#by 'fucked up dog surgery site' I mean they fucked up the surgery not that the pics are particularly fucked up

[karmaphone]

today was So Much and now I have fucked up dog surgery site pics on my phone :/

[oleanderblume]

Hey I'm healing from top surgery so I'm gonna masterwork the stages of healing I've been experiencing cause people are always leaving shit out :D

• You will sleep. Often.

So, basically after I got my surgery done, I had a whole concoction of medication and all of it knocks you the *fuck* out. If you fight it, you're simultaneously fighting God. That being said, take it. It's made to make your existence more bearable. Because if you're Top Surgery came with liposuction, like mine did, wherever you had liposuction will hurt. So just count on doing just about fuck all during that first week.

• You will need help, accept it.

And I mean with things you don't think you should need help with. Yes, getting tall things, but also in that first week and ESPECIALLY the first couple of days post op, you might even need help getting out of bed, opening doors.

The general rule here is you can't life anything over 15lbs, but *really* it's "you can't do anything where you can feel your stitches pulling" which is basically everything sans going to the bathroom. For me, the hardest thing was being so in need of assistance, that I legitimately couldn't lift my torso up enough to get out of bed, I figured it out after day 3 though.

• You will probably have to have drains, get over it. And yes. They suck, but for a specific reason.

Everyone talks about how shitty drains are, but I've never heard them say *why* drains suck because they hurt after a period of time. Usually around end of week 1, and for me, all of week 2. By week 2, I legitimately wanted to Rio these Fulkerson out.

But I wanted to rip them out because of a bunch of reasons.

1. They werr placed in a way where i couldn't see them and had limited access to the insertion site, closer to my back than my side. This made it very hard to deal with near the end for reason 2.

2. They fucking itch, and if they don't itch, they legitimately hurt. (This is why that pain medication is helpful imo.) The insertion site has loose stitches keeping the drains in your body, and your skin eventually wants to heal around it, now imagine constantly itching and/or aching, in a place you can't touch or even fucking see— constantly.

3. It's kind of gross. This wasn't a big issue for me. I have a morbid curiosity (I wanted to take a video of my sister pulling out my drains bit they didn't) but for folks who don't like the idea of having to pour out your body juices to measure and record, that can be squicky.

4. Fucking dogs. Dogs and quick movements, especially of other people is the MOST terrifying, because I was constantly afraid of pur dog jumping up and tearing those fuckers out of my body.

Now I'm gonna talk about the actual healing process and how that feels.

Week One— The least painful, but most disabling.

The first couple of days, I was essentially entirely reliant on my sister. I couldn't go to the bathroom without her help to get out of bed. At this time, you still have the anesthesia in your system so you can't feel a whole lot, other than gravity, and you're still pretty sleepy. It's advised to get up Avery few hours to shuffle around, but honestly, taking a nap is all you'll want to do.

Of course, the sitting up rule still holds, you can't really lay flat on your back, and you won't want to, because it's hard to fucking get up without help.

As far as pain goes, you don't feel much in the actual surgery site. Some surgeons include additional liposuction (this method is used to reduce the liklihood of dog ears or excess skin from the procedure itself)

^^^this will be the most painful thing during the first week^^^

It's because you get a lot of bruising, both external and internally when you have liposuction and it causes a lot of aching. The ache will gradually fade around the week 1 end, especially if you heal well from bruising you might have some numbness left over, but likely not from the liposuction. Those bits will be tender. You'll be given (or have bought) a compression garment that will come in very handy. It's not the same as a binder in that it's much easier to remove. The tightness won't be as restrictive, and it will help with liposuction healing and keeping your gauze in place. This is made to be worn basically 24/7 with exception of showers and washing. It *will* chafe, and you *will not* feel it. Prepare for that.

You can't physically do much of anything during this week, I couldn't open or close heavy doors, grab anything heavier than maybe 5 lbs, and most definitely not reach for anything. As mentioned, I couldn't lift my own ass out of bed, so I definitely couldn't drive. They *say* you can drive after the first 2 days. Don't. 1, you're probably on pain medication which knocks you put in about an hour of taking and 2, you're probably underestimating the strength and movement involved in using a steering wheel.

Over all, this is actually the easiest part of healing, pain wise. It's definitely the hardest if you don't have someone to care for you and help you during this time because you most definitely can't do it on your own.

Week Two— This one fucking SUCKS.

This is the week that the anesthesia has definitely worn off and you're running in pain medication. I was given a concoction of Gabapentin, Oxycodone, Diazepam, and over the counter Extra Strength Tylenol. Use them. Probably more than you think you should, honestly.

I had/have a very bad habit of not taking my pain medication as much as I should be because I'm low-key afraid of overdosing, but honestly. You won't overdose unless you take waaay too much of all your meds at once.

You'll still have to be sleeping sat up a bit, but you'll have significantly more mobility and strength— that doesn't mean you can over extend yourself. The 15lb rule still exists, and you don't want to extend your arms fully.

At this point, you'll be regaining feeling, it won't be a whole lot, but it comes in stages. (I'll go in depth near the end of the post)

This is when the drains become an aggravation. If you haven't had them taken out by end of week 1, week 2 you more than likely will, and up until then, they will get worse and worse to deal with.

For me, because of where they were placed, they were directly where I couldn't see them and couldn't fuck with them, but I laid on them every night, and of course, my skin was beginning to heal over the sutures, causing aching and unbearable itchiness. THIS is why you want to take your meds. In addition, remember how I mentioned the compression garment and the chafing? You're still wearing that. And if you haven't been closely watching your chafing, by week 2, you're made fully aware of it, because your under arms and sides will have gained feeling by then, and it will fucking hurt. Get band-aids. I have a stack of them up and down my sides where my drains were, and where I've chafed the most.

By your first week post op appointment, the surgeon has probably removed your gauze and any sutures covers for nipple grafts. They'll tell you how to do nipple and scar care. This varies from surgeon to surgeon, but I'll tell you about mine.

I had nipple grafts, so for week 1, I had little gauze squares on top of my nipples and sutures into my skin to protect them. At my post op those were removed and my nipples were covered in Vaseline and telfa paper. (It's basically a medical gauze covered in a plastic that easily sticks to moisturizing gels)

As for my actual top surgery scars, instead of having open sutures, I have my stitches, along side these sticky "brackets" they are plastic and run along my front and sides, except for directly under my nipples because of proximity. The plastic little brackets act as a tension that essentially pulls my skin together and keeps the stitches from stretching and forming wide scars. They fall off on their own once the skin has healed to the point that the tension isn't sufficient for them to keep sticking to my skin (they legit look like little plastic bridges and they are very satisfying swimming tools if you like running your fingers along the bumps they make under your binder) they also move over time, my two center ones have formed a triangle lol.

These brackets prevent me from having to do regimented scar care that some other folks have to post op, so I'd ask about them in your consultations :) you still have daily nipple moisturizing, and draining if you still have drains, but that takes a load off of the laundry list of shit you have to keep track of every day.

NOW FOR PAIN :D

You will be in pain. First it will be itching. The most annoying, persistent itching you have ever felt in your life, and you have to be incredibly care where it's coming from. This itching is actually normal. Itching is the lowest registry of pain your body has, and as you heal and your nerves regenerate, you will feel a variety of very weird things, but most definitely it will involve pain and itching.

Next will be what I'm gonna term "zingers" these are like spikes of tingly pain that you get in your chest, probably in your nipples the most. They don't really hurt, so much as just feel particularly strange and they are annoying too. Not everyone will experience this, and not necessarily both nipples or at this stage, it's highly dependent on how you heal and if you regain feeling in your nipples at all.

I was expecting myself to never regain feeling in my nipples again because of the type of surgery I had (double incision) so it took me by pleasant (and also awful) surprise.

Other weird sensations as your nerves begin regenerating are "hot/cold" and "inexplicable tightness" and of course, "let's ache".

•hot/cold is basically if you took IcyHot or Vicks Vapor Rub or any kind of menthol topical ointment and rubbed it all over your chest. It doesn't hurt, but it is very interesting. It only lasted about 2 days for me, but it was notable.

•inexplicable tightness is exactly as it says. It *feels* like your skin is being pinched, this also doesn't exactly *hurt* but it's not a particularly pleasant feeling. It's just your nerves waking up and going "Oh hey, I'm closer than I was to my neighbor than the last time I checked" it's more noticeable when standing and you feel compelled to hunch over a bit because it's sort of tricking you into thinking your skin will somehow rip open if you don't. At least, it does that for me lol.

• let's ache is also exactly what it's called. It's specifically (for me, mind you) a persistent and constant ache directly along my stitches, specifically the part that wasn't given brackets because of how close it is to my nipples. This is probably the only part of me that hurts not *just* because of nerve regeneration, but also because of increased movement and higher tension because j can't put brackets there. However, I do put scar tape there, which helps, if possibly only through placebo.

By far though, the most distracting pain will be from your drains, if you still have them in.

Medication does weird stuff to your sleep pattern and dreams— additional notes.

So, because I've only just ended my Week Two of post Top Surgery, I'm gonna talk about the weird shit that the medication does and it's major affects.

So, my prescription is 2 antibiotics, 2 pain pills, 1 anxiety med, 1 antinausea. I also have over the counter pain medication, but it's functionally useless right now.

My personal routine is wake up, take antibiotics, and take at least 1 of the prescribed pain meds. My oxy lasts 6 hrs, the gabas last 12. Both will make you sleepy and dizzy, and also give you weird fucking dreams and royally fuck up your sleep schedule.

So, if you've not noticed, you'll be sleeping a lot. You're in the process of healing, and your body literally won't let you stay awake for much longer than 3 or 4 hours in that first week. Later on, it gets much easier, and if your me and don't *want* to be unconscious 90% of the time, it becomes a toss up between "Do I want to take ineffective Tylenols and be awake but in pain the whole time? Or do I want to take effective prescribed pain meds and have to lie down for a nap in roughly an hour because I'm too loopy/mentally foggy to carry on a conversation?"

The prescription wins most every time lol. Soon, as a result, I sleep a vast majority of the time. I can technically stay up in spite of the medication, but it is *very* hard, and even harder if you're trying to be active. Gabapentin is longer lasting and stronger than my oxycodone, and it makes your head feel like it's full of cotton balls. It works fantastic for pain relief, but at the cost of precision motor function and focus.

It gets harder to walk and carry on a conversation because it's a sedative and you're actively fighting your body saying "go the fuck to sleep"

Other weird side effects from the drugs and the healing have are psychological and emotional!!

It's commonly said that post top surgery you can have depression, and I would say yes— but also no.

It's more of being at the mercy of wildly fluctuating emotions and how they manifest. Typically in the form of crying, I've noticed. But not necessarily depression as I'm familiar with it.

Now, this can be for more reasons than *just* medication, and it has no bearing, in my opinion on how one might truly feel about their operation. Some factors include whether or not you take testosterone.

Low testosterone is known to be a cause of depression in cis men, and it works exactly the same for trans men and people who take testosterone. Previous to your surgery, you'll be required to stop taking a lot of your medications, including T if you're on it. This massive dip in T can *definitely* contribute to feeling depressed post op, but for a lot of guys familiar with T, this is a kind of depression you can largely tell is artificial— because it goes away the next time you take your dose XD

Other things that affect your mood is of course, your own hormones. The human body runs on hormones, and our body having gone through invasive surgery like top surgery will of course put your body in overdrive to repair broken connections, and to do that, it releases hormones. Which, in addition to reaction chemically inside you for healing purposes, also are the things that literally control your emotions.

This, in combination with the medication you've been prescribed, and the medication you've had to delay taking, can have a major impact on your mood and mental health. It doesn't necessarily mean you regret getting top surgery (you would know if you did)

But it can manifest in fluctuating mood, how you respond to emotional or psychological stimuli, dreams, nightmares, and how subconscious fears may manifest in them and the occasional intrusive thought. Also you will probably cry. And probably a lot. Over stupid shit too.

Things I've cried over in the past 2 weeks.

Typing "things I've cried over in the past 2 weeks"

A 5 second clip of futurama

A 15 minute excerpt from a 3 hr video essay of a gay furry dating Sim I have literally never heard of or played.

Talking about crying or what I've cried about so far, even when no emotions are attached.

Thanking a person for talking to me.

A good hug

The fact I can't watch Jimmy Neutron Boy Genius.

A video essay about Wizards of Waverly Place.

A donut

That my brother helped me get cheerios down from the pantry because I can't reach that high right now.

My sister getting me curry

Curry in general (tearing up typing it right now)

Getting top surgery

As you can see, a lot of those are just weird shit to sob over for a solid 5-45 minutes.

I've also had a bunch of super weird dreams, and the biggest cause of that (aside from drugs and healing) is sleeping position and pre-existing conditions.

I have sleep paralysis, it's a chronic condition triggered by sleeping on my back, and unfortunately, when healing from top surgery, you have no choice but to sleep on your back for at least two weeks :D

So that's a thing to be wary of, if you deal with that.

Okay, that's all I got in terms of stuff that I haven't ever seen people talk about or even mention in regards to top surgery. So yeah.

Oh also, I have 2 (lightly used) GC2B tank binders to give away. One is trans pride colors, the other is a olive green. Size XL (ideal for folks with at least 38 C cup size) so if anyone is interested dm me :)

[ari-kari]

hey. gnarly gender stuff below. wouldn’t recommend reading if you are triggered by gender doubt, detransition, sexuality, negative body talk, and surgical malfeasance. oh and also light gore. sorry it’s going to get kind of weird

so I’ve been quietly stepping away from id’ing as trans for a while now. which is a subject that probably needs its own post, all things considered. but there’s one aspect of my (de)transition that is causing an enormous amount of stress in my life, and I’m genuinely not sure how to handle it. so I figured blabbing about it here might help me get some clarity.

anyways. let’s talk titties.

my first top surgery in 2022 was botched. dog ears, massive janky nipples, bizarre incision site choices - it was a whole deal. I got a revision last year (from the same surgeon lmao) that fixed a lot of things, but unfortunately it made other problems significantly worse. So while aesthetically things are much better than they used to be, I still consider myself to be botched. I haven’t taken my top off in public since it happened, and I don’t see myself doing so any time soon.

For a long time, I assumed that this was my only problem; some asshole small town doctor had messed up my results, and now I felt uncomfortable in my body. But it slowly began to dawn on me that things were more complicated than that. Because when I imagined myself being intimate with someone with perfect, stellar top surgery results…I still felt horrible. To the point where, even with nipple prosthetics, I haven’t felt comfortable enough to have sex since my revision 9 months ago.

So now we get into the crux of the problem. Which is this - I do not feel desireable without breasts. Not to myself, and not to others. And to be honest, I knew this would be a problem even before I got the surgery, but I went through with it anyways. Because desireability is small potatoes when it comes to the horrors of gender dysphoria, right? In my mind, I was being vain to put my intimacy concerns over the pursuit of my “true self”. Everyone with dysphoria had to “fix” it eventually - I couldn’t just not get top surgery.

But like…fuck, dude. Maybe I shouldn’t have gotten top surgery.

I prefer my body without breasts. It feels much more “me”, especially when I’m alone. But I don’t feel hot. I don’t feel fuckable, or beautiful, or attractive. And I’ve been trying to chip away at it in therapy, but I haven’t really put much of a dent in it, and it’s bringing up some really hard questions that I no longer feel capable of ignoring.

Honestly? My confidence in my sexuality is a big fucking deal to me. I’m someone for whom intimacy of all kinds is really important. And even though I know that there are PLENTY of people who find flat chests attractive, I personally do not. And it’s seriously starting to fuck with my head.

Idk man. Insurance is able to cover reconstruction for me due to a federal loophole, but there’s no way in hell they’re going to fix my jacked-up nipples on their own. And I’m seriously beginning to question if a little gender dysphoria might be worth the relief of finally feeling confident in my own skin again. I have a consultation appointment in June, in either case. So in the mean time, I just have to…figure this out. No biggie.

Anyways, that’s my spiel. I’ve been wearing prosthetics for a while now and tolerating them fairly well, but I recognize that having something physically attached to you is a whole other ball game. So we’re just gonna keep on trucking and see what happens 🫠🫠🫠 either way I have a funny feeling that the “perfect” answer I’ve been seeking to this problem does not exist.

[coping-via-clint-eastwood]

Tagged by @gas0line-f0rest

Rules: Bold the ones that are true and tag 15 people to do it.

Appearance

i’m over 5’5” // i wear glasses/contacts // i have blonde hair // i prefer loose clothing to tight clothing // i have one or more piercings // i have at least one tattoo // i have blue eyes // i have dyed or highlighted my hair // i have gotten plastic surgery // i have or had braces // i sunburn easily // i have freckles // i paint my nails // i typically wear make-up // i don’t often smile // i am pleased with how i look // i prefer nike to adidas (I don't know) // i wear baseball hats backwards

Hobbies & Talents

i play a sport // i can play an instrument (technically yes but I'm rusty as fuck) // i am artistic // i know more than one language (I'm not as fluent in them as I am English but it's enough for basic communication) // i have won a trophy in some sort of competition// i can cook or bake without a recipe// i know how to swim // i enjoy writing // i can do origami // i prefer movies to tv shows (both) // i can execute a perfect somersault // i enjoy singing // i could survive in the wild on my own // i have read a new book series this year // i enjoy spending time with friends // i travel during school or work breaks // i can do a handstand

Relationships

i am in a relationship (FICTIONALLY, YES) // i have been single for over a year (boi it's all my life bro 😭) // i have a crush // i have a best friend i have known for ten years // my parents are together (legally, yes...) // i have dated my best friend // i am adopted // my crush has confessed to me // i have a long distance relationship // i am an only child // i give advice to my friends // i have made an online friend (WAY MORE THAN ONE ❤️❤️❤️❤️❤️❤️❤️❤️❤️) // i met up with someone i have met online

Nature

i have heard the ocean in a conch shell // i have watched the sun rise // i enjoy rainy days // i have slept under the stars // i meditate outside // the sound of chirping calms me // i enjoy the smell of the beach // i know what snow tastes like // i listen to music to fall asleep // i enjoy thunderstorms // i enjoy cloud watching // i have attended a bonfire // i pay close attention to colours // i find mystery in the ocean // i enjoy hiking on nature paths // autumn is my favourite season

Misc.

i can fall asleep in a moving vehicle // i am the mom friend (depends on the friends, but oftentimes yes) // i live by a certain quote (certain quotes more like) // i like the smell of sharpies // i am involved in extracurricular activities // i enjoy mexican food // i can drive a stick-shift // i believe in true love // i make up scenarios to fall asleep (really? on the fake scenarios site? well aside from AO3 I mean) // i sing in the shower // i wish i lived in a video game // i have a canopy above my bed // i am multiracial // i am a redhead // i own at least three dogs

Tagging @addictedtostorytelling @agentkalgibbs @binders-and-beanies @bl33ditout @buildinggsr @chennnington @clintbeifong @echoanddust @feelingsofaithless @figsr @glasstown-resident @hollygl125 @ibroughtmycopyoftheiliad @mcliancraft @shesfagulous

[sadachmesarthim]

coercive notions - stucky

content: semi-graphic violence, blood, minor character deaths, emotional manipulation and abuse, false imprisonment, kidnapping, torture in the form of nonconsensual body modifications, stockholm syndrome.

dead dove: do not eat. steve sucks big time in this one. i’m not really sorry about it. 

note: happy 6k followers to @sweeterthanthis​ !!! i love the idea of these prompts, they definitely did their job !! i was thrilled when i saw i got my quote of choice. this one’s based on ”i wish i knew how to quit you” from brokeback mountain (my favorite angsty husbands) 

if the timeline is nonsensical in this - think 2 years post engame but no one's actually died! there is also some background starker but it's only mentioned twice. this is my first time writing for steve and bucky, and my first ~dark~ piece. it was definitely the challenge it presented itself as, and i’m super thankful for the opportunity to participate alongside so many talented witers!! 

word count: 4.2k ; read time 15 minutes

Steve'd survived because of Bucky. 

