#certainly the men in this show are geared towards girls absolutely. and i can absolutely see how girls might be pushed to focus on them and

[theskyexists]

Vision of Escaflowne is good! The dub is good! It starts out great! Great characters, main character, action and portal fantasy. But then the writers seem to forget that the main character is the main character. I think this is often a very big problem with mildly to very sexist writers: their default thought about women is that they are passive. And so it's no big deal in their minds to let them remain passive as long as the men around her are active. Letting the girl be active is like a special treat, and they assume the audience should be perfectly accepting of a passive main character if she's a girl.

[kyuuppi]

“You lie to your best friend/crush that you have an OnlyFans just to see their reaction”

Ft. Sugawara; Nishinoya; Tsukishima; Oikawa; Kenma

Pt. 2

A/N: My bias is so obvious here LOL

KARASUNO

↳ Sugawara

➣  You are over at his house, the two of you idly watching a sitcom while browsing your phones and chatting in between; it’s comfortable, as times with Sugawara usually are.

➣  Every time Suga leans in to show you a funny meme on his phone or throws his head back in laughter at a joke from the show, you find your heart skipping a beat.

➣  He is beautiful, basically an angel in your eyes, but he is also your best friend and you don’t think he has any interest in you like that. Not in the way you do. 

➣  That’s how you get the idea to test his feelings. 

➣  Being the troublemaker you are (how else would you and Suga get along so well?) you decide to shake things up by casually mentioning you’re interested in starting an OnlyFans and asking if he thinks its a good idea. 

➣  You expect either of two reactions: either he’ll be as supportive as usual, possibly advising you to be cautious with strangers online like the mother hen he is, proving he only sees you as a friend—or he’ll tell you not to, possible evidence that likes you.

➣  The response you receive is not quite what you were expecting...

➣  Once the words leave your lips his head immediately whips around in your direction, light brown eyes looking at you with a serious expression on his face, something you’d never really seen before. It makes you uncomfortable and you begin to regret all of your life decisions.

➣  Suddenly though, he is leaning into you, his arms coming up to trap you against the couch as you try to back away. Your eyes are as wide as saucers and face completely flushed as he continues to stare you down before speaking.

➣  “Even though I’m your best friend, I’m still a man, you know. You’re being awfully cruel right now.”

➣ You audibly gulp, suddenly feeling light-headed but he keeps speaking, close enough that you can feel his hot breath fan across your cheeks.

➣ “Asking me to watch the person I like show off in front of thousands of other men? Even I have my limits.”

➣ And that marks the day of you and Sugawara’s first kiss. ♡

↳ Nishinoya

➣  Your best friend, Nishinoya Yuu, is notoriously unabashed with his affections. 

➣ The two of you have an interesting relationship—Noya has no qualms with expressing how pretty he thinks you are, borderline flirting with you at times, and you frequently return the favor. 

➣  But you don’t take any of it seriously, of course, regardless of how much you secretly wish it were real. Everyone at Karasuno knows about Noya’s undying dedication to the volleyball club manager, Shimizu Kiyoko, and he confesses his love to her at least twice a day. 

➣ Unbeknownst to you those professions became less and less frequent after he met you and now most of Karasuno thinks the two of you are basically dating

➣ The two of you are at the mall, a frequent hang out place where Noya can look at volleyball gear and you can browse manga at the bookstore, when you get the idea to prank your friend.

➣ “Hey, Noya? I’ve been thinking about finding a way to make more money but I don’t have time for a part-time job so I decided to make an OnlyFans—I already have a few subscribers.”

➣ Nishinoya nearly trips and falls flat on his face. You would have laughed if it weren’t for how he immediately grabs at your shoulders, staring at you with a mix of anger and fear. 

➣ “Absolutely not! No one should be allowed to see your beautiful body like that but me!”

➣ You immediately fluster at his loud declaration, acutely aware of how other customers in the mall are giving the two of your strange looks as they walk by. 

➣ “B-but Noya, we aren’t even dating—”

➣ “Then let’s start dating!” 

➣ And what are you gonna do? Say no?

↳ Tsukishima

➣ Being friends with Tsukishima could be frustrating at times—a sentiment you and Yamaguchi frequently discuss when the blond isn’t around. 

➣ Tsukishima likes to think most things are beneath him and he’s too cool to find enjoyment in activities most other friends enjoy, ranging from mini golf to video games. The man seems content to waste his life away studying and listening to music if it weren’t for you and Yamaguchi forcing him out of his room. 

➣ Naturally, something like a prank war would be something Tsukishima would want no part of—not that that has ever stopped you. 

➣ Usually, your pranks are failures. Either Tsukishima easily figures out what you’re doing before it can happen or he doesn’t give you the satisfaction of a reaction, chastising you for wasting your time pulling pranks when you have a failing grade in mathematics you’ll later beg him to help you study for.

➣ He still helps you though, he’s whipped

➣ Your newest prank however, you feel exceptionally confident in. Not only is it simple to pull off, only relying on your acting kills, but it also might answer your curiosity on whether you have a chance in getting your dearest Tsukki to see you as more than just a friend.

➣ The day you decide to do it the three of you are hanging out in Tsukishima’s bedroom as usual, you working on the math homework Tsukishima forced you to study while he reads a book and Yamaguchi sits in the corner reading a book.

➣ You had already discussed your plans with Yama beforehand, to which his expression looked suspiciously devious, like he knew something you didn’t know, as he proclaimed his support. 

➣ You hear Tsukishima turning a page and decide to speak up. 

➣ “Hey, Tsukki, have you heard of OnlyFans?”

➣ You hold back a snicker as you see Tsukishima visibly tense, his eyes widening behind his glasses for a moment before he relaxes. From the corner of your eyes you can see Yamaguchi smirking behind his comic, watching the blond closely. 

➣ “...yeah, I’ve heard of it,” Tsukishima simply replies. 

➣ “I’ve been thinking about making more money but I don’t have time for a part-time job so my friend suggested it. She said I could make over ten thousand yen a month.”

➣ “I think only the really attractive ones make that much.”

➣ You gasp, thoroughly offended, and Yamaguchi looks mildly annoyed by his friend’s response, already opening his mouth to chastise him for being so mean—but before he can say anything, Tsukishima is speaking again, still looking down at the book in his lap. 

➣ “Don’t do it though.” 

➣ “Why not?” You pout, refusing to look up at him when you speak. 

➣ “...I don’t want the person I like to do those types of things.” 

➣ You nearly choke on your own saliva, head darting up to stare at him in disbelief. Yamaguchi, for some reason, only smiles softly, looking unsurprised by the admission. 

➣ “W-what? You...like me?”

➣ “Oi, shouldn’t you be studying? One more F and you’re gonna flunk out of the class, dummy.”

➣ You’re slightly disappointed by the change of subject but when you notice the soft pink on Tsukishima’s cheeks you can’t help but to smile the whole time you finish your homework.

AOBA JOUSAI

↳ Oikawa

➣ Oikawa is a busy guy.

➣ You were well aware of that before the two of you happened to be paired up for an assignment and got to know each other, eventually becoming close friends. 

➣ Between volleyball practices, tournaments, magazine interviews, and appeasing a passionate fan club, Oikawa rarely has time for himself, let alone another person. 

➣ Despite all of that, you could tell he always made sure to spend time with you, dedicating a few weekends a month to hanging out, just the two of you, and constantly texting you in the times the two of you couldn’t physically be together. 

➣ From an outsider’s perspective, it was almost like the two of you were dating. 

➣ But alas, you know the sad reality is that Oikawa is most certainly not your boyfriend and you have no idea if he has any interest in your like that…

➣ ...Which is why you decide to try to make him jealous one day to push him towards confessing his feelings, if they exist. 

➣ The two of you are at a café, sipping lattes and gossiping about other students when you bring it up. 

➣ “Y’know...I’ve been thinking of making an OnlyFans.”

➣ To your surprise, Oikawa’s eyes seem to light up, his lips curving into a smile of excitement. 

➣ “Wow, really? Maybe I should make one too!”

➣ Oikawa immediately pulls out his cell phone and the color drains from your face as you realize your plan has completely backfired. 

➣ “My fans are going to love this—hey do you think we can do a collab? The two of us in one pic would make us top creators for sure.”

➣ You can only nod numbly with a fake smile at Oikawa’s enthusiasm.

➣ Oh god, you’ve created a monster…

NEKOMA

↳ Kozume

➣ Unless you’re Kuroo, becoming friends with Kenma is a nearly impossible feat. Actually making him want to spend time with you alone, even more so. 

➣ But somehow, you managed to work your way into Kenma’s tightly knit social circle more like a two point line segment of him and Kuroo and your evenings after his volleyball practice are usually spent in one of your bedrooms, playing Splatoon and Animal Crossing until your Switches die or your parents force you to come home for dinner—whichever comes first. 

➣ You love spending time with Kenma, his quiet presence somehow making you feel comfortable—but over time those feelings of ease have shifted into something more akin to nervousness and excitement as you’ve come to develop a crush on the setter.

➣ Every moment with him, watching the small smiles tug at his lips when he wins a match or his cute, frustrated pout when he can’t figure out how to defeat a boss makes your heart flutter and it’s becoming more and more painful to idly sit by without expressing your feelings.

➣ A direct confession, especially to a boy with nearly 0 social skills, is scary, so you want to be sure your feelings are returned before you even attempt to share them. 

➣ Thus, you’ve decided to take Kuroo’s advice.

➣ “Push him into a corner. Kenma will only act when he thinks he has to.” 

➣ You take a deep breath to steel your nerves before you speak, eying him sneakily from behind your Switch. 

➣ “Gamer girls and boys are kind of trendy these days; I’m thinking about starting an OnlyFans to make money to buy more games.”

➣ The only visible response you receive is a slow blink as Kenma continues to play his game, fingers tapping furiously on the keys. 

➣ “Ah...I don’t think that’s a good idea.”

➣ “Why not?”

➣ There are a few moments of silence between you two, the room only filled with the SFX of your games as Kenma seems to finish his round. You recognize the victory music as Kenma pauses to finally raise his gaze to meet your own. 

➣ “It's your body so I can’t tell you what to do but...I would feel really jealous of all your subscribers.”

➣ And just like that, Kenma returns his attention to the video game, unpausing and starting a new match, blissfully unaware of you struggling to calm your racing heart and flushed cheeks. 

[teawaffles]

The Conspiratorial Bullet: Chapter 5

Returning our view from where the two girls began to rekindle their beautiful friendship to the site of the flag once again, a fierce battle was still raging on.

Just moments earlier, the blue team had been at a numerical disadvantage. But with their allies having received their communications and returned, the battle could now tilt either way…… No, they currently had the momentum to push the enemy back just a little.

“Alright, we’re totally forcing them back here!”

“If we can get through this fight, there’ll only be a handful of them left. We just have to hold out a bit longer.”

The nobles had spotted a chance of victory, and they could even afford to smile now. But as they verified their opponents’ positions from within a thicket, from behind a tree on the opposite side, a mysterious object was lobbed in their direction.

“What’s that?”

One noble had noticed the item sailing towards them — a bulging leather pouch. But its opening wasn’t fully shut, and as the blue team members stood rooted to the ground, the contents of the pouch spilled out onto them from above.

Out the bag poured a vast quantity of dummy bullets.

“H-Huhhhhhhh!?”

Stunned, the men shrieked as the rain of bullets pelted them without mercy. Of course, in the blink of an eye, most of them had been covered with paint.

One of the noblemen touched the paint on his clothes with a finger as he spoke in a daze.

“Is this, really possible?”

It seemed that doubt had surfaced in the others’ minds as well, for those who’d been paint-bombed simply stood where they were, their confusion plain as day. And as they did so, in the distance, a figure watched them from behind a tree.

“Sorry about that. Still, this is a great tactic.”

——As James Bond murmured that, he chuckled.

Needless to say, the one who had delivered that hefty blow on the blue team was Bond. At a spot far removed from the crossfire, he’d quietly made his preparations alone, and lain in wait for the chance to pull off this stunt.

Using bullets in this manner, when they were meant to be shot from a gun, could potentially invite controversy; but Herder had said, “If you get paint on any part of your body, you are out” — and not “if you are struck by a bullet fired from a gun”. In other words, if one adhered to the rules as explained, it could be said that this tactic of raining huge quantities of mock bullets on the enemy was legitimate.

Although they’d been suspicious at first, after a moment, the nobles looked at one another and laughed.

“That was an interesting attack for sure, but now…… what’ll we do? Should we call the referee and seek a decision?”

“Nah, we were completely done in — it’s our loss. Let’s bow out with grace.”

Far from leaving them frustrated, the innovativeness of that idea had felt refreshing; even as they harboured twinges of regret, the men obediently left the battlefield.

The red team members glanced at one another, as if wondering why their opponents were leaving the battlefield: it seemed Bond’s unconventional attack had surprised even his own allies.

Gazing at their puzzled faces with delight, Bond began to head for the apparent location of the opposing team’s flag. There was no rule that a certain person had to capture it, so he wanted to settle things himself if he could. With the blue team’s forces severely depleted, as long as they eliminated the remaining few members, they should be able to steal the flag with ease.

But the instant he saw the path to victory, from the direction of his own allies came a familiar voice.

“O—i, everyone. I’ve taken the flag. The game’s over now.”

That was absolutely impossible. A chill ran down his spine.

The voice announcing their victory—— was his own.

“Huh? We’ve already gotten the flag?”

“That was quicker than I thought.”

Naturally, since they thought the game was over, his allies had let down their guard. Bond shouted to them as fast as he could.

“No! That’s not me!”

But the warning came a second too late. Before his voice could reach them, several gunshots could be heard coming from their direction.

“……They’re done for.”

Bond bit his lower lip as he headed for his allies. There, a group of men stood in a daze, their clothes stained with paint. It seemed they had fallen into a spectacularly executed trap.

The number of players eliminated here was comparable to what Bond himself had taken out earlier. Once again, the balance of the battle had been restored, and his shoulders sank — but then he heard the rustle of leaves from a thicket behind him.

Sensing danger, Bonds dived swiftly into the nearby bushes. That instant, from the corner of his eye, he caught sight of a certain colleague’s young face.

Bond smiled as he raised his gun.

“You said you weren’t the type to get passionate, but that was a pretty nasty trick you pulled there ——Fred-kun.”

“That’s because I can’t let the team Mr William is on be defeated.”

