#brooklyn thursday night

[intrepidacious]

What if Reader did not lose her roommate in brooklyn, thursday night?? Would she and Steve still have met that night??

palpable echo

pairing: steve rogers x reader

word count: 720

warnings: an alternative universe to brooklyn, thursday night. not exactly angst but not happy either. please note that my blog is rated 18+. minors dni. ageless/empty blogs will be blocked without warning.

a/n: so the short answer to this would be "i don't think they would have". but i don't do short answers. also let’s ignore the time.

Steve’s not sure how he makes it through the night that second year.

There’s a restlessness in his bones that won’t let him stop walking, so he doesn’t. Earlier in the night, he might’ve still had a vague idea of where he was going, but at this point, he can’t be sure.

It’s not like he’d be welcome company anywhere, anyway.

He barely feels the wind tearing at his coat by the time the first tentative rays of sunlight start coloring the sky a shade of orange that, on any other day, he might have stopped to appreciate. By the time Thanksgiving turns into another bleak Friday, the cold has turned into something solid in his throat.

He’s walking in circles.

A few people are dotted around the park now, and so he tucks his chin into the collar of his coat and doesn’t raise his eyes. There’s not enough of a crowd for the whispers to haunt him again quite yet, but he’s having a tough time predicting these things nowadays.

("I thought you don’t care," Bucky would’ve said. Once upon a time.)

The rubble is clicking next to him, and when he turns his head slightly, a dog is staring at him, head slightly tilted as if to assess him.

Steve stops.

The dog keeps looking at him, then takes a couple of curious steps closer.

"Don’t worry," a voice behind him says. "She’s mostly friendly."

He can relate to that mostly, and so he slowly pulls one hand out of his coat pocket and holds it out for the dog to sniff. She does so with a sort of indignant breath of air, and then she leans her chin against his fingers and looks at him expectantly until he pets her between the ears.

Her tail starts wiggling.

Something small and hardened loosens in his chest, tiny and insignificant compared to everything else, but present nontheless.

"What a bitch," the voice says. "She took weeks to warm up to me like that."

There might be the hint of a smile tugging at his lips. It feels foreign, somehow, and it’s the surprise of it all that makes him look up.

There’s something rough about you, and it feels off, even though he can’t put his finger on a reason. Maybe he’s used to seeing the grief more obviously on people’s faces, still.

Instead, your eyes are soft and amused when he meets them, and they change only the slightest bit when the recognition hits you a little later. There’s part of him that wishes he could take it back and live in that first moment a little longer, where he’s just a stranger and a nobody; just a man getting to pet a dog.

But it’s never that easy.

The silence stretches, the wind howling in his ears again. It’s so loud he doesn’t even hear your question the first time.

"You alright?" you repeat when he blinks at you, your fingers drumming against your coat.

"I’m fine." It’s the same lie everyone tells these days. His voice is so raw, and he can’t be sure when he’s used it last. At some point earlier this week, probably.

You nod a little like to confirm it, but there’s something almost like concern etched into the tick of your jaw. For a moment, it seems like you want to say something else, but then you shake your head.

"Well, we better get going so we can scold Lulu in front of her co-workers for not taking you out before her shift, don’t we?" you say with a lightness so fake he can almost smell it. Steve doesn’t blame you.

The dog nuzzles his hand.

He clears his throat. "Sorry for keeping you."

It sounds genuine when you say, "Not at all."

He wants to add something else, but it’s like there’s no words left in him these days, and looking for them would take way too long. So he watches you walk off, the dog trailing beside you, and he doesn’t expect you to turn around.

You turn around.

"Thanks for trying," you call, and the wind doesn’t swallow it this time.

He doesn’t know why, but he buys a sketchbook on his way home. And later, for the first time in weeks, he sleeps through the night.

thank you for reading 💛 if you want to see more of my writing, check out my masterlist or follow @intrepidacious-fics for update notifications!!

[pinballforever]

Credit pinball.by.xtn (Photo by Christian Larsen)

[lichfucker]

I'm hosting the game at my own house this time which I've never done before. I have no idea how I'm gonna set up the furniture

[teddiee]

Into Each Life: Chapter 10

Summary:

Arnie’s expression clears, briefly, and he blinks up at Tony like he suddenly remembers the other Omega is sharing the cramped stall with him. “Y’told me it wouldn’t hurt, once. Before… before I left. You said—you said it’s what we’re s’posed to do.”

“Arnie,” Tony warns.

“Yeah, you did. You said that t’me. You smelled scared, though. Knew you didn’t believe it. What you were sayin’. But I trusted you anyway. And then… and then…” Arnie swallows, and rubs at his eyes, and Tony’s heart plummets into his stomach.

Perpendicular to him, Bucky shifts. Tony can’t bring himself to look at him. He wants to disappear.

“Roth,” Tony bites out sharply. “Shut the fuck up.”

Words: 9,952

Steve Rogers’ birthday, Tony learns, is Independence Day.

“You’re joking,” Tony sputters, unwittingly, when Steve drops the news in casual conversation. He bites his cheek and swats at Bucky’s hand as it reaches from behind to pinch at his hip bone when Steve turns around to face him, his brow furrowed.

“What? No, I’m not joking. Why would I be joking?”

It’s late on Wednesday evening. The Brooklyn boys, ultimately deciding it was too warm to heat anything on the stove for supper, had pooled together their pocket change and set off for the nearest Horn & Hardart Automat.

“Horn and Who?” Tony had asked warily, albeit delighted, when a soot-smudged and bright-eyed Alpha appeared outside his window to whisk him away from his ivory Omega tower.

He had only dropped him off there earlier that week, two days prior. And he had seen him every night since.

“You’re sweet, you know that?” Bucky had replied, shifting his weight onto his forearms and leaning over Tony’s window to grin at him. “The automat, princess. Where us workin’ class-type go to pay ten cents for a sandwich when our butlers can’t be bothered to make one for us.”

Tony nodded sagely. “Sounds humbling.”

“Y’gonna come out here? Or am I gonna have to carry you down?”

“I’m all booked up tonight, sorry,” Tony sighed. He shoved his socked feet into his shoes and reached for his suspenders, dangling loosely at his waist, to pull each strap over his shoulders.  “I’ve got a swell date with my footman. He’s bringing hot pastrami on rye.”

Bucky laughed, loud and beautiful, and Tony’s stomach swooped. Somewhere down on the street below, a blonde Alpha groaned.

“For cryin’ out loud, can’t you two make moon eyes at each other later? I’m starvin’.”

“Aw, jeez. Shut your pie hole, Rogers. We’re comin’.”

Twenty minutes later, the young Alphas, hungry and irritable, bicker and grumble incessantly at each other as the trio slowly inch up a line stretched halfway down the block for their ten-cent suppers.

“We still haven’t even made it to one game this season, Rogers.”

“Last time I checked, Buck, I wasn’t the one pulling weekend shifts.”

“Don’t be a punk. I pick up Sunday doubles to help Nan and Pop with Becca’s tuition.”

“Not worth it,” Tony mumbles under his breath.

“Please. You were picking up Sundays so Hendricks would let you skip out early on Thursdays to chase skirts at Ruby’s.”

“Nice,” Tony says.

Bucky flicks Steve in the ear. “Quit bein’ a wiseass.” His tone is casual, but the scowl he delivers to his best friend over Tony’s head is dirty enough to send the angriest Nazi retreating with his tail between his legs.

He hooks his arm around Tony’s waist and rests his chin on the Omega’s head. Tony accepts his wordless apology easily and sags into the embrace, hoping his scent doesn’t show how secretly pleased he is to be touched like this in public. Bucky’s dating history is none of his business—besides, with how tactile Bucky’s been in the few short days since they started their…courtship? Entanglement?—anyone in a twenty-mile radius can smell Bucky’s unofficial claim on Tony like a forest signal fire.

Either way, he’s a silent sucker for the Alpha’s groveling.

Steve, to his credit, manages to look properly contrite as he casts an apologetic wince in Tony’s direction.

“I mean, not anymore, of course. Chasing skirts, and whatnot. Or, um—”

Tony snorts.

“The point is,” Steve continues haughtily. He begins waving his hands in the air for emphasis. “I’d be happy to go watch the Dodgers. I love the Dodgers. ‘The Pride of Brooklyn’, y’know? Let’s go Dodgers.”

Tony squints. “I don’t think anyone calls them that.”

Bucky yanks at Tony’s earlobe.

“I just don’t know if I want to spend my birthday at a baseball game.”

“But it’s a holiday,” Bucky points out, and the three boys shuffle up the sidewalk as the line slowly dwindles. Behind them, a surly Beta man in coveralls with grease stains on his fingertips occasionally leers in Tony’s direction. He smells like rotten seaweed and moldy plywood. Steve doesn’t seem to notice, too busy drowning under the plight of his current misfortunes, but Bucky shields Tony’s body with his own and keeps the Omega close. He keeps an arm slung around Tony’s chest, or a hand on his waist, or fingers curled around his hip. The primal, possessive creature inside of Tony thrums happily. “I don’t have work. You don’t have work. Tony doesn’t have work.”

“Hilarious,” says Tony.

“C’mon, Steve. Think about it. What’s more patriotic than baseball? America’s favorite pastime. Drinking shit beer and heckling the Phillies with my best pal—” he squeezes Tony’s waist “—and my best boy.”

My best boy.

Steve frowns again, and this time a crease forms between his eyebrows. “It just doesn’t seem right, I guess. Celebrating the country. While everyone else is off fighting for the country.”

“No need to be so contrite, Steve-o,” Tony says, reaching out and squeezing Steve’s bicep in sympathy. He hates it when Steve frowns, but more importantly, he hates that Steve continues to carry the incomprehensible weight of war-riddled guilt on his slight shoulders. “It’s just a birthday. Everyone has one; if I remember correctly, you even got me drunk and clobbered all of my shoes on the dance floor for mine.”

“You looked great.”

“Shaddup, Buck, I know I looked ridiculous,” Steve scoffs, face flaming.

“Wasn’t talking about you.”

Fifteen squabbling minutes later, they reach the front of the line. Steve admits that his birthday is the fourth of July—Tony guffaws, because of course Steve Rogers shares a birthday with Uncle Sam, the Star Spangled sap that he is —and Bucky orders Tony a hot pastrami on rye. When Tony tries pulling out his wallet, Bucky snatches it from his hands and tucks it into his own back pocket before Tony can even blink.

Eventually, once sandwiches find their way into the hands of cranky Alphas and appetites are satiated, the best friends manage to reach a compromise: they’ll attend the Dodgers game—it’s an afternoon game, anyway, and the Dodgers are having a stellar season, says Bucky, who apparently despises the Phillies with a vitriol Toby usually reserves for things like poetry class, and his mother’s homemade meatloaf—and then stick around Flatbush to watch the fireworks that night. Steve mentions something about a picnic blanket, and Bucky asks him if he’s going to weave his own wicker basket, too, and then Steve Rogers is wrangling Bucky Barnes into a headlock as Tony Stark happily munches on the worst sandwich he’s ever tasted.

Tony doesn’t mention that he has never watched the fireworks with anyone before or seen a baseball game; he's only listened to games on the radio with Ana (a devoted Yankees fan).

“Promised to buy me dinner, my ass,” Steve grumbles, wiping the crumbs of Bucky’s Reuben out of his hair. “I offered to cook tonight. That potato soup ma used t’make, with the onions. You liked ma’s soup.”

“Didn’t want no soup, Steve. S’too hot.”

“Dragged me out here… made me pay for my own damn sandwich…”

“—I told you I’d take you to dinner. Last time I checked, you made your own money, y’damsel.”

“Semantics. You bought Tony’s.”

“S’different. Gotta woo my fella.” To prove a point, Bucky hooks a finger into Tony’s belt loop and pulls him close until their chests are touching. He presses a light kiss to his nose. Tony blushes. “How’s the grub, doll?”

Tony feigns a sigh. “Passable. Don’t know what I’m going to tell Gaspard, he’ll be crushed.”

Bucky quirks a brow. “The footman?”

“Maybe. I’m still workshopping pretentious, self-absorbed French names. I’m open to suggestions.”

“Raoul,” Steve pipes in.

“Bertrand,” offers Bucky, voicd muffled around a stolen mouthful of Tony’s sandwich.

“Bertrand’s not French,” says Steve. “Is it?”

“You’re a real wisecrack today, you know that?”

“Bertrand’s French,” says Tony. “A snooty, French variation of ‘Bertram’. German.” He pauses, contemplative. “There’s a mathematician named Bertrand. I read his dissertation on non-Euclidean geometry back in grammar school. Not bad, if you don’t mind analyzing core mathematic principles served up with a heaping side of philosophical-yuppie-bullshit.”

“German?” Cries Steve, aghast.

“Love it when you start talkin’ etymology to me, honey,” Bucky husks into Tony’s ear, not bothering to drop his voice low enough to spare his best friend, who sputters indignantly in the background. Tony scoffs, amused, but Bucky smells like he means it: rich and tangy. Heady.

The warmth of it curls into his nostrils and settles pleasantly at the base of his spine. Tony tips his head back and grins at Bucky, eyelashes fluttering.

“‘Bertram’. Comes from the Old German words ‘beraht’ and ‘hram’. Means ‘bright raven’.” Tony’s taking the piss, honestly, but to his delight, he watches Bucky’s pupils dilate. “It’s very Shakespearean,” he finishes, a little out of breath.

“Jesus,” Steve mutters. “Get a room.”

“Don’t mind if we do,” Bucky snarks back, slipping his hand into Tony’s and tossing their trash into the nearest bin. “What time’s curfew, darlin’?” Like he doesn’t know.

“Uh. seven? Room checks are tonight.” Tony’s tongue feels dry in his mouth. Bucky’s looking at him the way he does when he—

“Great. Wanna go fool around?”

“I hate you guys,” says Steve, dropping his head into his hands. “I need new friends. Single friends. Beta friends…”

Tony’s lips twitch. “Yeah. Okay.”

“Spend the night.”

Tony pokes his tongue into his cheek to suppress his smile. “I can’t.”

“Sure you can. We’ll sneak out after curfew. I can have you back before the sun’s even up. No one would ever know.”

“I’m on thin ice. My room smells like you. Every week at room check, Tompkins sniffs around like a Basset Hound, hoping to find my secret rotating horde of Alpha lovers hiding in the closet.”

“Oh, yeah?” Bucky grins. “Who else do you keep on deck?”

Tony crumples his ethics homework into a ball and playfully lobs it at Bucky’s head. It bounces off the Alpha’s forehead and he catches it in his hands, cackling. He’s sprawled out on Tony’s bed, looking devilishly handsome and entirely too irresistible in the harsh fluorescent lighting of the Omega’s small dormitory.

“Humphrey Bogart. Lou Costello. That guy at the bodega in Gowanus who calls me ‘angel face’.”

“Knew I outta be worried about that guy. Looked far too pleased with himself to just be sellin’ you some canned vegetables.”

“Have to keep my roster fresh. In case my current rotation gets bored of me.”

Tony’s joking, mostly—mostly?—and he’s still smiling because Bucky does that to him. Makes him grin until his cheeks hurt, these past few days. He’s scribbling some nonsense onto a piece of paper so that he has something to turn in for class tomorrow—it’s not like he’s done an Ethics reading since he was sixteen, anyway, and he’s fully prepared to fail his final exam next week because who cares, honestly—but Bucky’s behind him, suddenly. He stands at Tony’s desk chair, wrapping his arms around Tony’s chest and pulling the Omega back against him. He leans down a bit, resting his chin on Tony’s head.

“Hi,” Tony says quietly. He feels Bucky’s heartbeat against his shoulder blades.

“Hi,” Bucky says back. He presses his lips to the crown of Tony’s head.

Despite Bucky’s jab at Steve earlier, the two of them haven’t done much fooling around since that fateful, heated morning in Bucky’s bed. True to his word, Bucky accepted Tony’s tentative approval of their courtship like a gentleman. He kept him close all weekend and doted on him—tending to his bruises and staying a noble three steps ahead of his seemingly predictable, blubbering outbursts.

Tony wept incessantly for two straight days, leaving him both outraged and deeply mortified. Regardless of his most valiant efforts, even the tiniest action seemed to trigger waterworks.

He cried on the telephone when he called Jarvis. He cried when Steve cooked him breakfast in the morning, and when Bucky pulled him into the shower and washed his hair—both boys in their underclothes—intimate and gentle and nonsexual. He even shed tears when Steve returned from the dry cleaners Sunday evening, carrying Tony’s godawful suit.

“Aw, Christ,” Tony gritted out, pressing his palms into his eyes to stave off the familiar burning pressure. He didn’t know how he had any tears left to spare, good God. “Thanks, Steve. Just—you could’ve tossed it in the trash. Or—I don’t know, burned it. Fed it to the pigeons, or something.”

“It’s a nice suit,” Steve protested, a little stunned and a lot wary. He cast a panicked look at Bucky, who was observing the unfolding situation with amusement from the kitchen table, casually biting into an apple. “It doesn’t… it’s as good as new. It doesn’t even smell like that Alpha, anymore. Honest.”

“Swell,” Tony said, voice wavering dangerously.

And then he started weeping.

“Sweetheart,” Bucky crooned. He pulled Tony into his lap and wrapped his arms around his midsection. “Of course we’ll get rid of it. Maybe we’ll spare the pigeons, though. I bet there are plenty of hungry termites in Brooklyn.”

“Buck,” said Steve, appalled.

“I don’t know what’s wrong with me,” Tony wailed. “M’so embarrassed. I’m not usually like this, I swear it. I just—I feel insane.”

“You’re perfect. Everything’s perfect,” Bucky said consolingly, hugging him tighter. “You’re letting go of eighteen years of shitty, repressed emotions. I’m surprised you haven’t tried to sock one of us in the face yet.” Bucky gestured to his roommate, who was stealthily hanging the suit on the far-facing side of the coat rack. “When Steve’s ma died, he got so drunk on Jim Beam; I found him passed out on the side of the road outside the cemetery. Had to throw him over my shoulder and carry him three miles home. Halfway there, he threw up down my back.”

“It’s true,” Steve said sagely. “And Bucky bawled like a baby the night we moved Becca into The Institute.”

“She was cryin’ all over me, begging me to take her home. She’s my baby sister, it was brutal.”

On Sunday night, he and Bucky finally went out. Bucky took him to a cozy mom-and-pop diner—somewhere he used to frequent with his parents after church on weekends. He held Tony’s hand, and paid for his food (much to Tony’s protest), and when they got back to the apartment, James Barnes pushed Tony up against the threshold of the doorway and kissed him like it was the one thing he was put on this Earth to do.

Bucky gripped his waist with one hand and cradled his cheek with the other and slicked his mouth over Tony’s with a spiritual sort of reverence. Tony, useless as always, sagged, his eyes fluttering shut as he choked out a desperate whimper. Bucky responded with a low chuckle of his own that carried an unmistakable sense of dominance, hauntingly Alpha.

He rewarded the Omega by sinfully curling his tongue around Tony’s own and Tony shuddered and sighed as he was greeted with a familiar roaring in his ears and a soft buzzing under his skin, his submissive instincts kicking into overdrive as he succumbed to Bucky’s unhurried, devout ministrations. His glands throbbed in a way that had him squirming and shuddering, and when Bucky’s thumb trailed delicately against the suck mark on his neck, he almost keened.

Bucky responded by pushing into the bruise harder and growling into Tony’s mouth.

“Good boy.”

Tony moaned lowly.

It was dangerous, the effect that Bucky Barnes had on Tony’s physical being. He found himself unable to do anything but submit as he yielded over control of the kiss, happily allowing Bucky to assert control in a way that felt so simple, so innate, it made his toes curl.

“James? Is that you?”

Bucky ripped his mouth from Tony’s and pushed him behind his body, Tony stumbling with the grace and discretion of a newborn animal. He latched onto the back of Bucky’s shirt for purchase, sucking oxygen into his lungs to put out the fire in his blood.

“Mrs. Lombardi,” Bucky croaked, before clearing his throat. “Hi, yeah, hello. It’s just me.”

Bucky’s elderly neighbor narrowed her eyes as she peered at the two of them from her doorway down the dimly lit hallway, three rooms away. “Is that Steven with you?”

Tony pressed his forehead into Bucky’s back and bit down on his lip to stifle his laughter. Bucky reached behind and gave his waist a warning squeeze.

“Not Steve, ma’am. This is Tony. My, uh… cousin.”

Tony almost choked on his spit.

And because he’s a terrible person, he stepped out from behind Bucky, nodding.

“On his mother’s side,” he improvised. “From Indiana.”

Bucky’s lips pressed together tightly, his mouth twitching. “Uh-huh. Visiting for the summer.”

“Oh, how wonderful,” Mrs. Lombardi gushed.

“Isn’t it swell?” said Tony, grinning.

Bucky dropped Tony off at school early Monday morning before his shift at the docks. He followed him through his window, cornered him against Arnie’s bedpost, and kissed him slowly (and far too indecently for six in the morning) before promising to stop by after work.

“You don’t have to do that,” Tony objected weakly, chasing Bucky’s lips as the Alpha moved to pull away.

“Want to,” Bucky murmured, conceding. He curled his tongue around Tony’s and stole the protest from his mouth; Tony’s hitched whine tugging the corners of his mouth upward. “Goin’ steady, remember? I’m tryin’ to win you over.”

“Uh-huh.” Tony’s next breath tripped into a staggered moan as Bucky fisted his fingers into Tony’s unruly hair and sucked at the hinge of his jaw. His eyes rolled back in his head, hips stuttering for desperate purchase against Bucky’s firm, unyielding body. The hard outline of Bucky’s erection against his belly was a teasing, familiar presence after a weekend of sharing a twin bed—though, like usual, the Alpha seemed perfectly content to ignore his own arousal.

“You’re gonna leave marks,” Tony griped with all the conviction of an incensed Labrador. Bucky’s teeth dragged across his pulse point and Tony’s bones pulverized to dust, his head lolling back as if his spine had vanished inside his body. The only thing keeping him from braining himself on the wooden railing was a firm set of fingers urging his chin back in place.

“Babydoll,” Bucky husked into Tony’s jaw, grinning wickedly. Practically sinking his molars into Tony’s strangled mewl. “How am I s’pposed to leave you, huh? All dizzy and sweet for me like this.”

The air that Tony sucked into his lungs tasted like Bucky. It made his vision soft around the edges. “Gonna skip morning classes. Jerk off until I cry.” He swallowed audibly. “Or pass out. Maybe both. Then I’ll probably sleep ’til noon.” With his eyes glazed and his inhibitions ash, Tony hardly registered the candor spilling out of his mouth. He was so pent up he could combust.

