#and unit still tried to paint him as a bad guy

[themthistles]

'survival shows are so bad and toxic and exploitative and misleading and biased :(' why are you still watching

[bellarkeselection]

Halstead’s Favorite Duo

Anonymous request - Can you do a Jay Halstead x reader, where they are married and she is part of the K-9 unit? Maybe they called her in or something to help chase down a suspect.

My boots hit the ground as fast as I could to keep up with my first best friend for I wish I could say my whole life. Yet I have only known this dog since I joined the K-9 unit that works with the Chicago Police Department. My German shepherd dog ran forward on the heels of the man that was running from us. The man we were after was a drug cartel that they had been hunting for months. “Ryder! Attack.” I commanded him before he launched himself through the glass store window.

The guy we were chasing tried to run to the back of the store but he tripped over a shopping cart giving Ryder the opportunity to tackle him to the ground. Stepping over the broken window glass I draw my gun from my belt pointing it at the guy. “Y/n, Ryder! Are you guys okay?”

“We’re fine, Jay. Ryder ain’t too bad at his job. Ryder, come here.” I smiled seeing my husband coming around the corner lowering his gun when he saw the situation.

Ryder snarled at the guy on the ground keeping his tail still when we were out in the field. Otherwise he would let it actually wag when he was happy. Jay bent down on a knee after putting his gun away, grabbing the guy off the floor and handcuffing him. “You’re under arrest for smuggling drugs across the border. Take him back to the station.” He handed him off to one of the other local officers.

“You did good, boy.” Dropping down on a knee in front of my dog he started moving his tail wagging it since it was just me and Jay alone with him. “So how much paperwork does this leave you with tonight. I can order take out if you want if you’ll be home later.”

He shakes his head walking back to one of the squad cars having me and Ryder following his heels like we did every morning when we all had to leave the apartment. “Hailey said she would take care of it. I actually had something else in mind.”

“Oh really. Care to share what you had in mind?” I smirked knowing that he wouldn’t give it up even if I asked the question but I did it anyway.

Jay sent me a glare. “It didn’t work on our first date and it still won’t work now.” I nudged him and he chuckled before Ryder barked signaling that he wanted into our conversation.

“That means he doesn’t want to be left out of whatever mystery thing you have planned. And you agreed to take me in every way that includes my doggy.” I responded to him.

Jay and I had gotten married a few years ago. I had just been promoted to chief of my unit. Vioet was the man to help me get it after he had seen my history with Ryder and the amount of cases we helped crack down compared to the other k-9 unit members. Jay opened the door letting my dog jump into the backseat shutting the door once he was in. We both got in the car and removed our bullet proof vests and he started the drive looking my way a few times. “Do you remember the day we met?”

“Of course I do. I got injured on an assignment and the doctors at the hospital your brother Will works at wouldn’t let Ryder inside my room. So he started losing it and breaking things. If it wasn’t for you I was sure Ryder would have bit Will’s leg.” I snorted running a hand down my face thinking back on that night.

Jay smiled, shaking his head. “Yeah but he and I have the same goal to protect you…and love you.”

“So where are we going exactly? I mean it’s kind of strange that you are asking about the day we met. We’re already married. What else could we possibly do?” I shifted in my seat bouncing up and down with the tension of waiting.

Jay didn’t stop the car for another few minutes, parking the car outside of a house that was painted a light blue on the outside and it had a gray roof. He let Ryder out of the backseat first before coming over to my side and helping me out. “The surprise is that this place is now ours.”

“Are you serious, Jay!” I gasped covering my mouth with my hands spinning around to face him since he was standing behind me.

He slipped the keys in my hands. “It’s our. I am not lying to you. I got it all set up a few weeks ago. That way we aren’t cramped in an apartment and this gives Ryder a space to run when he wants to.”

“I love you.” I smiled, wrapping my arms around his neck and kissing him slowly.

Ryder barks running towards the front door just as Jay wraps his arms around my waist tugging me closer to deepen the kiss until he breaks it not being able to hold in his chuckle. “I love you too…and Ryder seems to approve.”

Comments really appreciated ❤️

[minswriting]

KINKTOBER 8 - gunplay and stockholm syndrome

nsfw | mdni | aaron hotchner x reader | dark themes, read at your own discretion.

note: this was my first time truly trying to write dark themes. so it’s probably so bad lol

Being an assassin, you always lived amongst danger which is how you got yourself in this situation. You had prior knowledge that the FBI was investigating the murders you committed. And that it was only a matter of time before they connected it all to you. And you knew that you did not want to be caught at all. Which is why, two months ago, you had taken it upon yourself to hatch a plan to kidnap one of the members of the Behavior Analysis Unit. And a month ago, you became successful.

You had kidnapped the Unit Chief. And god, has it been a crazy month.

The man, Aaron Hotchner, had tried really hard to get you to do the right thing for the first two weeks. And truthfully, you almost caved. There was just something about an authoritative man with a velvety voice that always did it for you. But you had other goals in mind and nothing would make you stray from those goals. No matter how much you were attracted to the man.

The intensity of the connection you guys had was ridiculous. At first, Aaron hated you. He hated that you were smart enough to kidnap him. He was strongly worried about his family, the BAU, and often wondered how they were doing. And yet, as the days went on and he was still in this cold basement, his worries had turned to resentment. How have they not found him yet? Are they not utilizing every tool that the FBI has to offer? Or are you just that good at covering your tracks?

He honestly couldn’t tell. For once, Aaron Hotchner was at a loss on what to do.

Over time, he gained a respect for you. It was hard at first for sure but he learned that you may be an assassin but you don’t kill for no reason. You were truly a vigilante type. The men you killed were truly scum, even if they painted themselves out to be high and mighty. You were someone that killed those that have wronged others in serious ways. And for that, Aaron respected you.

And he was deeply attracted to you which for the first three weeks, he cursed himself for. Anytime you’d come home and he would see you, he would curse his body for wanting nothing more than to be buried inside of you. But now, as you sat all nice and pretty on his cock, Aaron didn’t understand why he beat himself up over his attraction to you. You were truly a goddess.

And the gun to his head as you bounced on his cock was certainly an interesting experience.

You had come home frustrated and angry, something about missing your shot. He didn’t really care about what exactly happened. All he wanted was to make you feel better. It was sick of him, really. But he may as well try to indulge himself in a way he can’t in his day-to-day life.

You bounced on Aaron’s cock like you were on a mission. Your pussy was so tight and so wet. You were definitely wound up from your mission today. With the gun pointed at Aaron’s head, you couldn’t help the grin on your face. “You don’t even look scared,” you exclaimed, using the gun to move a piece of hair out of Aaron’s face.

“Should I be?” He replied, licking his lips. If he died, he’d die with his cock buried inside of the heaven that was your pussy. And honestly, right now, that did not seem like a bad way to die.

“It’s a loaded gun,” You said, looking at the pistol. You slowed your movements, bringing the gun down to Aaron’s chest and aiming it directly at his heart. “Just one pull of the trigger,” you whispered. “And bam. You’re gone.”

The whispering, the seductive look in your eye. Aaron should really be scared. He should be cursing himself at ever allowing his guard down for an unsub. And yet, he sought out the thrill that was you. You scared him in a way that made his cock so hard and his brain into mush. He would let you kill him if it meant he got to die by your hand and your hand only.

But he also knew that you wouldn’t kill him. You only killed the bad guys.

“You wouldn’t,” Aaron said hoarsely, bucking his hips into you, making you gasp in pleasure. “I’m not one of the bad guys you kill.”

“Maybe I could change.”

Aaron shook his head no. “You kill the bad guys because they remind you of your father, a man who abused you and your mother simply because he could.” Aaron’s voice was soft, tender, all while his cock was buried deep inside of you. “I’m not someone you want to kill. I too catch the bag guys. Just in a different way.”

You hummed, bringing the gun back to Aaron’s temple, continuing your movements on his cock. “I suppose you’re right,” you sighed, allowing the pleasure to overcome you.

Aaron relished in the pleasure you gave him, exhilarated from the dangers of the gun. And when the two of you finished the intense sex you had, Aaron came to his senses.

It was that night that he was saved and you were arrested. And it took awhile for Aaron to get back on his feet after being isolated from society for so long. All he ever thought of was you, how you smelled, how you looked, you good you felt. He craved you constantly. And yet, he could no longer have you.

[im-totally-not-an-alien-2]

Spoilers for Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom

I haven't actually finished the game but I was thinking, what if Zelda never returns to being a hylian and just remains a dragon forever? Who would be the next in line for the throne?

That's right.

Link. Why?

1. Link is from a long family of knights and one of the only known and confirmed nobles in the game

2. Link is one of the only people in Hyrule to know many classified secrets of the royal family (especially if he regains all his memories from his time as Zeldas personal guard and whatnot)

3. Link has saved and aided all of the different tribes on multiple occasions and united them under him.

4. He has personal friendly relationships with all the tribes leaders aka the chiefs and Zora king

5. Link is pretty good as descalating conflicts and finding middle grounds

6. Link is cononically just as compassionate and lovable as Zelda is and would be beloved as Prince

Theres more but I think you got the picture. Just imagine Prince Link, uncomfortable about this turn of events but willing to do what is best for his people.

So I propose a plot for the new DLC: Of course theres a new Big Bad (maybe a sorcerer like Vaati or something) who makes themselves a castle of thier own in the Depths and is trying to take over hyrule but in a different way than we've seen before. Sure they still create monster and cause havoc but they also do political stuff like scandal and slander

Link gathering alliances with the people of the different tribes and trying to clear his name after he's been framed for crimes he did not commit maybe? He, that doesn't really fit the vibe with what I'm going for, but what if the new Big Bad tried to make the people of Hyrule like him more and use thier love of him as a way into power?

Maybe disasters keep happening and the new guys servents/knights keeps saving the day but things keep getting worse and worse. Maybe there could be a new game mechanic where there's a ward or talisman that stops dark magic/ evil entities from entering the city and most of the disasters in that area stopping entirely and when the servent/knight tries to enter the city they hit a magic barrier and it sounds like a mosquitoe getting zapped by a bug zapper and they scream, revealing themselves to be a monster who had been the one causing all the disasters in the first place. The civilians freak out and the monster flees.

Link and the sage of that area believed in Link the whole time/was suspicious of the servant/knight follows the monster with Link and they find a maze like nest the monster has created

Cue dungeon

Cue boss battle

Rinse and repeat for all the sages people (maybe there are some previously unknown Zonai survivors that Minaru is awed and excited to find and she takes them in idk) maybe they were lost in time or something. Maybe thats where the big bad came from and the the Zonai children interrupted the Big Bads spell and thay wound up in the distant future, the children later running away in confusion and terror. So new tribe and dungeon? Just a thought

DLC features:

1. MASSIVE main quest to renovate the castle where you get to redecorate it however you want. Like you get to choose the furniture and decorations and have things restored to thier former glory. Granted you have to pay for repairs out of your own pocket (taxes can only go so far and thats going towards rebuilding the towns and stuff) and you get to put up your own pictures to replace those torn apart portraits and stuff you see around the castle in BOTW and TOTK. You can put up pictures of Hyrules former royals, the champions, the sages, ect. Or you can go the painting route where someone paints the photos you have on your Purah Pad like in your house in Terry Town. I would buy the DLC just for this to be honest

As you renovate the castle and dig out all the collaped pathways you get new memories of Links time as a soldier and get to see his family as well as memories with Zelda

I would throw so much money at Nintendo just to be able to renovate the castle to my liking. Like, so much you have no idea

2. Link getting a freaking crown and royal armor sets. One for prince and another after he's corinated as king near the end of the game

Armor sets based off of the new and old boss monsters

Armor sets based off of the mini-boss monsters including Gloom Hands (this one looks horrifying btw) and you get some kinda boost from each that represents that specific monster like a Hinox set giving you a food affect boost and Gloom Hands set boosts the power of the Phantom Ganon drops

Maybe a sage set that boosts the powers of the sages a bit

Forest dweller set that increases the durability of wooden weapons

3. Rebuilding the town ruins and creating homes for people all over hyrule like the Deya village ruins and Tabantha ruins and you can do it Lurelin Village style (I loved that side quest it was actually pretty fun)

Anyway, this is me officially releasing this idea to Nintendo it they want it so long as they credit me for the ideas they use from me. They don't even have to pay me (but hiring me would be nice)

Here's a poll to maybe help convince them this is a good idea

@nintendo :)

[missvelvetsstuff]

Just a Number

Bucky Barnes x Reader

Summary: Reader meets Bucky at a party and the attraction is more than either one of them wants to resist.

Notes: Since most stories are younger readers I felt like having a more mature reader could be a nice change of pace. Especially since I'm creeping up on senior discounts and want to believe Bucky could fall in love with someone like me.

I try to keep my readers description vague but, as always, she's female, tall and this one is obviously 40+

Chapter 11

After Val left, Y/N went in to speak to Pepper about her unexpected visitor. Pepper shared her concerns about this strange woman showing up out of nowhere and they spent the rest of the afternoon researching and compiling information on Val. Her jet set upbringing, parents murder, her relationship with Nick Fury and alliances with a number of bad guys painted a murky picture of someone who was obviously high up in the intelligence communities pecking order. Pepper gave her some tips and tech for dealing with that crowd.

When Y/N and Dawn made it home the first thing that Y/N did after greeting Olivia and the dogs was take an electronic device and check the rooms until it started beeping around the dinner table. She looked all over it and found a small electronic device stuck to the underside, which she crushed under her heel then dropped into the dogs water bowl. She set the bowl on the kitchen counter and did the same thing a few times when she found other devices.

When she was sure they had all been found and destroyed Y/N sat down on the couch and slumped into the cushions. Dawn made them all drinks, then she and Olivia sat and waited for Y/N to explain what was happening.

Y/N took a long drink before sitting back up and looking at her sisters.

"I had a surprise visitor at work today, I think you've met her" she looked at Olivia who didn't know what to say so Y/N went on "Contessa Valentina Allegra deFontaine or "call me Val" stopped by the office to let me know how she thinks I'm really good for James and should encourage him to accept her offer so she can keep my family safe."

Dawn let out a string of expletives before asking "Who the Hell does she think she is? Coming in and threatening our family. I have half a mind to-"

Y/N tried to calm her "Sissy, calm down. There's a reason I searched for bugs before talking about her. Pepper and I have spent the afternoon looking into this woman and she is high up in the intelligence community with some interesting history. Not the type we can just bury in the woods."

Dawn was seething "I'm just tired of being fucked with by outsiders. What is this project she wants him involved with."

Y/N shrugged "She never told me but seemed awfully sure I could influence him into accepting her offer. Based on what Pepper and I found on her, I don't think it's something James will want to be involved in.

If I ever even see him again, which is doubtful, I would never push him towards anything he wasn't comfortable with. On the off chance that we do see him again we won't be mentioning any threats against us, regardless of who she is. I won't have him doing something because he thinks he has to protect me."

She looked at them both with a question in her eyes and Dawn nodded, always having her sisters back.

