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astxrwar · 10 months ago

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drops of blood [1/4]

SYNOPSIS: Bucky Barnes has some wires crossed. He fixates on a barista at a coffee shop near his apartment, and tells himself it's fine as long as he keeps his distance. Except you keep making that distance smaller.

Rating: M

Word Count: 7k

CONTENT WARNINGS: Off-screen violence. Series will enter gray territory in later chapters; angsty guilt-ridden stalking, exhibitionism, consensual-but-not-safe-or-sane vibes all the way down. teehee.

Read on AO3

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When you’re a teenager— no, not even, when you’re a preteen, in middle school— a crew of surveyors for a Russian oil company finds a plane frozen in the Arctic. You’d just finished up the section on World War Two in history class; two weeks ago you’d been sitting in a hard-backed chair with the lights off trying not to fall asleep while watching a Netflix documentary about the life and death of Steve Rogers, the prototypical American Hero, that your teacher put on presumably to get out of having to actually teach. You had to fill out a worksheet about it. You had homework asking about the ways that national ideals of heroism have changed over time. You spent a whole class period talking about that, comparing and contrasting Captain America and Iron Man. You had to write a five-paragraph essay about whether or not you thought the American Hero archetype would even exist without Captain America’s death.

Except Captain America is not dead.

Captain America is alive.

It is 2012, and a lot of things are popular. The Hunger Games. Gangnam Style. The new Batman movie, the one with Christian Bale. A type of teenage and pre-teenage girl exists—has existed, will continue to exist— and while there was NSYNC and Backstreet Boys and whatever the fuck else in the 90s; right now there’s Twilight and One Direction and Justin Bieber.

Captain America comes out of the ice. Captain America is 6’4 and muscular and blond and blue-eyed and unfailingly kind, and then he goes on to join up with a bunch of other people—superheros— and saves the world.

The end result, the one that anyone with a brain could have seen coming a mile off, the one that gets referenced by late-night talk-show hosts and poked at in grocery-store gossip rags and sometimes said outright in interviews with the guy on national television, is that Steve Rogers— Captain America— kind of ends up rounding out the “teenage girl obsessions during the ‘10s” list.

And—

Well.

You were never big on any of that.

Your friends were, though, and so you let yourself be dragged through the onslaught of new Netflix specials and you dutifully and appropriately emoji-reacted to every Battle of New York youtube compilation and Vine edit they sent to you and you even went to the movies to watch the new remastered docudrama about the life and now the not-death of Steve Rogers, and—

You never really liked blonds, so.

His friend, though—

His friend was kind of cute.

Sergeant James Barnes. Twenty-eight, dark-haired and blue-eyed and attractive, in a charming, boyish kind of way.

Fast forward ten years. There’s some weird drama with a helicarrier and some entirely anticlimactic fight at an airport and then an alien kills half the population of the world and then they all come back again, courtesy of Iron Man’s sacrifice and your middle school history teacher one-hundred-percent predicting the future with the whole “the American Hero trope is dependent on the hero’s death” shit that you totally didn’t understand at the ripe age of twelve—

Anyway. Life happens, basically. You grow up. You’re not even friends with those girls anymore. Not uncommon. And that crush on cute little baby-faced James Buchanan Barnes lasted all of something like three months— one of those fleeting childhood infatuations you have on people who are safely unobtainable, like rock stars or fictional characters or guys who are very, very dead— after which time you never really thought about it again.

And now you’re twenty-three and working closing shifts at a coffee shop in Brooklyn while figuring out what your life trajectory is even going to be, adjusting as best you can to your fucking daily customer base having quite literally doubled in the last six months, that part of you that’d read his entire wikipedia page on a phone with an actual physical slide-out keyboard at two in the morning an entire eleven years ago so far away it feels like something even less than a memory.