Fred Porlock responded in a flat voice.

“Bond’s” voice from earlier had been a product of Fred’s mimicry. He’d led his opponents to mistakenly believe that the blue team’s flag had been captured, then took advantage of their lowered guard to inflict a massive blow.

“Hmm, so you’re determined to win too. Speaking of which, you’re rather passionate for someone who’s stone-faced.”

He purposely slung those provocative words over, and from the other side of the thicket, Fred’s retort sailed back.

“Perhaps — but getting too passionate only impedes my work. For me, an ironclad rule is to remain calm at all times.”

“I don’t think that’s necessarily true. It’s precisely this important work which requires a passion that’s second to none.”

“In that case, shall we prove who’s right?”

Fred’s unusually provoking comment had a somewhat joyful ring to it.

Bond chuckled.

“I knew you were a passionate man.”

With that single line uttered with joy as the catalyst, Bond leaned out of the vegetation and raised his gun. It seemed Fred had the same idea, for both of them were now pointing their revolvers at each other. But this was no time for indecision. Both men pulled the trigger, then took evasive action. The bullets passed through the exact spots they’d been a moment earlier, and they each hid behind a tree at the same time once more.

That thrilling battle lasted only a moment. Then, Bond called out with a childlike innocence.

“Aah, what a shame: I’ve been hit. Look, here’s the paint stain.”

“I’m not getting fooled by that — you completely dodged the shot.”

Fred had instantly seen through his deception. But even after his true intentions had been read like a book, Bond seemed to be enjoying himself, and he made to step out in preparation for his next move.

——Then, as if in response to that action, Fred raised his voice.

“Mr William, we can carry out a pincer attack now.”

“……What?”

That shocking line sent Bond looking around the area in suspicion. Then, as Fred had said, he saw William standing behind him.

“Hey Bond. How’s it going?”

“W— Will-kun!?”

For a split second, Bond panicked. He’d been trying to keep an eye out for William’s movements, but then the man showed himself just when he’d been focusing on Fred — this was the worst possible situation he could’ve found himself in. Bond knew he still had a few teammates left, but could it be that William had wiped them all out without making a sound?

In any case, it was a fact that his most formidable enemy had crept up behind him. Bond switched gears: in a flash, he took aim at William.

But far from defending himself, the man simply shrugged, as if he was troubled.

“Sorry, but — I’ve already been eliminated.”

“Eh?”

Yet another surprising statement. Bond’s thoughts were in disarray as he stopped himself, his gun still trained on William. Then, he felt something thud against his back.

“…………”

With an awkward smile plastered on his face, Bond turned his head, and looked behind him. There, stood Fred with his gun raised. Somehow, it seemed a slightly victorious smile had risen on his face.

He didn’t even need to check his back — he knew he’d been hit. With a magnificent sigh, Bond sat down on his haunches.

“Ah~, you’ve got me. So something like that was possible too……”

Now, he finally understood the plan that William and Fred had concocted. Bond ruffled his hair in regret, and William smiled as he spoke.

“There wasn’t a rule saying that you can’t take a detour as you leave the battlefield.”

William had anticipated the strategy his opponent would employ, then used the fact that he’d been eliminated, purposely passing through the frontline where Bond and the rest were in order to give the impression that he was still in the game. Of course, he made sure to tell the people he encountered that he was already out, so that they could avoid wasting bullets on him.

Even so, for those who knew William’s true power, the effect of his presence was enormous; now, just as William had planned, Bond made the mistake of leaving his back open to Fred.

“I didn’t think you’d also exploit loopholes in the rules.”

“Nonetheless, it’s a tactic bordering on foul play. Though, as long as Herder doesn’t show up, it should be alright.”

“……Will Herder-kun appear when someone breaks the rules?”

It was certainly an entertaining thought, but keeping watch over the movements of every single player must surely be a monumental effort. That said, it was flat out impossible for a single person to cover such a huge area — that was probably just a joke, wasn’t it?

In any case, Herder had yet to reveal himself; whatever the truth about his actions behind the scenes, with Bond — the mainstay of his team’s offence — now eliminated, this battlefront had effectively collapsed. As a result, the red team’s chances of victory were now almost zero.

“Aww, even though I was so fired up; I wanted to play on just a little longer.”

Bond hung his head in regret, and William smiled gently at him.

“It’s a pity indeed. Now it’ll be up to Moran and the rest to turn the game around.”

Analysing the state of the battle from here on, William looked towards the little cabin: the setting of the game’s impending climax.

Scoreboard

🔹 Blue team: Albert, Jack, Fred, William, Kevin, Andy

🔺 Red team: Moran, Bond, Louis, Helena

[pallasperilous]

Funny Bone

The other day Supernatural9917 threw out this meme as a cracky Halloween Dean/Cas prompt and I was SO MAD, because I then had to write it:

And so here it is. Goddammit.

Funny Bone

https://archiveofourown.org/works/26761150 Words: 4930 Castiel/Dean Winchester Fluff and Crack, Crack Treated Seriously, Skeletons, Bad Pick-Up Lines, No Angels AU, Men of Letters Bunker, Mild Gore Mature (mentions of lewd acts, canon-typical violence, and some truly horrible pickup lines)

It wasn’t even a particularly creepy skeleton; it was in kind of a “just chillin’” pose on the floor. One ankle was still locked up in a heavy iron cuff, at the end of a short chain leading back to the wall. Snoresville, as dead stuff goes; Dean’s seen worse at Disneyland. It was the skeleton’s comment about Dean’s ass that really livened things up.

Discovering the bunker in the first place was a helluva surprise. The whole facility is legitimately batshit; Dead Guys of Letters knew how to live (and, apparently, die. All at once.).

But after plowing through a dozen rooms worth of priceless treasures and crusty boobytraps, even Sam was looking kinda full up on shock and awe.

“We can hit the basement tomorrow,” he said. There was a big smudge of dust across his nose and some cobwebs in his hair.

“Nuh uh,” Dean answered, kicking the door shut with the toe of his boot. “If there’s shit still kicking down there, we gotta clean it out before it cleans us out. It’s that or we’re sleepin’ in the car.”

“Ugh,” Sam said, as if twenty minutes ago he hadn’t been losing his mind over a rare book about werewolf hemorrhoids.

So discovering that the basement included a no-shit actual dungeon felt more like an unanticipated bonus, and stumbling across a skeleton while exploring it barely even registered. Skeletons and dungeons! They go together like rama lama lama ka dinga da dinga dong.

It wasn’t even a particularly creepy skeleton; it was in kind of a “just chillin’” pose on the floor, inside a big circle of greasy black ash.  It looked a little mildewy in in places. One ankle was still locked up in a heavy iron cuff, at the end of a short chain leading back to the wall. Snoresville, as dead stuff goes; Dean’s seen worse at Disneyland.

It was the skeleton’s comment about Dean’s ass that really livened things up.

“Welp,” Dean had said, holstering his gun and wiping his hands on his jeans. “We’re all clear. Let’s head back upstairs, salt the shit out of everything, and then we can pick up some groceries.”

“Do I get to buy a vegetable that doesn’t fit in a bun, or are we still in the refractory period?” Sam snarked from the corridor.

“I don’t see you cookin’, “ Dean started, shuffling back towards the hall, and that’s when the skeleton butted in.

“Are those astronaut pants?” it asked. “Because your ass is outta this world!”

Dean absolutely did not scream, but it’s possible there was a yelp. 

He almost unloaded a clip into it – unclear what that would’ve possibly done, but it’s good to start with the simple, available solutions. Next he nabbed the lighter fluid off of Sam and dumped out half a pound of kosher salt as a chaser and set the fucker alight.

This does not have the intended effect.

“Baby, I’d like to put my meat on your grill,” the skeleton says, greenish flames dancing between its ribs, “because you’re hot, and I’m smokin’.” Then it sits up a little, just enough to shoot Dean some finger guns.

“What the fuck,” Dean says.

Sam makes a little evaluatory noise. “Sexually harassed by a skeleton,” he chuckles. “I think that’s a new one. Even for you. Is that a new one? I know a lot of strange shit went down in Purgatory.”

The skeleton perks up even more at that, grungy eye sockets sweeping up and down Dean’s body. “Are you a time traveler?” it asks. (Maybe he asks, because the voice is pretty deep and dude-ish, although possibly just on account of its vocal cords being leather shoelaces.)

“Wh…no, I’m not a time traveler,” Dean fibs. He’s more of a time trafficking victim, anyway. “Oh, wait, god,” he says. “Please don’t tell me you’re asking that because –“

“– I can see you in my future,” the skeleton finishes, eagerly, and Dean really wishes this thing had eyebrows so he could tell if they’re waggling.

“Yeah, okay. That’s enough for today,” Dean groans. “I need a drink.” He starts to back out of the room as a pre-emptive strike against Bones commenting on how he hates to see Dean leave, but loves to watch him go. Dean’s working on stumbling back again Sam’s left shoe when the skeleton pipes up one last time, this time with a husky, anxious edge.

“I realize that Purgatory isn’t accessible through a simple chronological shift,” it says, teeth chattering. “But it does require travel between modalities, and if you’re capable of that, I would very much like to speak with you again.”

Dean and Sam’s heads slowly swivel back towards the skeleton, like two little pizzas on the same Lazy Susan.

 An hour later, they’re still in the dungeon, working on dousing the skeleton with every possible anti-bad-stuff solution they’ve got, just in case he’s a vampire skeleton or a ghoul skeleton or a witch skeleton or maybe just a wendigo that’s incredibly bad at its job. In between progress reports, he’s still hitting on Dean.

“Dude, don’t you have an off switch somewhere?” Dean asks him.

“Well, Dean, you certainly make me feel like a light switch,–“

“– because you turn me on,” all three of them say in unison.

The skeleton looks a little embarrassed, which is kind of impressive when you think about it. “You’ve…heard that one before?” he asks.

“I spend a lot of time in bars,” Dean deadpans. “Okay, sage is a no-go.”

Sam strikes a line off on the clipboard he found upstairs. “Is this part of a curse or something?” he asks, glancing up at Bones. “Like on top of being a sentient skeleton, you can only speak in horrible pickup lines?”

The skeleton shakes his head, which produces a sound Dean recognizes from his kneecaps on cold mornings. “No, the spellwork allows me to speak freely on most subjects; except who I am, or how to free me. But it’s helpful to use language modern humans can easily understand.”

“Huh. Well, in a way, it is Dean’s native tongue,” Sam says, smirking.

“You shut your face,” Dean hisses.

“When I first saw you, I lost my tongue. Can I try yours on for size?” Bones asks Dean.

“Buddy, I don’t know where you get your information from, but nobody actually talks that way,” Dean tells him. “Nobody sober, anyway. Who isn’t a virgin.”

The skeleton slumps. “I learned from my last visitor. He tried to release me on several occasions, but he either died or abandoned the project.”

Dean arches a brow. “The project being…you?”

“I would be very valuable under the right circumstances.” The skeleton shrugs and casually holds out an arm for Dean to scrape at with the demon blade. “He gave me lessons in modern vernacular as a way to pass our time together.”

“Sounds like a peach,” Dean says, before he can catch himself. “If you have a peach-related pickup line in there, man, you’d better just sit on it.”

“That’s what-“

“I will smash you with a hammer,” Dean barks.

The skeleton relents, but with obvious reluctance.

 They call it quits before Kansas rolls up the sidewalk for the night and leaves them stranded with nothing but two Clif bars and a gross of septuagenarian cans of franks ’n beans. Bones shifts nervously when Dean leaves – “Which is better, pancakes or waffles?” he asks.

“Pancakes,” Dean says, with a sense of grim duty.

“Because I’d like to know what you’re making me for breakfast,” says Bones, his voice trailing off as Dean books it down the stony corridor.

  By lunch the next day (bologna sandwiches, so sue him, he’ll make something good later) they’re pretty sure that Bones doesn’t pose any known, immediate threat – other than to Dean’s sanity – so they switch gears to springing him. Maybe he will be worth something, or maybe he’ll crumble into dust and Be Free, or maybe he’ll just stop being chained to the basement wall, in which case he can become their skeleton butler or something.

There are weird runes on the ankle cuff, so Sam snaps some quick photos and heads upstairs to feel up the library. This leaves Dean in the basement with Bones, some good old-fashioned power tools, and Bones’s ex-suitor’s gross sense of humor.

“You know I can understand you just fine when you’re talking normally,” Dean says. “You’re just reciting some prehistoric shit that idiots say to girls to get a pity-laugh, hoping it leads to a pity-fuck.”

“What’s a pity-fuck?” Bones asks, all mildewy innocence. Dean’s pretty sure the grunge in his eyeball sockets is dried eyeball.

“Pretty much what it says on the tin, my guy,” Dean answers, and reaches for the acetylene torch.

 “Enochian,” Sam says, when Dean surfaces for another sandwich and possibly a beer. He’s really disappointed about the torch.

“Gesundheit?” Dean replies, around a mouthful of bologna. Like everything else here, the kitchen is pretty schwa, although the inside of the fridge required three exorcisms and half a jug of bleach.

Sam paws around the smelly old book in a way that makes Dean feel sorry for the girls Sam dated in high school. “The symbols on the cuff. I think they’re Enochian. It’s a fake celestial language made up by some sixteenth century con artists.”

Dean coughs up a bit of Wonder Bread. “I respect the hustle, but what’s it doing on an ankle cuff in a dungeon younger than Mickey Mouse?”

Sam frowns. “Well, it could be for show. But just because some nutbars made it up doesn’t mean it’s totally powerless. Maybe it does have some kind of…heavenly mojo.”

“Liwl probbem,” Dean observes, finishing off his sandwich. “Def nuh heggen.”

“Huh?”

Dean takes a swallow of beer. “I said: there’s no heaven.”

Sam shrugs. “We didn’t think there was a Purgatory, either.”

“Okay, but if we find out angels are real,” Dean snorts, “then Bones can fuck me in the ass.”

 Sam reports his findings to Bones, who sits placidly on the back of his pelvis, carpals splayed out on his kneecaps. What’s even holding him together? Dean can see what’s left of his ligaments, but they look like petrified gas station jerky.

“Do you know what they mean?” Sam asks him, pointing at the sigils.

Bones’s jaw creaks open a little, then closes again, and then he shakes his skull (something rattles inside.) Finally he makes a little frustrated noise and replies – “Baby, are you a book? Because I’d like to check you out.”