Olivia looked sacred and couldn't offer the same promise "But, Y/N what if she-"

Y/N held her hand up "No matter what, Olivia. We must stand united, as a family. Always."

Olivia looked at her and nodded meekly.

Y/N smiled softly "I know it's scary but we can't let her bully us."

A few days later, on Saturday night, Y/N was woken up by someone pounding on the front door, her puppy bolting out of the bed and barking his way to the door.

"Loki! LOKI! Sit!" He promptly sat but she could still hear him growling softly and patted his head.

She looked thru the peephole and gasped, not believing her eyes, standing shocked for a minute before she opened the door. "James?"

Bucky felt his knees weaken when he saw her, mussed hair, sleepy eyes full of confusion....he had never seen anything so beautiful. Suddenly all the words he had wanted to say to her were caught in his throat and he was at a loss, unable to do anything but stare at her longingly.

He felt something touching his hand and his heart sped up, thinking it was her reaching for him but the cold, wet nose pushing against his hand shocked him out of his daze and he looked down to see the dog licking his hand.

He looked back up at Y/N and she giggled "Loki. That's enough."

She gave Bucky a small smile and opened the door "You've been cleared by security if you want to come in."

As he entered, Dawn wielding a baseball bat, and her dog were stumbling down the stairs.

Dawn stopped at the bottom of the stairs to assess the situation but her dog went to check out the new person.

"Thor! Get back here, don't go kissing on the intruder." She snapped in annoyance.

Bucky looked at the dogs at his feet and couldn't help but laugh "Loki and Thor? Holy shit!"

Dawn shook her head and looked at Y/N with an eyebrow raised, questioning. Y/N nodded and Dawn headed back up the stairs "Thor! Bed!"

Her dog whining, looked at his brother and reluctantly followed her up the stairs.

Once Bucky stopped laughing and closed the door he felt her staring at him and he lost his words again.

He reached for her and sighed sadly when she pulled back "Y/N, doll, I'm so sorry for showing up in the middle of the night but we just landed at JFK and I couldn't wait any longer to see you, it's been so long and everything is such a mess and I-  I can go if you want."

She shook her head and looked at him tiredly "Well I'm awake now. Come in and have a seat. You want some coffee or something?"

Bucky shook his head "No, thanks. I'm alright." He stared at his hands before taking a deep breath and stammered

"I, fuck I uh I don't know where to start I feel like I haven't seen you in ages and so much has happened."

He looked up at her hopefully. "I want you to know I never wanted her. I mean, those pictures. I didn't want her. She kept flirting with me and I told her no a hundred times but I didn't, I mean I guess I did something but she drugged me and I never wanted her. I don't even remember anything. You could even ask Sam and Captain America can't lie, you know." He gave her a small smile that she returned, making him feel warm inside.

Y/N listened as he rambled nervously, her heart fluttering at how hard he tried to convince her but her brain was more skeptical. "She drugged you? How does that work on a super soldier? You told me you can't even get drunk except on Asgardian liquor so how?"

He shrugged "I don't know specifics but she must have given me a strong enough dose, way more than a regular person would need to knock them out. We were drinking shots playing some crazy card game and then I woke up naked, next to her. I don't want to sound paranoid or like I'm making excuses but I think John was in on it with her because they were fucking around the rest of the trip-"

A gasp caught both of their attention and they turned to see Olivia, eyes wide, filling with tears and with a hand over her mouth. "Who wh who was John messing around with?" She was barely able to spit it out.

Bucky looked to Y/N helplessly, deducing that the strange woman must be John's wife Olivia.

Y/N gave him an apologetic look and hurried to Olivia's side as the sobs started coming.

Dawn appeared like out of nowhere and put an arm around Olivia's shoulder then nodded her head towards Bucky, wordlessly telling Y/N she had Olivia before leading her back to her room with Thor.

Bucky shook his head when Y/N returned to him "Shit, I'm so sorry. That's his wife Olivia isn't it? I I didn't-"

She shook her head "Of course you didn't, you couldn't have. She received a letter that Johnny was MIA over a month ago and has been staying here ever since. They haven't had any kids yet and he won't let her get a job or any pets so would have been home alone all this time. She's been helping train the puppies and has dinner ready most nites when we get home."

Bucky carefully reached for her hands, scared she would pull away again, and sighed in relief when she didn't.

"I haven't been able to stop thinking about you, doll. I've really missed you."

He slowly pulled her into him and wrapped his arms around her.

Y/N let him pull her into him and felt her eyes filling with tears as she hid her face in his chest, fighting to hold them back, fighting to hold back all of the emotions she had been dealing with since the last time they were together but the sobs beat her and he squeezed her tighter and rubbed her back, burying his face in her hair.

"I'm so sorry sweetheart. I never meant to be gone so long and I'm sorry that you got those pictures and I'm just sorry."

Y/N nodded and sniffled, trying to wipe the tears on his shoulder "I know, it's ok. I mean not ok but it wasn't your fault."

Bucky looked in her eyes and even tired, red and full of tears they were the prettiest eyes on the most beautiful woman he had ever seen.

"I can't promise there won't be any more long absences but I can promise no one will ever catch my eye or my heart like you have."

Y/N giggled "Yeah, I met another one of your other girls while you were gone."

Bucky was confused "Other girls? I don't have anyone but you. Who did you meet, exactly?"

Y/N nodded "Yeah, I guess that's not fair. She didn't really seem like your type and had a very long name but insisted I call her Val."

Bucky stiffened "Val was here? What did she want?"

"Not here she stopped by Stark Tower to meet me. She made sure that I knew that she knew every single detail about me and my family before telling me that I should encourage you to accept her offer but wouldn't tell me what it was. So I didn't make any promises. Pepper and I looked her up, she's pretty high up on the intelligence community tree which makes me wonder how much she can be trusted to follow through on anything she promises."

Y/N paused to let him tell her about his interactions with Val but he was quiet too long for her liking so she pushed. "You've obviously met her so tell me, what's her deal? What does she want from you?"

Bucky looked at her for a moment, considering how much he should tell her since he didn't want to endanger her or her family but realized that Val visiting indicated Y/N was already in danger, no matter what he did.

He sighed and ran his hand through his hair

"She works for, or maybe with, General Ross and they are making plans for if he becomes president. I say if but she seemed pretty confident he will win."

Y/N nodded to encourage him to continue "They are putting together a team, like the Avengers but all with, I think she said troubled, pasts. Me, John and she mentioned people from the red room where Natasha, I mean Black Widow was trained. Val strongly encouraged me to work things out with you, said you would help keep me grounded. I just don't know if I want to get into a team under a man who pushed the Sokovia Accords and has threatened to send me to the raft more times than I can count. I mean, can I really trust either of them? And do I want to weigh you down with a partner who has to be away risking his life?"

Bucky paused to catch his breath "To make matters worse she didn't really give me a choice. I can join their team or they'll get my pardon revoked and I spend the rest of my life in the raft."

Y/N looked at him confused and she was so adorable he wanted to kiss her but restrained himself and explained

"The Raft is a top secret ultra high security prison created for enhanced individuals that's located somewhere in the North Atlantic. It is underwater unless someone is coming or going but prisoners don't leave."

He saw her brow furrow and her face grew red, she started shaking

"What?! That's no fucking choice, they can't do that to you. We need to tell someone. Can't let that little bitch make you join their team. Why, I have a good mind to-"

Bucky rubbed her back "Calm down doll. Unfortunately they can. If it happens, then he is president and a traitorous assassin vs a highly decorated general slash president, isn't a fight I can win."

Y/N whined "But Jamie, you can't-"

He shushed her "Hey, sweetheart. It'll be ok. I'll be ok. You're the one I'm worried about."

"Why? What's she going to do to me? I'm no good in a fight so she doesn't need me for her team." Her nerves twitched, hoping Bucky wouldn't realize she hadn't told him everything.

He heard her heart speed up and saw the small drops of perspiration on her forehead "Y/N honey, did Val say anything else when you spoke to her? Are you sure there wasn't anything else? She didn't threaten you did she?"

She jumped a little "Threaten me? What do you mean? Like she would kill me or something? I don't know what you mean."

He saw her pupils dilate and how she wouldn't look him in the eyes. "Baby" he said softly while stroking her back "I need you to tell me everything. If we're going to try to make this work we need to be honest with each other."

His hand moved some hair out of her eyes and held her chin gently until she looked back at him and quickly away

"It's nothing" she mumbled something else he couldn't understand.

Bucky sighed "Ok well I guess that's my answer. Take care of yourself doll. I'll get out of your hair." And started to pull away.

Y/N couldn't bear the thought of him leaving again "Wait. Jamie."

He kissed her on the forehead "Look doll, it's alright you can tell me anything."

She looked away and mumbled again.

"Y/N" he gently scolded

"Fine. She said if we were together and you took her offer that she would make sure my family stayed safe, like we'd get hurt if you didn't. I didn't want to put more shit on your shoulders that's all."

Buckys eyes flashed anger "I'll have to talk to her about that. Threatening the people I care about is a deal breaker."

He caressed her cheek with his flesh hand "I don't know if I want to put any trust in Val or Ross but I do believe they would lock me up and never think twice about it and if I'm locked up then I'm not with you and I really want to be with you."

Y/N looked at him, searching for any trace of uncertainty in his stormy blue eyes but there was none. "Good. I want to be with you too."

Bucky grinned at her "You're sure? Cuz once you're mine, you'll never get rid of me. I'll follow you to the ends of the galaxy."

"Isn't that supposed to be ends of the earth?" She questioned with a giggle.

Bucky shook his head "Not with some of the friends I have."

He looked at her for a moment before pulling her close and kissing her. The kisses started soft and gentle until she let him in and Bucky groaned at her taste, she felt the rumble in his chest to the tips of her toes and whined at the rush of wetness in her panties.

Bucky kissed down her neck mumbling against her skin "so sweet, never get enough of you doll"

He stopped suddenly and sniffed when she whined and growled "dammit baby, you smell so fucking good" before kissing her hard holding her with his hand on the back of her neck. He moaned as she ran her fingers through his hair, pulling gently.

When he had to pull away to catch his breath he looked at her guilty and pulled away "Fuck, I'm sorry. That's not taking it slow, I just missed you so much and I-"

Y/N looked at him with lust darkened eyes "Shut up and carry me to my room, Sarge."

Buckys breath caught "Anything you want doll, is yours."

Chapter 12

@supraveng @cjand10 @440mxs-wife @kandis-mom @dtba-grey81 @calwitch @ozwriterchick

[caroldanversinatardis]

New Story!

I wrote this based on a prompt from @direwolfrules . Sorry it took so long, but I hope you enjoy!

If you'd like more stories in the future, let me know!

Story Teaser Below:

As the X-34 zoomed southbound across the endless Tatooine desert, Luke still couldn’t shake the nagging pull inside of him. The closer they got to whoever was out there, the worse the pull got, like two magnets forced to inch next to each other. He had to see who or what was calling for his attention.

“There!” Luke pointed out a prone figure lying in the desert sand near an astromech. Owen pulled the speeder to a stop and quickly jumped out. He ran over to the body and crouched down. Luke watched as a dark expression flashed across his uncle’s face, but it was gone in an instant.

“Luke, grab the water!”

Luke reached over into the backseat and hooked his arm around the canteen strap. He hopped out of the speeder and ran over to Uncle Owen. “There’s not much left,” he said hesitantly.

“That’s okay. It’s enough for now.” Owen rolled the young mystery boy onto his back and held his torso off the ground. “Hey, you doing ok buddy? You awake?”

The dark-haired boy stirred slightly, his eyes fluttering between open and closed. He tried to mumble something, but it came out too raspy to understand.

“Take it easy, kid.” Owen lifted the edge of the canteen to the boy’s lips. Drops of water slid down the side of the metal canteen as Owen poured a small sip into the boy’s mouth. The boy spluttered and coughed. Water sprayed all over the front of his orange jacket.

“You’re gonna be alright.” Something about Owen’s voice must have had a strong effect on the mystery boy. He reached forward for a second, but then his eyes rolled backwards and he slumped into Owen’s arms.

“Is he ok?” Luke asked.

Owen scooped the boy into his arms with a grunt. “He’s sunburned pretty bad and probably got heatstroke. Beru knows what to do.” He started walking back to the landspeeder. “We need to get him back to the house. Is that droid working?”

Luke ran his hands carefully over the silver and orange astromech. It didn’t take long for things to heat up in the blazing suns of Tatooine, but this droid had clearly been soaking in sun rays for a while. Heat waves radiated off its body. The paint chipping off of it made it seem like it picked a fight with a Z7 Sandblaster droid.

“This is a C1 unit. It’s pretty old, but if it was moving around out here, then it’s probably still in good shape. Just needs a battery recharge.”

“Good. Can you get it over here?”

Luke carefully pushed the heavy droid over to the landspeeder and Owen helped him lift it into their backseat with an unceremonious thud.

“Geez, that thing is heavy,” Luke mumbled as he climbed into a tight spot next to the droid.

“I hope you can lift it on your own, ‘cause I’m counting on you to get it up and running when we get back.” Owen revved the speeder to life. “See if you can find out any information about this guy.”

Luke nodded as he settled in beside the battered astromech, cradling the water canteen in his lap. The journey back to the Lars homestead felt longer than typical, with the sun beating down relentlessly on Luke and Owen’s heads.

As they zoomed home, Luke couldn't help but stare at the unconscious stranger in the front seat. Who are you? he wondered.

Maybe he was a pilot? Or a racer of some kind and his jacket was a streamlined uniform? He looked about Luke’s age, but definitely wasn’t from around here. He didn’t have any type of sun protection with him and his clothes were both too heavy and brightly colored for someone wandering the unforgiving deserts of Tatooine. Everyone here wore some sort of variant of beige or white. His short dark hair was a dead giveaway and his skin looked like someone painted it with copper dust, though that might have just been the red sunburns. Two sharp scars stood out on his left cheekbone.

This guy looked so out of the ordinary and yet…something about him still pulled at Luke. It wasn’t a bad feeling, but it certainly wasn’t a good one either, like the feeling Luke got while working on an unfamiliar machine. Was this person a threat? He could almost tangibly feel a connection to him, an invisible tether connecting the two of them like electricity passing between the spark plugs of the speeder.

Whoever this kid was, he was definitely important.

[imaginesxthevamps]

OI OIII

can you do a smut about Brad getting a blowjob and him moaning and gasping???

