#and when it comes up in fic it's to be utilized as a coping and exploration method in order to move past it

[sarahowritesostucky]

📖"Hydra Sanatorium"

Rated: Explicit

Pairing: Bucky Barnes x Steve Rogers

Word count: 5112

Tags: a/b/o, medical institutionalization, cognitive disability, made up kinky medical things, diapers, catheters, non-con medical procedures, restraints, forced wetting, hurt/comfort, humiliation, kind!Careworker Steve, bratty!Patient Bucky, alpha Steve, omega bucky, dub con everything due to a/b/o biology, dry humping, forced orgasm, masturbation, implied self harm, orgasm therapy, age difference (19/30), omorashi

Summary: Bucky is a troubled teen coping with the traumatic transformation of late-onset omega puberty.

Steve's been developing too much of an attachment, he knows he has. But he might not have the self control to remain detached anymore.

A/N: This fic contains heavy medical kink, diapers/wetting, and a/b/o dub-con shenanigans. Consume Responsibly.

Wait! I think I missed a previous chapter! Series Masterlist

Chapter 5: Excited Catatonia with Aggression

It takes a while longer for Bucky to calm down, shuddering and shivering in Steve’s arms.

This session has been a big deal for the poor kid, since he’s been denied for so long. Omegas don’t do well when they don’t get release regularly. And Steve’s pretty sure that not only is Bucky sobbing because of that, but also because he’s likely been touch and sensory-starved at home as well. Who even knows the last time the boy was hugged, outside of a stay on-ward?

It is, unfortunately, going to be time to tell him about his family situation soon. Steve knows that if he doesn’t bite the bullet tonight, then his boss will do it for him tomorrow. And that won’t increase her confidence in Steve’s impartiality any. Steve could almost stomach her ire, but the part where Christina would be the one breaking the news to Bucky that his folks don’t want him is what sways Steve.

The kid deserves better than Doctor Raynor’s notoriously blunt demeanor. Christina doesn’t do it on purpose, but she’s ex-military and that’s very, very apparent in the way she approaches people. There’s a reason why she has a PhD and not an MD after her name. Raynor is much better suited to managing employees and administrative duties than she is dealing with patients … She tends to make them cry.

It’ll be much easier on Bucky if Steve is the one to tell him.

Still, after watching him come apart in his lap so beautifully, Steve has to pause a few times to steel himself for this conversation. “Well,” he says, trying to think of something else to help put the omega in a good mood. “You earned your reward. Been good all day. You want to take the cath out now?”

Bucky sits back with wide eyes. “Really?” he says, brightening. “Yeah! Can we?”

“We sure can, Sweetheart.” Steve kisses his cheek. “Good boys get nice things.” Bucky blushes, and Steve chuckles about it as he swaps out to a new pair of latex gloves. “Okay, bear with me here.”

It’s a simple process. All Steve has to do is use safety scissors to snip the inflation valve off the tubing, and a second later Bucky’s making a tiny noise of surprise, and the small amount of saline liquid that’d filled the balloon comes dribbling out. “Oohh,” he sighs, relieved. “Oh God. Thank you. Fuck, that was so annoying!”

Steve hums sympathetically. “I can imagine.” Having an object in one’s bladder giving the constant urge to pee doesn’t sound like a good time to him, either. But that’s why it’s one of the consequences that Hydra utilizes. It’s a way to help combative patients accept that they’re no longer in control of their bodies. “Bet you’re not gonna give me trouble on your diapering anymore, huh?”

Bucky grumbles and tucks his head down. “Mmn.”

Steve’s lips twitch fondly. “I’ll pull it out now,” he warns. The first few times that they’d had to cath Bucky, he’d been a crying, resisting mess, but after three years of coming in and out of the ward, he knows the drill. Steve gets enough lube to coat the head of his cock, being sure to slip some all around the tube and push it into his slit as much as possible. “Mmkay. Relax your muscles. Annnd deep breath.” Bucky inhales, and Steve slides the catheter out.

“Ugh.”

“All done.” He tosses it in the medical waste bin. “Good job.”

Bucky exhales hugely, eyelids fluttering. He looks down at himself, and flushes when he sees that his penis has dribbled a little more in Steve’s lap. “Sorry,” he mumbles, and Steve shushes him.

“S’okay. It happens.” They both know that Bucky’s bladder control won’t return to normal for a couple of days, which is to be expected. Bucky seems self-conscious of having wet on him though, no matter how miniscule the amount. So Steve reiterates how it doesn’t bother him, even taking Bucky’s hand in his and pressing their joined hands to the wet patch that’s right at the waistband of his scrub pants. Bucky blushes massively, but his scent radiates comfort, which is the goal. “You’re a good boy, Bucky,” Steve tells him in his best soothing rumble, then just keeps talking at him like that, because it clearly helps Bucky to calm down and be happy.

Steve’s dick is mighty happy, too, though he’s dead set on ignoring it. It’s not like it’s unusual for him to get aroused in-session with patients. It happens. … But it happens a lot more frequently with Bucky than with anybody else. Steve’s been aroused ever since he first got into the double-sit chair with Bucky, and half hard since he started fingering him. Things are a little more pronounced now, and he knows his erection is obvious. It’s approaching a full-on boner, though thankfully still angled down and towards the crease of his thigh. His compression underwear are doing an admirable job of keeping things contained, but it’s still a thick and obvious shape under the pale green of his scrubs. “Um,” he says stupidly, seeing their entwined fingers so close to it. He hastily releases Bucky’s hand.

Over the years at this job, Steve’s gotten used to not acting on his own arousal, but he isn’t surprised that Bucky gets distracted by it. The boy is a sexually frustrated omega teenager, after all, and Steve’s the only alpha who’s ever touched him intimately, probably the only one who’s been dominant to him in any sort of organized or respectful fashion, too. He can’t expect the kid to have the same control of his faculties that a regular person would. That’s just not how omega bodies work. And Steve is a healthy, thirty-year-old adult alpha male, so it’s simple fact that when he’s aroused like this he’s gonna wind up clogging the air a bit for Bucky. He can see it happening already, knocking the kid a little woozy. “You okay, bub?”

His nostrils keep flaring and he keeps sucking his bottom lip compulsively as he stares at Steve’s crotch. He stops using his words and switches to little grunts and hums, starts making this needy little sound in the base of his throat that both medical literature and video titles on PornHub would refer to as a ‘keen’. His eyes go glazed and he makes that noise repeatedly while his backside weeps and his nipples pebble up beneath his shirt.

This, right here. This is why people make fun of omegas as being empty headed cocksluts. Not that Steve sees it that way—God no, he doesn’t. It’s a beautiful thing to him, to see Bucky go all soft and wanting, a natural reaction that tells him the omega is feeling pleasured enough and protected enough to let go. It means his body and brain have actually decided that it’s safe enough for him to be vulnerable like that. If nothing else, it’s a huge fucking compliment to Steve as an alpha. “Oh, Honey,” he coos, petting up and down Bucky’s sides. “You gettin a little soft, mm? Sinking a little?” Bucky whimpers and Steve hushes him supportively. “That’s okay, Buck. I’m here. Alpha’s here. You can let go for a little while if you need to.”

“... ‘pha,” Bucky slurs, latching onto the word, and Steve nods.

“Yeah, Sweetheart, Alpha’s got you. You want to lay your head down for a—”

‘Going soft’ usually only means whining and slicking and, well, going soft. It’s something easily contained and soothed, encouraged into a nap or a bit of cuddling. But that’s in healthy and well-adjusted omegas. Bucky veers in another direction altogether when he slides his hand over and starts aggressively cupping Steve’s erection through his pants.

Steve’s eyes widen. “Hey, hey. Uh-uh.” He tries to grab Bucky’s wrist but the boy evades him and his scent sours at what his dumbed down mind perceives as rejection. “Buck, now listen: you can’t touch me there.”

Bucky’s too far down already, and hearing this just makes him get more aggressive. He shoves forward, hand moulding back to the shape of Steve’s dick and squeezing insistently. “Nnn.”

A guttural sound of pleasure escapes Steve before he can cut it off, and then he’s on course correction. “O-okay bub,” he chokes out, gathering Bucky’s hands and guiding them away. “You know I can’t let you.”

Bucky whines mightily at being denied, rocking in his lap like a tantrum and trying to tug his hands free. His hips are jerking in tiny movements, and the strap support that’s under his thighs is definitely the only reason he’s not grinding directly against Steve’s crotch right now. “Nnn!” he whines, when he tries to tug his hands free and can’t. “Nnn!” He starts to get violent. He gets his hands free for a split second and manages to whack Steve upside the head before Steve regains control.

“Bucky,” he Voices, quiet but stern, “Stop. Don’t hit. I can’t let you touch my dick. You know that. It’s against the rules. Now stop. Alpha’ll be real mad if you don’t listen, right?” After Bucky finally tapers off and goes lax in surrender, Steve cautiously releases his hands. The omega grumbles unintelligibly and puts them on his shoulders instead of trying to get them anyplace Steve’s employment contract says they can’t be. His fingers curl hard at the bend of Steve’s neck and his nails do dig in a little meanly, but the point is he’s trying. Steve relaxes and praises him with a gentle, “Good job, baby. That was good listening.”

Bucky grunts a little more, and he seems to get his brain back online after a few more minutes pass by and he’s relaxed into Steve’s lap better. He doesn’t look as buzzed, looks like maybe he remembers most of the English language.

“You back with me?” Steve asks, when he notices him starting to try and hide his face in shame again.

Bucky nods, scrubbing his cheek on Steve’s shoulder. “Sorry,” he mumbles. “Didn’t mean to.”

“I know, sweetheart. You’re okay. You pulled out of that one real good. I’m proud of you.”

One of the things Bucky struggles with is the tantruming that he tends to shoot off into during or after release. ‘Excited Catatonia with Aggression’—Present in every edition of the DSM since III came out in the eighties. It’s somewhat like a heat frenzy, only with behaviors that can turn self-injurious and emotionally harmful in the blink of an eye. Steve is relieved that they were able to avert an episode this time. “Real good,” he repeats. “Have you been practicing your calm down techniques at home?”

Bucky squirms. “Mmn.”

“Use your words, bub.”

Bucky grumbles some more, and he keeps hiding against Steve’s shoulder, but eventually he does admit, “I do ‘em sometimes. … Sometimes in my room. At night.”

Steve feels his heart ping in with another dent. ‘At night’, he knows, just means when Bucky’s family won’t catch him doing it. When he won’t be shamed for rocking or sucking or stimming in some other way. Steve’ll never forget the first time he’d tried to send Bucky home with a few helpful items. The father had gone red in the face and dragged Bucky out the doors, and Steve had been unable to do anything but watch from the building’s west entrance as everything they’d given Bucky to take home with him was dumped right there in the parking lot.

Deep down, even way back then, Steve had known in his heart that Bucky wasn’t going to be able to stay with his family. Not if he was going to make it.

(And Steve really needs him to make it.)

“... Steve?” Bucky sounds shy and fatigued, which can happen when he’s fought off the emotional stress of a tantrum. “Can we stay here for just a little bit? Please?” He shuffles on his knees with a sniffle, pressing close for comfort. “Just for a little bit? You smell so good, and I don’t wanna leave yet.”

“Of course, sweetheart, yeah. We can do that. We can stay for as long as you want.” Steve really means it, because he knows he’s got to figure out a way to tell Bucky the bad news tonight. And Steve hates to think the worst of any patient, but he’s got a bad feeling that it’s not going to go over well at all. “Buck?” he prods gently, waiting until he knows the omega is paying attention. “Honey, can we talk a little bit?”

Maybe if he can get Bucky to talk it out, he thinks, get him to conclude on his own that going home isn’t the best option for him, then maybe Steve can present the change in custody as a choice. It’s wishful thinking, but he has to try. He doesn’t want to crush Bucky’s sense of self worth more than it already has been. Bucky already feels dejected and unloved, and knowing that his family has legally washed their hands of him isn’t something Steve wants him to have to deal with. It’s better if Steve can talk him around to the other side, make him ‘decide’ that he doesn’t want to go home to his family.

Steve knows Christina wouldn’t approve of the deception. And he knows if she found out, he’d be taken off Bucky’s case at best, professionally reprimanded at worst. He’d be considered compromised. And hey, maybe he is. Doesn’t mean he’s going to do things any different until somebody makes him. Bucky’s still his patient right now, and Steve is going to take care of him the way he thinks he needs. “So … um, I wanted to ask you about how things’ve been at home, lately.” Bucky tenses and Steve hushes him, bringing a hand up to cradle the back of his head and encourage him to press his face closer. Bucky takes the cue and snuffles into Steve’s neck, mouthing over the pulse point. Steve pats his back. “Has anybody been close with you?” he asks, near-pained because he thinks he already knows the answer. “Your mom maybe, or your brothers?” Bucky shakes his head and Steve feels awful. “Are you sure? Snuggling? Or, even just a hug when you need it? Some scenting?”

The last time Bucky had been admitted on-ward, the social services team had roped his folks into a session to try and better educate them on their son’s new special needs. Steve hadn’t been present—had been on vacation, of all things, Christ—but he’s heard that the parents did not appreciate the instruction, and they didn’t take any of the information to heart. Obviously.

“Mm mn,” Bucky’s saying, rubbing his mouth over Steve’s skin as he speaks. “I never ask. Don’t want ‘em to know. They’d just make fun’a me if I asked.”

Steve inhales sadly. “You need regular touch Bucky. Hugs, skin contact, lap time, something.”

“No,” he mumbles, sounding like the surly teenager he is. “You don’t get it.”

“Well explain it to me, then.”

“They’re totally ashamed of me. My dad hates me.”

Steve tuts. “I’m sure that’s not true, Honey. They may be uncomfortable about certain things—uneducated, or ill-equipped to help you. The counselors here have talked to you about it, haven’t they? You know: about how people can have implicit biases that they—”

“No!” Bucky gets angry and pulls away, sitting back on his knees and giving Steve a sharp look. “I’m embarrassing to them. They don’t want the neighbors to know! My brothers’ friends aren’t allowed to come over to our house to hang out anymore, so they hate me too, and just … Ugh! You just don’t get it, Steve. Not everybody believes like you guys do here. Lots of people just think that omegas are … they just think that we’re …”

“Honey,”

“Mm mn,” he sniffles, stubborn. “They think we’re useless, dumb. A waste of space.”

“That’s not true and you know it Bucky,” Steve says sternly.

“I don’t know shit,” he growls. “That’s how it is in the real world, Steve. And how’re they wrong, huh? I’m never going to be able to have a job, never gonna be able to take care of myself.”

“Bucky,” Steve pleads, concerned at the vitriol in Bucky’s voice. He should not be talking like this, and the fact that he is means that things at his home have been more abusive than Steve realized.

“—Just a waste of tax dollars. A drain on society. Waste of hardworking people’s tax dollars,”

“Stop.” Steve’s pissed when he Voices it, and it comes through loud and clear. Bucky shuts up right away. He blinks wide eyes at him, and Steve takes the opportunity to shut him down. “I don’t ever want to hear you talk like that again, Bucky,” he says, easing off from his Voice when he can see he’s gotten the kid’s attention. He puts his hands on Bucky’s hips and looks at him sternly. “There are people who think like your parents do, yes. But it’s not nearly the majority. I think you’re under the impression that a lot of people share those ugly beliefs.” He waits, and when Bucky says nothing to deny it, Steve huffs. “It’s not many. I’d say … ten percent of folks? Maybe fifteen, when there’s a Republican in the white house.”

“What? Really? …You’re not just saying that?”

Bucky looks slightly swayed. Bolstered, Steve pets his hands up and down Bucky’s sides, rucking the soft material of his tee shirt as he does it. “No, I’m not just saying that. Most people don’t think the way your folks do. Only assholes who watch Fox News parrot out the sort of vile shit you just did.” He raises a knowing eyebrow, daring Bucky to deny it. He’s met George Barnes a few times. He knows what type the man is. “You are just as important as any other person, Hon,” he promises, and when Bucky starts to sneer again, he’s struck by the distinct urge to smack him.

He digs his fingers in warningly at the boy’s waist. “Hey, listen to me, now.” Bucky stops sneering, and Steve sighs, trying to think of something he can say that’ll make Bucky realize he’s actually worth something. “Do you … Do you believe in God, honey?” he asks—not at all professional, but Steve’s gone past professional with Bucky for a while now, whether he wants to admit it or not. He’s heard Bucky make a few flippant comments in the past, about ‘God’ or ‘heaven’ or ‘prayers’ (usually in relation to morbid comments about wanting to die or off himself), so he’s taking a chance and going out on a limb here. “Hm?”

“God?” Bucky’s brow furrows. “I guess so. I mean my family never really goes to church except for—”

“I didn’t ask if you go to church,” Steve interrupts. “I asked if you believe in God, in one form or another.” He waits patiently for Bucky to answer him. When he does, it’s with a tiny nod and a mumbled,

“Yeah. I think so. … I do.”

Steve softens. “Okay then. Me too, by the way.” Bucky makes a weird face like he’s still unsure why Steve is talking about this, So Steve explains, “Think about it: Do you really think there’s any God out there who’d create a whole class of people that didn’t have a purpose? Ten percent of humanity that’s just a ‘stupid waste’?” He waits until Bucky makes a face in consideration. “Right. I’m Catholic, you know? My ma dragged my butt to mass every Sunday growing up. And I just wish you could’a heard the things I did, the things they preached. It was never ugly like what your folks’ve been telling you. Omegas are different from other people, but so are Alphas. Doesn’t mean we’re not just as good and important as anybody else. We just have different needs, and that’s okay.” He offers Bucky a cautious smile. “I mean, maybe it’s not a coincidence that we’re five and five of the population, huh?” He reaches up and cradles the side of Bucky’s face, tracing his cheekbone with the pad of a thumb. “It’s like somebody had this idea we’d be complimentary, or something.”

Bucky’s lips have parted, and he even smiles reluctantly at the soft teasing in Steve’s tone there at the end. He reaches up and covers Steve’s hand with his own. “I guess so,” he murmurs. “I mean, it kinda makes sense.”

“Mm.” Steve smirks. “It does.” He kisses his cheek and gives another little squeeze on his waist. “C’mon. Let’s go get cleaned up.”

Bucky is sullen at first when they exit the massage room, but when Steve makes it clear that he won’t be leaving Bucky’s side now that their lap time is over, the omega trails along happily enough. They wash up in the bathroom and change into clean clothes. Bucky doesn’t fuss at all when Steve helps him into a fresh diaper, but he does mumble, “I hate ‘em.”

Steve has just pulled up the soft fleece pants for Bucky. “Do you really? Or d’you just hate how embarrassed it makes you feel?”

Bucky chews his lip and doesn’t answer for a long minute, his lashes lowering and his cheeks darkening. “... The second one, I guess. Embarrassing.”

If you were my omega, Steve wants to say so badly. You’d never have to feel embarrassed about anything. Not for the rest of his life, because Steve would take care of him, make him feel like the treasure he is. Like he deserves. He licks his lips, overly emotional and trying not to let it show. “Hey,” he says softly, putting his hand over Bucky’s fleece-covered knee. “You know it’s a common thing, the wetting, right bub?”

Bucky nods sullenly. “I guess.” He’s still sitting on the changing table with his legs thrown over the side, and Steve steps forward to give him a hug. “Who’s ever gonna want to put up with me?” he says, and Steve’s heart just about fractures.

Me, he wants to say so badly, but he can’t. He holds the words back like bile in his mouth, hugs him tighter and says into his hair, “Lotsa people, Buck. There’s whole agencies devoted to helping omegas find their mates.”

“There are?”

“Of course. Half my job is making sure patients are set up to succeed in the world, once they get outta here.” He steps back and takes Bucky’s hand, and together they walk out of the bathroom and down the ward’s hallway. “That’s actually something you and I need to talk about.”

It’s dinnertime, so Steve walks them to the room where all the patients on C Hall eat their meals. He makes himself a coffee while Bucky goes to load up a tray with food from the line, then they sit together away from the other patients. Steve works up the nerve to have the conversation he’s been avoiding all day. “So,” he says. “When you get out of here,”

Bucky makes a face down at his tray of food. “Ugh.”

“Ugh?”

He shrugs. “I dunno. I hate thinking about going home. They’ll come and pick me up, be jerks all over again, till next time.” He stabs vindictively at the little pile of peas he’s got. “I know it’s crazy to want, but … sometimes I wish they’d never come back, that they’d magically just forget about me and I could stay here forever.”

