#but I can’t get the fucking experience if nobody is willing to fucking hire me

[luna-the-cretar]

So apparently our store isn’t making enough money for corporates liking (from my understanding, I think we’re essentially breaking even), so now they’re essentially cutting everyone’s hours in half (except for the managers)

Which is already incredibly annoying, but also they’re already only scheduling the THREE EMPLOYEES as part-time because of course they are, so they’re cutting even THAT in half. And since I only make $10/hr (yeah, I know, it’s bullshit), I’m essentially making pennies now because of corporate greed

[safetycar-restart]

🏉 I'm about to make it worse-this AU with Mercedes who are absolutely cunts in this.

Mercedes have a rule after 2016 that only one of their drivers can submit weekly over an entire season with you,the other Sub is only allowed to submit if they find somebody else.

Here's the problems,they didn't only bring George into the team,they also brought you in from Williams where you were George and Nicky's dom,and obviously Lewis gets priority so the team dom is only avaliable to him,but your George's dom,nobody else is allowed to touch him or make decisions for him. But your contract states that's not allowed anymore,the only reason you signed for Mercedes in the first place is to try and sneak moments with George.

But George isn't allowed to see you,and there's no respite. He has to sit in his motor home crying every night begging that you'll come see him but there's no chance that's ever gonna happen,and he's tried other doms but they're too rough or too sweet and they're not you. The worst part is Lewis doesn't even need you,he's a sub leaning switch so he doesn't need that much attention and he tries to help you but Mercedes are hellbent on this ruling so 2016 doesn't happen again. You try and sneak messages and meetings between races but that's just worse because your not a constant in his life anymore.

I knew, I fucking knew, you’d send me a George version of the Charles angst. And this idea is so good I love it.

So, you leave Williams with George and join Mercedes, because you know he needs you and you don’t want to leave him.

Except, and I think I’m gonna change your idea a tiny bit here, and say that maybe mercedes always hire two doms, one for each driver?

The standard is for teams to hire one Dom for both drivers, not only because it saves money but also because it creates a much better bond between teammates and a better team cohesion as a whole.

But, after the utter disaster that was Nico Rosberg, Lewis refuses to share a dom ever again. And obviously Mercedes aren’t going to fight him on that.

The problem is, when you join Mercedes it becomes clear that you’re actually a better dominant than Lewis’s current Dom?

Lewis is a switch. He doesn’t need a highly renowned Dom, so his old dom really wasn’t all that good because Lewis didn’t see the point in hiring someone who was.

But now, now you’re on the team and you come with SO much experience and knowledge, because you’ve had to learn a lot to be able to Dom George how he needs.

And Lewis is their number one driver. Lewis gets the best of the best. So when you join, you get assigned to Lewis and George is left with Lewis’s old Dom.

George just.... simply doesn’t function.

He begs you to come back, but there’s nothing you can do about it. It’s clear in your contract: you can only scene with Lewis and you can’t have any contact with the other driver.

George tries so hard to not be resentful of Lewis, but this is all Lewis’s fault. Lewis is the one who demanded that this rule be instituted. If Lewis had been willing to at least try to share with him, then he’d still have you.

And logically he knows that it’s not lewis’s fault that the ream chose to allocated you to Lewis and not him. But George still can’t help but blame him.

George tries to get along with his new Dom too, but they just aren’t right. They aren’t you.

Even when George had you at Williams, he was always a needy and sensitive sub. You managed with him, because you take control whenever he’s with you.

And he got used to that. He got used to feeling okay because he could seek shelter in your presence and submit all the time.

But now he has a dom who doesn’t work like that and he has to watch as you follow Lewis around the paddock and he just... he cries himself to sleep at night and begs you to join and curses Lewis for not giving him the benefit of the doubt.

[angry-geese]

Bruno Bucciarati x Reader

Warnings: none! Sfw. Some domestic Bruno fluff. Gn!Reader

Notes: More Bruno/Abba survives au. Reader comforts Bruno after a nightmare

You had spent the past few weeks anywhere but your home.

With Passione under new management, you often found yourself thinking of the future. Maybe Passione had some Stockholm Syndrome grip on you, but you were hesitant to fuck with it. Don't poke a sleeping bear; there is no war in Ba Sing Se- that sort of thing. You took things day by day. The gangs worked, and that was the best you thought things would get. While growing up you quickly learned not to question it, soon falling into the underground yourself after a family member's unpaid debt. Things were often best left unsaid.

Being one of the boss' right hand men gave you a new outlook on things. Bruno's gang gave you a family you never would have had without it. There wasn't much you wouldn't do for it. Your loyalty wasn't to Passione more than it was to Bruno himself, and in turn don Giovanna. People stayed out of your way, either out of fear or respect. Sure there was a whole new set of people who wanted you dead, but there was even more willing to defend you.

Nobody was able to give you a straight answer if he was ever going to be the same again. He had a long way to go, but he was alive; that was about the best you could ask for. As you recovered from your own injuries, you found it difficult to leave Bruno's side for long. Giorno let you, partially because he didn't want to deal with whatever hell you would raise if he hadn't. For the time being, you were off field duty, and often found yourself working as a secretary for the group. Someone had to do it. It allowed you to stay with Bruno while you still felt like you were helping out. If you needed to be found, you'd be right by his side.

After he got out of the hospital, he was hardly ever let out of your sight.

By the time the two of you returned home, a thin layer of dust covered everything. You had considered coming back to clean, but decided against it since you were never there. The thought of hiring someone slipped your mind. Bruno never seemed to care. Or if he did, he said nothing about it. You spent the first day home idly cleaning. He'd try to help, but often found housework difficult. You scolded yourself for pushing him too hard. He refused to let you do everything yourself, so you stuck him on lighter housework.

Bruno often talked about the future. You still weren't sure what it held for you. While he wasn't outright retiring from Passione- if that was even possible- you made him promise to slow down. He was all too quick to agree. He had you; at this point that's all he wants. Settling down was something he thought about often, but he found himself unable to voice that. If you wanted kids, he'd give you them. If you wanted to be a stay-at-home parent, he'd support you. If you wanted him to be a househusband- although you technically weren't married- he'd do it.

If it would make you happy, he'd do anything. But for now he'd settle on getting the house clean.

Somewhere outside a car door shuts, muffled by the thick walls that separate you and your driveway. Not many people would be stopping by at this hour- maybe its your neighbor. Despite tossing and turning, you still can't sleep. You'd get up, but don't out of fear that you'll wake Bruno. He wouldn't be upset with you, but you figured he needed to rest. By your bedside you have water and ibuprofen ready- should he need it- though if he was in pain he likely wouldn't show it.

You're not quite sure what gets you to look over.

Sweat beads on his forehead. His brows knit, hands gripping the sheets tight. His breathing is shallow and shaky. You roll over to face him, gently touching his shoulder. He wakes with a jolt, only relaxing when he sees you.

"Sorry amore," he says tiredly, "I didn't mean to wake you."

"Nightmare?" You ask.

After a moment, he nods. You pull him close, cradling his head against your chest. You run your fingers through his silky hair. Its grown quite a bit, reaching just past his shoulders. He sighs, leaning into your touch. The steady beating of your heart threatens to lull him back to sleep. He'd have gotten one of the nurses to cut it for him, but he liked when you would. You're no hairdresser, but there was something intimate about it- he wouldn't let just anyone near his head with sharp objects.

"You scared me there for a moment." You laugh, but it does little to disguise how nervous you are. "Almost thought you wouldn't make it."

"It'll take more than that to kill me." He says.

"No." You say. "We're not testing that. I've had enough near-death experiences for a lifetime."

Bruno laughs, the noise coming from low in his chest. You pull him closer but hold him like he's fragile. He's not going to break in your grasp, but you sure feel like he will. The smell of his cologne mingles with laundry soap- lavender, just like his shampoo.

It feels strange to be home after so many weeks away. Although Bruno would agree, he'd never tell you that. Over time he's grown used to the harsh white lights of the hospital, and the rooms that never seem to get quiet. He'd much rather be here.

"What do you think about getting married?" He asks.

"To you? Or just in general?" You joke. It's a bit too heavy of a topic for you, and it's not often he brings this up. If he proposed, you would say yes- there's no one else you'd want to be married to. The two of you have lived together for so long you might as well be married.

Although its too dark to see his face, you feel his lips curl into a smile. He plants a quick peck on your lips, then your nose, then your forehead. Idly you brush a lock of hair out of his eyes, tucking it behind his ear.

"To me." He says.

"Fine. As long as you promise not to die on me."

"I promise."

[mst3kproject]

The Ape

In the vein of movies that should not be confused with eerily similar previous entries, The Ape is distinct from The Ape Man... but not by much.  Both feature a slumming horror superstar, glandular secretions, and a stupid gorilla suit.  All these things also showed up in early seasons of MST3K, of course, and The Ape Man also has a surprise bonus.  Apparently, the guy in the gorilla costume is none other than Crash Corrigan, of Undersea Kingdom!

Long ago, Dr. Adrien lost his daughter to polio, and ever since he's been obsessed with finding a cure.  That sounds pretty noble, but unfortunately, Adrien is a mad doctor, so the cure he comes up with requires killing healthy people to drain them of their cerebralspinal fluid!  In order not to arouse suspicion, he kills and skins a gorilla that escaped from a circus, and wears its hide when he murders people... you know, as one does. To nobody's surprise but his, he ends up getting shot, but hey, at least he cured beautiful young Frances' paralysis!

This is a weird, dumb movie but one thing I can say in its favour is that everybody seems to have given it a good try.  This material was far beneath Boris Karloff but he takes it seriously and actually gets a couple of decent moments, as does Maris Wrixton (who was also in The Face of Marble) as Frances.  Nobody else is even close to Karloff's level, being just bland 40's actors who talk too fast, but none of the main cast are phoning it in, either.

Conversely, the worst thing in the movie is its truly horrendous gorilla suit.  The puppet face shows the actor's eyes and can curl its lip, which is cool, though the features don't look very gorilla-ish.  The rest of the suit, however, is terrible. It's way too shaggy and in order to give it a gorilla-like silhouette, they stuck a big hunchback on it.  This might have worked if Corrigan had tried to walk on all fours like gorillas actually do, but instead he waddles along upright like a toddler with a full diaper, which ruins it.  The people who made the movie also appear to think gorillas are nocturnal which, for the record, they are not.

Gorillas were kind of a big thing in movies of the 40's and 50's.  The species had been scientifically described a century earlier, but hadn't really been studied until the 1920s and most people had never seen one outside of King Kong. Films of the period were not kind to the gorilla.  One of the first gorilla movies was 1930's Ingagi, which purported to be a documentary about gorillas kidnapping women as sex slaves.  That kind of set the tone, and subsequent movies depicted gorillas as creatures prone to violence and rape.  Examples from this blog alone are numerous: The Ape Man (1940), Panther Girl of the Kongo (1955), and Bride of the Gorilla (1951) for starters... Robot Monster (1953) might also count.

The Ape has a slightly more nuanced approach to gorilla behaviour.  Yes, its gorilla does maul people to death... but the first victim is its trainer, who has been shown mistreating it.  Another circus employee even tries to tell him that he'll catch more flies with honey.  When the ape batters its way into Dr. Adrien's house, it does so in order to get at the trainer's coat, which Adrien left draped over a chair when the dying man was brought to him for treatment.  We see far more fear of the escaped ape than we do of the animal itself, and it does not commit near as many murders as Adrien does while dressed in its skin!

So that's halfway progressive for the 1940s.  We can also look at the treatment of Frances, the wheelchair-user partially paralyzed by polio.  She is clearly meant to be an object of the audience's pity, and Adrien is obsessed with making her able to walk again – as he could not do for his own daughter.  To some extent the movie infantilizes her, as she is clearly dependent on her mother, unable to have much of a social life, and her boyfriend Danny professes his willingness to 'take care of her'.  When she regains movement in her legs at the end of the movie, she and her mother immediately burn her wheelchair.  Apparently she's not allowed to build up her stamina slowly... if she walks ten minutes from home and then can't continue, she's just gotta sit there until she recovers or somebody finds her.

On the other hand, Frances' family aren't trying to force Adrien's possible cure on her, but let her choose it for herself. Her mother doesn't mind looking after her, and Danny is happy to accommodate her by, for example, hiring a cart so she can accompany him to the circus.  Danny in particular is very suspicious of the fact that the injections Adrien gives to Frances are causing her pain, and takes the doctor to task for it, telling him he would rather have her disabled and happy than walking but in pain.  “I'd rather carry her around all my life!” he says.  Her loved ones are willing to try for the cure, but it doesn't seem like anyone will be miserable if it fails.  Frances herself wistfully admires the acrobats at the circus, but shows no anger or bitterness that she cannot be like them.

Frances is even allowed some initiative, as she hurries down the road in her wheelchair calling to Dr. Adrien and trying to warn him that the gorilla is in the area.  This, ironically, is what leads to Adrien getting shot, as it attracts the attention of the posse hunting the animal.  But as Adrien lies dying, he gets to see Frances standing for the first time in ten years, so I guess we're meant to think this was all worth it.

But was it?  Several people died in order to provide the spinal fluid that helped Frances heal.  The movie shows them as terrified of Dr. Adrien and/or the gorilla, but other than that it is oddly uninterested in their fates.  None of the deaths are presented as tragedies, with families left in mourning... the only family we hear about for the gorilla trainer is a father who is already dead, and another one of the victims was an asshole who told his wife if she didn't like him cheating on her she could always drown herself(!??).  So... are we supposed to think they don't matter?  That their deaths are acceptable because they helped Frances – who was not dying or even deteriorating, and was satisfied with her life as it was – to a cure?

It is notable that we do not see what happens when Frances finds out that people had to die for her to be able to walk.  She would have to reassess her opinion of Dr. Adrien, whom until now she has thought of as a loving father figure.  She would have to figure out what this means for her future and perhaps need reassurance that she is not culpable.  Her unconcerned happiness at the end suggests that nobody bothered to tell her, and that she has not yet made the connection herself.  This is really quite unfortunate, because it deprives Frances of her only real chance to be a character rather than a plot point – which is ultimately all she is here.

Nobody else is shown dealing with the aftermath, either.  The town has long mistrusted Dr. Adrien because of rumours that he was experimenting on his patients, and a recent spate of missing dogs is shown to be his fault.  An early scene shows a group of boys bothering the doctor by throwing rocks at his house (which made me wonder if toilet paper hadn't been invented yet. According to Wikipedia, it dates to 1857, so there's your Fun Fact for the day). Seeing their worst fears realized really ought to have some effect on the people.  Even if nobody bothers to tell Frances how her miraculous cure was effected, others will surely figure it out and have to weigh up what he achieved versus the crimes he committed to get there.

Yeah, I know: this is a movie about a guy killing people while wearing a dead gorilla.  I'm thinking too hard.

Finally, I want to note some interesting possible connections between The Ape and a number of other movies I've seen.  Both The Ape and The Ape Man appear to have been inspired by the 1932 movie Murders in the Rue Morgue, which also features a gorilla and injections of bodily fluids in the name of mad science, and did not feature very much resemblance to Edgar Allen Poe's story of the same name.  I don't know if these films directly inspired each other, and it's been ages since I saw Rue Morgue... but the combination of plot elements here seems weirdly specific to be something different people came up with independently.  I should watch all three again and see if I notice any more similarities between them.

There are also interesting likenesses between The Ape and another Boris Karloff movie, 1945's The Grave Robber.  The latter is the story of a doctor who needs fresh corpses as part of his research, which culminates in surgery to allow a paralyzed girl to walk again.  The doctor in this film is more a victim than a villain, himself, as he finds that the man he's been paying to rob graves for him is actually murdering the homeless, and he can't expose this criminal without jeopardizing his work and incriminating himself.  It's been a long time since I saw this movie, either (as I mentioned a few weeks ago, I've had some shit going on and I haven't had a lot of time for movies, bad or otherwise), so I can't actually say if it's better than The Ape, but it's definitely less silly.

Anyway, the moral of this story is vaccinate your fucking kids or a gorilla will kill you.

[qhazomb]

I keep pinballing between monster Gordon designs in my head, and the most common contenders have been and owlbeast form like from The Owl House (bc him fluffy), that one humanoid design where his hair is super long and floaty and full of eyes, or a spiky dragon with near geometric scale spikes (bc the irony that his monster form is all sharp and pointy but his human form and personality are so soft and cuddly)

Bubby is usually the fire type of the group, so i always imagine monster Gordon with magma or plasma? Plasma maybe better, fits a celestial theme.

ooooh, that’s neat! i like the idea of monster gordon with plasma and lightning powers might have to incorporate that with the one i’m picturing. imagine electricity arching between his mane tendrils and whiskers and stuff, which signifies that something is about to get plasma breath’d also OOPS THIS PROMPTED ME TO SHARE A LOT OF THOUGHTS SO THIS GOT LONG, putting the rest under a read more ha ha

another thing about the monster gordon au i’ve been thinking about is that he’s not a straight-up cosmic entity like i picture benrey being, but more of just an alien from another dimension, like the critters from xen (he’s not from xen, though. whole ‘nother place entirely!) in this au, i still have gordon and benrey having known eachother as children, only this time gordon was the lil monster kid living in the woods, of course. and also, kid benrey actually saw his monster friend get carted off by black mesa! he saw the company’s logo on a vehicle or equipment or something, and never forgot it. benrey and his folks move to new mexico when he’s like, 13, and ends up befriending their new neighbor- a twenty-something guy named tommy. eventually, benrey learns that tommy’s working for this lab called black mesa, and when he sees the place’s logo he’s just !!!!!! and immediately decides he needs to try and get in that place. he doesn’t know shit or fuck about science, so trying to get a scientist job there is out. but maybe they’re hiring for like, a janitorial or security position? he’s pretty fit, and knows how to mop a floor and shoot a gun. so he goes for that. gordon still completely forgets his human childhood friend, though, awww. though that might be partially blamed on some of the experiments conducted on him. speaking of his time as a research specimen, he actually had it a tiny bit better than benrey did. didn’t take until he was in his teens before a much more caring scientist showed up to make sure he had good mental, emotional, and physical enrichment. and instead of that scientist being tommy, like for benrey... for gordon, it’s coomer. dad coomer momence :) they find gordon much more willing to cooperate after he imprints on coomer, too. and also take note of how active his curiosity is, with the alien asking so many questions and looking for so many answers for about how things work, especially when he hits his teens. somewhere along the line, some ‘mesa higher ups decide to let this xenoguy indulge his apparently scientific mind, and give him a job (he’s still required to check in for tests on himself, and not allowed to leave the facility, though). even tho he’s not an eldritch horror, he’s still got shape-shifting powers, and takes on a human form, both because all the spaces he’d work in were made with humans in mind, and to reduce the number of weird looks from literally everyone outside of sector E. and because he looked human, benrey didn’t recognize gordon at all, but also couldn’t shake this weird vibe he was getting from him. vibe increases after he sees this guy heading to do a dangerous test without one of the fancy hazard suits (being near-indestructable, he doesn’t need one). just before they get to where the test chamber is, and benrey asks him again why he doesn’t have a HEV suit if he’s really supposed to be here, gordon yells “BECAUSE I’M NOT FUCKING HUMAN, OKAY?? Now will you PLEASE let me go do my fucking job, I’m running so god damn late, christ...” the “not human” part is emphasized by gordon briefly showing a glimpse of his true form. which benrey instantly recognizes. ...aaaand then feels bad about the “i need to make sure you’re nice or not, everybody here’s afraid of you” thing. in this case, some of the other employees in sector C were afraid of gordon, as they knew what he was. benrey was a new hire and didn’t (obviously) and didn’t get why some of the scientists and guards were acting nervous around this seemingly friendly (if short-tempered) guy. but now he does. as well as why gordon looked a little self-conscious about it when benrey brought it up. whoops. even though monster!gordon doesn’t wear a HEV suit, he still has trackers that the military use to hunt the science team down. the trackers are just, y’know, in him. and unfortunately, nobody on the team knows exactly where they were stuck in him, and he doesn’t wanna just go clawing himself open everywhere to find the damn things. so the betrayal still happens, though benrey is def not feeling it as much, cause like, he JUST found his old alien friend and was gonna bust him out!! which obviously he can’t do if the fuckin’ military gets a hold of him. but then, he also can’t bust gordon out if he himself gets killed by the military... so turning gordon in is the lesser of two evils. turn him in now, and then try to free him again later. that’s the plan. of course, the bootboys ambushing gordon aren’t at all prepared. they weren’t properly informed on everything about gordon, and for about this whole time, gordon’s been taking on a human form. said form being considerably smaller than his true one. gordon does not black out and get tossed in (the wrong part of) a trash compactor. he does still get pissed at bubby and benrey, though. but this time, he forgives benrey first, as the guy gets way, WAY more emotional over this all than gordon’s ever seen from him. showing off a ton of genuine guilt and regret over it, and also explains why he did it right away (even tho gordon’s still convinced he and benrey never met until the test). bubby mostly just seems scared shitless, oops. but gordo does forgive him before it’s all said and done. they still run into coomer clones and less-than-stable bubby prototypes (which are now just clones as well because reasons). bubby’s not a genetically engineered perfect organism, but a regular/realistic ‘test-tube baby.’ he’s still got a bionic heart, though. coomer’s still a cyborg, too, but not really a super-powered one. his robotic limbs are just advanced in that they’re as dexterous as his old natural limbs, and have artificial touch receptors. they’re also made out of materials that are sturdy as all fuck. they’re just a couple of dudes, as far as physical abilities go. their clones, however? still very fucked up. possibly a little bit more fucked up. this au is also another “not a game” one, and there’s a different reason for why coomer’s clones seem to have a weird connection with gordon/gordon’s brain. bubby’s do, too. those clones aren’t just clones, but also results of genetic splicing experiments. i’ll let you guess where the other non-coomer/bubby genes that were spliced in came from. go on. guess. i haven’t thought about what happens when they get to xen too much. probably just that they fight the nihilanth, since i headcanon that it was indeed still the cause of the xen portals, but benrey ate it to steal its sick boss arena. gordon however wouldn’t do that, as he doesn’t get pissed at any of the team to, y’know, wanna go final boss on them. still gotta be the big hero man (even when he’s not technically a ‘man’). after they get back from xen, tommy prob manages to convince his dad to convince his employers to NOT lock gordon up in a lab again, as it would both mean a lot to his best friend benrey (who is like a little brother to him), and because he’s become fast friends with gordon himself and thus cares about him. i’m also trying to decide if i still want mr. coolatta to be an eldritch being or make him human, too. kinda leaning towards letting him stay non-human, though this time tommy doesn’t have any of the ‘buffs’ i say his adoptive dad gives him in my other not-a-game aus. aaaand that’s all the thoughts i’ve had on this thus far!

[chemicalmagecraft]

Taiyuu OCT Round 5

Character Nicknames: Nii-chan: Takeda Ryuji Gong'gong: Wang Ju'jiao (Yukino and Ryuji's grandfather) Mushu-chan: Firecracker Yuu-chan: Mochizuki Tofu Freezerburn: Todoroki Shoto (not really a nickname, but I made up a hero alias for him since I feel like he wouldn't still be using Shoto like 10 years later)

x x x

Yukino sighed when they arrived at the island, though she loosened up a bit when Nii-chan put a hand on her shoulder. She took a deep breath as Nii-chan and Gong'gong secured the boat they'd borrowed so they didn't have to take the train. When they were done, Gong'gong got off and offered Yukino a hand. There wasn't a dock (Taiyuu couldn't afford one, to the surprise of absolutely nobody except maybe Laccadaisy), so they'd had to find a spot to park the boat where they'd be able to put Yukino's stuff in it without too much trouble, though it was still a little cumbersome for Yukino to get off...

Nii-chan hopped off once Gong'gong helped Yukino off the boat. "You okay, Yuki-chan?" he asked.

Yukino nodded. "Yeah. Let's just get this over with." She squeezed Gong'gong's hand, which she had yet to let go of.

Gong'gong squeezed it lightly back. "They won't hurt you anymore," he growled.

Yukino nodded, then they headed for the main building. It looked even worse than when Yukino had left. They were probably not bothering with keeping up appearances anymore. Nii-chan and Gong'gong walked on either side of Yukino, flanking her like a pair of dragon-themed bodyguards. They were both in their hero outfits, too. Nii-chan was keeping his breathing calm, but Yukino could taste the heat of his Quirk in the air. Buckskin, the vice principal, met them outside the building.

"Ah, h-hello, you must be Nidhogg and Da'long," Buckskin said, shaking a bit from Gong'gong's glare at first. Between his Dragonborn Quirk making him look like a literal dragon and how it tended to agitate animals and people whose Quirks gave them animal instincts (especially when he was angry), Yukino would've been at least a little sorry for the guy if, y'know, she didn't think he deserved it. The guy had made it perfectly clear that he was the one responsible for keeping Laccadaisy's disaster of a school ‘running.’

"You're aware what we're here for, yes?" Nii-chan asked coldly, stepping forward.

Buckskin nodded and produced a folder. "All of Takeda-chan's Quirk information and paperwork is in this file. Ryujin might have made some notes about her Quirk as well, though."

"Then we'll have to talk to her later," Nii-chan said. "Now, is everything else taken care of?"

Buckskin nodded. "After today you shouldn't have to interact with Taiyuu at all if you don't want to. Though I'm sure any of the staff would be willing to write a letter of recommendation to whichever school you apply to."

"Too little, too late," Gong'gong scoffed. "You shouldn't've tried to make a school you couldn't run."

Buckskin cleared his throat. "It wasn't a problem when we originally started this school. We had to close due to issues that occurred later on in the year."

"I'll take your word for it," Gong'gong growled dismissively. "I think we'll head to the dorms now."

They turned back around, to where Yukino pointed the dorms out to be. Though Gong'gong glared back at Buckskin until he went back into the main building.

x x x

Although she knew that they'd have to talk to her eventually, Yukino really didn't want to see Ryujin at the moment... As such, she started to entertain, if only for a moment, the idea that Taiyuu was cursed when they ran into Ryujin in the entrance hall of the dorms. The woman winced and started to turn around when she saw them. Yukino wouldn't have stopped her, but...

"Are you Ryujin, then?" Gong'gong growled.

The woman jumped and turned back around. She looked really tired, just a little livelier than a zombie honestly. Mushu-chan was wrapped around her neck like a boa... constrictor, which he was currently about the size of. "Yeah," she said.

"You made my granddaughter cry," Gong'gong stated, walking towards her a bit. An edge of grandfatherly disapproval had crept into his voice.

Ryujin nodded. "It wasn't my intent, but I suppose I did..." She sounded a little resigned.

Gong'gong glared at her expectantly.

"Is there anything else you need of me?" the woman asked.

Gong'gong growled, a malevolent aura starting to build around him. "You defended the girl that made my granddaughter feel unsafe in this school, when it should've been your duty to make sure she never felt unsafe to begin with. Then you dismissed her feelings on the matter when she brought it up to you. I don't care what your 'intentions' were, you made my granddaughter cry. What do you have to say for yourself?"

Ryujin sighed. "I didn't understand her feelings," she said. "I didn't understand her feelings and hurt her because of that." She fiddled with Mushu-chan's tail. Mushu-chan looked like he was starting to get a bit agitated, probably from how nervous Ryujin was getting. "I regret that," Ryujin admitted. "I regret a lot of things about this place..."

Gong'gong looked like he was about to either sigh or roar Ryujin's head off. "Is there anything you'd like to say to my A'hua, then?"

"There is nothing left for me to say that would not simply be wasting her time," Ryujin said.

Gong'gong stepped forward, looming well over Ryujin due to his size. "I don't know if you're a complete asshole or just that fucking dense, but either way it does not improve my opinion of you or the blockhead who hired you." His voice had started to gain more of a deep, dragony growl than it normally did.

Yukino glanced at Nii-chan, who was looking at Gong'gong with a bit of concern. Normally Gong'gong was a lot better about keeping a handle on his temper, but Nii-chan and Yukino both knew from firsthand experience that he tended to be a bit more touchy about people hurting his family. Yukino wasn't too concerned about Ryujin getting hurt if she kept on like that, but, well... Gong'gong was doing decently well on the hero rankings but there were still a lot of people who, unfortunately, thought of him as monstrous and/or villainous due to his Quirk and the appearance it gave him and would gleefully jump on an incident like him mauling a fellow pro hero, regardless of the circumstances...

Ryujin flinched at the draconic grandfatherly rage looming over her. Still, she forged on digging herself deeper. "I'm not a big fan of Laccadaisy either, at this point," she said despite the fact that that was clearly more a dig at herself than at Laccadaisy. "Do you want me to waste your granddaughter's time with an apology that badly?"

"Waste. Her. Time?" Gong'gong snarled.

She sighed, looking resigned. "...It seems we have differing opinions on apologies. I am sorry that I hurt her, but what will an apology do about that? It's too late to change that now."

Gong'gong growled again, accidentally breathing hot smoke into Ryujin's face. It was probably an accident, anyway... "So you're an asshole, then. You can say apologies are useless all you want when people are trying to apologize to you, but when you're the one who hurt a young girl's feelings? You don't get to fucking decide that. I hope helping the girl was worth it, kid."

Ryujin looked away, though Yukino felt like it was more due to the hot smoke in her eyes than any actual guilt, which Yukino was starting to doubt she was capable of experiencing. "If you want an apology, I'll give one."

Gong'gong bared his fangs at her. "At this point I doubt it'd be all that sincere."

Ryujin started rubbing her eyes. "I've already said that I'm sorry that I hurt her. Did you think I would waste my time lying about that?"

Gong'gong's face contorted in rage, hot air and smoke pouring from his opening mouth. Before he could do anything stupid, though, Nii-chan stepped forward and put a hand on his shoulder. He somehow managed to look dignified even though he had to stand on his tiptoes to reach. Nii-chan cleared his throat as Gong'gong grumbled and backed off. "What my grandfather is trying to say is that he finds the attitude you've demonstrated regarding apologizing for your mistakes… rather disturbing, especially given how he believes you owe Yuki-chan an apology. I know it's not our place to judge you, but I can't help but agree with him. You can't change the past, yeah, but you can make up for your mistakes. And that starts with a sincere, heartfelt apology. Please try to remember that for the future, yeah?" He gave her a diplomatic smile.

Ryuji clenched her fists. Mushu-chan started to yell something, but she quickly calmed him down. "No, it's absolutely your place to judge me," she said. "I've hurt someone important to you, and I owe her much more than just an apology. If what you wanted was reparations, I had already planned to offer that to her." She still didn't apologize, instead taking a note from out of her pocket. It looked like it had a little bit of... something slimy on it. Ew. She offered it to Yukino.

Yukino frowned and crinkled her nose as she carefully took the note. At least make sure it's clean, lady! It was addressed to her, with 'Should you wish to hear from me' written on it. Like Yukino would ever want to see this self-centered woman ever again. "Maybe later..." she grumbled, starting to get more annoyed with this lady.

Ryujin then opened her briefcase and started looking around for something. "Since I'm speaking to you, I have another thing for you..."

"Uh, about that," Mushu-chan said when Ryujin started to get annoyed searching for whatever it was she was searching for. "In my defense I didn't think it was important."

Ryujin glared at the red dragon. "Are you serious." she asked flatly.

"It looked tasty!" Mushu-chan pouted in his 'defense.'

"Everything looks tasty to you, Firecracker," Ryujin told Mushu-chan. "We've been over this."

Yukino growled. Did he eat something of hers? No wonder this woman covered for Zuruko so much, does she really even bother to control her 'Quirk effects?' Like sure they're living things, but they can clearly be reasoned with enough that they should be able to understand such complex orders like 'don't eat other people's stuff.'