Adventures on a boring party | Brad Simpson

Word count: +/- 2.1k

Date: 26/03/2023

Proofread: yes (language and grammar mistakes can still be present)

Warnings: smut (oral sex, m receiving), swearing

Tags: Brad Simpson, The Vamps, imagine, x reader, fanfiction, one shot, smut

A/N: Hello hello, I hope you like it :)) Thanks for your requests!!❤

______________________________

Brad gets out of his car, locking it up while walking away. The gravel rustles under his shoes as he is walking towards the building. In front of him there is an old but beautiful castle. A red carpet is rolled down the stairs which lead to the front door. He walks up the stairs which are also lit up by torches. A security man asks his identity to which Brad replies with his name. As he enters the building he can hear classical music echoing through the halls of the castle. With a sigh, he enters the ballroom where the event is taking place. He got an invitation from Jaguar, the car company, to this fancy party. Tomorrow there is a race not so far from the castle and they wanted to unite all the biggest car sports fans the evening before. It’s an exclusive party for sponsors, influencers, shareholders and the important people who work in the racing world. It has everything that an exclusive and fancy party should have: fancy food, classical music, and people in suits and fancy dresses. Despite all of it Brad is really not in the mood for such a fancy party although he has no choice. 

Brad takes a glass of champagne from a tray and takes a sip. His eyes are scanning the room to see if he recognises anyone. With another sigh, he tries to mingle with the other people. This is really not his scene so he doesn’t know what to do. Should he talk to people or not? 

‘You’re Brad Simpson right?’, someone taps him on the shoulder.

‘Yes, that’s me’

‘Nice to meet you, I’m Jason, one of the racers’, he introduces himself.

‘Nice to meet you Jason, so are you ready for tomorrow?’

‘Oh yeah I am, I’m also not staying long, I need a good night's sleep’

‘Wish I could say the same’

‘You don’t like these parties?’

‘No, it’s not really my thing but I don’t really have a choice since I’m sponsored’

‘Yeah I get that, just try to enjoy it a little bit, at least try the food, it’s the best part’, Jason laughs. 

‘Maybe I should do that then’

‘I have to go, good luck mate, it was great meeting you’

‘Yeah, you too’

As Jason leaves Brad takes another sip of his glass. Following the guy's advice he makes his way to the table where the food is stalled out. He takes a few things to eat and he needs to admit that the food is not bad. He drinks from his champagne before trying some other things. When his glass is empty he takes another one from a tray. 

Brad turns around and decides to leave the ballroom. He walks down one of the castle halls where it is quiet. A few people smile at him when they walk by. In the distance, he sees a girl who is staring at a painting that’s hanging on a wall. Her silhouette and her long hair look familiar. He steps closer and more of her features become visual. 

‘Y/N?’, he asks surprised.

You turn around and you can’t believe your eyes. You can’t believe that he is standing here in front of you. It’s been years since you’ve seen him. If you remember correctly it’s 5 years ago since you’ve seen each other. Both of you were 22 at the time. You had a fling with Brad, not something really serious. Your relationship back then was more focused on sex and pleasure but you were young. Neither of you had ended things back then, you just grew apart. Brad went on a world tour and you went to study on the other side of the world. The contact was lost. 

‘Brad? What are you doing here’, you ask surprised.

‘I got an invitation for this party, what are you doing here?’

‘My dad works in racing’

‘Yeah that’s right’

You can see that Brad is taking all of you in. His eyes are scanning over your body. He is looking at how your tight black dress is embracing your curves. He bites his lip slightly. You can’t also keep yourself from looking at him. You can see how his shoulders got broader just like his arms and chest. It’s only now that you realise how you’ve missed those chocolate brown curls. You swallow which Brad notices.

‘Maybe we should go back to the party’, you say. 

Brad follows you back to the ballroom. When you enter it you see your dad. He is smiling and coming your way. 

‘Hi Brad! It’s been a long time since I’ve seen you!’, He says and gives Brad a brotherly hug. 

Your father and Brad always got along well. When he was at your house they would laugh and joke the whole evening. If they didn’t talk about cars they would talk about golf as your dad is also a golf fan. Luckily someone starts talking to your dad which gives you the opportunity to pull Brad away from your dad. You’re not really in the mood to listen to a conversation all night that only involves cars and golf. 

‘What are we going to do now?’, Brad asks.

‘Dance?’

‘We’re surely not going to slow dance on this music’, Brad sighs.

‘Oh we are, you've got a better idea?’, you smile and you pull him to the place where a few other couples are slow dancing. 

Brad takes you by the waist to dance. It feels weird to be here with him but it’s more fun than staring at a few paintings. 

‘So, how have you been?’, Brad asks.

‘Good, I finished uni in California and now I’m working for a company in London. How have you been doing?’

‘We’re celebrating the band’s 10-year anniversary this year, it’s been going well

You smile at him not really knowing what to say. He is looking extremely hot and all you can think of his how much fun you two had back then. To be honest it was the best time of your life. Sometimes the two of you would do reckless things like driving around in the middle of the night or exploring places you weren’t really allowed to do that. 

‘I’m bored’, you say.

‘You were the one who wanted to dance’, Brad laughs.

‘What if we go discover this castle?’

‘Are we allowed to?’

‘I don’t know but do we care?’

Brad smiles and both of you leave the ballroom again through the same door. You’re wandering through the halls of the castle. The details of the interior are impressive. You open a door that makes a lot of noise. Brad looks at you with a scared face.

‘Y/N, do you really want people to hear us?’

‘Oh come on Brad, you weren’t so scared when we did this years ago’

Brad sighs as you walk into a big room. You guess it’s a big dining room as there is a long table with chairs. Brad follows you as you inspect the room. You touch a statue and you hear Brad sigh again behind you.

‘Please, you’re going to break something’

To provoke him you sit down on the table and Brad rolls his eyes. He stands before you and you take his hands in yours in an impulsive action. Brad looks surprised but he doesn’t let go of your hands. You pull him closer until he is standing between your legs. 

‘I’ve missed you Bradley’, you say. 

‘I’ve missed you too y/n’

Brad stares into your eyes and you bite your lip. Your fingers are playing with his and you can feel the contrast between his warm fingers and his cold rings. Brad’s eyes never leave yours and it feels like time stands still. It feels like you and Brad are the only people on this world. Brad can’t handle it anymore and pushes his lips onto yours. His warm lips are moving against yours and you can taste the champagne on them. His tongue slips into your mouth and you moan in the kiss. Unaware you pull Brad closer to you and you’re grinding against his crotch. The anticipation is building up as the kiss is getting more heated. You can feel Brad getting hard which turns you on.

‘We should take this to another place’, Brad says out of breath.

‘The guests are staying in the other wing, I have a room there to stay the night’, you say. 

You take Brad’s hand and make your way to the other wing. To go there you have to pass the ballroom again as it is on the other side. The halls on this side of the castle are more restored and the rooms are furnished as hotel rooms. You open the door of your room and walk in. You close the door when both of you are in. You turn around to Brad again and you start kissing him again. Your hand is going over his length which becomes even harder under your touch. 

Gently you push Brad onto the bed so he is sitting at the end of it. You walk towards him and sit on your knees. You unbutton his pants and Brad helps you to get out of his pants and boxers. His dick is hard and almost touches his belly. Slowly your hand moves over his length and you get wet only looking at his dick. Brad is looking at you with his eyes filled with lust and you look at him while you take his cock into your mouth. You start to suck on the tip and Brad closes his eyes. You take it further into your mouth while you go up and down. Brad moans and throws his head back. You try to take his whole dick into your mouth but it’s difficult because of how big he is. You take him out of your mouth again and you pump him with your hand. Pre-cum is coming out of the tip and as soon as you take him back into your mouth you can taste it. 

'Fuck y/n, your lips always feel so good around my dick', Brad moans. 

While you're sucking on Brad's cock, your hand is going up and down at the base of it, giving him extra pleasure. To add to that you start to gently play with his balls with your other hand. Brad gasps from all the pleasure you're giving him. 

Brad looks down on you to see how you're sucking his dick and he loves the view. He loves how your body looks in that tight dress. He loves the way you're being so desperate for him right now. Nobody could ever make him feel this good like you do. 

'How I've missed these lips, take it all in baby', Brad groans and throws his head back again. 

His moans are getting harder. You try to take him as deep as you can. His dick is hitting the back of your throat, almost making you gag. You can feel his dick twitching inside your mouth, indicating he is close. You're going up and down faster. Your tongue is playing with his tip, making him go crazy. One of Brad's hands is gripping your hair while the other is keeping him steady on the bed. 

'Fuck y/n baby, I'm-, fuck', Brad moans out.

Loud groans are leaving Brad's mouth while his hot load is filling your mouth. You get his cock out of your mouth. His cum tastes salty but you swallow it. Brad looks at you and he smiles.

'Babe, this was amazing', he says.

You love the way he calls you babe, he used to do it all the time when you were together. You stand up and sit on his lap while you throw your arms around his neck. 

'Only for you', you say smiling.

Brad kisses you softly this time. A meaningful kiss which tingles on your lips. His lips moving slowly against yours while his hands are on the small of your back. After the kiss you rest your forehead against Brad's. 

'What do we do now?', Brad asks.

'I don't know, I don't-', you can't get out of your words.

'Tell me y/n'

'I don't want to lose you again'

Brad takes your face between his hands and makes you look at him. His eyes aren't dark and filled with lust anymore, now they are the brightest brown looking soft. A small smile is playing on his lips.

'I promise you, you won't lose me again princess', Brad promises.

Gently Brad kisses you again and it feels like your life lights up again. It's only now you realize how much you've missed him all these years.

______________________________

The Vamps requests are open

[drbased]

I watched this really, really good analysis of always sunny and I agreed with all of it, but she had to sneak the obligatory 'Charlie is a nonbinary icon' in there. Here's why Charlie being nonbinary would destroy one of the entire conceits of the show:

As she says, IASIP is a satire; it holds up a funhouse mirror to society and says, 'this is how you look' so we laugh but also can think about our actions and beliefs. In this satire, Mac, Dennis and Charlie represent the three facets of maleness and masculinity:

Dennis: Dennis represents rape culture, sexual insecurity and tyrannical narcissism

Mac: Mac represents hyper-masculinity, the 'naturalising' of patriarchy through religion, and the misogyny and homophobia that come with that

Charlie: Charlie represents audacity. Charlie is disgusting, uneducated and gullible. But he has absolutely no shame, he has zero self-awareness and no insecurity. He believes that he's owed the waitress despite offering nothing of value; he simply deserves her because he wants her.

Frank is the glue that binds them together. Frank is, in many ways, all of them combined: the lechery of Dennis, the bigotry of Mac, and the audacity of Charlie. But he has a confidence that they don't; he is more successful than they will ever be, because he puts the effort in. At the end of the day, Frank shows that even if these guys actually tried they'd still be abhorrent people with failed relationships living in squalor; this isn't a case of 'failed masculinity' holding the three men back; the values they all share are rotten to the core.

Painting Charlie as nonbinary misses the whole point; he's supposed to represent the more respectable face of masculinity - someone who is on the surface nicer, more respectful of women, who has romantic ideals and simple dreams, who toils stoicly with no delusions of grandure. He's supposed to represent the family-oriented, respectful, humble male. A good salt-of-the-earth working man. But in reality, as anyone who has met a man will verify, your chances of meeting a genuinely humble man are slim. He might be 'humble' in the sense that he does the shit jobs that no one else can do, but that never stops him from indulging in ridiculous schemes, from assuming that he knows how to be a lawyer, from stalking his chosen woman. He is demonstrably actively proud of his working-man status.

If you say he's nonbinary, or any gender other than male, the satire is lost; you concede that these traits aren't masculine enough and therefore aren't male enough. If you say he's nonbinary, you concede that he is sufficiently kinder than the others to 'opt out' of maleness (and yet terfs are the 'men bad' ideology 🤔), and his stalking is now seen as a genderless belief and activity rather than one that has an incredibly clear history of being something men do to women.

This is a more extreme version of how 'nice guys' present themselves; they believe that because they're not like Dennis (they don't actively seek to rape women), or like Mac (they don't make misogynistic comments and insults to a woman's face) then they must be the respectful form of maleness, which is Charlie. But Charlie's form of maleness doesn't stand in contrast to the others; it merely represents another facet to maleness that works together with them. After all, if those forms of masculinity contrasted each other, then the characters would argue all the time that the other is being disrespectful to women. But none of them care. If anything, they stand a united front against women like The Waitress, they will join forces to torture Dee, they will accept Dennis as a rapist as long as they don't have to think about it too much. And that's how misogyny operates in the real world; men may have contrasting beliefs about what 'counts' as misogyny, but ultimately they will all protect each other in the end. At the end of 'The Nightman Cometh' they all gather round the heartbroken Charlie, as if what he did was a sincere gesture of love to a human being, and not a comically obvious attempt at manipulation. It's deeply cruel and misogynist to paint Charlie as anything other than a man.

[bitchofdarkness]

Thoughts on Kim Yeong-hu and Tak In-hwan

Something that I noticed pretty early on was that Kim Yeong-hu was not a fan of Tak In-hwan. He probably couldn't stand him on a personal level long before the monsterization started, but since the guy was his superior he didn't make it as obvious as he would've probably liked to. He did speak his mind though, so that tells us enough about how much respect he has for Tak. *cough* none *cough*

In episode one we see how betrayed he looked at Master Sergeant Tak's actions, aka letting one of the monsters go.

Now we also know from later episodes that Yeong-hu is one of those guys that aces tests (he beat Sergeant Min in every competition) and most likely climbed the ranks due to being a dutiful, obedient little soldier that listened and acted on the orders given.

That's why he was so pissed off when MS Tak suddenly changed tune, because Yeong-hu recited the order they'd been given from the start and had been acting on the whole fucking time and Tak had the audacity to act like that was never the case.

Imagine you're Yeong-hu, doing what you're told, because clearly those higher ups had to have some sort of clue in this batshit crazy apocalypse that was going on. (And they did, they just kept it all to themselves) And since enough monsters had been hostile and killed civillians or fellow soldiers, killing them didn't seem like the wrong thing to do.

What pissed me off was how MS Tak kind of painted Yeong-hu as a bad person for following orders (in that first episode you can see how he silently judged him). He himself shot the mother-monster and instructed to burn her. And yet he acted like Yeong-hu was super cruel for doing what he was told.

And then he changed directions by telling Yeong-hu their order had always been to only kill the monsters that were attacking them, not all monsters.

Then, pray tell, why the fuck did he shoot the mother of that baby monster he let go? She did NOT attack him at all. She didn't even hurt any of the soldiers when she frantically tried to get to her baby (and technically she could've done that). And still, he wanted her dead, but then does a 180° and spares the baby monster.

Make it make sense. If you want your soldiers to all act the same and follow your orders, you fucking give them the right order instead of judging them for doing what they were instructed to do. Idk if some people don't get this (when I recall some posts about the second season), but when you go through as much training as these Navy Seals did, you're one cohesive group and you do what you are told and not start getting creative yourself, because that would mean death for your unit or yourself in a dangerous situation/combat. You have to be able to predict what your comrades would do and quickly, i.e. in case you're not able to communicate via comms.

I doubt Yeong-hu or any of the other soldiers actually want to kill the monsters that are docile. In the later episodes they clearly figured out a system to mark the harmless monsters with paint and refrain from killing them.