Bucky was the one that kept the fevers at bay, bought him medicine, nursed him back to health even when neither of them thought he'd survive through the night. Bucky was the one that dragged him out of the river, and left him alive on the bank.

Left him to wake up. 

Bucky was the one that welcomed him with open arms when Steve was abandoned by the Avengers. Steve'd lost his home, his family - everyone and everything he had - when the world rejected him (the millionth time). Bucky was the one that came back. He'd lost his arm, his identity, everyone and everything he remembered - but he still ran to Steve without hesitation. No matter how far away they got, no matter what separated them, they always came back to one another. 

They got together right after the fight with Tony in Siberia. 

They'd found each other, and suddenly gained a future. 

Steve had never... really pictured himself having a future. When he was younger, he accepted that he'd die young. A fever that wouldn't break, a cough that wouldn't leave, pneumonia he couldn't beat... Then he joined the army. He suddenly... had possibilities.

But there was still war, he was still fighting, and he was still in the line of danger every single day. It didn't matter if he was fighting Hitler, homophobia, Hydra, - someone was always gunning for him. Someone was always trying to get him killed. And it worked! He died! Crashed straight into the ocean and froze, for seventy fucking years!

Until someone had the audacity to defrost him, and yet again force him into the line of fire. Without really consulting him first. It was something Steve was slowly coming to terms with - he’d always be fighting, always be serving, always be protecting. 

He’d been failing his job as a protector, lately. 

+//////+

They all thought it was a bit weird, but then again, so is living with two men that look seventy years younger than they actually are. So is living with your coworkers. So is being a superhero. So of course none of the other Avengers said anything. 

Not when Bucky started asking Steve permission for things - to get up from, and leave, the table after meetings. If he could get seconds during breakfast or dinner. If he was allowed to come on patrols or missions. Everyone just assumed it was a forties thing, or that it was just Bucky getting more comfortable around them. The dirtier minds of the group (Tony, Peter, Natasha) chalked it up to a kinky sex thing. 

Steve saw it as devotion. 

Bucky saw it as a way to keep him appeased. 

See, Steve'd gotten more... irritable, lately. Every time Bucky got hurt on patrol, was in a bad position during a mission, needlessly volunteered to do something dangerous  - it pissed Steve off to high heavens, for no reason. It'd gotten significantly worse over the course of a few months, to the point where Bucky could barely breathe without Steve getting upset. 

It came to a head one day when Bucky got pinned during a fight with New York's latest nuisance. He wasn't even supposed to be there, it was his day off, for fucks sake. But he'd heard the call go out, and suited up before following a few minutes behind the rest of the crew. 

This particular species of big nasty™ (a xorrian dog? Thor had called it?) had an... upsetting taste for live, warm flesh. He popped up outta nowhere over Manhattan during the Friday morning rush, apparently scouting Earth for the next course in their Milky Way Dinner Service. 

Bucky, self sacrificing moron that he is, was in the wrong place at the wrong time. Just as Steve laid down the final blow, narrowly avoiding the alien's jaw, Bucky slid underneath it, shoving his hand between the soft plating of the monster's stomach. He reached in, single-handedly gutting the thing while Steve put a shield-sized dent in its skull.

Their foe dropped almost instantly, crushing Bucky beneath several tons of dead weight. None of them would have known he was there, either, if Tony hadn’t programmed life-sensing protocols in a new combat arm he’d gifted the soldier for his second anniversary home and Hydra-free. A signal went to Tony’s suit the instant FRIDAY sensed structural integrity issues, sending him a precise location.

“What do you mean he’s here, babygirl? We didn’t call him in.” The worry in Tony’s voice was apparent, calling the attention of the rest of his team. They were all intrigued, prematurely pulled from their celebrations of a fight well won. 

“It seems that Sergeant Barnes is approximately twenty paces northwest of your location, and his elevation is slowly decreasing. Would you like a map of the area?”  

“Uhh, no Fri. I think I know exactly where he is. Cap, get your ass over here!” His heart rate was increasing by the second. If he thought correctly (as Tony almost always did), Bucky was... underneath the alien. “We need to pick this fucker up, or flip it, or something. I think Bucky’s stuck under it.” 

Steve’s blood ran cold. “Tony, what the fuck are you talking about? Bucky wasn’t part of the group today.” 

Steve didn’t hide his anxiety well when it came to Bucky. Their team knew that he was Steve’s whole world. One more life threatening situation, and Steve might actually die from old age with all the years Bucky’d stressed out of him. FRIDAY sending a detailed ping with Bucky’s combat arm location didn’t do anything to ease his anxiety, either. He knew it was just like Bucky to do something like this - jump in without word, all act and no think. Try to help his team out and wind up crushed by an alien pet the size of a 787.

Peter was next to them, soon, ready to help get this thing off their friend. Together, they managed to drag Mister Beast-of-the-Week far enough down the street, revealing a very unconscious, very bloody Winter Soldier nestled in the asphalt. 

Steve was on him in a second, picking Bucky up with both hands. Tony already had FRIDAY doing preliminary scans and sending them back to Cho and Strange. Initial reads weren’t terrible, all things considered, but he still looked like shit. He might be five hundred times stronger than the average man, but no one’s prepared to be stuck under 200 tons of pure xeno-reptilian mass. Not even Bucky Barnes. 

His head rolled back freely as Steve picked him up, exposing an already bruised and swelling jaw. Steve’s breath caught in his throat, choking him on his own shock. Saved by the bell, Cho called Tony back immediately, sending for one of them to bring him to the tower surgical site immediately. 

“We have to go, Steve. Let us take him, we’ll get him fixed. We’ve done it before. We can do it again. But you have to let him go.” Steve’s upward glance brought him Tony’s exasperated face. He was dizzy, everything felt like slow motion. 

He didn’t register the movement until he saw it, watching Peter’s hands as they held him back. Tony took Bucky’s lifeless form, carrying him toward Stark Tower and away from the wreckage. 

The wreckage he shouldn’t have been anywhere near in the first place. 

The wreckage he wouldn’t even have known about if he didn’t beg Tony to be included in all mission alerts. 

The wreckage he would have avoided if it weren’t for the martyr complex he’d had since birth. It might not be nearly as strong as Steve’s, but it was still there. Bucky’d always gone to obscene lengths protecting the people he loved. 

Steve had a track record of doing a piss poor job of repaying the favor. He couldn’t save him from the war. He couldn’t save him from the train, or from Hydra. He couldn’t save him from Thanos. He couldn’t even save him from a stupid little skirmish downtown. No, from where he was standing, Steve’d fucked up. Big time. 

He promised that day, he wasn’t going to let anything like this happen again. 

+//////+

It was weeks before he was back to normal, and even then - Bucky wasn't entirely sure he wanted to leave. Not because he was still sore, or not feeling up to par. In fact, he'd been antsier and more ready to get back into the field than ever. He missed his friends, he missed the people he fought evil with every day. He missed sparring with Sam and going on runs with Peter, listening as Thor regaled stories about Old Asgard no one.. could quite follow. Missed the twice weekly calls from Shuri. But most of all, he missed his freedom. 

Steve wasn't ready to give it to him. 

When he woke up after surgery, Steve was right next to his recovery bed. He almost looked like he did back in the day - sleep deprived, worry lines forcing their way to the surface of his face. Vague frustration enveloped him, even when he met Bucky's conscious form for the first time. 

Their first few conversations were tender, loving, but it didn't take long for them to sour. 

Steve'd insisted on bringing Bucky back to their shared floor immediately after he woke. He allowed Cho to look him over, FRIDAY to scan him, everyone to come say hi - but he never let Bucky out of his sight. Not while Bucky was awake, anyway. 

He slept a lot in those first few days. He was still healing, and while it might have been much faster than anyone expected, he was also recovering from what should have been several deaths over. He spent most of his time in bed, asleep, or talking to Steve. 

Most of it was lecture, some was praise. How stupid he was to get involved on his day off. How much Steve loved him. How he wasn't allowed to go being a martyr like that again. How much Steve loved him. How Steve was going to do a better job of watching over him from now on. How much Steve loved him. 

There was a lot of that, after Bucky woke up. How much Steve loved him. How important Bucky was to him, how much it meant to him that Bucky was alive and breathing and conscious and okay. Every time he got a lecture, or a reminder, Steve's hand was on him somewhere. His shoulder, his wrist, his face. His throat. Every time he spoke, he squeezed, just the tiniest bit. Not threatening, not even to force acknowledgement. Just.. Because he could. To the untrained eye, it was just physical contact. 

Bucky knew better. 

Bucky knew conditioning when he saw it. When he felt it. 

Bucky also knew he was significantly more susceptible to conditioning than most people. 

Bucky was fucked. 

+//////+

Tony didn't think anything of it when Steve asked for handcuffs that could hold a supersoldier back. He, too, was a pervert with a genetically enhanced super-boyfriend, who was he to deny the Captain a little fun? He'd designed restraints Peter could use without breaking (or hurting himself!), why not share the love?

No one thought anything of it when Bucky stopped joining them on missions. Trauma has a different effect on everyone, maybe Bucky just needed time to process almost dying (again). No one would blame him for it. Hell, most of them encouraged his staying home. 

None of them... really thought anything of it when he quit leaving altogether. They trusted Steve's judgement, and if he didn't think Bucky was ready to leave, then he wasn't. Bucky knew better than to defy him, too - just kept his mouth shut around "yes, Steve"s and "okay, Steve"s.

The conditioning didn't stop as he got stronger. He'd been back to 100% weeks ago, but Steve was still babying him. Carrying him to the shower, not letting Bucky bathe himself, or brush his own teeth. He couldn't dress or eat without help, go anywhere without asking. "I just want to keep you safe. I need to know that you're not going to get hurt." Steve's words remained calm, level, but his face betrayed the threat behind them. If you don't listen, you won't be able to leave at all. 

Bucky'd learned the hard way that if he didn't listen to Steve, he wouldn't have a choice. He'd attempted to leave their floor by himself while Steve was out on a mission with Tony, Nat, and Thor - he got up early, showered, got dressed. His first taste of freedom in a long time, he was so excited to go see everyone again. 

He was downstairs and halfway through breakfast with Bruce and Peter when Steve got back. 

+//////+

Bucky couldn't remember the last time he'd seen the sun. It's a familiar feeling to him, one he thought he'd never deal with again. The isolation. The lack of control. The fear. 

Steve initially hadn't looked mad. He let Bucky finish his meal, kept a distant but watchful eye over the group until the two others finished and moved on to their lab work downstairs. 

Bucky knew he was fucked. He'd broken rules. He'd left their room without permission. Steve might not have looked it, but Bucky could feel the anger and disappointment radiating off him. 

After that... He wasn't allowed to do anything. 

No workouts, no missions, no patrols. No leaving their room. Steve'd used the restraints Tony made - had him thoroughly tied down to the floor below their bed. No internet, no phone. Not a single book or movie or boardgame in sight. Good boys don't require entertainment to behave. No eating - Steve'd placed a gastric tube down his sinus to provide nutrition. His muzzle, the one hydra'd used... Steve'd locked it over his jaw, and left it there. Good boys don't need to use their mouths - not to drink, not to eat. Not to talk back or call for help.  No using the bathroom on his own - he had a catheter replaced once a day, and Steve changed his bag as needed. Good boys don't get to leave the bed, not even if it's an emergency. 

He learned to wait for Steve. Learned his schedule - early morning meetings with Wakanda, check ins with Fury and Maria, patrol a bit after lunch. Then, he'd come back, make sure Bucky's bag was empty and his feeding tube was flushed and clean before feeding him. 

Steve allowed him to use the bathroom and shower at night, under incredibly watchful eyes. The restraints Tony'd made were long enough to stretch the entire perimeter of their room, but Steve kept him on a short leash. Bucky had five minutes total - shit, shower, shave. If he didn't finish in time... There's always tomorrow. 

If he did, he'd get rewarded. 

Steve'd wrap him up in a large fluffy towel, carry him to bed. He'd bring back the sweet little reminders, with his hand around Bucky's throat. How much Steve loved him. How this was all for his protection. How Steve wasn't going to let anything happen to him, ever again. How proud Steve was of him, for letting him return that favor, even decades later. How well behaved Bucky was, how good he'd been for Steve.

Steve was so different from Hydra, too. That's what made it so fucking difficult to resist the love bomb-type conditioning. He wasn't the torture type - didn't like the idea of doing anything he didn't have to. Steve didn't want to hurt him, and Bucky knew that. He found it harder to reject Steve's advances the longer he was locked in that fucking room, found it harder to discern whether or not he... wanted... to reject it.  

He was Bucky's dialysis, and his drinking problem. 

He was Bucky's oxygen machine, and the cigarettes he'd smoked to earn him one. 

Steve could ask Bucky to do anything, ask him for anything... and he was powerless to say no. He'd tried. 

+//////+

It'd gotten him a flick to the mouth, for his hesitation. 

"When I ask you a question, love, you need to answer me. Do you understand?" The tears in his eyes nearly spilled over, sharp pain from his lips radiating into his nose and the corners of his eyes. He didn't want to answer. He wanted to leave. He wanted to run, to get the fuck away from Steve and the compound and everything. 

"Yes."

"Yes what, angel?" Steve might've been good about keeping his emotions checked in public, but Bucky could tell he was smug. Gloating. He enjoyed this. What'd happened to the sweet kid from Brooklyn that could barely hold himself upright? Bucky missed him. 

"Yes, Stevie. I’m sorry Stevie." Saying his name was painful. This wasn't his Steve. This wasn't the Steve he'd fallen in love with. Wasn't even the man that'd dragged him out from underneath that alien... How long ago? Months? Years? 

Bucky didn't know anymore. 

Didn't know why his friends hadn't saved him yet. Didn't know how his absence went unnoticed for... however long it'd been. Didn't know why he was struggling to be upset about it all. 

Steve, observant as he was, could practically see the gears turning in the other's head. He cradled Bucky's face in his hands, drawing him into calculated eye contact. Bucky felt sick. There was something... wrong, there. Something Bucky'd never seen before. 

"They don't love you like I do, Buck. They don't want you. They don't love you." 

Bucky flinched at the words, physically recoiling from Steve's grasp. He knew it wasn't true, he knew... He thought it wasn't, right? 

Steve's laugh pulled Bucky out of his own thoughts, bringing him back to the room in front of him. He had a display up, with various recordings of the rest of the Avengers. He flipped through them, muting and unmuting seemingly at random. 

"... I mean, he's probably ditched us for Zemo again. Would that really shock you?"

"he almost died again. I don't blame him, i wouldn't want to be found eith-"

"-e can take care of himself, let's just give him time."

Steve waved the holo display away when he saw the first few tears fall. "Don't you see, Baby? They don't care like I do - they don't love you like I love you. No one will ever love you like I love you." Steve's words stung, but Bucky couldn't deny that they made sense. Of course no one was looking for him. He was unpredictable, still kind of an outsider. Why would they try to come find him? Why would they care?

Bucky's mouth moved before his brain could stop him.

"'m sorry, Stevie, please, I'm so sorry! I-I- I thought they cared, please, please don't leave me Stevie! I was so wrong, Steve please! Wish I knew how to stop, Stevie, but you know I can't. You gotta help me stop Stevie, I've been so confused, been tryin' to quit you Stevie but I can't. Wish I could quit you but I can't, I can’t be left alone anymore. Please, you can take my arm if you want it, Stevie. Take anything, take whatever you want from just please, please don’t leave me alone anymore!"

He was in hysterics at this point, unable to believe what was coming out of him. Was he really okay with Steve taking his arm away? Did he really love this Steve back? Was he just scared?

The worst part was that he couldn't tell. 

+//////+

The smell of fresh coffee woke him before he was ready. His eyes burned, still dry after Steve refused to close the window before they went to bed. 

Bucky would have closed it himself, but he couldn't actually reach that far. 

They'd moved out to the cabin a few months after Bucky finally broke realized how wrong he was. It was a cute little place, big enough for the two of them but small enough to not draw attention if someone came upon it by accident. Not that they really could. Steve'd installed motion sensors five miles out, and had fully automated... solutions, in place, should any threats or issues arise. 

They went entirely unused. 

It really was a beautiful plot of land - they had a few animals, a cute pair of kittens to dote on and play with. He had enough room to move around, to sit in the sun or curl up in bed. He had plenty of books, games, anything and everything he could want to occupy his time, really. He had Steve. 

And breakfast now, apparently. 

Steve set the plate on the bedside table, gently sitting next to his lover and planting small kisses on his still shut eyelids. Bucky looked up and smiled, blushing at the hand that'd wrapped around his neck. He reached out, gently thumbing at the inside of Steve's wrist. Oh, how he'd missed this. Missed contact with his Steve. 

He opened his mouth, accepting the bite Steve offered him. Steve always made the best pancakes, he thought, appreciating the hot meal hitting his tongue. He hadn't eaten this good in weeks. It was hard for him to cook without his arm, but Steve always provided. Steve cooked for them, cleaned up after them, made sure Bucky was sated. Safe. 

He'd taken off for a mission nearly a month ago. A dangerous one, he'd said. One he might not return from for a while, he'd said. Bucky worried. He always did when Steve left, especially since he couldn't know where or why he was going. But Steve always came back to him. Sometimes, he was back in one piece. Once, he'd come home with an arrow in his stomach and several gunshot wounds. That'd been a... scary night. Another time, he came home with half of his hair singed off and his clothes in tatters. 

Last night... Last night he finally came home, and he looked like shit. 

He was covered in bruises, nearly 40 pounds lighter than he was when he'd left. There were holes in the shield, too large to be bullets but too small to be anything else easily recognizable. Some were through his suit, too - puncture wounds littering his chest and stomach. They were already partially closed, but he was still bloody. 

There were still webs in his hair, too - Bucky brushed them away after Steve closed (and locked. always locked.) the door. He knew better than to comment. Steve was just protecting him. Steve loved him, he was doing what he needed to keep Bucky safe. 

But that didn't mean it didn't hurt. That each time Steve left for a mission, Bucky cried himself to sleep. He thought, eventually, that the pain would go away. That the death of each of his friends would get easier, somehow. That the fear, the hope, of losing Steve would stop consuming him. 