“Aw, you don’t want to stay here forever,” Steve coaxes. “In a mental hospital?”

Bucky shrugs. “I’d rather be here with you then back home with them.”

God, Honey. You’ve got no idea how much I want to keep you. Steve tries not to get overeager, but this is a good start to the conversation they need to have, so he goes with it. “Yeah?” he prods. “I’ve always been able to tell your dad’s a bit of a prick, but things are that bad at home?” He wants Bucky to talk about the abuse, then they can segue into discussing healthier options. “Buck?”

Bucky avoids looking at him, poking around his food and making patterns in the mashed sweet potatoes with his fork. “... Nobody makes fun of me here,” he says quietly. “I’m allowed to relax and … and do what feels good.”

Christ. Steve grits his teeth and imagines beating George Barnes’ face to a pulp. “Yeah Honey,” he eventually croaks. “Yeah that’s how it should be. Always. The fact that your folks make you feel that way, that they treat you the way they do … It’s wrong. It’s abusive. So is the way they’re always dumping you here and yanking you out, using it as a punishment. You do realize that?”

Bucky glances up at him, but he shrugs. “I guess so,” he mumbles.

“No, not ‘I guess so’, it is,” Steve insists. He nods at Bucky's tray. “Stop playing with your food. Put a bite of that in your mouth.” Bucky’s eyes get a little wide at the command, and then he flushes and responds positively, listening to Steve and eating a forkful of potatoes. Steve feels a warm thrill of satisfaction at being obeyed. “Good boy,” he praises. “Look, Buck. I want to talk about your options for when you leave here. You do realize that I’ll help you, right? If you put in a petition on grounds of abuse, I’ll sign it. You could choose where you live. You wouldn’t have to go back to your parents’ place. In fact I don’t think you should. It sounds to me like they make you pretty miserable.”

“What?” Bucky looks surprised. “But where else would I go? I don’t have a job or any money.”

“That’s okay. You know the state puts money aside for omegas, right? We can get you set up with what you need.”

Bucky looks wary, but he nods. “Yeah. They talked about it in life skills class. Welfare programs.”

Steve supposes that’s the sort of thing George Barnes talks trash about at home. “Yeah,” he says encouragingly. “You can apply for an apartment and an income. It won’t be a lot, but it’d be enough to live off of. You’ll get medical, housing, heat support.” Bucky’s face goes scarlet at the mention of his heats, but Steve presses on. “And there are jobs out there for omegas who want to work. You just have to know where to look. Like this girl I know from my church? She got a job working at a childcare center. Told me she loves it.” Bucky’s brow is furrowed as he takes in all that Steve’s saying, and Steve holds his hand out over the table, palm up. ���C’mon, tell me what you're thinking.”

Bucky bites his lip but he does put his hand in Steve’s. “I don’t … I don’t know how to be on my own,” he admits. “I’m afraid. What if I mess up?”

“Oh, sweetheart.” Steve squeezes his hand. “You won’t mess anything up. You know, I have so many omega clients who do well. Almost everybody does, really, when they get out of here. And you wouldn’t be on your own. There’d be people helping you. You’d get a caretaker assigned from an agency. A good one.” He hates thinking of another alpha helping Bucky, scent marking his apartment and making him feel good. But that’s Steve’s problem, not Bucky’s. “Honey, I think your self esteem has taken such a huge hit from this when it didn’t really have to. Your folks have been saying nasty shit in your ears ever since you presented three years ago, and I’m sorry but that’s a damn shame. It’s fucked up.”

Bucky is looking at Steve like he can’t believe what he’s hearing, and Steve knows why. He’s never really cursed in front of Bucky before, and he’s certainly never verbally trashed the kid’s family. But Steve is fed up. He just spent the last hour helping the most beautiful, sweet omega through a release, and knowing that the poor thing is so mixed up about his gender because of his asshole family absolutely burns Steve up. He’s had enough. Bucky deserves to feel good about himself and have a good life. Steve gives his hand another supportive squeeze. “Hey, why don’t we sit down tomorrow and make a ‘what if’ plan, huh?”

“... What’s a ‘what if’ plan?”

Steve smiles gently. “It’s where we think up options for what you might do, where you might go, if you want something different when you get out of here.”

“Steve, I don’t … I don’t know.” Bucky looks down, face screwed up in worry. In a tiny voice, he admits, “I’m not sure I can really take care of myself. Not like this.” He says it so sadly, and Steve doesn’t know what ‘like this’ means, but he can make a few guesses. Across the table from him, Bucky is looking rather miserable. “My parents’ll probably be by any day now to pick me up, anyway.”

Steve cringes. He finally forces himself to say, “Well, that’s um, that’s not really going to happen, actually.”

“What?” Bucky’s wide, hurt eyes coming back up to lock on Steve don’t make this task any easier. “What do you mean?”

“Um, you see, your folks decided to sign a paper when they came by this last time, saying that they agree to relinquish custody.”

Bucky’s entire face falls in a way that absolutely breaks Steve’s heart. “Oh,” he says, voice tiny. “They got rid of me?”

“They signed over custody, baby. I think they finally realized that it was hurting you more than helping, so they agreed to let us take care of you from now on. They’re finally trying to do right by you.”

It’s a complete lie, Steve is pretty sure. He knows Bucky’s parents and he’s certain that nothing about the situation was done for Bucky’s benefit, only their own. The Barnes’ simply didn’t want to deal with their son’s needs anymore. But Steve is trying to put the best spin on this he can, for Bucky’s sake. “It’s going to be okay, Buck,” he promises. “I’m not going to let anything bad happen to you. You know that, right?”

Bucky’s already pulling into himself. He physically almost seems to shrink, shoulders hunching and arms tucking in. He nods at Steve’s question though, and he doesn’t rage or fit at the news that his family doesn’t want him anymore. “Yeah,” he says, voice dull. “I know.”

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[barkbarf]

helloooo thoughts on stancest? i have an idea that i’ve been thinking about but i’m too scared to write it as a fic in case the gf fanbase crucifies me - dogl1ke

Stancest isn't my very favorite - when it comes to GF ships, billford and dipford are still on top for me. But! I've seen lots of great stancest ideas and art that have been pretty enjoyable. I've drawn them together once, I think. My favorite flavor of stancest would be a one-sided thing, from Ford... A teen Ford (a late bloomer) struggling to come to terms with or understand his own queerness, and shamefully stumbling into thoughts about the one guy he has a genuine bond/closeness to. He's disgusted with himself and has no clue how to cope - then it can really go anywhere from that point. (My personal favored ending to this is him bottling it up for years until he begins to project onto/take it out on Dipper...) I really love Ford, and while I love Stan as well, I see Ford as more the type to have the taboo fantasies and feel all the shame and all that gross angsty stuff. When it comes to sexual stuff, Stan strikes me as a go-with-the-flow kinda guy who is... ultimately vanilla, by my standards lol. This all is just my personal ideas and what I get out of that pairing, though, so I'd love to hear your ideas/what you like about the ship!

And, about being scared to write your fic, please don't be! Write whatever you like! Utilize the block and delete buttons to your advantage, as often as possible. It's not worth it to chop yourself into the smallest possible bite-size pieces in hopes of being digestible to the whole fandom. There's plenty of stancest fans out there - I've been in the fandom for a long long time and have seen tons of content for it. And, yknow, if people have any brains, they'll avoid your stuff if it's not their cup of tea. Good luck out there!

[frownyalfred]

Hello! Your fic "good in red" where Bruce finds Clark drenched in blood at the batcave, did remind me of a particular train of thought I had a while ago. It was about how Clark or any kryptonian with hyper-efficient senses, would react to sensory deprivation. Especially how he'd react to sensory deprivation tanks? I thought during his initial years when his powers were developing and fluctuating, he would love the idea considering it was very overwhelming to him at the beginning.

However I thought hypothetically if he were to try one, he'd go through a real bad panic attack and dissociate. Considering he's used to feeling, hearing and seeing too much all at once, the complete absence of sensory input would push him into a bad headspace and put his mind on a overdrive. Coupled with his issues and guilt complex, the idea of missing any call for help while being in the tank would make him feel tense and paranoid the whole time, defeating the whole purpose of being in a sensory deprivation tank. Maybe for a Kryptonian under a yellow sun, a sensory deprivation tank would serve the exact opposite effect of what it would help a normal human achieve ( you know like peace of mind, tranquil? a break from overstimulation and anxiety)

But BUT what if, he uses it as unhealthy coping mechanism? For instance, what if Clark in your fic, instead of going to Bruce, goes to the Fortress and just enters the sensory deprivation tank he probably redesigned from one of those cryostasis chamber with the help of the kryptonian AI there? What if he does this at times when a mission goes downhill and he just doesn't want to feel anything at all after being overwhelmed by the agony and despair of the aftermath? I had this image of him entering a sensory deprivation tank all bloody, inspired by your fic? Bruce who comes to find Clark after receiving only radio silence from him even when he called for him, only to follow the trails of blood to find him floating in a tank also stained red with all the blood, jumping to the worst conclusion in the opposite end of the spectrum unlike your fic. How Bruce would help Clark come back then? After all, there's a reason they don't let humans in those tanks for too long. Can you imagine how bad of a headspace Clark would be in after locking himself in for hours? Would Clark even become catatonic for some time?

Seeing how much it affects Clark, would Bruce think about looking up sensory deprivation for kryptonians in more detail from the point of using it as a contingency? Would he be disgusted to think of it seeing how badly Clark was affected and yet he can't exactly dismiss the idea considering if any kryptonian went rogue, he'd need as many aces up his sleeve as possible to be able to find a way to defeat them. And the potential of a sensory deprivation tank utilized as a cage, eliminates the probability of him having to use lethal means. And even if Clark or any rogue kryptonian escapes, they'd be instantly overwhelmed and in extreme scenarios even become catatonic from the sudden influx of sensations. It gives him time to strike once again. All this information obviously needs to be saved for references and contingencies, even if it makes Bruce nauseous. He probably has nightmares of Clark begging him not to put into the tank, not again please and wakes up from drenched in sweat.

Sorry this got too long! I was just so excited and wants to blabber about it to someone! I loved that fic of yours btw! Whump you write always ends up too good to be just read and left at it! Anyways have a good day or night! (Sorry if there's any errors 😅 it's like 2am)

agh, this is an amazing take and I agree 100%. I almost -- really -- want to write a second chapter/remix of the fic now where this happens, because I agree -- it's absolutely in character for Clark and Bruce would have a trial on his hands, bringing him back from the edge.

Plus, the visual of Clark slowly lowering himself into the deprivation tank -- sobbing and covered in blood that slowly sloughs off him in the perfectly-neutral water -- compels me.

god he would be so sad *clenches fists*

[namazunomegami]

ahhh sorry, the heatwave fic i meant was the fic you reblogged, that three-part one, "affection's edge". i only saw it because i was following you, and when i realized you were the one who reblogged it i was like "this is the SAME BRAND",, same brain cell

i think i read your "into the void" fic on ao3 before i found you on tumblr... that's happened to me a lot in this fandom. but i am suuuch a sucker for the religious allegories. "your serpent will always think it was right to bite" just hits absolutely diff.

geto is basically moral imperatives: the character. he goes full genocide and he sounds so calm and rational and legitimately?? healed??? by the decision?? he can believably be so many things because he's figured out the magnet hack with the moral compass baby.

it's really fun hearing about the backstory for the reader in that fic, too! the sheer utility value of having cursed energy gps, especially for geto who eats curses... and god. teen geto was a very sensitive and perceptive person who read others super well. he really was!

every idea i have lately has turned into this multichapter saga shdflkshdg it KILLS me but it's so fun thinking of backstories and abilities and how they could tie into their relationships with the characters!

i hope both of us can finish some wip someday,,, jhfgksdhg the struggle is SO REAL. but one day!

OH YOU MEANT CIELO'S FIC??

Now, I get it, I'm sorry for rambling about my Yuta fic lmao.

I love Cielo's works and the way she writes Geto. If I want a bit of inspiration or when I'm struggling with my own fics, I always visit her blog and read her stuff. I think we both like to characterize him as a kind of twisted caretaker but her Geto is a bit more playful than mine, and more upfront about his awful antics against the reader. And I absolutely love it! 💕

Yeah, I like religious symbolism a lot too, I can get my own religious trauma out of my system so I guess it's both beneficial to me and my audience too lol. But that part you're quoting from my fic is actually a little symbolistic tale about victims of abuse and their relationship to their abuser. The story is about that sometimes it's futile to make your abuser admit to the damage they caused and instead, you should focus on yourself and your healing. But it sounded kinda cool so I took it and reworked it a bit to fit into the narrative.

I like writing backstories for the readers even if I don't include it in the fic. But it actually helps a lot to have an idea about them, what kind of environment they come from, what they bring into the dynamic and why etc. It's easier to handle the dynamic if I have a general idea about how they got together with the character, what makes them attached to each other and stuff. Maybe I do this because I've been writing a lot of OC x canon stuff where you must establish the background of your character, make them fit into the canon and well... make it make sense why the character is into your OC.

I'm trying my best to restrain myself and not to start yapping about the dynamic of jjk OC and Geto because... oh boy... I do love to talk about my imaginary babies.

I really like that idea! It makes so much sense for Geto bringing reader to track down curses so he can add them to his collection. Cute date idea! But honestly, I came up with reader's technique when I was half-way done with the first part, completely out of the blue. But I do remember there was a headcannon post about how different cursed techniques reveal something crucial/sensitive about the character or how they can be interpreted as a coping/defense mechanism and that post probably influenced me a little bit.

And like... I don't want to spoil my own fics, but in the dilf!Geto fic, reader's curse technique kinda similar to his technique but it's not like curse manipulation 2.0. Similarities are important in this dynamic I can tell this much.

I was also a member of the multichapter madness gang but I got frustrated that I can't complete any one of them. I still have a Jerome Valeska fic, I love it with all my heart, it's packed with so much dark content but it still needs 8 chapters to be wrapped up (the whole fic is 26 chapters long with the unwritten ones). Aaaand I published the first chapter in 2021 so it deserves a rewrite too. I would rather write a really long one shot with lot of exposition and buildup to have higher chance of finishing it in the future. I mostly just keep the details, the fun facts and the backstories to myself, hoping for somebody like you to share them 💕

[mannatea]

This is about the post you made asking to send you questions about fanfic tropes! I'm excited, fanfic tropes are so interesting to me!

How do you feel about kidfics/pregnancy fics? I feel like that's a controversial one. Personally, it's a squick for me, but I'm always interested in hearing differing opinions!

Angst/torture is also a controversial one despite its popularity. I really like angst a lot but I will admit that there are some fics that drew out torture scenes a little too much for my taste.

What about fix-it fics? I'm fine with this one, I think it's completely subjective and depends on the fic. I've seen fix-it fics where I've loved the source material's ending, and other times, it can save a fandom from a terrible ending.

Finally, how about miscommunication? This is another controversial trope and most people will agree that it's a result of lazy writing. How about you? Do you think that miscommunication can be utilized well or do you think it's always a cop-out?

I apologize if I ended up asking too many questions! I'm really interested in your opinions when it comes to fic writing!

Send me a fanfiction trope and/or fanfic AU and I'll talk about my opinion(s) on it!

These are some great ones, thank you for sending them! 🙏 Even though some of these are sort of listed together I've broken them up into separate tropes because I feel like the nuance of their differences can and does sometimes matter to readers!

Kidfics: I have so many opinions about kidfic. I don't even know where to start. I feel like I could record a one hour long essay on this alone because there are so many subcategories of this trope and I feel a little bit differently about each one. I guess if you want me to expand on anything, feel free to ask. 🤣

I hate fankids. I just...do not like them as a general rule. No offense toward people who have fankids for their favorite blorbos, or even love the concept of fankids, but that specific subgenre just ain't for me.

I'm ambivalent toward stories that are like "the characters are married with kids and this story is about them as a family." These can be really fun stories but it depends a lot to me on the canon, the characters, and their kids—the "family dynamic" if you will. Sometimes this hits right and sometimes it's a huge miss. I feel like if the children are canon children this has a higher chance of hittig the mark, though.

I'm excessively picky about characters and characterization with kidfics because there are some characters I can't stand seeing written as a parent (usually because I find the portrayal chosen for them in that role as OOC). Have I written these characters as parents anyway? Yes, and I regretti spaghetti that choice.

Related to the above: I tend to not read many kidsfics because I just hate how the kids are written or how the parents are written in relation to their own children. (See: Single Parent AUs where the kids are LITERALLY NOTHING MORE THAN A PLOT DEVICE FOR ROMANCE! 🤮)

I'm obsessed with adoption storylines. It's a personal fave. Am I coping with something? Um...maybe. I was literally planning some bullshit about this yesterday wrt Regal.

I also like "oops there's a baby now" stories, but only as a writer (I don't trust others to write my blorbos in these situations).

Generally speaking I like to write child characters, but they HAVE to have a real place in the story and they have to have a believable and reasonable impact on the characters. Like, they're children but they're still characters and should be treated as such. This can be difficult as a writer because you're more or less creating a whole new character, but it's imperative that this be done properly or you end up with characters who feel more like table decorations than people...and nobody wants to read about that.

Lastly, I also very much believe in talking/discussing/exploring the negative (and neutral!) components of parenthood. I like including things like PPD, regrets, characters feeling overwhelmed in their role as parent, parents who need to get to know their kids as people to form a close bond to them, the stresses of work/home balance, and so on. I feel like this is just a very safe environment to talk about those things.

Pregnancy fics: I love writing them but I don't love reading them. I feel like too many authors have obviously never been pregnant or have never been around a pregnant person, and I tend to find those stories hard to read. They also tend to just skip talking about topics that are difficult, and lean into how cutesy pregnancy is (+ morning sickness weeee), which makes me want to shrivel up and die.

There's nothing wrong with liking that, and certainly nothing wrong with writing it, but it's not for me. I tend to lean into more complicated feelings about pregnancy and birth, and I think this might also be related to the fact that I tend to lean into characters who would also by default have complicated feelings about these things.

I think I'm mostly here to just explore how such a big life-changing event might impact a character/characters, not so much for the miracle of birth.

Angst: Used to really love writing angst, and I still do like using it in longer-form stories. That like sad heavy introspection thing is definitely right up my alley, though these days I tend to not write a lot of angst for its own sake. I like it to be mixed in with hurt/comfort and happy endings lmao.

Torture: Very much not up my alley if we're talking literal torture of a character. If we're talking about a more broad "blorbo torture" (i.e., putting guys in Situations That Suck), then sign me up. My stupid ass loves putting guys in situations. I do think this can be taken too far though, and then it becomes unfun to read (and I am not here for what is essentially torture-porn).

Fix-it fics: People who write fix-it fics are braver than any US Marine. I'm generally too lazy to write them myself but I will spew 3,000-word-long essays on how to fix a terrible tv show plot at my poor unsuspecting and innocent friends on Discord.

Miscommunication: Real life is full of dumbass miscommunication on the daily. I don't think it's unreasonable to use it in a fic, but it does have a tendency to feel quite dull sometimes, and I personally won't use it as a writer unless the miscommunication makes a lot of particular sense (and usually has some component of intention to it).

To explain that last point a bit better, I feel like the best "miscommunication" in a story relates to intentionally poor communication, rather than a misinterpretation of something someone said, or a misunderstanding regarding a situation.

The reason I feel this way is because miscommunication is used too often for great dramatic effect, when I think it serves its role best as a quieter sort of drama. People can and do misinterpret one another all the time, and they do leap to conclusions and suffer a misunderstanding, but if these things are done even a little wrong they just feel like cheap drama. Miscommunication that feels more subtle tends to not fall to pieces in the event that the author fails to present it perfectly.

As an example, the RP I'm doing now has my blorbos in a pretty bad situation. Tethe'alla has turned on them in the wake of a tragic event and they've been forced to flee under very poor circumstances and go into hiding. They've chosen to pass this time (that they both know could be years and years) posing as a married couple in a small town in Sylvarant, because it's pretty much the only way they can live in society without looking suspicious...and they very much need to be in society to stay up on what's happening in the world. They're both hiding a lot from the other but it's very intentionally done. They haven't had the time or space to process ANYTHING they've been through, yet. Naturally this lack of communication will cause problems later, but when it does it should feel like a natural progression of their lives and lived experiences—not something done for easy and cheap drama.

