#because let’s not lie to ourselves that’s all there is anyhow

[kataraavatara]

nessian moodboard

[annecoulmanross]

Top Ten Historical Figures Done Dirty by The Terror (2018)

So, we all know and love Dave Kajganich and Soo Hugh’s beautiful show, right? Of course. But it’s important to set the historical record straight, especially when there are real people’s life-stories and legacies on the line. 

(NOTE: this list is biased heavily toward upper-class individuals because the historical record does a better job preserving those voices for us. Was the real Cornelius Hickey as nasty a person in real life as he was in the show? Almost certainly not – which is why we’re given “E.C.” as a nod to the fact that we shouldn’t assume these characters represent real historical villains, even when the narrative makes them antagonists; HOWEVER, not everyone in the show was given the same courtesy as the OG “Cornelius Hickey.” Which is why this post exists – to show you the best sides of some people you might not otherwise appreciate for their full humanity. That being said, keep in mind the sources used – and, for instance, who has surviving portraits and who doesn’t.)

Thus, below the cut, I give you this list, (mostly) in order from #10 (honorable mention, only somewhat slandered) to #1 (most hideously maligned) – my list of characters from The Terror who deserved better. 

(Please don’t take this too seriously – I know there are reasons why choices had to be made in order to make this show work on television, and I do very much love the end product. But I also genuinely think it’s a good idea to remember the real people behind these characters, and think critically about how we depict them ourselves.) 

Bottom Tier – The Overlooked Men of the Franklin Expedition

#10. Richard Wall – & – John Diggle

We’re combining these two because they had a lot in common, historically speaking! Both were polar veterans, having served as a Cook (Wall) and an AB-then-Quartermaster (Diggle) on HMS Erebus under the command of Sir James Clark Ross in the Antarctic expedition of 1839-1843. Certainly we do get some good scenes with them in the show, but there was plenty more to explore there – for instance, Captain Ross was apparently so taken with Richard Wall that he hired him on as a private cook after the Antarctic expedition. (One imagines that Sir James may have regretted letting his friends of the Franklin expedition steal Wall out from under him.)

(If you want some more information on Diggle, the brilliant @handfuloftime​ found this excellent article on him – fun facts include the detail that Diggle’s only daughter bore the name Mary Ann Erebus Diggle.) 

#9. John Smart Peddie 

Now, I don’t think we should go as far as the Doctor Who Audio Drama adaptation of the Franklin Expedition, which makes Peddie into Francis Crozier’s oldest friend, someone “almost like a brother” to Crozier (no evidence of ANY prior relationship between the two existed, contrary to whatever the Doctor Who Audio Dramas would have you believe!) but Peddie probably earned his place as chief surgeon, however fond we may all be of the beautiful Alex “Macca” MacDonald, who was, in fact, the Assistant Surgeon, historically speaking. It’s hard to find information about Peddie, but someone should go looking! I want to know about this man! 

(If you want to know more about the historical Alexander MacDonald, there’s a short biographical article on him from Arctic that you can read here.)

#8 James Walter Fairholme

The only one of the expedition’s lieutenants who doesn’t really get any characterization in the show, which is a travesty! The historical Fairholme (pronounced “Fairem”) was, as they say, a himbo, and the letters that he wrote home to his father are positively precious. He loved the expedition pets (lots of kisses for Neptune!), and he needed two kayaks because he couldn’t fit into just one with his beefy thighs. Fitzjames loaned him a coat when all the Erebus officers had their portraits taken, and then called him a “smart, agreeable companion, and a well informed man,” and Goodsir singled Fairholme out as “very much interested” in the work of naturalist observations. Just a lovely young man who could have gotten some screen time, you know? 

(Also, as @transblanky​ discovered, four separate members of the Fairholme family gave money to Thomas Blanky’s widow when she was struggling financially in the 1850s, making them, combined, the most generous contributor to her subscription.) 

Middle Tier – Franklin’s Men Who Didn’t Deserve That

#7. William Gibson

Alright, I want to talk about how uniquely horrible the show’s William Gibson is: this is a character willing to lie and accuse his partner of sexual assault that didn’t happen. I get there were extenuating circumstances, but if I were a historical figure who died in some famous disaster and someone depicted me doing something like that? Let’s just say I’m deeply offended on the real Gibson’s behalf. 

What do we know about the historical William Gibson? Not much – but we know a little. Gibson’s younger brother served on an overland exploratory venture across Australia in the 1870s… from which he never returned. (God, the Gibson family had the worst luck?) This description of a conversation that young Alf Gibson had with expedition leader Ernest Giles only days before his death is VERY eerie: 

[Gibson] said, “Oh! I had a brother who died with Franklin at the North Pole, and my father had a deal of trouble to get his pay from government.” He seemed in a very jocular vein this morning, which was not often the case, for he was usually rather sulky, sometimes for days together, and he said, “How is it, that in all these exploring expeditions a lot of people go and die?” 

I said, “I don't know, Gibson, how it is, but there are many dangers in exploring, besides accidents and attacks from the natives, that may at any time cause the death of some of the people engaged in it; but I believe want of judgment, or knowledge, or courage in individuals, often brought about their deaths. Death, however, is a thing that must occur to every one sooner or later.” 

To this he replied, “Well, I shouldn't like to die in this part of the country, anyhow.” In this sentiment I quite agreed with him, and the subject dropped.

(From Giles’s Australia Twice Traversed which you can read here) 

Beyond that, one thing we do know is that William Gibson was probably friends with Henry Peglar – they had served on ships together before, and Gibson may possibly have been the poor fellow found cradling the Peglar Papers, according to researcher Glenn Stein. So we might imagine the historical Gibson as a much kinder man than the show’s depiction of him – this was someone who befriended the clever, playful Peglar we all know and love from the transcriptions of his papers, so full of poetry and linguistic jokes. It’s a shame we didn’t get a chance to meet this real Gibson, who actually knew the Henry Peglar whom we love so well.

#6. Stephen Stanley

Look. There’s that one famous line in James Fitzjames’s letters to the Coninghams about how Stanley went about with his “shirt sleeves tucked up, giving one unpleasant ideas that he would not mind cutting one’s leg off immediately – ‘if not sooner.’” And certainly Harry Goodsir had some mixed opinions of the man, saying was “a would be great man who as I first supposed would not make any effort at work after a time,” and that he “knows nothing whatever about subject & is ignorant enough of all other subjects,” whatever…. that means…. 

But Fitzjames also had some rather nicer things to say about him, that he was “thoroughly good natured and obliging and very attentive to our mess.” Also, the amputation comment? Very likely had a quite positive underlying joke to it – Stanley may not have been much of a naturalist, but he was actually an accomplished anatomist, who won a prize for dissection in 1836, on account of his “bend of the elbow,” which was “a picture of dissection,” according to Henry Lonsdale, who also called Stanley his “facetious friend” and “a fine fellow” (Lonsdale 1870, pg. 159). So, the real Stanley probably was rather droll, but the perpetually cruel Stanley of the show misses some of the real man’s major historical virtues and replaces them with historically unlikely mass-mercy-murder. 

#5. John Irving

Now we’re getting into the territory of characters who did get some good development, but are missing a bit of historical nuance. As I’m sure many of you know, the historical Irving was indeed very religious, but the flashes of anger (i.e. against Manson) we see from Irving in the show don’t seem terribly consistent with the Irving depicted in this memorial volume, where John seems more like a quiet, bookish, mathematically inclined young man, with a self-deprecating sense of humor and a gentle sweetness. It’s really not at all far off from the version of Irving we see with Kooveyook in the show – I just wish we could have seen more of that side of Irving. 

Top Tier – The Triumvirate of Polar Friends

So, these three DO have many good things to recommend them in the show, but because I’ve done such deep research on them, it can be quite jarring to watch certain scenes in which they behave contrary to their historical personalities, and I find myself pausing when watching the show with friends or family to explain that NO, they wouldn’t do that! 

#4. Sir James Clark Ross

First thing – we LOVE Richard Sutton. He did a beautiful job with the material given to him. (This is true of all the actors on the list, frankly, but it’s doubly true here.) But that scene at the Admiralty where Sir James tells Lady Franklin “I have many friends on those ships, as you know,” to shut down her argument for search missions? At that time (aka 1847), historically, Sir James Clark Ross was actively campaigning for search missions, planning routes and volunteering his services in command of any vessel the Admiralty even vaguely contemplated sending out. You could see this real-life desperation in Sir James’s morose attention to his whiskey glass in that scene if you’re really trying, but I think the more historically responsible thing would have been to make vividly clear that James Ross risked life and limb, as soon as he possibly could, to try to rescue Franklin and Crozier and Blanky, men he’d known and cared about and bitterly missed – and, in the case of Crozier, “truly loved.” 

#3. Sir John Franklin

The historical Franklin had plenty of flaws – his contributions to British colonial rule certainly harmed no small number of people, and we should question the way that heroic statues of Franklin are some of the only memorials that serve to honor the lives lost on Franklin’s expeditions – especially considering the steep body count of not only Franklin’s final voyage, but his previous missions in Arctic regions as well. (DM me and I’ll scream at you about counter-monuments! Is this a promise or a threat? Who knows!) With that said, most contemporary accounts agree that Sir John Franklin treated his friends, his family, and those within his social orbit with kindness, and his cruelties were systemic, not personal. In this light, the image of Sir John viciously tearing into Francis Crozier’s vulnerabilities in the show feels very off. Though there was certainly some friction over Crozier’s two proposals to Sophia Cracroft, historically speaking, there’s no evidence at all that Sir John discouraged her from marrying Francis – Sophia may have had many reasons of her own (*clears throat meaningfully in a lesbian sort of way*) for not accepting any of the several marriage proposals offered to her (from Crozier as well as from others), and we ought to keep in mind that she remained unmarried all her life. The notion that the real Sir John would have considered Crozier too low-born or too Irish to be part of the Franklin family isn’t grounded in historical fact.

#2. Lady Jane Franklin

Again disclaimer: the real Lady Franklin left behind a legacy with much to critique. Those who rightfully point out the racism of her treatment of the young indigenous Tasmanian girl Mathinna should be fully heard out. Observations of her own contributions to imperialism are important and valid. Though I tend to see her feud with Dr. John Rae as somewhat understandable – given that Lady Franklin didn’t have the benefit of our hindsight knowing Rae was correct – the levels of prejudice that she enabled and even encouraged in the writing of Charles Dickens when he attempted to discredit Inuit accounts of Franklin’s fate are inarguably deplorable. These things being said, everything noted for Sir John re: Sophia Cracroft goes for Lady Franklin as well – there’s no reason to imagine a scene where Jane would bully Francis Crozier within an inch of his life, seconds after a failed second proposal, when, historically, Lady Franklin felt the situation was so delicate that it required the quiet and compassionate intervention of Sir James Clark Ross, a dearly loved mutual friend to all parties. Tension does not imply aggression; conflict is not abuse. We know this can’t have been an easy experience for the historical Francis Crozier, but the picture is a lot more complicated than what can be shown in one small subplot of a ten-episode television show. Because of this complexity, however, Lady Franklin’s social deftness suffers in the show. (I could also write an entire essay about Jane Franklin’s last shot in the show, at the beginning of Episode 9: The C the C the Open C – TL;DR is that framing is very important, and, at the very last moment, the show reframes Lady Franklin as a mutilated corpse, a speaking mouth without a brain, which is….. a choice.)

And, at number 1, the person done most dirty by The Terror (2018) is….

#1. Charles Frederick “Freddy” Des Voeux 

Look. I’m biased here because I am fed daily information about the historical Freddy Des Voeux from @frederickdesvoeux​ so I’ve become, I think understandably, a bit attached. 

But this is very plainly the clearest cruelty the show does to a historical figure – the historical Des Voeux was a very young man (only around 20 when the ships set sail) known always as “Frederick or Freddy” to his family, and described by all parties as bright and sweet – Fitzjames said that he was “a most unexceptionable, clever, agreeable, light-hearted, obliging young fellow, and a great favourite of Hodgson’s, which is much in his favour besides,” and described him cheerfully helping to catch specimens for Goodsir. Des Voeux is named “dear” by Captain Osborn in Erasmus Henry Brodie’s 1866 poem on the Franklin Expedition (43) and Leo McClintock reported the young man’s well-known “intelligence, gallantry, and zeal” in his 1869 update to his account of the Franklin Expedition’s fate (xlii). None of this is consistent with Des Voeux’s behaviour in the show, especially in the later episodes. 

To reduce Des Voeux to an easily-detested figure, over whose death one might cheer, is not a kindness – the creation of a narrative where his death is satisfying does damage to the memory of a real person, a barely-more-than-teenager who died in the cold of the Arctic and left behind only scraps of a shirt and a spidery signature in the bottom margin of a fragmentary document. 

Television shows may need their villains, but it’s important to remember that real life isn’t like that. Surely the historical Frederick Des Voeux was most likely not a perfect person, and, as an upper class officer contributing to a British imperial project, he does bear some responsibility for the harm done by the Franklin expedition, but it’s not accurate to assume he was any less worthy of sympathy than the other officers who considered him a friend – those men whom we now venerate, like James Fitzjames. So as far as I’m concerned, Freddy Des Voeux deserves at least as much consideration, care, and compassion from us. 

[you-cant-spell-subtext-without]

so get this. I was gonna roll around in Tombstone related fluff today - but no, no - this post came across my dash so Now We Are Gonna Discuss the Carnal Consumption of Meat as it appears on That Show Supernatural.  YEAH BUDDIES!

(also my sincere apologies to OP of the inspiration post who innocently tagged it with “lunch date!”  because I am about to go Elsewhere, cursedly).

Let’s all go meat man, after the cut!

This analysis centers primarily on 5x14 Bloody Valentine.  The title of course is a semi-homage to a 3D Slasher Film Jensen starred in circa 2009. 

Which I will be renting soon I guess.  ,[<- parasocial panda GET BACK IN YOUR ENCLOSURE]

Also Its Really Fun that the trailer for Said Cinema ends with “nothing says date movie like a 3-D ride to hell” [are you also thinking of Cas pulling Dean out of hell, or are you normal?]  ***unironically the teaser for 5x14 is -

EXT. SIDEWALK - IN FRONT OF ALICE'S APARTMENT BUILDING

RUSSEL 

First date.

They then eat each other.  Literally they eat each others flesh.  They also do it while dirty talking about it.  SPN IS A SHOW 

ALICE Ugh! I've been so alone. So empty...

RUSSEL I know. Me too.

ALICE I want you, Russel---All of you... inside me...

[they both take bites out of each other, Alice chewing on a piece of Russel's flesh]

****Remember this detail, as it is important.

ANYWAY, it’s truly Cursed that not only are we doing an homage to this 3-D Jensen Horror Date Flick but also this episode is specifically centered on Valentine’s Day.  The day honoring romance and love Now Coopted by Hallmark, everyone, that is the day spn writers chose to introduce us to 

Sir Horseman of THE Biblical Apocalypse Famine. 

Canonically, we are aware that the show is drawing from the book of Revelations in its depiction of the Four Horsemen.  Here’s what it says about Famine -

"When He broke the third seal, I heard the third living creature saying, "Come." I looked, and behold, a black horse; and he who sat on it had a pair of scales in his hand.”

-Revelations 6:5

Famine holds scales (used to weigh out grain in times of food scarcity).  Spn’s depiction is represented as hunger, a bottomless pit of need.  It consumes souls (demon and human alike).  

Cas describes Famine a little more poetically:

CASTIEL 

"And then will come Famine riding on a black steed. He will ride into the land of plenty... "

"... and great will be the Horseman's hunger, for he is hunger. "

"His hunger will seep out and poison the air. "

***Consider a prior season in which we are introduced to the Seven Deadly Sins.  Which are the sins associated with hunger?

Gluttony

and Lust.

***this is also important

Back to the episode.  Case cold open, and we find out that Alice was a Nice Girl.  In that she didnt drink, smoke or

have premarital sex.

***So Alice’s hunger for the sin of Lust caused her to succumb to it; and her demise was presented as Gluttony (literally eating her partner’s flesh). HMM

Famine’s presence is affecting the town, and Cas is not immune.

DEAN 

And when did you start eating?

CASTIEL 

Exactly. My hunger-- it's a clue, actually.

***They lay it out a little more in case you missed it ->

SAM 

I thought famine meant starvation, like as in, you know, food.

CASTIEL 

Yes. Absolutely. But not just food. I mean, everyone seems to be starving for something--Sex, attention, drugs, love...

***this is so important.  but of course because its spn and our textual narrators are generally unreliable (even in a Ben Edlund episode, yes I know)

we get a red herring

CASTIEL 

Right. The cherub made them crave love, and then Famine came, and made them rabid for it.

***but that’s not accurate.  they didn’t get married or become obsessed with each other (remember the cursed coin in 4x08 Wishful Thinking and the unconditional love wish? not what happened here). they had premarital sex.  they did the thing Alice considers wrong, and dark, and sinful.  and then they ate each others’ flesh.

DEAN 

Okay, but what about you? I mean, since when do angels secretly hunger for White Castle?

CASTIEL 

It's my vessel-- Jimmy. His, uh, appetite for red meat has been touched by Famine's effect

***mad lad Jimmy Novak’s hunger is for...red meat?  He is starving for red meat?  You are telling me that the Novaks, red blooded conservative religious midwestern Novaks, ate RED MEAT SO SPARINGLY that Jimmy Novak was LITERALLY starving for it?!?!  No way.  Absolutely no way.  This is a man who was such a religious zealot he STUCK HIS HAND IN BOILING WATER and accepted an angel of the lord into his own body but his secret hunger was for fucking ground beef?

give me a damn break.

to me this is an absolute coverup.  Because Cas’s burger consumption is not related one iota to his vessel Jimmy Novak.

it is a representation of Cas falling.  Cas’s cravings for meat represent his growing (and very much prohibited) feelings for...humanity (Dean Winchester), and they are presenting as Gluttony in the form of his downing more and more copious amounts of red meat.  

SERIOUSLY, consider this - at one point the depiction is so desperately carnal that he is eating raw ground beef with his bare hands. It is fucking uncomfortable.  and it is SUPPOSED to be.  Famine stirs up hunger for the prohibited.  For the sinful. That which we are starving for but do not believe we can ever have, so we lust and we lust and we LUST after it, but should we allow ourselves even just a taste of what we have been ravenously craving, we binge it until we ourselves disappear into the oblivion of our own sinful, dark desires.

Since You Want More Examples of why this cant possibly be hunger for Cheeseburgers and Cheeseburgers alone, Consider Famine’s effect on Dean.  Remember his doctor kink?

**when its revealed that Doctor Corman has succumbed to Famine’s poison by drinking himself to death, Dean - very uncharacteristically by the way - reacts by saying out loud

DEAN Thanks. Crap! I really kind of liked this guy.

***please note that Doctor Corman says the following to Dean in the prior scene they have together -

DR. CORMAN [to Dean]

Agent Marley, you just can't stay away.

****was that a flirtation?

***Also, Dean doesn’t want to go out and chase tail for Valentines Day.   

SAM

I mean, what do you always call it-- Uh, unattached drifter Christmas?

DEAN 

Oh, yeah. Well... be that as it may...I don't know. Guess I'm not feeling it this year.

SAM 

So you're not into bars full of lonely women?

DEAN 

Nah, I guess not. [takes a sip of his beer] Ahh. What?

SAM 

That's when a dog doesn't eat-- That's when you know something's really wrong.

***oh look we are relating things to eating again.  sex/lust to gluttony.  hmmm hmmm hmmm

ANYHOW -  *takes deep breath*

 this is also the Episode Where This Scene Lives

****JACKTING JOICES

oh and speaking of jacting joices, this is also the Dean Notices Cupids Crotch Episode.

frAckles, I am once again asking why you only permit celestial beings to hug you from behi-[gunshots]

but Dean isn’t hungry.  Why? Famine has the explanation, and we get it after Dean immediately runs inside after Cas heads in to complete his portion of their plan barely giving him any time to do so because he misses him that much.

FAMINE 

I disagree. [Famine moves closer to Dean and touches him] Yes. I see. That's one deep, dark nothing you got there, Dean. Can't fill it, can you? Not with food or drink. Not even with sex.

DEAN 

Oh, you're so full of crap.

FAMINE 

Oh, you can smirk and joke and lie to your brother, lie to yourself, but not to me! 

***not Dean making all of those homophobic/homoerotic jokes every time he’s in danger or feeing uncomfortable; not that, that can’t possibly be what Famine is referencing, right?

I can see inside you, Dean. I can see how broken you are, how defeated. 

***not THIS parallel:

AMARA:

You're a mystery. I can see inside your heart. Feel the love you feel, except… It's cloaked in shame

You can't win, and you know it. But you just keep fighting. Just... keep going through the motions. 

***not the motions of performative heterosexuality!!

***Dean’s not hungry because in his heart he truly believes that he can’t actually have what he hungers for.  That Thing Which This Episode Overtly but Also Very Clearly Made Obvious.  It’s an angel riding shotgun [I did Do That and I am Not Sorry], eating a burger in the front seat of the impala.  But, I’ve deviated from the meat of this essay [gunshots] [this time just for the bad joke].

BONUS

there’s Exists another episode in which a man ravenously consumes red meat; eventually succumbing to eating raw beef with his bare hands in the season prior to this one.  

Yes Supernatural the Show That Brought Us Not One But Two Scenes of Persons Carnally Consuming Red Meat With Their Bare Hands.  

This episode is a MOTW - the man in question is a rougaru - a monster that starts out as human but due to some specific genetic disorder (hmmm hmmm hmm crack in THE chassis hmmm hmmm) soon begins to be extremely hungry - “for everything, but eventually long pig.” AKA human flesh. 

Wanna know the kicker?  

Episode’s called Metamorphosis.

(GIF by jackttwist)

I’ll see myself out.

[DOUBLE BONUS for extra credit:

if you really wanna wild out, go watch the scene of Jack the rougaru looking at himself in the mirror in 4x04 - and then meander on over to 7x01 and check out God!stiel looking in the mirror as the leviathans writhe inside him over there. It’s worth the walk.]

***oh and @lilac-void​ im tagging you in this one because in exchange for your KIND creator content nomination I guess I will respond by cursing you with an Honorary tag in this, a Meat Meta.  you’re welcome slash I'm sorry XO [but seriously thank you again for your kindness and appreciation; it really motivated me to sit down and get moving on making more content <3]

[asterekmess]

Heyo! So I’ve been in the sterek fandom for quite some time now and I’ve been wondering about how you would describe stiles’ personality?

I’ve never actually sat down and watched a full episode of teen wolf (and honestly I’m not sure if I ever will considering everything I’ve heard about how they treat derek and his history but idk who knows I’m very curious in a lot of the plot lines and character development), and a lot of the stuff I know about the show I’ve scraped from fics, gifs, and meta posts

For me personally, Stiles’ personality and characterization is so fluid and nuanced that sometimes I have trouble pinning him down (tho derek doesn’t have trouble with that *wink wink*) So I would love to hear your thoughts! Sorry for the long ask, this grew legs and an ugly mug shdhdhhdjdcj anyhow have a great day :D

Well, everybody's got different perspectives and opinions on Stiles' personality, honestly. Even when you try to stick to 'canon' things, there's a lot of room for interpretation on the why when he does things, or what it says about him as a person, etc etc etc.

Personally, I see canon Stiles as kind of an asshole. I mean, I love him, and he does some incredible things, and he's clearly got an intense love for those close to him. But I do make him kinder in fics, or I at least make him regret being a dick.

In canon, we're given a Stiles who cracks 'dead baby' jokes (he's talking about human sacrifice, so the conversation was already plenty morbid. This wasn't out of the blue.) Who begs for Scott to let Jackson die (though it's made clear that this wasn't serious, and he later works to save Jackson's hide like ten times over), and who will mercilessly poke and prod at people's insecurities or painful pasts, especially when worked up. Isaac's previous abuse isn't a no-go topic. Derek having 'dated' (read: been assaulted at worst and at best, been lied to) serial killers isn't something he's going to tread lightly around. He doesn't try to soften things to save someone's feelings most of the time.