Because it was the truth—while the near-constant physical contact Bucky offered over the past few days worked wonders in stabilizing his wonky, imbalanced hormones, all the exposure to the Alpha’s pheromones had also worked him up beyond belief. At this point, he was pretty sure he could come at the drop of a hat, if Bucky commanded it.

Bucky bit out a curse, his scent spiking sharp. He pressed his thumb into Tony’s bottom lip and Tony, feeling petulant and turned on and ten million other things, bit down on the digit. Bucky’s gaze turned molten.

“Good,” Bucky swallowed, throat bobbing.“You deserve it. Better be thinking of me, though.” He pulled away, but not before one last tug to Tony’s bottom lip. Eyes blazing. “You can tell me all about it tonight.”

“Roger Barnes?”

Steve flushes crimson, swiping the selective service card out of Tony’s hands. The ink from the "4-F” stamp smears on Tony’s fingers, still fresh.

“I’m running out of options, alright? I tried ‘Grant Stevens ’ just last month.”

“Ahh. Very stealthy, Nancy Drew.” Tony reclines, releasing a puff of smoke into the cloudless sky above. “Congrats on the impending nuptials, by the way. Where should I expect a wedding invitation from, Washington Heights?”

Steve squints down at the form. “Er, no. Bayonne.”

“NEW JERSEY?” Tony cries, scandalized. He pushes himself up on his elbows, cigarette dangling loosely from his lips. “Hate to say it, pal, but it’s no wonder they rejected you this time. Not even Nazis are afraid of schmucks from ‘The Garden State’.”

Steve is smiling again.

Jackpot.

“Now you’re just bein’ mean. You’re uninvited from me and Buck’s wedding.”

“Shame,” Tony sighs. “I would have made the most fetching flower girl.”

“The mouthiest one, maybe.”

“Since when are they mutually exclusive?”

“Aren’t you supposed t’be studying?” Steve reaches for Tony’s long-discarded, school-issued study guide and flips to a page of practice questions. “You’re distractin’ me. We’re supposed to be going over…” he flips to another page and makes a vaguely constipated face. “…‘The Art and Duty of Childrearing’. Hell, is this actually one of your classes?”

Tony’s eyes roll back so far into his skull that he can see his brain.“Go on, then. Let’s review all the ways Mother Nature has blessed my fertile, bountiful womb.”

It’s warm outside, reminiscent of the first day Tony decided to bask in the sunlight on top of an old brick studio in downtown Brooklyn. Just like that first Thursday day, he lies on his back, his shirt untucked, collar unbuttoned, his cheeks turning pink from the sun. 

Just like that day, he inhales small doses of oil paint, and charcoal, and turpentine, and lets the safe, tangy aroma of his friend’s pheromones soothe the jagged edges of his anxiety. Where the low hum of a trusted Alpha's voice—an Alpha he cares about—makes his eyelids droop and his spine soften.

And this time, he lets himself float a little. In a quiet, submissive space.

Or he would, perhaps. If Steve Rogers wasn’t so determined to disrupt his feeble grasp of serenity with questions about his—

“—endometrial lining? This certainly doesn’t seem relevant,” Steve mutters, scratching the back of his neck and peering down at Tony’s study packet as if it were written in Latin. “Are you sure this is yours?”

“Do you reckon the childbirth chapter for fellas would offer better insight?”

It’s not like he was even carrying around his final exam guides for these absurd classes on purpose, mind you. But Rebecca Barnes had cornered him during yesterday’s mealtime, halfway to hysteria with a crazed look in her eye, demanding a study partner since ‘None of the girls would partner with her, not since Sally Mendelsohn told the entire grade that she had been disguising dirty messages in her needlepoint using Morse code.’

“Have you?” Tony asked, impressed.

“It doesn’t matter!” Becca cried. “Sally’s a rotten busybody who wouldn’t know romance if it bit her on her stupid, powdered nose. She wishes she had a fella to send suggestive handkerchiefs to.”

It didn’t matter that he reminded her—repeatedly—that he had never once studied for an Institute exam during his two years of enrollment. His professors would pass him anyway; no one would risk holding back Howard Stark’s pain-in-the-ass son. In fact, Tony had it on good authority that most of the staff were anxiously ticking off his remaining days as a student on their desk calendars.

Becca had stuffed the study guide into his satchel anyway and called him a spoiled swine.

“Some of us can’t risk summer school in this loony bin. Quiz me, before I tell Jamie you’re being a real cad.”

Steve only found the stupid thing because he was digging around Tony’s satchel for a pencil. Which, you know, Tony had so generously offered him in the first place.

Nosy, meddlesome Alpha.

“Rogers, if you care about me at all, you’ll stop using the words ‘gland secretion’ in my presence.”

His complaint falls on deaf ears. Steve scans a paragraph—with excessive concentration, if the lines on his forehead are any indication—mumbles something under his breath, and makes a pencil notation onto the paper.

“Are you… correcting my ‘Art and Duty of Childrearing’ study guide? God, enough of this bullshit. We’re supposed to be criticizing your reckless life choices right now. And your clearly misguided death wish. And how all of this contributes to a self-sacrificial disposition that is, frankly, alarming.” Tony sits up and snatches the packet out of Steve’s hands. “We’re going to have a safe, wonderful time. Contributing here. On home soil. Pinning up posters and, I don’t know, helping old Roosevelt sell war bonds.”

“Oh yeah?” Steve replies. He’s biting back a smile, even if he smells a little sad. “How are we plannin’ on doing that?”

“Betty Grable auctioned off her stockings at a rally last month for forty thousand. How much do you think my tightie whities will go for?”

“I’m not answerin’ that.”

"What happened to that steadfast patriotism, Lieutenant Liberty?”

“Jesus, Tony. These nicknames keep getting worse and worse.”

Tony shrugs, stubbing out his cigarette. “Don’t be a drip, that one was catchy. You already shot down ‘Sergeant Spangles’.”

“That’s Bucky’s ranking. Why not sic him with some dorky comic book alias?”

“How many times do I have to remind you that comic books are neat, Rogers? Not dorky. Stop insulting my prized collectibles, or we’re going to have a separate problem. Y’know what’s dorky? Naming each of your acrylic paints after famous New York landmarks. How is ‘Coney Island’ yellow?”

“It felt right! You told me you thought it was sweet, jerk!”

Tony does think it’s sweet. Tony thinks everything about Steve Rogers is sweet, and safe, and wonderful, and Tony can’t even begin to fathom sending Steve off to war because that would also mean thinking about sending Bucky off to war. And that is an entirely different beast of a problem that Tony’s not ready to poke at with a thirty-foot stick.

“I think some shade names deserve careful reconsideration, that’s all.”

“We’ve already talked about this. I’m not calling my brown paint ‘Tony Stark’s Eyes’”.

“Well, pardon me, Rembrandt. It beats ‘Bronx Zoo’. Do you know what I envision? Mud. Screaming children. Animal crap.”

They’re still bickering half-heartedly when the rooftop door creaks open and Bucky slips through, looking handsome and work-weary and sending Tony’s heart tripping pathetically in his chest. Not unlike their very first encounter. Or any of their subsequent encounters.

“I can hear you two blathering on halfway down the block,” Bucky says, sending them both a look of mock exasperation. He crouches in front of Tony and ruffles his hair. Tony swats the intrusion away without any gusto, pretending he hasn’t been keening for the Alpha’s touch all day. Bucky links their fingers together instead and kisses the back of his hand.

“Welcome home, honey,” Tony says drily. “Thoughts on selling my underwear for war bonds?”

“Very noble. S’this a private bidding?”

Steve’s subsequent eye-roll is so delicious Tony can taste it.

They don’t go to Ruby’s. Bucky’s too tired, and Steve’s too cranky, and Tony’s too hungry. They end up at some seedy Irish pub that doesn’t blink twice at Tony’s designation (small mercies), and Tony feasts quietly on Shepherd’s Pie while Bucky drinks a Guinness and plays footsie with him under the bar.

“There’s nothin’ wrong with staying here, Stevie. We have this same conversation every week. Plenty to do to help out without getting yourself killed.”

“Easy for you t’say,” Steve mutters. He’s only halfway through his own beer but more than halfway to being tipsy. “You enlisted. We both enlisted. Tried to, anyway. Enlist.”

“Yeah, well,” Bucky finishes his pint and licks the foam off his upper lip, pushing the glass out of reach in frustration. “Priorities have changed. If I could do things differently, I would.”

Tony shovels a large forkful of pie into his mouth and chews slowly, staring at his plate with fixed intensity.

“They’d take you anyway,” Steve grumbles. “Sergeant Barnes. Whole army’s probably filled with guys like you. Real Alphas.”

“You’re being a real asshole, y’know that?” Bucky replies. He snatches Steve’s beer from his grasp. “You’re cut off. Here, doll.” He pushes the glass in Tony’s direction. “Put me outta my fuckin’ misery.”

Tony scrunches his nose. “Don’t love a stout, personally.”

Steve steals his beer back and sulks.

“They don’t want me either, Stevie,” Tony tries to offer his consolation around a mouthful of mashed potatoes. “Not even as a nurse. Or, I don’t know, a French prostitute. Like the rest of the Omegas. Not that I’d make much of a healthcare provider.”

“I know,” Steve says miserably. “I watch you try to feed the rest of your paracetamol to Mrs. Lombardi’s cat.”

Tony grimaces.

“Jury’s still out on the French prostitute, though,” Bucky says. “Could definitely picture you in some nice lace garters.” He winks, and Tony’s cheeks flame as he’s reduced to a puddle of goo.

“Anyway,” Tony coughs. He waves his fork in the air. “Fuck ‘em. We don’t need ‘em.” He purposefully does not let his mind wander to a specific set of pencil-sketched blueprints sitting in some government-sealed folder on Howard’s desk.

Bucky reaches out to stroke his thumb over Tony’s warm cheek. “Their loss. No Germans would be a match for this big, beautiful brain.” Bucky is smirking, but he says it softly, meaningfully, and it’s a touch too honest for this shitty pub. Tony almost swoons into his pie.

“Don’t forget my dashing good looks,” Tony says stupidly, instead.

“Couldn’t forget those if I tried.”

“M’leaving,” Steve says, draining the last of his stout and tossing a couple of coins down onto the bartop. He stumbles out of his stool, and Tony watches him warily. “I’m behind on next week’s mockups. And I promised Missus O’Doyle I’d check on her kids before bed; she’s workin’ late tonight.”

Tony watches him with a frown. The Alpha smells dejected and sullen, and the pheromones make his nose twitch. He folds his hands in his lap and tries to ignore the impulses that tell him to reach out and provide comfort, like a good little caretaker.

“I’ll see you on Monday? I promised to reassemble your toaster. Not that it’s… irreversibly damaged, or anything.” Saturday evening’s check-in phone call with Jarvis had left Tony feeling fidgety. He was alone in the apartment—the Alphas had gone to pick up groceries for supper to give Tony a bit of privacy—and the nearest kitchen appliance immediately fell victim to his oldest anxious habit.

When the roommates returned thirty minutes later, they found Tony sprawled out on the floor, surrounded by wires, a screwdriver in hand, his brow furrowed in concentration.

“I’m reconfiguring its heating elements to create a signal that can, uh, disrupt nearby radio frequencies. It’s made of nichrome, so it’s pretty easy to repurpose the material to create electromagnetic interference. Once I modify the power source, it’ll oscillate at radio frequencies instead of, y’know, heating up. ” Tony explained sheepishly. “A portable signal jammer, if you want to get technical. Sorry about the mess. And your toaster. It was kind of a piece of junk, anyway.” He paused his ramblings. “Nope, didn’t mean that. It’s a lovely appliance. I’m certain it’s performed its job dutifully over the years, producing many slices of golden-brown Wonder Bread. I’ll fix it—maybe? I hope you both aren’t too sentimentally attached to it."

Bucky knelt on the floor in front of Tony’s mess of bolts and scrap metal. “We leave you alone for half an hour, and you get bored enough to commit espionage in our kitchen?” He swiped at Tony’s chin with his thumb to remove a rogue oil smudge, eyes crinkling with mirth. Meanwhile, Steve held up the homemade contraption and inspected it as if it were something sacred and not just something Tony hastily soldered together with a Zippo he found on Bucky’s nightstand.

Tony rubbed at the back of his neck. “Nothing that fun. Best case scenario, it’ll work for localized interference. The radius is way too much to cause significant damage, given that it’s a… toaster. I already tested it out on nearby coms, and was able to intercept the local police station. Also, your neighbor’s episode of Stella Dallas.”

Steve leaves the bar with a lukewarm wave and a smile that doesn’t reach his eyes, and Bucky squeezes Tony’s knee under the bar top as he promises his roommate that he won’t be too far behind.

“He gets like this, sometimes,” Bucky says. He waves down the bartender to close out his tab, pulling bills out of his wallet. “He gets so caught up in the injustice of it all, of being turned away, that he doesn’t realize they’re savin’ his life. Sometimes, I wish they’d stamp his damn form just to shut him up. And that the war would wrap up before he realized what he was signin’ himself up for.” Bucky rakes his fingers through his hair, stirring a twinge of sympathy in Tony as he suddenly notices how exhausted the Alpha looks.

“I wouldn’t be able to think straight if I knew he was over there. Kid’s got a chronic illness for every damn letter of the alphabet. It’s bad enough to know that I’ll be leavin’ my own people behind, eventually. But at least… it’s safe here. And he’ll have you.” Bucky gives him a tired, crooked smile. The private one he reserves for Tony. “I have no doubt you two knuckleheads can find enough trouble to get into in Brooklyn without giving the Europeans their own headache.”

Tony considers this for a moment. “Hearing ‘no’ all the time is one thing. It becomes a pretty strong incentive to get the same stubborn jackasses to change their mind and start saying ‘yes’.” He pushes a few peas around his plate with his fork. “Choosing to say ‘no’ for yourself is a privilege, I think. For some people. Like… Steve.”

Bucky—who lives rent-free in Tony’s incessant inner monologue, apparently—hums quietly.

“Let’s get you home, gorgeous.”

“What’s the point?” Tony bemoans, sliding off his stool with the swiftness of a drunken sloth. “I’ve already missed curfew. Byron probably assumes I’m out cavorting with my secret harem.”

“I’ve already told you that you can spend the night. Offer still stands, don’t have to ask twice.”

Tony feels something warm pooling at the base of his spine. Bucky has extended some variation of this invitation to him every night this week, and while Tony keeps deflecting, the allure remains strong.

“Thought you were trying to make an honest Omega out of me, Barnes?”

“Come with me to the restroom, and I’ll make an honest Omega outta you right now.”

Tony doesn’t need to be told twice.

It’s not the most romantic spot, truthfully, to fool around, but Tony Stark has allowed Bucky to kiss him in secluded alleyways that smell a little like dumpster and against splintered doorways that dig into his back, so he’s not overly picky.

So when Bucky gets his hands on Tony’s waist and his mouth on his throat the way that makes him go fuzzy in the head, Tony almost forgets that they’re surrounded by leaking faucets and suspiciously stained urinals.

Almost.

“What if—oh—someone walks in?” he gasps, referring to the four (maybe five, if he’s being generous) other patrons currently occupying the establishment.

“Then they’ll get dinner and a show,” Bucky rasps. He captures Tony’s mouth again before the Omega can squawk in protest and Tony grips his belt for purchase, his whole body useless and pliant. His response to Bucky is always easy and physical, preparing itself for any likely scenario—the warm coiling in his belly and rush of slick that graces his underwear reminding him that yes, that scenario could easily include a random toilet in some sleazy Brooklyn pub.

Bucky always kisses Tony like he has all the time in the world to do so. The intensity changes, as does the urgency, but Tony’s learning that he likes these kisses with Bucky best. Deep, slow. Hard and bruising. The flat of his tongue curling around Tony’s and caressing his own like he’s trying to swallow the sighs and moans right out of the Omega’s throat.

Bucky takes and Tony gives, as much as he can, and he’s rewarded with the glorious ebb and flow of the Alpha’s heady scent. Encasing Tony in a fog thick enough to suffocate him.

“You smell so good,” Bucky growls, voice low. His warm breath fans across Tony’s cheek. “Jesus. Why do you smell so fuckin’ good?”

“That would be eau de toilette. Try not to inhale any more bleach; I think it’s messing with your synapses.” It’s unfair, really, because Bucky smells delectable, too. Practically indecent, really, for a public restroom.

There’s a predatory gleam to the Alpha’s eye that makes Tony think that he won’t be leaving the building with his dignity (or his underwear) intact, and Bucky’s grip tightens on his hip as he moves to drop his mouth back onto Tony’s, but they’re both interrupted, suddenly.

A small, choked sob echoes from stall behind them.

Both boys freeze instantly.

“Did you hear th—” Bucky starts, and Tony slaps a hand over his mouth. His heart takes a stuttering, stacatto beat in his chest.

Another stifled sob. This one louder than the previous.

And there’s no way that Tony isn’t the one hallucinating this time—that he isn’t the one who inhaled too many floor-cleaning chemicals—because he knows the source of that blubbering. He could recognize it in his sleep.

His poker face must be utter shit, because Bucky looks at him in alarm. “Do you know him?” he asks, his hands trailing down to Tony’s elbows. Steadying him.

Tony swallows audibly. “No. Nope.”

A loud, wet sniffle chimes in from the stall.

“Tony?”

Tony curses.

Bucky’s hand tightens on his arm. Tony drops his head to the wall behind him, letting it thump against the wood paneling. He closes his eyes and curses the constant, relentless situational irony that seems to plague his life.

“Arnie?” Tony replies. He scrubs a hand over his face. “S’that you, Roth?”

Please be wrong, please be wrong, please be wrong, please be wrong—

“Hi, Tony,” the voice hiccups. Then, from the seclusion of the corner bathroom stall where he’s huddled away, Arnie Roth bursts into tears.

Tony stares at the ceiling helplessly.

Bucky cocks an eyebrow and turns his head to face Arnie’s outburst. His gaze darts between Tony and Tony’s weeping roommate. Whatever he sees in Tony’s face must make him hesitate, however, and something heartbreakingly gentle slashes across his own features.

Feeling raw and all sorts of strange, he pulls out of Bucky’s embrace and strides over to the stall. “Roth?” He raps his knuckles on the door. “Roth, I can see you sitting down there. Not very seemly, by the way. Probably getting all sorts of weird stains on those nice slacks of yours.”

“M’okay,” the Omega says wobbly. “Floor’s clean.”

Tony’s nose wrinkles. He narrowly avoids stepping on a piece of toilet roll. “Think we have slightly different hygienic standards, but, alright. Sure. Wanna open up?”

He waits. Nothing happens.

He turns to Bucky and shrugs.

“I tried,” he mouths.

Bucky sends him an exasperated look. He’s still standing in the corner of the restroom, guarding the door. Giving Tony space.

Giving Arnie space.

Tony rolls his eyes. He knocks on the door again.

“C’mon, Arnie. Can’t a fella say hi to his favorite roommate?”

“I was your only roommate,” Arnie sniffs primly. “Your favorite roommate was yourself.”

Bucky’s mouth quirks.

Miraculously, the stall door clicks open.

Arnie Roth is as drunk as a skunk. His eyes are glazed with tears and intoxication; his clothes are wrinkled, and he sits with his bony arms wrapped around his knees. His skin is as sunken and pallid as a ghost, and he reeks of booze and distress and Tony fights the instinctual urge to recoil.

“Hey, pal,” Tony says instead. “You look great.” The acid in his stomach does somersaults, urging him to get lost and seek immediate comfort in the arms of his Alpha. He wants to pull his own hair out. He wants to spit the terrible taste in his mouth onto the floor. “How’s the bender?”

Arnie groans and drops his forehead onto the rim of the open toilet. Delightful.

“M’drunk,” he says miserably.

“Uh-huh, I can see that,” Tony replies, whipping around and shooting a frantic look at Bucky. He doesn’t know what sort of desperation he’s signaling, precisely, but Bucky’s locking the restroom door and standing over his shoulder in an instant. Tony can smell the exact moment Bucky perceives Arnie in all his boozed-up glory—an Omega reacting to another Omega’s distress is one thing; an Alpha reacting to an Omega’s distress is an entirely different innate, primal beast.

“Jesus,” Bucky mutters.

Even Arnie swims through his inebriated stupor long enough to latch onto Bucky’s pheromones. He squints at the intrusion, nostrils flaring. 

“Alpha?” He mumbles.

“Not quite,” Tony bites out. He edges closer to Bucky until his shoulder blade presses into the Alpha’s sternum. Bucky grazes his knuckles against the small of his back.“Where’s… Marcus?”

Arnie frowns. “Michael?”

“Sure. Him.”

Arnie groans and drops his head back onto the toilet bowl. The unexpected pull drags the wrinkled collar of his shirt downward, revealing the pale, veiny stretch of his neck.

Tony chokes on a high-pitched, strained whine that punches out of his lungs when he’s met with the sight of Arnie’s mating bite. Red, tender. Fresh. Something ugly and visceral pools in his gut and blood pounds in his ears, hot and heavy like thunder.

He tries to stagger back, but his feet won’t move. His hand instinctively twitches for his own throat before he aborts the movement. He feels the burn of Arnie’s mating bite as if it has been seared onto his own flesh. Hot and blistering, like a brand.

For better or for worse, Tony made a conscious effort to avoid thinking about Arnie after his sixteen-year-old roommate was pulled from school. Two months earlier, Arnie’s situation served as both a cautionary tale and a sobering reminder. If Tony wasn’t vigilant, if he didn’t play his cards right, he risked becoming Arnie: stripped of his own choices, forced to bond with some undesirable outcast for whatever social, political, or financial gain his parents deemed fit.

A distant, logical part of Tony knew what Arnie’s fate had in store. He knew that Arnie would go home, succumb to his heat, and emerge several days later biologically linked to an Alpha. He sat through class. He skimmed the textbooks. He knew the science.

He detached himself from Arnie because it didn’t matter that Arnie was the only other male Omega Tony had ever known. They weren’t the same. Tony wasn’t weak like Arnie; he wasn’t compliant like Arnie; he wasn’t going to roll over and show his belly to the first Alpha his parents threw at him. 

And then Tony met Bucky.

And Bucky pressed his thumb into Tony’s unblemished mating gland and whispered soft promises into the base of his throat, and Tony could almost picture the Alpha’s canines sinking into the skin and he wanted it, in that moment. He wanted it more than he had ever wanted anything, more than he ever even knew he could want. His teeth ached with it.