<3

[princessrainbowpastel]

google docs is only popular with fic writers because it's popular, full stop, because it's a free cloud storage text editor connected to your email because google is omnipresent. the data from this poll has not been adjusted to reflect this and should not be taken as representative of google docs's actual quality or utility.

i have literally never written anything in google docs that did not get extremely laggy with every keystroke the moment i hit more than like 5 pages. using an entirely offline text editor is always going to be superior on that front.

google docs's utility in fic writing comes from the ability to share the doc and edit it between multiple people; this is only necessary as an actual text editor if you're drafting and writing a fic with multiple people. if it's just to give to a beta reader to look over, you can just as easily write it in another offline text editor and then copy and paste it into a doc when you're done. that way you get google docs's commenting function that's the real appeal for fic writers without having to cope with the fact that it's a terrible text editor.

also i still hold a grudge against them for splitting up the controls for inserting and editing a table

Oh dang, I didn’t realize that. I mainly had to use Microsoft word back in high school when making reports or essays or whatever, but sometimes I did use Google docs and it worked pretty well. A little tricky to use than Microsoft word, but still good.

But I’m glad you told me that! Honestly if I didn’t have to pay for it I’d totally use Microsoft word more (maybe, it’s that’s still more complicated and a tad laggy than using the notes app lol). I believe it was free to use on apple devices so I had to use my iPad and a bluetooth keyboard as a laptop back in high school in order to properly write assignments, but I have no idea if that’s changed and you have to pay for it on apple too lol.

But yeah I didn’t even think about co-writers/group writers and beta readers/writers lol. I guess that would definitely be a good platform for sharing fics for that kinda stuff lol.

[beelmons]

Escapade 3

Pairing: Spencer Reid x f!reader Rating: Explicit, readers under 18 are not advised to read this story.   Tags: smut, best friends to lovers, possible angst at some point, porn with plot, mentions of weapons, minor OC appeareances for plot purposes, mentions of death for plot purposes, unprotected sex, mentions of philias, fingering female receiving  Summary: The stress of the job can take a toll on one's mind and body, and as your friend Spencer and you come to realize: there're many fun ways to cope up with it.

Chapters: 1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5

A/N: You have no idea the amount of odd things i have had to research for this fic to make sense. Let me know what you think.

After your first affair, you managed to score two more times with him. The second time happened under the same conditions as the first, late night at the bar, he was the one to walk you home, you invited him in, and the rest was history. The third time, though, got more complicated; it was right before a flight, when JJ told you to “grab your go-bag”, you thought it was a great excuse to slip away for a couple of minutes with your little lover boy, and the fact that he had had the same idea did not help the cause. “Let’s do the thing” he texted you as soon as your liaison finished giving the order. You barely made it to the flight, messy and restless, and of course the focus was all over the two of you.

Somehow, don’t ask me why, you managed to sell the story that you had forgotten to update your bag and the clothes you had in there were dirty from the last mission. Kind as he was, Reid had offered to drive you to your apartment and help you pack your gear. You weren’t sure if the team had bought it, but the briefing needed to be done and they were not about to lose time snooping in your private lives. After that close call, you agreed to profile each other afterwards, trying to see anything your coworkers would be able to see that could give you away.

Fast forward to the utility closet escapade. It had been the day after a very tough case, you could see in his troubled face that it was hitting him hard, he was as stressed as ever. He blew you off the night before and you decided to give him space, you cared for him after all. The morning of the affair, you got the text around 10:00am. “Let’s do the thing” once again, it sounded ridiculous, but it made you feel the excitement you had long forgotten, ever since you got this job.

Days went by and the opportunity didn’t present itself. The office had been crazy with paperwork and research students, and the university tour Hotch had warned you about before. Thankfully, or not, the event was interrupted by an urgent case. It took you to Missouri, some small town which name you didn’t manage to register; the place in where you stayed could barely be called a hotel, and the beds were so small your boss had to resort to giving you all individual rooms, he also ordered each agent to review the case on their own before the meeting in the morning, so you were stuck by yourself for the night.

Unsatisfied with being alone with such a horrific case, yet another sexual sadist, you decided to take a walk. Unlucky you, the desk clerk was doing his night rounds around the halls. He was a creepy man, young nonetheless, that kept throwing flirtatious, unwanted jokes at you, and Prentiss, and JJ, and any woman that moved. At any other time, you would have suspected him as a possible killer if it weren’t for the airtight alibi Emily had corroborated earlier.

— My, my, what do we have here? — he said suggestively —Can’t sleep?

You were standing in front of another room, which you prayed would be Prentiss’s and she would come out any second to rescue you.  

— When you see what we see, sleep is not really something you enjoy. —you answered dryly.

— Well, care for some company? I’m Steven. —he offered a hand to shake, which you did making sure it would only be understood as a formality.

— Actually, we’re not supposed to interact with subjects of the investigation.

— I was cleared, though, plus no one is awake right now. —he kept pushing— The staff room is just around the back. I have some coffee and snacks if you want to hang out.

You were about to knee him in the stomach, couldn’t men just take the hint? You were fidgeting with your fingers, trying to hold back the feelings of anger and disgust rumbling inside you, but before you were able to give into your not-so-pacific solution the opening of the door beside you robbed your attention from Steven to someone else.

— Hey, what are you doing here? —Spencer said as he stood beside you, his body still half way inside his room— I was just going to go get you, I need your insight on something I noticed about the UnSub.

Your eyes found each other for a second and you shot him the most thankful yet pleading look he had ever seen on your face.

— Hey, man, we’re kind of in the middle of something here. — Steven interrupted with a confidence that was making you even angrier.

— Oh, sorry. —Spencer apologized almost offendedly— I just thought you might want us to catch the serial killer around here.

— You know what? I’m sorry Steven. —you turned to the odd man and squeezed his shoulder reassuringly— We are just short on time and, for your safety, it’s better that we solve this soon.  —your body then turned to face Reid and you took the folder he was holding in his hands as you walked past him into his room.

There was an awkward exchange of glances between the two men remaining on the hallway. Unable to take the tension in the air, Reid slid back behind the door and shut it closed. Before he could say anything, and he really wanted to, you tackled him into a sincere but quick hug, to which he responded loosely.

— What was that for? —he asked with a small smile on his face.

— Dude, you just saved me from an insanely awkward situation. I swear to God, men sometimes don’t know how to take a hint. —without wanting to go over the topic any further you took a seat on one of the chairs by the coffee table that had file documents scattered all over— So, what did you want to ask me?

— Right. —he said as if he had snapped back to reality— I’ve been checking victimology trying to find a pattern, and I don’t know if there’s something here, but all of victims had a diagnosed phobia of balloons.

— Globophobia? —you asked confusedly.

— They found traces of balloon material in the last victim, maybe a support group for people with globophobia could be the connection.

— Most people who develop globophobia in early their years actually evolve to develop globophilia, arousal from balloons. You know, —you continued as he looked at you expectantly— support groups for odd phobias are a lot less common than fetish communities for odd philias.

— You think he’s targeting people with attraction to balloons?

— He could even be a balloon fetishist himself.

— Worth the shot of presenting it to the team in the morning. —he reassured your theory.

— If you don’t mind, can I stay the night? I really don’t want to try and go back to my room with little Steven doing rounds.

— Sure —he said lightheartedly. There was a small pause on his side, which you thought was the end of the conversation until he started up again— Listen, I don’t mean to sound like Morgan, but nothing can happen tonight, we really just have six hours to go through everything I can find on balloon fetishists, and we should really focus.

— Excuse me? —you said, pretending to be offended— Calm down, stud, I think we can exist in the same area for a few hours without fucking.

He stuttered incoherently before a smile from you calmed his tension. You continued to rummage through the papers together in utter silence, occasionally exchanging a “this is interesting” before highlighting a piece of information. Nothing else seemed to be indicating a connection, the clock was ticking, and the case just seemed to be redundant, the same theories generating over and over again.

— Can I ask you something? —his question put an end to the silence in the room.

— Sure —you said loosely, your eyes still fixed on the document in your hands.

— Am I good in bed?

— What? —the oddness and bluntness of the question made your attention snap back to your partner— I thought you only had six hours to learn everything you needed about balloon fetishists, and you should really focus.

— Sorry. —he said as he went back to looking at the file in front of him— Most sexual sadists end up with a misconception of sexual release because, at some point, they discover they are inappropriate or insufficient in bed.

— You can’t be thinking you are insufficient in bed, can you? — His eyes met you once again, lips pursed in embarrassment, and he shrugged at the question. At this sight, you threw the papers you were holding somewhere onto the coffee table— Okay, honest talk, I always have fun with you, but, sometimes, I’m the one who gets worried about how tense you look whenever I’m getting you off.

— But that has nothing to do with your skill, or mine for that matter, I just, I never really know what to do with myself when I’m receiving… —he made a pause, as if trying to find out the right words —receiving fellatio.

— First of all, it’s weird that you call it by its roman name. —you joked— this is what I’m talking about, you don’t know what to do because you overthink.

— I overthink because I want you to feel good, isn’t that the point? So, I don’t really want to do something that will make you uncomfortable.

— I mean, yeah, that’s great, and I really, really appreciate it, but for you to feel good is also the goal, the whole point of sex is that both parties are enjoying themselves. Going with what you feel is right or pleasurable for you is also valid and can be pretty fun for your partner as well, it’s nice to let go of control every once in a while. Plus, —your tone had turned softer— if you want to do something you’re not sure I will like, just ask me. I would tell you if there was something I didn’t want to do.

— But you have never said no to anything before.

— Well, —you crossed your arms over your chest, almost trying to hide the shyness that your next statement was generating in you— so far, everything you’ve done, I have enjoyed.

You could see a soft smile draw on his face. He deserved the praise he was getting; Spencer was a gentleman in and outside the sheets, he was caring, compassionate, and attentive, it was about time you did something to pay back the years of having your back without thinking twice, and if teaching him how to relax with a woman was going to do it, then so was it. You decided to stand from your seat to sit on the carpeted floor, next to the coffee table you were working on, and patted the spot beside you, inviting him to seat with you.

— What are you doing? —he asked with incredulity as he accepted your invitation and joined you on the floor.

— Relax, I won’t break your stupid rule, and you will get back to the balloon fetishists soon. We are just going to do a little exercise, I want you to close your eyes, and listen to my instructions, got it? —you watched amusedly as he, so naively, obeyed your commands— I want you to picture a woman, okay? Someone you really, really like, she’s standing in front of you. Now, imagine she has just agreed to spend the night with you, and she said that you can do whatever you want to her. What do you do first?

— I… —you could tell your questioning was making him nervous— I ask her if she’s really sure.

— No, Reid, God! —you complained— She already told you she is sure, she wouldn’t be doing so if she weren’t, unless you had taken her by force. Did you take her by force, Reid?

— Of course not!

— Then, she’s sure. Focus again, she gets closer to you, what do you do first?

— I really want to kiss her.

— Good, good, go ahead, you are kissing her, and you can tell she wants more. Don’t think about what’s right or wrong, if something’s off she will tell you, think about what you want to do, what you want to feel on her, or on yourself.

— I really want her to moan out my name.

— My, now that’s a challenge. —you said teasingly— How do are you going to make her do that?

— My hands… —he paused for a second, and you were enjoying, a bit too much, the way his fingers trembled, and his eyes moved from side to side covered by his eyelids—I put them on her waist, but that’s not where I want them to be, so I move them to her ass. I’m kissing her neck, instead, she tastes so good.

— Okay, go on, Reid, remember you can do whatever you want. —your voice had begun to lower, you were trying to encourage him to continue, not trying to pull him out of the fantasy.

— There’s a wall, and I want her up against it. She’s still facing me, though, and I can start feeling her front. I want to go lower, her underwear is in the way, but maybe it should remain like that, I want to feel her wetness in around my fingers, to have her clench around me so hard, that all she can think about is me…

You had begun to feel flustered; you figured the fantasy wasn’t about you, even if, for a second, you wished it was. You decided to clear your throat to snap him out of his daydream, you had promised you would work the case, after all, and you didn’t need the urge of being under him boiling into your skin. You diverted your gaze as he opened his eyes.

— Lucky lady. —you said in a neutral tone.

Spencer was barely able to gather his thoughts once he laid his eyes on you. You were wearing simple pajama pants and a t-shirt, and you had completely forgotten that you weren’t wearing a bra. This last fact, though, didn’t go unnoticed by Reid. He could see in the way your nipples were perked up that you were at least intrigued by the scenario you had induced into his brain. To your great surprise, he didn’t say anything, instead, in a quick motion, he grabbed you by the shoulders and pushed you back gently until you hit the floor, he crawled until both hands were on the floor by each side of your head, basically pinning you down against it. Before you were even able to react, his lips were tasting the area of your jawline, a couple of nibbles being left on the skin as he kissed with hunger. You couldn’t help the whimper that left your lips, your hands, that had remained stiff up to now, wrapped around his back, trying to keep his body closer to yours.

He moved from your jaw to your ear, his tongue worked wonders on your earlobe, causing a shock of arousal to run across your body. Your lower bottom was looking for friction, so you tried to grind against the thigh that had been placed in between your legs. As he felt your movement, one of his hands travelled down to stop the motion of your hips, pushing them against the carpet once again. Astonished by his actions, you moved your head away so he was forced to look at your questioning face; he answered with a mischievous smile, and lowered himself once again to whisper into your ear.

— Relax, I will show you what I do to unwind.

He continued to taste every bit of you around the area of neck, and the only thing that could help you shake the feeling that you had heard those words before off was the sensation of his hand sliding under your pants. His slender fingers moved curiously across your slit, trying to get a sense of how lubricated you were, safe to say if he were to fuck you there and then, you were more than ready to go down. His middle finger began to circle around your nub, and your hand traveled to his hair in response; you couldn’t help but to tug on it instinctively. You heard him chuckle under his breath; he was enjoying seeing you so desperate, with your eyes tight shut, being able to focus only on him.

— You just fantasized about another woman, and yet you are here with your hands down my pants, you sure are a playboy, Dr. Reid.

Your sentence came out in between heavy breaths. You didn’t have an answer on his part, instead, his finger moved lower to slowly insert it in you. Yes, that was enough to shut you up, in a sense. The loud sound of pleasure that your throat emitted gave him the validation that he needed to keep going, he thrusted it, slowly at first, trying to get a hold of what you enjoyed. You could feel the finger curling, up, to the sides, down, whatever direction he could, he was exploring with the determination to find what made you squirm, and, at last, he found it.

Your grip on his hair grew tighter with every stroke of his fingertip, your toes curling upwards, just trying to contain the sounds that were dying to get out. A part of you was enraged about the fact that he had gotten turned on at the thought of someone else, and you were probably just an outlet for those urges. Petty as you could be, you did your best to contain your moans, you were not going to give him the satisfaction of seeing what he could do to you with just his hand, while he fantasized about God-knows-who. Though, you were not being very successful at your plan, soft whimpers kept slipping past your lips as he continued to move at a steady pace, the bottom part of his palm was purposedly pushing against the area of your nub, making sure it was not being neglected.

He began to feel you squirm more desperately, and the walls of your insides getting tighter around his fingers. He finally took a breather from devouring every piece of skin he could get access to, limited by the t-shirt you were still wearing, and fixed his gaze on your face instead. You opened your eyes at the loss of him, your hand still unwavering on his hair; he made sure not to stop the rhythm he had established with his finger and as your climax reached you couldn’t help but to moan out, quietly, his last name.

You laid tiredly against the floor, still a bit pissed at how the situation had unraveled but filled with bliss and relaxation. You sure had a clear mind now to work on the case. Spencer stood back up with ease and offered a hand, the clean one, to help you up.

— I have to, uh… —he made a motion with his hands as if he were washing them

— Sure, sure.

You watched him slide into the small bathroom in the room and heard the faucet open. In your head, the plans on how you were going to get back at him had already began to form. He thought he could just finger you in the middle of the night and get away with it? You were sure he was hard underneath his pajama pants, you had seen how immersed he was in his fantasy, after all.

Your train of thought was abruptly stopped by the most intrusive sound there is: a knock on the door. The was panic in your eyes as you looked at the closed piece of wood, and Reid’s face, as he jumped out of the bathroom, was mirroring your expression.

— Who is it? — Spencer yelled from his place.

— It’s me, kid, sorry, were you asleep? —you could hear Derek’s voice on the other side.

— No, we were just going over the case —The young doctor skipped clumsily in your direction as he replied and looked you over, you did the same, you were trying to see if there was anything out of character, but you hadn’t come up with any sort of story, there was nothing to match, how you were going to sell the idea? Relax. It’s normal for you to visit each other during trips, it helps you bounce ideas around, it was okay, there was no reason to suspect. —Coming! —he yelled once again. By the time he opened the door, you were already back onto your chair pretending to be buried on a random victim file.

— Hey, what’s the matter? —you heard him ask your coworker.

— Sorry to bother you, I just couldn’t sleep, something about this case, man, it’s making me really uneasy.

— Yeah, we were reviewing the files to find a pattern, and we think it gets even creepier.

— Now, this is the second time you said “we”.

— Oh! —Spencer moved out of the way for Derek to catch a glimpse of the room, seeing you sitting on one of the chairs.

— Hey, I didn’t mean to interrupt… —he said apologetically, not with his usual teasing tone.

— You’re not interrupting, we were just working. Want to join us?

Morgan seemed to have a little bit of doubt about staying; he didn’t want to think he was cockblocking one of his best friends, specially when he needed to get laid the most, although, upon further inspection and seeing pictures of corpses laid all over the apartment, he didn’t perceive anything romantic about the set up, and so he decided to enter, to Reid’s disappointment.

— And how did you end up here? —he said with a smile as he caressed your shoulder in a friendly manner.

— Ugh! —you complained— I couldn’t sleep, so I went for a short walk, and Steven McCreepy down there had me cornered down the hall. Dr. Reid here actually saved me from him.

— I just happened to walk outside, I didn’t really do anything.

— Learn how to take a compliment, kid. —Morgan said as he patted his shoulder— Now, why don’t you walk me through what you already have.

You briefed him on the whole balloon theory, and he seemed as horrified as both of you were in the moment. The night continued with a very focused group of profilers, and Spencer was able to finally go back to learning about globophiliacs. Your eyes were starting to feel tired because of the lateness, and even though Reid did seem like being able to go on until sunrise, both Morgan and you had begun to feel the strain.

— Okay, we’ve made good progress, but I think I’m going to call it a night. —Derek interrupted the session first.

— I’m beat, too. —you joined.

— I doubt Steven is still going around at two in the morning, but do you want me to walk you to your room? —the offer from Morgan caught Reid’s attention, and your eyes met for a couple of seconds. It was a no-brainer, though, you didn’t have any real reason, or excuse, to be staying in your partner’s room for the night, and finding one was just going to add to the suspicion Derek already had.

— Sure, thanks. —you answered.

The blond man remained quiet as he accompanied the two of you to the entrance of his room and waved with an apathic “good night” before shutting himself inside. Morgan kept to his offer and walked all the way back to the room assigned to you, most of the trip had been in silence, both being too tired and overwhelmed by the case to discuss it any further. You took your key and unlocked the door once you were finally by it, but before you were able to enter, his voice stopped you.

— Hey, I really need to ask you something. —he said with tenderness in his voice, and you turned back to be facing him instead.

— Okay, what is it?

— Is something going on between you and Reid? —he blurted out.

The question did take you by surprise, but you kept your expressions at bay, only furrowing your brows in confusion.

— Why do you ask? Jealous? —you joked. His expression and lack of laughter, however, showed you that his concern was genuine, and he was not looking to kid around.

— You know the rules about fraternization.

— You are the one to talk. —you answered with a snark.

— Okay, screw the rules about fraternization —he finally seemed to loosen up a bit— I just don’t want you or him to get into something you won’t be able to get out of. Look at Hotch, and Rossi, this is not a job that allows for a happily ever after.

— Thank you for your concern, Derek, I really appreciate you looking out for me, and I know how much you care about Reid, too —you took a couple steps forward and laid your hands on his shoulders— but I promise, nothing is going on. We are good friends, that’s where it ends.

Your eyes fixated on his, and, for a second, you felt the guilt bubble inside you. Was it worth it? To be lying to your friends, the people who loved you, to jeopardize a sincere friendship, and even your job, for some casual sex, was it worth it? You didn’t want to think about that anymore, moreover, it wasn’t only your decision. If Reid wanted to stop it, too, he would have already. That’s what you told yourself to calm down the burning sensation of what you thought was an innocent lie, even if you knew otherwise.