Except one night in April this guy walks in. He’s dark-haired and blue-eyed and wearing a leather jacket and matching gloves; he comes up to the counter and he makes startlingly unbreaking eye contact that freaks you out a teensy bit— a lot— and orders a coffee, black, and nothing else, and you stare right back kind of temporarily immune to the weirdness of it because you know him, why do you know him—

It clicks as you’re pouring the coffee into a reinforced cardboard cup and it stuns you so completely that you almost overfill it and wind up less than a second away from burning the shit out of your hand.

Sergeant James Barnes.

He looks the same, kind of, but also not at all— you sneak glances at him while you fumble for a lid, the harsher angles of his cheekbones and the wider set of his jaw, the crow’s feet at the corners of his eyes and the lines setting into his forehead and the way he doesn’t really have any of the baby fat left in his face that he had in all the photos you’d seen of him.

“Thanks,” he says, when you give him his coffee.

His smile, or his attempt at it, looks more like a grimace than anything.

You expect him to leave, then, but he doesn’t— he goes over to one of the tables in the lobby, the one by the window in the corner of the room, and he sits there and he drinks his coffee and he stares out at the street. It’s dark already; late November, almost December, the solstice approaching. It’ll be a long while before it’s still light later than 4:30.

He stays there for a long time, and the awareness of him prickles at the nape of your neck as you work, filling orders for a dwindling trickle of customers and starting the long and arduous process of cleaning up everything for close.

Sometime around 9:30 you go into the back to try to get started on dishes; the doorbell chimes when you’re about halfway through, and you grumble under your breath and rinse soap suds off of your forearms and resolve to pretend you hadn’t lost track of the hose and accidentally soaked the whole of your shirt from about the sternum down—

There’s nobody waiting at the counter when you come out, though.

And Sergeant James Barnes is gone.

You expect it to be one of those things. Everyone in New York has one of those things. They’re great party stories. One time I sat next to Denzel Washington on the subway. Michael Keaton bought a phone from me when I worked at Apple in Midtown. I ran into Steve Buscemi at this one mom-and-pop bagel place.

I served coffee to Captain America’s not-dead friend in Brooklyn.

Except next week, same day, he’s there again.

The lady in front of him is getting something stupid complicated and being annoying about it. Two pumps caramel, two pumps vanilla, two creams and two skim milk, three sugars and make sure to melt it first, if you don’t, I’ll know, Jesus Christ, make your coffee at home—

The guy who is maybe potentially Barnes laughs.

You said that out loud, apparently. Mumbled it under your breath, or something, quiet enough that the lady hadn’t heard, just shot you a suspicious look and sipped at her drink and then left without a thank-you, apparently satisfied. It’s just you and him now, your coworker off doing food prep in the back room and the lobby empty.

Somehow, he’d heard you. And he’d laughed. It was a weird sound, sharp and rough and cut short like he hadn’t meant to and like he’d tried to make himself stop; his expression is flat, and he’s not smiling, but there’s something— lighter, about it, than when you’d seen him last.

“Black coffee?” you blurt out, before he can say anything.

He blinks. He’s doing that thing again— the staring.

“Easy to remember,” you say, by way of explanation. “Simple.”

His mouth twitches at the corners, not really a smile, yet, but still— something. That lightness to his expression, impassive as it is, hasn’t faded. “Yeah, just black,” he says. “Thanks.”

You make it for him— ‘make’ is a stretch, you pour it, and that’s all, really— and he takes it back to that same spot by the window in the corner, nurses it as he looks out into the street, the sky cast that bruised purple color when the sun’s gone below the horizon but the light hasn’t faded, yet.

You try not to stare.

Same deal as the last time; he stays.

“Hey,” your coworker’s voice drifts from the back room, “You want to sweep the lobby or do the dishes?”

“Lobby,” you reply, extremely fast, thinking about last time and the hose mishap and how your shirt hadn’t dried until basically the end of your shift, but also thinking about maybe-Barnes sitting by the window and how part of you really fucking wants to know. Even if it’s not him, if it’s just some particularly uncanny lookalike, you wonder if it happens a lot. The being mistaken.

You make it through about maybe five minutes of actual lobby-sweeping before you become physically incapable of resisting your curiosity.