“Hey!” says Dean. “Keep it in your pants, man, I’m right here.”

Sam squints. “I think…Dean, I think he’s trying to tell us something, but the spell on him means he can’t say it directly.”

Bones clenches his fists, releases them, clenches them again.

“Yeah. Keep him talking. Let’s see how close he can get.”

Clack clack clack.

“Uh,” Dean says, rubbing the back of his neck. “Okay. Do I need to, like. Give you some kinda opening?” he asks Bones.

“Sweetheart, I’d like nothing better,” Bones answers, then clacks his knuckles on his brow with exasperation.

“Sorry, Christ. Hit me with your best shot, buddy. Dealer’s choice.”

Bones clears his…ghost throat? and tries: “Tell me, Dean…did it hurt?”

Dean blinks. “When I…fell from heaven?”

Sam claps his hands. “Fucking knew it. It is Enochian, and it does have something to do with this. I think he wants me to check the library for another book. Maybe there’s one misshelved or something that I can actually use to translate. Or I can Google around, maybe there’s a subreddit.”

Dean’s pretty sure Bones has never heard of a Google or a subreddit (for that matter, does Dean actually know what a subreddit is?), but it seems like there’s a glimmer of hope deep in those scum-holes.

 Sam gets translations for a few of the words – “obedience” and something he’s fifty percent sure means “millstone” – but the rest is still gobbledygook, and he hasn’t come down with another update in hours. The dungeon is pretty roomy, but it’s not like there’s a foosball table or a cable TV pickup down there, so Dean and Bones wind up lying on the cold-ass ground, staring up into the dark reaches of the ceiling together and, like. Chatting.

Occasionally Bones goes quiet and Dean glances over at him. He really could just be a totally normal, completely dead dungeon skeleton. A good power washing and the right mounting hardware and he’d be ready for a high school biology classroom.

“So if these runes are a celestial thing, does that mean you’re some kinda demonic...thing?” Dean asks. “Cause I gotta say, you’re a much less of a douche than the demons I’ve met.” He snorts. “I know you probably can’t say.”

Bones sighs (how? With what lungs?). “The last person who tried to free me was a demon.” He shifts a little, maybe surprised that he can say this out loud. “It had been so long since somebody had spoken to me…I’m afraid I came close to actually enjoying his company. But he was no better than his kind usually are.”

“Don’t suppose you caught his name? Maybe Sam or me killed him for you already.”

“He called himself—no, I can’t say it.” He makes a sound resembling a harumph.

Then his skull creaks over to look at Dean. “Does your name start with ‘C’?” he says, very deliberately.

Dean is momentarily puzzled, but he works it out by the time Bones wincingly adds “…because I’ve got a D that wants to come behind you.”

There aren’t too many demons under the “C” tab in Dean’s blood-stained mental rolodex, and when he says the name out loud, Bones makes a sound like an entire set of dominos being thrown down a spiral staircase.

  Crowley is pretty pissed, which is fun.

It’s nice that the dungeon floor already has a perfect trap on the floor; they don’t even have to hit up Ace Hardware for paint. A damp shop cloth and a little nail polish (Wet ’n Wild in “Red Red,” don’t leave home without it) brings it right up to working order.

“Why does it smell like a nail salon fucked a bloody wine cellar?” Crowley says, after he’s settled down a bit. He manifested right in the creepy torture chair (in the shackles, even! What service!) and he made some escape attempts followed by angry noises about rust stains. Now he’s recovered his dignity and has kicked back a bit, legs crossed, fingers steepled, oozing maximum levels of 2 cool 4 school.

“How do you know what a nail salon smells like?” Dean retorts.

“I get a monthly mani-pedi. There’s no shame in a little self-care, boys.” Crowley’s eyes trickle down to their feet. “Imagine what fungal horrors those work boots must conceal.” Then he squints, and looks up, finally taking in the whole room. “Could swear I’ve been here before. Little upscale for you, isn’t it? Did we splurge for a vacation rental?”

“Crowley, why don’t we roleplay Titanic?” Bones growls from the wall behind him, and Crowley’s face goes slack. “I’ll be the iceberg, and you can go down.”

Crowley swallows and slowly twists back, as far as the shackles let him. “Feathers, is that you? Well, as I live and breathe.”

“You do neither,” says Bones, with so much gravelly contempt that Dean suppresses a little shiver.

“Oh, I still breathe now and then, when the mood takes me. I’m a sentimentalist.” Crowley cranes his neck a little harder and squints into the dim. “Goodness, you’ve dropped some weight since we last spoke, haven’t you. Finally let go of all that pesky soft tissue?”

Bones tilts forward and kind of clatters onto hands and knees, then tipsily begins to rise up to standing. Dean’s a little concerned he’s gonna topple right over and they’re gonna spend the next two hours collecting him in a basket, but when he moves to help out, Bones waves him off. After a couple false starts he makes it up onto his feet bones and then shuffles out to the end of his chain, right under one of the overhead lights. He’s still a good couple feet off from Crowley, but Crowley looks like he wouldn’t mind a few extra acres.

Bones sways a little bit, just enough for Crowley to wince. “You didn’t come back.”

“I got busy.”

Sam shifts impatiently. “What is he?” he snaps, gesturing at Bones.

“Exceedingly dull,” Crowley says. “I should’ve guessed you were friends.”

Dean uncorks a fresh bottle of holy water.

“You wouldn’t believe me if I told you,” Crowley amends, quickly. “And even if you did, you wouldn’t know what to do with him. It’d be like giving a laptop to a pair of howler monkeys.”

Dean puts his thumb over the mouth of the water bottle and holds it over Crowley’s head. “Try me.”

Crowley scoffs, rolls his eyes. “It doesn’t matter what he is, since he’s useless as long as he’s chained up. And I wouldn’t have left him down here if I had a single clue how to smuggle him out.  I haven’t even been in here since the Bay of Pigs; I’d worked a loophole in one of the defense spells here that let me in. When it broke down, I lost my exploit. Wasn’t worth the bother after that.”

Dean slides his thumb a millimeter north of a perfect seal, and a fat drop of water busts its ass open on Crowley’s forehead and sends up a thin line of steam. “Good thing I’ve got a limitless supply of bother,” Dean notes. “Sam, we still got those syringes in the trunk?”

Crowley snarls. “Go ahead and melt me like the cartoon shoe in Roger Rabbit, it’s not going magically make me come up with a solution.”

Bones grunts and rattles his leg chain. “Do you speak Spanish, Crowley? Because you look like the Juan for me.”

“Did I teach you that one? You absolute xylophone.” Crowley glances back at Dean. “Do your worst, Squirrel, I deserve it.”

Sam frowns. “He uses the lines to get around the spell’s speech restrictions. This is something about speaking languages…were you able translate the Enochian symbols on his cuff?”

Crowley blinks. “What symbols?”

 After a whole lot of faffing around with mirrors and terrible cellphone photography, they confirm that Crowley can’t see the symbols at all.

“More demon-proofing. Clever little buggers, those Men of Letters,” Crowley sighs. “A real shame they were peeled and eaten like bananas.”

Finally Sam just hunkers down with a pencil and pad to transcribe the entire ankle cuff, and Dean awkwardly holds up Bones’s ankle, like he’s being sized for a glass slipper. When they shove the results in Crowley’s face, Dean watches his eyes dart along the words.

“Well, it’s your lucky day, boys. Along with the usual wankery, there are instructions on how to release the cuff. I can translate it,” he finally says, with an unusually low inflection of bullshit, “but I’ll thank you to release me, first.”

Dean is flummoxed. “What, you’re not gonna haggle for a cut of the profits or anything?”

“Activating the release mechanism will free him completely, and restore his…restore him. I’d rather be at a safe distance.” He glances back at Bones, looming in the shadows. “A continent or three should do the trick.”

“If it doesn’t work–“

“I’d be more worried about what happens if it does,” Crowley sighs.  “But feel free to summon me back for tea and sympathy. Here, I’ll even give you my number. But please, no personal photography. I pity you enough as it is.”

  Crowley finally smokes out, and Dean has a beer to celebrate while Sam looks over the list of what they need and Bones clatters his fingertips like castanets. The ingredients are (as always) larded with shit that’s exotic and expensive; Sam is looking crestfallen at some of the items. “I’ve heard of all of this, but I’ve only seen maybe half of it for sale anywhere.”

“Baby, are you a yard sale? Because you’ve got some serious junk in that trunk,” Bones monotones. He’s back to lying on the floor.

At least it’s getting easier to translate this shit. “They’ve got all the ingredients here somewhere,” Dean says. Sam looks skeptical. “C’mon, Sam, no way these dudes would use a lock when they didn’t have the key.”

The ensuing scavenger hunt takes a few pints of elbow grease, but at least by the end they’re both familiar with the Bunker’s floor plan, document filing system, and inventory records. They find virtually everything in-house, though they do end up driving to the nearest farm stand for some hen’s eggs and rosemary (and heirloom tomatoes, because they look bomb).

Dean christens – or maybe exorcises – the kitchen range with some red meat, and they fuel up with burgers before taking the plunge. Dean’s still licking the ketchup off his fingers when Bones pipes up one last time. “Can I ask you something?” he says.

Dean and Sam brace for impact.

Bones sighs. “That’s not the start of a pickup line. I genuinely have a question.”

“Shoot.”

“Why are you so intent on freeing me? You could have just left me down here. I’m not a threat this way. You only have Crowley’s word that you might profit - or suffer - from my release.”

Sam gives Dean a look; it’s the look that says I sure hope you have an answer, because I think this entire thing has been dumb as shit and half as necessary. It’s a look Sam uses pretty regularly.

“Uh. It’s the right thing to do? As far as I can tell, you haven’t hurt anybody or done anything else to deserve being down here. We went through all those records upstairs, and there’s no note that says ‘by the way, that skeleton downstairs eats babies for breakfast.’ This place is cool, but the dudes who built it were obviously shady as fuck.”

“I see.” Bones sounds a little disappointed.

Sam fake-coughs into his hand, and Dean sets down his paper napkin. “Also, you seem cool. Like, you’re easy to hang out with. Other than the stinky one-liners, and we’re gonna wean you off of those.”

Bones straightens himself out a little. “Thank you, Dean. You know, on a scale of one to ten, I’d rate you a nine.”

“Okay, okay. Why not a ten?”

Bones sets his chin on his knuckle bones with a tidy little clack. “Because I’m the one you’re missing.”

Dean groans, but he thinks the guy might be smiling, somewhere behind that skeletal grin.

 By hour two, Sam’s pretty tuckered out from pulverizing a billion and three mummified dove livers while reciting nonsense syllables, and Dean’s right arm is about to fall off from holding up this giant silver swizzle stick that’s either a really weird short sword or a decorative javelin, but Bones has never looked perkier. He’s lying on a nice white bedsheet and looking fresh as a recently exhumed daisy.

“Okay,” Sam rasps. “Light the candle and we should be good to go. Any last words, Bones?”

“Are either of you religious?” He crosses his arm bones over each other.

“Fuck no,” Dean answers, before Sam gets a chance to launch into it.

Bones shakes his skull fondly. “You should reconsider. Because you’re the answer to my prayers.”

Dean makes a gagging noise and lights the candle.

 What happens next (well, after the cuff pops open) is some of the freakiest shit that Dean has ever seen, and his Freaky CV is pretty fucking impressive, thanks. Bones tells them to avert their eyes, “just in case”, but he takes a peek between his fingers anyway, because he’s an idiot.

For a second Bones is just lying there, and Dean has a second of real disappointment that maybe he’s Moved On Past The Veil or something, but then he starts…foaming. It starts out kind of uniform and colorless, but then it really picks up speed and volume and starts to separate into swaths of distinct and horrible colors and textures. He closes his eyes again for a second to give his stomach a chance to reboot, and when he looks again the foam is gone, and instead there’s a whole lot of angry jelly trying to form into organs.

Just as the jelly is really getting its shit together and looking more like lungs and intestines and stuff, the heart-jelly pulses once and sends out a fistful of big squishy vines…veins? and a fat white worm of nerve scrambles down the spinal column and starts putting out franchises. This is followed by some disturbingly tasty-looking red sheets of muscle that swiftly sheathe over all the whole scene, and then the muscles start sweating out fat and cartilage and this is the point where Dean decides that looking away is actually definitely one hundred percent for the best. Even then, the sounds are tough to handle.

Kinda wild: he’s seen people taken apart, but watching one get put back together is somehow gnarlier. Well, if this guy is even a person. It’s a human skeleton, sure, but god knows even Mickey Rourke has one under there.

Finally everything seems to have quieted down.

“How you doin’ over there, Bones?” Dean asks, and dares to take a peek.

Bones is crouched down in front of them, fists balled up in the bedsheets (it’s a relief that the bedsheets didn’t get accidentally sucked into the muscle layer or something, like one of those surgeons who leaves a sponge behind). Dean sees white guy skin and some dark messy hair and gets the gist of a decent build.

The face slowly cranes upwards, and Dean is really truly ready for anything here; tusks, fangs, Klingon forehead ridges, gingivitis. Instead he gets a faceful of hot math teacher. Bones’s eyes are still closed, but he’s frowning like he’s mentally reviewing his strategy to explain the quadratic equation to a roomful of horny teens.

He slowly rises to standing (yikes! Naked! Dean is a Moderately Bad Man, so he glances, but just long enough to register “nice), uncurling slowly and carefully.

Then he’s all the way up. Bones squares his shoulders and straightens the last kink in his spine, and the frown resolves. Dean’s about to say something, when his eyes snap open, and this cold white light absolutely blasts out of them, and fuck, Crowley wasn’t kidding: this guy is definitely A Thing. The whole room flattens and distorts in the light. Shadows race up the walls like they’re looking for a way out, then snap together into the shape of enormous ragged wings, stretching thirty feet higher than the actual ceiling clearance.

Then the light dies down; the wings fade into regular-grade shadows. Instead of a terrifying unearthly avatar of Oh Shit, Dean’s looking at a buck naked thirty-something math teacher. Who happens to be an unearthly avatar of Oh Shit. And has nice eyes.

“My name is Castiel, angel of the Lord, Seraph of the First Shield,” the avatar says, in a piss-shakingly resonant version of Bones’s voice.

Then: “Do you speak English, Dean?”

“Yes?” Dean fumbles.