He'd just smiled, kissed his husband's cheek, and helped him strip down. He'd mouthed at the graze left on the side of Steve's neck, reverent in the presence that was his protector. Bucky'd developed quite the complex, in their time of isolation. Every time Steve came in - from cutting firewood, picking food from the garden, feeding the animals, or from nights like last... Bucky just couldn't stop talking. 

About how he wouldn't be alive without Steve. How he'd still be a mindless slave for Hydra, killing innocent people under everyone's noses. How he owed Steve his life, a thousand times over. How he'd've been taken by Ross or Stark or Clint or someone, and locked away miles under the sea. He'd pressed them into Steve's jaw like kiss-coated secrets, like no one in the entire world knew these things but Bucky & Steve. Like they were bits of information to cherish, to chew on and savour before swallowing. 

Steve just laughed, picking Bucky up and bringing him to bed. He followed shortly after, cleaning and patching himself up before snuggling right up to Bucky. 

Sleeping was interesting, initially, but they'd adapted. It was easier to cuddle Bucky without his arm, but sometimes Steve woke up with his legs tangled in loose chains by the footboard. It was an easy enough trade, in Bucky's opinion. Give up his arm, give up a bit of freedom, and get a loving, devoted husband in return? One that would make him breakfast in bed, one that would hold him and kiss him and praise him whenever he needed? One that would kill for him? Die for him?

Bucky saw it as a fair enough trade, and if that meant their friends needed to die... He tried not to think about it.

[sweatpeeee]

Love potion AU

Part 1

Peter Parker x Reader

Words: 2k

Summary: Peter Parker, infatuated with an uninterested MJ, creates a liquid potion to have her fall in love with him, but what if the wrong person drinks it???

Warnings: lowkey angst, Peter is a desperate fool, Ned is a supportive friend and MJ is an absolute queen. 

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

“Hey Pete-” You blush, books clutched between your arms. 

“Hey.” You notice Peter glancing behind you constantly, barely acknowledging your greeting. A forced thin tight smile replaces your shy smile, but soon recovers when you see Ned beside you, you give him a grin, readjusting your backpack strap, 

“Hey Ned, new hat?” You chuckle lightly at the boy with a red fedora sitting on top of his hair. 

“Why Hello, m’Lady, and yes- I do have a new hat in the collection.” He beamed, you laugh at his response, 

“Well it looks great on you-” 

“Hey, have you guys seen MJ? I haven’t seen her enter the school yet-” Peter interrupted your conversation with Ned, His eyes scanning the hallways and the entrance doors. 

“Peter, give it a rest- MJ made it quite obvious that she’s not interested in a relationship right now-” Ned seemed tired of constantly lecturing his friend about his crush on the girl, but that didn’t seem to stop him from ogling her from afar.

“Yeah- I know Ned, but maybe I can convince her to-” Ned was quick to shut that down, 

“Absolutely not- Peter, do you realize how insane that sounds?!” It sounded like Ned was about to patronize the boy some more before you decided you heard enough and walk away, sad and in a way- feeling a bit rejected. Although you did nothing that would cause you to become rejected, you felt like Peter rejected your presence in general. It’s not anything new, it’s not like it’s the first time either. You fell for Peter when you first met him, the boy was an absolute sweetheart, you had no idea why every girl wasn’t head over heels like you were. The kindest and most genuine smile you’ve ever seen resting upon his face with adoring puppy brown eyes. With a heavy heart you went to your first period class 10 minutes early. 

Ned finished his lesson with his friend, Peter grumbling under his breath- Ned spun around in your direction just to find that you weren't there, even glancing around hoping you haven’t left… again. Again and again, every day- you always left early and Ned noticed, he also noticed when Peter didn’t. Dejected, Ned sighs loudly before glaring at his best friend, 

“Well, are you happy?” He huffs

Peter cocks his head to the side, brows furrow, clearly puzzled, “About…?” 

Ned was getting frustrated, “Oh, you know- the fact that you’ve technically been a horrible friend and blatantly ignored Y/n’s existence.” 

“Y/n was here?” Ned reached over and slapped the back of Peter’s head. 

“Ow! What the hell Ned!” Peter rubbed the back of his head realising a groan. 

“You deserve that, and more-” Ned then turned on his heels and walked to his first period as soon as the bell rang, a slightly disoriented Peter ran after him, his curls bouncing along with his small jog,

“What? Why? Ned!... Wait- god, Ned! What does that mean?!” 

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

*y/n*

“God, I don’t even know what to do anymore! It’s like- It’s like I don’t even exist! Not even as friends! He couldn’t even look me in the eyes! I’m not that ugly… am I? Maybe-” You lay on your bed with your legs up against the wall while a bit of your head peeks off the side. 

“Alright let me stop you right there.” Michelle interjected, looking up from her book and placing her book mark before shutting it closed, “You are not ugly- don’t ever second guess that, plus the fact that you question your value because of some boy is just plain stupid, I mean like, women have been subjected to a society where our beauty and our worth is determined by men, and that’s honestly disgusting, like who the hell do they think they are-”

“MJ~” you grumble, plopping a pillow on your face.

“Right right, my bad- point is, you’re a bad bitch- and no boy should make you feel like you’re less, I mean this is Peter we’re talking about right?” MJ reaches and nudges the pillow away from your grasp, hitting the ground with a soft thud, you nod in agreement, 

“That’s the thing MJ, like I understand I’m not supposed to let a boy make me feel less but when I look at him, it’s like the whole room lights up,” your hands flailing above you, occasionally tangling your fingers through your h/c hair, “and he has the most beaming smile and it just melts my heart, and I just can't keep that ‘I don’t give a fuck what you say’ attitude with him.” A smile creeps on your face a tthe thought of the adorable boy with the brown locks and puppy dog eyes, “I just wanna tell him that he’s the sweetest and he makes my knees go weak and my heart swoons and wants to jump out of my chest at the sight of his beautiful fucking face.” you finish with a sigh, as if you’d been holding that in all day, and you kind of were. 

“First of all, give me a second to hold back the urge to projectile vomit all over your room-” 

You let out a chuckle as you cover your face with your hands, your ears burning in embarrassment, “MJ, stoooop” Your hand’s muffling your words

“No seriously, that was the cheesiest thing I've ever heard in my life- did you rehearse that?” She laughs. You don’t reply to her question. 

“Y/n, tell me you don’t rehearse that in the mirror-” She gasps with a smile

“I mean sometimes-” Before you can finish, Michelle is bursting with laughter, your laugh shortly joins along. 

You adored these moments with your best friend, and you appreciated how forward and comfortable she got with you after a bit in your friendship, you guys were such great friends, anyone could see it. Not a lot of people saw this side of Michelle, the funny, goofy, and loving person you know now. You could understand why Peter fell in love with her, I mean not only does she have a great personality, but she is absolutely stunning as well without even trying, wearing no makeup and a simple jogger and t-shirt and she could be on the cover of Vogue. 

Michelle’s laughter died down, wiping her tears that were at the edge of her eyes, coughing a bit from the force her lungs gave out, “god, who is this girl Peter is so ‘In Love’ with, as you put it, anyways?” 

Your laughter died down, clearing your throat a bit, you sat up, your legs crossed beneath you, “um, well- it’s kinda hard to explain-” your eyes drop to your fingers that tug on your cuticles, a habit you had if you were nervous or anxious, Michelle notices, “Stop picking at your fingers, you know that they’ll bleed,” you jerk your fingers away and instead start playing with the loose strings from your socks, “and what's complicated about Peters crush?”  her eyes squint as if she’s trying to get into your head. 

“Well, i-it’s not that it’s complicated- it’s just, i dunno… I- “ your eyes are on your shirt, your teeth nibbling on your lower lip. 

“Y/n, would you quit stalling and just tell me?” MJ stands up and sits on the bed, shifting to lay her head on your lap, you softly chuckle at her antics and lightly slap her forehead, “God bless that forehead” you giggle as Michelle groans. 

“So?” her finger reaches up and boops your nose. Dejected you sigh. 

Might as well tell the truth, lying will just get me into more shit anyways. Besides, MJ’s my best friend, she deserves the truth. 

“Liz.” god, you felt like a dumbass. 

“Liz?” MJ cringes 

Alright, now’s your chance to come clean-

“Yup! I know right.” Your voice definitely went up a couple octaves, your palms instantly clamming up. 

“Huh, I guess that makes sense-” She shrugs

“Y-yeah, I definitely think so too... “ 

Makes sense?? What is that supposed to mean?? 

“No you don’t, listen- don’t stress about it. Liz has nothing on you, “ MJ smirks up at you, sitting up and placing her hands on her shoulders making you face her, “ You are stunning y/n, like genuinely- I’m not saying this because you’re my best friend- because you know that i’m brutally honest 24/7, i’m saying this because it’s true.” Your ears burn pink and you cast your gaze to the side, “Hey, look at me- I mean it. You are so beautiful, no matter what- all those imperfections? All those flaws? They are beautiful and they are real. They prove that you aren’t a fake ass bitch who replaced everything with plastic surgery, it means that you have flaws and that you love your own flaws. Ok? And if Peter can’t see your beauty while accepting your imperfections, then he's absolutely not worth your time.” Hearing MJ talk so highly of you made your eyes brim with tears, MJ smiles in adoration. 

You let out a choked up laugh “Thanks MJ” you sniffle

“Of course, y/n. And remember what I said about boys?” 

“Boys aint shit” You burst into giggles

“That’s right queen, and don’t you forget it-” She stands up and holds your hands in hers, dragging you to your feet, “Now let’s go get pizza or something- I’m starving.” she begins pulling you towards the door, You laugh once again and follow her out. 

*Peter* 

“It’s honestly incredible how he just suddenly comes back to life, I mean what a plot twist-” Ned was ranting about the End of Skywalker, Peter couldn’t bring himself to care honestly so focused on finding a way to make the girl of his dreams fall for him. Was he looking it up? Yes. Every wikipedia article, witchy craft site, fuckboy sites, everything. 

“Peter, are you even listening to me?” Ned sighs and puts on the spiderman mask.

“Sounds fantastic, ned.” a mumble leaves Peters lips as his fingers mindlessly tap at the keyboard for more results to his search. 

“See, that response right there doesn’t make sense. I mean I asked a yes or no question and you replied with ‘fantastic’-” 

“Woah. no way” Peter once again mindlessly interrupted his friend. 

“Oh for the love of god, Peter! Give it a rest bro! This is deadass everyday, like all you talk about is having her fall for you! Besides all those sites won't help, to make MJ fall for you would take some magical miracle!” Ned burst, feeling lightheaded. 

Finally Peter stops his rapid typing and spins to look at Ned, eye’s wide and his jaw to the floor, “Ned! You absolute genius!” Peter shoots up from his seat, grasping his coat and wallet as well as his house keys. 

“I’m- what is going on-” Ned removes the mask, confusion written all over his face. 

“Magic, Ned! Magic! I’ll be right back, dude- Bye!” and with that Peter left in search of a magical wizard. 

-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------

“No absolutely not.” Dr. Strange muttered as he read his book, probably a spiritual thing.

“Oh come on, Mr. Strange-” Peter pleaded, nearly pouting. 

“It’s Doctor Strange, and my answer is still no.” Dr. Strange stood up, his eyes glued to the book as he swirled his hands in a graceful motion to create a small table with more books and a glass of tea of which Dr. Strange takes a sip of before walking around some more. Peter right on his heels. 

“Look, all I’m asking is to have a small enchanting spell of some kind, or even a potion-” 

Finally Dr.Strange finally looks up from his book and turns towards the young spiderboy, “Peter, you do realize that you are asking me to enchant a human-” 

“Of course I know-” 

“No you don’t, you are tampering with the emotions of a human being. This could cause some real trauma to the one being enchanted. Are you aware of that?” Strange seemed to become frustrated with Peter’s persistence. 

“Well… I am now-” Peter’s gaze fell at his feet, fidgeting with his fingers, a habit he had when he was nervous, “Listen- I understand if you don’t want to help me, but all I want is some time. Just.. I dunno, a week- to prove that I can be the perfect boyfriend for her. I just want time to show her, and when the time runs out, if she’s still not interested, then I won’t insist. Please.” Peter’s soft brown eyes gazed up at the wizard, his pout showing itself. 

“Oh no… not the pout.” Dr.Strange groans, he rubs his eyes in frustration, inhaling deeply before muttering, “One week. No more than one week.” 

-----------------------------------------------------------------

And that concludes part one of my Love Potion AU series! thanks so much for reading- and i’m so sorry it took so long, like I said, I’m a HUGE procrastinator. Let me know if you’d like to be tagged or have any suggestions on how to improve my writing! Thanks Again and I hope you enjoy! 

@puremusicbeat-blog @halparkebitch @missmulti @everyoneyoulovedies @le-yona @universeoffandoms1 @writeroutoftime @bluelida

Ok just an FYI I tagged people who asked to be tagged AND people who voted on it, if you don’t want to be tagged, message me and I will remove you from the list! 

[thanksjro]

“Bullets”, a Last Stand of the Wreckers prose story- Ironfist Solves a Murder Mystery

Now that Overlord and Rewind have been exploded horribly in the vacuum of space, multiple people have died, and Chromedome’s horrifically single, let’s take a look at all those Last Stand of the Wreckers extras, yeah?

We more or less start with a Furmanism, as is tradition.

One day Furmanisms won’t be nearly as prevalent within the comic publications, and that is a day that I cannot wait to see. Forget politics, forget misogyny, forget basically NEEDING Death of the Author in effect to enjoy anything the man’s done- Furmanisms are a crutch that everybody in this franchise uses, but nobody needs. They never feel natural, in my opinion. It’s like a literary obligation at this point, and you can tell, because it never quite meshes with any writer’s style.

Anyway, this is the setup for what would happen on Pova- the Wreckers have been watching Squadron X fix up their ship, and now that the thing’s airborne again they’ve gotten itchy trigger fingers. Well, some of them, anyway. Rack n Ruin aren’t so sure about this whole thing, seeing as there are eight of them and an entire battalion up there. Impactor’s working the crowd though, as a leader of such a high turnover rate group is required to do, and that’s the point where First Aid stops reading.

Yep, this is one of Fisitron’s datalog entries, of which First Aid is a fan.

This isn’t First Aid’s first appearance within the IDW continuity- he played a role in Spotlight: Jazz, where he lived up to his name, and in Transformers: Ironhide #1, where he was in the background. This IS his premiere as a major player in a story, however, and it’s here that he’s revealed to be a bit of a slacker- he should be making the rounds at Delphi right now, but instead he’s reading entry logs about the wartime equivalent of a boyband.

He hits a key to quicktab to something at least somewhat medically-related as he feels someone approaching from behind. It’s the CMO, and he is in no way fooled by First Aid’s attempt to hide his shame. He gets back to work, but that particular entry- 113, because of course it is- is still on his mind. Hope he never finds out it’s a load of bunk.

I REALLY hope he never finds out this is all bunk. We all need something, you know?

Of course, First Aid- y’know, not to brag or anything- personally met one of the Wreckers. Roughly five years ago, Springer had approached him at a medical conference on Kimia. Why a medical conference was being held on Kimia of all places isn’t addressed, but it was probably because half the folks stationed there are doctors. First Aid, being a classy guy, fucking ogles Springer the entire time they’re talking.

You’ve heard of “Men Writing Women”, now it’s time for “Roberts Writing Robots”. Yes, this is THAT scene, and it’s on the first goddamn page.

First Aid, wanting to be of use to his idol, offers his medical expertise, completely willing to fix Springer’s nose, give him a breast reduction, and even update the circuit dampeners he doesn’t have. Springer, while flattered, isn’t looking for that sort of help. He’s looking for folks who have a lot to give.

The phrasing he uses makes First Aid think that he’s about to be recruited to the Wreckers- in other words, about to be put in line for a slow and awful death- but Springer clarifies that he’s looking more for eyes and ears to help him, not so much bodies. He hands First Aid a card with his number, and says to give him a call sometime.

Cutting back to the present, First Aid is walking through the rows of patient slabs, where we see an honestly horrifying practice in play- every patient in Delphi has their non-essential functions turned off to conserve power. This includes things like the ability to move, and speak.

Because that couldn’t possibly have any negative repercussions.

He checks in on the Fader he’s been assigned, confirms that, yes, his head IS still missing from his neck, then makes to walk out of the room, only to be startled by the sudden entry of a stretcher and Ambulon. Here, Ambulon is identified as a chief paramedic, as opposed to being a ward manager. Whether this is early installment weirdness or a simple mistake isn’t clear.

Ambulon is quickly followed by Dogfight, Dodger, and Backstreet(’s back, alright!) First Aid gets to work, by checking the three of them for injuries, paying special attention to their Autobot badges.

This is the reason Rung had to call in at the beginning of MTMTE #4, though it might be more because First Aid can’t act like a professional of five friggin’ minutes.

Oh, Delphi’s HR department is getting a call for sure.

First Aid, while a known fondler of badges, has never had this exact reaction. He runs off to make a phone call, leaving the injured Dodger to wait for the surgery he’s going to undergo the moment First Aid gets back.

Meanwhile, somewhere else- I’m guessing Kimia- Rung has an appointment underway with a dude named Flattop.

Flattop’s TFWiki article is one of the most depressing on the entire site, and it’s completely “Bullets”’s fault.

You see, Flattop’s attempting to talk through his trauma, but it’s difficult.

This level of insight is why they pay Rung the big bucks.

The war, while terrible for everyone’s mental health, has given Rung a slew of patients to handle.

Gee, wonder who that medic was.

Anyway, so Flattop’s deal- he was at Babu Yar, which was an event that was apparently so terrible, everyone involved was offered brand new bodies as compensation. He’s currently hiding underneath a table, which Rung identifies as “playing to type”. Flattop isn’t even here to talk about Babu Yar, but it’s good to know that war is still hell.

The reason Flattop’s actually here is this: he was serving under Silverstreak- another one of Rung’s patients, and someone who I’m convinced might actually be a Warrior cat given the name- and was going to check something out when he saw something utterly terrifying.

Rung gets Flattop out from under the table, and they talk about what the Shimmer means. Flattop is convinced that since he’s seen the thing, he’s going to die. You see, folklore in space is very similar to its counterpart on Earth, in that it’s a warning swathed in story to make it easily digestible.

Rung, who tries to keep things rational, offers to give Flattop a few possible explanations for what he saw. Because Flattop had only recently gotten his hot new bod a short while before he saw the Shimmer, it’s completely possible he had had a hallucination due to the adjustment period. Another theory is that Flattop has PTSD. Which, I mean, yeah.

While Rung was busy trying to explain what had happened, Flattop friggin’ died.

Awkward.

Over with Ironfist- because “Bullets” is a prequel- we’re in the middle of a meeting with the Ethics Committee. Xaaron, Animus, and Trailbreaker of all people, have come together to pass judgement on Ironfist’s cerebro-sensitive bullets. There’s a lot of hemming and hawing, and Ironfist reflects on how they got to this moment, while fiddling with a data slug to burn off the nerves.