He's presented as someone who is incredibly impulsive, with his emotions, words, and actions. It's kind of implied this is because of his ADHD, but that doesn't explain how often the impulsively cruel or harsh things he says aren't retracted or apologized for, or just generally regretted. Yes, ADHD people are impulsive, and yes sometimes our mouths get away from us and we can end up saying some Fucked Up shit to people because we literally couldn't control the words coming out. But that doesn't mean we're cruel or evil or mean. We still feel bad for doing those things, and those of us who are decent people, try to fix or repair what we've messed up. I am...not a fan of how often ADHD is used as an excuse to make a character a dickhead because "he has no filter." No filter means we struggle to control our thoughts and what we say, it doesn't make us heartless.

So, when I'm writing him, I fix it. Even if he still Does something fucked up, I have him care that he did it. I have him realize what he did or said wasn't okay and respond to that knowledge in some way. Which to some people, means I'm just ignoring what a fucker he is, but imo it feels like a horrible fuckup on the creator's parts, so I'm just correcting the mistake. He's no less Stiles just bc I taught him to say sorry.

Anyway. I'm trying NOT to ramble here.

To answer your question, as best I can; Stiles is sarcastic. Stiles is passionate to a fault. His emotions are BIG, whatever they are. Good, Bad, or even apathy. Whatever feelings he has are just intense. He is very much a no gods, no kings, no masters, kind of man. There isn't really an 'authority' to him, except maybe his dad sometimes. He puts family, and those he considers family, First. But that doesn't mean he isn't selfless. Because he is. Incredibly so. Uncomfortably so.

He walks into gasoline for his friends. He puts himself in the position of losing the only parent he has left, for his classmates. He cares enough about strangers to insist a drunk girl he's spoken to for five minutes max stay hydrated and give her a bottle of water. He literally handed over his mind on a platter to a fox demon for someone he barely fucking knew, to keep her safe.

Loyal. Humorous. A fighter. Family-oriented. Clever. Passionate. Strong, physically, mentally, and emotionally. And a very good liar, in my opinion.

He doesn't lie very well in the show, not to people's faces. He'll stumble around a "I haven't seen him since the last time I saw him" or "are you asking me to tell you what I would have told you if I were going to tell you it?" but at the same time, he can repress and hide away his feelings and his pain in a way not even Derek manages.

He asked Caitlin questions about her girlfriend, and worked to solve the human sacrifices, literal minutes after finding out he'd just lost his oldest friend. He drove Lydia to the warehouse to save Jackson after having the shit beat out of him by a man who'd been learning to cause pain since he was a CHILD. And he never gives away how incredibly broken he is for more than a couple seconds. and it's a little frightening, because he convinces people in this show who are lie detectors that he's okay, when he's a fucking mess. Even Derek shows his pain.

You're right that he's nuanced, and part of that is because when you see him in meta or in fic, what you're seeing is a dozen versions of him sort of compressed into a flat image. Because he changes throughout the show, and while some of his core personality stays the same, a lot of stuff changes. So one fic might harp on his insensitivity, and callousness toward Isaac or how easily he says "just let them die" when talking about Derek or someone else. And then another will dive into how fucking far he's willing to go, travelling all the way to mexico and facing down a hunter clan a dozen times more powerful than the argents with no one but a banshee at his side, just to get Derek back. Or how he saw Malia hurting and sat with her on a couch and held her hand. One is a much earlier version of Stiles, from the start of the show, the other from his midpoint. Near the end, you're able to say that he was so torn about leaving Derek while he was dying, he had to be Begged to go save Scott. That he manipulated an ENTIRE FBI investigation in order to save and protect Derek. (im focusing on derek bc sterek, but also bc his relationship with Derek is the Biggest Arc he has in the show, and the most solid)

You're going to read about different versions of him, and I totally get how that's confusing.

We all sort of bleed ourselves into him and either bring certain canon characteristics to the forefront, or straight up add our own so he's more relatable to us.

So while I can't really help you pin down any specific Stiles, just know that there's not really a 'true' Stiles that anyone can confirm or deny. It's all just perception, so however you see him, go with it. Strengthen it. Explore it. I'm sure you'll find people who see what you do.

[caguaydreams]

A thorough analysis on why Vah Medoh’s dungeon theme makes me want to cry

Yep, that’s an accurate title. Hi there! do you have a moment to hear about Breath of The Wild soundtrack? posting for yet a third time in hopes that tumblr won't hide it. I'm so tired

What started as a quick and harmless post, pretending to simply point out a couple of things, rolled downhill, out of my grasp and turned into a massive snowball of a short essay. How and why did this happen? Well, I assume a lot of people know about this song, and know what I’m talking about when I say that it makes me tear up and sob uncontrollably with every change in key as the seconds tick by and I spiral down into a dwell of misery from where I struggle to find the exit and to later recover.

……No?…..At the VERY LEAST it makes you a little uncomfortable. And I state this with much certainty, because after reading hundreds of comments everywhere online where this song is present, I picked up on a vast majority of people who expressed to feel the same way I did when it came down to our current music subject. See, statistics don’t lie… normally. So, naturally, my intrigue got the best of me. I wanted to find out exactly why this soundtrack was mercilessly stirring up everyone’s emotions, so I caved in and we ended up with this.

Buckle in, fellas.

Out of all Divine Beasts’ dungeon themes, Vah Medoh’s is the one that I can’t sit through. Not without growing antsy and wanting to turn it off as soon as possible. I find it genuinely difficult to listen to, and it’s not only because Revali is my favorite character and the song is just, plainly put, depressing, mind you.

We’ll start from 0 terminals activated.

It opens up similar to the other three dungeon themes; the pace is slow but eerie, gives off the impression that it sounds broken somehow. Something is off here, and it’s easy to figure out what that is from the get go: you’re basically entering a majestic, ancient, mechanical mausoleum, where everything went terribly wrong a century ago. Someone is gone, someone you knew, someone who was probably close to you, but it’s impossible to be sure. You don’t remember a thing, and this entire ordeal is confusing at best, and terrifying at worst. It’s your duty to make things right again.

It’s the same for all four Divine Beasts upon entering, save for the obvious little differences that separates them from each other and make them unique. Ruta’s is played on a major key, adhering to a sense of hopefulness. Naboris’s begins with a startling smashing of the piano keys, much like thunder of a sudden lighting strike. And Rudania’s theme starts threatening, dangerous, like scalding lava.

But now, back to Vah Medoh. The tone here is… alienating. The dissonant chords are all over the place, and feel disconnected, cold. It’s almost as if someone doesn’t want us to be here, or just like the elusive key, our presence is unexpected. Fitting, for a Divine Beast that’s high above the land, impossible for most to reach, yet we somehow made it. Apart from the piano, we have the occasional hint to rito culture, in the shape of a short, synthetic version of the rolled chords at the very beginning of Rito Village. A quiet reminder of where we come from. There is also, of course, the morse code distress signal, but we’ll talk more about that later.

As soon as this formal introduction is over, we finally get to the more, say, intimate stuff. Oh, and wouldn’t you know, it’s just tragic.

One terminal activated.

There’s no better short way I can describe this passage, other than anxiety-inducing. Especially when the strings come into play, and there’s two reasons I can think of why I feel this is an important thing to point out:

1- Characters and Symbolism.

I tend to associate stringed instruments, all of those which compose the violin family, with rito culture. And Revali, most specifically. In Creating a Champion we can see the early concept art and designs for all or most major characters in the game, and Revali’s highlighted rough design might be the one that changed the most throughout proper development of the character, out of all champions. He looks quite different from our usual depiction of him, it’s fascinating. What truly catches my eye, however, is the design of his bow.

You thought bird puns were bad? Oh boy, how do you feel about Revali having a bow that looks like a violin/cello/viola??? And do you need a bow to play it also??? Like, is it even an instrument or it’s nothing more than a mere fashion statement?-

Anyway. I believe this was originally going to be a not-so-subtle wink to rito culture, being heavily musically inclined as we can see and conclude for ourselves. Perhaps Revali was going to be a musician as well, now how cool it that!

Needless to say, the idea was eventually scrapped. But one detail I am CERTAIN carried over to the character we know and love today(okay not all of us love him but seriously if you dislike him why are you still here lol): strings. The association between bows(weapon) and stringed instruments, aside from being a quite clever and creative one, goes beyond the concept art and remains strong as part of Revali’s character, settling for having a presence via score. After all, Revali is a master of archery, so in that way it makes sense to keep strings as symbolism to reinforce the idea and drive it home.

But can you guess what other thing Revali excels at? That’s right: flying. He’s the only rito we know of who successfully managed to take advantage of wind currents and bend them to his will. And do you know what musical instruments are often used to evoke the feeling of flight and gale? If you thought of bowed strings, you’re correct! Unfortunately, I couldn’t find much support on this topic online, so you’ll have to take my word for it. I am most certain that this is fact, although not something worth discussing on the Internet, by the looks of it.

Anyhow, violins/cellos/etc are ever-present whenever we’re close to Rito Village or dealing with a rito related mission. Attack on Vah Medoh, for example, features a sequence of strings that is meant to evoke the strong winds we’re fighting against in that particular moment(*). Another great example is The Final Trial, the song that plays at the shrine of resurrection nearing the end of the Champions’ Ballad. Preceding the activation of each terminal, you’ll notice that a new instrumental element joins the crowd: the first one corresponds to the tambourines, related to the zora and Mipha; the second one are strings, referencing the rito and Revali, etc. I tell you, the moment I heard this during the trial I almost started crying like a baby. And, although strings have a lot to do with Rito culture in general, they tie most strongly to Revali, since he was the champion of his people, and his legacy carried over throughout the years. His accomplishments became material of folk tale, a legend, a source of pride and inspiration for the village. And let’s not forget that, at the end of the day, Revali is the crucial and foremost connection Link has to this place. Other than appeasing Vah Medoh, Link’s responsibility here is to free his past fellow champion’s spirit from Ganon’s malice. The soundtrack is referencing Revali first, and by extension his devotion to his home.

With all that in mind, let’s move on to our next point:

2- Nowhere to Go.

You shoot the canons, land on top of the Divine Beast, do what you gotta do, activate the first terminal and the soundtrack goes off unannounced. Like some sort of surprise anxiety bomb. The rhythm turns fast, the melody erratic, incredibly desperate in its execution. There’s this sheer despair, fear, this feeling of suffocation almost, which are so well achieved in this particular piece.

And that is, partially, because a quite familiar resource is used here as well; one that we’ve heard before in songs such as Rito Village or Revali’s theme. You could even think of it as a motif: two notes are played in an semitone interval, repeatedly and in quick succession. For the sake of later convenience, we’ll call this the Flight Motif, now let me explain why. In Breath of The Wild, this semitone loop is often followed up by some form of resolution. In Rito Village, formerly known as Dragon Roost Island(**), that resolution consists of a graceful descent of the melody, from a high that was built up previously during the motif. On the other hand, if you listen to Revali’s theme, you’ll notice that the interval repeats itself for a couple of times as thought charging up, to then rise fast and determined into a triumphal reprise of Revali’s distinctive assigned melody. This juxtaposition supposes the difference that lays between common rito flight and Revali’s trademark ability; both musical sequences are speaking of flight, albeit in two different languages depending on the way to achieve it. While the rito traditionally use their wings to glide and let themselves get swayed by the air currents Buzz Lightyear style, Revali takes full advantage of his flying capabilities to somehow create an updraft of his own, rising meters above the ground whenever he likes or needs to.

So, now that I layed out my base of thought when focusing on the strings, this’ll be much easier to explain. We’ve settled what the instruments themselves are a symbolic representation of Revali, in this scenario specifically. He was the only one inside Vah Medoh, and the score is, in a way, a retelling of what we can vaguely assume went down here during the Great Calamity, as much as it is what sets the tone and ambience for Link’s mission. But what are we hearing exactly? What we talked about, the Flight Motif, is being repeated nonstop. And that’s the thing, remember how I mentioned that this sequence usually finds resolution at the end? Well. Inside Vah Medoh,… it never does. The melody picks up in numerous occasions, but it’s not nearly as graceful, or calculated, as we’ve grown used to by now. It gets tangled and lost, and then inevitably falls to the ground in disarray. The pattern repeats itself, reaching higher after a handful of failed attempts, but no matter how much it tries, the cycle never ends. What used to tell us about flying and freedom in the skies, has morphed into an almost sinister musical incarnation of a tornado, and there is no way out of this trap. What do you think it must feel like to mindlessly flap your wings against wind currents so strong and violent, that it is impossible to get anywhere nearby, let alone take off every time you lose your balance. Or every time you’re shot down. On top of that, trying to aim and fight back in whatever short breaks and opportunities you get, at an enemy that’s much more powerful and relentless, who’s using your own element as a weapon to destroy you… it’s a risk Revali surely had to take in order to put up a fight. Even knowing full well that the odds were not in his favour, that he was most likely going to lose this battle, that he was going to die. Let that sink in. I’ll skip the activation of the second terminal, since there’s barely any change registered in the theme in general. So-

Three terminals activated.

I know this post is supposed to be a breakdown of the song purely, but that doesn’t mean there’s no place for a little theorising, and the following scrutiny is also quite relevant for our discussion. Bear with me for a bit. I’ve read almost everywhere about people’s most common interpretations on the Divine Beasts SOS signals, and how everyone thinks that Revali’s coming in last (a few seconds later than the other champions) has to do with him holding on for longer. Or, also, overconfident as he was, it means that the idea of calling out for additional support didn’t cross his mind until it was too late, and that’s why the beeping sounds more frantic and panicked than the others’ when it does appear. After giving it some thought myself, I’m betting on the latter option holding more ground, and that’s not all. I want to touch upon a detail of the piece that I never acknowledged was there until very recently(after seeing myself obliged to listen to this song fully and a handful of times, suffering every minute of it for the sole purpose of this analysis. It’s okay I didn’t need my heart anyway). Soon after activating the third terminal, the SOS signal disappears, or grows distant and faint enough that we can’t make it out from the background anymore. In its place, we’re confronted by this… shrill, piercing and painfully slow tune. It sounds synthetic, artificial, devoid of life. And it’s funny, because you know what it reminds me of? I’ll tell you:

A heartbeat flatline sound.

And I want to highlight that this doesn’t happen in any of the other Divine Beasts themes. All their SOS signals carry on, but Medoh’s is no more. This abrupt stop, followed by this bone-chilling tune…. makes me believe that Revali was the first of the champions to fall. A few days ago I came across SuperZeldaGirl’s video on a similar topic, theorising that this could very much be the case. There is not much evidence to support this claim other than some visual cues that could be suggesting to it, but after I found this in the soundtrack, and if we’re to rely on it for anything, I believe Revali was either the first champion to be ambushed by Ganon, or well…. the first to be killed. It is plausible, because short after Calamity Ganon unleashes his power, Revali parts from the group and flies directly to Vah Medoh, and he very well could’ve been the first pilot to arrive.

On this note…. we’ll have to wait and see for ourselves, when Age of Calamity provides long-awaited answers to many of our questions.

Four terminals activated.

An interesting melody is being played on what, for me, would qualify as a glockenspiel or a celesta, which are keyboard based instruments that produce a sound similar to that of a music box(***). If you want to pay more attention to it, I suggest listening to Vetrom’s Instrumental Mix Cover of the theme, where they practically zoom in on this part of the song (keep in mind that it uses the All Terminals’ time signature so it’s being played faster). For some reason, this particular addition makes me feel profound empathy. The sound of this instrument could be described as cute or childlike, magical, even. It is more often than not used to represent innocence, but I highly doubt that’s specifically the intention here. Much like the leading strings’ melody, the melodic contour of this one is trapped in a loop of going up and down constantly, but the difference is that this time around it sounds more under control. And much more uniform too. It doesn’t lose focus or takes risky, fruitless leaps, but rather chooses to stay on a path of waves that consistently rises and falls without taking detours. Like a determined battle strategy, giving it your all. You fall, but get back up again, and try again, and again. It reminds me of Revali’s approach to training, being persistent to the point of overworking himself. He had discipline nailed down to a tee, which I also think served him well in combat. It’s not just about being hard on yourself, either, but being confident and having complete faith in your abilities; believing that you’ll make it.  For this to appear now, that the SOS signal is almost completely gone, is significant because it means that by this point, being so close to success on Link’s behalf, the music is sparing genuine encouragement for once, in spite of the tragic outcome of the past and the danger of the current situation. But, in all honesty, this is probably just me reading too much into it. Perhaps the composer just thought this addition sounded pretty bitching and there’s not much else to it, which is completely fine. Although, intentional or not, sometimes coincidences do happen, and at the end of the day, interpretations like this are a form of appreciation for an artist’s work and for what they can unknowingly accomplish.

All terminals activated.

This is the moment when the song finally lightens up. Notice how the strings abandon the wave pattern for a more even contour. The beat quickens, the melody stabilizes. At first I thought, coming from our flight analogy, that this meant a cease in movement entirely, and it was partly one of the reasons why the song in general makes me anxious. But thinking about it now, …there is something different going on here. The strings are playing on a steady rhythm. It resembles a march, it’s like a pounding heart. It’s a lively, hopeful statement. And what’s interesting is that, up until this point, there was so much fear and helplessness present in the score, even going as far as to reach a dead end when we activate the third terminal. But that’s it, isn’t it? the music just keeps going further. 

It’s saying: this isn’t over yet. Even after complete and utter defeat, there’s still hope and an underlying wish to overcome this predicament, and we started to hear this as soon as a fourth terminal is activated. The melody we previously talked about? it’s here as well, and its beat is much more daring and confident.

And I just want to say… this is so powerful. Because this sentiment is deeply tied to the game’s story and Revali’s character arc. You see, he is introduced as someone who resents Link for being the manifestation of his failure, in a way, because Revali has trained arduously his whole life to be where he is, to be recognised. And yet… this hylian gets chosen by a magic sword and some tale of divine destiny and, apparently, that’s all it takes for him to be deemed the hero that will save the land. In Revali’s eyes, Link has done nothing to prove his worth before him, so it is easy to see why he despises the silent knight so much; he is yet another individual that was born into their destiny. Meanwhile, Revali has had to build his reputation from the ground up, earning him a place among the greatest warriors of Hyrule, and even then he finds himself surrounded by people who grew up praised for being born gifted.  We can see how Revali is the odd one out, and can map out the reason for him acting so antagonistic towards Link.

But once we’re on Medoh, things start to change. When Link enters the Divine Beast, Revali greets him with disdain, as per usual. Of course, Link has no recollection of whatever happened a hundred years ago, other than a small glimpse of the rito champion talking down to him, a memory that came and went in a flash. So as Link, we more than expect Revali to act cold and mocking, which he does. He provides us with as little help as needed in order to free Medoh, reluctantly, shielding his wounded pride over having to wait for Link, of all people, to come to their rescue. But you can hear him starting to open up bit by bit(I wish I could translate his dialogue directly from Japanese but I’ll make do with a couple of dubs and other numerous sources from translators online). With each little step Link takes towards success, activating the terminals, the perception Revali has of him shifts from one of resentment to one of genuine admiration and respect. By the end of it all, he is willing to not only cheer on Link during the boss battle, but to trust him with his life’s worth achievement. And once left alone, he admits defeat and lets go of his bitterness, realising that he was wrong to underestimate Link, and later wishes he could’ve had a chance to measured up to him. To take all of this into consideration and work with it in the soundtrack I think it’s genuinely splendid. And for once, I am grateful that it ends in somewhat of a positive note that puts my soul to rest. I still have a hard time listening to the first two thirds of the entire thing, but now I can look forward to a hopeful and earnestly heartening conclusion for all the pain that this composition puts me in. I must admit that it’s beautifully and brilliantly crafted, and that I am enamoured of it regardless.

That is why I wrote roughly 4k words about it! I hate myself!

If you’re as crazy as me about the soundtrack of this game, I recommend you read the published cd interview with the composers themselves! if you haven’t already. I just found it yesterday(unbelievable but it’s true) and… after writing all of this and checking it out, I felt validated. It sure is a one of a kind feeling. 

Alright folks, we’ve made it to the end. Congratulations for sticking around and thanks being interested in my nonsensical rambling! 

I also hope that you, like me, will now be unable to listen to bowed strings without being reminded of Revali. Good luck!

————– Annotations/Sidenotes/Whatever

(*)The Flight Motif(in point number 2) is also present in this track. We can hear it in the background right after the Rito leitmotif, as per usual. It starts with a clarinet, I think, before the strings take the lead. (**) Note that the Flight Motif only comes into play in the Breath of The Wild rendition of the song. (***)I strongly associate this instrument with Mipha, given that it is used in her theme, in every “response” to the initial melody. It can be heard in Attack On Vah Ruta, as well, it enters the scene when the notes Mi(E) and Fa(F) are played. The initial tune, Si and Do(B and C) are played on a clarinet or oboe, wind instruments just like the flute that leads Sidon’s respective theme. The celesta can also be heard inside Vah Ruta, activating the first terminal…. when the song really takes a turn just like Medoh’s. Mipha has nothing to do with the song of this analysis, however. We must understand that instruments, although they are attached to characters/various story elements in some cases, can always be used outside of that context, for that is the nature of an orchestral soundtrack. If you have this many tools at your disposal, you will make good use of them.

[imagineaworlds]

I Love You (Part Fifty-Seven) -- Aaron Hotchner

Written By: @desperately-bisexual

Request: None.

Warnings: SMUT!! Cursing. Unprotected sex. Wrap it before you tap it, ladies, gentlemen, and nonbinary sibs. Dom/sub relationship. Mild edging. Impregnation kink. The reader does go by they/them pronouns, however, Hotch refers to them as female when saying “good girl”.

Pairing: Aaron Hotchner x Greenaway!Reader

Word Count: 8391

Timeline: A few days after part fifty-six.

Criminal Minds Discord Server

November 2nd. Aaron Christopher Hotchner’s birthday only came a few days after Halloween, which just meant more sugar for the kids. Between the cookies on Halloween and the birthday cake on Hotch’s birthday, those kids were spoiled rotten. Not that I ever complained. I loved celebrating Hotch’s birthday, as much as he hated it, and I loved dedicating the whole day to him—again, even though he hated it. He disliked the idea of celebrating himself. Not to mention that celebrating his birthday just made him think of his mother, who was horrible to him, and that would lead him to remember his father, who was even worse. That was why over the past couple of years, I had been trying to turn that day into his day, and not his parents’. It was okay for him to be selfish. Aaron really struggled with thinking highly of himself, or even thinking anything about himself. He preferred the idea of just spending his time and energy on me, the kids, and work. Between all of that, there was hardly any time for himself. On his birthday, however, it was all about him, and I was going to make him love his birthday one of these days.

However, my plans seemed to be canon-balled in the side by my parents. They surprised me and Hotch with a call shortly after Halloween to let us know that they had decided to get back together, and that they had moved in together again. When I asked when this happened, my mom said a couple of months ago. So… they had been keeping that from me all this time? Them and Hotch with the fucking secrets. I let it slide, though, considering I always knew that they still loved each other and that they only split up in the first place because of work, but now that was all in the past. Now, they could just be them. In fact, that was why my parents called in the first place. They asked if they could have the kids for the day, and when I tried to argue that it was Hotch’s birthday so we wanted the kids home with us, my mom interrupted with: “Oh, perfect! We’ll take the kids for the day, then you guys can come over for a birthday dinner!”

Ugh…

The thing about my mom was that she was never really… there… when Elle and I were growing up. Because she worked for the CIA, she was gone a lot, the same way that Hotch and I were away from Scar and Jack so much. With her traveling so much, she hardly settled to do “motherly” things like learning to cook. Elle and I loved her dearly, okay. We did. But her cooking was like eating acid. For Hotch’s birthday, I was imagining something a little more special than battery acid. Yet, I couldn’t talk them out of it.

Hotch had sing-songed in my ear, “We’ll have the whole house to ourselves for the day…” which made me ultimately give in. Then, when I hung up on them, he said, “Who knows, maybe the kids’ll like your parents.”

I groaned. “Who ever likes their grandparents?”

“Celia and Ken are good people, baby. They’re fun, and they love you and Elle more than anything in the world. I’m sure they’ll be good with the kids.”

I squinted at him. “Fine.”

My dad picked up the kids early in the morning since he spent the night working at the Academy anyhow. They lived about an hour away from our house, so by the time they were gone, we only had lunch, the afternoon, and about an hour of the evening before we had to leave. What was supposed to be a day of fucking in every reasonable room of the house turned into us just staring at our bedroom ceiling, counting the minutes until we had to get ready. I was dreading dinner. Not only was the drive going to be unbearably long, but dinner itself was going to be complicated.