“So do I,” says Castiel, and smiles.

Then he makes finger-guns.

  Castiel sticks around for a grand total of five minutes before he’s suddenly gone again, because angels are (a) real and they can (b) teleport? at (c) any moment because (d) fuck you, then he reappears six hours later (clothed) standing over Dean’s bed, having apparently forgotten that humans like to sleep; this time Dean does shoot him, but luckily he doesn’t seem to take it personally.   

“I located Crowley,” Bo- Castiel says. The silver sword-javelin thing is sitting on the kitchen counter in front of him; apparently it’s an Angel Blade and it lives in Castiel’s coat sleeve and can vaporize demons. It doesn’t look like it has any Crowley on it, but maybe it’s self-cleaning.

“Did you kill him?” Dean asks, now that he’s semi-coherent and wrapped around a cup of coffee in the kitchen.

“Not this time,” Cas answers. “He did help, after all.”

“Sure,” says Dean.

“You don’t need to let me fuck you in the ass, either,” Castiel says, and Dean honks some coffee up the back of his nose.

“Oh,” he gasps. “Okay. Cool. Thanks. Didn’t realize you could hear that convo all the way down there.”

“Angels have excellent hearing. Mine wasn’t impacted by the spell.”

Dean can think of at least three very private moments Castiel almost definitely could hear every instant of, and longs for death. Or maybe not, since apparently this guy lives in Heaven and could hear him there, too. “Great. Good to know. Noted.”

“But…” Castiel looks wistful.

“What?” Dean nudges him. Dean Winchester: angel nudger.

Castiel frowns. “If I said…” he stops himself. “This is…what I want to say is very irregular, at least between angels and humans.”

“Jesus christ on a goddamn pogo stick, man. It’s three in the morning, some of us have a circadian rhythm and a limited lifespan. Say whatever it is you gotta say.”

Castiel looks up and drowns Dean in his swimming pool eyes, which Dean has learned belong to a radio ad salesman in Illinois, who Castiel possessed a few years back before jumping several decades into the past to run some errands and getting rope-a-doped by the Men of Letters and then warehoused in their basement; after they all spontaneously bought the farm, he just slowly ran out of the power reserves needed to keep his vessel from turning to mush and hey presto, talking skeleton.

Classic story, really.

“If I said you had a beautiful body, Dean,” Castiel says, solemnly, “Would you hold it against m-“

Dean doesn’t let him finish. {AO3 version}

[ugly-crying-over-bucky-barnes]

Field of Poppies Part 25

Summary: After being apart for six years, childhood friends Tommy and Amelia reunite under odd circumstances. Tommy is an outspoken young man and Amelia is pregnant and out on the streets. The bond of family can be unbreakable but it is tested often. Especially when Europe descends into war.

Part 25: Some have trouble adapting to home again. Some are gearing up for trouble they’re going to cause.

           By August of that year, Barney was locked away in the asylum. It happened so suddenly. Although he certainly hadn’t been himself since his last gunshot wound in the trenches, everyone had hoped that he would reacclimate as time went on. But his behavior only got worse. He was prone to violent outbursts that he didn’t even remember seconds after.

           Tommy and the rest of the 179th did their best to try and keep him calm and out of trouble. But there was only so much they could do. A few episodes at the Garrison was one thing. Harry could accept that the man was clearly out of his mind and not doing it on purpose. But the rest of the public world couldn’t understand.

           Barney was arrested a few times. But his was committed after he bit a cop and tried to escape jail. He was deemed insane soon after.

           Amelia knew Tommy took it very hard. They all did. These men who were parts of their lives were suddenly changed beyond a point of return. And there was nothing they could do about it. They couldn’t visit Barney and they couldn’t get Danny’s fits under control either.

           Rosie was at her wit's end and relied heavily on support from Amelia. Consequently, this allowed Tommy to slip back into his habits of working all hours of the day.

           Amelia noticed this a few months in, but she wasn’t sure what to say. Before the war, she had no problem laying into him about working himself to death. But after? Well, she didn’t know what to even say. She felt guilty about being strict about anything. In her mind, he had been through enough. Why should she scold him on something that was small compared to the grand scheme of things?

           But she wasn’t blind either. Amelia was aware that he never slept more than a few hours at a time. She couldn’t find the warmth in his eyes anymore. He was less outspoken than before and had a habit of sitting in stony silence instead of speaking out. He was energetic with the kids, at least as much as he could be on the amount of sleep he was getting.

           Amelia was grateful for that. Although it hurt to know Tommy had changed so much, at least the kids wouldn’t realize.

~~~~~~~~~~

           Amelia went into the betting shop one sweltering afternoon to bring Tommy lunch. He hadn’t eaten that morning and had been absent during dinner the night before. But there was no sign of him. She went into Arthur’s office to see where he was.

           “He came in early this morning, was here before everyone else.” Her brother-in-law answered. “He left ‘bout an hour ago saying he would be back later.”            

           “He didn’t say where he would be?” Amelia asked, her concern growing.

           Arthur shook his head. “I asked but he never answered.”

           She chewed on her lip. “Okay…well.” She considered waiting but figured her nerves would get the better of her. “Here, you can have this.” She gave Arthur the lunch before leaving the shop.

~~~~~~~~~~

           Small Heath wasn’t particularly large, but that didn’t mean he was even there. He could’ve gone beyond the neighborhood. She started with Charlie’s Yard. That’s where Annie and Max were for the day. They were cranky inside because of the heat so she sent them to both Charlie for the morning.

           “Haven’t seen him,” Charlie said, sitting on a stool in the shade while he watched the kids. Curly was showing them a grasshopper he’d found in one of the horse stalls. The kids were so taken by the discovery that they didn’t even notice their mother arriving.

           “Do you know where he might’ve gone?” Amelia asked hopefully.

           “Whenever he’d get in a mood, he’d go to the graveyard to visit his mum,” Charlie replied. “I’d look there.”

           “Thank you,” Amelia said gratefully, hoping Tommy’s uncle was right.

           Across the yard, Annie squealed. The grasshopper had jumped out of Curly’s cupped hand and was on the loose. Max ran to try and catch it again. They were both so caught up in the summer fun, that she wasn’t going to interrupt it with her nerves.

           “I’ll be back to take them off your hands,” Amelia promised Charlie.

           “S’alright. They’re not hurting anyone.” He nodded before she went off toward the graveyard.

~~~~~~~~~~

           Charlie was right. Amelia found Tommy among the overgrown grass and crooked headstones. But he wasn’t standing in front of his mother’s grave. Hers was a few rows down. No, he was standing in the newer section in front of a newer plot.

           “Tom.” Amelia hated interrupting him while he was in deep thought, but she was just thankful she’d found him.

           He glanced over his shoulder. Without saying anything, he reached for her hand. She took it as she stood beside him. That’s when she noticed they were in front of Greta Jurossi’s grave.

           “When I got the letter from you, the one where you said she had died, I didn’t believe it.” He spoke in a quiet voice, just loud enough to hear over the sound of cicadas in the grass. “I dunno, I just thought she was going to be the one to upset the system. One of those historical figures that people talk about.”

           Amelia knew that he and Greta shared the same ideologies. Aspirations that she was afraid of but Greta wasn’t. He had respect for her.

           “I know.” She said gently. “She would come by sometimes to the shop. She and Polly would always get worked up about the rights of women and the working class.” She smiled weakly.

           Tommy nodded, his eyes staring into space. “You were right, though.”

           “About what?”

           “When you came back, I was telling you about the communist group. You didn’t think it was enough to change the world.” He recalled. “And you were right.”

           “Tom…”

           “You don’t have to say anything.” He shook his head. “There’s nothing more to say.”

           Young Tommy Shelby had so many dreams and a drive to change everything he saw as unjust. But the world had taken him in its fist and squeezed the convictions out of him. It had forced him into the mold of a soldier. Forced him to comply. Killed off Greta, killed her message.

           But Tommy wasn’t dead yet. There was a new fire lit inside of him. “Politics, laws, parties. It doesn’t matter. You can’t win if you play by their rules.”

           “So, what are you-”

           He began to walk back down the path, still holding her hand. “Everything will be alright.” He promised her. “You won’t have to worry about a thing.”

~~~~~~~~~~~

           The two went back to the Yard to bring the children home with them. Charlie was still taking refuge in the shade, smoking a pipe and watching Annie running around in the mud.

           “You found him then.” He commented as Amelia and Tommy came up to him.

           “Not a lot of places you can hide in Small Heath,” Tommy replied to his uncle.

           “I hope they weren’t a fuss, Charlie.” Amelia ignored her husband’s glib response.

           “I’ll tell you what, that boy of yours is just like you, Tom,” Charlie remarked. “Full of energy but once he’s around a horse, he’s quiet as a mouse.”

           “I’m sure you taught him well then.”

           “I didn’t teach him anything.” He shook his head. “Must be the Traveler blood in him.”  

           “He doesn’t have Traveler blood, Charlie,” Tommy muttered in reply.

           “Well, then it’s fucking intuition, hell if I know.” His uncle rolled his eyes, his pipe still tucked between his lips as he spoke.

           “Hell, if you know.” Tommy shook his head. “You better not have been teaching him that kind of fucking language.” He warned before heading toward the horse stalls to find Max.

           “That one has Traveler blood in her.” Charlie pointed his pipe toward Annie. The little girl had ruined her skirt by stomping around in the mud by the canal. She had a loose hold on her teddy bear that seemed just as filthy from the morning’s play.

           “You think?”

           “Reminds me of Pol when she was little. An absolute terror but you’d be happy to see her come around. Max will be a gifted rider, like Tom. But Annie won’t back down from a challenge, no matter how many times she’s bucked off.”

           The thought of her precious daughter being bucked off a horse was a nightmare to Amelia. But she knew that there was no forcing Annie into being someone she wasn’t. Amelia knew that all too well. Her family wanted her to be a lady of high society. They wanted her to be proper, educated but not too educated, and a million miles beyond Small Heath. But she was aware that she was a girl of lower class. Her upbringing was nothing compared to the socialites in London. She ran the streets with the Shelbys much to her parents’ discontent. And while she wasn’t as fierce and feisty as Tommy and Arthur, she didn’t mind living in Small Heath. She loved the people there.

           The more her parents pushed, the more she rebelled. In London, she felt empty. She had no friends because all the girls her age were boring to her. London felt cold and desolate to her. Sure, the place they lived in was nicer, but it didn’t matter.