And suddenly that unfathomable, corporeal promise of bonding didn’t feel so abhorrent. His desires didn’t feel like a consequence of his biology. Tony simply craved, without worrying about the repercussions. And for a few quiet, peaceful moments, his desire didn’t feel like something he had to fight.

Tony wonders if Arnie had wanted it. At the height of his heat, most likely fogged up and overwhelmed by pheromones, controlled by pleasure and need, he felt like he wanted it, too. At least for a moment.

Tony stares at Arnie’s mating bite and it taunts him like a punishment. A cruel reminder of Tony’s ugliest insecurities, his projections onto the Omega boy in front of him who didn’t deserve Tony’s internal scorn just because Tony couldn’t come to terms with his own bleak kismet.

Bucky releases a low rumble, and his hand drifts up to barely ghost the back of Tony’s neck. The Alpha’s pheromones pierce the bathroom to cloud Tony’s own—a terrible concoction of confusion, anxiety, and ill-timed arousal in response to his momentary lapse in judgement.

“Dinner. We were at dinner. ‘Cross the street. Down the street? Dunno,” Arnie slurs. He rubs a palm across his clammy forehead. “Ran into… his friends. From work. They joined. Ignored me. Which is fine. They were borin’.” A loud sniffle. “Had to use the men’s room, but they wouldn’t… wouldn’t let me in, without Michael. Without m’Alpha. ‘An he was busy. So I left. T’find a different bathroom. Didn’t even… didn’t even notice, I don’t think.”

Like most public places requiring Tony to have a chaperone after his presentation, it’s not uncommon for upscale establishments to require male Omegas to be accompanied to and from restrooms. For the Omega's safety and to avoid distracting other male patrons, which is straight crock, mind you, and Tony would sometimes just like to take a piss in peace, thank you very much.

“Ended up here. And… and I was alone. No Michael. Some men were real nice ‘an bought me drinks ‘an stuff. Said I was real pretty.”

“I’ll bet,” Tony grumbles.

“Dunno… dunno what happened. Never drank before. Wasn’t ‘llowed. Dunno if—if I like it. Tastes weird. Head hurts. Stomach hurts.”

And then Arnie’s yacking into the toilet.

Tony lurches forward, throwing himself to his knees to sweep the younger Omega’s hair back as he empties his guts and sorrows into the basin. Bucky curses and kneels next to Tony, rubbing a hand up and down Arnie’s sweat-drenched back.

“That’s it, pal," Bucky murmurs gently. His voice is a soft hum, mirroring the tone he used with Tony when Tony broke down blubbering over something inconsequential during the weekend, and Tony shudders instinctively. Even though he isn’t the one retching up cheap liquor. “Easy, that’s it. Get it all out.”

Arnie trembles beneath their grip, and Tony does his best to refrain from wincing as he blinks up at the ceiling and wonders how he went from necking with Bucky against the wall to holding his vomitous ex-roommate in his arms in a matter of minutes.

Bucky continues to soothe Arnie as the younger boy heaves and sobs, muttering gentle encouragements that make Tony feel bizarrely territorial. He bottles up his horrifically misplaced envy as best as he can while pushing Arnie’s bangs off his forehead, as this is clearly not the time, but the look Bucky shoots him over Arnie’s slumped body lets him know that the Alpha can detect it.

Bucky’s lips twitch and Tony stabs his tongue into his cheek and recognizes quickly that the two of them are completely ill-equipped to handle a situation of this emotional magnitude.

He wishes Steve were here.

“Where’s Matthew now?” Tony asks the ceiling.

“Michael,” Bucky interjects.

“No clue. Prolly out lookin’ for me.” Arnie says, and then pukes some more. Bucky grimaces and pats the Omega on the back. Tony glares at his hand.

“How long have you been hiding in your porcelain tower, Rapunzel?”

Arnie groans and bats Tony’s hand away. “T’many questions. No more questions.”

Bucky takes over. He pulls Tony away and pushes his palm for Arnie’s forehad. Arnie sags. “C’mon, Arnie. Help us out here, you’re doin’ so well. How long ago did you leave the restaurant, kid?”

The Omega whimpers. Tony feels like strangling something.

Or drowning his ex-roommate in the toilet.

Bucky, to his infinite credit, shoots him an apologetic look over his shoulder. Tony glares back.

“Not that long. Maybe… maybe that long. Like, twenty minutes?” Arnie pauses for several seconds. “Oh, no. S’not right. Maybe an’ hour. Or longer.”

“Fabulous,” Tony says.

“We need to find his Alpha,” Bucky says, always the voice of reason. “But I don’t wanna leave him like this.” He’s still holding Arnie upright. Tony resists the urge to grind his molars.

“I don’t… I’m not sure what he looks like. I never met him, or anything,” He says uselessly.

“I’m not leavin’ you here either, sweet boy.” Nothing about Tony feels particularly sweet at the moment, but the endearment is an olive branch to Tony’s hostile body language, so he accepts it begrudgingly. Bucky’s smooth Brooklyn drawl is an easy weakness of his. “We’ll wait ’til he sobers up a little. It’ll help, getting it out of his system.”

“Thank you,” Tony says instead. It comes out as a whisper. He’s sitting on the floor now, cleanliness be damned. His energy has been fully zapped. He gestures to Arnie vaguely. “For… you know.”

Bucky’s expression morphs into something soft, something belongs to Tony and Tony alone. Tony holds it close to his chest. “Don’t have to thank me, doll. What were we gonna do, leave him?”

In response, Arnie echoes something unintelligible into the toilet and then: “Don’ leave me. Feels nice. You feel nice.”

Tony snorts. “I take it back. That’s enough acts of service for one day.”

Bucky’s frowning at Arnie now. “What’s his Alpha like?” He whispers.

Tony shrugs. “Older. Teacher. Has kids, if I remember. Liable for negligence, clearly.”

“How much older?”

Tony picks at a loose thread on his pants. “Late thirties? Early forties, maybe? Could’ve been worse.” It’s the truth.

Bucky says nothing for a long moment. And then: “He’s bonded.”

Tony nods. “Noticed that, myself.”

“M’bonded,” Arnie garbles helpfully.

“That’s right, pal,” Tony says. “Was it everything you hoped and dreamed?” Arnie Roth, with his kind, supportive parents and his hopeless sexual naivety and eager willingness to sacrifice his body for the pipe dream of securing an Alpha who would keep him safe and protected from harm.

Fat lot of good that did him.

Tony doesn’t expect Arnie to answer, so it startles him when the Omega lifts his head, wipes at his mouth, and leans his head back against the wall behind him. Bucky pulls away but keeps his hands braced until Arnie steadies himself.

“Don’ remember much of the bonding,” Arnie says quietly. His eyes are glazed over, unfocused, like he’s talking to himself. “Think I blacked out, by the end.” Tony swallows. He drifts in and out of his own heats, sometimes. When the sensations become too much to bear. “Woke up with the bite. Hurt for a while. Felt different. Could feel… him.” He blinks rapidly a few times, and Tony suddenly wants to reach across and shake the Omega’s shoulders so he doesn’t have to hear anymore.

“Let’s not,” Tony says instead, knowing where a bout of liquid courage combined with a loose mouth can lead. He wants to change the subject but he’s paralyzed, and Bucky’s gazing at him like he doesn’t know what to do, leaving Tony with his jaw wired shut.

Arnie’s expression clears, briefly, and he blinks up at Tony like he suddenly remembers the other Omega is sharing the cramped stall with him. “Y’told me it wouldn’t hurt, once. Before… before I left. You said—you said it’s what we’re s’posed to do.”

“Arnie,” Tony warns.

“Yeah, you did. You said that t’me. You smelled scared, though. Knew you didn’t believe it. What you were sayin’. But I trusted you anyway. And then… and then…” Arnie swallows, and rubs at his eyes, and Tony’s heart plummets into his stomach.

Perpendicular to him, Bucky shifts. Tony can’t bring himself to look at him. He wants to disappear.

“Roth,” Tony bites out sharply. “Shut the fuck up.”

“S’not so bad, every time. Not when… when my body wants it. Like in heat. But sometimes—sometimes, it still hurts. Just thought… y’should know.”

There’s no sound, for several moments. Just the roaring of Tony’s pulse in his own ears.

Tony studies his knees. He yanks hard enough on the loose thread to rip a hole into the fabric at his kneecap. His fingers tremble.

Bucky avoids Tony’s gaze entirely. He stares at the floor with a blazing intensity sharp enough to burn holes into the linoleum.

He smells murderous.

Arnie, blissfully aware of his verbal detonation, lolls his head toward the bathroom door.

“Oh,” he says simply. “Michael.”

Tony and Bucky snap their heads up in sync. The bathroom door is locked.

“No one there, buddy,” Tony croaks. His vocal chords feel as though they’ve been severed by a serated knife.

“Can smell him,” Arnie says simply.

The banging on the door starts two seconds later.

Michael Bech is tall but not as tall as Bucky, with a full head of white hair. His skin is tan and his belly a little soft, and he has smile lines.

For someone whose biological companion has supposedly been missing for more over an hour, he doesn't smell particularly distressed. He tsks when he pulls a moaning, barf-covered Arnie into his arms, and cracks a joke about “Omegas and alcohol consumption, amiright?”

“Couldn’t find this one anywhere, thought he walked all the way back to Manhattan,” Michael says, eyes crinkling. “Had to check every building on the row. Nice fellas at the bar finally told me they saw a wisp of a thing stumble into this here pub, smelling like a fresh rose, and I thought, ’Yep, sure sounds like my Arnie’.”

Arnie sighs and tucks his face into Michael’s neck. Tony turns away.

Michael thanks Bucky for his help, and Bucky shakes his hand with a tight-lipped smile that doesn’t reach his eyes. Michael doesn’t acknowledge Tony, but he spares him a fleeting, curious glance and says, “Anyhow, sorry for all the trouble. You know how Omegas can be.”

Tony ignores him, accustomed to the slight, but Bucky openly bristles.

Michael tugs Arnie’s collar up over his throat before they leave.

“Call me, if you can,” Bucky whispers. They’re outside The Institute, and Tony is looking anywhere but the Alpha. His blood feels like lead in his veins.

“Sure,” he says. He scrapes at a rock with his shoe.

“Tony,” Bucky says, more firmly. “Tony. Sweetheart. I need to know you’re alright. Can you do that for me? If you have a moment, just… give me ring.” The words sound distorted in Tony’s ears. Warped.

A firm hand grips his chin. “Doll.”

“Mhmm,” Tony answers.

Tony doesn’t like the way Bucky smells. Well, he does—he always likes the way Bucky smells. But right now, Bucky smells like he did when he found Tony in his window. It makes his jaw ache. It burns inside his nostrils, acrid and oversensitive.

In fact, every minute twinge in his body feels heightened. His neck feels stiff, and there’s a dull pounding behind his eyes. His tongue feels heavy in his mouth. He feels like scratching himself. Or clawing at his skin.

He also feels like sagging into Bucky’s neck and disassociating. Surrendering his thoughts and his body to the Alpha in front of him, who will surely take away the pain and soothe out the ache, if Tony just lets him.

But he can’t. So he just blinks at the street lamps and grinds his teeth and supresses the swooping, churning feeling in his belly and ignores the way his glands throb when Bucky grips his chin a little tighter and lets his vision go a little unfocused.

Tony doesn’t know what Bucky detects, but the Alpha’s pupils dilate in the reflection of the streetlight and he presses his forehead to Tony’s. The Alpha’s body is taut, full of restrained tension.

“Omega,” he murmurs softly. Oh.

Tony sighs.

“Call me, tomorrow night. When you get home. I don’t care how late. Can you do that for me, sweet thing? Can you try and promise me?”

Tony nods slowly.

Bucky exhales visibly. “Good. Good boy. Thank you. As late as you need, okay? Just need t’hear your voice.” Tony trembles at the praise, like Bucky knew he would. When he falls into the Alpha’s embrace, Bucky’s arms are there to catch him.

“I’ll miss you this weekend,” Bucky says into his hair. “Who else is gonna hog all the covers?”

Tony nips at his collarbone. “S’only way to get you t’stop kickin’ in your sleep.” He feels so warm. He feels sore. Every inhalation of Bucky’s woodsy, wintery musk feels like sensory overload. “M’sorry,” he says before he can stop himself.

Bucky’s arms lock around him like a vice.

“What’re you sorry for, baby?”

What is he sorry for? Tony hides in Bucky’s shirt. He could suffocate happily here, he thinks.

“Tony?” Bucky’s hand comes up to lightly scratch at the hair at the base of Tony’s neck, and Tony’s spine goes lax. He drops his head back and shudders. “Words, gorgeous. Talk to me.”

Tony scrunches up his nose. He doesn’t want to talk anymore. He wants Bucky to kiss him.

He wants Bucky to fuck him.

The thought has him swallowing down a moan. God, he wants Bucky to fuck him. He needs it. He would be so perfect for him, and Bucky would make him feel so good, he knows it. His cock perks in interest, and he shivers and presses his hips into Bucky’s thigh to seek out friction.

Bucky goes still. “Tony,” he warns.

Tony likes the way Bucky says his name. Low, and gravelly. He wonders what the Alpha’s voice would sound like saying other things.

The things that Bucky says in his dreams.

Large hands cradle his face. Blown pupils find his own. Bucky peers down at him, expression carefully guarded. He presses a thumb into Tony’s cheek, steadily adding pressure to pull Tony back down to Earth.

“What’s goin’ on, Tony?” Bucky’s thumb traces the slant of his cheekbone. Tony blinks at him blearily. “You smell…” The Alpha stops, mouth twisting. His nostrils twitch, and so does Tony’s prick. “Is this because of Arnie? What he said?”

No, Tony doesn’t want to think about Arnie. He doesn’t want to dwell on anything that the other Omega said—the way he blabbed all of Tony’s darkest, most shameful insecurities out loud in a public restroom stall, of all places. Right in front of Bucky.

“I’ve gotta go,” Tony says—mumbles, really—and pulls out of Bucky’s grip. “I’ve gotta—I’ve got. Homework. Studying.”

“Tony.”

“I’ll call you. Promise. I’ll try. From the Jarvises’ phone. Tomorrow night.”

“Tony.” Bucky reaches for him but Tony flinches out of his touch, and the Alpha’s hands drop to his sides. The look on his Bucky’s face morphs into hurt and Tony has to look away so his own despair doesn’t chew at his insides.

“Don’t do this, Tony. Not after last weekend. Talk to me, sweetheart. M’not going anywhere.”

“I’m okay,” Tony says. “Really. I’m… I’m fine. I’m great.”

Tony doesn’t know what he is, exactly. But he’s not great. And he’s probably not fine, or even remotely okay, really.

And he knows this, for certain, twenty-four hours later.

When he’s sitting around his family’s dining room table, stuffed into another godforsaken suit, sandwiched between his mother and Tiberius Stone.

Feverish. Burning. Plummeting straight into heat.

[nonasuch]

so I went to New York this weekend!

I tagged along with some friends who were going to the Five Points Toy Festival in Brooklyn, and convinced them to come see Sleep No More with me on Thursday night, since it’s allegedly closing at some point and I’ve always wanted to go.

And since they had to head back to DC a day before me, I decided to get another ticket for the Sunday matinee on my own.

Unfortunately my cards were a 6 and a 7, so I missed a few things right at the beginning, but I’m still really happy with my experience. My first show I spent a bunch of time following the Tailor, which I really enjoyed — he had a duet with the Taxidermist in his shop where they played tug-of-war with his measuring tape, and another with the speakeasy bartender. I saw Hecate eat her dinner and sing “Is That All There Is” in the 4th floor bar, and the Porter try to save Lady Macduff from the poisoned milk and then do an amazing dance in the bag check room. Plus a bunch more small lovely moments that I caught in passing as I explored.

My second show I had my bearings a little bit more. I got to chat with “Benji” (who I now know was actually Will Boyajian!) in the Manderly before my card was called, which was really fun!

Before this trip, I did do some advance reading, so I’d have a general sense of what to expect and wouldn’t be totally lost. This also gave me an idea for a little art project: I made a set of papier-mâché eggs (using a trashed copy of Macbeth for the paper) with thematically appropriate prizes inside, sealed with a wax seal and a red ribbon you could pull to open them. Basically fancier versions of the mystery eggs I have at the shop. I made eight, because that was all I could fit in my dress pockets. The prizes were:

a glass jar of vintage mother-of-pearl buttons

a glass vial with a dried flower inside, sealed with wax

another sealed vial with a fossil shark’s tooth

a tiny bell jar with mini (fake) butterflies on pins

a brooch made from a vintage medal ribbon and vintage keys

a tiny glass bird

a little bag of vintage game pieces

a wooden acorn with more tiny treasures inside it

I ended up giving “Benji” the shark tooth egg, which turned out to be perfect because he said he collects shark teeth! The others I saved until I got inside; I wanted to be careful about making sure I could give them out without interrupting anything.

I was super lucky to have some time entirely alone with the Tailor while he sewed up the Taxidermist’s coat, so I just set his egg (the buttons) on the corner of his desk and stepped back, and he tucked it into his jacket pocket when he was done.

I watched the Taxidermist make his bone sculpture assemblage and then smash it in frustration, so I hid an egg under one of the skulls after he left. I did get to see him find it when he came back. Same with Hecate, when I left an egg under her fan on her table at the wrecked bar.

The speakeasy bartender invited me to play a card game with him. I lost, but I gave him an egg as a thank-you.

I watched the Porter make a paper boat and blow it off the edge of the counter towards me. I caught it, and tried to give it back with his egg. He took the egg, but gave me back the boat. And I caught the witch in the green dress in a quiet moment in the lobby, and handed her an egg across the counter.

I realized I’d accidentally given the Taxidermist the wrong egg, but I managed to catch him at the last possible second, before he disappeared after the walkouts, gave him the right one, and told him I’d given him Malcolm’s egg by mistake. (Some of them were labeled, but the lighting is so low and my labels were tiny).

Aside from my self-imposed side quest, I got to see a bunch of scenes I’d missed last time. I caught the rave, I followed Agnes for a while, I saw a lovely waltz between Duncan and Mrs. Danvers in the ballroom. I kind of forgot the fifth floor existed, oops.

Afterwards, I was totally exhausted and must have looked it, because someone let me into the reserved section so I could sit until the crowd thinned out and I felt a little less wiped. I have some really cool souvenirs — my mask, and the paper boat, and I bought a poster too.

If they extend it into the fall, I’ll totally go again.

[popculturebuffet]

MGADD: The Gatekeeper Review: The Masterpiece Shelved by Disney's Cowardice and Transphobia (Comissioned by WeirdKev27

Hello world I have arrived... because Disney has done something so monumentally stupid and offensive, even for them. I genuinely wish I was talking about this episode under circumstances that weren't "Disney showed what it really thinks of queer people... again", but if it weren't for a brave animator mentioning it off hand and the episode leaking soon after, I wouldn't of been able to.

The short vision since i'm sure most of you reading this know what's going on but to recap: thursday night an animator on Moon Girl and Devil Dinosaur, Derrick Malik Johnson (Thank you The Mary Sue for recording the names), mentioned that an episode of the show was shelved due to "Which party won", while a poster on reddit, superootoro backed up the story. Both posts have since been deleted because the mouse clearly got upset this story got out.

Their also likely not pleased the episode ITSELF got out soon after thanks to disney fan Owlphibia. How they got it I don't know, and someone on the crew definitely supplied it.. and I applaud our anonymous hero. If a company isn't going to make something fully available for audiences to see, there is no shame in leaking it anyway. I felt that way when I thought Scooby Doo and Krypto Too was never getting released and reviewed it last year. and still want someone to escape Warner HQ with copies of Batgirl, Scoob: Holiday Haunt and Coyote Vs Acme.

We'll get into the episode shortly but needless to say it's focus on an openly trans character who outright states she's trans with a bigoted asshole who tries to move goalposts as the villian made it clear WHY Disney shelved the episode indefinitely, with Johnson claming they said it was due to who won the election. That said the presence of the beyonder, who disappears early into season 2 and the redditor saying the episode was meant for early season 2 makes it clear this is just an excuse: They shelved it, waited to see which way the country turned, then formally dumped it the second it was clear they MIGHT get heat from the new president over this rather than stand up for what's right.

Their response... does not help. Disney CLAIMS the episode was shelved not banned and their PROUD OF THE DISCUSSIONS IT BRINGS AND OF THIS SHOW WE JUST CANCELLED. NO FOR REAL. I doubt this will actually make it go away and making the tweets making accusations go away, thank alvis for screenshotting, just makes it more clear that no, they just wanted to shelve an episode that frankly and honestly talked about a trans child's struggles with no metaphors about brooklyn being trans: her transness is why the villain hates her and why the episode happens. It happens because a woman is a bigot, and Disney coudln't handle that. They can handle when the bigots an immortal definitely religious man but we don't say that or a super soldier from another dimension, where the subtext is blatant and what it's calling out is blatant, but Disney still has deniability. But when someone wants to tackle queerness openly and honestly.. they run.

It's a pattern for them. They cancelled owl house because its main romance is between two girls. They are oddly and throughly convinced that Lightyear failed not because it's a tonal mess that tries to squeeze buzz light year's cheesy good world building into a darker hard sci fi story that it doesn't fit in, but because two women kissed, and were so paranoid about that that they tried to make Inside Out 2 straight as possible by making the girl Riley has a blatant crush on older than her.. which.. it just makes it a crush guys. Thank god their so bad at this

And of course the piece de resitance before this: Firing openly queer black man and show runner for X-Men 97 Beau Demayo for both wanting his show to actually tackle prejudice instead of just rubber stamping it and being openly sexy on his socials when.. tha'ts his right, thent rying to frame him as an abuser, allegations that ONLY sprung up long after the show had already aired and only when they tried to bar him from showing up at an awards ceremony for an episode he fucking wrote.

Disney is not a good company on most days. They fuck up at least once a year from their implicit support of the don't say gay bill, to the owl house debacle to writing off a ton of shows for tax purposes. I love the CONTENT they fund, I love the card game ravensburger made with their properties, I love the creative stories many an animator has made. But I don't love them. Not anymore and probably not in the foreseable future. I love the stuff peopl ehave created under them but it's become clear Disney has become desperate, greedy and souless. While all companies struggle to be represnetive it's disney who shows their ass the most. Wether it's saying "first gay character evah come see" for characters who were there for a minute so it could be cut from china, banning pride flags, or not letting an alien we can all tell is gay just.. say she is when everything around Penny implied it. Let her fuck a duck disney christ.