There were a thousand things from my past that Hotch didn’t know about, and I would’ve kept it that way, but knowing my parents, they were going to unknowingly spill the beans, and I was going to have to explain a thousand things after the fact. Great. I mean, it wasn’t that I was actively keeping it all a secret from him. It just never came up. I was sure that there was stuff in his own past that he didn’t bring up because he couldn’t remember at the time or because there was no point in mentioning it. But my parents were the embarrassing type. I thought that by dating an older guy, and kind of rushing our relationship, we could skip that whole “embarrassing dinner with the parents” spiel, yet there we were. Hence, why I was staring at the ceiling with him all day rather than running around the house naked.

While in the car, Hotch and I were extremely handsy with one another. He was trying to focus on the road, but I kept messing with his hair, or playing with the wedding ring on his finger as we held hands; meanwhile, he was kneading my thigh every so often, or caressing my cheek with his thumb, or brushing my hair out of my face. I wanted my attention to be on him. The whole day was supposed to be dedicated to him, yet I couldn’t think straight. Going home after years and years of not being there was just making me appreciate how far I had come, and now my mind was racing with memories, good and bad.

I had the love of my life, the job I always wanted, and I had an amazing, beautiful, nuclear family. My stepson loved me as his own mother. My daughter was perfect in every way. Just as I always anticipated, she lit up a room just with her very presence, and it was most obvious whenever she was around Reid or Morgan. My best friends, and one of them was the godfather of my child. My life was perfect. Going home, however, was just a reminder of a time when things weren’t perfect. I didn’t need that bringing me down right now.

“What’s wrong?” Hotch asked me when he took notice of how quiet I was.

I glanced over at him and sighed. “I love them, my parents. You know I do.”

“I know.”

“But I just don’t want to do this…”

“It’s too late.”

Silence hung in the air for another minute as I returned to deep thinking about what they could possibly say in front of Hotch that could upset either of us.

“What are you thinking about now?” he spoke up again.

“The past.”

He raised a brow. “Care to share with the class?”

I smiled and shuffled to face him. “Well, I was just thinking about how different I used to be before I joined the BAU and met you, and before we started dating. Even when we first started going out, we were so different than how we are now.”

“Is that a bad thing?”

“Not at all.” I rested my elbow on the arm rest between us and stared up at him. “I used to work a shitty desk job, only dreaming about being where I am today. I had no friends, I didn’t talk to my parents or my sister, I hated my job, I lived in a one bedroom apartment in the city, and I didn’t have anyone I loved or who loved me back. I was entirely alone. And then everything changed when I met Jason Gideon and I solved the Footpath Killer problem faster than anyone else. So, I joined the BAU, thinking ‘What have I got to lose?’. Joined the team, made a friend or two, reconnected with my sister, and met a guy who was… well… my boss. He wouldn't leave me alone unless I went with him to dinner.” I poked Hotch’s dimple lightly when he smiled in response to my joke.

We both knew that he hadn’t chased after me. He wanted to. He really, truly wanted to chase after me, but he kept his distance because he thought that it would protect me, spare the team confusion, and spare himself potential heartache. But, eventually, he budged, and he asked me out. And by budged, I mean that I forced his hand. But it was cute to think that he would’ve chased after me if things had been slightly different. Maybe if I didn’t join the BAU, the chase would’ve happened naturally. Or maybe we would’ve continued staring and smiling at each other from a distance and nothing would ever happen because we were both cowards who didn’t know how to jump headfirst into a real relationship since we had been hurt one too many times before.

“And I guess he was cute, and I guess he was sweet…” I leaned in close and whispered in his ear, “And I guess he was good in bed…”

Hotch turned quickly and pressed a kiss to my lips before I could pull away from him. I smiled and pushed him back. “Tease,” he muttered under his breath.

“Shh,” I insisted. “I’m telling a story.” I sat back in my seat, swinging my legs over the arm rest between us so that my feet were on his thigh.

“That’s dangerous,” he warned.

“I trust you. Now, my story.” I hummed to myself, thinking about where I left off. “I gave up my life for a better part of a year for him and our relationship. So, I'm starting to think that this maybe might work, and the second it entered my head, he starts lying to me—”

“I didn’t lie—”

“No? What would you call what you did in Cincinnati, then?” I raised a playful brow. Hotch didn’t respond. He only licked his teeth and fell silent again so that I could continue my story. “Anyhow, he starts lying to me, yet I can’t stop thinking to myself that he’s the one, that I love him more than anything, and I’d die without him.” Hotch tore one of his hands off the wheel so that he could run his thumb over the inside of my left ankle. “And I know that I love him the way he is— even when he thinks that lying to me is the right thing to do.” Hotch squeezed my calf lightly to warn me away from accusing him of lying again. “I wanted to tell him, ‘You don't have to always be there; you don't have to change your habits… Just love me. You don't have to put the seat down; you don't have to eat avocado toast; you don't have to change a thing— Just stay with me.’ So, I try to tell him, ‘I want you— nothing but you.’ Because you take me in your arms, and suddenly everything in my life makes sense. For a moment, I forget just how dark and cold the world can get. It feels like my life led right to your side and will keep me there from now on.” I leaned forward again, pressing my palm against his cheek. He continued to watch the road, though I knew he was desperate to look at me, too. “Now I wanna hold you close— I don't ever wanna have to let you go. I don't wanna go back to the lonely life. Can we do that?”

Hotch moved to kiss my palm. “Of course.”

“Listen, when we get to my house, take a look at that town, take a look at how far I've come. I will never go back, never look back anymore. Everything bad that happened in my life stems from that place. I was missing what was perfect in my life—you and our family—but now I have you, and I never, ever want to let that go. Does that make sense?”

Hotch shrugged.

I brushed his hair back out of his face. I needed him to understand exactly what I meant, so I had to put it into terms that he could understand. “Just think about what you wanted. Think about what could be. Think about how I love you. Think of what's great about me and you. Think of the bullshit we've both been through. Think about how we’ve come so far together, and how we’ve overcome every single obstacle, no matter how tough they seemed at times. That’s not by chance, Aaron.” I gently curled my fingers around a fistful of his hair. “That’s effort that my parents never put in. That’s learning from our experiences—learning from where we came from and choosing to be better. Going back to my hometown and seeing my old life is like taking steps back on Candyland—” He chuckled at my simile. “I’m serious!” He shook off his laugh as we turned into my neighborhood and he started looking at the house numbers to figure out which one was mine. “You can’t let me stay here,” I said once I saw it at the end of the cul-de-sac. “Please, Aaron.”

“You’re being a little overdramatic, baby girl.”

“Just wait.”

I knew that once he would spend the evening with my parents, learning about my past and how spoiled and annoying I was as a kid, he would understand what I meant. I never thought in a million years I would be back there. I never thought that my parents would somehow manage to convince me to come back. Yet, as Hotch pulled into the driveway, I realized just how fucked this was.

“Mom! Dad!”

I looked over my shoulder and out my window to see Jack and Scarlet running out of the house, speeding onto the front lawn, and dashing towards our car. I smiled lightly. At least I had them. My little man and my lil’ bug. They made this trip worth it, and the upcoming dinner was going to be unbearable, but I could just hold Scarlet in my arms if I ever got upset or bored, and I would feel at home again.

Did Hotch realize how grateful I was? I mean, to be honest, I did most of the work, but the beginning was a team effort… if you catch my drift. I was so thankful that he gave me my lil’ bug Scarlet, and that he looked after us shortly after she was born, and that he was so hands on with her. I mean, he was close with Jack. He dedicated everything to his son when he was born, and even more so after Haley’s death; but Hotch was vastly different with Scarlet. With Jack, there was a level of protection that he had because of Foyet; because he didn’t want Jack to experience anything traumatic ever again. On the other hand, Scarlet hadn’t been through anything yet, and Hotch was working tirelessly to make sure it stayed that way. I would say that Scarlet was a daddy’s girl, too, which only encouraged Hotch to coddle her. I didn’t care anymore. It used to irk me that he was too overbearing with her, but since our lives had continued to turn upside down because of work, I actually appreciated Hotch’s caution with our daughter. Jack had been hurt once before, and between Hotch and I, we had been hurt over a hundred times—if I were being generous. At the very least, as her parents, we could protect Scarlet from ever enduring what the three of us had.

I swung my feet off of Hotch’s thighs so that we could both get out of the car. As I opened my door, Jack immediately jumped up, his arms sprawled so that I could catch him. I laughed as I barely made it on time. “Oh, boy!” I groaned while standing and hugging him tightly.

He was too big now to lift, and it pissed me off, but what was I supposed to do? Hurt my back more just to try to pick him up? No… As much as I missed holding him on my hip and hugging him so tight that neither of us could breathe, trying to lift him now would have been futile and simply hurtful for the two of us.

“Daddy!” Scarlet cheered as she jumped into Hotch’s arms. Like I said, daddy’s girl.

He kissed her cheeks over and over again until she pushed him away because it tickled too much. “How was your day, Ms. Scarlet?”

She poked at his cheekbones. “Good. Grandpa and Grandma played soccer with us.”

“Did you win?”

“Yeah.”

“That’s not true!” Jack argued. “I won!”

I kissed his hair. “I’m sure you did, little man.”

“How was the drive?” Dad asked as he and Mom came to meet us outside, too. Hotch and I turned to face them. We told them that it was long, but nice. “Did ya work up an appetite?”

“Dad—”

“You know it,” Hotch answered over me, sending me a quick glance that begged that I would be polite.

“Good. Good.” Dad patted Hotch on the back before ushering us inside. “Celia’s been cooking up a storm all day. Hope you like steak.”

“Nothing sounds better.”

----

Dinner was ready almost immediately. The family gathered in the dining room, the kids at the end so that they could draw in a coloring book that Scarlet brought with her while the adults talked on the other end. Hotch and I sat side by side, my parents across from us. This was the first time we had a chance to talk with my parents since the wedding nearly three years ago. Not that the distance was on purpose. It was just that we never had the chance to sit down like this ever. The first time they met Hotch was practically just after he proposed, but then we were called away to work. It happened like that every time. Our jobs called us out to different states all the time, my mom’s job called her out to different countries, and my dad’s job required him to be at the Academy practically 24/7. It was a miracle that we could get all four of us in the same room for Hotch’s birthday.

Not that I necessarily saw it as a miracle. Considering we had never done this before, like I said, so therefore, Hotch never really got to know them, and vice versa. What were we supposed to do if they ended up hating them? I knew I was bitching about this all day, but that was only because I was nervous. If this went awry, I wouldn’t be able to choose between my parents and my husband. I knew what my decision would be, but that was heartbreaking to even consider.

Hotch put a hand on my knee to stop it from bouncing anxiously. My attention snapped to him to see that he was sending me a look that asked if I was alright or if I needed a break. I sent him a look that said I was alright. I was just thinking… Again…

Dad cut through his slice of birthday cake that Mom made for after dinner while talking with Hotch about Cody, the Director of the FBI. For dinner, my mom made steak—which was edible—and mashed potatoes and green beans, which were there. She tried her best. Dessert was probably the best part. Hotch didn’t exactly like anything “unhealthy” since he liked to stay so fit for the field; but I made him try some of the cake on my plate, and once he did, he was convinced into having a slice of his own.

“Have you been in contact with anyone from your high school?” Mom asked me. “I heard there was some kind of class reunion a month or so ago.”

I chuckled behind my cup. “Who would I be in contact with?” I took a sip.

“I don’t know… Oh— What about Steven Teller?”

I nearly spat my drink out. “What—”

“You know! Steven!” Mom hit Dad’s shoulder, “Where did he end up going for college?”

Dad started thinking. “Hmm… Wasn’t it… Tulane?” He snapped in eureka. “Yes! That was it! Tulane. His dad told me after he graduated that he got a job working for some prestigious law firm.” My dad pointed at me, “You must have a thing for lawyers.”

Hotch leaned to the side, pulling me towards him somewhat. “Steven Teller? Isn’t that—”

I stopped him with a glare. When he fell silent, we both sat back up straight in our seats. I looked at my parents. “No, I haven’t talked to Steven. I haven’t talked to anyone. And, honestly, I don’t want to.”

“What about Tess—"

I cleared my throat. “It’s getting kind of late,” I said, checking my watch. “I want to show Aaron around before we leave. You know, brag about some old memories and stuff.”

My parents took note of the change in tone in my voice, and the way the room suddenly grew uncomfortable. They recognized that they touched some kind of nerve. They fucked up, though they weren’t sure how, and they weren’t going to pry or stop me from talking to Hotch about it all privately—which was clearly what I wanted to do. So, they let us go.

I grabbed Hotch’s hand and started pulling him towards the stairs. He hurried after me, trying to keep up with how fast I was leading him along, and even trying to tug back on me to get me to slow down, but I didn’t. We skipped up the steps and hurried down to the last room on the left. My bedroom. It hadn’t been touched or bothered since high school. It was so weird. It was like some kind of time capsule that should’ve been burned down years ago. This wasn’t who I was anymore. I had grown up so much since leaving home. Like I told Hotch, I left this place and I never looked back, and I was fine with how my life turned out. I just didn’t think my parents would keep mine and Elle’s rooms untouched like this— like they were shrines of a better past or something.

“Steven Teller. I know that name,” Hotch said, closing the door behind me. “It’s been churning in my head for six years, Y/N. How do your parents not know?”

“I’ve told you before, I didn’t tell anyone. And I’ve also told you before that I would’ve never told you or Elle if the Fisher King hadn’t let the cat out of the bag. He took pictures of it, Aaron, and then he used them to black mail me. How could I tell people that? I got those pictures back, I hid them away, and I left this place for as long as I could.”

Hotch stepped closer to me. He put his hands on my biceps and sighed. “I’d kill him if I could.”

George Foyet and the Hawai’i gang had seen up close and person how far Hotch was willing to go to get revenge on those who hurt his family. If Steven Teller were there in front of us, I had no doubts in my mind that Hotch would’ve been willing to get locked up just for the sake of putting him six feet underground.

“Remember, I told you to take a look at how far I’ve come. I told you to remember that this isn’t who I am anymore— that none of this matters to me now. What matters is being in your arms. Being with you helps me forget.” I reached up to hold his face in my hands. “It was so long ago. Aaron, I need you to believe me when I tell you that it doesn’t matter. I mean— I— It does matter… But I don’t let it define me. I don’t let it distract me from what makes me happy. You, Jack, and Scarlet make me happy. That’s all that matters. I don’t care about him. I don’t think about him. Every bad memory I have of him has been forgotten and replaced by my happy memories of you.”

Hotch wrapped his arms around my waist and he lifted me up slightly so that my toes were barely tangling over the carpet, but my face was even with his. He kissed me. After a moment, he set me back down on my feet and he let go of me.

“So, what was Y/N Greenaway into when they were in high school?” His change of topic caught me off guard, but I appreciated it. He knew that I didn’t want to talk about this because, to me, it didn’t fucking matter. And if it didn’t matter to me, it didn’t matter to him. What mattered was that I promised to show him around. He was in my old bedroom, and he wanted to finally get to know everything I never told him. “You have any fun stories to tell me about all of this?” he teased while spinning around to get a look at everything around him. He stopped when he noticed my box of vinyls. “If there isn’t a single good record in here, I’m leaving.”

I snickered. “Well, your definition of good music is definitely older than mine.”

He grinned at me while running a finger over the titles. “Are you calling me old right now?”

“Mhm.”

“I’m only one year older now, not ten.”

“Still old.”

He picked out one of the records. “Brat.” He admired the cover of A Night at the Opera by Queen. “So, this is where your love for Queen began. Who’s old now?”

“That record’s older than me.”

“So, you like old things, then. Who would’ve known?” he questioned sarcastically. I rolled my eyes and sat down on the bed. “Oh,” Hotch smiled to himself, “look what we have here.”

I watched as he reached for something at the bottom of my bookshelf. I cocked a brow, figuring that he was just grabbing an old kiddie book that we could take home for Scarlet, but what I saw in his hands when he turned around absolutely mortified me. “No—” I insisted quickly, pushing myself to my knees on the mattress. “Aaron Hotchner, you put that back!”

Hotch’s wicked smile brightened as he meandered over to the bed, flipping the book open to the front page. “I always wondered when I’d get the chance to see this.”

“Aaron—” I reached out, trying to swipe the book from him, but he caught my wrist and held me steady. “I swear—”

“Behave yourself,” he narrowed his eyes, still smiling, though. He released my hand, allowing me to sit back down obediently. As he turned to the next page, he sat down next to me so that I could watch what he was doing. “Do you remember how we went through my old yearbook the night you first told me you love me?” I was going to kill him, I swear. He had to know that I would do it, and I knew how to get away with it. “And you told me that I would never, ever get to see your yearbooks.” With that snide, calculated comment that was supposed to tease me, I tried to grab the book from him again, though I knew I shouldn’t have. “Look at you, you were adorable!” I tried again. “If you don’t stop that, I will tie you to the headboard.”

“I wasn’t adorable,” I told him as I gave up trying to take the yearbook away from him. “I was nerdy and dorky. Elle was always the cool one. She knew how to play the system so that she could be popular, meanwhile, I was just focused on getting to the Academy.”

“Sounds like a fun childhood,” he teased with sarcasm hiding behind his words.

“Hey!” I punched his arm lightly. “I had fun!”

“Mhm,” he nodded sarcastically. “Was that between studying and playing D&D, or was that after you volunteered at the senior center?” He pointed to all the different pictures of me on the community service pages. 

“I’ll have you know,” I grinned, recalling a memory that would definitely get under his skin, “that it happened after the homecoming game junior year.”

He looked up at me with wide, shocked, yet still angry eyes, just as I predicted. “Please tell me it wasn’t in his car, at least.”

“Her bedroom,” I corrected. “She lived just a block away from the school, so we snuck out of the game and walked to her place. Elle never even knew I was gone.”

Hotch’s eyes dilated slightly as his mind raced with every possibility of what happened that night. “And what about your room?” he asked while looking around in order to avoid eye contact with me so that he was harder to profile.

“Her birthday the following week,” I answered, now using the same kind of smirk that he had plastered to his face only moments ago. He thought that he could get to me by looking through the yearbook and stirring up old memories, but what he failed to recognize was that I would do anything to get the upper hand on this situation again.

Hotch cleared his throat as he turned another page of the yearbook. “Oh, look!” He was trying to change the subject again, despite how obvious it was that he was thinking about what happened on that bed in high school. “It’s a picture of you and Elle.” He turned the book slightly towards me again, but I didn’t look down at it.

I leaned against him, shifting around on my knees as I got closer. When my hand brushed against his pants, Hotch cleared his throat again and nearly slammed the book shut, yet he still managed to somehow hold together his composure. “You know,” I whispered into his ear, “birthday sex is a lot of fun.”

“Was this your move in high school?” he asked me with a raspy, breathless tone.

I knew I got him, now it was just a matter of breaking him. “No.” I shook my head. “This was.” I grabbed the book, knowing that he wasn’t paying attention to it anymore, and I threw it to the floor. His hands were desperate to hold onto something now, so they immediately found my hips as I straddled him. “And then it went a little something like this…” I whispered in his ear as I started slowly unbuttoning his shirt.

“Your parents are downstairs,” he whispered back.

“Just like high school.” I smiled.

He laughed as he leaned in to kiss me. “You would have been bad news for me back in high school, Y/N.”

“I’m still bad news for you.” I finally got his shirt open and I quickly pushed it off his arms. His arms snaked around my waist once they were free of his blue silk shirt. “You remember Valentine’s?” He nodded before pulling me in for another kiss. I pushed him away. “Round two?”

He shook his head. “I just want you. Please.”

“Whatever the birthday boy wants…”

Hotch moaned as I lowered my hips, grinding my panties against his trousers. When he was least expecting it, I parted from our endless kisses and pushed a hand to his chest with enough force to give him the idea that he should lay back on the width of the bed. Hotch listened, his arms falling from hugging me to grabbing my hips as he laid back calmly. He stared up at me with his brown eyes dilated that were turning pure black with lust. He licked his lips, trying to forget about how nice it was to kiss me and how he wanted to do it again.

I used my hand on his chest to balance myself as I dragged my hips up towards his chest slowly, feeling the outline of his erection passing over my covered slit. As I pushed myself back down, I felt his tip hit my clit, both of us letting out an unexpected moan in response.

When I realized what happened, I put my other hand over his mouth. “You have to be quiet,” I whispered, moving my hips forwards and backwards against him. He groaned against my hand, the vibrations of his pleasure running through my hand before coursing through the rest of my body.

“Fuck me,” he begged against my hand.

I sat up entirely, moving down his thighs somewhat so that I could fidget with his pants. He groaned quietly every time my fingers accidentally passed over his throbbing length as I struggled to get his pants off as fast as possible. I wanted him just as badly as he wanted me, and there was only so much time we had before my parents or Jack would come looking for us. All I knew was that I wanted to fuck him and call him mine for his birthday.

We worked together to discard the rest of our clothes. While I fidgeted with his pants, his hands crumbled up the skirt of my dress, and he made a move to lift it over my head, but while he was still laying under me, he couldn’t make the aggressive move he wanted. So, he had to wait. I pulled his belt out of all of the loops, then tossed it to the side. Without hesitation, I undid his pants, my palms brushing over his erection so often he was moaning and bucking. I lifted my hips so that I could push down his pants and underwear to his ankles, and when I sat back down, I made sure that I was right over his erection.

“Baby, please. Your dress.” He tugged at the skirt of it lightly. I nodded, raising my arms over my head. He whimpered a “thank you” and sat up slightly so that he could pull my dress off my body entirely, and afterwards, he unclasped my bra with expertise. “So precious, baby girl…” he exhaled through his nose lightly before kissing my bra strap. As my fingers tangled themselves in his hair and pulled, Hotch’s cold fingers slowly started pushing my bra straps off my shoulders. The more my bra fell, the more he kissed my bare body, making his way down to my nipples. “I love you,” he whispered to me as my bra fell to the floor and he wrapped his lips around my left nipple.

I moaned, throwing my head back. “I love you, too.”

He released my left nipple and slowly went to suck on the other one, making my stomach twist in pleasure. While he was preoccupied and I was desperate for him, I reached between us so that I could take his length in my hand. He hissed quietly. When I bucked my hips up slightly, running my clothed slit up every inch of him, I felt him twitch in my hand with excitement. He wanted me, of course. I wanted him, too, but this was all about pleasing him. I was going to take my time making sure that he was served and happy.

Hotch nibbled on my nipple gently when I ran my thumb over his tip. I heard him whimper a few quiet times. So, I did it again. He released my nipple so that he could moan into my chest. I smirked and did it again.

“Baby, please—” he gasped breathlessly. “Just fuck me. Please.”

“You wanna cum for me?” I asked him before kissing his hair.

He nodded. “Yes. Please. Fuck—”

As I lifted my hips, Hotch reached between us to push my panties to the side. “Do you want to cum in me?” I teased his tip at my entrance.

“Baby girl, I want to fill you so bad…” He tried pushing my hips down, but I held steady. “You—” He gasped against my shoulder as I rolled my hips slightly. “You promised— For my—For my birthday—”

“I know, baby,” I whispered. “I know.” I just loved hearing his pleas and whimpers too much to not pry them out of him. But now that he had given himself to me and his whimpers blessed my ears, I could finally give in for him. “I’m sorry.” I started lowering myself onto every inch of him. We both let out quiet moans that filled the room. Hotch wrapped his arms around my entire body, pressing my chest against his. “I love you.”

“I love you—” He groaned and threw his head back as I settled at the base of his cock. “You treat me so well, baby girl. Thank you.”

“Shhh…” I cooed. “Fuck…”

As I started rolling my hips around him and slowly moving up and down his length, I felt myself get more worked up, encouraging me to only go faster and harder. We held each other close as I did so. He was so hard, every inch of him was throbbing inside of me, hitting exactly where I needed him most. But then there was the added stimulation of my clit grinding on his pubic bone. It made me melt.

“I fucking love you,” he whispered.

“I love you, too.”

Slowly, but surely, my back started to tense up. The muscle that had been injured the worst during the bank explosion over a year ago was starting to act up again, which wasn’t unusual in these cases. For the most part, I was healed since then, to the point that I could participate in cases in the field without issue, and Hotch and I could have intense scenes with only minimal aches. But from time to time, I would feel it to the point that it felt like my back was screaming at me: “Please, do anything else but this!” So, I gave in. I listened to the way my body was angry at me, and I tried to shift around somewhat to calm down, but it wasn’t working.