           So, if Annie wanted to be a wild girl who flocked to dangerous horses, then there really wasn’t a thing Amelia could do about it. Not with Tommy’s blood in her.

~~~~~~~~~~

           “Not even half a year since he’s come back and you’re already up the duff, again.”

           Martha and Amelia snickered behind their hands. It was true. Martha was pregnant again and Polly was bewildered by the revelation.

           “Oh, Pol, it’s okay.” Amelia smiled. "It was bound to happen once John came back."

           “You and John are getting your own flat, or I'll get my own. I’ve had more than enough newborns in this house at one time.” Polly replied firmly.

           “I suppose that’s only fair.” Martha agreed. Six Watery Lane had become quite the den of rascals. “At least John is home and can help me with the other two."

           “And make sure he does. Those three have been working themselves to death.” Polly shook her head in disapproval. “And it’s all Tommy’s doing.” She glanced at Amelia.

           “I think they’re just trying to find their place in the world again.” Amelia shrugged. “Remember when they were gone? We had to adapt to the world. Now they do too.”

           Polly didn’t look convinced. “When a Shelby man is working like the devil, that means there’s going to be trouble.” She warned.

           It did speak to the conversation she and Tommy had earlier in the graveyard. “He did seem to have some plans.” She admitted. “But he didn’t say what.”

           Polly continued to smoke by the kitchen table where Amelia and Martha were sitting. “One can only guess what goes on in that head of his.”

           Amelia looked down at her lap. As his wife, she thought she would be the one to know. But she felt just as blind as the rest of them.

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

           It was a rare night, but one that Amelia rejoiced in having. After dinner, she got the kids washed up and put in bed. After Tommy kissed them each goodnight, he returned to the master bedroom and caught Amelia before she even made it to her vanity.

           Without a word, he kissed her deeply. He pressed her up against the door as he locked it to avoid any awkward situations if one of the children wandered in unannounced.

           It was so easy for Amelia to forget everything when Tommy held her. She could rejoice in the fact that in those brief moments, she was taken care of. There was nothing to interrupt them, nothing to cause them harm, it was just the two of them. They were the moments Amelia yearned for when he was in France. The moments where she could keep him close and cast aside the ugliness of the world.      

           But the feeling couldn’t last and they were brought back to Earth as the night wore on. Still, they enjoyed each other’s company in the dead hours of the night. Amelia curled up in the crook of his arm, tracing the new scars on his chest that he’d obtained in the trenches. He held her close as he smoked.

           Eventually, he broke the silence and uttered a rare confession to her. “I’m going to do bad things, Mel.”

           The admission sent a chill up her spine. Yet, it was something she already knew. Something she’d known even in childhood when adults would comment on Tommy’s proclivity for mischief. When they remarked how his father was nothing but a waste of space. When they speculated how Tommy would live up to the Shelby name. A name cursed.

           “I know.” She whispered. From then on, she was complicit. Her wish to stay in Small Heath as a child had brought her to that point. Her wishes for Tommy to stay out of danger had fallen upon deaf ears as she should’ve realized. But if she wanted a quiet, polite, bland husband, she would’ve stayed in London to marry one. Instead, she was with someone who was destined to be one of the most dangerous men in Britain.

Permanent Tag: @papa-geralt-of-cirilla @biba3434 @kimmietea @karmezii @enrapturedbythemoon @vampgirl1997 @tarafaithe @evelynshelby

Tag list: @shelbyblinded @hanster1998 @xxbeckybeexx-blog @fairypitou

Masterpost 

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[supernovadragoncat]

Thunderstruck Outtake: Sally Cancels the THOT in Sandor’s Dressing Room (What happened after Chapter 14)

Dedicated to @jennusdemenus who asked for a glimpse into what happened directly after Chapter 14 (aka what happened to that THOT in Sandor’s dressing room, you know the one!) 

Read on below the cut to find out! 

You can catch Thunderstruck here on AO3 and here on FF.net! Only two chapters left!  

Back to the door, Sally watched the venue thin out. This bit was always the same. The city or the venue didn’t matter. Groupies and drunks, they were always the last to go. The drunks would plant themselves in an empty floor and wail for another encore well after the band left the stage and the crew started clearing off the gear. The groupies would flock to the door Sally had planted himself in front of and wield their feminine wiles in hopes of sneaking past.

As it stood, neither the groupies nor the drunks got too far, and Sally occupied himself with self-indulgent daydreams. He was usually hungry right about now. Having scrambled for scraps earlier, tonight was no exception. While Cannibal Star was likely on the prowl for booze and women, Sally had one thing on his mind.

Soft and sweet. Heaven on his lips. He’d savor every moment.

I shouldn’t.

He’d already had two cupcakes, but then also that beer and he wasn’t a twenty-something anymore, metabolism burning through every bit of bullshit he put in his body. His gut could prove it; the wobbly bits that hadn’t been there two years ago and showed no signs of slowing down now.

What’s a third cupcake when you’ve already had two? Sally reasoned with himself.

Catering got the kind he liked; the icing wasn’t too sweet and melted like butter on a hot July day in his mouth. Not that he ever let it be known. This shit wasn’t about him and he was just grateful no one had told him to pound sand yet. If anything, Cannibal Star had become some of his closest friends, the crew like family. They took care of their own and catering got the cupcakes he liked. That must count for something.

A flurry of activity snapped Sally out of his daydream. The crew all appeared absolutely addled as a roadie hurried across the stage, hollering about something or another that beckoned the others to gape in saucer-eyed wonder. The roadie jumped down to the floor and rushed to Sally.

“Shit’s going down. Sandor and his girl,” the kid panted and nudged his way past Sally and through the door that led to the hall.

“Oh my God!” Sally damn near punted the roadie out of his way and bolted down the corridor. He caught of glimpse of fiery red hair blazing towards the back door and Sandor looking like the world was crumbling around him.

Sandor turned to Sally, at a loss and out of words, any stray bits of explanation he could manage. That all fled the man now and he tore into his dressing room like a tornado, fury quick on the heels of emotional ruin and it was a wonder the flimsy door wasn’t ripped off the hinges.

“Trouble with the little lady?”

Sally hovered outside the dressing room and recognized the voice emanating from the other side. Mona the Monster’s ludicrous attempt at sultry banter was embarrassing even in the best of times and now solidified her place squarely on the blacklist of shame.

The men of Cannibal Star didn’t spook easy and certainly put up with their fair share of crazy if it meant getting laid at the end of it. It took a lot to get added to the blacklist.

“Get the fuck out!” Sandor’s shouts exploded into the hall and he bounded towards the doorway, wrangling Mona by her upper arm as he went.

“If you think I’ll tell you twice, you’re stupider than I’ve always known you to be.”

The woman’s feet barely had the opportunity to the meet the floor before her mostly naked ass was being tossed into the hall for Cannibal Star, the crew, and all of God’s green creation to see.

Ankles buckling, she stumbled and barely caught herself when her arms shot to the cinderblock wall.

“I’m actually very intelligent—” she fired back, equal parts furious and haughty even now, mostly naked and looking haggard in the harsh fluorescent lights beaming up above.

Anger like Sally had never seen consumed Sandor. Wide-eyed fury, fists curled, chest heaving, and face burning red—if Sally didn’t know any better, Sandor was teetering on the precipice of quite literally exploding.

“You’re trash! That’s all you’ve ever been,” he seethed in a commendable show of restraint, so much so the man was shaking. He pointed a trembling finger at Mona the Monster.

A crowd had gathered in the corridor, the message having spread like wildfire. By Sally’s estimate, the entire production now lined the hall to watch this holy terror finally get taken to task. Mona the Monster had a reputation all her own—an ungodly abomination of self-righteous entitlement and paper-thin self-esteem.

Sandor shifted towards her in a quiet step and a faint smirk Sally knew to be the calm in the storm. The fury roiled beneath the surface but next came the exacting cruelty that Sandor wielded better than anyone Sally knew.

Mona seemed to know what was coming too. Her eyes scanned the hall of faces all watching in twisted delight at her impending downfall. Her arms crossed over her chest in a laughable attempt at modesty.

“In all these years you’ve been around, spreading your legs for anything with a guitar and a pulse, I’ve never gone for you,” Sandor began, voice a deep rumble, but his eyes still flashed with rage. “I haven’t even looked at you twice. I find a girl who’s leaps and bounds better than you in every conceivable way, the first girl I’ve ever loved, and that’s when you think I’m going to hit it? Tell me again how intelligent you are. You’re nothing. You’re old, your tits are saggy, you reek of cigarettes and booze. Even at your youngest, all you could ever offer anyone was a lousy lay and now you’ve defined new levels of disgusting and that’s the only distinction you’re worthy of.”  

Snickering and quiet encouragement rolled over the crowd. Mona’s eyes darted up and down the hall, desperate to find a sympathetic gaze to latch onto. For some absurd reason, her eyes landed on Sally.

“Don’t look at me!” Sally barked. “You’ve done it now, you nasty bitch.”

“Like you’ve ever amounted to anything,” Mona snapped. “You’re a nobody!”

All at once, the members of Cannibal Star hurled themselves from their perches throughout the hall, peeling away with congruent fervor to be done with Mona the Monster.

“Done! You’re done!” Sandor bellowed and lurched towards her, settling in next to Sally’s side. “If I ever see you at one of our shows or practices, you even breathe the name ‘Cannibal Star’ in this city, you’re getting a Stratocaster shoved so far up your ass, you’ll be choking on the strings for the rest of your shit-filled life.” Sandor leveled irate eyes at Sally. “Take out the trash.”

Sandor turned on his heel without another glance and disappeared in his dressing room. Silence blanketed the hall.

After all these years, the shame finally caught up to Mona and, when it came, it came like an avalanche. For the rest of them, justice came just as mighty and sugary sweet. Tears rolled down Mona’s cheeks in a river of jet-black mascara. In one last ditch effort, she reached for Thoros, tits now exposed for all to see.

“A bridge too far. Get the fuck out,” he grumbled and eyed her in a way no groupie ever wanted to be regarded. Sandor had the right of it—disgust. This woman was worthy of nothing more than that.

Mona stumbled towards Harwin, probably seeking out the softest of the bunch, the one most likely to toss her stray bits of sympathy. Sally held his breath and said a little prayer that the kid would keep his wits about him.  

“You heard the man,” Harwin sniped with usual iciness. “You’re done. Get out.”

In a few more faltering steps and gasping cries, Mona eased down the hall towards Bronn. Sally fell in after her, blocking her path should she try to flee the other way. Mona blubbered a plea and Bronn crossed his arms tight over his chest.

“This was a long time coming, sweetheart. We all stand behind his decision. Get gone.” Bronn motioned to the door at the end of the hall leading to the parking lot.

Sally remembered now that’s where that sweet little Sansa had disappeared, and he hoped like hell that girl still wasn’t out there. Or maybe it was better if she was—she could witness Mona’s fall from grace, though she probably wouldn’t enjoy it as much as the crew was now.

A wave of applause rolled down the hall, growing louder as Mona continued towards the doors with Sally close behind. At the end of the line, no rope left to cling to, Mona turned to Sally.

“Can I at least get my clothes?” she pleaded on a quivering breath.

In only heels and a thong, Mona tried in earnest to cover herself. Sally reached around her and pushed open the door. A blast of chilly air swept through.

“No, should’ve thought about that when you took them off in his dressing room.” Sally shoved Mona through to the other side and followed after. She shivered against the night air. “I mean, he came here with her. How fucking stupid are you? What exactly did you expect?”

Mona lifted her eyes from the ground and glared at Sally but must’ve thought the better of mouthing off. As it stood, she was the one humiliated for all to see and standing outside naked. Sally scanned the parking lot for Sansa and thanked the man upstairs that she wasn’t here. Hopefully, she was safe and okay.

Sally spotted a flattened cardboard box perched against the fence on the other side of the lot. He motioned his head towards it. “You can cover yourself with that.”

She had the audacity to scoff. The offended breath escaped her thin, ugly lips that snarled at him. Sally prodded her shoulder with his finger and stepped to her, forcing Mona to shuffle backwards.

“Now you listen here, and you listen well, you tramp—Sansa is beautiful, and kind and she loves him. You’re not even in the same Universe as her. You have nothing to offer him. And if you think she’s some lovesick hanger-on, I’ve known that man far longer than you have, and I’ve never seen him like this. He loves her too.

“Nothing’s coming between them. Not a tour, not distance, not time. Nothing. Mark my words, they’re it for each other and they’ll figure this out. And you’ll still be a dried-up, bitter hag.

“Like he said. You’re done. I’m putting the crew on notice. If anyone catches a whiff of your skanky ass, you’ll leave here missing more than just your clothes next time.”

“Bye now!” he taunted with a wave before pulling the door shut.

On the other side, the hall had cleared out, both shows of the night now over. Sally retreated to the catering room and poked his head inside. The stars aligned in a rare formation and by some celestial miracle one lone cupcake sat pristine and unaccounted for on the table. Sally plucked it from the spot on the plate and admired the swirl of white icing on the top.

Back down the hall, he cradled the cupcake in his hands but the little flush of joy he felt was short lived as he passed Sandor’s dressing room door, wide open now. Inside, Sandor dwarfed the chair he sat in, elbows to knees and his forehead cradled in the palm of his hand.

Sally hovered beneath the doorframe, almost certain Sandor was aware that a presence had joined him. His shoulders tensed and his breathing shallowed, but the man remained resolute in his abject misery that kept him rooted where he was.

“Anything I can do?” Sally ventured.

Face still obscured, Sandor didn’t move other than the faint shake of his head. It was a wasted courtesy anyhow. What exactly could he do? Anything he could think to offer would be like tossing fistfuls of dirt into a gaping chasm that’d been created in Sandor’s life. The futility was absurd, and the man was so clearly already suffering the loss.

Sally’s gaze drifted to the cupcake in his hand—the last one, but he’d already had two, so the right choice was glaringly obvious. He paced into the room in shuffled steps and stopped in front of Sandor.  

“Here. Take this.” He held out the cupcake and Sandor finally lifted his head from his hand. Sally saw clear enough what he’d been trying to hide. Sandor’s eyes glistened with tears.  

“Those are your favorite.” Sandor shook his head and settled back in the seat. “Why do you think we tell catering to get them?”

“Always assumed it was a coincidence,” Sally shrugged. “Then it sounds like there will be plenty of cupcakes in my future. Take it.”

He jabbed the cupcake towards Sandor who took it from Sally and set it on the table next to him.

“Thank you,” Sandor murmured on a voice almost as deflated as he looked.  

A cumbersome silence fell between them and Sally took it as his cue to leave. He retreated to the door but stopped beneath the frame.

“If you’re curious, after handing her ass to her, I told her touring, distance, time, a tramp in your dressing room—I don’t honestly believe any of that is going to come between you and Sansa.”

“How do you know that?” Sandor countered and a deep crease of contemplation settled between his brows.

Sally could’ve laughed. It was obvious. Everyone that met Sansa tonight commented on it in one way or another and it all distilled down to the same damn thing—something shifted in Sandor with her around. She quieted him in a way, the stillness of peace for a man so accustomed to a life uprooted and unsettled; one who prided himself on being grounded and Sansa rooted him in a different reality—one where he was worthy of love and she was more than willing to give it.

Sandor had no family, nothing much to call his own, except now her and it scared the poor bastard in a way that meant he understood the gravity of what he’d been given. In some ways, Sally couldn’t blame him; the guy had been given the keys to the kingdom and bore the responsibility of not fucking it up.

“Just a feeling,” Sally said because how the fuck was he supposed to explain all this? The man would figure it out one way or another. “When you know, you know. You know?”

Sandor expelled a quiet laugh. “Yeah, I do know,” he said, shouldering the tremendous weight of regret. Sally had been there. The lessons of age came with more than just a few extra pounds and some things were heavier and harder to carry.