— Alright, I’ll take your word for it. —he shot you that signature smile of his— Good night, sweet lips.

He made sure you locked your door before he headed back to his own room. It suddenly hit you, the weight of what you were doing, and the recklessness of your will to do it again. If you could only stop thinking about Reid on your body at every waking second, maybe things would go back to normal.

If.

[ofieugogyshz]

🖊️🖊️ one for your husband and one for any of your kids!!

okay so the original meme is buried somewhere in my blog, but i very distinctly recall this one being something to do with favorite f/o quotes and talking/gushing about them?

even if it wasn’t that latter part, that’s what i’m doing, because i’ve had it on my mind for the last several times (”times for what?” shut up, language is all made up, i can unmake it if i damn well please.)

Unfortunately I won’t be able to answer for any of my kids, because I can’t think of anything of theirs that sticks out to me, after all this time this has been in my inbox. More importantly, this is already going to be a long post; I’m not about to make it longer.

Lance:  "I never give up, no matter what. You must be the same?"

so.

This quote.... hits. A lot. Like, OHKO level. Handful of reasons for that but namely it all shifts down to timing. 

(Head’s up, this is gonna be some heavy stuff, including depression, life frustrations, and parental death mention.)

The year is some fuckass year like 2011 or 2012, maybe even 2013. I’m pretty sure it was still the year that BW2 came out, or the spring quarter in the year right after. I’m in my college/university’s small food court, sitting in a quiet fume near the section that normally housed that college’s anime club that I could never quite integrate myself into as seamlessly as I could my community college’s anime club. Mostly on my part, as I was going through a lot at the time. I don’t even know if this was right before the calm of the storm or its aftermath, but it’s all a very shitty, shitty time for me.

I’m just trying to, very angrily, depressedly, distract myself from everything in my life at the time. College is already hard, but I like learning, I’m getting a BA in English, and I had a lot of fun at my community college, and could probably easily find friends here if I tried. There certainly were a few other people I ran into from high school. Even some classmates somehow managed to like me in some classes. I’m here by sheer luck of the financial draw, as FAFSA and my CalGrant level are both taking care of things like tuition and books, and I haven’t needed to get a job yet.  Things, with regards to college, are going pretty well. I should be happy. Happy about that, at least.

Outside of that wonderful, fun, interesting and amazing bubble that was college? Life. My mom is dying. Maybe she’s already dead by this point; I don’t really remember, because I made it a point to rely on my shitty memory to get through that time and not have to remember every single day of those years. I’m not sure if I regret that, but it was the only coping tool I had available to me other than video games, since drugs and alcohol were not things I was interested in, even if I could have afforded it. Books were normally also an escape, but the downside of English Major is that you have to read so many large texts and sometimes dense stories, that you can’t really squeeze much fun reading in-between. If my mom died/was dying, I was having to prepare for moving on top of her death finally striking, after a long, slow battle with cancer that I knew she’d lose all along. (That’s an entirely different, albeit shorter, story). I didn’t want to move, was hoping I could stay, but I think, if this was after her death, I had to uproot my life for the first time. I had moved to a mobile home trailer park to live with an old woman who was very critical of some things and I just didn’t feel comfortable staying there for anything other than sleep or a shower. So I felt out of place, removed and detached from everything, because I had to uproot my entire life in a manner of days, because my dad had sold the house I grew up in, for reasons that felt entirely shitty at the time. And, maybe, a little shitty, but were somewhat good reasons, if they had been given or explained more properly (or from anyone other than my dad, aunt, and grandmother).

I kind of lost myself just now, so I’mma try this again. Mother, dead or dying. House, sold before I could move out, and forcibly moved out in a manner of days. Everything I’ve ever known for a, at the time, lukewarm but familiar life, taken from after years of expecting it, and hoping it’d be just a little bit later, just a little further on, when I could maybe financially support myself. Income? Nonexistent. Barely lucking out on tuition fees by only the good grace of my state’s grants, FAFSA, and going to two of the cheapest schools in the state and maybe the nation (at the time). So I’m just feeling shitty, pissy, angry, depressed, just, so much all at once, everything happening all at once, and I’m taking on extra units to make sure I graduate in a spring semester rather than take 2-3 classes and graduate in the fall of a sixth year. I’ve felt lied to about the time it takes to get a degree, and even though I’m the first in my family to actually do all of the education on time, it just sucks. 

I’m trying to escape it. And what else do I turn to, but Pokemon?

And I’ve already beaten bw2 by this point, and I’m just trying to do the Champions Tournament, because I was a shameless fangirl and eager to fight against Lance. And win (Note: I did not win as often as I’d’ve liked in the PWT or was used to throughout normal gameplay). I’ve seen the phrase he says when you lose against him about 5 or 6 times now, so I know what it says. I know what he says. I’m forgetful, however, so while I’m sitting in that busy corner of the food court, fuming about life and existing and everything happening all at once, mindlessly pressing the A buttong while playing a game to escape it all for just a little bit until I can come back and deal, his words strike a chord within me for once, that it made me want to cry.

"I never give up, no matter what. You must be the same?"

Like, I think I had made his rp blog about this time, and I had used a variant of that quote as the sidebar header/quote. Maybe. But I knew that he said that, and it didn’t affect me those times before-- outside of general fangirling for getting to him. But at that moment, on that day, it just made me burst into tears that I had to close my ds and move away. Because I grew up on too much anime, too much power of friendship and hope and not ever giving up. Of course I was the same, or I had been for the longest time. But at that point, I was just so tired, I just wanted a break for so long already, that it cut me to the core.

It was like a reminder that, no matter how shitty things got, to not give up.

That’s why it’s my favorite quote of his. It means so much to me. He means a lot to me, but not nearly as much as this quote did at that moment. 

[tiptapricot]

Had a chat w @khonshuscondemned under this post about a lot of parallels with Marc when it comes to how he deals with his emotions as a form of coping, and I decided to lay out/restate some stuff there in its own post since ideas got a bit out of hand.

Now I’ve already actually kind of talked ab (presented..?) some of these thoughts in my fic Utility, but the long n short of it is that in my view, Marc has become a master of compartmentalization when it comes to his emotions, because that’s how he’s learned to survive and cope with the trauma he holds.

Percy’s post specifically touches on the scene with the kid goon on the cliff in Cairo, and how Marc very clearly through the start of the episode makes deliberate choices not to harm the kid as much as the others. A slap instead of a punch, knocking out instead of threatening with a knife, throwing the knife away once he does find himself with it, etc. There’s a line for him there, and he obviously doesn’t want to cross it (also Jake chooses not to kill the kid, but doesn’t seem to hesitate for the other two, indicating that that’s a line for him as well).

However, Khonshu then orders Marc to take the kid to the edge, and we see him hesitate. Until now, not crossing his own line has been seamless with his fighting, a non issue, but here we see him falter. “He’s just a kid.” Just like Marc was. He knows what it’s like to be intimidated and scared and hurt by someone more powerful than him, and he doesn’t want to be that. But he has to be, and so he is.

And that’s the thing about Marc Spector. He feels things, he has triggers and boundaries, but he always shoves them to the side because his life is one big emergency situation, and in his eyes, that doesn’t leave room for opening up, for feeling conflict and fear. Because that would also leave him open to mistakes, open for his enemies to get their shot in, and that, in turn, could lead to the emergency situation turning into one of life or death.

From childhood to serving Khonshu, Marc has learned that taking things out of their box could be deadly, that doing so will only cause him harm and pain and anguish, and so he doesn’t. He keeps all his things sealed up and he doesn’t touch them, and he shoves them away when he needs to because he needs to.

And we see that in the cliff scene. We see him hesitate, and then boom, he shifts to a stony face, to a snarl, forcing himself into the rough and tumble headspace of someone who doesn’t care, someone who couldn’t care, because that’s what needs to be done. He holds the kid out over the ledge and—

He falls. And dies. And Marc has tripped headfirst over his line.

We see his face in utter shock for a moment, horrified and surprised, because that wasn’t supposed to happen, and just like always it was his fault (Abdullah El Faouly also wore a scarf when he died, because of Marc, because he thought he could do something he couldn’t). It’s enough to tip things over and let a reaction spill out for just a split second. But then he hides it all away again. He redirects his anger back onto Steven because it takes it off his hands, and then diverts his focus back to the mission, back to Khonshu, because he knows if he dwells on this for too long it will stop their mission in its tracks, and only more people will die.

We see a similar reaction at the trial where, once again, emotion is ripped out of Marc, put on display without his consent, and even when he is crying and tired and weak on the ground, he still pushes himself aside to get the job done. He points the finger at Harrow and says this is not about him because it isn’t, and if it was, then all of it would have to be, and he cannot be paralyzed by the weight of everything he refuses to recognize. He can’t be weak because then Harrow will win, and that can’t happen, and he specifically can’t be the one to let it happen (he cannot be blamed for something again. he is responsible and he does the right thing and he takes care of the people that need taking care of because that’s what he’s supposed to do and he’s already failed twice and seen how it ruins his life [caves and deserts, mothers and gods] and he can’t let that happen again).

And then! He doesn’t recognize afterwards that that sucked! That Harrow utilizing his mental health against him so aggressively was triggering and traumatizing. He’s gruff with Layla, but we see him freeze up at Mogart’s when Harrow shows up and he’s only able to move once he leaves. He doesn’t cower, he just looks angry and unbreakable. He becomes so unflinchingly tough that his body locks him in place and stops him from acting, even when Khonshu urges him to, because he is too caught up in himself and too busy hiding it. In Marc’s mind, even if he knows what’s happening in his head he can’t show it to anyone else, because vulnerability is weakness, weakness brings pain, and pain is the worst thing he can think of.

This of course, ironically, is exactly the situation he’s put in in the Duat.

Marc knows about his past, he knows what the doors Steven asks about lead to. He brushes off seeing himself at the Shiva as just an old memory, just some random time on a street, and he tries to deflect and hide. Moon Knight until this point has been a masterclass in watching Marc Spector’s cycle of repression, forced vulnerability, and repression again, but he isn’t allowed to take that step back this time. Instead it is the act of literally opening doors, LITERALLY opening things up to someone, that allows him to begin to heal (which isn’t to say that ANYONE should be forced to confront trauma they aren’t ready for, but in Marc’s case he was not going to allow anyone to see those things and it was doing damage to himself, and sharing the burden allowed his weight to be lighter).

In our brief convo, Percy then brought up the point that in the Duat, while Marc opens up to Steven, opens his sarcophagus, lets him in, he walks right past Jake’s. The room that was already open to begin with.

And that just… summarizes Marc’s conflict perfectly.

Because he chooses to open up to Steven, to force through that connection even if it hurts and wasn’t meant to be there, but even though Jake is there, asking for it, waiting for it, he cannot extend the same action. Because Jake is just another thing to keep in its box, another line he won’t cross. Only this time that line is a threshold. It is the step over an open door, into something sealed up tight in another room. Out of sight, out of mind. If he doesn’t recognize Jake, if he doesn’t see him, he can stay in the comfortable reality where he isn’t there, and their brain becomes much easier to manage. Because Marc is already walking a razor’s edge. Steven alone is enough, his own past and trauma alone is enough, and he is at his limit, pushing it.

Marc is constantly at his breaking point, and Jake would just be too much. He is extra baggage, something that when exposed cannot be hidden again, and Marc would be forced to topple right over the edge, to confront that maybe he has more to deal with than he thought he did, more than he ever could alone or even with Steven.

And that, of course, would mean he’d need support. From others. That reaching out would become what he needs to do instead of pulling away.

Jake would open a door, without Marc even touching the doorknob, and that, out of everything, is something he can. Not. Allow.

[can-i-ship-in-queering-peace]

DNI if you about drama I want none of it tyvm!

This podfic is not mine but is so amazing!!!! It’s such a fix it fic while literally just being an entire rewrite of the whole story of them but much better imho. I’ve binged this podfic a few times and just needed to share!!!

Please check it out and share!!!(just noticed this doesn’t link you to the series that this is pls seek it out, well worth it!!! There’s 13ch and they get longer!) that’s what it looks like for ref) the original fic is linked if you would rather read it but the narrator does such an amazing job with effects and voices!!!!

It’s not sexual just so y’all know it’s plot heavy and like you’re watching them beautifully mash up movie with the book and their own ideas it’s amazing and Reddie heavy! Ugh it made the movie hurt a lot better/less. The writing and voice acting is so good got me wanting to start up both, legit. I really enjoyed this so much ima start makin podfics yall (narrator: “and he did”)

Sorry but in order to keep getting this fanfic of mine the love it deserves I must keep it pinned. I will start posting them as I work through them. I have a lot of fics to finish Harringrove(will post through my side acct), Boreo, Byler and even a Reddie(maybe more icr), I’m working on atm but my dms and asks are always open to suggestions and to just chatting out any concepts.

🤷🏻hope ya like! 🏳️‍🌈👏🏻(⚠️trigger warning⚠️of internalized homophobia feels for my fanfic) unrequited love?.. not really)

My first Byler oneshot and it’s almost 5000 words ayyy look at meee:

Also I’m pushing myself past my more younger self who would be too scared/embarrassed/shy to share something like this. Lol I’m working on saying yolo more these days and having so much fun sharing my heart through works with others out there like me/who can relate to my content, and to, hopefully feel less alone. It’s such healing work! I’m def gonna be trying my hand at more podfics in the future since I’ve utilized them so many times when too depressed and unmotivated with things to even read content for fandoms to make myself feel better/less alone.

Big hug of a side note, if you’re a queer kid or where one and are an adult dealing and healing with your past/experiences/struggles/trauma/etc, or if you are or where in the closet, no matter what your situation.. if you’re seeing this know that you’re not alone. Nothings wrong with you! You’re lovely, you will be happy and healthy one day surrounded by people who know the real you and love that person and accept you for you! If you don’t feel that way, you’re not at the end of your story yet! Keep going! Keep fighting! It gets better and that comes from a sad queer case such as myself who makes stuff like this to cope with my own childhood (queer) traumas lol. I love you and you’re amaziiing sweety! KEEP SLAYING, FUCK THE HATERS (and stay safe!) 🤗🥰)

Finally made my Byler playlist public even tho I haven’t proof relistened and added nearly all the songs I want but we need what we can get for this ship content so just ignore any songs that don’t go. The Will playlist is done I went thru it all again. Checks out well

Fanfic context;

Other writing bits:

Ch2 of my Genderqueer Five fic is out! <3

[glowingbadger]

FE3H misc. spicy HCs

I did a handful of general spicy headcanons for some of my FE3H favs a while back as a break from an ongoing fic I was working on, so I figured I'd post that over here too. Linhardt, Felix, Lorenz, Seteth, Jeritza

x gender neutral reader

18+ NSFW v

Linhardt:

Not a very high sex drive, but when the mood strikes it's fierce- though even if you're together for years you might not be able to tell he's horny until the moment he says something blunt and unabashedly lewd about wanting you immediately.  He’s very comfortable initiating.

Usually a bottom, as you'd imagine, but a power bottom of sorts; he feels completely at ease communicating exactly what he wants, what feels good, etc, and loves to be able to watch your body move above him.

Will learn your every single weakness, turn-on and sensitive spot and utilize them mercilessly.  He's absolutely fascinated by the minutiae of pleasuring you, mentally noting even small changes in your breathing or tone of voice.

Not very experienced to start, but a very fast learner

While not outlandishly kinky, he's open minded, and willing to try just about anything once- provided it's not too strenuous

Can become entranced and even aroused by seemingly odd, innocuous things- it's not unusual for him to catch an interesting color in your eyes, or a quirk in how you walk or move your hands when you talk, and find himself needing to express his affection for you directly

Very good with his hands, and very invested in foreplay; he becomes so enamoured with the subtle pleasures of touching and tasting you that it may be agonizingly long before it occurs to him to actually seek out his own climax.  He’s gentle in a way that’s almost unbearable, all making him something of an unintentional tease.

Felix:

Somewhat high sex drive, once he's with someone he's comfortable with- he's kept himself from intimacy for so long that he's a starved man with someone he actually likes

By the same token, he's not likely to come out and say when he's turned on. Fortunately for you, he's also not good at hiding it, becoming unusually handsy and a bit territorial with you when his physical needs arise.

Not very vocal during sex, but what moans he actually let’s himself make are raw, desperate and lustful.  Similarly, he’s not much one for dirty talk, since he’s generally focused entirely on the physical sensations, but you might catch him muttering “yes” or “mine” against your neck.

He secretly loves it when you tease him, but loves it even more when you're too dizzy with pleasure to speak clearly enough to give him sass.  He loves watching your expressions, always aiming for that post-coital dazed and over-fucked smile.

Sex is generally energetic and passionate, sometimes even a bit competitive; you may try to see who can resist cumming for longer, or wrestle to see who ends up topping.

He likes marking you with hickies, scratches, etc.  While not outwardly possessive, he does like to know that you're his (and vice versa)

He's surprisingly weak to compliments and praise, especially if it feels sincere.  Bonus points for moaning his name, or picking up on small details of what he enjoys and so on.  Basically anything that makes it abundantly clear that it's him that you want to be with and that he makes you feel incredible.

Even he is caught off-guard by how much it turns him on to see his partner being strong in any sense- strong willed, physically strong, anything that impresses him about his SO is also likely to deeply arouse him.  It’s especially gratifying to be on top of such a strong person and make them dazed and spaced-out with pleasure.

Lorenz:

An average sex drive, but he'll restrain himself for fear of propriety for ages before initiating anything more scandalous than kissing.

By that token, he’s extremely fun to tease, conspicuously blushing and stuttering over even light touches or a brief kiss on his neck.  In truth, he gets a real thrill out of this, but only admits this to you after a particularly brazen incident where you steal him away in an empty corridor for some heavy kissing and rubbing him from atop his clothing, then free him to go about his business for the day completely wound up and frazzled.

Certainly the type to “make love” rather than fuck, unless he were with someone for long enough that they would request something more rough from him, and he trusted that they would instruct him.

Adores spoiling his lover; scented oils, massages, long hot baths, the works.  Your pleasure is his foremost priority.  As such, he takes instruction very well- more than happy to do exactly as you say and revelling in any moans or words of encouragement he can earn from you.

He finds it ungentlemanly to be on the bottom and “make you do all the work” unless you really insist.  Generally, he’s more of a service top.

Loves giving his partner oral and could easily keep at it until you need him to make love to you.  Your taste, touching your lower body, the sounds you make- he’s absolutely intoxicated by every part of going down on you.

Somewhat surprisingly, he’s more than happy to indulge in dirty talk, but less surprisingly, it tends to be deeply poetic and romantic.  That being said, he’s more than happy to hear you utter any sort of filthy words he may inspire in you, as it means he’s performing well.

Seteth:

This is probably showing my favoritism, but my personal very headcanon-y headcanon is that Nabatean men are better endowed, have greater stamina and “fecundity,” and so on compared to humans, given being like near-godlike themselves (at least at full power) and since, even before the massacre, there didn’t seem to be many of them overall, so greater fertility would be a valued trait.  But really this just comes down to me being hot for Seteth, okay?  Just let me have this.

He’s fairly sexually flexible, given how long he’s been around, but it will take a long while before he’s ready to let himself express his (predictably pent up and frustrated) desires for you openly.

Once the physical part of the relationship has started to open up, however, he’s intense, focused, and thorough.  He wants to touch every part of you, hold you as close as he can, and satisfy you utterly and completely.

A big post-sex cuddler, as he’s got strong protective instincts and wants you close and safe.  Even more so if the sex got really rough and you’re both coming down from that high.

While there’s certainly a bit of a “repressed beast” situation in regards to his libido, he’ll generally let his partner take the lead in suggesting kinks or experimentations.

He’s a Switch and enjoys power play- either pinning you down and verbally dominating you, or begging to be tied up and used.  It never gets overly violent, but the psychological element of a sub-dom relationship plays into his authoritative personality.

He has a strict “no physical contact during work hours” policy, but if you catch him working late into the night once everyone else is gone, you may become very familiar with the surface of his desk.

Jeritza:

Similar to Felix, his sex drive can be pretty high, but only after the long and difficult process of getting him to actually open up to someone.  Once he’s come around to actually liking a person, however, he’s deeply enamoured with their body.

An odd mixture of sweet and intense- catching you in deep, erotic kisses, but also more than happy to fuck you into the mattress or against a wall.

