “It’s no use, woman!”

That man was way more powerful than the “puny god” people called names back on Asgard - and his sheer might made you quiver.

Just what kind of monster had he become, and why?

“L-Loki, please...” you tried to appeal to the last bit of humanity  he might possess, and your begging made his guts twist in agony. “You’re scaring me.”

“You better be scared!” he exclaimed, grabbing you by the chin and forcing you to look at him. “No matter what disgracefully weak “alter ego” of me you knew, I am built different. Stronger. Better. Everyone in the Nine Realms fears me, and I desire nothing else! Everything distracting me from fulfilling my destiny and reign over you dull creatures I got rid of. You’re nothing more than an insect I might as well crush right here and now!”

Choking on a sob, he tried to relish that last chance he got to admire you, smell you, touch what he cannot possess...no matter how many universes there may be.

A flood of tears cracked down your face at his words, yet you couldn’t be helped.

No matter what he would say - he looked just like him.

And that was enough for you to feel alive after such a long time of being a walking dead. There had to be a reason you landed right at his home, of all places in this universe. You had a connection, both of you felt it ever since you had been transported here.

"May I ask-” you disrupted yourself, awaiting some reaction. But the conqueror had seemed to have spoken what he thought important to say, not declining your question at all.

Whenever he seemed fit, he could disintegrate you - yet right now, this situation was way too intriguing.

“What happened to myself in this reality?”

Loki swallowed harshly, letting go off of you as he threw you down the stairs. He wouldn’t even bide you one look as he tried to surpress the turmoil of emotion still running through his veins, desperately keeping it from breaking free.

The outcome would always be the same: Suffering, for both of you.

“And if death was coming for you

I’d give my life for you.”

He only ever wanted it to stop hurting. To become unfeeling, since love had always been poisoning his mind, sometimes being gifted with it even though he knew he would never be worthy of anything else than disgust and hate.

And that contradiction caused him to throw away anything good that happened to him, through you. Let it be taken away from him just shortly after finally learning to remotely enjoy.

You deserved the truth, a reason to hate him even more than you probably already did.

Had you only come to his salvation earlier, then he might have been helped - yet now, he was beyond redemption. Broken. Sick. Dangerous.

And when the Chitauri dragged you away, his last words let your blood run cold:

“She died through my hands.”

_____

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[need-a-fugue]

The Weight of Winter

Written for @wonderlandmind4​‘s Fall Winter Writing challenge. The prompt? “Jack Frost can fuck right off.”

Characters/Pairing: Bucky x Reader

Summary: You find comfort in the snow, in the eerie silence of winter. But Bucky’s just not into that shit.

“For the last time,” he mutters, words meting through tightly clenched teeth as he tosses the bag into the corner and tightens his metal hand around your hip. “We are not on the run.”

A final woosh of cold air blows past you, tiny tinkles of sleet and snow pelting the back of your neck as he ushers you the rest of the way into the room and kicks the door shut behind you. “Just let me have my fun, old man,” you pout, head heavy on his shoulder, legs nearly buckling beneath you.

“I don’t understand you SHIELD agents,” he grumbles, shaking his head back and forth as he takes care to lower you gently to the edge of the bed. “Mission’s over. It’s done. We’re in a safe house – ”

“Motel,” you correct, the word firing over the top of a pained hiss as his fingers begin peeling away the sticky fabric around your wound.

Bucky rolls his eyes – “Safe being the operative word.” – and shakes his head again. “And you’re… fantasizing about being on the run?”

“First of all,” you begin, voice low and far weaker than you expect, the sound alone causing your breath to hitch with a sudden – albeit fleeting – swell of dread. No need to worry, you remind yourself yet again. Because you never need to worry when you’re with him. “There is no SHIELD anymore,” you go on, struggling to fortify the statement. “So I’m not a SHIELD agent.”

His face tightens, brows shrinking together into an anxious scowl as he watches you feign composure. “Whatever,” he spits out, his concern quickly morphing into frustration.

“And secondly,” you continue, small, crooked smile blooming across your sallow face, “safe is all well and good… but danger can be so damn much fun. And sexy.”

He trains his eyes on your blood-soaked middle, refusing to look up and meet your teasing gaze. A deep swell of anger overrides that side of him that normally sparks and flames at your odd sensibilities, your quirky sense of humor, your unflappable desire to keep from showing any pain or fear. Ordinarily, he finds it all strangely enchanting, perhaps even admirable. But not now. Not here. Not like this. “You’re still in danger of bleeding to death,” he mutters harshly under his breath. “If that does it for you…”

You flinch away from him and flop backwards, falling onto the stiff mattress with a dramatic sigh, arms and legs askew. Bucky blows an impatient breath out of his nose and crawls up the bed to finish removing your nearly shorn tac suit. “It’s barely a graze,” you breathe out, muscles inadvertently clenching as his fingers work beneath the thick, leatherlike fabric. “I’m fine.”

“Knives don’t graze, sweetheart,” he replies with a raised brow. “They cut and they stab. And what you are is cut and stabbed.”

You let out another sigh – one filled with more than a hint of defeat – and you give into the exhaustion that the day – and blood loss – has wrought, allowing your body to sink down atop the scratchy comforter. Allowing Bucky to do what he needs to do. What’s the point in playing down your injuries when he’s the one tending to them, anyway?

You turn your head, gaze traveling to the far side of the small room, to the wide picture window there. Curtains frame either side of the slightly frosted glass, leaving the stunning view on full display. A sprawling clearing right outside the motel. A dense forest of snow-capped trees, branches heavy with the weight of winter, looming just beyond. All of it beginning to dim and darken in the blueish twilight. “I trust you,” you murmur softly, barely a whisper, final word catching as he tugs away the last of the sticky, blood-soaked suit.

He lets out a short scoff, little more than an irritated huff blown sharply through his nose. And he rises and spins to retrieve the large black bag from the corner. Zip. You hear him tug it violently open, sharp clinks and scratches echoing through the otherwise silent room as he digs through the bag’s contents. You know what’s in there. You know what he’s looking for. The fully stocked first aid kit, complete with styptic and a suture set. A full bottle of vodka, because you were always either going to celebrate with swigs or choke on a scream while disinfecting.

“Don’t get the clean clothes all bloody,” you chide weakly from the bed, eyes still trained on the tranquil beauty outside. Bucky’s bag is always packed with a fresh set of civies – one for you now too, ever since that tumble you took into a scummy pond a few missions back. He’s always got them buried beneath the other essentials, packed neatly away with care. Vaguely, you recall laughing at him – long, long ago. Mocking – You’re like a damn boy scout – back before you ever realized how much you would benefit from his preparedness.

Another scoff sounds as he continues to dig around, plucking out items and either palming them easily in his large hands or dropping them to the floor with a dull thud. But you don’t turn to see what exactly it is that he’s doing. You don’t need to. Frankly, you don’t care. This isn’t the first time he’s patched you up after a rough mission. Isn’t the first time either of you have been tasked with staunching the flow of blood from the other, stitching skin and haphazardly bandaging wounds that would make local clinics and hospitals just a bit too suspicious.

He knows what he’s doing, and you trust that. You trust him. So you keep your gaze trained on that window, on the melancholy dusk beginning to gray out the bright white field, draping a shadow across the snow-heavy trees in the distance.

It had started just after you exited the expressway, giant white flakes suddenly filling the sky, dropping lazily about you as he drove. As dark red blood seeped into your palms – into his wide open palm as well – as the two of you hurried deep into what had begun to look like a true-to-life winter wonderland. The further you crept into the thickly wooded hills, tree branches already glistening pearly white above, the more the car struggled for purchase – Bucky cursing all the way, steering with just his tightly gripping metal hand, refusing to let you go with his right – on the whitened roads. And the less everything seemed to hurt.

“It’s beautiful,” you mutter blankly – not for the first time – as you continue to stare longingly out the window. Your eyelids grow heavy, once reeling brain now slowing in time with the gently falling flakes beyond.

Bucky’s head pops up, sees yours turned away, your gaze locked onto the gradually graying expanse outside the tiny, musty motel room. “It’s a snow storm,” he says after a moment, annoyance creeping back into his tone. “Shit could’ve killed us out there.”

A quick – and painful – laugh vibrates through your body, your eyes pinching shut against the ache as you swivel your head towards him. The mattress dips beside you, and when you open your eyes again, he’s there, his warm hip pressed to yours, his bloodied hand once again resting on the wound in your side. His brow is scrunched with worry and dread, and you almost let out another laugh, one fond and wistful, as you reach up and trace a finger down the length of his all-too-serious face. Almost. “You think everything’s out to kill us.”

His tight expression uncoils just a bit at hearing your voice, feeling your touch, seeing your tired eyes lock onto his. “I see what the world shows me.”

You feel the scratch of his stubble tickle your palm as you flatten it atop his cheek, let it linger there for a fleeting moment before ending with a swift pat and letting your hand fall heavily back to your side. “Well, I see snow,” you hum out, blinking your eyes shut again as your head shifts back towards the window.

His fingers – both flesh and metal – begin to press and tug at your side, wiping away some more blood before – “This is gonna hurt.” – a splash of vodka spills over your exposed skin and down into the wound. It burns, causes you to jolt and stiffen and recoil, even as his hands pin you down. “Sorry,” you hear him mutter, barely a whisper, as breath returns to your lungs in fits and starts. As Bucky’s vibranium thumb takes a break from tending the gashes in your side to instead absently stroke a tender trail along your rib.

“I know you have some lidocaine in there,” you say with a twisted smile, voice strained as the blaring pain slowly recedes into a dull ache. “Could’ve shot me up with some of that first.”

He shrugs – “Need to see where I’m injecting it.” – and pulls away the gentle caress to begin his work.

All the while – as he numbs the large wound in your side, and another smaller one above it, and then begins to stich you up, his fingers swift and well-practiced – you stare out that window across the room and urge yourself to get lost out there, out in the cold, numbing winter landscape. “Is it Siberia that made you hate the snow?” you ask after several long, silent moments.

“Yes,” he answers pointedly.

Your tone shifts, becomes a bit gloomy, voice echoing a soft sentiment buried deep in your soul as you say simply, barely a whisper, “We could be there right now. We could be anywhere.”

Bucky continues to focus on his work, his words coming out clipped. “We’re in Pennsylvania. Not Siberia.”

“But it could be anywhere,” you murmur softly, tiny smile spreading across your lips. “We could be on the run. Together. Going… somewhere. Going anywhere.”

He’s silent for a long moment, nothing but the steady in-out of his breaths mingling in with your own more strained, more shallow ones. “Stark should have the extraction team here in a couple of hours,” he says finally, his voice tight and tense.

You let out a deep sigh, your wracked body somehow – despite the dull throbbing and disconcerting numbness – managing to relax into the bed. “Can’t just let me have my fun, can you?”

“This isn’t fun,” he spits out, words commanding despite the slow, deep, oddly soothing tenor to his voice. “I don’t even want to think about us being out here without any help on the way.” A long, languid breath spills out of him and you feel the warm press of his flesh hand atop your ribs, the gentle brush of his thumb returning and setting off a tiny, itchy tendril of delight – of love – in your core. He leans down over you, presses his forehead to yours, his breath hot on your cheek as he mutters, “I just want to get you home, doll,” before dropping a quick kiss to the corner of your mouth and springing back upright to finish his work.

You watch him for a moment, as he cuts down some gauze and tenderly tapes it to your side. As he deftly maneuvers a long bandage around your torso, whispers through clenched teeth – sorry…damn… sorry, doll – when the shifting of your body causes you to grimace and quiver.

When he’s done, you return your gaze to the outside world, the nearly full moon reflecting off the snow to breathe light into a space that is otherwise total darkness. Shuffling and clanging and snapping all sound in your periphery as Bucky dumps the spent supplies back into the duffle and strips off his tac suit, the heavily buckled jacket falling to the floor with a weighty slap. The water runs in the adjacent bathroom, his hulking shadow falling out onto the floor just beneath the window, just in your line of sight, as you listen to him hurriedly wash his hands. Desperately scrubbing away the evidence of your injury… of his own agony.

“Do you think it’s snowing back at home too?” you ask once the water shuts off.

“God, I hope not,” echoes out from the open bathroom door in an exhausted tenor. He steps out into the dim light of the room and tosses a quick glance outside, no doubt checking for threats rather than taking in the wonderous scenery that you’ve been living in for the past who knows how long. He lets out a huff, tugs on a clean T-shirt, and leans over to flip off the bathroom light.

“Jack Frost might be paying a visit to the compound right now,” you say with a crooked grin, your voice thick and tired, slightly slurred. “You never know.” The weight of your lids is becoming too much to bear, no matter how you struggle to keep them afloat. You blink – once, twice – so much time in between that you miss seeing the strides that carry him across the room.

The bed dips beside you and you open your eyes one last time to see Bucky tactfully lay down beside you, curling close without disturbing your still throbbing body in the least. He leans in and drops a swift peck to the very tip of your nose, his pale blue eyes holding tight to your gaze until your lids flutter shut again and sleep finally begins to overtake you. Then he lays down his head, barely a breath away from yours on the pillow, and he mutters, just loud enough to cut into your snow-white dreams, “Jack Frost can fuck right off.”

[jawritter]

Twelve Days Of Christmas

Chapter 7

Summary: Dean never realized that Y/N missed Christmas until he turned off an annoying Christmas song on the radio on the way home from a hunt, now he will make it his personal mission to give her the Christmas he misses so much, and if he plays his cards right, maybe he will give her what he has wanted to give her for so many years, himself.

Pairing: Dean Winchester x Reader

Written For: @spnchristmasbingo​​​​​​

Square Field: decorating

Word Count: 1564

Warnings: Fluff, don’t want to give to much away after that.

A/N: This is to help me catch up on my SPN Christmas Bingo card lol Chapter 8 will post tomorrow! I knew chapter will post every day until Christmas! I know I’m insane lol. This is a real time fic collection and all mistakes will be my own! Please do not copy my work! Hope you all enjoy these!!

**SERIES MASTERLIST**   **MASTERLIST**   **BECOME A PATREON**

You don’t remember the last time you slept that well. For some reason, you were beyond exhausted by the time you went to bed last night, probably the alcohol, but still, you appreciated the decent night's sleep nonetheless. 

Normally your sleep, much like most hunters, was plagued with nightmares. Since Dean and yourself had been sharing a bed in the Cabin you, as well as Dean, seemed to be nightmare-free. Even if he did sleep as far away from you as the bed would allow, arms folded like a corpse. 

Rolling over with a sigh you take in the empty bed next to you. It was cold, Dean had been up for some time. The darker than usual sky outside told you that you were probably in for another day indoors, so why was he out of bed already? 

You brush off the feeling of rejection that tried to slip its way into your subconscious. If Dean had a problem with you, then why the hell would he have gone so far and done all this for you? It didn’t make sense for someone who didn’t like someone to want to spend this much time with them, doing all the nice things Dean had done for you over the last few days. 

“Calm the fuck down Y/N, and stop overthinking,” you scold yourself, kicking off the covers and making your way into the living area of the cabin in search of Dean. 

As soon as you descend the little set of stairs you find him easily, sitting with his coffee cup in his hands, and eyes staring at the fire he had going in the fireplace, the tree standing in the corner, put together and fluffed in the corner of the room, waiting on you to decorate later today. 

You stood there watching him for a moment, with his sleep tossed hair and sweatpant clad legs spread out comfortably as his eyes watched the hungry flames dance over the logs, consuming them and turning them into ash. 

You reach for your phone in your pocket, and quickly snap a picture of him. Even with the tired, whether-worn look on his face, he was still just as breathtakingly handsome as he was when he was in his late 20’s. Maybe even more so now. That boy you met long ago had been replaced with the man you now loved today. It was done through fire, and torment, the broken pieces that were once discarded, now at the hands of the potter inlaid with gold and turned into a beautiful piece of kintsugi pottery. Unique in his own right, and heartbreakingly beautiful; made so by his own brokenness.   

As you descend the last step his eyes drifted from the fireplace to you, and a warm smile spread across his face, masking the tired expression from before. 

“What are you doing up so early,” he asks as you drift your way to the coffee pot, pouring yourself a generous amount before taking your place next to him on the couch.  

You shrug, knowing his eyes were still watching you closely as you crossed your legs and took a sip of the dark, steaming liquid, savoring its bitter taste on your tongue. “I woke up, and you were already up, so why not get up too.”

Dean hummed in response, offering you the blanket that was on the back of the couch. 

“Got her all setup,” he said, nodding in the direction of the tree. “All we got to do is decorate. It’s gonna be another snow day, so I figured we’d spend today making this place look a little more festive. I know it’s a piss poor day 7, but tomorrow we can get back into more exciting stuff once the snowstorm clears.”

Sitting your coffee down on the little table in front of the two of you, you take his hand in yours, determined to get through to him. 

“Dean, not every day has to be some grand plan all day! I’m perfectly happy decorating the tree and just spending the day with you. When’s the last time we actually decorated for Christmas? Don’t feel like you have to keep me busy. You’ve done so much for me already.”

Dean’s eyes drifted across your face, searching, he was always so hard on himself, he was always trying to carry everyone else’s burdens, it was unfair that no one ever tried to carry him. 

“I just want this to be the Christmas you deserve, Y/N/N.”

“Dean, you’ve already given me that, and so much more. I’ll never forget this, even if I’m lucky enough to live old and develop Altimeters, I will still remember this time here with you. It means that’s much to me.” 

Dean’s eyes traveled to your lips, you didn’t realize you had been gravitating closer to him as you were sitting here talking to him, but right now you were so close to him you could feel his coffee kissed breath fanning over your skin. 

Before your brain could even process what to do next, Dean deliberately leaned closer to you and tentatively captured your lips in his, giving you a sweet, slow kiss that was almost not even there, but at the same time, it was enough to set your heart soaring around the room and light your world on fire all at once. It took a second for your brain to catch up with your body, but as soon as your lips begin to move slowly along with his, he deepened the kiss, wrapping an arm around your waist and pulling you closer to him, throwing everything he had into it; slipping his tongue across yours as your lips parted with his own, stealing your breath away from you. 

When he pulled away from you he kept his eyes close and leaned his forehead against your own, both of you breathing as if you had run a marathon, the room itself even felt charged with a current of sorts, igniting around you like the air before a southern thunderstorm. 

“You have no idea how long I’ve wanted to do that,” he confessed earnestly, and looking into his green eyes, still pale in color from the morning light you thought surely you must have fallen and hit your head on a hunt, or this was all some fever-induced dream. 

But it wasn’t a dream or a fever-induced hallucination. This was real, Dean was real, and this whole thing was hanging entirely on your acceptance or rejection. He’d taken a chance, and Dean was quite fragile when it came to his emotions, you knew this was the last time you would ever get this chance again if you pushed him away. 

“And I’ve wanted you to do it since the day I met you.”

The wide, relieved smile that spread across Dean’s face could honestly have stopped the world from moving in its tracks if they saw it. Before his lips could reconnect with your own, his phone began to ring loudly on the coffee table, cutting through the still air around you. Sam’s name flashing in bright letters across the screen. 

“You better get that,” you tell him, looking at the clear dilemma developing in his features. “It might be important.”

Reluctantly, Dean reached over, grabbing the phone and answering quickly. “Make it quick Sammy.”

You watched as Dean’s features transformed from annoyed to confusion, and your nerves started to get the best of you. 

“Sure, that’s fine Sammy, what time?... Okay great...see you then.” 

Dean hung up the phone, leaning over and placing another tentative kiss to your lips before lacing his fingers with yours.

“We better get started decorating,” he said, watching the relief spread across your features as he did, and his heart swelled at the idea that you still wanted to say with him, that he hadn’t just overstepped and ruined everything, he just couldn’t wait any longer. 

“What did Sam want?” you ask, still a little concerned. 

“He and Eileen are going to drive up here to see us tomorrow, he swears nothing’s wrong, he just wants to tell us in person. So I figure we get this place in shape, maybe fix a little family dinner and our Christmas with the family tomorrow, that way Christmas morning It can be just me and you.”

A smile tugged at the corner of your lips as you reached for the box of decorations sitting at the foot of the coffee table, and handed Dean the string of lights to untangle. 

“Well, looks like we better get started then.” 

Dean grabbed the lights from your hands, kissing you quickly again before starting to work on the ball, a new excitement hanging in the air around the cabin. Whatever Sam had to say, good or bad, Dean seemed really excited, and his excitement was contagious. 

Or was it the fact that you were certain your heart would never come down from floating around the raters from that kiss? You didn’t even care what it meant at this point, all you cared about was Dean was kissing you. That was something you never thought would happen. If he gave you nothing else for Christmas, that would be enough.

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[retrievablememories]

a sudden desire | johnny (m)

title: a sudden desire pairing: johnny x black reader genre: fluff, smut, fantasy/sci-fi summary: when you make an emergency landing on an ice planet, you have no choice but to seek refuge for the night. word count: 5.4k warnings: detailed description of an injury, mentions of violence, tending to wounds, mentions of insecurities, heavy petting, fingering, some dirty talk, unprotected sex—do not try at home!! 🔞 a/n: this exists in the same universe as my other fic, empathy. i’m developing this universe literally as i go, so plz excuse any plot holes, illogical shit, etc. i feel like this might be a bit too similar to another fic i wrote on here, but whatever chile it’s an excuse for some johnny smut so...bone app the teeth

The cold bites into your nose, fingertips, lips—the very bone marrow of your body. All you can do is shudder against the strong, icy wind beating across your skin and cling tighter to the backpack on your shoulders. You flex your fingers on the backpack straps to keep the blood circulating in them, though that doesn’t do much good when they hurt too much to move properly.