Ryujin sighed, rubbing her brow. "I'll have to rewrite the letter, then... Do you have an email I can send it to?"

Nii-chan quickly pulled out a business card (seriously what kind of pro hero has a pouch for business cards) and scorched out his phone number with a swipe of his finger. He held it out to her. "My business mail," he said. "I can give it to Yuki-chan... if I think she should see it."

Ryujin blinked. "It's... a letter of recommendation." She took the burnt business card. "Unless someone decides my mouse looks tasty again, I should have it to you within the week."

"Oh, those are good..." Mushu-chan muttered.

"No, Firecracker," Ryujin said.

Nii-chan cleared his throat. "Well, thank you, then."

Yukino hesitated, but managed to mutter out a small "Thanks."

"I hope the future is better to you than I was," Ryujin told her.

Yukino looked away. "Mhm," she muttered, pushing down the urge to make a snide comment. Then she heard a noise that would've really startled her if she didn't know that it was what a dragon clearing their throat sounded like.

"Oh, sorry, and one more thing that I think we want to address..." Nii-chan said at Gong'gong's prompting.

"Yes?" Ryujin asked.

"I understand Yuki-chan might not have had all the facts about the 'quirk effect' thing, but… Whatever you meant by that language, if it was an inside joke or something… it made Yuki-chan uncomfortable, and I'm sure she wasn't the only one," Nii-chan said. "In the future, it might be wise to not say things like that in front of people who might take it the wrong way, especially if you continue teaching."

Gong'gong, the man who was often called a monster or a dumb animal for almost a century due to how his Quirk made him look, nodded sternly.

Ryujin winced. "Ah. That. I was trying for neutral language... It doesn't matter, I won't be teaching again." She stroked Mushu-chan again. "It's Laccadaisy's fault we're here at all! Stupid debt thing..."

Yukino scoffed. Yet again, she was trying to bring Laccadaisy into this...

"Trust me when I say that being called a 'thing' can hurt, kid," Gong'gong growled. "And we aren't arguing with you there, but this is about you, not Laccadaisy."

She frowned, keeping silent. "It can," she agreed softly. "I'll... avoid saying that in the future."

"Thank you for your understanding," Nii-chan said, giving her a small smile that Yukino didn't think she deserved. "I think we should go pack up now. By the way, Yuki-chan wants the notes you made of her Quirk. The original copies."

Ryujin nodded. "I suppose that's fair. They're on my computer, but I can send the notes to you and then delete them."

"Thank you." Nii-chan gave her a polite, but slightly forced, smile. "We'll be leaving now."

"Goodbye," Ryujin said, quickly walking away from the three.

Yukino started guiding her brother and grandfather to her dorm room. "Wait, I just noticed," Yukino said when they were almost there, definitely out of Ryujin's earshot. "Did she ever actually apologize? Or just say that she should, then change the subject?"

Gong'gong grumbled. "Not to my memory."

Nii-chan gave a sigh. "Okay maybe she was just tired, but that woman is a PR nightmare waiting to happen with an attitude like that..."

"Isn't this whole thing a PR nightmare for the heroes involved?" Yukino asked.

Nii-chan shrugged. "Definitely for Laccadaisy, but the non-administrative staff can probably get off a little easier if they can say they didn't know about any of the debt stuff. Though by your account there were other issues that they brushed aside, so they might get called out on that. If they keep their heads down, though, they might just make it out without too much trouble."

Yukino nodded, but bit her lip. "Is... Is it bad that I kinda want them to get in trouble?"

Gong'gong shrugged. "You got hurt by this mess. They say heroes have to be selfless and want to save everyone, but I think there's nothing wrong with wanting to see someone who hurt you or yours fucked over, as long as you're still willing to save them from a villain or something." 

"Yeah, a little schadenfreude doesn't make you a bad person or a bad hero," Nii-chan reassured her, ruffling her hair.

They finally reached her dorm room. "We're here," Yukino said. The door was open, and she could see Yuu-chan with two men in suits. Bodyguards, maybe? One had cat ears and the other had dog ears, and Yukino saw some flashes of scars and tattoos mostly hidden by their suits. Yukino knocked on the doorframe and waved at Yuu-chan as she entered. It looked like he was packing up, too. "Hey, Yuu-chan," she said.

Yuu-chan looked up at her. "Oh, hello, Takeda-chan," he said, looking a little nervous. She couldn't see his face under his mask, but Yukino got the feeling he was trying to smile and put on a brave face. She couldn't blame him if he was nervous, though...

Nii-chan tried to get closer to Yuu-chan, but the bodyguards silently stepped forward in a clear sign of "we're gonna have problems if you get any closer." In response, Nii-chan put his hands up and stopped moving. "You okay, kid?" he asked, ever the hero.

Yuu-chan quietly nodded. "I am, thank you. And I'm sorry about them, they're just here to protect me. Please back down, you two."

The bodyguards nodded and backed off. They still looked a little wary, though. They especially seemed to raise their guards when Gong'gong entered the room, though Yukino couldn't blame them for that. Yukino could still feel a bit of anger coming from Gong'gong, so if those two had some animal instincts like their ears might suggest then they were probably feeling it as well. Gong'gong sighed, but attempted to make himself seem less threatening to the guards.

"It's cool," Nii-chan told Yuu-chan. "We're kinda here for the same reason, just for Yuki-chan. We're gonna pack her stuff up real quick, though would you prefer if we waited until you were done?"

Yuu-chan shook his head. "No, that's fine."

"Thanks, kid," Nii-chan smiled at him.

They got to work packing up Yukino's stuff as Yuu-chan and his guards finished up packing his. Yukino offered to keep in touch with him as they left, but he seemed ambivalent at best... Yukino and her family got all her stuff packed up and left soon after. They'd made sure to bring enough boxes and a big enough boat that they could get everything in one trip to the island. They didn't really run into anyone on the way back to the boat, which Yukino was fine with. There were a few people she might've liked to see again, but she also wanted to leave the island and never return.

x x x

Yukino held the note from Ryujin, still considering if she should open it or just give it to Mom, who would gladly incinerate it for her. As promised, Ryujin had sent Nii-chan an email with a letter of recommendation and her notes on Yukino after a few days. She'd also asked how Yukino was doing while she was at it. Nii-chan had assured Yukino that he'd only tell her what Yukino wanted him to tell her, even if that was cussing her out or something. The offer was tempting...

Ryujin's letter of recommendation seemed pretty good, though she lost points for the Quirk notes. Really she could've just asked Yukino; the notes she'd put in from observation and speculation both were stuff Yukino had already figured out. Sure, Yukino had a lot more time to figure it out than her, but why was this the first time Yukino was seeing these notes? Though then again this was the same woman who apparently took several months to figure out one of her students' Quirks could be turned off, so what was Yukino expecting?

So really Yukino didn't know if there was anything of actual worth in this letter. Plus, she'd had to wash her hoodie twice to get that gross slime out of the pocket. She hoped it was just dragon spit... After some deliberation she carefully opened the letter (it still smelled, ew) so she could read its contents.

-Takeda

I know this may seem insincere, but I do hope you offer me an opportunity to repay you for the hurt I've caused you. If you ever need anything I can offer I will do it for you, no questions asked. I always pay my debts.

And then it listed her contact information.

Yukino growled and crumpled it up, accidentally frosting it a little. "Gun," she grumbled. "You'd do anything I want, but can't even manage a simple apology?" She stood up, walking to the door. Then she sighed and turned around, walking back to her desk. As tempting as it was to give it to Mom and watch her set it on fire with her Quirk, Yukino hid it away in one of the drawers of her desk instead. Maybe she'd write the contact information down later, but for now she didn't want to look at the note anymore. As much as she doubted it'd actually be worth much, it was probably wise to at least have the option to cash that favor in...

x x x

They were mostly silent during the drive to UA. Yukino was a little nervous, and Nii-chan probably didn't want to add to it. Yukino took a deep breath when Nii-chan stopped his car in the visitor parking lot, then opened the door and got out. Nii-chan got out and put a hand on Yukino's shoulder. "Hey, you okay?" he asked.

Yukino nodded. "Just a little nervous. And... feeling a little stupid..."

He sighed. "It's... not your fault that it turned out like that."

Yukino nodded. "Yeah, I know..."

He smiled and held a hand out to her. "Want some fire before you go?" he asked, making a small flame.

"Thanks," Yukino said, then started sucking up the flame. "Let's go," she said when she had her fill. They walked to the front entrance together, where two people were waiting for them. She gasped. Sure, she'd been expecting pro heroes, since like a lot of hero schools UA tended to have pros as teachers, and she knew they were teachers, but she couldn't believe that two of her favorite heroes were going to be supervising her exam! She felt an involuntary shudder of excitement as she looked at the heroes. She was going to meet Freezerburn and Froppy!

And then Yukino looked down with a blush, suddenly very conscious that the hoodie she was currently wearing was themed after Froppy's hero outfit.

The frog hero herself chuckled. "I can see I have a fan, huh?" It looked like she was wearing her winter outfit, despite the weather not starting to get cold yet.

Yukino's face heated up a bit more. "Ah, sorry, I... swear I didn't plan that!" she shouted, waving her arms.

Nii-chan joined in on the chuckling, then put a hand on Yukino's shoulder. He leaned in close to her. "This is as far as I can go, sorry. I believe in you, though. Knock 'em cold."

Yukino smiled, warmed by his words of encouragement... and the last-minute superheated breath he spoke them with. "Thanks, Nii-chan. I'll do my best," she said as he walked back to his car. Yukino turned back to the people who would, hopefully, be her teachers in a few weeks. "Right, so what now?"

"First, you will have to take a written exam." Freezerburn said, his tone as cool as Yukino ever heard the few times she actually heard his voice in interviews and the like.

Yukino nodded. "Sounds about right. And I'm guessing you're doing it first instead of after the practical exam so I'm not tired?"

"That's right," Froppy confirmed. "Plus there are some people with Quirk drawbacks that can involve mental strain or lowered concentration after overuse. No sense putting them at an unfair disadvantage."

"You will need to learn to mitigate or deal with the drawbacks of your Quirk, of course," Freezerburn added, "but we aren't going to test you on it. Now, follow us to the exam hall."

Yukino grinned and followed the two heroes into the building. It looked like, since it was the weekend, there weren't many people walking about the halls aside from them. "For the record," Yukino said as they walked, "I'm kind of a fan of the both of you."

"I don't hold it against anyone if they're not my fans," Freezerburn assured her bluntly. Then the corner of his mouth crept up in a small smile. "Though I do appreciate it."

x x x

The written test was easy since Yukino knew most of the material already. She still did have trouble with some parts, but she'd studied beforehand and it paid off. After she finished, her proctors took her to one of UA's training grounds, the false city. Yukino marveled at the training ground, which felt like it could be an actual city, if an empty one. If Yukino were randomly teleported there she would've wondered why there was nobody in the city, not what she was doing in a weird dirt city. Sure, it didn't look like the buildings had much furniture in them, but she could still see them as actual buildings. Not to mention the roads and sidewalks had signs and things like that that made it look more realistic!

"Something wrong, Takeda-chan?" Froppy asked. She was holding a clipboard that she'd gotten while Yukino was taking the test, probably to take notes on her performance.

"Oh, nothing," Yukino said, smiling a bit. "I was just looking around, this place looks amazing. So the practical exam is gonna be here?"

Freezerburn nodded. "The scenario is that some villains have taken a civilian hostage, and you were called to find and rescue them," he explained. "Somewhere nearby, you will find a group of humanoid robots playing the role of villains. You must rescue and protect the dummy acting as their hostage and return it here, to this rescue zone." He pointed to a square marked off by four green flags. "I will be guarding the rescue zone, while Froppy will be shadowing you from afar to supervise you. Once you get back here with the hostage we will begin the second phase of the practical exam. Do you have any questions?"

Yukino raised her hand. "Should I pretend the robots are real people? I can disable tech with my Quirk pretty easily, but doing the same thing to a person would probably be murder."

Froppy wrote something down, hopefully a good sign.

"It's good that you asked that," Freezerburn said. "You will need to know how to take down real villains without permanently harming them, of course, but for now you only need to make sure the hostage doesn't get damaged. Take the villains down by any means necessary, as long as the hostage remains safe. If you're ready, then start."

Yukino nodded, then crouched and put her tail on the ground. She formed a platform of ice just off the ground, making it with footholds and a sort of staff for her to grip. She hopped on the platform and gripped the staff, taking a deep breath before lifting. Flat-out flight still terrified her, but with her grandfather's help and some padded ground to practice over she'd managed to get herself to the point where she could float a little over the ground without panicking.

Still, it took her a few seconds of concentration to raise the platform, then a deep breath to calm her nerves. She pushed her platform forwards, slow at first but picking up a bit of speed. The ice platform was making her hands and feet cold, so she tried to hurry up and find the robots before she got too cold. She scanned the streets, floating by faster than she could walk but not nearly as fast as her top TK speed. Not only was she not comfortable with that speed just yet, but she doubted she'd be able to spot any robots or even steer if she was going that fast.

After searching a few streets, she spotted a flash of something metallic inside of the the buildings. She slowed to a stop, then crouched down. Yukino floated up a bit, seeing a robot in one of the windows, then floated back down so they hopefully couldn't see her. She quietly snapped the staff off of her platform and floated up to the window, then got off the platform and peeked through it. 

It looked like the robots hadn't spotted her yet, fortunately. There was a robot standing by the window, but it looked like it was facing the other direction. Unless the robots didn't have faces, but it hadn't reacted to her presence so probably not. Including the robot by the window, Yukino could see four from where she was. She could also see a dummy on the floor with the kanji for 'hostage' on its otherwise-featureless face. She could guess what that was supposed to be.

Yukino smashed her staff through the glass window, bonking the robot in the back of the head with a flash of white vapor. Frost coated the upper half of the robot, then Yukino threw it at another robot. She shattered her platform into giant shards and threw about half of them at the other two robots, sending the other half to where the dummy was so they could act like a bit of a protective shield. She dropped her staff, jumped up, and moved to the door as fast as she could. A robot opened the door as she reached it, so she quickly struck it in the chest with a Quirk-enhanced palm strike. She only left a handprint of frost on the robot's exterior, but sent a spike of pure cold to where she thought the robot's 'heart' was according to what she felt of the other robot.

The robot immediately slumped over, its power cut. Yukino pushed it aside and looked into the room. The robot she'd thrown the first robot at was almost out from under its frozen comrade, and while she'd gotten one robot with the ice shards the other one had managed to dodge. Yukino quickly tightened the barrier of ice around the dummy now that she could see where it was and didn't have to worry about accidentally cutting it. When that was done she turned the shards that the one robot had dodged back, impaling it, and pressed down on the frozen robot, keeping the other robot pinned under it. She quickly walked over to the final functioning robot and flicked it. Like with the robot at the door, she screwed up its systems with pinpoint freezing.

Yukino got back up, shaking off her hands and walking over to the dummy. She raised the shards of ice that she'd put over it, getting ready to pick it up. And then she heard heavy footsteps coming from the next floor up. 

“Never should’ve come here!” a robotic voice yelled, muffled from being one floor up but still audible.

Yukino let out a small curse and summoned all the ice shards to where she was, picking up the dummy and quickly freezing all the ice shards together. It was a patch job, but there hopefully weren't any sharp edges. She placed the dummy on the platform as carefully as she could without being too slow, then quickly floated the dummy through the door. She followed after, closing the door when she went through it and icing it so it wouldn't budge. She summoned her staff to her hand and tapped the broken window with it, making bars of ice over it.

Yukino soon heard metal bodies slamming on the door. She wasn't sure her barricades would hold too long, so she started running. She didn't know if there were any more robots posted nearby, so she kept her eyes on her surroundings as she ran back to the rescue zone.

She didn't encounter any more robots on the way back, thankfully. Along the way, since Yukino wasn't attacked, she let go of her staff and simply let it float by her side. She also checked on how the dummy was doing, since she was so rushed when she remade the platform. She had to adjust it a bit so it wouldn't fall off, but other than that it looked good.

Yukino smiled as she got to the final stretch, seeing only Freezerburn between herself and her objective. She noticed, though, that it looked like he was wearing weird metal bands on his wrists and ankles. Her smile slowly faded to a frown. He wasn't wearing those things earlier, was he?

The metal-laden bands he was wearing, plus the look he was giving Yukino, made her raise her guard as she got closer. She was able to react quickly, then, when he surged forward on a sudden wave of ice. The ground on either side of his ice wave was freezing over in a thin layer, too. Yukino slammed her staff into the ground, erecting a thick wall of her own ice before he could freeze her over. Freezerburn jumped over her wall as his ice crashed into it, fixing her with a glare. "We will begin the second phase of the exam now," he told her.

Yukino grinned. The idea of having to fight the pro hero was intimidating, but at the same time Yukino couldn't help but feel excited to face off with one of her favorite heroes. "A boss fight, huh?" she guessed.

The man nodded. "More or less." He reached into a pouch on his belt and pulled out a roll of tape. "Your goal is to wrap that around my arms. We will stop if Froppy or I decide you are unable to fight. Is that understood?" He threw the tape at Yukino.

Yukino nodded as she grabbed the tape and stuffed it in her hoodie's pocket, then put her hands on her staff and froze a small dome over the platform the dummy was on. She pointed the staff at Freezerburn as she sent the encased dummy off to the rescue zone. Luckily it looked like the rescue zone was still just barely in her range from this distance.

He gave her a small grin. "Getting the hostage out of the way first," he noted. "Good choice." Then he waved his left hand at her staff, throwing a wave of fire at it. Yukino grinned and cut through the fire with her Quirk, though she let some heat behind to warm up her now-cold hands.

She heard a familiar hiss of flash-cooling vapor and jumped to the side of a smaller wave of ice that the half-cold hero had sent her way. He'd also frosted over the rest of the nearby ground while he was at it; the road under Yukino's feet was now covered by a thin layer of white.

It looked like Freezerburn knew at least some of the details of Yukino's Quirk. There was no way he thought she had true cryokinesis with all the ice he was throwing her way. Though Yukino wondered if he knew everything. "Y'know," Yukino said, then waved her hands through the air, which was still above her temperature threshold. White vapor condensed, then gathered into shards of ice. Yukino saw a flash of recognition in the hero's eyes. "I used to wonder why you would never make ice from the air." She threw her ice shards at him.

Freezerburn melted the ice with a quick wave of fire. It wasn't directed at Yukino, but she absorbed the wave of heat left over. Then Yukino shattered the remains of her ice wall and threw the shrapnel at him. He reacted quickly, turning to spray the ice with a jet of fire. Yukino hadn't really expected it to actually hit, but she used the distraction to close the distance between them and jab her staff at the band on his right wrist.

He grabbed the staff, but wasn't quick enough to stop the tip of Yukino's staff from touching the metal on his band. Yukino channeled her freezing through her staff as soon as the ice and metal touched. She could feel Freezerburn trying to cut her off with his Quirk, though, a weird feeling like water slipping from her Quirk's grasp. She lowered her absorption as he lowered the temperature himself, then when she felt the threshold approaching she pushed. It wasn't as good as if she was unopposed, but Yukino was able to gain control of most of the metal and the ice that formed around his wrist from the contest, with just a few swirls left out of her influence. It was always a weird feeling, but thanks to her mother Yukino was familiar with those little contests of cold.

As she thought, the metal was dense. Yukino snapped her staff in half and jabbed the half not frozen to his wrist restraint at the band on his right leg. She easily threw his arm back with her telekinesis to throw him off, distracting him enough that she was able to hit his ankle band. Yukino grinned widely as she put it under her control, then forced him to raise his leg by lifting the band up. He tried to point his right hand at her, but found telekinetic resistance that he simply couldn't fight with due to his poor footing.

"Those weights are meant to make you slower, right?" Yukino asked. "Throwing you off so you're a little easier from hero students to fight, on top of the sandbagging." Yukino's grin widened as she deliberately tried to evoke her draconic ancestry. "You might've guessed by now, but the amount of energy I can put into an object is dependent on mass, not size. You're fighting against their weight as well as my Quirk."

"But your control will fail if I heat it back up, will it not?" he asked, then pointed his left hand at his right. Yukino reached out as he shot a jet of fire at his wrist, cutting the blow off with her own hand. Freezerburn's eyes widened as his fire just stopped in Yukino's palm, the heat absorbed by her Quirk.

Yukino sighed. "C'mon, didn't you notice me cooling off your fire earlier?" She clasped her hands around Freezerburn's left hand before he could turn off his fire, the white vapor that accompanied her Quirk seeming to snuff out his flames. He didn't lower his output, instead increasing it to keep Yukino from freezing his hand. Yukino greedily sucked at the energy he was giving off. It tasted of some really good cold soba.

She laughed, shaking Freezerburn's hand a little. She pulled the right side of his body away from her a little more, before he could try to hit her. "Y'know, I've kinda always wanted to shake your hand," she told him. "This isn't at all how I imagined it going, of course, but honestly this is better. I was worried you’d overwhelm me with your ice, but it looks like I managed to hit your weak point before you could steamroll mine."

Freezerburn struggled against the floating restraints, unable to do much since Yukino was holding onto one arm and pulling the other arm (and leg) away from her, then tried to set a fire with his foot. Yukino stomped it out before he could do anything more than melt the frost by his feet, able to use her Quirk through her shoe without discomfort since it was so hot. "You've managed to restrain me," he said. "Impressive, but you haven't won yet."

"Yeah, I know," Yukino said. She flashed her Quirk through a strand of her hair, granting her the ability to move it since she needed both hands to keep Freezerburn from breaking out of their deadlock. She used the hair to reach into her pocket, though it took some mental effort and was a little slow since she was concentrating on keeping Freezerburn’s right (and, to Yukino, more dangerous) side from reaching the ground where he could use it to do anything aside from prolong her control over him. Yukino cooled her capture tape as soon as she felt her hair touch it, then pulled it out of her pocket with her telekinesis.

Freezerburn struggled some more as he saw the capture tape floating towards his wrist. He almost broke free, but Yukino dug her claws into his skin with a small 'sorry' to keep her grip. She tried not to break his skin, but he still winced from the sharp claws digging into his flesh. Yukino felt him raising the heat of his Quirk as she unraveled a length of tape and prepared to loop it around his wrist. Yukino tried to raise up her cooling to match, though she could feel him slowly overtaking her. Her claws turned an icy white as she pushed her Quirk to its limits despite not making any ice. She tried to pick up the pace of unrolling the capture tape, pulling Freezerburn's straining arms a little closer together as well so she didn't have to roll out as much.

Finally she managed to get it long enough to make loose loops around both of Freezerburn's wrists, then relaxed the resistance around Freezerburn's bands so she could put more attention into getting the capture tape properly around his wrists. She didn't let go of his left arm, he'd probably incinerate the tape immediately if she did, but he stumbled as he suddenly found himself able to properly move the right side of his body. Yukino pulled as fast as she could, closing the loops around his wrists before he could stop her.

He sighed and relaxed as the capture tape touched his wrists. He still kept up the fire, though, which was probably a good idea because Yukino might've accidentally frozen him with how much heat she was sucking up. "We're done. We should probably try to safely turn our Quirks off now."

Yukino shrugged. "I can jump off at the count of three? There's ice everywhere so it probably won't damage the road too much more than it probably is already if you accidentally splash some fire out."

He nodded. "That sounds like a good idea. If you're ready?"

"One..." Yukino said. "Two..." She jumped away from Freezerburn, getting mostly out of the range of the heat wave that spilled out when she released him and her Quirk stopped suppressing his.

Freezerburn quickly cut off the fire, leaving the ground near him unscorched but steaming and defrosted. He shook out his left hand, wincing at the marks Yukino's claws had left.

"Sorry about that..." Yukino said.

"It's okay," the man assured her coolly. "We were in a fight, after all." He rubbed his right wrist next, melting the ice and warming the weighted band back up. He warmed up the leg band next. "I can't promise you anything at the moment, but you performed very well." He held his hand out to her. "I would be delighted to have you as a student, Takeda-san."

Yukino stared at the hand he was offering her. She laughed a little, wiping away a happy tear. "Thanks. You have no idea how much that means to me." She grabbed his hand, giving it a firm shake. A real one this time, from one of her favorite heroes (that she was not directly related to).

"Now, could you please get on my right side?" he asked. "I'd like to warm the area up a bit before Froppy comes back."

"Oh, sure," Yukino said, walking over to his right side. She walked to his side. As he warmed the area up with his fire, Yukino looked around to see Froppy watching them on top of a nearby building. It looked a bit like she was glaring at Freezerburn. Yukino smiled and waved at her. She hoped, no, knew that she was going to get into UA. She was going to like it here.

[overheardatthecontinental]

Talk Chapter 14

AO3 LINK

The moment John reaches the city line, he turns on his phone. Yet again, he is met with a cacophony of vibrations as his phone loads with the unread messages that have accumulated over the past twelve or so hours.

He waits until the barrage has ended before hitting the speed dial option that will bring him directly to the Continental. He orders a day room to set up shop, as well as a request for the technician to start researching DeLuca’s mother.

He’s transferred to Winston long enough to find out the name of Mateo’s mother. Winston barely gets a sentence out before John has said a goodbye.

When he is done, he dials Sofia.

It’s already evening in Morocco and he can hear loud music in the background when she answers.

“You’re lucky I’m picking up considering you don’t answer any of your texts.” She says loudly, over the pulsing rhythm.

John feels his lips twitch at the annoyance in her tone. “Been busy.”

“So I’ve heard.” The background noise gets quieter and he hears the sound of a door closing. “Rumor has it, you’re killing anybody even considering taking the Kingston contract.”

Good. While he doesn’t have the time to actually go ahead and kill every person seeking out Helen, he wants anybody considering her contract to think twice.

“Hearing many rumors in Casablanca?”

“Oh, you went global , John. Everybody everywhere is talking about it.”

John sighs at that and shakes his head, “Is there really nothing more interesting happening anywhere?”

“I’ll break it down for you because I know you’ve had a lot of head injuries: everybody looks at you like a monk. You don’t date. You don’t fuck around. Everybody just kind of assumed you were celibate. I've even heard rumors that you made a deal with the devil to be powerful at the cost of giving up sex.”

“Then, a contract goes wide. Some woman no one’s ever heard of. Never set foot in the Underworld yet seems to have a connection to John Wick. Everybody waits for a response. Only you disappear off the map for twenty-four hours. And nobody can actually find Helen Kingston.”

“Then, you resurface and start killing anyone who’s even looked at the Kingston contract. So, no, John. There really isn’t anything more interesting happening anywhere.”

John lets out a breath.

This, he realizes, is quickly becoming his newest fear. That even if, somehow, he can get them both out alive, he’s going to have to face the rest of the Underworld.

He’d warned Helen before he left that he still had enemies. Ones far worse than DeLuca. The Syndicate heir was ambitious, but DeLuca truly didn’t care whether Helen lived or died. Others would. Others would make it their mission to make her suffer just to see how John would react.

She was already trapped in ways she couldn’t possibly understand and that terrified him.

“But I take it you’re not calling to find out what the rumor mill is pelting in Casablanca.”

“No, I’m not.” John says, drumming his fingers on the steering wheel as he waits for the pedestrians to cross in front of him. “I need a favor. There’s a bottle of Romanee-Conti ’72 in it for you. Plus expenses.” He’s more than willing to give her a marker if that’s what this takes, but he has a feeling that the rare vintage plus the intrigue of it all will be enough to capture her attention.

“Color me intrigued. What’s the job?”

“The man who’s hired the hit on Helen is Mateo DeLuca of Syndicate. I have reason to believe his mother, Isabella DeLuca, is the one who is actually calling the shots. Only problem, she’s in Rome.”

Sofia hums, “Is she well-guarded?”

“I don’t know.” John answers honestly, “But I need her in New York yesterday.”

“An exchange. His mother for your girl?”

John drives on, inclining his head at the question, “I’m certain it won’t be that simple. But yes.”

Sofia hums and, again, he can hear her moving. The background noise increases slightly, “I can be to Rome in five hours.”

“Perfect. If you can get her when she’s going to bed—”

“No one will be the wiser until morning. This isn’t my first extraction, John.”

He nods to himself because of course it isn’t .

He isn’t a micromanager. He never has been, but the stakes have never been quite like this before.

“You care if she’s bruised?”

John considers it.

He typically liked to keep things as clean as possible. He didn’t do extractions or espionage or anything else that called for more tact and forethought than a bullet to the head.

But Isabella DeLuca was the force behind Mateo. Arguably, the force behind Helen’s abduction.

“Not in the slightest.” He says finally, “Although I don’t expect she’ll put up much of a fight. She’s a bureaucrat.”

Sofia groans, “I prefer it when they fight. Bureaucrats just whine.”

“I get it. I’ve spent more time dealing with politics the past few days than I have in my entire life.”

“Never thought I’d see the day where John Wick had to talk nice to people. Then again, never thought you were going to get your v-card punched, either.”

John rolls his eyes at Sofia’s ongoing joke. There wasn’t much else she could get on him but his decision to be largely celibate fascinated his friend. Truthfully, John didn’t think too much about sex or carnal pleasures. He didn’t prioritize fleeting experiences.

But then, the assassin’s voice softens, “How is she? Your girl. Does she understand what’s going on?”

John nods before remembering that Sofia can’t see him. “Yeah, she gets it. And she’s…” unbelievable. Ridiculous. Brave and clever and tougher than he ever gave her credit for, “In the past week, she’s been kidnapped, held hostage, and forced to go into hiding because half of New York is out to kill her. And despite all that, her biggest concern is that something could happen to me .”

It still boggles his mind.

“How long have you been together?”

He isn’t entirely sure how to answer that and there’s far too much to explain over the phone. He decides on, “It’s complicated.”

“Isn’t it always?” She asks and John is glad that she isn’t going to chastise him for not knowing better. “Hang on.” He hears her switch languages to Arabic. While John isn’t fluent in that particular language, he knows enough to hear the word ‘airplane’. After a minute of back and forth, she is back on the phone, “I’m headed to the airport now. The concierge is finding a pilot as we speak.”

“Perfect.” John says with a sigh of relief. “Thank you.”

“Where am I taking her once I have her?”

He thinks, quickly. There were too many eyes in New York for him to chance it getting back to DeLuca. Likewise, he was certain his house was being watched. Even though it technically wasn’t under his name, enough people knew about his residence in Jersey for it to get around. And there was no way in hell he was bringing Isabella anywhere near Helen.

“There’s a private airstrip just outside of Newark with an adjacent motel. Keep her there. If I don’t talk to you before then, I’ll plan on meeting you there tomorrow, at noon. I’ll probably be offline when you land.”

“I’ll get her there.”

“Thank you, Sof.”

He hangs up and concentrates on the road ahead, even as his thoughts spin. He hates having to depend on anybody. That said, he does trust Sofia to get the job done. To take care of it and troubleshoot any unforeseen problems on her own. That knowledge helps with the distaste he feels for needing help. It was easier to accept the help, too, knowing it would benefit Helen.

John makes it to the Continental and leaves his car with the valet. Walking into the lobby, he spots Verdugo sitting in an armchair by the fire, reading the newspaper. He imagines the assassin is likely still the number one contender targeting Helen, considering John hadn’t been able to touch him the day before.

He feels his hand already itching for his gun but he knows the rule.

He recites the rule, to himself, again and again as he passes by.

No business conducted on Continental grounds.

He can’t falter on that, not here. The moment Verdugo sets foot outside the hotel, he’s fair game. But not here.