This is just after the Surge happened, an event kicked off by the betrayal of the Autobot cause allowed Megatron to seize a majority of the Autobot outposts. It was a huge deal, a lot of shit was stolen, including the Weak Anthropic Principle, and it left everyone a little twitchy towards one another. Trust is not in vogue at present.

Kimia’s in a mess of trouble anyway, however, due to the events of Babu Yar, where Gideon’s Glue had rained down on the Autobot troops under Flame’s command, eaten to Swiss cheese by something eerily similar to something being developed on the station.

So an investigation was established. Brainstorm, who’s apparently big man on campus here at Kimia, is questioned, as is everyone else. Of course, no one cops to having invented Gideon’s Glue, because that’s a big ol’ war crime, so the questioning goes nowhere, but now there’s a precedent for mistrust on this science station.

Anyway, back to the bullet thing.

Ironfist’s cerebro-sensitive bullets are designed to hit the head, every single time, ignoring trajectory, ballistic physics, what you think is possible, and the Geneva Convention. It’s fired, it hits the first brain it identifies. Brutal stuff. Effective, but brutal.

Trailbreaker’s not a fan.

I mean, maybe? I guess it depends how gray your morality is. I bet Prowl would like them.

After telling Trailbreaker to keep it professional, Xaaron tells Ironfist that using these bullets would be a literal war crime, and he’s got a little over a day to hand them over to the Committee for destruction. Meeting adjourned!

Ironfist is left standing there until his good buddy Skyfall checks in on him. Ironfist is kind of bummed out, but Skyfall knows how to cheer him up- by comparing him to Impactor, former leader of the Wreckers, and one of Ironfist’s fan-crushes.

Man, this makes the Pova reveal a little harsher in hindsight, huh?

Skyfall invites Ironfist to the Exit Rooms, a place where the Kimia employees can drink and no one will give a shit, and as they make their way over they run into Brainstorm.

Brainstorm gets some interesting development in this story.

That’s right, not only are his weapons completely insane, and in some cases literally abstract, they’re apparently often so incredibly dangerous that the Ethics Committee loses sleep over the fact that they exist.

And Brainstorm loves it.

No wonder Trailbreaker was so annoyed in his Spotlight.

Skyfall asks about what’s in Brainstorm’s briefcase, gets an answer that’s likely a lie, then the boys head over to the Exit Rooms.

Over on Hydrus 5, it’s raining cats and dogs, and this is somehow the Transformers fault. I guess the universe bends to the will of what would be the most dramatic, as everyone takes a break from warmongering to soul-search.

Or ego-stroking. That works too.

Here is our dear Pyro, reveling in the aftermath of a battle that destroyed the natural ecosystem of the land, but at least they kicked those ‘Cons’ asses!

Pyro, who’s revealed to be maybe perhaps not the best at coming up with one-liners, is left alone for a bit as Afterburner goes to check on the rest of their men. As he tries to piece together a speech to deliver, he sees a green something- they’re always green, aren’t they?- and that something is the Shimmer.

Well, heck.

Over on the dilapidated space station of Debris (wow, that’s even less subtle than usual for this franchise) Springer’s holding a bullet. I mean, it’s not really a bullet, and the Decepticon who fired it wasn’t really a Decepticon.

I want you to know that I keep track of how many times 113 comes up in these stories, and for “Bullets" it’s a LOT.

Today’s letter from Agent 113 foreshadows/hindshadows the events of Last Stand, claiming that the DJD hasn’t heard anything from Garrus-9 since the Surge happened. Prowl’s concerned that Fortress Maximus is still alive in there and fighting off the Decepticons while waiting for backup, so he recently called Springer and invited the Wreckers on a mission.

All Springer has to do is pick some sorry sons of guns to die.

Over with Guzzle, who is romanticizing a weapon, comparing his gun to a religious artifact, our dear little bastard man has realized that he does, in fact, have emotions, and is in mourning over his lost comrades, who died rescuing Kup from Tsiehshi. Guzzle doesn’t much appreciate this whole “feeling” thing, and would rather it didn’t get in the way of him shooting statues for no other reason than him wanting to. Then he sees the Shimmer, and feels fear. He doesn’t much care for that, either.

Even Nick Roche is powerless to stop this madness.

We reconfirm the fact that Ironfist is a massive nerd, then are shown that the bullet accident that will have killed him by the end of Last Stand #5 has already happened. Ever so slowly, the bullet is heading for Ironfist’s brain. Every time it hits a new layer of his noggin, he blacks out.

Ironfist is going to leave on his super-fun, not-at-all-traumatizing Wrecker adventure soon, and he’s promised Skyfall his workshop. Skyfall was at Grindcore for a while, and that kind of gave him PTSD, so when Ironfist had gotten accepted to Kimia, he’d brought him along for the ride.

I like to call Grindcore Eugenesis-lite.

Because Skyfall is a reckless son of a gun with access to Ironfist’s workshop, he inadvertently caused a major incident with something called Black Phosphex, which resulted in the deaths of several Autobots because it wasn’t properly tested. This landed him in Garrus-9 for a bit, in a temporary career-path deviation, until it was time to come home to Kimia, just in time for the Inquiry.

Are stans always this intense? Because good lord, Ironfist.

Over at Karashi Delta, in the aftermath of a fierce battle, Rotorstorm is hyping himself the fuck up.

But does he buy it himself?

Hmm, survey says no.

Of course, verbal abuse isn’t the only thing we’ll be getting here. No, things begin to escalate pretty rapidly with Jetstream, who moves from shoving to almost beating Rotorstorm to death in a matter of months, before disappearing from the station forever.

Dang, this Jetstream fella kinda sucks. What’s his friggin’ problem?

Ah.

Again, I can’t stress this enough, Whirl’s awful flipper claws from back during his time as a cop do not make a nice fist. He was basically stabbing Rotorstorm. Who let this man be a teacher?

Rotorstorm is snapped out of his self-deprecating flashbacks by the sight of something on the canyon lip up ahead. It’s the gotdang Shimmer. Rotorstorm books it, not wanting to be caught by a harbinger of death. It doesn’t work, but points for trying.

Back on Debris, Springer’s picked his new recruits. Now all he has to do is call them up. Hey, isn’t Springer green? Green like the Shimmer? How about that.

Back on Kimia, Skyfall’s wandered into Ironfist’s workshop to share the gossip on Fisitron’s latest Wreckers: Declassified. Folks are a bit critical of his writing style, it would seem.

Of course Swerve knows what fan-fiction is. He seems like exactly the type to make fun of it, then read a 43,000 word fic in a single sitting, under cover of darkness, burning with shame all the while.

After making a note on his current Wreckers: Declassified document to ease up on the adverbs, Ironfist switches gears and gets busy on his other project: an Unofficial Wreckers’ Training Guide. I wonder when the switch from Primal Vanguard to Wreckers as a hyperfixation happened for him.

Ironfist asks Skyfall what entry he’s currently on, and the answer is a ways away from the latest one. Skyfall’s a slow reader, but he doesn’t want to just beam it all into his brain because it feels like cheating. He asks Ironfist when he’s going to cover the Wreckers’ mission to Garrus-9, the one that happened while he was there being not-imprisoned. Ironfist gives a non-answer, then asks if Skyfall wants to help with packing up the war-crime guns. Skyfall most certainly does not.

Ironfist starts breaking everything down when he gets a call from Prowl, as happened in Last Stand #4.

Back with Springer, we’re giving our dad a hug, as he greets Kup. It’s here we find out who Ironfist replaced on the Wrecker team for Operation: Retrieval- it was Skyfall. Skyfall had impressed Springer during their last Garrus-9 excursion, and thought that he’d be a good fit for the team, despite the Black Phosphex incident.

Kup goes full old man story time mode about how insanely boring Prowl is, while Springer gets the door. On the other side is Twin Twist, Top Spin, and Perceptor. They hold the vote, Ironfist given immunity due to unmentioned Prowl reasons, and Springer gets ready to call all their new pals.

Back at Ironfist’s workshop, Ironfist reflects on just how his life got to this point. He’s going to join the Wreckers! Never mind the fact that he’ll be going to die, and that’s if the bullet crawling around in his skull doesn’t get him first. Never mind the very likely possibility that he’s being exploited by Prowl. Nah, he’s gonna go on an adventure! It’s gonna be awesome! Yaaaaay!

It doesn’t pay to be blue and naive when Roberts is handling the story. Just ask Pipes.

Or don’t. You won’t get an answer.

Called it.

Ironfist, starstruck, bumbles his way through the conversation we saw in the Mosaic, and so it was that he became a Wrecker. All he has to do is pop on over to Rung’s office, get his head examined, then get his butt on over to Babu Yar.

Telecon work completed, Springer reflects on the fact that Guzzle turned him down. It’s not often someone turns down the chance to be a Wrecker.

Oh, well, never mind then.

Ironfist immediately tells Skyfall about what’s happened, because he’s just so jazzed to be a Wrecker. Skyfall isn’t quite as thrilled, but does his best to be supportive.

And by that I mean he’s not listening in the slightest as he’s already planning out the interior design for the workshop once Ironfist is gone. I bet he’ll get Atomizer to help him, the tacky bastard.

Skyfall runs off to go look at paint swatches or whatever, and Ironfist finalizes the stuff for the Ethics Committee pickup.

Oh, so that appointment wasn’t on Kimia after all. Can we please get some sort of fast-track program for the mental health specific degrees? We can’t keep using Rung for everybody, he’s only one person.

Oh heavens, Ironfist, be careful.

Ironfist gets another call, and we jump scenes before we can figure out just who rang or why.

Brief timeskip, and we find ourselves at Babu Yar, as Ironfist introduces himself to Guzzle and his gun.

Ironfist is about as smooth as coarse-grit sandpaper.

While Ironfist is busy revealing his nerd shame to Guzzle, someone’s decided to be a cocky little asshole.

Oh, dramatic irony. Always a delightful sort of pain.

Rotorstorm cranks up the “I’m hot shit” act to 11.5, doing completely unnecessary flips and talking himself up like he will literally die if he doesn’t.

Off in the distance, something disingenuously impressive comes up over the hill.

Of course, it’s not Optimus Prime, but it is someone who would very much like to be him. Such is the nature of primus apotheosis. Gang’s all here!

This is going to turn out fan-fucking-tastic.

Rotorstorm and Guzzle want to play with the big gun Ironfist brought along, and since Ironfist is going to die anyway, he lets them go for it. This would be why everything was on fire at the start of the miniseries.

Yep. Just gotta make it hurt just a little more, doncha Roberts? Just gotta twist the knife.

Nine months after the events of the Garrus-9 mission, Skyfall is upset. He’s gone and played himself by not attending the Ethics Committee hearings, and they’ve taken all his toys away as a result. He tries to mask his lack of concern for safety precautions behind a facade of missing Ironfist, but it doesn’t get him the weapons back.

Feeling cross, he decides it’s about time he made a visit to the Exit Rooms to blow off a little steam.

Later, he gets a call. Worried that his lack of ethics and/or his drunken squabbling has gotten him in trouble yet again, he’s loathe to answer, but does anyway.

Ghost call!

No, it’s actually a prerecorded message, one that claims that Skyfall killed Ironfist. Ironfist had asked Brainstorm to take a gander at the gun after he got shot, and found that it had been tampered with, set to go off on its own when held a certain way. That’s who was calling before he left for his Wrecker mission. 

Skyfall starts to panic, expecting the security detail for Kimia to bust into the workshop at any second. 

Ironfist knows that only Skyfall could have done this to him, but he doesn’t know the exact motive. Was it because he was jealous of how good a weapons expert he was? A chip on his shoulder about Grindcore? Whatever the reason, Ironfist isn’t terribly concerned at the time of the recording. What he is concerned about is Gideon’s Glue.

Ironfist had, in fact, invented Gideon’s Glue, but he’d been so horrified by what the shit actually did, he flushed it into space and destroyed all research before the Ethics Committee even knew about it. It still got to the Decepticons, though, didn’t it? How could such a thing happen?

Probably not, considering what happens next.

Ironfist is a smart guy, but more importantly, he knows how to reach his audience. Literally, in this case, as Skyfall finds out, when the Enforcement Squad starts trying to break down the door. Ironfist had the message that Skyfall is currently listening to primed for beaming into all of Fisitron’s reader’s brains. Everyone knows what happened. Swerve. Atomizer. Ratchet, who’s over on Earth right now. First Aid, who has enough bullshit to worry about on Delphi without this nonsense. You. Me. Everyone.

Skyfall, in a mad attempt to save himself, throws some of Ironfist’s Wrecker memorabilia at the door, and out pops that last tube of Gideon’s Glue.

There’s only one way out of this one.

This got really intense at the end, didn’t it?

[happys-crazy-queen22]

Warped Tour Surprise

Gif Credit @bloodrunluv-blog

Requested By Anon I hope you enjoy it

Hope you all enjoy.

Happy Reading Dollies 

@chriscrosscerulli @ryansitkowskiswifey  @ilovetaquitosmmmm

"Warped tour here we come". You cheered as you started loading your bag into the tour bus.

"This year is going to be great". Chris kissed your lips.

"And why is that"?

"Because you're here and we can have tons of sex".

"That's the only reason"?

"No, I'm glad you're here with me. We get to spend time together and go to concerts like normal couples".

"That sounds truly romantic, Chris. I love you".

"I love you too". He kissed you again, picking you up and throwing you over his shoulder smacking your ass on the way to the door.

"Crazy goon, put me down". He threw you on the couch. You landed with a thud and your head landed in Ryan's lap.

"Hi there". You smiled looking up at him. Ryan was not impressed.

"Hi".

"Chris come get your girlfriend out of my lap and put her in yours".

"She's yours. I need a break she's been on my lap all night". Chris laughed as you gasped getting off Ryan.

"You liar. He's been in my lap the whole night".

"I really don't want to hear about your sex life. Please shut up".

"Oh Ryan, you love me".

"The jury is still out on that". Ryan chuckled as he went back to his phone.

"Babe, I'm going to lay down for a bit". You told Chris.

"You okay. Don't tell me you're getting sick we just started warped tour".

"No just tired. I didnt get much sleep last night". You winked at Chris as Ryan groaned.

"I'm still here hearing about your sex life".

"Good night". You kissed his lips and headed off to his bunk.

You must have slept for hours because when you woke up you were already there. The guys were walking around getting to know the band's that were playing.

Getting out of bed your head started to feel dizzy as you stood up. You quickly sat back down. Feeling nauseous and light headed you crawled back into bed and tried going back to sleep. You shrugged it off as the motion of the bus moving.

"Y/N"? Feeling a hand shake you a groan came from you.

"What"?

"You're missing all the fun". It was Chris.

"I'm not in the mood for fun. I don't feel good".

"What's wrong"?

"I think the bus ride made me dizzy and nauseous".

"Yeah that can happen if you haven't been on a long bus ride before. It will get better. You need anything"?

"No I'm good. Going to try and sleep some more".

"Okay. Rest well". Chris kissed your temple and rubbed your leg before leaving.

The night came Chris and the band were back inside they were up front talking and laughing. A very awful taste came into your mouth as you were sleeping. You tried swallowing it down but the more you swallowed the stronger the urge got to throw up.

"Oh fuck". You covered your mouth throwing yourself off the bed and leaped over the piles of bags and clothes in the floor and bolted to the bus bathroom.

Blech blech. The sounds of your lunch hit the toilet. Your eyes were watering and you throat burned.

"What is that"? Ricky asked, quieting everyone down.

"Everyone's here". Balz looked around.

"Y/N". Chris yelled sprinting to the bathroom. He knocked on the door.

"Y/N, you okay"?

"No". You gagged as a piece of food got stuck in your throat.

"I get you a sprite and some crackers". You heard him walk away.

"What's happened"? Ricky questioned.

"She's sick. I think she has motion sickness from the bus". Chris grabbed a can of sprite and a sleeve of crackers heading back to you.

"Hope she feels better".

Chris knocked again then came in. You sat on the floor with a rag on your face.

"Here you go". Chris popped the top on the can and handed it to you.

"Thanks". You cleared your throat. It was hurting and you sounded terrible. You haven't thrown up this much since the last time you got food poisoning at the seafood restaurant that Chris took you for your birthday six months ago.

"I'm sorry". He crouched beside you. Removing the wash cloth you eyed him.

"It's not your fault. I'm just not use to it like you are. I'll be better tomorrow".

"Do you need anything like motion sickness medicine"?

"No. Just leave me the bathroom, keep me in sprite and just love me".

"I can do that". He chuckled.

"Oh and guess what"?

"What"?

"Slipknot is playing one show here. They're the special guest".

"No f-ing way".

"So you need to get better. I want to take you to their concert".

"I'm already better. It's a date". You blew a kiss to him when he closed the door checking on you before he left.

Two days have past and you sickness hasn't stopped. Chris was getting worried but you just shrugged it off until you felt you threw up a lung. Your back hurt and you didn't feel like yourself.

"I'm taking you to the hospital". Chris grabbed your bag and started putting clothes in it.

"I'm not going to the hospital. I'm fine. This will pass".

"You haven't ate a proper meal in three days. You live on sprite and crackers. That's not healthy".

"Chris".

"Please go. For me"? He looked at you with those puppy dog eyes.

"Fine but under one condition".

"What"?

"You can't go". Chris shook his head.

"No, I'm going to be there. What if something is wrong"?

"Then I will call you".

"What if you dont have time? They will take you to surgery and I will never know".

"I'm going alone or not at all".

"Okay you dont want me to go the you're going with Ryan".

"Ryan"?

"Yes".

"Ask him, he's going to say no".

"Ryan will you take Y/N to the hospital"? Chris asked Ryan who was sitting in his bunk playing a game.

"Yeah".

"Ryan you're supposed to say no".

"You really need to go. I will wait out in the waiting room for you".

"Fine. Let's go". You groaned. Getting out of your nice warm bunk.

Ryan and you waited in the waiting room what seemed like forever but it was only twenties minutes. You had thrown up six times in that time. The nurse was afraid you would pass out.

"We are the only ones here what is taking so long"? Ryan bounced his leg.

"We might be the only ones you see but this hospital is probably filled with a lot of people. If you don't want to be here then you can go"?

"No, I told Chris I would take you and I am".

"I just hate hospitals".

"I know. Me too. Just relax and play on your phone".

"It dying". Ryan huffed.

"Here play on mine". You handed him your phone.

"Thanks".

"Miss Y/L/N"? A nurse called you.

"Here". You smiled at Ryan and followed the nurse. Ryan sat there quietly playing on your phone, texting Chris every few minutes with up dates.

"So miss Y/L/N, what brings you in here today"? Your doctor asked as she looked at your chart.

"I'm on tour with my boyfriend and we ride in a tour bus so the day we got to the site I got this feeling of nausea and I was dizzy. I thought it was just motion sickness but this has been going on for three days now, it's gotten worse and it doesn't seem to be letting up any time soon".

"Okay, lets take a look at you and see what we can do". You laid down on the exam table. She lifted up your shirt and started touching your stomach.