That could've been a possible way to react to this situation from the start, but Tak seriously decided on a whim what they were supposed to do. And I hate him for that. I can't stand him. Sure he let the baby go, but he still helped kill; ordered to have her killed and watched the mother die. He is the worst, since his word would've stopped it all right away, but he decides not to say anything until his actions were questioned by Yeong-hu.

And we know Yeong-hu took it to heart, because I doubt Tak was the one coming up with the idea to mark the harmless monsters so none of the soldiers would kill them and only focus on the dangerous ones.

Anyways, I think that moment with the mother and baby monster in episode one was the start of Yeong-hu questioning everything Tak told them to do. And even though he tells him later on that he trusted him to take care of the troops, I doubt that he did. And Yeong-hu had every right to doubt that guy, since they lost half of their people within a fricking year.

And you know what's sad? Yeong-hu's personal decision was to go and find Yong-seok on his own, because he didn't want to risk the life of any of his soldiers. But then Tak decided the crazy doctor should go with them and obviously he would need more protection, aka more men. Who obviously died.

I know it must've been Seok-chan who told the Master Sergeant about Yeong-hu's plan to go on his own, but Seok-chan's intention was to keep Yeong-hu safe, while Tak's intention was for the crazy doc to get to his lab- not to save Yong-seok.

Idk where I'm going with that, but I think a lot of people assume he's a bad person because he's military, but Yeong-hu actually just suffers from resting bitchface and has a big heart (granted, most of the space in his heart is taken up by Seok-chan, but still) ...he cares so much for his fellow humans and you can basically watch him grow throughout the whole season.

[lbibliophile-sw]

Wave, I Can See You

For: @clonefandomevents - 501st Bingo: Character in peril, 212th Bingo: Misunderstandings; @212thappreciation - day 1: Canon divergence Also on AO3 [540 words]

“This is so karked up.”

“You’re telling me.”

Keys focuses on his batchmate’s voice in his ear, trying to ignore the cold fingers of mist creeping through the joins of his armour. They really shouldn’t be talking right now, not while he is on a scouting mission in unsecured territory, but he needs the comforting distraction of his 212th brother. One of the few advantages of them both being stuck on this creepy planet.

“I can’t believe the Umbarans stole our armour. That’s just wrong.”

“Honestly, I’m surprised no-one has tried that before. I guess the clankers aren’t that smart.”

“Or they did and the brass decided to cover it up.”

He settles into position, sensing more than seeing the rest of the unit fanning out beside him, their bold blue and white armour somehow fading into the hazy shadows. Their quarry in the valley below is less lucky, golden accents almost glowing in the dim light.

Despite their joking, anger is burning deep in his gut. How dare they. It is bad enough that the Umbarans are killing his brothers, but how dare they wear their armour. How dare they take one of the few things that are theirs, that they can mark as their own. How dare they use his brothers’ platstoid skins to deceive them. He glares at the nearest figure, his eyes tracing the stolen markings. The familiar markings…

“Flick… why didn’t you tell me your armour was stolen? Are you ok?”

“What are you talking about? I’m fine. It was you guys who had a patrol jumped. I’m wearing–”

“Fire on ten. Mark.”

Keys raises his blaster in automatic response to the order, his eyes still fixed on the white-and-gold figure below. His mind races.

The 501st were told Umbarans stole 212th armour. The 212th were told Umbarans stole 501st armour. 501st brothers line the ridge, ready to spring their trap. Figures in 212th gold creep through the trees, Flick’s familiar paint bright in the gloom.

“Flick. Wave your left hand.”

“What? Why-”

“Just do it!”

He watches as Flick’s helmet tilts in confusion. He watches as Flick’s left gauntlet starts to rise. He doesn’t wait for the figure – his brother­ – to finish the motion.

“FLICK!”

His helmet is off, freeing his voice as his desperate call echoes through the mist. His helmet is off, baring his instantly recognisable face as he breaks cover, stumbling downhill through the undergrowth. His helmet is off, leaving him unprotected from the raised blasters of the brothers behind him and the rising blasters of the brothers before him.

For a moment he is terrified that he was too slow, can almost see the blazing blasterbolts flying.

But then the forest is ringing with the familiar call of ‘hold fire!’, a chorus of matched voices. Then he is colliding with Flick, his batchmate’s own helmet discarded to reveal the confusion-fear-relief on his face.

“Keys!”

---

Later, he shakes apart in Flick’s arms as he realises just how close they came to tragedy.

Later, he stands silent as they are reamed out for flagrant disregard of communication protocols, and knows that any punishment is worth it while Flick is still alive to stand beside him. 

[wordingg]

Free Tire Removal Service

Note: I wrote this for the 40th Anniversary Jason Todd Exchange. This was my gift for G_of_Thorn.

-----

The first time Jason Todd stole the wheels off the Batmobile he was fifteen and it nearly cost him his life. You would think that he would know better than to do it again.

But, Jason wasn’t a fifteen year old kid helpless in the mean streets of Gotham’s seediest districts anymore. He was the big bad Red Hood and he wasn't afraid of the Bat or Two Face or even the Joker (especially the Joker). So, the first time he saw the Batmobile parked in HIS DISTRICT (the nerve, seriously) Jason didn’t hesitate to jack those big beautiful truck tires. Seriously, he didn’t even know they made them that big. He didn’t stick around to see what the Bat would do once he found his ride up on cinder blocks. He rolled those big ass tires all the way to the nearest chop shop, sold them for a mint (because really who was going to try and rip off the Red Hood) and took the money straight to Abuela Gutierrez. She could put the money to good use.

The second time he ran into the Batmobile it was in Tricorner. Not his usual stomping grounds, but he had a hot tip that Carmine Falcone was storing his heroine in a storage unit there and had made a short trip to the island to wire up a little c4 and blow the whole unit to kingdom come. On the way back, he happened to see something glossy black in a narrow alleyway behind a Thai restaurant that had him doing a u-turn on his bike. There she was, the Batmobile, so glossy black it looked like candy paint.

It wasn’t the Bowery, not even close to it. But, Jason ws burning with curiosity about whether the Bat had taken any precautions after his last tidy haul. Besides, he had a collapsible tire iron in his saddlebag.

(The bat had taken precautions and added alarms on all the tires. But, Jason was no amateur and he disabled them before removing all the tires and rolling them the two city blocks to the water's edge and pushing them in.)

The third time wasn’t even him. He was out of town handling a shipment of epi-pens, mifepristone and other needed medications being shipped in from Canada hush hush like through a friend of a friend. He had two clinics set up in the Bowery by then, but keeping them stocked with the real essentials was a pain in the ass that a little bit of smuggling could easily solve for him. Fuck tariffs anyway they could eat his entire ass.

When he came back to Gotham, everyone was talking about how four kids no older than thirteen were seen rolling tires almost as big as them away from crime alley, all of them wearing red hoodies. Jason was so proud he could have cried. There was real hope in the next generation.

He sent a cake and a metric ton of burritos to the houses of each kid and made an announcement to all his guys. Any bat vehicle parked in the bowery was fair game. If any bat tried to give any of his people trouble for fucking with their cars, bikes or fucking unicycles, they could rest assured that the Red Hood would have their back.

Jason had expected that to be the beginning of open season. He was spoiling for a fight, if he was honest. It was either the Bats or Carmine Falcone and honestly he wasn’t all that interested in trying to go up against Falcone yet. He had been funneling the money he made from drugs (only non-addictives), drag races, and gambling dens back into the community. He had set up homeless shelters, free childcare centers, clinics, and children’s homes all throughout the Bowery, all with good people who he knew could be trusted. Anything that was leftover went straight to families that needed it. The Bowery was big, but it was also close and everyone basically lived in everyone else’s pockets. They kept things insular and they took care of their own and it was never hard to ask a few abuelas or nanas about who in the community could use his help the most. Still, that didn’t leave a lot of money left over to invest in weapons or hiring outside goons to go throw themselves into the line of fire.

The bats were the next best thing. The only problem was that they weren’t biting.

Jason had gotten a visit from Batman early on in his campaign to take over the Bowery. It was a joke, honestly. Jason had just started to wage a bloody one man war against Black Mask to push him out of the Bowery. He didn’t have a gang yet, just a duffle bag full of impressive weaponry and a death wish. And one night there Batman was perching on his window all dark and foreboding. Instead of fucking off when Jason took a few pot shots at him, he just started droning on about how Jason was a criminal and if he didn’t stop with all the violence and bloodshed, he would be getting another visit from him and next time he wouldn’t be so nice.

Oh, so scared. /s

What a douchebag.

Jason didn’t pay him any mind. Partially because he already thought that Batman was a grandstanding jackass who only ever showed up if he could get a big front page piece written about him in the Gotham Gazette. Where was Batman when his dad was beating him? Or when his mom was passing out on street corners? It didn’t even have to be particularly his mom and dad. When had Batman ever helped anyone who lived in the Bowery, in the poorest part of the city, like him? Never, as far as he knew. Batman barely ever set foot in the Bowery. The rest of his reason was because he wanted Batman to pick a fight with him. It had been a while since Jason met someone he couldn't beat in a fair fight and he was looking forward to punching the Bat in the face.

Jason succeeded in not just pushing Black Mask out of Gotham, but actually spun his ass out so bad that he was lucky to own one shitty strip club and a bar out in the West End. Batman never showed up again. Jason mostly forgot about him and focused on his own shit.

Until now. Who knew that Jason could still be disappointed in Batman even after all these years?

Despite the open invitation to come fuck with him, no Batman ever showed his face in the Bowery. Batman and all of his associates weren’t seen in the Bowery for months after the kids stole his tires. It was a bummer. Most of his people seemed happy about it though. They were all patting themselves on the back for scaring off the big bad bat. So, Jason shrugged it off. At least it was good for morale.

Until finally one of them showed up.

A late night in May, under cold drizzling spring rain, Jason spotted a bright red spot of color shooting down the streets toward Otisburg, cutting right through the center of the Bowery. He followed it on the rooftops for a while before it pulled into what he thought was a locked underground garage and disappeared. Intrigued, Jason followed.

The garage was locked when he got to it, but he was able to enter the building it was built under and access the garage from there. Inside was a lot of garbage, a few abandoned cars and oh hello. A glossy red coupe with a definitely illegal tint on the windows. Not to mention a garishly obvious stylized R painted on the hood. Jesus. Way to keep a low profile.

Still, Jason was so pumped to finally get a chance to take another pot shot at the Bats that he didn’t just take the tires off. No, he also removed the suicide doors, the bucket seats, and was under the hood working on detaching and lifting out the engine with a chain tossed over a metal support beam in the ceiling when the boy wonder himself finally came back.

“Hey! HEY!” Robin shouted, sprinting at Jason from somewhere in the dark garage, his voice sounding a lot more frantic the closer he got. “OH MY GOD! What have you done to MY CAR?!” he screeched by the time he came to a sliding stop a few feet away from the car itself. Jason had carefully placed each piece he removed from the car beside it so it looked like a halo of car parts surrounding the chassis up on cinder blocks.

“Oh, well look who it is!” Jason sang as he popped up from under the hood holding an adjustable wrench in his hand. “If it isn’t the bird brained idiot who parked his car in my territory. How’s it going, bird brained idiot? Catch any ne’er do wells today?”

“How did you do all this? The seats? THE STEREO?!” Robin bemoaned, going from one item on the ground to the next like he didn’t know where to look.

“Oh my god,” Jason sighed, rolling his eyes so hard he thought he might have seen his brain for a second. He dropped the radiator to the ground with a loud clang and walked over to where the chain hooked around the engine was hanging from a beam in the ceiling and gave it a testing pull. It was still attached in a few spots, since he wasn’t actually ready to take it out yet. But, he could probably pull off his big coup de grace well enough. He had the core strength for it.

“HEY ASSHOLE” Jason shouted and Robin’s head popped up, his face a comic masterpiece of crestfallen and confused.

Once Jason had his attention, he gave a powerful pull on the chain and the whole front of the car lifted off the ground for one brief glorious moment before with a horrendous sound of wrenching metal and torn vinyl piping the last few bits and bobs connecting the engine to the rest of the car gave out and the whole thing ripped free of the chassis, dropping the car back onto the front cinder blocks with a loud clang.

Robin wailed a distraught “NO STOP WHAT ARE YOU-” but froze as his car came crashing down to Earth with an ear shattering bang.

Jason guided the engine block down off the chain and onto the dirty garage floor and then dusted his hands off on his jeans. Robin was still frozen in shock, his hand still half raised toward his car. Jason tapped his adjustable wrench on Robin’s shoulder as he went by him.

“Stay out of the Bowery, twerp,” he said brightly and then strolled out of the garage humming a merry tune.

-----

Jason was exceedingly pleased with how well pranking Robin had gone, but he assumed that would be the end of it for the bats for a while. Batman had obviously gotten the message loud and clear and Jason would eat his own shoe if Robin so much as saw the word Bowery in a book and didn’t shudder in terror. Surely, they had the message now that no bat was safe in the Bowery and he wouldn’t have to worry about seeing any more after that.

Except that Jason developed a shadow just a few days after his run in with Robin.

Once the sun went down and Jason put his helmet on, he could feel that he was being followed. He couldn’t see whoever was following him, but he could feel them. Like a breath on the back of your neck or a sense of foreboding, he knew he was being followed everywhere by unblinking eyes as soon as he donned the Red Hood.

It took a week before Jason finally admitted that he wouldn’t be able to catch whoever it was who was watching them. No amount of turning around or taking strange turns or changing up his routine could shake the feeling of being watched. But, he could at least let them know that he knew he was being watched.

He was on top of his own apartment building, sitting between planters full of cherry tomato and pepper plants still small in their big five gallon pots when he called out, “I know you’re there! You could at least come out and say hello!”

He wasn’t wearing his helmet. It was the end of his night, so he had taken it off and was dragging on a cigarette before heading inside. But, he was still armed and in his body armor and it had been an easy night, except for the constant eyes always putting him on edge. If this was likely to work, he didn’t see why he shouldn’t try it then. Not that he was actually expecting ‘asking nicely’ to work.

So, imagine his surprise when a thin dark figure separated itself from the shadows at the far end of the roof and stepped toward him.

Jason startled so hard he almost dropped his cigarette over the side of the roof. Almost.

“Whoa! Ah, okay, hi hello. I really didn’t think that would work,” Jason stumbled over his words.

The shadow tilted its head at him and oh look it had little bat ears. Guess that answered that.

“You broke Robin’s car,” the shadow said in halting uncertain speech. They also had the voice of a young girl.

“I didn’t break his car, I just disassembled it. He can put it back together,” Jason said with a wry grin. He was tempted to take another drag of his cigarette but wanted to be ready if she lunged at him.

“You stole Batman’s tires,” the little shadow added, stalking closer but staying at the edges of the roof.

“Okay, I did do that. Multiple times, even,” Jason said, his grin turning smug as he remembered the satisfied feeling he had each time he rolled those tires away from that shining black monster of a vehicle.

“Can’t steal my tires,” the little shadow said, it’s voice lilting up in a teasing tone.