He loves to affect your body in any way he can.  He wants to know how much he turns you on, hear your moans, feel your body tense and your nails along his back and through his hair.  Overall, he responds very well to an active and expressive lover who will show him exactly how much they want him.

You’re gonna have to find a way of coping with the Death Knight, unfortunately.  This is why Jeritza is actually not as “violent” as you may expect in bed, as that can trigger a personality lapse, and the Death Knight is absolutely a fighter and not a lover.

Can actually be pretty damn kinky, even initiating some new things that you may not have expected.  That said, he refuses to tie you up, for fear of slipping up and hurting you.  He’s perfectly alright with being tied up, though he remarks that it’s fairly silly, given he could easily break out.  In fact, breaking out of restraints might become part of the kink itself.

Pretty big into food play- he definitely wants to lick up ice cream or syrup off of your body, and will absolutely lose himself in the sensory experience of it all.

After a battle, he especially craves intimacy, as being raw and passionate with another person who he somehow cares for tethers him to feeling “alive” and being Jeritza, rather than the childlike Emile of his past, or the bloodthirsty Death Knight in his psyche.

[agent-absinthe]

foreigner’s god pt. 1

marvel. bucky barnes/reader. canon divergent. heavy fic. 5k+

Blaire Briar gets through the day by telling herself that James Buchanan Barnes and the Winter Soldier are two different people.  It makes knowing he’s been pardoned and walking free easier for her to process.  Only when she’s forced to assist on a mission with him on the team roster her carefully constructed coping begins to crumble.  Forced to finally deal with their shared trauma Blaire and Bucky begin the difficult process of healing.  The process is made more difficult when Bucky realizes that despite everything he has feelings for her.

warnings: assault, rape/non-con, violence, blood, sexual content, language, No Snap AU

“Sir, I can’t take this assignment.”

Director Coulson looked up at the woman from his desk where he had been staring at the phone, currently on hold with Stark, a record 48 minutes now.

“That assignment requires your skill set, I would think after complaining of not feeling useful you’d be happy for the opportunity.”

“Sir,” she tried again- almost pleading, “I cannot take this.  Not with this team.”

He leaned back in the chair and considered the woman in front of him.  Special Agent Blaire Briar, who worked mainly as a grunt in Comms for recon teams.  Except when her special talent of Energy Vampirism brought her out into the field.  Although she wasn’t used often for the skill set, when it was needed she became invaluable.  Briar started out as an intern for Shield brought in by Maria Hill on a Stark recommendation- a series of personal traumas set off by Alexander Pierce led to her current position.

“The team was hand picked and is non negotiable.  Captain Rogers prefers to work with those he trusts and he says he needs you, this isn’t a request.”

“I have trauma with the Winter Soldier. I can’t-”

“Sergeant Barnes,” Coulson corrected feeling guilt at her desperate expression, “he was pardoned so as far as the government and all other agencies are concerned all reparations are paid.  Any personal feelings are just that- personal- and are to be dealt with in your own time.”

“And if I refuse?”

“You’ll be reprimanded and will most likely cost thousands of people their lives if not more.  I know that’s not something you want on your hands Agent, so just take the assignment.  You’ll be back in comms by the end of the weekend if all goes well.”

This was fucking bullshit. 

Blaire couldn’t see straight as she stomped down the hall back to comms, gripping the wall from a sudden bout of nausea that overtook her.  The folder was delivered to her in the afternoon by a security personnel and at first she had been thrilled to receive the assignment.  There were ruins on a small island off the coast of Ireland thought to contain a training base for Hydra recruits.  Files inside the base could provide names of remaining Hydra agents, contracts and agreements that the terrorist organization made, among other intel that could be incredibly useful.  It sounded interesting and she was itching to get out there and live a mission instead of listening in on one.

“Whoa, you ok?  Jesus, Blaire you look like you’re about to throw up.”  Hill’s voice sounded like it came from far away even when she put a concerned hand on her back.

“Tell me this job is worth it.”

“What?”

“I need you to keep me from walking the fuck outta here.  I can’t do this shit anymore, I can’t fucking do it.  I could be at Stark Industries or- or working with Strange or pouring goddamn drinks at Starbucks getting verbally abused by assholes.”

Her hands were on her knees now as she tried to focus on her breathing and stave off the panic attack building in her chest.  She was too young for this kind of stress.  Was any of this worth it?  The manilla folder containing her assignment was tossed to the floor, open on the team roster page so his name glared out at them. 

James Buchanan Barnes

When Maria saw the name she knew what was wrong immediately and knelt in front of Blaire, hands on her cheeks so she had to focus on her.

“Hey, hey, hey breathe for me, Briar.  That’s it.  Listen, they’re two different people- two completely different people.”

“I know that.  I know.”

“You can do this, you’re strong and I know for a fact that you’re too much of a bitch to let something stop you from doing your job, right?”

Briar laughed at that, the laughter dissolving into tears momentarily before she regained her composure, “right.” 

“You are the only one that can help them on that mission, you’re the one that’s gonna be calling the shots.  Now let’s go ahead and go down to development so we can get you measured for your gear.”

~

“Are you listening to me, James?”  Dr. Raynor asked with a forceful tap of her pen against the notepad to get his attention.

“Not really.”

She sighed and started writing waiting until he looked up with irritation before continuing, “I said done correctly this could be an opportunity for you to cross another name off the list.  Emphasis on done correctly.”

Bucky let out a breath he was holding in and turned to the window so he could pretend not to hear what Raynor was saying.  The therapist was right and so was Steve when he approached Bucky last week to let him know about who they needed for the recon.  He’d apologized to people he tried to kill easy enough, but it didn’t feel like there was a proper way to apologize for what he did to her.

“And what am I supposed to do when I see her?  Just walk up and say sorry?  It’s like you and Steve live in this perfect little world where forgiveness is just handed out the minute someone says sorry.”

“Steve and I live in the real world where we face our problems-”

“Oh, here we go.”

“-where we face our problems and hope that we can be forgiven for any harm caused.  You’ll be working with this girl so you will have to face it sooner or later, make sure Rogers is there when you do it if that will make you feel more comfortable.  That’ll be your homework until our next session- try to come to terms with what happened and make an effort to talk to Briar.”  

It was just the same shit Steve told him over and over.  Dr. Raynor sure as hell couldn’t know what he was going through even Steve didn’t understand this part of adjusting.  

Of atonement.  

When he closes his eyes and concentrates he can still see Pierce with a smile telling him about a “special” side mission, a “treat really”, that he wanted The Winter Soldier to complete.

Her apartment was quiet when he entered through the bedroom window to begin the first step of the mission.  Placing a small hidden camera in the framework of her gaming setup tucked in a corner across from the bed.  When he walked into the rest of the home he was stopped by a curious mew and looked down to find a fat, grey cat weaving between his legs.  The cat observed him for the rest of the camera placements and sweep of the apartment, disarming any weapons he found.  A loaded gun under the sink, a taser between couch cushions, and a knife on the bathroom vanity.  

“Your target’s not on her way yet so hang tight.  Fix the camera in the living room while you wait, I want it more focused on the couch and turn on your body camera.”  Pierce’s voice came over the earpiece sounding almost bored as he sat at his desk and looked through the new feeds.

He gravitated back to her bedroom when he wasn’t given another task finding that the room was pleasant to be in.  Warm and dim, smelling like the floral perfume bottle he inspected earlier.  The cat followed and jumped to the bed meowing at the soldier in annoyance when he didn’t pet him.  Something like muscle memory took over and Bucky lifted his flesh hand out to the cat who purred rubbing it’s face into the palm.

“Good cat.” He mumbled earning another meow and purr.

After a few more minutes of radio silence he sat, the mattress and box spring groaned under his weight and the softness felt foreign.  When another minute passed he leaned back in the unmade bed and didn’t move as a purring weight laid on his stomach.  It was all so...comforting.  Only when his eyes began to close did the earpiece screech on.

“Target’s in transit, be ready when she gets there-”

The front door opening interrupted Pierce, “Tikki!  Where is my fat little man?”

Tikki jumped off of him and he could hear the cat meowing to it’s owner as she walked to the kitchen, tossing her bags down on the way.  The woman looked normal enough to him, a little heavy for an agent but nothing he couldn’t handle.

“She’s worn out from training but we still don’t know how long her power can last.  You need to get the implant in her neck to block the absorption if she tries anything.”

Bucky fished in his utility belt for the dime sized, pronged disk and held it in his fist as he stalked closer to the kitchen.  She was singing to herself while stacking up dirty dishes to make room for a take out bag.

“Thank god I got there before they closed and yes they did give me some grilled chicken for you, Tikki.  Such a fat kitty, lucky you’re so cute.  Sure as hell don’t keep you around to pay rent, you’re a freeloader and you don’t even care!”

Pierce was telling him to proceed, but Bucky stood in the doorway and watched her set a small bowl down in front of Tikki who ignored it to eye him and meow louder, suddenly puffing up as if realizing that the strange man was now a threat.  

“What’s the matter you crazy cat?  That’s all you’re getting so deal with it.”  

A low growl and hiss.

“Jesus Christ, what?  Is there a fucking-”  She started and turned around only for her voice to die in her throat as they stared at one another.  

“Ok, Bucky?”  Dr. Raynor repeated.

“Ya ok.” 

~

This was it.  They were getting briefed this morning then they’d be flown out, Blaire could barely stand without shaking so she sat at her small cubicle in comms until it was time.  She should have known that Steve would try to play good guy and come find her.

“Hey, Blaire.”

“What do you want?”  

“Briefing is gonna start soon, thought we could walk down there together.”

“To make you feel better or me?”

The super soldier leaned against her desk and crossed his arms, “you know I wouldn’t put you in this position if I didn’t have to.  There’s no other way for us to get through those doors, trust me we’ve tried.”

“Let’s just get it over with.”  

She wasn’t trying to lash out at Rogers on purpose but it was hard to control her anger when she felt this shitty.  Steve and her used to be good friends, introduced by Tony who thought Blaire could make the soldier blush, they ended up balancing each other out nicely.  After what happened with the winter soldier and Shield they grew apart not talking unless Tony had a gathering they were both obligated to attend.  It was a loss on both ends when they stopped hanging out, the easy back and forth humor between them almost nonexistent now.  It was early enough in the morning that the pair walked in silence without many other agents around until Steve broke it.

“I know I don’t have any room to say this, but Bucky’s a good guy.  Begged me to find another way so you wouldn’t have to see him, tried to back out of the mission, he feels like shit about this and he wants to apologize to you.”

Blaire already knew where this was going, “and you’re the buffer?”

“His therapist suggested it.  Dr. Raynor.”

That wasn’t something she expected.  Therapy was a good sign, taking the therapist’s advice an even better one.  Blaire wasn’t stupid she knew that Barnes was under the influence of years of systematic abuse when he attacked her, practically brainwashed and nearly physically impossible for him to defy an order.  He was a victim too.  That’s what made being angry at him still so hard.

Her thoughts were interrupted by Steve opening the door to the conference room to see Barnes pacing.  The hair was shorter and the arm was new, but his body had the same heavy muscle and wide stance.  She found that she couldn’t look at him when they finally made eye contact, not directly anyway.  Focusing instead on the zipper of his gear or scruff on his chin.

He’s handsome.  Why the fuck does he have to be handsome? It wasn’t fair.  None of this was fair.  The world was playing some kind of fucked up joke for her to still be attracted to him.  That wasn’t new of course; she found him attractive since she first saw the winter soldier in photos and videos from the attack on Fury in Pierce’s office.  She had been standing there staring at the holograms when Pierce made an offhand remark about it, teasing her for her flushed cheeks.  Now that she knew he was the one who ordered the attack the memory made her boil with shame.

“Agent Briar.”  At least he was trying to be polite.

“Sergeant Barnes.”

“I-” he stopped, his adam’s apple bobbing with anxiety as he swallowed. “I am no longer The Winter Soldier, I am James Buchanan Barnes and you’re part of my effort to make amends-”

“Your therapist knows how to write a good script.”  Blaire interrupted.

Steve didn’t make a move to intervene and stayed off to the side sipping a coffee and watching.

“Look, I know that you were not in control of yourself when it happened and because of that you are also a victim in the situation,” she said it slowly trying to sound reasonable, “There isn’t a lot that you can apologize for.  Pierce is the one who owes me that and he’s been dead for a few years now so I doubt I’ll be getting it anytime soon.”

“Thank you for understanding, not a lot of people do, but I still have to tell you how sorry I am for the pain that I caused you.  I want to try to make things right or as right as they can be.”

“If you really want that then you’ll interact with me as little as possible.  Please understand that it’s not personal.  I just can’t fucking look at you.”

Barnes nodded quickly, the words cut him to the core in a way he had never experienced.  Yet he still apologized, still at least tried to make amends with Blaire and despite her blunt reaction he hoped Dr. Raynor would consider it a success.

“Yeah, of course.  I can do that.” 

Bucky thought he was doing a good job with it so far too.  He stayed in the flank of the group during the mission and got to see her work after she was able to duplicate an energy reading and get through to the bunker.  Three Hydra agents crumpled to the floor as soon as they rounded a corner to stop their progress, Briar released the pent up energy she absorbed from them at the next group they came across.  Leaving their bodies broken and bloody in a heap against a wall.  

“Hey, Cap why the hell did you drag me outta bed on a Saturday?  Looks to me like Miss Atom Bomb here’s got it covered.” 

“Miss Atom Bomb sounds like way too pretty of a hero name for me, Sam.”  She laughed tossing a smile back at the Falcon, “guys on the Strike team just used to call me Leech.”

“Those guys were assholes.”

“Ya, they were pretty awful most of the time.  M’not gonna be able to keep it up much longer though, I fill up on too much and I burn out quick.  I got a few more bursts in me before I start seeing doubles.”

The bunker ended up being an intel goldmine opening up several leads for the team to follow in their mission to eradicate Hydra once and for all.  Being part of that kind of adrenaline high in person had made Blaire even more dizzy than her burn out, no wonder field agents dreaded being behind a desk.  It wasn’t until they were strapped back in the plane with the sun rising that she was beginning to feel that same dread.  She was dirty and tired but helped more in this mission than she had almost her entire time in Communications.

“How ya feelin’, Briar?”

“Like shit, Romanoff.  How about you?”

Natasha laughed and handed her a rations bar, “good to see you out in the field.  Started feeling like the boy’s club for awhile.”

“How on Earth will you cope with my loss come Monday?”

“A quick word with Coulson and I won’t have to cope with anything.”  She offered.  Producing another rations bar from her pocket like a bribe.

“Nat, I can’t.  Look at me, I’m not fit for field work-”

“You just obliterated more than 50 guys in that bunker and I’ve seen your hand to hand combat, it’s not bad.”

“Ya but I’m about to fucking pass out now.  I mean- it’s complicated.”

The assassin stretched out and settled in next to Blaire trying to think of a way to talk her into it.  Wanda and Vision were off trying to live the domesticality that Tony now had, leaving their team bare bones.  There was no telling when or if Thor would show back up from trying to fix shit back home, they were missing a super and Blaire seemed the best fit.

“You wanna be in communication so bad then why don’t you be our guardian angel when we don’t absolutely need you in the field?  It would get you out of that cubicle more often anyway, sure we could talk Coulson into a pay raise too.  Plus you’ll get to listen to my voice and boss Steve around, what more could you want?”

“You’ve operated without a guide in HQ for so long.  No one’s gonna buy it.”

“They will if Golden Boy and Wings asks.”

Blaire took the second ration bar and rolled her eyes, “I’ll think about it.”

She ended up taking it of course once Nat wanted something she almost always got it, Blaire sure as shit wasn’t going to tell her no.  For the most part it started out really well with the exception of a few hiccups in finding her place on the field when it came to real action.  Off the field was a different story- Blaire knew how to operate a team in a way that both got the job done safely and felt like borderline workplace violence at the same time.  Bucky tended to be the target for the latter on most missions.

“You don’t listen!  Jesus fucking christ I am going to buy a goddamn adult tether backpack for you!  And ya know who’s gonna have to hold the leash?  Wilson!”

“Whoa, whoa, whoa don’t drag me into this.  I’m doin’ my job.”

Bucky wanted to dig out the earpiece and throw it, “I still took care of it, didn’t I?”

“You fight like you have handlers still, Barnes.  News flash, you don’t!  I’m the one who has to file all the paperwork when you go off course on your own and cause mayhem and destruction like its the fucking Winter Soldier Show.”

All Bucky did was ignore her suggestion to not engage with the hostiles ahead until Natasha and Steve followed suit.  There were only three guys from what he could see and a hostage was waiting for them with time running out so he did what he thought was best.  There ended up being six instead of three and the hostage received a minor injury when he wasn’t able to get to them fast enough.

“Well, it’s over and done with now so could you just shut up?”

Everyone on the line went dead silent for a few seconds.

“Quinjet is waiting at the extraction point for pick up.  Good job team, we look forward to your safe return to the hanger.  Briar signing off.”  Came the calm check out.

Sam landed next to Bucky with a satisfied chuckle, “oh you fucked up big time, buddy.”

“I hate you.”

She wasn’t waiting for them like she usually did when they landed, coming in a few minutes later with a small med team in tow to look over injuries.  Barnes waved off the attempts to dab blood off of his brow where he caught a stray punch and focused on getting his gear off.  Blaire wasn’t about to let him off the hook just yet, still too blinded by her rage to consider letting them both cool off before talking.

“That’s the third time you ignored me when I told you not to run blindly into enemy fire.  What’s your problem, Barnes?”

“I’m not the one with a problem.”

“Are you kidding?  It’s like you do this shit on purpose just to piss me off.”

“I do!”  He yelled, turning around to make eye contact with her.  “The only time you ever acknowledge me is when I get you riled up.”

“Oh, you poor baby do I not pay enough attention to you so you feel like you gotta act out?”

Bucky dropped the rest of his gear and started towards her, already feeling his energy dropping with each step from her defense.  He didn’t let it show and only stopped when he was in front of her.

“You’re the one with the problem here.  How am I supposed to fix this when you won’t talk to me?  You won’t even look at me dammit!  I’m the only one making an effort and I can’t let go of it if you won’t.”

Their voices boomed in the near empty hanger as Steve was making his way over to break it up after releasing the rescued hostage over to medical, fearing that he may be too late to salvage their already rocky relationship.

“What do you want, huh?  You wanna hit me?  Go on doll, take a shot and get it out of your system.”  Bucky continued leaning down to her height tauntingly.

“Maybe I do.”

“Great, let’s go.”

“I don’t think this is a good idea-”  Rogers started.

“Stay out of it, Steve!”  They shouted in near unison before Blaire turned on her heel and began speed walking to the exit with Bucky right behind her.

The night air was shockingly cold against their flushed skin and it made Bucky think a little more clearly as the door slammed shut behind him.  Only when he went to say something Blaire caught him by surprise with a haymaker to his cheek.  Her punch held more power than he would have thought, momentarily knocking him off balance enough for Blaire to ram him.  The impact of their bodies knocked both down to the wet grass as they struggled until she was on top raining half pulled punches down that she didn’t follow through with.  Her hits fueled by emotion slowly got weaker and weaker until she slid off of him sobbing. 

“I didn’t get mandated therapy.  I lost my dignity and my job and my will to live in the span of a fucking week.”  She choked out, nails digging into the artificial turf. “Then everyone found out it was Pierce that put out the hit and all that footage was just uploaded to the Hydra file.  Oh don’t worry Blaire it’s classified it’s so classified but no we can’t delete it or anything sorry.  I can get into it, I can see that file and I only have level green clearance.  It’s just sitting there for anyone to look at it.  My coworkers, bosses, the fuckin’ guys in coding.  They can just type in credentials and watch me get raped.”

This must have been what Dr. Raynor meant by coming to terms.  Pulling everything ugly out to the open so they didn’t have to dance around it any longer.

He looked strange without any of the guns and knives strapped to him, but it was still The Winter Soldier.  Blaire knew that in an instant from the face mask strapped to him like a muzzle and the silver arm shining against his black modified jacket.  She was frozen. Never in her life had she experienced Freeze instead of Fight, but then again she couldn’t remember the last time she was this scared.  Thoughts ticked off in rapid fire until Tikki jumped up on the counter with a hiss breaking the spell.  She threw the take out bowl of hot matzo ball soup that he easily dodged and turned around to feel under sink for the gun only to find it gone.  A hand clamped something down on the back of her neck, his metal one coming down around her mouth like a vice when she yelled out for help.