Charon already has a key card placed on the counter when John reaches the counter. John places a coin down and they make a quick exchange.

“Mister Dexter sent you a fax and the Technician has compiled the information you asked for. I’ve taken the liberty of sending it all to your room.”

“Thank you.” John says, thinking back over the past few days. For everything that the Continental staff had helped him with. “For everything, this week.”

“Of course.” The Concierge replies with ease. John takes his key and starts to walk off when Charon calls to him, “And Mister Wick?” He waits until John turns, “I wish you the best of luck with your… task.”

John nods his thanks and proceeds down the hall and up the stairs. The day room was almost identical to the one he had stayed in while waiting for news of Helen just days ago. Two folders layfolders lay on the table when John walks in.

The first is much smaller. John flips it open and finds only two sheets of paper, reporting the updated odds. In large capital letters, it advertises Kingston Contract Odds .

John forces himself to swallow as he reads through it.

Verdugo remains the top contender, but the rest of the list is very different than the one he had seen yesterday morning.

Fuck, he thinks, was it really only yesterday?

He sighs, reviewing the changes. While he had eliminated a great deal of the assassins targeting Helen, even more had dropped out of their own accord, it would seem.

Good.

But more would always come, as evidenced by the papers in his hands.

More names he didn’t recognize. Junior assassins and street kids looking to make a name for themselves.

He’d try to make time to eliminate more. Keep reminding people exactly who they were messing with by going after a woman they knew to be his.

John takes out his cell phone, again, ignoring the dozens of text messages that would be left unread until he had the time to deal with them. He finds Santino and drafts a new message.

J: Need to talk. Today.

He reads it over after and sends. Before he can even set it down, it vibrates in his hand.

S: Intriguing. You know where I live.

John turns off the screen, setting the device to the side as he opens the second folder.

Pictures of Isabella DeLuca on the arm of her late husband at scores of different events over the years. A birth announcement of their son. A copy of a marriage certificate. A degree from Sapienza University of Rome in business sciences and another in political science. A transcript, providing proof of excellent marks and scores.

She was bright, it seems, adding to Helen’s theory that Isabella was the true brain behind Syndicate.

He continues going back into her history, but he doesn’t make the connection until he sees her birth certificate.

Isabella Carlotta Giovinco.

Daughter of Stefano Giovinco and Valentina D’Antonio.

He whips out his phone and dials Winston speedily.

“Hello again, Jonathan. Have you—”

“Valentina D’Antonio.” John says quickly, “What’s her relationship to Lorenzo?”

“Valentina?” Winston repeats, “She was his older sister. The eldest child of Claudia and Enzo D’Antonio.”

“And that would make Isabella DeLuca his niece?”

“Yes.”

John closes his eyes, “And you didn’t think that was pertinent information to share when DeLuca asked me to kill the D’Antonio’s?”

“Killing family is not an unusual practice, Jonathan. But, honestly, it slipped my mind. When Isabella was never, herself, a D’Antonio.”

“But her mother was.” He shakes his head, “And in those days, everything was patrilineal. Heir’s weren’t chosen based on age or conviction; they automatically went to the oldest male.”

“Which, in Valentina’s case was her brother, Lorenzo. She married one of her father’s lieutenants, if I remember correctly. They had several children, one of which being Isabella. It was quite the scandalous thing when Isabella married Dante. She had to renounce the Camorra at her own wedding to be accepted into Syndicate.”

“A lesser gang.”

“But one that quickly rose to prominence. It’s second only behind the Camorra in Italy.”

John pinches the bridge of his nose. He fucking hates this bullshit.

There’s a knock on the door and a beeping as the door unlocks. Winston enters and John lowers his phone, shutting it off.

“So, before Isabella, Syndicate was just another Italian crime family trying to be great.” John assesses, “Her family probably thought she was crazy for leaving the safety of the Camorra, but there was no advancement there. In the Camorra, she was just the daughter of a soldier and a has-been princess. But in Syndicate, she was a queen.”

“You think Isabella was the driving force behind Syndicate’s rise?” Winston synthesizes, looking unsure.

John nods, “I do. Helen told me that DeLuca wasn’t smart enough to be doing this on his own and I didn’t listen. Fuck .” He exhales, “I almost missed it.”

He’d kick himself if he could. If he had just listened to her from the beginning… no. He can’t focus on should have’s.

This is good.

Any doubt that Lorenzo D’Antonio will turn down his request fades from his mind.

Because it’s personal now. For them, at least.

It’s been personal for John since they started stalking the woman he loved.

“Unbelievable.” He mutters.

“I take it Mateo demanded the same last night as when he first took your beloved.”

John nods again, “Yes. And I’ve spent the last few days trying to figure out how I can get us both out of this alive. I can’t believe I almost missed it.”

John exhales and it feels like a weight is lifted from his shoulders.

It’s far from over but he can feel everything start to come together. There’s a light at the end of a tunnel that once seemed endless.

He breathes easy.

He wishes that Helen weren’t hours away so he could take her into his arms and hug her as the relief courses through him, overwhelming the guilt that he had missed something so crucial.

“It’s unsurprising that you missed it.” Winston says, “You’ve never had a political mind. You prefer the simplicity of being told where to point and shoot.”

True enough, John thinks.

“There’s something else you should know.” Winston adds, his voice softening in a way that tells John that whatever comes next won’t be good. He nods and Winston says, “There’s a missing person’s out for Helen Kingston. I’m not sure if it was someone in the Underworld trying to draw her out of hiding or if it was someone from her work, but the police were at her house this morning.”

If it wasn’t one thing, it was another.

John shakes his head, “Do you know if Charlie was able to clean the scene before the police got there?”

Winston nods, “Yes. I have someone watching the investigation. The police are under the assumption that she ran away since both her cell phones and her laptop are nowhere to be found but her family is pushing, saying Helen wouldn’t just disappear without telling them.”

“Alright.” John sighs, “Thank you for letting me know.

“Of course.”

“I have to meet with Santino.” John says, closing the folder and handing it to Winston, “Could you pass these along to the Technician? I need them scanned and emailed to Sofia Al-Azwar.”

Winston accepts the folder, inclining his head, “I’d ask what you were planning, Jonathan, except I feel it’s better that I don’t know.”

“You’re probably right.” John agrees.

“That said, I will be watching with complete and utter fascination.” The Manager continues, “Good luck.”

John nods, pocketing the key in case he needs to come back, and leaving the rest behind. Without a goodbye, he hurries back down the hall. He descends the stairs only to meet Verdugo walking up. The other assassin gives him a smile.

“You’re a hard man to find, John Wick.”

John stops and reminds himself again, of the mandate.

No business shall be conducted on Continental grounds .

While John was more than willing to argue that this isn’t business, it was personal , he was certain that argument wouldn’t fly with Winston or the High Table.

“Am I?” He asks, instead.

“Very. But every now and then, you pop up. Seemingly out of nowhere. If only Helen Kingston was privy to doing the same.”

No business shall be conducted on Continental grounds .

“It would be in your best interest,” John manages to bite out, “To forget her name.”

“But it is such a pretty name. Fitting, really. There was a war over her namesake as well.”

No business shall be conducted on Continental grounds .

“One where thousands died,” John agrees, aware that they’ve caught the attention of several onlookers just off the lobby, “Yet another reason it would be wise of you to drop the contract.”

Verdugo inclines his head, “You can’t keep her hidden forever. You do know that, don’t you? If it’s not me, it’ll be someone else.”

No business shall be conducted on Continental grounds .

“It won’t be you.”

“Why are you making this so much harder on yourself?” There is genuine curiosity dripping from Verdugo’s words. A confusion, of sorts, as if he can’t understand why John Wick is putting off the inevitable.

Kate had been similarly curious, although hers had been riddled with amusement. Now she was dead.

But every assassin thought themselves invincible, to a degree. Yes, they were far more aware of mortality than the average person having watched the life drain from countless eyes. But the older assassins in particular, who had brushed with death regularly, often seemed to forget that.

John, himself, was guilty of that. He thinks to the tie that does not hang from his neck, which instead, he had left with Helen. He might never wear one again in his promise to her to not let anyone have a chance at defeating him.

“Make it easier on yourself and let her go.” The other assassin pauses, “I’ll make sure it’s quick. Painless.”

No business shall be conducted on Continental grounds .

No business shall be conducted on Continental grounds .

No business shall be conducted on Continental grounds .

“Would you like to take this outside?” John asks, hoping against hope that Verdugo is stupid or confident enough to make a mistake.

Verdugo inclines his head, “You forget, Mister Wick. You’re not the one with the multi-million-dollar bounty… Consider my offer. Others’ targeting the Boogeyman’s woman will be far more malicious.” He starts to ascend back up the stairs, “Be seeing you, Mister Wick.”

John repeats the rule one last time before forcing himself to turn away. Until Verdugo leaves the Continental, John can’t do shit.

That said, he’d be extra wary of tails on his way home. Just in case.

He’s almost tempted to let the assassin tail him. Take him to the middle of nowhere and pummel him to death.

His focus has never been so chaotic. He’s typically good at ignoring the smack talk. At walking away from those seeking to push him or make him lose his resolve.

John needs to stick to the plan.

Helen is safe. Protected.

Marcus won’t let anything happen to her.

He needs to do his part.

He nods to Charon as he leaves, ignoring the countless sets of eyes watching him as he strides through the lobby with purpose. The valet is gone when he reaches the stairs and John takes a moment to breathe. To go over the plan.

Santino will still be his point of contact. The easiest of the D’Antonio’s to convince to go along with his plan. But now he has leverage to use with Lorenzo, which makes it significantly easier to breathe.

He just needs to get the bounty removed. Then he can deal with the rest—the other enemies who might target Helen, the missing persons’ case being explored, and the countless unresolved feelings that had been flowing between them.

In a way, he’s relieved that the deadline is only two days away because he’s not sure how much more he can take.

The valet pulls up to the curb with his car and John hands him a tip as he walks by. Santino’s penthouse condo wasn’t too far away, just over the bridge and into Manhattan.

John is waved into the garage by security and he parks next to one of Santino’s many, but mostly unused, sports cars, before heading to the elevator.

When he arrives, a few members of Santino’s entourage were relaxing around his penthouse.

Ares plays a video game with a few of her co-bodyguards. She throws him a smirk as John is wanded down by another member of Santino’s protection.

Her hands move in a blur as she signs you still alive, old man?

John rolls his eyes and signs back Respect your elders.

Ares only grins wider I’d rather respect your girlfriend. I’ve seen the pictures. She has a nice ass .

Not knowing how to respond to that, John just shakes his head and moves further into the penthouse suite. Santino appears at the balcony, always one to make an entrance, and descends down the stairs.

“John! Always a pleasure. Café?”

John nods, “Si. Gratzi.”

Santino motions with a hand and leads John to a kitchen where two more of his men were sitting. Both regard John with interest but he ignores their stares. Santino barks an order in Italian and one of them stands to make the espresso.

“You’ll have to forgive the mess,” Santino says, although John has noticed no mess to speak of, “My father and sister are visiting.”

John hums, “Are they here?”

“No, no. Gianna doesn’t travel often and prefers to use the advantages of the Continental whenever she does. My father is staying with a business associate.”

John didn’t understand much of politics, but he was well aware that business associate meant mistress in this case. He says nothing as Santino’s henchman hands them each a small cup.

“Now, to what do I owe the pleasure of your company?” Santino asks.

John glances around not so subtly and Santino gives another order. The men vacate the room and John can hear them passing on to others outside the kitchen that it is time to leave.

“I’m sure you’ve heard the rumors going around.”

“Ah, but I never believe such fickle things.”

That was a lie, but John let it slide. He didn’t come here to argue with the Italian mafiaso after all. He can hear the swing of the door and he glances back. Ares has come in.

“I hope you don’t mind, John, but I do prefer to keep my head of security close at all times.”

He resists the urge to roll his eyes but nods, signing as he speaks, for Ares benefit, “Of course.”

Santino offers a smile that doesn’t quite reach his eyes and John finds himself doubting that this is a good idea.

Remember your promise , he thinks. He will come home.

“Now, please,” Santino says, “Enlighten me with the truth.”

“The rumors,” John admits, “are largely true.”

“But not entirely?” Santino leans forward.

“Is anything entirely true?” John evades with a practiced ease.

“Is she your girlfriend?”

“We’ve never technically put such a label on our relationship.” Not technically a lie, John thinks. “But for all intents and purposes, she is mine .”

Santino grins broadly, already rapt by the drama of it all. John will never understand the Mafioso’s fascination with such things. Truthfully, John isn’t certain why anybody gives a damn about the lives of people they don’t care about but that’s another matter entirely.

“Mio Dio, John. I did not think you had it in you.”

He barely withholds another eyeroll.

“And now what? You destroy New York piece by piece, until there’s no one left to harm her?”

“That’s plan B.”

“And plan A?”

John swallows down the espresso, keeping an eye on Ares as he prepares to explain.

“Mateo DeLuca holds the hit over Helen. I’m sure you’re familiar with him.”

“We’ve never actually met.” Santino says, “But he is my cousin.”

John nods once, “And of his mother?”

“Isabella. My dear aunt Valentina’s daughter. Until she disowned and dishonored her family to marry that scoundrel, Dante. Quite the tragic affair, although I was too young to remember.”

“She remembers you.” John says, “She’s ordered your death, along with that of your father and sister, in exchange for the release of Helen’s contract.”

Ares moves fast but John is faster. He grabs a cutting board from the island and uses it to catch the two knives she throws at him before he discards it, throwing it to the floor.

“Relax!” He says as he signs, before turning back to Santino, “If I wanted you dead, I wouldn’t have offered you an explanation. I’d have killed you the moment you walked in.”

Santino looks to his guard, quietly ordering her to stand down, before looking back at John. “Go on.”

“They want the Camorra.” John says before taunting, “And it would be easy enough to give them. Except I don’t trust them. Nor do I like the idea of the High Table coming after me while DeLuca takes Rome, free of consequence.”

“I take it you have a plan?”

“It would require your cooperation, as well as that of your father and sister.”

“How so?” There is a glint of excitement in Santino’s eyes that John really doesn’t understand but he isn’t going to complain if it means the mafiaso is willing to help.

John glances to Ares, who has her arms crossed and is still watching him with suspicion. “We’ll need to stage your death. I’ll take photographic evidence to give to DeLuca. Once he exchanges his end of the bargain, you can present the DeLuca’s to the High Table to be tried for treason.”

“And you walk away with the girl.” Santino hums, shaking his shoulders as he considers it, “How exciting! How would you like to fake my death? Strangle me? Pretend to cut me open, hmm?”

Unbelievable. It takes him a moment to even remember to speak, “I was thinking fake a bullet to the head. It doesn’t leave much room for questioning.”

“Are we to do this now?” Santino is practically bouncing.

Again, John is tempted to just yell what the fuck but withholds with a shake of his head.

“I was hoping to speak with your father, first. But yes, it would be today. If I’m seen coming and going while you are obviously alive, DeLuca might suspect that I’ve tipped you off.”

“Wonderful!”

“You’d have to stay in hiding for two days.” John says, “And no one can know. Not even your entourage or security. Save Ares.”

“Yes, yes!” Santino nods, “They will mourn their loss only for me to rise, like Christo.”

He swears he catches Ares rolling her eyes while Santino considers how to best spin faking his death. Not that she’d ever admit it. She was too loyal. A rare quality in the Underworld, but one John respected nonetheless.

“Can you get a hold of your father remotely?” John asks, “Over video call?”

“Of course!” Santino gives instructions to Ares. She nods and leaves the room, “New video conferencing on top-of-the-line laptop. Just released from Geneva. It’s untraceable, unhackable.”

The other assassin returns with the laptop and sets it up for Santino. The heir calls his father while John closes his eyes. The youngest D’Antonio had been an easy sell—willing to play dead for the shock value and entertainment factors alone. And while John was certain Lorenzo would be swayed by Isabella’s involvement, he was aware that Lorenzo might take a bit more pushing.

The call is picked up by one of Lorenzo’s bodyguards.

John is aware that high-ranking members of the Underworld kept hired guns, and particularly members of the High Table required guarding, but it still throws him.

John, who can barely stand the presence of friends, cannot understand the appeal of such things. Or the inability to take care of one’s self.

After a few minutes, Lorenzo is brought to the computer. He settles down in front of it, peering at the camera. A rush of Italian parts from his lips and John finds himself code-switching quickly, trying to change the language his brain would accept.

“I told you, I would see you Friday before I left—” Lorenzo was saying, his voice dripping with disdain.

“Yes, father, but I have John Wick here to speak with you.”

Santino turns the camera towards John.

“John!” Lorenzo says in surprise, “I was hoping to see you on my visit. When I heard about your… conundrum, I assumed you would be too busy.”

“Lorenzo,” John steps closer to the camera, “It’s about that matter I wish to speak with you.”

And it all comes out.

The involvement of the DeLuca’s. Isabella’s slow, careful takeover of the Syndicate. Playing kingmaker to her son and murdering her husband, all in quest of taking back the Camorra.

The contract on Helen’s life.

How, despite the contract, John doesn’t trust the Syndicate crime family.

“That whore .” Lorenzo spits out, when John has finished, “She gets that from her mother. Being a princess in the Camorra was not enough.” The old man shakes his head, “Her ambition is her downfall.”

“You can have them tried at the High Table for their treason.” John nudges.

Lorenzo certainly perks up at that. What a display that could be. The Camorra annihilating its number one competitor, publicly.

“I’ll testify for the High Table.” He continues, “All I ask is a few hours of your time. And that of your children.”

“I don’t like the idea of playing a dead man.” Lorenzo replies uncertainly, “It would look weak.”

“Only for you to rise from the grave, seizing what has fallen in DeLuca’s absence. Syndicate could be yours.”

Lorenzo considers it, a smile breaking upon his face. “Alright, John. Tell me your plan.”

....

thanks to @meetmeinthematinee​ for reviewing it before I posted this :)

[mistletouchunderthetree]

the last WIP of eddie month! i saved the longest for last (it’s over 11k words lmao) and hopefully you all enjoy it even though it’s forever unfinished. this was meant to be my big bang fic and then life happened and i was never able to finish it - it even has a few plot points outlined at the end (but even those don’t take you to the actual end of the story, oop). anyway, happy eddie month everyone!

this was a fun experiment in which i combined my favorite parts of each canon - book, miniseries, and movies - into one weird amalgamation that probably only makes sense to me. there is canon-typical violence, homophobia including slurs (henry bowers), and mentions of suicide (stan lives, but it was close).

“Eddie?”

He groaned out loud, turning his computer monitor off and turning in his desk chair.

“Yeah, Ma?” He shouted.

“Eddie come down here, please,” she said, her voice traveling up the stairs. He rolled his eyes and left the home office and found her standing at the bottom of the stairs. He stood on the landing at the top, looking down at her. “Down here, Eddie.”

He fought the urge to roll his eyes again as he took the stairs two at a time.

“Eddie, stop that! You know how dangerous that is! What if you fell and broke a leg? You know how easily bone fragments travel, Eddie, you know –“

“Yeah, Ma, I know,” he answered, ignoring her demand. “What is it?”

“I wanted to let you know you have plans on Friday evening,” she told him, beady eyes staring into his own. He walked past her, squeezing by to get through the hallway and into the kitchen. It was about time for dinner anyway, he told himself, might as well make something while he was here.

“And what plans would those be, Ma?” He asked, assuming he had to take her to bingo or the pharmacy or the emergency room. 

“You’ll be taking Vicky Beck to dinner.”

He turned to look at her, eyebrow raised. “Who?”

“Vicky Beck, dear,” she repeated, as if saying the name again would stoke the embers of his memory. He just looked at her blankly. She sighed, annoyance radiating off of her as she plopped down into a chair at the kitchen table. “She’s Marjorie’s daughter, Eddie. Very nice girl. Around your age, too. She’s a receptionist at one of the local doctor’s offices. I gave Marjorie a photograph of you to show her – she’s very interested.”

“No,” he said without making eye contact. He used the excuse of taking out ingredients for dinner from the pantry and refrigerator to not look at her. “I’ve told you so many times, Ma, I don’t want to date. I’m not interested.”

“Oh, Eddie,” she frowned. “I just worry! Who’s going to take care of you when I’m gone? Your health is so delicate, someone needs to be there –“

“I’m an adult, I can take care of myself,” he told her, pouring tomato sauce from a can into a pan. 

“Clearly you aren’t if you think it’s okay to use canned sauce, young man!” Sonia said, standing and smacking his hand. He huffed, putting his hands up and stepping away. “You don’t even know what’s in the disgusting preservatives they use, this stuff is full of chemicals, you’ll get cancer if you eat too much of this. I’ve told you so many times to stop buying things like this. You think you’re an adult but you don’t know, you need someone to steer you right, you make terrible decisions when no one’s around to stop you…”

“Buying canned sauce is a terrible decision? I’m the one that pays for the groceries, Ma! I should get to choose what I buy!”

She glared at him. “Edward, I’m not in the mood for your foolishness. When you stop purchasing cancer and bringing it into our home then we can talk. In the meantime, you will be going out with Vicky Beck on Friday evening. You’re too old to be alone, Eddie. My own health is beginning to falter, you’re going to need someone to take my place when I pass.”

He blinked at her. “You want me to find a woman to be my new mother when you die?”

“Do not use that tone with me, young man!”

“I’m 20, I hardly think I need to be taken care of by a surrogate mom!”

“Eddie,” she said, placing a sweaty hand on his cheek. He could smell the stench of her perfume and he did his best not to wrinkle his nose. “You have always been so… strong-willed. So full of ideas. And that would be okay, were you not sick. But you are sick, Eddie. Your delicate immune system can’t handle what others can… I’ve spent your whole life making sure you don’t go too far, to get yourself sick or hurt. And that’s what I’m doing now, with Vicky. I’m protecting you, because you need protection. No matter how hard you try to fight it, it’s the truth. So. You will see Vicky on Friday, take her to an early lunch after church on Sunday, another dinner next Wednesday, and she’ll be your girlfriend in a week’s time.”

He knew his horror was evident on his face but he couldn’t do anything to stop it. “That’s ridiculous, Ma, you can’t pick out a girlfriend for me! I don’t even want a girlfriend! And you know, just because I have asthma doesn’t mean I need protection from the big bad world, okay? I take my meds and I use my inhaler and that’s all I need! I don’t even need you! All you do is smother me, and force me into things I don’t want, so –“

“You stop that right now –“

“You know what?” He said, a burst of adrenaline-fueled courage shooting through him. He left the kitchen and started back up the stairs. “I’m leaving. I can’t stand it here anymore.”

“Eddie!” She screamed, and he knew the crocodile tears were starting. He ignored them as he grabbed a suitcase and began to pack everything that would fit.

*

Twenty-six year old Eddie Kaspbrak answered his phone, wincing when his mother’s voice came through the tinny speaker.

“Eddie? Eddie!”

“Yes, Ma, it’s me,” he said, barely containing his annoyance.

“Eddie you have to come home,” she said, sniffling. “I’ve been put in a wheelchair, Eddie, I can’t get around like I used to. I need help, you need to come home and help me.”

He sighed, massaging his temples as he felt a stress headache blooming behind his eyes. He eyed the medicine cabinet in the kitchen that held the Advil. “I’ll hire an in-house nurse, Ma, how’s that?”

“No!” She shouted, leaving him cringing. “Those nurses don’t know what they’re doing, Eddie, they’re the rejects that the hospitals and doctors offices won’t take, and I refuse it!”

He looked around his small house. He had a spare bedroom downstairs, and he supposed it wouldn’t be too difficult to add a ramp to get through the front door. With a little bit of self-hatred settling in his stomach, he said, “I’m not coming home, but you can come live with me.”

*

“You’re 32, right?” Angela asked, her fingers running through the condensation on her glass. Eddie nodded, only thinking about how disgusting it was that she wasn't using a straw. (Dishes and silverware and cups at restaurants are breeding grounds for disease, Eddie, his mind mother reminded him.) “So what are you doing living with your mom?”

He huffed. “My mom lives with me, there’s a difference.”

Angela raised an eyebrow at him.

“I take care of her. She’s old and sick, she needs help with just about everything.”

“You know…” Angela trailed off, glancing around the room. They sat in a small booth in the corner of an Olive Garden only twenty minutes from Eddie’s house. He wasn’t about to pull out all the stops for a date with yet another girl his mother set him up with. “You’re not a very good date.”

His eyes widened. “Excuse me?”

She laughed a little. “I mean, sure, you’re cute, but… Nobody wants to date a guy in his thirties who lives with his mom. You probably should save that bit of information until like, date three, at least. You won’t look me in the eye, and it makes me a little nervous because you don't seem to have a problem making eye contact with anyone else. Everything about your body language screams that you don’t want to be here. With me, specifically.”

“Do you do this on all your first dates?” He asked, offended.

“Just the bad ones,” she answered. “You know, the ones with men.”

He choked.

“Oh, come on, dude, look at me,” she said, gesturing to herself. Eddie frowned; he thought her flannel and boots looked comfortable. “This look is about as gay as you can get. My mom can’t accept it; she's constantly setting me up. Usually I tell her no but she showed me a picture of you and… well, I just had to find out what your deal is.”

“What the fuck is that supposed to mean?” He asked. His face was hot.

“Eddie,” she said in a voice meant for a young child. “Your mom has a lot in common with my mom. I mean, I hate to assume, but I can almost guarantee that, just like mine, your mom is sending you on dates with the opposite sex as a very clear nudge in the right direction.”

He gaped at her, unable to form words.

She laughed, but this time it was a bit more sympathetic. “Did you not know?”

He shook his head, then reached into his pocket to take a hit on his aspirator. She raised an eyebrow but didn’t comment.

“Well, whether you are or aren’t, your mom thinks you’re gay.”

“Fuck,” he whispered to himself, heart pounding against his ribcage. “I don’t – what? Why?”

“I mean, you’re a single 32 year old, for starters. I’m assuming you’ve never had a girlfriend. Had any boyfriends you kept secret? She probably would’ve caught on.”

“I’m not – I’m not –“ He couldn’t bring himself to say the word. Angela’s expression was changing quickly from one of amusement to one of pity. She opened her mouth to say something when the waiter stopped at their table, placing their food in front of them. They began to eat in silence (Eddie had already sanitized his knife and fork), and when they started to talk again, neither of them brought it back up.

*

There weren’t enough people for a funeral so instead they had a simple graveside memorial service in the Bangor Cemetery. One of his aunts spoke through crocodile tears so much like hers about what a good mother Sonia had been, and Eddie’s eyes stayed dry.

After, he met his three aunts at a café for a small lunch, and they got onto him when he didn’t order salad. They got onto him because he didn’t cry during the service. They got onto him for constantly keeping his poor mother in a state of such stress. They got onto him for leaving her for New York in the first place. They got onto him for not being married at 35, for not giving his mother grandchildren before she died.

He nodded and kept his mouth closed.

*

There was a method to his madness, he’d swear by it. Vitamins in the morning, followed by an anxiety pill if he needed one (he always needed one), followed by breakfast, which usually consisted of eggs (he enjoyed variety, so he made his eggs differently each day of the week – Wednesday was scrambled) and wheat toast with margarine spread on one side, the crusts cut off (the crusts are too easy to choke on, his mother’s voice said from inside his head), and then brushing his teeth. He got dressed, checked his email and the weather on his phone (a sunny day, cloud-free (but you never know, storms can just crop up out of no where – best bring your boots and rain jacket and umbrella just in case, you wouldn’t want to catch a cold and end up with pneumonia just because the weather forecast was wrong) and cool), and stepped out the door of his Queens apartment.

He walked to his stop and got on the subway, used an antibacterial wipe to clean the place where his hand would be holding onto the rail (his mind mother reminded him how easy it was to catch something that way – all you have to do is rub your nose, Eddie, and suddenly you’re sick with whatever the germ-infested subway rider that stood there before you had), and held onto his phone for the 30 minute ride. He exited at the financial district and walked for 2 minutes to his office building. He used the stairs to get to the eleventh floor (take the elevator, Eddie, you don’t want to aggravate your asthma) because he liked the slight burn in his legs by the time he made it to his floor. He stopped in the bathroom to wash his hands (you have to wash your hands, Eddie, you have to), said hello to Brianne at the front desk, and sat in the chair in front of his computer in his cubicle.

The work day tended to be boring. He spent a lot of time typing up reports, and even more time responding to emails. By his lunch break, he usually felt as though his brain was going to melt out of his ears. He popped two Advil to stave off the oncoming stress headache.

He ate lunch with his co-workers – they walked together a few blocks to a deli that made great sandwiches, and though he sat with them he didn’t talk much. In the beginning he fielded a lot of questions he didn’t want to answer, but after fifteen years they knew not to ask.

Except Daniel, who had started two weeks prior.

“So, Eddie,” he said, as they sat in the break room. He gestured at Eddie’s left hand. “I see you’re not married.”

“No,” Eddie agreed, taking a bite of sandwich. He hoped it would send a solid shut the fuck up message, but Daniel kept on.

“No? You got a girlfriend, at least? You’re what – 45?”

“40,” he said, his voice clipped.

“You’re 40 and not married? That’s rough man, what’s up with that?”

Eddie breathed in deeply, hand patting his pocket to feel for his aspirator. “Just never met the right person, I suppose.”

“Not even divorced?” Daniel asked, his voice getting higher with incredulity. Eddie bristled; it felt very much like he was being made fun of, but he didn’t know what to say. It reminded him of childhood bullies, calling him names before he even knew what they meant. He'd always talked back to - well, to whoever his tormentor had been back then. Now his brain wouldn't supply him with any quippy response, any thinly veiled insult. How had he been so brazen as a kid and so timid now? He tried but he couldn't even remember much of his childhood, like everything before he was 18 and living in Bangor with his mom had a thick haze covering it.

“Never married, no girlfriend,” he said plainly, unable to come up with anything better. He looked away.

“Boyfriend, then?” Daniel said. Eddie’s stomach turned and he flushed.

“I’m single, Daniel,” he said, before wrapping what was left of his sandwich (almost all of it) and standing. “I’m going to have lunch at my desk today, if you don’t mind.”

He didn’t wait for an answer before leaving the room, ignoring Daniel’s exclamations of “I wasn’t trying to upset him!”

He sat at his desk, fuming. He could hear the voice of someone he’d been out with once, laughing in his head.

Your mom thinks you’re gay.

But he wasn’t. And it wasn’t that strange for someone to be 40 and single. He knew plenty of people his age that weren’t married! Granted, most of them were divorced, but the point stood. Marriage wasn’t everything. Love wasn’t everything. He’d made it on his own for 40 years, and besides that he wasn’t interested in anyone. Couldn’t remember ever liking anyone enough to do anything about it. He could recognize when women were attractive, but it didn’t go beyond that. Can’t a man live alone with no romantic relationship and not get shit for it?

“Hey, Eddie,” said a voice from behind him. He spun in his chair. Jeanine stood there, a regretful frown on her red lips. “I’m so sorry about Daniel back there. Apparently he’s the type that doesn’t know when to shut up.”

(Your mom thinks you’re gay)

“A lot of that going around,” Eddie said, trying to ignore the voice in his head telling him to ask Jeanine out. He couldn’t even tell if it was his mother or someone else. It wasn’t his own voice, though.

Jeanine smiled awkwardly, like she wasn’t sure what he meant. “Right. Hopefully you’ll still eat with us tomorrow. We told Daniel to cool it.”

“No worries,” Eddie lied. “I needed to get some work done anyway.”