“I always got pretty good marks in history,” is what you tell him. Because saying “are you Seargant Barnes” seems kind of— rude.

He stiffens, and he drums his gloved fingers on the lid of his coffee cup, and he doesn’t look up or say a word.

“Your photo was in a bunch of the textbooks,” you add, twisting your grip on the broom handle, back and forth. It’s definitely him. The haircut. His face. Older, a lot less boyish, but the same eyes. “Sergeant Barnes. 107th.”

He doesn’t look at you. Speaks very deliberately. “Are you going to tell anyone?”

There’s this bright jolt of satisfaction at being right, followed pretty quickly by a pang of guilt at the thought you’d irritated him.

“Oh—um, no, definitely not, I’m sure it’s— annoying, probably, getting recognized,” you say, stumbling over the words. “I— sorry, I shouldn’t have— bothered you.”

He does look at you, then. He stares. You’d been fidgeting, still, but under the force of his gaze every muscle in your body goes tense and still, frozen solid, and nerves prickle up at the back of your neck, raising the hairs there. You have to fight back the urge to shiver.

“No,” he says. “It’s never happened before. Don’t— don’t be sorry.”

You open your mouth. Close it again. Your hands resume their twisting around the broom handle before you abruptly decide you do need to actually finish the chore you’d set out to do.

You tell him one last thing, before you go back to it. You’d always kind of felt weird about saying this kind of stuff; it gets touchy, particularly after Vietnam. Not really a great practice to get into, the whole “thank you for your service” schtick, because a lot of them don’t see it that way, and every war after that was even more complicated and your opinions on those are— similarly complicated. But World War 2– that was different. It wasn’t US military overreach. It was necessary. And he’d been drafted, you remembered that.

“Hey,” you say, very soft. “I just— Thanks. For— you know. Serving, when your numbers came up. It couldn’t have been easy, I mean.” you clear your throat, shift your weight, suddenly feeling very self-aware. “Coffee’s on me, next time, okay?”

Something flickers across his expression, like a ripple over the surface of a lake. Whatever it was, it’s gone before you can make sense of it.

You spend most of the week thinking he won’t come back next Friday. But he does. There’s nobody in front of him in line, this time, and like the time before your coworker is off in the back, which means it’s easy to slip him his coffee and conveniently forget to ring it out.

“Thanks,” he tells you, his voice a lot quieter. Softer, too.

You smile at him. His mouth twitches back, like maybe he’s not sure if he should return it, but wants to.

He takes the seat by the window again.

He keeps coming back. You try to make small talk but it feels stilted and awkward. It kind of makes you sad, a little bit, seeing him sitting there for hours, alone.

On your day off, in early January, you go grocery shopping.

You spend about 25$ in total and you make a split second decision to grab something out of the ordinary that’s on-sale. Dude was raised during the Great Depression, you guess he’s not the most experienced in the realm of the great big world of Weird Things You Can Purchase At The Modern Day Grocery Store. It’s meant to be a sort of peace offering, a look-I-can-be-normal-about-it, let’s-be-friends kind of deal, if he’s going to keep hanging around the coffee shop. You’re not sure if he, like— wants that, friends, or if maybe it’s just that he doesn’t want to be alone, but you figure it’s worth a shot.

Part of it is that he interests you. Part of it is that your job, as much as it sucks less than a lot of other service jobs, is very mundane, very normal, often very boring, and James Buchanan Barnes being a regular customer is easily the most interesting and least boring thing that has ever happened to you at work. Or— ever, honestly.

And maybe that’s selfish, to want to talk to him for that reason, but— whatever.

On Friday, like last week, you get there and you clock in and you try to casually scan the lobby, the floor littered with straw wrappers and crumpled napkins and empty sugar packets, the tables tacky with flavored syrup and coffee stains that you’d need to clean later, chairs around them arranged haphazardly and not pushed in, and—

And in the back corner, sitting low in his seat, baseball cap tugged down and shade over his eyes and fingers drumming restlessly against the side of a paper coffee cup, is James Buchanan Barnes.