“Any of your neighbors try to help they die.”

No, that wasn’t right. He sounded local, like he was from New York.  That wasn’t possible.  The metal crushing her jaw came off when she threw her elbow back with full force catching his ribs.  It came darting back out immediately and shoved her to the kitchen floor on her stomach, his heavy weight on her lower back and ass was crushing as he straddled her.

“Fuck off!  Better kill me because I’m not saying shit about anything.”  She growled trying to buck him off.

There was no answer only his body going still like he wasn’t sure of the next move himself.  Then the weight was gone and for a second Blaire thought that maybe she could get away or at least get to her phone on the counter and send a message to Shield.  It was when she tried crawling away that she felt his fingers hook into her shorts and jerk them down.

“No!”  More panic now than before.  The prospect of death was always looming over her working where she did, but not this.  Please anything but this.

With the shorts off she was rolled to her back as he straddle her hips, his hands trying to catch her wrists again while she fought.  Nails raked down his face and neck, leaving rivets of red and tearing off his mask as they went.  When Blaire caught sight of his face she knew it was over.  There was no emotion there, just a slack jaw and blown out pupils.  He was going through the motions like someone was telling him what to do, a machine being controlled by someone else.  When the soldier did catch her wrists and pin them down with his metal hand he went still again, staring down at her as blood dripped off his face.

“I don’t wanna do this.”  He suddenly announced maybe to her or to no one.

“You don’t have to!  Just leave, just get up and leave.  It’s not too late.”

She could hear the faint static buzz of someone screaming from his earpiece and then the slack look was back and her thighs were being kneed open.  It was happening so fast and Blaire found herself completely powerless, he had done something to her to stop her energy absorption and without that she was just some intern with a little gun training.  No amount of fight, of pleading, would help her now.  Somehow that was more terrifying than anything else.

“Stop it! Get off me, get off!  I’ll fucking kill you!” 

The threats sizzled out into broken shrieks as he thrust into her hard enough to hurt both of them with no prep.  Tears pricked at the corner of her eyes from the pain and violation, droplets of his blood now falling faster onto her as he moved.  Blaire tried catching his hip with her heel to get him off and keep fighting but the metal squeezed her wrists tighter in warning til they gave way with a crunch, his pace never slowing and only growing sloppier.  The pain was too much for her to even scream for help, not that she’d want to.  Didn’t need poor Miss Hoffman coming in here waving her cane to the rescue only to end up dead.

She looked past his blank face to stare at her kitchen ceiling focusing on the water mark in the corner she kept meaning to paint over.  His flesh hand came up to her face to cover and turn it away as if he didn’t want her looking at him.  The kitchen filled with the scent of soldier’s blood making her mouth taste like pennies.  Droplets of it felt like scalding water as it fell on her check and neck.  How long would it take to scrub his scent off?   Her body couldn’t seem to adjust fast enough to allow her any relief but by the grace of whatever cruel god watched the display his hips stuttered and stopped.  A sob bubbled up from the sensation- too hot and too full, seeping out of her before he even pulled out.

There was always a point in his missions where the targets gave in and stopped fighting.  He watched that happen with this one after he stood.  Watched her curl in on herself as she laid there crying with his cum dripping out of her and down the back of her thighs.  Then he was back to her bedroom window without retrieving his mask or the blocking device, no longer listening to whatever was coming through the earpiece.  Mind going absolutely haywire and telling him he just needed to get out.

“I’m sorry, Blaire.  I didn’t know.”  Bucky sat up with his own chest beginning to tighten at what she was telling him, it made him sick.

She cried harder and shook her head, “it’s not your fault, Barnes.  No matter how much I want it to be so I wouldn’t feel so shitty for hating you.  It’s not your fault.”

Without thinking Bucky leaned over and wrapped an arm around Blaire pulling her to his chest.  She tensed at first but relaxed and returned the hug when she felt him begin to shake too.  So they sat together on the wet turf and cried until Steve managed to herd them back inside thankful they hadn’t killed each other. 

Bucky kept a hand on Briar’s shoulder as they entered, “Are we good?”

“Ya, we’re good.”  She clapped him on the back and then punched his arm as an after thought, “but if you ever tell me to shut up during a mission again I’ll tell your therapist and make sure you have to go to sensitivity training.  This doesn’t mean we’re friends.”

“I’ll only get a rise out of you when I want you to yell at me then.”

He watched her roll her eyes and could have sworn he saw the corner of her mouth turn up into a smile.  That made him smile too and Bucky felt a new sense of ease.  Unsurprisingly at his next session with Dr. Raynor he found it easier to open up.

[evilwickedme]

ok so to sum up my feelings for leverage: redemption, season 1(a): (long post warning, there’s a tl;dr at the end)

I knew that Hardison wouldn’t be in most of the season due to Aldis Hodge being a busy bee nowadays, but I didn’t realize that meant he’d only be around for the first two episodes. He was sorely missed, not only because of my attachment to him, but also because he’s usually the grounding factor in the group dynamic, and his role as info guy and tech guy was split evenly between two characters who had their own issues.

That said, Hardison is absolutely a highlight of the two episodes he’s in. his speech about redemption was everything I could’ve hoped for (plus, more evidence for the Jewish!Hardison pile...). I wish we’d gotten to see more of his dynamic with Breanna because what we saw was funny and sweet and we don’t generally get to see Hardison taking care of somebody who so desperately needs taking care of. I hope that Aldis Hodge is around for more episodes in 1(b), because what we’re left with feels a little hollow.

Sticking to original leverage characters for now, for the most part the leverage crew still felt true to the original series as characters, even if the show itself was a little bit confused at times. The actors understand their characters and embody them so well that I think one could give them the trashiest script ever and they’d still sell it. Sophie is a particular focus in 1(a) because of Nate’s death, and she’s particularly well written as a result.

That said, I’m super bitter that we saw little to no mastermind!Parker. Parker’s character being given the mastermind role was a big deal and it feels like they’re walking it back because they feel uncomfortable with it. It is eventually given an in-text excuse, but literally in the last episode, and it was not a particularly convincing reason, and in fact contradicted moments from previous episodes (Sophie leaving for a client meeting and ignoring Parker in ep3 comes to mind). It’s frustrating, it makes the end of the original leverage feel pointless, and letting Parker make a decision once in a while is not the same thing at all. The original series repeatedly showed us that while everyone in the team had their strengths, Parker works problems and solves them in unique, interesting ways, and other characters’ days in the limelight tended to be comedic or even failures. It’s a broken promise, and a pretty major broken promise at that.

On a more positive note, Parker’s dynamic with literally everyone was fantastic. She’s possibly the best written character this season. They’ve taken the autism out of the subtext and into the text (although obviously still undiagnosed), and given her coping mechanisms that were taken seriously in the text even when they were played for laughs, which I appreciated. Her attempts to mentor Breanna were sweet, her friendship with Sophie was electric and at times (CRIMES) hilarious, and as usual, she has a fantastic dynamic with Eliot that makes my heart burst. If you don’t think they’re romantically involved, at least acknowledge there’s a life partnership here. They’ve spent the last decade together.

(We’ll get to Harry.)

Eliot isn’t given much arc-wise, which is frustrating since he’s my favorite. He’s being presented as the goal at the end of a redemption arc, ie to keep working at it every day until your soul heals or whatever, and it doesn’t reflect the message they’re trying to convey via Hardison’s speech and our two new characters. He’s got his moments, but I think they under utilized his potential.

Breanna!!! Breanna’s my new favorite, except for Eliot. She’s hilarious, she’s insecure, she’s nerdy and excited in a way that’s similar to Hardison but still distinct in its inherent teenage-girl-ness and I LOVE IT. Unlike the previous series, where Hardison’s “age of the geek” was often a joke played on Hardison, we’re at the point where Eliot and Parker are both right there with him, and so they accept and even appreciate Breanna’s nerdiness. Also, canon gay character? In YOUR Leverage? It’s more likely than you think.

(No, I never thought they’d make ot3 canon on screen. I hoped, but I didn’t think it would actually happen.)

I think Breanna’s the character that will be the most interesting to see grow. She’s got a lot of potential and a list of crimes a mile long (or more). I adore her with all my heart. I want to see her tiktok account.

Harry. Oh, Harry.

It took me a while, but I do like Harry. It took a while, because the narrative positioned him at the same level as Nate back in episode 1 of original Leverage. But in episode 1 we didn’t know the other characters. We had Nate as the POV character, and so we cared about him because we were seeing the world through his eyes. (This is TV Studies 101. I know this, because I took TV Studies 101 in 2019.) In Leverage: Redemption, we no longer have a POV character, for several reasons:

Nate, previously the POV character, is dead.

As it is, by mid-season 3 of leverage Nate was no longer a POV character. This is, coincidentally, the point where the leverage writers realized they had four other characters in the main cast they could do something with, and in-universe, Nate accepted that he was a thief, not a special Good Man.

Sophie is sort of a POV character for the first episode of the revival, but only for the first few minutes. Afterwards, the series settles into the groove of seasons 3-5, i.e., the entire crew is our POV. We know our crew, and we love them as is.

Narratively, however, Redemption insists on positing Harry as the POV character, because it is his redemption we are pursuing most vehemently. And I think they really relied on us already knowing the actor - I’ve never seen him in anything before, so to me he was a completely fresh face and they put almost no effort into selling him to me. Beyond being competent and consistently mildly baffled by the antics of the leverage crew, I honestly don’t know who this man is by the end of EIGHT episodes with him. I have a much better handle on Breanna by the end of 1(a), and I can tell you I knew all five of the original leverage crew better by the end of the first episode of the original series than I do Harry. What’s the name of his daughter, John Rogers. Is he still married. How old is the daughter. Why is none of this worth mentioning. Give him a sense of humor that isn’t reacting to other people’s shenanigans. I’m so frustrated. It’s bad writing.

I did manage to grow to like Harry by the end, but I’m pretty sure this is down to Noah Wyle’s charismatic portrayal of an under-developed character, at least partially. And I never stopped being frustrated at not knowing who this man is at all.

The two highlights of the season are undoubtedly episodes five and six. Episode five was the first time I felt like the episode was more than a collection of good moments between the main cast and mediocre moments between the main cast and also the main plot. The issues with pacing and tone that I suffered through for most of the season were mostly non-existent in ep5 and 6, and at least in episode 5 I attribute that to the pared down cast. They had time to focus not only on our actual characters - Sophie, Parker, Breanna - but also on the case. This is the only client from 1(a) I am going to remember next week without googling it first, mark my words.

Episode six worked for the exact opposite reason - it completely disregarded the client and plot and immersed itself in the characters. Breanna gets a moment to shine, but everybody else gets their bits and I wouldn’t be surprised if that was the script that was most fun to write. The characters felt natural, real, and captured the found-family dynamic that’s been missing all season for the first time.

While episode 2 is the weakest episode, I don’t actually have much to say about it. I am disappointed in episode 8. For a mid-season finale, I really expected them to do something. Instead, it was an episode about Nate Ford that copped out of being about Nate Ford (both with fake-Nate and with the new version of him being relayed to us). I would have told the writers to give that energy back to episode 1 and write an episode that’s about anybody who isn’t Harry, oh my God. I know I said I grew to like him but so many episodes were about Harry. He’s the newbie! Why didn’t Hardison get an episode that was actually about him, considering he was only around for two episodes? Why does Eliot have to be the butt of the joke when the theme of the series should directly tie back to him in a much more meaningful way? The last episode parodies their own tagline by saying Eliot isn’t just a hitter, but it deftly avoids noticing that they’ve turned him into nothing more than very muscly comic relief, including in that very episode!

Also, I hated the Marshal. Eliot actively looked uncomfortable around her.

tl;dr

The season took a while, that’s definitely true. But it did find its footing eventually, and by the halfway mark of 1(a) it finally felt cohesive again. The characters were played fantastically even when they weren’t well-written, and if nothing else, the humor landed every time. It still has its kinks and problems to work out, but if you look at it as a brand new show rather than a continuation of one that went off the air over eight years ago, it’s actually doing rather well. I’m choosing to judge it in both lights - according to its own standards, it establishes its identity in episode five; according to Leverage standards, it establishes its connection to its roots in episode six. Either way, I thoroughly enjoyed 1(a), and continue to have high hopes for 1(b).

fic writing will commence in three, two, one...

[thebangtancloud]

hi ray! i'm curious to know how ur writing process goes so i have a bunch of questions for u to answer if you're up for it 😊

1. where do u usually draw inspo for ur fics?

2. how long does writing a reaction take u compared to full-blown works (like series, one-shots, etc.)

3. how do u cope with writer's block?

4. when coming up with specific scenarios for each member, do u consider their IRL traits & characteristics when writing or do u just come up with a plot that could apply to all the boys?

and finally...

5. how tf are u so talented at sharing stories (so much so that ur updates are the ONLY thing i look forward to these days)? 💗

i apologize in advance if these questions are intrusive; ily tysm and have a nice day!

Hii lovely anon!! I definitely am up for it ahhh this is something I've never done before.

Here we go:

1. Inspiration for fics:

I usually get inspired by random moments during the day. Most of the time, I get an idea for a plot either by the k-dramas that I watch, which I try and modify according to my taste (almost always includes adding some more angsty scenarios to it). Other times, I get random ideas when I'm studying - I'm not even sure how - the idea just pops into my head. I also tend to write out a scene that plays out in my head right after I get inspired to write it so that I don't lose the touch and the burst of energy that I got for that piece.

I also do get a lot of ideas from my friends and close ones. Be it them directly telling me to write about something or just a part of their life that appears to be worth writing about. Quite a few works on my blog have been inspired by the lovely @persefoneniverse , so of course, I also try to work with an idea that has been given to me, trying to fit it into my style of writing.

Works that have been written outside of the influence of others would entirely be inspired by real-life experiences that I've lived through. During Happier (the longest fic I've ever written) - I included descriptions of poor health which were struggles that I've faced when I was at my lowest. There are several instances where I've recreated a scene from my life - just as it is - like Taehyung's and Seokjin's reaction to the reader fainting, it's funny but I've fainted exactly the same way. So yes, I also tend to rely on situations I've been in, it gives me an idea as to how a person truly feels - the emotions that they experience and express, the pain and it's intensity, etc. - instead of just trying to make a wild guess as to what would be an appropriate reactions of person x to y and z.

2. How long I take to write:

Tbh, it entirely depends on my mood. Sometimes I sit to write during a short break that I've taken from my studies (which is about 30 minutes) so I finish almost 3-4/7 member's reactions. When I'm completely in the mood to write and do nothing else, I take much longer, almost 1.5 hours to write one reaction set.

Sometimes the ideas for the reactions just come straight to me, sometimes I struggle to come up with them. So including the time that I utilize to come up with an idea (i try to keep every scenario different and unique so that my works don't appear repetitive), writing it out, finding appropriate GIFs (which surprisingly takes much longer than I thought), I'd say that it takes me at least 2 hours to write a reaction set.

Longer fics, on the other hand, take me quite some time. I took 4 weeks to write Happier (my longest fic so far - 25k words). I'm not that great at being consistent tbh, so most of the times, I write for a while and then I stop. So that's one of the reasons why they take so long. Building characters, the settings, the plot, etc. takes up quite some time too, but once I've completed those, I'd say half my job is done.

3. Coping with writer's block:

There are quite a few things I do when I go through a writer's block. Firstly, I stop writing. This really proved to be useful to me because the more I used to struggle, the more I used to run away from writing. So to avoid that, whenever I feel stuck, I just stop writing. It takes me about a week to refresh my mind and get back to it.

I try to read and explore different genres and authors. I'm a big Nicholas Sparks fan, I've got a hard copy of every single book that he's ever written and his works are officially my 'cure to writer's block'. His language is simple and style of writing is spectacular. The way he plays with a character blows my mind - so naturally, this inspires me to try and do the same.

I also watch a lot of horror movies when I go through a writer's block. I don't know how, but it helps. Not majorly for the plot, but tiny elements in scenes usually stand out even more when I struggle to write - it's almost like a detector for ideas lol - and I get thoroughly inspired by the little things in movies. Be it the villain's emotions (fear/rage/revenge/pain) or even an outfit that someone wore or the food they ate, everything usually stands out even more and helps me quite a bit.

Lastly, reading my own works helps me get out of a writer's block too. It reminds me what I'm capable of and highlights areas I could improve, so yeah, that's pretty much it hahaha.

4. Choosing traits that match the member's personality?

I'm so glad you've asked me this ahhh. Yes, I always try to give a character a trait that matches the true identity of the individual, since I'm writing about the members. This has been sometimes that I've been following from the very beginning. I used to read a lot of fanfiction before I began writing, and it used to frustrate me when a few writers would give some of the members a characteristic which is totally unlike them. That had been one of the reasons why I started this blog. I wanted to write stuff that was realistic, something that someone could read and go, "damn, I can totally see them reacting/behaving that way". That's my reward, honestly. It's something that I've been doing from the start and when people notice that in my writing, it makes me feel like I've accomplished something that I was working towards.

I'll give you an example of describing the member's true identity through a piece of writing. I read somewhere that 'Jin is the youngest in his family but the eldest of the group, and Taehyung is the eldest in his family and one of the youngest in the group, so sometimes Taehyung tends to take care of Jin the way an elder would.' I read this a long time ago and it really stuck with me. It gives you an idea of how complex a person's behavior could be, and over time, it helps in building up the character of the person you're writing about.

5. Talented? Pfft- nah

This...whatever I do here, is something that I never planned on doing. In school, I'd always be at the top of my class in English and I'll never forget the day my English teacher told my mum to 'stop making me watch sad movies because it's showing in my essays.' LMAO this is where I get the angst streak from. My essays in school used to be so bloody depressing and blue that anyone who'd read it would become sad, and I guess this has been something I unknowingly used to do from a very very long time. I should try to look up some of the answer sheets from them and show you guys what I would write ahhh this is inspiring me right now lol.

The funniest thing, or rather the irony of the situation is that my spoken English SUCKS. I have no idea why. I've been trying to improve on my speaking skills for years now, but everything that sounds so good in my head just turns into gibberish when I speak it ARGH. This is why I've had so many people tell me that my English is horrible. It used to hurt me a lot, I'd feel really insulted, and naturally, I used writing to try and improve at least some part of my English. One of the biggest accomplishments is getting my mum to finally say "you're English is actually pretty good." like yes mom, I've been writing for years now lol. So yeah, I really wouldn't call this my talent. It's something that I've tried to mold and sharpen and shape instead of just being handed a ready-made piece, you know? I've fallen and rubbed my nose against the floor countless of times in embarrassment, but this has also taught me what it feels like to hold my head high.

Something that Namjoon spoke during a conference when he was asked how he stays humble. I'd never be able to stop if I begin writing about his sexy brain but yeah he said something about considering himself to be just 5% of the entire picture. That hit me like a truck. It really brought my pride to the floor and humbled me in an instant. Because that's what I want to do, too. What started out as a hobby has now become an activity that so many people are a part of, which I couldn't be more grateful for. It gives me a chance to offer a part of me that sometimes helps people, comforts them, lightens up their mood, gives them the inspiration, etc. which has always been my motive behind writing.

The fact that you've been looking forward to my stories makes me so happy, dear anon. I cannot begin to express how grateful I am to you, and to each and every reader that is a part of this beautiful journey of my life. None of these questions were intrusive, don't worry hahaha. I've always wanted to be open about everything I struggle with or even the little accomplishments that come my way every now and then, and I'm really really happy that I got to do this :))

*sigh* phew, that was a lot. I hope you haven't grown bored ;)

[bigskydreaming]

Fandom Stuff To-Do List (basically just stuff I want to get to this week in any order, now that I have Completion Capabilities. Not meant to be a promise of any specific things on this for sure getting done, just these are stuff on my mind to get around to when I have the chance)

- Finish meta post about the wings fic AU and how peoples’ wings are affected by massive physical or emotional trauma that changes them as a person (aka do Babs’ wings change when she becomes Oracle). Which will of course segue into a mini-rant about how our culture tends to view trauma and the acquisition of physical disabilities as something there’s no coming back from, like there’s a ceiling on how good a person’s life can ever be after certain things happen to them. 