“Fuck, it’s freezing,” Ten curses beside you, and you’d agree if your lips didn’t feel frozen shut. Out of all places for your ship to give out, it’s just your luck that it happened on Kankara. Ice planet or not, though, you all made it out only by the skin of your teeth. The raiders who were on your tail would’ve surely taken advantage of the ship’s ruined state—one that they caused—if Laila and Lucas hadn’t taken them out with their gunning skills.

You, Ten, Lucas, and Laila huddle together near the entrance of the repair garage as you watch Johnny transfer the team’s credits to the repairman. Surprisingly, he’s one of the few other humans you’ve encountered in your travels across the galaxy, and it makes you wonder how he ended up here.

You already know there aren’t going to be many credits left after paying to fix the extensive damages the ship sustained, which is even more reason to get it in working order again. Because once it’s running, you can seek more missions—and more bounties.

“What’s the cheapest place around here that we can crash at for a while?” Johnny asks the man once he takes his Unit Pad back. The man scoffs, throwing him a look that’s equal parts sympathetic and amused.

“Not many hovercabs run around here, especially this time of night. The closest and cheapest place you’ll reach on foot is Drakar’s Motel...but it ain’t shit to write home about.” The man gives Johnny the directions. Most of what he says goes in one of your ears and out the other. You’ll be amazed if half of your brain isn’t frozen by the time you get indoors.

Laila sighs at the prospect of shacking up in a strange place. “I wish we could take the smaller craft,” she says, stomping her feet like a child.

“Too bad it got damaged too,” Lucas says, rubbing her shoulders in a futile attempt to warm her up. “These raiders are fuckin’ ruthless, man.”

“I guess it’ll have to do,” Johnny sighs, pocketing his pad and making his way back to the group. He reaches for one of your hands and you uncurl it from your backpack strap to take his. It’s an effort, but you feel better the instant his skin is on yours, so you think it’s worth it.

The snow never stops falling on this planet. It’s a perpetual winter, only much less jolly and welcoming than your typical winter wonderland. There doesn’t seem to be much of anything here. Just scattered buildings, empty streets, snow, and more snow—like a frozen desert. You don’t mind a bit of cold weather every now and then, but this is an extreme you don’t think you could ever get used to.

Kankara’s neighboring moons hang large in the sky, providing ample light to travel by. At least you don’t have to worry too much about whatever’s lurking in the dark.

Thankfully, you don’t have to walk the streets for too long before a bright glow begins manifesting through the ice and snow, as if some holy mirage. The slanted edges of a building come into focus, and it becomes clear that this is the motel’s silhouette.

“Finally!” Ten kicks a mound of snow in front of him and it sprays up around Laila, who promptly blesses him out for dousing her in more cold. As usual, Lucas has to squeeze his way in between them to stop the ensuing mess.

The first thing you notice about the motel is its neon sign. Not all of the letters work, so it looks more like “a a’s ote” than “Drakar’s Motel.” You simply chuckle and roll your eyes at that. If you were the one who had to come out in this cold to fix the letters, you’d leave the shit alone too.

There’s not much to see on the outside of the motel, with white powder covering nearly every inch of its exterior. You have to admit that it looks quite small, though, even from farther away.

When you all get inside, you realize it’s not much better. The temperature in the lobby is only a few degrees higher than the outside, at most. Not brutally cold anymore, but certainly not enough to warm anybody up. The lobby itself is barely bigger than one floor of your ship, and the burning fluorescent lights make you feel like a bug pinned underneath a glass pane, strangely lit up and displayed for all to see.

An extraterrestrial you recognize as a Vykyll sits behind the check-in counter reading a magazine. They’re balancing their chin on one of their tentacles, looking half-asleep and extremely bored with their job...or with life itself. Their nametag reads “Srynei.”

Srynei looks up from their magazine and gives you all a weary expression. “Before you even ask, there are only two one-beds available. The other rooms are either occupied or defunct.”

“One bed?” Lucas echoes, his eyes widening. He looks stuck between incredulity and annoyance.

You and Johnny glance at each other. He shrugs. “Well…it’s not like we have the money to pay for anything better, anyway.” He takes out his Unit Pad to hand to the alien. “Book it for five nights.”

Srynei places their magazine down and takes out a Unit Pad with the motel’s logo on it. “2 rooms for 50 credits a night...you got it.”

“Defunct? What does that mean?” Laila asks, furrowing her eyebrows.

“It means we can’t stay in those rooms, dumbass,” Ten replies, flicking her forehead. She catches his wrist before he can pull away fast enough and twists it, making him yelp in pain.

“I know what it means, watermelon head. I’m asking, why are they defunct?”

“Burst pipes, leaks, shattered windows from the sheer amount of cold...not my problem, though, I just check in the guests.” Srynei rolls their eyes as if they’re exhausted with the absurdity of the entire situation. You can’t imagine how many off-world visitors Kankara gets for the motel to still be in business, but stranger things have happened.

After the transaction is finished, Srynei holds out two room keys and you take them. 102 and 105, which means at least you won’t have to venture back out to use the stairs.

“So who’s sleeping with who?” Laila asks.

“I thought that was obvious,” Lucas snickers, wrapping his arms around her and Ten’s shoulders. He squishes them against his body in a too-tight hug and they both complain for air. “We should all leave these two,” he nods his head in your and Johnny’s direction, “to themselves, shouldn’t we?” It makes sense. The statement is innocent enough, but the sly faces of your three friends reveal their true thoughts.

“Can you not?” You laugh nervously, tossing Lucas the key for room 105. “I’m about ready to hit the sheets, so…” You don’t wait for his response before making your way down the hall, which is a tad narrower than you’re comfortable with. Everyone else will probably end up walking single-file to fit through. “God, this place is a claustrophobic nightmare.”

You fit the key in the lock and try to keep your mind off what Lucas just said. With some success. Okay, not a lot.

You and Johnny have been together for a little over 5 moon cycles now, but it’s safe to say you haven’t done much other than kiss and cuddle—which is mostly fine with you. But sometimes, you wonder how he feels about it and if he’s...content with it? Or maybe even growing tired of it? You feel bad for even thinking like that, because you know he doesn’t care and you shouldn’t either, but…

This isn’t the first time you’ve slept in the same bed together, but now that’s it been brought up, you can’t keep your mind off the subject of doing more. And as if on-cue, it makes your oh-so-familiar self-doubts rise to the surface.

“Are you okay?” Johnny’s voice interrupts your thoughts. His hand clasps over yours, and that’s when you realize you’ve been fumbling with the key in the lock for a good few moments now. He steadies your hand and helps you finally turn the key and unlock the door. “You must be really cold, let’s get you inside.”

“It’s not gonna be much warmer in there...” you say. The other three are already raising hell as they try to squeeze past each other in the small corridor, and you know it’s going to be a long few days.

The room is just as small as you expect it to be—and just as cold. There’s a heating and air conditioning unit by the window, though you doubt even it works judging by the room’s temperature. “Sometimes I feel like we never left Earth. Some of this stuff is so similar…” You wonder if the motel was purposely modeled after its Earth-based counterparts, or if there simply weren’t enough funds to spring for more advanced alien tech.

You don’t know a lot about Kankara, but you’ve heard it mostly described as a vast and cold-hearted place. The latter characteristic is undeniable of the weather, but you don’t know if you can make that kind of snap judgment for the planet’s inhabitants. Living somewhere like this will make anyone’s ambitions and hopes shrink to near nothingness, centering more on survival than basic pleasures.

“Takes getting used to,” Johnny sighs, closing the door and stripping off his two outer jackets as carefully as possible. “It’s like déjà vu.”

“You should get cleaned up,” you say, fiddling with the switches on the HVAC. As you thought, nothing works. That’s lovely.

“You should go first.” Johnny comes over to you and rubs his hands on your arms to try and warm you up.

“No way, I’m not the injured one here. I’d think you need it more than me.”

“Isn’t the first and probably won’t be the last. I’ll be fine.”

“Are you sure?”

Johnny moves your braids to the side and kisses your cheek in what is usually an innocent gesture. Him saying, “Don’t make me beg,” immediately after, though, makes it decidedly less so.

“O-okay,” you squeak, rushing to grab your clothes and head to the bathroom.

The bathroom is plain as hell, but clean, at least. You scrub off as much of the day’s dirt and grime as you can. Thankfully, the water isn’t as cold as the rest of the place, but it still isn’t as warm as you’d prefer.

Johnny takes his turn after you dress and come out. You climb onto the bed and notice that a portion of the window is in view—he must’ve pushed the drapes back. You stare out of the glass, watching the snow fall endlessly and wondering how it never piles higher. It’s as if the planet is in stasis, perpetually frozen on both a physical and time-based level.

Johnny comes out of the shower shirtless and looking not much happier than he was when he got in. His mouth is tucked into that straight line that always makes you laugh. “The hot water only lasted about 2 more minutes before it cut out on me, so that was fun.”

You try not to snort. “That’s tragic, Johnny.”

“Truly a modern tragedy,” he says sarcastically, brushing his wet bangs out of his eyes. He glances at you over his shoulder as he puts his worn clothes away. “Maybe we could take a shower together next time.”

“I’m sure,” you murmur, embarrassed, tucking your knees up close to your chest.

You glance at the wound just below the left side of his ribcage. It’s mostly scar tissue, no thanks to the cauterizing heat of the blaster shot that struck him, but it still looks horrible. And it must feel similarly, with the way he moves around the room being extra careful of it.

“You need to redress it,” you tell him.

“I know,” he sighs, his shoulders slumping at the thought of doing that. Johnny turns back to look at you, a pout on his bow-shaped lips. “Will you help me?”

A small smile crosses your lips. “Okay.” Johnny roots around in his pack for the medical supplies he remembered to pack before you all ditched the ship. He takes out the roll of bandages, AntiBac Gel, and bandage clips and hands them to you before gingerly climbing on the bed, propping a pillow against the headboard to lean on.

“We’re lucky we got away when we did,” you say, spreading the AntiBac over the wound. “Those bastards wouldn’t let up…”

“We definitely would’ve been way worse off without the others,” Johnny agrees. He glances at your hand moving across his skin. “Seeing you fight always reminds me of when we first met, though…all those training sessions we had, I mean.”

“Why?” You grimace slightly at the scarred edges of the wound. Not because you’re disgusted, but because you feel bad at how painful it looks.

“Back then, you were ruthless…and it fascinated me. Even though I’m not a huge fan of violence.” His lips twitch as if he doesn’t mean to smile about it, but he does anyway. “And you’re still the same but it’s...like, different, you know?”

“I’m afraid I don’t.” You laugh, unraveling the bandage and beginning to wrap it around his chest.

“I can’t explain it,” he says, looking at you from behind his still-soggy bangs. You glance at him, drinking in the curve of his cheekbones and his chin in the light of the bedside lamp. “It’s just...everything seems a little different when you’re in love with someone.”

Your fingers falter with the bandage for a second, and you hope he doesn’t notice. If he does, he doesn’t acknowledge it. “I suppose I can’t argue with that,” you say. “But...I’m just doing what has to be done. To keep ourselves alive. It gets scary out there, and…” You falter, unsure what to say. Or if you should say what you’re thinking.

“And you can’t live without me?” Johnny says, putting his hand over his heart.

“You literally never get tired, do you?” You grin, finishing the bandage and securing it with the clips.

“I dunno, sometimes. I am just a human, after all.” Johnny brings a hand up to tuck a stray braid back into your scarf. He lies back on the small bed when you’re done, taking your hand in his and kissing it. “Thank you, my queen. How can I ever repay you from saving me from a certain demise?”

“You’re such a clown.” You shake your head, laughing and pulling away from him long enough to put away the makeshift first-aid kit.

After you store the supplies, you climb back onto the bed. It’s barely enough for the both of you, let alone Johnny’s big body, and you find yourself nearly on top of him. You mentally will your palms not to sweat as you sit in such close proximity to him while he’s half-naked. You do enjoy it, though. A lot. You find yourself tracing one of his many old scars—one long line extending across his bicep—with your gaze.

“Didn’t you get that one from the day we escaped the EECA?” you ask quietly.

Johnny glances at it and nods, his lips curling into a slight smile. “Mm...yeah. Remember when Lucas kissed you that day?”

“I don’t want to remember.” Your skin grows hot with the memory, though more out of embarrassment than anything else.

“Did you enjoy it?” His eyes crinkle with laughter.

You give him a skeptical look. “No, not really!? We didn’t know each other that well then, and I don’t like having my personal space invaded.”

Johnny considers that, tucking his bottom lip between his teeth before looking at you. “What about me?” His tone lowers and he inches closer, glancing at your lips.

You raise your eyebrows and place a hand on his chest. “I know you aren’t trying it with a serious wound right now.”

“I’m already halfway hard.” He smirks, adjusting his sleep pants.

Your chest warms straight through, enough to make you forget all about the frigidness of the motel room. You feel both anxious and enthralled. The two emotions create a conflicting dichotomy inside of you, and it makes you uncertain of how to respond. You shove his shoulder, making sure to be careful of his side. “What kind of freak gets off on having their wounds tended to?”

You both laugh, but Johnny grins nervously after a moment, suddenly becoming much more shy than he was a few minutes ago. “You know it’s all just me being silly, right? You don’t have to do anything you don’t want to. I just want you to be comfortable.”

You just hum and look at him, regarding his features, before kissing him very tenderly on the lips. “I know, John.” After you pull away, you continue observing each other, though it doesn’t feel awkward, just—tense. Without a word, you both lean in and kiss again, a little deeper than before. His hand cradles the side of your face and neck, drifting between the two as if he isn’t sure where to settle.

Johnny licks into your mouth and you respond in kind, sliding your arm across his shoulders to pull him a little closer. Your touch is often still tentative with him, especially when you’re more intimate like this, still not quite sure if you’re allowed to have this, if it’s okay to indulge.

Johnny pulls away slightly to rest his forehead on yours, his lips still moving against your mouth when he speaks. “We...really don’t have to if you’re not ready,” he says, sounding slightly winded from the kiss alone.

“Shouldn’t I be asking you that?” you respond. You touch the hem of the bandages where they meet his skin, a little above his abs, and your hand keeps hovering there, unsure if you can touch him that way.

“It doesn’t matter,” he responds, moving closer to kiss you again.

You don’t know how long you sit there simply kissing each other, tasting each other’s lips as if there will never be enough of this—this sweetness shared between you.

After a beat of hesitation, you allow yourself to touch his abdomen, feeling the firm indentations of muscle underneath your hand. He’s impossibly warm even though you’re on an ice planet—it’s like he’s his own personal space heater. His skin is soft under yours, and he smells good enough to drown in forever.

In response to your touches, Johnny’s hand leaves your face and travels to your side, sliding down your waist and lower to your hip. His fingers are close to the inside of your thigh, moving over the fabric of your pajama pants.

Your hand drifts to the waistband of his pants, too, though you hesitate to go further. You realize with a bit of surprise, though, that you very much want this, more than you possibly let yourself believe. There are still many things you’re apprehensive about doing or saying with Johnny, but in this present point in time, you feel positive that you want to feel him in, around, under, over top of you—it doesn’t matter how.

Johnny’s lips separate from yours, and he moves his mouth to the soft skin of your cheek, ear, jaw, neck. Wherever he can reach is fair game at this point. “You can touch me. If you want.” He says this while kissing your neck, letting his voice vibrate across your nerves and seep into the very fibers of your being.

You take up his offer.

You tentatively slide your hand past the waistband. You don’t go underneath his underwear, but that’s fine for you. For the both of you. Instead, you feel him over the fabric, caressing the curve of his hardening cock and teasing the sensitive head with trembling fingers. Johnny moans softly against your neck, sighing and pressing his hips a little closer into your hand.

“Should I let you have all the fun?” he asks, kissing your throat.

“No,” you reply, breathless but still amused, “that wouldn’t be very fair, would it.”

Johnny vocalizes his pleasure and agreement when his fingers slip lower, pressing between your legs and gliding over your clit through the layers of your clothing. Your breath hitches, but you don’t stop stroking his dick, and he grows bolder with his own actions, sliding his hand up and away—only for a second—and then down into your pants, burdened with one less layer and giving you more calculating touches.

He strokes your clit as if he’s never touched anything so gently, and it makes you grip the back of his damp head and pull him closer to you, if at all possible. He answers that need for proximity by coming back up to claim your lips again, your tongues gliding against each other’s in the room’s quiet.

Your fingers are sticky from Johnny’s precum leaking into his underwear and onto your hand, and likewise, you are growing increasingly wetter in his hold.

Johnny moves as if he means to climb on top of you, but he winces and grunts halfway through the motion and you stop, looking at him with wide eyes.

“Are you hurt? I told you this wasn’t a good idea…”

“Stop worrying about me,” he says, though he doesn’t try to move again. “It’s just a little pain...but, um...maybe on the side is better.”

You nod, and you both spend a few awkward seconds shuffling around on the bed so Johnny is spooning you instead, your back to his front. You feel a little disappointed about not being able to see him, but that dissipates when he resumes touching you and kissing your nape. You mean to reach behind you to take care of him, too, but he seems content with gently rocking his hips against your ass, grinding his dick between your cheeks.

“Is this enough for you?” he asks, his voice soft and deep.

“W-what?” You can guess what he means, but being asked takes you off guard.

“Do you like how I’m touching you?” Johnny applies a little more pressure on your clit when he asks this, and you try unsuccessfully to not shudder like a leaf in a windstorm at the sensation. Combined with the sound of his voice, it’s an electrifying kind of feeling. “Or do you want more?”

It seems like every part of your body is throbbing with yes. “I...want more.”

Johnny lays a kiss against your shoulder. You feel him pull your underwear to the side and drag his middle finger against your clit and down to your hole, teasing you as if he doesn’t think he’ll insert it. Your body tenses and you moan. You don’t know if you should press back against his dick or into his hand, and it’s the sweetest, yet hardest, decision you’ve ever had to make.

Johnny finally eases his finger inside of you and makes a sound you can’t quite distinguish. “Is this all for me?”

“W-who else would it be for?” Your words are almost lost to the pillow as you use it to muffle your increasing sounds.

“I’m flattered, really. You shouldn’t have,” he snickers, pumping his finger into you. He makes sure to drag his palm across your clit as he does, carefully but firmly enough to make you pant. He caresses your inner walls until he finds your G spot and then focuses his energies on pleasuring that part of you.

“Shit...Johnny…” You curl your fingers into the fabric of the sheets beneath you.

Johnny slips another finger into you, and the stretch sets your nerves on fire with a more intense bliss. His mouth returns to your skin, kissing and licking and biting you everywhere.

“Johnny, please…” You reach back to grasp his hair, needing something to hold onto. He slips his right hand to your front, grasping one of your breasts through your shirt and running his thumb over the hardened nipple. You two are a tangle of limbs at this point, blurring into each other in the best possible way.

Your abdomen grows tense and your stomach warms as you come closer to your orgasm. You find yourself gripping Johnny’s arm, wanting him deeper inside of you, yet nearly wishing he’d stop for fear of being overwhelmed.

“Are you gonna come? Good. I wanna feel you gush around me,” Johnny whispers into your ear. He slips his right hand past the collar of your shirt, palming your bare breasts and pinching your nipples between his fingers.

You moan brokenly as the cord tethering you to your composure snaps, making you come and clench around Johnny’s fingers. The sound of him fucking you with his hand grows wetter, and you hear Johnny cursing in response.

Just when you think you can’t take anymore of his fingers curling into your spot, he pulls them out and puts them in his mouth, sucking them clean.

“You taste so good.” Johnny sounds drunk with lust—as if him rutting against your ass wasn’t enough of an indicator. You crane your head towards him, grip his chin, and bring his lips down to yours, tasting yourself on his mouth. He kisses you hungrily as soon as your lips meet. You almost have to pry him away to say your next words.

“I want more...” you say quietly against his lips.

Johnny smirks. “How much more?”

“You know what I want.”

“Hm...do I?”

“John…”

“Yes, queen?”

You blow air through your nose in lieu of cackling outright. “Inside me, please.”

Johnny gives you a soft peck before gripping the waistband of your underwear and pushing it down your legs. You help him slide them off the rest of the way, and he does the same for himself. His dick springs up between you, flushed and wet with precum. He grips it and guides it between your thighs, though he doesn’t enter you just yet.

The tip is sticky as it pokes against your thigh and then slides through your lower lips. You shudder at feeling him so close to you, hard and warm and yearning. He rubs against you like that for a few moments, his shaft stimulating your clit and making you leak onto him even more, his dick glistening with it. Johnny grasps your hip and moves your body in tune with his own movements, and you swear you see a tiny explosion of stars every time the vein on his cock rubs your clit.

“You’re killing me,” you sigh, rolling your head against the pillow before quickly stopping. You don’t need the hassle of retying your scarf if it comes off—and God knows it will if you continue.

“I think I’ve tortured us both enough.” Johnny places the tip at your entrance and slowly inches inside. Even that much makes you gasp, and you continue whimpering as he spreads you open with his thick shaft. Johnny’s breaths grow more labored, and he groans long and low when he finally bottoms out.

There’s little room left for words when he starts thrusting, taking it slower than you expected—but you don’t mind. Even though you’re already soaking and pliable from his earlier actions, he takes his time with fucking into you, guiding you along his length and pushing his hips to meet yours in an intimate rhythm. When he brushes against that same sensitive spot with his dick, you feel like your body’s been gripped with an almost painful kind of pleasure. One that holds onto you and refuses to ever let go.

It’s all so overwhelming.