“You okay?” Hotch asked after noticing how my pace had slowed.

I nodded slightly before cringing again. “My back…” I finally admitted. This was the worst fucking time for it to hurt. “I’m sorry, baby.”

He shook his head and sat up. “Don’t be.” He hugged me and stood, giving me time to wrap my legs around his waist. We moaned into each other’s mouths in response to the way he moved inside of me. He turned around and started carefully laying me on the bed with him still buried inside me.

“That’s a talent,” I mumbled against his lips. He chuckled. “I like being under you better, anyhow.”

Hotch leaned up to stop me from continuing my endless string of kisses. “You’re sure you’re okay?”

I nodded and bucked my hips up to encourage him. Hotch caught the hint, so he planted his feet on the ground and slowly started pulling his length out of me. When his tip was all I had inside of me, we kissed, then he thrust into me with a little more power. I moaned loudly. Hotch quickly put his hand over my mouth to keep me quiet. I pressed a kiss against his palm to let him know that I understood that I had to be quiet, but he didn’t release me because now he was on top, and my mild bratty attitude hadn’t gone unnoticed by him. He was in Dom space now. I could see it in his eyes. Melting in with the lust and love that filled his dark eyes was a red tint that screamed: “You’re mine.” And I loved it. I loved it and I let that tint put me in my place.

He snapped his hips back and forth again a few more times. With every thrust that passed, he increased his speed and power to the point that I was a moaning mess under his hand. Everything was so muffled, but he understood that I would’ve been screaming for him if I could. I loved him. I loved how he fit in me perfectly—that it didn’t matter that we had been together nearly six years because I was still so tight for him and only him. I was his. He was mine. We were us, and that was what mattered. Being back at home, reliving a few bad memories, talking about some people I would’ve rather forget about, none of that mattered while he was towering over me.

He leaned in close and let out a shuddered breath in my ear because he was close to moaning loudly, too. “I’m gonna cum,” he warned. I nodded against his hand, letting him know that I was close, too. “Fuck…” He started attacking my neck with his lips, leaving a mild hickey that hopefully wouldn’t start forming until we were gone. “Fuck, fuck, fuck—” There was his tell. “Y/N—” Before he could say anything else, my walls tightened around him as I tipped over the edge, encouraging him to cum, too. “Fuck!” he hissed against my skin.

“Sir,” I moaned against his hand. I bucked my hips to make sure both of us worked out our entire orgasms before slowing down and giving up. “Shit…” I slumped back, my body going limp.

He slowly pulled out of me and removed his hand from my mouth. “You okay?”

“Yes, Sir.”

“Your back?”

“I’m okay, baby, I promise.” I patted his chest. “Happy birthday, my love.”

“Thank you.” He sat up by pushing his hands on my hips, then he let go of me so that he could pull his pants up. “I don’t think we can use a towel…” he joked.

I rolled my eyes at him. “Ha. Ha.”

“Where the fuck did you throw my shirt?” he questioned while spinning in a circle to try and spot it. I giggled and reached over my head to retrieve it from the floor. I threw it at his face. “Brat,” he hissed after catching it. I smirked.

Hotch held his hand out for me, and when I took it, he carefully helped me up, keeping his eye on me to make sure that I wouldn’t break. I was still a bit sore, but it was manageable. I figured that since he was right about the towel thing, I’d have to make my way to the bathroom down the hall, and I would just grab a Motrin or something there, too.

After Hotch slid his arms back through his dark dress shirt, he moved to start buttoning it up, but I beat him to it by shooing his hands away and grabbing ahold of the hem of his shirt. As I reached the top button, my pinkie passed over the purple mark I made on his neck that was getting more and more obvious as the seconds flew by. I blushed and looked away. Hotch chuckled and lifted my chin by trapping it between his thumb and his curled index finger. My gaze met his again.

“Are you shy, baby?”

I nodded. He grinned and gripped my jaw hard. I gulped before biting my lip and feeling the way my legs gave out somewhat.

“Why, though? Weren’t you the one to mark Sir?”

I whimpered. “Yes, Sir.”

He brought me close to his lips, then lingered for a second, as if he were daring me to act out by kissing him quickly, but I obeyed by waiting. Maybe five years ago I would have given in, but now… with my parents and the kids downstairs… There wasn’t really any time, and our priorities were different. So, I waited for him to kiss me first. He smirked at my compliance, then slowly leaned in to press his lips against mine, barely even touching me at all before he pulled away.

“We should head home,” he whispered.

I whimpered. “I hate you…”

He grabbed my jaw harder. “Go clean yourself up.” He kissed me again, this time a little more passionately, then he turned to walk out and start wrangling the kids downstairs.

I let out a shaky breath as the room fell silent again. That was certainly one way to celebrate…

Once I cleaned myself up in the bathroom, downed a pain killer, then got dressed, I headed downstairs to see Hotch holding a passed out Scarlet in his arms. She was resting her chin on his shoulder while sucking on her thumb—a habit I thought we kicked about six months ago. Jack, on the other hand, was sitting on the floor in the living room while playing with Red and some of his other favorite toys. As I passed him, I kissed the top of his head. I asked if he was ready to go yet, and he nodded. I could tell that he was getting tired, and I knew that by the time we had him and Scar loaded up in the car, the two of them would be dead asleep for the whole drive home.

“Alright,” I began wrapping up the conversation Hotch was having with my parents, “I think it’s time to get them home.” Hotch agreed shortly before my parents gave in. “Thank you, guys, for looking after them today.”

“They were perfect,” my dad said.

“We’d love to have them back soon,” my mom added.

Please, no, I thought to myself, even though I was smiling and conceding. Hotch stood with Scarlet in his arms, and I kissed her temple while petting her hair. It was a miracle she lasted this long. I honestly thought that she was either going to pass out before dessert, or that dessert was going to give her a sugar high that would keep her up for the rest of the night. However, I had not anticipated that she would eat dessert and still be exhausted. I guess we got lucky.

“Oh, wait, I almost forgot!” Mom jumped to her feet and ran to the kitchen to grab something. I prayed that it wasn’t leftovers. When she returned, she was holding a wrapped gift in her hands. “Ken and I got this for you, Aaron.” She held it out for him.

Since his hands were full, he couldn’t necessarily accept it, so I offered to take Scarlet from him carefully to make sure that she wouldn’t wake up. When his hands were free, he took the gift. I watched as he eyed me for a second before starting to unwrap it.

“You guys didn’t have to do this,” he insisted politely. My mom and dad shook their heads like it was no big deal. As the wrapping fell apart, he found a black leather box in his hands. He found the zipper on the side and pulled it open. Hotch chuckled to himself. “You guys seriously didn’t have to do this.”

I peeked over his shoulder to see what it was that they got for him. It was a fancy travel-size shaving kit. It had an electric shaver, with the charging chord, it had a handheld shaver in case there was no plug-in sight, it had a full tube of shaving cream, moisturizer, aftershave, and so on. It was completely unnecessary. Like, ostentatious for no fucking reason. I almost wanted to chuckle, but it would’ve been rude, so I bit my lip and held back the urge.

“We know what it’s like to have to travel all the time for your job, so we just wanted to make sure you had a way to make sure that beard of yours never grows back,” my dad joked.

I finally let out a chuckle. “I miss the beard.”

“I don’t,” Hotch said, smiling. “Thank you both,” he said to them while zipping up the kit. “It means a lot.”

“Can we go home now?” Jack questioned, slowly stumbling into the room, rubbing his eyes with his fists.

“Yeah, buddy. You wanna say goodnight to Grandma and Grandpa?”

Jack shuffled another few steps towards my parents, and he hugged their hips lightly. After they hugged him back, he meandered towards his dad who kneeled down to let Jack crawl onto his back to carry him the same way JJ liked to carry Henry. Jack slumped against Hotch. He flung his arms around his dad’s neck and trapped his legs around his waist. When he was steady, Hotch stood up straight.

“Seriously, thank you both for tonight. We had a lovely time,” Hotch said to my parents.

“We’ll call you guys in a couple of days to see if you want to do this again,” I offered. Scarlet started fussing in my arms. “Okay, okay, we’re going.” Hotch and I slowly started making our way to the front door. Dad skipped around us so that he could hold the door open for us since we were a little pre-occupied. “I love you,” I said while passing him and kissing his cheek. He kissed mine, too.

“Drive safe,” he begged.

“We will.”

Hotch headed down the front steps, then turned to make sure I could navigate them safely while not being able to see around Scarlet. When I made it down, we walked side by side to the car. Since Scarlet was certainly smaller than Jack, I was able to balance her in one arm long enough to open the backseat to put her down and buckle her in quietly, then run around to the other side to help Hotch get Jack in since he passed out on our way to the car, too. When they were settled, I chuckled. They were still so young and innocent. I almost envied their ability to fall asleep so quickly and in such uncomfortable positions.

Hotch sighed and snaked his arms around my waist. “I love you.”

I rested my head back on his shoulder. “I love you, too.” I slowly spun around. “Happy birthday, baby.”

He kissed me. “Probably my best birthday yet.”

“Suck up.”

“I try.” He kissed me again until we both melted and smiled against each other’s lips.

-----

criminal minds family: @peggy1999​ @gorgeousdarkangel​ @alex--awesome--22​ @oceaneblu​​ @brithedemonspawn​​ @absolutemarveltrash​​ @bshelley322​​ @rousethemouse​ @sunshinepower17​ @weexinling​​ @pettttyyyc​​ @Braty-angel  @braxdix

[oss-crime]

Chapter 2-Project “Ma” –Eve–; Scene 3

Original Sin Story: Crime, pages 23-37

Apparently the carriage’s speed was enough to outrace their pursuers.

After they arrived at Nemu village, they headed for Eve’s house, which was also the residence of the village chief.

This village had no clinics. As he had some medical knowledge, the village chief also acted as the village doctor.

“Welcome home…And who are these people, Eve?”

Chief Zvezda’s eyes went wide when he saw Eve carrying in two men, one of them injured.

“They were attacked on the plains by the white army. This one’s wounded.”

“It looks that way…Well then, you sit over here. I’ll examine you.”

Seth obeyed the chief’s words, taking a seat in a chair set deeper in the room.

After watching him silently, Eve spoke up to Adam “Are you alright? You didn’t get injured or anything?”

“No, luckily for me. More than that—”

Before Adam could continue his sentence, the village chief cut in as he wrapped a bandage around Seth’s head, “Judging by your outfits…you two are researchers from the royal capital.”

“Ho, you’re quite well-informed.”

“Director Horus of the Royal Research Institute is an old acquaintance of mine. Is he still working hard on research artifacts as usual?”

Adam hesitated for a moment, before telling the chief, “No…He’s passed on. Two years ago. Right now I’m working as director in his place.”

“How…I see, I hadn’t known. I’ve stopped going to the Twelve Royal Capitals lately. And so that would make you—”

“Horus’ adopted son, Adam.”

“I’ve heard your name from him, but I suppose that would make this our first time meeting like this.”

“Yes, and—"

This time Seth butt in. “Erm…I’d appreciate it if you could patch up my wound first.”

“Oops, sorry.”

The chief flusteredly resumed wrapping bandages.

“…Hm?”

He made a puzzled expression, peering at Seth’s face.

“Your left eye looks funny. Is that injured as well?”

“Ah…No, it’s always been like that. I haven’t been able to see out of this eye from birth.”

“A defective left eye…Horus was like that too, as I recall.”

“Ha ha, that’s right. Just a coincidence.”

.

After Seth’s treatment was finished, the researchers bowed their heads to Eve and the village chief and said their thanks.

The chief offered for them to rest at the village for a while.

“The white army wouldn’t go as far as attacking us here,” the chief revealed.

Adam replied, giving him a courteous smile, “Is that because this place is a village of sorcerers?”

“…My my, so the son of Horus is able to glean that much.” The village chief sat down in a nearby chair, a hand on his aching hip. “Let me ask you a question instead, Adam. For what purpose did you all come to this remote place? I’d think that scientists would have little interest in an excavation site, of all things.”

“That’s not so. After all is said and done we’re researchers of the old legacy. It wouldn’t be all that strange for us to want to see where it’s excavated.”

“But up until this point we have never once had a scientist go visit there. Your aim is not the excavation site.”

The village chief’s tone had hardened, but Adam wasn’t intimidated. “Chief Zvezda—No, esteemed sorcerer Raiou Zvezda. It seems you have something in mind already. As it happens, we also have several things we’d like to talk to you about.”

“So I’m the one you’ve been after.”

“Actually, to be more accurate—” Adam turned to Eve. “—We came here to meet her.”

The peaceful atmosphere that had been in the room just moments ago changed in an instant.

Eve could feel a sense of unease.

This wasn’t a light matter; especially considering they had come here with a retinue of soldiers.

Appearing to guess at Eve’s anxiety, the chief said to her, “Eve, please go outside for a minute.”

But Eve shook her head.

“If there’s a reason why these scientists are interested in a humble village girl like me, then I want to know what it is,” she said, somewhat challengingly.

It wasn’t like she’d never done anything of note. Depending on the situation…there was a chance that she would have to drive off the scientists that she’d rescued herself.

“Oh dear, let’s all calm down now, everyone.” Seth stood in the center of the group, remonstrating all present. “Sorry for being rude. …I’m sure you are as well, aren’t you Adam?”

“…”

“None of us wants to see this turn out like what happened with the ‘Witch of Merrigod’.”

Upon hearing that name, the village chief’s gaze turned even sharper. “So…you two are on a ‘witch hunt’ after all!”

“You’re quite knowledgeable. I suppose you…suspected us of that from the start. You not knowing about Dr. Horus’ death—was also a lie, I imagine.”

“I said this earlier, but I haven’t gone to the Twelve Royal Capitals in some time. I rarely even go outside the village. …But sorcerers have a network that allows them to share information.”

“The spell that uses green onions? Talking to people at long distances…Well, leaving that aside you have several misunderstandings here, so I shall explain.”

Adam looked at Seth with dissatisfaction. “No, I’m the one who—”

“Just leave this to your underling. Mister Director.” After cutting Adam off, Seth once more bowed to Eve and the village chief. “I have yet to introduce myself. My name is Seth Twiright. I work for the Royal Research Institute, and I am the late Dr. Horus’ top apprentice.”

“…Self-labeled top apprentice,” Eve heard Adam quietly mutter.

.

Levianta was called a “Kingdom”, but at present the position of ruler was not something gained by heredity.

In this country that was born to protect the temple and flourishing through the legacy bequeathed by the gods, the “gods” were absolute, and all people were little more than their servants.

The one who ruled the country had to be someone who could hear “the voice of the gods”. And the one they deemed most suitable for that was a virgin who commanded extraordinary magical power.

For that reason Levianta was ruled through the ages by a “queen”, but there were various institutions that existed for selecting that queen.

The special orphanage owned by the Loop Octopus family, the Lighwatch temple managed by the Asayev family, the Royal Research Institute run by the Vaju family, etc…

This also served as a source of political conflict in the senate. Because whichever establishment the queen was born into decided who was the next head of the senate. The current queen Alice Merry-Go-Round had once been a child raised in the special orphanage.

“Naturally, the other families don’t just passively sit and watch. There are a lot of senate members who get worked up over making the next queen show up from their own facility. As for the Vaju family, they’ve been seeking out results from a certain experiment…”

The village chief covered his face with his hand as he listened to Seth’s explanation. “Scheming to artificially birth a child with strong magical potential…How frightening.”

“Be that as it may, if we hadn’t then the institute wouldn’t get its funding for the legacy research. Dr. Horus couldn’t afford not to comply.”

“There have always been shady rumors about the Royal Research Institute. That to birth the ‘next queen’ they abduct potential mothers from all over. …Though Horus never told me anything himself.”

“That’s another misconception. It’s not like the research institute is forcibly making off with these women. It’s all out of their consent—if it means performing a service to the gods then everyone is quite happy to participate in our research.”

The village chief snorted, clearly not believing him. “It hasn’t been like that recently, at the very least. You’ve all been carrying out ‘witch hunts’, even using troops for it.”

“To be accurate, they’re a peace-keeping force. And, well, we’ve found ourselves in certain circumstances that require we hurry.”

“Why is that? As I recall the current queen is still in her forties. Her dynasty should last for another twenty years more at least.”

“…The institute is no longer searching for someone to be the ‘mother of the queen’.”

“--? What do you mean?”

“We are trying to find a woman who can become queen. And the new queen will also become the mother of the gods…The ‘Ma’.”

“You can’t mean…!? The ‘Ma’ is little more than a fairy-tale!”

Seeing the chief’s astonishment, Eve asked, “Father, what’s the ‘Ma’?”

“…It is said that when catastrophe is on the cusp of visiting this world, the dragon god LeviaBehemo with two heads and two wills will have a second coming in this world as human children. And the woman who births these ‘Twins of God’ is ‘Ma’…the divine mother, Mem Aleph…It’s an old myth passed down from long ago.”

“Erm…” Eve then said to Seth, guessing on her own what the conclusion to the story she just heard was then. “…So if the gods must be reborn in this world…Then does that mean that there really is a catastrophe coming?”

Seth briefly clapped for her. “That’s correct, Miss Eve.”

“But what’s your basis for that?”

“It was none other than the dragon god LeviaBehemo who prophesized thus. Through the queen. We’ve never had an oracle be wrong before. The senate needed to come up with a countermeasure post-haste.”

And the countermeasure drafted by the senate head Miroku Loop Octopus was project “Ma”.

They changed the role of the next queen selection measures to search for a woman who could become the mother of the gods.

Once she had safely birthed the children that would become receptacles for the gods, she would obtain the position of queen in place of Alice, as reward for her service. …That sort of thing.

“But if you do that then the current queen will have to step down. Can the senate really decide that on their own?”

“The current queen agrees with this project as well, you see. …I mean, I think that the members of the senate wouldn’t be able to move with this much forward momentum if she didn’t.”

The one who managed to produce the mother of the gods from their institution would achieve glory as the savior who protected the world from catastrophe.

And also the position of next head of the senate.

“…Anyhow, the Royal Research Institute must also search for ‘Ma’ candidates under orders of the Vaju family.

Upon hearing that the village chief gave a sideways glance to Eve with a sullen expression. “And so…you’ve selected my own daughter as an ‘Ma’ candidate.”

“The Royal Research Institute is seen as the most plausible source for completing this project. So the head of the senate has given the institute several authorizations. Such as to freely make use of security forces and their information.”

“But if the Royal Research Institute were to successfully carry out Project ‘Ma’, Miroku will lose his position as senate head. Is he alright with that?”

“Well, I don’t know that far…But I imagine it would be pretty difficult to find the ‘Ma’ in Senator Miroku’s special orphanage. And so…maybe his plan is to be able to continue to wield some influence in the senate even after stepping down by collaborating with the facility most likely to succeed.”

“What an awful power struggle.”

“I agree. Well, anyway, it’s thanks to our information that we were able to learn of some rumors around here…”

That was, the rumors of the “Witch of the Forest” that supposedly would appear in the sprawling “Forest of Held” to the south of the village.

There was a girl who would use magic to drive off the tribesmen that would appear every now and then…She had green hair, and would cast lightning with a blue spoon…Supposedly.

“According to what we’ve heard, she’s the bearer of significant magical power. Only, this region is currently being terrorized by that savage clan. That’s why we brought along minimal guards with us…Though conversely, that seems to have just spurred them on.”

Listening to all that, Eve was reminded of the soldiers that they’d left out on the plain. “I wonder if…those guys are alright.”

Adam had been quiet this whole time, but he replied, “The peacekeeping unit…especially Gammon, are all strong men. They can’t use magic, but they are proficient with swords and guns. They won’t be defeated by the likes of those tribesmen.”

“But—”

“In the worst-case scenario, they’ll seek out reinforcements from the royal capital…Right now it’s us I’m worried about.”

Eve felt her cheeks flush from being looked at by this man so close to her in age.

There weren’t any intrepid, intellectual guys like him in the village.

“Hmph…It sounds like you two are mistaken about something.” The village chief cut in between Eve and Adam. “This ‘Witch of the Forest’…I’ve certainly heard of that story, but that isn’t Eve.”

“B-but, she has the same green hair, and her magical ability—”

As Adam tried to argue, the village chief quietly shook his head. “Green hair is a trait shared by the people of the forest…And as for magical ability, everyone in the village has it in varying measures.”

“…Let me ask then, Chief. Are there any other green-haired girls in this village—”

“No. We’re immigrants who originally wandered here from elsewhere. But Eve is different. She was abandoned and set adrift in a nearby river when she was a baby. My late-wife scooped her out. We raised her as our own daughter.”

“So then—”

“Did the intel you gathered claim that the Witch of the Forest was someone in this village?”

“No, it…didn’t say that…”

“If you’re looking for a girl with green hair, I’d suggest going to the Forest of Held. You’re sure to run into the people of the forest immediately.”

“…Seth.”

Adam gave Seth a prompting glance.

“O.K. Now it’s time for this.”

What he brought out was a small iron rod that forked into two prongs.

“This is an artifact. It can measure someone’s latent magical potential by holding it out in front of them like this…Augh!” Appearing to have realized something, Seth looked up to the ceiling and held his head. “We don’t have the output device! I left it in the carriage.”

“What!?”

“No…It’s understandable. With the way things were there wasn’t any time to take out something so heavy…”

“…Nothing for it. We’ll have to go back there and get it.”

Adam asked if they could borrow Eve’s automated carriage.

Given that it would be dangerous to bring a woman over to where there might still be some tribesmen, he apparently intended to go get the equipment with Seth.

“But you need magical ability to run the carriage.”

“Don’t worry. I have enough myself.”

Thinking on it, he had been riding in a large automatic carriage. Adam must have been driving that one too.

“Don’t break it. It’s very important to us.”

Adam nodded at Eve’s words, and started to move to leave the house with Seth along.

--But that moment, they heard the shrieking sound of a car wheel from outside.

“Huh!? …Could it be?”

Adam leaned out the window.

And there he beckoned over someone who was outside.

After a beat, a long-haired man walked into the room.

He had a gun and a sword sheathed at his hip. He appeared to be a military man.

“So you’re alright, Gammon.”

This man named Gammon exchanged a handshake with Adam.

“It was no big deal. There were just quite a lot of them, so it took some time.”

“You only have the one carriage? And I can’t see the other soldiers outside of your driver.”

“I sent everyone back to the royal capital. They’ll need to appeal for information, and reinforcements, depending on the circumstances.”

“Reinforcements?...If you were able to repel the tribesmen then there’s no need for that, is there? Don’t do anything too dangerous. This is supposed to be a peaceful—”

“I won’t be turning my sword on any witch. This is incidental. I want to take the opportunity to make a decisive strike on the white army.”

Adam heaved a sigh.

“…I suppose that is the official job of a peacekeeping force. But don’t forget. Your responsibility is—”

“Guarding you, I know. Naturally I will accomplish that properly myself.”

“Alone?”

“Is that not enough?”

“…It’s enough. You’re dependable.”

“You could stand to be a bit cheerier. I did bring you back what you forgot.”

Packed in the luggage compartment of the automated carriage that the captain of the security forces, Gammon, had rode in on was the device that Adam and Seth had left behind on the plains.

Once more putting together the magic measuring device, Seth started to take note of Eve’s magical ability.

“Though this isn’t a standard instrument. Using it in itself is quite simple. Please just stand perfectly still right there.”

Seth turned the iron rod's prongs in Eve’s direction.

After a while the box that was attached by wire to the bundle of metal let out a “be-beep”. Seth set it down and started to examine the numbers displayed on the box’s screen.

When he did, his expression grew crestfallen.

“…Your M count is 72. And your other numbers are average. That means you’re only a little bit stronger in magic than the average person.

Adam stood next to Seth and peered at the data output device.

“You’re sure the device isn’t broken?”

“I could check…Hey, Gammon.” Seth did a reading of Gammon’s magical ability just as he had done with Eve. “…M count of 0. Alright! You are, without a doubt, ‘magically impotent’!”

“…”

While breaking out into something of a cold sweat as Gammon glared at him, Seth then measured the magic potential of Adam, and then the village chief.

“…Amazing. The village chief is 200, and Adam exceeds 300. If you two were women you’d most certainly be candidates for ‘Ma’—At any rate, I think the device is working correctly.”

Upon hearing that outcome, the village chief slowly stood before Adam.