"I'm guessing you are sexually active"?

"Yes but we always use condoms".

"Are you on birth control"?

"No, I have really bad side effects in using birth control so I don't take any".

"Okay".

"I'm going to run a few test and see maybe something will show up".

"Fine".

The nurse came and drew blood and she hooked you to a IV you were dehydrated from all the throwing up.

"Everything has came back normal except one".

"Oh god".

"You're pregnant. Congratulations".

"What? How? I mean I know how but woah".

"I'd say you're about six months".

"Six months"?

"Yes".

"Can you get morning sickness after you find out"?

"Some have morning sickness through out the pregnancy and others only get it some on and off". "Why do ask"?

"Six months again I got food poisoning or could I have been pregnant at the time and it was just telling me and I didn't listen"?

"You may have been. Did you go to the doctor"?

"No. It was over in twenty-four hours".

"Then you may have been. It's highly likely".

"This is insane, really". Your mind was blown.

"Do you want to keep it"?

"Yes. Yes. I'm happy its just very unexpected thats all". "I came in here thinking I'm dying and I'm just pregnant".

"How did I not know"?

"The baby was probably playing hide and seek with you coming out at night and hiding during the day. Has you appetite increased"?

"Yeah but I was under stress so I thought stress eating".

"Well you're pregnant and not dying so you're boyfriend is going to get a shock of his life". She said with a chuckle.

"Yeah he is".

After the doctors you went to get something to eat. She had given you motion sickness pills to help you eat. Ryan was asking all sorts of questions on the way there.

"Are you okay"?

"Ryan yes. I'm just hungry". You said taking a bite out of your burger. "Mmmmmm, so good".

"Did she drug you"?

"No".

"Then why all of the sudden can you eat"?

"She gave me motion sickness meds and I'm pregnant".

"What"!!

"I'm pregnant and if you tell Chris before I do you'll never be able to play a guitar again".

"What"?!!! He was stunned. It wasn't even his kid and he was shocked.

"I'm pregnant". You took the last bite of your burger.

"I didn't know you two were trying"?

"We weren't. It just happened. Can you get me another burger"?

"Here you can have mine". Ryan handed you his burger.

"You think its a bad idea that I keep the baby"?

"No, I just can't believe that Chris is the first one to have a kid. I thought it would be Ricky or Vinny".

"Vinny? He's still a kid". You giggled.

"Exactly, they can learn to grow up together".

"Seriously though, I'm happy for you". He gave you a shy smile.

"Thanks Ryan".

"Now let's get you back before Chris has my head".

"Do you know the stage manager for slipknot"?

"Yeah"?

"Can you give them a call? I need to talk to them".

"Okay"? Ryan took out his phone and handed it to you. The drive back to warped tour you were planning something for Chris.

"Y/N". Chris wrapped his long arms around your waist.

"How did it go"?

"I was dehydrated and she just gave me meds for the nausea".

"That's all"?

"Yeah". You looked at Ryan who was hiding his face. He really couldnt keep a secret as big as this from Chris.

"Ryan"?

"Yeah, everything's good. But...". You gulped when Ryan said but.

"She has her appetite back so we may need more food". Thank God he didn't say anything.

"I figured she would. Im glad you're fine". "Are you ready to party tonight"?

"Yeah, I'm waiting for that date".

"They're about to go on. You want to head over there"?

"Yeah". You wrapped your arm around his waist his arm around your shoulder and walked to the Slipknot stage.

"Come on". You pulled Chris to the back with the Slipknot crew.

"We can't be back here". Chris sneaked in as you giggled.

"Y/N"? The manager waved you over.

"Wait, you know him"? Chris was in aww.

"Hey there".

"After the last song you can go on there".

"Thank you so much".

"No problem". He said with a smile.

"You're fucking kidding me? We're going on stage with Slipknot"? Chris was acting like a kid in a candy store.

"Yes".

"How"?

"I have connections". Chris kissed you hard and passionate.

It was the second to last song. You and Chris were rocking out to one of Chris's favorite songs. You're surprised Chris hasn't gotten whiplash but you'd worry about that later. He was is happy.

You could hear Corey tell the audience that the lead singer of Motionless in white is coming on stage with his girlfriend.

"That's your queue". The manager pointed to the front.

"Lets go". You grabbed Chris's sweaty hand and pulled him on stage. His face was frozen. He was nervous being there with a person he looked up to.

"Hi ya doing Chris"? Corey asked.

"Great". Chris mumbled into the mic.

"Wonderful, now this little lady has something to tell you". He handed you the mic.

"Chris, I'm having so much fun with you in this fairy tale and I think it's time we add a new chapter to it".

"I'm pregnant".

Chris starred at you with a blank expression. You understand that it was a shock but this was funny.

"You okay there pal"? Corey asked Chris who nodded and mumbled a few words.

"You sure, do we need a medic"?

"No".

"So, what do you think"?

"We're going to need a bigger tour bus". Chris ran his hand through his hair.

"Yeah but are you happy"?

"Yes. Fuck yes". He hugged you tightly swirling you around on stage.

"Give a round of applause for the new parents". Corey clapped. Chris quickly hugged him and squealed. You didn't know if he was happy about the baby or hugging Corey Taylor.

"I'm so fucking happy". Chris screamed, you giggled hugging him.

"I love you".

"I love you too". Chris kissed you sweetly with his hand on your belly.

Chris was truly happy until you told him that you were six months along then he fainted. He thought he had some time to get  things ready but the baby would be here in no time. The guys still couldnt believe that Chris was the first to knock a girl up and become a dad when you told them.

[freerabbitmanandpig]

My Friend With Parkinson’s

On Oct 1st of this year I was given compassionate release from Allenwood USP for (what was diagnosed as) an unspecified connective tissue disorder. I had served roughly 60 months of a 70 month sentence. To secure this extraordinary release my lawyer had sited the new emergency COVID increased risk criteria, pointing to my status of being prescribed immunosuppressants, as well as suffering from lifelong asthma. Being as that I’d been housed in a care-level 3 medical facility, most of my time had been spent around inmates with chronic conditions, many of them without a chance of making it home within the course of their natural lives. Conscious of the fact that many of these men lacked the financial resources available to my family, especially as the pandemic has left many people in the street without regular employment, I made promises to some of these men to attempt to get their stories out into the world.

Christian Tarantino (Reg. # 14684-050) is a middle-aged man that I met while in Allenwood. A gambler with a good sense of humor, who was generous with his friends and, while in the street, lethal to those who stood in his way. According to the FBI, back in the early 90s Chris was part of a crew that committed a number of armed robberies. In 2011 he was sentenced to three consecutive life-terms for the murder of a guard during an armored car robbery back in 1994, as well as the murder of one of the participants whom he feared would flip on him.

Criminals, conscious of their own status, tend to withhold judgement, and I’d be lying if the description of Chris as a “cold killer”, spoken to me with admiration by more than a few inmates, did not inspire this same admiration in me upon hearing the stories of his exploits. To be clear, I never personally heard Chris tell any stories about his case, or murder in general; the stories he did tell me were often funny ones about the club scene in NY, or his dog. The problem was that, when Chris spoke, I often had to strain to hear him. Still, the Parkinson’s had made him patient over the years, and he did not get frustrated when a person had to ask him to repeat himself, sometimes multiple times. No matter how long it took for him to finish the story, it was worth it to hear it all the way through – as I said, he was funny.

Chris and I had started talking more about his disease a month before my release, after having heard that the Marshall Project had published a short story of mine the year before. The problem, he’d told me one morning, was that a 15-minute analysis with the MD did not take in to account the fact that his PD fluctuated in intensity throughout the course of a given day. Even if you’re classified as a care level 3, you generally only get to see the facility’s MD once a year, with all subsequent outside appointments and medication adjustments being managed by your assigned PA. The key to adequate treatment lies then in the temperament of your PA. My PA was considered the best on the compound and was likely instrumental in getting me the workups and appointments I needed to secure my compassionate release. Chris’ PA was largely considered the worst on the compound (one of two), a bitter woman who often had to be compelled into action via administrative remedies, which Chris was inevitably forced to file. If he came to a sick-call and was not actively in the throes of intense contortions (which he sometimes referred to as ‘crazy legs’) then he was often disregarded. Chris and his PA were prone to devolve into shouting matches, nor was this a problem that she had only with him. Even when he wasn’t engaged in fighting the crazy legs, he was mostly still confined to his wheelchair. There were, on occasion, times when he felt in control of his legs enough to walk, albeit while holding on to another inmate’s shoulders. There was no shortage of willing shoulders, as inmates of all races would step up to ferry him, either to the computer room – where they would inevitable have to help him type his emails, or to the shower – where no handicap accommodations existed. This last omission struck many of us as particularly negligent, considering the yard’s care level. Another problem was the speech impediment. I’d often heard him ask, rhetorically, how it was that sounding like “a retard” when he spoke was not a clear enough indicator of the severity of his condition, regardless of the tremors. Of course ‘retard’ is not really the best adjective for any modern condition, but the point was still valid that, when he spoke, he sounded like a person recovering from a massive stroke – only he wasn’t recovering, Parkinson’s is a degenerative illness.

          The prison had no choice but to provide him with follow-ups to the local neurologist after a highly invasive surgery, known as ‘deep brain stimulation’, in which a device, a ‘neurostimulator’, was implanted into his brain. This local doctor told Chris flat-out that he was incapable of treating him at this stage in his illness, nor is the facility capable of recalibrating his implant.

         At night, a small group of us would walk to pill line to get our evening medications. I got Elavil and Gabba Pentin – the former for my interstitial cystitis, and the Gabba Pentin for more generalized pain. Chris, on the other hand, got a bunch of different pills, each with an Old Testament-sized list of potential side effects. To add insult to injury, the medical staff crushed most of his medications, as though this middle-aged man in a plastic, yellow wheelchair, barely able to get the cup of powder into his mouth, would somehow be able – or even willing, to cheek these many pills so that he could smuggle them back to the unit and…. What? For anyone curious enough to look, Federal Penitentiaries are full to the point of bursting with real narcotics. Who the fuck wants to sniff twenty different PD meds?

         During these evening walks (some of our only time outside of the unit since the pandemic started) the subject of my pending motion came up on a regular basis. It was news, if nothing else. As for Chris, PD does not put him at an increased risk for COVID complications, and although I’d heard him, on occasion, tentatively breech the subject of outright compassionate release, his main request to me was that I put his story up, in the hope that perhaps someone else from the outside would get involved and get him moved to a medical facility. At least then he wouldn’t have to worry about falling down in the shower and bearing the indignity of calling for help, alone and naked on a wet floor that’s covered with other men’s piss and body hair. Before I was released, I wrote one final staff request for him to the medical coordinator attempting to get him transferred to a care-level 4 facility. This was not his first attempt to obtain such a transfer, and, for the purposes of the request, Chris provided me with a list of names of staff members who had seen him fall down, or else had helped him get back to his cell after an accident. It was a long list.

         For a man who devoted a large part of his life to fitness, it’s a hard pill to swallow. In my mind I am stuck wondering what three consecutive life sentences (or a thousand for that matter) really means for someone like Chris, who’s own body has become a prison. In a sense I have an idea – back in 2017, my uncle Steven Parr – a successful and well known archivist in San Francisco, was diagnosed first with Parkinson’s, which was later amended to a diagnoses of Lewy-Body syndrome – a disease that bears similarities to PD. His initial suicide attempt was precluded by his manager, Adam, who was on the phone with my mother at the time. His second attempt, however, was successful. To me, though, the most poignant encapsulation of Chris’s attitude was made apparent when I was pushing him to the showers one morning. He’d removed his shirt before getting back in his chair, and I was struck by his apparent muscle tone and total lack of body fat, despite his sedentary lifestyle,

“Damn Chris, you’re in a wheelchair and still in better shape than half these dudes in here.”

“Yea..” he spoke slowly – struggling to force his tongue to conform to the consonants, “..this is the worst thing god could’ve done to me.”

         In a way it was cruel how the progress in my appeal seemed to engender a sense of hope in some of the other care level 3’s working fervently, without the aid of outside capital or competent legal help, to obtain their own releases before the virus made it’s way to the yard. By Oct 1st the USP at the Allenwood Correctional Complex had 7 cases, all of them quarantined in the shu after having arrived on a plane, and then a bus, with who-knows how many others potentially infected. They’d already shut the medium back down as, despite their ‘best’ efforts at screening all arrivals, 15 cases had popped up in general population. As I already stated above, the administration fought me every step of the way – even after the motion had been granted and I was only awaiting the end of my obligatory 2 week quarantine, the staff refused to allow me to call my family, my lawyer, or even probation, so that I could arrange for transport. I didn’t know whether I’d be going straight home or to a program until the last minute. I could see it in their faces every time they brought me legal mail or were forced to set up my screening for the drug program that I’m in now – they didn’t think I deserved it. Like they had only just found out via the granting of my motion that they presided over an unequal system. I got 8 months back – goodtime I’d lost, along with years-worth of visits and phone calls - “privileges” they justified in taking almost exclusively over dirty urines, and for what? Suboxone. At my final workup the MD confided in me that, prior to the pandemic, they’d been told by the region to start preparations for the MAT program (medication assisted treatment) and to apply for the DEA approval to begin prescribing both suboxone and vivitrol. Unfortunately, these proceedings had to be halted to focus their energies on the then emerging public health crisis. Maybe it’s my prejudices, but itt seemed to me that these people took it personally – as though those reclaimed 8 months had come directly off the end of their own lifespans.

[hazzabeeforlou]

Not so small life update below (you know me, I write novels...) 

I’m getting a puppy. I’ve decided this not just because it’s been five years since my last pupper left me, and not just because a puppy is ALL I’ve wanted for the past five years, but because my life has now drastically changed. I talk a little bit about my music on here, but not the extent of it, or how difficult the last four years have been for me. I hold three degrees in music now, one of them from the most famous music school in the world; in 2016 I was accepted into the most prestigious European h*** competition, one of only two Americans to make the cut (the other being my friend and classmate who went on to win an international competition). I’ve performed with the New York Phil. And today I just started as a cashier at a home improvement store. Three degrees, thousands of dollars in student loans, and I rang up merchandise all day, because there just are no jobs, and I’m not demeaning that work at all, it’s so important and I actually enjoyed it but I reached for my DREAMS and got fucking smacked to the ground. Orchestras are not going to be performing for untold months. There will be no auditions, and it’s not like I was fucking winning them anyways since my surgery four years ago--the one that kept me from competing in said European competition, the one that promoted my fic Flawless and has saddled me with chronic pain and made even standing for six hours at a register fucking torture-- has made it horribly hard to practice and compete on the level I had before. But this past year I had made PROGRESS, you know? I’d worked so hard on PT and started yoga and really focused on whole body stretching and I had ADVANCED for the first time in February, and I was beginning to feel hopeful that maybe just maybe I could make a career out of doing what I loved, when this happened. And I don’t say all this to complain, because I have it SO good. I have a home to come back to, with the luxury of not having to pay rent, the luxury of getting only a part time job so my pain can be managed, of having time to practice so I don’t lose my skills. But with that comes sacrifices, and a shift of focus. This past fall I was planning on really branching out on my own; I mean I’ve lived away from home for the better part of a decade but, since the surgery, I’ve needed help, I just can’t physically do some things so... Anyways. I was hoping to be a bit more free. Move to the city with my friend and gig. Maybe date. Maybe fall in love. And all that is benched now, because home is the only practical place to be medically, physically, financially, and now because of my newly discovered sister, I can’t really cut as many ties as I’d planned because she deserves to know her family, and me peacing out of it is just not... helpful. Also I’m the driving force of my dad’s reconciliation with this and I’d do anything for my sister. Anything. But I’m closeted at home, and my parents are massively homophobic and religious, as you know. And I have no friends here anymore, even if I could see them. Honestly it feels like stepping back into hibernation, like pausing in the middle of emerging from a cocoon. And so hence the puppy. I’ve never been very good with love, except with my dog. I fell for her when I was eight, when I was too young to know that giving your entire heart to someone is foolish. I loved her recklessly, before I internalized that somehow the way I loved was wrong, before I started training myself to be reaction-less during movies and hide my thumping heart during kisses. Since before I turned everything sentimental into blasé jokes to preserve myself from exposure, from being told that I was warped and demented and wrong not only in my political views, but in love. I couldn’t bear to hear that my love was evil. I couldn’t. It’s been very hard for me to watch my friends all find love these past few years, to stand up in their weddings, to watch them get dogs and have babies and begin their own nuclear lives. So I finally decided I’m just going to get a puppy for myself, by myself. Me and my little salary from my part time cashiering job and painting commissions will pay my student loans and my insurance and my car and my food and my rabbit and my puppy, and I’ll be human-starved as fuck and maybe too physically and emotionally drained to be creative at all or write fic or post on this site, but I’ll be happy, I think. And even if it’s not the kind of love I dreamed of finding while I was still young, I’ll still have puppy love. And puppy love has to count for something. 

[blindedbythedarkness]

Josh,

Let me tell you about the fucking day I’ve had today. I mean, it isn’t even lunchtime, but this has seriously become one of the weirdest days of my life so far. It’s a little gross and TMI I know you wouldn’t care (and if I had to hear the details of your brain smoothie, you can listen to this). I know I’ve said I’ve had a lot of shit health recently, well allow me to expand on that...

Woke up at 9am.

By 9:05 I was telling the details of my undercarriage to a doctor by phone which is very bizarre when you can’t see their face (gotta minimize patient contact what with the plague going round).

Was told to take a piss sample into the surgery. I guess they didn’t even want me sticking around long enough to make a fresh one while there. Told her I had nothing to bring it in. 

"Anything" she said "anything you can find" 

Cut to me rummaging through the recycling bin because I am Not Pissing In My Waterbottle. 

Next thing i know am on the loo with an I cant believe it's not butter tub between my legs (And of fucking course now is the time my period decides to start. But hey, least I'm not pregnant! That’s about as good as my luck gets nowadays).

Got in the car to go to the surgery. I took A in the car for a "change of scenery" like hes a dog or your average housebound nan. He had the courtesy of holding my piss tub and I promised him I would nay brake too hard. 

Drove to uni. That was odd. I mean the roads on the way still had plenty of cars but campus was deserted. All the eateries shuttered up. Proper wee dystopia it was. 

Parked in a doctors spot because this is a lawless land. Couldn’t get into the doctors surgery. Had to peer through the window so some poor lass on reception could let me and me butter tub in. 

Was immediately greeted with a table of PPE (oh that’s personal protection equipment, I realise that wasn’t normal vocab back when you croaked). Had to put on a mask and gloves. (For the record, don’t put on gloves first. It’s bloody hard to tie a mask when you cant feel owt and your hands are squeaking).

Glasses fogged up because of the mask. Removed glasses. Sat silently in surgery unable to even read the posters waiting for the doctor to appear. 

That was wild. Gone are the fucking friendly jumper wearing community docs of the old days. I was called in by a young woman in scrubs and an apron, mask and gloves. Tell you if I'd been at a dentist I'd have run a mile at that site. She looked proper threatening (though lets be fair you were scared enough of the jumper clad ones)!