“I love you,” he moans, pushing his cock in and dragging it back out with all the leisure in the world, “so much.” Your mouth falls open, and you want to say something back, anything, but you can’t make the words come out. Instead, you’re taken aback as tears spring to your eyes, choking you and closing your throat off to any sentiment you might want to express.

This isn’t the first time he’s told you that. You both know this well. But within this context, it makes your head spin with a new kind of dizziness. It all feels so good, too good, too much to bear.

You bite his arm to keep yourself silent, though it’s too late, and he feels your tears dripping onto his skin. Johnny handles you as if you’re made of glass, drawing your face towards his as he looks at you and wipes your wet cheeks. You still aren’t comfortable crying in front of him, but he never minds.

“Look at me,” he says. Johnny’s still moving inside you, sliding into you all slick and deep, and it makes you feel nearly too vulnerable to tolerate, as if you’ve been flayed open. But you do it anyway, latching onto his warm eyes. His skin shines from a thin layer of sweat, and it makes his hair stick to his forehead. The lamp light hitting his face makes his eyes look like two never-ending pools of warm honey, and he cups your face and kisses you tenderly when you lock eyes, and it’s all just too much.

“John, holy fuck.” You don’t really mean to say that, of all things, but it can’t be stopped once your orgasm floods through you, only it isn’t the violent and quick kind—it’s more of a slow buildup that finally bursts apart, spreading ecstasy through your whole body. You moan and tremble uncontrollably as Johnny slowly strokes you through your climax, still rubbing your clit and fucking into you deep.

Everything becomes a tiny bit blurrier for you, but you don’t fail to notice his own reactions as he grows closer, his thighs trembling from the effort of keeping his pace even. Finally, Johnny crushes your body against his as if you could melt together, pulling out to cum over your thighs and stomach. He buries his face into your shoulder and groans against you, and it’s a sound you think you’ll want to hear for the rest of your life. He keeps stroking his dick in between your thighs until he’s spent, his chest heaving from the effort of it all.

You both lie there for a few long minutes, simply trying to catch your breath. You still feel the dried tears on your face, though you try your best to ignore them, not wanting to ruin the moment with unwelcome feelings.

Johnny pulls his hand out of your shirt and sits up, though it takes an extra bit of strength on his part. You feel strangely guilty about how much you dislike suddenly being parted from his touch. As if he can sense your unease, Johnny grasps your hand in both of his and gives it a long kiss before going to the bathroom.

You hear the water running. Then, Johnny comes back quickly with a small towel. He climbs onto the bed and helps you into a sitting position.

“I’m sorry it’s not warm.” He smiles sheepishly, dabbing the washcloth against your cheeks as he erases the remnants of the tears.

You give him a small smile in return. “Nothing on this planet is.”

He cleans the mess he left on your lower body before tending to himself. After he’s done, you both pull your clothes back on—because it’s far too cold to sleep without anything on—and Johnny finally finds a shirt.

In the dark of the room, you curl up against each other to keep out the chill. When you wake up in the morning, you know you’ll be greeted to more cold and snow. It’ll still be days before you can return to your ship. Depending on how many credits are left, you might have to swap a few meals for Reserve Paks instead of eating decent food. You can already taste the lukewarm, oatmeal-like consistency of it in your mouth.

Despite that...you still have your friends and teammates. You still have Johnny. Maybe this could be a peculiar form of happiness. Maybe this could be contentment. Something that belongs wholly to you.

You trace a circle on the back of Johnny’s hand, studying his features illuminated by the moonlight spilling through the blinds. You shuffle closer to be level with his ear, and he blinks at you sleepily.

“I love you too.”

[monchikyun]

XVII. ghost stories

Connor doesn't want to admit it to himself but he has is currently over the moon. Living alone in that dreadfully dull apartment whose purpose has been that of a prison cell, a place where he'd spend the rest of his days waiting for some kind of divine punishment to restore the world's balance by putting him through suffering most soul-wrenching has not been a very pleasant experience. But Sumo, that helpless creature he gets to call his friend and roommate, has done nothing wrong to waste his life like that, cooped up in a supersized terrarium. The angel of a dog deserves a proper home. And if Gavin doesn't mind the android tagging along, then who is he to deny the floofpuff his favourite company.  Maybe it’s a bit presumptuous to think that Sumo has any distinct preference towards him, but that’s something Connor allows himself to indulge in, the idea that he’s doing a good job taking care of that overgrown puppy, that no one else would love him the same way Connor does. Of course, this kind of love would be better defined as an emotional dependency, but the canine doesn’t have to know that. 

He's happy, no one can deny him that, but with it also comes to the violent inner conflict, for the joy that flows through him never stops feeling wrong, one way or another. As if every little bit of content that he steals for himself extends the sentence he made himself serve, that he has to make up for each and every time he smiles or feels his heart flutter in something else than fear.

Yes, he did agree to Gavin's proposition, but it doesn't mean his mind is automatically set on actually going through with it. 

Every time they're locked in a shared moment like that it's hard to deploy rationality. Hard but not impossible. And if he really was against the idea of sharing home with the one person he’s sure he loves, he wouldn't have answered so enthusiastically. It's just that there is a mess inside of him and he can't quite sort through all the excess guilt and sorrow. 

“Hey, Con, what’s going on inside that head of yours? I can basically hear your brain cogs grinding.” 

They've been lying side by side on the bed closer to the window, keeping a polite distance between their bodies. The snowing outside has ceased, which can’t be said for the weather beyond his eyelids. Connor hasn't wanted to face anything tonight, so he has submitted his vision to the darkness, listening to Gavin's slow rhythmical breathing, one of his favourite sounds in the world.  

Many times has he found himself wishing to share the events that lead him to his current devastated state, times upon times did he want to transfer his memories to some innocent bystander just so he doesn’t have to suffer alone. But never to anyone close to him. It used to be a wound too ugly to be shown, and he feared that once it’s revealed, it would make him revolting in the eyes of the recipient. If it's just him who has to bear the hideous burden then he can justify it as a consequence for his shortcomings, that was something agreed upon in his mind. But when the weakness is stronger than his resolve to let it stew inside of him for all eternity, he can't do anything else but to listen to its cries for help. Because when he closes his eyes and concentrates, the voice screaming for someone to come and save him is no one else's but his own. 

And Gavin just happens to be the first one to get near enough to hear. 

"I'll tell you, but only if you really wish to know what happened on that day. It won't be an easy story to tell, and even less so to listen to." 

"I'd bet you anything that I've heard worse. Witnessed, even. Maybe."

Connor turns to face him, just to give him an expression that conveys how unconvinced he is about that. 

"Okay, sure. Just. This is very… hard for me, so…" 

"Hey it's fine, we don't have to do this if you're-" 

"No, I need to get it out. It's been weighing me down for almost a year, and I don't know how much longer would I be able to last like this.," he squeezes his eyes shut again and dares to grace Gavin with a minuscule smile. 

Gavin extends his hand far enough to almost touch him, letting it linger in the vast space between them. It feels like they doing something like this for the first time, like they’ve regressed back to how it was before this December. He can’t stand it, so he seizes the hesitating hand and clutches it like it’s the only thing keeping him from slipping into the endless dark. 

"Let's be fair here, no one deserves to be my outlet more than you." 

He's the main reason Connor's still here, after all. 

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

What a terrible fucking day has it been already, and it's only ten in the morning. Hank has woken up with a hangover tracing his every step, directly followed by his ever so caring partner. They have been stuck working on a seemingly never-ending case, and the lieutenant isn't known for his patience. Every day he grows wearier and wearier of not being able to find their guy despite it feeling like they're oh so impossibly close to apprehending him. Like he's hiding just around the corner, laughing his ass off at their incompetence. It bogs down not only him, but Connor has been invested in this more than everyone else. The poor android probably blames himself for the fact that the perp is still walking freely among all of his potential victims. 

So when they finally get the call of his whereabouts, when this nightmare of an investigation is about to come to an end, he is so wired-up he cannot see anything besides that what matters to him right now, which is nothing else but the hooded figure fleeting away across the busy street like exhaustion doesn't even exist to him. Unfortunately, Hank is an old man and his muscles are not what they once used to be, so he has no choice but to leave this chase to the one of them who doesn't need any organic tissue to run at the speed of a motorcycle. When the lieutenant does eventually catch up to them, he releases a sigh of relief that gets lost in all the breathless heaving as he watches the monster of a man lying on the floor in the pool of his own blood. He is not a callous person, not usually that is, but right now he wishes that the person on the ground wasn’t breathing anymore. Maybe he'll regret thinking like that later, but at the moment it feels more than justified, given what inhumane atrocities the man has committed. 

He's about to praise Connor for his good work when an arm sneaks around his shoulder, and he senses something sharp against the skin on his neck. 

"Tell me Jake’s not dead or I''ll kill this geezer like the pig he is." A gravelly voice grazes his ear and he wants to throw up from the undesirable proximity. 

"You won't." 

Leave it to his android partner to always have the upper hand in a crisis. He’s is sure that the gun Connor’s holding in his hopefully steady hand won't miss his target and that he'll be released from this death grip in a matter of seconds. It's not the first time he's found himself in a perilous situation like this, but that doesn't mean he's isn't sweating like he's about to get murdered in cold blood. Because he isn't. He can’t be-

A loud bang reverberates through his head down to his spine, ending at his feet just as devastatingly hot lava takes his mind under. It's the worst pain he's ever been in, yet it feels so… liberating.  He can just make out a desperate scream of his name in the voice he's got used to hearing these past months before all his thoughts slowly disappear into the all-encompassing darkness that is carrying him somewhere distant, somewhere painless. Here, in the great void of salvation, he's nothing but an idea.  

Happy because he’s arrived in the place he's been trying to get to all this time, for a hope that he can meet the most important person in the entire world, the missing piece of his soul. Sad because he’s leaving the other one behind. 

He doesn't know if the flickering light that is gradually moving closer is the thing he's been longing for, but he's more than willing to find out. 

Because nothing burdens him anymore. He's finally free. Home at least. Just like he should be. 

@a-convin-new-year should i continue tagging this blog or it too late? 

[enkelimagnus]

Literature

Bucky Barnes Gen, 1756 words, rated T for Hydra shit

Jewish Bucky Barnes, The Falcon and the Winter Soldier: Episode 3 Power Broker

Sam falls asleep on the plane over to Madripoor and leaves Bucky and Zemo alone. They actually talk to each other. I would say it's nice.

TW: brief allusion to past rape, internalized homophobia, brief mention of the holocaust

Read on AO3

Part 20 of Making a Home - the Jewish Bucky series

--------------

It’s an eleven hour flight from Berlin to Madripoor, even with Zemo’s private jet. Once drinks have been served, food has been eaten and threats have been made, they all find themselves settling.

Sam has dozed off on a seat, seemingly exhausted. After all, they’ve already travelled the eight hours from the states, and the day has been stressful at best. At least, Sam trusts him enough to fall asleep while Bucky watches Zemo. He wasn’t expecting that. Or perhaps his human physiology is betraying him.

Bucky needs less sleep than a normal human on regular days, and he also can survive much longer sleep deprived. He’s well aware of the limitations of his body. Hydra tested them thoroughly and multiple times. Zemo would know as well, that Bucky might look tired but it doesn’t diminish his abilities as much as it seems.

The man in question is at his seat with his book, though he’s regularly looking up through the windows of the plane or around the cabin. There’s something quiet and wistful about the way he stares at a spot where the carpeting is not perfectly set against the wall to the bathroom.

The silence is good, especially after earlier, where Sam and Zemo somehow managed to gang up on him about Marvin Gaye of all people.

It’s not that Bucky doesn’t like Marvin Gaye. He just doesn’t like much music. He’s sort of lost the taste for it. His brain is usually unable to perceive it as anything but unnecessary noise that keeps him from being completely aware of his surroundings. And at least 40s music doesn’t have death and rape associated to it.

And he doesn’t need to know what Steve thought of it, whether Steve loved it or not. He’s not Steve. Steve journeyed light into the 21st century. Everything was something new to learn and experience, it was exciting and bright. Bucky is travelling with baggage. And he has memories attached to songs and tastes and sensations and events.

Bucky simply can’t use the notebook the way Steve did.

Sometimes, he wonders if Sam forgets Bucky wasn’t simply on ice for 80 years. The issue with him is that he lived through most of it, and it was all torture.

Or maybe not all . He woke up craving Karpov’s kasha the other week, and it makes no sense. He only tasted it during one specific time of his life, when Karpov and him got stuck in a safehouse in the snow, with no way to reach the outside world, for two weeks. The Soldier’s rations and formulas ran out long before they were able to leave. Karpov was too smart to let him starve, and perhaps that time alone with the Soldier, away from the world, with no way to freeze him or unplug him had made him see he was still a man. The kasha was warm, and thick, and sweet and sometimes, Bucky remembers that feeling and craves it.

The danger with people like him, America’s Super Soldiers, is that we put them on pedestals.

Zemo’s right.

In all honesty, Bucky believes he’s forgotten who Steve really was.

Memories become blurry when they age and no matter how desperate Bucky is to crystalize them, to remember them, to be sure of what he lived, all he manages to do is to frame faded photographs and fill in the blanks himself.

Steve and him didn’t have time. He found him after two years of searching, only for Bucky to be back on ice within two weeks. After that, Steve visited a few times during his recovery, when he introduced him to the goats he’d named after the sisters he finally remembered. And then, there was the War, and the Snap and once Bucky was back to life, Steve was shattered. And two weeks later, he was gone.

They didn’t have time to learn each other again. Bucky doesn’t know who Steve is anymore, half of his memories feel tainted by Smithsonian explanations, and he hates it so fucking much.

He hates that he can’t remember right, he hates that Steve’s slipping away from him every second of every day, that all that is left is the fucking shield and Captain America. That Steve’s legacy doesn’t seem to run deeper than that, else Bucky would have less of a single-minded focus on that fucking piece of useless fucking metal.

It’s only been three months. Why does Steve feel like he’s been gone for a lifetime?

Bucky breathes out a shuddering breath.

When his eyes focus again, Zemo is staring at him.

The book is open on his lap. Bucky can read the title. Same Sex Fantasies in Heterosexuals. Fucking hell. He doesn’t need that right now. At all.

“You’re a different man than the one I remember,” Zemo says quietly after a moment. His voice is soft, just slightly above a whisper. He knows Bucky has sharp ears. He knows he doesn’t need to wake Sam up.

Bucky dignifies that with a huff and looks away for a moment. Zemo’s eyes don’t leave him. He can feel them on him, on his face, on his throat, on his hands, on his body. They make him itch. They make him want to punch him for looking at him like that.

Like what?

You know exactly like what.

When Bucky looks back, Zemo’s indeed still watching him.

“You’re old now,” Bucky says eventually, in a vague answer to what Zemo said earlier.

“Eight years have passed, James. You cannot blame a normal man for something he has no control over.”

Eight years. So Bucky was right. Zemo wasn’t dusted. He stayed in that solitary confinement cell for eight years as the world moved on around him, as the world fought and lost half of its people.

Had he wished to be one of the ones that were snapped out of existence? Probably. After all, every second Zemo breathes and exists is a second more he wasn’t supposed to have. He tried to kill himself in Siberia, once his mission was over.

“Do you ever read normal stuff?” Bucky asks, a bite in his words.

Zemo raises an eyebrow, head tilting slightly to the side. His eyes are still glued to Bucky’s face. He still wants to punch him.

“I would need you to define ‘normal stuff’ to answer this question.” There is a hint of mirth in those brown eyes though. He knows exactly what Bucky means.

Bucky huffs and rolls his eyes. “Machiavelli, fucking… whatever this shit is,” he makes a motion of his chin towards the book. It’s in German, something about boundaries in relationships. Hilarious, really. It’s not like Zemo has anyone to set boundaries with. Unless those eight years of solitary have somehow driven a rift between Zemo and his own dick. “That’s not normal stuff. Novels, popular stuff…”

“I wonder,” Zemo starts. “Have you any recommendations for titles of ‘popular stuff’ for me?”

Everything Bucky can think of is old. He’d told himself he’d look into acquiring books but… he hadn’t had the time or the energy.

“I see your taste in literature has elected to stay with your taste in music, then.”

Fucking ass. Bucky closes his eyes and sighs so heavily he’s pretty sure Sam’s going to wake up.

“To answer your question, James,” Zemo starts, conversationally, as if they aren’t enemies, as if they are just old friends, so old they have become strangers. “I do read normal stuff.” The phrasing is foreign in his mouth, in that accented voice of his. “I’ve read all the classics, and children’s literature. Eight years are long. I practiced my Russian with translations of Harry Potter and the Lord of the Rings at first.”

Bucky hums, looking up at him for a moment. “I noticed your pronunciation had changed,” he says quietly. “Did you read it to yourself out loud? Pretended someone was telling you a story?”

It’s cheap. They’re both aware of how lonely the past eight years must have been. It’s cheap, and it’s low-hanging and Bucky almost feels guilty.

Zemo’s small smile doesn’t reach his eyes.

“Have you read Jules Verne?” Bucky asks, trying to erase his taunt with some more literary conversation. “Was obsessed with his work as a kid. Kinda like Tolkien, but even better because it was… full of invention, not of magic.”

There’s a floating moment, a few seconds of Zemo just watching him with that slight sadness in his eyes before it is washed away and replaced by a hum.

“I’ve read those books, yes. In the original French,” Zemo points out and Bucky is almost grateful for the boasting. “You should seek a new translation, if you’re not adept at the original language. The one I assume you read was a descendant of 1870 translations, riddled with errors and political censorship. They fixed that in the 60s. You’ll like the new ones better.”

Bucky raises an eyebrow. “I’ll take that under consideration, I guess.” He’s so sure he’ll like it.

“And if you find yourself in the north of France one of these days, you should stop by this little city called Amiens,” Zemo continues. “A fine place, old and new, in the way only Europe can be. Jules Verne died there. The city’s positively themed after the man and his work. You can even visit his house.”

Visiting a dead man’s last residence? “That’s kinda morbid,” he mutters and Zemo has a small chuckle.

“People visit Anne Frank’s house as if the walls aren’t hollowed with fear,” he points out. “Dying makes one the public’s intimate friend. You know that better than anyone else.” He gives Bucky a sidelong glance. They both know he’s talking about Steve, and the documentaries and exhibits and think-pieces.

Bucky nods quietly and looks back through the window. The sun is painted indigo and pink. It’s beautiful. He’s forgotten the sunset could be this beautiful.

When he looks at Zemo again, he notices the exhaustion written all over his face, in the small wrinkles and under eye bags and the way his eyes won’t settle on anything for too long, desperate to stay awake.

“I’m not gonna kill you,” Bucky says after a moment. “We need you.”

Zemo chuckles tiredly, a soft and muted sound. “If that is the one thing that is keeping me alive… I believe I shall keep myself useful, then.” It’s almost sarcastic. A man living on borrowed time, wishing desperately he could be executed.

“You do that.”

[howdytherepardner]

a tale of two fountains or maybe tributes to "great men"

spires of caverns and pits and spikes; all in aggregate seem to suggest that it could not all have been constructed with care yet each one constructed with too much care for one to bear. cascading semi-chlorinated water separated and dispersed through multitude arteries abruptly exposed to the world around it, standing alone in a vernal pool tucked between decadence and the machines driving legacies of wealth and influence. despite the drapings of grandeur and the mythos surrounding it, it is not unknowable. any outside perspective would give you something to remember it by, but the spears are not a strong enough defense to hides its insides. this unrelenting, static chaos holds an eye of stability; not precise to guarantee protection, but enough to assure that anyone brave enough to venture within will know some measure of relief from the world that surrounds it and the world that it is.

~

i wander down an exposed stairwell with my prox and a towel, wearing only a linting mask and old swim shorts. the paved surfaces that my journey follows range from smoother cement to asphalt jagged with berries from trees that would never realize their evolutionary purpose. it is not the first time i have decided to sit under the fountain of freedom ahead of me arriving at it, but it is the first in memory that i have been so prepared. normally, a pair of briefs would get soaked while too many things sat on the stairs anticipating the emergence of my dripping form, which would continue until i made it back to my room. but there i was. i have never been particularly good at meditation, and would only claim to have “achieved” a meditative state a few moments in my life, but media depictions of water falls as a particular source for finding some form of releasing outer thoughts; it seems to work well enough, but perhaps i just enjoy the spectacle. this night, there were only a few pairs that sat along the side of water, so not too much of an audience, but enough for me to wonder what they thought as i hung my towel and mask on “Double Sights” and sloshed my way to the tower. normally i might set myself directly under a narrow cascade or in the eye, but this session i remained at a static point in orbit: my legs soaked and my arms quickly coated by innumerable droplets, but my hair only catching the most divergent skydivers, the back of my neck losing its dryness only to sweat and humidity.

it’s a place of security, your conversations drowned out by incessant waters, and in close enough proximity, your own thoughts as well. that was the aim of my venture up campus. i’ve been struggling to fall asleep lately. my body will be exhausted from interactions and activities (walking to class? inconceivable) enough that i give up on work earlier in the night and pray that an earlier sleep will restore some greater stamina. the mind however is plagued with sensations of the time that i’m wasting THERE ARE ONLY 22 WEEKS OF SCHOOL LEFT AND YOU’RE SITTING IN YOUR FUCKING ROOM WHAT HAPPENED TO THE YOU THIS SUMMER WHO WAS READY TO SEE PEOPLE AND LIVE AGAIN, the regrets i am well beyond amending THIS IS JUST HOW YOU WERE FRESHMAN AND SOPHOMORE YEAR HAVE YOU LEARNED NOTHING WITH YOUR IVY LEAGUE TRANSCRIPT, and other anxieties I AM FAILING ALREADY. I AM INDEED TAKING IT ALL FOR GRANTED, WHAT ARE YOU GONNA DO ABOUT IT PRINCETON OPINION PERSON? I AM DISAPPOINTING MY FRIENDS AND EVERYONE WHO HAS EVER INVESTED CAUSE OR CONCERN IN MY SUCCESS AND WELL-BEING. of course, the mind is of body as well, and these permeate through the rest of me. i haven’t felt health for a while THOUGH I’M SURE THAT’S JUST THE COVID THAT I’VE DEFINITELY CONTRACTED AND SPREAD TO MY LOVED ONES or the scattered eating and sleeping schedule compounding into no full restoration. most of the time, this leads to a shirtless run on the towpath (if i’m not doing school work, i might as well perfect this bag of bones), but Ida has eroded many segments to the bottom of the canal, so darker nights may not be the best for it AND MY VISION SEEMS TO BE GETTING WORSE EVERY DAY, SO IT’S ONLY A MATTER OF TIME UNTIL THE BODY SURRENDERS ANY SHRED OF WORTH ENTIRELY.

but that night was not humid, and chilly waters woke me to ensure i was fully experiencing my slate slowly being washed away. worries seem to just slip away from me, like a patagonia in any of the clubs’ coat rooms. i feel the effortless mind of my body switch on the ignition, turning all engines to ensure that i freezen’t in the water, and i can stretch each muscle individually as i am asked to confront the prospect of how this form is treated. and i can breathe again, full and deep, and i feel like i am able to get up and face the world as it comes once more.