“And now we’ve satisfied you that Eve is not this ‘Witch of the Forest’.”

“…At the very least we’ve established that she can’t be an ‘Ma’ candidate.”

“I see…That’s good then, Eve.”

Eve wondered if it really was.

Maybe she had just let a chance for her to become queen slip out from under her very nose.

Queen…huh.

It was an unbelievable honor for a citizen of Levianta to obtain that position.

But I doubt my father would let me become queen.

Eve knew quite well that he was a man who hated politics.

It was only because there was no one else who could fulfill the role of village chief that he had bitterly accepted the role.

I’ve had to work specifically because he rarely takes in any taxes.

She thought her father was a splendid man.

But that didn’t mean she had no complaints.

<<prev------directory------next>>

[phoebosacerales]

The 6th house in Astrology

I thought I'd just share this excerpt from "The Plague", which feels like a whole lesson on the 6th house, while also being very relevant in these times of covid-19. It says a lot more than I could ever try to say and explain about the joy of Mars.

"The word 'plague' had just been uttered for the first time. At this stage of the narrative, with Dr. Bernard Rieux standing at his window, the narrator may, perhaps, be allowed to justify the doctor's uncertainty and surprise, since, with very slight differences, his reaction was the same as that of the great majority of our townsfolk. Everybody knows that pestilences have a way of recurring in the world; yet somehow we find it hard to believe in ones that crash down on our heads from a blue sky. There have been as many plagues as wars in history; yet always plagues and wars take people equally by surprise.

In fact, like our fellow citizens, Rieux was caught off his guard, and we should understand his hesitations in the light of this fact; and similarly understand how he was torn between conflicting fears and confidence. When a war breaks out, people say: 'It's too stupid; it can't last long.' But though a war may well be 'too stupid', that doesn't prevent its lasting. Stupidity has a knack of getting its way; as we should see if we were not always so much wrapped up in ourselves.

In this respect our townsfolk were like everybody else, wrapped up in themselves; in other words they were humanists: they disbelieved in pestilences.

A pestilence isn't a thing made to man's measure; therefore we tell ourselves that pestilence is a mere bogy of the mind, a bad dream that will pass away. But it doesn't always pass away and, from one bad dream to another, it is men who pass away, and the humanists first of all, because they haven't taken their precautions.

Our townsfolk were not more to blame than others; they forgot to be modest, that was all, and thought that everything still was possible for them; which presupposed that pestilences were impossible. They went on doing business, arranged for journeys, and formed views. How should they have given a thought to anything like plague, which rules out any future, cancels journeys, silences the exchange of views. They fancied themselves free, and no one will ever be free so long as there are pestilences.

Indeed, even after Dr. Rieux had admitted in his friend's company that a handful of persons, scattered about the town, had without warning died of plague, the danger still remained fantastically unreal. For the simple reason that, when a man is a doctor, he comes to have his own ideas of physical suffering, and to acquire somewhat more imagination than the average. Looking from his window at the town, outwardly quite unchanged, the doctor felt little more than a faint qualm for the future, a vague unease.

He tried to recall what he had read about the disease. Figures floated across his memory, and he recalled that some thirty or so great plagues known to history had accounted for nearly a hundred million deaths. But what are a hundred million deaths? When one has served in a war, one hardly knows what a dead man is, after a while. And since a dead man has no substance unless one has actually seen him dead, a hundred million corpses broadcast through history are no more than a puff of smoke in the imagination. The doctor remembered the plague at Constantinople that, according to Procopius, caused ten thousand deaths in a single day. Ten thousand dead made about five times the audience in a biggish cinema. Yes, that was how it should be done. You should collect the people at the exits of five picture-houses, you should lead them to a city square and make them die in heaps if you wanted to get a clear notion of what it means. Then at least you could add some familiar faces to the anonymous mass. But naturally that was impossible to put into practice; moreover, what man knows ten thousand faces? In any case the figures of those old historians, like Procopius, weren't to be relied on; that was common knowledge. Seventy years ago, at Canton, forty thousand rats died of plague before the disease spread to the inhabitants. But, again, in the Canton epidemic there was no reliable way of counting up the rats. A very rough estimate was all that could be made, with, obviously, a wide margin for error.

'Let's see,' the doctor murmured to himself, "supposing the length of a rat to be ten inches, forty thousand rats placed end to end would make a line of...'

He pulled himself up sharply. He was letting his imagination play pranks, the last thing wanted just now. A few cases, he told himself, don't make an epidemic; they merely call for serious precautions. He must fix his mind, first of all, on the observed facts: stupor and extreme prostration, buboes, intense thirst, delirium, dark blotches on the body, internal dilatation, and, in conclusion... In conclusion, some words came back to the doctor's mind; aptly enough, the concluding sentence of the description of the symptoms given in his medical handbook: 'The pulse becomes fluttering, dicrotic, and intermittent, and death ensues as the result of the slightest movement.' Yes, in conclusion, the patient's life hung on a thread, and three people out of four (he remembered the exact figures) were too impatient not to make the very slight movement that snapped the thread.

The doctor was still looking out of the window. Beyond it lay the tranquil radiance of a cool spring sky; inside the room a word was echoing still, the word 'plague'. A word that conjured up in the doctor's mind not only what science chose to put into it, but a whole series of fantastic possibilities utterly out of keeping with that gray and yellow town under his eyes, from which were rising the sounds of mild activity characteristic of the hour; a drone rather than a bustling, the noises of a happy town, in short, if it's possible to be at once so dull and happy. A tranquillity so casual and thoughtless seemed almost effortlessly to give the lie to those old pictures of the plague: Athens, a charnel-house reeking to heaven and deserted even by the birds; Chinese towns cluttered up with victims silent in their agony; the convicts at Marseille piling rotting corpses into pits; the building of the Great Wall in Provence to fend off the furious plague-wind; the damp, putrefying pallets stuck to the mud floor at the Constantinople lazar-house, where the patients were hauled up from their beds with hooks; the carnival of masked doctors at the Black Death; men and women copulating in the cemeteries of Milan; cartloads of dead bodies rumbling through London's ghoul-haunted darkness, nights and days filled always, everywhere, with the eternal cry of human pain. No, all those horrors were not near enough as yet even to ruffle the equanimity of that spring afternoon. The clang of an unseen streetcar came through the window, briskly refuting cruelty and pain. Only the sea, murmurous behind the dingy checkerboard of houses, told of the unrest, the precariousness, of all things in this world. And, gazing in the direction of the bay, Dr. Rieux called to mind the plague-fires of which Lucretius tells, which the Athenians kindled on the seashore. The dead were brought there after nightfall, but there was not room enough, and the living fought one another with torches for a space where to lay those who had been dear to them; for they had rather engage in bloody conflicts than abandon their dead to the waves. A picture rose before him of the red glow of the pyres mirrored on a wine-dark, slumbrous sea, battling torches whirling sparks across the darkness, and thick, fetid smoke rising toward the watchful sky. Yes, it was not beyond the bounds of possibility....

But these extravagant forebodings dwindled in the light of reason. True, the word 'plague had been uttered; true, at this very moment one or two victims were being seized and laid low by the disease. Still, that could stop, or be stopped. It was only a matter of lucidly recognizing what had to be recognized; of dispelling extraneous shadows and doing what needed to be done. Then the plague would come to an end, because it was unthinkable, or, rather, because one thought of it on misleading lines. If, as was most likely, it died out, all would be well. If not, one would know it anyhow for what it was and what steps should be taken for coping with and finally overcoming it.

The doctor opened the window, and at once the noises of the town grew louder.

The brief, intermittent sibilance of a machine-saw came from a near-by workshop.

Rieux pulled himself together. There lay certitude; there, in the daily round.

All the rest hung on mere threads and trivial contingencies; you couldn't waste your time on it. The thing was to do your job as it should be done."

"The Plague", by Albert Camus.

[one-boring-person]

Quite Some Trick.

Dwayne (The Lost Boys) x reader

Warnings: light injuries

Context: this is based off a post that @lostbetweenvampiresandmusic reblogged a few days ago, as well as being a sort of request thing for @browneyes528 , seeing as they mentioned that they would like to see a Dwayne fic about his skating, so here you go!

A/N: I did some research for this, because I'm not the most knowledgeable when it comes to skating terms and that, so I hope it's not too inaccurate.💛💛

Masterlist.

Exhilaration courses through me as I kick off the platform, allowing the skateboard below me to roll onto the sloped surface as I lean with it, keeping my balance as much as possible, gritting my teeth as I try to make myself as aerodynamic as I can in the process. My speed picks up at a high rate as the wheels carry me down the smooth decline, air rushing around me, my hair blowing out behind me from under my helmet as I hit the trough of the half-pipe, transitioning easily into another vert up the other side, my body titlting backwards as the board carries my legs upwards, though I quickly correct myself, triumph flooding me as I pop off the top. Once in the air, I grab the board in one hand and twist, managing to force myself round as the blood rushes to my head, gritting my teeth as I realise I'm too close to the deck to pull it off completely. In a split second, I've righted myself in time to hit the vert again, absorbing the impact by bending my knees a little, feeling a little disappointed as I control the descent, and corresponding ascent again, briefly grabbing the board as I lift off the top again, not getting enough air to do anything properly, before returning to the pipe again, halting on the opposite deck.

Chewing my lip, I try to catch my breath, leaning my skateboard against my leg as I lean back against the railing, waiting my turn again as the other skaters move up into line, a guy on skates taking my place at the front. In my head, I evaluate the trick and where it went wrong, knowing it's all down to height and velocity, deciding on what to do next time round, pulling my gloves on further as I make it known I'm in line. As I wait, I look around the skatepark, marvelling at some of the other tricks being pulled off everywhere, wincing as I see someone bail out of a 180 and land on their back, the impact looking painful despite that fact that they instantly stand and get back on their board. Oddly, I find my eyes drawn to them, their long dark hair unkempt as they skate back up to a deck a little way away, the skater turning so that I can see his face.

Somehow, his dark eyes find mine, an eyebrow raising as I feel my jaw drop: he's stunning. His skin is a warmer tanned colour, his toned chest bare beneath the leather jacket he's wearing, his muscles tensing whenever he pushes off, my eyes following his every movement. He's a very proficient skater, despite his fall a couple of minutes ago, the tricks he's pulling off putting some of the veteran skaters around here to shame in their fluidity, the sight of him skating around the skatepark mesmerising to watch, so much so that I nearly miss my turn.

Rolling my shoulders, I tear my eyes away from the dark-haired skater, balancing on my board briefly as I eye the half-pipe ahead of me, trying to spot any snakes or other lines. Upon finding none, I kick off, being sure to give myself as much power as I can as I speed down the slope, crouching slightly. This time round, I move with the board as it enters the climb, giving myself much more air when I pop off the top, allowing me time to grab the board and completely invert myself I start to drop again. Using my momentum, I pull the board around, my body righting itself again in time to hit the ramp again, triumph and pride flaring up in me as I realise I've just pulled off the trick I've been working on for hours. Unfortunately, this means I'm too distracted to notice I've gone over the top of the opposite side, the board flying away from my feet as I fall backwards, brief dread replacing the triumph as I allow myself to crash back to earth. Pain erupts in my back as I connect, harshly, with the concrete, my helmet and elbow pads cracking violently against the hard surface before I lie still, not trusting myself to get up, even though I know I should move, aware that I'm obstructing another skater.

In my haze, I barely register that someone is offering me their hand until they lean down slightly, face coming into view - the brunette from earlier. Eyes widening in embarrassment, I shoot him a small, grateful smile and take his proffered hands allowing him to pull me to my feet again, catching me when I stumble forwards a bit, still a little disorientated, my face bright red as I search for my board, only to find it lying few metres away, beside the skater's one.

"Thank you." I mumble out, picking my way over to my board, still mortified that he saw me fall like that, especially after finally managing to pull off a 360.

"No problem. That was quite some trick you just did." He compliments, smiling at me as he follows, checking me over for any serious injuries; thankfully there are none, but my cocyx and back will be sore for days maybe weeks, though my pride will recover much more quickly, especially after remembering that my saviour fell earlier on.

"You think so?" I question, surprised at his words.

"Yeah, it looked really smooth. You done it before?" He confirms, offering his hand again after a second, this time for me to shake, "I'm Dwayne by the way."

Gingerly, I take it, his skin icy underneath my bare fingertips, the frigidity seeping in through the fabric of my gloves.

"I'm (Y/n), nice to meet you. That was my first time actually managing to get the full way round. I messed up the ending, though, so it wasn't that much of a success."

"Ah, well, these things take practice. I can help you out if you want?" He offers, lifting an eyebrow in questioning.

"Are you sure? I'm nowhere near as good as you, I'd just be annoying to have around." I muse, recalling the elegant ease in which he skates, as if he's had decades of practice, even though he only looks twenty or younger.

"Of course! I wouldn't offer if I didn't mean it. And I've seen you skate, you're not half as bad as you make yourself out to be." He confirms, smiling at me as we seat ourselves on the edge of one of the sections of the large bowl, having checked for other skaters before doing so.

"You think so?"

"I do."

"Well, thank you, I guess. I'll take you up on the offer, if you don't mind. I've been trying to get that trick for months." I agree, smiling back at him, realising I'm enjoying his company.

"I look forward to it, but first I think you should rest a bit, especially after your fall." Dwayne advises, gesturing to the rapidly forming bruises on my elbows.

"Yeah, I guess I should." I agree, inspecting the ugly purple marks, "Wanna get something to eat? I think I'm done here for today."

"Sure, let's go." The brunette accepts, climbing to his feet before helping me up again, the two of us swiftly skating from the skatepark. My pace is slower than normal, but I manage to keep up with the taller skater anyhow, the two if us continuing to talk as we go, pulling up in front of a stall selling food just a little way away from the Boardwalk. We order some chips and water, heading over to the wall separating the beach and the pavement in order to sit and eat, the two of us content to just chew our food in companipnable silence. As we finish, we start up the conversation again.

"So how long have you been skating for?" Dwayne inquires, looking over at me curiously.

"A few years now. My parents never really liked the idea of me doing it, so it took some time to convince them." I inform him, picking at the hem of my shorts a little.

"Why?"

"Well, they thought I should do a "real" sport, you know? Apparently skating is not good enough for them."

"They should watch you sometime, they'd change their minds immediately." Dwayne shrugs, my eyes straying to his bare chest as I notice his toned muscles moving under the tanned skin.

"I doubt I could get them anywhere near a skateboard, let alone a skatepark." I chuckle bitterly, sighing in frustration at the thought of my parents and their old-fashioned views, "How about you? How long have you been skating?"

Oddly, he looks a little hesitant to reply, seemingly considering his answer in his head before giving it.

"Since I first laid eyes on a board, I guess. I fell in love with the idea." He finally says, running a finger over the line of his board with a proud smile on his face, "I've had this board ever since I started."

"You've never broken a board?! How?!" I exclaim, recalling the three times I've snapped a board in half after going over a ramp too quickly, or by trying to skate down a flight of steps.

"I don't known I guess I'm just too careful." He laughs, looking over at me again.

Behind us, a few shouts of his name draw our attention, the skater's shoulders visibly sagging as he spots someone in the crowd, my own eyes swiftly finding them.

"You know them?" I ask him carefully, wary of offending him or his group of biker friends, the platinum blonde clearly eyeing me up from across the Boardwalk.

"Yeah, they're my brothers. I've gotta go, but I'll see you at the skatepark again tomorrow? At eight?" He affirms, looking slightly frustrated.

"Sure, I'll be there. It was nice meeting you, Dwayne."

'It was nice meeting you, too." He responds, smiling at me as he gets up, skating away from me with a quick goodbye, a small feeling of excitement rising in me at the thought of seeing him again. Before he leaves earshot, however, I call out his name, making him turn around.

"Thanks for not laughing at me when I fell!" I shout to him, grinning at the brunette.

"Only an idiot would!" He responds, waving once more as he returns to his brothers.

Twisting back around, I continue to smile to myself as I go over the last hour or so, glad to have made a new friend, even if I did gain an injury in the process.

[damn-stark]

Crossed Stars Ch.9

Star Wars x Marvel

A/N- y’all we are almost done with this series! I can’t believe that! I love how this chapter turned out! I hope though guys like it too. So do let me know what you guys thought!!

Warning- ANGST, swearing, LONG chapter

Pairing- Poe Dameron x reader, Steve Rogers x reader

Takes place- DURING ENDGAME

(Let me know if you want to be tagged)

————

“Thanos found the soul stone on Vormir.”

At the sound of the planets familiar name you quickly look up to the screen and then turn to meet Poe’s gaze, who’s was already on you, both sharing a knowing look at the planets familiarity.

“What is Vormir?” Natasha asks as she keeps writing on her paper.

You shift in your seat to sit up straighter, putting your drink on the table before you begin to answer her, “it’s a planet at the very center of celestial existence. It’s said, or at least where Poe and I are from, that the people that die in the cold vacuum of space their souls end up getting lost in Vormir. I’ve always thought it was just a legend.”

All eyes fall on you, an uncomfortable silence covering the room until Nebula broke it—not that her comment made everyone feel better. “It’s a dominion of death. It’s where Thanos...murdered my sister.”

The room was now covered in an awkward and deafening silence. Steve’s deep sigh breaking it but not making anything better.

Just like Scott’s comment. “Not it.”

—

After a lot of briefing, small arguments, takeout food and a sleepless night planning, or mapping was all finished. The opportunity to see the people you all lost was closer than ever—only if everything went according to plan. Which you hoped it would. It had to work.

“All right. We have a plan. Six stones, three teams, one shot.” Steve announced as you all looked at the screens that contained said plans, filling everyone with determination, hope and fear. Some more than others.

Once the group dispersed to finish what they needed to do before traveling through literal time, you sat on a chair around the table and rested your head in your hands to let out a shaky sigh. Tears stinging your eyes, but not wanting them to roll down your cheeks. Not like you really had the chance to when you heard someone sit next to you.

“Everything okay?”

You lift your head to meet Poe’s worried gaze, taking in a deep breath before you assured him, “I’m fine...it’s just all this you know? It’s just hard.”

Maybe you should’ve known better then to lie to Poe, he could see right through you. Even if he didn’t follow up on your lies. He wanted to but he knew now wasn’t the right moment. Instead he responded to your previous comment and left what he wanted to ask for later. If their was a later.

“I understand, but just now everything is going to be fine. It’s going to work out.”

You smile at his reassurance, letting him take your hand in his to give it a comforting squeeze. The both of you holding each other’s gaze for a moment too long before you had to look away and pull your hand away, deciding to somewhat change the subject. Letting the anger from his previous decisions return.

“Are you sure going to Vormir is the right choice? You’re not lying and just flying home are you?”

Poe narrowed his gaze on you, deciding to be the bigger person and not continue with an argument you only wanted of have. “Natasha asked me to fly the ship since neither her or Clint flown in space.” His serious demeanor then turns cocky at the choice of his next words, “plus it gives me an advantage when we get to tell stories to our friends. Now I’ll be the one with the better stories.”

You quirk your eyebrow, the anger you wanted to feel vanishing regardless of what you wanted, a scoff escaping your lips at his comment but choosing not to follow along since you knew you would get nowhere, and instead choosing to say something else.

“Why don’t you travel to New York with Steve and me?”

Poe’s smile falters at the sound of a certain name, something that reminded him of why he needed to leave, even if you asked him not to, and as much as it hurt him. Regardless of how he now felt though he kept his smug smile plastered on his face. “Worried?”

You can’t help the smile that spreads on your face, really hating the fact that you couldn’t stay mad at him—“even if I’m still somewhat mad at you...you’re my best friend Poe, I—yeah I’m worried.”

His smile turns more genuine, hating some words that you said but taking it and feeling his heart skip a beat. And before he could say anything, you had to ease the thick tension that now surrounded the both of you.

“Plus you aren’t as agile as before since you know...you are getting older.”

“Ha! You really believe that?” He remarks with a visible smirk.

“Yes.” You pause, once again holding each other’s gaze that made the thick tension increase tenfold, a feeling you had to break by clearing your throat and looking down at your hands that rested on the table; “but we are traveling through time, so obviously I’m worried.”

“I’ll be okay. We’ll be okay.” The pilot reassured you, the moment after that falling into a comfortable silence, something that made you stand up with the intention to leave, but before either of you could the both of you stood close to one another, the habit of holding each other’s gaze not seeming to break even if you wanted to. Had to. And just before Poe could choose to close said space you pulled him in for a hug and rested your head on his shoulder.

At first Poe was taken back by the interaction, shocked and clueless on what to do, his senses later returning to him making him return the hug. Tightening his hold around you to pull you in closer, having every intention to never let go and just hold you there in his arms. Taking in every single detail, like the way your perfume smelled so sweetly against his nose, the way you leaned your head on his shoulder and held onto him like your life depended on it, memorizing the way you felt in his hold and how you made his heart swell.

It was a moment and feelings he needed to remember because he knew that he would never get to live them ever again.

Anyhow the tears on your cheeks fell onto the material of his shirt, seconds later releasing a shaky breath before you talked to him in a soft whisper, “Come back in one piece Dameron, we have a family to reunite with.”

Poe smiles, holding back his own tears before he responded, “you got it sweetheart.”

—

Walking up to the platform was unsettling, even if the sight of all of you in uniform caused goosebumps all over your skin. It was just the not knowing if this was really going to work that made you nervous and unsure. To the point where you felt sick. The only thing that seemed to sort of ease you was Steve’s motivational speech.

“Five years ago we lost. All of us. We lost friends. We lost family. We lost a part of ourselves. Today we have a chance to take it all back.” While listening to Steve’s speech you look to Natasha, flashing her a smile. A gesture she easily returned before pointing her head in Steve’s direction, rolling her eyes in a exaggerated manner in means to make fun of the man.

You shrugged, holding back a laugh and showed a playful smirk before the both you returned your attention to Steve. “You know your teams. You know your missions. Get the stones. Get them back.” The group of you brought your fists towards the center, in a way to motivate each other and show that this was a team effort. It was a gesture that made all of you smile; “One round trip each, no mistakes, no do-overs. Most of us are going somewhere we know. That doesn’t mean we should know what to expect. Be careful. Lookout for each other. This is the fight of our lives and we’re gonna win. Whatever it takes. Good luck.”

You look to Poe across from you, the both of you showing each other a assuring smile and sharing a knowing look that spoke thousands of words that you didn’t have to express verbally, a quiet and meaningful interaction overall—completely missing the way Steve caught on to said interaction.

“He’s pretty good at that.” Rocket shared, earning an agreeing comment from Scott.

“Right?”

“All right, you heard the man. Stroke those keys, Jolly Green.” Tony interjected in a loud voice.

Said...sentient? Responding back. “Trackers engaged.”

Rocket then turned to Poe, crossing his arms as he saw said man hold onto his now tiny ship on his palm. “You promise to bring that back in one piece, right?”

Poe shrugged off Rockets comment in such a...Poe way, something that made Clint chuckle beside him, “yeah, yeah, yeah.”

“As far as promises go that was pretty lame.”

Poe smirked as he looked down at Rocket, “I’m the best pilot, I’ve got this.”

You snicker at his comment, only earning a side glare from said man; watching Hulk join the circle in means to finally begin this waited mission. The sick feeling in your stomach returning—Natasha’s side comment only slightly making you feel better and letting a smile tug at the corner of your lips.

“See you in a minute.”

—

“All right, we all have our assignments. Two stones uptown, one stone down.”

The words Steve was saying barely registered in your head as you felt the vomit in your throat, the feeling you felt right as you fell into the multicolored swirling tunnel presenting itself in a disgusting way—of course you’ve flown before and the feeling didn’t feel that different but their was just something about traveling through time that didn’t sit right in your stomach.

The only reason that you didn’t throw up on the spot was because of the loud thud that happened a few feet in front of you, the sound of a loud roar and a crash frightening you to the point the throw you felt was swallowed back.

At the sight of who had done such nonsense your eyebrows knotted in confusion, your eyes lighting at the recognition of Bruce—younger and more angrier Bruce—Hulk?

“Maybe smash a few things along the way.” Steve added, causing Bruce to tear off his tank before responding.

“I think it’s gratuitous but whatever.”

After watching Bruce leave you all followed by sneaking through alleyways to get to the big tower that they said they once lived in, avoiding those weird monsters as best you could along the way.

“Does this feel like home?” Tony joked.

A joke you didn’t get right away; “What does?”

“Those aliens dogs.”