“Was she out there?” he asked and, when his eyes drifted from the floor to Sally, Sandor looked caught in a tangle between devastating sadness and foolhardy hopefulness.

“No, man. She’s left.”

Once more, Sally glimpsed the way Sandor’s eyes glistened when his gaze returned to the floor. Sandor bit his bottom lip hard and nodded.

Sally offered what paltry advice he could, and it wasn’t about placating the man. He and Sandor had an honest understanding, one that meant they could speak freely with one another and Sally took that liberty where he could and right now Sandor needed it.

“She may have left, but that doesn’t mean she’s gone,” Sally offered. “And you may not be able to get her back tonight but, one of these nights, you will. You just wait and see.”

It was a call to faith and Sally didn’t know much about what Sandor believed in and in some ways it didn’t matter. Certain things superseded the superficial constructs of belief and love was one of them. And if there were ever two people desperately, stupidly in love with one another, it was Sansa and Sandor and sooner or later they’d figure it out.

[breezeinmonochromenight]

I was challenged to rewrite this prompt into something a little more serious/fleshed out with a few inputs from a friend:

Note 1: Why am I still here? Just to [make myself] suffer?

Note 2: This was supposed to go up the day before yesterday, but every time I get Metal Gear asks I just [vibrates uncontrollably and writes an essay]. So, sorry ‘bout that to the anon asking.

Note 3: Higgs is unapologetically on his full creep shit in this. So. Consider that fair warning.

—

Of course she’d get caught wandering through Homo Demens’ territory on her way to deliver a fucking pizza. That alone was bad enough luck for a lifetime. But, in an even more unfortunate turn of events, of course one of those terrorists just had to be the same guy that just couldn’t leave her alone on these god-forsaken deliveries to the middle of nowhere. 

The Man in the Gold Mask that she’d had multiple run ins with wasn’t just ‘one of them’, either. Oh, no. She could never be that lucky. Of course he just had to be the leader of the fucking pack, to boot. The entire situation would have made her laugh hysterically, the cosmic irony of it all proving too much for her already fraying sanity, had the business end of a rifle not currently been digging into her temple with the slightest shift in movement. 

Unsurprisingly, the ter — she couldn’t bring herself to even think the word, because thinking it confirmed that she’d been fraternizing with a monster — Higgs liked to bloviate in front of his lackeys just as much as he did around her. She could only count the seconds passing by; could practically feel her delivery getting colder through its packaging. She hadn’t been paid for this delivery, and yet,  she could feel it being snatched from her hands with each lost moment. Her thoughts inadvertently had her jaw clenching, brows furrowing into a glare at no one in particular. The anger at her current situation and grief over the unfortunate nature of Higgs’ real identity caused a roiling her gut so intense, so immediate and all-consuming, that she found herself half tempted to nudge her guard and see if she couldn’t take an early exit out of the situation.

No pay meant no resources, and no resources meant, well... she refused to be in a ‘no resources’ situation ever again.

She wasn’t the same dirty, starving little lost girl any more. Wouldn’t be. Couldn’t be.

(And though she’d never admit it, she’d grown accustomed to his sudden appearances and self-insertion into her life. He was a random variable that interrupted the stagnancy of her days.)

(He was almost delicate with her when the rest of the world had not been.)

(He was a... friend, reluctant as she was to admit it, and now that had been taken away.)

(She was so tired of things always being taken away from her.)

—

“...Darlin’, I don’t much care for the look you’re giving me or my... associates.” Higgs’ drawl was lazy, almost bored in tone as he came to a stop in front of her.

Hearing that pet name finally interrupted her brooding.

She blinked, fully snapping back to reality when she felt sting of the the rifle muzzle pointed at her digging its way into her temple a little more. Wincing at the resulting thin line of blood trickling down the side of her face from the new cut and the gravel digging into her knees, she flicked her eyes up to meet his expectant gaze as lowered himself to a crouch, their eye contact never breaking.

Well, shit. This was bad.

Had Higgs been speaking to her directly?

Whoops.

“Whatever.”* It was entirely dismissive in tone, but she was spiraling quickly, and couldn’t bring herself to care. If this was how she was going to die, she might as well show some backbone and die with a little dignity. Go ahead and get it over with. “Maybe I really don’t like assholes like you holding me up.” 

Was it a stupid thing to say in her position? Absolutely. But what else was there to do? Apologize for wallowing in her own misery and zoning out? Beg for her life? 

Yeah, no.

Fuck that.

Her life really wasn’t worth much, anyway.

—

Higgs sneered through his masks at her, hidden face beginning to lose its composure at a rapid rate. It was taking everything in his power to maintain his even facade toward her before removing the physical masks he hid himself behind, especially when he’d noticed in the porter’s eyes that she’d drifted off to a place very far from her current reality. 

It felt like a dismissal. Made him feel powerless, like he had for so many nights with his da— when he was a child. And that had infuriated him, especially coming from the one person he couldn’t take his mind off of; that he kept finding his way back to.

Why this reckless little porter got under his skin so easily, he didn’t quite know.

But she did, whether she meant to or not. And the hold she had on him was powerful — so much so, that he could often physically feel her emotions as she was experiencing them. Rarely were they positive, but they served as an easy guide back to her, wherever she may be.

That was why, not long ago, when an incredibly pleasant, persistent tingle down his spine had nearly doubled him over with arousal, this so-called ‘connection’ of theirs had gotten infinitely more irritating to him.

Investigation led him to her private room at Mountain Knot City and, more importantly, to the sight of her being far less mouthy than she’d ever been with him toward some fucking no-name porter... One that she was currently riding late into the night, so desperate in chasing her release that she didn’t notice — or perhaps, worse, didn’t care — that he’d decided to pay her a visit.

Heh. Higgs supposed, in retrospect, that he shouldn’t go there. It was rude to speak ill of the dead, after all. That, and the poor fuck’s corpse had effectively wiped out Bridges Corpse Disposal. So, realistically, he shouldn’t be too angry.

(Except he was. He was still absolutely fucking seething.)

(If only she hadn’t looked so goddamned enticing with her skin glistening from a thin sheen of sweat in the low lights; hair partially shielding her face and biting her lip to hold back the noises of pleasure-pain and her pleas to a god he was sure she didn’t believe in.)

(If only the way she looked with her toes curled and back arched skyward hadn’t effectively rooted him to the spot, unable to look away from the sight of her strong thighs trembling and parting just enough that he could see a tiny, heart-shaped birthmark sitting high on the inside of one of them.) 

(If only the thought of claiming that little heart with his teeth before he buried his face in-between her thighs hadn’t left him so painfully, achingly hard that he’d had to bite down on a gloved knuckle to keep from howling as he spilled into his hand later that night. An ultimately useless act, given the perfect visual he now had of how she’d look riding his cock, controlling the pace of her hips until he was finally ready to let her tip over the edge — an image that had him rutting into his hand again in record time.)

(If only, if only, if only. If not for so many if only’s, he’d have killed her ‘acquaintance’ in the act that night.)

Logically, he should have killed her, used her body for a voidout long before now. Forgotten her name and everything about her. She knew his face now, after all, and the last thing he needed were witnesses.

But he couldn’t. There was something about her he couldn’t let go of. Something that made him want to completely devour her, mind, body, and soul. Something about her defiance toward everyone and everything despite being dealt a shit hand that made him see a bit of himself in her.

Still, even though he had no intentions of killing her, he couldn’t let mouthing off go completely in front of his men.

“A word of advice, darlin’?” Higgs gripped her chin hard as he spoke, forcing her to look him in the eye as he ran a gloved thumb over her full bottom lip.

She refused to say anything or to shy away as Higgs tugged his masks off with his free hand, dark eyes catching his blue ones and staring him down fiercely. He kept their little contest going for an extended moment, amused, before leaning in close to her ear, positively delighted at the small shiver he sent through her body.

“Trigger fingers can slip. So might want to work on on keeping that mouth of yours shut, quickly,” Higgs growled out, casual drawl giving way to something much darker, before jerking her head away from him. He was pleased at the further surprised widening of her eyes in response. Flicking his tongue out, he dragged it down a in wide stripe on her cheek, the coppery tang of her blood welcome on his tongue. “...because I’d just hate to see this gentleman put a bullet in that pretty little head of yours.”

He lingered for a few seconds longer, too close to her graceful neck and that remarkably smooth looking skin of hers. She smelled good, sweet, even— faintly of soap and something else he couldn’t identify.

Funny, given her sour personality. 

Still, despite his efforts at unnerving the porter, nothing even close to fear was registering on her face — only a look of shock and revulsion, maybe even annoyance with him. “What the f— Look, man, I’m not interested in your business. I just wanted to pass through to deliver a fucking pizza. But I’ll shoot myself it’ll make you just stop. fucking. talking.”

He barked out a genuine, surprised laugh at the unexpected, honest response. He certainly could do that, but given the look in her eyes and the way jaw was set, he knew it wasn’t an act — she’d actually do it.

And that’d be no fun for either of them. She was even more feisty than he’d originally thought. Confusing. Interesting.

And he’d be lying if he said he wasn’t curious to see more.

“Bring her back to my tent and let her get cleaned up, but don’t let her leave,” he ordered her guard her guard before turning his attention back to her. “The pizza girl here and yours truly are going to have a nice n’ friendly little chat about everything that’s happened here today.” He smirked at her near-instant change of expression from completely stone-faced to puffing out lightly freckled cheeks in anger, ready to hurl expletives at him.

Yeah.

Yeah, she was definitely a keeper.

(He was internally mourning the loss of a perfectly good pizza the whole time, of course, but its delivery girl was just too appetizing in her own right not to entertain for a little while.)

(He’d just have to make another order and make it more than worth her while to deliver it. An offer she couldn’t refuse, if he recalled the quote from the old pre-Stranding movie correctly.)

(Cold pizza was for the dogs, after all.)

[nothingbutfangirlsmut]

The Girl Out of Time

Pairing: Bucky x Reader and Sam x Reader

Background: Willow Roffe was born and raised in Brooklyn. She lived her life as happily as she could with her two childhood best friends Bucky Barnes and Steve Rogers. When they both left her to join the military she tried to continue with life but that didn't get to happen for her for the simple fact that she meant something to James Buchanan Barnes.

Rated: Story will be over all MATURE but not every chapter. There will be strong language, talk of both mental and physical abuse, some good ole angst, and some eventual smut once the story reaches that point.

Chapter 2

I stood outside the door of the "avengers tower" as Steve had called it. The building truly was a tower. I'd never seen anything like this in my life. Steve gently pulled my hand to lead me inside. I'm sure he felt like he was dragging a child behind him. All I could do was stare. I tried to look at everything. There was just so many odd things that looked familiar yet completely foreign.

"Welcome back Captain" a pretty blonde woman said as she smiled wide at Steve.

I noticed the deep 'V' in her shirt's neckline. She was wearing a very tight and short skirt as well. My father would beat the absolute hell out of me if I even thought about wearing something like that.

Steve lead me down a small hallway that stopped at some closed metal doors. Steve pushed the lone button on the wall next to the doors. The next second the doors came open. We stepped inside letting the doors close again. It's an elevator but where's the operator? I heard Steve chuckle as he pressed one of the numbered buttons.

"It's completely self efficient now. They no longer need an operator." He smiled down at me.

"How?" I asked him.

"I'm still not entirely sure I just know technology has come a long way. A lot of things have changed."

I nodded staying quiet. I already had so many questions but I didn't want to bombard him with all of them especially since he's only been here for two years.

The metal doors opened up to a very large living space. It was so elegantly decorated. Something you'd see in a film or in a rich person's home possibly. I've never had the luxury of knowing what the finer things in life are.

"I'll introduce you to everyone." Steve smiled walking towards the small stairs leading down to the sitting area.

"Jarvis" Steve said looking up towards the ceiling.

"Yes, Captain?" An odd monotone type of voice sounded like it filled the whole room.

I didn't see anyone at all that the voice could have came from.

"Can you tell everyone to meet me in the living room please." Steve said back to the unknown voice.

"Of course" the voice answered.

"Who was that?" I asked as I stepped farther into the open room.

"Jarvis, he is an AI. Tony created him."

I turned to look at Steve. I know I looked completely confused because I felt completely confused.

"An.. AI? This Tony created a person?" I asked in bewilderment.

"I'll let him explain it." Steve chuckled.

A few minutes later as I walked around the room I heard the footsteps of a few people coming towards us. I turned around to see a small group coming down the few steps to put them in the sitting area.

"Ok, all of you guys already know about Willow but I thought I'd introduce her to all of you." Steve explained.

I walked back over to his side as the others each took a seat around the room.

"This is Natasha Romanoff also known as Black Widow." Steve gestured to the gorgeous red head in extremely tight and revealing clothing.

The woman waved and smiled.

"That's Clint Barton also known as Hawkeye." Steve pointed to the man sitting next to Natasha.

He smiled and nodded.

"The timid genius over there is Bruce Banner who is also the Hulk so I'd avoid irritating him." Steve said with a humorous smile.

Bruce looked embarrassed by what Steve said as he gave me a small smile and wave then looked anywhere but towards me.

"Lastly, this is Tony Stark." Steve barely gestured to the man standing by the counter on the other side of the room.

"Stark?" I questioned remembering that name.

"Capsicle, you forgot to tell her I'm also known as Ironman. I'm also a genius billionaire." Tony said with a cocky grin in place.

"Stark" I repeated the name.

Why can't I remember how I know that name? Wait, of course, Howard Stark. How could I forget him.

"Do you know Howard Stark by chance?" I asked him.

His face fell instantly. I knew I had struck a cord without meaning to.

"Howard was my father." He said simply.

"That's amazing! I met him a few times. My father worked with him on several occasions. He is a great man." I smiled widely.

It was an odd thing to see the son of Howard Stark standing in front of me looking the same age now as his father was the last time I had seen him.

"Well, Willow, what exactly happened to you? Do you remember anything?" Natasha asked leaning forward.

I shook my head. The last thing I remembered it was 1946 now it's suddenly 2013. I'm at a complete loss for 67 years. I should be an old woman right now or maybe even dead.

"I can show you what happened." Tony said suddenly.

"You can?" I asked excitedly.

Tony nodded as he walked to the center of the group.

"Jarvis, open the Hydra Research file." Tony ordered.

"Certainly sir" the voice answered.

Suddenly images appeared to come out of the table Tony was standing in front of. I watched as he moved his hands around which also seemed to move the images. He made one image larger. It was a newspaper article with my photo on it.

The headline read "Local Woman Still Missing After Months of Searching".

The picture was originally of myself and Steve as well as someone else it seemed. I remembered the picture partially. Steve and I were at the Stark Expo. I could see his arm draped around me in the photo but the rest of him was cut out. What I don't remember is who the other arm draped around me belonged to. I only remember being there with Steve.

Tony moved his hand and the photo changed to a moving picture. It was of the same man I met earlier. Fury. He was sitting behind a desk staring straight at me.

"Your mission is simple. This is a research Intel gathering job. You are going in to one of the former Hydra bases in the Swiss Alps. I want as much information as you can gather. We will meet at shield headquarters in 24 hours."

The picture stopped then Tony changed it again. It was another moving picture. I saw several people in head to toe black gear. Most of their faces covered. They carried large weapons. They were walking threw some kind of cave. There was odd equipment everywhere. I recognized a few things. The image seemed to change suddenly to a different area.

"What the hell is that?" I heard a man ask.