I'm so.. tired of this. I've been at this for almost 6 years. I've been covering disney this whole time, starting with ducktales reviews and while I haven't been covering shows as they come out for a variety of reasons, I have kept a firm eye on them. And they just, keep fucking up. They dont' care about queer people. They haven't evolved AT ALL since this half assed tweet Alex Hirsch mocked back when twitter was relevant

And this should be spammed to them because my god. This is a fuckup of monumental proprtions. And it hits personally as I fear for my trans nephew in this colder, worse world we're entering. He may be 14 but he would've appricaited this and so would the many trans kids who just need someone to say: your okay you matter. That's what this episode was trying to do.. and it got shuttered.

The only good news is the pressure MIGHT get disney to actually release it. MIght being a strong word. Last i checked you could find the episode on internet archive, but I'd find it where youc an while you can as Disney is likely going to be doing everything to cover their ass

And that dear friends is one of the main reasons for covering this episode: Disney might try to bury it as deep as they can, so I want a full record of it. To show the content and context of it. The other is to judge the episode on it's own merits. I'll say right now: this is an excellent episode and it deserves to be released. But it's important to get into why: why this episode is good, why it deserved better and why this SHOW deserves better. Moon Girl was canceld recently and if anything this story draws more attention to somethign Disney likely thought they could do quietly and to the show from people who haven't watched it or may of given up after season 1. It's important to me as a critic and person to look at this work for what it is and not just what disney has done to it: a well done story that takes a side character and makes her a star, while also being bonkers in the conkers in a way that absolutely works. Join me under the cut won't you as I break down this tremendous episode.

The episode begins with the volleyball team at lunella's school gearing up for a regionals match. I'd honestly forgotten about these guys as their main spotlight episode for season 1, Goodnight Moon Girl was one I kinda half payed attention to as I wasn't a huge fan of the gimmick.

Looking back on the ep though it's easy to see why they gave the team's captain, Brooklyn, her own episode: she's funny, has an entirely relatable rivalrly with her sibling, and was open and welcoming to lunella. IT's easy to see why Lunella is now the team's eager hydration technician and casey is preparing the half time show. It also shows off the series tight continuity: They tend to bring back characters you wouldn't THINK come back, or if needing a side character using one of the casts established friends, with the volleyball team also playing a supporting role in the dance episode that chronologically comes after this. Brooklyn and co are pumped and ready for the other team whose team name I forgot but is mostly a threat thanks to their leader and her mom/coach greer.

Greer is played by Amy Sedaris and look the show had me at Amy Sedaris plays the main villian. I forgot just how good she is at being evil and her comedic energy nicely offsets just how.. nasty this person is.

While i'm not hiding that Greer turns out to be awful a touch I like is that the episode does for a second: Greer seems like a hypercompetivie hellicopter mom, but offers orange slices and is nice and cordial to everyone. It seems like it was just a bait and switch and given how the show goes, had this episode not been banned, you'd be expecting it to simply segue into some problem for Lunella that leads to her doing a science.

Instead the problem is entirely Greer and it starts simply because Brooklyn and her best friend Tai, who was previously established as non binary, something the episode makes sure to point out again later. They just joke and laugh reminscing about playing soccer together back before Brooklyn transitioned, with Brooklyn being happy she's not on the "boys team".

Unfortunately for her, Greer hears this. And just like that a switch flips: the animation is exagerated and it's clear this bitch is immediately nettled. It telegraphs a problem trans people in general face: that just saying your trans immediately makes some people target you. That just an offhand mention can lead to someone trying to make you miserable simply for being YOU. It's one of MANY reasons the targeting of trans kids disgusts me and i'ts something the show portrays chillingly well this sudden.. entitlement to decide who a person is based on their body. That because you can't get past it, this kid has to suffer. I"ve seen it, I hate it, and the show does it well and Sedaris does it very well, using her usual comedic energy to make a character whose utterly loathsome, yet in such a skincrawlingly real way. Greer is far from a subtle character.. but transphobes tend not to be. While her tactics are for the most part not over the top, her bigotry is portrayed as loud and hateful as we've seen from the right. (Not to give the democrats a pass given the sheer number who want to throw trans people under the buss for the party's systemic issues that caused the election loss, but the right are far more vitrolic and operatic about their transphobia, like Elon Musk deadnaming their daughter and making up a story about them being intrested in women's clothing.. only to get utterly wrecked by his daughter pointing out he was never around for her as a child. Given how fragile elon's ego is and how terminally online he is, zinging him on his own platform does way more damage than anything else could possibly do.

So Greer goes to tell coach Hrbek, Luna's reluctant science teacher and loveable jock, that Brooklyn was biologically a male. Not her terms but fuck her for that. I like how greer just tries to imply it.. she won't come out and SAY Brooklyn's trans: just because transphobes aren't subtle dosen't mean they don't try to do this doubletalk bullshit. Hrbek nosells it just blinking condescndingly and when she dosen't get it telling her bluntly yeah he knows and tells her in no uncertain terms Brooklyn is a girl and she's playing.

He then slips on an orange because life is not kind to this man: like he dosen't get injured a lot but he is stuck teaching a concept that while giving it his best, he's not good at and dosen't like teaching. And now after doing something genuinely heroic, standing up for a kids right to be who they are and telling off a bigot, and only likely not saying fuck off because a crowd's present, he gets hurt. Poor guy. True hero

With the only adult out of the room Greer tries every bullshit tactic in the book to get Brooklyn disqulaified and I love her reactions: no coach, player coach. Her pride flag pads are ones she got from the store. Her bottle.. has water. Greer tries every bullshit thing but you get the sense this isn't the first, and sadly probably isn't the last time, some asshole has tried to disqualify brooklyn based on her gender.

In the locker room getting ready the rest of the Squirrels have picked up on what's going on. Lunella is upset and want sto do something but can't, but it's telling both Brooklyn and Tai try and brush it off. Tai outright tells them not to mentoin their non binary or Greer might explode and Brooklyn shakes it off just.. used to it. And it's fucking sad that a child whose 14 at most, the same age as my nephew, just has to be.. used to it. That people will hate you and try to unperson you just for being what you are. It's part of why this episode being delissted is so frustrating: the message is told well and it's one trans kids need to hear. It's why representation matters: that little voice that says "you are not alone". As a bisexual seeing bi characters makes me happy as their not common even now. While we don't share a gender, Luz being bi on loud house and the show making sure that was clear felt nice. It felt good being seen. That kids after me won't have to struggle with these feelings and just see someone and go "That's me.. that's what I am" and it's so fucking terrible Disney coudlnt' see past their already overflowing wallets to understand that, that the only chance the episode has of release is because they fucked up.

Since greer can't rules lawyer or bully a child out of competttion she goes with plan b: a magical key. Yeah another good reason to cover this one and something that understandably won't get as much coverage? This episode is fucking bonkers. While greer is a well written villian.. she's also a TERF who bought a magical key at a yard sale. No really the beyonder recaps how she got the key. It's not the first villian whose done that on the show, and I do want to someday meet the villian who hosted that yard sale, so it still works in the shows mythology. It also hope the show has had some rediculous villians: Living hair , a symboite tha'ts an online troll, lady stitlman at home. The show is serious when it needs to be this episode included, even the living hair episode had a serious aseop on the racisim black women get about their hair and the internalized racisim that creates. But the show isn't afraid to get weird so while a karen with a magical key she what bought at a yard sale is defintely the weridest foe lunella's faced, it's still within the realm of posisblity for this show. And definitely the marvel universe as a whole. I mean spider-man's rogues include a nazi made of bees and a stegasaurs man, both of whom I hope lunella fights if we get a season 3.

So Greer locks them in the locker room which turns into an escape room/death trap where they have to find keys. Thankfully Brooklyn's awful little brother loves them, so they have an edge and she shoots down lunella just.. mcguivering their way out. It's also intresting to have a super villian fight.. where lunella ISN'T in costume. She's just her normal self, and still just as competent and the only reason she dosen't break things right away is that everyone involved , particularly their leader, assumes they have to play this game fair. And given how in most death games breaking the rules usually kills you it's an easy assumption.

Our heroes do solve the puzzles well, and we get a great joke with Kai whose excited by the lava... and one of their teamates shouts "no it can kill us stop that".

That's a suprising thing I found with the episode: it is REALLY funny. I forget how funny the show can be, and this ep might be it's funniest as Casey, Luna's bestie and sidekick, is forced to stall like a motherfucker as she gets the sense something is wrong.. I mean opening the locker room to find no one there is a good clue. And yes Casey dosen't figure out this is supervillian stuff till near the end but it's done resonably: she can probably get the hint Greer's done SOMETHING but assumes she just locked them in another room or tricked them or something. You know standard school setting vilian shenanigans. Not "This terf tiger mom happens to have a magic key she found at a yard sale. Casey HAS seem some shit at this point, I mean one of the episodes in this very season not long before this was suppposed to come out is her and lunella having to travel inside the dinosaur whose also one of their best friends. But usually the villians on this show wear a costume. Even the gentrifying assholes from season 1, while wearing suits still had super tech and a very obvious black and white motif Lunella should've seen as a red flag. Greer for all intensive puproses is just a bog standard transphobic karen. You just.. can't plan for "turns out she has a key from a super villian yard sale." It's like "a giant obese monster from another dimension who literally needs raitings to lives kidnaps you to star in his shows or else". It's certainly plausible given how weird the marvel universe, but no ones ever really prepared for Mojo that hasn't met the floating fat man. Who for those who aren't freebasing x-men regularly is entirley real. I made none of that up

He also made chibi clones of the x-men called the x-babies. Look it up.

Point is no matter how fucking weird a characters life is, they can still be surprised. So Casey instead decides to stall. Stall as if her life depended on it which.. it dosen't but a lot of other kids do. So she makes up a tradition where they have to do THE WAVE before a game. And I love both her hammy calls to do the wave and the mascots gradual exhaustion. Best gag of the episode.

Let him Rest. Eventuallyt he poor guy collapses, but luckily Devil comes in as Casey called him over and tells him to vamp. Vamp like he's never vamped before. Vamp as if, in her words "Your mariah carey opening for beyonce". And he does... and while he sounds about how you'd expect him singing to, like he's gargling the marbles he ate this morning, everyone loves it. Because it's a singing dinosaur.

This comedy is just... fantastic. The shows humor dosen't always land, but this is it at it's best: silly, over the top, yet grounded in the characters; Casey using her natural ambtion and improv skills and Devil using the voice Satan gave him to sing to a souled out crowd. It's good stuff and nicely helps with the tension of the a plot, with the two cutting back and forth, i'm just not doing that because I don't gotta.

Speaking of which we get a nice musical montage of our heroes bravely solving the puzzles. And they do, passing all sorts of shit to do, opening the final door.. only to find the game's reset.

And here it is: the episodes signature scene. Out of all the cut stuff from the episode, this is the bit i've seen the most on social media, the bit I saw before I even saw the full episode. The speech that helps make what Disney did SO much worse and helps tie this all together.

Brooklyn realizes the hard truth: because Greer dosen't consider her a girl, she has to quit the team as in Greer's warped eyes, her playing at all is against the rules. It's a metaphor that's blantat as it is heartbreakingly accurate: Society always keeps moving the goal posts for queer people. No matter what you do, no matter how hard you try to fit in or just be accepted, there were always be people who will just not care and will keep trying to shove you back int he closet because what you are is inconveint to them. if it dosen't exist to THEM it dosen't and they will keep making your life harder to try to break you down, to try and get you to quit.

I'm Bisexual. Mentioned it before in this article, and have never been shy about it. But it's also a side I struggle to explore sometimes. Growing up in a society that didn't even seem to have a word for what I was and already horribly awkward with women, I FEARED my bisexuality, convinced myself I wasn't. In hindsight.. I didn't want another thing on top of my autisim and anxiety for people to judge me for. Even now I don't try to date.. I mean part of it is i'm broke and have issues, but I realized as I wrote this article.. part of it is fear. Fear of rejection, fear of someone trying to change who I am, fear of getting beat up for being who I am.

And the fears I have I need to deal with, the reality I deal with.. is multipled twentyfold for any trans person. I have trans relatives. I won't get deep into details on the ground i'ts not my story to tell, but what they've faced is heartbreaking. What my nephew has had to put up with just for existing is fucking devistating. It's a bleak world that just wont' let them be who they are without a fight because the idiots who can't accept it have the power and some of those who have the power to stop it.. turn a blind eye. Again a good chunk of democrats were all too quick to try and throw trans people under the bus when Kamala didn't say hardly ANYTHING about trans rights. The knives come out easily and quickly and someone's personhood simply dosen't matter the second it makes your life harder. It's why these guys hate prounouns and trans people: They see just wanting to be who you are as entitlement, as a lot to ask.. when .. it's not. It's not hard at all to ask. It's not hard to treat someone with dignity.

In my case.. it was thanks to, ironically enough tv. It was the summer after high school, I was bored and had a lot of spare time so I watched a lot of the canadian teen drama Degrassi: The Next Generation. And while degrassi is far from the most subtle show or free of mistakes, when it came to queer rep it had a solid track record, slowly evolving with the times. As such this is the first show I saw with actual trans representation: a character whose out as a trans man, adam torres, and has to deal with the metric ton of bullshit kids STILL face, while also having plenty of story outside it, from his friendship with best bud eli to his marveling at his brother Drew's poor life choices. Adam wasn't a token, wasn't just a prop for trans stories (Though this being an early 2010's teen drama he both had a TON of stories about being trans and perscuted against and was played by a cis actress. Again not exactly free of mistakes), he was a fleshed out human who just wanted to be who they were. It helped me see Trans people exist, and accept it easily.

And that's why this episode being pulled.. fucking bothers me. Because realizing she can't win, Brooklyn breaks down, blaming herself for what's simply truly isn't her fault. It's Tai who naturally steps forward, pointing out she CAN open up to them and that when Tai came out as nonbinary.. Brooklyn supported them. It's not selfish or being a burdern to let others help you.. and it's easy to support others. to lift them up and accept who they are and defned them against dickheads who say otherwise. The most heartbreaking part is the simplist as brooklyn laments

"How many doors do I have to break down before they stop locking them"? And given disney put one up themselvfes.. it's galling. Btu the message.. persisits: support is easy, and support matters and you are not alone. It's okay to let others carry you sometimes, and it's not a burdern or drama to vent about shit this frustrating.

The other message is an important one as the republicans no doubt prepare to lock more doors... sometimes... playing by the rules dosen't work. Bigots simply will make more to try and keep you from playing. Sometimes you just gotta say fuck it and say fuck them. Fight. Don't play civlity politics, don't play nice, tell them to fuck off.

So our heroes do smashing reality and reealizing things are fragile in this reality: it's held together only so much.. and thus they start breaking it.

Back outside Greer's key starts to glitch and Casey finally gets it.. as does Greer's daughter whose HORRIFIED at what her mom did. That she wanted a fair match. And so did greer.. but only by her rules. GIRL POWER.. no really she says that. I love they just make her a TERF outright and the way amy sedaris says it just shows how hollow that statment is when you won't accept ALL WOMEN.

Her daughter also isn't having this shit and steals the refs whistle, not letting this start till EVERYONE is here. Luckily it's time for the shows ocne an episode beautfully animated musical sequence. This time using all sorts of pride colors and some really nice looking sprites. I lespecailly love them taking the menus of an rpg battle system and breaking out of the frame with it. Really fun stuff and of course we get the shot almost everyone has used and I'm no exception. Brooklyn in front of a pride flag, using a trans flag volleyball to smash her way out.

So our heroes are free, and with the key obviously glitching the Ref, whose mostly just been.. done this whole episode, gets the picture and Brooklyn, not being stupid, uses those soccer skills she mentioned to smash the key while Greer's escorted the fuck out. I mean granted the ref should also.. call the police or shield or somebody as several woman were kidnapped, but given it was in front of a large crowd AND this is the cellphone age i'm sure someone did. But it's just as statsifying Greer is left making hollow threats to get the ref decertified as the door slams in her face. Now she's locked out and that door should neve ropen again.

So Brooklyn and head.. rival team girl... whatever her name was, shake hands. Also kev sugggested they end up going out and I like that. Mostly because i'm pretty sure greer would fucking melt and then all the children everywhere would sing.

So we end on Brooklyn spiking. We don't know who won or lost.. and it jus tdosen't matter. What matters is Brooklyn got to play the game.

The Gatekeeper is excellent. Strong contender for my best of the year list which fast approaches as my backlog

Piles up as usual.. i'll manage most of this. But this episode is fantatic and wether you've seen the show before or not, watch it. It's excellent, and I hope to god the pressure from it makes disney actually release it on disney + next batch. I'm still not 100% they will hence doing this.. but as long as we keep the pressure up it could happen. And who knows, we could even get a season 3. Why not shoot for the moon? Thanks for reading and just remember "I'm pulling for you we're all in this together"

[avastrasposts]

Big Sky Country - ch. 6

Chapter 6 is here and since we left Frankie on his way back to the ranch in Montana, and Aisling still in New York, how are they going to work this out after the way they left it?

Summery: Cowboy Frankie returns to New York to work things out with his 'maybe girlfriend' Eva. But he also makes a connection with another woman, who makes this lost cowboy feel welcome in her Brooklyn bar.

Series Master List

Warnings for the whole series can be found here

“You’re the only one who makes my mind as quiet as the prairie.” 

His parting words remained with her but Aisling didn’t expect Frankie to bury himself so deep in her head. Heartbreaks, guys ghosting her, cheating on her, it had all happened before, apparently she had a knack for picking the losers. But it never took her long to get over them, a week or two of being a bit down, nothing a night out with friends couldn’t fix. 

With Frankie, it had been twelve fucking weeks. Three months of her mind drifting to him whenever there was a slow moment at work, getting annoyed when someone sat in ‘his’ spot at the bar, dreaming about him almost every night. 

Jenny noticed and tried pulling her out of it, taking her to their favorite BBQ place, sitting at long trestle tables, laughing at the ridiculous mason jars the drinks were served in. But then Jenny left for the rest room, and Aisling’s eyes drifted to the Texas flag hanging on the wall and then he was back in her head. 

“You could just call him, you know,” Jenny said, sitting down opposite Aisling and handing over another mason jar of lemonade spiked with bourbon, seeing where her friend’s mind was at. 

“Why would I do that? To get fresh material for the delusion living in my head?” Aisling snorted, shaking her head. 

“To get him out of your system, ask him to come back here, or better yet, go see him. You’ve never been out of the city. Go see Montana.” 

“Jenny, now you’re being the delusional one, how would seeing him again get him out of my system?” 

“I just think, the way you talk about him-” 

“I don’t talk about him,” Aisling interrupted, almost slamming her drink down on the table at the very notion. 

“I hate to break it to you, Ash, but you talk about him almost every day,” Jenny raised her eyebrows, daring Aisling to challenge her. “Only last night at the bar, you said Frankie would like that new beer we’re stocking.” 

“That was just an observation, I wasn’t talking about him.” 

“And when we had lunch on Thursday you told me the story about how he delivered a foal all by himself.” 

“There was a nature documentary about wild horses on the tv!” Aisling protested, “It was an interesting story!”

“You’d already told me that story twice,” Jenny said, “And I’ve known you for over twenty years, never, ever, have you talked about horses. I don’t think you’ve ever even been near a horse.” 

“I have,” Aisling objected, “Remember when Jules worked selling tickets for the horse carriages by Central Park? We used to hang out there and bug her the whole summer.” 

“Doesn’t count. And the point stands; you talk about him almost every day, he’s clearly still on your mind and you need to get him out of your system. Or move to Montana. Whichever one seems easiest to you.” 

“Maybe she just needs to get laid? I volunteer.” 

The voice of a man a few years younger came into the conversation as he sat down next to Jenny, grinning at Aisling. 

“Fuck off, Pete,” Aisling snapped, rolling her eyes at the blonde man. 

“Shut up,” Jenny said at the same time, digging her elbow into Pete’s ribs, making him wince, “This is serious, Aisling is going to be pining over this cowboy for the rest of her life if we can’t figure out how she’ll get over him.” 

“I’m not moving to Montana, and I can’t call him, I don’t have his number,” Aisling said and downed the last of her drink, scowling at Pete’s unwelcome addition to the table. 

“You can actually call him,” Jenny replied, fishing a folded piece of paper from her tote bag. “I got it from the trash after you threw it away. Just in case, you know.” 

She smoothed out the paper and pushed it over the table to Aisling, who looked down at it without touching. There, on the wrinkled page from the bar’s notepad, in Frankie’s neat handwriting, his name and number, Francisco Morales. 

Seeing his name, in his writing, suddenly made her throat close up and she blinked a few times. 

“Just call him,” Pete said, “I don’t really want to have sex with you, so calling him is clearly the only option.” 

Aisling rolled her eyes at Jenny who swatted his arm. 

“Fuck off, Pete.” 

Aisling looked down at the paper again and pushed herself to her feet. 

“I’m over him. And I’m not moving to Montana. I’ll just hang out with Ben and Jerry until this blows over, as usual.” 

Jenny sighed, took the paper and folded it up again, leaned over the table and stuffed it into the pocket of Aisling’s jacket. 

“Just in case, if there’s an emergency and you need someone to deliver a foal or something,” she said, giving Aisling another look that meant ‘Don’t you fucking dare throw that piece of paper away’. 

“Fine, whatever, see you tomorrow,” Aisling replied, giving them both a wave as she left the restaurant. 

The piece of paper burnt a hole in her pocket on the way home and she tucked it out of sight between the pages of a book as soon as she could.

Out of sight, out of mind

When the bus dumped him outside the gas station on the outskirts of Big Sky, Frankie drew a deep breath of relief. He never thought he’d feel so light just seeing the prairie in front of him as the bus pulled away. He stood several minutes just staring at the rolling plain and the sky above until the honk of a horn behind him pulled him out of his reverie. 

Herb waved at him from his truck, right on time as usual and Frankie hoisted his bag up on his shoulder and crossed the road. 

“Hey, man, admiring the view?” 

The older man greeted him with a grin as Frankie slid into the passenger side of the truck. 

“Hey, Herb, yeah, good to be back,” he replied, sinking back in the seat and rubbing a hand over his face, “Long fucking journey.”

“How was New York? You were gone a while, wasn’t sure you’d come back.” 

Herb knew most of his history with Eva, Frankie had told him things were over between them when he got back from New York last time. And he was smart enough to guess that Frankie’s sudden departure five weeks earlier had something to do with her too, even though Frankie hadn’t told him exactly why he was leaving. Frankie usually made a point of being as truthful as possible with Herb, but when Eva called, he’d chickened out

Now Frankie sighed as Herb put the truck in drive and pulled out from the gas station. 