Jeanine glanced over his shoulder at his computer that he hadn’t turned back on. “Of course. And I wanted to let you know… This office is very accepting. There’s no… Judgment here. Just… So you know.”

Eddie pulled his aspirator from his pocket and took a hit.

(You’re sick, Eddie, you’re delicate, but I can protect you from yourself, a wife could protect you from yourself, you’ll always be sick but)

“Thank you for the sentiment, Jeanine,” he said, turning back in his chair. He heard her walk away and sagged against the backrest. Moments later, his phone rang.

He picked it up and frowned at the area code. Derry, Maine? He was… He was from there, wasn’t he? That was where he’d lived with his mother before they moved to Bangor. Derry was the town covered with thick haze that he couldn't completely conceptualize.

He answered the call with his heart in his throat, unsure why his hands were shaking so badly.

“Edward Kaspbrak speaking.”

“Eddie?” The voice said. He didn’t recognize it. “Eddie, it’s Mike. You need to come home. It’s back.”

The haze began to lift.

*

“I’m glad you made it, Eddie,” Mike said, offering a hug. Eddie warily wrapped his arms around Mike before glancing around the restaurant. 

“If I’d remembered more before I got on the plane, I probably wouldn’t have,” he said honestly. Once he started getting flashes of a rotting leper, of a decrepit house, of a clown’s drool on his face, he wanted to turn right back around. 

“How much do you remember?” Mike asked.

Just before he could answer, another voice joined them.

“Hey, guys.” Eddie turned and smiled. He would recognize Bill Denbrough anywhere (though he hadn't, had he? He owned his books, had seen his picture on the back cover, and he'd never thought twice about it). He stepped away after another hug, letting the other two catch up. He stood looking into the large fish tank, anything to get a reprieve from the memories that were hitting him, and then jumped when something hit the large gong next to their table. He spun, his eyes catching on red hair first. Beverly was smiling, and another man stood next to her, tall and thin and handsome, and somehow Eddie knew it was –

“Ben?”

“That was my reaction!” Beverly said with a laugh.

“You acknowledge Ben before you acknowledge me? Some kind of best friend you are, Eds.”

“Don’t call me Eds,” he said, the words spilling from his mouth without thought. He looked to Richie, wearing an ugly mustard color shirt beneath a leather jacket. He wore glasses much like the ones he’d worn in childhood, though they magnified his eyes a little less, and his hair was messy. He'd seen Richie's face, too, on a Netflix special he'd felt oddly compelled to watch. “You actually became a comedian.”

Richie’s cheeks turned pink and he took a few steps closer, hands in his pockets.

“I mean,” Eddie continued, “It’s not ventriloquism but not half-bad!”

Richie laughed loudly, his head thrown back. “Fuck, even I forgot I wanted to be a ventriloquist!”

“You would’ve made a terrible ventriloquist, Rich. Eddie was just too nice to tell you.”

They turned at the new voice, smiling at the curly hair and sweater.

“Stanley!”

“Yeah, yeah,” he said through a smile. After Eddie felt like he’d hugged everyone twice, they took their seats. He sat between Richie and Ben, right across from Bill. Stan was on Richie’s other side, already talking about his accounting firm and his wife Patty.

“She sounds lovely,” Beverly said with a smile.

“You’re not married?” He asked, pointing to her left hand. 

She frowned, touching her ring finger. “Uh, technically I am. I guess I kind of… left him?”

Eddie’s eyes widened. 

Beverly shrugged, waving them off. “It’s fine! What about everyone else? Anyone else married?”

“I am,” Bill said. “Her name’s Audra; you guys would probably recognize her if you saw her –“

“Oh shit, she’s that movie star!” Richie said loudly. “And you’re an author, I’ve totally bought your books before, dude!”

“I have, too,” Eddie admitted. He hadn’t known why he bought them at the time, but it had felt like something he needed to do. He thought he might even own a jacket from Rogue & Marsh.

“Nobody else is married? What about you, Ben?”

“No,” Ben said, cheeks pink. 

“But dude, you’re so hot, how are you single?” Richie said, punching a shocked laugh from Eddie’s chest.

Ben rolled his eyes playfully. “I mean, I’m not lonely by any means –“

Richie cut him off to whoop loudly.

“Anyway, what about you, Trashmouth?”

“Nope!”

“Divorce?” Bill asked with a smirk.

“I’m offended, Big Bill. No, no divorce. Haven’t had a serious relationship in… probably fifteen years. Kinda hard to hold anything down when you’re touring all the time.”

“Makes sense,” Beverly agreed, before her eyes met Eddie’s. He groaned. “What about you, Eddie?”

“Uh, no marriage, no divorce, very boring. Next.”

“No way, Eds, you can’t get off the hook that easy!” Richie exclaimed. “C’mon, when was your last relationship?”

Eddie looked down at the table. “Haven’t really had one. I was never really interested.”

The table had quieted, like Eddie had dropped a blanket of discomfort on all of them.

“It’s not a big deal,” he said, finally looking back up. He could feel Richie’s eyes burning a hole in the side of his head but he didn’t look. “I like living alone. I have friends at work and I always have nice chats with the pharmacist and... Look, it’s not like I’m lonely, okay? It’s fine. I’m fine.”

The conversation moved on quickly, Eddie’s discomfort obvious to everyone. Richie kept looking at him as though he were a puzzle, and as soon as the waitress returned to their table Eddie ordered himself a shot of whiskey and a bottle of beer, not even thinking about the fact that he would be drinking straight from the glass and don't you know, Eddie, dishes and silverware and cups at restaurants are a breeding ground for germs! Now that he'd remembered his asthma was fake, his aspirator a placebo, he felt like he could count the hours wasted on sanitization and worry about his delicate system. It made him boil with anger, that she had taken so much from him while giving him so many issues. He didn't want to waste more time. His system was fine.   

The night was long and draining, as much a reunion as it was a horror show. He was almost positive he remembered everything now, as did the others, and Mike claimed to have a plan. For now, though, they had some time to sleep. No point in heading into Neibolt exhausted, Bill had said with a shrug, and everyone had agreed. Eddie was finding it hard to sleep, though, with images of the leper running through his mind -

I’ll blow you for free

- And leaving him terrified and shaking. He thought back to being a kid, the same fear had kept him up at night then, too. He remembered talking to Richie about it as they read comics in the room above the Kaspbrak house garage, and Richie admitting he was having trouble sleeping, too. Kept seeing the werewolf, his own name written on It’s letterman jacket. 

He turned the bedside lamp on and picked up the phone without bothering to sanitize it even as his mind mother screamed at him. He looked at the directory and tried to remember which room was Richie’s. He was almost positive it was 207, one floor down and one over from his own, so he dialed the extension and waited. As the ringing sounded in his ear, someone knocked heavily on his door.

His heart seized up in his chest and he grabbed his aspirator from the side table and took a hit, even though he knew it was a placebo. 

“Who is it?”

“Eddie Kaspbrak?” A male voice from just outside the door said. “There’s an urgent message for you at the front desk.”

“Hello?” Richie’s sleepy voice said in his ear. He sighed in relief, not answering him yet.

“A message from who?” He asked loudly.

“What are you talking about – Eddie?” 

“A message from… Your wife,” the voice said, and Eddie froze.

“Uh, one second,” he said to the person on the other side of the door, then lowered his voice and spoke into the phone. “Rich, someone’s at my door saying I have a message from my wife.”

“You don’t have a wife,” Richie said, confused.

Eddie huffed. “Yeah, exactly!”

“Oh, fuck,” Richie said, and Eddie could hear shuffling on his end of the phone. Then, another noise, somehow both quiet and the loudest thing he’d ever heard. He watched with wide eyes as the lock on his door turned slowly until it clicked.

He opened his mouth to tell Richie whoever it was at his door had a key and to hurry the fuck up, but the line was beeping like Richie had already hung up. Slowly, he shoved the blankets off, putting his feet securely on the floor. He glanced around for something he could use to defend himself. A lamp? The phone? Why the fuck hadn’t he brought a knife or a gun to this clown fight?

The door slammed open, hitting the wall and revealing a man in a tattered jumpsuit. He had a knife in his hand.

Panic seized Eddie’s chest. The irrational part of his brain wanted to grab his aspirator for another puff but he knew it would be his last, so instead, without thinking it through, he charged forward as fast as he could, throwing his weight against the door as it bounced off the wall and back toward the man. 

Both men screamed. Eddie out of pure adrenaline and fear, some part of him wondering why the fuck he’d done that, and the other man because his foot and arm were smashed in between the door and the frame. Eddie kept his weight against the door knowing he didn’t have a lot of time; he didn’t weigh much, and this guy seemed particularly strong. He looked at the hand holding the knife, the small rivulets of blood dripping where the edge of the door had cut into the skin, and he grabbed a hold of it with both hands, trying to pry meaty fingers from the handle without cutting himself.

He didn’t manage it before the man pushed back with his own full body weight, throwing Eddie to the ground. He landed with a muted thud on his back and the man pushed into the room, spotting Eddie immediately. In the brief eye contact, Eddie realized with certain clarity that this man was Henry Bowers.

Henry Bowers, who had held him down and broken his arm with his bare hands. Henry Bowers, who had punched him in the nose more times than he could count. Henry Bowers, who had beaten Richie up again and again, who had mocked Bill’s stutter and Stan’s religion. Henry Bowers, who left even Beverly, the strongest of them, trembling. Henry Bowers, who had killed Mike’s dog. 

Eddie’s eyes flitted to the knife in his hand and a chill ran down his spine. Just yesterday he couldn't remember this man's name, but he remembered he used to fight back.

As a kid, he fought back against Henry Bowers, who somehow had the same knife he’d used to carved Ben open, the same knife with which he’d murdered his own father.

Henry lunged at Eddie, still on the floor. He kicked upward, one foot landing in the soft pudge of Henry’s stomach, the other his groin. Henry didn’t seem to notice, which left Eddie feeling terrified – what if this wasn’t Henry at all? What if this was something much, much worse?

“How ya doin’, little queer boy?” Henry asked, his voice hardly having changed at all. “Ready to get all cut up? Teach you to throw rocks!”

Eddie kept his foot wedged against Henry’s stomach, though the weight of him was causing a steady throb down his leg. Moving quickly, he pulled his other foot back and kicked again, this time aiming for the hand with the knife. Henry seemed taken off guard but he didn’t drop the knife, just leaned more of his weight onto Eddie’s leg. He cried out, giving in and planting his other foot against Henry’s stomach to hold him back. Henry didn’t seem to mind that he was leaning all his weight against Eddie’s feet, hovering over him like a ghost. 

“Not quite strong enough, are ya, fag?”

Eddie grimaced - the first time Henry called him that, he hadn't even known what a fag was. 

Henry brought the knife closer, almost able to reach Eddie’s face. With fear stronger than he’d felt in a long time thrumming through his veins, he grabbed Henry’s wrist with both hands, pushing him back. He let his fingernails dig into the place where the door had cut him, and Henry screamed, finally dropping the knife. Eddie glanced to his left and saw it, and with one hand still gripping into Henry’s wounded arm he reached over and grabbed it, plunging it upward into Henry’s chest just above where his feet held him up.

Henry’s eyes widened and Eddie sobbed as blood dripped onto his hand where he held the handle of the knife. He yanked it back out but Henry had become dead weight and his legs crumbled beneath it. He yelled, and then heard another voice.

“What the fuck!”

“Rich, help,” he said, hardly able to breathe under Henry’s weight. He was still wriggling, but Eddie kept a tight grip on the knife. Then Henry’s weight was being lifted a bit and Eddie helped, shoving until he landed on his back next to Eddie, blood seeping into the front of his shirt. Eddie stabbed again, but Henry caught the blow with his hand, and Eddie screamed as the blade sliced through the rough palm. Henry stared up at him, with a look that Eddie could almost describe as confused.

“Eds, Eds, what’s –“

“It’s Bowers,” he shouted, finally gathering the nerve to rip the knife out of Henry’s hand. Henry yelled and swung, smacking Eddie in the side and knocking the breath out of him. His uninjured hand came at him curled in a fist and managed to land on his eye. He stumbled backward a little on his knees, eyes closed against the blow, and without looking plunged the knife down again. Henry’s shrill scream and Richie’s Jesus fucking Christ oh my God oh my God let him know whatever he hit wasn't pretty but it wasn’t enough to be fatal.

A final time, he lifted the knife and opened his eyes. Henry’s face was covered in gushing blood, what was left of his eyeball hanging out of the socket. Eddie felt the Chinese food he’d eaten threaten to make a reappearance. From the corner of his eye he saw Henry’s arm begin to move and he flinched, not ready for another hit, but then Richie’s foot slammed the hand into the ground and Eddie plunged the knife back into Henry’s chest, over what he was pretty sure was his heart.

He pulled the knife out and threw it on the ground. It slid across the floor and stopped beneath the TV stand. Eddie pulled himself off of Henry, uncaring if he was still alive; if he was, Richie could deal with it. His own head spun, pain radiated down his legs, and his eye socket throbbed. He fell onto the bed with his eyes closed. For a moment he only heard the slight noise of movement from Richie, and then:

“Holy fuck, dude, you fucking killed him.”

Eddie let out a long breath of relief before saying, “don’t say it like that. It was self-defense.”

“Well obviously,” Richie agreed, and then threw up. The sound and smell made Eddie’s stomach turn again, and he leaned over the bed, grabbed the wastebasket, and lost his own dinner.

*  

They had migrated to Richie's room, after a brief talk with the rest of the losers to inform them of what happened. Everyone was appropriately horrified and offered to come sit with them for the rest of the night, but Eddie insisted he just wanted to sleep and he wanted to do it in a room without a dead body. Richie had offered his own, promising to keep quiet so Eddie could get some rest. 

Eddie had been unable to sleep, though. By the rigidness of Richie beside him, he was sure he wasn't the only one.

"So what's it like, being famous?" He said quietly into the darkness. He felt Richie jolt and he apologized with a laugh.

"No, it's fine, uh," Richie sighed. Eddie felt the comforter jostle like he was resituating himself. "I dunno, honestly. Kind of boring? I mean, don't get me wrong, in the early days I partied a lot. Slept around, got into things I shouldn't have. But… being clean and telling jokes you didn't even write? Kinda shit, not gonna lie."

"God, I fucking knew you didn't write your own shit," Eddie said. "I don't even know how I knew, but I'd watch all your stupid specials and like, be annoyed at myself because this guy is so obviously a fraud, why the fuck do I religiously watch everything he puts out?"

"Could have been my charming good looks," Richie joked, and Eddie felt his cheeks heat up. 

"Definitely not that," Eddie said with a hollow laugh. "Apparently somehow I just knew you were my best friend and I was pissed because I know you're so much funnier than the shit you say onstage."

"Oh," Richie said. Eddie squeezed his eyes shut. He didn't know how to fucking do this. How do you have conversations with people that aren't too much but don't feel like fucking small talk? Richie was his best friend once upon a time, would've been his best friend their whole lives if Derry hadn't fucked them up. 

But would they have been? Would they have been best friends if they'd grown up together? Navigated their early twenties together? Would he have dropped Richie the second he got into whatever shit he got into in LA? Would Richie have dropped him when he realized Eddie was fucking boring, with a desk job and a mother he couldn't escape? Would he have been just another person shoving him on dates with girls he didn't want to date? Another person asking why he wasn't married yet? Another person to think -

Your mom thinks you're gay.

He bit his lip. He couldn't think about that right now, not when their literal lives were on the line. He'd been putting off his sexuality crisis for years, it could wait another 24 hours.

Because that's what it was, and he knew it. He remembered the feelings from being a kid. He remembered the swooping sensation in his stomach, the blushing, the constant need to be the center of Richie's attention. He didn't think he knew what it was back then, but now? Now he knew what all those things meant. He knew what they meant when he felt them sitting next to Richie at dinner, and now, laying next to him in bed. 

But that was for a later date, if he even made it to a later date.

All Eddie could hear in the room was the whirr of the air conditioner, Richie's breathing right next to him, and his own heart pounding in his ears. He closed his eyes, willing himself to relax enough to even doze, but the quiet was broken when Richie cleared his throat.

"Yeah?" Eddie asked, when Richie didn't follow up with anymore sounds.

"I just - " He sighed. "You remember how we thought… When we were kids… That some of our power, or whatever, came from the lucky seven? None of us could have hurt It on our own but we could together, and we worked together and we all loved each other and looked out for each other."

"Yeah, I remember that."

"I don't feel like we're the lucky seven anymore," Richie admitted. Eddie didn't know what to say. "We're not… Together… the way we used to be. We were like one single unit back then. Even with Ben and Bev and Mike, we'd barely met them but they just fit with us. And now we just feel like…"

"Like seven adults who haven't spoken in over 20 years?" Eddie finished for him.

"Yeah." Richie's voice was sad. "We're not kids anymore, you know? And we don't know each other. Eds, I don't think we can even say we're friends anymore."

"That's not true," he argued, turning his head on his pillow to see the outline of Richie's face in the dark. He wasn't wearing his glasses but he was facing the ceiling. Eddie couldn't tell if his eyes were open or closed. "We all fell right back into old habits at dinner! It was like nothing's changed."

"But it has changed!" Richie said, his voice rising a little. Eddie jostled when Richie pushed himself up, sitting on the bed with his head in his hands. Eddie stared at him and chewed on his lip. "God, are you telling me you still act like that as an adult? I can just look at you and tell you're not somebody who trades sarcastic insults with anyone. And I don't still joke about fucking people's mothers and I don't constantly slip into shitty Voices all the time and I don't just fucking make fun of people like an asshole! But we both - we both regressed! Like, some shit happened when we got back together and all of a sudden we were both shitty little teenagers again! All of us! Bill's stutter came back, for fuck's sake! Ben's an awkward fucking mess around Bev, as though that guy isn't swimming in pussy right now -"

"That's fucking gross, Richie," Eddie muttered, pushing himself against the wall. 

"I'm just saying," Richie continued, "that we all get along as 13 year olds. Not as the people we are now."

"That's - " Eddie paused and blinked hard, surprised to find his eyes filling with tears. "It's just because that's how we're used to acting with each other. If we all spent time together again I bet we'd end up acting more like who we are now."

Richie scoffed. "Eddie, who you are now would hate who I am now."

"I wouldn't hate you." He reached out hesitantly, rested his hand on Richie's broad back. "Why do you think I'd hate you?"

"You - You hate getting dirty! And you dress like you're ninety, your hair is like, combed, and you've clearly never used a drug in your life. You -"

"I'm gonna stop you, dude." Eddie readjusted himself so he was sitting facing Richie, who's blue eyes were clearer than ever without his glasses on, even in the dark. "The actual regression I experienced was turning back into the person I was before that summer, before I found out about my asthma. The scared kid who carried a fanny pack full of disinfectant wipes became a scared adult who kept disinfectant wipes in his briefcase and Advil in his pocket right next to his aspirator. I have been alone for the last 20 years. And I've wasted so much time being the delicate child my mother wanted me to be. Who I was at 13 is more me than who I am at 40. And I think - I think that's why we all regressed the way we did. Because we were happy together, at 13, and I don't think any of us are happy now."

Richie stayed quiet.

"Well," Eddie amended, "except for Stan. But he acted like an adult as a kid, so I don't think that counts. Anyway, I don't give a shit about what you've done in your past. I lived with my mother until she died in my mid-thirties. I've never had -" He cut himself off, feeling his face heat up. "Never mind. The point is that we are still the same people we were at 13. The people we've been for the last 20 years? That wasn't really us. This is us. Lucky seven."

"Okay," Richie whispered. Eddie ignored the way he swallowed thickly. "I think I - I think I'm just scared. Just going over every single way we could fail. And even - even if you're right about us, how we're all still the same… There's so much about each other we don't know. We don't really know much about how we've each spent the last two decades. Or where we've worked, where we've lived, who we've fucked. It's like we're strangers…"

Eddie cleared his throat, willing his blush to disappear. "Maybe… Okay, this might sound stupid, so if you laugh afterward, I'm giving myself permission to hit you."

Richie snorted. "Alright, go ahead."

"We should find a way for all of us to know each other again. So we're not strangers. We should be the strongest version of the losers club when we go into the sewers, right? Losers club doesn't have secrets. Maybe we - you know, we bond with each other again. By telling each other stuff. You know?"

"Are you saying you want to sit in a circle and tell each other secrets?"

Eddie huffed. "Essentially, yes."

Richie laughed a little but held his hands up in surrender. "I'm not laughing at you! Just - I mean, why not? It couldn't hurt. Maybe we could re-do the blood pact, too?"

Eddie grimaced. "Yeah, Rich, let's physically weaken ourselves before we go fight a demon space alien. That's a super good idea."

"Well you don't have to be mean about it, dickhead."

Eddie laughed and shook his head. "How about, if we all live, we'll -"

"If we all live?! Don't say shit like that man!"

"I've already killed a man, Richie, I don't think death is completely off the table."

"Fuck, you killed a man." Richie sounded awed and a little scared.

"And you were very helpful, by the way." Eddie smirked.

"Listen, Eds, you've always been the brave one, we all know that, Mr. This is Battery Acid."

"I think I called It Fucknuts, too," Eddie recalled. He remembered spraying his aspirator at It, but even still he couldn't picture It clearly. "Do you remember what It looked like? It's real form, not any of the glamours."

Richie paused. "I don't - I don't think so? I just - I remember the eye in the sewers. When we all stood around like idiots and you screamed at us to step the fuck up. But other than that…"

Eddie remembered that, too. He'd lost his shoe in the eye, kicking it and screaming at the others to help him. It almost shocked him, to remember himself as being brave. But he had been. He'd attacked first, both the eye and… Whatever It became, in the end. His aspirator had really hurt It. 

"I wonder if we really saw It…" Eddie said. Another memory had hit him, one of Richie holding a baseball bat, of Bill trapped under Pennywise's arm. "I think - I think we hurt It while It was the clown. Maybe that's - maybe part of why It didn't die is because it was still using a glamour. It escaped before we hurt it enough to see the true form."

"That's - I mean, it was weird that Pennywise just bolted…"

"And Richie?" He reached out again, a little more confident, and touched Richie's arm. The contact made his chest clench. "You're brave, too. Don't you remember? Now I'm gonna have to kill this fucking clown."

Richie laughed quietly. "I hadn't remembered that until you said it."

Eddie hadn't remembered the battery acid or the eye until Richie brought them up, either. He wondered if it was because neither of them were the kind of people who looked for the good in themselves, and if there were other things they'd done that they could be proud of and just hadn't remembered yet. He hoped so. He hoped they still had some of that bravery left.

Richie flopped back down, head hitting the pillow as he released a loud sigh. Eddie followed suit, his face warming when he realized Richie had landed closer than he was before. They weren’t touching, but he could feel the heat from Richie’s arm only inches from him.

“We should probably try to sleep before… Well, we should try to sleep.” Richie’s voice had quieted. Eddie could barely hear him over the whirr of the air conditioner. “Goodnight.”

“Night, Rich,” he murmured. He hoped Richie couldn’t hear the fondness in his voice over the sound of the AC. He breathed in deeply and closed his eyes. He was asleep in minutes. 

*

Three short knocks on the door woke Eddie a few hours later. His left side was warm and he mindlessly moved into the heat before his muddled and tired mind remembered it was Richie next to him, still sleeping with breaths so loud it could almost be called a snore. Light poured in through the window so that Eddie could see Richie’s relaxed face, and staring down at the other man distracted him enough that he jolted at the sound of more knocks.

“Rich? Eddie? W-w-wake up, we’re meeting d-d-d-downstairs in twenty!” Bill’s voice drifted through the door and Eddie sighed, sitting up and shaking Richie’s shoulder.

“Mph,” Richie said, rolling away from Eddie.

“Wake up, didn’t you hear Bill?”

“Was ignoring him,” Richie answered bluntly. Eddie rolled his eyes and got up, heading toward the door just as Bill began to knock again.

“Hey,” he said, opening the door to find Bill’s fist mid-air. “We’ll be down soon, but can I talk to you first?”

Bill nodded, and Eddie closed the door behind them.

“Rich and I were talking last night and… Well, we were talking about how we don’t really feel like the lucky seven anymore. We’ve lost some of the connection we had as kids, and that connection is a huge part of why we survived last time. I just think – We think we should do something to bond again, like how we bonded at the Jane but… More. Maybe – Maybe we could go downstairs and just… share things about ourselves. You know, the kind of important things you share with your closest friends.”

Bill’s eyebrows had risen and Eddie bit his lip awkwardly. If Bill didn’t go for it, it wasn’t going to happen, and something in Eddie’s chest told him it needed to happen if they were going to survive.

Finally Bill shrugged. “I m-m-m-mean, it couldn’t hurt.”

“Right,” Eddie agreed. “So… If you could let everyone know what’s going on? We’ll meet you downstairs soon. I’m probably going to have to physically yank Richie out of bed, so…”

Bill nodded. “That’s fine. I’ll see y-y-you down there s-s-soon.”

Eddie thanked him and went back into the room, surprised to see the bed empty and the bathroom door closed. He sighed in relief that Richie had gotten himself up and went to his suitcase to pull out clean clothes. Richie finished in the restroom quickly and they switched, Eddie hurrying through his morning routine and dressing, anxious to get downstairs.

He stepped out of the bathroom without looking up, his pajamas folded in his hands, and after a few steps toward his suitcase he raised his head, confused by the silence.

He swallowed thickly at the sight of Richie standing in the middle of the room in just jeans, the hem of his boxers visible, the trail of hair leading down into his boxers all Eddie could see.

“Sorry,” he choked, looking away as quickly as he could force his head to move, feeling the heat light up his cheeks. He cursed himself in his head, power walking the rest of the way to his suitcase and focusing all his energy on making sure all his things were placed neatly and organized inside, trying not to think about Richie, half-naked, a few feet away.

He could hear Richie clear his throat behind him, but his voice still came out strained. “No worries.”

Eddie nodded without looking up. His hands were clenched into fists.

“Um,” Richie said awkwardly, when Eddie didn’t move. Eddie let out a breath and stood up, turning to face Richie, only to find himself again faced with a bare-chested Richie.

“What the fuck!”

“Sorry!” Richie said, not moving.

“Put your fucking shirt on!”

“Right.”

Richie bent over to reach into his suitcase and Eddie stared with his mouth open at the way the muscles in his arms moved, the way his back arched. He realized as he stared that there was no longer any attempts at denying his sexuality. This was it. He couldn’t look away as Richie pulled a shirt over his head. His cheeks were still hot and he waited for some joke from Richie, something like take a picture, it’ll last longer, or like what you see, Eds?, but Richie remained quiet.

“So,” Eddie said once Richie was fully dressed. “We’re meeting the others downstairs.”

“To share secrets?”

“Shut up,” Eddie said, walking out the door. They could hear the chatter of the others as they headed down stairs, and Eddie realized without surprise they were the last to make it down.

“Hey!” Beverly greeted. “Good thing you’re here, we were about to start without you.”

“Actually we already finished without you,” Stanley said, sly grin on his face. “Guess you guys don’t get to be part of the club anymore.”

"How dare you, Stanley," Richie said, skipping over to plop onto the floor next to Stan's spot on the couch. Beverly and Ben sat on the loveseat while Bill, Mike, and Stan took up the couch. There was a single armchair waiting, empty, between Richie's spot on the floor and Ben and Beverly, and Eddie took his spot. 

"We decided Bill will go first," Mike said, and Eddie nodded. It made sense in a way he couldn't explain. Of course Bill would go first. Bill would always go first.

"So," Bill started, then stopped. He cleared his throat and turned his face to the floor. Eddie bit his lip nervously, his heart beginning to beat faster as he waited for Bill's secret. "I wasn't s-sick. The day G-G-G-Georgie died. He - he wanted me to go out and p-p-p-play with him, but I didn't - I didn't want to. It wasn't that I didn't l-l-l-love him, or -"

"It wasn't your fault," Beverly said to him. "Nobody could've known what would happen."

Bill's face was red but he didn't cry. His eyes were resolute as he looked around at each of them. "I feel so g-g-guilty for what I d-d-did. And I feel g-g-g-guilty that I hadn't th-th-thought about G-Georgie in over 20 years."

"Pennywise wiped our memories, man, that's not -"

"I knew I had a l-l-little brother thatd-d- died. I knew his n-n-name, how old he w-was. And it was like… I d-d-didn't care. It d-d-didn't m-m-mean anything. I re-re-re-remembered him and it didn't m-mean anything."

"Fuck that," Richie said suddenly. "Seriously, Bill, fuck that shit. You didn't really remember Georgie, because if you did you would've spent the last 27 years feeling like you feel right now. We all know it. It's not your fault you didn't remember and it's not your fault he died."

"I know you probably don't believe that," Eddie added, "but it's true. None of it was your fault. And you're the one who led us to beat Pennywise the first time. You ended the cycle early, man. You saved lives."

Bill shook his head, still avoiding meeting anyone's eyes. "W-W-We all did that."

"Then maybe we should all get a pat on the back for it," Ben suggested. "We all did something that saved who knows how many lives. We should all - you know, give ourselves credit for it."

Eddie thought back to the night before, discussing all the things with Richie that he hadn't remembered doing. All the moments he was brave, strong, powerful. How he and Richie didn't remember them because they struggled to see their own strength.

"I agree," he said, nodding to Ben. "We all need to give ourselves more credit for what we did. Yeah, It came back, but we stopped it back then. The killings, they stopped. We were all brave as fuck, guys. And we can be brave as fuck again."

"I don't recall being brave as fuck," Stan said quietly. "I only remember being terrified out of my mind."

"That's what being brave is, though," Mike told him. "Doing something even when it scares you. And you're being brave right now, just by being here, Stanley. All of you are. We're all terrified but we're all here, and that, as Eddie so eloquently put it, is brave as fuck."

"Well said." Beverly smiled softly. "You should go next, Mike."

Mike looked surprised for a moment, eyes widening a bit, but he quickly nodded, shuffling in his seat. 

"Well," he started, looking around at each of them. "I guess you know I've kept up with each of you, but not - not quite the extent that I've kept up with you. I've read all of Bill's books and seen every movie adaptation. I've seen every television appearance Richie's ever made. I've read every article ever written about Ben. I've driven up to Bangor a few times, to one of those fancy department stores, just to see Bev's clothes in person. Couldn't afford to buy anything, but -"

The group paused as an uncomfortable undercurrent swept through the room. Eddie noticed he wasn't the only one who wouldn't meet Mike's eyes.

"Don't be weird about it," Mike said with a soft sigh. "It is what it is. And this - this tension, this discomfort… That's what Eddie's talking about. To be the Lucky Seven we have to push through what makes us uncomfortable. You guys can't walk on eggshells around me anytime finances come up. We can't walk on eggshells around each other at all. This is the point of this. We've got to share the hard shit, too."

Eddie didn't know what to say, so he kept his mouth shut. He looked up, though, and Mike was giving a comforting smile to them all. Eddie breathed in deeply and let it out slowly as Bill agreed with Mike, and the awkward tension began to dissipate.

"Anyway," Mike continued, "it's been hard to be the one to stay here. I won't lie, there were so many times over the years that I thought about calling one of you. And there were times over the years that I even resented you guys a little, for being able to leave. But this was what I was meant to do. This was my job. I accepted that, and I'm okay with it. I've made my peace with it."

"I'm sorry you had to stay here, Mike," Ben said. Mike just shrugged good-naturedly.