Ahead of them were some kind of chambers. There was two of them. One was open and empty while the other was closed with something over the glass to shield what was inside from view. I watched as they used tools to break the door open. It looked like a cloud of smoke that came out of the chamber. Once it cleared I felt every bit of color drain from me.

"That's me" I whispered in shock.

"What the hell?" One of the men questioned in the image.

"We need immediate extraction! I repeat immediate extraction! We found something!" A man shouted loudly.

Two men worked carefully to pick me up out of the chamber and carry me back threw the area they had come threw.

The image changed again. This time I was laying on a table. My skin looked to slowly be gaining color again. A few people in white lab jackets stood around me.

"Do you have any idea who this is yet?" One of them asked.

"I do" the voice came from somewhere unseen.

The video moved to show Fury standing in a doorway. He walked over to where I lay and looked down at me.

"This is Willow Roffe friend of our very own Steve Rogers." He stated.

"What would Hydra want with this woman?" One of the doctors asked.

"That I do not know. Not yet anyway." He seemed bothered by that.

The moving picture stopped and Tony turned to me. He waved his hand and the images disappeared.

"Any questions?" He asked.

"Yea, actually, a lot of them." I answered honestly.

---

Masterlist

[godkilller]

[ Do you think that Gin, due to having not had his mother in his life to raise him to be understanding of the social norms and etiquettes that people follow, that he had to, in a sense, raise himself with the turmoils and harshness of the world that he had to live in? In a sense, he was raised by "mother nature", and mother nature certainly isn't the best mother for children to grow up learning from. Do you think that Gin's slightly 'creepy' ways of expressing himself and his emotions are 1/2 ]

[ this fact? For example, he was never taught about emotions like love and hate, and about things like personal space and social etiquette, so he came up with some warped sense of them as a child which influenced how he would act about things in future (his plot to kill Aizen, his love for Rangiku, his constant Duchenne grin, and his constant toying about with characters like Rukia and Ichigo). Could it also be why he was able to kill without any remorse when he was only a child as well? ]

          I have to start this off with a thank you–because I’m really not accustomed to followers / people outside of my immediate roleplay circle being engaged with the content I post. It’s extremely exciting! You raise some good theories, too, friendo! 

          It’s important to note that Shinigami / souls, once they’re reincarnated within Soul Society, the Rukongai, etc., they have no memories of their previous life. Gin cannot recall his mother from when he was human, nor will he know of the loss of her somewhere deep down in his heart. Souls are cleansed in their passage to Soul Society, and in the general scheme of reincarnation—-so Gin’s inner workings can’t be attributed to the lack of his mother or a mother-like figure, because he’d be unaware that he was lacking anything of that nature.

          That’s where I’ll start: simple unawareness. Gin’s seen helping out a collapsed Rangiku by the side of a beaten up dirt path. There’s no one else around, which assumes that he was well-past the outskirts of any nearby village. Gin did not, also, seem to be lost or wandering. It’s important to note that, because it means Gin prior to meeting Rangiku had minimal interactions with others—-he lived an outcast’s life, most likely akin to how Aizen, too, was completely alone during his days in the Rukongai. He’s not aware that his life could be anything different. Beyond the merchants in which Gin likely stole from to get by, Gin did not have anyone that knew his name.

          It’s even implied, just by the sheer simplicity of his name’s meaning, that Gin named himself one day—-a boy, nameless, wandering the woods, looking into a moonlit pond or creek’s reflection, finally sees that yes, I’m silver. This name could have been with him since his rebirth within the Rukongai, but it’s unlikely. This further implies that Gin had absolutely nobody in his life before he met Rangiku.

          Meeting Rangiku, and immediately helping her before he even knew her name (or she knew his) also gives us insight that as a child Gin instinctively wants to help others. He was not taught that, he naturally wished to share his rare and prized favorite snack not because someone told him he should, but because he wanted to. It is with Rangiku that Gin shows his seemingly first sign of compassion. It is also the moment he ceases being a child, and becomes instead a caretaker.

          We don’t know where Rangiku was before, but she looked far worse for wear when she was initially picked up by Gin off that pathway. Her clothes were torn and dirty and she looked malnourished, though that could have been due to the men attacking her to steal part of her soul for Aizen’s Hogyoku. Back to the malnourishment, however—-it’s a theme, like with Rukia and Renji’s past in the Rukongai; children with power tend to starve. Rangiku likely was starving for a while but simply didn’t understand why (that she had power) because Gin’s offering of food (that it’d help her) seemed to surprise / confuse her.

          This also implies that Gin, in some way before meeting her, already knew he had power within him, and how to also handle that power.

          It’s said that Rangiku, even after meeting Gin, had severe PTSD-esque episodes of absolute sobbing concerning those men, what was taken from her, and it bothered Gin to his core—-enough to motivate him to, on sight, condemn the men he recognized gathered around Aizen in the middle of the night—-and to also ultimately condemn Aizen himself. This wrathful anger towards those who wronged his newly acquired friend was born from mere months, not even, of knowing the girl—-Gin, by nature, seemed to harbor strong loyalty, dedication, and brutal protectiveness. This implies that Gin, again, knew no one else before Rangiku. She is his first complete connection with another–and she’s his age, which is important to note too because over the span of his life Gin seems to be surrounded by people far older than him.

          Growing up in the Rukongai isn’t easy. We have multiple character backstories stemming from the hardships presented in those often run-down villages. Any time we’ve seen child!Gin, he’s alone in a vast wasteland, or alone in the forest, or alone, and then there’s Rangiku. Alone, and then there’s Aizen. Gin didn’t need to know about Aizen, be ‘tainted’ by Aizen, to construct his own murderous plot for him, for the men involved with hurting Rangiku—-no, Gin had already carried out multiple killings before he introduced himself to Aizen that night. There can be a case for it being due to Gin raising himself, raising himself and taking care of Rangiku—-there’s no denying that children taking care of themselves is taxing enough on their cognitive development, as well as all things psychological. Gin has a twisted concept of ‘play’ and it shows.

          Gin’s first parental / adult authority figure in his life is also simultaneously someone he harbors the deepest pits of wrathful hate for, so even then there’s a stripped-bare concept of parenting present, if at all, between them. I cannot begin to stress the effects such a dynamic can have on a child’s mind—-Gin will never be put into a position where he’ll feel it’s safe to ask an adult for help purely because of his absolute distrust, dislike, of Aizen as his primary adult figure in his life. Why show him any vulnerability, why give him an unwanted advantage? It’s around that time where Gin completely shuts himself off and hunkers down for his overall goal of plucking back Rangiku’s soul piece and shoving a blade through Aizen’s heart.

          Dark stuff for a kid to think about.

          In the Academy for Shinigami, Gin was surrounded by adult students, or at least older teen-equivalents, and graduated within one single year–breaking all records–to immediately place himself as a Third Seat in the Fifth Division. On the educational front; sure, Gin’s a genius, he didn’t need to complete those other years. He blew through with flying colors. But socialization got completely bypassed. All Gin needed to do was study, practice, train, for all of what… 8-9 months? Easy enough to seclude himself to all but Rangiku, that’s how he grew up to begin with. So not only has Gin avoided socializing with others during the Rukongai days, he’s also set himself up to not make a single Academy friend. He’s instantly scooped up by Aizen, and it’s right to closing up shop for never making another meaningful connection.

          It’s said in one of the character books (I can’t remember what exactly) that Gin enjoys people-watching, he prefers the sidelines to observe others. This can be a nod to the fact that the lil fast-learning kid had to watch others to recognize what was appropriate. From properly dressing himself to how to clean his blade after a messy kill—-Gin learned almost everything surrounding behavior via observation, and his own conclusions brought on from those observations. So whilst mother nature indeed did some raising of Gin in the harshness of the Rukongai, Gin for the most part raised himself. He taught himself, he cared for himself, and he did so while also taking on Rangiku, making sure she had nice clothes, good food, a roof over her head, and protection via vowing to become a Shinigami—-for her, “so that you don’t haveta cry anymore.”

          People who miss out on socialization during their younger years will struggle to make connections in their adult lives. Gin cannot fathom caring beyond a furrowed brow for the woes of strangers. The only times he will care for completely new faces is if they carry a trait that reminds him of someone he does care about. Things need to be easily translatable for him, easily relatable, for Gin to consider caring. It never served him as a child to care about the merchant who threw rocks at him for grabbing a piece of bread, it never served him to wonder about the other Shinigami’s feelings as he beat them to death for hurting Rangiku. It never occurred to him to think about the previous Third Seat’s family as he cut him down.

          It’s not that he kills with no remorse, however. It’s that he kills with no remorse for the victim he has killed. Gin canonly is aware of and mourns the wrongness he’s committed in relation to Rangiku. So he doesn’t think of them, the victim, and if there had been a time where he did it was swiftly snuffed out by Aizen. Aizen, ultimately, filled any and all holes that Gin’s parenting of himself left behind. To me, Aizen indeed raised Gin into the man he became, but the foundation on which Aizen built his perfect traitor was already geared towards terrible things. If anything, Aizen simply enabled Gin to go further, fall harder, delve deeper—-he gave him the resources, the knowledge (even through mere observation) on how to become the monster his snake speech boasts of. Aizen wanted Gin to become a certain chess piece capable of immense cruelty, power, and Gin too wanted that same outcome. It was easy enough, at that point, to fit such a mold.

          Gin seemed to gravitate his worst teasings towards Rukia, who at the time held within her the Hogyoku, an incomplete structure of everything Aizen desired to feed to his own. Therefore, the animosity between them was mutual. Rukia’s strong dislike is also, in flashbacks, countered by the fact that Byakuya never was bothered by Gin in their short little chats. Rukia didn’t like Gin because of his reiatsu, his presence. Gin didn’t like Rukia for the fact that Urahara / Aizen were both using her as a Hogyoku storage unit. To him, she was blissfully unaware of how helpful she was being to them both. Him teasing her on the bridge can, to some extent, be attributed to the fact that Gin knew she was about to fall into Aizen’s hands. The thought of saying “I could stop all of this, save all of you, right now” was too heavy to keep to himself. A cruel offering that needed to be immediately removed from the board.

          Gin’s testing (and in some perspectives bullying) of Ichigo in their second fight within fake Karakura Town was hardly out of pure cruelty. Gin needed to know Ichigo’s resolve to stop Aizen, he needed to know that the kid was ready—-and at the realization that he wasn’t? He needed to kick his ass into gear so that he at the very least tried his damn best to stop Aizen from winning. Gin knew that if he failed and Aizen continued on with his plot, Ichigo would be the only one standing in his way. Never shooting or slicing at a vital, Gin hardly even wounded Ichigo beyond shattering his Hollow mask and saying some viciously blunt words. A messed up version of a pep-talk, but it readied the kid enough to realize he needed to reevaluate himself. Perhaps it assisted in simmering his recklessness, his near-arrogance in believing he could simply chop away at Aizen until he was down for the count. Gin passed on the same cruel reality that he himself would go through within the next two hours following their altercation; pure futility—-that sometimes… you just can’t win.

[stealth-spiderr]

better // t.h.

aight lads!! this is my piece for Kath’s ((@upsidedownparker)) 3k writing challenge, it’s inspired by in my blood by shawn mendes and i hope it’s at least a little bit good bye xo

summary // tom calls layla earlier than usual, and more needy than usual, to pick him up from a bar where he’s drinking to forget his broken heart, and maybe he tells her why it’s broken.

pairing // roommate!tom x oc

warnings // mentions of drinking, swearing

word count // 2,222

Being startled awake by her phone ringing in the middle of Saturday nights wasn’t anything new to Layla since she had become roommates with Tom. In fact she preferred the calls seeing as that meant he wasn’t bringing home another girl for the night. When she’d first moved in he’d call his mate, Harrison, but once she and Tom were comfortable around each other she’d told him to call her for rides home instead. He certainly stretched the limits of that offer over the next few months.

What she wasn’t used to however was Tom’s goofy contact photo lighting up her screen while she was still up. She was sprawled out on the couch, part way through the third rom-com of the night and it wasn’t even midnight yet. Layla pauses the movie to answer the call, already getting up to put on some shoes.

“Which bar are you at again?” She asks, instead of saying hello.

“Need you,” Tom whimpers.

Layla stops in her tracks, noticing the quiet from the other end of the phone. Normally Tom would be in the bustle of the place he was at, she’d barely hear him ask for her to come pick him over the sound of music and people. But now all she could hear was his strained breathing and the faint thump of bass from rooms away.

“Tom, are you-”

“Please, just get here. The Blackbird.”

Before she could say another word the line went dead. She quickly scrambled to her room, pulling a hoodie over her thin long-sleeved t-shirt and stuffing her already socked feet into a pair of vans. She hissed at the cold on her bare legs when she hurried out the door, quickly locking it behind her.

The Blackbird was a bar a couple of towns over, about a twenty minute drive during the day but Layla could make it in fifteen at this time of night. She was thankful he was there as both of them frequented the bar with their friends so the staff are mostly familiar with Tom’s antics.

It was right on twenty minutes later when she pushed open the door of the Blackbird, her hazel eyes scanning the room hoping to meet Tom’s warm brown ones. After a minute of no luck she walked to the bar, waving down Max, one of the bartenders she’d come to know fairly well. She’d barely opened her mouth when he nodded his head in the direction of the bathrooms.

“He went in ‘bout half eleven,” he said, “checked on him about five minutes ago and said you were on your way. I gave him some water, hopefully he drank it, he looked shocking.”

Layla smiled gratefully. “Thank you.”

She walked around the corner to the little hallway where the bathrooms were, a guy slipped passed her and shoved open the door to the men’s and she quickly tapped his arm. He stopped and raised his eyebrows at her questioningly.

“Can you check and see if there’s a guy called Tom in there? He’s got brown hair, probably looks like a corpse by now, I just need to take him home.”

“Sure thing, I’m gonna piss first though or I’ll explode.”

She smiles at the guy as best she can after he put that horrid image in her head, before leaning on the wall opposite the door. She drums her fingers on the wall to the faint beat of the song vibrating the walls until the door opens and the guy sticks his head out.

“He’s in here, but very out of it. He said he won’t go anywhere until he sees Layla, and I’m assuming that’s you.”

She licks her lips and rakes her fingers through her dark brown curls.

“Yeah, that’s me,” she sighs.

Layla slides passed the guy who says Tom’s in the last stall and that he’ll watch the door until she can get Tom out. She mutters a thanks and continues into the room, it smells bad, but that doesn’t matter when she finally lays eyes on Tom. He sitting on floor, back against the wall with his legs straight out in front of him leaving his feet sticking into the next stall. There’s an empty bottle of water beside him, a small wave of relief washes through her knowing he’s had something other than alcohol to drink. She bobs down beside him, definitely not sitting on the floor herself, and brings her hand up to his cheek, tilting his face towards her. His eyes open slowly, they’re a bit bloodshot and it takes him a few seconds to focus on Layla’s face.

“Hey, roomie,” he whispers, bringing his hand up to cover her own on his cheek.

It sends shivers through her body, there was something about the feeling of his fingers on her own that drove her crazy.

“How’re you feeling?” she asks.

“Not really feeling anything, if I’m honest.”

His eyes slid closed as he spoke but his hand stays over hers so she knows he hasn’t passed out.

“Can you stand?”