So in I go and of course I’ve got to get examined. Oh, did I mention this is a problem down below? Yeah, I felt proper sorry for her bc 1. Am now bleeding 2. I've been in fekkin quarantine it ain't exactly bikini waxed down there.

I had to endure the insertion of both fingers and a plastic fekkin duck so she could have a good look (I didn’t even get dinner first, chivalry is truly dead). She had a fucking desk lamp on it. Like, lass it's a fanny you can interrogate it all you want it ain't gonna talk. She also chose that time to comment that I had lovely long legs, like aye cheers for the compliment but this is still undignified (Jk, I lost the remainder of my dignity years ago).

Long story short that’s how she confirmed that my bladder is trying to say a cheeky hello every time I cough. I guess it didn’t get the memo that there’s a fucking pandemic right now and there’s bigger issues to deal with (or maybe it did and was trying to provide some company). You feeling ill yet? Apologies.

Anyway, I soon took my leave and now, even though it may be 11am on a Monday morning, I think it’s safe to say it’s already been a weird week. Getting healthcare right now is certainly an experience.

Sorry to gross you out with that, Josh. I Just. It’s been a wild fucking morning and I had to tell you. 

As for the prolapse, I’ll live. It still sucks though. Just EDS kicking my ass again as usual.

Until my next tale of this bizarre world, Josh.

C

[manthastop]

thank you to @wormoffthestringg for the tag i lof you!! for this i tag anyone who wishes to do so ଘ(੭ˊᵕˋ)੭* ੈ✩‧₊˚

appearance ♡ i am over 5’5 // i wear glasses (have done for 17 years)/contacts // i have blonde hair // i prefer loose clothing over tight clothing (depends on my confidence levls for the day) // i have one or more piercings (i have both my ears pierced) // i have at least one tattoo // i have blue eyes (they are bluey green so i guess that counts?)// i have dyed or highlighted my hair // i have gotten plastic surgery // i have or had braces (i have had these bad boys on for just over two years) // i sunburn easily (i need factor 50+ wherever i go) // i have freckles // i paint my nails // i typically wear makeup (when i have the effort to i make myself feel pretty by doing creative makeup but my skills need improving) // i don’t often smile // i am pleased with how i look (when my brain is nice to me and doesn’t make me feel dysmorphic)// i prefer nike to adidas  // i wear baseball caps backwards 

hobbies and interests ♡ i play a sport // i can play an instrument // i am artistic (going to universoty for my photography degree!) // i know more than one language // i have won a trophy in some sort of competition  // i can cook or bake without a recipe // i know how to swim (i am not graceful though, i have torpedo legs!)// i enjoy writing (if it is poetry or about ancient civilisation within greece and rome- god i am a geek!)// i can do origami // i prefer movies to tv shows (depends on my mood honestly)// i can execute a perfect somersault // i enjoy singing (i did music at gcse and i highkey miss it,i need to work on my vocals again!) // i could survive in the wild on my own // i have read a new book series this year // i enjoy spending time with my friends (they mean the world to me and are chaotic as fuck haha) // i travel during school or work breaks (as a current year 13 who was studying at 3 school sites this was my everyday life) // i can do a handstand

relationships ♡ i am in a relationship (it is an online one and i am so happy to have him!) // i have been single for over a year // i have a crush (my boyfriend is- when you start dating they are still a crush) // i have a best friend i have known for ten years// my parents are together  // i have hooked up with my best friend (well snogged her a few times)// i am adopted // my crush has confessed to me  // i have a long-distance relationship (he lives 5,162 miles away *cri*) // i am an only child // i give advice to my friends (i do a lot and i am often hypocritical when giving this but i would like to think it is helpful as it comes from the heart) // i have made an online friend (yes, many and i am thankful for each of them) // i met up with someone i have met online (my ex best friend and first partner i both met shortly after meeting them online- we were placed on the same summer programme! i also met my recent ex for the same reason!)

aesthetics ♡ i have heard the ocean in a conch shell // i have watched the sunrise // i enjoy rainy days // i have slept under the stars // i meditate outside // the sound of chirping calms me (woodland settings are my happy place) // i enjoy the smell of the beach // i know what snow tastes like (i caught a snowflake with my tongue and it was magical!) // i listen to music to fall asleep (sometimes) // i enjoy thunderstorms // i enjoy cloud watching (they are so pretty to look at!) // i have attended a bonfire (i have been to many bonfire nights and each were lovely) // i pay close attention to colours (colours make me happy so i always try to look for them in my surroundings)// i find mystery in the ocean // i enjoy hiking on nature paths (especially when it is scenic)// autumn is my favourite season

miscellaneous ♡ i can fall asleep in moving vehicles (not always i have to be very tired to do so)// i am the mom friend // i live by a certain quote(s) // i like the smell of sharpies // i am involved in extracurricular activities // i enjoy mexican food (churros are what i live for!!!) // i can drive a stick-shift // i believe in true love (and soul mates which i believe we have many of for different reasons throughout our lives)// i make up scenarios to fall asleep // i sing in the shower (when i actually shower as i hate them)// i wish i lived in a video game  // i have a canopy above my bed // i am multiracial // i am a redhead  // i own at least 3 dogs

[silenthillmutual]

Hey! For the ask meme, 5, 9, 12, 16, 21 :) Is that too many???? I think that's too many but oh well ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

(actually i dont think its too many but ily you anyway!!)

5. what makes you feel validated?all my family members (except my mom) not even asking when i change names, just saying “hi [insert new name]!” like i do wish they cared a lil bit more than they do about what’s going on in my life but that part at least!! feels good

9. what does your name mean?tbh, weeb ass got it from noriaki kakyoin initially just as like, an rp nickname? bc i used to rp kakyoin a lot. but i dont want to go by noriaki since i’m white and i know ‘nori’ by itself pops up as a name or nickname in other cultures, although outside of japanese & arabic i can’t find it right now.

tbh i really like that it just sounds like ppl are calling me seaweed, although i’ve also seen that depending on the kanji used it could also mean doctrine/belief. i wish i could find the use of it in other cultures but scrolling through baby name websites is both nauseating and unhelpful, although one person said that in lithuanian it means “wants”

i was going to go by kieran as a middle name until my mom ruined that (like she did with luke) but atm i’d rather accept link - like from legend of zelda, since link was designed to be androgynous and a lot of trans ppl relate to him (although ppl trying to find a deeper meaning to the name on baby name sites is hilarious - ‘lincoln’, really? just admit u like video games) - or cas. cas is apparently dutch for “imperial” but i just took it from the character castiel on supernatural, and his name is probably derived from the archangel cassiel. ‘cassiel’ has a ton of different spellings depending on which religion’s texts you’re reading and which translation, but that name means “speed of god” or “god is my anger”, according to wikipedia. he’s sometimes depicted as the angel over saturn, or the angel of saturdays. he’s not depicted in the bible, but shows up in jewish/islamic/christian mystical and occult texts.

(i think its also worth noting i had a hard time finding these names on baby name sites and like, i do live to be difficult!)

12. favorite trans headcanon?

there are just so many good ones!!! danny fenton & timmy turner (made esp great by the fact that butch hartman just fucking hates it) being trans, that cow from the barnyard show on nickelodeon, reigen arataka, mob (as either trans masc or trans fem), link - and for that matter, any character when you see them shirtless and they don’t have nipples? they had top surgery and elected not to have the nipples put back on. 

i think sam porter bridges from death stranding could easily be read as a trans man or trans woman, and i like both. on the one hand, he needs an stand-to-pee device (literally, that is a part of your equipment); on the other, the game has heavy themes of motherhood and he is able to use technology to be connected through what i can only describe as an umbilical cord to the bridges baby. and it wouldn’t surprise me at all if the gender commentary was entirely intentional on kojima’s part. for that matter, i also love trans solid snake and trans hal emmerich in metal gear solid. 

i also think danganronpa deserves a special shoutout, not just because you can pry canon trans girl chihiro fujisaki from my cold, dead hands and i’m sick of seeing cis bootlickers harassing ppl online over that transphobic as fuck storyline, but for real? nobody’s birth name actually spells out “diamond” with their sibling so mondo and daiya oowada are both trans (it’s also one of the only ways to make any part of case 2 make any goddamn sense), yasuhiro hagakure and celestia ludenberg having plotlines where where they have to reveal those aren’t their birth names? congrats they’re both trans now. 

i wish there were more headcanons about characters being trans women that didn’t rely on stereotyping. i know thats a big problem wrt seeing muscular or tall women and ppl focusing their trans headcanons on them, so i actually kinda head canon aoi asahina as trans and wanna eventually write that for fic w sakura ogami being cis bc people tend to look at sakura and go “well obviously shes trans bc shes muscular” (and then they do the opposite when it comes to trans men, but i’ve seen a lot of trans masc hcs). i also don’t see a lot of nonbinary hcs being given to amab people…. we need to fix that!! but alas i have already rambled a lot so thats a post for another day.

16. song that gives you Big Trans Feels?

if we’re not including music that is literally about being trans (like “transgender dysphoria blues” by against me!) then, “twin size mattress” by the front bottoms! the lines “it’s no big surprise you turned out this way / when they closed their eyes and prayed you would change / and they cut your hair and sent you away / you stopped by my house the night you escaped / with tears in my eyes, i begged you to stay / you said, ‘hey man, i love you, / but no fucking way’“ always sounded like he was talking about a trans girl friend of his, but i dont know enough about the band to say for certain what that song is about. it probably helps that i felt that song extra hard when i was first coming out and w how my relationship w my mom was like.

21. what makes you feel euphoric?

back when i first started going by luke (and then later by nori), my dog bingley would just blink at you and not react if you told him to go get [deadname]. he only would come find me if you told him to go get luke / nori.

he’s such a good boy. i hope somebody steals him from my mom.

thank u for asking!!!!

trans asks

[mimymomo]

We We’re Inevitable PaulxEmma One-Shot

I posted this on AO3 and I’m really proud of it so I’m posting it here too. I really want to expand it as well so if anyone’s interested I will. In this story Paul and Emma get the happy ending they deserved. Plus there’s dogs!

“Well, goodbye Kelly! Good luck with the pot farm.” Emma, or should she say Kelly now, glances up to say thank you. A pot farm, far away from Hatchetfield, all she wanted not even a week ago. Now she didn’t know what to think. Sure, she’s happy that she didn’t die and turn into one of those fucking musical zombies, but she couldn’t help and think about all she lost. Sweet ole Bill and poor Charlotte, Professor Hidgens, hell even Nora, Zoey and the asshole creep Ted. And Paul…oh Paul. ‘You were supposed to make it back to me. We had that date to go on…and now what?’

“Thanks.” 

“Oh, and one more thing. You will be escorted to Colorado by a Mr. Ben Bridges. He’s waiting outside.” Emma shot the soldier a confused look, “oh, I don’t know any Ben Bridges.”

“Well according to our records, you two seem to be pretty good friends. Peep would like to see it become something more.” The soldier smiled, about-faced and marched out the hospital room, leaving Emma to herself. She looked around what had been her room for the past week, ‘well goodbye Clivesdale, goodbye Emma Perkins, goodbye life I never thought I’d miss.’ As she begun to pick up her few things, someone entered the room. ‘Must be the nurse here to check on me again.’ However, when she turned her head, she was greeted to a sight she never thought she’d see again.

“Oh my god, Paul?” he had his signature goofy, dazed look on his face that morphed into a large smile at the sound of his name. “You made it!” Emma cried reaching out to grab him and pulled him into a hug. She needed to feel him. She needed his touch. For a week she was forced to face the facts that Paul was dead and gone. But now he’s here in her arms, perfectly safe and alive. His skin was cold when she touched him, but Emma couldn’t bring herself to care, just wrapping her arms and tightly around his torso. “We made it!” They made it, they were getting out of it. It was almost too good to be true.

“Emma, I’m sorry. You lost.”

Emma felt her blood freeze over and her body stiffened. She pulled herself out slightly from Paul’s embrace. ‘Did he just?’ No, there’s no way, he was fine. He was just pranking her. She gave him a smile in disbelief. Why was he pulling something like this now?

“Paul?”

“Emma, I’m sorry. You lost your way.”

Emma’s smile vanished. This wasn’t a prank. She began to pull her hands away, “Paul you’re scaring me.”

Paul began to waltz her around the hospital room, singing along to a song she couldn’t hear. “I’m still the man you trust. It’s inevitable for us!”

Emma began to cry, “no! Get away from me! You’re not Paul, you’re one of them!” Paul, no – that thing inside Paul, wouldn’t let her go. Her leg was killing her from being paraded around the room. Soon more people entered the room – Professor Hidgens, the nurse who must’ve been turned in the last few minutes, Ted, Bill, Nora, some random guy in a suit. All singing and dancing, circling her in. Emma broke though the group and out the door, down the dark hallway only to be brought back right back to her room.

“It’s just a fucking loop! What the fuck!” she screamed, limping away from the multiple hands that clawed out to grab her.

Suddenly, her hospital room transformed, the walls in front of her and to her sides fell, revealing an audience staring and watching her. She was on a stage. Her bed and IV had disappeared and the infected people started to sing towards the crowd and not her. Emma saw this as her chance to get help, she called out to the audience and begged them to help her, call someone, throw her a phone, do something, anything! No one helped, they just sat there – some with wide eyes, shocked that she was speaking to them. Others just laughed at her, at her pain. Did they not realize she was about to die and turn into one of those things?

She felt herself get pulled away by what used to be Bill and Ted and pushed into the center stage.  Bill and Ted joined the other in kick line, singing some song similar to the one Professor Hidgens sang in his bunker a few days ago. Emma screamed as they drew closer. When she got to the edge of the stage, she tripped to the floor.

Paul yelled, “THE APOTHEOSIS IS UPON‑”

“US!” the rest of group finished, reaching out to nab Emma. Emma felt body go in slow motion as she yelled and extended her hand outward for someone to help.

Then everything went dark.

Suddenly, the lights came back on and the audience is cheering in a thunderous applause. The infected people start linking hands and bowing. Emma takes this time to try calling for help once more. Nothing changes. This time everyone is laughing, pointing at her.

“WHY ARE YOU CLAPPING?”

More laughing ensues. Then she’s being dragged away again, this time towards backstage. She had no escape. She just kept screaming and screaming, her growing hoarse. ‘This is it,’ she thought despondent. ‘This is where I die, in Clivesdale at the hands of people I once considered friends and something more. Haha…’ The last thing Emma remembers before entering the dark is the lyrics to the song Paul was just singing; ‘It was inevitable.’

“- Perkins! Ms. Perkins! Emma Perkins wake up!”

Emma flashes open her eyes and jolts upwards to the sound of her name belling yelled. She can’t breathe, the world is spinning, and everything was blurry. She could see the outlines of two people staring at her, but she can’t fully register who they are. She can feel someone touching her but that just sends her into a further frenzy. “Get away from me! Don’t touch me!”

“Ms. Perkins please calm down! I’m nurse Joy Drewman. We’re just here to check on you,” the lady with long brown hair wearing all white exclaims soothingly. “It’s okay, you’re okay now.”

After a minute of heavy breathing, Emma felt herself simmer down. She looked around the room, she was in a hospital. She was wearing a hospital gown, IV taped to her arm and a bracelet with her medical information tightly wrapped around her wrist. To her left was a light cream wall with swirling patterns on it and an ugly painting hanging up. To her right was the door. Nurse Joy was checking her vitals and behind her, the soldier lady from her dream stood near the door. ‘God,’ Emma thought, ‘I feel like shit! And my leg is on fire.'

After the nurse finished checking on Emma, she left leaving the other two alone in the room. The soldier cleared her throat to gather Emma’s attention, “Emma Perkins, I’m Lieutenant Parks from United States Military, special unit PE IP. PEEP for short.” PE IP? Peep? “So Ms. Perkins, do you remember anything that has happened over this past week?”

Emma couldn’t NOT remember. The singing, and dancing, all the deaths… But what about Paul and all the infected people that were just in here? Why wasn’t she dead right now? “The meteor, and everyone was singing…”

“Yes, that’s right,” Lt. Parks nods. “A meteor touched down in Hatchetfield a little more than a week ago, spreading an infection killing nearly everyone on the town. We found you near the crash site of our military helicopter. You had had a long thin metal pipe bent through your leg as well as a few broken ribs and plenty of blood loss. You were barely conscious when we picked you up. You’re in Clivesdale General Hospital now, and you just had surgery for your leg. This is the first conversation I’ve been able to have with you fully attentive. You were having a pretty severe nightmare, weren’t you Ms. Perkins?”

'Nightmare? That’s what that was, just a dream?'

Emma shook her head in shock. Helicopter crash…Clivesdale hospital…surgery? So, all thought that really did happen, she could hardly remember any of that. “So, the meteor?”

“Was destroyed along with the Starlight Theatre. Hatchetfield has completely been sealed off from the rest of the mainland as well as any means of transportation to get there. We blew up the Nantucket Bridge. It was pretty damn awesome. We believe the meteor was what was controlling the infected people. The hive mind, you could call it. Once it was destroyed, the people infected all seemed to drop dead.”

Emma wished those words didn’t bring her comfort, that she was horrified at the realization that so many people in her old hometown were dead. But after all that happened back in Hatchetfield, in that…dream? She just couldn’t help herself. Yet Emma still was pensive around the lieutenant, could she trust this lady in front of her? “Lieutenant Parks,” Emma cut in, “was there, um, are there any survivors?” Emma knew she should keep her hopes down, but she couldn’t help but ask anyways. But now, what did she even want the answer to be?

“That’s what I’ve come in here to tell you. When we picked you up there was a certain name you were continuously mumbling; a Mr. Paul Matthews.” Emma whips her head up, “Paul?”

“Yes, Mr. Matthews. I’m pleased to tell you that we did in fact find him.” Emma stops breathing and locked eyes with the Lieutenant, “Paul is…alive?”

Lt. Parks smiles, “we found him buried under the rubble in the remains of the old theatre. He was badly beaten and barely hanging on but, yes, he was and still is alive. He’s was just taken out of the Intensive Care Unit and placed in the general ward.” Emma felt relief course through her body. Tears sprang into her eyes and she began to shake in her bed. “Oh thank God!” she cried, “oh Paul!”

“He’s been asking about you ever since he woke up. I was coming to see if you were up for little a little trip to visit him in his room?” Emma shook her head violently, ignoring her newly developing headache. It was a no brainer, she had to go to him. See him with her own eyes.

“Okay then,” Lt. Parks said. “I’ll call a nurse to bring you a wheelchair.” She leaves the room and Emma is by herself. ‘Shit, it really was a dream,' she thought, her head in a fog. 'We really did make it. Paul’s okay. He’s okay…’

Around ten minutes later, nurse Joy and Lt. Parks re-enter with a wheelchair. The two help Emma off her bed and into the chair, then they’re off. Once out the door, Emma makes a mental map of the trip to Paul’s room. ‘Out the door, make a left, go all the way down the hall to the elevator. Go three floors up then take a right and down the hallway.’ They keep going down the seemingly never-ending hallway until they reach room #511. When they got the door, Emma felt the restlessness return as she squirmed in her chair. She didn’t know what to expect when the door opened, she just wanted to see him. Lt. Parks swings open the door and Emma held her breath as she gets pushed into the room. Paul was sleeping soundly. His eyes were gently closed, and the bed sheet placed over his body rose and fell with his chest after each breath he took.