“Oho,” Jason laughed, some of the tension bleeding out of his body. He wasn’t sure he could take such a sneaky shadow in a fair fight, but if she just wanted to play, then that was fine with him. “Pretty confident, huh? What makes you say that?”

“Don’t drive,” she said with such a perfectly innocent shrug that it made Jason bray out a loud uncontrolled laugh.

“You got me there!” he said, once he caught his breath. “But, bats and birds still aren’t allowed in the Bowery. I’ll figure something out,” Jason said with a dangerous grin. “I’m the Red Hood, by the way. Don’t think we’ve been properly introduced,” he added with a genteel little sketch of a bow.

“You’re Jason Todd,” the little shadow said confidently and Jason was so shocked he almost fell over. But, luckily he was leaning against the low wall around the roof, so he didn’t. That would have been embarrassing. 

“I’m Black Bat,” she said, holding out one slim hand encased completely in ink black kevlar.

Jason took her hand and shook it firmly. She squeezed his hand just as strongly back. “You’re scary as hell, but don’t think I won’t find a way to get the best of you,” he said.

“Good luck,” she tittered and then was gone almost before he could blink.

-----

Jason pondered for a good long while how to catch the Black Bat. If she didn’t drive, then his current method of fucking with the bats was out. He considered just fighting her, as that was normally his go to for dealing with people who didn't listen to him. But, he also liked her and even if she was scary as hell she was also tiny and sounded feminine. He was not ignorant of the optics of a huge tank of a guy like him fighting a girl as tiny as her. That tossed out most of the physical stuff and put him back in prank territory. Something he didn’t have much experience with, if he was honest with himself. So, off to YouTube he went.

There were a staggering array of options when it came to pranking someone, Jason found out. Jason would never admit it, but he lost hour upon hour looking up all the different kinds of pranks people played on each other. A lot of them weren’t options because they were either too mean or required you to live with the person, but finally he settled on one he thought a young girl would probably appreciate. Buying the crafts was a fun experience in ribbing, but Mrs. Cotilla who ran the dollar store was nice enough not to give him too hard of a time for all the weird shit he was buying.

Then, all he had to do was wait for her to show up. Or, for him to feel her eyes on the back of his head and call her down, more than likely.

So again imagine his surprise when he felt eyes on his back but also heard footsteps. Was she getting sloppy? Or was she trying to give him a chance? If that was the case he wasn’t about to look a gift horse in the mouth.

Reaching into the pouch on his hip where he had been keeping his secret ammo just for her, Jason whirled as fast as he could and chucked the pouch at where he had heard her coming up on him as hard as he could.

The first thing he saw was an explosion of red and black glitter as his glitter bomb collided with something. The second thing he realized was that the thing his bomb had collided with was not a young girl all in black but a young girl all in eggplant purple who was gaping at him while she was covered head to toe in red glitter.

“DID YOU JUST GLITTER BOMB ME!” she shrieked holding her arms out at her side.

“I THOUGHT YOU WERE BLACK BAT!” he shouted back, holding his hands out palms up.

“Glitter! For me?” Black Bat called, her voice all excitement and teasing as she separated herself from the shadow of a water tank and jumped as light as a cat to stand beside the girl in purple. She picked up the glitter bomb from the ground and gasped in delight as she squeezed it and it rained more sparkling plastic pieces.

Jason pressed a hand to his chest and tried to slow his beating heart. “Shit. Yes,” he gasped, taking a deep breath. “I told you I was gonna get you somehow!” he shouted once he realized that she was there and the glitter trap had finally been sprung.

“You didn’t get her though! You got me!” purple girl shouted, trying to brush the glitter off of her front and only succeeding in grinding it into the fabric more. “God dammit! And it had to be red?”

“Never would have got me,” Black Bat said, tossing the glitter bomb to the ground once it was no longer making little puffs of red sparkles when she squeezed it.

“I’ve still got plenty more of these things. I’ll get you. You’ll see,” Jason blustered, putting his hands on his hips.

“I want the glitter,” Black Bat said, holding her hand out and putting her other hand on her hip mirroring Jason. “Give.”

“What? Fuck. No,” he said, confused and on the backfoot. “Why would I give you the glitter? Hell no.” But she just kept standing there with her hand out looking tiny and threatening. And, Jason had made them for her. And, there was no way in hell he was going to hit her with one of these things. She could at least enjoy his hard work, he guessed. “Goddammit,” he spit and handed her the pouch full of glitter bombs.

She hummed happily as she pawed through the pouch, sending up more little poofs of red glitter dust before selecting a glitter bomb. She weighed it in her hand, tossing it up and down and then whipped it at Jason as hard as a baseball pitcher nailing him square in the forehead. Luckily the glitter bombs were just made of cotton balls, red and black glitter and burlap so he didn’t feel anything but a rain of glitter sprinkle down his face and chest.

“Jesus fuck,” he groaned, not even bothering to try and get the dust off. He knew from experience that it would take days for it to leave his skin and hair.

“Avenged,” Black Bat said to the purple girl.

“That’s why you’re my actual best friend,” purple girl sang.

“This is my friend,” Black Bat said to Jason, gesturing at purple girl with the pouch of glitter bombs she still held in her hand.

“Spoiler,” Purple girl added.

“Spoiler for what?” Jason asked, his nose wrinkling as he frowned and tried to shake glitter out of his bangs.

“No, like, my name is Spoiler. Like, I spoil all your evil plans! Get it?”

“Seriously?” he turned to Black Bat. “You guys let her go out with a name like that?”

“Hey! Like you have any room to talk! You’re not even wearing a hood right now that’s a fucking domino!”

“Hey, this isn’t feedback hour, okay? My name is ironic,” Jason spat back.

“YOU STARTED IT!” purple girl shouted back.

“Hey,” Black Bat interrupted them, poking Jason in the side which gave him a little start because okay when did she get so close. “Spoiler has a bike.”

“Huh? Uh, yeah. Why does that matter?” purple girl asked looking confused.

Jason was also confused for a second before the clouds parted and God smiled down on his poor bedazzled ass and he realized what Black Bat was getting at.

“Did you park it in the Bowery?” he asked with what he knew had to be a truly unhinged looking grin.

“Uh. Yeah? Why?” purple girl answered, but she wouldn’t get an answer. Jason was already sprinting off the roof toward the road scanning for any hint of purple he could see. This girl had a theme and he doubted that her bike had escaped it’s eggplant grasp.

What followed was probably the most fun and chaos Jason had had since ever probably. He was methodically grappling across the Bowery looking for Spoiler’s bike while being chased by a frantic Spoiler who had at some point gotten Jason’s bag of glitter bombs so he was being spiked with them every time she got too close. Black Bat was also zipping along beside them, sometimes helping Jason, sometimes helping Spoiler and just generally being a force of uncertainty.

Jason eventually found the bike parked down near the water but before he could do more than plant his butt on it, Black Bat was flinging him off it. But, for his trouble, she had given him the bag of glitter bombs. So, Jason got to chase Spoiler back across the Bowery pelting her with as many glitter bombs as she had hit him with.

Once both Spoiler and Jason were laying flat on their backs exhausted on a rooftop near Otisburg, Black Bat sat down on Jason’s chest and showed him his pouch filled with all the glitter bombs they must have lost as they chased each other up and down the Bowery. He had no idea how Black Bat had had time to gather them all back up and put them back in the pouch while still chasing the two of them, but she had.

“Now me,” she said with finality and plunked the bag down between the two of them.

So, Red Hood and Spoiler took turns tossing red glitter bombs at Black Bat while she performed what Jason guessed was probably a dance from Swan Lake with all the fluttering of hands. By the time the sun was starting to peak over the edge of the water, turning it into a diaspora of glitter itself, they were all completely covered with a metric ton of glitter.

“Fun,” Black Bat sighed happily, turning her arms in the warm morning daylight and watching them sparkle.

“Yeah. You two are cool,” Jason agreed. He was exhausted. Chasing those two girls all across the city was a tougher workout than any fight he’d ever had. “You can hang with me. But, no boys!” he added loudly.

Spoiler barked a laugh. “No boys allowed!” she agreed. “Only hot girls and homicidal crime bosses.”

“Amen,” Jason said.

-----

Jason was added to a group chat titled ‘two girls and a criminal’ by the next morning. He was more than a little tickled by the name and was glad that one of them had thought to open up a line of communication. That way they could let him know when they were flying through his district and he could warn them about any skeevy shit he heard about through his own channels. He also put the word out with his gang that purple girl and the little shadow were cool and not included in his Fuck Batman five point plan.

Even if that was the intention they mostly just sent memes to him and he mostly just sent pics of his tomatoes and the kids in his after school group, which they fawned over appreciatively anyway.

Spoiler came by irregularly, usually while chasing a case. Despite acting wild and fun in person, she was surprisingly no nonsense about her cases. Most of which were about hustling the other gangs still messing with the lower income areas of Gotham that weren’t under his protection, so Jason was more than happy to feed her whatever information she wanted. Even if he could tell that half the info she was fishing for wasn’t for herself. He didn’t know if it was for Batman or someone else that she was gathering intel and he didn’t particularly care. He trusted Spoiler enough to deal with her regardless.

Black Bat showed up all the time. He wasn’t really sure what her deal was, but she was fun and scary smart and the kids in the Bowery immediately fell in love with her. If the kids liked her, then that was good enough for him. Their asshole radar was honed as sharp as scalpels, so their positive assessment was worth its weight in gold to him.

Plus, she always came along with him to get greasy chili dogs at the hot dog stand outside Papi’s Strip Club which made her a hit with not just him but all the girls and customers there. Within a few months she was as good as any Bowery native, born and raised, as far as the people on the street were concerned.

And then one night at the end of summer Black Bat and Spoiler showed up together, which always spelled trouble, with one more kid in tow.

The three of them landed on Jason’s roof, their feet making hardly any sound on the sunbaked bitumen. Somehow Robin looked smaller and slighter than both the girls, though that might have been because of how they stood in front of him with their backs straight and their shoulders thrown back while he seemed ready to fold in on himself any moment.

“Hey, I thought we said only hot girls and crime bosses,” Jason said mildly, stubbing his cigarette out on the sole of his boot before slowly hauling himself out of the folding chair he had been lounging in.

He didn’t really mind them bringing Robin along. They both mentioned him pretty often, so it wasn’t hard to figure out the three of them were pretty tight. He had figured that it wouldn’t be long before they brought him into their little cadre of crime fighters and criminal.

“Robin basically counts as a girl,” Spoiler quipped, though not a muscle in her body relaxed and her feet remained planted firmly like she was waiting to take a hit.

“Hey,” Robin said weakly from behind her. “In my defense, I don’t even want to be here,” the last bit mostly directed at Jason.

“Robin is good,” Black Bat said, her body language loose and easy. Though for her she could be doing the splits and still be ready for anything. “And, we need him.”

“Oh yeah?” Jason drawled. “What for?”

“For the prank to end all pranks,” Spoiler added with a shark toothed grin that Jason could see even under her full face mask.

“We’ll need his brains,” Black Bat added with a solemn nod.

Jason snorted. “Well then, you kids have come to the right place!” Jason said with a grand sweep of his arm. “As my feathered friend there can tell you, I am the king of pranks! Did you ever put your car back together, by the way?”

“Yes,” Robin snapped out, looking alive for the first time since they dropped down. “No thanks to you.”

“I knew you could do it, kid,” Jason said with a wink that made Robin look so wrong footed and flustered that he almost laughed again. “So, what do you have in mind,” he asked Spoiler.

“We’re going to prank the most untouchable of us all,” she said with a solemn expression. Jason frowned, expecting her to say Batman. He wasn’t above pranking Batman, but he kept so far out of the Bowery lately that he expected he would have to go pretty far afield to get him. Though, if the kids helped him maybe it wouldn’t be so bad. “Nightwing!” Spoiler finished.

“Nightwing?” Jason repeated, totally lost. That definitely wasn’t what he was suspecting. “That guy from Bludhaven? Why him? I thought for sure you were gonna say Batman.”

Spoiler snorted. “Bats has to be the easiest guy in the world to prank. One time I put mouthwash in his mug instead of coffee and I swear he drank from it three times before he poured it out.”

“Last week I put glow in the dark hello kitty stickers all over the back of his cape and he did a whole patrol like that,” Tim chipped in.

“Whipped cream. Up nose,” Black Bat added with a snort and a mime of shooting a can of something up her own nose.

“Jesus,” Jason said, not sure if he should be impressed by their savagery or sympathetic for Batman.

“Nightwing is the real get. He’s the oldest of us and the only one who’s graduated to having his own city to protect and everything. And he’s not beaten down and exhausted like Bats yet. We’ve all tried to get him, but it’s like he has eyes on the back of his head! It’s ridiculous!” Spoiler complained, waving her arms around in frustration.

“He’s a nice guy, though! He’s like my big brother,” Robin added hesitantly. “So, like, we don’t want to go too hard on him.”

“Yes go hard,” Black Bat added.

Jason snorted.

“You’re our ace in the hole,” Spoiler hissed. “You got all of us-”

“Not me,” Black Bat interrupted.

“All of us MORTALS,” Spoiler corrected herself with a haughty glance at a pleased looking Black Bat. “With you we can finally get his ass!”

Jason made a show of thinking about it for a second. There were plenty of reasons not to do it. For one, Jason had negative interest in anything happening outside of Gotham. For another, he knew next to nothing about this Nightwing guy. For third, it might not be wise to make enemies of some unknown mask, even if the other Bat kids were down for it.

But, who was he kidding. He knew he was in from the second they asked.

“I’m in,” he said finally, eliciting a whoop of delight from Spoiler, a little hopping dance from Black Bat and a begrudging look of satisfaction from Robin. “Let’s get to planning. I’ll make pancakes.”

-----

They eventually decided on a multi-prong approach. The girls wanted to go hard on this guy, so they decided to each play to their strengths. Each of them would go after this guy with a prank they felt was the best match for their skills with Jason as the unexpected coup de grace.

They all jumped in the back of one of Jason’s shit cars and rode together for the quick one hour drive on the interstate into Bludhaven. Once they were there, they all jumped on a comm together and then took off in different directions. The game was on.

Jason went straight to his objective. His job was going to take the longest, but he was more than confident he could get it done in time. After the kids piled out, Jason took the car deeper into the city. Bludhaven really was a shithole, even by Bowery standards. At least the Bowery had character and history. Bludhaven was all strip malls and square cheaply built office buildings piled up beside shitty hipster bars stacked beside gaudy department stores. Nothing was much older than thirty years old, yet everything looked run down and dirty. The sidewalks were miniscule, with no room for kids to ride bikes or even walk or cross the streets. Jason drove for over thirty minutes before he saw a single grocery store. Seriously. These people should eat their elected representatives for breakfast.

Eventually he reached the small security door that Robin had marked on the map for him. He pulled his shitty truck up to the alley and hopped out. Just like Robin had advised him, there was a keypad beside the door and entering in the code caused the door to lift up and in like a garage door rather than a normal door. Jason raised his eyebrows behind his domino mask. Swanky. He grabbed his toolbox and welding kit from the back of the truck before heading down the narrow ramp hidden behind the door.