Tom nods as Layla withdraws her hand, he uses the toilet and the wall to pull himself up. She pulls his arm over her shoulder and wraps hers around his waist and starts walking towards the door, surprised at how steady he is. She kicks the door to open it, and the guy waiting outside holds it open before a few impatient looking guys enter behind her.

“You right with him?” the guys asks.

“Yeah, I’ll be fine,” Layla replies, “thank you so much for your help though.”

The guy nods but walks beside her to the door of the bar before giving her a salute and heading off. She gets the unusually quiet Tom out to her car and buckles him in with no problems before getting in herself. She sticks the key in the ignition but before she can turn it Tom grabs her other hand and mutters for her to wait.

“Please don’t throw up in my car,” she begs.

He chuckles, the most emotion Layla had seen him show since she arrived, but shakes his head whilst leaning on the headrest. He rubs his free hand over his face and up through his hair. She looks him over, his hair now looking even messier, his eyes barely half open, his flushed cheeks from drinking. His fingers carelessly twisting with hers as she turns as much as she can to face, he lulls his neck to the side to look at her properly.

“Why do you do this to yourself, Tom?” she whispers.

“To numb my broken heart.”

Layla opens her mouth but Tom presses his finger to her lips to silence her before rolling his head back to face forwards.

“I had a girlfriend before you moved in, she lived here. We were pretty serious or at least I thought we were but she up and left me with no explanation. I went to my parents for dinner, she was s’posed to come but said she wasn’t feeling well, I told we’d go another night but she insisted I still went. When I got home, she was gone and so was all her shit. Never heard from her again.

“That’s why I went out all the time, go out all the time. I was so used to having her there and all of a sudden she wasn’t, I didn’t know how to handle it. First time I was out I just kinda hid in a corner, looked at my phone until I was drunk enough to not have any worries,” Tom pauses and takes a deep breath. “That felt so good, just having the clearest mind because I couldn’t focus on anything properly. Not on how much I was drinking, not on who I was kissing, not on taking them home for the night. The more I did it the easier it got. If I felt like shit my mind was like ‘just have a drink and you’ll feel better, just take her home and you’ll feel better.’ And I thought maybe it was getting better, I hadn’t thought about her in a while, and it didn’t hurt when I did think about her. But, fucking hell, I ran into her on the way down here and I just- fuck, it was like it was the night she left all over again.”

Tom’s voice cracked and he dropped his head quickly, bringing his hands up to cover his face. Layla still saw the first tear spill from his eye, and her heart was breaking for him. She knew he wasn’t in the best place when she moved in but she didn’t want to over step so she never asked about it.

“You wouldn’t think this could get worse though, right? But it fucking does, because she’s pregnant,” Tom spat the words like they’d left a foul taste in his mouth.

“Yours?” Layla asked.

He looked up at her, eyes red and raw from him wiping them dry, and shook his head.

“You’re sure?”

“Yeah, she left just under eight months ago now and she definitely wasn’t that far along.”

“Jesus, Tom, I’m so sorry.”

“Yeah, so am I.”

The pair sat in silence for a minute before Layla reached for the key again, when Tom made no move to stop her she turned it and put the car in gear. She hated driving in silence so the radio was playing at a low volume in case Tom wanted to talk, but he stayed silent the whole trip.

Getting Tom inside was a bit more of a bother than getting him out of the bar, now that tiredness had settled through him Layla had to hold up more of his weight. None the less she got him inside and to his room, telling him to get ready for bed while she got him some water. She also kicked her shoes off as she passed by her room, before grabbing two glasses of water, one for herself as well.

When she entered Tom’s room she thought he wasn’t in it, it took a few seconds for her to notice he was sitting on the floor leaning against the bed, just in his boxers. She carefully sits beside him, putting the glass down in front of his feet and then waits for him to make the next move. Minutes go by before Tom picks up the glass and downs the liquid as fast as he can manage, a few drops leaking from the side of his mouth in the process.

“People keep telling me it gets better,” he mumbles, turning to Layla, “does it ever?”

“Absolutely,” she tells him confidently, placing her hand on his leg and giving a reassuring squeeze.

“Doesn’t feel like it, it feels like the walls are caving in.”

“Tom, I think you’re forgetting that better doesn’t mean good. It just means that tomorrow, or in two days or even more you aren’t going to feel as shitty as you do right now. I’m not gonna sit here and say everything will be fine, because I can’t promise you that. But I can promise you it will get better.”

Tom lays his hand over Layla’s and tucks his fingers in between hers. He won’t look at her in fear of seeing any form of distaste across her face at the action. She won’t look at him in fear he’ll notice the flush in her cheeks at the action.

“Will you be my better?”

Tom’s voice is croaky and barely audible, but she hears it, head turning towards him hastily. He still won’t look at her, she can see how hard he’s trying to not meet her gaze and he cheeks only redden the more he tries. She leans over and presses a kiss to the soft skin of his cheek, pulling away and waiting for him to turn his face to her.

“I’ll do my best, Tommy.”

He finally looks at her, loving the way the nickname sounds in her voice, loving the way she’s looking at him. He can’t help but let his eyes flick to her lips as her tongue darts out to wet them quickly and he subconsciously does the same.

“Will you kiss me?”

He leans in the tiniest bit as she nods and brings her free had up to his face, running her thumb along his cheekbone gently before closing the gap between them. He lets Layla dominate the kiss, she keeps it slow but teasing, biting softly on his bottom lip a couple of times before he pulls back.

He untwists his fingers from hers and gets up onto the bed, holding his hand out to Layla to help her up.

“Will you stay? I think I need somebody now.”

She doesn’t answer out loud, but accepts his hand and gets under the blankets with him. He rolls onto his side, facing away from her and tugs her arm over his torso. She happily cuddles into his back and he splays her fingers out on his chest so she can feel his heart beating, it’s a little fast. She starts drawing patterns on his skin until he falls asleep, tangled in her limbs, she traces the word ‘better’ across his chest before letting the fatigue drag her to sleep.

let me know if you wanna be tagged or don’t wanna be xo tag list // @tomsfireheart // @tomhoellandb // @laucontrerasv // @spidey-pal // @paper-goonie // @hottrashformarvel // @gayvodkatour // bridiereads** // @starksparker // @h-osterfield // @upsidedownparker // @shuriismyqueen // @spideymood // @thewiseandfree // @stephie-senpai // @bi-writes // @peters-vlogs // @noneighborhood // @caloe-vera // @starlightfound // @lafayettes-baguettes-1 // @lemirabitur // @lilleone

tom taglist // @assumeimapenguin // @idontlooklikereginageorge

[katelyndehoog]

Guatemala Mission Trip

          We knew going into this endeavor that it wouldn’t be easy, but I don’t believe anything or anyone could have adequately prepared us for what we experienced during our trip to Guatemala. No amount of bug spray, hand sanitizer or Imodium could have helped us with the mental and emotional struggles we each experienced. We knew this adventure would be extremely hard on us physically – that was a given, but I don’t believe a single one of us accounted for the overwhelming emotional rollercoaster that was our first ever Dental Mission Trip with KIA. Kindness In Action – is the most appropriately named nonprofit organization based out of Alberta, Canada with an absolutely fearless and eccentric leader, Dr. Dave Maskell. As per our knowledge, we were the first dental hygiene students to ever embark on an adventure such as this – which made it all the more intimidating and exhilarating. We have our beloved instructor, Nicole Edworthy, to thank for the opportunity. Without her persistence and advocacy, we may not have ever been given a chance to experience anything like this. 

      Volunteer. It’s one of those words with such a lovely connotation. But how much of yourself can you give to it? How far can you push yourself for to your cause? How committed, involved, or passionate are you? Empathy – is another lovely word. I don’t believe I understood it’s true meaning until this trip. Until you’re fully immersed and standing smack dab in the middle of it - faced with the reality of it all - how could you? It wasn’t until we were done Day 1, sitting on the bus heading back to our hostel that it hit me - exactly we were doing here & why this work was so important. Some things in life are so much bigger than anything you could imagine and no matter how much you thought you knew what you were getting into – your world is rocked regardless. This project changed a lot for me in ways I find hard to describe. It went beyond trying to do some good for people we knew didn’t live the luxurious lives we do – I feel as though I benefited so much more than they did. It has shaped me in ways I doubt any other experience will ever touch on. Just a simple task we perform weekly such as teaching oral health education – became a life-alternating event.  The children we were met with at these remote pop-up dental clinics were the most eager to learn. They showed more enthusiasm and attentiveness then any of the client’s I’ve instructed at our school’s clinic. My heart is overjoyed with the fact that we may have changed their lives for the better with a simple instructional session using a goofy oversized toothbrush and set of teeth. These children’s only motivation being a free toothbrush, maybe some floss or toothpaste but nonetheless they demonstrated how intelligent and quick to learn they could be, performing almost perfect technique. If all of my client’s could be taught to floss the way these children are now able to, then we’d be laughing. I’m so unbelievably proud to have had the chance to do to this.

      A sharp reality check occurred to me shortly after my heartfelt oral health education morning of Day 1. These people led bare minimal lives. I began to realize I wasn’t even sure if any of the local stores would sell floss. Later in the week we happen to pass by a vender selling toothbrushes and toothpaste as a bundle on the market street and that briefly made me hopeful. But this is a reality of living in a country such as Guatemala. Even an established city such as Chisec had the bare bones as far as what we consider ‘necessities’. So tell me, what good is a flawless flossing technique without a single spool of thread to do so? My heart sinks immediately thinking of this. How do you ask someone living in parts of the world such as Chisec to prioritize purchasing toothbrushes and toothpaste over food to feed their family? You certainly can’t, just as they can’t. All the good I thought I might have done for even just one child, vanishes before my eyes and I’m at a loss. The first of many emotional rollercoaster rides. We were only able to do so much for the people of Guatemala during our brief time there. Sadly that may have just consisted solely of their first and only professional dental cleaning or tooth extraction – and we had to let that be enough. No matter the toll it took on us. However, there is a silver lining to this aspect of the trip – or should I say silver diamine. We saw countless carious lesions (or cavities) in all stages of development – and the line up for restorations and extractions was never short. A new treatment to us, with miraculous powers was the application of this silver diamine fluoride. SDF has the ability to arrest further progression of the lesion, and also eliminate pain for the individual. I can’t tell you how many stories we were told of people chewing with only one side of their mouth, or eating nothing but soft food for sometimes years due to uncomfortable pain. I can’t imagine living like that but it was so common among this population – they shook it off so easily. Something any one of us would have such a hard time tolerating – dealing with this pain day in and day out. Thankfully SDF was quick and easy to apply and seemed almost heaven sent. I can sleep better at night knowing that even if we did nothing else for these people than aid to eliminate their pain and prolong the life of their existing teeth – then we’ve made a significant difference in their overall lives.

       Thankfully through every whirlwind of a day, we had an incredible team to fall back on. This sounds so cliché I realize, but my god was it ever true. Most of us arrived in small groups together conjugating at the airport in Guatemala City. We exchanged pleasantries and gathered our luggage having no idea the extent of the wild ride we were all about to take together. These were the people we set up a dental clinic daily with, operated using the most minimalistic materials and equipment, slugged at it all day in the abnormally hot and humid weather, worked full days through doing whatever was needed or asked of us to then pack it all up and lug it back to the buses to await the next day’s challenges. Our team consisted of dental students, hygienists, husbands and other family members, as well as the finest, hardest working handy men you could ever ask for and us – the first ever hygiene students, all wide eyed and bushy tailed. The group dynamic was pretty inspirational, considering you couldn’t pick a more random group if you drew names from a hat – coming from all over the country and having never spoken to one another before. We did pretty well spending the entire week together, working collaboratively on a project that most of us had no prior experience with anything even remotely similar to. It made me realize you don’t have to be a dental professional to make a dental teamwork, but you certainly have to be a team to make a dental profession work. We had one huge common denominator though – compassion. I am so honored to have been a part of this incredible group of empathetic professionals – each bringing the hugest amount of heart and give to every minute of every day. I was constantly in awe of every single one of them. Again, cliché but the absolute truth, I promise you. Plus the pizza dinners and evening laughs kept me rolling – I wouldn’t have made it through without them.

     But holy heck my girls. Oh my good heavens these incredible girls. You have my whole heart. From the very beginning of this endeavor playing luggage Tetris, packing ourselves into trucks, three flights, one 6 hour bus ride, three different countries, so many food/drink/airport mishaps, grouchy mornings, grouchy afternoons, evenings, days, all the mood swings, panic attacks, near misses, and baggage checks, shared snacks, water bottles and hand sanitizers, laughs, cries and proof of life pictures – these girls came through. I wouldn’t have lasted a single day without them – they’ll deny this but I know it’s a very true fact. They each showed me themselves throughout this journey. If I take away just the smallest piece of what each of them taught me, I’ll consider myself sincerely blessed. They’re empathy, knowledge, skill, grit and grind, compassion, patience, and love for they’re profession truly moved me. These young women have what it takes to conquer the world – I have no doubt about it. Things I feared we’d struggle with, they soon proved they were thriving at, things I worried we couldn’t do – they had already gone ahead and done, things I wasn’t sure if we should tackle – they jumped right in with. These women are my inspiration, my goals, and my tribe. I have a love for them that won’t ever be diminished – because we did this - completely together. There are never enough thank you’s to the ones who pull you through or give you they’re last granola bar – absolutely the most touching gesture.

      I can only hope to bring forward into my career, the vast amount of knowledge, skill and compassion I gained during this trip. My outlook on dental hygiene has now been expanded worldwide. Typically in office, we are told our most common client will be at a DD1 status (low in degree of difficulty in dental hygiene school terms). This is relative to the part of the world we’re blessed to be living in, but also the region in our province of Ontario. Although the population of Guatemala had particular dental attributes, I believe if we were to travel outside of our main cities, to regions of Ontario that are more remote, without fluorinated water and with less to dental care – we may experience similar conditions. I hope that during my career I am able to travel throughout Canada to aid the people in our own country whom are in need. With the experience I obtained from this trip to Guatemala, I feel as though I am better equipped to service these more vulnerable populations. The care I provide would be better geared towards them – with a greater understanding of their struggles, and dental needs. I feel I will be able to prioritize appropriate treatments and oral health education specific to the individual and based on their way of life. I look forward to future trips to help expand my knowledge of these remote locations an their specific needs.

      Perhaps the highlight of this journey isn’t something that can be pinpointed – it’s in the everyday life that follows - the constant reminders and memories, the things you bring forward with you into each day. I wake up more thankful, more patient, in a kinder mood, with a slower pace, and brighter eyes that stay fixated on the important things for a little longer. I remember telling my loved ones when I left, to expect a changed girl when I returned… but to be completely honest – I’ve never felt more like myself after all this. And that is an indescribable feeling that I hope more people pursue. However that may be. Find your journey and let it find you.

Thank you for reliving my journey with me.