And that’s why so much of our media content is geared towards treating disabled people and survivors almost more as resources to ensure ‘the same kind of thing’ doesn’t happen to people it hasn’t happened to yet and thus ‘can still be saved/protected.’ Rather than people just fucking acknowledging that trauma is just destructive change that’s impact is relative to how many resources a person has to cope or deal with that change and incorporate it into their life. And that people don’t need to be protected from trauma or accidents as much as is hyped because its literally impossible to ever prevent anything bad from happening ever, so rather than hyping the illusion that ‘this sort of thing could never happen to you as long as you do xyz and don’t do abc’ more attention and focus should be shifted to acknowledging that its still gonna happen sometimes no matter what people do to prevent it or keep safe from it. Because these sorts of trauma ARE EXTERNALLY ORIGINATING and thus there’s literally only ever so much people can do that’s originating within the self to control/protect from being affected in certain ways by stuff originating from outside the self, aka inherently OUT of our control. 

And thus IMO we’d all be better served as a society by paying less lip service to the idea that people can be guaranteed safety or protection from various things and instead have more of that focus and attention shifted over towards the acquisition and building and distributing of more resources to help people in the EVENT of certain things happening to them anyway. Which in turn helps spread the narrative that you know what, even if these things happen, even if you are disabled, even if you are traumatized, that’s not the end of the road, that’s not a dealbreaker, that’s just a CHANGE that we as a society are here to help you through. It just means that your life is different now, that you may be different now, but different doesn’t have to be bad, it doesn’t have to come with a ceiling or limitations, it just means a change in perspective. 

Bad things will still happen, just like bad things still happened before your Big Change, and its important to remember not to glamorize or romanticize the Before time because that tends to gloss over the fact that nobody’s life was ever perfect before big change or trauma hit anyway. So why on earth should it be a surprise (or any different from anyone else’s life) that life isn’t perfect after big change or trauma? That doesn’t mean it can’t still be GOOD. That you won’t still have good days, good surprises, happiness, friends, joy, laughter, that maybe it takes more resources or just DIFFERENT resources to get there than it did before.....but everyone’s life is different and everyone requires different resources to achieve various desired results or experiences in the first place, so its not the end of the world to have to switch your focus and look in different places for different resources now. 

There needs to be less focus on what HAPPENED to people and more focus on what EFFECT it had on them, specifically. On how it changed them and what those changes mean they require now in order to live their life fully and happily,  that just might be different from what they needed before. There needs to be a shift in focus from just the trauma or accident or THING that happened that changed the course or direction of a person’s life as like....the definitive point their life changed, because that THING that happened was still just a THING. It came from the outside. It was external. It literally WASN’T ABOUT THEM, and thus focusing on IT can only ever reveal so much about the PERSON it happened to. 

No, the point of focus for a person’s life changing in the wake of massive trauma or an accident isn’t WHEN that happened, its when in the aftermath of that, however long it took, when that person, that survivor, finally got up one morning and realized they had a new normal. That they weren’t the person they were before, but they aren’t aimlessly lost in a single long-lasting trauma response searching fruitlessly for personal landmarks to reorient themselves when those landmarks simply don’t exist anymore, because they don’t HAVE to find or lean on those old familiar landmarks anymore. Because they’ve found new ones, found their footing in a new landscape, a new approach to living and perceiving the world around them and how it impacts and intersects with them. 

Gimme a change in focus to how recovery isn’t a thing you can ever FIND, that you can ever ACQUIRE by searching for it...and so its less vital that we hold up the idea of it as some kind of semi-mythical Holy Grail its okay to send knights eternally questing for on just the possibility of its existence because hey at least its something to shoot for, when not so deep down a lot of people shelling out advice for recovery that isn’t rooted in their own experiences or utilization of the same advice they’re selling but rather is born of ‘eh, you want something I can’t give or help with and that’s making me uncomfortable so lemme point you in a direction just vague or far away enough that I don’t have to worry about seeing you and your aura of Making Me Uncomfortable around for awhile’....

.....nah, instead how about looking to how resources might be better utilized just....supporting people until they can reach that point of recovery in their own time and their own ways. Because by its very nature, you can spend years working on recovering, on finding a new normal, a new sense of stability in your life, but you’re only ever going to ‘find it’ the day you realize that you’ve ALREADY found it. That you don’t have to go searching for it anymore because its already there, you settled and replanted yourself without even realizing it. Recovery in the wake of trauma is about searching for a way to feel better, to heal, to move past something, and the answer to that need is a feeling of no longer needing to search or find that ephemeral something, because you’re content, you’re okay with who and what you are now. And you don’t need to look anymore for something you wake up and realize you’ve already found somewhere along the way. 

Being disabled, being traumatized, being hurt, being CHANGED by some kind of big ass fucking Meteor Of Suck smacking into the planet that is your life and wiping out the fucking dinosaurs of this weirdo metaphor, like....yes, it leaves a mark, makes an impact, oftentimes a BIG one. But like, without the meteor that ended the dinosaur age or whatever, none of us would even be here because the point is just life goes on, and there’s no predicting what it will look like tomorrow, so yeah it could be worse and maybe it’ll never be like it was before, but there’s absolutely zero proof it couldn’t maybe be BETTER, even if it doesn’t ever look the way it was before. 

Change is just change. Its not the enemy, its just the point of life. Like we’re born and then things change every single day of our life however long it is and then we die. Birth and death are the bookends, and constant change is every single page of the book in between that. Change isn’t the villain of our story, change IS our story. 

And its OUR story, so it never gets to be defined by what someone else does to us in the story, because the hero’s journey isn’t about what MADE the hero set out on their quest, its about their QUEST itself, its about their TRIUMPH, its not about what happened its about what THEY decided to do NEXT because of it. Its not about the catalysts for our changes, its about what we decided to DO, who we decided to BECOME, once those catalysts hit the page and necessitated further change. 

Your trauma, your change, none of those are YOU, because YOU are the person you see when you look in the mirror and take all of that in, view it as part of you, your story, something that left a mark just like every single experience of your life has left SOME kind of impact no matter how small, and who you changed into, decided to become, how you incorporated all those marks and changes and experiences....THAT is you. The ENTIRETY of that map, not the single markers along the way, no matter how loud or dramatic or attention-grabbing they try to be. 

You are the map of your experiences and you only look to a map, a map only matters to you when its about leading or finding the way to where YOU want to go, with intent. No road map gets to take the wheel of the car just because you aren’t going in the direction it said you were supposed to go originally. If you get lost, you get lost. If you end up somewhere you didn’t expect, you end up somewhere you didn’t expect. If you realize you no longer want or need to go where you were setting out to originally, if you change your mind or decide another destination is better suited to you, you get to look to your map and draw a new route accordingly, because its YOURS, it only exists because of you, not you because of it. 

Your trauma or whatever else is fucking up your life may be big fucking pieces of the mosaic you are when you see yourself in the mirror metaphorically speaking cuz I want this analogy to be inclusive for blind people too and I just realized I need to spend more time thinking up alternative ways to express that sentiment that don’t rely on a singular axis of experience to convey it, because that’s kinda the point in and of itself: 

We’re all born with toolboxes that give us a variety of tools to approach life with, to build things out of, to build OUR life out of. The aim of civilization, of society, of being a species that only made it this far by being communal and building things together, pooling our tools to build things none of us were equipped to build with just what we already had...is that ideally, the toolbox we’re born with gets added to by others around us. Our parents or guardians or teachers, our friends and loved ones, the random person at the store who saw someone was a dollar short at the grocery store register and offered one of their own or the way we can add to someone else’s toolbox by simply asking if they’re alright when we can see they’re not and then just like that they have the added resource of the knowledge that someone cares enough about them to want to know what’s wrong. 

And none of our toolboxes are identical. None make it all the way to our deathbed with us while containing the exact same tools we started with, some are missing, some are added. Some we didn’t even realize we had. Some we never even used. Some we used the hell out of and are worn to pieces and some are shiny and new because we wore out the older version of them and needed a replacement. And sometimes big fucking meteors of suck smack into our lives right when we’re just minding our own business and enjoying our own jurassic age and everything changes forever, but millions of years later we might still be around and now we just look like chickens and alligators and sharks and all the other creatures that are basically just dinosaur descendants in a different form because we’re hardy as fuck and damn I really need to get over this metaphor it is not the analogy I’m looking for but oh well. 

Point is, sometimes Change happens and the tools we’re used to leaning on when building our better, ideal lives and optimal experiences, like....maybe they just don’t work for us anymore. Maybe we can’t grip the old familiar ones the way we used to, maybe our eyes have gone to shit and we can’t wield the more precise instruments with the precision we’re used to, maybe the nails we were using to build stairs in our dream house are fucking useless cuz they’re not the right size when building the wheelchair ramp our new dream house needs instead.......and so fucking what? What does any of that actually say about US, about who we ARE, about what our life could be or how good it could get? 

Absolutely nothing. Because the toolboxes we were born with were still only ever just tools. What we ARE is what we make with them, what we build out of ourselves, what we choose with intent to become. So what if our old tools aren’t up to the task of actualizing our new dreams? That’s what we need other people for. That’s what society SHOULD be for. That’s when what we need is not to be FIXED, not to be restocked with what we had originally but is now no longer of use to us or what we need or maybe even not what we want.....no, all we need is....new tools. New resources. New kinds of help. 

And again, that’s what society is SUPPOSED to be for. To help us define ourselves not by the problems we face but our solutions to overcoming them. To help give each other new tools and teach each other how to use them when change necessitates hunting around for something that’s easier to grip now. And if we all come into the world starting out with different tools than everyone else anyway.....what does it MATTER if somewhere along the way we have to swap out the old familiar ones we started with and look for new ones we didn’t need originally? 

A cane is just a cane to help someone walk because for whatever reasons, their legs or spine need that tool to help get them where they want to go. A cane is not proof that it will never take them to a destination where they’re every fucking bit as happy as people who made it to the same place without the use of one. A cane is not THEM. Its just a fucking cane. Same thing with glasses, with wheelchairs, with prosthetic limbs, with hearing aids. Same thing with support groups, with therapists, with trauma centers. 

Like do people ever think about how fucking AMAZING it is that we have prosthetics at all? That somewhere along the line, people saw a problem, saw a need, that was not ‘oh this person (or maybe even ‘they themselves’ because let’s not go the saviorism route and forget that disabled people have had plenty the fuck to do with designing or dreaming up or building the tools disabled people use to navigate life while working with a different set of physiological tools than most people are equipped with. Like this isn’t a ‘oh look how good other people are to people in need’ point but more just a ‘people-as-in-society-overall-which-includes-both-able-bodied-and-disabled’ point). 

Like the point is the response to seeing that was not just ‘oh so and so or maybe even me is damaged beyond repair,’  no instead it was just ‘this person’s legs aren’t currently equpped to do what this person needs or wants them to do.’ And people said okay the solution, the answer, the RESPONSE to seeing that problem or need was not to sit back and think about how much it sucks that this person can’t walk on their own and how limited or ‘lesser’ their life will be than other peoples’ because of that, no they said instead, hey, what if we just BUILT THEM DIFFERENT LEGS. Like, just THINK about that. We, as a people, communally, as in more than one, pooled resources to BUILD PEOPLE NEW FUCKING LEGS. 

And all it ultimately took, the catalyst for THAT, for changing the lives of people who use prosthetics as tools in their day to day lives....the catalyst for that CHANGE was NOT in fact....whatever happened to make various people need prosthetics in the first place. No, the catalyst, the change that got us to the point of people having the OPTION of prosthetics at all, was the point in time where people saw a need, and came up with the solution of prosthetics to address that need. When they said not oh that’s a problem or oh sorry you have that need, but oh I have an idea, or oh here’s what we can do about that. The defining element wasn’t that something needed building. The defining element was WHAT PEOPLE CHOSE TO BUILD BECAUSE OF THAT. 

Just like severe trauma is a catalyst for change in a person’s life, a meteor that no one saw coming and can dramatically reshape the landscape of their life, wipe out familiar comforts and landmarks they use to orient themselves.....but at the end of the day, that person is not the meteor itself. We don’t call them whatever we call that meteor, we call them by their fucking name because they’re still the same fucking person, just in a different place now, with different needs, with different dreams or wants or goals. Who they are isn’t how rough they have it while they’re going through the most....because how much a trauma shakes up a person’s life is directly relative to how equipped they are already to deal with that particular trauma or change. 

So by its very nature the ‘worst’ or most changing traumas are the ones that we’re personally LEAST equipped to deal with at that particular time on our own, and how fucking stupid is it to try and draw conclusions about a person based just on how they react in the immediate aftermath of an event whose defining element is that it was a destructive change that was uniquely impactful because it hit them where they were least equipped to deal with it? 

Like, NOBODY is equipped to handle well, like, an event that relative to THEM SPECIFICALLY, like....is something they’re not equipped to handle. LOL. Like, that’s so fucking dumb, but that’s who we ALL are when in the midst of massive trauma responses - just people hunting desperately for new normals, new landmarks, new awareness with which to recenter ourselves, reorient ourselves, redefine who and what we are in relation to our lives and society and our loved ones in the wake of a massive change that shook things up and required repositioning ourselves because the spot we used to be positioned on no longer exists.

And what the fuck can you learn, can you actually KNOW about a person based solely on the fact that ‘oh this person is having a hard time dealing with something that there’s literally NO good way to deal with?’ 

People talk a lot about how revealing trauma or tragedy is, that you can learn a lot by seeing how someone handles a huge trauma or tragedy being thrown at them, even in fiction. But y’know what? There’s a ceiling on how much that alone can ever reveal, especially if the lens of time through which you examine that person or character is limited just to the aftermath of the trauma, the thing that HAPPENED to them. Rather than focused on the beginning of their new journeys, once they’ve reoriented themselves, acquired new tools, picked new destinations or goals for their lives and set out to now make THOSE a reality....just like people before or without massive trauma or tragedy are similarly not defined by the LACK of what didn’t happen to them, but simply by......what destinations or goals they pick for their lives and their journeys to get there and what they do and what choices they make along the way. 

Nah, if you ask me, a person’s truest essence isn’t revealed by what they do with whatever limited tools or resources they have when struggling with a massive trauma or tragedy that’s only massive specifically BECAUSE it hit them in a way or place they were ill-equipped or unprepared to deal with. Because the essence of that person, the truth revealed by examining that struggle, the answer in focus when looking through just that finite lens....can be boiled down to the exact same thing, no matter WHO you put in that place. 

What they do in the wake of a massive trauma is simply ‘as much as they’re capable of given their limited resources or capabilities at THAT SPECIFIC POINT IN TIME.’ Which is inherently....not a lot. Completely subjective and relative to every individual, given the different traumas, resources and needs or injuries relative to every individual while they’re going through their fucking worst....but that’s still the point. 

A person struggling with things beyond their capability to handle well at that given moment given their current state or resources.....is ultimately never going to appear as anything other than.....a person struggling with things beyond their capability to handle well at that given moment given their current state or resources. Wow. Really pegged that person huh. Got them all summed up, totally differentiated from every other person to ever go through shit, just by seeing them.....not handle it great when by its very nature of fucking course they’re not going to handle a trauma they’re not prepared for with any degree of ‘great.’

Like, is it any wonder our society has this built in presumption that experiencing certain traumas or tragedies just fucking CONDEMNS that person to from then on live a life that will never actually measure up to being as optimal as it maybe could have been if that hadn’t happened? What other conclusion are you gonna draw, about how good or not a person’s life is in the wake of massive destructive change....if you’re only ever focusing on or looking at how they react at the specific point where they’re LEAST equipped to deal with that trauma or tragedy well?

Because thing is....that’s not a person. That’s a snapshot of a person. Try and define me or sum me up by looking at a fucking Polaroid of me when I was ten or whatever. Go on. See how revealing that is. Tell me what that says about me.

People can’t be defined by negative space. By what they’re NOT. By all the ways in which they can’t be what they MIGHT have been had something happened different, or all the things they COULD be if they were born into different circumstances. You do that, you’re not describing a person, you’re describing hypotheticals that you can apply as desired to ANY person, with just a few tweaks here and there, and thus always find a way to picture them as you want to for your own personal purposes, agenda or comfort, rather than gaining any insight whatsoever about who they are as defined by the space that they DO fill up, with intent, by their choices.

We don’t look to the early history of our species and talk about all the people who DIDN’T discover fire, maybe even just because they were born in a fucking wet climate or whatever where it was inherently more difficult to happen across the realization that striking sticks or stones in certain ways can make a very useful and helpful flame. With the point being that even if we DID talk about those early humans as much as we did the ones who got actual bonfires going, the fact that they simply ‘weren’t the ones to discover fire’ actually would reveal shit about them in and of itself, because who’s to say that the reason, the ‘culprit’ for that was that they were simply too dumb or whatever to figure that out instead of just being they lived in a climate that made that discovery particularly difficult or less likely to happen by chance? Y’know? 

But no, anyway, we talk about the ones who DID discover fire, because the turning point for our species which that was, like, we don’t look at it and define it by the lack of it happening sooner, at the problem that not having fire was for the people who came before that discovery. It was the triumph that mattered, it was the choices made in the wake of that discovery, it was how people put that new tool to work and not oh how revealing it is about the rest of early humanity that they didn’t put that tool to work in similar ways because it simply wasn’t even a possibility for them when it was simply a resource they didn’t have.

Nah, IMO a person’s truest essence is revealed not by their problems or their lacks, not by the hypothetical maybe me they could have been if they went through life without anything bad ever happening to them and thus who they’ll never actually be now. Its not revealed by taking a snapshot of them in the moments or days or even weeks following a trauma or tragedy that struck with an accompanying seismic shake-up of all their existing stability and support systems that ultimately limited how much or many of the resources they’d previously acquired or built could even be of use to them in dealing with things now. You don’t learn anything substantial by putting people in a room with only two exits and one of them locked and then act like its an insightful revelation that they ultimately make their way out by means of the finite options available to them when their options have been actively limited by forces outside them and their control, even if that wasn’t the ‘optimal’ answer to that predicament and you wanted them to make other more ideal choices without acknowledging they literally were limited to the most basic of fucking choices available. No, IMO the actual revelations about people come in their declaration of a new want or wish or ask or goal AFTER they’ve found their footing and are ready to live again rather than just cope. 

Why define ourselves by our needs when we’re most ourselves when dreaming of our wants?

You don’t gain the most insight by watching someone flail about when they’re at their lowest and just floundering. You want insight, you look to see what tools they use to pull themselves upright, what resources they ask for or seek out in order to build something new that they can place upon their new shaken-up-and-reformed foundations and from there find some stability with which to pull themselves FORWARD. Instead of just clinging to the shattered remnants of whatever their source of stability was previously but is no longer useful for that purpose, maybe not even because they WANT to cling to just that or are afraid or unwilling to move forward, but because they simply can’t reach any fucking resources with which to do anything BUT just cling to what little they could grab, and what they actually need is just someone to offer them said resources instead of just acting like they really did something by looking at a person lacking in resources and then judging or defining them simply by all the things they AREN’T doing to better themselves or their lives, WHEN THAT’S ONLY BECAUSE THEY’RE LACKING THE FUCKING RESOURCES TO DO ANY OF THAT.

You see who a person is not by comparing them to who they MIGHT have been before, because who can say with any certainty what person they might have been the day after that massive trauma or tragedy, had said trauma or tragedy never actually occurred? Who can guarantee that person, that hypothetical maybe-me is ACTUALLY better than who they are or can become now?

Nope. You wanna know who that person is? That’s who they declare themselves to be the second they stop trying to define themselves by who they WERE and thus who they’re not anymore....but rather by who they are NOW, and who they want to be from here on out. You don’t look at the person who’s been pushed to the ground and say oh that’s that person, that’s who that person is. No, all that tells you is that person was pushed to the ground by an asshole, and surprise surprise, they fell because that’s what fucking happens when someone pushes you to the ground, lolol. That’s not the nature of a person, that’s the nature of physics. Wow. Person A is affected by gravity and the forceful aggression of assholes in their vicinity. The uncanny insight of it all.

You wanna see that person, you look at who they are AFTER they’ve pulled themselves back up. You see what they do THEN. Once they’re back in control of themselves, their life, in the driver’s seat.

You can’t define people by the lack of something. A lack of control, a lack of choice, a lack of resources. Because we are our choices, we are the journeys we take, we are what happens on the next page of our story because the next page of our story only EVER happens because each and every page we decided to MAKE something happen next. 