The excitement you feel, then, is not really the kind you’d expected to— the last time you’d thought about him had been middle school, and even if it’d been just that three months, you remember with startling clarity that girlish, daydreamy kind of interest, how it felt, pleasant and mild and entirely harmless. Whatever you feel right now is not like that at all. It’s sharp and it’s visceral and it’s real, not a fantasy or the result of your imagination, not directed towards some fiction of a person that functioned as a safe receptacle for the things going on inside your head, but an actual individual human being.

It’s just interest, just curiosity, what you feel— you don’t have a crush on him, it’s not like you’re still in middle school and still interested, like that, in even just the general category of person that crush had represented. And the person sitting in the lobby isn’t the person– the fiction– you’d even felt that type of way about, anyways. You don’t know him, and he’s obviously nothing like the guy memorialized in every Captain America docudrama miniseries on Netflix. No, James Buchanan Barnes is a real human being, a very different human being, one that’s a stranger to you and you think— you guess— probably just as much of a stranger to that other, safer, softer, more boyish version of himself.

You keep thinking about how he looked at you, unbroken and unwavering and eerily fucking precise, how his eyes hadn’t even move at all, focused so intently that it’d made the hairs on the back of your neck raise and goosebumps prickle across the tops of your shoulders and all the way down your arms and your gut instinct yell, loudly, there is something not right about this guy!

You’d read his Wikipedia article again. It’s been updated since; lots of shit came out since 2012. You’d heard about the Winter Soldier stuff, but reading about it in detail— it’s bad. There are probably several things that are not exactly right about him, now. That’s fine, though. The way the world is these days, there’s stuff not right about everyone.

You’re occupied with a steady and annoyingly constant stream of customers until about 8:00, making coffees and sandwiches and trading on and off with your coworker in the back room, where you’re trying to get the brunt of the stocking and dishwashing done before they leave at 8:30. You’d been fucking busy, and you’re annoyed, you got cream from the dispenser machine all up one of the sleeves of your sweater so you’d had to take it off, and there’s fucking caramel sauce stuck to the hairs on the flat of your forearm near your wrist and gluing them to your skin and that grocery bag of fruit is sitting on the back table next to your jacket and your gross sweater and your house keys and it’s staring at you. Accusingly.

Your coworker leaves.

You steal a careful glance over the coffee machines at the lobby, just checking, just to make sure that he’s still—

And he is.

Cool.

It takes you a few minutes to kind of— dredge up the guts to go talk to him, another few more for the last trickle of late-night coffee-getters to start to finally taper out, and then you do it. You gather your resolve and your nerve and whatever else, courage, too, probably, and you go out into the lobby and you stand in front of his table and you wait for him to, eventually, look up from where he’s been staring, kind of sullen-looking, out of the window.

“I looked it up,” you blurt out when he does, before you can think better of it, “Online. Apparently supply chains were really small, in like. The 30s. So people could get stuff, right, but a lot more of it was— local. You know that, obviously, but, um.”

He just looks at you. Unblinking.

“Anyway,” you say, trying to ignore the weird kind of twisty feeling of your nerves in the pit of your stomach; jesus christ, he stares, a lot, “Anyway, I had this neighbor when I was a kid, right, and he was— his family, they were refugees. Immigrants. He was learning English, but I made friends with him by using my allowance to buy things at the grocery store, like, weird things, stuff that he’d never had before. So we could— try it. For– fun. And I thought– well. There was a sale, today, so.”

You gesture to your hand; awkwardly, helplessly, god, this is weird, like ice-breakers on hard mode, if the ice were less like a frozen-over pond and more like one of those miles-deep Antarctic glaciers. A tissue-thin plastic bag, the knotted top of it held in your fist, the lone fruit inside just kind of– sitting there.

He finally blinks, and then he shifts back in his chair, and he looks at you some more, his gaze unwavering and solid and heavy like it has actual, physical weight to it, like it’s pressing down on your shoulders and forcing you into the ground. “Are you— have you been trying to make friends with me?” he says, in a tone that’s kind of incredulous and a lot disbelieving and tells you absolutely nothing about whether or not he’d actually be amenable to that.