“Oh God…” Emma whispers bringing her hands up and over her mouth. He was covered in burns, the right of his face, his hands up to forearms. Everything was either covered in a bandage or a cast. And on closer inspection, Emma notices that the sheet was oddly flat where part of Paul’s left leg should’ve been. Emma turns to Lt. Parks, the older troop seemed to understand what Emma wanted to ask without her having to ask. “When we found him, the bottom half of his left leg had been trapped under a large pile of concrete and wooden beams. We had no way of moving the rubble and the leg was too badly damaged to be repaired so we had to make the call to…” She pauses and looked down at Emma’s face. The brunette was in distress but in her eyes the Lieutenant could tell she wanted her to continue. So, she did. “We had to have an emergency amputation.”

“Amputation?”

“We removed his leg, up to his knee, in order to transport him.”

“Fucking hell…” Emma mutters in exasperation. Paul, her Paul. He was here, right in front of her – broken, burned and missing half of his leg. ‘What the hell did I make him do?’

At that moment, Paul begun to stir, slowly peeling open his eye with a few blinks. “Ughh…”

“Paul?” Emma reaches out her arm to grab Paul’s hand, lacing their bandaged fingers together. “Paul can you hear me?”

Paul moans and turns his head in Emma’s direction. “Emma?” Emma began to sob, “oh Paul! Paul you’re okay!” She kisses the back of his burned, shriveled hand before placing her forehead down upon it. “Emma? You’re here?” Emma sobs even harder, his voice was groggy and strained but not one musical note could be heard.

He was really here and truly okay.

“I’ll leave you two alone,” Lt. Parks booms from behind, backing out the door and closing it behind her.

“Fuck Paul, I thought you had died.” Paul just smiles and wipes away some of her stray tears with his fingers. “It was going to take a lot more to stop me from dying and leaving you alone.”

Emma giggles, her sobs slow into a trickle, “apparently you dumbass.” Paul gave her another grin then groans. Emma panics when Paul starts to glance downwards at his body. “Shit, I got pretty messed up, didn’t I?”

Emma couldn’t look at him anymore. “This was my fault.”

Paul turns back to look at her. “Emma you can’t mean that?”

“Paul you wouldn’t have to that meteor if I hadn’t asked you to. Hell, I wouldn’t have even had to ask you if I hadn’t fucked up my leg from not wearing my damn seatbelt on that helicopter. Now look at you!” she holds out her unoccupied hand and waves it up and down over Paul’s body. The tears had returned in full force. “You’re in a hospital missing part of your fucking leg because of me!”

“No Emma,” Paul exclaims, “if it wasn’t for you, and your idea to go back and blow up that meteor we’d all be dead. Every single last one of us.” He grabs both of her hands and gives them a comforting squeeze. “You saved me, you saved all of us. Besides, what’s half a leg when the alternative is becoming a mindless singing alien?”

Emma gave him a small smile through the tears, “of course you try pass the glory off to someone else.” After a few minutes her tears whittle down to a few streaks and her breathing returns to what could be consider normal. They sat, or Paul’s case, laid there not saying a word. Hand in hand, enjoying the others presence. They basked in the sun blazing through the window and the quiet, which in the past week, they’d come to really appreciate it.

Not even five minutes later, Lt. Parks and another nurse enter Paul’s room and tell her that she had to return to her room. Emma immediately tenses at the idea of leaving him again, but they quickly inform her that she would be allowed to come and see him again tomorrow. Paul gives her one last squeeze then they separate. They smile at each other as she is exited out the door.

After that, for the following two weeks this becomes their routine – Emma would be wheeled into Paul’s room and would spend as much time as they could together, just talking, telling stories, good and bad, comforting each other. Then at the end of the day, Emma would be rolled back to her room, only to repeat this process the next day and the days after that.

When Emma was set to be discharged early the next week, stitches removed and now able to walk on her own, she pleaded with Lt. Parks to let her stay with Paul until he was discharged as well. She couldn’t leave without him, not again. And a few days later, with some favors being done by Peep, Emma was given special privilege to stay with Paul in his room. They even brought in a spare cot for Emma to sleep on, which she later moved into the narrow spot in between Paul’s bed and the window. Lt. Parks said it was because there were still some more things that needed to be done dealing with their relocation, but Emma could tell she was lying.

Soon Paul began physical therapy, three times a week, to help with his limited mobility. Emma could tell he hated going but he never outwardly complains once. Emma knew it was because he didn’t want to upset her. She hated that he put on a brave face to soothe her, not once thinking about himself. On days after a particularly difficult session, Emma would sit with him on his bed and hold him close to her body. She ran her fingers up and down in circles on his back and would whisper just how proud she was of him in his ear.

Their first date wasn’t a silent movie at some indie theater like they planned, no – it was some Hallmark tv movie marathon in Paul’s hospital room surrounded by candies and snacks from the vending machine and hospital cafetorium. Plus, some food Emma snuck in from a McDonald’s down the street. They two feasts on junk food while curled up together on Paul’s bed, making fun each movie’s overall cheesiness and predictable plot. When nurse Joy comes by to check on the two, she is greeted to two fast asleep thirty-year old’s, candy wrappers and McDonald’s boxes strewn about the bed. The position the two are in is too cute, she doesn’t even dare wake them up. She just turns off the lights and closes the door – the only lights now come from the tv screen and the buildings, cars and sky above that shine in from the window. She can scold them over the outside food tomorrow.

Some days are easier than others. On one of those REALLY bad days, Emma can’t seem bring herself to move out of bed. She just stares blankly out the wide window, she hates these days. The days where she can’t help but think back and replay the incidents of Hatchetfield over and over in her head. Think back to all that happened to her new friends, what had happened to her sister. Wonder why she is still alive when so many others deserve it so much more than her? Wonder why she kept even trying to live on in the first place…

Emma hears the door to her and Paul’s room creak open and begins to turn around. She expects to see Paul being rolled into the room per usual. What she doesn’t expect is to see Paul standing up in the doorway, slowly making his way over to the bed on foot, by himself, a wide smile on his face. Nor does she expect the prosthetic leg attached to his left knee. Sure, he’s using crutches and his steps are awkward and stilted, and yes there’s nurses standing only inches away to catch him in case he falls, but that didn’t matter to Emma. He was walking again.

“Surprised?” Paul asks. Emma is stunned speechless. He continues on, “they’ve been letting me practice walking with a prosthesis during P.T. They think I’m ready to get fitted for my own leg now. I wanted to surprise you. Did it work?”

‘This is why,’ Emma thinks to herself, getting up from her bed and walking over to Paul. ‘He’s why.’

They share their first kiss in room #511 that day.

A few days before Paul is discharged, Lt. Parks comes back and gives them their new identities. “Here are you new passports, ID’s and everything you need detailing your new lives.” ‘Emilia Bradshaw…well hey it’s better than fucking Kelly that’s for sure.’

“Parker Murphy huh?” Paul says, eyes glued to the stacks of paper in front of them.

“You look like a Parker,” Emma jokes, ruffling Paul’s brown hair that was in major need of a haircut. Hell, both of their hair was in desperate need of some good old TLC.

Paul cracks a smile and looks up at her, “and you totally look like an Emilia.”

They are being sent to a plot of land in Colorado. ‘Colorado? Why does feel familiar?’ Emma stiffens the tiniest amount and scoots closer to Paul, nearly sitting in his lap. Without thinking about it, he immediately brings one of his arms up and wraps it around her body. He used to these moments of jumpiness, they both get them. Without Emma noticing, Lt. Parks had been talking about their living situation. ‘God, I hope Paul has been paying attention.’

“- nearly three acres of well treated land and house is brand new and completely furnished. And yes, it’s paid off. It’s quiet, private and best of all, only around thirty minutes away from the nearest heavily populated city so you don’t feel like you’re too far in the middle of nowhere. It’s a great place…” Emma held her breath, “…to start a family.”

Emma exhaled at the words, then after fully realizing what Parks was insinuating felt her face grow exponentially hotter. She looked up at Paul, only to see that his face and neck had gotten even redder than hers. They briefly lock eyes, quickly turning away. “Well I think that’s everything. I’ll see you two in a few days to take you to Colorado.” Then Lt. Parks takes her leave.

“Hey Emma,”

“What’s up?” she still couldn’t look at him in the face.

“Have you noticed that even with the new names, our nicknames could still be Emma and Paul?”

“What, seriously?” she asks finally turning back to Paul to see him nod his head up and down. “Emilia would be Em for short but if you add the ‘a’ from the end, it could be turned into Emma.”

“Shit you’re right.”

“Parker is a bit of a stretch, but I guess it’s kinda hard to find another ‘pau-’ names. So, I think it’s close enough to prove my point. Do you think they did that on purpose?”

“Oh definitely,” Emma concludes, looking over the documents again. They’re actually leaving, like for real now. They’re going to start their new lives together. Emma sees Paul fiddling with a few sheets of paper, trying his hardest to remember their travel itinerary. ‘Start a family huh?’ Even at a young age, Emma was turned off to the idea of settling down with a husband or wife and having children. ‘There’s too much out there to see and explore. There’s no time to settle down,’ is what she always said to her sister whenever she asked. But now, after everything that’s happened to her, settling down with Paul didn’t sound too fucking bad at all.

Colorado was pretty, well at least the land where her and Paul’s new house was at was. Acres of fenced off grassy hills, colorful trees and the view of distant mountain tops in the front and dense forestry surrounded their house in the back, plus there was a pool. A freaking pool! The actual house wasn’t too shabby either. In fact, it was pretty damn beautiful. When Lt. Parks said brand new, she wasn’t kidding. The house was huge – three stories tall to be exact, with 5 rooms and three and a half bathrooms. The kitchen was decked with the nicest stainless-steel appliances Emma had ever seen. Two ovens, a flat top stove and a long granite island in the middle. Emma had discovered her genuine love of baking during her time at Beanie’s, so she looked forward to spending quite a bit of time in there. The living room was big as well, with a leather couch, La-Z-Boy recliners, stone fireplace, and a 75-inch flat screen with both Netflix and Hulu on it. If Emma thought she was going to pass out in the kitchen, the revelation of tv wasn’t helping.

“Holy shit Paul, I’m never leaving!” Paul just laughs at how excited she was getting after exploring each new room. In all honesty, he was feeling a bit overwhelmed at all the excessiveness of the house but seeing Emma’s giddy reactions helped ease that tension.

The master bedroom was the cherry on top of Emma’s perfect sundae. Inside was a king-sized bed, dressers plus a walk-in closet, and a window which opened to reveal a balcony. Then there was the master bathroom that had two vanity sinks, a toilet and not only a walk-in shower but an old-fashioned bathtub as well.

“Oh God I need to lie down,” Emma muttered staggering towards the bed planting herself faced down on top of the comforter. “I’m dreaming, this must be a dream!” her words come out muffled from her head being buried.

Paul chuckles joining her on the bed, facing upwards though. “Not a dream Emma. This is really your house now.”

“Now, if only a puppy appeared, then it would be absolutely perfect!”

“With the size of this place we could probably get like six dogs…” Paul exhales. Emma turns to face Paul in brand new vigor, “so we can get six puppies?”

“We’re not getting six dogs Emma.”

She puts on the cutest pout Paul has ever seen, “but we are going to get A dog, right? Or two?”

“I can definitely agree to that,” Paul chuckles. Emma leans over and plants a sweet kiss on his lips which he quickly deepens. His lips are slightly chapped against hers which are freshly coated in cheap convenient store chapstick – it’s perfect and warm.

“We should go right now,” Emma speaks, fire in her eyes. Paul just looks at her, flabbergasted by her enthusiasm. “We just took a long flight to Colorado and finished moving in all of our stuff and you want to go out and buy a dog right now?”

“Yes!”

Paul rolls his eyes then closes them, “give me an hour to nap and I’ll be ready okay?”

Emma gives him an exaggerated groan in response but still snuggles in close to him, closing her eyes as well. “Fine, but in an hour we’re leaving.”

Paul kisses her forehead, “okay Emma.” They’re both out in a matter of minutes, the only sounds in the room is the two’s peaceful snores in harmony with the other.

Five hours later they two are leaving the pet store with bags of dry food, canned food, treats and every other dog accessory known to man. A small dog in both of their laps: a tiny black and brown chihuahua-yorkie mix named Socks in Emma’s and an adorably scruffy three-legged golden poodle terrier mix named Bee in Paul’s.

For now, their family was complete. And Paul and Emma couldn’t have been happier.

[k-l-s-h]

Flowery Taste on the Tip of our Tongues - Avant goût

To @krasnyzmeya, who gave me so many muses including Ange. Probably the one I’ll always love the most.

               They were supposed to meet in the same dusky bar, in which both of their brothers had dragged them into, a little more than a year ago now. Only this time, it was just the two of them. And this time, nothing was the same.

Ange was sited in a corner, not too far away from the bartender. Watching pensively the ice cubes of her drink melt slowly. Remembering. It had been so out of the blue, the way they all crossed path again. After four years of dead silence. Since they went away and her and Arch went through surgery. He forgot them almost entirely. Feeling a void without knowing who or what used to fill it. But she, on the other hand, remembered. She remembered them, everything they shared and everything they lost. She remembered her.

She just, didn’t care.

That’s what the surgery did to her. Desensitizing her of emotions, as the doctors said. But then the Zhang twins came back. Smashing their way into her life once more, when Aaron ran into Arch on his way home. Or more precisely, when his sister’s dog ran to Arch and started to jump around him happily. He too, had forgotten everything. But where they were only faceless shadows in Arch’s memory, Aaron just didn’t remember. As if someone had erased their very existence out if his life. He knew that he’d been in love and that someone else was very dear to him as well, from what his sister told him. But that was all.

And his sister.

She was the one that changed the most. The one that lost the ability to love. But it was nothing like what Ange was going through, no. Because where the Russian woman was reduced to an unemotional and coldblooded being, she still felt affection. She loved her little brother like she always did. That didn’t change. She just did not show it. But her though, she didn’t even felt love for her own twin brother anymore.

That’s what made them all so different.

And then, they all met again. After the two men bounded oh so easily, for the second time in their life. The same couldn’t be said for them though. Their first conversations filled with silences and tension. No. They didn’t bound like their brothers did. At least not like them and not after some time. Things only started to change, when she did manage to irritate her.

 “Why haven’t you told us?” She broke the silence. Her tone was demanding, but still managed to stir something in the redhead, that wasn’t quite yet used to hearing again, the smoky timbre of her voice.

Arch and Aaron were both at the bar. Waiting for their drinks and more then probably, making the most of their few minutes away from them. From the rampant strain between them all.

She downed her drink, eyes carefully studying her form. “I thought that you didn’t gave a shit about us all.”

Th ice-skater brought her glass to her lips, taking a slow sip of her rum before she locked eyes with Ange. “No. You’re wrong.”

A pause. She arched one of her brows at her. Her eyes briefly darting behind the mixed-race, at the window. It was snowing outside.

“That’s you that you’re describing.” She explained without missing a beat. Cold stare moving back to their brothers. “I don’t love anymore that’s true. But it doesn’t mean that I don’t want to understand.”

 Ange scowled lightly at the memory. Even before the surgery, people used to point out how impassible, unemotional she tended to be. Hell, even her own brother used to say that where he was hypersensitive, she on the other hand had the sensibility of a wall of brick. Of course, he was only half-serious about it. Arch knew how his sister really was deep down. She didn’t care much about the opinions of strangers anyway. But the twins. Those damned Zhang twins. They never assumed that and maybe that’s why it annoyed her at the time. Especially coming from her. Because yes, one saw right through her. Just as she saw right through him. Allowing themselves to be magnificent and terrible at the same time, with each other.

But then there was the other.

The one that made her feel everything twice as much. Even when she didn’t show it, she could feel her blood boil in her veins. Her jaw ache with the need to let her lips stretch in a carnivorous smile. The thunderous laugh rumbling in her chest, trying to make its way out of her mouth like a tidal wave. She pissed her off, made her soft. She made her impatient and almost envious, when she spent time with her younger brother but not her. She made her pupils blow out with hunger. A shudder ran down her spine, as other memories made her head spin and heat pouring in the pit of her stomach, between her thighs. She could still taste on her lips, the flavor of their sleepless nights that smelled like cigarettes after sex. A faint scent of flowers too, floated in the air tainted by the city lights, that rolled on their naked bodies while she painted her skin with her lips, teeth and ink. Like a blank canvas, that was only hers to tarnish and adorn. And she did the same with hers, that was already filled. Covering her up with black, red, blues and love bites.

She was supposed to not feel anymore. And yet, that tiny woman that looked like ice but felt like fire, ignited the embers in her veins, filled her lungs with the smoke of her breath and branded her chest and hips with her fingertips. Her sultry voice making it hard to breathe and her smoldering words, fueling her anger and passion and everything that made her, her, with a renewed desire for more. Anything and everything.

Fuck.

A frustrated grunt leaved her lips. Where the fuck was she?

Ange just knew that the she-devil was making her wait on purpose. She was never late. But here the redhead was. Last time she checked, they were supposed to meet fifteen minutes ago. And Ange would not give her the satisfaction of sending her a message first. She could already see that fucking grin on her lips and two could play this game. It was infuriating. She was infuriating.

But, maybe that’s why, Ange fell for her all over again.

She never made the same mistake twice. But if she’d learn something from her encounter with the Zhang twins all those years ago and now, it was that there was a first time for everything with them. With her. At least she knew for sure, that the same could be said from her and her brother. The Zakharines were under their skins just as much as they were under theirs. And not everyone could say that they made someone that couldn’t love, fall for them.

Ange abruptly raised her head up. Eyes almost immediately falling on her.

Arria.

There she finally was, at the entrance. Dressed all in black except for her red belt, heels and lips. A leather jacket too big for her, that surely belonged to her brother, thrown on her shoulders. Her hair was tied in a high ponytail, little rebellious curls falling on her forehead.

The Russian couldn’t quite put her finger on it. But if she had to take a guess, she’d say that it was something magnetic, that flowed between them. They were like two magnets that used to repulse each other, but that now collide together. Sometimes softly though so far, violently.

As if one cue, clearer blue eyes met hers. She was stiff at first. Expression harsh, austere. But soon enough something shifted. She softened, sparks shining in her cold eyes before the grin Ange visualized earlier, twisted her lips.

She still struggled sometimes. The consequences of the surgery still there. Some days more than others. Lasting a few hours at times. It was hard. A nightmare even, when it happened. But it was ok. She had to fight it as well. Aaron and Arch too.

Going straight for the redhead, Ange knew that she was up to something just by the way she was walking. Squinting her eyes maybe lightheartedly at the brunette.

“What now?”

Ah crap. Her damned smile was the one of a fucking predator, now.