~

Scudder Plaza may be the most relaxing spot on campus: you can catch the cooling spray from James FitzGerald’s monumental sculpture, Fountain of Freedom, or be soothed by the sounds of its cascading water. At twenty-three feet high, Fountain of Freedom is one of the largest cast bronze sculptures in the U.S. Inspired by the rugged beauty of the artist’s native Pacific Northwest, the grooves, channels, and spires of the six-ton sculpture—reminiscent of naturally eroded forms—are meant to symbolize Woodrow Wilson’s aspirations and frustrations. … Seven hundred gallons of water are recirculated through the fountain each minute and are sprayed through an intricate system of fifty major pressure valves and more than 1,000 pin-hold jets. (x)

~

but tower 4 is some distance from those 4 towers. and without jets pushing them back, many things come crawling back. i am looking down to the basement cafe with its lights out, wondering if the people coming my way were laughing at my relative under-dress, when i decide that i cannot go home yet. i complete another barefoot walk across campus, and lay my towel down as a seat at my penultimate resting place.

~

its silhouette a vague enough [cardioid of sorts] to prevent any association based on shape alone, your expectations may be higher than what you need. it is a piece of furniture in name and in relativity to form, something regarded briefly in the minds’ eye and then passed by just as quickly. its flows ooze at a steady rate, in synch such that it never appears to be moving at all; the only proof that it is, really, is the shading below coming from beyond the light and the drippings at its bottom hidden from view. those surface shimmers make a soft sound, but on touch simply flow between the fingertips. a single indentation on the surface has received a few stones of the many that live below its form, placed there by hands other than its creator; certainly, they gave their vision the precise amount of care and intent required to manifest it. an illusion that what it emits has eroded it over many years to a smooth shape, but with the truth that it is still very young and remains solid within.

~

it would not feel quite right to sit atop einstein’s table, so i sit on the concrete next to the square of rocks. even with consistent eye contact, its subtle streaming does little to shield spectators from the world outside. a car driving by listening to top hits from summers past, a few pedestrians making their pilgrimage for late night snacks; every little itch on the surface of my skin, and of course, bare exposure to every THIS and THAT in a state of overwhelming stillness. but in all, it comes to pass, and my brain is left backtracking to the overwhelming stillness i have known in recent months. i am nostalgic for my University Mandated Quarantine Walks, particularly one alone in the mountain lakes preserve after my first snow back. i am nostalgic for early autumn days looking at the sun reflected off a pond. i am nostalgic for the waiting to find out where i’d spend my junior year, the waiting to receive messages and letters from friends. restless simplicity, anticipation for better things that, well, i guess are supposed to be the present. it doesn’t really feel that way now. as SENTIMENTS have alluded to, i am struggling to make it through right now. instead of a senior year that serves as the culmination of all that came before, i feel instead trapped in shitty replays of the past 3 years. like a script composed of false cognates, it feels like i understand what is happening right now and it makes no sense.

~

Near the earthwork is “Einstein’s Table,” made of jet mist granite and inspired by Albert Einstein’s theory on black holes. Lin noted that the theory was validated last year during the creation of the table. Outer space and constellations were a source of inspiration for both projects, she said.

During the hourlong conversation, Lin shared details of her process from start to finish, which included many adjustments along the way. “With every artwork there might be six to eight models,” she said. “I’m always teaching myself about the site, so that I’m preparing myself for what it’s going to be like to be on site.” (x)

~

but i think i am mostly wondering about how similarly others are feeling. it appears to me that my peers are sliding right back into the chaos of the now, festive in the face of it all and doing everything i tell myself i should be doing right now. do i come off that way to them? does anyone really know how to express these feelings 100 leagues below the surface, or is it just me? what feels true to me, and what leads me to rise from my seat next to the table and return home, is that i must continue. there is little option now but to follow through on this all until the end of the line, whenever it may come; maybe that comes easier for some people now, but i think i’ll make it eventually. i am not entirely sad and i am not entirely happy, but i am here. i think i want to help people despite not being perfect at it, and i am here. all things for granted or not, i am here. i will continue to get cold under one monument and never deny the temptation to touch another passing by, because i know those are things i like to think. i hope you know you can talk to me always.

[eerythingisshaka]

Ficmas Day #23 “Snow In Manhattan”

[Dr. Manhattan/Cal Abar x OC]

Word Count: 1.4k

Dr. Manhattan finds the holiday season intriguing.  With him being a blue god that can control matter in every form, somehow the thought of a white man giving presents around the earth one day a year just didn’t seem to meet his level in his opinion.  Santa comes into your house uninvited and just because he lives a gift, he is celebrated, yet Dr. Manhattan is feared just for the potential his power has.  

He gets that ignorance is bliss, so it doesn’t bother him that much.  The issue he has, though, is the disappointment that people face during the holiday season.  The cards and commercials and movies exhibit images of goodwill and compassion for the less fortunate, yet constantly he sees those with more passing the poor by in order to fulfill selfish desires and feed the commercialization of the spirit of the holiday.

However, at one time, he did sense the presence of a human who appeared to have a different heart, not just for Christmas, but all year long.  Raye made herself useful to others through community service and volunteer work at a local shelter.  Working two jobs during the week, and volunteering on the weekend, she has little time for herself to even enjoy a walk in the park before she is exhausted.  

One night, leaving the shelter, Raye says her goodbyes to volunteers and inhabitants alike.  Walking to her car, she finds a $100 dollar bill sitting crisp and flat against the asphalt.  When she picks it up, she looks around her for anyone nearby.

“Incredible,”  Dr. Manhattan says to himself, as she walks over to a woman sitting outside the shelter, handing her the money.

“Take this.  It isn’t mine so I’ll let you have.  I’m sorry we are at capacity, but make use out of this.  Hope it helps.”

“Bless you, baby!  God bless you so much!”  the woman replies, getting up and walking off down the street.

Dr. Manhattan knew that would happen, however seeing it in real time always felt stronger.  A week ago, Raye won a small fortune from a scratch off ticket and wasted no time to take it to a church so that they may expand their food ministry.  

Dr. Manhattan laid several ‘traps’ along Raye’s path to test her heart.  A regular person would’ve claimed if not one thing, all of them in order to better their own lives and those closest to them.  But she refuses every single one to instead pass on to a neighbor.  

One day, during a rare off day between jobs, Raye sits on the rooftop of her apartment overlooking the city.  She takes a deep breath in her chest, letting out a heavy energy on her heart.  This time of year made her the most excited and sad at the same time and when it gets to be too much, being in the air makes her feel the most grounded.

The door to the stairwell opens as a man pops out.  

“Excuse me.”

Raye looks back, watching him closely as he meanders across the roof.  “Hello.”

“Don’t mind me, I was just looking to get some fresh air.  Or is air pollution thicker the higher you go?”  He looks at her with bright eyes.  His tailored trench coat and turtleneck are out of season for the weather despite wearing them well and not a drop of sweat rolls off his brow.

Raye shrugs.  “Maybe, but it’s quieter from the noise below.”

He leans over the wall to check out the traffic quietly.

Raye hugs herself, feeling compelled to commit to small talk.  “So, do-”

“You don’t have to speak to me.  If you don’t want to.”

Raye snaps her jaw shut, looking away embarrassed.

He leans against the wall, putting a hand over his heart.  “I don’t mean to sound rude.  I understand I initiated conversation, but I don��t want to disturb your meditation.”

She nods.  “Thanks.  I’m not great with it but I’ll try if I want to.”

He holds your gaze for a moment, coming closer when he says.  “If you could entertain a question: do you have plans for the holiday?  Besides sitting up here?”

Raye smirks.  “Well, I won’t plant myself here all weekend since I have soup kitchen duty and then toys for tots in the evening.”

“You’re a giver.  That’s nice.”  

Raye nods proudly.  “I like to give my time.  It helps not to have an idle mind and hands.”

“Still it would be nice to be with family or friends for a day, right?  When do you get that time?”

Raye thinks for a minute on this.  “I don’t.  I mean I have them, but since I’m so busy, I think they just decided to stop asking me to do things?  And I’m fine because they’re right, but it still…”  her voice trails off before she fidgets uncomfortably.  “Well, I know you didn’t ask to be my therapist, huh?”

He shakes his head, sitting next to her.  “No, it’s ok.  I like to listen.”

“Aw.  Who are you by the way?”  

“Cal Abar.”

“Nice to meet you.”  

Cal turns to her slightly.  “One more question, if I may ask.”

Raye perks up.  “Ok, go for it.”

“Imagine your perfect holiday.  What does it involve?”

Raye pushes out her lips and closes her eyes to activate her critical thinking brain.  “What would I want…”  She snaps her fingers.  “Snow!”

Cal nods knowingly.  “I see.  Why such a simple request?”

Raye sighs.  “I mean...I don’t live in a snowy area.  It’s like 70 degrees but can you imagine if it snowed here?”

“Wouldn’t it be beautiful?”  Cal says.

“Yes, but that would be one more obstacle for people I see everyday.  Living on the street with ice and snow?  I’m grateful that’s one less thing to worry about for them.”

Cal points a finger as if he suddenly thinks of something.  “Take a trip!  Somewhere snowy for the holiday?”

Raye scoffs.  “With what money?  I can’t afford a trip like that.”

“That does sound nice.”  Cal stands up, pacing in front of Raye.  “How about this, close your eyes.”

Raye eyes him suspiciously.  “Why?”  

“Visualization.  If you imagine yourself being there, just maybe you’ll get the effects.”  Cal closes his eyes with his hands in front of his face in prayer position.  He peeks an eye at her.  “Try it.”

Raye closes one eye, until trust takes over the other.  

“Imagine the snowflakes falling on your face.  Cold wind biting your nose.  The crunch of tiny ice formations under your feet as you step.

Raye gets caught up in his storytelling, trying to create the picture he is painting in her head.  She feels something drop on her forehead, she touches something cold.  

“Whoa, this is kind of working Cal!”  Wind blows her face as she opens her eyes and sees slopes of snow in front of her.  Raye’s jaw hits the floor in amazement as turns around, unable to comprehend what has happened.

“Cal!  Cal, what’s going on!”  She takes a few steps forward, kicking the fluffy snow, touching the clumps and breaking it up in her hands.  “How is this possible?”  Ahead of her, she sees a figure, she assumes to be Cal.  Running towards it, the wind whips her face and the knee deep snow makes each step heavier than the last.  Once Raye approaches the figure, she sees that it’s actually a snowman.  

She walks around it, seeing its carrot nose and coal eyes.  “How did you get here?”  She touches its face and in a flash she is back on her apartment rooftop with Cal’s face in her hands.  She snatches her hand back self-consciously.  “Sorry!  But what the fuck?”

“You made it back!  How was your visualization?”  Cal asks warmly.

Raye is taken aback.  “That wasn’t a visual, I was in a snowstorm!”

“Eh, a flurry at worst.” 

“But I don’t get...How did you?”

Cal raises an eyebrow with a sneaky smirk.  “I’ll let you know one day, not now though.  Do you want to try again?”

Raye nods.  “Yeah!  But come with me.”  She closes her eyes, feeling the rush of adrenaline through her veins.  

“Next time you see me, I’ll be there with you.  Imagine the snow again.”

As she visualizes, she doesn’t feel the same immersion that she had before.  

“Cal it’s not wor-”  

As quick as he came, he was gone.  Raye ran to the stairwell calling his name in the building but no one answered.

Dr. Manhattan witnesses her searching for him from afar, coming closer to the main development of their relationship.  Once Raye is ready, he will appear again.

[itscalledbisexualcrisis]

Scrap Metal - Chapter 6

Summary: Hiro broke off her engagement to Kuvira three years ago and left Zaofu. All she wants is to live her quiet life in Republic City, away from her haunting past. Kuvira's catching up to her, but is she going to find what she's looking for? Or is she only going to reveal the secrets Hiro kept hidden from her all these years?

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“We have been informed that there are dissenters in the western city of Omashu. They are requesting assistance to take down the rebels,” relays the scout. Kuvira is leaning on the table, flipping through the detailed report in front of her. Omashu had been one of the later acquired cities. She found them to be quite irritating to negotiate with and spent many months going back and forth with the old king about their treaty. It was easy to assume that rebel groups would pop up within it.

“We can send Commander Guan, he’s the closest in proximity and has the troops to take care of any dissenters,” Baatar suggests. “It’s about time we reel in Omashu, once and for all. Who better than our Southern Commander?”

Kuvira continues reading the report, letting the rest of her inner circle pipe up with suggestions and requests. Even though it does make sense for Commander Guan to go, due to the location of Omashu, it was hard keeping a stronghold of the mountainous city. They needed a consistent leader for the mountainous region in general. Especially since their plan to take Republic City was fast approaching, Kuvira needed to be at headquarters focusing on the Spirit Canon and Colossal. Her eyes scan across the table, eyeing her inner circle carefully.

She limited the amount of people allowed in her highest ranks. Various men and women of the sergeant and commanding rank sat around the circular table, all capable and willing to fight for their country. She needed someone unrelenting and dominant to maintain balance in the mountains. Most of all someone who she trusted, and the list was few and far between.

“Well, from previous reports, Commander Guan is already struggling to hold together the South East and coastal regions. Do you think it’d be wise for him to take on a new battle when he’s in the middle of one?” Kuvira turns her attention to a voice with sharpness that cuts through the room’s ardent dialogue. Sergeant Anjij was one of Kuvira’s oldest friends from Zaofu who joined her when she first began uniting the nation. She was a talented water bender, a rarity for the Metal Clan, but nonetheless accepted for her talent. She was an expert in combat and one of the front line soldiers during the first siege on Ba Sing Se. Her thick dark hair was held back in a high ponytail and eyes a dark sea foam color. She was known for being a serious no-nonsense woman by her colleagues, a quality Kuvira admired. “We cannot possibly let him leave the Southern coast unguarded.”

“I agree,” Kuvira speaks up finally. Any conversation left was shut down immediately. She turns her head slightly to face the woman. “Commander Guan is occupied with the coastal regions. We need to maintain order within the entire empire. Which is why it is important we have trusted leaders to ensure that the empire is united. Sergeant Anjij, how would you like to be the new Commander for the Southern Mountainous region?” It was an on the spot decision by Kuvira, but seeing Anjij’s cocky smirk only reassured her of her choice.

“It would be an honor, Kuvira.”

“It’s settled then. We will head to Omashu tomorrow afternoon,” Kuvira instructs, standing from her seat to regard the rest of the room. She turns to Baatar sitting directly to her left. “Send word to Commander Guan to send a small battalion to meet us there. We will be taking a few rations with us for Omashu. Bringing in supplies will be better for negotiations and to reassure the people that we are not their enemy. Baatar, I want you to keep working on the Spirit Canon. I expect you to have it done by the time I come back.”

“Yes, Kuvira.”

“With that, this meeting is adjourned.”

---

“Oh thank Spirits!” Hiro threw her arms around Kuvira, not even getting a chance for the woman to take off her helmet. She inhaled the scent of metal and filth, taking in her lover for the first time in what felt like the longest week of her life. All week she’d been sitting near the control center, awaiting news on a mission from Suyin and the Metal Clan Guards to rescue the Air Nomads. This wasn’t something that happened often, but the few times Suyin took the special task force outside the domes was always a big mission. Especially ones that involve the Avatar. Kuvira usually went on these missions and even though Hiro should be used to it, she wasn’t. It didn’t make her feel any more reassured that they would be facing the Red Lotus again. She still gets shivers thinking about their attempt to kidnap Avatar Korra in Zaofu. 

Kuvira smiled and stroked Hiro’s back, hands gripping on to the material of the shirt. She exhaled and made sure to squeeze Hiro a little tighter. The smell of clean laundry and lavender shampoo filled her senses and she could rest easy now, taking in the heavenly scent of her fiance. 

“I’ve missed you too, darling,” Kuvira muttered with her face buried into Hiro’s hair. She could tell that Kuvira was exhausted. They had just stepped off the airship, most of the other guards visibly wounded. She spotted Anjij limping out of the ship with a fellow guard towards the infirmary. Hiro cupped Kuvira’s face and started to examine it for any noticeable damages. It made Kuvira chuckle at the silly face her fiance was making. “Are you broken? I don’t want to send this one back for a refund because of brain damage.”

Kuvira swats Hiro’s hands away, but it only seems to make Hiro even more clingy, draping her arms comfortably around her neck. The reassurance she got back were calloused hands caressing circles on to her hips.

“I’m fine, no brain damage,” she teased. Humor danced behind the irritation in her eyes. After hours of being stranded in the mountains, all Kuvira wanted was a bath and a long sleep with her lover.

“What happened out there?” Hiro’s eyes glaze across the rest of the injured team. “Everyone looks shaken.”

“The Red Lotus were difficult opponents, but the mission was a success: Avatar Korra and the Air Nomads are safe, and the Red Lotus has been apprehended,” Kuvira reported.

“No bruises or new scars for you?” Hiro asked. She wanted to try to keep the air light between them, but her concern showed through brightly. It made Kuvira feel proud, in a way. It was the way Hiro was so openly worried about her that made her want to tuck woman away in her arms, away from all of the dangers in the world. When she was in the mountains with no real indication of when Suyin would return for them, Hiro didn’t leave her thoughts. There was no doubt in Kuvira’s mind that Suyin would come back, but the slight possibility of losing to the Red Lotus also came up. She vowed that she would make it out and return to Hiro just as she promised. Even when she saw the flying bison coming over the tops of the snow capped mountains, she still wasn’t satisfied until she saw the Zaofu domes come up from the horizon. It was only when she had Hiro back in her arms, did Kuvira feel that her mission had been complete. 

“A couple of bruises, sore muscles,” she said offhandedly. “My shoulder in particular. I had to catch and heave a grown man from falling off the side of a cliff, but it’s nothing compared to the injuries everyone else sustained.” The thought of Kuvira carrying the weight of a man twice her size made Hiro blush and her jaw drop. Sometimes she forgot how strong Kuvira was and how intense those gentle green eyes could be.

“You’re incredible, you know that?” Hiro wanted to laugh, but could only muster a smile. This week had been very difficult and upon seeing everyone else’s current roughed up state, she didn’t let her guard down when Kuvira said she wasn’t injured. She definitely will be looking into that shoulder later.

Hiro held her face, this time gentler. Kuvira let a quiet moan escape her lips as she let her head be cradled. Hiro thought the tired pout on her lips and scrunch of skin between her eyebrows made Kuvira look unusually vulnerable. It must’ve taken a lot out of her for her to be sharing such a tender look with her in such a public area. It wasn’t easy for Kuvira to communicate her emotions, and Hiro never pushed her to do more than what she was comfortable with. At most, Hiro could get a short squeeze of her hand letting her know that she was okay or a hug that meant she just needed something to ground her. But it seemed that at the end of the day, her strong Captain was still a human who craved affection. And she was so honored to have the privilege to take care of such a powerful and beautiful woman.

She left a careful kiss on her lips before pulling her to go home, promising to draw a hot bath and warm spicy curry for dinner. 

---

Hiro tapped the pencil on the table as she looked over her notes again. Zhu Li gently set the cup next to her. 

The two of them had been pretty silent this morning, going about an easy routine with an ease they’ve created. Hiro spreads out the notes on the table to be examined. Truly she was getting down to having nothing left to share. She had drawn up an updated map of the city. Due to the renovations, some streets were shut off and new buildings erected in previous vacant lots. Most of it was resource centers for impoverished citizens amongst other government buildings. There was a network of phone wires that had been cleaned up to maximize contact for the police force radio communications. A more linear pipeline system replaced old lines that appeared to not have been changed since their existence. It was all in actuality mostly maintenance stuff, and if any of it could be of use to the Empire, she had no idea what for.

“You ever thought about working in urban development Zhu Li?” Hiro asked offhandedly. She was seated at the table with her feet kicked up on the metal surface and leaning on the back two legs of her chair. Zhu Li set down the teapot and quietly examined the new documents handed to her.

“No ma'am.”