“Yeah, I wasn’t sure either,” Frankie replied, “Eva called to tell me she was pregnant, that’s why I Ieft.” 

“Pregnant?” Frankie could see Herb’s eyebrows rise from the corner of his eye, “How did you feel about that?” 

Typical Herb question, always asking how it made him feel. Frankie almost chuckled at the older man but it just came out as a strangled snort and he rubbed a hand over his face again. 

“Scared, hopeful, nervous, petrified,” he shook his head, “fucking terrified. But it’s over, she had an abortion, I’m not gonna be a dad.” 

“That why you came back?” 

“It’s a long story, and it might need a beer or two for the details,” Frankie replied, “but yeah, things got messy, she had the abortion without telling me about it, I got involved with another woman, she found out I had a girlfriend, Eva found out I’d cheated, I stayed to make things right again, but in the end, it wasn’t going to work.” 

Frankie leaned his head against the back of the seat and closed his eyes briefly as Herb turned down the smaller road that led back to the ranch.

“That’s a lot for just five weeks, but tell me about it when you’re ready, Frank,” Herb said, glancing over at the furrow between Frankie’s eyes. 

“I don’t think there’s more to tell,” Frankie shrugged, “New York kicked my ass, and I’m more sure than ever that I can’t live in a big city.” 

“Any regrets?” Herb asked and Frankie knew what he meant, Herb was asking if he’d used any drugs while he was there.

Frankie shook his head, “No, not in that way, I was tempted but I stayed away from it, I know it would only make things worse.” 

“Not in that way?” Herb looked over at Frankie again, “What do you regret?” 

Frankie looked out through the passenger side window and sighed, the memory of Aisling filling his mind. She hadn’t been far from his thoughts much in the past two days, constantly at the forefront of his mind as he debated his decision while stuck on the endless bus ride. 

“That I fucked up, hurt someone else again,” he said, “I should’ve walked away but the need to make myself feel good first…I couldn’t resist.” 

“The other woman?” Herb asked and Frankie nodded, guilt creeping into his chest. 

“She’s…she’s great, fucking amazing…” Frankie shook his head, self-deprecation creeping into his voice, “she works in a bar, I ended up there on my first day back, and she just…fuck…It felt like she saw me but it sounds so pathetic when I say it.” 

“But that’s what it felt like?” Herb recognised the turbulent emotions on the face of the younger man, “like she saw you, and not just some stranger in a bar?” 

“Yeah, like she saw something else than everyone else sees, not the addict or the ex-soldier with a bunch of issues, or the miserable fuck who has to live away from everything to keep his shit together.” 

“Take a step back, Frankie,” Herb said, putting his hand on Frankie’s shoulder and giving it a squeeze to pull him out of the spiral, “Those things are not you, they don’t define you. They are issues you need to deal with, but they are not who you are.”  

Frankie nodded, taking a deep breath, “She made me feel like that, like that stuff doesn’t define me. She didn’t know about it all, I didn’t tell her, but…I don’t know…” Frankie trailed off, trying to figure out how to put into words how someone who didn’t know him, could make his head so peaceful. “She just…made it feel…right?” He shook his head, “I don’t know Herb, I can’t get my head around it, she made me feel peaceful, my head was quiet when I was with her and I craved it.” 

“It must’ve been hard to resist being around her if she had that effect on you, especially in the city,” Herb replied and Frankie nodded. 

“I never should’ve gone back to the bar after the first time, but shit…” Frankie trailed off again and Herb glanced over at him as the truck bounced over the last mile of dirt road up to Frankie’s cabin. He pulled up in front of it and killed the engine. 

“Are you staying in touch with her? The other woman?” he asked, and Frankie shook his head. 

“Na, I fucked up, she doesn’t want anything to do with me. I told her I was leaving though, so that’s it, I’m out of her life.” 

“Take it as a lesson Frankie,” the older man said, putting his hand on his shoulder again, “Take it as a lesson and learn from it, even though you feel like shit about it now. Maybe you’ll find your way back to her some day, or maybe you’ll find someone who makes you feel the same as she did. Either way, when that day comes, make sure you’ve learned from your mistakes and don’t repeat them. Be honest to yourself and to those around you. That's all you can do.” 

Frankie nodded and put his hand over Herb’s on his shoulder, giving it a squeeze, “Thanks man, I needed to hear that. I already know it, but I needed to hear it.”

He pushed the door to the truck open and raised his hand in a wave, “I’ll see you tomorrow, thanks for the ride.” 

“Miranda is cooking you dinner tomorrow, you can’t say no,” Herb grinned and Frankie gave him a quick thumbs up. 

“Wouldn’t dream of it, I know she’s fed up with your conversation topics,” He grinned at Herb and closed the truck door. 

Out of sight, out of mind.

That's what she'd thought, but no such luck. It was like knowing that she had a way to contact him made the intrusive thoughts even louder. Not even the loud noise in the bar that evening could drown them out. She sighed loudly as she called dibs on dishwasher duty and took a stack of glasses into the back. The murmur of the guests, the low bass of the music, it was muted back here and she took a moment. Leaning her forehead against the warm metal of the industrial dishwasher hood, she closed her eyes. 

Frankie’s face drifted into her mind and she remembered what he’d said about the noise, how it grated on his ears. She’d never thought about the noise of the city like that before. To her it was just a constant buzz in the background, a comforting hum that let her know that she wasn’t ever truly alone. But Frankie hadn’t felt that, and the way he talked about the quiet of the prairie, of where he lived in Montana, made her long for that kind of silence.

“Makes my mind go quiet and it makes me calm, it’s easier for me to live with myself out there.” 

For the first time she thought she might understand what he meant, she felt like she wanted to sit in a quiet room and just sort through her thoughts, like sorting a bookshelf. What to keep, what to throw out, what should she read next? 

What should her next step be? All she knew was that living with Frankie as a constant distraction in her head wasn’t going to work. 

With a groan she pushed herself upright again and went back to the bar. A woman snapped her fingers at her as soon as she opened the door, snapping and waving for her to come over. 

“Excuse me, miss? Miss?” she called while Aisling made her way over to the table. 

“How can I-” 

Aisling didn’t even get to finish her question before the woman was talking over her. 

“I had this wine, in a bar over on India Street, it was red, from Bulgaria I think, maybe Romania. Do you have anything like that?” 

“No, sorry, we don’t have any wines on the menu. We only have beer, but we have some re-” 

“You don’t have any wine?” The woman interrupted her again and Aisling forced her customer service smile to stay put, her cheeks aching. “What kind of a bar doesn’t serve wine?” She looked over at her laughing friends, rolling her eyes and shaking her head. “You’ve got to have something? Can’t you go to the bodega, or like the bar next door and buy a bottle?” 

“The owner of the bar has decided to specialize in beer only, but we do have some very light, fruity beers that are almost wine-like, if you’d like to try one?” 

The woman pursed her lips and looked like Aisling just deeply offended her, but then she shrugged, waving her hand in Aisling’s direction as she turned back to her friends. 

“Sure, whatever, just get me something to drink.” 

Aisling gritted her teeth into a smile, “Ok then, coming right up,” and turned back to the bar. She grabbed the Belgian beer and sent the runner over to the table with it, before she got back to serving the line of patrons at the bar. 

The bar got louder and rowdier as the evening moved on, and both Jenny and Aisling had to dodge unwelcome advances from tipsy customers. Jenny slapped away the hand of a man who reached across the counter in an attempt to hook a finger into her neckline, shouting abuse at her as he spilled his drink in the process. Aisling stepped in and chewed him out, getting the bouncer to bar him, to loud protests from his equally drunk friends. 

The whole vibe was in itself not unusual, a regular Saturday night, but Aisling felt her patience running thin, impatiently snapping at any man who got too close. The table with the rude woman left and Aisling cursed under her breath when she saw that they’d left no tip, scooping up the exact change from the table. 

The final straw came when she was collecting glasses towards the end of the evening, the bar crowd thinning out as people went home or on to some club. A man stumbled from the rest room as she bent forward over a table to retrieve a glass. As he walked behind her, he grabbed her hips and grinded his groin into her ass, groaning loudly and whooping. She pushed back, making him stumble backwards into the wall, and he cursed loudly as his head made sharp impact with wooden slats. 

“Fucking bitch!” he yelled, grabbing the back of his head, “What the hell is wrong with you?” 

“Keep your fucking hands off me!” Aisling snapped back at him, getting ready to kick him in the balls if he tried advancing on her. The drunk man took one stumbling step forward, rage across his features, but was halted by Mickey, the owner, holding up his hands in front of the man in a placating gesture. 

“Sir, please, the next drink is on the house, I apologize for her behavior,” he said, attempting to usher the man away from Aisling and towards his friends at a nearby table. 

“She fucking assaulted me,” the man protested, “I want her fired.”

“You’ve got to be fucking kidding me, Mickey!” Aisling spluttered, “He was dry humping my ass and you’re giving him a drink on the house?!”

“Fucking fire the bitch!” the man yelled as Mickey ushered him towards his friends who were waving at him to join them. 

“I’ll talk to her,” Mickey assured him, snapping his fingers at Jenny to bring over another beer. 

“Mickey!” Aisling protested, and he rounded on her, hissing as he got up in her face. 

“It’s part of the job, Aisling, just brush it off. Your attitude is bad enough as it is these days, making a scene isn’t exactly helping your case. Or your tips.” 

“You’ve got to be fucking kidding me,” Aisling blurted, “You’re telling me you’re fine with a guest grabbing my ass and dry humping just so that we can get more tips? Why don’t you just hire a prostitute?!”

“Now, listen, Aisling-” 

“No, you fucking listen!” Aisling snapped, her temper getting the better of her as she felt the injustice of the whole fucking night fuel her rage. “Fuck that guy, and fuck you for taking his side, fuck your bar and your stupid fucking overpriced pretentious beer.”  

Aisling threw the rag she’d been holding on the floor as Jenny stared at her from across the bar, as did pretty much everyone else. But Aisling was too furious to care, and she didn’t even register Mickey yelling at her as she stormed through the back door. Cursing she wiped at the tears that welled up, she hated how she always cried when she got mad, and grabbed her bag and jacket. She was outside in the back alley before she’d even gotten out of her uniform shirt, and with an angry growl she ripped it off, buttons bouncing over the ground. She pulled her own shirt from the bag and yanked it over her head as the back door opened. It was Jenny, her eyes wide as she glanced back over her shoulder. 

“Mickey’s livid, I think he might really fire you this time,” she gasped, “Come back in and apologize, please!” 

“No fucking way, I quit, I’m fucking done,” Aisling replied, tugging her jacket over the t-shirt as she started to walk away down the alley. 

“Aisling!” Jenny called after her, nervously looking between the door to the bar and Aisling’s retreating back. “Aisling! I’ll call you tomorrow! I’ll get him to not fire you, ok?” 

The interior of the cabin smelled stale and musty as Frankie pushed open the door. Leaving it open, he dumped his duffel bag on the nearest chair and went to open the windows and let the clean air inside. The smell of the prairie drifted in on the draft and he inhaled again, it smelled like home in a way he’d never felt anywhere else. A little it reminded him of his childhood back in Texas, but mostly it just reminded him of life here. 

He sank down on the couch and leaned his head back, closing his eyes. He should shower, should heat up a can of something for dinner, but he just needed to relax for a minute. A coyote barked from somewhere outside and Frankie pushed himself off the couch and went to the front door, sinking down on the porch swing. The night in front him was dark but he could make out the shadows as his eyes got used to the faint light. 

The coyote barked again, and Frankie heard the underbrush rustle as a startled rabbit scurried away. He relaxed back against the wooden slats and kicked it into a slow swing. The sky above him was sparkling with stars and out of habit he found the North Star, a constant in the northern hemisphere, it had helped guide him many times. 

The coyote yapped again, closer this time, and Frankie scanned the darkness just out of his field of vision, straining his eyes to spot the glimmer of the animal's eyes. His ears felt unfamiliar with the silence after the weeks in the city, but after a while he could pick up the faint rustle of the wind through the dry grass. A twig snapped nearby and as Frankie looked over, he saw the coyote. It had frozen mid step as it spotted Frankie’s movement, and now the two of them stared at each other across the front yard. 

“Hey there, boy,” Frankie said in a low voice, “what you up too?” 

The coyote blinked as its ears moved forward towards the voice and Frankie chuckled. 

“Are you the welcome wagon? I appreciate you keeping an eye on the place while I was gone, but there’s no food here, boy. Better get a move on or that jackrabbit’s gonna get even further away.” 

The animal regarded Frankie with curiosity for a few more seconds, before a sound behind drew its attention and it turned its head towards the darkness. 

“Go on, boy,” Frankie said, keeping his voice low, and the coyote looked back at him once again, before it turned and disappeared into the night. Frankie watched the spot where it had been swallowed up by the shadows for a while before he got to his feet with a sigh. He felt content. There was a dull ache in him, a hole left by Aisling, shaped by the guilt and regret he felt, but he hoped it would fade over time. He would take Herb’s advice and learn the lesson, make sure he didn’t make the same mistake again. 

Aisling slammed the door to her tiny apartment, reality starting to catch up with her as the rage abated. Sinking down on the bed she dropped her head in her hands, sighing deeply. It wasn’t that she got fired, she could probably convince Mickey to take her back. If not, there were thousands of bars and cafés around Brooklyn, she’d find a new job. 

No, it was the idea of going back to another bartending job, or being a barista, smiling for tips, being polite to rude customers and dodging their advances. She was in her forties, and up until now, her life hadn’t bothered her. She made enough to pay her small bills, buy bodega sandwiches and the odd evening out with friends. It had been enough. Kicking off her shoes, she lay down on the bed and stared at the ceiling. 

It had been enough. Past tense. 

It irked her to admit, but at the root of it, was Frankie. The way he’d talked about his life in Montana, so different to how she lived. How he couldn’t handle the noise and the rush of New York that she just took for granted. He just wanted to go back home to the silence, the big open sky, where his mind could be quiet. And for the first time in her life, she craved the same silence. And she craved him. 

She sat up on the bed, staring at her small bookshelf. She could almost reach it from the bed, the room was that small and suddenly she couldn’t stand it. She took two steps across the floor and pulled out the book, finding his note at once. The handwriting was so neat and precise, it didn’t really say anything about the man who’d jotted it down. As she sat down on the bed again, she smoothed out the paper, ran her hand across his name before she looked around the the room again. 

What do you have to lose apart from time? 

Dignity? 

Girl, what fucking dignity? You’ve just been fired from a dead end job, you live in a derelict Greenpoint relic that’s about to be knocked down, your life fits into two bags, one if you leave the books behind, what the fuck do you have to lose? 

It was no effort to pull her phone from her pocket and look up the bus time table, just looking. Just checking to see what it would cost and how long it would take. She could afford the one way ticket, but not the return. 

Fuck it. 

They had bars in Montana. 

Before she could change her mind, she pulled the duffel bag from under the bed. Her life really did fit into it, but she had to leave almost all the books, only two for the bus fit in the bag. In a final moment of uncertainty, she pocketed the key for her apartment instead of dropping it in the mail slot. Her whole life was packed up and on her shoulder in less than an hour, the thought both made her feel free and miserable. So many years with so little to show for it. But there was nothing to hold her back. One big leap made easier by her small bag, and it made her feel free. 

The window in his bedroom was open when he went to bed a little bit later on the first night back, and he crawled under the covers, feeling his mind starting to churn the second he closed his eyes, the events of the past three days rolling inside him.

Maybe I should’ve tried a little bit harder? What if I’d stayed, got my own place? 

He shook his head even as it lay on the pillow, he knew it was a pipe dream. 

On my own, I would’ve been so fucked. Probably gone back to Eva, or worse. But maybe I should’ve asked for Aisling’s number, or given her mine, just to stay in touch. She must’ve felt the same thing, right? 

He chewed his lip in the darkness, listening to the sounds of the prairie night outside with half an ear. 

She probably didn’t feel the same way, why would she? You’re grasping at the thinnest fucking straws, Morales. She’s not fucked up like you, doesn’t need saving, she’s got her shit together. It was just like a regular hook up to her, she’ll forget you in a week or two. 

He grabbed the pillow and rolled over onto his stomach and buried his face in it as he shook his head. 

Yeah, maybe, but she was still fucking pissed at me three days ago, and it had been what? A month? Would she still be that pissed if it meant nothing to her? Maybe if I give her some time? 

Pendejo, she was pissed because you didn’t tell her you had a fucking girlfriend, any woman would be pissed about that. 

He rolled the thoughts around his head, making lists in his head, pros and cons, feeling like his old army brother Will who always counted things, bullets, kills, days, months, number of times Frankie had fucked up. 

But as his mind drifted back to his trio of close friends he could hear the advice they’d give, and in the darkness, it made him smile as their voices echoed in his head. 

Will, the oldest and definitely the wisest, would cross his arms and give Frankie a thoughtful look, thinking through the options before he answered. 

Herb’s right, Fish. Take it as a lesson for your next step in life. Maybe you’ll see her again, maybe you won’t, but don’t waste this opportunity to learn something about yourself. 

Benny, the younger brother of Will, would shrug as he furrowed his forehead with a sympathetic look that didn’t really mean much, Benny could pull new women every night if he wanted too. 

It sucks, Fish, she sounds special, but I mean…do you really want to be in a relationship now? We should go out sometime and have a bit of fun. You know I’m a great wingman.

Yeah right, Frankie thought, grinning to himself. Going out with Benny to a bar meant Frankie ended up as the wingman instead while every woman in the place made eyes at the muscular blonde guy. No one looked at Frankie when Benny was in the room. 

And then there was Pope, his real brother in everything but blood. The disappointment from him about his many relapses had always been the worst to endure and it had made Frankie withdraw. In hindsight he knew it was all on him, but a piece of him wished Pope had tried harder to stay in touch when Frankie needed him the most. By now, it had been over a year since they last spoke. But Pope would always take one look at Frankie with those sharp eyes and see straight through him. And in this, he would set him straight about what he needed to do. 

Go back, hermano. If she makes you feel like that, go do what it takes to have her in your life. Even if it’s just as a friend. What have you got to lose? Not many good things have happened to you lately, if she’s one of the few, fight for it. 

Frankie sighed, rolling onto his back again, staring at the open window, a few faint stars visible. He’d pulled away from them all, from everyone in the past, in the depth of his addiction and then during his slow road to sobriety. He’d told them he’d moved to Montana only after he’d moved, sending them a text in the group chat about his whereabouts. Benny had given him a thumbs up, Will had replied saying something about whatever he needed. Pope hadn’t even replied. 

Suddenly he missed them, more than he had in a long time, ever since they came back from the doomed mission to Colombia. A mission they had no business being on, a greedy grab for money disguised behind some sort of invented moral about going after a top narco lord. It had been a disaster, leaving them more broken than ever, their team leader dead, and their brotherhood almost torn a part. 

He reached for his phone, finding Pope’s number and quickly, before he could change his mind, he typed a message and hit send. 

Port Authority after midnight was even more of a shitshow than she’d expected, and she quickly made her way through the sparse crowd to the right bus stop. The bus wasn’t due to leave for another forty minutes and she pulled out her phone again, nervously tapping the locked screen. She hadn’t bought a ticket yet, her nerves holding her back. Butterflies, and not the good kind, fluttered in her stomach. Apart from short trips to Long Island, a few weeks living on Staten Island that she’d rather forget about, she’d never left New York. Never left the state, never had the money, or the need too. Now she was facing two days on a bus, leaving everything behind based on a shitty night and a man she hadn’t spoken to in three months. Her lip was chewed raw by the time she unlocked the phone and the bus rolled into the stop.

She stood with the phone in hand, looking at the screen, the small ‘Buy’ button taunting her, even as the driver opened the door and announced the departure. The other passengers began to load their bags into the hold, and still her thumb hovered over the button. 

A high pitched squeak pulled her attention away from the phone and she looked towards the source of the sound, further down the plattform. A fat, well fed New York city rat, was attacking a pigeon, it looked like it’s wing was broken. As Aisling watched, the rat sank its long, yellow teeth into the neck of the bird, and dragged it underneath a dumpster by the wall. She heard another pathetic squawk from the pigeon and then it went quiet. With a shudder she turned back to the phone and hit ‘Buy’. 

Fuck this city. 

Frankie blinked in confusion at the bright sunlight that streamed across his face.

“Jeez…” he muttered to himself as he rubbed a hand over the stubble on his jaw and glanced over at the clock radio on his bedside table. He hadn’t set his alarm and now he was later than he usually would be. His belly growled, reminding him that he’d forgotten to eat last night, and with a yawn, he dragged himself out of bed and into the shower to start the day. 

He ate a can of ravioli from the pan while standing at the stove and poured the black coffee in a travel mug before he headed out the door. After reconnecting the battery the old truck rumbled to life and he gave it a grateful pat. At least some things were always dependable. 

Herb greeted him back at the ranch and then sent him back into the routine of the day without nonsense, telling him to go over the tack of the horses that would be going out on the trail with a group of guests the next day. 

Frankie was met by a sharp whicker as he stepped into the stable, two large heads turned to him as he pulled the door closed. The buckskin horse whickered again, bobbing its head up and down and Frankie chuckled, stepping over to her. 

“Hey, Dolly, my girl. Did you miss me?” he muttered, scratching her forelock as she nudged his arm for treats, nuzzling close to his shoulder. Frankie rested his head against hers and inhaled the familiar smell of her coat as she affectionately nipped at his shirt. 

“Sorry I left without saying goodbye,” he said, “but I’m back now, and I think I’ll stay. Gonna take you out later today, you can make sure I can’t walk tomorrow, my butt’s gonna be so sore.” 

He chuckled at his own joke as Dolly gave a low whicker, her soft nose bumping his pocket. 

“Sorry, I forgot to bring something, I’ll make it up to you later.” 

She gave him a snort but seemed to forgive him as he continued to scratch her mane. After a few minutes he gave her a final pat and went over to the tack room, giving the other horse a pat too. His phone started ringing as he opened the door to the tack room and Pope’s name flashed across the screen. His thumb hovered over the green button for a few seconds before he drew a deep breath and hit it. 

“Hey Pope, it’s been a while,” he said in greeting, dropping his eyes to his boots without even realizing, as if Pope was standing in front of him with those sharp eyes. 

“It has, but it’s good to hear from you, Fish,” came the voice of his oldest friend on the other end, “You still in Montana?” 