“Měirén get up. We have places to go to.”

Ange squinted a little more. A line between her brows. “I thought that you wanted to drink.”

“I changed my mind.” She retorted cheekily as she chugged the remains of her hard liquor. A familiar hint of mischief dancing in Arria’s icy blue eyes that made Ange hiss at her. And yet, she got up to follow her lead. Rolling her eyes at the ice-skater antics that were so her and yet so new.

                 Arria had started to write again recently. Filling both papers and her phone with notes full of pretty and crude words. And if Ange had asked her why and how, the Asian woman would have answer that it’s because she thought that, maybe, she had loved her long before the day they parted years ago. And that she loved her like she loved words. But neither of them did. Probably because they weren’t ready and because it sounded too cheesy.

They were passing by a park, hands and shoulders brushing when Arria stopped dead in her track. Something caught her eye and next thing Ange knew, they were in front of a massive statue. The brunette swiftly scribbling in her notebook while she leaned on its base. Observing it. At first, the character carved in the stone could’ve been mistaken for a man, with how muscular they were. But the more she looked at it, the more Ange was sure that it was a woman. The redhead barely contained her snort. She wondered how many straight girls climbed on it to kiss it. Incapable of discerning its actual gender.

“So, you really dragged me out of the bar after making me wait for you, to then pay more attention to a big piece of marble huh?”

Something playful rang in the bite of the Russian’s words, that made Arria throw her head back with laughter. A grin taking form on Ange’s lips that she was sure, the mixed-race wanted to kiss with the way she stared at them.

“You always liked my shenanigans you can’t fool me měirén. Also,” she started pensively “she kinda looks you don’t you think?”

She arched a brow at her statement. Observing its face a little more before she shrugged. She could see some similarities but didn’t care that much. Sliding behind Arria’s back and whispering in her ear instead. Smiling when she felt her shiver. “Keep on making me run around after you solnyshko and see what’s gonna happen to you later tonight…”

Then she started to walk away. On her way out without even looking back. She didn’t have to do so to know that the Asian woman was gaping at her, red spread on her cheeks. And it didn’t take long either, for her to hear the furious clapping of heels right behind her and her hand to be snatched. Arria grumbled to herself. Refusing to look at her so she wouldn’t see her blush.

Pffftr. Cute.

“So where are we really going?”

Grumbling some more, she took the lead again. Fingers now intertwined with hers. “You’ll see soon enough killjoy.”

Ange chuckled wickedly. She always won at some point. Even with her.

                “The Seine?” She asked. Brows raised and the shadow of a smirk, dancing on her lips.

The glance Arria shot at her was almost sheepish. Almost. She nudged her arm playfully. “Hush would you. That’s the closest thing to the sea I could find in the middle of Paris.”

The sea huh?

Intrigued, Ange let the Asian woman take her a little further away along the river. Far from people before they came to a stop. The lights of the street lamps were reflecting in the almost black waters. Creating something mesmerizing to observe and waking up the echo of a memory within them both.

“You know, before my surgery I went to the sea.” She started. Carefully breaking the silence, as she watched the wind play with the surface of the river while Ange was watching her. “I was in no fucking state to do so. But I forced Min-Min to buy two plane tickets for Incheon and we flew there.” A sad chuckle. A sad smile. “He was so worry and I felt so guilty… But I had to.”

A question that sounded like a whisper drowned by the noises of traffic.

“Why?”

“Because my most precious memory of all of us, of the two of us, was at the sea.”

Ange’s throat was dry, when Arria’s clear blue eyes dived into the dark waters of hers. She didn’t have to add anything. Her declaration screaming so much more than anyone could imagine. That day, was the moment where they saw, where they all truly saw who each one of them were. If Ange had to pinpoint when she fell in love with her, it was probably that night at the sea. Where Arria talked about how it reflected the endless sky and how it was scary and yet pretty. Powerful and beautiful. Arria said that she reminded her of the sea. And that she was the reason why she started to love it.

The first kiss they shared tasted like copper and anger. Teeth clashing and biting the flesh of the other lips. Nails scratching and hands pulling both red and curly hair, as grunts leaved their painted black mouths.

The second though, tasted like salt and sorrow. She still didn’t know what happened, what was said between her brother and the ice-skater. Just that she soon after came to her flat. And that, as she let herself fall on her bed, tugged at her wrist and urged her to lay on top of her between her thighs, her lips had the flavor of tears.

And as Arria got on the tip of her toes, her head falling backwards as hers leaned down, their third tasted like each other. Like cigarette and caffeine. Like spices and a hint of mint. With a faint but lingering, flowery aftertaste on the tip of their tongues. She felt Arria’s hands tangle in her hair and her lips stretch in a smile, with this one.

So Ange thought that maybe, just maybe, she could get used to that.

[iphoenixrising]

For 600 Followers: The Surgeon, The Captain, and the Soldier

From the Dr!Tim Universe: civilian!Tony, Captain America!Steve, and Winter!Bucky Barnes. Mr_Flamingo said he would read the shit out of this. Welp, there you go.

Dr. Stark is a busy, busy man. Even without the weight of Stark Industries on his back (thank-you Miss Potts), he still runs from one emergency to the next.

This one just happens to be to The Captain America.

Which is so Classified even the top level brass don’t know the guy’s real name. Probably because his files have been sealed longer than most of them have been alive, which is just grand. If there’s anything Dr. Stark likes, it’s a challenge.

When Nick Fury of S.H.I.E.L.D came to him because honestly, he the best surgeon they’re going to get in this half of the hemisphere anyway, Tony tried to throw him out for approximately twelve seconds–

Until the file was tossed over his desk and a picture flops out pretty much in his lap.

And that picture is of a beautiful man.

With a star on his chest.

“I don’t put Cosplayers over people with real problems, Nick.”

“Stark, when I say he’s the real deal, that’s what I motherfucking mean.”

Mmhm. And he graduated from Med School yesterday. “Captain America has been dead for only seventy years, give or take. Looks spry for his age, good for him. I bet he’s Osteo’s wet dream, right?” Because he really does enjoy having witty banter with his rejections.

That’s when Nick Fury leaned over his desk, “you’re the only civilian the Black Widow has ever let work on her, and you think I’m bringing you someone in a costume?”

Some of the incredulous is creeping out of this exchange with the way Fury’s remaining eye is focused. “Seventy years? Nick, that’s–” but when Nick hasn’t moved a muscle, hasn’t blinked, probably hasn’t so much as inhaled.

That’s when the possibility becomes reality.

“Holy shit.” Tony’s eyes blow wide and the run-of-the-mill play date in the lab to make something to help with those pesky arteriovenous malformations is right on the backburner. “You’re kidding me.”

“Would I be here if I was kidding, Stark? He is the real World War II veteran. You save his life and I will give you what we have on a certain reason he survived.”

Dr. Stark stares for approximately thirty seconds, judging. The next instant he’s in his sharp coat and red shades, riding to DC in an Apache helicopter.

(Once upon a time, he would have told the engineers how he could make it better, but since his Dad died, he didn’t have to build for SI anymore. He could build for his passion and not feel one fucking bit bad about it.)

Forty-five minutes and he’s scrubbing in, the situation crucial. Agent gave him the run-down without giving him any real information on how this happened. He got a glance at scans of the cranial fracture and hemorrhaging. Shards of skull had been embedded in the grey matter (which makes no sense how he survived this long except as another shred of proof he’s the real deal. Captain Fucking America… his inner fanboy is screaming behind his calm, cool, surgeon demeanor.)

The team S.H.I.E.L.D gave him for the procedure are obviously all military, and in such need of a good laugh. Dr. Stark is sure they’re under order to watch every twitch of his fingers just in case he’s going to try making Captain America a drooling moron or something while poking around in his brain. So, he has to pull out the old SI CEO song and dance, being an unrepentant witty smart ass and talk fast before any of the sternly gowned agents can threaten him with horrible dismemberment if anything should happen to their delicate snowflake.

He gets the one called Barton to crack a smile while they’re scrubbing up, and it’s all going to be fine.

All is right with the world, except when he comes into the nice, sterile OR–

Where he finds the patient awake.

“Hey there, big guy,” he pats the shoulder of the utterly stunning blonde (who is apparently as old as his great-grandpa and has abs for miles), “we probably shouldn’t be meeting this way, considering you’re apparently the biggest secret in the Modern World, next to Big Foot sightings and the what is that gross ring around the tub really made of debate, but still, it’s nice to make your acquaintance. I’m Dr. Stark, and I’ll be your surgeon for the evening. Let me guess, gurney for one?”

He’s talking but checking machines, supplies, and sliding the special eyewear, taking the opportunity to review the site opened at the scalp to show the skull fracture at the side of Captain America’s head. While he watches, the skin is trying to heal around the clamps and a nurse apparently familiar with the Captain’s rate of healing is constantly re-adjusted to keep the wound open enough for surgery.

(The impact should have killed him. How did it not kill him? “Time is of the essence, Dr. Stark. You need to pull the bone fragments while he can keep his skull from healing over it.” Christ, Agent Tight-Ass, full work-up next time for Project Super Soldier Sandwich.)

“Hm…” slurred from behind the oxygen mask, and if Dr. Stark wasn’t one hundred percent invested on making sure he had everything he would need to fix the oddly not healing bleeder in the Captain’s temporal lobe (with things like Wernicke's aphasia hovering in the background), he would have shuddered. “Got that reference, Doc. S’funny.”

Watching the electroencephalography to monitor the Captain’s brain activity, Tony glances over as S.H.I.E.L.D’s people start filtering in around him and the ones with guns watch him closely through the observation windows.

“Never doubted you for a second, Captain. Guy that punched Hitler should be right above a Yeti in my opinion. Anyhoo,” and Tony, gowned, gloved, and masked, comes around to look at the very, very blue eyes and hold a hand close to the Captain’s blonde eyebrows to check the dilation. “The nice esthetician over there is going to hit you up with something to make you very, very sleepy so I can fix that terrible headache you’re probably having right now.”

And Captain America looks up at him from under those lashes, quirks a small shit-eating grin, “ssorry, Doc Stark. Knockouts...won’t work on me. S’ ‘causea the Serum. Gonna be awake no matter how much they gimmie.”

Blinking with his heart in his throat because he can’t imagine the pain the Captain must be in right about now, Tony gets himself back with, “oh? Then I have your witty repartee to look forward to while I work, don’t I Captain?”

“SSteve, Doc. I’m SSteve.”

“Nice to meet you, Steve. I’m Tony, and I’m going to save your life.”

“Soundss like ya gotta plan, Tony.”

And when the slightly familiar red-headed nurse gives him the thumbs up and it’s time to start, he has to step back around to the site being kept open for him.

“I always have a plan, Steve. Fortunately for you, part of my plan involves great music and nice conversations while we discuss your vitals.”

AC/DC starts in with a little Back in Black. And since he is who he is, him mouth moves on autopilot while he works with a delicate touch, fast and efficient, getting side-tracked from his running monologue with Captain Awake and Alert and Answering to accept vitals and updates from the other staff.

It’s been hours, and he’s on up-to-date knock-knock jokes.

They’ve run the gambit of must-see movies (and no he doesn’t see Agent Tight-Ass writing down the ones Steve asks about in detail because yes, he should see Firefly. Alien cowboys, Captain. Alien cowboys), and spent so much time on just the 60’s.

He’s gotten some stories that are absolutely hilarious (because Steve was so curious about the most oddball shit, ATMs, Fitbits, Twitter…) and is closing the wound in Steve’s scalp before he realizes he’s...done.

“Feels so much better, Tony, thank-you.”

“Hey, glad I was in the neighborhood. You’re quite the conversationalist when I’m poking around in your brain.”

“Could say the same. Thought ya might re-wire me to do something silly. Bark like a dog when someone says bell or something.”

And the staff is cleaning up around them, giving Tony the space to ease down just a notch, and wink, “sorry Captain, something I save for the bedroom, not the operating room.”

The sparkle that lights in Steve’s eyes–

–is really his undoing.

**

Riding the high of saving Captain America’s life got him all the way home and to his bed, still churning over the events of the surgery. Butterfinger and U were happy Daddy made it home in one piece (he’d kept the failed surgical bots, unable to decommission his first attempts at independent AI just because they’d rather play fetch than learn procedures...besides, they’re his creations and with their capacity to learn, they’re still evolving), and absolutely pampered him with coffee while he told them about why he was so late.

Butterfingers booped and patted his knee lightly while U rolled back and forth in excitement. Their favorite part was about the Apache, of course. His children were Philistines (but what would he do without them?).

Waking up at one am to Agent Tight-Ass leaning against the bureau in his bedroom was probably the fright of his life.

(Probably not, but no one needs to know that. Few people knew about his kidnapping in Afghanistan from a Medical Conference five years ago.)

“The Captain won’t let another doctor examine him.” Agent Tight-Ass said without even a hello or the decor is nice. “He’s asking for you.”

Tony completely blames it on sleep deprivation when he almost says my Captain? but shakes himself out of it at the last second.

The implications of Agent being here strikes him in the very next second and he’s throwing the covers off and climbing out of bed fast. A clean pair of purple scrubs and Agent knows he goes commando under his expensive and stylish pj pants. “Post-Op complications?” The litany of problems Steve could be experiencing after such a difficult and delicate surgery flash through Tony’s frontal lobe, a slideshow of problems he should have been able to catch before anyone else.

(They shouldn’t have made me leave him. He needs to be under close observation.)

“No. But, S.H.I.E.L.D needs to verify the Captain is physically fit for duty. He won’t let another physician check him out. We’d like you to come back to DC just to make sure.”

And, well, he’s Tony Stark, so he tries to play it off in front of Agent just to be a pain in the ass to deal with, but even before he’s had a single cup of coffee, Tony is riding in another Apache with his leg bouncing in anticipation.

He’s thrown a Henley on under his scrub top, cuffs up to his elbows and probably looking like a derelict resident, but dammit, at least he has good hair.

The damn corridors are long and Agent Tight-Ass is silently striding beside him while Tony desperately holds a cup of coffee in one hand and the Captain’s chart in the other, taking in every detail and plotting out all the worst case scenarios.  What he absolutely doesn’t expect is to see the gorgeous man in dark jeans, red t-shirt, terrible trucker hat, and a single black-gloved hand standing against the wall like he’s the only thing holding the building up. Tony manages to keep his tongue in his mouth when Agent Tight-Ass stops to introduce them.

“Sergeant Barnes, this is Dr. Stark, the Captain’s neurosurgeon.”

And those eyes are like winter, grey and cool, taking him in from dirty sneakers to the half-curl just above his temple. It’s terribly frightening and arousing at the same moment and Tony is absolutely, completely out of his depth in hot men.

(And in-between relationships, isn’t he? Why are the Gods so damn cruel?)

“Very nice to meet you, Sergeant. I understand you’re an unapologetic smart-ass that can kill pretty much anything a mile away and make the worst borscht known to man. Pleasure is all mine, really. Borscht is already terrible, but making is worse? That has to take substantial talent.”

What he doesn’t expect is the tall, intimidating brunette with the sexiest stubbled jaw to blink down at him, head cocking sideways like an inquisitive cat, “s’at so?  I think the pleasure is all mine, Doll. After all, Stevie ain’t quit talkin’ ya up all night. ‘Preciate ya taking good care a’ him fer me.”

Ah. Barnes. James Buchanan Barnes. Always thought those stories were exaggerated.

Tony absolutely does not, does not (think about them together), lick his bottom lip while staring up into those eyes. “Anything I can do for the red, white, and blue, Sergeant Barnes. Just showing my...patriotism.”

Tony grins wide when he gets the Sergeant to laugh out loud, ruining his intense I will murder you vibe.

“Speaking of the Captain,” Agent Tight-Ass interrupts smoothly.

Both of them give the agent waiting with a patient, pleasantly neutral expression, and when Tony looks back, he can see the tension in James Barnes, and lets himself be his usual kind of confident.

“Honestly, I’m going to take good care of him. If the slightest thing deviates from absolutely normal, you will be the first person to know.”

“Thanks, Doll. Good t’ know he’s in the best hands,” and the gloved one squeezes his bicep, right above his elbow (and he is completely imagining that hand has absolutely no give whatsoever) before he turns to where Agent is holding the door open.

The Captain is awake at this ungodly hour and apparently more chipper when he wasn’t in horrible distress from bleeding all up in his grey matter. It was really nice to see this side and observe his handiwork, amazed the staples had already worked themselves out and there wasn’t even a scar to show surgery had ever taken place.

(Steve’s hair is soft and unfairly naturally fluffy. Tony’s bare fingers are threaded in it while his thumbs press lightly over the surgical site to test the healing and be fucking amazed.)

Sergeant Barnes is there for the examination, back in a corner, with that sensual bad boy thing going on, arms crossed over his chest, eyes sweeping the room every few minutes (like he wouldn’t notice?).

And once he checks the normal vitals and signs, looks for all abnormalities, any hint of a complication, Tony Stark–

–lies through his teeth.

“You need at least a week of rest. No strenuous activity at all. No punching Nazis, jumping out of planes, or potentially dangerous anything. Watch terrible daytime TV, eat your weight in bad food, and take it easy. The possibility for complications, or of re-opening the bleed site is high, even for a Super Soldier. Normal downtime would be months, I’m giving you a week. No arguments Captain.”

He turns to look at the Sergeant over his shoulder and they exchange a nod, but he sees James Barnes rolling his lips down like he’s trying not to smile.

“A week? A whole week?” The Captain honest-to-God whines, looking up at him, sitting up with perfect posture that makes his chest thrust out in such a distracting way.

(Those eyes should really be illegal.)

“Absolutely. I’m saying only a week, okay? That is very, very good news for you. From the scans taken less than an hour ago, you’re healing quickly and well. Still, we’re not going to take anything to chance.”

He grins down, completely confident he’s giving Steve the chance to get out in the world more, maybe get out from under all the Agent-Agents around here.

It’s all too soon he’s being ushered out the room and back to his Penthouse in New York, his heart thundering in his chest. The last twenty-four hours seem like some kind of dream, some kind of forbidden fantasy, something he couldn’t have really done, and being set back at his place with his bots and his lab, his nice office in Stark Medical waiting for him tomorrow, with endless calls from Pepper about the Board really wanting him present for the Quarterly Meeting this time, all of reality lays so heavy on him that he thinks maybe Agent Tight-Ass messed with his memories somehow so he’d never be able to tell anyone why S.H.I.E.L.D really wanted him in the first place.

He goes back to bed for an hour of sleep, thinking about Sergeant Barnes’ hand and Captain Roger’s eyes.

Dodging Pepper’s calls the next day between consults, residents, trips to the robotics, and some time spent in the lab, he’s in his office for a whopping fifteen minutes when his secretary knocks on his door.

“I’m sorry Dr. Stark, but they said they know you and he’s your patient–”

When Captain America and Bucky Barnes appear over her shoulder, looking a devilish mix of sheepish (Steve) and smary as hell (of course, the crackshot), Tony wonders how much effort it would take to clear his schedule completely–

–for the next seven days.