Zhu Li was a quiet woman. She limited most of what she said to short questions and nods. Hiro didn’t mind her, but she noticed with the addition of Zhu Li that Kuvira wasn’t coming around anymore. It definitely made things harder for her because how could she take down the Great Uniter if she can’t even see her. As much as Hiro wanted to ask Zhu Li, she kept the small woman at arms length. It was too soon to let down her guard and start asking her questions about Kuvira. She needed to feel out the situation before making her next move.

Hiro realized soon after Zhu Li’s appearance as her ‘assistant’, that the air changed around the maglev. The guards watching over her were more lax, probably because they realized the Great Uniter wouldn’t be paying them as frequent visits. Occasionally Zhu Li would leave and deliver the completed workbooks to an unknown receiver.

This was disadvantageous. She needed to get Kuvira’s attention. She was running out of time before they deemed her as unusable and sent her off to a reeducation camp. I mean, she used to know what would get Kuvira’s attention back at Zaofu. The thought was quickly erased from Hiro’s mind and she let out a small cough. Zhu Li glanced up briefly in suspicion.

Honestly, the thought did cross her mind to potentially seduce the Great Uniter, but even she had to laugh at that idea. She hadn’t forgotten about the interaction she witnessed between Baatar and Kuvira the other night, but ever since then she hasn’t seen either of them. This isn’t working. She needed to think of something else. Hiro gnawed on the inside of her cheek, looking at the map of Republic City in front of her. I won’t run away again. But I can’t do this alone-

“This is quite the setup you have here.” Hiro turned her head to see a familiar dark haired woman coming down the steps. “It’s been a long time, stranger.”

“Anjij? I didn’t realize you were here.” Before all of the nonsense with the Earth Empire and Kuvira taking control, Anjij had been one of the few people Kuvira considered a friend. It wasn’t atypical for Hiro to find them engaged in a thoughtful conversation while waiting at the transport station or grabbing a casual lunch on their break together. When Hiro was stationed in Ba Sing Se, Anjij was occupied on the front lines and Hiro only saw her in quick glimpses and at meetings. Now it was clear that Anjij was doing very well for herself. Even after years apart, Hiro still remembered the higher pitch and smooth melody in the way she spoke.

Anjij definitely broke enough hearts in her life and will definitely break more. There was an intimidating aura to this woman and it certainly attracted people. This harsh demeanor was accentuated greatly with her crisp Earth Empire uniform and sly smile.

“Well not for much longer. Kuvira and I are headed to Omashu tomorrow,” Anjij explained. She looked around at all of the scattered maps and diagrams. “Looks like the same old Hiro. Tell me, are you still a pro Pai Sho player?” Hiro smiled slightly. Although it was comforting having someone so friendly and familiar, she still felt out of place. Afterall, the armbands indicated on Anjij’s armband had moved up to be a Commander now.

“I’m a little rusty,” she admitted. Zhu Li was silently setting up an additional teacup, but Hiro couldn’t help but feel that the other set of ears was taking in this interaction carefully.

Honestly Zhu Li was very hard to read. When she first started coming a few days ago, Hiro was very cautious. They talked minimally, only when Hiro showed her what she had written down or drawn up. If Zhu Li asked a question or implored Hiro to explain further, it felt like a business transaction. She gave no indication of her personal opinions or thoughts about what Hiro was sharing to aide in Kuvira’s empire. As someone quite reserved herself, Hiro knew better than to underestimate her. “You said you were headed to Omashu?”

“Correct. Have to whip those mountaineers into shape, you know?” Anjij chuckled at her own light heartedness and Hiro tried to match it. “Your name came up in today’s meeting. I wanted to see for myself, Hiro Zhao, returned in the flesh.”

Hiro tried to keep the surprise from her face.

“Well, in case you don’t know, this isn’t a willing return.” Anjij raised an eyebrow. “From the looks of it, you’re anything but a prisoner right now.” Anjij glanced over at Zhu Li placing the delicate teacup on Hiro’s desk. “But, regardless of the reason, I’m glad I got to see you.”

Hiro’s face faltered. Hiro wanted to reciprocate Anjij’s honest admission, but she couldn’t let their current standings overcome that. In the end, Anjij was a Commander for her enemy that kept her prisoner. And the reality was also that they were no longer young women in Zaofu inviting one another over for dinner or sparring together. 

“You too, Anjij.” Anjij’s gaze shifted as she carefully took in Hiro’s tense expression. She lifted a hand to gently rest it on her shoulder, and Hiro had to resist wincing. She had been touch starved this past week, mainly keeping to herself and shying away from guards when they escort her to her room. She would be lying to herself if the little human contact didn’t comfort her. If Anjij noticed any of this, she didn’t show it.

“Let me know if you need anything. I’m your friend, Hiro, prisoner or not, and I mean that.”

Hiro wanted to believe her. She wanted to believe Anjij when she shot her a determined look of comfort. She wanted to trust Zhu Li as a possible ally to her mission. She wanted to believe that she had someone on this damned maglev to help her. But no matter what Anjij said, she had no one.

---

Most nights Kuvira ate alone. She always opted to eat alone in her office so she can work simultaneously. It was efficient and productive on her part. Sometimes Baatar would join her, but with his dedication to the Spirit Canon, he would be in the lab all night. So when she heard a knock on the door she was surprised.

“Kuvira, mind some company?” Anjij asked through the door. Kuvira called for her to enter. Anjij walked in confidently and shut the door behind her. “I don’t mean to intrude, but there are a few more things I want to go over before we leave tomorrow.”

Kuvira nodded, putting down her current work and giving Anjij her full attention. The taller woman took a seat at the chair facing her desk. 

“The dissenters seem to come from civilians, mostly destroying incoming Earth Empire rations and supply lines,” Anjij reported. “We should be safe passing through on our own as no one will be expecting our arrival. We have suspicions as to the exact perpetrators, but if you ask me, I think the previous king and his council are calling the shots.”

“As far as we know, they’ve been complicit in their surrender of Omashu,” Kuvira answered back. “But you’re correct, they’ve given us the most resistance since their acquisition. We must approach this with discipline. No one is above my mercy. Not even a former king and his court.”

They continued like this, exchanging knowledge and strategies to finding the dissenters to crush their uprising. It was easy to get people to do what you want, it was harder to keep them in line once you had them. If anyone were capable enough to be her commander, Anjij had shown her worth.

As they wrapped up their conversation, Anjij shifted as if weighing her next statement.

“Before I leave, I wanted to mention...I saw Hiro today. She seems off .”

“What do you mean?”

“Nothing obvious! I know from today’s meeting she was regarded as a recaptured Earth Kingdom citizen seeking redemption, but don’t you think that’s a bit brash?” Anjij asked. She quickly followed up upon seeing Kuvira’s gaze harden. “With all due respect of course! I am not trying to question your course of action, but have you thought of a smoother way to transition her to the Empire?”

Kuvira eyed her commander carefully.

“Continue,” she demanded. She saw Anjij’s shoulders relax as she patiently waited.

“Well I was thinking, if you made her a corporal and gave her more leniency, she might be more willing to be of service to the Empire.”

Kuvira scoffed. “I didn’t take you to being so keen to Hiro before? What, an afternoon rekindling old memories made you soft?”

Anjij didn’t react.

“She doesn’t have to know that she’s still being closely watched,” Anjij calculated. A growing smirk danced on her lips. It was one Kuvira was familiar with. It brought her back to days in the Metal Clan. It mirrored the look of success and satisfaction every time Anjij would get the upper hand in sparring matches. Their subtle rivalry was what drove them to excel in their field. As time went, Kuvira turned out to be the stronger opponent, but she never forgot that when she saw that smirk appear, there was a deceptive move coming next. “The false comfort to do what she’s good at, will make her let down her guard. Meanwhile, we keep a close eye on her, make sure she doesn’t slip up. And when she inevitably does, we let her think she has the control-”

“When in reality, she’ll play right into our cards,” Kuvira finished. Her calculating gaze never wavered from Anjij. Her blue eyes were piercing with deceit and Kuvira could see how she was enjoying the idea of this. “What do you mean we?”

She shrugged.

“A first step could be bringing her with us to Omashu. Keep a close eye on her and away from the rest of the troops. The more you let her open up to you and see the work of the Earth Empire helping people, the more she’ll be inclined to help us,” Anjij said simply as if it was the easiest thing in the world. She leaned back comfortably in the chair across from Kuvira. “C’mon Ku, this is Hiro we’re talking about. She’s practically a genius with her technology and can learn any new skill like it’s nothing, but what she doesn’t have is a backbone or awareness.”

Kuvira clenched her fists on the table.

“Fine. You’ve made your points. She will be joining us on our mission to Omashu,” Kuvira concluded. Anjij nodded with the cocky smirk still on her face and got up to leave. “But Commander, I do need you to keep your guard up. Like you say, she’s a genius. We cannot let ourselves be underestimated by her.”

Kuvira didn’t like how her words came out like she was defending Hiro rather than warning Anjij.

“Of course, Kuvira.” The words were empty and it was clear Anjij didn’t see Hiro as a threat. She left Kuvira to eat her now cold meal.

“Commander,” Kuvira piped up, stopping Anjij as the door was halfway shut. “This was your idea. So if anything is to go wrong, I am holding you accountable.” Anjij studied Kuvira carefully once over before nodding once and leaving Kuvira with her thoughts.

The thought of manipulating Hiro into the guise of comfort had crossed Kuvira’s mind. And Anjij was right, Hiro isn’t aware enough of her surroundings to judge twice. But something in her gut told her it wasn’t a good idea to play this game. If she were to do this, Hiro would be moved up the ranks and would be working a lot closer with Kuvira, something she just told Baatar she would be doing the opposite of.

The more she thought about it though, she didn’t mind having Hiro around her. As annoying as she was, she was useful. And that’s what mattered. She was useful.

---

“Have you been to Omashu before?” Anjij asked.

“Never,” Hiro answered. She stole a glance from the Pai Sho game in front of her to look out the window of the maglev. A thick fog coated the outside as they traveled to a higher altitude and through the mountain range. She was never a fan of heights, but what made her more uncomfortable was sitting at the meeting table with Anjij across from her and Kuvira to her left, examining documents. Kuvira had been studying them as soon as she stepped in the room, not even acknowledging Hiro’s presence or the fact that they were playing a Pai Sho game in what was supposed to be the meeting room. Anjij called her in for a friendly game and a debrief of their current mission.

“We’re providing extra aid to the people of Omashu. Due to their location, it’s hard to get supplies out there so we try to deliver big bouches at a time,” Anjij explained, moving another piece of the game. “We’ll be here for about a day or so, but I’ll be staying behind to make sure the rations are properly distributed.”

Hiro anxiously glanced over at Kuvira for any reaction or addition, but the woman seemed very engrossed in the designs she was looking at. If Hiro had a better angle she could see what had all of Kuvira’s attention. Quickly she drew her eyes back forward and Anjij was giving her a kind smile that didn’t reach her eyes. Hiro moved a piece in the game, not thinking much of it.

“And that's the game,” Anjij boasted. With her final piece moved, Anjij had successfully completed her Pai Sho board. Hiro folded her hands on her lap, accepting her defeat.

“I told you I was rusty,” she shyly admitted. “It’s been a while since I’ve played an actual game.”

“No one in the big city plays Pai Sho?” Anjij questioned.

“Not really, not like how we played in Zaofu. Most people played fast Pai Sho,” she explained. Asami was the only people she knew in Republic City who still played the traditional form of Pai Sho with slow methodical moves. It had been a while since Hiro played against someone new.

Anjij stole a glance at Kuvira before getting up.

“I’m going to check on the conductor and the other guards. We should be arriving within the next hour. Zhu Li, if you will come with me please, I’d love for you to make more of that jasmine tea,” Anjij flirted. Kuvira resisted rolling her eyes and a clipped warning. Zhu Li simply nodded and followed. Anjij, a flirt as always , Hiro thought.

It left Hiro and Kuvira in an awkward train car alone with cold porridge and documents stacked on the table. Hiro started packing up the Pai Sho game, letting her thoughts take her away from this maglev. As this was only one of the few train cars taken for their mission, it was very quiet. This was the first time she’s seen Kuvira in almost a week. It was almost unnerving how stoic the woman was.

“Do you still play?” The question stuttered out hung in the air, but Hiro couldn’t back out now that the words were already spoken.

“Are you asking for a game?” Kuvira asked carefully. She glanced down at the neatly set up Pai Sho board in front of her. Hiro shifted uncomfortably under her gaze and took a big gulp of the scorching tea to calm her nerves. She was surprised when Kuvira set the papers down and moved to sit across from her in Anjij’s previous seat. Hiro noticed how she placed them face down so she wouldn’t be able to sneak a glance at what she was looking at. “I’ll go first.”

The first few moves were done in silence. Hiro tries to focus on the game and not how this game brought back nostalgia. They’ve played plenty of Pai Sho games in the past, and Hiro knew Kuvira's strategies. Even though it was just a game, something told her that she had to win this one. So she maneuvered her pieces with deft and purpose, different from how she played with Anjij.

“Why did you let Anjij win?” The question caught her off guard and Hiro hesitated while picking up her next piece.

“What do you mean?” She placed the tile down, realizing now that Kuvira was already going in for an attack strategy to win. 

“You had her cornered for most of the game. All of a sudden it was like you stopped playing,” Kuvira observed, moving her tile to another space. “So tell me, why would you let her have the upper hand? Most of all, why make her think she got it in the first place?”

Hiro wasn’t surprised by Kuvira’s observation. In fact she knew the whole time that even though the other woman was engrossed with paperwork, she was acutely aware of her surroundings. Nothing could get past Kuvira...which is exactly what Hiro wanted. Her lip quirked up in a half smile.

“Still being very attentive of me, I see. I’m flattered,” she taunted. Her eyes conveyed that she knew what kind of dangerous game she was playing alongside the Pai Sho game. She smoothly transitioned her next piece over by the one Kuvira just moved. “Anjij was always a challenging player. She moved her pieces seemingly sporadically without thought, when in reality she’s trying to out maneuver her opponent as quick as she can, that way she can finish her board. If you play against her the way she wants you to, she won’t even realize you’re the one winning. Pai Sho when played quickly can be fun and exciting and Anjij has found a way to mix the two.

But I’d argue that careful and thoughtful movements with purpose allows you to see your opponent clearly than going fast can. I could’ve slowed Anjij’s gameplay down and ended it sooner, but she’s the type of woman who likes the thrill of the game.

And once she’s won, she’ll utilize the same strategy until she realizes too late that she’s used up all of her cards and tricks… and you as her opponent have bested her at everything she can give.”

Hiro had been studying Kuvira’s body movements this whole time as the woman played with the piece in her hand, eyes drifting up to meet Hiro’s in what looked like surprise. Hiro bit the inside of her cheek as her face broke out in a smile and crossed her arms.

“I believe it is your move.”

While speaking, Kuvira didn’t even notice that Hiro had successfully cornered her, one move away from winning.

---

Kuvira narrowed her eyes. Her keen ears perked up and she turned her head from the game abruptly to the windows. She squints, no longer paying attention to Hiro. Somewhere within the fog, a shadow moved. It was swift and if anyone else had seen it they would’ve waved it off as a mirage. But Kuvira knew better. She knew to trust her own instincts.

Without another thought, she gets up and grabs on to Hiro’s arm, pulling the other woman up with her. Some of the Pai Sho pieces jerked across the table, messing up their almost completed game.

“H-Hey!” Hiro stuttered, surprised at the sudden jerking movement.

Kuvira shoved Hiro to the floor with her falling on top. Soon after, the window that was previously next to them exploded in a flurry of shards and the train car lurched. Hiro gasped, her next words choked in shock. Kuvira felt the rest of the metal churn and jerk as the rest of the windows blew out in the left side of the car. It’s when she feels the train rocking to the side that she feels panic bubble up. But Kuvira wasn’t paying attention to that; not the way her body was being thrown around or the ringing she felt in her ears. 

Kuvira closes her eyes and lets her senses take over on the metal around her. That’s her default, she centers on what feels familiar and how she can regain control. Her awareness focused on the metal lining of the train, the plates of metal on the floor, the armor attached to her body. It felt like time slowed down as the train tipped over the edge. Hiro’s screams were only vaguely in the background of the ringing of metal hitting metal and the creaking of the maglev as it tipped over the mountainside, completely detaching from the tracks.

“Hold on.” She felt two arms wrap around her shoulders tightly and bury her face into Kuvira’s collarbone. The car tipped on its side and the rest of the windows shattered underneath them. By now the once pristine meeting room was trashed as furniture, documents, and weapons were tousled to the side of the train. Hiro grunted as they tipped alongside with it, their bodies crashing into a nearby table as the train began sliding off the mountain. Kuvira opened her eyes and inspected the shattered window now above them. The train began skidding down the mountain and slowly building momentum, tumbling further into unknown depths.

I have one shot. One move. Only one split second to get this right.

Fluidly, her arm shot out and with it a thin metal cable attached to her belt. The end of it escaped into the white abyss of the train car empty window. It all depended on the angle, the speed and most of all, luck. Kuvira searched aimlessly for something sturdy to hold on to, but the panic was settling in her bones as they skid further and further down the mountain. Hiro clung to her crying helplessly. She clenched her teeth. C’mon. There has to be something-

There

The green in her eyes sparked to life and the tug from her cable told her to hold on tight. With a flick of her wrist, she latched on to whatever support she found. And the next, she was hoisting both her and Hiro out of the train car and into the white chasm. They flew through, suspended in the air at a fast speed. 

Kuvira twisted her body, feeling the ache in her arms and back as she was trying to control her momentum while carrying both of them through the air. Hiro gasped and Kuvira felt her grip loosen slightly. Kuvira was quick and with her free arm, and held Hiro tight to her. In response, Hiro wrapped her legs around Kuvira’s waist, holding on as tight as she could.

She couldn’t see more than a few feet in front of her, but the dark mass of rock was a breath of relief. It came a lot faster than she intended and her body harshly crashed against the side as they bounced off.

“Do not let go,” she grunted, seeing the mountain coming up again as they swung back towards it. With another grunt and contortion, she managed to get one foot settled firmly on the mountain. All it took was for her to feel the familiar rock underneath her feet, for her to finally let go of the breath she was holding. Her chest heaved and she heard a large thud from far below. She couldn’t completely relax yet, because she still had Hiro clung tightly to her chest. With her bending and pure physics on her side, her metal cable was holding on to something far above them, keeping them from tumbling with the fallen train car. The sweat poured from her forehead. “Hiro, I’m going to pull us up.”

Hiro blinked a couple times, her small body still shaking. Kuvira feels the woman nod against her chest and clench her body even closer. With the reassurance that Hiro wasn’t going to fly off, Kuvira’s attention settled on the metal and slowly they began moving up. Hiro unconsciously gnawed on her bottom lip as they ascended, careful not to make too many movements to disturb their rise. Meanwhile Kuvira focused on keeping supporting both of their weights as they ascended through the misty mountain air.

It was a gangly looking tree growing out of a shallow cave that saved them. It wasn’t very wide and  it sloped off to only hold enough room for both of them to lay down and catch their breaths. The cave was damp and cold, but all Kuvira could feel was the burning from her muscles ache. She moved on to her hands and knees, the adrenaline still pumping through her as her hair flew out in tangles against her face. Leaning down, she pressed her forehead against the damp ground, thankful to feel the comforting rock beneath her.

Kuvira cursed, letting herself settle and finally picking up to the frantic shouts coming through the radio attached to her hip. It was staticy and hard to hear, but she could just make out Commander Anjij’s shouts.

“Kuvira! Are you there!” She presses the button on the radio, trying to catch her voice. She sits up, letting her elbows fall on to her bent knees. Looking over at Hiro next to her, she sees the other woman has rolled on to her side with her back facing her. She didn’t seem to have any visual injuries, which was a relief. 

“Yes I’m here. Are you hurt? How are the others?” she asked.

“We’re all fine! What about you?” 

“I’m alright. Hiro and I are safe.”

“Thank Spirits you both survived!” Anjij sighs. “Where are you?” “In a cave on the side of the mountain. I can’t tell how far we traveled down.” “We’re coming right now! Hang tight!” With that the radio died on the other end. Kuvira gripped it tightly and resisted the urge to crush it or throw it off the ledge. It was her only contact with the rest of the world now. It was the only chance she had to escape this. She looked over at Hiro again, who seemed to finally quake her shaking body.

“Hiro, are you alright?”

“I think so.” The other woman sat up carefully, and despite definite bruises and scrapes, she was safe. The thick material of the Earth Empire uniforms definitely took on most of the impact. Her glasses are gone, and her weary brown eyes fixate on Kuvira. “Thank you.” Kuvira doesn’t respond, but lets out another sigh and leans back against the wall of the cave. Her eyes fall on the empty whiteness outside the cave.

“Don’t thank me. I should’ve taken more safety precautions,” she muttered bitterly to herself. It was a mistake to go into Omashu blind. At this point she knows it was the previous king of Omashu who attacked her. No one else had known that they were arriving. The thought of being crossed made her jaw clench. They would not be getting away with this blatant terrorist attack on her train.

“Kuvira? Are you okay?” the voice cut through her negative thoughts. It was the genuine concern in Hiro’s voice that made Kuvira look up. She didn’t even realize that her hands had balled into fists and the small sliver of earth beneath them was shaking. Looking over, Hiro sat on her knees with a tentative gaze. She kept her hands firmly on her thighs, but she wrestled back and forth reaching out and holding Kuvira’s hand.

One side broke over and Kuvira felt the warmth of Hiro’s hand settle atop her clenched ones.