You blink to look at Tony with a glare, a loud scoff leaving your lips. “Do you think space is just filled with these things?”

“Yes.” Scott added in.

You roll your eyes and set a hand on your hip to educate these uneducated earth beings; “space is filled with millions of different species. A lot of them that are great people and or considered hero’s. Earth just fills your minds with these insane cliches about “aliens” that are untrue. Not all of us are green big headed creatures with no form of intelligence.”

Scott stayed quiet, his lips parted in disbelief to your words, while Steve smiled and Tony chuckled at the man’s shocked and speechless reaction. You could go on for hours about space, all things that earth gets wrong about where you’re from, all the beauty in it and those who live in it....all the things you missed about it and the ache you felt to go back home.

—

“Got it on?” Steve questions, his back turned to you while you changed into the shield uniform you had “borrowed”.

“Yep, you can turn now.” Why was their a need to turn around? It’s not like he hasn’t seen you unclothed before—then again it would’ve been awkward if he saw you undress...it just would have made things more awkward than they were. You’ve barely shared a word with Steve since you caught him admiring the picture. You really didn’t want to be distant but...well he’s had years to tell you about her and he didn’t. Knowing that just made things worse. Was there something to hide about her? Did he still...care?

Stars. Things are just confusing. What you wouldn’t give to just live through war again. As bad as that sounded at least then you didn’t have to deal with all the shit you dealt with now.

“Okay let’s head inside.” Steve instructed as he faced you, seconds later guiding you through the towers lobby.

“Stars this feels like being in a stormtrooper uniform—at least I can see in this thing.” You complained while adjusting your vest, earning a weird and puzzled look from Steve, a reaction that made you quickly follow up on, “right uhh, well this reminds me of these uniforms from these soldiers I used to be at war with. It’s a long story for a different day I’m afraid.”

“Can’t wait to hear it,” Steve responded, a soft smile on his lips that only lasted a couple seconds before Tony came in through the uncomfortable ear piece.

“Better hustle, Cap. Things look like they’re just about wrapped up here.”

Steve nodded and responded through the ear piece, “got it, y/n is waiting in position, I’m approaching the elevator now.” Before Steve could disappear in the elevator he turned to talk to you, “be careful down here, okay? Tony should meet you here shortly.”

You nodded your head in comprehension before sharing a small smile and a quick salute; “don’t worry I’ve got this. You be careful too and remember avoid running into yourself.”

Steve chuckled, responding with a quick nod before he walked into the elevator and left you out here to wait and wait. All the while you missed the weird interaction Tony had with Steve about his “ass”. It was weird but also something you wanted to laugh at, but couldn’t. Not if wanted to remain blended in and remain “professional”.

So unfortunately you remained quiet and stayed waiting until Tony joined you wearing the same uniform. The both of you standing by one another and acting as natural as possible.

“Coming down in 3,2,1.” Right on cue the elevator dinged and out came a younger Tony and younger...Thor? Along with a chained up unknown person in between them. “Thumbellina, do you copy? I’ve got eyes on the prize. It is go time.”

“Bombs away.”

“Y/N, get in position this is going to happen fast.”

You nod and turn your back to him, casually watching your intended target and ignoring Scott’s unnecessary comments. The nerves you felt before returning as the situation began to rise.

“All right, move it, Stuart Little.” Tony inhaled sharply as he turned away. “Things are getting dicey out here let’s go.”

“Promise me you won’t die?” Scott commed in.

“We’re just giving me a mild cardiac dysthymia.”

You glance at Tony with a worried look, “that doesn’t sound mild.” Your attention was soon stolen by the argument that was beginning to break out in front of you, whilst Tony became more urgent when he saw nothing happening to stop it.

“Do it Lang! Windows closing pull my pin.”

Shortly after Scott came in, “here it goes.” That making the crowd stop and for young Tony to gasp out before he collapsed to the floor—you let out shaky breath before standing up straighter and following with your eyes as the case with the stone in it slid and stopped in front of your feet.

Double checking no one was looking you immediately crouched down and swiped said case, a proud and nervous smile now present on your features.

“Good job, L/N.” Tony complimented as you both discreetly strode towards the stairs, his next comment directed to Scott, “meet me in the alley we’re gonna grab a quick slice.”—you placed your hand on the doorknob and just as you were going to twist it to open said door you were violently thrown back, crashing into Tony and hitting the floor with a harsh thud, the case in your head slipping and sliding somewhere you didn’t see.

“That wasn’t supposed to happen, was it?” Scott wondered.

“Oh, we blew it.”

You groan and struggle to lift your aching head, noticing the stone no longer in the case, “Stars.”

—

“Cap!” Said man turned to Tony’s call, “sorry buddy, we have a problem.” His eyes then landed on you to notice your head in your hands, a concerned look flashing in his eyes.

Scott scoffed and remarked Tony’s comment, “yeah we do.” Making said man’s head whip Scott’s direction.

“I’m sorry, it was my fault.” You strained, “I lost the stone.”

—

“What are we gonna do?” Steve stressed.

“You know what? Give me a break, Steve. I just got wiped out by your girlfriend, who by the way got hit in the head with the hulk.”

As if your headache didn’t hurt enough, Scott shouting just made it a hundred times worse, which is why you tried your best to ignore him and now Tony arguing. The exact thought of what exactly was I doing here running through your head. You’re a pilot, someone who’s supposed to be in the sky, not screwing things up on the ground—maybe it would’ve been better if you had gone with Poe and Natasha. That or stay—

“We’ve only got one particle left. Each!” Scott’s comment made you lift your head, an idea coming to mind, something that seemed to have struck Tony too.

“I got it! Why don’t we just travel to a place where the particles and stone were in the same location or at least close by one another?” Steve and Scott look at you with a curious gaze, while Tony nodded and got out of the car, adding on to your idea.

“Exactly! Did you read my mind or something?” Tony then looked at Steve and continued, “there’s another way to retake the tessract and acquire new particles. Little stroll down memory lane...Military installation, garden state.”

—

If you do this and it doesn’t work you’re not coming back.

What the hell were you doing? Traveling further into time like if nothing was on the line, like if you didn’t want to go back to....certain people.

Then again too late now. You were in some place called New Jersey. In the location the idea of Captain America was born. The only way back was by this going well. Or else and at least the problems you were faced with before were going to be part of the past—the only positive thing was the dress you were wearing, it out beat the heavy uniform you had to wear before by a landslide.

“The bruise on your face is new, what happened?” You questioned Steve, somewhat easing the situation at hand while the both of you hurried and snuck into the lab the particles were at.

Steve opened the door and let you in before he could, a playful smile seen on his lips before he passed you in search for what was needed, all while you kept watch—“I did the thing you warned me against....I ran into myself.”

You chuckle, “I would ask how it went, but I kind of get the idea.” The feeling of what was before between the both of you resurfaced, feeling as if nothing had gone wrong, as if...neither of you had caught anything strange or that nothing was changing.

“Got it!” Steve exclaimed happily, enjoying a moment of success with the new particles in hand.

When he rejoined you, you beamed up at him and the both of you shared a high five. “Way to go team Cap!” You congratulated, earning a shy smile from said man. “Now let’s go before we get caught.” Doing just that, the two of you make a hasty escape, striding side by side, avoiding the looks you were given and having to stop as the lady from the elevator turned the corner with a couple guards on her back.

“You’ve never seen these people before?”

“No, I’ve got an eye for this. They looked fishy.”

“Can you describe them.”

“Well one of them had a hippy beard.”

Steve took your hand and quickly pulled you into a room. Not really making sure if it was occupied, but coming out lucky in that matter—and at first neither of you shared a word, the only noise heard was the rapid beating of your heart at what could’ve happened if you had been caught, adrenaline bumping through your body all the same. Just as you were going to actually say something regarding your situation you saw Steve pick up a picture of...himself. Pre-serum him that is.

He looked back to the door, an unreadable expression flashing through his eyes before he set down the picture frame and let you pick it up to admire it with a soft smile on your lips—cute. You looked up to make a comment about what you saw, but it was then you noticed something that made your heart drop, your smile dropping alike. It was the women from his picture. She was there on the other side of the window. And just like before you saw his face reflected on the window. The same longing gaze that was filled with so much love that was just directed and felt...for her.

He still cared.

As if feeling your eyes on him, Steve eyes fell on your own reflection, the realization of what you had caught hitting him as he saw the tears that gleamed your eyes, the sight causing him to turn to you with an apologetic look. One you quickly avoided and shrugged off with your words.

“It’s time to go.”

—

The feeling of joy of having this emergency mission succeed didn’t feel as exciting as you had thought. The feeling of returning back to your normal time didn’t feel as exciting. That hopeful smile that was shown before was nowhere to be seen, replaced by a deep frown. An obvious sight to anyone or at least a specific someone who’s first instinct after traveling through time was to look for you.

A relieved breath of air exhaled by that specific someone when he saw you fine—somewhat fine and well. A puzzled look flashing through his eyes at the sight of you in a dress that you didn’t have on before, but one he couldn’t lie and say you didn’t look great in. And you would have looked for him too, but your attention was far from this room, the only thing pulling you in was the sound of Bruce’s question.

“Clint where’s Nat?”

Said man fell to his knees, a look of utter grief shown in his eyes. That alone speaking what he didn’t, what he couldn’t. A tragedy that shouldn’t have happened but did....she was gone. Natasha was gone.

—

“I’m surprised you’re not with your boyfriend.”

At the sound of Poe’s words you look back to see him walking towards you, the bitterness he had at the slight thought of what he said completely disappearing at the sight of the tears rolling down your cheeks.

“I don’t want to talk about him right now.” Your voice cracked as more tears slip down your cheeks, proceeding to watch as Poe took a seat on the chair in front of you, his own frown present on his lips.

“Everything okay?” In that moment after that question you missed the way Poe’s eyes darted across your face to try and get any hint of what you were thinking, of what could possibly be the answer. An answer he secretly and selfishly hoped was a ‘no’ something that would lead you to return with him. But when you truly answered he was disappointed to hear you change the subject and talk about what he should’ve considered instead.

“It’s just all this,” you sigh, “it’s hard. It was hard. We went back in time to save what we lost but we ended up losing someone in the process.” You muttered sadly.

“Natasha did what it took to get what we went for.”

“But she shouldn’t have.” You interject in a louder tone, blinking up to meet his gaze, “she should have gone and got that stone but came back. She shouldn’t have died. She should be here enjoying the fact that we did it. That it worked out after all.” You tried to sound mad, but those efforts soon failed when more tears escaped your eyes.

Poe looked to the floor, his own eyes watery at the memory of what he had seen, of what he had to go through—“she had to do it or else we wouldn’t have gotten the stone. That red sentient said it himself...a soul for a soul. Clint nor I could do it...only her.” Poe wanted to add something else, but choose not to, not if he wanted to keep you from getting angry. Because he knew if he shared the extent of what had happened in Vormir, you would be pissed.

“She just deserves to be here.” You cried, dropping your head in your hands to let out a sob that had to do more than just with Natasha’s death.

“I know,” Poe sighed, carefully moving to wrap his arm around your shoulders and rest his head on yours. A gesture you found comfort in and eased into, a gesture that made you cry that much more. “I know.”

—

“All right, gloves ready. Question is who’s gonna snap their freakin’ fingers.”

You quietly looked around the room, searching for the volunteer—Now if you could do it, you would, but their was no way you could even attempt, the effort would kill you before you could even snap your fingers.

“I’ll do it.” Now seeing Thor step up was an option, but seeing his current condition perhaps it wasn’t the greatest choice.

“Excuse me?” Tony exclaimed sharply.

“It’s okay.” Thor assured the group as he continued to walk towards the glove, only to be stopped before he could even attempt to touch it.

Steve gently pushed said man back, trying in the nicest way possible to shoot him down. “Thor, just wait. We haven’t decided who’s gonna put it on yet.”

“I’m sorry. What we’re all just sitting around waiting for the right opportunity?”

“We should at least discuss it.” Scott interjected.

“Look sitting here staring at that thing is not going to bring everybody back. I’m the strongest avenger, okay? So, this responsibility falls upon me.”

“Normally you’re right.” Tony tried to calm Thor down, trying just like Steve had to turn him down, but to no avail. All the arguing just making you impatient.

“Just let me! Just let me do something good. Something right”

“Look,” Tony tried again, “it’s not just that glove is channeling enough energy to light up a continent. I’m telling you. You’re in no condition.”

“What do you think is coursing through my veins right now?”

“Cheez whiz.”

You snort at Rhodeys comment, the rest of Thor’s argument going to the back of your head. And before the overthinking could start Bruce’s comment made your ears perk up—“it’s gotta be me. You saw what those stones did to Thanos. They almost killed him. None of you could survive.”

Poe stepped up and looked to Bruce, “how do we know you will?”

“We don’t. But the radiation is mostly gamma. It’s like...I was made for this.”

—

“Okay, remember everyone Thanos snapped away five years ago, you’re just bringing them back to now, today. Don’t change anything from the last five years.” Tony reminded Bruce. Something that Bruce nodded to in agreement before responding with two simple words.

“Got it.”

Bruce followed by carefully putting on the glove, the sight alone making your stomach twist and the nerves return tenfold. It was now or never. Natasha’s sacrifice had to mean something—it was going to mean something—and as if Poe could hear your heart beat in your chest in anticipation, he met your gaze to share an assuring smile before pushing you behind him as the both of you stood behind Tony and the shield he activated.

“Artoo, BB8 stand behind me.” Said droids didn’t fail to listen, the little orange and white ball standing between your feet, only poking his head out to watch what was about to unfold.

And shortly after Tony’s commands to his A.I., metal doors surrounded the outside building, shielding everything that could be affected by what could come. The dark lightening contained by those same doors making this feel much more eery and nerve-wracking. The sight of the stones lightening up on Bruce’s hand causing your heart to pump much faster, hearing him groan and grunt out in pain as the energy of the stones burning his arm making you feel that you couldn’t breath, that you had pent up air in your lungs.

Hearing everyone’s concerns for their friend in anguish making you want him to stop. But knowing that he was close, stopping you from expressing such worry. The sight of him struggling to stand up and try to bring his fingers together causing you to hold Poe’s hand in fear, the final step and sight of seeing Bruce snap his fingers causing you to close your eyes for a brief moment to avoid the bright light that shone after the action.

To then open your eyes as Bruce fell to the ground, grunting in pain, the sound of the metal doors opening grabbing your attention, while the natural light crawling through the windows hit you with the realization of what you were still doing and making you instantly drop Poe’s hand. Neither of you commenting on it, but instead focusing on the soft songs of the birds that now flew outside.

Birds that weren’t there before, that just lacked altogether. That single sight bringing a soft smile to your face and tears to sting your eyes, bringing hope and truth.

You looked to your long time friend and the both of you shared an emotional smile, the words you were thinking said out-loud by Scott.

“Guys I think it worked—” just before you were going to say something, a blast crashed into the building.

Having one moment of clarity get crashed by sudden darkness.

.

.

.

Tagged- @itsbuckyb1tch​​​​​​, @kaitlynw011​​​​​​ , @blushingwueen​​​​​​ , @80sthottie, @thescarletknight2014​​​​​​ , @bbuckysbeardd​​​​​​ , @ellvswriting​​​​​​ , @sakurashortstack​​​​​​ , @whatthefrickfrackwereyouthinking​​​ , @danicalifxrnia​​​​​​ , @lanatheawesome​​​​​​​ , @perryoncw​​​​​​ , @panic-onthegroundsofbrooklyn​​​​​​ , @abysshaven​​​​​​ , @valeecruz16​​​​​​ , @gummy-bears16 , @winchescumberholland​​​​​​ , @a-somehow-functioning-dumbass​​​​​​ , @randomhanabananas​​​​​​ , @just-a-sad-chicken-nugget-xxx​​​​​ , @awkward117​​ , @itsfangirlmendes​

Permanent taglist- @ms-dont-care​ , @commondazy​

[delimeful]

the shapes in the silence (8)

warnings: deceit (morally ambiguous), lying, arguing, negative thinking(lots)

Chapter 8

Apparently, ‘longest nap of his life’ meant three hours, because that was all he got before Patton came knocking gently on his door, snapping him out of a hazy nightmare in a cold sweat.

“Hey, kiddo!” He greeted, eyes suspiciously bright. Ugh, morning people. “We’re having a house meeting!” 

“A what?” Virgil responded automatically. He, of course, knew what a house meeting was, but- “You’ve never invited me to one of these before.” 

Patton had the grace to look sheepish. “Well, we don’t have them very often, and you didn’t… really want to talk to us last time we had one!” 

Oh yeah. He’d been absolutely certain it had only been an excuse for them to all complain about him suddenly ‘moving in’, so to speak. It’d taken actually eavesdropping before he realized it was actually an argument over who kept stealing Logan’s jam. He was fairly sure Roman had only passed up on accusing the new ‘unfriendly neighborhood Dark Side’ because he was the actual culprit. 

“...Sure, okay.”

He followed Patton downstairs, and found the others sitting already in their customary spots on the couch. Out of habit, he stepped towards the spot he normally sat as ‘Puff’, before remembering himself at a slight look of surprise from (still normal-sized) Roman. He propped himself up against the wall closest to Logan’s chair, not in the mood to loom menacingly by anyone who might be perturbed by it.  

As expected, Logan ignored him completely. “Good. Now that we are all here, I believe we should address the situation regarding Roman’s recent shrinking episode.” 

“Did you figure something out, Microsoft Nerd?” Roman asked, leaning forwards slightly. Virgil wondered how the nicknames had such little bite when they were directed at anyone but him.

Logan glanced at Virgil, but upon seeing no question about the situation in his expression, simply continued. “Currently, my hypothesis is that this size reduction happens to us due to the fact that we are incorporeal manifestations of a personality. For example, things like feeling overwhelmed or vulnerable might cause us to involuntarily shapeshift as a mechanism to protect Thomas or ourselves.” 

He flipped a few pages in his notebook. “I believe that is why access to our normal functions is limited whilst in the reduced form, as well, which is highly inconvenient.”

That would really stress Virgil out if he hadn’t already mastered the art of driving himself into the exact mental state needed to trigger his transformation either way. 

“As such,” Logan continued, “we need more information in order to find a solution. I believe Roman can help me test this hypothesis by focusing on aforementioned overwhelming thoughts to see if he can activate this reaction at will.” 

“What? Why me?” Roman protested immediately. “Why don’t you do it, Specs?” 

Logan gave him a condescending look. “Because I have no feelings, obviously. You are the only one we know of showing this symptom, anyhow. Our control group, so to speak.” 

Roman groaned, and for a moment, his gaze flicked to where Virgil was standing, wishing he was in bed as they talked about stuff he already knew. He straightened up a bit, narrowing his eyes back at Roman. What?

The creative side pulled his eyes away without giving him any sort of answer, but Logan hadn’t missed the byplay either. He stared between the two of them for a moment. Patton blinked at all of them mutually, lost in the silent stare off. Slowly, Logan leaned back. 

“If you’d prefer to do this at a later time-” He started, but Roman cut him off. 

“No, it’s fine.” He stared at Virgil like he was trying to convey something meaningful with the words. Virgil stared back, catching exactly none of it.

A moment and a flash later, Roman was sitting on the couch, doll-sized. Patton made the ‘oh no, cute!’ face again, and Virgil couldn’t help but stare. He was so… small. He couldn’t believe Roman had let him pick him up at all, so much could have gone wrong- 

“Oh, it worked!” Roman said, surprised. Logan hummed consideringly, already deep in thoughts he didn’t bother to share with the rest of them. 

“Can you turn back?” Virgil asked, voice sardonic. Roman scowled imperiously at him, but very noticeably did not get any bigger. 

“That part… appears to be more complicated.”

“Maybe try thinking about the opposite of what got you that size!” Patton offered, Logan nodding in agreement. 

Roman didn’t seem as easily convinced, but he did close his eyes and make an expression of thinking very hard for a few moments. Virgil took the opportunity to go make himself a bagel. It went perfectly up until the toasted bagel popped up loudly, and Roman groaned, presumably at his concentration being broken. 

“Anxiety.”

“What?” He responded through a mouthful of crunchy bread. “I’m hungry, I don’t have to watch you focus. You always figure it out eventually.” 

It was definitely meant to be delivered dismissively, but a second later there was a loud clatter from the lounge. Virgil poked his head around the corner. Roman was full-sized again, and had knocked a cup off the table in the process. He squinted at the startled creative side for a second. This was the second time in a row that had happened after he’d spoken.

Was Roman fucking with him? 

… No, Princey was too clueless for that. It was probably just coincidence.

Logan had taken it all in stride, turning to Patton and asking him to replicate Roman’s feat. Virgil took the opportunity to steal some of Logan’s Crofters and smear it over the other half of his bagel. Petty crimes. 

Once he re-emerged, Patton was still the same size, midway through an apology for not being able to manage it. 

“It’s quite alright, I have plenty of new information to look through. Oh, and Anxiety?” Logan called out, making him freeze where he was three steps up the stairs already. Could he seriously smell jam like a hunting dog? 

“Have you experienced anything like this before?” Logan asked, and everyone’s gaze turned to him.

Great, it wasn’t about the jam. It was so much worse. There was no getting out of it this time.

“No.” He answered bluntly, and ignored the way the lie tasted sour in his mouth. “I haven’t.” 

He looked away before he could see the mistrust form in their eyes, and retreated to his room. He hated lying to them, partially because it felt awful, wondering how and when they’d find out his untruths, but also because the more Virgil lied, the better of a grasp he got on the situation.

As such, it was almost unsurprising when he opened his door and found Deceit, standing in the middle of his room and eyeing his messy floor with distaste. He still felt his heart jump, though, looking over his shoulder as though the others would have trailed after him to witness the impromptu meeting. He slammed his door shut after him, already scowling darkly.

“What are you doing in my room.” He asked, flatly. Deceit gave him a deeply patronizing look. 

“Oh, because I can totally just stand around in the plain sight waiting for you to get back from your little get-together. That definitely wouldn’t get me harassed by those naive idiots.” 

Virgil gritted his teeth at the insult, voice coming out sharp. “I’m the one being harassed. I told you to leave me alone. Get. Out.”

Deceit raised an eyebrow. “Like you weren’t practically calling my name with all the lying you’ve been doing. Obviously, you know that even just hiding the truth counts as a lie. You’re clearly doing much better than a liar like me.” 

“Shut up.” Virgil snarled, the shadows in his room curling around his feet. He clenched his fists, ignoring the feel of nails biting into his palms. “You’re just sour that Thomas still hasn’t noticed you, even after I split off and proved that Dark Sides can appear to him.” 

“Oh, you’re so right. It’s not like I want to keep helping him without needing all that attention or anything.” Deceit smiled smugly, as Virgil worked his jaw. “You can’t play the villain forever, Thomas won’t still hate you and get hurt because of it. I’m much worse off, helping keep him safe by keeping him in the dark.”

“I don’t care if he hates me.” Virgil returned, ignoring the way Deceit’s lips thinned knowingly. “Thomas needs his friends, needs people, and if he goes down the road you want him to take, he’ll be alone and hated his whole life, and he won’t even know why.” 

“Virgil, you’re the farthest thing from a hypocrite I’ve ever met.” Deceit offered, saccharine-sweet. “After all, you certainly wouldn’t know anything about being alone and hated, now would you?”   

“Yeah, it’s my job.” He spat, furious. “I’m supposed to keep Thomas from feeling the way I feel preemptively, genius.” 

He took a deep breath, trying to prevent his voice from slipping. “I knew what I was getting into when I revealed myself. Maybe you should focus more on your own role instead of nosing into my business.”

Deceit’s eyes narrowed slightly with irritation. “Yes, I’m definitely the one slinking about where I don’t belong. You’d never take advantage of someone’s trust under false pretenses, after all.”  

Virgil bit into his tongue hard enough to make it bleed. Deceit smirked, as though he’d never been irritated at all. After a moment, the look smoothed over into something more contemplative.

“You are so obsessed with Thomas upholding society’s standards, so afraid of him becoming a bad person. But you don’t have anything to worry about. After all, you’re a reflection of him, and you’re so very selfless, aren’t you?”  

Virgil recoiled as though struck, but there was no victory in the other side’s expression. 

“You made the right choice. The others will accept you when you’re exposed. You won’t regret it.”