"Well, if we're going to be talking about the uncomfortable shit, maybe I should go next." Eddie raised his eyebrows at the bluntness in Bev's voice. She huffed a short laugh. "I mean - I mentioned leaving my husband at dinner but… There's so much more to it. He - Well. I'll start with - I have one very close friend. Her name's Kay, and I've known her a long time. And it's… it's funny, you know, when someone knows you, how they can see through your bullshit? Kay can see through my bullshit. But she never called me on it. Don't get me wrong, she told me to leave him for years, before we were ever even married, but she never… She had to have known, you know?"

Eddie swallowed thickly as Bev rambled, her voice catching a few times. His hands balled up into fists, a response to the anger that was slowly building inside his chest as Beverly spoke.

"But I'm glad she never brought it up because… I don't know how to talk about it, especially with someone who never met… Well, someone who never met my father. I didn't know how to talk about the shame I feel for running from my abusive father into the arms of an abusive husband. I don't know why I did it. I don't know why I stay."

Tears were dripping down her cheeks now, and Eddie had the urge to reach over and hold her hand, but Ben already had an arm around her shoulders and Stan was clutching her hand.

"Anyway, I - I left him. I had to… He didn't want me to. And part of me is… so fucking scared that I'm going to go right back to him after Derry."

"That's n-not going to h-h-happen, Bev," Bill said quickly, leaning closer to her to put a comforting hand on her knee. "We won't l-let you."

“It shouldn’t be like that. Isn’t it the same thing? Putting my wellbeing in the hands of yet another man? Trusting in you guys to keep me from going? It needs to be my own decision, and it needs to come from my own strength.” 

No one spoke for a moment. Eddie watched as Beverly wiped her tears with her free hand. Finally, Ben turned to face her and said, “we won’t make the decision for you, but no matter what you decide we’ll be there to support you. Obviously we all want you to be safe and not go back to him, but no one here is your keeper. We just love you and want the best for you. And if you leave you won’t be alone. We’ll all be there for you.”

The others murmured their agreements and Bev smiled through her tears, thanking them quietly.

"I'll go next," Stan offered, raising his hand a little. "I… Well, I guess I'm sort of Twitter famous? I've got a blue checkmark and everything."

"I'm sorry?" Richie asked, voice rising in pitch. "It took me two years to get a fucking checkmark and they gave one to you?!"

Stanley shrugged. "I had a commercial for my accounting business go viral."

No one said anything. Eddie stared blankly at Stan as though he'd grown a second head.

Stan huffed. "Patty and I made a commercial when I first started the company. We filmed it ourselves because we didn't have money to hire anyone and it was just - it was just me at my desk, and Patty standing next to me. And I'm just talking, you know, about why people should choose me as their accountant. But Patty apparently found it absolutely hilarious because she kept, like, laughing - snorting while I was talking. And in my head I'm thinking, there's no way we're going to use this, this is ridiculous, and I smile at the end - well, Patty says it's a grimace but what's the difference, really? - and Patty, completely unscripted, yells "call Uris Accounting for all your accounting needs!" and then I started laughing. Anyway, she posted it on Facebook without telling me and it went viral -"

"Holy fuck, I've seen that!" Richie yelled, throwing his hands up. "It's - there's a YouTube video, one of those compilations, called 'People Breaking and Laughing on Camera (Almost Entirely Richie Tozier Laughing at His Own Jokes)'! We're in the same compilation YouTube video!"

"You have the name of the video memorized?" Eddie asked. Richie laughed.

"That's terrible news," Stan said. Richie laughed harder. "Anyway, now the company's Twitter has thousands of followers who think my deadpan humor and random observations are hilarious. My actual secret is that I don't actually write any of it - Patty does. She's the funny one but she isn't a big fan of too much attention so people think it's me."

"Aw, it's okay, Stan, Richie doesn't write his jokes, either," Ben said with a grin. Eddie laughed, watching happily as Richie began to yell indignantly. 

It took a few minutes for the group to calm down. Eddie sat and soaked it in, trying to ignore the twisting in his gut that told him this lighthearted fun was going to end soon. That they may never get this feeling back again.

"Anyway," Stan said finally. "Patty's very funny. She calls my car The Sedanley."

"Aw," Bev cooed, grinning. "That's cute! You guys sound really happy together."

"We are," Stan agreed, his cheeks pink. "Anyway, who's next? Eddie?"

Eddie's stomach clenched and he bit his lip. He cleared his throat, finding a spot on the floor to stare at so he could avoid the eyes of his friends. This was his idea in the first place, he certainly couldn't back out now.

"Before I say anything, I just want to say I've never told anyone this, and it's… Well, it's quite embarrassing and I'd really appreciate you all not making fun of me."

"W-We'd never m-m-make fun of you," Bill assured him immediately. Eddie gave him an incredulous look. Bill laughed a little. "Okay, f-f-fair enough, we d-definitely would. B-B-But wew- won't! You can t-t-tell us."

"Yeah," Eddie muttered. He took a few deep breaths and opened his mouth. “I’ve never… you know, done it. Like…” His eyes darted around at each of them and his cheeks pinked. He lowered his voice to a whisper, “Sex.”

Stan laughed. “Clearly, if you feel like you have to whisper the word sex.”

“We promised no laughing! Nobody laughed at your stupid Sedanley!”

"Oh, honey," Bev said. "Why not? You could get any woman you wanted!"

Eddie didn't look up from the floor. His hands were balled up into nervous fists.

"Or man?" She continued. A question. 

Before Eddie could speak, Richie's voice broke the tense silence. “No! You aren’t allowed to come out!”

“I kn-kn-know you’re not about t-t-to be homophobic,” Bill interrupted.

“Like you can talk,” Richie answered, annoyed. “Have you ever written a character that wasn’t straight?” Bill tried to answer but began stammering worse than usual. “And I’m not being homophobic. But if Eddie comes out right now and steals my goddamn thunder then that would be biphobic. Because I’m bi. That was my secret. So. Now, Eddie, if there’s anything you’d like to say…”

“You’re the fucking worst,” Eddie told him. “And I don’t… I don’t know. I’ve never had feelings strong enough for anyone, man or woman, to ever do anything about it. I suppose I’ve found men attractive before, but never anyone that I knew or liked or – I suppose mostly celebrities, strangers on the subway, things like that. I never… I guess I haven’t met many people that have caught my interest.”

"Sounds like you need to lower your standards,” Stan said bluntly.

“Nah,” Ben said, smiling at Eddie. “I get what he means. I never really formed any connection with anyone either. Before you guys I was lonely, and after you guys I was lonely. I suppose I had been interested in someone when I was younger, but… I forgot about her. Maybe eventually you’ll remember someone, Eddie. Someone who caught your interest.”

Eddie finally glanced up, his eyes immediately finding Richie, who was staring resolutely at the floor. He chewed on his lip. Finally he looked over at Ben and said, “I think I will remember. Eventually.”

"Well," Richie said loudly, and Eddie jumped. Richie's cheeks were bright red and he shoved his glasses up his nose with his pointer finger. "Since I already spoiled my secret, I guess I don't have to go."

"We're very proud of you, Richie," Bev said with a soft smile. "Even though you ruined Eddie's moment."

"Sorry 'bout that, Eds," Richie said with a small shrug and a sheepish smile. "Couldn't let you steal my gay thunder."

Eddie furrowed his brows. "Didn't you just say you were bi?"

Richie waved him off. Eddie noticed his face was still flushed. He pushed his glasses up his nose again. Eddie clenched his hands into fists as he watched Richie fidget, knowing the other man was nervous but not being completely sure what he was nervous about. Eddie had said he would probably remember someone he had feelings for… Could Richie be figuring him out? Could Richie already know that Eddie had those feelings?

And now that he knew Richie was into men as well… Could he return those feelings?

"-but like I said earlier, to Eddie, I feel like I'm only just remembering the girl I loved…" Eddie realized he'd been ignoring Ben, who was obviously talking about Beverly. The two of them were still next to each other, but Eddie could sense some discomfort in Beverly's body language. He thought about how her entire life had revolved around men and felt a pang in his chest for her. She deserved a break.

"So, w-w-what do you th-th-think, Eddie?" Bill said. Eddie startled, tearing his eyes from where they'd rested on Bev. Ben had finished talking and Eddie was hit with a wave of guilt that he'd been too inside his own head to really listen. But he knew the gist of it, right? Ben loved Bev, Ben had been lonely as an adult. He was basically just repeating Eddie's life story, although probably without the virginity aspect. 

"I mean… I dunno. Do you guys feel closer?"

Bill shrugged helplessly. Eddie's heart sank. He didn't feel any different, either. 

"I think this was good," Richie said, stepping up beside Eddie and wrapping an arm around his shoulder. "At the very least we're better off than we were before. It was like a trust exercise, you know? It - it worked."

Eddie looked up at him. He was giving Eddie what was probably supposed to be a reassuring look, but from the angle Eddie was at, looked more like a grimace. Eddie laughed a little.

"W-Well, alright th-th-then," Bill said, heading toward the front door of the Inn. "Let's g-g-go."

*

By the time they made it to the small door that led to It's lair, Eddie could barely breathe. Nothing had happened the entire way. Why had nothing happened? Where was It?

"Well…" Richie said with a shrug. "No news is good news, right?"

"I don't think that applies here," Stan said, his voice trembling.

"Are we ready, then?" Mike asked. Eddie gripped his aspirator and shot it into his mouth. The others nodded grimly. Mike pushed the door open, and they went inside.

Amidst the chaos - It turning into a giant spider with Pennywise's face, chasing them down tunnels that lead to nothing good, three doors with no right answer - Eddie had clutched his aspirator in his hand. He hadn't thought about it, but now, as he watched Richie's body float into the air, eyes white, he thought that perhaps he'd known all along. He remembered spraying the aspirator into the giant eye, remembered - this is battery acid, fucknuts! - and he stepped forward.

He didn't utter a sound as he sprayed the aspirator at It, watching as the mist hit one of the spider legs. It's head swung around to face Eddie, so close Eddie could smell It's rancid breath.

"Battery acid," he said coolly, before shooting off the aspirator again. He was close enough now that the mist sank into one of It's eyes. Pennywise's voice bellowed around the cavern, screaming in pain, and Eddie sprayed again, this time aiming for It's open mouth. Just as his finger pressed down, just as the HydrOx filled It's mouth, Eddie was slammed into from the side. He lost his grip on the aspirator and landed hard on the ground, but his eyes didn't leave the spider. He watched as the mouth, filled with razor-sharp teeth, clamped down where his arm had just been. 

"You're a fucking idiot, Kaspbrak," Stan said, helping Eddie up.

"Holy shit," Eddie said, breathing heavily and looking at Stan, who was shaking. "You saved my life."

"Yeah, well," Stan said. Then, more quietly, so low that Eddie didn't think he was supposed to hear it, he said, "You saved mine first."

"We gotta save Richie," Eddie said, as It's yell pierced the air again. It was rounding on Mike and Ben on the other side of the cavern, and Richie still floated in mid-air.

"Hey!" Stan screamed, his voice echoing in the lair. Eddie's eyes widened and he grabbed Stan's arm. "You're not real, clowns are human and don’t have spider legs, either you’re a human or a spider, make up your mind!"

Eddie watched in horrified shock as It began to shrink, spider legs pulling in toward its body. The others began to join in, yelling what seemed like nonsense to Eddie, who suddenly could only focus on Richie, collapsing to the floor.

He rushed to Richie's body, lying on the ground, and began to shake him.

"Clown! Clown! Clown!"

"Rich, wake up, man," he said, patting Richie's cheek. Richie groaned. "Yeah, hey, buddy, open your eyes!"

"Eds, wha-" His eyes widened as he took in Eddie's form. He grabbed tightly onto Eddie's right arm, staring at it in wonder. "Fuck, you're -"

"Come help us!" Ben's voice carried over to them. Eddie looked over to where their friends stood in a semi circle around It, now shriveled and small and not a clown at all. Eddie helped Richie to his feet and, feeling more powerful than he ever had in his life, squeezed It's heart until It was no more.

Richie saw Stan kill himself and Eddie losing his arm and dying in the deadlights and when they’re out of the house he grabs Stan’s arms and looks at his wrists angrily and Stan realizes what it means and Richie asks “Why didn’t you do it?”

 “First I didn’t remember… I was in the bathtub… I was… Ready. I could only remember promising Bill, the blood oath… But then I remembered Beverly saying she saw us all as adults… And I remembered that I had, too, when I was in the deadlights, and that Eddie was going to die. I knew – Somehow I just knew that if I killed myself Eddie would die, and if I came back he wouldn’t. I could – I could end my own life, but I couldn’t bring myself to end Eddie’s. So I came back.”

not even the author knows what happens next :-)

[smallblueandloud]

fsk emotions: the playlist

(i’d like to apologize in advance for how long this is going to get. UPDATE: yeah, this is around 4k, i am So Sorry.)

in case y’all weren’t aware, i have fitzskimmons emotions ALL THE TIME. my poor friends have to deal with me texting them at 11 pm like “i’m freaking out about fsk again” embarrassingly often. so, i figured i’d try to share some of those emotions with y’all, in the form of songs from my private fsk playlist on spotify. 

that playlist is 63 songs long. hopefully i will not feel the need to talk about ALL 63, but i’m not going to make any promises. y’all know what i’m like about this. i’m planning on giving you a list of the songs for your listening pleasure, and then go into detail about the lines / vibes from each song that i think especially fit the ship. we shall see how this goes.

just a warning: my music taste is very all over the place. i associate the sound of 80s love songs with fsk, so there’s gonna be a few of those, but also some weird obscure indie songs and some pop and just... bear with me, okay? these songs are in no particular order, because i have no idea how to make a “”legit”” playlist or whatever the heck y’all are doing to make such good mixes. i’m just gonna stick a tracklist here and move on.

can’t fight this feeling // reo speedwagon

gravity // sara bareilles

new year’s day // taylor swift

don’t go breaking my heart // elton john & kiki dee

dancing in the dark // bruce springsteen

born to be yours // kygo & imagine dragons

i choose you // sara bareilles

ordinary people // john legend

carry on // fun.

blackbird // the beatles

thunder road // bruce springsteen

the long and winding road // the beatles

the archer // taylor swift

army of angels // the script

paper rings // taylor swift

lucky // jason mraz & colbie caillat

wonderwall // zella day

team // noah cyrus

i melt with you // modern english

cornelia street // taylor swift

coroner’s report // molly ofgeography

two // sleeping at last

fair // the amazing devil

arms unfolding // dodie

making love out of nothing at all // air supply

all the song explanations are under the cut, because this is going to get long. there’s also ten honorable mentions if you manage to make it to the end of this. let’s get started!

1. can’t fight this feeling // reo speedwagon

i felt legally required to put this one first because i literally named my magnum opus after it. i like this song a lot on its own, but it specifically reminds me of fsk because the idea of your partner(s) as the place you will always gravitate towards is peak fsk for me. also, these three are canonically each others’ reassurance and rock and i’m just... i love them a lot, okay? this song’s imagery and lyrics have come to be inextricably associated with fsk for me and i love it a lot.

important lyrics: “And even as I wander, I'm keeping you in sight You're a candle in the window on a cold, dark winter's night”

“And if I have to crawl upon the floor, come crashing through your door Baby, I can't fight this feeling anymore“

2. gravity // sara bareilles

this one goes second because it’s probably my favorite song of all time. i play it on repeat whenever i’m feeling sad or anxious or pining or happy or just... anytime, lmao. but i also think it’s a very fsk song, and more specifically the fitzdaisy relationship! not only does it have more of that “gravitating towards each other” theme (more literally in this case), but the lyrics are also... very much fitzdaisy, i think, who are very much each others’ safe space and have been vulnerable with each other from the very beginning.

important lyrics: “ Oh, you loved me 'cause I'm fragile When I thought that I was strong But you touch me for a little while And all my fragile strength is gone”

(although really every single lyric fits really perfectly, so go and check out this song! it’s genuinely my favorite song ever and i think everyone would benefit from a listen or two)

3. new year’s day // taylor swift

the most underrated song from reputation, this song is probably the most INTENSELY fsk song i’ve ever heard. these three have grown up together, have changed together, have left their mark on each other in ways that can never be undone. the thing i’m most nervous for in the series finale is the show completely ignoring that impact (along with all three’s relationships with coulson and may especially!). no matter their romantic configuration, none of them would be the same if they hadn’t known the others. and new year’s day really articulates that, along with a really sweet feeling of trust and the image of them cleaning up together after a party - which makes perfect sense when you think about canon, and how they’d stick together even after leaving the life-changing experience of shield. even though there’s no more life-changing adventures, they’re still going to be together, and that means something. y’all, this song is really good and the best fsk song ever and you NEED to listen to it.

important lyrics: “Hold on to the memories, they will hold on to you And I will hold on to you”

“Please don't ever become a stranger whose laugh I could recognize anywhere”

4. don’t go breaking my heart // elton john & kiki dee

look, just let them be happy, okay? also, i really love the trust aspect of this song, which i associate intensely with the fsk relationship. after all of the betrayal and pain and suffering they’ve experienced, i really love thinking about how much all three must trust each other, even in canon. also i wrote a fic where all three danced to this song and now i won’t ever get that image out of my head.

important lyrics: “Don't go breaking my heart I couldn't if I tried Honey, if I get restless Baby, you're not that kind”

“And nobody told us 'Cause nobody showed us And now it's up to us, babe Whoa, I think we can make it“

5. dancing in the dark // bruce springsteen

okay, this song is a bit darker than the others but i am a secret lover of springsteen, shh. also the mood works VERY well for three agents of shield who haven’t gotten a break since they left college. i really like the idea of them making their own happiness in the middle of the darkness together, because that’s part of why i’m so emotional about them! they are each others’ safe space and protector!

important lyrics: “You can't start a fire Sitting 'round crying over a broken heart This gun's for hire Even if we’re just dancing in the dark”

6. born to be yours // kygo & imagine dragons

heck yeah, let’s talk about the fact that no one in the ot3 would be the same if they hadn’t met the others! not just that, but the fact that they support each other and are a big reason why each of them have made it through the pain of the series with, like, less trauma then they could’ve. fitz was there for daisy when she developed her powers and is the one who talked her into coming back in s4, daisy was there for jemma when she came back from maveth (and in the framework), and jemma and fitz have been supporting each other since they worked things out in s3. also, they know each other insanely well and i think this song does a great job of expressing that!

important lyrics: “I never knew anybody 'til I knew you I never knew anybody 'til I knew you And I know when it rains, oh, it pours And I know I was born to be yours”

7. i choose you // sara bareilles

they! change! together! thank you for coming to my ted talk! also, i’m just... very obsessed with the idea of them choosing to be together, choosing to try to work through their problems, even when there have been so many. i am also obsessed with the idea of them spending their lives together. leave me alone.

important lyrics: “We are not perfect we'll learn from our mistakes And as long as it takes I will prove my love to you I am not scared of the elements I am underprepared, But I am willing And even better I get to be the other half of you”

8. ordinary people // john legend

i really, really love this song, actually? i’m a big fan of a lot of his music lmao. but i like this song specifically because it’s about how complicated love can be sometimes, and i think fsk’s love gets really complicated sometimes! and like, despite it all, they love each other and they’re trying to work it out. but that doesn’t change the fact that it’s really hard sometimes! (shoutout to the fic i titled with a lyric from this song that exemplifies that exactly)

important lyrics: “I know I misbehaved and you made your mistakes And we both still got room left to grow And though love sometimes hurts I still put you first And we'll make this thing work but I think maybe we should take it slow”

9. carry on // fun.

first off, this song has INTENSE post-framework fitz vibes. this is very much how i headcanon his relationship with violence works after they escape from the framework and fuck canon. but also, just, the idea of them all healing together? the idea of them moving on together after shield? poetic cinema. chef’s kiss. they’ve all changed SO MUCH since the show started, and yeah, not all of that change is good! but at least they’re still together.

important lyrics: “You swore and said we are not We are not shining stars This I know I never said we are Though I've never been through hell like that I've closed enough windows to know you can never look back”

10. blackbird // the beatles

i don’t know what about this song reminds me of jemma but something in this song reminds me of jemma, and fitz and daisy helping her heal. regardless, i am So Into them helping each other heal! mostly because the way that the show refuses to give them a break is SO FRUSTRATING. (also it tends to involve them being soft with each other and i am Weak.)

important lyrics: “Blackbird singing in the dead of night Take these broken wings and learn to fly”

11. thunder road // bruce springsteen

this is probably my second favorite song of all time. i am Absolutely Unbiased For Sure. regardless, i adore the imagery of this song, the contrast between the poetic feeling of it and the down-to-earth lyrics. this song, to me, is about people coming back to each other at the end of a long long journey. being in love while tired and recovering from a long, painful, messy life. and that just fits them... so well.

important lyrics: “Well now I'm no hero That's understood All the redemption I can offer girl Is beneath this dirty hood”

“With a chance to make it good somehow Hey what else can we do now Except roll down the window And let the wind blow back your hair? Well the night's busting open These two lanes will take us anywhere“

(y’all do not understand how hard it was to not copy All The Lyrics. you really really have to listen to this song.)

12. the long and winding road // the beatles

EXACTLY THE SAME THING THAT I SAID FOR THE LAST SONG. god this song works so well for them. they are never going to be able to leave each other because they’re so interconnected and yeah, part of that is circumstance, but so MUCH of that is CHOICE. they CHOSE to spend time together, they CHOSE to spend time together, i’m getting emotional over here.

important lyrics: “The long and winding road That leads to your door Will never disappear I've seen that road before It always leads me here Lead me to you door”

13. the archer // taylor swift

this is THE definitive daisy pov song. try to tell me i’m wrong. you can’t. daisy showing vulnerability is a BIG DEAL because of how easily she deflects things! she shows vulnerability to people she loves, most notably mack, coulson, fitz, and jemma! it physically pains me to think about how much she trusts them, y’all. there’s also this sense of melancholy throughout the song, because she’s never going to be the person that she once was. I’m Upset, Y’all.

important lyrics: “Combat, I'm ready for combat I say I don't want that, but what if I do? 'Cause cruelty wins in the movies I've got a hundred thrown-out speeches I almost said to you Easy they come, easy they go I jump from the train, I ride off alone I never grew up, it's getting so old Help me hold onto you”

14. army of angels // the script

this song is courtesy of @theclaravoyant, who recommended this as THE fsk song, and i think she’s very right! they fight TOGETHER, y’all. i’m very emo about it. their love is TRANSCENDENT and helps them OVERCOME their obstacles and i’m Really Upset About It, okay?? this song especially sounds like jemma’s voice, but it works so well for any of them and i Love It.

important lyrics: “When they got me cornered Close to giving in Oh I feel you round me like a second skin”

15. paper rings // taylor swift

*sobbing* i just want them to be HAPPY. i think part of my feelings about this song stem from, like, how fsk manages to find love during really, really dark times? and manages to be in love with each OTHER during the events of the show, which are VERY DARK as i think we can agree. and yet they managed to get together! and they managed to stick together! and idk, y’all, i’m just so soft for permanent partnerships and people being Married(tm) and this song brings that in SPADES.

important lyrics: “Kiss me once 'cause I know you had a long night Kiss you twice 'cause it's gonna be alright Three times 'cause you waited your whole life”

“I like shiny things, but I'd marry you with paper rings Uh huh, that's right Darling, you're the one I want, and I hate accidents except when we went from friends to this“

16. lucky // jason mraz & colbie caillat

this song just SCREAMS domesticity to me and no it’s absolutely NOT because i used a lyric from this song to title my collection of domestic fsk ficlets, i have no idea where you would get such a ridiculous idea. they are all BEST FRIENDS okay and they’re in LOVE and they come HOME TO EACH OTHER at the end of the day. they genuinely like spending time together. god, this song is so cute, i love it so much.

important lyrics: “I'm lucky I'm in love with my best friend Lucky to have been where I have been Lucky to be coming home again Lucky we're in love in every way Lucky to have stayed where we have stayed Lucky to be coming home someday”

17. wonderwall // zella day

before you tell me i’m being stupidly cliche, look at the artist. and then realize that the artist doesn’t make a different for how cliche i’m being. first off, this is such a wlw song (google that one car commercial if you don’t believe me) and skimmons is kind of. my peak wlw song. but also this song is so lovely because it’s about people persevering through challenges to be together, even their own feelings, and that’s VERY good and VERY fsk. i’m just very gay, alright? leave me alone.

important lyrics: “And all the roads we have to walk are winding And all the lights that lead us there are blinding There are many things that I would like to say to you But I don't know how Because maybe You're gonna be the one that saves me And after all You're my wonderwall”

18. team // noah cyrus

this song is from @bobbimorseisbisexual’s fsk playlist (thanks al i love you) and it’s VERY GOOD for this ship. god, i have so many emotions about them being on the same team (which is part of why it’s so FRUSTRATING when the show tries to split them up-). especially because trust is such a big aspect of their relationship? look, these are three people who have been betrayed a lot, even by each other. it’s so IMPORTANT that they trust each other to be on the same team!! (also this song is one of the only songs i’ve ever heard that’s apparently singing to both a man and a woman, and i’m gonna ignore the fact that it’s a duet. let me have my poly songs.)

important lyrics: “Whenever you're winning I'll give you strength, boy And I'll share your name, girl 'Cause I'll always be on your, I'll always be on your team Yeah, I'll always be on your team”

19. i melt with you // modern english

this song is sponsored by @florchis, who not only was the person that first told me about this song but also named her entire fsk collection after one of the lyrics. she has very good taste. first off i love how high-energy and happy this song is. declaring your love for someone is a VERY fun thing to do in the best of circumstances! and i just love the idea of them taking time for each other in the middle of all of their shield business. i love them so much, y’all.

important lyrics: “Moving forward using all my breath Making love to you was never second best I saw the world crashing all around your face (let me hear you) Never really knowing it was always mesh and lace (c'mon)”

“I'll stop the world and melt with you You've seen the difference And it's getting better all the time There's nothing you and I won't do”

20. cornelia street // taylor swift

YES, i know this is the FOURTH tswift song on this list. she’s really good at songwriting, okay? also... y’all.. the VULNERABILITY. the LONGING. the idea of having to deal with the very real fear of loss fits VERY well for a ship where everyone involved is in mortal danger three times a week. also, the idea of never being able to separate the memories of a place from the people? that’s peak fsk. i know i keep saying this but they’re all HUGELY INFLUENTIAL on each other and it’s a BIG DEAL!! they’re never going to get over this relationship, this love, and I’m Never Going To Get Over Them.

important lyrics: “And I hope I never lose you, hope it never ends I'd never walk Cornelia Street again That's the kind of heartbreak time could never mend I'd never walk Cornelia Street again”

21. coroner’s report // molly ofgeography (aka @ofgeography)

first off, everyone should listen to this ENTIRE ALBUM because it’s VERY GOOD. secondly, i know this song is really sad but imagine this as steeling yourself for the series finale. canonverse fsk hurts SO MUCH, y’all, and i love them so much. the metaphor in this song is *chef’s kiss* and the guilt of losing love is.... yeah. i’m sad. please be sad with me.

important lyrics: “How do you bury love, and what gets carved into the stone? If I had waited by the window would love be safe and back at home?”

“We held hands in the procession, black and veiled and strange You said, ‘love was good when love was here,’ it didn't ease the ache“

22. two // sleeping at last

okay i definitely think that part of this is me being an extreme 2 and therefore considering this song the Peak of Romance. which is probably a little unhealthy but leave me alone. i don’t know enough about enneagram types to diagnose any of the ot3, but definitely this song resembles all of them to some extent, especially daisy. (i am in pain.) this song, to me, feels like daisy pining for fs in canonverse. (i am in PAIN.) she would ABSOLUTELY give parts of herself up for them and count on the fact that they wouldn’t notice. god, this hurts so much. i love this song so much. if it helps, i think in a happier universe they all also sacrifice parts of themselves for the others? which hurts too but in a good way.

important lyrics: “Tell me, is something wrong? If something's wrong, you can count on me You know I'll take my heart clean apart if it helps yours beat”

“I just want to build you up, build you up 'Til you're good as new And maybe one day I will get around to fixing myself too“

23. fair // the amazing devil

this song is CRIMINALLY unknown. GO LISTEN TO IT RIGHT NOW AND THEN MEET ME BACK HERE. this song just screams fsk at me. the humor, the depths of love, the good-natured resentment, the depths of love... god. it’s so good. i definitely think the strength of their emotions for each other overwhelm them sometimes. i think they find comfort with each other, i think they tease each other, i think they’re disgustingly in love all the time. god.

important lyrics: “She promises to fight them all when it all becomes too much And he, he curses at the world for Leaving him behind and he's falling out of touch And she is stronger than he's ever been he knows And she brushes her hand through His hair, he's got so much fucking hair”

“And he holds her close just to keep the world at bay And when they're sure no-one can hear them She'll turn to him to say, she'll turn to him and say It's not fair, It's not fair how much I love you“

(yes i DID copy more than i’ve been copying for the rest, because the songwriting in this song and album are PHENOMENAL and YES i will harass y’all until you listen to it because LOOK AT HOW GOOD IT IS.)

24. arms unfolding // dodie

i know, i know, this is a really short song. but it’s really pretty and i think it fits daisy, like, extremely well. think about daisy during early s4, specifically. she loves them enough to break down her walls. that’s what this song is about. and that’s what i’m gonna go cry over now. god this post is so long what the heck.

important lyrics: “Hope I'm not tired of rebuilding 'Cause this might take a little more I think I'd like to try Look at you And feel the way I did before”

“You know I could live without or with you But I might like having you about“

25. making love out of nothing at all // air supply

okay, so i admit it, i’m actually a HUGE fan of really cheesy 80s music. but i really love this song for them? especially jemma. i think it fits jemma really well. first off, it’s that good old vulnerability with admitting that she doesn’t know everything! and it’s admitting that she specifically doesn’t know what she’s doing with this relationship! and admitting how much she loves both of them even though she might not have wanted to! and i think she’s just... so amazed, so so amazed at the way that fitz and daisy are able to forgive and be loving even when they’re in the worst situations? which is definitely a big message of this song. (oh jemma, i love you and your violent tenancies. i see al’s valid criticisms and i am Loving You Anyway.)

important lyrics: “I know all the rules and then I know how to break 'em And I always know the name of the game But I don't know how to leave you And I'll never let you fall”

“And I don't know how you do it Making love out of nothing at all”

jesus CHRIST this got long. i actually also had a bunch more songs that i didn’t have a LOT to say about but i thought they fit anyways, so uh, honorable mentions:

can’t help falling in love // elvis presley (”wise men say only fools rush in / but i can’t help falling in love with you”)

the longest time // billy joel (they’ve influenced each other)

after all // peter cetera & cher (they’re never going to be able to forget the influence they have on each other)

leave a tender moment alone // billy joel (daisy pov for skimmons. that is all)

she // dodie (i am Soft and Gay and skimmons is also Soft and Gay)

bremen // pigpen theatre co. (honestly idk what to say here, it’s just The Vibe)

say something // a great big world (similar vibe to ordinary people)

saturn // sleeping at last (Science and also Influence On Each Other)

celeste // ezra vine (thanks to al for this one too, i REALLY want to write a fic about them and this song at some point)

 you’re the inspiration // chicago (i just love the sound of this song. also i think all of them - but jemma especially - are inspired by the others to be better)

[champagne-bucky]

Stronger

Summary: Life as the newest Avenger is tough, but a new friend is willing to help you through it

Warnings: bullied!Reader x Bucky

Notes: This is a requested one shot by @i-ve-become-fictional ! Hope you enjoy this! Like, repost, comment, and follow for more! :) 

Avenger Wrecks Billion Corporation Building.  