Whatever.

Fuck it, you think, and then you lift your chin and you meet his eyes and you make yourself stare right back, stubborn and deliberately unflinching. “Yeah,” you tell him. “I have.”

His expression– it’d been flat, impassive and unreadable, but something cuts right across it for a fraction of a second when you say that, quick and sure as a knife. For that one heartbeat of a moment he looks expressive and alive– you think he might even look stricken, actually, and you wonder far too late if maybe this had been a mistake, if you’d upset him. Done something wrong.

But then it’s gone, so quickly that you think you must have imagined it.

He leans back in his chair, and he looks down at his empty coffee cup as he taps it absently against the table, like he’s thinking it over. When he looks back at you the sum of his features are wholly neutral, except for his mouth, which is quirked up at the corners, just a little– not a smile, not with the way his lips are pressed together, into a hard, unwavering line, but it doesn’t look like something bad, either. It doesn’t look negative.

“Okay,” he says. “All right, shoot.” He jerks his chin towards the bag in your hand. “What’ve you got?”

You tear the side of it with your fingernails and dump the contents on the table. “Pomegranate. Had one before?”

His mouth twitches up more, and this time it does look like a smile, the beginnings of one, like he’s repressing it. He clicks his tongue and stretches his legs out under the table and shakes his head, just a little. “Yep,” he says. “Struck out on your first try.”

“No way Mr. Great Depression is more worldly than me.” You decide you’re going to interpret that as an agreeable reaction. There’s only one chair at his table, so you drag one over from nearby, the legs making this awful grinding sound against the tile floor. “I’ve never had one, so I’m taking half. Only fair.”

You fumble in your pocket for your knife to cut into it. He stares at it, when you pull it out, and then stares at you, “What do you have that for?”

Some nameless tension inside of you unwinds at the realization that he’s not just sitting there in stone-faced silence, anymore.

“Walk home after close,” you reply with an easy shrug; the conversation no longer feels like the world’s most awkward one-person performance or like actually physically pulling teeth, and that’s— pretty cool. Feels like a victory. “I usually finish at like, eleven-thirty. Not super dangerous, or anything, but better safe than sorry.”

Barnes makes a disapproving sound— what you think is a disapproving sound— under his breath when you flick the blade open, and grabs the pomegranate from the center of the table. “Too short,” he says, jerking his chin at it in your hand, “Gonna be a pain in the ass, let me.”

The knife that he pulls from what you think must be a sheath on his boot is a straight blade without a handguard, matte black and tapered to a point and without a doubt longer than four inches. Long enough to halve the pomegranate in one clean cut, sharp enough to bite into the laminate surface of the table underneath, just a little.

“That’s definitely not street legal,” you say, mostly joking.

Barnes stares at you. It takes you a second to realize that’s— new. Relatively speaking.

“New York made anything over four inches illegal, plus butterfly knives and switchblades,” you inform him. “I think in the 50s.”

He makes some noncommittal sound of what you assume is probably distaste, and stows the knife back in his boot.

“Don’t worry,” you say, “I’m not a snitch.”

He doesn’t smile, but his expression lightens a little.

On the table, the pomegranate is split neatly in half, and the little pebbled fruits inside the open skin glint in the warm light from the overhead fixtures. Like flecks of garnet. Or drops of blood.

“Could get these in the fall, sometimes,” he says, looking down at it. “Used to pick the bits out with a sewing needle. Made it last all afternoon.”

Your brain conjures up the image of the baby-faced Barnes, maybe sitting on the curb or the front steps of a building. You wonder what the details of the memory are. You wonder if little scrawny Steve had been there, or if he’d been alone.

You don’t ask.

“I don’t have a sewing needle,” is what you do say, “But—“ your nametag is clipped to your shirt, a flat slip of plastic with a pin on the back, and you unfasten it and slide it across the table.