“I’m alright,” she let out a long shaky breath through her nose, slowly easing her nerves. The feeling of Hiro’s hand touching hers all at once put her at ease and made her nervous. “They are coming to rescue us now.”

Hiro shivered and wrapped her arms around herself, taking away the contact between them. It was quite cold and the harsh wind that occasionally passed made it worse. The adrenaline was wearing off now and Kuvira realized just how much of a dangerous predicament they were in. It was still the morning so there was plenty of light out, but if they weren’t found before sunset, they wouldn’t survive the night. Kuvira stood up abruptly, trying to peer up through the fog at anything. Even if she could launch herself up there, there was no way she could carry both of them all the way back up by herself. And there was to guarantee that there’d be another ledge stable enough to hold them. Right now she could only hope to be found.

---

Hours passed. Even though dusk was still many hours away, their ledge had become freezing. This whole time they were silent and sitting apart with what little space they could find between them. Hiro tried to keep her shaking to a minimum, not wanting to set off the other woman in any way. Hiro’s mind had been racing. Ever since the attack, she couldn’t ease her mind. Did that happen often? Kuvira seemed to be fairly calm about it. It didn’t occur to her before how dangerous being a leader of an empire could be.

“You’re going to get sick.” Kuvira reached out and offered a hand, making Hiro flush. When she didn’t move, Kuvira rolled her eyes. “You either come here and we try to salvage body heat or we both lose a few toes.”

Hesitantly Hiro obliged and pressed her body next to Kuvira’s, making them shoulder to shoulder. She resisted the way her body wanted to sink into the other woman’s unusually warm body as they leaned against the cave wall together. Kuvira’s hair had been let out completely now, and she felt it tickle against her skin.

She felt a shaky breath brush across her neck and she shivered, but this time not from the cold. Kuvira instinctively tucked in closer, making Hiro tense up. If it wasn’t awkward before, it was now with Kuvira’s face practically buried in her neck. Despite the warmth admitted from her, Kuvira’s face was freezing against Hiro’s skin.

“Please,” the word whispered past her ear. “If we’re going to survive this, we’re going to need each other.”

She sounded so sure of herself that they were going to be okay. It was the confidence that made Hiro finally relax into Kuvira’s body and let herself rest. She felt Kuvira’s body slouch as the woman drifted off to sleep. It was clear that carrying them up the precarious mountain had taken a lot out of Kuvira, and Hiro had mixed feelings about the situation they were in now.

She took a risk and reached out to hold Kuvira’s hand in hers as she let the exhaustion take her.

[tysonrunningfox]

Two Night Stand AU: Part 6

Ao3

I’m...chasing the ever illusive feeling of accomplishment upon finishing things.  Heard it’s possible.  

“How was…how was that?”  Hiccup asks, flopping back onto the bed with more force than his skinny shoulders should be able to produce. 

They’re a few experiments in, a couple of failed hypotheses closer to the truth.  Her hands are shaking, her skin twitching when he pulls the sheet up her chest, a fond gesture that she should tell him to stop.  But they’re being honest, and she honestly likes it, enough that she scoots sideways to rest her head on his shoulder. 

His hand finds her hip, stroking in a lazy, exhausted way that makes her chest throb even though it’s somewhere beyond the middle of the night and there’s no way they’re doing that again.  Because there’s no way they have energy to do that again. 

Maybe if he did all the work. 

“That was good,” she adjusts to get comfortable, her temple against a sweaty collarbone that doesn’t quite do the trick.  He’s the close kind of bony, like he has less of a buffer, and she can see why his personality is as oversized as his hair. 

He might kiss the top of her head.  She’s not sure.  She should ask, in the name of honesty, but she doesn’t know how much she cares about honesty if he’ll touch her again in the morning. 

Like there’s a limit, obviously if he started spouting racist slurs or required a pledge of allegiance first, that would be a no-go, but a little hair kissing?  Forgivable. 

Corny, but forgivable, given the circumstances.  Given how if she thinks about it, it feels like there’s no one else on the planet.    

“I’m…” He trails off, nose in her hair.  Nuzzling her hair.  And Ruffnut said no one would bang her pre-shower.  Ruffnut just doesn’t have a mind for the science of it all.  “I’m…”

“You’re…” She half-asks, half-ignores, eyelids feeling heavy as his warm palm settles on her waist. 

“Hungry.”  He laughs, stubble evident on her forehead. 

Her stomach growls. 

He laughs.  He kisses her head.  She should ask why he keeps doing that and also ask if there’s a pizzeria in the basement that she didn’t notice in either her haste to get up here or her haste to leave.  A 24-hour pizzeria.  Open during a blizzard. 

“We should go figure that out.” 

“I was thinking take out,” he laughs, voice still low, kissing her head again, and his boniness shouldn’t be so soft.  This shouldn’t be so ok.  “Or we can eat here.”  His hand migrates down, tickling her stomach, and she twitches at the memory of the last hour even as she grabs his fingers. 

“I’m literally hungry,” she laughs, “for calories.  Not jokes.” 

His stomach growls.  And he earned it, and that makes her laugh, which makes him laugh, chest reverberating like it’s bigger than it is.  Big hand on her waist.  Lips in her hair. 

“Me too.” 

“Well, let’s go do something about it.”  She sits up, taking the blanket with her, and he has the audacity to be groggy as he sits up slowly and fumbles for his leg.  Before his boxers.  It feels intimate.  And he looks up at her through his eyelashes, adjusting his stance, everything out. 

And penises are weird.  And she feels like she can’t look at anything else.  Maybe it’s allowed though, for science. 

It looks hungry too.  Not for calories, necessarily, but it has also driven the show for the last few hours, so maybe it’s someone else’s turn. 

“Here,” he tosses her the shirt he’d been wearing before pulling up his boxer briefs and it’s easier to pull it on than it is to emotionally fund an archaeological expedition to the site of her strip tease that wasn’t a tease. 

It was an appetizer. 

And he ate. 

And they’re still hungry. 

Because scientific endeavors don’t have any calories. 

“Food?”  He looks at her like it’s really a question.  Like her answer isn’t ‘forget the food and get back here because I’m cold’. 

Her stomach gurgles and he grins, holding out his hand and pointedly ignoring her eye roll.  He pointedly ignores a lot of things, among them, how obvious it is that there is no food.  He lets her look through every cabinet and find mustard, a pack of gum, vitamin C supplements, and a single packet of fruit snacks. 

And it’s snowing. 

And she’s wearing his shirt and nothing else and she knows what she can do with his hands and she swallows hard as she turns to face him. 

“We have to ration the fruit snacks.  Who knows how long they have to last?”  She tosses the packet at him.  He drops it.  He bends down to pick it up and his ass is right there.  She wonders if she’s allowed to tell him that his ass is more distracting than his leg, but even asking that of herself ruins the game.  “Also why don’t you have food?” 

“I did, until we got high.” 

“Fair.”  She tucks her hair behind her ear.  “Fair.” 

“Why…why don’t you just go back to bed?”  His voice dips as he asks the question and she wonders how asking him to do all the work would really come across as his fingertips glance across her thigh.  “I’ll be there in a minute.”  

“Are you weighing the fruit snacks?”  She backs into the doorway and pauses, elbow on the doorframe, “because as the person who just got off more, I could make a concrete argument for getting the bigger half of the fruit snacks—”

“You can have the whole packet.”  His lip twitches like a warning he tries to squelch and she takes it, for once, shuffling out of the room.  Badly moonwalking, almost. 

His awkward is contagious. 

She has the feeling there’s a vaccine, and she should have acquired it socially at some point, but she didn’t.  And she’s here.  Badly moonwalking out of a kitchen over a fruit snack victory. 

Sometimes rock bottom isn’t so hard.  Sometimes it’s padded with expired fruit snacks. 

“I’ll hold you to that,” she mumbles before turning and shuffling off, refusing to hold the shirt down. 

The longer she sits in it, the more comfortable Hiccup’s bed becomes.  His bedroom is homey in a way hers never has been, disorganized enough to feel lived in, the blanket well-worn and soft around her waist.  Her bedroom was always so clean, everything in its place, until the last few months.  And even now, it’s not really comfortable, it’s more just…messy.  Like she lost interest in everything before it made it back to its place.  It feels like lethargy, like sleeping until three, and staring at a computer screen until her eyes burn and she’s forgotten all that she didn’t get done. 

She likes Hiccup’s room.  She likes thinking about last night, about being tangled together in a web of constant communication.  She flushes when she remembers that she probably shouldn’t be thinking about it, adjusting Hiccup’s shirt around her waist and curling her knees to her chest. 

Hiccup comes in a moment later, holding a suspiciously laden tray, the all too familiar smell of Kraft macaroni and cheese wafting towards her. 

“Where did you get that?”  She shifts, accepting the tray as he slides back into bed next to her, quickly thumbing his prosthetic off and hiding his leg immediately in the blankets.  There’s a full, expired packet of fruit snacks on her side and she wonders if feeding anybody anything has ever been sexy and if that’s enough of a concept to turn into an experiment. 

“Don’t worry about it.” 

Astrid takes one of the bowls from the tray and frowns, because where Hiccup’s skin is touching hers it’s warm, and he didn’t go outside and—

“This is your neighbors’ food, isn’t it?” 

He avoids her eyeline just enough to prove her point and she grins, “you were such an asshole about me breaking that window, and now you’re breaking into their apartment and stealing their food.  Hypocrite.” 

“They will understand,” he shrugs, stirring his food and taking a bite.  “I’ll tell them it was life or death, that if I didn’t feed the crazy girl I met online, she was going to go all Donner Party on my ass.” 

“I still might,” she’s suddenly too aware that it’s his shirt warm and soft on the back of her neck.  “You did witness me breaking and entering, I probably shouldn’t let you live.” 

“But I fed you,” he elbows her, shifting slightly closer to her in a magnetic way she wishes she didn’t notice.  “And for the record, I thought it was pretty badass when you broke that window.” 

“I agree,” she takes a bite, and Kraft has never tasted so good.  The muffled moan at the taste of fake cheese is embarrassing and she clears her throat, “I’m glad you came to your senses.  It was badass.” 

“I have to say,” he slows down, stirring his mac and cheese and looking at her, eyes narrowed.  His eyelashes are ridiculously thick, dark in the half-light of the room, and she wonders what she would have thought about him if she’s met him anywhere else, in any other way.  “I really don’t get you.  Like, one moment you’re unemployed, looking for a booty call online at midnight, and the next you’re just…this go-getter, take-no-shit-even-from-windows-or-laws rebel.  Which is it?” 

Astrid should be angry, and some remnant of who she used to try and be stirs in her chest, offended at the idea of being a rebel.  The rest of her is…well, she’s flattered he asked.  That he noticed. 

“I don’t know, both?”  She takes another bite, mulling it over for a while.  “I was valedictorian in high school.  Graduated college at the top of my class.  I had not the requisite three, but six letters of recommendation ready to be sent off to medical school but…” 

The way he’s looking at her makes it hard to breathe, hard to think, hard to remember that she’s damaged goods, doomed to keep that never-healing injury close to her chest until it scabs over and becomes some knotted whorl of scar tissue. 

“I was engaged once,” she can’t look at him as she says it, and her hands suddenly look like they should be attached to someone older.  Like they’re her grandmother’s knuckles.  “Sounds like I’m writing a memoir.  I was engaged recently, up until a few months ago.”  She shrugs, “he cheated.  I wanted to work it out, he didn’t.  You know, typical…whatever, bullshit, but…”  It’s hard to talk about in a way she can’t explain, hard to form the words on her tongue even while they’re surging through her brain. 

Harder when he looks at her, more curious than sympathetic, chin tilting to the side. 

“I thought…” She swallows, thinking about rebellion, and how maybe after months of listening to the reality of her shit situation, she needs to push back against it.  “I thought that maybe getting back out there, getting back on the metaphorical, dick-shaped horse might make it sting less and maybe that’s stupid, but—”

“Did it work?”  He’s too quiet to really cut her off but she was so hoping to hear him talk that she pauses when he does. 

And he has those earnest eyes. 

She shrugs, wishing she’d grabbed her own shirt while also being glad that she didn’t.  His is softer.  The kind of shirt a girlfriend would love to steal, and she’s never thought of being that person again.  All paths forward were cul-de-sacs to be walked alone in fits of depressive pacing. 

She bites back a smile.  She feels tired.  A bit sore.  Her stomach more than the rest of her, because it was hilarious when he tipped backwards off of the bed.  She’s lost, but no more than usual, in fact she might have re-discovered the concept of North, as an idea.  A theory.  A constant that exists separate from whatever direction she’s facing. 

“I don’t get how someone could be there through…I mean, it used to feel like everything.  Like life stopped at college graduation and everything since has been limbo, but anyway, I don’t get how someone could see what I was working towards every day for years and then suddenly, it was too much.  I was too much.” 

“You?”  He raises an eyebrow, leaning back against the bedframe with a snort, “never.” 

“Apparently he just couldn’t take me ‘obsessing’ anymore.  That was the word.”  She hasn’t told anyone this.  Not her mom, not Ruffnut.  She’s held it close like an infection, fearing a diagnosis that would require an emotional surgery so invasive it would be more exorcism than excision. 

“Obsessive,” he nods, “I’ve heard that one a few times too.  Mostly from people who think I’m in the way or I will be soon.” 

“The thing is, I was always like that.  I was the twelve-year-old with a five-year plan, I was the eighteen-year-old with a plan for my second promotion at forty, it didn’t show up out of nowhere.  You think he would have told me my ‘obsessiveness’ was a deal-breaker before he bought a ring.”  She sighs, “like he never did anything else he was ‘supposed’ to, why did he suddenly start?  And who told him that I thought he was supposed to propose?” 

“No, I—the way I see it, people need to realize that refusing to make a decision is a kind of decision.”  Hiccup’s fork clangs against his bowl as he drops it on his lap, freeing his hands up to talk, “people spend their entire lives either trying to avoid the flow or completely immersing themselves in the flow until they freak out at the lack of decision in their lives and it’s the same on both sides.”  He gestures at one corner of the room, eyes bright, “you’re either thirty or forty or fifty, flitting between random part time jobs or you get a job straight out of college and then you have to get an apartment and you can’t lose the job because of the apartment, and then you have to keep houseplants alive to prove you’re an adult because the standard is impossible—”

“I don’t really know where you’re getting your standards—”

“And ‘obsessive’?  As an insult, it’s—being a little obsessive is the only thing that cuts across it, so of course people hate it.  Because it makes them realize that they’re either drifting down the lazy river of life, or they’re fighting the current just to brag about it.  And that they’ve never actually thought about what they want, versus what they’re supposed to have by now, on some imaginary timeline.”  He looks at her, cheeks red like he forgot he had an audience for his rant.  “And really people are just jealous that they never thought of wanting something that hadn’t already been sold to them, so then it’s your fault for making them realize it.” 

She doesn’t think that ended up where he wanted it to.  She’s not sure it ended up at all, it just spiraled higher and wilder, but she liked it.  The limitless-ness of it, the fact he found the energy for it. 

“Wow.” 

“Blacked out for a second there,” he tries to put the energy away but it crackles between them, “high on my own dulcet tones.” 

“We should go like…write to our senators or something,” she laughs, punching him in his skinny arm. 

“Right,” the cynical mask doesn’t fit under his bed-head and she nudges his shoulder with hers, taking another bite of stolen mac and cheese. 

“No, you’re right, it’s…he couldn’t care about anything enough to decide on it.  It’s not just me.  He liked the concept but the reality of choosing what his forever looked like didn’t sit well.” 

“I feel bad for him, honestly.”  He laughs and she tries to resist the cold fingers that curl in her chest as she raises a judgmental eyebrow. 

“What about this story makes him seem like the one who should be pitied?”  Except she doesn’t want his pity either, but she knows she doesn’t need to tell him that from the way he smirks at her.  With her.  Conspiratorial, not confrontational. 

“Because he’s so stupid and he doesn’t even know it.”  He finishes his food and sets the bowl aside on the bedside table next to an empty condom wrapper that didn’t make it into the trash.  Because this isn’t the environment for a heart to heart and he’s not the person she should want one from, but here she is, watching the snow fall outside the window over his shoulder.  “He thinks you’re just one example of some milestone girl and when he thinks he’s ready, he’ll find another one, but that’s not—you’re not.  You’re—of all the girls I could have met on that dating site--”  

His face softens, and the hazy potential in his expression amplifies the energy that she doesn’t want to name.  To name it is to acknowledge it, and to acknowledge it cements her place on top of the podium for ‘worst one-night-stand-haver’.

“What are those?”  But she’s never been good at keeping quiet. And maybe sometimes, at the end of a long, winding losing streak, any win counts as a win. 

“What are what?” 

“Those mushy, lovey-dovey eyes you’re looking at me with right now.”  She punches his arm again, lighter this time, then jokingly points her thumb over her shoulder.  “Get those out of here.” 

“It’s like three in the morning, my contacts are dry.”  He’s not wearing contacts.  She knows because she tore apart his bathroom looking for a plunger.  She knows because he’s close, like he’s going to kiss her again, and she can see every fleck and striation in his eyes.  “So, this is really your first one-night stand?” 

“Yes, I told you that,” she tucks her hair behind her ear, “why would I lie?” 

His shrug verges on an attempt at confidence as he leans to half-whisper in her ear, “they usually don’t last this long.” 

“Well,” she bites her lip and lets it go slowly, glad there’s no one here to assess the optics of the move, “that’s too bad.” 

“I’m going to go destroy the evidence of my…grocery run,” he takes her empty bowl and stands up. 

“And deal with your contacts?”  She just wouldn’t be herself if she let him have that inch, and she feels more like herself than she has in a while. 

He blushes and rubs the back of his head with his free hand, “yeah, contacts, I don’t need reminding.  Not with how…itchy they are right now.” 

“Whatever,” she stands up to size up his closet, trying to determine where something warmer would be.  Probably in the back, and he’s left-handed, “it is actually cold in here, so I’m going to grab a sweatshirt.”  She opens the left door, “I promise I won’t steal it, I don’t need any souvenir aside from the psychological trauma of…Stockholm Syndrome.” 

Her words trail off to nearly nothing.  Words not worth saying, because they don’t apply anymore.  None of this applies. 

She’s staring at a closet full of women’s clothes.  Young clothes.  The kind of clothes she might wear if she wore more black and if she went anywhere.  Aside from this apartment on a whim. 

This one-bedroom apartment where a young woman clearly lives. 

“Astrid,” Hiccup’s voice skips and she turns slowly to face him. 

“Those aren’t your grandma’s coats.”  She states.  Accusing isn’t necessary.  “You may have played me for a fool, but I’m not one.” 

“I didn’t—” He practically drops the bowls onto a desk and gets between her and the closet, like if he’s in the way she won’t remember what she’s seeing, “look, Astrid, I can explain—”

“I don’t need to hear this side of the story!”  She can’t look at him anymore, not with the stack of picture frames staring at her from the closet shelf.  He covered his bases, hid anything suspicious.  Made sure to offer his guest use of the back-stabbing knife.  “I’m familiar enough with the other half, I’ve put this one together pretty well.” 

“Astrid, please, it’s not like—”

“Who is she?”  She hates that she just said that.  She hates that she’s said that before, when she was crying more than yelling and watching her carefully registered future fall apart.  “No, never mind, I don’t care.  I just—thought I was better than getting roped into this, but I guess not.” 

“Can you please just listen to me?”  He follows too close as she retreats to her pile of clothes, hurling his shirt at his face as she gets dressed.  “It’s—her name’s Heather.  She’s a DJ.  The storm cancelled her flight back—”

“Not my problem,” she sits on the edge of the bed, tugging her socks on and hating herself for wondering what Heather looks like.  For knowing that Heather is going to spend hours thinking about the same thing.  For how petty and small she is because even now, in the moment, she knows that this is better than being on the other side of this coin. 

“Let me explain myself,” he fumbles through a dresser drawer.  A dresser drawer full of bras and underwear, and if Astrid didn’t have a vendetta against that stupid toilet, she might throw up.  “Here.  Just—read this, please.” 

He holds a letter out to her.  Written in girly handwriting on college rule. 

Her hand hovers above it for a second before curiosity wins over and she snatches it from him with a glare. 

Hiccup,

Being direct in a letter feels ironic, I guess, but I don’t know how to say this any other way. 

It’s not working out. 

I know we just got the place, and I know that I met your Mom, and I love you but I just don’t see where this is going.  I don’t know if it’s living together or if I’ve just been on tour too much, but the connection is I feel like I’m pretending when I’m with you. 

I think we’re just growing apart.  Or we already grew apart.  I don’t know. 

I’m on the lease, but maybe you can stay with my brother.  You have a cousin in town, right?  I should know that.  We live together, I should have met your family.  I’m not trying to get rid of you, I just need some space on my own right now.  Have for a while. 

Heather. 

“See?”  Hiccup asks, voice quiet and husky as she carefully folds the letter back along its worn seam. 

“I—no, I don’t see, if she gave you this Dear John letter and asked you to leave, why are you still here?”  She hates that she asks, that she’s still sitting on his bed, that she’s wondering how hard it would be to find Heather on social media. 

Not hard, probably.  But she doesn’t think the comparison would accomplish anything. 

“She hasn’t given it to me yet.  I don’t know when she wrote it.”  He wrings his hands together, knuckles white, and he looks familiar in a way she shouldn’t have let happen. 

“You snooped.”  Another not-an-accusation. 

“I didn’t—ok, it fell and I picked it up and saw my name but—”

“What does this have to do with me?”  She asks even though she knows the answer.  Which is ‘nothing’.  This has nothing to do with her, and her involvement is her mistake even if it’s not explicitly her fault. 