Newest Addition to the Avengers is Well Below Qualification Ranks. 

Are the Avengers Becoming a Joke?

President Issues a Statement Regarding New Avenger: “Y/N Y/L/N is a Hazard to Our Country!” 

The headlines wouldn’t stop, they were getting so repetitive. You get it, you suck, as an Avenger and as a person in general. Why do they all hate you so much? You’ll never understand why. It all started when James Rhodes hired you on as an Avenger. With Natasha Romanoff and Tony Stark’s passing and the retirement of Steve Rogers, S.H.I.E.L.D was looking to recruit a new member for the Avengers. You weren’t exactly top of your class strength wise, your skills excelled with computers and different types of technology. Needless to say, you had no real place on the team, unless they thought you were a gamma infected being that was holding out on everybody, you rendered useless. 

Why do you put yourself down like this? Well, the other recruits were telling you the same thing, to your face and behind your back, when Fury considered you to be in the running for the Avengers. You were just as surprised as everyone else had been when you got a final nomination to join. It was between you and a highly respected and highly decorated S.H.I.E.L.D agent. You don’t know how you managed to get that far, but considering you blew everyone else out of the water when it came to cooking up concoctions in the scientific portion of the tests and memorizing how Tony Stark built numerous Iron Man suits, from a heap of scrap metal to glorious nanotechnology, the other recruits never stood a chance. 

The team of remaining Avengers were shocked and impressed that you managed to make it as far as you did, truth be told you were too. When it came down to you and the other agent, Fury urged the team to really think about who they wanted. The votes were tied, but some poor soul thought you had potential to be an actual Avenger. What that same soul didn’t realize was with an uncoordinated member came dozens of heavily opinionated jerks from every walk of life criticizing your every move. 

There was a small group of people that supported you. They tried their best to defend you, but that small group was always taken over by the tsunami that was late night television commentators and early morning local news reporters. It was safe to say, the majority didn’t like you. 

Day after day you would train your ass off trying to get stronger. You were getting better, but you weren’t the best. You wish you could quit, but you were already in too deep. 

The building was an accident. You didn’t mean to destroy it, however it was a building that was on the midst of foreclosure, which meant no casualties were harmed because no one was inside. Despite this important fact, the media ran with it and was quick to try and call you a cold blooded killer. Not true, not even a little bit, that at least was James Rhodes would tell you. 

The others liked you. Sure, those who weren’t too keen on you took a while to warm up, but they all adjusted to your presence quickly. It seemed as though somedays they really did appreciate you. You could tell some were frustrated by you though. For instance, you had overheard a conversation from Clint and Sam voicing rather loudly how they thought you would get yourself killed because of you “careless” fighting style. 

Most days you didn’t want to leave your room. You didn’t need to affiliate yourself with the new wave of hate and toxicity the internet and it’s trolls would bring you. You wanted to disassociate yourself from the world, and yourself, for one goddamn day. However, Colonel James Rhodes would not have any of that today. 

“Due to light of the recent events from last mission, the Senate is ordering us to hold a press conference.” Rhodey announces which caused collective groans from the group. 

“Do we all have to be present?” Clint asked slouching in his chair. He really didn’t feel like facing the ravenous press today. 

“Well, actually, only myself, Bucky, Sam, and Y/N will be attending the press conference today.” You froze in your seat. A panic attack threatening to rise within you. The feeling of the teams eyes all landing on you. You’ve never had to be at the press conferences before. Usually it was only Sam and Rhodey taking the lead. 

“Kid, you’ll do fine. Just give simple and minimal answers to the press. Don’t answer any questions you don’t want to. If anything, we’ll answer them for you.” Rhodey put his hand on your back before walking away to get ready. 

—

You always had stage fright. Ever since 5th grade when you misspelled that one really long and complicated word. Everyone in the crowd was laughing at you, at least to your imagination. You remember specifically Marcy Hunter making fun of you and taunting you for weeks. Calling you stupid, getting the whole grade to think you were stupid, saying you were one of the biggest losers on planet ea-

“Hey, you ready?” Sam looked at you with concern. 

“Yeah, yeah. Let’s just get this over with.” You muttered nervously. 

—

The millions of flashing cameras and yelling journalists did nothing to ease your confidence. Every single one of them were up in arms about what had happened. No one was hurt, so why were they all acting as if a mass murder took place. 

“Colonel Rhodes, are there any updates regarding a body count from the premises of the building.” Someone shouted 

“For the last and final time, no one was in that building. It was already cleared for months before we got to it.” Rhodey looked annoyed as ever. Same questions same answers. They were just looking for an opportunity to rip on you. 

One woman eyed you up and down with her evil eyes. She was waiting patiently to get the mic and rip you limb from limb. She finally got it after about an hour into the conference. 

“Ms. L/N, how do you think this mishap will affect on the citizens of New York?” She was going somewhere with this wasn’t she?

“Well,” you cleared your throat, “as Colonel Rhodes has mentioned, the building was cleared and the citizens surrounding the area were promptly evacuated.” Sam nodded his head in approval. 

“So does this mean there has been no discussion of your removal from the team?” What?

“I’m sorry?” You questioned. 

“Well, it just seems destruction follows you wherever you go. I mean for Christ sake a billion dollar building collapses and you aren’t even the slightest bit worried that you dm could’ve killed people.” She was evil. The way her lips curled into a devilish smirk. 

“Like I’ve told the other reporters, building was empty and no civilians were near the scene.” Rhodey was getting annoyed now. 

“What I’m trying to say is, did you all really think it was a good idea to have someone with so little experience play with the big boys. It seems as though she doesn’t even know what she’s doin-“ The bitch was immediately cut off by Bucky. 

“Okay, that’s enough out of you, out of all of you. Y/N is an Avenger whether you like her or not. We voted to have her on the team, not you or you or any of you for that matter. I’m so sick and tired of seeing headline after goddamn headline about how “incapable” she is. Can’t you people focus your attention on, I don’t know, literally anything else in this goddamn world besides her. She’s made some mistake, we all have, just because she’s an Avenger doesn’t mean she’s not human like the rest of us. I swear to God I will personally rip to shreds everyone single news article that runs one more negative thing about her. So if you all can understand where I’m coming from, shut the fuck up about her and write something else. We are done here.” Bucky looks out fo the crowd angrily. The rooms falls silent after you all get up and exit. 

—

It was late in the night and you were pounding it away at the gym. Trying to forget what had transpired at the press conference. You were working up a sweat trying to rid the voices in your head. 

You’ll never be good enough. 

You’re pathetic. 

Failure.

You suck.

Failure.

Sorry excuse for an Avenger.

Failure.

Failure 

Fail-

“I thought I was usually the only one up this late.” Your thoughts stopped as Bucky’s voiced echoed from behind you.

“Never thought anyone else came down here this late.” You responded, eyes still focused on the punching bag in front of you. 

“Can’t sleep?”

“Never could.” You responded still hitting the punching bag. 

Bucky ponders for a moment looking at your sweaty form. You always looked defeated, so helpless, you always thought you were useless. He never thought that though. Bucky always saw something in you, he never saw you like the monsters in the press did. 

“Are you okay?” You sensed the concern and sincerity in Bucky’s voice.

“What do you mean?” You tried to act dumb. 

“Don’t play coy, Y/N. I know how you feel.”

“How could you possibly know how I feel?”

“Because you’re not the only one who was the media’s favorite chew toy.” You stopped punching the bag as Bucky walks over to you and leads you to the bench.

“I know how it feels, to be an outcast, to be hated by everyone. How do you think the media reacted when the dreaded Winter Soldier was joining the Avengers. Dear God, I had to stay off the internet for weeks, couldn’t even walk down the street without some asshat yelling names at me, calling me a monster.” 

You remember the public outcry that rang throughout the world when it was announced that Bucky Barnes, former HYDRA assassin, was joining the Avengers. The media had a field day with him, some even went as far as protesting the front gates of the compound demanding that this evil man be exiled for the crimes he had committed. 

“Nobody liked me, and those that did couldn’t even get their message across to the world as to why I was a good guy. I know I’m not perfect, but I’m not evil by any means. It’s taken a while, but I know it wasn’t James Barnes who did those things to those innocent people, it was HYDRA and the Winter Soldier programming.” Bucky had been going through lots of therapy since he was brought back. Steve had insisted that Bucky go to every last therapy session even if it meant he would break out of the retirement home and drag him there himself.

“I was the deciding vote, ya know. When no one else thought you could do it I was the only one who spoke up in your defense.”

“What so the heat could be taken off of you?” You shot back, the little rage bubble in your heart expanding. 

“No, stop thinking like that. I know what you may think, that everyone here doesn’t like you, but that’s far from the truth. Everyone here, they warmed up to you, they really do enjoy having you on the team, honest to God. They have their concerns thought.” Oh boy here we go.

“I agree with them on the fighting thing, you were a little choppy at first, but hey, no one is perfect. In fact, I remember one time where Sam crashed his new set of wings into the lake when the new compound was built.” You stifled a laugh.

“Hey, there’s that pretty smile.” Bucky smiled back as you fought a blush. 

“You really don’t think I’m useless?”

“Far from it, doll.” 

“Then teach me.” You finally looked at Bucky.

“What?”

“Teach me how to fight, how to be like you.” You looked up at him with pleading eyes.

“Doll, no one can be like me, you gotta be your own you.” You sighed.

“But that doesn’t mean I still can’t teach you a few tricks.” You had a wide smile plastered on your face as you hugged Bucky tightly. The first person to show you true compassion since you got here. 

“Thank you Buck, thank you.”

“Anytime doll, anytime.”

—

Two months later…

“C’mon Y/N, let’s move it, just like we practiced.” Bucky yelled at you as you did the kick punch combo again. 

It’s been a long two months, but goddamn was it worth it. Slowly, the headlines about you stopped and the people moved on to a new problem. It felt good to not be the center of attention anymore. 

Bucky recommended you to a great therapist. Together you and Dr. Han worked through your insecurities and difficulties. Everyday you were getting stronger physically and mentally. Bucky on the other hand enjoyed spending his time with you. Soon enough you became more than just training buddies, you became best friends. 

He liked getting to take care of you, helping you defend yourself. Sam always joked that the two of you were doing something more than just training, but there really wasn’t more to it. Bucky saw something more in you, he saw that scrawny little boy from Brooklyn, weak, but had the drive and passion of a soldier. Bucky looked after you as if you were young Steve Rogers, and he’ll be damned if he lets anything happen to you. 

[raquellmurillo]

After the heist I want Raquel to pack her bag and get some money as Lisbon and leave Sergio ...She should stay with her family in some paradise.Monica will also join her ... They both should focus on raising their children and casual dating with guys..And sometimes Rio , Helsinki uncle will visit them .

That’s actually such a cool idea! I love Sergio and Raquel, don’t get me wrong, but above all, I love consistency lol 

Why not? What if Raquel tells him that after her talk with Alicia, she has realised that because of her love for him, she has neglected her daughter and ruined her future. Because lets face it, if Raquel is on the run, her daughter is too. 

And, I know the show never really mentions this... but Sergio is like... a criminal. I know he’s meant to be the ‘good guy’ and all, but he also goes around hiring, what, the Serbian mafia? (Who are those people???) Has a lot of money, buys a shit ton of stuff on the dark web... If the police can’t track him, the mafia’s running that shit-show can. His wealth isn’t built on an empire of people to protect him.... what is one kid with a billions of euros with no protection, living as an outcast to a criminal organisation looking for easy money? Doesn’t that just sound like a target??? It’s easier to take one person down, than a well built up ‘empire’ of people lmao - okay, if he hid away etc. but not go around making purchases like them army trucks... because as soon as he starts his heist, the people who he purchases those things from are gonna tie the two ends together... If Alicia can track him, what is finding him to an organisation with more hackers than he has??? 

Back to the point, Raquel isn’t the ‘weakest link’, both her and her daughter are ‘weak points’. If Sergio ever pisses off any of the probs very dangerous people he is working with... the main targets are gonna be the people closest to him. Back in the day when he was a petty and poor criminal, well, didn’t really matter. Now, however, things have changed.

Raquel has given her life up to be on the run not only from the police, but like, a large proportion of the criminal world. She is never going to be safe, nor is her daughter. By association she has condemned her family to, well, to some probably not fun situations in the future.

But like.... ignoring all of that.

I totally get you; love is love, I do ship them, but who said their love story had to be conventional; say she came to visit him at the end of s2, told him that she would meet up with him here and there, she would come to live with him, but in 10 years time or so, when her daughter is grown up enough to take care of herself and her decisions won’t impact her. That money might’ve bought Sergio freedom, but the moment Raquel leaves her life for it, its gonna cause her problems, ones which money won’t be able to fix. She’ll never be able to let her daughter go to school without fearing that she might say something, be recognised. She’ll never be able to have the freedom Raquel had when she was young. Her childhood might be carefree playing on the beach, but purely through association she’ll always be on the run from the police, interpol, the other criminals out there who feel like getting a few billions for, basically free, having to take down a person, not an empire. I get financial security, like totally. But its not exactly too great if the price you’re paying for it is your personal security.

And look how much more fun s3&4 would’ve been if Raquel was still part of the police... darn that would’ve been so amazing her in terms of character development, as she’d really have to decide whose side she was on. (obvs with a different plot) - acting as a double agent type thing, to alongside Sergio, make sure no one was hurt etc. 

... she is safer not being with Sergio. If Sergio truly loved her, he wouldn’t be with her. I know, I know, that’s so controversial of me to say, but I’ve seen it been done in masterpiece style on screen. I had never seen a better ship been written even though I didn’t get a single kiss! Both of the characters acknowledged they loved each other but were in an environment in which them being together would end in defo at least one of their deaths. Their love for each other was greater than any sort of sexual desire; keeping one another safe was a priority, even if it required sacrificing (very unfortunately for the audience) the desire part. It can be done. 

Love can be either selfish or selfless; I think, from the way things have been written, Sergio is more Andres’ brother than one could’ve imagined. He loves her, but not enough to resist his temptation, to ruin her, destroy her life, risk her life and her families. It sounds hella dark, but when you think about it, it sorta is. Because it is wrapped up neatly and nicely and Sergio is all cute... because she loves him and goes after him, blindly. Because however much Alicia’s dialogue about Raquel’s taste of men was written to obvs make the audience disagree with her about Sergio’s case..... darn nobody is perfect, but come on. Denver lost his father in the last heist, Sergio’s brother was shot (ik he was dying, doesn’t that make it worse for Sergio tho? The last months with his brother in paradise, lost?) but there’s one hella completely different reaction. And then we have the scene in which Raquel tells him he is just trying to avenge Berlin; does vengeance have a higher value than love? Is the whole Berlin thing not enough for him to be like, “actually, putting people that I love at life threatening risk, really isn’t a great idea”...??? Rio will eventually be arrested, and tough luck, ya know. Why put the rest of his team’s life at risk? idkkkkk His true love for Raquel will be shown in lcdp7 when he plans a heist to avenge her? WHy for the love of god is she in the bank? 

Damn right, Raquel should pack her bags up and finally find a man who is not so willing to harm her. No one said love or the character had to be perfect; I’m a true believer that love requires sacrifices, and Raquel has sacrificed a lot for him... you’d think he’d have the decency to at least not go ahead with the heist ya know. Sergio might be a bit socially awkward, but he’s not fucking dumb. I hate how people seem to think that because he hasn’t had much experience in relationships, he won’t know what he is doing... firstly, when does anyone have any sort of idea of what they’re doing in a new relationship with a new person? It’s all new, and it’s always a learning process ya know. Secondly, Sergio has enough brain cells to lecture Andres about getting married to someone knowing he has very little time... he knows enough to acknowledge that what his brother is doing, isn’t exactly too fair on his wife - which is fair enough; ya know, ‘best three years of her life’ and then she drinks herself to death from the heartache in the year following that? Very hard situation, tbh. Andres is being fucking selfish, but darn, turns out there is something in these genetics...

disclaimer: I still love Serquel, but damn I love my analysis, (I am being very picky today lmao) and if they keep this writing up, they’re gonna keep pushing me to make such unconventional findings. Never before today did I think I’d come to a conclusion that Andres and Sergio are similar in terms of ‘love’... but darn, under the cute dialogues and all the rather radical decisions of the screenwriters point towards very dark threads. 

Saying that, if you’re gonna write something like that, have the balls to actually explore it. Don’t make Raquel the ‘love interest’; consequently follow the choices through and make Sergio the nut job who put her back into the bank. Maybe even write it as him idealising the idea of his love for her... maybe the trap in their relationship is as Alicia said, Raquel idealising these guys, but Sergio also idealising her. 

[casually-inlove]

I'm a bit curious about the change in He Tian's attitude towards Mo in some earlier 2016 moments. He looked like he was playing around with Mo and even taunt him then, but the kiss came out of nowhere, and he is now having a crush on the boy. What do you think that makes him interested in Mo in the first place, and at which point did he start taking their friendship seriously, and started loving Mo?

Hey there, anon!

That’s a fabulous question actually. At some point, I also wondered what it was that made He Tian interested in Momo to begin with, or when this transition actually happened, and I was addling my head a lot over it, lol. I can only speculate here, but nonetheless here goes.

First of all, let’s take a look at how OX initially presented He Tian. We saw a wealthy, privileged and somewhat snobbish boy, who enjoyed top grades and enduring popularity among other students. Hell, even the teachers were fond of him, while girls flocked around He Tian every break. Whatever he said or mentioned was being met with giggles and bashful sighs. You get the picture. 

Unfortunately, it’s all but a pretty wrapping. In reality, none of those people knows who He Tian really is. We as readers know that in fact, He Tian suffers from profound loneliness. We know that despite all that money, he barely has any noteworthy personal possessions. That he still experiences the aftershocks of childhood traumas. That his relationships with his family are deeply fractured. People who surround He Tian on a daily basis could be described as sycophants. Their adoration towards him is pretty shallow. They are so crazy about him why exactly? Because he’s handsome, rich, popular, etc. Not saying that it’s a bad reason to like someone, but it’s not particularly meaningful either.

Anyway, this leads me to my main point. He Tian is used to that sort of shallow attention and plays along with it for his own reasons. He’s used to people nearly applauding him for whatever he does. He’s used to people wanting to be near him. If we think back to his childhood, we’ll see that instead of a mother he had been (apparently) surrounded by maids (?), who were hired to care for him (and that’s apparently why he’s so bad at house chores, haha). 

Case and point: he’s used to being in the center of attention and having people bend over to his whims.

And then… cue Mo Guan Shan, who gives zero fucks about He Tian. Who gives zero fucks about his popularity or his money, who has the balls to tell him to bugger off in the rudest ways possible. Momo doesn’t dance to his tune, and that’s something new to He Tian, something he hadn’t experienced before.

So… Momo comes off as belligerent, dirty-mouthed school bully who is contemptuous towards those rich and powerful (he has reasons for that, but still Momo’s view is tinted through his own childhood experiences). There’s raw honesty in Mo Guan Shan and that initially fascinates He Tian. Let’s admit it: He Tian comes off as being bored or somewhat indifferent towards life. The fact that there’s one person who doesn’t bow and kowtow before him is refreshing. That’s probably one of the reasons why He Tian hires Mo to cook and clean for him in the first place. He’s bored and Mo is the cure to his boredom. A cure that runs his mouth, threatens to knock his teeth out and outright calls him fake and dangerous, haha.

If I were to give a Tvtrope to this one, it would be “I love you because I can’t control you”. He Tian cannot approach MGS normally, like how he would have approached anyone else. Friendly attitude doesn’t work with him. Momo truly reminds me of a stray dog that is used to people treating it so badly that it would bite the hand that tried to pet it. There’s also a matter of MGS being very prideful. That raw honesty of his doesn’t fade away even when He Tian gives him beatings or pays him to do house chores. Sure, he takes the money but he never sugarcoats his attitude, never hides his distaste for He Tian and people like him. He makes it clear that he HATES every second of being near HT or in his apartment, yet he manages to put it aside when needed. 

Anyway, I digress. I believe that fascination on He Tian’s part had been rather instantaneous. It may have very well happened during the fight between XiXi and MGS. Momo has shown that he didn’t follow any rules, and literally had a savagely pragmatic side to him (when he used a stone to hit XiXi). That was probably the moment when HT’s curiosity was aroused. He’s not used to seeing people like that.

The kiss scene is also very telling. From the easiness with which He Tian invades personal bubbles of the others, we can surmise that he thinks it’s no big deal, and if it’s no big deal to him, he literally thinks it’s the same way for everyone else. As I mentioned before, he’s used to people being willing to “give in” to him, hence he seems to have a mindset that he can take whatever he wants (like a spoiled brat, haha) and that nobody ever would mind — precisely because they are willing to begin with. This fails with MGS. Not only he reacts violently, he begins crying. That’s absolutely not the kind of reaction He Tian was expecting; you can blatantly see it written all over his face. He even asks Momo if he finds HT disgusting. 

I believe that’s when He Tian actually felt a pang of guilt for his doings. The way Mo Guan Shan reacted is extremely human and understandable. Someone he DESPISED came up and forcefully pushed their tongue into his mouth, forced him into a kiss that is by all means just another taunt or a joke, not to mention that by the looks of it, it was his first kiss — something that in many cultures is considered to be nearly sacred. And He Tian probably for the first time in his life experienced a rejection. He wanted someone who didn’t want him, and there’s nothing his cool reputation or money could do about it. He also realized that he disgusted somebody — also something new to him. The novelty of it all, the unexpected guilt — these are the new feelings in his otherwise stale daily life. Mo Guan Shan made him experience something dramatically different.

Another point is that there are rather obvious parallels drawn between Momo and that puppy He Tian used to care for. He saved that puppy from a violent mountain torrent and nursed it back to health, just like he saved Mo from She Li and the angry mob later. He Tian’s failure to protect that puppy from “death” (like He Cheng made him believe) is one of the unresolved issues of his past, which he tries to rectify (or I should rather say, prevent from repeating itself) with Mo Guan Shan. Subconsciously he might be projecting that dog onto Mo Guan Shan, although he seems to be very much aware of his own associations, as he calls Momo his puppy.

During the time He Tian spends taunting and forcing Mo to do stuff, he learns things that make him admire Mo. Like Mo’s refusal to sugarcoat his attitude, the fact that he’s shouldering a heavy financial burden, that he’s actually extremely hardworking, that he has pride and doesn’t entertain shallow ideas of being someone’s monkey on a display even for a princely reward. He Tian discovers traits that he likes. He Tian discovers that under that hard-shell hides someone very honest and raw.

Lastly, if you think about it, Momo and He Tian are somewhat very similar: both of them have been marked by isolation. Mo has been ostracized because of his father’s imprisonment, and grew up being mistreated by likes of She Li and possibly looked down on due to his poverty. He’s withdrawn into a shell out of fear of being hurt, and he the way he views others is marked by suspicion and trust issues. He’s used to people acting nasty to him and, as sad as it sounds, to Mo this is a normal occurrence. What’s abnormal and suspicious is when somebody pulls a random act of kindness on him. And that’s what makes him think “why? what’s their agenda? what’s the catch?”. He Tian, on the other hand, is isolated because of his money and family influence. People who surround him are sycophants, those fangirls and fanboys, whereas in reality not only they don’t care for who he is, they probably wouldn’t even believe if he admitted to being a broken bird. Cause that’s unfathomable, right? Someone who has been born with a silver spoon in their mouth cannot be unhappy or hurting or alone. On top of that, he also has experienced his trust shattered, by his older brother, no less. He feels betrayed. He Tian is just as lonely — if not more — as Momo. So I guess that makes them — two coyotes from the same hill? Or how that Chinese “two peas in the pod/birds of a feather flock together” saying goes, haha. But even still, Momo has something that He Tian never had: someone to love and fight for (Mo’s mom), a home where he’s cherished. I think on subconscious level He Tian craves that, and Momo enables him to vicariously live that life he never had. Does it even make sense? xD

At which point He Tian’s playing around grew into something more serious? I think the kiss episode was akin to a bucket of cold water doused over He Tian’s head that made him reconsider some of his ways. What really triggered his desire to help MGS was probably the plot devised by She Li and the consequent fight. It may have made him suspect that MGS with his financial issues is far more vulnerable to shady vultures than he initially thought and that MGS is walking on an edge here. A little push to the wrong side and he would end up in deep shit. It’s after that fight that He Tian realizes how much Momo is shouldering by himself, and it’s then when we see him try helping him, like getting him a part-time job in that photography studio. Incidentally, it’s also when he’s started to find out Momo’s other sides. Like him being industrious, or unwilling to entertain an idle crowd of onlookers, etc.

Undoubtedly, He Tian’s feelings grew after the mob fight, where Momo got badly injured. We actually see him scared of losing MGS. Not to mention his consequent visit to his father — well they do say absence makes the heart grow fonder. It’s also clear to me that Momo’s display of care (during He Tian’s nightmare) had a big impact on HT. That’s when his violent tendencies of forcing Mo gradually fizzled out and became a lot more playful.

So all in all, He Tian probably started to gain feelings once he realized that Momo had his reasons to act like a delinquent, and that underneath it all there lay a person with integrity, who had been simply disenchanted by life and the circumstances that befell on his shoulders.

Whelp, that’s again a long-ass post. These are but my speculations and I don’t aspire for it to be 100% accurate, but I think I jammed in most of my ideas here.

[thatmultifandomhoe]

Strawberry Cream and BBQ - 22

Pairing: Hybrid Hoseok and Human Reader

Overview: Your best friend knows she can count on you for anything, so when she asks you to watch her hybrid while she’s gone for a study abroad trip for four months, you can’t say no. But when these four months are over, things have changed in a way no one expected.

Word Count: 7,484 (holy fuck y’all)

Genre: Hybrid AU, Fluff, Future smut, Angst, Best friends to Lovers

Warning: Angst and Fluff for this week y’all.

Master List

Sneak Peak - Part 1 - Part 2 - Part 3 - Part 4 - Part 5 - Part 6 - Part 7 - Part 8 - Part 9 - Part 10 - Part 11 - Part 12 - Part 13 - Part 14 - Part 15 - Part 16 - Part 17 - Part 18 - Part 19 - Part 20 - Part 21 - Part 22 - Part 23 - Part 24 - Part 25 (Final) - Move in Day: A SC&BBQ Drabble

©thatmultifandomhoe Do not repost, translate, or use my stories without permission.

Sipping your coffee, you followed Johnny as he led the way to the library. It was taking longer than expected. Apparently, your ferret hybrid friend was more popular than you realized, having to stop so he could have a brief conversation with each person who came up to say hi and catch up.

“I don’t even know this many people,” you whined after he had stopped yet again to talk to someone.

Johnny shrugged, holding the library door open for you. “What can I say? The people love me.”

You snorted. When he narrowed his gaze at you, you took another sip of coffee and pretended to be interested in the DVD’s that were in the bookcase next to you.

“Anyways,” quickly turning on his heel, he headed towards the Stacks, his footsteps echoing in the empty stairwell. “Thanks for coming with me. I swear this research paper is going to kill me.”

“You’re not allowed to die on me until the semester’s over.”

That got a chuckle out of him. “Will do. By the way. How’s Hoseok?”

Raising an eyebrow, it was your turn to lead Johnny, showing him the way to the hybrid section. He had recruited you for this sole purpose, along with allowing him to bounce ideas off of you and to keep him company.

“He’s good.” Making a left and going up another staircase, you waved your hand to the bookcases that were specifically about hybrids. “He has work today, and then he’s staying late for practice. His solo in the show is coming up and he’s still honing in certain moves, so I’m bringing dinner to him tonight.”

“Aww,” Johnny ruffled your hair as he walked around you, his gaze immediately searching for the books he wanted. “The two of you are so cute, already acting like a mated couple.”

His play on words made you laugh as you walked further, setting your purse and coffee down on a table that was nearby and claiming it.  “I wonder why that is,” you joked, tying your hair up into a ponytail, making the mate mark visible.

“Looks like it’s all healed now.” He handed you a stack of books he was holding and without being asked, you brought them over to the table for him. Out of habit, you reached up to gently rub the mark, softly smiling now that it didn’t hurt to the touch.

“I know. I was kinda getting worried. It just seemed like it was taking so long to heal.”

“Well he did bite you,” Johnny explained, snickering as you smacked his arm once he joined you at the table, setting another pile down. “Again, it’s different for everyone receiving the mark. Nobody has the same body type, and since you’re not a hybrid, your body heals at a slower rate than ours would.”

Your eyebrows furrowed in confusion, and it wasn’t until Johnny glanced up at that he continued to explain. “Since our DNA is combined with that of an animal, we heal a little faster than humans. It’s nothing special though. It’s not like if I were to get a cut on my leg that it’d be gone in an hour.”

“Oh, so not like the werewolves from Twilight then?”

Johnny pressed his lips together, staring down at the book he had open, his head shaking as he made a tsking sound. “Damn Twilight for ruining our hybrid lives.” Looking up for a moment however, he grinned “Why don’t you go ahead and try telling that joke to Hoseok? He is a dog hybrid after all.”

You giggled, reaching over the table for your coffee again. “Nah, my friend Namjoon is a wolf hybrid. I’ll tell them both that.”

The ferret erupted into laughter, nose scrunching up as he leaned back against his chair. “They’ll be hardcore judging you.”

“But their reactions will be worth it,” you pointed out, stealing another sip of coffee before hunkering down into helping him. “So, what are you planning for this paper?”

Hoseok whistled as he walked down the hall to where the front offices were. A week or so ago, an email went around to the dance instructors asking if anyone would be interested in teaching an extra hip hop dance class. It was an afternoon shift and was one of the many free classes that the Dance Studio offered. He wasn’t sure how many kids were planning on showing up – the email mentioned anywhere from ten to twenty – but he knew from past experiences that wasn’t always the case. More often than not, a majority of the kids didn’t show up for fear of being judged, whether it was because they couldn’t afford the class when there would usually be a fee, or because they were hybrids.

Walking into the air-conditioned office, he smiled at his coworkers as he passed, a mixture of humans and hybrids. The class itself didn’t start for another hour, which meant that he had free time to check his emails and eat a snack or two before getting ready to teach. All that time he spent attending the classes the Dance Studio offered, he never once thought he’d be on the other side as an instructor. As much as he owed his life to you and Sue, dancing was his first love.

The way he was able to close his eyes and feel the way his body connected to the music and moved on its own. He loved that while everyone heard the lyrics of the song playing, he heard something else. He heard the emotions, the desperation, the love, the empathy, and he was able to physically portray the story he was being told in a way for others to see. Then when the audience cheered him on, the roaring of the crowd and their applause, well…that’s how he knew he did it right.

He loved every second of it.

“Have you offered him some water?”

Blinking, Hoseok frowned as he turned in the swivel chair to face Jennie. She was a newly hired office assistant and this was only her third week at the Dance Studio. With a file in her hand, she nodded to Carrie, the other office assistant that sat next to her.

“He said he didn’t want one.”

“Who’s this?” Hoseok gently asked, not wanting to be rude about interrupting them.

Jennie just glanced at Hoseok, then pointed out the window to the hallway leading to the front door. Following her finger, his eyes landed on a kid. He was sitting on one of the black chairs with a green backpack held to his chest, staring at the door.

“He’s been there for over an hour,” Jennie said. “He said he was waiting for someone to pick him up.”

Pressing his lips together, he crossed his arms across his chest. The kid had on a red beanie, so the girls weren’t able to realize what he was. But as Hoseok took a deep breath, he could smell it.

He was a hybrid.