“Yeah, but I just got back from New York, long story,” Frankie replied, “All good with you, hermano?” Calling Pope brother was almost a code between them, a word only used when it meant something, when it was time to listen. The word a special signal between just the two of them, brothers in all but blood. 

Frankie could hear Pope’s smile through the phone, a low chuckle almost in relief, “I’m good, hermano. Still in Florida, still with Linda.” Pope had started dating her back when Frankie had been deep in his addiction, and he’d only met her twice, neither time a very good memory. But from what he’d heard from Benny, she made Pope happy and they were good together. 

“That’s great, man, I’m happy for you, I…I know I didn’t make the best impression on her, but she seemed great for you.” 

“She is, and I’m…” Pope trailed off for a few seconds as Frankie heard the sound of someone moving on the other end, a low ‘bye, love you’ from Pope, and a door closing. “Sorry, she’s just off to work, yeah, she’s amazing, I’m really happy, found some peace, you know?” 

Frankie shuffled his boots on the rough concrete floor of the tack room and leaned against the workbench, a sudden spout of jealousy tightening his throat. 

“Yeah, I know, I’m happy for you, really, man. It’s great to hear that you found it.” 

“What about you, Fish? You still clean, doing ok out there in cowboy country?” 

Frankie could hear the smirk and the exaggerated twang in Pope’s voice and he chuckled. 

“Yeah, I’m good, still clean, still working the ranch, but…uhm...Eva and I broke up. She moved to New York a while back.” 

“Shit, sorry to hear that,” Pope replied, “But I…” 

“Listen, man,” Frankie interrupted Pope, he didn’t want to go into the whole business with Eva over the phone, and he could hear his friend gearing up for a longer conversation, “I was thinking last night. I know I’ve been shit at staying in touch, but I want to change that. I’m not coming back to Florida any time soon, but maybe you and the Millers could come out here? I wanna show you guys my life out here.” 

“Frankie,” Pope smiled down the phone, “I’d fucking love that, and you know the Miller’s won’t say no to some ranching. Let me talk to them, we’ll find some dates that work and let you know.” 

“Awesome, man, it’ll be good, I’ll make sure Herb books you into one of the nice cabins.” 

“And get me a horse that won’t buck me off,” Pope laughed at the other end and Frankie grinned. 

“I’m not promising anything, might put you on the mule.” 

“Fuck off,” came the instant reply. 

“You’ll love the mule, Pope,” Frankie laughed before he glanced over at the saddles waiting for him, “Listen, I’ve got to get back to work, we’ve got guests coming tomorrow,” 

“Alright, hermano, we’ll see you soon, ok?”

“Yeah, see you soon, hermano.” 

Frankie felt the smile stretching his face as he hung up the phone, he felt lighter already. Guilt and shame had kept him away from his old friends, and reconnecting might not be easy. But this was a small step towards it and he needed to move forward. Put Eva and New York behind him, get over Aisling, learn from his mistake and rectify those he could. With a deep exhale, he hoisted the first saddle off its perch on the wall. 

The Greyhound bus rumbled away down the pin straight highway, heading west, towards the darkening mountain range. The sun slowly sunk behind the highest peaks, soon their shadows would touch her feet. Looking back, east, towards a past she’s left on a whim, she sighed and let her eyes drift up to the indigo sky. Big sky country indeed. 

So alien to her eyes, so open to someone used to living their life surrounded by tall buildings, busy people, small trees in small parks. 

Here, the open prairie gave speed to the cold wind hurtling down from the mountain range, whipping dirt from the road, tugged at her loose hair. She briefly closed her eyes against the particles of dust, inhaled deeply, tasting it on her tongue, dry grass in the air, a hint of snow from the mountains. No way back now, the bus too far away to stop. Only her duffel bag and a phone number, hoping he’d pick up and let her in. 

Aisling turned around and crossed the road, the bright lights of the gas station at the edge of town spilling across the dusty asphalt. She pushed open the door and nodded to the clerk behind the counter, dropping her bag by one of the small tables next to the coffee machine. His number was already in her phone, but she hadn’t had the courage to call him yet. But now she was here, and he was only a short car ride away. 

She closed her eyes, sending up a silent prayer, and tapped Frankie’s name on the screen, pressing the phone to her ear as it rang. 

Chapter 7

A/N: So Aisling finally got herself out to Montana on a bit of a whim, spur of the moment decision. But how is Frankie going to react when she suddenly turns up on his doorstep?

tag list: @harriedandharassed @inept-the-magnificent @sheepdogchick3  @readingiskeepingmegoing @noisynightmarepoetry @survivingandenduring @vabeachazn @amyispxnk @oberynslady @amyispxnk @thewiigers  @lady-bess @missladym1981 @peppermintfury @typewriter83 @anoverwhelmingdin @vabeachazn

[broodybuck]

Title: The Praise Doctor

Pairing: Steve Rogers x Bucky Barnes

Rating: E

Tags: 18+ explicit smut, sex worker Steve, handjobs, top Steve, bottom Bucky, praise kink, first date

[ao3 link]

"Is this how you like it?" Steve asks.

His hand, a loose fist around Bucky, slides up so lightly it's more like a dangerous tease.

Bucky's skin tingles more from the soft tone of the man's voice than his hand although the combination undeniably has an effect on him. Bucky nods.

"You're perfect like this," Steve croons. "You look perfect, all cradled in my lap, naked, writhing. Wanting and needy. Oh Buck, you look just perfect."

Bucky fully shivers at this praise. It is what he paid for after all. Steve Rogers is known as the Praise Doctor in hushed circles. Bucky heard about him at a nightclub. He had gotten the guy's number and called the very next day.

This is exactly what Bucky fantasizes about. To be pleasured and praised endlessly at the same time. It's honestly too good to be true especially when the man himself, Steve Rogers, is as large and beautiful as men come.

"You're completely flushed, baby," Steve coos. "That color looks so good on you."

Steve slides his free palm flatly down Bucky's chest, his hand around Bucky's cock slides back down to the base with a slight squeeze.

"How do you look so good like this? Tell me, sweetheart."

Bucky murmurs out a moan. It's so good, every word Steve says to him is perfect. How does this guy do it so right?

Every session, which has been exactly three so far, has been better than the last and it's becoming a problem. Lately, if Bucky tries to date or even just have meaningless sex, it does nothing for him. No one talks to him enough, touches him enough. No one makes his brain melt the way Steve can. This service is ruining him.

Right now, when he's curled in Steve's lap getting a handjob while being utterly adored, Bucky has no capacity to think about how ruined he is. He can only delve deeper into the blurry pleasure and let it wash over him in waves until he comes in the man's hand — which he undoubtedly will any second now.

All week, Bucky tries not to think about Steve. He tries to flirt with guys at bars, he takes the phone numbers of men his friends want to set him up with. But every Thursday, he's giddy as he walks up the steps to a Brooklyn brownstone and knocks on the door.

Steve lets him in. It's their fourth session tonight. Bucky can feel his stomach turning over and over again, his chest fluttering, his whole body not letting him rest.

"Hey," Steve smiles, closing the door behind Bucky. "I like that shirt on you."

"Oh, yeah?" Bucky stammers, looking down to check what he's wearing.

It's an old Brooklyn tee. It fits a bit snug after so many cycles in the dryer but the fabric is light gray, basic cotton. He hadn't put much thought into what he would wear on these nights since he knew the clothes would be coming off. Maybe he should've thought about it more. Suddenly self-conscious, Bucky shifts uncomfortably in place.

"Yeah," Steve answers. "But you know I'd like it much better, off."

Bucky breathes a little easier. Since he's overthinking his clothes so much, he'd much rather be naked right now. He tugs the collar of his shirt up and over his head, happy to be free of it. He considers for a moment what he'll wear next time. Then the thought leaves his brain when Steve quickly closes the space between them.

"Mhm, much better," Steve hums, his gaze trailing down Bucky's chest. A fingertip circles one of Bucky's nipples tantalizingly slow.

When he applies pressure over the nub, Bucky squeaks out an embarrassing sound. He's always making noises he hasn't heard himself make. Only Steve gets them out of him. Only Steve. It's seriously a problem. He shouldn't be this attached to a sex worker, a man he's paying to please him.

Steve drops to his knees and carefully works open Bucky's jeans. Bucky steps out of his pants and shoes as Steve rolls them down his legs.

Steve's eyes focus on the hard line in Bucky's boxer briefs. Steve sighs blissfully like he's happy to see Bucky erect. He's still on his knees.

"Do you know how beautiful you are under here?" Steve asks quietly, his palm grazing Bucky's erection.

Bucky's eyes slip shut, his head tilts back automatically as he feels Steve push his underwear down and hot air breathe over his cock.

Steve nudges his ankles, directing him to step out of the undergarment. Bucky opens his eyes, following the instruction, realizing he's already lost himself so quickly.

Steve stands with a smile and frames Bucky's face.

"Would you like to come for me, tonight?"

Bucky nods then blinks hard and remembers he's supposed to answer verbally.

"Yes."

"I love to see you let go for me, Buck. It's breathtaking, honest, watching it all spill out of you. Watching that good release run through you."

Bucky bites his bottom lip, feeling his skin heat to an unfair temperature. His knees wobble enough that he sways forward. Steve notices and grips Bucky's arms to steady him.

"Let's get you to the bed, sweetheart."

This session is not long. In fact, tonight Bucky comes embarrassingly fast. He's not sure what it is. You'd think he'd be used to it, being this is the fourth time he's seeing Steve.

But he can't get used to it. Steve finds something new to say every time. He praises a different part of Bucky, makes a big deal out of the way Bucky does anything, even things he can't help. It makes Bucky so hot, he doesn't feel in control of his body. And tonight, he certainly wasn't.

Usually, their sessions last a good forty-five minutes and then with cleanup and redressing, it might round out to an hour. This time, Bucky's panting from his orgasm when he checks the time. It's been thirteen minutes. Jesus, that's humiliating.

He can feels the hot blush on his face as he avoids Steve's gaze.

"Sorry, um..." Bucky starts.

"No need to apologize. It's a good thing, baby. I'm flattered I could get you there so fast, tonight," Steve whispers.

And sure, his words still tingle on Bucky's skin but it doesn't make him feel all that better about what happened.

Bucky tries to sit up. He's always in Steve's lap. It's something that just sort of happened the first time and Bucky loved it too much to give it up since then.

Steve sits back on the bed giving him room to move but Bucky doesn't make it very far when Steve says, "We still have the rest of the hour."

Bucky freezes, finally daring to look at him again.

"Of course, it's up to you. But I'm betting I could get a second round of you," Steve smirks. Obviously, Bucky's not going anywhere now.

"Oh... yeah, okay," Bucky stammers.

"Or..." Steve says. This time he looks away which is unusual. He looks worried when he says, "I could ask you something I shouldn't."

Bucky's heart leaps in his chest. He has no idea what Steve's about to ask him and yet, somehow he knows he wants him to.

"This is so out of line and unprofessional," Steve goes on. Bucky considers for a moment whether he should still be in Steve's lap for this but he's unable to move at this point. "But I'd really like to take you to dinner."

Bucky's eyes betray him and widen enormously. Steve smiles shyly.

"There's no pressure, obviously. I know you hired me and this wouldn't have anything to do with that. I'm asking you for a... date," Steve clarifies. "If you're interested."

"Yes," Bucky says without taking another second to think. He can barely breathe he's so in. "Tonight?"

"Well, we have the time and it's only 7:15. So, yes, if you're hungry."

"I don't have anything else to wear," Bucky says, peering over to his pile of casual clothes on the ground. He really regrets the outfit now.

"I can lend you something if that's not weird."

"Okay."

Steve smiles honestly now and then carefully lifts Bucky off his lap and sets him on the mattress before venturing to his closet. He comes back with a nice sweater and dress pants.

"These should fit. Let me change too," Steve says handing him the clothes.

Bucky gets off the bed to grab his underwear and then dresses in Steve's clothes.

He feels a wave of nerves wash over him when Steve reappears in a nicer outfit and looks Bucky over.

"I like that sweater on you," Steve remarks.

"Steve," Bucky warns, his face turning warm instantly.

"Hm?" he smiles innocently.

"I thought we were going to dinner."

"We are, can't I compliment how you look?"

"You know why you can't," Bucky argues, his voice strained.

"Alright, I'll save that for later," Steve smirks and holds out his hand.

Bucky takes it and they walk together to Steve's car.

Dinner is at a very nice restaurant downtown. Bucky's overwhelmed with how he's feeling. He's still shocked he's here and at the same time, the thought of getting to date the man who's able to make him feel like no one else... well, that would solve a whole lot of problems. He hasn't stopped thinking about Steve for a month now. So, yeah he's excited to be here.

"So, have you taken others out like this?" Bucky asks cautiously.

"No, you're the first," Steve says. "This is completely separate from my services. I made that clear, right?"

"Yeah, you did. I guess I'm just wondering... why me?"

"You're my type," Steve admits. "I've been holding back since our first meeting, trying to keep things professional. Then... I don't know, I figured what the hell, why not try?"

Bucky nods trying not to keen too hard at his words.

"You're um, my type too," Bucky replies after an extended beat.

"I am?"

"Yeah. I mean, I'm sure you're a lot of people's type. You're like gorgeous."

"And here I thought I was the Prasie Doctor," Steve says low enough that no one else should hear but it still makes Bucky's face flush.

"Have other people tried?" Bucky asks to distract from it.

"Tried what?"

"To ask you out or something?"

"No, actually. Everyone has been very professional," Steve reveals.

"Huh," Bucky remarks surprised.

"Are you comfortable being here?" Steve asks. "On a date with me?"

"Yeah. I'm nervous, but comfortable," Bucky answers honestly.

"Well, there's no need to be nervous, Buck. You already know how fond I am of you — with all of you."

Bucky blushes hard and tries to hide the way he bites his lip when he looks away. Steve laughs lightheartedly.

"Sorry, just a habit."

Bucky knows he should flirt back. He swears with anyone else, he would have.

"That's okay," Bucky says. "I don't know why I'm so nervous with you. I shouldn't be given..."

"It's completely understandable. We've shared an experience most haven't. It's a unique situation that we're now trying to adjust away from."

"Yeah. You seem smart," Bucky comments.

"Thank you," Steve says. "I'd love to learn more about you, Buck."

"What do you wanna know?"

"Anything. Start from the beginning," Steve smiles.

That calms Bucky and he starts telling his life story. He talks a little too long and by the end of the dinner, he realizes how much he's been talking. Then he notices Steve's been listening to every word without a single interruption.

"Sorry, I've been talking forever. I should be asking about you," Bucky apologizes.

"No, I'm really enjoying this," Steve says. "Besides, I figured I can tell you more about myself tonight."

"Tonight?"

"When we get back to my place. I may be getting ahead of myself, but based on our history I figured more would happen tonight. And as much as I've loved seeing you, I really want to show you all of me."

Bucky gulps. He's not sure if he's nervous or just turned on now, probably both. He really wants to see Steve, all of Steve, oh god just the thought is getting him hot and bothered.

Bucky merely nods and is grateful when the check is dropped off.

Being back in Steve's bedroom is a whole new experience tonight. He's not cradled in Steve's lap, he's not the only one naked and he's not simply getting a handjob while Steve praises him every second.

No, they're kissing tonight. Passionately, fully on the mouth, tongue and all. Steve's a good kisser and good with his hands. He's undressing both of them, Bucky likes how he's taking the lead, he could've guessed he would.

Steve's kissing down Bucky's neck by the time Bucky realizes they're both naked and he barely gets a chance to look at Steve before he's being laid down on the bed. Bucky opens his eyes and tries to take it all in. A nude Steve over him, rubbing against him. His eyes fall closed from the sensation, from the arousal building too high, too quickly.

Steve kisses him again.

"Do you want to..." he asks breathlessly.

"Yeah," Bucky answers readily and opens his legs on instinct. He's almost embarrassed about it especially when Steve notices with a pause. But thankfully, Steve doesn't let any shame linger.

"Oh honey, you're so good for me. You know that? Look at you, spreading your legs for me. You want me inside you, doll?"

Bucky shivers, a full-body one. How is he going to handle this man's constant praise with his cock inside him? He's never wanted something so badly in his life.

"Please, Steve. Yes," Bucky whimpers and watches Steve fetch lube and a condom out of the nightstand drawer.

He begins opening Bucky up, one finger at a time.

"Keep talking to me," Bucky pleads in a whisper.

He thinks, maybe he's not supposed to ask that of Steve anymore. He's not at an appointment with the Praise Doctor anymore, he's on a date with Steve. Thankfully, Steve quickly quiets his worries.

"Sorry honey, was just admiring how good you feel. Haven't gotten to feel you like this before — I got a little lost," Steve says.

He smiles shyly, a blush coats his cheeks. Bucky can't believe Steve is embarrassed for once. God, that's a new level of hot. Bucky squirms from it and Steve presses a hand on his chest while fitting another finger inside him.

When he's ready, Steve coats his cock with more lube and then stares intently into Bucky's eyes.

"You have no idea how long I've been imagining this," Steve tells him, pushing the head of his cock against the rim. Bucky whimpers. He can't even talk, he just wants it — needs it.

"Can't believe you haven't felt how hard I was. I was trying to hide it, but god, I didn't think I was doing a good job," Steve half laughs.

Bucky tries to think back but his mind is too fuzzy. He mainly remembers every praise, every touch of the man's hands. Maybe he was only thinking of himself, he's not sure, but he can't remember feeling Steve under him.

"I was so hard, every damn time," Steve shares. "Getting to make you come has been the highlight of my week. But this, baby, this is going to surpass all of that. I need to be inside you, need to feel you around me."

"God, yes. Fuck me, Steve. Please, god, fuck me," Bucky blurts out.

Steve pushes inside, faster than Bucky anticipates, but it's only a moment of pain before his body settles around the thickness filling him. He breathes out as Steve kisses him hard on the mouth. He kisses him back and then Steve starts fucking him.

"You're all I've been thinking about," Bucky says.

Steve looks right at him, still fucking him while listening to every word.

"You were ruining me with a handjob. God, but no one could make me feel as good as you, I swear," Bucky whines.

"Fuck, Bucky. Shit," Steve curses and fucks him harder like he can't help himself.

Bucky moans out, gripping Steve tighter, arching up into the increasing thrusts.

"Want you to come in me," Bucky stutters by Steve's ear and the man's pace falters again.

"Shit, Buck. Thought I was supposed to be good with words. Since when do you got a mouth like this?"

He crushes their mouths together before Bucky can answer. It's so hot, so perfect, and Steve picks back up the pace. Fucking him like he's on a mission like he's putting all his strength into it.

Bucky moans, way too close, even when he's already come tonight, earlier with the fastest handjob he's ever came from.

"Steve— shit, sorry."

"Don't you ever apologize for needing to come, Buck," Steve snaps by his ear but it's not angry, it's just demanding and hot. "Don't you ever apologize for showing me how good I make you feel. Fuck, you're amazing. You're perfect."

And it dawns on Bucky then that maybe all of Steve's praise wasn't just part of the job. Maybe all the new things he was always thinking to say was because Steve was finding them for the first time, he was falling for Bucky all this time.

With that revelation, Bucky comes hard and loud. Steve kisses him, keeps fucking him through it, and then it's not long until he's following suit. He stills inside him, his cock throbs with each eruption of come that fills Bucky up.

This feels so right, how it should. This is what was missing all those other times. They both needed to finish, Bucky needed Steve inside him to feel truly satisfied.

And the best part of this all, he doesn't have to wait a week to see Steve again.

[starstuffandalotofcoffee]

I threw down pretty heavily with SURJ this year, and also wasn't particularly happy with their post-election analysis. I'm not necessarily looking to move orgs, but I'm curious what the takes on the WFP/Move On call were. I'm in the contacting them to see if I can get the recording, but I'd also love to get your deeper opinion.

the recording of the mass call is here (I couldn't recall the coalition name while drafting that post and was in a rush to get to something and probably should have waited). I will admit I was not in like, a great headspace to remember details, and I had to drop off early, but I have signed up for my local meeting which is tomorrow (check your area! there's links on the same page). It focused a lot more on community building and tangible plans put in place and a lot less about Our Fellow White Women coming from educated lefty white women in Brooklyn who only have access to other educated lefty white women in Brooklyn. I also think that it did contain some useful post-mortems. I do not think it's correct to say Democrats made all of the right choices over the past 4 years but the issue is less "we have abandoned the working class" and much more "messaging is fucked, a lot of programs move too slowly, and we should have prosecuted Trump much more quickly." Like, more generally, I think that capitalism is a massive problem and is a major factor why we're at where we're at. but SURJ felt like, well, Very Online Leftists who are like "under late stage capitalism we are all fucked" and when you ask "ok what should we do about it" they're like "stop capitalism" and when you're like "ok what are the actionable steps" they're like "CAPITALISM BAD". Or to put it another way, to reference the Daniel Hunter 10 steps article, it felt all very public angsting, no action. And perhaps it was just that that call was Wednesday Night and Worth Fighting For was Thursday and they'd had another day to pause and grieve and breathe but the former just made me feel like they were wallowing and the latter was the first thing that made me feel better that wasn't pure distraction.

also: Judith LeBlanc was a smart choice. I feel better today for having gone to my synagogue and talked to old left-leaning Jewish people. I think you need to spend time with people who can say "the steps backward are unacceptable, and also, I have gone forward once and I will keep doing it and I know the work might not be done in my or your lifetime and we still do it." I also think it's a key point in coalition building to have the former head of the Communist Party given an equal platform as Jamie Raskin and Pramila Jayapal and Leah Greenberg. (I also found Ash-Lee Henderson to be a fantastic host/moderator here; again, I think SURJ's mission isn't inherently bad in theory but it really does turn into a lot of Liberal Urbanite White Woman (and sometimes men) self-flagellation. Like...you should not make women of color do the work, but you should fucking listen to them instead of talking forever about how bad and sorry you are about other white women.)

[phoenix-joy]

Excerpt:

Edel said the archives were founded because she and members of a group called the Gay Academic Union, which worked to make academia more accepting of LGBTQ people in the ‘70s, began talking about how difficult it was to find reliable information about lesbian history. 

“A few of us said, ‘Hey, why don’t we just start collecting our history? We’re the ones who best know what we need, what we want. Why let other people do that for us, because they’ll control our history?’” recalled Edel, who now splits her time between New Jersey and Arizona with her partner. “We were all people who really knew that our history was disappearing too quickly.”

[...]

The Lesbian Herstory Archives hosts a variety of events, such as a weekly “Lez Craft!” night on Thursdays. For its 50th anniversary, the organization is hosting a “Dyke Prom” in May at a loft in Brooklyn, though Edel noted that the event is already sold out. 