Behind you, the door hinges creak and the bell chimes and you sigh, long-suffering, and get to your feet with an exaggeratedly affected eye-roll.

“I’ll be back,” you tell him, “Customer.”

You go to take the order and then midway through making it the doorbell sounds again. Midway through making that, same deal. This happens, at night, a trickle of customers just fast enough to keep you working nonstop, now that you’re the only person running the store. It goes on for something like ten minutes, which irritates the shit out of you despite the fact that it is technically your job. It’s nine-thirty at night and you’ve been at work for six hours and what you want to be doing is picking this dude’s brain, not making fucking coffee and bagels.

And also because a part of you is aware that he usually leaves around now.

He’s still there, though, when you come back; on the table there’s the husk of one half of the pomegranate, this pale and washed-out color like corn silk, and a neat pile of seeds on a recycled-paper napkin. Barnes has the other half and he’s poking out little grains of red with the safety-pin end of your name tag and biting the pieces off the tip, breaking the fragile skin between his teeth. He looks— calmer. Kind of wistful.

You realize this must be the first time he’s done this since he was a child, all the way back in a Brooklyn that doesn’t look anything like this one. Living alongside different people. Walking different streets. Breathing different air.

“That’s for you,” he says, nodding at the little bits of red, the empty husk, “I thought— since you’re working.”

You blink at him, and then you smile, a small, grateful one. Something flashes in his eyes, when you do; you aren’t paying much attention to it, still thinking about him, being so out of time. How strange this all must be. How much you really did mean it when you said you wanted to be his friend.

Barnes seems to realize when he brings the pin to his mouth again that it’s attached to your nametag. “Sorry,” he says, stilted and stiff and awkward-sounding, again, “I— you probably don’t want this back, now.”

“‘S fine, you can throw it out, if you want— I have so many.”You slide back into the chair and fish out of your apron pocket a blank one that you’d grabbed from the back, not knowing he’d gone and picked all the seeds out of your half already. “I forget them in my pockets, they keep ending up in the washing machine.”

His expression relaxes, a little. He catches the kernel of fruit at the end of the pin between his teeth and bites down until there’s a burst of red in his mouth. Stabs another, works it free of the shell, the flimsy little white membrane around it wilting in on itself. You watch him do that for a minute, contemplative and silent. His mouth is red. His tongue, too, when it darts across his bottom lip. Makes you think about rocket pops from the ice cream truck in the summer. Makes you wonder if they had those, back then.

“Did all that work for nothing, huh?” he says, after a while. You startle out of your thoughts and blink at him, nonplussed; he glances down at the pile of seeds on the napkin. “Thought you wanted to try it.”

“Oh,” you say, eloquently. “Oh, yeah. Duh.”

The first gem-glittering marble of fruit is softer than you’d expected and ruptures between your thumb and forefinger, staining the pads of them all red. You think about summer, as a kid, when you’d fall and scrape your hands on the asphalt hard enough that they bled. It’s almost the same color.

The second time the seed is firmer and it bursts sharp and tart and faintly sweet between your teeth. “Kind of like cranberries,” you say, taking another.

The pile is gone quickly, leaving just the napkin, the juice, like a dark wine stain. You lick your fingers clean. He’d been staring, the way he kind of always stares, but when your lips close around your thumb, he looks away.

You learn a bunch about food in the 1940s, mostly by accident.

Mangoes were a thing; they’d had some growing down in Florida, and you could get them seasonally. Pineapples used to be so rare that rich people would display the whole fruit as a centerpiece at parties and things, way back in the very early 1900s and up through the Great Depression, too; but by the time the 30s rolled around you could get the canned kind at the store. Watermelon was a thing, too, but they all had the solid, jet-black seeds you weren’t supposed to swallow; somebody’d bred those out of the commercial ones sometime after Barnes had slipped out of time.

“I gotta just go straight for the really fucking weird stuff,” you muse, mostly to yourself. It’s late and it’s quiet in the shop and it’s raining outside, the street slick and black and reflecting the light from the lampposts. He stays later, now, leaves closer to 10:30; you’re kind of proud of that. That he seems to like you, your company. Or at least doesn’t dislike it.