The longer he watched, the more he noticed. Every time someone walked by, his grip on his bag would tighten and as the hallway grew loud with the sound and chatter and sudden laughter, he would flinch. His shirt had dirt stains on it and he was willing to bet that the fabric was thin to the touch.

A pang hit his heart as he stood, exiting out of his emails at the same time. His sudden movements surprised the girls, but he waved away their question. “I’ll be back.” He told him, feet already moving towards the door. “I’m gonna walk him home.”

“You know him?” Carrie asked.

Hoseok shook his head. “No, but I know where he lives. Seen him around a few times.”

That was a lie. It was however, enough for Jennie and Carrie to accept his answer without that sympathetic look in their eyes. He made a short detour to his locker, retrieving his keys and wallet while grabbing a few Cliff bars and water bottles along the way.

It wasn’t that he didn’t trust his coworkers, but he remembered back when he first started coming to the studio. In fact, he had heard more conversations that started with:

“That’s Hoseok. He lives at the shelter, but he’s here more often than not. If you have any questions and don’t know who to ask or where to go, ask him. He knows where everything is and all the regulations.”

Or some variation of that. There was always that mention of him living at the shelter. He came to the Dance Studio to forget that he didn’t have a place to call home, not to be reminded of it.

Double checking to make sure he had everything, he made his way back out to the hallway entrance, not surprised to see that the kid was still sitting there. The closer he got, the easier it was to notice the small lumps underneath his beanie that concealed his ears. “Hey bud,” Hoseok gently spoke, slowly crouching down in front of him so as to not scare him.

The kid flinched as he stared at Hoseok, his small hands clutching the backpack to his chest. He didn’t look to be much older than ten. If he was even that.

Hoseok wet his lips, offering the kid a smile. “It’s alright. I’m Hoseok, one of the instructors here. What’s your name?” He patiently waited for him to answer, not minding that he was staring at Hoseok’s ears or glancing down at his tail. These were the very things that set them apart from the rest of society, but to each other, it made them equals.

“Samson,” the child softly spoke, his arms relaxing around his backpack as his nose scrunched up for a brief moment.

“Well Samson,” Hoseok repeated, smiling at him. “Do you like to dance?”

Samson nodded, briefly looking down at the floor. “I’m not that good at it.”

Tilting his head, Hoseok sniffed, finally catching a feline scent coming from Samson. “Now don’t say that. I bet you’re really good at dancing.”

He shrugged his tiny shoulders, reaching down to play with a loose string coming from the side of his jeans. The beanie he wore started to slide back, revealing blond hair and when he looked back up, his eyes were a deep blue that reminded Hoseok of the ocean.

“Did someone say you weren’t good at dancing?”

Samson’s bottom lip trembled long enough before he pressed his lips together for Hoseok to figure out on his own. His mind went in multiple directions, trying to figure out if it had been another student and what classes had been offered this morning that Samson could have gone to.

Reaching a hand out, he wiped away the tear that fell down Samson’s cheek. “Hey, it’s okay buddy. Did an instructor tell that to you?”

Despite flinching when Hoseok first arrived, Samson leaned into his hand, the hybrid instincts in him taking control. Even though they were different hybrid breeds, Samson was still a child who needed reassuring. “N-no.”

“Was it another kid taking the class with you?” Hoseok gently prodded, noticing how Samson wasn’t as guarded. With another nod from him, he sighed. The Dance Studio didn’t usually have issues with bullying, normally when working with kids they tended to be more understanding and opening to people and hybrids, but there was always a handful that would come in and they would have to have discussions with the classes about bullying.

“She told me only girls can do ballet.”

Pulled from his thoughts, he was surprised that Samson volunteered this information without having to be asked. Ballet though, that did make a little sense. “Well she’s wrong. Boys can do ballet if they want. You know, one of my best friends has been studying ballet since he was really young. He’s branched off into contemporary dancing, but he started with ballet.”

With a little sniff, Samson leaned off of Hoseok’s palm, reaching up to rub at his eyes. “Really?”

“Yeah, Jimin loves to dance. He sometimes stops in when he can and joins in on a class or teaches one.” Getting an idea, Hoseok smiled at the kid. A part of him wanted to reach up and ruffle his hair – he was an adorable child – but he figured Samson was wearing the beanie to hide his ears. “How about this? I can talk to my friend and see if he can come in sometime and help you out. Does that sound like a good idea?”

His blue eyes widened at Hoseok’s suggestion, almost as if no one had ever promised him such a thing before. Like no one had made him a promise, ever.

“But-” Hoseok quickly added, pointing a finger at Samson. “You gotta promise me that the next time someone tells you that you can’t dance, that you won’t listen to them. You shouldn’t stop doing something that you love just because of someone else’s opinion. Okay?”

There was a hint of hesitance in his eyes, but as he stared at Hoseok, Samson found himself nodding with a soft ‘okay,’ and a smile. Maybe it was because Hoseok was a hybrid like himself that he was relaxing, nowhere near as tense like he had been when he first sat down an hour ago.

The front door to the Dance Studio opened again, a stream of sunlight entering the hallway and covering Samson and Hoseok in the light before it closed shut, a group of people walking and chatting towards the locker rooms. It reminded Hoseok of why he originally come over in the first place.

“Samson, do you want me to walk you back to where you’re staying?” He purposely avoided the word home. He wasn’t one hundred percent positive, but he was pretty certain that Samson lived at one of the Adoption Centers. He was too young to be living in the Homeless Center, and Hoseok hoped that he’d never have to live there. That was a life he never wished on anyone, hybrid or human.

He didn’t respond right away. Instead, his small hands clutched at his backpack again as he looked down, prolonging his answer. It was a sight that made Hoseok’s heart crack. He was just a child who deserved much more than this society was giving him. He shouldn’t be living in a place that held so much uncertainty, but in a home filled with love.

Finally, he looked up with hopeful eyes. “Can you carry me? Please?”

Hoseok pressed his lips together to suppress the wave of emotions that wanted to overcome him, not just for his benefit, but for Samson’s. The sadness would have been too much for him to handle. “You bet I can. And before I forget, these are for you.” He held up the Cliff bars that he had almost forgotten about and the water bottles, handing them to Samson.

He watched as the child put them in his bag, and while he did so, Hoseok was able to see in the backpack. Extra clothes, a blanket, and a stuffed teddy bear lay packed away. Just enough to fill the bag but not too heavy that he couldn’t carry it.  Please don’t let him live at the Homeless Center, he thought to himself. He’s just a kid.

Once zipped back up, Hoseok had Samson wrap his arms around his neck and as he stood, Samson wrapped his legs around his torso allowing Hobi to hold him tightly. He ignored the whispered conversations that the employees were having about the two of them, instead simply focusing on getting the kid in his arms back to where he was staying.

“So, Samson,” Hobi quietly asked after they were outside. “Do you always hide your tail and ears?”

The little boy had his head resting on Hoseok’s shoulder, tired from the dancing he had done earlier, only now just feeling it since he was relaxed and felt safe enough in Hoseok’s arms to do so. “Yeah. People always stare when they see them. Kids always tug on them too.”

Hoseok winced in sympathy, remembering all to well the tugs he had suffered through growing up. Carly may not have tugged on his tail, but the friends she had over tended to do whatever they pleased to do. Back then, his cries had fallen on deaf ears. “I used to hide my tail and ears too,” he murmured, gently rubbing Samson’s back.

Stopping at the cross walk, he leaned his body weight on his left foot as he pressed the button. The weather was finally warming up and everyone was walking in shorts and tee-shirts, gleefully abandoning the winter jackets for the brief moment. It was just one freak heat wave before the temperatures went back down again.

“Really?”

“Really. For a long time, I was scared. Being a hybrid nowadays isn’t like how it was when I was a kid.”

The light turned red as a white walking figure appeared on the light post across the street, but Hoseok still looked both ways to make sure that there weren’t any speedsters before walking across the street. “It wasn’t until three years ago that I got adopted. She’s really nice and took me in when no one else would look twice at me, and because of her, I was able to meet my mate.”

Samson squirmed and Hoseok tightened his grip on the boy until they were safely back on the sidewalk. He had shifted so that he was no longer resting his head on Hoseok’s shoulder, but straightening up so he could look up the older hybrid. “Mates are real?”

The question was so pure and innocent, that it had Hoseok chuckling. “Yes Samson, mates are real.” Glancing up, he could see the Adoption Center from down the street. With a nod towards the building, Hobi pointed at it so Samson would see what he was gesturing to. “Is that where you’re staying buddy?”

Samson barely glanced at the Adoption Center before quietly nodding, resting his head back down on Hobi’s shoulder as a very soft, cat like mewl came from him. Only ten feet away from where they were standing was an empty street bench. The area wasn’t crowded with foot traffic, so making a change in his plans, Hoseok settled down on the bench and moved the little boy onto his lap.

There was a sniffle as he curled against Hoseok’s torso. Despite the situation they were in, Hoseok couldn’t help it when he smiled. Samson was very much like a little kitten. Hugging him, he gently kissed the top of his head, and waited. What Samson didn’t know, was that the Adoption Center that he was staying at, was the last one that Hoseok had lived in before he decided he had enough. If his memory served him right, it was a fairly decent place with nice people working there. He had simply been at the end of his rope.

“Do you wanna know why I dance?”

It was a random question to pose to a child, but it was the first thing that came to mind. Apparently, that worked, because Samson was looking up at Hoseok with watery eyes. He gently wiped away the tears with his thumb. There were multiple reasons why, but he always remembered the main reason he started dancing in the first place.

“Because it made me feel like I was in control.” Leaning back against the bench, he set Samson’s backpack next to his thigh. “I got sent to multiple Adoption Centers growing up. I was always moving around, and the people, and hybrids, weren’t always nice to me. But when I danced however, it felt like I was the one making the choices and not someone else who thought they knew what was best for me. It eventually led me to meeting people who enjoyed dancing too, and they understood what it was like to randomly bust a move when the right song came one the radio. Dancing is ultimately, what gave me my first family. They weren’t people who decided that I was the right fit for them, but they were people who made me feel like I belonged, and I wanted to be with them. Does that make sense to you Samson?”

Hoseok wasn’t sure how much of this conversation Samson would remember, or even understand despite his attempt to make it simple. But if he had someone tell him something like that – or anything along those lines – when he was younger, it would have made sleeping along in the bedrooms at the Adoption Center a little easier. It would have hurt a little less all those times when families would come looking for a hybrid to adopt but walked right by him.

The fabric of Samson’s jeans bunched up as he leaned forward, bringing his backpack into his lap. Eyebrows scrunching together, he carefully unzipped the backpack, but to Hoseok’s surprise, he didn’t take anything out. Instead he slid the beanie off his head to reveal two small blond and orange cat ears. They twitched after being cooped up in that hat, flicking in every which direction to capture the sounds of people walking, the fluctuation of voices, and beeping of cell phones.

It wasn’t until the beanie was in his bag and was zipped up again that Samson looked at Hoseok. “There’s a guy and girl in dance,” he softly spoke. “And they’re nice to me. They like the Avengers too.”

Giggling, Hoseok hugged Samson to his chest and kissed the top of his head with a scratch at the base of his cat ears; the vibrations of Samson’s purr going through both of their bodies. “That’s good Samson, that’s really good buddy. Next time you come to the Dance Studio, just ask for me and I’ll come visit if I’m not teaching. We can hangout during breaks, and you can bring your friends if you want too.”

After a few more well-deserved scratches, Hoseok gathered Samson on his hip once more and slung the backpack over his shoulder, heading towards the Adoption Center. Upon entering, Hoseok was hit with memories that he hadn’t been expecting. It was exactly like he had last seen it.

The walls were painted a light sky blue as white shelves with trinkets and collars for hybrids lined the walls, organized by specific breed of hybrid. The counter was in the right-hand corner with the register. Behind it, a grandmotherly woman sat on a stool with a clip board in hand as she filled out paperwork. He knew that to the doorway on the left led to the rooms that the hybrids lived in, and from there if he went straight and made a right, he’d be in the common area.

“Samson, wasn’t Angie supposed to pick you up?” The grandmotherly woman raised an eyebrow as she stood up, surprised to see the child being carried in by another hybrid.

Samson simply shrugged, his arms tightening around Hoseok’s shoulders for a brief moment. “I don’t know, Carrie brought me there, Mrs. Gilly.”

Mrs. Gilly sighed, sparing a glance at Hoseok. It wasn’t until then that she really looked at him. There was something different about him, a nagging feeling in the back of her mind, but she could have sworn that she recognized him. Hybrids were always coming in and out of the Adoption Center, so it was possible that he may have stayed there, but it was more than that.

Hoseok however, remembered Mrs. Gilly. Her curly grey hair was now straightened and pulled up into a bun on the back of her head, a pair of pencils stuck in to hold it together. Wire framed glasses sat on top of her head, and a coat of red lipstick was painted on her lips. If he got any closer, he’d be able to smell the all too familiar baby powder that was her scent. He was never sure if that was just Mrs. Gilly’s natural scent, or the scent that all old people acquired after turning sixty. She had been one of the few bright memories that he was able to recall from his moving around in the Adoption Centers.

“It’s alright Mrs. Gilly,” Hoseok intervened, not wanting Samson to get into any trouble. “He had been waiting for someone to pick him up, but our staff noticed that he had already been waiting over an hour, so I volunteered to bring him back.”

His voice struck a chord with Mrs. Gilly. She knew that voice, but back then, there had been such resentment lacing his voice. Reaching for her glasses – it took a couple pats above her head before she was able to locate them – Mrs. Gilly slid them back on, and blinked.

“Hoseok? Is that you?” Placing her hand on her chest, Mrs. Gilly smiled as she stepped closer to the counter.

It was his turn to smile, nodding as he moved next to the counter to set Samson’s backpack down. “It’s me, Mrs. Gilly. How have you been?”

“Still doing the same job even though I should have retired about ten years ago,” Mrs. Gilly joked.

Hoseok laughed. Any tension that had been there when entering the Adoption Center slipped out of his shoulders. “You kidding? If you left, this place would never be the same.”

Mrs. Gilly raised an eyebrow, taking a moment to look at Samson before meeting Hoseok’s. “Samson, why don’t you go to your room? You look tired hun.”

Samson, not catching the look that she had given Hoseok, nodded in agreement. He was tired, there was no doubt about that, and taking a nap didn’t sound like a bad idea. With one last hug to Hoseok, and then one to Mrs. Gilly, Hobi lowered him to the ground and handed him his backpack, watching him fondly waddle through the doorway before finally disappearing from sight.

“How did you get him to take that beanie off?” Mrs. Gilly figured that he had something to do with it. “He never goes outside without it on.”

She hasn’t changed a bit, he thought, licking his lips as he scratched the base of his dog ear. With a shrug, he smiled. “Just that I had once been in a similar situation, and that he shouldn’t be ashamed of who he is.”

Mrs. Gilly, a woman who had a heart of gold, gently patted his hand. “Just like how you needed someone to tell you that?”

If there was anything that he knew about Mrs. Gilly, it was that she was always straight to the point, and somehow, she always knew more than what was being said. Crossing his arms, his smile softened as his gaze went back to the doorway. He wondered if his feet would automatically recall the path to his old room that he used to share with the other hybrids at the time. “Honestly, if I hadn’t of left, I don’t think I’d be where I am today.” Without missing a beat, his thoughts wandered back to Strawberry, Sue, his friends and coworkers at the Dance Studio.

He didn’t see it, but Mrs. Gilly was smiling at him. It was obvious that a good life followed Hoseok. Maybe not right away, but it came to him eventually. There wasn’t that resentment in his tone anymore, and if she was seeing correctly, there was a glow around him that came from happiness and love.

Straightening up, Hoseok looked back at her, prepared to ask about Samson, when something caught his eye. There was a rack of brightly colored pamphlets on the wall behind her with bold print. One advertised adopting a hybrid, another for fostering. There were multiple ones for what to do when your hybrid is going through heat or expecting and various other things, but one in particular caught his eye. It was a simple green pamphlet, but what it was advertising made his breath catch in his throat.

             What Happens When Your Hybrid Finds Their Mate?

“Uh, Mrs. Gilly? Can I um…can I see that pamphlet? The green one.” He didn’t usually stutter, but his mind raced with all the possibilities, and with everything that had been happening lately, this could very much have an affect on his life with Strawberry and Sue.

Looking over her shoulder, Mrs. Gilly gave him a curious look, but retrieved them pamphlet for him. “For you or for a friend?”

“For my mate and I,” he answered, opening up the pamphlet. “She’s human.”

The pamphlet was broken up into equal sections. The first explained what a mate was to the hybrid and what was expected to happen. The second went on to discuss what would happen if the owner was the mate to the hybrid, but the third…the third was exactly what he was looking for.

What Happens When Your Hybrid Mates with a Human or Another Hybrid?

It is common for hybrids to mate with fellow hybrids, but hybrids can also take humans as their mates.

There are TWO paths that you can take with your hybrid.

The First path, also known as The Mate Act, states the following:

As the owner, you are agreeing to become a guardian to the hybrid.

The hybrid will carry documentation stating who his owner was, but is mated to their mate and lives with them.

The hybrid and their mate are (in the hybrid world) married, so they will be considered a married couple, especially if the mate bears the mate mark.

Any future decisions will be made between the hybrid and their mate.

Paperwork for The Mate Act can be picked up at the Courthouse, doctor’s offices that specialize in hybrids, Adoption Centers, and Homeless Centers for Hybrids.

Signatures from the owner, hybrid, and the mate are required for the paperwork to be processed and can be returned to the Courthouse between the hours 9am-5pm during the week.

The Second path, while not ideal and is for only extreme cases where the owner believes the hybrid will be in danger, is known as The Hybrid Owner Act which states the following:

The owner remains as an owner and retains their rights to the hybrid.

As the owner, you are agreeing to limited contact between the hybrid and their mate.

The hybrid will not live their mate, but will instead continue living with the owner even if the mate bears the mate mark.

The exception to this is when the hybrid is experiencing their heat.

Any future decisions will continue being made by the owner.

If this path is decided, after a period of time for discussion and thinking over, paperwork for the Hybrid Owner Act can be picked up at the Courthouse, doctor’s offices that specialize in hybrids, Adoption Centers, and Homeless Centers for Hybrids.

Signatures from only the owner and hybrid are required for the paperwork. If the circumstances are extreme, only the owner’s signature will be required to be processed and can be returned to the Courthouse between the hours 9am-5pm during the week.

Hope had been building up in his chest when he first started reading, for once it seemed like the law was on the side for hybrids. There was actually a chance for him and Strawberry. The further he read however, it felt like a sledgehammer was hitting his body at every angle possible. As much as he wanted to have faith in Sue, to trust that she would be understanding and accepting, he was afraid that with the option of the Hybrid Owner Act, she would take him away without listening.

Without thinking, he slammed his fist into the counter, eyes squeezing shut in an attempt to calm down as his tail repeatedly hit the back of his leg in anxiety.

Mrs. Gilly jumped at the slam, deciding that it was best if she remained quiet for a moment and letting Hoseok have the chance to think. With that in mind, she opened the drawer underneath the register, shifting through the many packets of paperwork the Adoption Center was required to have on hand. It only took a few seconds to locate the one she wanted, and without speaking, set it next to his hand.

“You know,” Mrs. Gilly softly spoke. “Even though we’re required to have all copies of each form, I always tell people that we’ve run out of the Hybrid Owner Act. There’s no reason for an owner to have that much control.”

Hoseok blinked, seeing the paperwork for the Mate Act sitting in front of him. “She already has my mate mark,” he whispered, his voice cracking as he ran a hand through his hair in a weak attempt to collect himself. “Strawberry…she’s my entire world. I love her, and she loves me.”

Mrs. Gilly, who tried to keep her emotions together for the sake of the hybrids, felt her own eyes water up as she watched that sliver of hope being ripped away from Hoseok. She didn’t know the specifics, but it was obvious from his reaction, that things weren’t exactly perfect at the moment between his owner and mate.

Giving his hand a squeeze, she waited for him to look at her. For a brief moment, it was like she was seeing the old Hoseok. The one who had run away from the Adoption Center all those years ago because he felt unwanted, and wasn’t meant to be loved. “Then you fight for her Hoseok,” she firmly told him. “You fight for your mate, and you never stop.”

An earbud was in each ear playing your favorite song as you entered the Dance Studio that night, carrying a reusable bag in each hand. One held the lasagna that you had finished making for dinner, the other carried the salad, sodas and dishware.

It was around eight, the building was empty as your footsteps echoed in the almost quiet hallway. The music that you had been playing wasn’t very loud, the earbuds were noise canceling but you were still able to hear the music that Hoseok had pulsating in just the hallway.

Carefully removing the ear buds, your footsteps fell on deaf ears as you entered the room without bothering to knock. As enhanced as his hearing was, there was no possible way that even he heard you knocking with the music as loud as it was. Unlike the last time you came with dinner, this time there was a table against the mirrorless wall and two desk chairs.

Hoseok was still dancing as you set the bags down. The lasagna was plenty hot enough to sit out as he finished practicing for the upcoming show. There were only two months left. The music he had playing was unfamiliar, and it was only when you focused on trying to understand the lyrics that you realized it wasn’t even in English, or his typical rap music. It was catchy and you found yourself nodding along anyway, finishing up with the setting the table and tossing the bags under the table as your hips swayed to the beat.

While you were preoccupied, Hoseok was grinning while he watched you dancing in the mirror, trying his hardest to suppress his laughter. He never liked telling anyone that they couldn’t dance – he literally told Samson to never let anyone say he couldn’t dance – but watching you in the mirror, he knew there was no dancing ability running through your blood. Although, his eyes lowered until they solely focused on your hips. You did have a little rhythm going on there.

The song was nearing its end but he hit replay with the remote, smirking when you didn’t notice what he’d done. From the way you were moving your body like the music was controlling your soul, it was obvious that you weren’t expecting him to sneak up behind you. But when you were moving like you were, how could he not?

Only a few steps behind you, he reached out, pulling you against his body by your hips. You jumped at his sudden presence, but he felt you quickly relax, melting against his chest at his touch.

“Shorty give me whip-whiplash,” Hoseok sang into your ear, laughing when you weakly slapped him.

You didn’t turn around. Instead you kept dancing, not caring that the professional was probably hard core judging you and decided to keep going. The song was catchy as hell. Plus, why wouldn’t you want to grind against your mate?

His groan didn’t go unnoticed when you purposely moved like that against his crotch, his grip tightening on your hips as he buried his face against your neck to nibble the mark.

A spark of heat ignited inside at the touch of his lips, your eyes closing as you leaned even more against him. Every time Hoseok touched you, it felt like you were experiencing summer for the first time, feeling the way the sun kissed your skin and made you feel alive. If this was what it was like now, you could only imagine how it would be five, ten, hell, thirty years from now.

The song slowly came to an end, dragging the two of you out of the music haze that you welcomed, bodies coming to a halt until the only thing to be heard in the room was heavy breathing. Breathlessly giggling, you finally turned around to kiss Hoseok, his arms wrapping around you as the two of you shared brief, but multiple, kisses. The only reason you stopped kissing him was because of your smiles that broke almost every one.

“Well hello to you too,” Hoseok teased, stealing one last kiss.

“Come on,” taking his hand, you pushed him in the direction of his chair and sat down in your own, cracking open a can of Coke. “Let’s eat before you decide to give me a dance lesson.”

He scrunched up his nose and shook his head, eyes scanning the food that you spent the last hour or two putting together. “I don’t know baby; I think you may be a little too far gone for lessons. You do know how to move your hips though, and I was very impressed with your show.” His lips curled into his signature heart smile, the same one that sent your heart racing as he held his hand out for your plate to scoop a piece of lasagna onto.

“Shut up,” you shyly spoke, the large smile on your face saying otherwise as you filled a bowl with salad before passing that over to him. The whole scene, while filled with sexualized energy only seconds ago, was still intimate. Intimate in that having a late homemade dinner at Hoseok’s work felt like normal. Like Johnny had pointed out earlier in the Stacks, it reminded you of married life.

You never wanted this feeling to end.

Sensing content and happiness coming from you, Hoseok relaxed even more knowing you weren’t stress or worried in some shape or form. He wanted that to last before he told you the news he discovered. The pamphlet in his front pocket suddenly feeling like a million bricks were sitting on his thigh as he ate. However, that was a fleeting thought.

“Any stories from work today?” You innocently asked. You shifted in your seat, bringing your left leg up onto the chair so your elbow was on your knee as you worked on your salad. He usually saved a few stories about the kids that he taught, whether they were his regular kids or new ones that came in for a specific class, or came in for the first time to dance in general. Plus, after being cooped up in the Stacks with Johnny for the majority of the day, you were curious how his day had gone.

Well, there was a kid, and there was a story, but he wasn’t sure how you’d react to the ending. Pushing around a tomato, Hoseok sighed, leaning against the wall when he finally looked up at you. There was no prolonging the happiness that you were radiating. Reaching into his jeans pocket, he pulled out the folded pamphlet and opened it to the side that pertained to the two of you, setting it next to your plate. “I went to the last Adoption Center that I had stayed at earlier today,” he softly spoke, watching as you took it with curious eyes. “They’re called, The Mate Act, and The Hybrid Owner Act.”

You tilted your head and glanced back up at Hoseok before looking at it. The font was large enough to scan the top part in seconds, gasping as you looked back at him. “Hobi…this…this means that-”

“That Sue would no longer be my owner but my guardian, and I wouldn’t have to live with her.” He softly interrupted. He leaned forward and slid your hand between his palms, a gentle smile making his lips curl up at the corners. “It means that we can live together, that we can move if we decide to, have the traditional wedding like I know you’ve always wanted, and even start a family of our own. That is, if we can take The Mate Act.”

“If we can? Why wouldn’t we take it?”

It was the perfect option for the two of you. This Act guaranteed a future with Hoseok, why wouldn’t you take it?

“Because we need Sue’s signature. But Sue doesn’t need your signature for The Owner Act, and if she decides to take that one, she doesn’t need mine either.”

Blinking in confusion, you watched as Hoseok’s smile slipped until it completely disappeared. In your excitement you had skipped over the second half of the pamphlet, which included The Hybrid Owner Act. Your grip slackened on Hoseok’s hands as you read, and reread, even reading it a third time to see if this was real.

“The Hybrid Owner Act doesn’t apply to us,” you argued, holding the paper up with your free hand. As much as Sue seemed to be acting unlike herself, she wouldn’t…at least you hoped, she wouldn’t go so far to the extreme to cut off contact between you and Hoseok.

Hoseok swallowed the lump in his throat, looking away from you and at the food set out. You had worked so hard to make dinner and bring it to the Dance Studio, working around his practice schedule and understanding how much the annual show meant to him.

“I just want to be prepared,” he answered, his voice strained when he looked back up, revealing how watery his eyes had gotten. “Baby…Strawberry, I don’t know what Sue is going to do. I don’t know if she’ll be pissed or happy, and I am hoping, god I am hoping, that she’ll be understanding. Neither paperwork needs to be signed right away – if need be, we can wait so she can adjust – but if for some reason she picks The Hybrid Owner Act…”

Wetting his lips, he raised your hand to kiss your knuckles repeatedly. He absolutely hated having to have a backup plan for if the worst happened. But all he could think about was what Mrs. Gilly told him back at the Adoption Center. “We’re gonna get a lawyer, and we’ll fight. We’ll fight and if we have to, we’ll fight to have you become my new owner, so that we can be together. But this is only as a last case scenario. Trust me Strawberry, I’m really hoping that we’re only overthinking everything and she’ll understand and be happy for us.”

Your grip tightened in Hoseok’s hold for a second before releasing it. His eyebrows raised at your actions, but when you stood and made your way around the table, he shifted in his seat and opened his arms as you sat on his lap. With a gentle kiss to his forehead, your fingers slipped through his hair to gently scratch the base of his ears. The sensation had him as a puddle at your touch, coming to rest his head on your chest while hugging you. For the first time since your relationship started, you were the one comforting Hoseok, and not the other way around.

“I’m going to fight for us Strawberry,” Hoseok promised, taking your hand to kiss your palm. “I will always, fight for us.”

To say that you weren’t scared was an absolute lie. But as you held Hoseok, you pushed back the tears and focused on him, on being there and reassuring him. “I know babe,” you murmured instead, leaning your cheek against his head. “I know you will.”

It warmed your heart to hear him say that, but you were hoping that it would never come down to that.

[mst3kproject]

622: Angels Revenge

I would pay folding money for a half-hour gag reel of all the times Mike swung too hard or in the wrong direction or the wind was wrong and he took off Crow’s head.  It had to happen at least twice.  MST3K was not known for the sturdiness or sophistication of their props and we love them for it.

A fourteen-year-old boy steals some stuff from a drug dealer who looks an awful lot like Ben Murphy.  In revenge, Fake Ben Murphy and Actual Jack Palance beat the shit out of him. This upsets both the kid’s sister, an up-and-coming musician, and his schoolteacher, and they hatch a plot to destroy the drug depot.  They recruit a few friends – a Hollywood stuntwoman, a karate teacher, a model, a cop, and one of the teacher’s students – and steal some ammo from a bunch of neo-Nazis, and then it’s on to beat up the druggies!

I guess the idea behind this movie is fairly sound – a group of women get together to do a job the men aren’t willing to do.  The question of just why the men aren’t willing to do it is an open one.  Do the drug dealers own the police or something?  I dunno.  At the time it came out, Angels Revenge was panned as a ripoff of Charlie’s Angels, which it most unquestionably is, but there’s a reason that was a successful formula: women enjoy movies in which women kick ass, and men enjoy looking at boobs.  In the right hands, it would still have been a ripoff, but it could have been a much better ripoff.  Unfortunately, the grubby hands it got into were those of Greydon Clark.

The opening of this movie is a series of annoying missteps. A group of women we do not know (we’re not even sure how many there are) invade a gas station in the middle of nowhere and start blowing stuff up.  Their names are given in the opening shot but not in a way that makes them memorable. One character apparently dies, the others go on without her, and then she reappears to save the day.  None of this makes much of an impression beyond ‘oh, look, tits’, but we can tell they’re trying to get into the main building.  We get into it just enough that we want to see what’s inside, and then bam. Freeze-frame, narration.

The time for this would have been about five minutes earlier. Seriously, this ‘action opening’, obviously patterned after things like James Bond, goes on for five minutes at least in which we don’t really know what’s happening or who any of these characters are.  If we had just one to focus on that might help, but we’re watching six or seven of them run around doing different things and we don’t even know what their plan is so we can’t tell if it’s going right or wrong.  The whole sequence should have been either massively cut down to just enough to tell us action is happening before it goes into the flashback, or just moved in its entirety to its proper place later in the narrative.

Then when we finally do start meeting the characters, the first one we meet is not the one who began narrating a moment earlier!  It’s the beat-up kid’s sister, the one who so-far looked like she was in charge. Finding out she’s secondary in the whole plot is a bit of whiplash, and as far as I can tell the main purpose of the Vegas sequence (besides showing us her midriff) is to give a cameo to Arthur Godfrey as himself.

From there the rest of the characters are introduced and we finally find out who the hell they all are and what they bring to the table.  April, the teacher, is the mastermind. Michelle, the singer, is the backer. Terry, the stuntwoman, is their engineer.  Keiko, the karate teacher, is the hand-to-hand fighter.  Maria, the model, is a distraction.  Elaine, the cop, is the tactician.  And Trish, the student, is… uh… somebody wanted a kid in this movie. The point is, if you go back and watch the opening sequence after the bit where everybody’s introduced, it’s much more involving and makes infinitely more sense!  They could have had five minutes of action, but they gave us five minutes of boredom just by putting it in the wrong spot!