With that final condemnation, he sunk away, and Virgil was left alone with the silence ringing in his ears. He hated fighting with Deceit, hated that the man wasn’t above tearing at sensitive spots to get his own point across, hated the raw, cut-open feeling that came with it. 

Most of all, he hated that Deceit was right. 

He was just using the others, lying to them to assuage his own pathetic loneliness. He’d made his choice, he’d known he’d be surrounded by people who didn’t want him there. He’d known, he’d known, and it still never got easier.

The transformation was at the edge of his senses, only a grasp from shifting him, and for a moment he entertained the thought of letting it happen. Running back to them, curling up in the presence of Thomas’ best attributes until Deceit’s words were barely even whispers in the back of his mind… 

Something clicked in the subconscious, and he let the errant dream go, sinking onto his bed. Thomas was making another video, and though it didn’t seem like he was going to be summoned this time, he still had work to do. He pulled up a screen of the scene through Thomas’s eyes, attention catching on every possible minor flaw, predicting the audience’s every possible reaction, determined to make the editing process hell so that only the best of Thomas was shown. 

That was his job, after all.

[vintage-story-time]

Family Games by Ray Todd

Chapter 8

Glynn was up early, unable to sleep. He spent a long time in the shower,

enjoying the hot water, soaping himself thoroughly. When he was dry, he

inspected his face in the mirror, thinking that perhaps he had grown more beard

overnight. He sure felt a lot older.

Standing before the sink he thought about what he had done the night before, and

felt tingly all over. It hadn't been another wet dream; he had really, actually,

fucked his mother. True, he hadn't been able to spend the whole night with her,

and hadn't gotten nearly enough of that glorious pussy, but she had fucked him

back. She had loved his prick and played with it and fed him her tit. She had

talked dirty with him and told him that even though his father's cock was much

bigger than his, she dug his prick just as much.

He looked down and saw his shaft rising, the head spreading as if it could feel

the magic caress of his mom's velvet cunt. Those sleek, long legs and the way

she moved her crotch, the way she rolled her terrific ass -- Glynn got hard all

over and his balls began to ache.

It was Saturday, he remembered, and his dad wouldn't be going to the

construction outfit he owned today. Damn, Glynn thought; he wanted to fuck some

more, and he wanted his mom, not Lorena. Not right away with his sister, anyhow.

Mom had promised to teach him a lot of things about sex, like how to eat her

cunt, and he was more eager for that experience than for anything else. Maybe he

could get Lorena to take dad out of the house for a couple of hours; he sure as

hell couldn't wait until night.

Trying to whistle, he went downstairs and headed for the kitchen, his stomach

growling. He had already downed a glass of juice and had bread in the toaster

when she came in. Glynn looked up at her, thinking that his mother was

fantastically beautiful in a red robe that clung to her hips and outlined the

high mounds of her fine tits. The robe swung away from her molded legs when she

walked, too, and the glimpse of them made his mouth dry up.

Her coal-black hair swung loosely down her back, and she wore red lipstick that

made him somehow think of the lips of her cunt, those soft, soft lips he had

never actually seen up close. He blushed when her eyes caught his, and felt like

some kind of nut because his face turned red. But she smiled at him, her lashes

half lowered over sultry dark eyes, and he perked up immediately.

"Good morning, dear," she murmured. "Did you sleep well?"

"Kind of," he said. "But I wanted to be in your bed."

She came to stand close and lift a scented hand to his cheek. "I know, lover; I

wanted you there, too. Maybe there'll be a chance today. Would you like that?"

Damn! He wanted to grab her and rub his stiffening cock into her belly, to hold

her by the cheeks of that alluring ass and to bury his face between her tits. "I

have to screw you today, mom; I have to."

Her smile widened, and she dropped her hand to squeeze his prick. "So eager and

ready. Just as soon as it's possible, darling; I promise."

She left him standing there with his shaft paining, and made a pot of coffee

while he watched every movement of her superb body with avid eyes. It was still

hard for him to believe he had gotten into her cunt, that he had pumped her hot,

juicy snatch full of his come, and that she wanted more.

When he heard somebody else coming, he hurried to the table and sat down, to

hide his erection. It was Lorena, looking fresh and supremely happy, dressed in

tight cutoffs and a floppy but thin bandanna shirt that showed the bouncy

movement of her tits. She looked a question at him, and he winked. She winked

back, and grinned broadly.

His sister was really a cute girl, he thought, one that any guy would be lucky

to screw. And now she had fucked their father; the experience had made her glow,

he saw, and wondered if he looked as joyful this morning.

"Hi, everybody," Lorena said, skipping over to the stove and putting her arms

around her mother's waist to kiss the back of her neck. "Morning, mom."

"My, isn't everyone chipper this morning," Arlene said. "I hope your father is

in a halfway good mood."

"Oh, he will be," Lorena said, and blew a silent kiss at Glynn.

Glynn wondered how she had managed it; his sister couldn't have held down his

old man and practically raped him when he woke up. And how had she taken that

prick, the one mom said was so much bigger than his own? He guessed a girl's

pussy could stretch as much as was needed. Lorena brought the toast and ducked

her hand beneath the table to nip his shaft, laughing when he flinched.

Then Eric Johansen came down to breakfast. It was the only meal he shared with

the family, Glynn thought, staying away at lunch on business and not coming home

for dimmer because he didn't want to.

"Morning," his father said gruffly, and Glynn sneaked a glance at him to see if

he could read anything on the craggy face, but the man wasn't showing anything.

"Better hurry, dad," Lorena said. "Remember you promised to take me out and show

me the construction site today?"

Arlene Johansen turned from the stove, one eyebrow going up. "Oh? At this late

date, you're showing an interest in your children?"

"Don't start," Eric said and took a cup of coffee from his daughter. "I thought

it was time they both got to know a little about the business, but one at a

time."

Glynn met his mother's eyes in mute, intent appeal, and she nodded slightly.

"All right, then; Glynn and I will manage to take care of ourselves. That is, if

you have nothing on, son?"

He half choked on a piece of buttered toast. "N-no, mom; guess I'll stay home

and help in the yard or something."

His father only grunted, and Glynn knew a vast feeling of relief, then a

sensation of exultation. He was going to be alone with her, with his lovely

mother; they would have most of the day to themselves! The knowledge shook him

to the core, and he clamped his legs together to keep his cock from jumping,

crazily. Right in the living room, he thought -- with the drapes drawn and doors

locked; right there on the floor, with both of them stripped naked.

Somehow, Glynn held himself together until they left. Gathering up purse and her

weird hat, his sister leaned close to him and said softly, "Have a lot of fun,

little brother. Dad and I are going to a motel, so you'll have plenty of time."

All he could do was nod his head and smile weakly. Lorena really had it rolling,

and the day ought to be a ball for both of them. For all four, he corrected

himself; their parents would dig the action as much as they would, he was sure.

He listened for the station wagon to pull out of the driveway, and sat for a few

seconds after he was certain they were gone.

"Mom," he said, "can I help with the dishes?"

"I'm putting them in the washer," she answered quietly. "They can wait, but I'm

not so sure I can."

She held his hand as they walked into the living room and they separated only to

close the drapes. But he wanted some light, so he snapped on the bar lamp as she

turned to him with her hands by her sides and her chin up.

"Here, darling -- not upstairs in bed?"

He shook his head. "Here on the floor, mom. I've watched you here, peeping under

your skirt when you got careless with those fantastic legs, making pictures in

my head how you would look all naked, trying to make believe that you would

drink too much and pass out and nobody else would be home. Now it's all coming

true, and I want to screw my hot, beautiful mother in the living room."

"Of course you can," she murmured, and reached to undo the belt of her robe.

He sat on a barstool, knowing a trembling in his legs, and watched her open the

robe. The red of it made a bright frame for the long, willowy body exposed to

his view, and he gazed enraptured at the creamy expanse of woman flesh she

showed him. His mom's tits quivered at the least movement of her shoulders, and

he stared at them fixedly as she dropped the robe.

They were rich and heavy, round and firm, with those long, brown nipples

sticking out invitingly. She cupped them in both hands, offering them to him,

and her voice was low in her throat when she said, "Hadn't you better get out of

your jeans, dear?"

Fumbling at his zipper, he dropped his eyes over the smooth planes of her belly,

down to that prized treasure between her full thighs. His mother's pubic hair

was black as midnight, curled tightly, thickly grown in an entrancing vee whose

tips narrowed and spread themselves up into the delicate creases formed by her

groin and the upper reaches of her incomparable thighs.

"You -- you're so beautiful, it hurts my eyes," he mumbled.

Her smile was warm and bitchy, her tongue darting out pinkly to wet her red

lips. "Do you really think so, Glynn? I'm so glad; I want to be beautiful for

you, hot for you."

Her hand left her breasts and slid insinuatingly over her hips, down across her

belly, and her slim fingers toyed with her mound. "Here I am, lover. Here's what

you want."

Glynn kicked out of his jeans and whipped his tee-shirt over his head, not

knowing or caring where it landed. His stiff cock stood erect, the head of it

glistening, and already a tiny droplet of fluid hung there.

But when he stepped down and went toward her, his mother drifted back. "Just a

second, dear. You said you wanted me to teach you something, and I will. Here,

let me take a sofa pillow."

Uncertainly, he stood with his prick thrust out while she stooped to place the

pillow upon the floor. "There, Glynn; there are two ways for a man to eat a

woman, and I'll show you the first one. Lie down, darling, and put your head on

this."

Obediently, for he would do anything for this woman, he stretched out on the

carpet with his head braced. She moved over and put one shapely foot on each

side of his rigid body, so that he looked up into the hairy nest he adored.

Glynn could see the lips of her cunt then, peeping shyly pink from the black

furry thatch. It was like a mouth, he thought, but far more lovely, and

beckoning him to know its richness.

Slowly, she crouched, bending her body bit by bit until she was kneeling over

him. Her knees snugged his hips, and she rubbed them up and down tenderly,

swinging her hips, making the round white globes of her breasts sway

provocatively.

"Your body is so smooth," she said, "and very appealing, Glynn. I'll bet the

young girls go wild over it."

"I -- I only had one, before you," he said. "And I wish you could have been the

first, mom."

"You're sweet," she said, and moved so that her cunt came down upon his belly,

hot and softly wirey, crispy but somehow soft moss. Working it around, she made

him wiggle, and he reached for her hips.

But when he touched them, his mother slid up to his chest and gave him a few

moments to revel in the intimacy of her pussy on his breastbone. As he stared

into the dark, shaggy forest of her pubic hair, she said, "Just do what comes

naturally, lover. Kiss it and love it, and run your tongue right on inside the

lips. Up near the top, when you feel around, you'll find my clit; it's a little

nubby thing like a pea. Work on that darling."

As she moved even closer, he caught the pungent aroma of her cunt, a perfume all

her own, musky and sensuous, like some night blooming flower. Crisp and

beguiling, her mat was at his nose, and with a sigh of happiness, Glynn stroked

her ass cheeks and nuzzled into the tempting fleece.

It was woolly against his face as he went into it, and right away he found the

sweet honey of her labia. He pressed his own lips against them, panted into

them, and as his mom rolled her ass in his hands, he pushed his tongue down

through the softly spiked hairs into her body. Shuddering as he did so, Glynn

shoved his tongue between the hot and slippery lips, on into her vagina.

His teeth pressed to her pussy, he began to lap like a puppy dog, luxuriating in

the taste of her, in the spicy flavors of his mother's steamy cunt, drawing her

oily lubrication into his mouth and swallowing hurriedly. He wanted to chew her,

and he did, gnawing the pussy lips tenderly while she moaned and rocked her

crotch down against his head.

"That's right -- oh baby! That's the way to eat me -- oh yes, yes! I love it --

I love you."

Glynn sucked her cunt lips into his mouth, opening wide to bring them in. She

was sugary and blazing, and he sucked hard, drinking down her juices avidly,

rubbing his chin into her crotch. Letting her rubbery slot ease back into place,

he tongued into it again, reaching as deeply as he could. Remembering what she

had said about the pea-shaped thing, he felt along the wet silken lining until

he found it.

His mother quivered sharply then, and hissed as he sucked on it, as he worked

his teeth down to where he could chew it delicately. Her belly rolled over him

as she dropped to her hands, and her ass swung in quickening arcs while her

crotch stroked his cheeks, his chin. She was fucking his face, he thought

dazedly; his sexy hot mother was screwing his mouth.

"Uhhh!" she grunted. "Uh-uh -- oh, darling! You're terrific -- it's so good, so

wonderful -- eat me, Glynn. Eat your loving mother's cunt, son!"

He redoubled his efforts, snorting and chewing, licking and sucking, and her

movements grew more frantic. She thrust hard against his mouth and ground her

hairy wet snatch into it with almost brutal strokes. He clung to her ass, eating

the cunt he loved more than anything else in the world.

"C-coming!" she cried out. "Ah, Glynn -- you marvelous little lover, your mommy

is coming!"

He felt her vibrate, felt the sizzling tissues of her snatch tighten

convulsively, and knew an added release of her love oils. Holding to her,

continuing to lick her box, he rubbed his nose across her palpitating mound.

She sat up, shaky and weaving, balanced upon her knees. He wanted to keep

kissing her pussy, but she slid it wetly away from his searching mouth, moved it

down over his chest. "That was f-fine, lover. My head is still swimming."

Hiking her ass, she passed farther down his body, then lifted so that she was

poised above his heavily throbbing shaft. "Now we'll fuck," she said.

Glynn trembled when she wrapped her fingers around his rod, and went stiff, in

both legs as she steered the head into the drippy bush of her treasured pussy.

He held to her thighs when she started to lower her crotch, when the bulb of his

cock started to slide into the greasy lips.

In it went, easy and fine, penetrating deep into the clinging cavity as it

slipped deep. His mother dropped farther down, and yet more, until she was

sitting on it. He could feel the springy pressure of her hair upon his balls,

and the ecstasy of the cunt closed around his embedded prick. He was into his

mom again; he had his hard pole shoved up her opulent pussy and she was fucking

him.

"Such a young hard cock," she murmured, her palms flat against his chest and

grinding her belly, hunching slowly to him. "Fuck me, darling -- fuck your

mother and tell her what a great piece of ass she is."

He stroked it up into that fabulous cunt, into the hot, wet velvet grippings,

feeling his cockhead reach bottom. "You're the greatest, mom -- the finest piece

of ass anywhere. Fuck me the same way you fuck my daddy."

"Your daddy -- your father -- " she gyrated her ass and made his prick head

touch every tingling spot within her vagina. "He used to f-fuck me a lot, but no

more -- no more. Oh, feed me that young meat, Glynn!"

Glynn shoved it to her, lifted his ass every time she dropped hers, and heard

the suctioning noise his prick made going in and out of her oily cunt. Back and

forth it squished, his balls getting soaked with the hot liquids.

"I'll screw you forever," he gasped. "Your sweet cunt is mine, now -- all mine,

and I'll fuck it day and night. I love your pussy so much -- love your ass and

your tits and the way you screw me. Oh, mom -- mother darling -- you hot-assed,

beautiful mom -- "

She slammed it to him, making short, rapid strokes that circled briefly around

his hard-driving prick. "Go ahead, dear -- let it go! I'm going to come again

with you -- "

He moaned and clenched her ass, trying to spread her apart for the final,

twisting thrust that nailed down her womb. Then his cock turned into a long,

slim volcano spitting fiery lava throughout her scissoring pussy. A gush of

semen spurted up into her, bathing her cervix, raining greasily down to flood

his stilled prick.

His mother's breath gusted from her open mouth, and she threw back her head. Her

thighs clamped violently against his hips, her torrid cunt nibbled down upon his

glans. She was coming in undulating waves of rapture, rolling her ass and

beating her small fists into his chest.

Glynn thought they had made it fine.

[omgrachwrites]

Schooled (Bucky Barnes)

Pairing: Bucky Barnes/OC

Summary: After the passing of Ava’s father she starts acting out which drives her right into the arms of one gorgeous Professor Barnes.

Warnings: fluff, lil bit of angst, mentions of dr*gs

Words: 2260

A/N: Can you guys believe I’ve posted twice in one week?! I don’t think I’ve ever typed the word ‘Shakespeare’ so many times and on Shakespeare day as well, its pretty fitting! I hope you guys all enjoy this, please let me know what you think and if you would like to be tagged just shoot me an ask! I love you guys very much! xxx

Part Four - Halloween

Bucky sighed to himself as again he marked another unsatisfactory essay, he couldn’t believe those essays were written by the students in his class. The first few were okay but barely, the next couple had just been plain rubbish and the essay that he had marked before this one was downright plagiarised. He looked up at his students who were working on their projects with the exception of Ava and Loki; they were passing notes to one another. Bucky thought that he should say something but he didn’t want to single out Ava. Again. He remembered how embarrassing that was from his own college days.

He raked a hand through his fluffy hair as he looked back down at the pile of essays that he should have marked weeks ago. Now was the perfect time to get the marking done before the work load piled up. Turning over the top essay he saw that it was another one on Shakespeare. He was pissed off with himself, why the hell did he put Shakespeare on the syllabus? The last essay he had marked on Shakespeare there was an author’s note at the bottom of the page, explaining why they thought that Shakespeare was a ‘cool guy’.

Bucky was sure that being a ‘cool guy’ wasn’t very high on Shakespeare’s list of what he wanted to leave behind. Massaging his temples, Bucky looked at the name that was at the top of the essay and saw that Loki had written it. Loki had transferred from Cambridge with a glowing recommendation and now it was Bucky’s chance to see if he lived up to his expectations.

From the first paragraph of the essay Bucky was hooked, it was probably one of the most engaging essays that he’d read about Shakespeare. It was plainly obvious that Loki was passionate about Shakespeare and that was what Bucky wanted in a student, somebody with a bit of passion. By the time that Bucky had reached the end of the essay it was obvious that this was the highest mark on a paper so far. It was so good that Bucky would have even allowed an author’s note about how cool Shakespeare was and it would have even made him laugh.

“Mr Odinson,” Bucky started and Loki looked up with wide eyes, Ava also looked up at him, “I really enjoyed your essay about Shakespeare, it’s the best one I’ve read in a while.”

Loki looked slightly confused and hesitant but he smiled all the same, “well, thank you very much sir,” Ava nudged Loki’s arm and gave him the most dazzling smile that Bucky had to look away.

“Right guys and gals, get going and please enjoy your weekend. Next time we’ll be picking up Shakespeare, Hamlet to be exact,” his announcement was met by an influx of groans but Loki looked excited, “oh, don’t sound so glum, according to Mr Owens, William Shakespeare was a cool guy,” he grinned and there came a whoop of agreement.

“Yes! Right on sir!” Bucky laughed and dismissed the class; Ava shot him a faint smile on her way out.

As Ava walked out, Steve was walking in and did a double take when he saw Ava, “wait, what the fuck?” Steve mouthed and he backtracked himself into the hallway.

Groaning, Bucky stood up and followed his friend out of the lecture hall, “Steve come on! Don’t,” Bucky pleaded but it was too late.

“Ava?” Steve called out, way to keep a low profile Bucky thought, Ava turned around at the mention of her name.

“Steve? Is that you?” she laughed and narrowed her eyes, “I’d ask what you’re doing here but obviously by the look of those shorts you’re the gym coach,” she gestured at his outfit, causing Steve’s ears to go red, “is Sam here too? Maybe we could have ourselves a lovely little reunion,” she rolled her eyes at Bucky.

“I thought that you had graduated university,” Steve said slowly, pointing out the obvious and he looked from Ava to Bucky and Bucky shrugged nonchalantly.

“Yeah Steve, so did I, I mean that is what you told us right Ava? Or at least that’s what you implied,” Bucky knew that he was acting like a child but it was hard for him not to feel offended. Especially when she looked so beautiful in ripped blue jeans and an oversized green sweater.

“Oh my god Bucky, all I did was lie to you! I didn’t realise that it was a crime, maybe your pretty face kept you safe from women lying to you but we’ve all got to start somewhere,” she walked up to him, “so please, stop treating me like a fucking war criminal, alright?” she snarled, jabbing him in the chest.

This girl certainly was a far cry from the woman that he’d met in Greece, “it was good to see you though Steve, really it was,” she looked around the corridor to make sure no one was coming before she stood up on her tiptoes and kissed Steve’s cheek. She shot an angry look at Bucky as she walked off down the hallway.

Steve looked amused and was about to say something but Bucky shot him a venomous look that made him shut up. Bucky sighed and the two best friends walked off down the hallway together and into the car park.

“So,” Steve started, deigning it safe to speak as they squeezed themselves into Steve’s tiny vintage car, “tough break huh, where do you want to go for lunch?”

Bucky was starting to get a migraine from all the marking he had done and the frustrating encounter that he’d had with Ava in the hallway, “yes Steve, it is a tough break, I must have been especially wicked in a past life to deserve this, and honestly, I don’t mind. As long as they sell Irish coffee, I need some sort of alcohol,” he sighed, rubbing his temples.

Steve nodded as he started the car and when he spoke, his voice sounded a little weird and high pitched, “I know the perfect place, I’ll call Sam on the way and see if he’s free to meet us.”

About ten minutes later Steve was pulling up outside a little café, it was absolutely packed inside so Steve and Bucky sat outside – it was a pretty nice day – to wait for Sam. When Sam turned up there were a group of girls that giggled and swooned at Sam as he walked to Steve and Bucky’s table, he was still in his firefighter uniform. Bucky rolled his eyes and grinned as Sam sat down opposite him, he couldn’t see why Sam just couldn’t get changed into regular clothes before he came out on his lunch break.

“Sam, you could have at least gotten changed, you’re making the rest of us look bad,” Bucky chuckled and Sam shrugged, rubbing the back of his neck.

“Sorry Buck, I just can’t help it if the ladies love me,” Sam winked, “how are you and that incredibly hot TA?”

Bucky shrugged, shaking his head as he nervously began to rip up the napkin that was in front of him, “that incredibly hot TA and I can be nothing but good bed mates,” Sam was saved from replying because at that moment the waiter came to their table to take their order.

“Just three coffees please man,” Sam said to the kid who nodded and scrawled it down in his notebook.

“Make one Irish,” Bucky smiled and turned to look at Steve who looked crestfallen which was pretty out of character, he was staring at his shoes. Bucky was about to ask him what the matter was but a lightbulb went on in his head and he smirked, “oh my god. It’s here isn’t it? She works here,” at Bucky’s words Steve’s head whipped up and a dark flush spread out across his cheeks which confirmed Bucky’s suspicions.

“Who works here?” Sam frowned, on the wrong page from everybody else and Steve gave Bucky a threatening look which Bucky promptly ignored.

“The girl he’s got a crush on, I hear she’s an English beauty,” Bucky chuckled and clapped Steve on the shoulder, “I just can’t understand why you won’t ask her out.”

Steve looked at his best friend like he’d just suggested the most outrageous plan, “what the hell are you talking about Buck? I can’t just ask her out, a woman as beautiful as her must have a boyfriend. She could do a lot better than me anyhow,” Steve shrugged, he’d been nervous around girls ever since high school.

“Seriously man, our local bar is throwing an early Halloween party tonight. How about you invite her to that?” Sam suggested reasonably and Steve rolled his eyes shaking his head.

“It’s three weeks till Halloween; it’s completely ridiculous celebrating it this early!”

“Yeah, that wasn’t really my point,” Sam sighed, “but never mind,” Steve fell silent almost instantly when their coffees were brought out.

They were brought out by a pretty woman with short dark hair and by the look on Steve’s face this was the woman that he’d been lusting after. Steve was hopeless when he was around women that he liked, that was made plainly obvious as Steve wouldn’t say a word to the waitress when she came outside to collect cups and plates. She even smiled at him once which caused Steve to completely lose his head and spill coffee all down himself. When Steve went to the restroom Buck wrote Steve’s name and number down on the bill.

“He’ll thank me one day,” Bucky said to a smirking Sam.

——————————–

Ava walked out of her room, her heels clacking on the hardwood floor and she stood in front of Loki, turning on the spot, “what do you think about my sort of costume?” she giggled, she was going to an early Halloween party with Wanda and MJ tonight. She had decided to go as a princess but she made her outfit casual so it could be seen as normal party attire.

Loki leaned back on the couch, raising an eyebrow appreciatively as he looked her up and down, “you look fantastic.”

Ava giggled and flushed slightly at the compliment, “are you sure that you won’t come? It won’t be the same without you.”