“I didn’t think it’d be you.” 

“That doesn’t even make sense—”

“I wanted…I wanted something to hold against her when she finally gave it to me.  I wanted an a-ha, I thought—I didn’t think,” he looks at her, green eyes wet and pleading, “I went on a dating site to have something to throw in her face when she dumped me with a note after we’d moved in together—”

“And I fit the bill?” 

“Yes.”  He says it like he means it, reaching for her hand with both of his, and she jumps to her feet.  She shouldn’t feel betrayed.  She used him too.  She used him first.  Using him was her idea at every turn but the way he’s looking at her makes her feel like she clicked Accept before she read the Terms and Conditions. 

“Well that’s—”

“Astrid,” he says like he hopes her name is a balm, but it doesn’t really work, and she hates that they’re out of sync even though he’s awful and she hates him.  For real this time, on purpose.  Not just an imagined, convenient hatred.  He’s everything that hurt her and more.  In fact, he put in the effort to make her believe he was different before he ripped the rug out from under her.  “She’s right, ok, it hasn’t been working.  It’s not—I thought I was getting some preemptive revenge but instead it’s you and—”

“So, I messed up your revenge for you?” She snorts, stalking out to the living room and grabbing her jacket.  She checks for her phone, her keys, her purse, because no one could pay her enough to come back here.  “Good, it’s what you deserve.  I hope it’s…sweet,” she scrambles, “sweet and sour, actually.” 

The opposite of bittersweet.  Or maybe adjacent on the color wheel.  He doesn’t get to feel bitter, either way, he gave that away. 

“You—I don’t want her—”

“Clearly,” she glares at him and she wishes it worked, that he hadn’t seen how easily removable her outer layer is.  Plate mail rather than greaves.  Something that holds its shape no matter how long you leave it alone in the dark. 

“I didn’t even know you existed, Astrid.”  He says her name like it has value, like it’s a coin under his tongue that will curry favor in the afterlife and she wishes she couldn’t see his leg right now.  She wishes that his vulnerability didn’t feel like trust, or that she didn’t want the trust.  “If I had I would have ended it so long ago, before I got the note, before—I thought she was—we were—If I’d known about you—”

“You would have what?” 

“I—you’re the one I want to be with.”  He was probably high school class president.  Or worse, runner up who bet on something lame like saving the world instead of getting everyone a new vending machine. 

She would have voted for him. 

The lump in her throat feels like it’s going to explode. 

“Astrid, the last forty-eight hours—I,” he swallows hard, risking one hand against her jacketed arm as he steps between her and the alarmed front door.  And she believes him.  She’s seen him vulnerable enough to recognize his honest face.  And it doesn’t matter, it can’t, because he lied.  Systematically.  While making it feel like he didn’t lie at all.  “I—last night, tonight—sometimes I forgot that other people even existed.” 

He reads her mind like a stolen book and she feels the loss of proceeds. 

“I’m leaving.” 

“I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to dredge anything up—”

“You’re just some funny guy who knows how to write a dating profile,” she clears her throat and stands up straight, shoving his front door open with enough preparation that the alarm doesn’t make her blink, “I think I’ll live.” 

“Astrid—”  

She races down the stairs and to the door.  Against who, she’s not quite sure. She doesn’t think he’d follow her in boxers at four in the morning and she wouldn’t let herself care if he did.  Because emotions are that easy, right?  When they’re big and confusing and stupid, you can just turn them off until you’re equipped to handle them. 

You can just pause. 

She’s so sick of being paused.  She’d rather fast-forward at this point, through the tears and confusion and the listless hours of staring at the ceiling and trying to finagle herself into being blamed for other people’s shitty decisions. 

But it doesn’t work that way. 

She feels every shove of her shoulder against the door in real time.  Feels the heavy snow shift inch by inch, tumbling onto the walk that someone managed to plow at some point in the last two days. 

They were a pause, in a way, the long, lingering moment that stretches out before disaster. 

The walk home is freezing.  Her hands are numb as she fumbles with her key, opening the front door and barely noticing the scene on the couch. 

“You’re home!”  Ruffnut fumbles with a blanket, slapping at something suspiciously firm where the gap between her legs should be.  “Ah!  N—how was it?” 

“Is that from my bed?”  Astrid doesn’t wait for an answer before yanking the blanket and revealing Snotlout, scrambling to cover himself with a pillow that Ruffnut tosses him. 

“You’re back!”  He yells, like it’s normal for him to be naked on her couch, and she realizes all at once that it would be if she hadn’t camped out here for months, feeling sorry for herself. 

Which she does.  Still.  Maybe more than ever, but admitting it is different than spending all of her energy trying to hide it. 

“You two are impossible.” 

“So are you!”  Ruffnut calls after her, “it’s been two days, quite an extended sexcapade, I’m proud of you—”

She slams her bedroom door so that she doesn’t have to hear anything about pride from someone so happy and pulls out her phone before she can think twice about it, deleting her profile from that stupid dating site.  She’s done waiting for her mistakes to blow over, at least this one is shallow enough to shower off and be done with it. 

[maladaptive-ninja-returns]

Infinity War (5)

CHAPTER 5: RAGE

Loki & The Avengers

Summary: A work inspired by @queencfthestarsdrfoster ‘s post of the universe where Loki is alive and Thor is avenged.

Series: Will contain all- and more- that we saw in Infinity War. Will not contain smut and fluff for obvious reasons. Might contain weird humor though.

Chapter content: Something I wish I could’ve done to them through the screen

Warnings: …blood. Icky. gooey, blood. Magic.

Word count: So my workplace shifted again. It’s...okay. Yeah, that’s it. Just okay. I mean partially it’s on me for not taking breaks and just keeping myself busy because I just cannot sit free, man. I can’t. And then by the time it’s 4pm I am exhausted as fuck and have to just keep it together till I can find my way out. Why am I like this? But I have to say, it kinda lifted my mood when I thought about my new radiant friend.

MASTERLIST & Taglist in bio, my love

Ebony Maw doesn't believe in violence of the mind. He does not believe one needs to boil one's insides just because some petty creatures with no real destiny in this universe have made a feeble decision of taking what is rightfully his master's.

Their death would be a small price to pay for the delay they have caused in me helping the Titan fulfil his destiny.

The periodic bloop on his ship's radar brings him to a rough terrain that is being tormented by the fresh blanket of snow piling over it. The winds are showing no mercy as they hit the transparent shield of his ship, illuminating the collision spots with a hue of gold and blue. How fascinatingly dull, this planet Earth, Maw coos to himself before landing his ship and walking towards the entrance.

Much to his surprise, he does feel a shiver through his adequately armoured body as the raging winds seem to be coming at him with impure intentions. And so, a tsk under his breath is followed by modestly twisting his hand to create an air barrier around him, keeping those vicious microscopic ice shards away.

The crunch of fresh cold powder under his feet is somehow welcoming to the symphony of havoc he plans on bringing to the ones who slipped through his hands. To the ones who do not have pure intentions for the infinity stone in their grasp.

There is a ripple he feels from somewhere behind him, tilting on one limb and taking a gentle swerve as an icicle misses him by centimetres. No time is wasted to pull that very icicle from the air and turn it around to throw it in the direction it originated from. And while that icicle travels back, snow is raised from the ground to be compressed into more. Those stubborn steps do not retreat as icicles find their target, only coming to a halt when those piercing eyes see for themselves Loki's figure lying in the snow, struggling to breathe.

Those piercing elements of snow have found all the vital points over the God's body, not surprising the Child of Thanos.

"You are supposed to be dead Asgardian," Ebony declares with a soothing yet eerie tone, his stature never faltering even as he looks down at the body writhing in pain, "you should stick to being dead."

Green eyes drowning in pain look up at him; same eyes he had once drained all hope out of. Such powerful techniques of purification were wasted on such frivolous being that day.

"But..." Loki struggles with the pain surfacing on his face, "b-but I'm not the one who's-"

It takes just one slight shift of Maw's posture. Just a single tilt towards Loki to hear what the dying alien has to say. And just as he does, a streak of blazing fire takes the master of torture with him, leaving Loki to complete his sentence, "-dead," before disappearing with hues of gold and green.

The snow feels harder on the skin than it looks, almost making Maw grunt. He thinks he misses the punch from the man clad in iron he thought he had left behind, but the hit to his skull sends a blaring pain, unbalancing him for a few seconds.

"Told you earth was closed, you dipshit!" Tony's voice resonates through the suit.

Maw feels the rising bitterness grind between his teeth before he slides away from another punch and sends ice shards towards Tony followed by a rumble under his feet.

"What the- is he trying to bring an earthquake?" Tony rises in the air to dodge the attacks coming his way.

The claws which are targeting the ground seem to be the epicentre of the rumble- focused on ripping the rocks lying somewhere under that blanket of pure white- feel themselves being wrapped by a stringed glow that yanks those arms, disrupting whatever power Maw possesses to move the elements around him.

"You really should get a hobby."

Maw knows that voice too well.

The magician.

When the supreme torturer tries to wrap the enchanted magic strings around his arms to pull Strange towards him, the latter moves his hands to convert those strings into handcuffs, freeing himself to create three more elemental circles and call forward blasts of pure energy aiming at his could-be tormentor.

Ebony dives away, calling forward more shards to break him free of those cuffs, taking the first chance his hands get to call up the already cracked rocks to target the sorcerer.

The first one is missed. The second is dodged. The third is barely tackled by his magic. The fourth one gets him. So does every other boulder that comes flying his way.

Strange is surrounded with boulders from every side, all of them aiming to crush him where he stands. While he is trying to protect himself- and the fate of the universe wrapped around his neck- he doesn't notice the slithering pieces around him, too wrapped up in fear as the rocks finally close in on him with a thunderous rumble breaking the air on their collision.

"Strange!"

No one knows where that cry comes from as clouds of dirt and smoke hide the point of impact; the crime scene.

Ebony Maw does not move a muscle from where he stands, his hands clasped on to each other with a watchful look, satisfied with himself.

"You critters should have given up these futile attempts when you had the chance."

His voice has a chill that echoes through the mountains. Even the wind seems to fall silent.

"You picked the wrong people for that intention, Voldey."

If Maw had brows he would have raised them when he turns around to look at a faint glow- a few feet above the ground- rise further. It's only when the clouds of unrest begin to lower the haze does the shadow of something fluttering around that figure comes to light.

How did he-

Every scenario is running through his mind to figure out how that magician escaped, cracking the glass walls of restraint inside him. The smokiness in the air takes its sweet time to reveal the shadow of the figure, the chest lit up in a warm blue glow while the arms rise from either side to mirror that very glow in Maw's direction.

"Light's out, you son of a bitch," Stark announces, already witnessing heaps of ice shards rising from the ground. The cloak of levitation readies itself to protect Stark while a grunt rises from Maw's throat as he changes the direction of the shards to point at Tony. Pulling himself back to gather as much potential, Ebony Maw is about to push them towards the man when piercing noise followed by something sharp jabs him like a thousand needles in the back.

"Now!" Tony shouts at the top of his lungs.

Within seconds a streak of green comes running on the snow- melting it where it touches the cold, cracking the ice till it reaches Maw to surround him in a circle marked with a Nordic enchantment.

Before those beady eyes can make sense of this intricate entrapment surrounding him, the cluster of boulders meant to kill Strange break with a crackling sound to reveal the Sorcerer Supreme clad in the Iron Man suit, his hands ready with burning rings that are fired at the tormentor, cuffing him while merging with the Nordic circle of magic, trapping his limbs.

It is unreal; the scream that leaves Maw's throat. The menacing cry is not for the pain but the pride that has been marred by humans and the God that is on one knee, keeping his magic strong and his eyes on the one who tried to take his light away not too long ago.

"YOU WILL ALL DIE! YOU WILL DIE THE DEATHS OF ROTTEN SWINE CRAWLING WITH MAGGOTS ALL OVER YOU! YOU WILL ALL WHINE BENEATH MY FEET!"

Stark and Strange walk towards the creature who roars while on his knees, their armours being exchanged without a word, looking at the dull alien yanking at the illuminated golden and green chains holding him down.

"Oh you coward," Maw hisses at Strange before turning to Stark, "using a shrewd God to capture me? Do you not know the likes of him? His silver tongue has a purpose. A purpose to fulfil his means. Once he is done you lot he will throw you to the black holes and move on to someone more powerful. He only fends for himself. I know because I have been inside his brain. His darkness eats him alive and soon it will eat you all!"

A huff of air leaves Tony's lungs when he shares a look with Strange. Their lungs slowly come back to ease. Their shaking hearts have found solid ground. Their doubtful eyes now look in the direction of the figure walking towards them, its hands illuminating green with an increasing density.

"They see through you, Asgardian!"

All the rage collected on Ebony Maw's forehead wants to launch at the God walking in his direction in any way it can find. But that rage seems to come to a standstill when it sees the figure emerge from behind the fog; concentrating on those lines running up and down the blue skin that is too flawless to belong to a mere animal. The rage resting on Maw's forehead starts taking a few steps back when it locks its beady eyes with the red that sears through his very soul.

"You're wrong, Maw-" Loki comes to stand right outside the glowing circle keeping his punisher captive- "they do not see through me."

A flick of Loki's wrist and the chains are pulled into the ground, making a reluctant Maw bow down to get them back up.

"They cannot see anything."

Maw tries to but he cannot break his gaze from those eyes carrying the colour of blood as they're looking down on him with unspeakable emotions; seemingly blank stare ripping his insides with every drop of volcanic heat leaving them.

"You did not leave much for them to see last time, did you?"

The icy chill from Loki's hand as it wraps around his throat to make him stand and face him with the roles reversed sends poisonous shivers through his existence.

"Don't worry-" Loki whispers too close to him; close enough to make sure he can be the first one in this universe to smell Maw's fear but not close enough for Maw to get his teeth in him. His free hand conjures a four edged dagger glistening with the glow from the snow. "-unlike you, I won't make you wish for death."

The strike is smooth. The blade goes inside his abdomen in one go, puncturing his vital organs with that very strike. Maw does not even feel it; something that brings a smile on Loki's face. "I will make you live death."

The blade comes out, bringing with it the spoils. Black insides slowly spill. This is the first time Maw feels something tickle his abdomen. The itch increases into an unbearable agony and he is trying to clutch to the wound to make that burn stop.

And the blood does stop. The wound heals back, leaving a blue bruise-like stain on that grey skin. The heavy breaths of relief slowly turn into wheezing. The eyes filled with three-seconds of reprieve go wide in horror. The murky, black blood-stained hands turn into claws to rip apart the very skin that healed a few moments ago as the throat breaks into an agonising shriek.

The poison on the dagger has done its job well. It coagulates the blood and regenerates the tissue to seemingly heal the wound but burns the coagulated blood and new fabrication of the tissue to the point that the animal would rather tear its skin apart than have that thing inside it for one more second. And when the freshly healed wound is exposed to the nitrogen in the air, it catalysis the poison to spread further into the body, making that animal a writhing howling mess on the ground.

Ebony Maw experiences the same fate. The shrill screams breaking the air come out for a few more seconds before he has gnawed himself inside out. All that is left of this child of Thanos is the goo its desecrated body lies in.

It does not take a genius to figure out how much thought Loki has put into Maw's extermination; something that makes Stark wonder what had Squidward done to Loki to call for such a gory end.

"Great," Strange snaps Tony out of his thoughts, scrunching his nose at the remains of the grey villain, "one down. How many more?"

"We took down the strategist," Loki announces, sending his dagger back to his pocket dimension, "it should be easy to take down the rest of the...children."

"Great," Tony mentions with a slight groan, "Alexander is dead. Loki's actually a-" he gestures at the Frost Giant, looking him up and down- "a teen girl's dream smurf and I just got a call from Banner telling me Cap met another of these deranged kids.” He groans. “Exactly how I was planning the day to go."

[throneoflevin]

One Foot in the Grave

( @miqojak​ for mentions. Be careful what you ask for! My writing is a bit rusty.)

Even as spring crept closer and closer the cold of the North didn’t seem to dwindle. How he hated the cold – dreaded it, truly. The memories from this place, the people out for his head, the damned cold…nothing made it a place he enjoyed coming to. This time he had been smart enough not to get in over his head at least. He was only here to observe, not to fight.

How normal has that become? When was the last time I wore a suit of armor?

When he had taught Jak her painful lesson out in the Forelands. A lesson she had ignored, though he could hardly blame her for that. She was similar enough to him that she would continue to allow people around her – convince herself she was a loner while adding more and more people to her ring of “friends”. She didn’t want to be alone, despite what she said aloud. Just like him, she wanted someone to take the pain away, to tell her everything was okay, to wake up beside every day…to love. The same thing every person in Eorzea wanted. She was young enough to make that mistake, the same mistake he had made more times then he cared to admit. The ones who loved you never stuck around for long. You either buried them, or they tried to bury you. If you were lucky, they just disappeared without a trace.

Was it lucky she disappeared? She is dead, and you know it. Just because you haven’t seen the body doesn’t mean she is going to reappear one day.

He knew that. He didn’t expect Y’ashe to walk through the door of their home one day, not anymore. She was gone, and like everything else he had allowed close, it had faded away. The Seeker exhaled; his breath visible in the chilly air of Ishgard. The heavy furs and large hood kept his face from view while keeping him from drawing too much attention to himself. Thankfully no snow was falling this day, but the frost on stone reminded him that it was never that far away. He watched people pass by in the market, keeping himself tucked away in an alley between merchants peddling jewels and furs like he wore. In truth, he wasn’t looking for anything. He wasn’t here to look for a person, to overhear some sort of information…

Why did I come here again?

As voices from the market began to quiet the sound of footsteps grew louder. His head turned to look further down the alley, a place that was too dark for him to see. In fact, it seemed like just beyond his right foot was nothing but unmoving shadows. Somewhere within that was the source of the footsteps; one after another they drew closer and closer. His ears stood tall beneath his hood, strands of long blond hair falling over his face as he waited…waited for whatever was going to emerge from the dark.

The footsteps stopped, but nothing came forth. They had stopped right beside him, just inside that expanse of black that threatened to swallow him. A few moments passed, the sounds of the market completely fading away as the Seeker focused his attention on the area just to his right. As he opened his mouth to speak the words were swallowed down; a pair of violet eyes appeared in the dark. Only the eyes were visible, but they were familiar to him. He had seen them in the mirror or the reflection in the water in the Forelands every sun for a long time.

“We are so dreadfully bored, aren’t we?”

The voice rumbled out of the darkness. It was low in tone, a growl hidden behind every word as if they were being forced to take form in place of some animal-like sound.

“We are. There is nothing we can do about that, though. I’m not going to needlessly involve myself in other things just to feel like I have something to attend to. I’ve never been able to just…float around idly and do as I please. There was always something to do…always something to fix…always someone to fight.”

“You don’t want to fight them again? You don’t want to get revenge?”

“I do, but that is something that takes time. It is like looking for a ghost.”

He had been searching high and low for any traces of the people who had left him to die out in the snow. Though, truth be told, he had been spending more effort looking for the person who had saved him. All of them were like finding a needle in a haystack, even with the contacts he had in the snow-covered city-state that were going to help him. Every time he spoke to them it was more of the same…”nothing new to report”, “haven’t found a thing”. It was…exhausting.

“Then we should do it ourselves! If we cause a stir, they will come running the settle their unfinished business! All we have to do is—”

“Make ourselves known. Please, don’t embarrass yourself. If you are thinking it then I have already thought it. You are my strength, not my brain. Don’t forget—”

The feeling of claws digging into his flesh caused Ketsuchi’s words to falter, instead replaced by a loud hiss of pain. The darkness extended out in the shape of two beastly hands, the claws of which dug forcefully into his right arm as blood began to stain the heavy furs.

”/You/ should not forget! I am your power and without me you are nothing! I am smothered every sun as you pretend your mind will ever be sharper than your blade! Are you trying to be her? Are you trying to carry on her memory or…or something foolish like that?!”

Ketsuchi offered a scoff as his response to the words, causing the dark arms to retract away from his. “Don’t be ridiculous. You already know that isn’t the case. She made me understand that my mind is just as much a weapon as my sword is.” He turned his attention to the dark where the pair of violet eyes glared back at him. The same torrent of aether was visible deep down in either eye, that violent storm of levin just waiting to be unleashed.

“I’m aware you want to fight. Truthfully, I do as well. Unfortunately, we don’t always get what we want. We have a deal and I intend to uphold my end of it, but you must give me time. Something will come along that will give you a chance to show your strength again…just give me time to find something worth investing in.”

“You have something already. Show her who you really are…she wants to see anyway. Show her. Show her. Show her. Show her.Show her.Show her. Showher.Showher.Showher.Showhershowhershowhershowher. Show her!”

“Jak!” “Jak.”

The two voices muddled together, one the low rumble of a beast in a cage, the other a calm, sadistic, condescending one. The darkness enveloped him; the world covered in a darkness no light could penetrate. Ketsuchi closed his eyes, letting the warmth of that sensation flow over him.

 ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

When he opened his eyes, it wasn’t to find himself in the cold. He had fallen asleep on the sofa outside his bedroom, the fire still burning away.

“Good morning, Master Kotetsu.”

The Seeker lifted his mismatched eyes slowly to see the pair of maids standing at the end of the sofa. Both Seeker women smiled sweetly as their tails swung side to side behind them. The male let out a long yawn, turning himself until his feet touched the floor and his back rested against the sofa. His right arm burned; an all-too-familiar pain he had grown used to. His bones ached, his muscles screamed – it felt like his arm was broken, even if it very obviously was not the case.

“…Good morning Miu. Ruka. What time is it?”