At the bottom of the ramp he pushed through swinging plastic sheeting and found himself in a hidden garage with a bunch of tools and junk strewn around but the crown was definitely the gleaming glossy dark blue bike siting square in the center.

“Hello, baby. I am going to do some truly terrible things to you,” Jason sang.

As Jason got down to work, the earpiece he was wearing crackled to life and the plan finally began.

Tim was the first leg of the plan because, as the girls had assured Jason, he was by far the best liar of all of them. He would get Nightwing to where they needed him to be.

“A great night for patrol, don’t you think?” Nightwing was saying, grunting like he was stretching or climbing over the comms.

“A perfect night,” Robin agreed. “Spoiler’s hot tip is over on Baltic Avenue. Let’s head over and pick out a good spot to stake out.”

Robin and Nightwing kept up a friendly chatter as they ran the rooftops to get to the fake lookout spot that Spoiler had ‘tipped Robin off about’. Jason worked away as he listened, happily disconnecting transmission lines and removing brake pads.

Once they got to Baltic Avenue, Steph’s leg of the plan took over. Robin led Nightwing easy as could be to the roof of an old multiplex. They both laid down on their bellies and pulled out binoculars to keep an eye on a boarded up office building across the street. Robin really was an excellent liar. Jason couldn’t find a hint of deceit in his voice and he already knew he was lying. Maybe Nightwing knew him better, but if he thought anything was off he wasn't giving any hints either.

After letting them lay there and get comfortable for a few minutes, Jason heard a bit of metallic banging and then Spoiler called out “YOU’VE YEE’ED YOUR LAST HAW, PARTNER!” which made Jason laugh so hard that he almost choked on his own spit.

From the other comms he heard a similar guffaw of startled laughter before the sound of something going Shoom! A deep hollow sound came faintly over the comm. There was a wet splat sound and then Nightwing shouting “OH MY GOD” and a much lower, “Dammit Steph,” from Robin. Which Jason took to mean that she had succeeded in nailing them both with her t-shirt canon loaded with hand towels soaked in purple fabric paint.

Nightwing burst out into laughter and the sound of slapping came over the call, so Jason figured he was trying to brush the paint off his suit. But, since it was fabric paint, he was only going to make it worse. That shit was never going to come out.

“Haha, Spoiler! How- Were you there the whole time?” Nightwing laughed, sounding way too pleased for this prank to be working correctly.

“YOU HAVE BEEN BETRAYED!” Spoiler continued to shout. There was a clatter as she tossed her t-shirt canon aside. “BUT THE BETRAYAL DOESN’T STOP HERE!”

“Haha, what the fuck,” Jason heard Nightwing say quietly to himself.

“HARK!” Spoiler shouted. “THE HARBINGER OF YOUR DEMISE!”

At that the sound of absolute chaos took over the comms, the volume getting so loud that the audio started clipping. Jason heard a shout of “CASS!” and “No! It’s in my mouth!” and “AH! NOT ME!” in beats and snatches. He guessed they didn’t care much about secret identities anymore. Not that he cared. They probably already knew his social security number and the last time he had his flu shot.

Jason would have taken his time to really soak in the truly glorious amount of chaos Black Bat was causing, but the fact that she was out lobbing yellow glitter bombs designed by the great Red Hood himself meant that the last part of the plan was in motion. Black Bat's job was to drive Nightwing (and possibly Robin if Nightwing hadn’t yet realized he was untrustworthy yet) to the garage Jason was hiding in, in the hopes of outrunning her on his bike.

Which meant that Jason only had a few minutes tops to put the final touches on his part of the plan. Luckily, in case it wasn’t already evident, Jason was fast as fuck with a wrench and a welding torch and he was very nearly done.

He was just stepping back and wiping sweat from his brow to admire his work when he heard Nightwing and Robin crash down into the alley outside the fake security door. Black Bat and Spoiler were right on their asses, their cackling laughter echoing strangely as they were picked up by multiple mics on the call. Jason took up a spot behind the bike, his arms crossed over his chest in a way he knew made the muscles in his biceps bulge impressively.

Nightwing and Robin scrambled down the ramp into the garage and Nightwing skidded to a halt three or four feet into the garage when he saw Jason and what was left of his bike. Robin almost ran into the back of him, but was able to stop himself and lean around Nightwing with a demonically pleased grin stretching his little gremlin face.

“May I present to you,” Jason said with aplomb. “The Night Cycle!” and here he swept a hand out to indicate the motorcycle that he had masterfully converted into a motorized unicycle. Still a motorcycle, technically! But now more suited to clowns with an adrenaline addiction than to a vigilante.

“Oh my god,” Robin laughed lowly, walking slowly around Nightwing so that he could circle the bike and admire it from all sides.

“Oh My God!” Nightwing exclaimed, sounding a lot more distressed than Robin had.

And now Jason finally took a second to look at Nightwing. He looked ridiculous, splattered all over with pastel purple paint which was covered again with shimmering primary yellow glitter. But, under all of that, he was also probably the fittest guy Jason had ever seen wearing a skin tight kevlar suit of all black accented in bright sky blue with thick dark wavy hair and the kind of jaw and mouth that Jason thought only movie stars from black and white films had.

Excuse me, why did these children not inform him that their ‘brother’ was a walking sexual awakening on legs? They were truly menaces.

Black Bat and Spoiler were by then sprinting into the garage and not bothering to skid to a stop before slamming into Nightwing’s back, who by the power of a core so shredded you could probably grate cheese on those abs, held himself still under their combined weight. They popped up around him to take in Jason’s masterpiece and their reactions were the butter to his toast.

Spoiler screamed in laughter and fell to the ground on her back, laughing so hard it sounded painful. Black Bat was bouncing on the balls of her feet, her grin spread so wide Jason could see it even under her full face mask.

“I want to ride,” Black Bat said, bouncing over to Jason.

“No!” Nightwing exclaimed, speaking for the first time since he saw his new bike. “Wait, no, please! That has to be so dangerous.”

“Aw, let the little lady take it for a spin,” Jason said, holding a hand out to Black Bat to help her up onto the unicycle. Which she took but didn’t use at all as she hopped up.

“Yeehaw. Motherfuckers,” she said before gunning the engine so hard even Jason lunged to stop her from smacking her face full force into the concrete floor. But, she just leaned forward and shot out of the garage full speed up the ramp, screaming all the way.

“Shit, wait!” Spoiler shouted, sprinting after her. Robin was tight on her heels, leaving Jason and Nightwing alone in the garage staring at each other.

“Are you … the Red Hood?” Nightwing asked slowly, moving to put his hands on how hips and then to cross them and then giving up and letting them hang free.

“Yep. That’s me,” Jason said awkwardly.

“How’d they rope you into this?” Nightwing asked, frowning around at the remnants of his bike. He was taking the destruction of his property surprisingly well.

“We’re buds,” Jason answered easily.

“Buds?” Nightwing asked, sounding really stumped, his head popping up to pin Jason with an unreadable look.

“Yep,” Jason said, popping the p on the word. “I failed to prank Black Bat and it was the beginning of the end. I’m one of them now, I guess.” What he just said sunk in a second after he said it and Jason rushed on to add, “A chaos goblin, I mean! Not a bat. Fucking perish the thought.”

Nightwing laughed, a real laugh not a fake or nervous one and Jason’s already battered sexual orientation took another hard hit. Good to know that all the bats were a menace in their own right.

“Well, I guess I should say welcome to the team. Of goblins, I mean,” Nightwing said, sticking out a hand.

Jason took it and Nightwing squeezed his hand tightly on the shake. Jason’s sexuality trembled. “I didn’t know you were a part of the team,” Jason said, resolutely keeping his eyes on Nightwing’s pleasantly smiling face.

“I’m the founding member,” he replied with a toothy grin.

“Oh,” Jason said intelligently, finally letting go of Nightwing’s hand.

“Anyway, why don’t you help me wrangle the rest of the goblins? They’re bound to have wracked up enough property damage for one night anyway,” Nightwing suggested, jerking a thumb over his shoulder back toward the ramp.

“Oh. Yeah. We can take my truck,” Jason grunted, following Nightwing out of the garage.

“Cool,” Nightwing smiled.

Jason’s sexual orientation crumbled with a sigh.

[draculagerard]

u asked for it so i am HERE to tell u about the netflix tv show never have i ever......except im not going to explain Everything super concisely bc i already have a hard enough time trying 2 explain the complexities of devi vishwakumar when my brain is Actually working but rn i am running on three hours of sleep, an energy drink that partially sprayed out of my nose, and some sour punch straws but i am going to do my best to like. idk explain it. apologies in advance bc this got so long im SO sorry. ANYWAY. never have i ever. its about a first-generation indian american girl named devi and she is like. well. not cool. her n her friends are called the "UN" which they thought meant united nations bc they're all woc but no it means unfuckable nerds. and the person who coined the term unfuckable nerds? one ben gross, aka devi's longstanding academic rival. do u see where this is going yet? great. wonderful. devi spends most of season 1 chasing after this jock paxton (who. we do love. just not with devi.) and imploding all of her personal relationships in an attempt to Not Feel the grief of her father dying. at one point she even tells her mom that she wishes her mom died instead of her dad (ouch, but also, been there). atp devi's friends, the other members of the UN, are taking a "friend break" bc she was. well kind of a bitch. so she moves in w ben (rival) for like a week and then he drives her, unlicensed, to where her mom is spreading her dads ashes and then she goes back up to the car and they go "you stayed" "yeah i just wanrted to make sure you were okay" and then KISS. KISS!!!!!!! but then paxton (jock) also likes her so she dates BOTH of them and then implodes on her and they both break up with her. and then she accidentally spreads a rumor around the school about ben's new girlfriend having an eating disorder which ends up being true. and then paxton (jock) dates her again. and then they break up after like 3 months and ben's new girlfriend (aneesa) also breaks up w ben same day and then ben and devi are like. besties for a bit. devi dates a new guy des who honestly should probably be in a relationship with his own mom instead and then he dumps her bc of his mom and THEN. after all of this. ben jokingly gives devi a "one free boink" card. (was it really a joke ben was it i dont think so!!!!) and. at paxton's graduation he sort of mentions devi but not by name and the narrator (which, i should mention the narrator for devi's inner monologue is american tennis player john mcenroe) says she doesnt get stomach knots!!! but then she and ben share an like an intimate moment in the hall and mcenroe says "there's the stomach knots" like!!!!! and THEN later that night!!!!! she goes to ben's house!!!!!!1 and redeems the one free boink card CAN YOU BELIEVE IT!!!!!!!! and thats where season 3 ends....

season 4 comes out in THREE DAYS and weve gotten SOOOO many spoilers for the first two episodes which (if anyone who watches never have i ever is still reading this and doesnt want spoilers please sotp reading) we find out that ben and devi DID boink and that they both thought iut was like?? bad foir the other person??? and ben just didnt know what to say so he asked if she needed him to call an uber like ben WHAT. as rae @ice-sculptures put it "can you believe that ben gross not knowing what to say after fucking led to the whole spiral of miscommunication lmfao" like they just DONT TALK devi tries to ask if he wanted to get coffee and he says NO because a basketball player at the gym told ben that devi wasnt serious about him because she put a period in the text or somethjing?? so instead he goes and dates this girl from art class margot and devi sees ben with her on the first day of school and gets. well upset. and then someone spray paints "STUPID BITCH" on devi's car and of course she thinks its margot!!!! (but shhhh it wasnt....it was actually this kid ethan....more on him later) and then like other stff happens im not super clear about that but basically at some point ben tells devi that margot doesnt want ben talking to devi anymore :( i dont rlly know much else past that i think thats where s4e2 ends??? but we do know that devi ends up DATING that ethan kid at some point but. sooo many things point to ben/devi endgame esp bc her other main love interest (paxton, the jock) is now STAFF at their high school so like?? i dont think they're going that route but im just. dsjfkhjsad SO EXCITED except i cannot watch s4 the day it comes out bc i will be seeing waterparks which. im so excitred for but also WHYYY do they have to be on the same day

i feel like i didnt explain this very well and left out a lot of like pivotal ben/devi moments but im sitting here jus.t typing and not rereading any of this im. So sorry that this is as long as it is jkhsddfsd thank u for reading this and. if u didnt read it i dont blame u szdkjhdfsakd

WOW OKAY HOLY FUCK A LOT GOING ON THERE HUH????? HELLO.

Okay okay key notes:

I already like Devi and I haven't even watched the show.

WHAT THE FUCK IS BEN DOING HELLOOOO. WHAT IS WRONG WITH HIM DSFJJFD

by boink im assuming it means fuck right. cause like i've never euphemism in my life

THEY END S3 LIKE THAT ?? FWERLJW

oh LORD devi's complex relationship with her mom okay i hear it

bro the miscommunication sounds SOOO bad... like they cannot communicate properly even once huh 😭

devi ends up dating WHO now???? first the guy who gave them the name un and then the stupid bitch dude?? HELP....

IT COMES OUT IN 3 DAYS??? oh shit good luck??!!

OMG youre gonna go to a Waterparks show????? have fun holy shit

anyways are you kidding ofc i read the whole thing i NEED media rants rn

[servenas-inner-fangirl]

Liveblogging Black Sails 2x9

Rewatching the first half of 2x9 because it's been a while and I am now more certain than ever that Abigail's entry was timed perfectly for the end of Flint's proposal to make Lord Ashe more suceptible to it.

Vane and his men enter the Spanish Man o' War in much the same fashion Flint won it at the beginning of the season, except they slaughter the sleeping men... parallels, parallels.

Vane didn't really win that fight with Billy, right? Looks like his men stepped in and Billy got a good kick in immediately prior. But then Billy is a giant, so who can blame Vane for not wanting to finish that one-on-one... also this way Billy can live.

Still digging the face paint.

But also Toby Stephens is so attractive in his role as Captain Flint. The hair, the beard, the way he talks, the way he moves... Like, Vane was pretty immediate, but this man is really growing on me.

I suddenly have a very bad feeling about Mrs. Barlow. What was she going to say when the knock on the door interrupted her?

So what, is Silver just gonna put a knife to Vane's throat and make him give up the ship? I so hope that's not the plan here.

God I love to see Anne fight. And we haven't really seen that since the pilot (if we don't count the murder of the guy from Flint's crew and his whore).

That atmosphere during the dinner sure is oppressive. And the ticking clock is making me nervous. Abigail couldn't play her role better if she had been instructed though (which maybe she was?)

Anne making a choice, still with blood spatters in her face. And I'm still pissed-off with Jack, but I'm glad she was there to save him. Shouldn't be too hard to convince the crew now...

Silver about to commit an act that might in the right light be read as selfless... or rather less selfish than usual. Wouldn't his chances be better if he swam to shore and tried to disappear in the dark streets?

But also if he succeeds and the situation with Lord Ashe goes south (which I suspect it will), they're all trapped in that harbor. That... doesn't sound good.