When asked about goals for the next 50 years, she said the archives have outgrown the Brooklyn space and will need to move soon.

“Fifty years is too hard to say,” Edel said. “We leave that in the hands of the next generation. I certainly won’t be around, and I’m just hoping that it still will be mission-driven so that we reflect the amazing complexity of our communities.” /endquote

Photos from article:

[trashyswitch]

Luigi's Secret

Chapter 22: Ler Moods on Work Days

Luigi's ler mood continues to distract him even during his work day. Meanwhile, Mario is very in-the-dark about the community, and asks Luigi for advice.

BEEP, BEEP, BEEP, BEEP, 

Luigi groaned and slowly opened his eyes. 

BEEP, BEEP, BEEP, BE- *tap* 

Luigi smiled slightly as he heard his brother groan and slap the top of the alarm clock to turn the beeping off. It was Thursday morning, and Luigi was already begging to fall back asleep. 

Mario sat up and rubbed his face, clearly tired. 

“Morning, Mario.” Luigi said. 

“Morning Luigi.” Mario replied, getting out of bed. “Did you sleep well?” Mario asked. 

“Kinda…” Luigi admitted.  

“Kinda? What happened?” Mario asked. 

“Oh nothing…” Luigi mumbled. 

Mario chuckled and got out of bed. “Lee mood?” Mario asked, poking his side. 

“No…” Luigi admitted as he caught Mario’s hand. 

“Oh…” Mario said, pulling on his arm slightly. Luigi turned around and lifted Mario’s arm up above his head. “The opposite, actually.” Luigi replied, tickling up Mario’s ribs first. 

“Ohoho NOHOHOHO! Leheherrr mohohood!” Mario laughed, 

“That’s right, Mario.” Luigi poked the lowest rib. “A big…” He poked the middle ribs. “Fat...” He poked the rib right below the armpit. “Ler mood.” 

Mario shook his head and pulled on his arm. “Luihihigihihi ihihit’s 7 o’clohohock ihin the mohohornihing!” Mario told him. 

“Yeah, has that stopped me before?” Luigi teased. “Besides: I’ve been in a ler mood since late last night!” Luigi explained. 

“Okahahay, ohohokahay.” Mario opened his right eye. “Fihine, but behehe gehehentle.” Mario told him. 

“Okay.” Luigi moved his fingers to the neck. “Can I at least tickle here?” Luigi asked, fluttering his fingers right on his brother’s jawline. 

Mario tittered, curled his neck in, giggling like a little girl. “Ohohokahahayhyhyhyhy.” Mario told him. 

Luigi smiled and tickled his brother’s jawline as gently, but as cruelly as his fingers could go. He wanted Mario to be aching for a chance to really laugh, but he also wanted Mario to melt at his touch. “This is what lers like to call ‘gentle tickles’, or ‘light tickles’. They’re supposed to leave the lee giggling, but begging for more.” Luigi explained. “Ihihit’s ehehevil!” Mario told him. 

“Yeah…But it’s merciful compared to the rough tickles some lers give people.” Luigi added. “And let me tell you, they can be veeeeery rough.” Luigi warned. “But I’m not a rough tickler.” Luigi let him know. 

“Yehehes yohou ahahare! Yohou’re ahaha lihihiar!” Mario yelled back. 

Luigi chuckled and shrugged his shoulders. “Maybe I am.” Luigi replied. “But only you’ll know that.” He stopped his fingers and wiped away the extra phantom tickles on Mario’s neck. “Time for us to get ready?” Luigi asked. 

Mario rubbed his own neck, quickly noticing that Luigi’s touch had made the phantom tickles go away super quickly. “It’s so weird how well that works.” Mario admitted. 

“I know, right?!” Luigi reacted. “So, am I gonna have to keep an eye out for you while we’re working?” Mario asked. 

Luigi shrugged his shoulders. “Only if we’re not with customers.” Luigi replied with a wink. 

Mario rolled his eyes and poked his side as he put his overall strap on. “You’re not the only one who can switch roles on a dime.” Mario told him. 

Luigi snorted and covered his mouth, freezing long enough for Mario to laugh at him. He sighed and smiled a bit before getting himself dressed. Luigi made them both a coffee, while Mario put together some breakfast for the two of them. Luigi gave Mario his gloves before putting his own on, while Mario organized their toolkit before letting Luigi pick it up. Leaving the house, the boys waved to the roads as they walked by. Luigi wrapped the tool bag around himself before hopping on the floating cubes in the air that led to the pipe. Mario was right behind him, hopping into the pipe right after him. 

Making it to Brooklyn, Mario and Luigi got into their car and started it. Mario turned the car around and began to drive to their first location. While he was waiting, Luigi had been reading a rather old tickle fanfic by nhasablogg about Nick & Charlie (two gay lovers from Heartstopper). This specific one was about Charlie discovering that Nick had ticklish hands while he’s drawing on his hand. It was a really cute and romantic idea, and one that Luigi kept coming back to whenever he craved some cute tickle fics. Nhasablogg had always been an amazing writer, even back when she was just nhasablog on AO3 from 2015 onward. 

Gosh…2015…that was way back when Luigi had just been a little snooper on the internet. No one even knew who he was that early on. He was just a sly snooper with a heavy lee mood and nothing else to do but go to school, and then go home to read fanfics all day and watch tickle scenes uploaded on youtube by unassuming people. He didn’t have a name, a profile, or even a voice on the internet back then. He just existed. And he always made sure to get back to this AO3-turned-Tumblr writer known as Nhasablog(g) and see what they’re doing these days. And maybe reread one or two of their newer fanfics again… 

*Poke* 

“eeEEK!” Luigi jumped, dropping his phone and quickly attempting to catch it. 

“We’re here.” Mario told him with a smile. 

Luigi finally caught the phone, and looked at Mario. “Sorry…I didn’t know the car stopped.” Luigi admitted. 

“You didn’t feel the car stop at all?” Mario asked. 

“No…” Luigi admitted. 

Mario chuckled and opened his own car door. “Phone away, focus on work. Okay?” Mario asked. 

Luigi nodded and opened the car door, before hopping out and closing the door. He followed Mario to the door of the customer’s house while carrying the toolkit. 

Later:

Luigi and Mario stopped at a restaurant and parked the van. They had set up their next appointment for 1:15, which meant they had an hour and a half to kill. 

Luigi and Mario were seated at a 2-person table, and started to look at the menus. “So…What are you gonna get?” Mario asked. 

“I don’t know.” Luigi replied. 

“Okay.” Mario closed his menu and looked at Luigi. “So what were you reading earlier?” Mario asked. 

Luigi slowly put the menu down as he developed a wobbly smile. “Uuuhhhhehehe…” Luigi mumbled. 

“Tee-kay fanfic?” Mario asked, enunciating the T and the K for the short form Luigi usually uses. 

Luigi nodded his head subtly, but noticeable enough for Mario to see it. “Yeah…By a writer named Nhasablog.” Luigi told him. 

“Who’s that?” Mario asked. 

“Another fanfic writer. They’ve been in the community for ages now.” Luigi admitted. “Since…2015, I think.” he replied. 

“Geez…” Mario muttered. “How many stories have they written?” Mario asked. 

“As of August 8…two hundred and twenty two.” Luigi replied. 

“And…Does this person have a real name? Or are they only known by their nickname?” Mario asked. 

“The Nhasablog person goes by just the letter N.” Luigi replied. 

“Okay. So N…Jin…Pocket…Who else is there?” Mario asked. 

“Oh! So many, it’s exhausting to keep track.” Luigi replied. “There’s also Nico, Kanene, Joker, Drew…It’s a lot. But my main people are Pocket, Drew, and Jin.” Luigi replied. 

Mario chuckled. “It’s hard for me to keep track without a visual context.” Mario admitted. 

Luigi nodded. “I know…” He muttered, before remembering something helpful. “Actually…Me and Pocket chatted a couple days ago.” Luigi admitted as he pulled out his phone and pulled up the Tumblr chain, before giving it to Mario. 

Mario took the phone and read the chain. 

{trashyswitch asked: [*sneaks up and pokes your sides* BOO!] 

weegee-the-lee answered: [*Screeches* Pocket!] }

Mario looked up at Luigi. “You’re just…going along with this?” Mario asked. “You’re not questioning this stranger?!” He asked. 

Luigi chuckled. “I don’t need to. The fact that she sent ME a message for the first time is huge.” Luigi admitted. 

Mario narrowed his eyes before shrugging his shoulders and going back to reading. 

{trashyswitch: [Yeeees? ;) What would the special green bean like? I’m all ears!👂🏻]

weegee-the-lee: [For you to not scare me like that! I was scared enough in the darklands!]

trashyswitch: [*widens eyes* Oh…did I bring back bad memories? *grows worried*]

weegee-the-lee: [*snickers* No, I’m just more paranoid.]

trashyswitch: [Oh…Alright. *skitters fingers on ribs* Is this better, Lee-uigi?] }

Mario chuckled again. “Everyone on here just calls you Lee-uigi?” Mario asked. 

Luigi nodded his head almost proudly. “Yup.” He replied, popping the P. 

Mario rolled his eyes and went back to reading. 

{weegee-the-lee: [*yelps* Pohohocket! Cuhut ihihit ohout!]

trashyswitch: [And why shall I stop? Why shall the evil Pocket stop tickling Weegee?]

weegee-the-lee: [*whines* shuhut uhuhup! Yohou’re thehe wohohorst!]

trashyswitch: [Am I? Am I really? *lessens tickles slightly*]

weegee-the-lee: [W-wehell... Mahaybe nohot…] }

Mario looked at Luigi. “So…It’s completely normal for lees to subtly admit to their lers that they like being tickled? Or were you just being cute?” Mario asked. 

Luigi looked down. “Uhhhh…It’s fairly normal…” Luigi replied awkwardly. 

Mario chuckled and looked back at the messages. 

{trashyswitch: [Okay. 🙂 *squeezes sides a couple times before stopping*]

weegee-the-lee: [*sits down, panting*]

trashyswitch: [*sits down beside him* Was that too much?] 

weegee-the-lee: [*shakes head, smiling*] 

trashyswitch: [*smiles and baps the bill of your hat*]

weegee-the-lee: [*giggles* that reminds me. *brings out a purple hat similar to his own, with “TS” on the front, and slaps it onto your head*]

trashyswitch: [*gasps loudly and fixes the hat on my head* OH MY GOSH- *hugs Weegee tightly* THANK YOU!! I love it! *tries not to tear up*]

weegee-the-lee: whOA- *giggles* You’re welcome!} 

Mario laughed and handed him back the phone. “You guys are nerds, I swear.” Mario reacted. 

Luigi took back the phone and pulled up something else. “You don’t need to worry about stranger-danger, Mario. I know what I’m doing.” Luigi said. “Unlike her, I didn’t post my face online and then link all the face reveals in the masterpost.” Luigi added. 

Mario blinked and sat back in his chair. “Say that again…but slower.” 

Luigi cleared his throat. “Nah. I’ll just show you.” Luigi showed Mario a picture on the website. It was of a female in a black shirt that said ‘Tumblr’ in pink cursive on the shirt. 

Mario widened his eyes and stared at the photo. “....Wow.” He handed Luigi his phone back. 

Luigi took his phone and closed it before putting it in his pocket. 

Mario bit his lip. “So…Do any of your other online friends have…face reveals?” Mario asked. 

“Nope. Just Pocket.” Luigi replied. 

“Okay.” Mario replied. “Well, that makes me feel a small bit better.” He admitted. “But one more thing:” Mario leaned back and bit his lip. “Would you recommend I get Tumblr?” Mario asked. 

Luigi widened and gasped. “G-Get Tumblr?! To-To what?” He asked. 

“To…meet these people and learn more about the tickle community.” Mario admitted. 

Luigi widened his eyes and covered his mouth. There was no way…this had to be a joke, or some sort of prank. “You want to…start up a Tumblr account…to learn more about the community?” Luigi asked. 

Mario shrugged his shoulders. “I don’t know. It’s only an idea right now.” he admitted. “You’ve talked so much about it and I feel so out-of-the-dark half the time. Maybe if I joined Tumblr and saw some of the things you see, then…I may be able to understand you better.” Mario admitted. 

Luigi was smiling brightly and looking down a small bit, blushing slightly. 

“And…I’m scared that these people you talk to won't really like me because I’m not traditionally part of the community?” Mario asked next. 

Luigi shook his head. “I already told you: We are in desperate need of allies.” Luigi told him. 

Mario smiled and looked over at the waitress as she walked up. 

“Are you ready to order?” The waitress asked. 

Mario nodded. “I think so. Can I get a-”

After Work: 

Mario and Luigi headed to the big green tube and hopped out of the car. “So what are some other teases people in the community use?” Mario asked. 

“Oh boy…” Luigi sighed and closed the door. “Verbal teases, tools, there’s a lot. Some people come up with games and challenges.” Luigi explained. 

“Like what?” Mario asked. 

Luigi smiled. “One of them is ‘Arms up’. The lee keeps their arms up above their head, while the ler tickles the armpits. Keep it up for a certain amount of time, then you win. If the lee drops their arms down, then the ler gets to do something to ‘punish’ or discipline’ the lee.” Luigi replied. 

Mario laughed. “Wow…Evil, but fun.” Mario admitted. 

Luigi bit his lip. “Yeah…That’s one of the things we look for in games like that.” Luigi admitted. 

“Evil, but fun?” Mario asked. 

“Yup. Evil, but fun…for both the ler and the lee.” Luigi replied. 

Mario nodded before hopping into the pipe. “See you there!” Mario shouted. 

Luigi hopped into the tube and flew through the tube right behind his brother. He held onto the plumbing toolkit that was around his shoulder, making sure that none of the tools fell out. As he flew through the invisible part of the pipe, Luigi admired the sunset and the rays that covered the white clouds in a mix of dull purple, light pink mixed in with the endless shades of orange, and yellow down to where the sun had hidden under the horizon. It was awe-inspiring, and it made time slow down for a moment or two…

Nothing…

Nothing beats seeing this beautiful sight every evening. 

[intrepidacious]

🥺🥺🥺🥺🥺

brooklyn, thursday night

summary: It’s the third Thanksgiving after the Blip, and you’ve become a habit Steve’s unable to shake.

pairing: steve rogers x reader

word count: 4.4k

warnings: some angst, some fluff (i mean, it's me); one night stand to two night stand to fwb to lovers kind of situationship; implied sexytimes

please note that my blog is rated 18+. minors dni. ageless/empty blogs will be blocked without warning.

prompt: this was written for layla's love in verse challenge and i loved this idea so much!! i found inspiration in "thanksgiving 2006" by ocean vuong—or rather, the poem found me, as poems tend to do. you can find it in its entirety underneath the fic

a/n: i seem to be making a habit out of posting holiday fics when it’s not, in fact, said holiday, and i can't even feel sorry about it. @heavenlybarnes thank you so much for this beautiful challenge!! i missed writing for steve, and this was the perfect opportunity 💛

masterlist | read on ao3

Brooklyn’s too cold tonight, so Steve keeps walking.

The serum has a way of warming his hands, but not his heart, coursing through his veins with hot vengeance he doesn’t like to stop and examine. He suspects he wouldn’t like what he’d find, because at the core, at the very core of him, there is a numbness where all the world used to be, and he despises himself for it.

He hates that part of himself on nights like this, that soft, aching vulnerability no genius scientist with their experiments could ever cure him from, or even just protect with their chemicals and radiation, all their balancing, imbalanced bullshit. That was never the point.

It’s just that he doesn’t feel particularly good at the moment.

So he keeps walking.

It’s November again, and the winter air is just as ruthless as that gnawing feeling inside that for the third year in a row, Steve doesn’t have anything he feels particularly thankful for. For the third year in a row, he finds himself walking down these streets, but he can’t fool himself enough to pretend to be aimless anymore. His feet find the way easily.

("You like to keep moving, don’t you?"

A tired smile. "I just fear I’m getting my directions mixed up.")

The sound of a lighter seems to echo on the empty streets, buried between snow and lingering unease.

***

The first year, you’re a stranger, and it’s all coincidence.

No one on the planet, hell, in the universe, probably, feels particularly celebratory, and so most windows are dark by the time Steve takes the first step outside. He’s known these streets for the better part of a century, and yet he’s never felt more like a stranger in them.

He buried his parents and went to war, and yet he’s never known grief or guilt like this.

There’s a cut on his cheek that hasn’t quite healed yet, from when his hand slipped while shaving the beard. Or maybe he was just trying to feel something. Red blood spilled like a reminder that he could put on the Cap façade all he wanted; he was still just human, and he failed.

You just got off your shift.

You have your apron wrapped around your hand as you lean against the side wall, hands shaking as you try to light your cigarette. The lighter is broken. He can hear you cursing over the howling of the wind.

("I never used to smoke," you tell him later. "My best friend always said it calms her nerves. I get it now."

So does Steve.)

"Do you need help?" he asks, even though he doesn’t have fire, not the one you could use right now. It’s his instincts that are hardest to shake, even on a day like this.

"It’s fine," you say without even looking at him, throwing the cigarette into your bag. "This is all just great!"

There is a tremor in your voice that he recognizes, that pent up frustration threatening to boil up at a minor inconvenience. You let your head fall back until it hits brick so hard he almost flinches, but you don’t even seem to notice.

You blink at him like you’re only just realizing he’s real.

"You want something?" you ask, and your voice is so sharp he feels the cut on his cheek reopening, but your eyes are soft. It’s disarming, that combination.

Steve’s dumbfounded for a moment, because he doesn’t really know why he stopped, either. Now that he’s aware of it, though, it’s impossible not to keep looking at you. And there’s that instinct, again. That gut feeling that tells him neither of you should be alone right now.

If he were Bucky, he might have told you that, with that half-smile of his that used to bring half the city to its knees. Bucky used to say all kinds of things to the girls he went out with, back in the day, and the rare occasion on which that backfired never seemed to deter him.

But Steve’s just himself, and he’s starting to feel creepy now, so he just says, "I think you’re the first person I talked to today."

You stare at him, and there’s that shift in your eye when you recognize him and hesitate for a second as you evaluate if he’s a threat. He wonders if there’s any getting used to that.

"Wow," you finally say. "Not gonna lie, but that’s kind of sad."

Steve huffs. "Yeah."

It’s the heaviness in your gaze that betrays you, your jawline etched in the cool smoke your breath trails behind. You lost someone, too.

What a strange thing to pick up on, he thinks, when it’s rarer to meet someone who hasn’t, but he still feels sorry in a way that seems oddly personal. The question of who is almost on his lips before he catches himself. Before he remembers that he doesn’t know you, and that he has no right to that sort of information.

You tilt your head, and a small crease appears between your brows. "Aren’t you freezing?" you finally say.

He shrugs. "I’ve been colder."

"Yeah." You nod, but he can see the gears in your head turning. Finally, you seem to swallow something down. "You got a second person lined up for the night?"

His mouth twitches involuntarily and he shakes his head.

"Me either. Great Thanksgiving, huh."

There’s a pause as you shift on your feet and he clears his throat, but neither of you moves. It’s a little uncomfortable, or it should be, but you toss your apron into your bag and cross your arms in a way that poses a challenge. Steve swallows heavily.

"I should—"

"How about we move this someplace warmer?" The question is accompanied by a glance that makes him step a little closer, makes him lower his head ever so slightly as you both consider each other, both of you waiting to see what will happen next.

And, yeah, maybe it’s selfish of him not to make up an excuse and leave you to your unlit cigarette, but damnit, why can’t he be selfish for a change? After a year like this?

So he says, "lead the way," and his voice doesn’t shake a bit.

("You haven’t been casual a day in your life," Bucky would’ve said, and Steve would’ve glowered at him. These are the things he misses; he can’t even be casually mad anymore.)

It’s not a long walk, and the wind does most of the talking. Neither of you is much in the mood for it. You’re shivering by the time you try to get your keys out, and when he holds the door open for you, you just give him a small nod.

"It’s out of order," you murmur as you pass the elevator, already unraveling your scarf. Steve follows, close enough that he could smell the lingering remnants of perfume on your hair if he took a deep breath. He doesn’t.

The building is old, all high ceilings and broken floor tiles, colorless. Every step trails an echo behind. Your neighbor’s striped doormat is barely visible underneath the pile of unread newspapers. The air is so cold he imagines he could still see his own breath.

You force your door open with your shoulder and then halt in the entrance, as if just remembering something. "You’re not allergic to anything, are you?"

"Not since 1943," he answers. It’s odd to admit it like this, even though you know exactly who he is. Somehow, he feels like he’s going about all of this wrong, but the thought of leaving seems even worse.

"Good," you murmur before you let him in and close the door behind him. "That’s good."

The hallway to your apartment is cluttered, but in a homely, charming way. Vibrant art prints and knick-knacks litter the surfaces and jut out of cardboard boxes, all of it covered with a thin layer of dust. You don’t turn the lights on, and so Steve only puts it together when the soft pattering noise stops at his feet and turns into sniffing.

"You have a dog," he says, surprised.

"My roommate does," you say, and then you catch yourself. He can see the short pause in your movements, even though you continue with a lightheartedness that is familiar in how false it sounds. He knows before you say it out loud. "Well, I suppose she’s mine now."

He sinks to his knees, slowly, because he ran out of speed a while ago. The dog wiggles her tail.

"Her name is Leia," you tell him. "You know, like Star Wars?"

It’s another reminder that he still hasn’t quite caught up with this day and age. He is spared an answer, though, because you’ve already moved on to the kitchen, switching on the lights as you go. Steve keeps petting the dog.

"Drink?" you shout, and it’s strange, how casually you’re treating this whole encounter while Steve’s own thoughts are still stuck on a merry-go-round. He doesn’t know if he can ever get off this ride again.

"Sure," he says lightly, because he’s been acting for years.

All of it just play pretend.

("You don’t mean that," you whisper later, much, much later.

"No." He brushes the hair out of his eyes. "Sometimes.")

You drink, and you sit on the living room floor, just chatting, really, because this is a strange situation for both of you. There’s an uncertainty in the air that grows hotter with every passing minute, and when the conversation lulls to a stop, it shifts.

You look at him, then, anticipation of something so thick between you he could cut it with a knife.

Steve has lived through a war and two very different worlds colliding within less than a decade, but this is still so new for him. And yeah, maybe it feels like he’s breaking some sort of rule here, crossing some moral boundary he’s not supposed to even look at, because that’s just how he was brought up.