“I might come later on but if I don’t, have a wonderful night love and stay safe,” he smiled and Ava nodded, blowing him a kiss before she headed out of the door.

Ava met MJ and Wanda at the bar and Wanda held up a sandwich bag with cookies in the shape of ghosts inside, “they’ve got pot in them,” she giggled, during the first three weeks of their final year Wanda had taken up a new hobby, “senior year of college is fantastic!”

“Maybe later Wand,” Ava giggled, shaking her head, “do you girls want some cocktails then?”

Soon enough the three girls – after one too many cocktails – were dancing in the middle of the room, drinks in hand. They’d also had a little nibble of Wanda’s homemade pot cookies but they weren’t really giving any effects at the moment.

“I still can’t believe that Bucky is your goddamn professor!” MJ shouted down Ava’s ear as she sucked her iced cocktail off the stirrer. Ava giggled, playing with the ends of her hair, not getting a chance to reply as Wanda spoke up.

“Are you going to start sleeping with him again though?” she asked and Ava shook her head, too much had happened between them.

“No, I’ll get us some more cocktails shall I?” she didn’t wait for an answer before she walked over to the bar, desperately wanting to get away from the conversation. While she was at the bar she felt a hand on the small of her back, she turned to see that it was Loki. He looked so handsome. He’d sprayed his curly blonde hair black and he was dressed in Victorian attire.

“Loki! You came!” she giggled and gave him a hug; he chuckled as he kissed the top of her head.

“Are you drunk?” he asked.

“Loki,” she gasped playfully, “however did you guess?”

“Well Miss Stark, your cheeks are perfectly rosy from the liquor and you look undeniably beautiful,” Ava giggled at his words and gave the gorgeous boy another hug. Over his shoulder she saw Steve – with a beautiful woman – Sam and Bucky. Bucky had some beautiful blonde perched on his knee. Despite herself, Ava couldn’t look away.

Loki pulled away from the hug and followed Ava’s line of sight, “ah, do you fancy Professor Barnes?“ he smirked.

“Something like that,” Ava thought there was no point in lying about it; she was still attracted to Bucky.

“And, he’s looking this way, how about we give him a show?” he winked and Ava nodded, wondering what he could mean.

In a flash Loki had her in his arms, leaning her back slightly, “I hope this doesn’t make things awkward between us,” he murmured before kissing her. She was pleasantly surprised but only for a second before she kissed him back, running her fingers through his thick curls. Loki grunted into the kiss as Ava pushed up against him before pulling away and the pair turned to look at Bucky.

The woman was now sitting beside him instead of on his knee and he was looking at Ava and Loki with a mingled look of amusement and perhaps something else, Ava couldn’t be entirely sure.

——————————–

< previous part                                             next part >

@void-imaginations​ @theonelittleone @leclerc-stan  @thejemersoninferno @allthingswildareshy​ @mikariell95​ @charles11700​ @writingkeepsmewhole​ @lovely-geek​ @white-wolf-buckaroo​ @goodolbucky​ @rosemoonmist​

[bellatrixobsessed1]

Kissing Dead Pearls (Part 25)

She is holding him so tightly, clinging to him as though he were going to disappear right from the hospital bed. This is how he knows that something is wrong. That she is going to say or do something that he won’t like. Even after so long, he knows her mannerisms. She always gets more loving and cuddly before doing something that she knows will leave him absolutely reeling and seething. He has been gone for so long that he isn’t sure what that that thing could possibly be. Or maybe it is that he simply doesn’t want to dwell on it much because he knows that he will find the answer.

Instead he tells her not to hold so tightly. She seems to remember the sores and loosens her hold. Granted she isn’t able to hold him as painfully tight as she could have, though her arms seems to be healing rather smoothly. She insists that it isn’t really a big deal.

“So…” he trails off. “I imagine that you have a few stories for me?” He inquires.

“Many of them.” She replies.

She opens her mouth to share them, but the doctors come to check up on him. Azula moves to let them tinker with the setting on his feeding tube, before ultimately deciding to take him off of it.

He waits until after they leave to inquire once more. “Well why don’t you start from the beginning?”

She thinks for a moment. “After you left, father’s drinking problem got worse.” After a brief pause, she adds, “unrelated to your disappearance. It had been steadily getting worse.”

Sokka furrows his brows. “He seems fine now.”

Azula nods. “AA.”

“And that’s going well?”

“There isn’t much access to alcohol on a boat…” she trails off and he thinks that he knows what she is thinking. “I don’t think that he has bought any on this island.”

“I didn’t seem like he did when he came to visit.” Sokka smiles.

.oOo.

That smile coaxes her forward, but delicate flutters still remain in her belly as she tries to find a way to continue. She doesn’t really care to discuss this matter. It isn’t something that she likes to think about if she can help it.

“You don’t have to share everything.” Sokka says.

“I would like to.” She takes a moment before continuing. “After father’s drinking problem started getting worse he started getting...harder to deal with. Everything was…” she finds herself at something of a loss. Since words seem to be failing her, she simply tilts her head so that he can see the scar.

His brows crinkle. “When did you get that?” She lets him trace his frail fingers over it.

“When I...jumped.”

“You didn’t...it wasn’t on purpose, was it?”

She swallows, “it was.”

She watches him rub his hands over his face, run his fingers through his hairline.

“I shouldn’t have left…” He mutters. “If I would have just stayed home…”

“Then you wouldn’t have gotten to have the adventure you wanted. That was your dream.” She replies.

“And look at the nightmare that it turned out to be.”

She shrugs. “You say that as if you aren’t going to make awful jokes about it and share the story at every party you get invited to.” He laughs. She had missed that laugh so much. Even if she can only manage a half smile at the moment. “Anyhow, I’m fine.”

He gives her a skeptical look.

“I have a therapist, though I haven’t seen her in a while.” She mentions, she isn’t sure if that makes him feel more or less comforted. “I also have Zuzu and your sister. And I started surfing again.”

“You stopped?”

She nearly flinches, recalling that she’d been practicing every day prior to losing him. “For a while, yes. I had to manage the lighthouse.” It isn’t a lie, not entirely. “Father started neglecting it for the bar so Zuzu and I had to do it ourselves.”

“Geez.” He grumbles. “I think I’d take another month out at sea over that.”

If he weren’t so covered in raw blisters, she’d have slapped him. “I don’t think that you mean that.”

“How did Kat hold up?” He asks. “I know she told me that she was fine and that our parents are fine. But I need the truth.”

“I think that Katara handled things better than I did.” She admits with a degree of resentment at having to admit that she wasn’t the best at something. “And your parents helped Zuzu and I a lot when father got particularly bad.” Another thought suddenly crosses her mind, she doesn’t want to leave him with any surprises. Not bad ones anyhow. “Speaking of your parents helping us. We returned the favor; there was a hurricane and it damaged the restaurant.”

Again Sokka rubs his face and begins to speak.

“Let me finish.” She rolls her eyes. “We were able to fix it up, but I thought that you’d like to know.”

“Thanks for the heads up.” He laughs.

She takes a deep breath and hopes that he will appreciate the heads up that she is about to give him. She fidgets for a tense moment before finally saying, “those are the few most important things. But there’s something else.”

“Is it more or less disastrous than you jumping off of a cliff?”

“I guess that depends on what kind of disaster you have in mind.”

“Katara already told me about her near death experience.”

“I figured as much. This is something else.”

“Please just say it, Azula. You always do.”

She can see in his eyes that he already knows what is coming, so she might as well put an end to her stalling. “It’s Jet.”

Sokka crinkles his nose. “Him? Really?” He brings his hands to his face a third time, but this time he simply holds them there. “So what does that mean for us?”

“Nothing.” She realizes how dreadfully poor her word choice is at the choking noise he makes. “Nothing changes, I mean.” There is a slight shake to her voice that betrays her nerves. “I told Jet before we left that the whole point of this trip was to find you.”

“I bet he tagged along because he was sure that I died.”

She says nothing. Another mistake; bitter laughter fills the hospital room, overtaking the rhythmic beeping of his heart monitor. She wonders if it can detect heartbreak. “I guess the world did forget about me, huh? For a second I thought that…”

“It would just be the same as how you left it?” She fills in quietly. “We didn’t forget about you. We just...I couldn’t be alone.” She doesn’t think that the knots in her stomach can pull any tighter. She thinks that her face might be lightly flushed. She doesn’t like talking so deeply about her feelings. And she feels just as guilty for feeling so discomforted as she does for having moved on so soon. She should have waited until after the trip to give Jet a try.

She can tell that he is resentful. She considers that she may have made the wrong call in breaking it off with Jet. Perhaps she was meant to find someone else. She likes to think herself clever, but she can’t fathom why the universe would grant Sokka back to her if things would only end unhappily. Azula can see the bitterness in his eyes.

She stands up. “I’ll leave you with time to think about things.”

.oOo.

His hospital room is empty before he can say anything at all. He gives an exasperated groan and slams his fist into the mattress. A burning sensation flares up his arm and he curses loudly. He hadn’t meant to hurt her. His anger hadn’t even been directed at her. She just so happened to be the only one there to receive his frustrated outburst. Really it could have been anyone; Zuko, Katara, or Jet himself. He could only hide behind jokes and smiles for so long.

He had lashed out and now he is going to pay the price. And it occurs to him--if he could get up and anxiously pace, he would--that she might take herself to the cliffs again. He tells himself that she has Jet so she will be fine.

She has Jet so he, himself won’t be fine. It is both reassuring and sickening to imagine her seeking Jet out for comfort.

And what if she doesn’t visit again? What if she only sends Zuko or his sister? He wants to take back that resentful laugh. That grudging remark. He was scared. He is scared. Anxious and in pain and he doesn’t know how the hell he is going to get on another boat. Doesn’t know how he is going to find it in him to readjust to life on the mainland.

He just knows that he doesn’t want to do it alone. Of course, Azula had tried to move on. She didn’t want to do it alone. She said as much. She shouldn’t have had to do it alone. He shouldn’t have to do it alone.

But his hospital room is empty a half an hour before visiting hours are over.

[dogboy-willgraham]

ooh here's a prompt idea if u feel like it: some kind of fairy tale au, like sleeping beauty, red riding hood, etc ( bonus if it at some point includes or mentions a duck)

(I AM FINALLY WRITING THIS I APOLOGIZE FOR MY BITCHY ASS TAKING SO LONG I COULDN’T GET INSPIRATION AND I DON’T EVEN KNOW HOW I’M DOING MENTALLY ANYMORE SO FORGIVE ME AND MY SCREAMING)

Sleeping Beauty AU, FOOLS

*The original Disney animated version because I am not doing the OG version with the 100 years sleep and the rape (Look it up, or don’t), or the Maleficent storyline because that’s not the point here, thank you for coming to my Ted Talk*

Once upon a certain place in time, there was a Queen, no one ever really knew Her name. She had a son, and while there was rumors of a horrid affair, for She ruled alone, none of them where true. She in fact did have a son by her husband, Lucifer, but when She found him sleeping with Her brother from a neighboring kingdom, She took a few shoots of water hemlock from Her own garden, and mixed him a wonderful drink the next morning. A week later She found Herself carrying a child. 

No one ever did find out the king had died. 

 Anyhow, when Her son was born, She held a ceremony and invited three angels. Michael, Uriel, and Ananiel. They each bestowed a blessing on the child. 

Beauty.

Kindness. 

And when Ananiel began faer blessing of safety, and draft flooded into the hall. And a wicked baritone laugh erupted.

“Such a grand party, my queen, and yet I receive no invitation?” A man shaped being with dark violet eyes emerged from the crowd, a pure white duck waddling beside him. 

“Gabriel,” She hissed. “You are not welcome here,” 

“Oh, but why not my queen? I’m no different from them,” Gabriel turned his gaze upon the three angels guarding the cradle where the prince slept. “I’m an angel, and just like them, I’ve come to give my blessing upon the young one,” 

“You are no more angel than a demon,” She hissed. 

“Leave, Gabriel,” Ananiel warned. “You are not to touch him while I watch over him, you’re ‘blessing’ is not welcome,” 

Gabriel chuckled darkly and waved his hand, sending the three across the room. 

The queen stood, arm poised just behind Her throne where her longsword sat.

Gabriel looked over and with another flick of his wrist She was forced into her seat. 

Finally, he walked to the cradle, and looked down at the golden haired boy. The boy roused from his sleep, due to Gabriel’s presence and began to fuss. 

Gabriel laughed lowly, and placed a hand over the boys chest, making the prince fuss more. 

“Oh, darling prince of Her majesty,” Gabriel began. “Do not fuss, I have come to bring you a blessing,” He took a deep breath and smirked deeply as he began speaking once more. “For your mother’s offenses, you will pay,” Gabriel began to address his entire audience. “The prince will live for sixteen years, happily and beautifully, as my dear friends have blessed, but on his sixteenth birthday, no sooner will the sun set as the prince will be pricked by the thorn of a rose, and fall into a sleep-like death, never to wake,” He finished and a bolt of thunder cracked outside, then it fell silent. 

Gabriel walked away from the cradle and down to the edge of the crowd. “That, is my blessing, my lord,” He smiled wickedly and began walking again. 

“That is no blessing Gabriel!” Michael shouted. “That is a curse!” 

“Oh, it’s no such thing, dear sister, it is a blessing, the prince will not be hurt when he falls into slumber,” Gabriel disappeared into the crowd after that. 

Uriel quickly began removing the crowd when they could move again, while Ananiel ran to the cradle and brought faer wings to cover the boy from any danger. Michael approached the queen, head hung low. 

“My lord, forgive me-” 

She cut off Michael. “Don’t,” She looked to Her son, guarded by sleek brown wings. “It isn’t your fault,” 

“I could’ve-”

“I could’ve done many things too,” She interrupted. “But ‘what-ifs’ will not help us now, we must do what we can,” 

When the crowds were gone Uriel returned to Ananiel and began speaking in a hushed voice to fae. 

“Is there anything we can do about the curse?” She asked Michael, not yet noticing the conversation happening by the cradle. 

“No, if one of us casted it, or someone like us, we could do something but, Gabriel’s magic is not the same as ours anymore,” Michael looked down sadly. “It’s impossible to even try,”

“Not impossible, my lord,” Ananiel cut in. “Well, at least it is to break it, but we can change it, at least a little,” 

“Go on,” She said. 

“Well, Gabriel didn’t say how it could be broken, so we can fill it in ourselves, or Michael can,” Uriel finished. 

“Is this true?” She asked Michael. 

“Yes,” Michael answered. 

“Then do it,” 

Michael approached the cradle and Ananiel hesitantly folded faer wings back. 

Michael set a hand on the child’s chest, calming him. 

“The curse can be broken, but only if the fair prince receives a kiss, from his true love,” Michael finished, and another crack of lighting rang out. 

“Really, Michael? True love?” Uriel hissed. 

“I’m stressed,” Michael deadpanned. “And it’s not impossible,”

“It will be fine,” She said. “But I don’t want him near here, roses grow like wildfires in my kingdom, I want a failsafe in case Michael’s change doesn’t work,” 

“Where can he go?” Ananiel asked. 

“I want you to take him deep into the forest, on the other side of the river, he will be safe from the roses,” She said. “And, if you can, if you will, raise him, I cannot abdicate my throne, he will have nothing to come back to if I do,” 

Michael looked to Uriel and Ananiel, and all exchanged nods. 

“We’ll do it,” Michael said. 

“Thank you,” She stood and walked to Her son. “I love you, and while it’s hurts, I must say farewell my dear Aziraphale,”

-

The trio of angels took Aziraphale into the forest that night, finding a small cottage miraculously abandoned. And, as the queen asked, they raised him. 

Well, Michael and Ananiel raised him, mostly. Uriel had the least maternal personality out of the three, and besides that, Uriel was less than interested in getting involved with whatever was happening between her their sister and their friend. Uriel was more than happy though to take care of the materiel aspects of Aziraphale’s life. 

And for sixteen years, minus one day, Aziraphale grew up happy and beautiful. Unburdened by the existence of his biological mother, or the curse that loomed over

-

The day he was suddenly burdened by his life outside of the cocoon of the forest, was his birthday. But, of course, he didn’t just wake up when all Hell broke loose, but, the beginning of the day is a fine place to start. 

-

“We have to tell him,” Uriel said, out of the blue. 

“Not yet,” Ananiel returned. “ And anyway, we already agreed that we were going to tell him after his birthday,” 

“No, we didn’t,” Uriel set the shirt they were repairing down. “We need to tell him, he needs to time to understand, we’re going to be taking him to Her as soon as the sun finishes setting, and what do you think he’s going to feel like if we just toss that on him and then throw him back at Her?” 

“After, Uriel,” Ananiel insisted. 

“Michael, be the voice of reason, we need to tell him,” Uriel all but pleaded. 

Michael set her book down. “We’re not throwing him back at Her, and we need to make sure this works, we'll tell him after,”

“Oh, for someone’s sake you two!” Uriel groaned. “You’re acting like this is all going to go smoothly! It isn’t!”

“We are aware it’s not going to go smoothly,” Michael gently retorted. 

“Really? Then why are you waiting?”

Michael and Ananiel exchanged a glance, both knowing why they were stalling, but neither willing to admit. 

“I need some air,”  Uriel grumbled and walked out, past Aziraphale who had just arrived at the door. 

“Is Uriel okay?” Aziraphale asked timidly, stepping in. 

“Uriel’s okay, love, just needed to stretch their legs,” Ananiel smiled, and opened faer arms, which Aziraphale let wrap around him happily. 

“They seemed upset,” Aziraphale whispered into the crook of Ananiel’s neck. 

“They were just excited, it’s your birthday after all,” Ananiel felt faer throat tighten with the lie. Fae exchanged a sad glance with Michael. 

“Hey, Azzie,” Michael began smiling. “Could you go get some of those water lilies you love? We need them for tonight,” 

“I was just outside?” Aziraphale asked in a small voice. 

“I know, dear, but I forgot, and I promise there’ll be cake in it for you,” Michael smiled. 

“Okay,” Aziraphale grinned and removed himself from Ananiel. 

“Be home before sundown,” Michael said seriously. 

“Alright, mum,” Aziraphale hugs Michael before going back outside. 

Ananiel and Michael share a look, understanding, and hesitation to have their perfect illusion of life shatter. 

-

Aziraphale hummed happily as he collected the pale pink flowers off their green beds, daydreaming as usual. It was hard not to, he’d never been outside the forest, and never met anyone else either. But he had his books, and he could imagine as best he could meeting a tall dark stranger, or a kind friend. 

But the dark stranger was preferred most times. 

As he plucked another flower he heard a thud from a nearby clearing, and muffled grunts. 

Aziraphale stood up and cautiously walked towards it, leaving his flowers in a pile. 

When he pulled back the thick of bushes he had to bite his tongue to keep from bursting into giggles. 

A young red-haired man, no older than Aziraphale it seemed, was sprawled out on the forest floor as if he had fallen off his horse, who was now sitting on top of him. 

“For somebody’s bloody sake Bentley! Get off!” The strangely dressed person pushed at the black horse, who just huffed and shifted farther onto it’s rider. 

Aziraphale let out a small snort, still mesmerized by the newcomer. 

The redhead looked over to Aziraphale and sighed in relief. 

“Oi, blondie, mind helping me out?” The redhead asked. 

Aziraphale nodded and went over to try and gentle the horse off the ginger, which was successful. 

“Thank you,” The ginger smiled, getting up and brushing the dirt off his pitch-black clothes. “I would’ve been there for hours if you hadn’t come along,”

“No need,” Aziraphale smiled as well, a little blush creeping up his neck. Now that he was able to see the redhead better, he found him incredibly handsome. His very own tall dark stranger. 

The redhead, Crowley was his name, blushed too as he gazed at the cherubic blonde in front of him. He shook his head though, as if it would help clear his head. “What's your name, kind angel?” 

Aziraphale flushed fully, quite surprised by the name, but not unwelcoming of it. 

“A-Aziraphale,” Aziraphale coughed out, his throat felt dry. “My name is Aziraphale,” 

“Crowley,” Crowley smiled, brushing a bit more dust off his gold accented jacket. “Aziraphale, you really are an angel,” 

Aziraphale wanted to both get away from Crowley and his wonderful words to collect himself and more of those words. 

“Are you from around here?” Crowley asked, interrupting Aziraphale’s frenzied thoughts. 

“Yes, from the clearing Eastward from here,” Aziraphale answered. 

“Ah, well, why don’t I give you a lift back? Repay you for saving my arse?” 

Aziraphale smiled sheepishly. “You don’t have to,” 

“Rubbish, hop on. Make sure to hold on though, Bentley is not peaceful,” 

-

Aziraphale forgot about his flowers as he clutched Crowley’s chest while the horse sped off. 

Crowley smelled very nice, a faint fiery smell with cinnamon, and Aziraphale couldn’t get enough. 

They arrived at Aziraphale’s home just before the sun had set. Crowley helped him off the horse and knelt to kiss his knuckles lightly. 

“Thank you for the company, angel,” Crowley smiled. 

Aziraphale blushed and looked away. 

”I hate that I must part ways with you now, but I will return as soon as I can,” Crowley frowned slightly, before digging into his leather bag and pulling out a white rose. 

“For you,” Crowley tucked the flower into Aziraphale’s hair, a stray thorn nicking Aziraphale’s skin. 

And as soon as Crowley was watching a blushing cherub he had an armful of sleeping cherub. 

Three women emerged from the house suddenly as well, and took a moment to take in the scene. 

“You have no idea the shit you’ve just started,” The red-haired one growled. 

-

To sum up the end, Crowley fought a giant duck, and then kissed Aziraphale, and they somehow fell in love, there was also a whole ordeal with Aziraphale’s birthmother, but he chose his family in the end. 

[awaisnbahar]

Because of what happens in our life, we let past rejection, bully, fear of loneliness and abuse decide things for us in present moment that may not let us experience new moments in life but run away from them.

We run away from so many experiences. But more importantly, we run away from ourselves by doing things that our bodies aren’t ready for and are constantly reacting to our mind. If we feel scary about wanting to do something, then we should do it. Not because scary means it’s dangerous, but it’s a reaction of your body to the mind of why it’s not doing it but thinking it.

We do small stuff all the time. We stifle our worth so much that when someone asks us what salary do we expect if we were on a job, our first-hand answer is made of what people think I deserve sentence that we know is the result of caring what people think of you and therefore you play small and live in the level trying to fix your life in the level it is created. Well, how about cutting the rope you’re using to climb a mountain, don’t you think you need to go to the top before you cut it, because cutting it in that position also cuts you.

We feel so worthless and think we should be doing what is there and is best according to people. We bring such an emphasis on the reference of people when deciding because we are afraid people will not love us. For love so empty we are, that we stifle what our hearts want and do what our minds are constantly justifying us to do.

Your mind never justifies to convince you to meditate. If you do, then it asks you What will I get? Getting is what the mind has designed for. It’s always in survival mode. It wants to get, be known and attach to things and people to get things from. Therefore, people are so crazy for relationships, they think being single is death to their self. They go on quick and connect with ones who don’t align with them in any ways but anyhow they do form a relationship in the name of loneliness and end up breaking up or regretting why they have done so and create shit in their lives in a place of utter emptiness.

You do not feel emptiness because you feel it for real. You feel emptiness because you felt it in the past, think you need a fix for it, think your own being is no worthy for that space in your heart but given outside people to access it and break it, have believed the lie that love is outside of you and to feel love and be enough you need to to do certain things when all you could was only connect to your heart and be whole but since nobody has ever taught you that so you chase and chase and never feel whole.

Our whole lives go like chasing a place, person or something to do the fix our minds have made are problems. We go on doing and thinking so much about it for real that we go on spending our entire lives just thinking about it and creating it, but thinking never stops and creating never halts. So, we just wait not knowing one day we will just sit on the bed and cry so hard because finally we see we wasted our time and that pain is really, really worth feeling for because at that position nothing else remains.

Just because something happened in the past, shouldn’t decide what happens now. Something that has happened is gone and all you need to give is acceptance of what it is not keeping a mental wish of how it could have been or would have been. You need to live where you feel your breath not somewhere in your memories to make you feel something you would run out of names to name it. Because that feeling is feeling everything at once and not being able to call it something. But you don’t need to call it something, just call it Life.

Let go of the past not by thinking or saying but by embracing yourself. If there was a special person who you would do everything for. Then do them for you because you are that special person. You are way bigger than what you think and do. Live in your heart not your mind and feel from your body other than think from past.