Vane, I believe you're barking up the wrong tree there with Billy. The enemy of your enemy is not necessarily your friend, and I don't think Billy shares your opinions right now.

But that captain's cabin sure is fancy.

I think that is the first time somebody actually managed to talk some sense into Vane, and the fact that it's not Eleanor or Flint, but Billy, is hilarious.

(Also you're still bleeding man, clean up your face.)

I think that's also the first time I've seen Vane run. It's kind of concerning.

Oh-oh, now Vane is coming after Silver personally...

Lord Ashe saying that bad word, "forgiveness"... this is where things go south, yeah? I think Mrs. Barlow knows it, too.

Oh, fuck, Flint's face. Ashe is asking for the one thing Flint can never give. All this hard work, for nothing... Wait, what?

The clock. The FUCKING clock. So it had a meaning but I was wrong about what it was. And Miranda is willing to blow up this whole thing for it, after everything. FUCK. (I mean, I get it, I really do, it's just...very unfortunate. AFTER FLINT SWALLOWED HIS PRIDE.)

And oh damn, she's taking no prisoners.

So this is not how I expected her death to go. I figured Flint would charge Ashe, and she'd be killed in the resulting scuffle. But she's just... executed? Holy shit.

Things don't seem to fare much better for Eleanor in Nassau...

Love to see Vane on the prowl, even though I hope he won't be successful. - Oh damn, outsmarted just like that, that's gotta sting.

I think what we're witnessing here is Vane having a change of heart in the light of Flint's treatment at the hand of Georgetown. Or at least that's what I hope it is...

Lesson learned, I hope: Don't hold Charles Vane at knifepoint unless you intend to follow through.

Awww, yes, the moment I've been waiting for!! Flint and Vane united are definitely a force to be reckoned with. Also I'm vaguely impressed Vane can admit he was wrong (or at least that someone else was right), although it's probably easier towards Billy than it would be towards Flint. Also Vane is not as stupid as he sometimes seems because he immediately understands the implications of Flint's capture for Nassau and by extension himself.

Quite ironic that Vane's taking of the Man o'War is what's gonna save Flint's ass in the end though...

Nooo, Eleanor!!

Wait, is that the first time we got a song in the credits?

[damnhotmsimmons]

Episode 10-Dead End

here it is, the season finale. I can’t wait to be (possibly) disappointed again

caution: spoilers below

oh look, another flashback, February 2020

Awww, Rossi and Krystal are celebrating their wedding anniversary

So Rossi became Unit Chief not long after Garcia left?

So Rossi became Unit Chief cause JJ, the original contender, decides to run the New Orleans Field Office, but obviously that didn’t work out

I appreciate Krystal being understanding of Rossi and his job

back to the present, and damn, Rossi is struggling to escape

JJ and Luke delivering the profile at the Seattle Field Office while Garcia is struggling to find a location on Rossi except Elias is too smart

I have a feeling something is going to happen to Sydney and the daughters, I just feel like there is

Bailey is back and Emily is negotiating with the AG, who is just as stubborn as Barnes in s13

Emily kinda has a point in this situation

Rebecca helping the BAU once again, but oh no, the AG wants to speak with her after that

Elias taking his family to a safe house and getting upset when one of his daughters tried to use their phone. Possible foreshadowing again?

Elias seeing Rossi and sending in another link to the team

Why does Elias want to talk to Bailey instead of Prentiss?

Emily telling Bailey the reason Elias wants to speak with him cause he painted himself as the face of the Sicarius investigation

Bailey attempting to negotiate with Elias, with Emily and Tara helping Bailey. It doesn’t go well as Elias refuses to let his family go 

the rest of the team going through the live feed and realizing that Rossi is trying to get through to him through coded language

JJ and Will heading to the jet alone while Luke and Garcia stay in Seattle

Bailey telling the AG that Elias knows about Gold Star

the AG willing to let Rossi and Voit’s family die to avoid losing her career? At least Bailey and Rebecca know that the BAU will see through them and know they won’t stop till they find the truth

Is the AG setting Rebecca up as the “fall guy” for whatever the AG has. Whatever the AG has planned, it’s not good

Garcia getting a call about Tyler Green. He’s not dead (yet) but he’s going into surgery

Luke is too good for Garcia, he’s upset when she mentions Tyler but still comforts her

“..I can’t keep going..” is she gonna leave again?

“Maybe if we lean on each other...” Again, Luke is too good for Garcia

Aww, the hug was sweet. If only they didn’t give them such bullshit writing in the past few episodes

Sydney being too suspicious about her husband and questions Elias 

you know it’s bad when Elias’ daughters know that something is wrong

“his heart is in the right place.” yea about that Sydney...

shit, Sydney is watching Elias from outside

oh no, she found his kill kit and the dog collar

Garcia calling Rossi a hero, she loves her dad

So Rossi knows how to mess with Elias’ system

Rossi disabling the signal but not before taunting Elias 

So the escape plan didn’t go well?

Bailey and Rebecca telling Emily that the AG decides to let Elias and his family go. Emily is not having it with Rebecca telling Emily that politics has to do with it

Oh shit, Krystal is there, and she’s motivating Rossi not to give up

Rossi is ready to join Krystal

Krystal isn’t wrong when she calls him a “stubborn jackass”

so that’s where Elias got those names

Not Bailey wanting to join JJ and Will at the location to negotiate Elias’ surrender. Yea this is gonna go well for him

Sydney and the girls now know about Elias’ true colors

Luke is with JJ and Will surrounding the safe house. And Bailey is also there

Bailey disregarding their warnings for traps, yea this will end well for him. Did he just forgot what happened in 16x05?

Not Elias letting Bailey inside the house and Bailey going in by himself

Luke, JJ and Will looking badass as usual

The team learning that Voit knows something about Bailey

Tara being upset that Rebecca is involved in the plan the AG and Bailey have which involves letting Elias and his family go

Sydney and the girls planning to escape and Will decides to help them while JJ covers for them

Oh shit, Elias killed Bailey

He now has Sydney

noooo, Will

oh thank god Will is okay

shit, I thought Sydney was gonna die next but luckily Elias ran out of bullets

Luke aiming his gun at Elias

Tara telling Rebecca that Bailey is dead and that Elias will only speak to the AG. She also asks Rebecca about Gold Star

Ugh, fuck you Rebecca, maybe Tara needs a new girlfriend after this

JJ suggesting that Sydney should be the one to talk to Elias in revealing Rossi’s location

I appreciate JJ being compassionate to Sydney

Sydney trying to appeal to Elias to reveal where Rossi is hiding

Rossi seeing Krystal again

Luke being the first person Rossi sees when he’s rescued

“Is this heaven?” Wishing this was hell for Tyler

Yes Tyler, you were hurting Garcia

if parallel universes exist, Greencia would still not happen

so Garcia finally realizes that what she had with Tyler won’t work, he broke her trust, overstepped her boundaries and will hurt her even more

 Garcia saying how she tried to hard to be different, a little too late for that?

Rossi is back at the BAU

the one time we get a family bonding moment, is when they all hug Rossi and it’s out of focus

Bailey’s frame put on the wall, rip Bailey

The team and Will all together at Garcia’s apartment talking about Bailey

Garcia and Luke having another moment

JJ and Will also having a moment

Tara and Emily talking about the AG, who is deflecting

So what the fuck is that cliffhanger, who was at the other side of the door? the AG?

so is gold star the new storyline for s17?

overall, this episode is a good one, not as Rossi centric as I assumed that. Pretty sad to see Bailey die just when he was starting to be more tolerable though Rebecca is getting on my nerves as well as the AG lady. I wonder who is at the other side of the door? Rebecca? The AG? a former main character? the director? I like the garvez and willifer scenes and it’s nice to see some family bonding moments even though it’s after a funeral and thank god Sydney and her daughters are okay. I’m glad that Greencia is over and they better keep it that way, maybe there’s hope for garvez but I don’t wanna get my hopes up. Will do a rewatch and I can’t believe I’m gonna say this but I plan to watch s17 when it comes out

[fujillamaparadise]

random little in-story details/concepts that aren't directly mentioned but I personally like lol

Thanks to a childhood with Ada, Cheryl used to secretly think that Josephine's sewing needle was bad luck. However, that sewing needle was one of the few things that Josephine, who hardly had anything to begin with, passed down.

The Ianuzzis always look out for each other. Sometimes there are some broken or missing parts in the family, but they always help each other out no matter what. They exchange money, clothes, food, and things related to their business purposes; they also help each other find places to work or live if things get too rough. Regardless of distance, they tend to keep in touch and always support each other.

David's mother took to gardening when she realized that she might've married the wrong man; even though she was actually fairly independent and somewhat rebellious for such a small conservative town, getting out of the house to do something so stereotypically domestic was the perfect excuse to clear her head and avoid future arguments while appearing like just another housewife with a respectable reputation. Although she was a fairly good mother, gardening became a priority over many other things in her life. Tom was never very interested in gardening, so they weren't as close as they could've been. Luckily, David seemed to share her interest in gardening and they did get to be close. When he was little, David had occasionally worried that she cared more about spending time with her flowers than him, but he never really understood why he felt that way.

Tom, being the older son, was the first to begin chopping wood with his father; he was rather good at all sorts of outdoor activities that his father also liked, but he still chose to chop wood sometimes. After chopping wood, Tom had a tendency to save leftover pieces and carve them into all sorts of shapes- animals, plants, cars, even little people- for David to play with as special toys. When they were little, their father had used to discipline the boys by taking away or breaking any of their store-bought toys if they misbehaved or fell short of his expectations. However, mesquite wood was much tougher than plastic, plus it was free, so the handmade toys Tom carved for David were heartfelt as well as hard to break; whenever David had to stay home alone, the toys kept him company, as well. After David got to know Bradley better, he began to paint the special toys Tom made for him. Over time, Tom became very skilled at carving.

David used leftover wood from the community college's woodshop when he began learning how to make love beads even though there was plenty of wood at home. Those outdoor sessions he spent chopping wood with his father tainted his perception of the wood at home; they seemed more like the evidence of a senseless killing rather than the conservation of leftover resources like the wood at the community college's woodshop did. David wanted his love beads to be free from his home even if he couldn't leave yet.

When Shirley and Judy had to stay in a jail for the first time because apparently the big city cops were super different from the sleepy guys in their hometown, they were extremely noncompliant and generally didn’t understand half of what was even going on; in a setting where bias ran rampant, their attitude toward the guys in charge definitely didn’t help. At some point, it was implied that one or both of them were segregated in a different unit in response to general inmate misconduct. Sometimes, Shirley and Judy wondered if they should have never tried leaving Highland at all despite how badly they’d wanted to celebrate their independence after being cooped up in the same town for years; the jail might’ve been worse than any of the homes they had stayed in as children, but it was pretty difficult for them to compare and they never actually talked about either of those topics since they were treated pretty badly in both places.

Butt-Head doesn't really see Mr. Van Driessen as a person very much because he's too soft-spoken and gentle; he's more like a dream of a person. However, Coach Buzzcut is easier for Butt-Head to see as a person. Pain is usually what keeps Butt-Head (and Beavis) grounded to reality, but his world is still unclear most of the time.

Beavis and Butt-Head's world, though hazy, can also be very raw and harsh at times; they don't really register it very often, though. Unlike most other people in town, Beavis and Butt-head couldn't care less about the past, but they do slip out of the present at times. Mainly, they live in their own little world and other people just come and go. On the other hand, people like Mr. Van Driessen and Coach Buzzcut are more connected to reality but still have a tendency to revisit or even relive the past. Sometimes, people like that feel momentarily real to the boys as they grow up, but it was never for very long in the past. However, their world does seem to slowly open up a little more as they grow up.

I have a few minutes before class [edit: this lasted more than a few minutes but class is SLOW], so here's a quick (but unfortunately not very thorough) rundown of the flowers that were included but not explicitly explained in Ch. 22

As Todd passes by, we see a gladiolus flower. The gladiolus flower, known for strength, resilience, and integrity, is also tied to Greek mythology in which Hyacinthus- purple/Greek hyacinth flowers are strongly tied to regret and sorrow- was killed by Apollo and had a gladiolus sprout from his corpse. I feel like the additional context could allude to a lot of things, but I don't want to ramble about that at the moment.

When David is thinking about Shirley and Judy, he pushes away a scorpion from a patch of yellow chrysanthemums. Depending on the cultural and situational context, they could mean something positive or negative. Yellow chrysanthemums could represent joy, celebration, and longevity, or they could represent neglected love, sorrow, and death. Of course, Shirley and Judy were very neglected in a lot of ways.

As Pork passes by, the exhaust of his car lingers over blue columbines. These tough flowers are known for their fortitude and ability to thrive in the harshest of places. Blue columbines can also be seen as symbols of courage.

While talking to Butt-Head, David steps past a pair of marigolds. These have all sorts of different meanings in all sorts of settings. Most of the time, though, marigolds tend to represent inner light, purity, sun, power, and strength. They can also be seen as the connection between life and death. David has only managed to grow two marigolds, though.

As David steps away from the white prickly poppies and jimson weed, his shirt is described as being adorned with sewn illustrations of amaryllis flowers in different shades. There are a lot of different meanings for every single color and it would take a while to list them all, but amaryllis is generally seen as a symbol of love above all else. Also tied to Greek mythology, "Amaryllis" was the name of a maiden who won a shepherd's love with sacrifice and the blood of her heart. Hmm.

The black dahlia is connected to commitment, sorrow, betrayal, mourning, darkness, and the unattainable.

oh also extra thingy lol, I know it's not canon-canon but why not. Honestly, red gardenias actually look pretty similar to roses, so I decided to mess around with that. Why not have a transition from giving pure white gardenias to a bride to giving ones that look like they've been soaked in blood of the innocent to a soldier? (geez im dramatic lol)

as for the rest (bluebonnets, white prickly poppies, jimson weed), those are just your typical plants of Texas :)

[baroquebucky]

reach

soulmate au where when you touch your soulmate you see glimpses of your future with them; the winter soldier touches you and realizes there’s so much more out there

series masterlist // previous // next

part two

word count: 3.3k (worth it me thinks)

masterlist

a/n: hi bffs !! here is part two to touch !! i hope u guys enjoy !! might make a part 3 if you guys want ?!? let me know what u guys think !!

You stared at the clunky metal cuffs on your hands, silent as the four of you were squished together along with two agents. Tears staining your cheeks, you had stopped crying as soon as the agents had cuffed you, turning on a steely exterior.

“i knew him” Steve spoke, you were all silent as he stared at the floor, “he looked right at me like he didn’t even know me” his voice distant.

“that was over 70 years ago how is that possible?” Sam spoke, looking at you and then at Steve.

“Zola, Buckys whole unit was captured in 43” Steve explained, his gaze hardening, “Zola experimented on him, whatever he did helped Bucky survive the fall” his voice softening.

“they must have found him and-” Steve’s voice was tender as he trailed off.

“none of that’s your fault steve” Natasha groaned, bleeding through the bandage you had put on her.