“Much later then you normally rest.” The blonde, Miu, responded. She was the more vocal of the pair of sisters and tended to do most of the talking. “Your breakfast had grown cold so we thought we should come get you. Would you like us to make something new?”

Ketsuchi yawned and rubbed at his right eye, trying to shake away some of the exhaustion he felt. “No…that is fine. I need you to contact Tsuki and let her know I’ll be coming by for some healing again. I’ll eat the cold food.”

The pair of Seekers nodded their heads before Ruka left to gather some clothes for him from his bedroom. Miu watched him closely as he rubbed his right arm up and down, even though he knew it would give him no relief from the pain. Ruka returned, offered the clothes, then went down the stairs to tend to other matters.

“…Something to say, Miu?”

Ketsuchi eyed the woman as he pulled his shirt over his head, using only his left arm to do so until his right was required to move to make its way through the arm of the shirt. The Seeker shook her head, flashing a kind smile and bowing before she made her way down the stairs. Ketsuchi let out a heavy sigh before walking over to the window. The sun was already high in the sky, indicating he had slept much longer then he usually would. He must have been exhausted…but as his mind caught up to him, he was reminded of the dream he had.

A small grin curled at the side of his lips, accompanied by the briefest spark of levin from his right eye. He couldn’t feed his other side as much as he wanted any longer…but perhaps it was time to start doing something more. Ishgard was still a task he would have to tackle at some point, but it wasn’t of immediate importance. He would continue to investigate as he had been – keeping his distance and building up a presence for himself. It was a difficult tightrope to walk, between people knowing you were there but just enough that you could wander about uninhibited.

For now, it was time to pay a visit to the little robin. He had taken the time after all to learn about the workings of the business her boss ran and how it connected with everything there. A confusing web of people that formed a hierarchy that made nearly no sense. How they weren’t constantly at one another’s throats in a war for the top seat was baffling to him.

“Well…she wanted to see the Demon. I suppose we should give her a taste then…shouldn’t we?”

The Seeker licked his lips as his left hand gripped at his right elbow. His body didn’t have to last forever…just a little bit longer. Just long enough to make sure once he was gone that the world would have someone to take his place. This world that had taken everything from him…how it would rot from the core outward. He wouldn’t allow it to continue as if no wrongs had been done…he wouldn’t allow it to thrive when it had wronged him so many times. It would fester like an untreated wound. His name still carried weight, carried fear…but soon it would be no more. She wanted chaos, didn’t she? Then it was about time she understood what true chaos was.

He began to hum, the soft sound of that song he had played for her that day. His smirk grew wider as he leaned his head back to stare up at the ceiling.

“Chaos it is, then.”

[bloommelon]

Everything Is Blue

WARNINGS: severe angst, suicidal themes, suggestive sexual content, eventual suicide, mental illnesses, eventual character death, unhappy ending, suicidal content, graphic suicide

A/N: please don't read if you're depressed, this is a very sad story but im proud of it because I actually finished something for ONCE. NONE of this is based on real life, it's all fiction. Jaehyun just fit my idea of this character, and I hope no one gets the wrong idea that I tried to glamorize suicide. And also, I do not feel suicidal and I am not depressed because of writing this, i simply got this idea while thinking I should try and write angst. On another note, I hope whoever reads this likes it or at least it makes you feel some type of emotion. Thank you. *i did not proofread at all btw*

Song: Colors by Halsey

✖✖✖✖

August 3rd

Jaehyun and I sat in a field of Nemophila by the river, the sun shining and clouds floating above us eating strawberries and our laughter filling the hot summer air. Jaehyun had taken me to the museum to see his favorite painting an hour beforehand, telling me it reminded him of me. It was a simple painting, blue sky with fluffy white clouds on a sunny day. I'd almost stayed home that day, not wanting to go anywhere due to a flurry of sudden panic attacks that week. "When you're feeling anxious, come here and call me and I'll come as quick as I can." At that moment, I'd been filled with happiness due to Jaehyun's caring nature but I should have been the one making sure he had somewhere to go when he was upset, but his feelings of sadness weren't noticeable back then. Giving him a hug wasn't enough to stop the pain he felt daily just from living. Laughter hurt, and so did seeing me smile making guilt rush through him at the fact that I brought him some happiness, but not enough for him to change his mind.

September 19th

Jaehyun wrote poetry about clouds and sunshine and the color blue. He would have  painted himself blue if it was socially exceptable. Most of the poems he let me read brought tears to my eyes, ruining my mascara. He always wiped the mascara off, then he'd kiss all my tears away telling me that's how poetry should make me feel. I told him many times how intense it felt, the emotions brought out by the poems he wrote and he'd stare at me and say" that's how i feel about you." Intense. Wildly. Airy. Bright and warm like sunshine shining down through clouds. Most people tell you to write when you're feeling blue to get whatever you're feeling out of your system so that you can feel yellow and bright again,but he still wished for the sun to poison him. He wished for dehydration and shock to take him away instead of writing useless poems.

October 13th

Friday the thirteenth. Bad omens were shown, I just didn't recognize them. I look back now and something had been off about Jaehyun that day. His smile wasn't the same. It was crooked in a way that it was almost a frown, but to outsiders it passed as a normal expression of happiness. He painted sometimes just like writing, and his paintings left me feeling blue just like the blue sky in august, like the painting in the museum, like the color of the walls in his room. It wasnt even a sad painting-he'd painted a red rose in a field of baby blue eyes by a river at night. It wasn't even sad, but when i touched the paper after it dried, I just wanted to cry. He'd held me telling me about the meaning behind it. "It's supposed to make you appreciate things and people that are different, but still appreciate the normal things and people too. No one should be left out. That everyone and everything is more than meets the eye, you just have to look deeper." The way he talked made me want to cry, and he could sense something was wrong, but the fact that I couldn't look deeper to notice his sadness made me tell him everything was fine. I pretended I was fine and I pretended he was fine, so that in the moment, I could feel like everything was fine when nothing about that day was fine. That night he'd went home and cried himself to sleep, and he'd almost done something heartwrenching but I couldn't ask him a simple 'are you okay?'. He would have lied anyways, but maybe if i would have pushed him to answer he wouldn't have cried alone that night or almost took a razor to his skin.

November 7th

Jaehyun and I would sit in my room for hours in comfortable silence, him drawing while i read books. He'd been noticeably upset on this day. To the point where I kept asking him what was wrong and was everything okay. He started rambling about death and blood to the point where fear bubbled up inside of me, spilling out into the world and when he noticed I was terrified, he had cried and apologized repeatedly. He'd thrown his drawing pad in the middle of all of this, it getting lost behind my bed. I'd held him for hours after that, hoping he would feel better and calm down. It worked on the outside, and I foolishly believed I'd helped him on the inside as well. He wasn't okay, and the way he had talked about blood and death so freely spoke volumes about what he thought of daily. If only I'd tried to look deeper. Most of us take what we see on the outside and assume that there's nothing more to see and we should look away as to not disturb the normalcy of the world.

December 25th

Christmas day was snowy and beautiful, the sun fighting it's way through the clouds to shine down on everything to try and melt the snow, but the snow was relentless and the roads icy. The gifts didnt matter that day as everyone was together and that made Jaehyun filled to the brim with happiness, which mattered a lot more. That night we lay together wrapped in nothing but the warmest blue blanket we could find, the snow falling against the window and the christmas lights above us in my room shining down us painting our faces in green and red. He was happy, but that didn't mean the pain had suddnely disappeared and that family made the bad thoughts run away, he was just hiding them. That night he whispered how much he loved me , lips against my temple. He told me I was the only gift he needed. He didnt know that he was the only gift I needed, and that him staying could have been so much better. Maybe that's selfish. On Christmas some people expect everything they want to be given but give nothing to others. That year, I was sadly part of the people who expect and was given everything I wanted but I gave nothing.

February 14th

Jaehyun's birthday. I had thrown him a surprise party that he loved, wearing a blue dress with pink hearts on it since it was also Valentine's day. Once he opened his gifts, which was a copy of the painting with the clouds on a sunny day that he absolutely adored and a necklace with my name on it in the shape of a cloud. His dimples stayed out all day, like I wish they would have stayed for life. As a Valentine's gift he gave me a blue rose and a painting of me by the river sitting in the field of Nemophila. That night I ended up in only his blue flannel with marks of his love on my skin the next morning,his whispers of "i love you more than anything" ingrained in my thoughts forever. I'd told him the same, but it didnt count as much since he said it first, and knowing now that that wasn't enough for him to stay breaks my heart all over again.

March 2nd

We spent the day walking around despite him being vocal of not feeling like getting out of bed, and he was a bit angry with me until I got him laughing by singing embarrassing 80's songs and dancing awkwardly. We both danced until we got tired, our legs exhausted and breathing was a difficult feat. I told him that he didn't deserve to be sad and he told me "i deserve whatever the world throws at me" which made me worry about him for weeks. I didnt tell him that, although maybe I should have. I just didn't want to make him feel bad when i started having panic attacks again because of it. He didn't know and didn't mean to, he just was in so much pain.

April 20th

He'd cooked for me on this day, telling me he felt a lot better. He appeared completely calm and peaceful like how some people get after doing things they love. Which he was good at cooking and enjoyed it, so I was extremely happy. He hadn't cooked in months-not like this. He was also baking. He wouldn't let me go in his kitchen. "It's a surprise, darling. Just be patient" Although he acted normal enough, whatever normal means, i sensed sadness coming from his being. After we ate, I felt nauseous. He turned into a concerning boyfriend rather than a happy one which made me upset since I knew he was keeping his sadness a secret. While he went to clean the kitchen after throwing a blanket on my cold body, I felt even more nauseous and after contemplating on whether or not to run to the bathroom my body decided for me. Vomiting isn't something anyone is fond of, and Jaehyun was even more concerned when he found me lying on the floor against the bathtub. He threw all the food away after that and blamed himself for me getting sick, though It was just a case of me eating way too much. Once in his bed, he kept apologizing and ended up crying but I held him and told him everything was okay. He didn't tell me that every small thing affected him so horribly it'd leave him wishing he'd never been born. He didn't know that those small things were things he couldn't help, but his brain told him that he ruined everything.

May 27th

Sitting in the field of Baby blue eyes with him felt different this time. More peaceful. We laid down side by side watching the clouds, he always said he wanted to float in the clouds but not anything about how he wanted to be buried like the roots of the nemophila we laid on. He didn't tell me he didnt want to grow anymore, not by himself and not with me-not with anyone. Instead he told me how much he loved me, that he'd die for me and told me it all day. He wouldn't let his hands off of me, never letting go of my hand or arm or hips. He wouldn't let go. He asked me to stay the night and keot me in his arms until I had to work the next day, getting upset when I left. He didn't tell me I'd only have a week or two left of this. Left of being in love, left of seeing his pretty smile and those dimples he was known for showing almost all the time. He didn't tell me he was looking for reasons to stay, trying so hard not to give up.

June 16th

When I'd woken up, a feeling of dread left me near tears all day. I hadn't seen Jaehyun in three days and it'd gotten late in the day without a word from him which was unusual. I pushed the uncomfortable feeling to the side until I'd decided to leave to go see him after calling him and texting him repeatedly. While walking out the door I remembered that day when he'd terified me with that talk of blood and death and him throwing his drawing pad. Worry filled my being, making me feel sick as I pushed my bed onto the side to find his blue drawing pad.

Tears stream down my face at the drawing I found. In my hands was the reason for all his weird behavior,all his guilt and all of his pain. He wanted to die. My Jaehyun wanted to disappear from this world forever. I throw the drawing pad in a random direction and run. I call all of our friends and his family, wanting to know if they had seen him. None of them had. I didn't want it to be true.

My legs carried me to the field of baby blue eyes by the streaming river, the sun shining down so brightly and the clouds reminding me of the painting Jaehyun loved so much.

My legs were already cramping but I pushed through that pain to find the love of my life laying in a field of nemophila, his wrists slit so terribly blood is all you could see. Flowing from his wrists to drip onto the plants under him, it was so red and gory I stopped breathing, running over to him to begin screaming while on the phone with one of his best friends. Johnny knew something was wrong, his voice got further away as he told Mark to call someone. To call 911, to get help.

In Jaehyun's hand was a a razor blade and I grabbed it, throwing the wretched thing far from us. I kept shaking him and screaming at him to get up. Nothing worked. Around his neck was the cloud necklace, and despite the horror I could see, he looked extremely peaceful, his eyes shut permanently. My Jaehyun was gone, and he'd died where he loved, but he'd felt so unloved to come to this place.

I'd never enjoy bright sunny days or museums again. I couldn't, not when I couldn't see Jaehyun's dimples or hold his warm hand. As much as he wanted to burn, he'd left the world cold. The sun still shined so brightly down on us as if nothing had ever happened in this place.

🌹

[comfortmarvelimagines]

when you can’t find the quiet pt4

heya ! this is a part that i started about a week ago, post-meltdown (one of the messy awful draining kinds). it wasn’t on the request list, but i think i should have around 8 requested instalments coming depending on whether or not i decide to merge some requests together. i hope this is okay !!!

Fuck, you were so ready for today to be done. Over with. Buried under a mountain of bricks and rubble and whatever else and shoved to the back of your memories, never to be so much as considered again.

Unfortunately, time doesn’t work like that.

Yeah, school was bad. When was it ever not bad. It was loud, and for some weird reason it made you want to scream back. You would readily admit just how hypocritical that sounded, but who were you to try and figure it out? You had a test in Spanish, and all you could think about was the girl breathing behind you, which somehow turned all other attempts at thought into complete and utter static (you’d be lucky if you scraped a D in that state). By the time decathlon came around, you were exhausted to your bones, frustrated, mad, despondent, sad, so many Bad Feelings that you couldn’t begin to sort it out. You didn’t even sit on a chair, instead opting to slide down the wall and hide your face in your knees.

No one dared disturb you.

It was okay for a while. In all honesty, time had been slippery all day and you really had no clue how long it was before things started creeping up on you. The team talking, laughing, the answer bells that you swore you could feel at the base of your skull, the fluorescent lights that were still that specific type of throbbing awfulness even with your eyes closed and face pressed into your jeans. And maybe it would’ve been manageable if you were in a different headspace, and your brain wasn’t so glitchy and not cooperating at all (you were no stranger to sensory overloads, that’s for sure), but that wasn’t the case; you didn’t mean to leave, but at some point, you did.

It felt like mere seconds before you reached the heavy front doors to the school. You went to push it with your right hand. It didn’t budge. There was a vague realisation that you needed to use both hands, one to actually unlock the door and and the other to push, but it was like you were stuck on a loop; you kept trying the same thing, and nothing changed.

“Hey, hey hey,” a warm hand covered the one you had contorted in a death grip around the handle. You didn’t resist when the hands encased yours, firmly but not to the point where it hurt, breaking the weird mental loop you were stuck in. “You’re okay. We’re gonna leave school now, and we’re gonna go meet Happy at the car, and then we’re gonna go to the tower and Mr Stark will be there but we don’t have to talk to anyone, we can just go straight to the sensory room and you’ll be okay, yeah?” Peter knew that definitive plans were the best way to help when everything was… Weird, like it was now. How he knew that your sense of time was out of whack, you didn’t know, but you felt marginally better as he opened the door and led you out knowing exactly where you were going and what you were doing.

Sure, it was outside your normal routine of getting the subway home, but as much as you hated to admit it you weren’t certain that you would’ve made it home completely okay. Sometimes days like today were too much, to the point where you felt sick and disoriented and disconnected from your body, to the extent where you’d be unsure of where you were or how to move. It felt shameful to admit to the number of times you’d gotten home after dark, simply because you felt so wrong that you ended up sitting against a random building on the sidewalk until the street was calmer, less frantic. There was even the one time when MJ had been walking to the grocery store a few blocks from her house and had found you, freezing cold, frantically flapping until your wrists ached at the joints because nothing was making sense and you knew where you needed to be, but getting there just wasn’t happening with the crowds and the lights and the snow and the cacophony of the god-awful New York traffic.

Today you were safe. You were okay. Peter was standing in as your rational brain, the part that was currently on vacation because it didn’t like the constant input. You were trying hard to be content with that and accept his help- really. But the insecurities kept running over themselves in your brain, and between that and the stop-start movement of the car, you felt nauseous. Not wanting to disturb Peter or Happy- you didn’t know when you’d got in the car, or how close you were from the tower- you bit down on your hand, focussing all your energy into not rocking. It was fortunate that Peter was the one sat behind Happy, because in your attempt to keep still, you’d thrown yourself forward, head jammed against the passenger seat, seatbelt likely forming a welt on your neck from the force. Like the last near-meltdown you’d had at school, there was this burning, incessant need to run. Get out. Like your brain didn’t realise that it was the thing being uncooperative, and that leaving very rarely actually solved the problem; or when it did, it created more to deal with later, on top of that specific brand of Post-Meltdown Energy Drain™.

You recognised the change in lighting, the cease in forward movement, the quiet void that came as the engine shut off. Recognised Tony’s voice, the cool air on your cheeks as the door opened and someone clicked your seatbelt and pulled it back as you were pulled away from the seat in front and the need to RUN…

Arguably the most disconcerting thing about meltdowns is the fact that everything blurs. There’s just so much input, and things move too fast and change too quickly, and it feels like you’re constantly a step behind it all until it snaps. You found yourself crouched, rocking sideways, head connecting with something solid every time you swung left. What you were hitting, you didn’t know. Your knuckle was still between your teeth; you knew it had been for a while, but you couldn’t remember when you tasted the first traces of blood. You didn’t remember when it became so hard to breathe, when it felt like every time you sucked in air your body retched in rejection.

You didn’t remember closing your eyes.

The rhythm you’d established was broken when a hand caught the side of your head. You panicked (even more than you already were); the rocking was steady and the pain was grounding, good, an anchor when everything was out of control in a way that was impossible to describe in words. Without even really thinking about it, you pitched forwards, needing the solid input even though you felt so dizzy you weren’t so sure of the difference between up and down. A hand met your forehead this time, slowing your movement and you opened your eyes, arms flailing to push it of because you were trapped and you weren’t in control and you didn’t know who it was and it was bad, bad, so bad that you wanted to scream.

Instead of screaming you threw up. Again and again, until your shirt was sticking to your skin and as the bone-deep exhaustion set in, you didn’t fight when the hands pulled you back until you were pressed against a chest, held tight, grounded in the pressure. “God, kid, you’re okay, you’re okay. You’re safe.” Tony. You could feel his voice, even though it was quiet enough not to hurt your ears. The thought of Tony seeing this, seeing you not okay and in control sent a jolt of panic down your spine and your breathing quickened, shocking you out of the lethargy you’d sunk into.

“Hey, hey, no, I need you to calm down, okay? Ready, we’re gonna breathe. In for four, two, three four. You can feel me breathing. I know you can. And out, nice and slowly.” As your stuttered breaths evened out, you became more aware of your body. How your hands were tapping against your knees, even though you barely had the energy to sit upright. How the lights were dimmed enough for you to open your eyes and see Tony’s forearm braced across both of yours, you figured to block your hands from your mouth given the blood smudged across your right one.

“Do you want me to let go?” It took a second for your brain to process the question. You slightly shook your head in response, neck cracking. It felt like the pressure from his arm around your back was the only thing holding you together. “I’m sorry. I know I shouldn’t touch without asking, but you were gonna give yourself a concussion, kiddo,” he paused, looking up at who you assumed to be Peter. “You’re in the elevator, at the tower. Peter’s here. Happy left to give you space, but I bet you he’s sent me dozen messages asking if you’re okay.”

“He’s texted me a bunch,” Peter interjected. Peter. He didn’t leave.

“What we’re gonna do is, when you’re ready, we’re gonna go up to my floor. You’re gonna have a shower, and get in some comfy clothes. Then you and Peter can go to the sensory room-” you panicked at that. Even though the whole situation was thoroughly humiliating (Tony Stark, of all people, had just watched you had a meltdown. In his elevator. And like, a bad one), Tony was a safe person. Secure. As selfish as it sounded, you wanted them both.

The soft tap on your back reminded you that you needed to breathe, and you reflexively gasped. “Okay, there you go. I know communicating is hard right now, but we can work through it if you stay with me, yeah?” You pushed your head against him. Stay.

“You got anxious when i mentioned the sensory room. Do you want to go there?”

Another minimal head movement, another crack. Yes.

“I think they want you to come,” Peter knelt in front of you. “Is that what you’re trying to say, y/n?”

You nodded again, wishing you could throw yourself at him in a hug. You felt so, so lucky to have him, have someone who understood without words.

“We can do that. What I was gonna do was go up and change, and then grab some food before heading down to meet you two. Underoos might just wither away to nothing if he’s not fed every hour.”

“Hey!”

“Are you telling me you’re not hungry?” Peter didn’t respond to that. “Exactly.”

His voice softened as he turned back to you. “Are you okay if the elevator moves?” You nodded.

“FRI, you know where to go”

***

A while later you were situated in between Tony and Peter, the latter tracing patterns across your back as the former held you tightly. You were basically curled up into a ball, and despite not usually wanting people to touch after a meltdown, this was okay. It was firm, tight, and Tony did an arguably better job of the deep pressure you craved than even the weighted blankets folded neatly in the corner from the last time you were there. Tony and Peter had mentioned things about plans, about access to the sensory space, about figuring out strategies to prevent it from getting this bad because “seeing you like that was heartbreaking, kid, and you know I’ve got a weak heart as it is”. But for now, you didn’t want to think. Just be, exist, content in fading into that specific brand of Post-Meltdown Energy Drain™ and beyond.