But times have changed, as he’s all too painfully aware, and you’re still looking at him, eyelids heavy, and Steve decides, fuck it.

His voice barely sounds like his own when he asks, "Can I kiss you?"

The second you take to blink and nod lasts an eternity, but when you do, he finally stops listening to that nagging voice at the back of his head that tells him he shouldn’t. Instead, he carefully pulls the sleepy dog off his knee and scoots over to where you’re sitting, watching, waiting. Steve looks at your face one more time, slowly, deliberate, and then he leans in.

He’s not gonna lie; it’s awkward for a good while.

The angle is weird, and he doesn’t know where to put his hands because this is the first time he’s touched you all night, and it’s just a simple fact that he hasn’t done this in a spell. But then you tilt your head just so, and his hand settles on your thigh, helping you into his lap and yes.

For a moment he remembers what it’s like to stop thinking, to stop running and just be.

And then your fingers thread through his hair, tugging slightly, and Steve’s brain shuts off entirely, consumed by the fire that courses through his veins. By the time your breath turns shorter, he knows your rhythm and he’s all too happy to take his time to match it.

He’s not ready for anything more than a distraction, and you’re not offering.

(You tell him to be gone when you wake up. "I have another early shift and I don’t want to have to kick you out," you mutter, snuggling closer. "Ruin my day."

Steve doesn’t sleep at all. He sneaks out once the early morning sunshine starts tickling your nose, shoes in his hand, his hands growing cold once again.)

***

The snow starts picking up.

There’s a message from Natasha on his phone that he’s stared at and then closed again about a hundred times. It was a response to him canceling their dinner plans, again, and this time she didn’t leave it at the sad little OK she would usually put. Her words have started to bleed into his very consciousness like a song stuck in his head.

I don’t know what’s different lately, but I think it’s good for you.

Steve’s not so sure.

The way he sees it, he’s setting himself up to grow attached to something he has no right to keep, and he’s seen how that story ends too many times in his life. It’s one thing to care for someone and a whole other thing to care about them.

("It’s nothing personal."

Of course it’s not. The marks left on his skin vanish within a few hours.)

There’s a bunch of unused brushes on his desk in the tiny apartment he calls home, more than twelve blocks away. Steve bought them last week, in a spur of almost giddy inspiration, and he’s only realized the ridiculousness of that when he unlocked the front door, receipt long discarded on the way.

Now they’re sitting there, waiting for something to change.

He’s been brought back to the city of the living, and he should be feeling more guilty about it.

***

The second year, you’re an indulgence.

He’s almost walked by your apartment several times now, mostly on early summer mornings or nights far colder than they should be, but he could never bring himself to actually cross the street, turn the corner, climb the stairs. He doesn’t come closer than a two block radius, really. Not until today.

The truth is, he’s thought about running into you so many times he’s forgotten what he wanted to tell you. Why he wants to see you at all.

But Brooklyn is too cold and too empty, and the feeling uncoiling in his chest tells him this was always how this was supposed to go.

You’re sitting on the steps in front of your apartment building, reading a book in the light of the street lantern. Your eyes are watery from the sharp sting of winter air, but you look undeterred. Unhurried.

"I thought you might come," you say, and Steve gets the strange sense that you’re pleased.

(It was a lie, you tell him later. You were waiting for a friend, to take you to some party you didn’t want to go to. "I didn’t think you’d ever come back," you mumble into his hair, fingers tracing invisible patterns on his skin.

As if he’s had a choice in the matter.)

"I aim to please," he says, even though that’s not true, has never been true. Maybe it’s the way you look at him.

You look sharper than you did a year ago, as if all that pain has carved itself into blunt edges and curt glances. But your hands are still soft. He stares at them as if he might be allowed to hold them again.

"Somehow, I doubt that," you say, tilting your head. "New look?"

Steve scratches his beard. "Old look. I’m still deciding which one to keep."

You snort, and it sends a tingle down his spine.

"What?"

"Nothing. That’s just the most serious way I’ve ever heard someone talk about facial hair." You look at him solemnly, like you’re about to break the worst news to him. He already knows. "You do realize it’ll keep growing back either way?"

If he were Sam, he’d have joked with you, in that dry manner of his, maybe winked at you afterwards to reassure you that it was all just teasing, good fun. There was a lightness to Sam’s interactions with people he cared about that had always seemed so precious in hindsight; like it couldn’t be shared enough.

But Steve’s just himself, and his eyes are as tired as his body, so he just says, "I didn’t want to be alone."

You watch his eyes with such intent he feels himself getting uneasy. Then, you take your keys out of your coat pocket and unlock the door. You don’t look back as you tell him, "It’s getting late."

It’s all the invitation Steve needs.

"What were you reading?" he asks, stepping into the damp, cold hallway after you. The elevator is still out of order.

You hand him your book without so much as a glance over your shoulder. He doesn’t really look at it, either, just keeps staring at the little bit of skin peeking out where your scarf has shifted down. He can’t help but wonder if it tastes the same.

("Whenever I’m sad and I feel like killing myself, I read something by Sylvia Plath."

He listens to your heartbeat. "And what if you’re sad and you don’t feel like that?" he asks.

Your smile is melancholy and contagious. "A children’s novel.")

"You know, you never told me your name," Steve says once you get inside, his cheeks burning.

"So I didn’t," you hum with a tilt of your head that’s already starting to feel familiar, even though this is only the second time you’ve met. There’s the same challenge in it, but the spark in your eye is new, mischievous, like you’re also remembering what things kept him from asking something as simple as a name the last time he was here.

You fill in his gaps.

The knowledge feels foreign. Like he’s somehow been allowed to see a whole new side of you, even though it’s just a name, and not much more.

He smiles softly at the sound of it, and then, before he can stop himself, admits, "I’ve been thinking about you."

Steve’s seen your lips twitch before, but he hasn’t seen you smile. Not last year, when everything was still so fresh the very air tasted like sorrow, not even when you lay next to him with hazy eyes and he wiped the sweat off your brow. But you smile at his words now, and it changes your entire face, all the harshness of it disappearing to show something glowing underneath, something more hopeful than he’s seen in quite a while.

You take his face into your hands and kiss him like an answer, carefully, as if he’s something precious, as if you have something to lose. It’s difficult for him to focus, to stop himself from telling you that he’s not, and you don’t.

But then his thoughts cease being so loud again, one by one, and maybe that’s why he’s missed your touch for a whole year. The endless echoes in his mind finally turn silent.

He pours his thanks into each kiss that follows.

("Text me," you offer this time, and even though he’s not sure what kind of invitation you’re extending with those two words, he clings to them like a lifeline.)

***

Each step crunches underneath his boots and Steve is starting to regret not taking the subway. But the air had seemed so nice tonight, and the streets are quiet in a way that should be lonely and yet is the opposite of that.

Three years, and empty spaces have been cautiously, regrettably filled.

("I hate losing things. It drives me up the wall."

How does someone move on from something like this? Little by little, or not at all.

The worst part, he thinks, is that anything new will never quite replace what’s missing. Only repopulate the void.)

The first time you came to his place instead of the other way around, you forgot your scarf, and Steve had to talk himself into returning it for almost a week. Fine. Ten days.

It just smelled so sweet.

"There it is," you said when he finally did knock on your door again, relief so clearly written all over your face as if he’s been returning a long lost child.

And then you carelessly tossed it aside and dragged him towards you by the collar.

Not that he’s complaining.

The snow, however …

Steve blinks up against it, at the familiar streets set against a dark sky. It’s a scene that begs to be painted, long shadows and milky streetlights caught in a whirlwird of ice. He looks at it for a long moment, and then he continues walking.

***

This year, you’re a necessity.

This year, it’s not been twelve months. In fact, it’s not even been two weeks, but he’s still missed you. Brooklyn sheds all of its colors this time of year, and on the dreariest mornings he finds himself craving your presence more than usual.

It’s terrifying, this sort of protectiveness he feels for you. It’s not what this is supposed to be, not what either of you needs right now.

("So what?" Sam would’ve said, and Steve would’ve lowered his head. Probably. He’s running out of scenarios to run through his mind, and so every time he tries, it feels like he’s chipping away at precious memories, distorting them, losing them. "So what?"

Maybe. The future has never felt less clear.)

He’s found out that he craves you like a drug, and he knows it can’t be healthy, he shouldn’t be doing this, but damnit, can’t he have one good thing to keep again for a change?

Like the taste of your hot skin bathed in a strip of moonlight, or that glimmer in your eyes that lets him forget the remaining half of the universe, reduces it only to him and you, and every shared breath between you. He keeps replaying those moments when he’s not with you, can’t stop himself, really. It’s easier now that he knows there will be a next time.

Not forever, of course, but now is enough.

("Enough already?" You nudge your nose against his shoulder. "I thought your ambitions were greater than that, Captain.")

Steve stops in front of the elevator, considers it for a moment, then takes the stairs anyway. Some habits are hard to shake, and perhaps you’re one of them. Though he doubts it; you’re more than just that.

He finds your door unlocked, which should be a reason for concern but somehow isn’t. Maybe it’s the smell. The lights are on in the living room and he can hear an old record playing.

("Leia loves it when I play them," you’ve told him before. "I think maybe they remind her of …" You trailed off, like you always do.

He still hasn’t learned your roommate’s name.)

He leaves his shoes by the door and follows the sound, like he’s done time and again.

Today, it’s Ella Fitzgerald, and you’re dancing in the kitchen.

The sight stops Steve in his tracks, because suddenly there’s an ease to his step he doesn’t like, can’t allow himself, even though it shouldn’t really be a surprise.

("Why not?" Bucky might have said.

"Live a little, man," Sam could have said.

He hopes, thinks, wishes.)

Nat’s message burns a hole into his pocket. Coward, it whispers, and Steve ignores it. He watches you swaying around and moving your arms in a ridiculously elaborate way, unaware that you have an audience.

Light. Pure light shining through all your edges, and softening them to his gaze.

Leia senses his presence first, waggling toward him with flapping ears and a cheerful bark, and so he lets himself be welcomed, sitting down on the floor with a quiet laugh.

You turn, and your hips stop moving, which is truly the biggest crime of all.

"Hey, stranger," you say, your smile so clearly audible in your voice it makes Steve bite his lip hard before he dares to look up.

"Hey," he says when his eyes meet yours, his body relaxing immediately at the sight of you. "What are you cooking at this hour?"

"Wouldn’t you like to know." You continue stirring the pot on the stove. "But you can set the table once you’re done charming my dog."

"That could take a while," Steve chuckles as Leia keeps licking his hand. "I’m very charming."

You roll your eyes, but the smile stays.

"Come on, honey," you say, pulling him to his feet again, and it might have just been a slip of the tongue, but damn if his heart didn’t just skip a beat.

Steve’s been called many names in his life, but he’s pretty sure none of them have ever sounded as right.

On impulse, he leans over to brush his lips over yours, softly, smiling when your mouth chases his as he pulls back.

"What was that for?" you whisper with a light frown.

He blinks. "Food," he finally says. "I’m starving."

("Get up, then."

His tongue traces delicate patterns down your throat. "Why would I need to do that?")

It hurts his brain, this softness of yours that’s close enough to touch and yet feels so off-limits.

He’s kissed you a hundred times before, languidly, feverishly, carefully, but never pointlessly. Well, not without a point he would admit to.

You choose not to dwell on it, thankfully, and go back to your pot with a hum. Steve runs a hand through his hair and pushes himself back into the role you’ve both agreed upon. Friends, for the most part. He can live with that, of course he can. He’s lived through worse things.

(Neither of you has ever wanted to fix the other. It was nice, for a change, being a little broken. It only meant finding new places to fit together.)

He wakes up a little over three hours after to find you wrapped around him, hugging his arm to your chest so tightly he can feel it rise and sink with each and every one of your breaths. He watches you for a long while, still half-asleep, every cell of his body screaming at him not to move an inch. To just keep you right where you are.

For a second, he wonders if he could get away with stealing one last kiss before he sets out on the trek home, like he always does. As if you’d heard him, you start stirring under his gaze.

"Stay," you whisper into the dead of night, and he can feel his eyes close almost immediately. Your voice cuts through the darkness like he’s already dreaming. "Steve. Don’t go, please."

And so he lets himself settle into your side, pulling you closer, breathing you in, his lips touching your forehead, and you sigh.

Maybe next year, he can be thankful for something.

thank you for reading!! if you liked this fic, please consider leaving a comment and/or reblog 💛 to see more of my writing, check out my masterlist or follow @intrepidacious-fics for update notifications!!

Brooklyn's too cold tonight & all my friends are three years away. My mother said that I could be anything I wanted -- but I chose to live. On the stoop of an old brownstone a cigarette flares, then fades. I walk to it: a razor sharpened with silence. His jawline etched in smoke. The mouth where I reenter this city. Stranger, palpable echo, here is my hand, filled with blood thin as a widow's tears. I am ready. I am ready to be every animal you leave behind.

Thanksgiving 2006, Ocean Vuong

[scarisd3ad]

Jump then fall | Steve harrington x fem!hopper!reader

Prologue - seven

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Summary - ‘And though I can’t recall your face I still got love for you, your braids like a pattern love you to the moon and to Saturn’

Warnings - loss of a sibling, divorce, fighting, cursing

"I'm gonna miss you," Steve mumbled into my shoulder as his little arms wrapped around my body. "Me too," I whispered back. I didn't want to move. I was well adjusted in our little town, I had my friends, I was just getting used to kindergarten, and I had Steve Harrington. my best friend and next-door neighbor who I did not want to leave behind, but dad got a new and better job in New York, so we had to pack up all our belongings and move from the tiny town of Hawkins to the big city. "can't you stay with me? We have enough room. "I shook my head "My daddy would be sad if I didn't go with them," I whispered back before they pulled away and placed me in my car seat. I was gone for good.

It wasn't like Steve, and I didn't stay in contact for those 7 years I lived in New York. it started with letters and drawings being mailed back and forth and then calls every Tuesday and Thursday night after school. But then we got older, and those letters and calls had farther and farther days between them. Then when Sara got sick, I shut down. I didn't send any letters or call him for months. After Sara died, my parents grew distant not only with each other but with me too, so I sent a letter to the one person who knew me better than my parents, Steve Harrington.

Dear Stevie,

I'm sorry I haven't called or sent any letters. I've been busy with school and other things, you know. I miss you. I hope I can come and visit you soon. My dad said we might go back to Hawkins to visit during the summer. Maybe we could have a sleepover if we do. Maybe we can call whenever you get this? I can fill you in on everything that's happened. Anyway, how's school??? I started this new book club at school and it's so fun!!!! I know you'd probably call me a nerd for it is, but it's really cool, and the people are nice too. I also made this new friend. Her name is Hannah she's so cool! She's an eighth grader!!!

Are you still playing basketball? If so, I wish I could see you play. Maybe you could play for me if I visit this summer! Dad said I could walk to your house every day if we did. I miss you and I hope we can call soon; I really need to talk to you about something that cannot!!! be disclosed over letter I need to like actually talk about it you know? I haven't really talked to anyone about it, and I need to or I'm gonna burst. Also, I'm sending these cool stickers that I got at a coffee shop here. I thought you'd like them. They're basketballs! Anyway, again I miss you a lot and can't wait to talk to you again.

- love y/n

(P.S. sorry again for not sending any letter)

I didn't get a letter back, nor did we visit that summer. Instead, that summer my parents divorced, and my mother decided she no longer wanted to be a mother, so my father and I moved into a crappy apartment in Brooklyn while the divorce took place. Luckily, that fall, the divorce was finalized. My mother gave up all parental rights legally, giving all custody to my father, and we moved back to Hawkins.

A week before 7th grade started my father, and I moved into a 2-bedroom house 3 streets away from Steve's. the first 2 days were full of moving boxes and decorating my new room so on the 3rd day I walked over to Steves with a plate of freshly baked cookies in clasped in my hands. During the seven years Steve and I sent letters back and forth, he always hoped he'd be able to try my baking, which was a skill I learned during 5th grade.

I grasped the plate in one hand as the other reached up to knock at the door. There weren't any cars in the driveway, but his bedroom light was on, which made me assume he was home. But after 30 seconds I didn't hear a 'I'm coming' or hurried footsteps. I was starting to doubt my intuition. Maybe he had just forgotten to turn off his bedroom light. Despite my doubts, I knock again, this time a bit harder. Then I heard a loud groan from inside before the door swung open."Wh-holy-y/n?" the annoyed look on his face immediately morphed into shock.

"You didn't respond" I giggled with a smile, "I-I guess it got lost in the mail" he whispered before launching himself into me. His arms wrapped around my body, and he pulled me close. The cookies were still clasped in my hand. I hoped the foil would be enough to keep them on the plate. "Wait, wait, wait" Steve pulls away so we're making eye contact. "You came all the way here just because I didn't send a letter back" his brows twist into a confused furrow as I laugh "No Stevie, we moved back" his face stays confused as he asks "Why" It was a long story, and not one to be told on the front steps of his house. "Long story. I'll tell you later. Can I come inside?"

"Yeah, yeah"

-

Steve and I sat on his bedroom floor that afternoon munching on cookies as I told him everything. I cried a lot; I hadn't cried about anything in the last four months. But with Steve, it just seemed like everything just came pouring out. Even though the last time I saw him, we were both 4 feet tall and missing teeth, it just seemed to click with him even after all these years. "Sarah got sick," I started with as Steve took a bite out of his cookie. "Oh...is she alright?" he asked voice laced with concern as his right hand reached over to grab my hand. 

I shook my head as tears pooled in my eyes, "N-no um she's-she's gone Stevie" Steve was silent as his hand squeezed mine. I'd never talked about Sarah or her death to anyone, not my mother, not my father, hell I didn't even talk to the therapist they took me to when I didn't want to talk to them. This was the first time I even uttered the words 'she's gone' It was like I was in denial, like if I never said the words, it would all reverse itself and I'd have my sister back. "a-and my parents we're fighting a lot, so they got divorced" tears began to trickle down my cheeks as I squeezed my eyes shut, fighting back tears. "And my mom she-she said she never wanted to be a mom, so-so she left."

That afternoon, while Steve's arms embraced me and sobs shook my body, I came to a shocking realization. The realization hit me hard that maybe listening to Steve's voice over the phone for the past seven years, and reading his letters he always signed off with 'I love you - Steve Harrington', might have done something to me. Something to my changing adolescent brain that would have altered our friendship for good. Maybe it was for the best that the week after winter break, Steve Harrington became one of the most popular boys in school and subsequently decided to no longer be my friend.

Taglist

@sheisjoeschateau @nothankyou138 @gleefulleve @luluw-20

[mixtapemag]

boygenius at pryzm.

photos by christopher hall.

boygenius rolled into London with just their guitars and played two sets at Kingston's PRYZM on Thursday night. Playing an entirely acoustic set, the boys show felt like a hangout session (with a confetti cannon).

Julien Baker's crescendo on "Anti-Curse" was astounding. Hearing Julien's voice unleashed in a quiet room was ceiling splitting. The interpolation of "Me & My Dog" and "Letter To An Old Poet" sent a wave of joy through the room. Lucy's voice on "True Blue" felt like a warm blanket.

The boys continue their European tour in Paris today before heading to Edinburgh this weekend.

Previously on Mixtape:

Photos of boygenius at the piece hall.

Photos of boygenius at way out west 2023.

Photos of boygenius at the idaho botanical garden.

Photos of boygenius at the forest hills stadium.

Photos of boygenius at the fox theater.

Photos of boygenius at the premiere of "the film".

Photos of Lucy Dacus at All Things Go.

Photos of Lucy Dacus at Red Rocks.

Photos of Phoebe Bridgers at Roskilde.

Photos of Phoebe Bridgers with Special Guest Lucy Dacus at Forest Hills Stadium.

Photos of Phoebe Bridgers at Kilby Block Party 3.

Photos of Lucy Dacus at The Stone Pony.

Photos of Julien Baker at Fox Theater.

Photos of Phoebe Bridgers at Leaders Bank Pavilion.

Photos of Lucy Dacus at Brooklyn Steel - Night Two.

Photos of Lucy Dacus at Brooklyn Steel - Night One.

Photos of Lucy Dacus at Variety Playhouse.

Photos of Julien Baker at 9:30 Club.

Photos of Lucy Dacus at Forest Hills Stadium.

Photos of Lucy Dacus at Webster Hall.

Photos of Lucy Dacus at Moroccan Lounge.

Photos of Better Oblivion Community Center at Outside Lands.

Photos of Julien Baker at Amplify Decatur.

Photos of Lucy Dacus at Newport Folk Festival.

Photos of Boygenius at Brooklyn Steel.

Photos of Phoebe Bridgers at Newport Folk Festival.

Photos of Julien Baker at Shadow of the City.

Photos of Julien Baker in Prospect Park.

Photos of Julien Baker at White Eagle Hall.

Photos of Julien Baker at Union Transfer.

Photos of Julien Baker at Outside Lands.

Photos of Julien Baker at Newport Folk Festival.

Christopher Hall posts over here. London.

[thebowerypresents]

Wednesday – Brooklyn Steel – January 25, 2024

A week into their new American tour, Asheville, N.C., rock five-piece Wednesday sold out Brooklyn Steel on Thursday night, putting on a thrilling show. And as an added bonus, dynamic singer-guitarist Karly Hartzman sat in on the final song of Hotline TNT’s opening set.

Photos courtesy of Edwina Hay | thisisnotaphotograph.com

[girlactionfigure]

nyjewishweek Israeli pop superstar Noa Kirel took to the floor of Brooklyn’s Barclays Center on Thursday night with an Israeli flag draped around her shoulders to sing the national anthem, “Hatikvah,” as the Brooklyn Nets and Maccabi Ra’anana lined up on either side.⁠ ⁠ Wrapping up her rendition, she said “Am Yisrael chai,” meaning “The people of Israel live,” her voice cracking before the tip-off. “We will win.”⁠ ⁠ The charged pre-season game took place after a devastating attack on southern Israel.⁠ ⁠ Jewish and Israeli spectators streamed into the arena for what was also Israeli Heritage Night, many carrying Israeli flags or signs in support of Israel, alongside casual fans and tourists.⁠ ⁠ “It’s very good to do this game, that all the Jews came here to support this team, that everyone will see the Jewish presence,” said Yoni Shmela, an Israeli who was on vacation in New York when the war started. “It’s really important that everyone came out to show support.”⁠ ⁠ At the start of the game, an announcer said to the crowd, “The Brooklyn Nets and Barclays Center condemn the terrorist attacks and mourn the senseless loss of life in Israel.”⁠

nyjewishweek