You looked over at her and frowned, “we need to get a doctor in here, she’s lost a lot of blood if we don’t put pressure on that wound” you turned, looking at one of guards next to you.

You flinched as they turned on the taser, scooting back closer to steve. Your eyes widened as they knocked out the other agent, taking off their helmet only to reveal Maria Hill. You smiled softly.

“that thing was squeezing my brain- who’s this guy?” She spoke, staring at sam.

After breaking out of the cuffs and escaping the truck the five of you headed to some secret base, you were quiet as they chatted among each other, thoughts of bucky clouding your mind.

“y/n, why- what happened?” Steve spoke gently, falling into step with you.

You looked at him, slowing down a little bit. “It was him steve” you whispered, voice shaking. Steve stopped completely, grabbing your wrist and pulling you away from the group.

“what- i thought- are you sure?” He rushed out, breathless.

“i saw us, together” you managed out, a tears falling from your eyes, “it was our future,” you looked at Steve, wiping your eyes before continuing to walk forward.

“y/n we have to talk about this” Steve rushed next to you and you nodded, he opened his mouth but you stopped him as you approached sam, Maria and natasha.

“not now, please” you pleaded and he nodded, holding your hand and squeezing it softly.

“She’ll want to see him first” Maria spoke, a smirk on her face as you all looked at each other in confusion, following her as she pushed some plastic curtains out of the way.

Your stomach fell and a smile found it’s way onto your face, “son of a bitch” you chuckled.

“about damn time” fury mumbled you couldn’t help but smile.

As they attended natasha the rest of you listened to fury rattle off his list of injuries, explaining why he had to stay hidden and why no one was told of him still being alive. You nodded along in understanding, your eyes trained on the floor before looking at him with a smile.

“does this mean i still have to turn in that report?”

Buckys mind was racing. The smell of freshly baked cookies and visions of you in his head. Even flashes of the blonde who was with you.

He could hear his scream after he fell, he saw flashes of them turning him into who he was now. He memorized your face, the way your hair looked and the smile you had on your face for the few seconds you had together. He focused on the future, the picnics and the singing.

Bucky mourned for himself, for who he was and who he wish he could become.

The sound of an argument and multiple footsteps brought him to reality, his eyes still red and nose pink from crying when he saw you. Alexander Pierce walked in and bucky felt sick to his stomach, watching as the agents lowered their weapons on his command.

“Mission report” he spoke coldly, angry when he had to repeat himself once more. Pierce crinkled his nose, hitting bucky in frustration.

Bucky hesitated, he shouldn’t tell them about you, he couldn’t. He needed you safe, he didn’t want you hurt.

“the man on the bridge, who was he” he mumbled, voice fragile as he spoke. Buckys eyes met Pierces, worry flickering in his eyes before pushing it away.

“i knew him” he mumbled, Pierce sitting in front of him. His words were fuzzy as he thought of you and the blonde man, he wanted you, he was meant to be with you. “but i knew him” bucky mumbled once more when Pierce finished talking, his lips pressing into a smal tight smile for a second.

“prep him” Pierce spoke, bucky wanted to cry, his stomach was in knots as Pierce told them to wipe him. Panic rose in his chest, he couldn’t forget you, he couldn’t lose his only hope in 70 years. He leaned back as they pushed him into his seat, his breathing ragged and heavier. He had to hold onto you, the smell on baking cookies in his mind as he squeezed his eyes shut.

“I never liked him” you spoke, turning to Natasha, “i told you remember! You brushed me off” you huffed, turning your attention to Maria and some suitcase.

Maria explained insights plan, telling the four of you how to stop the carriers. Making sure to emphasize the need to link all three carriers.

“- we can salvage what’s left” Nick spoke, you furrowed your brows and shook your head, anger bubbling in your chest.

“we aren’t salvaging anything!” You spoke angrily, Nick staring at you in shock. Steve nodded his head.

“we’re taking down SHIELD” Steve spoke and Nick tried to defend himself, “SHIELD had nothing to do with this!” The man grumbled.

“You gave me this mission, this is how it ends” Steve spoke firmly, “SHIELDS been compromised you said so yourself, HYDRA grew under your nose and you didn’t even notice” his brows furrowed and eyes cold.

“why do you think we’re meeting in a cave, i noticed” Nick shot back, you shook your head in disbelief.

“how many paid the price before you did?” You quipped, thinking about your soulmate, where was he? what would happen to him?

“I didn’t know about barnes” Nick softened, looking at Steve, the blonde rolled his eyes.

“even if you did would you have told me about it? Or would you compartmentalize that too” he scoffed, you bit your bottom lip in frustration.

“HYDRA, SHIELD, it all goes” you stated firmly, eyes set on fury, he looked around at the others.

“they’re right” Maria sighed.

You stood atop the dam, the sound of the wind rustling the trees calmed you down, you focused on one of the flashes you had seen when you touched bucky.

“You set this all up for little ol’ me?” You teased, bucky rolling his eyes with a smile on his face, taking your hand in his and leading you to the middle of the meadow he had found.

“only the best for my sweets” he replied, shooting a wink at you and you blushed slightly, the cool wind hitting your flushed skin.

“oh wow you even got us a little cake? went all out did you barnes” you teased and he smiled, letting a soft groan out.

“can you please stop laughing at me for five minutes” he pouted, and you smiled at him softly, sitting on the blanket and pulling his down with you, kissing the pout on his lips.

“i love it angel” you mumbled, kissing his lips softly before pulling away and reaching into the basket, pulling out the sandwiches and handing one to bucky along with a drink.

“found it the other day, thought you would like to watch the sunset from here instead of that old park” he spoke, taking a sip from the water bottle you handed him and your heart fluttered in your chest.

“i love you so much James” you mumbled, leaning over and peppering kisses all over his face, a smile on his lips as he soaked in all your loving.

You giggled as he moved over, picking you up with ease and spinning you around. Bucky set you down gently, you rested your head on his shoulder as you marveled at the sun setting, pinks and reds painting the sky, golden rays hitting the two of you.

“you know I’m yours forever, right doll?” Bucky mumbled, his head in your lap as you played with his hair. You smiled sweetly at him, nodding your head.

“and I’m yours forever and more lovebug” you replied.

“He’s gonna be there, you know” Sam spoke, causing you to jump slightly. Steve walked next to him, the two men approaching you.

“I know” you nodded.

“whoever he used to be, the guy he is now, he’s not the kind you save, he’s the kind you stop” Sam spoke, Steve standing next to you as Sam looked at the two of you.

“i don’t know if we can do that” Steve spoke for the two of you, Sam looked at you softly. Your eyes meeting and you gave him a small smile.

“he might not give you a choice” he whispered, you shook your head as he continued, “he doesn’t know you.”

“he has to, he has to remember me, I’m his soulmate” you spoke, eyes welling up with tears once more.

“gear up, it’s time” Steve spoke gently.

Your hands shook softly as you changed, taking in a deep breath as you fell into line with Maria, Sam and Steve, walking towards SHIELD.

“excuse us” you smiled as the man opened the door to the control center, moving out of your way quickly when he saw Maria and Sams guns, “alrighty star spangled man, your time to shine” you smiled, patting him on the back.

Steve began his speech, a proud smile on your face as he spoke, feeling the shift in the air, your heart thumping against your rib cage.

“did you write that down first? Or was it off the top of you head” Sam smiled and you laughed softly.

The sirens blared and you heard the echoes of gunshots, “they’re initiating launch” Maria spoke in your ear, you jogged next to Sam and Steve.

“how do we know the good guys from the bad guys?” Sam questioned.

“if they’re shooting at you they’re bad” you replied, Steve smiling before the two of you hopped down and fought the men on the airstrips.

You were in a whirl of punches and gunshots, throwing your knives and taking down men to help Steve get to the helicarriers.

Steve ran from behind you, the two of you running to put in the cartridge, “alpha lock!” You spoke, you and Steve running to leave the carrier. Sam calling out “bravo lock!” Not long after.

You took down a couple guards, hitching a ride with a pilot and Steve counting on sam to get him to the other helicarrier.

You ran out as soon as you could, blood running cold as you recognized the metal arm grabbing sams wing.

You froze as he tore the wing off, kicking him off the side, eyes wide you ran out, “Sam!” You cried out, panic filling your chest.

“I’m fine, I’m just grounded, I’m sorry guys” he apologized and you let out a sigh of relief.

“I’m still on the helicarrier, i got it” Steve spoke and you felt relief knowing he was safe.

“I’ll come down and help you” you spoke, turning around and coming face to face with three men. You groaned in annoyance as they approached you, moving quickly to take one of their guns, knocking them out with the butt. Using another one as a shield before kicking him off you and into the other man.

“Y/n no! Wait on my signal, he’s here and- we just need to wait for the right moment” Steve spoke, out of breath as he spoke. You hesitated, watching bucky run to beat Steve.

“okay” you spoke softly, doing what you could to make sure it was only steve and bucky in the helicarrier.

It felt like an eternity until Steve finally called for you, breathless. “Y/n get down here!” You ran quickly, maneuvering your way down and seeing the two men fighting.

“take it!” Steve yelled, bucky laying on the floor next to him, you nodded, running up to him as his tossed it to you, catching it before taking off again.

You felt the bullet whirl next to your head, he was shooting at you. Your stomach fell as you realized, running faster. You heard Steve groan, falling next to you.

“Steve!” You cried out, stopping before realizing you had mere seconds left. You saw the blood through his suit, biting your lip before taking off, hurrying to put in the cartridge, rushing to help Steve up.

“Charlie lock!” You cried out, putting his weight on your shoulder, struggling to carry him.

“get out of there!” Maria called, you looked at Steve, his eyes telling you all you needed to know, you nodded softly.

“fire now” Steve spoke, Maria began to argue but you cut her off, “do it!” You commanded, losing your balance as the helicarriers shot at each other.

Bucky’s groan caught your attention, your heart breaking as you saw he was trapped under a piece of metal. Without hesitation you and Steve jumped down, lifting the metal between the two of you.

“it’s gonna be okay” you whispered, moving to reach out only for the helicarrier to decline sharply, causing you to slip away, inches from his hand.

You grasped onto a ledge, steadying yourself and attempting to get back to the two super soldiers, the constant explosions making it difficult.

Bucky punched Steve, fear in his eyes as they spoke, you ran to them, continuously getting knocked over by the crashes.

“I’m not gonna fight you, you’re my friend” you heard Steve say, dropping the shield as bucky tackled him.

“you’re my mission!” Bucky spoke, anger in his eyes.

You leaped, tackling Bucky off of Steve, flashes of your future in both of your eyes.

“y/n!” Steve cried out.

“no wait pull over!” You cried out, eyes focusing on a box you had passed on the highway, bucky furrowed his brows in confusion.

“doll it’s raining it’s just a box” he slowed down, pulling over anyway.

“no there were cats!” you squealed, unlocking your door quickly and running out of the car, the rain immediately drenching you to the bone. Bucky cursed softly as you ran out without your jacket, following you quickly. His eyes landing on the two cats in your arms.

“told you so” you teased, motioning for him to grab the other two from the box. Bucky grabbed them quickly, running to your car and setting them on your lap, wrapping them in your jacket and trying to warm them up.

You arrived at the shelter quickly, heart aching as they took the four kittens from you. The small white one mewling and sinking his claws into your shirt, you smiled softly before taking his claws out of the fabric, handing him to a vet.

“We’ll call you when we’re done with all the tests and diagnostics” the woman smiled kindly and you nodded, bucky slipping his hand into your easily and you leaned into his warmth.

You were cuddled up next to bucky on the couch, head on his chest and watching one of your favorite shows.

“doll?” Bucky called out, moving you gently and you got up from his chest.

“sorry, I’m just worried about the kittens is all” you sighed, chewing on your bottom lip, bucky let out a breath before pulling you into his lap.

“that white one really liked you” he chuckled and you nodded, a smile on your face as you remembered the way he didn’t want to leave you.

“almost as much as you do huh” you teased and bucky laughed, shaking his head at your statement.

“no one can love you as much as i do dollface” he replied, his face serious before breaking into a smile as you rolled your eyes. You moved to get off his lap but he stopped you.

“why don’t we keep him” he smiled, nervous as he proposed the idea to you, “you could use some company when i go away for missions and I’ve always wanted a cat, and plus statistics say people are happier with pets-” bucky rambled.

“yes! oh my god finally! I’m so excited” you cheered, jumping of the couch and hopping around, a smile on your face as you turned to look at bucky.

Bucky smiled as you sat back down, leaning in to kiss him softly, a smile on both of your faces. “Should name him alpine” Bucky suggested a smile on his face as you nodded.

Bucky went overboard on toys and treats, his arms full as he set the bags down, a smile on his face as you finished kitten proofing the apartment.

“James! You didn’t need to get that much” you spoke shocked at the amount of things he got for your new kitten.

“this is our son we are talking about, he deserves the world” bucky scoffed, fixing the bags and putting everything away, the two of you excited to pick up your new child.

The two of you played with alpine for hours when he got home, giggles filling the apartment as you observed his antics. The three of you curled up on the couch, alpine asleep in your lap as bucky had his arm around you, some documentary playing.

“i love our family” you smiled, looking at bucky and kissing his jaw softly. He smiled at you as you pulled away, laying your head on his chest again.

“i love it too sweets” his heart was melting at the sight of you, cozy in his arms with the kitten in your lap.

“I’m yours forever bucky” you whispered, eyes closing as exhausting took over, his heart fluttered.

“I’m yours forever y/n” he replied, a smile on his face as the words left his lips.

Buckys eyes widened as the scenario played out in his eyes, you looked at him, a small smile on your face.

“it’s you” he whispered, a small smile forming on his face.

“it’s me, forever” you mumbled, moving to sit up and hug him.

Before you could, debris broke the glass you were laying on, your reflexes not quick enough to hold onto something, causing you to fall into the water, fear in Buckys eyes.

Both him and Steve dove in after you, bucky reaching you before his friend and pulling you out frantically. Steve helped drag you to shore, shaking you before giving you CPR.

You coughed up water, rolling around before your vision cleared, a smile on your face as you saw Steve, wrapping your arms around him.

“wheres bucky?” You questioned, heart sinking as you searched for the metal armed man.

“i- he was just here” Steve spoke, looking around, panic in his eyes.

Within moments Maria, Natasha and Sam found the two of you, rushing you to a hospital, treating all your wounds and any broken bones. Falling asleep moments after with Sam watching over both you and Steve.

It had been close to a month since SHIELD fell, since you last saw bucky. You woke up to knocking on your door, your eyes bleary as you checked the time, 7:34 am.

You groaned and forced yourself out of bed, “who needs something at 7 am on a Saturday!” You called out, angrily opening the door. Your anger sizzled away within seconds, you eyes meeting the baby blue ones you had only seen for moments at a time.

“Bucky” you whispered, your wind had been knocked out of you as you saw your soulmate on the other side of the door.

“hi doll” he smiled softly, his eyes brighter as he looked at you.

-

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