And we can only MAKE those choices, versus have them made for us and which thus says more about the person who forced those choices on us than it does us for simply being unable to stop that, we can only TAKE those journeys, versus being forced into certain directions and paths and down certain roads by limited options that say more about how little a person can do with only finite options available to them rather than say anything substantial about what directions a person might go in if they had actual options and choices available to them beyond just being presented with two routes that both equally suck, we can only do anything substantial with any of that, anything that says anything about US rather than just descriptive of our circumstances....

We can only do anything with all of that AFTER we’ve gained or taken back or regained control over our lives. AFTER we’ve found our footing. AFTER we’ve said well guess what, this happened then, but guess what else happened today? I got out of bed and said okay so we’re just not gonna worry about that because its over and done and it doesn’t get to be the only thing that matters about us. So instead, how about what matters right now is whatever the fuck I choose to do today, because THAT is up to me, THAT says something about me, THAT is not just some random rock crashing into me from outer fucking space and saying knock knock, fuck you. THAT is ME, saying with intent, THIS is who I am now and THIS is what I’m going to do today, and THAT’S an actual story about me and my choices and my PERSONHOOD. Versus just a summation of how shitty I looked while being smacked in the face by a mountain of bullshit and me without so much as an umbrella.

THAT’S a story about a person. That other thing, that fixation on the rock that crashed into them without warning? Its ultimately never going to be anything other than the story of how a person got hit by a fucking rock.

All of which is to say, so yeah, in that wing fic AU, Babs’ wings do change after what happens with the Joker, even though her wings had already settled.

BUT, the key thing about that is....the point of CHANGE for her wings was NOT when the Joker shot her. Its not when her life, when SHE changed, ‘because of that.’ Because maybe her wings didn’t work the same way anymore after that happened, because they represented who she was before that. And before that she was and thought of herself as someone who could grapple between buildings, flip kick into bad guys, do cartwheels across rooftops, and she can’t do those things anymore so maybe her wings don’t work for her in the way they used to because they were ‘designed’ for someone who lived life in a way she was no longer capable of. 

But her wings didn’t just change then and there, they still remained the same as always even if they weren’t as useful because maybe she could still fly perhaps, but not land in the ways her wings were designed to do that, due to the changed capabilities of her legs and spine which were meant to work in concert with her wings. 

See, because the point is.....if the wings are the ultimate expression of the self, even acknowledging that she was in fundamental ways CHANGED at that point (not lessened, but changed, made different, needing different things and having different wants).....the point is, at just that specific time, in the immediate aftermath of that trauma, what would her wings have changed into? What would they LOOK like, simply because say, two days ago, the Joker shot her and now she’s paralyzed? If she’s no longer the old her, how could the new her POSSIBLY be defined by that little data, that little definition, that small an image or encapsulation of everything she still MIGHT yet be or become once she’s out of bed, out of tears, out of grief for the goals that are no longer viable and now ready to say okay, now let me decide what DOES come next for me now.

So yes, Babs’ wings do change after the Joker shoots her, but they remain as they were for awhile. Just not as useful to her now that her toolbox of physical capabilities was less equipped to accommodate her newly changed needs and approaches to life.

When they change, its because she’s already become Oracle. That’s who she is now, Batgirl is a part of that but more about who she was. It’s part of the foundation she built her new self atop, its never going to not be a part of her, never going to leave, it still matters....but it is not the building itself anymore, it is the bedrock that made it through the seismic upheaval of her life and thus was sturdy enough she felt safe building something new on it, something that could ride out further earthquakes thanks to having it to ground her. But as integral as it is to what she built in the wake of her big quake....it is not the house she houses her self-image in. That’s Oracle’s domain now.

And so when her wings do change, it happens overnight, while she’s asleep. Dreaming of everything she wants now, everything she wants to become. They change not in a ‘this is happening’ sense, much like we’re never fully aware of how far into our recovery process we are.....instead, they change in a ‘huh, so this happened’ sense. Just like we only realize how much we’ve recovered, how much we no longer need to define ourselves by a quest to be better, happier, more alright...once we’ve already found that happiness or contentment and realized the reason there’s no longer the same drive to pursue some abstract image of recovery is simply because we no longer need to go anywhere to get that, we’re already there and this is what that looks like.

And so when one day Babs wakes up feeling different and looks in the mirror to see her wings no longer look like they used to but rather seem much more suited to the woman she is now, the woman she envisioned in her mind as a new goal or destination of self-determination, that she chose to become with intent, that she worked to become so she could be defined by something other than what some asshole did to her, so that she could be the sum of her deeds rather than the snapshot of her tragedy.....its a sign of change. Of her change, and proof that her life is not now what it once was, and never will be again.....but its not some big momentous reveal, more just an exhale of affirmation for something she’s already known for awhile and just now has the distance and perspective to see actual proof of. 

Its the marker of the fact that actually she’s okay with it, she’s okay with herself, her new self, because she doesn’t need to be who she might have been without that trauma, she doesn’t need to be a maybe when who she is? Has no more of a built in limit or ceiling or cap on happiness and success than the woman she was before her trauma had. She doesn’t love what happened to her, but its just something that happened to her. Its not who she is, THIS is who she is, this is THAT, and this she’s more than okay with, she’s proud of, she’s like damn I look good. Life threw a punch at her and she got into a wheelchair and rolled with it, and if you’re busy looking at the bruise from that punch because you’re so focused on the fact that it happened, you’re missing the real story. 

And that’s the way she pulled herself out of bed every morning for a year and into her wheelchair to train with escrima sticks in whole new ways of fighting so the next time the Joker tried knocking on her door, he wouldn’t get to pull the same shit twice. Because she’s not the same woman she was then and anyone focusing on THAT instead of watching out for all the ways she can still kick ass, some old, some new, some that she invented herself because necessity is the mother of invention and Babs has always been driven to be the top of her class for reasons that have everything to do with just HER and absolutely nothing at all with what happened to put her in a class where fighting from a wheelchair was a tool she felt she needed -

Well maybe they need to get clocked across the head with a stick to drive home that they’ve missed the entire point, that if you’re there looking to see a tragedy you’ve got the wrong fucking address cuz she’s doing just fine.

And so she wakes up one day and looks in her mirror and sees her wings have changed overnight and they look nothing like she remembers but tbh, she likes these a lot better, likes the way they feel, the shape of them, they just FIT....and then she just nods her head decisively, quietly pleased but in no rush to make any big announcement, because for her, this changes nothing. Its just a sign that change has already happened.

And its like....duh, she already knew that, and she’s more than okay with it, so semantics can wait for another time. She’s Barbara Gordon, the Oracle of Gotham, and she’s got shit to do.

And okay, so clearly, I ended up just writing that post instead of writing the rest of that to-do list, so I’m gonna now go make another post with the ACTUAL to-do list, and like, yay, I can cross this off I guess? My process is so mysterious, oh unknowable ways.

[snarkythewoecrow]

Prompt time! I know you've taken prompts for more serious subjects and mental health related stuff and I've absolutely loved them. If you are comfortable to write it and it won't be triggering, would you write like a sequel to your rubber band/coping mechanism fic where Peter goes to Tony when he has an urge to hurt himself or afterwards for helping cleaning up? Either that or a fic unrelated to that one where Tony sees Peter's old self harm scars or finds out that Peter still does sh? Just something irondad that's related to that subject but only if you are okay with writing it! I completely understand if it's something you don't wanna write more off, I just thought I'd ask anyway if that's okay

Sorry it took me so long to write, but here it is!

Read on AO3

*Trigger Warning for Self-harm and Blood*

In the kitchen at the lake house, Peter sat at the center island, watching Tony thread macaroni onto yarn as Morgan painted the necklace she’d already made. Noodles were scattered everywhere, and when you walked, there was a good chance you’d hear pasta crunching underfoot.

Morgan had paint from her hands to her hair, and Tony wasn’t fairing much better. Morgan had already made them all necklaces and was working on her fifth. The one she’d made Peter was draped around his neck. She'd said the one she made him was extra special because it had wagon wheels laced between the macaroni.

Peter was on the end of the island on a stool, his textbook carefully placed to avoid the smears of paint and glue. Thankfully, after the glitter balloon incident, Pepper banned glitter from the house, so Peter didn’t need to worry about that.

All in all, he should have been happy, but he wasn’t, and he wasn’t sure why that was, either.

Things had been better in the months since Tony had found Peter on the back porch that night, since they’d talked about his self-harming, but that didn’t mean that sometimes, for a reason Peter didn’t understand, he still had bad days—like today.

Everyone in his life was healthy and happy, things were going well at school, but he still couldn’t get the itch to cut out of his mind. Some days were definitely worse than others, and he’d been building toward this bad day all week. The rubber band on his wrist was getting plenty of use.

Tony had told him that he could come to him whenever he needed but seeing Tony smiling as he played with Morgan, he knew he couldn’t. He couldn’t bring the mood down. He didn’t want to be the reason the worry lines in Tony’s face deepened.

It was already hard enough to use the rubber band with Tony nearby. He always got this look—somewhere between sadness and concern. Peter hated causing that look, so he’d done the only thing he could to avoid it. He stopped snapping the band when he was with Tony.

It was easier this way. What Tony didn’t know, couldn’t hurt him, or at least, that’s what Peter told himself.

The cloud over Peter’s head wasn’t lightening up, and he felt overwhelmed like his lungs were filling with water, and he was going under. He fingered the band on his wrist, wanting to snap it, just to feel something, but then Tony laughed, and Morgan giggled, the box of macaroni spilled, and Peter—Peter just couldn’t do it.

He closed his textbook and excused himself from the table, mumbling that he had a headache and needed to lay down. Before he made it out of the kitchen, Tony called after him, telling him dinner was in a few hours and he’d check on him then.

Peter forced a smile, ducking his head and scurrying up the stairs, leaving the sounds of Morgan’s laughter behind him.

When he got to his room, he shut the door, falling against it, still clutching his textbook. He didn’t have a headache like he’d told Tony, but he didn’t know what else to say at the time, though with the tension in his body, a headache was a real possibility soon.

He kicked off the door and walked over to his bed, pausing by the desk to drop his textbook with a thump. He collapsed on the bed, so his legs were still hanging off the side.

With Tony no longer able to witness it, Peter snapped the band on his wrist, but it brought no relief from the deep need to cut. The feeling was so consuming Peter thought he could taste it. The flavor reminded him of ash. He hated that he felt this way, but he didn’t know how to control it.

Tony had paid for therapy, and May made sure he went, but the coping skills only helped so much.

When it was like this, nothing else seemed like it could scratch the itch—not as well as a knife.

His therapist had suggested holding ice cubes when the urge got bad, but that would mean going to the kitchen, and Tony would notice. He would ask. Then worry lines would etch the man’s face, and Peter would feel even worse because he put them there.

Drawing on his arms was a nearly laughable suggestion. His therapist had suggested a red pen for effect. Peter didn’t have a red pen, and it never worked in the past. The only thing he knew that could make him feel better came with a healthy dose of guilt. He knew hurting himself would temporarily make it all melt away.

But the worst part—the part that made Peter feel like a failure—was he didn’t even know what had triggered it. Everything had been going well. Maybe he really did come back from the snap wrong.

Frustrated, angry, Peter sat up and scrubbed his hands over his face. The urge to just make a little cut or dig his nails just deep enough to break skin was all-consuming. The band on his wrist felt more like a reminder of his failures than a lifeline—a way to pull himself back.

He wanted to scream at the unfairness of it all.

Then it reached a point where it started to hurt in his chest, and he just needed something to focus it all back, to let him breathe, and without conscious thought, he started clawing at his arm. The little stabs of pain felt grounding, but it wasn’t enough. It wasn’t the fix he needed.

The crescent-shaped cuts and scratches oozed blood as Peter got up and went looking for a knife, for something to cut with. He’d given his utility knife to Tony, but he thought they both knew that wouldn’t stop him, not when he felt like this.

A small part of him thought he should call out to Tony, but then he remembered how happy they’d looked, and he didn’t want to spoil that. He’d deal with this on his own.

He slipped out of his room, listening to make sure no one was close, then darted to the bathroom. His chances of finding something to cut with seemed higher in a bathroom.

When he got to the bathroom, he started rifling through the cabinet but not finding much. He came across spare toothbrushes and travel-size shampoos and soaps, but nothing sharp. He looked under the sink, knowing there should be a first aid kit, and where there was a first aid kit, there might be scissors.

He found his prize with a shaky sigh. Setting the scissors on the counter, Peter stuffed the kit back under the sink, pocketed the scissors, and headed back to his room.

When he got to the hall, he heard Tony talking, telling Morgan something about a spaghetti monster. It made guilt twist in his gut, settling there and starting to fester.

He ran back to his room as quickly as he dared, then shut his door, locking it for good measure.

The feeling that washed over him as he took the scissors from his pocket was one part relief, one part anticipation, and the rest self-loathing. He knew he wasn’t just letting himself down. He was letting those who cared about him down, too.

That didn’t stop him from sitting in the desk chair, putting the blade to his arm, and cutting, though.

It happened so easily, and when he did it, he put all those bad feelings into it, turning the negative emotions and guilt into something manageable, something he could do something about. Physical pain made sense. It had a cause, a source, a purpose. And the blood that welled up from the cut made sense, too. It all made sense in a way his emotions didn’t, and he needed it.

The one cut wasn’t enough, though. It had been hesitant and not that deep. The bleeding was already stopping.

Peter felt like the world was muted and focused down to the blade and his arm. He pressed the metal harder against his skin and dragged it until he reached the underside of his arm. It bled much more freely, and Peter felt almost high from it.

Wanting to see more, needing the cause and effect of it, he cut again just below the second, pressing even harder. The skin split neatly under the blade.

He was just about to make another when the door handle jiggled, followed by a knock.

“Pete?” Tony’s voice drifted through the door. “Why’s the door locked?”

Peter’s high came crashing down, and reality wasn’t gentle. It hit suddenly how stupid he’d been. It was like realization hit him all at once. One thing had so easily turned into another. And Peter had taken each step without truly acknowledging the direction he was heading. And the place it brought him wasn’t great. He was locked in his room with a bleeding arm, having used Tony’s scissors, and ignored every chance he’d had to reach out for help. Tony had only been a shout away.

His body felt like it had locked up as the emotions swirled within him. He dropped the scissors on the floor, clattering against the wood, and he looked down at his arm, really seeing the damage for the first time outside of the warped lens of need.

It was bad. It was really bad. He might not need stitches, but it would be close, and the blood was everywhere. There were droplets on his jeans and on the floor, rivulets running down his arm.

He didn’t know what to do or what to say. His voice had been stolen by the grief he was feeling. He wasn’t just mourning himself. He was mourning the loss of trust he knew he’d just caused. He wasn’t ready to face the music.

The door handle jiggled again, and there was another round of knocking, even louder. “Peter, open the door.”

His heart kept hitting his ribs so hard he thought it would bruise.

He didn’t want to lie, but he didn’t know how to tell the truth. He hated himself for not just telling Tony how he’d been feeling. With more clarity than before, he realized now that Tony would probably have been proud.

He wouldn’t be proud now.

He would be sad or angry or worse—disappointed.

If Peter were honest, he was pretty disappointed in himself, enough for the both of them, enough for the world. He felt like a failure.

He didn’t want to be a liar, though, but he didn’t know what to do, so he called out to Tony, “Just a minute.”

He grabbed some tissues from his desk and tried to dab some of the blood up, but it just smeared it around, making his arm look like part of a crime scene. He’d really done it this time. Once Tony saw, there would be no going back. He’d see how broken Peter was and not want him anymore. No one wanted to deal with this, no matter how much they said they cared.

Tears started to well in his eyes, frowning so hard his face hurt. He kept a tissue pressed to the deepest cut and stood. He looked to the window, considering escaping the only way he could. He knew it wasn’t an option, though, and would only make things worse.

Accepting his fate, his body and mind feeling weighted, Peter shuffled to the door and unlocked it. He stepped back so it could swing open, closing his eyes and waiting for Tony to realize.

There were footsteps and Tony saying, “You know you’re not supposed to lock the door.”

Then Peter heard it. The air sucking into Tony’s lungs.

Peter’s shoulders fell, and the tears in his eyes broke free, rolling down his cheeks.

“Jesus Christ.” Then a hand grabbed his arm, and Peter opened his eyes, his eyelashes clumped together by tears. The devastation was clear on Tony’s face.

“I’m sorry,” Peter said. The apology wasn’t nearly enough, though. Nothing really would be. There weren’t words for times like these.

Tony’s expression was pinched. He shook his head, letting out a breath, then saying, “I’m not mad.”

And Peter wondered who he was trying to convince.

Peter nodded, his face twisting into some ugly and raw. “I don’t know what happened. I know I shouldn’t have—I didn’t mean it. You gotta believe me.”

Tony’s expression softened, and when he swallowed, it looked painful. “We can talk about it later. Let’s get you cleaned up first.”

Then he was guiding Peter to his bed, sitting him down. He grabbed some extra tissues and pressed them to the wounds.

“Hold those there. Keep pressure. I’ll go get the first aid kit.” Then Tony’s foot hit the scissors, and he looked down, his head shaking a little. He bent down and picked the scissors up. Licking his lips, he said, “Will you be okay for a second?”

Peter wasn’t sure he’d ever be okay again, but he nodded anyway, not trusting his voice.

With a nod, Tony turned and dipped out of the room. Thankfully, or maybe not, he was back before Peter could think too much about what he’d done.

Tony pulled the chair closer and sat, the first aid kit on the desk. He dug out the supplies he needed and lined them up, opening the packets of gauze. Then he lifted Peter’s hand and the tissues from the cuts, assessing the damage. The bleeding had stopped.

No one said anything, and Peter wasn’t sure if that was better or worse.

With methodical movements, Tony cleaned the cuts, and a few times, Peter thought Tony had been close to saying something, but each time, he’d just shaken his head and gone back to tending his wounds.

As Tony taped the gauze in place, he finally asked, “Was there something I could have done? Something I didn’t do? I just—” He cut himself off with a sigh, then straightened. “You know you can come to me, right?”

Peter couldn’t meet Tony’s gaze, so he stared at his shoulder. “You seemed so happy today. I didn’t want to spoil it. You and Morgan—” He shook his head. “I didn’t want to ruin the mood. Sometimes it feels like that’s all I do, you know?”

Tony sighed, scrubbing a hand over his mouth. “I know you think—let’s just say I’d rather you told me than finding you like this. I know I’m not an expert, but I could’ve helped distract you if I’d known. It might not have been easy, but I want the chance to help you—no matter what mood you think you’re ruining.”

Peter nodded, the tears back in his eyes. He felt all-encompassing guilt for what he’d done. “I don’t know what to do—how to fix this.”

“We take it one step at a time. Relapses happen, and when they do happen, it doesn’t make you a failure.” He squeezed Peter’s knee. “Recovery isn’t linear. It might feel like it’s all over, and you can’t fix it, but it’s really just a little bump in the road, a little hitch in the graph. The line is still moving forward and up.”

He wanted to believe Tony, but it was hard. He didn’t feel like he deserved the kind of understanding Tony gave him. He felt sick for what he’d done, and it would be so much easier if Tony were angry. He could deal with that.

His arms wound themselves around his middle without his consent as he tried to hold himself together. The cuts on his arms barely stung any more, which he was thankful for. The pain wasn’t a good feeling now. It didn’t settle him like it had. Instead, it reminded him how badly he’d screwed up.

“Oh, kiddo,” Tony said as he got up and moved to sit beside Peter. Then his arm wrapped around Peter’s shoulders and tugged him closer.

Peter sank into his side, his breath hitching as he fought a sob.

Tony pressed his lips to Peter’s hair, his breath warm against his scalp. “We’re gonna get through this. Just you watch.”

Then Peter broke, and it was an ugly sound. He choked on the sobs as they erupted from him, tears dripping from his chin, snot clogging his nose. His shoulders shook as he fell apart, or maybe not really, as Tony was doing a pretty good job of holding him together.

And wasn’t that the meat of it.

Because Peter realized amidst the tears that no matter what, Tony and the others in his life, they weren’t giving up on him—no matter how badly he screwed things up.

Tony held him until he could breathe again, then he cleaned himself up and changed out of the bloody jeans, and he and Tony went to finish making dinner. Morgan was at the table with Pepper, both wearing macaroni necklaces and big smiles.

If either of them noticed the bandages, they didn’t say a word, and when Tony patted his shoulder and told him to grab a chair, it felt something like forgiveness or understanding.

Things weren’t always great, and the line of the graph might hitch, but Peter could see that it was still moving up, still moving forward, and he thought that just might mean he’d be okay.