After some of the movies I’ve see, incidentally, it is a point very much to this movie’s credit that I remember everybody’s names.  Well done, Angels Revenge!

That does not, however, outweigh the many other things the movie does badly.  The actresses are mere eye candy, hired for their looks and not for their talent.  They stand around in ‘sexy’ poses without bras on, and recite their lines like they’re in an eighth-grade play.  Even so, they’re better than the men, who are just as bad at acting but aren’t distractingly nice to look at.  The best actor in the entire movie is Alan Hale Jr and he’s only got about three lines.

Then there are the bits where the movie tries to be funny.  The Neo-Nazis are supposed to be funny, which I’m honestly okay with – Hitler hated being made fun of and so it’s the responsibility of all right-thinking citizens to mock him and his movement whenever possible.  But they aren’t funny, just a bunch of fat clumsy guys with Hitler mustaches.  I don’t know how people who make movies fail to understand that in order to be funny, characters have to do funny things.  Both the Neo-Nazis and other ‘comic’ male characters in the movie are presented simply as ‘lol, men are oafs, right girls?’ without any attempt at an actual punchline.

Another running gag is April, who insists she’s a Very Organized Person, and her over-full purse.  That’s not really funny, but I can’t argue with it.  Two years ago I bought a bag big enough to hold my knitting and I haven’t seen the bottom of it since.  Someday I’ll be rooting around for something, fall in, and end up in Narnia.

The sequence in which they rob the Nazis does provide some action and acts as a trial run to show us the women can work together successfully.  But we already saw that in the out-of-place opening sequence, so it’s not really establishing anything we didn’t already know.  The fact that we’ve also seen what comes after also tells us that they will succeed at this mission with nobody getting hurt (not that these idiots they’re robbing are in any way a threat), and sucks all the suspense out.  Man, the longer I think about it, the more ways in which that opening makes the movie worse!  Whose idea was that anyway?

The characters are stereotypes, boring at best and deeply offensive at worst. The black woman is six feet tall and works on vehicles, because black women are butch!  The Asian girl knows martial arts and uses a katana, because she’s Asian (and although she’s said to be from Vietnam, she has a Japanese name… it’s possible to come up with a backstory for her that incorporates this, but that’s not my job as an audience member)!  The white women are bitches and bimbos, more distinguishable by their hair than by their personalities.  April is presented as ‘the mousy one’ simply by not wearing lipstick on a heist.

I guess by having tough women and weak men, the writers thought they were being feminist, or at least appealing to feminists, but that’s not how feminism works on any level.  Strength and intelligence isn’t pizza – you getting an extra slice doesn’t mean I don’t get one.  Portraying the male antagonists as buffoons is actually deeply misogynistic, because it suggest that women can’t even play unless the men are idiots.  The point of feminism is that women are people just as much as men are, and deserve to be treated as such – by other women, by men, and by screenwriters.

Let me illustrate with an example from the opposite extreme: Elinor and Marianne Dashwood from Sense and Sensibility are sisters who each need to get married for the sake of their financial security. That might seem a very sexist premise for a story – and it is, but only because it takes place in a sexist culture. Elinor and Marianne have distinct personalities and different ideas of what makes a happy marriage, and they make decisions as individuals, not simply because they are ‘women’.  Each makes her own mistakes and learns her own life lessons, and the narrative explores what society has taught them to expect out of life versus the less romantic reality.  They are two human beings.  The characters in Angels Revenge, by contrast, are a bunch of pretty props.

It would have been so easy to make something actually enjoyable out of Angels Revenge.  As I noted above, it uses a successful formula and it really could have been a fun little piece of exploitation cinema.  Every decision made along the way, however, seems designed to sabotage it.  It’s badly-written, lifeless, cliched, racist, and based on a fundamental misunderstanding of feminism.  They hired women with no acting experience to play the main characters, and can’t decide which of those characters is our heroine. And of course, they edited it together in the wrong order, confusing and boring us and undermining what should have been important and suspenseful scenes.  This sort of thing just leaves me frustrated and annoyed.  You’re making a movie, people!  Could you not put a little fucking effort in?!

[barbariccia]

Jacob: Tough son of a bitch. Didn’t think he’d be up yet.

man, shepard is just so happy that garrus is up and about again, it makes my heart squeeze. ;w;

garrus’ armour is pretty much shot to hell and back, but in true fucking estinien fashion he’s not removing that shit for love nor money - and his face is pretty screwed up as well. he’s got a bandage patch on the right side of his head and neck from now-on, but he’s up and moving, and that’s what’s important.

Garrus:  Nobody would give me a mirror. How bad is it?

Shepard: Hell, Garrus, you were always ugly. Slap some face-paint on there, and no one will even notice.

Garrus: Ha--ah! Don’t make me laugh, damn it. My face is barely holding together as it is.

Garrus: Well, some women find facial scars attractive. Mind you, most of those women are krogan...

jacob salutes and leaves you guys to catch up, and the moment the doors close behind him, garrus starts voicing his concerns.

Garrus: Frankly, I’m more worried about you. Cerberus, Shepard? You remember those sick experiements they were doing?

Shepard: Right now, they’re a necessary evil. I need their resources to get this done.

also, you know, they built us back from nothing and are holding that above our heads, not to mention provided us with a ship and a crew and an AI that would all tattle.

garrus tells us that whatever he’s needed for, he’s fit to do, and he’ll go settle in at the forward batteries of the ship, which will be his main hangout spot during me2, and you can be sure i’m running right after him to have our 2-year catchup session.

i guess considering what happened to the last normandy... yeah, you really can’t.

Garrus: I thought I’d seen every weapon in the galaxy in our fight against Saren. Mercenary work showed me otherwise. And now Cerberus rebuilds the Normandy with a few upgrades to boot. I wish we’d joined up with them sooner.

Shepard: We haven’t joined Cerberus. They’re funding our mission. That’s all.

Garrus: Relax, Shepard. Just a figure of speech.

the translator in the omni-tool doesn’t always work for idioms and the like, leaving turians and humans particularly at a disadvantage with one another considering their cultural differences. it’s pretty cute that garrus has gotten this one right and that shep’s the one misunderstanding.

Garrus: I can’t exactly doubt your judgment. Not after I got my own squad killed.

Shepard: What did your merc squad do? It didn’t sound like you were available for hire.

Garrus: You saw OMega -- it was full of thugs kicking the helpless. I formed my team to kick back. We weren’t mercenaries. At least, nobody was paying us. We made money by taking down slavers, pirates, or gangs that went too far.

Shepard: Doesn’t sound like you made any friends with the gangs.

Garrus: I got three separate merc bands to work together to take me down. My manager at C-Sec would be impressed. It was simple. We’d hit their shipments, disrupt activities. Get under their skin. Make them angry. They’d come charging right into our well-prepared killzone. Crossfire and snipers, clean and surgical. They never stood a chance.

Shepard: Sounds like you were just another gang.

Garrus: Then I’m saying it wrong. We didn’t shake anyone down. No civilian casualties. That was our rule. Every member of my team had lost someone to Omega’s gangs. We weren’t out to get rich. We were out to make thos bastards think twice before murdering someone in the street.

garrus was going cowboy cop toward the end of me1, where we tracked down someone that wasn’t arrested and dealt with in a manner of his liking... but he seems to have taken a step back once the grudge was dealt with and figured out a way to carry on dispensing justice in a manner that wasn’t just going out for revenge. kinda. sure, his team all had grudges against the gangs of omega, but... they probably weren’t the only ones. not that violence for violence’s sake is acceptable, but i can see his reasoning well enough. make the gangs unable to function, pick off the main players, and there’s less problems to deal with on omega.

... he is forgetting that at the top of the chain is aria, though, and in a power vacuum in gang-controlled space it’s likely that someone else would have stepped in without too much fuss and carried on what the main three gangs were doing in the first place, though.

Shepard: Tell me about your squad.

Garrus: There were 12 of us, including me. Former military operatives, C-Sec agents, the usual. Had a salarian explosives expert. Pretty sure he’d spent time in the STG. My tech expert was a batarian, believe it or not. Not the friendliest guy, but he could hack any system ever built.

Shepard: How’d you end up fighting mercenaries on Omega in the first place?

Garrus: I trained to become a Spectre after the Normandy was destroyed, but it didn’t work out. Too much politicking at the Citadel. Nobody was willing to take risks. Omega was filled with criminals nobody else could touch, and there was no red tape to slow me down. It was a perfect fit. People here needed someone to believe in. Someone to stand up to the local thugs.

Shepard: That explains how you started. How’d you end up with a squad?

Garrus: Not too different from how you formed your squad to fight Saren, actually. You prove that you get things done, and people join up. Mercs who wanted to aton. Security consultants tired of playing by the rules. I gave them hope.

Garrus: And now they’re dead. Shows what I know.

Shepard: I’m not sure I understand. What happened?

Garrus: Sidonis asked for my help on a job. When I got to the meeting point, nobody was there. By the time I got back to our hideout, the mercs had killed all but two of my squad. And they didn’t last long.

Shepard: Are you sure it was a betrayal? Maybe they took Sidonis out first.

Garrus: No. I’ve put out feelers with some old contacts. He booked transport off Omega just before the attack. He also cleared out his private accounts before he left. He sold me out and ran.

Shepard: Know where he is now?

Garrus: No, his trail vanished after he leaves Omega. But I’ll keep hunting.

garrus’ evolution from wanting to find and kill dr saleon to wanting to find and kill sidonis is... really not that far of a stretch, actually. he’s a very emotional character, despite what we’re told about turians - that they’re militaristic and follow rules rigidly. his desire to do what’s right drives him as a turian, sure, but under it all there’s a sense of morals that’s completely unwavering. saleon was a bad person not just because of his illegal operations, but because what he was doing ran so counterpoint to what garrus considers moral and correct that the only way to deal with him, in his eyes, was to find him and put him down to keep him from doing it more (since the authorities were clearly no help). and it’s the same here - whatever sidonis’ reasons for his actions, garrus only sees one path before him.

it’s realistic, and it’s dangerous. who watches the watchmen, indeed - at what point does garrus realise that this is how he deals with what he deems immoral? when does death for death cross the line?

naturally, garrus’ loyalty mission is all about sidonis and the typing up of loose ends, so we’ll be coming back to this later on.

[kenzieam]

Not Happening, Doll - Chapter One (Bucky X Levi)

Rating: M (language, violence, eventual smut, angst)

Genre: Drama/Angst

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If I missed any tag requests, I apologize!!

*IF YOU WANT TO BE ADDED OR DELETED FROM THIS LIST, DM ME*

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I KNOW, I KNOW!!! I HAVEN’T FINISHED ALL MY PENDING STORIES AND HERE I AM STARTING A NEW ONE… I CAN’T HELP IT, LOL. COME ALONG FOR THE RIDE.

*****************************************************************************

Levi and Bucky cannot stand each other (or rather, the former Winter Soldier cannot stand to be around the Avenger’s newest member and, like the ass he is, he won’t divulge why) and of course, they get teamed up for a new mission. It’s deep cover this time and not only do they have to work together, they have to pretend they’re MARRIED.

Heaven help them….

****************************************************************************

“No.” The declaration was so abrupt that even Tony was stunned silent. Finally, he managed a disbelieving, “No?“

Bucky nodded once; eyes stubbornly fixed to a corner of the room that nobody currently was occupying, arms crossed firmly across his massive chest.  

“What-the-fuck-why?” Tony asked, voice hardening.

Bucky shrugged, glancing up once to briefly meet the glare of the woman he was referring to. “She’s too new, too green.”

Levi snorted derisively, rolling her eyes so hard Steve worried she’d just seen her brain and he was plagued with a similar impulse.  

“She’s new to us, not this line of work.” Tony’s voice was sharp now, warning the former assassin who only shrugged again, drawing a low snarl of anger from Levi.

“What the hell is this bullshit, Barnes? I gotta bleed for you first? Gotta pass initiation?” Levi’s violet eyes were incandescent, blazing with fury and indignation and Steve wondered idly if she would simply launch herself over the table at Bucky. This wasn’t the first time Bucky had questioned Levi’s abilities in front of the team, but it was the boldest.

“I’m not babysitting-”

“Oh, fuck you Barnes! Who the fuck kicked your amnesiac ass just yesterday in training, huh? Me!” Levi slammed her fist down on the table for emphasis then abruptly turned her attention back to Tony. “I’m not going to work with someone who doesn’t trust me.”

Tony sighed. “I need you to. Nat’s cover might be compromised and I can’t pull Wanda; unless Frosty and Steve are willing to play a gay couple, it’s on you.”  

Levi’s full lip curled and she fixed her blazing glare back on Bucky. “I’ll go, but send me with someone else who’s not a peckerhead.”

Steve had to disguise his sudden snort of laughter with a cough, rolling his chair away to face Clint and Nat. Nat was still disgusted at being grounded, her arms crossed over her chest, while Clint snort fresh coffee out his nose and proceeded to howl like he’d just been hit with an electric cattle prod, prompting Sam to laugh so hard he started choking and needed Steve to whack him on the back. Bucky just glowered; his expression a mix of begrudging amusement and boredom.

Tony shook his head faintly, glancing upwards to implore for strength. “It has to be him; he’s got the most experience with this type of infiltration work. We need absolute secrecy and camouflage to be successful.”

“And we have to pose as a married couple?” Levi clarified. At Tony’s nod, she rolled her eyes again and shot finger guns at Bucky. “There’s no way Captain Siberia can pull that off, affection? Shit, we’ll be blown inside a day.”

Anger joined the boredom in Bucky’s eyes, and something else Steve couldn’t immediately identify. His mouth opened in rebuttal but Steve didn’t wait to hear what came out.

“Stop it.” He commanded. He glared for emphasize at both Bucky and Levi, but let his gaze soften with her. It was no secret that Bucky had made Levi’s transition into this team as rocky as possible and this was finally going too far, even for the benefit of the doubt Steve often seemed to extend his oldest friend’s way. “This is the way it has to be. Bucky, you’re the most experienced in this; Levi, you are more than capable. I know you haven’t had too many opportunities to prove yourself with us yet, but I’ve read your jacket, you can handle this assignment all day.”

Bucky’s face went hard, his eyes darkening. Abruptly he stood and stormed from the room.

“Briefing in an hour! Wheel’s up in three!” Tony bellowed at his retreating back. The slamming door was his only answer.

Steve exhaled and forced a smile as Levi turned to look at him. She raised a brow.

“He’ll come around.” Steve offered weakly and Levi snorted, pushing sharply at the table to spin her chair away.

******************************************************************************************

“You proud of yourself?” Steve demanded, poking his head into Bucky’s room. He only grunted in answer, shoving supplies into a tactical duffel.  

“What is your problem with her, Buck? Levi’s got this-”

“Just drop it; punk.”

“No, I’m curious.” Steve strode past Bucky and flopped down onto his bed, resting his folded arms behind his head; crossing his feet at his ankles he fixed his oldest friend with a baleful eye. “Enlighten me. What is it about Levi that rubs you the wrong way?”

Bucky only sneered, disappearing into his bathroom.  

“She’s enhanced too.” Steve began. “Is that the problem? She’s the last experiment tied to Howard Stark, is that it? She’s new to us but not to this line of work. Fury trusts her; hell, we all do, why don’t you?”

“Why do you?” Bucky shot back; reappearing from the bathroom. “Who knows what SHIELD had her do, all her files were destroyed, why?”

“What about you?!” Steve demanded and was immediately ashamed when Bucky flinched at his words. “We going to start judging people based on their past now? Where does that leave you?” He snapped his mouth shut, already hating himself for going there. “All I mean is, you’re better than your past, and nobody holds it against you; why can’t you give her the same courtesy?”

Bucky fixed Steve with a dark, heavy, hateful glare. “Glass houses, right?” He spat, his voice dripping venom and pain.

“Buck, c’mon-”

“Whatever.” The former assassin stormed out; jaw clenched.  

The briefing was tense. Bucky glowered at nobody and nothing while Levi listened with a grave intensity, flicking occasional glances at Bucky before returning her attention to the information. The mission, while simple, was delicate. Bucky and Levi were going deep undercover, posing as a married couple, to infiltrate and observe a curious abnormality in a small industrial community. It was the type of place where a large corporation had moved in and all but bought the town; most of the residents were employed in the corporation itself, while the rest depended on the worker’s business to survive. The company had been going on a hiring spree in recent months, enlarging its work base to almost double and deep digging had discovered suspicious ties to murky industries overseas, blank parent companies with flowery bullshit names that, if you dug even further, stunk of HYDRA.  

Bucky, to his flat curiosity, was to play a stay-at-home husband, a man who worked from home on computers (children’s book illustration, to Sam’s intense amusement) and rarely left the house while Levi would be the one to actually begin working at the company. While Levi worked to burrow her way into the dealings at the corporation, Bucky would spend his days sneaking around like a thief, planting bugs and wire-taps in the neighborhood that he would then be able to monitor in real time from almost directly on top of.  

The corporation was too legally backed and too savvy to be taken down by anything resembling a government or law enforcement tied investigation and so the here they were, ready to dive in, the old-school way.

“Your backgrounds have been sent to your tablets, memorize them; we’ve got everything up to and including how much the tooth fairy gave you as a kid. Your entire life is there if someone gets suspicious and starts digging.” Tony explained, rubbing his forehead wearily.  

“Did I miss something? Why is nobody asking why we’re sending a former HYDRA agent directly into a suspected snake pit?” Levi broke in suddenly, her voice hard. “I mean, the guy’s a cyborg, it kinda makes you stand out in a crowd.”

Ashamed anger flared in Bucky’s eyes and his lip curled involuntarily. Tony shifted uneasily in his chair, clearly wishing that Levi hadn’t brought up such a sticky point. Steve tensed, ready to intercept if things suddenly turned violent, dimly noting that the rest of the team was doing the same around him. Levi continued to stare levelly at Bucky, one brow raised and Steve admired her balls, they definitely clanged.  

“We don’t really have a choice. We can’t risk an in and out type surveillance, that’s why we gotta go old school. We need someone with the most experience at deep cover and Barnes here has made a living, involuntary as it may have been, at being invisible. He’s also got the real-time experience to evaluate and make determinations on what he picks up, without having to send out communications that might get detected or intercepted. And you’re new enough to the team that no one tied to HYDRA should recognize you. It’s a definite risk but one we need to take.” He paused then and winced as he continued. “Which is also why you have to cut your hair and dye it before you go, Barnes.”

“WHAT?!” Bucky exploded, leaping to his feet.

“Well, Lev’s got a point. Your arm you can hide, that shaggy, greasy mess you call hair, right out there to see.”

“When were you going to tell me this?!”

“You would have known this if you’d read the jacket earlier but you chose to storm out like a toddler.” Tony snapped and Steve groaned quietly. This was falling to shit awfully fast. Bucky was already chafing on a number of points, chiefly being working with Levi, followed closely with being stuck as the mole, burrowing around in the background like vermin and demanding he cut his hair was probably going to be the proverbial straw.

“Your wardrobes are being sent ahead with the ‘moving company’ to the house, you need to fit the preppy style chosen for you.”

“Preppy?!” He thundered, nearly apoplectic now. “I gotta be-” he paused, then spat the word. “A millennial?”

At this, Tony finally had the grace to look temporarily sheepish. “Starbucks chic.” He shrugged, cockiness returning.  

Tony had a death wish, that was the only explanation. Salvation, however, came from an unlikely source.

“Save your energy, Barnes. We gotta get going.” Levi cut in; her voice surprisingly soft. She ran a hand regretfully through her own auburn mane, and looked over at where Bucky stood, chest heaving, fists on hips. “I have to dye my hair too, and wear ‘vegan leather’ or some shit.” She stood then with a heavy sigh, gathering the tablet and folder of information in front of her, holding them to her chest. She met Bucky’s glare again, but surprise had drifted into his eyes now, his lips slightly parted. “C’mon, husband. Escort your wife to the beauty salon.” She turned to address Steve. “Meet us in the hanger in an hour?”

Steve nodded, surprise making him dizzy as Bucky seemed to cave, heaving an almighty sigh before gathering his own materials and storming after Levi, pausing only long enough at the door to whirl and give Tony the bird.  

*******************************************************************************************

An hour later, a Seattle metrosexual and his vegan-leather clad wife marched into the hanger, walking close enough to fool a layman into thinking they were friendly with each other, as long as you ignored the sparks of banked anger and resentment flashing in their eyes every time they happened to meet.  

Bucky was now blond, sporting the uber trendy slicked-back undercut and clearly uncomfortable in fitted khakis and a body-hugging long-sleeved, navy blue sweater. Levi was only slightly less uncomfortable with a harsh geometric bob in unrelieved black, skin-tight jeans and white, deep-v necked, button-down men’s shirt, the sleeves rolled up and left unbuttoned half-way down to her navel.  

Steve bit his lip to keep from laughing. They had an hour and a half quinjet flight, followed by a two-hour drive with Steve to a safe house, then another hour and a half drive without him further to their new ‘neighborhood’ to get comfortable and learn all the shit on their tablets. And to eighty-six this distance between them, not even trendy hipster couples practiced this level of ‘anti-love’.

Bucky glared daggers at Steve, correctly reading his amusement and stormed up the ramp. Without a word he threw himself into the rear-row seat; Levi watched him mildly before looking at Steve and offering a faint smile.  

“Think we have a chance?” She asked.

Steve fought a grimace. “I’m not worried about you, I mean, I am… but you can take care of yourself…. I’ve never seen Buck this wound up though.”

“He really doesn’t like me, does he?” There was a definite edge of sadness in her voice and Steve reached over, slinging an arm over her shoulders and pulling her close, pressing a quick kiss to her forehead.  

“I don’t know what his problem is. He won’t tell me, and I’m worried what I said to him made it worse.”

“I doubt that, he respects you too much.” She paused, a little uncomfortably, then added. “We should get going.”

Steve nodded and turned, pulling Levi with him up the ramp and depositing her gently in a seat across from Bucky, to her faint amusement. Her smile however, faded when she slipped into the seat and remembered her ‘husband’ glowering at them both. Pulling out her tablet from a trendy over-sized tote, she smiled gamely at Steve while he strode further to the cockpit then turned her attention to reading her fictional past.  

With an aggravated sigh, Bucky yanked his out and began to do the same, glaring smoking holes into the screen.  

Steve barely held himself back from an only semi-ironic Hail Mary before beginning throwing the magic switch.

*******************************************************************************************

Levi stayed valiantly in her seat, despite the storm cloud next to her, and continued to memorize her story during the remainder of the flight. At times she’d feel Steve’s eyes on her and would glance up, grinning when they made eye contact, usually looking away in chagrin when a low growl from beside her would remind her that she wasn’t alone with the blond man.  

“Should be on this mission with him.” Bucky grumbled irritably. “Punk already looks metro.”

Levi rolled her eyes, taking a deep breath and praying to the fates for strength. Jesus Christ. “You are far from my dream partner too, Barnes. You think I want to spend the next how many months stuck with you? Pretending to…” she swallowed and while she didn’t really mean it this way, it looked like in revulsion, “love you? Dream on. The biggest asshole in the Compound and he’s all for me? How did I get so lucky?” Without waiting for a snarled reply, Levi deliberately pulled her knees up to her chest and turned her body away from Bucky, pointedly looking away and concentrating solely on her tablet.

Ears burning, Bucky chanced a glance up at the cockpit, fought a kneejerk sneer when he saw Steve’s disapproving frown. With his enhanced ears, Steve had just heard every word and Bucky was suddenly ashamed at the disappointment in his friend’s gaze. Gritting his teeth, he returned to his reading.  

Although he would have liked the company, Steve was proud that Levi stuck it out and stayed near Bucky, seeming to have completely erased him from her radar after her last burn. She hadn’t said anything that wasn’t true, unfortunately; since the Accords and Wakanda, Bucky had been struggling. He was the black sheep of the team, rejecting most social contact and glowering from the sidelines petulantly when forced to interact. The movie nights that Steve admittedly loved with the team were always made slightly tense when the Winter Soldier was made to attend. Nat was braver than most, dragging the man out of his self-imposed cave and demanding he stay and watch with them, but Bucky rarely relaxed enough to make it worth the trouble. Most of the team just gave him a wide berth now, a courteous acknowledgement when they passed in the hallways and little else.

He was a valued member of the team, no doubt; strong and capable on missions, but he just couldn’t seem to relax and the charming, charismatic man Steve had known before the war rarely volunteered conversation anymore, or even a smile. It hurt Steve’s heart, to see him struggle like this, but he was running out of ideas on how to help. Time didn’t seem to be doing anything but make Bucky more entrenched in his self-imposed isolation and, if he was being completely honest, Steve would have preferred to sit Buck out of this mission entirely. Maybe he needed to go back to Wakanda, maybe they shouldn’t have asked for him to return to the team after Thano’s defeat.

But he was the only man on the team fluent in enough languages, and familiar with HYDRA activities; he was the only one who could watch and evaluate what he was seeing and draw on his seventy-plus years of bitter experience to act accordingly. It sucked, frankly and Steve was infinitely sorry that Levi was going to have to suffer too. The woman was smart and capable and Steve’s mind and body hadn’t decided yet if the emotions and impulses he felt near her were brotherly or something far more intimate.

A small ping from the control panel reminded him that they were close to their destination and he yelled back to his flight mates about it, smiling in delighted surprise when Levi appeared and sat in the copilot’s chair, strapping herself in.  

Bucky watched her leave, watched her give Steve the smile she never gave him, feeling an unfamiliar pang deep in his chest.

*******************************************************************************************

“Okay, what high school did I graduate from?” Levi asked, glancing over her shoulder, quizzing her fictional husband.

“Thomas Jefferson High, Denver Colorado, home of the Spartans.” Bucky intoned, bored from the back seat.  

“My first dog?”  

“Mutt named Harvey, ran over when you were seven.” Bucky sighed dramatically.

“My apologies, your Highness.” Levi snarked. “Just making sure you read your homework.”

Bucky leaned forwards suddenly, poking his head between Levi and Steve’s shoulders. They’d been driving for less than an hour, but it seemed like forever. “Your full name is Madison Elise Jaeger-Harper, born June 2, 1994. Your mother was a whore who left the family when you were seven. Your step-monster was okay but definitely favored her own kids over the steps. You worked your sweet little ass off and graduated high-school early, which is the reason you’re so young and packing two majors-”

“And then I married a pompous, grouchy asshat and that’s how we ended up here!” Levi snapped, then whirled suddenly and grabbed at Bucky’s collar. Steve wasn’t sure if she was just that fast, to catch the Winter Soldier unaware, or if the man had let her, but it hardly mattered at this point. Levi yanked Bucky closer, their foreheads nearly touching and hissed, her voice so low and venomous that even Steve felt a cold finger trail down his spine.

“Listen here, Barnes.” Levi spat, nearly vibrating in fury. “This is not my dream assignment either, but if it somehow keeps HYDRA from infiltrating our world further, then I’ll do pretty much anything, even work in close proximity with you. But this is it, this is where this stops. Spit out whatever it that you hate so much about me and then get THE FUCK OVER IT. So help me, we are not going to blow this assignment because we can’t be professional!” Her eyes bored into his, her breathing heavy. “Well? Say it?!” Bucky only glared in return, fists clenched, his breathing just as labored. For the briefest moment, his eyes flicked down to Levi’s lips then back to meet hers, narrowing with anger.

With surprising strength, but not really surprising, Steve reminded himself, Levi was enhanced with almost the same serum as he was, Levi pushed Bucky away from her, the sound his back made when it hit the seat a loud crack. Both parties continued to glare at each other before Levi growled and broke the staring contest, turning around to glower out the windshield.

“Okay, that’s it.” Steve declared. He pulled the vehicle sharply over to the side of the road and threw it into park, whirling in his seat to face sideways. He leveled a stare at both teammates, until they looked away, cheeks reddening.  

“We need this to work.” He snapped. “We need to find out just how deep HYDRA goes in this town. I fought Tony on this to send someone, anyone else but you two, but I lost. So you both need to get this out and dealt with-”

Suddenly, Levi threw open her door and stormed out, marching angrily away. The whole car vibrated with the slam. They’d managed to pull over near some type of rest stop and Levi climbed onto a weathered picnic table a couple dozen feet away, in profile to the two men. Drawing her knees up to her chest, she rested her chin on top and stared forwards into the trees beyond the rest area, chest still heaving. Tears poured freely from her eyes now, even as fury continued to blaze from them.

Steve stared at her for a long moment, then flicked his eyes up to the rearview mirror. There were too many emotions on Bucky’s face right now to name all of them, but predominant in his eyes was discomfort and shame. Finally, when Levi had finally broke and cried, it had finally reached him.  

“Fix this.” Steve snapped.  

His oldest friend’s eyes flicked to his in the mirror for the briefest instant, then down and away. Bucky heaved a deep sigh, not in irritation, but seemingly to get up his courage. He nodded once, silently, then exited the vehicle, walking slowly towards Levi, his hands jammed into his pockets.  

Steve watched silently as Bucky approached, saw Levi remain silent and unmoving as Bucky paused and called her name quietly. After a pause, he stepped closer and leaned against the picnic table, a safe distance from Levi, and crossed his arms over his chest, staring out at the trees with her.

*******************************************************************************************

“Levi… I’m sorry.” Bucky murmured, when a few minutes had passed and she still hadn’t acknowledged his presence.  

She remained silent and Bucky continued, shame making it hard for him to breathe. He hated to see someone else cry, to know he was the cause.  

“I… I can’t tell you right now what bothers me so much, I’m not even sure myself but… you’re right, Steve’s right. We need to do this; we need to be professional.” He exhaled and uncrossed his arms, grimacing as he rubbed the back of his head and felt freshly-shaved hair.  

Levi stared forwards for so long that Bucky was tempted to move his hand in front of her eyes, to see if she hadn’t fallen into some kind of catatonic state but he held back, biting his bottom lip, his arms crossed again, not it anger, but in defense, to ward off the chill that Levi’s emotions seemed to super-charge the air around them with. His shoulders hunched and he began to worry that he truly had broken something in her this time, that she would never willingly communicate with him again-

Levi turned her head soundlessly and fixed him with her amethyst gaze. “I’m doing this for the team, not for you.” Her voice was flat. “I’ve done deep cover before too, with SHIELD. I can play the part, can you?” There was a chilling lack of emotion in her voice that struck somewhere deep in Bucky, in a way he didn’t understand fully. She waited until he swallowed and nodded in return before pushing off the table and standing in front of him.  

She held out her hand to him, but the smile on her lips didn’t reach her eyes. “Hold my hand, husband?” There was an edge and a challenge in her tone and whereas before Bucky might have felt a need to bite back, the genuine sorrow she’d let him glimpse softened his reaction. He took her outstretched hand, gave it an experimental squeeze. Levi tensed only briefly before returning the action and Bucky laced his fingers with hers, an involuntary move that made him hesitate a beat, as he waited for Levi to reject it.

Her smile softened a bit, but still didn’t reach her eyes. She moved soundlessly beside Bucky as he guided her back to the vehicle and opened the door for her. Steve waited, reaching over to rest his hand on Levi’s shoulder, searching her eyes when she looked at him. His eyes tracked Bucky as he slid into the back seat, then moved back to Levi’s, asking a silent question of her with a raised brow.

Levi nodded in return and the smile she gave Steve did reach her eyes. “Let’s go.” She murmured, then reached for her tablet. “Okay Barnes,” she called back as Steve shifted into drive. “Test me now.”