“You could just ask,” he says, sounding just the slightest bit exasperated, “If I’ve had something before.”

“No,” you tell him, deeply serious, “No, that fucking ruins it, Barnes, it ruins the surprise.”

He looks at you blankly. A few seconds too late, you realize you’ve never actually said that, out loud. His name. You don’t call him Sergeant in your head anymore, it seems too formal, but James seems too intimate, and you hadn’t asked— hadn’t wanted to ask, hadn’t wanted to pry— if he still thinks of himself as Bucky.

He doesn’t say anything.

Barnes it is, then.

Gooseberries used to be way more popular, all the way up into the 1920s, even though technically it was made federally illegal to grow them a few years before he was born. It was an attempt to stop the spread of this fungus that’d jump from the bushes to pine trees, killed huge swathes of them up and down the Northeast, decimated the lumber industry. He tells you his Ma used to make tarts and pies from them, in the fall when they were in-season, but eventually the farms upstate started getting shut down, and it was too expensive. The federal ban lifted in the 60s, you learn via Google, but production never really ramped back up again— they didn’t even have them at your regular grocery store, you’d had to go all the way to Trader Joe’s.

They taste kind of like green apples. He’d looked the way he did with the pomegranate, that first time, wistful and softer and like he’s remembering. It’s really the most you’ve ever seen behind whatever practiced and controlled exterior he maintains, beyond flashes of almost-smiles and eyebrow-raises and pointed looks. You want to peel that veneer off like peeling the skin from a fruit, get underneath it, get to the flesh of him; when this thought occurs to you, you bury it immediately, as deep as it will go.

“White pine blister rust,” you read aloud off of your phone, crossing the lobby to his table, coffee cup in one hand. You set it on the table for him and he reaches for it with a mumbled thanks. “That’s what it was called, the fungus-thing. According to wikipedia.”

Barnes blinks at you. He takes a long, slow sip of his coffee, even though it’s still probably a little too hot, not that it matters to him; and then he sets the cup down and frowns and says, “What the fuck is wikipedia?”

You laugh without meaning to.

The skin slips, a little, whatever’s underneath peeking out, bruised and soft and bloody, but then you blink and he’s fine. Watching you, expression light and practiced. Whole, again.

In February something happens.

Your coworker tells you before he leaves, pulls you aside in the threshold of the door to the back room to mumble, “there were some dudes out back by the garbage when I took it out before. I was getting bad vibes, I don’t know, just— be careful.”

There’d been a string of robberies through the borough, all within some convenient distance of the subway line, and the store is probably three blocks away from one of the platforms. The back door is one of those that opens only from inside the store, the other end flat and lacking a handle; you leave it propped open when you run to take the garbage out. You’re not stupid, is the thing. The guys, whoever they are— it could be nothing, but it could be that they’re waiting. Waiting for it to be just you, waiting for the door to open, waiting for the opportunity. You have a knife, but it’s a flimsy ten-dollar gas station piece of shit, mostly for intimidation and not for actual use; you’re also well aware that using knives in confrontations tends to make things worse rather than better. Bring that shit out and you’re asking to get it taken from you. Asking to have it used on you.

You could try to call the cops, but more than half of them have been requisitioned by the GRC, and you know what they’d tell you. Unfortunately at the moment we’re understaffed and can’t afford to respond to predictive calls. Please let us know if and when something illegal occurs. Practiced and perfunctory and something people joke about in your neighborhood, because there’s really nothing else any of you can do. Your coworker can’t stay, either; he can’t afford to pay the babysitter another hour, not on minimum wage.

“It’s okay,” you tell him, “I’ll be fine.”

And it is okay. You will be fine.

Barnes is there.

It’s a Wednesday, so it’s just sheer fucking luck that he’s here at all; he must be able to see it, in your face, when you come bursting through the little swinging gate-thing and out into the lobby, because his hands tighten into fists where they’re resting on the table.

“Oh my god I’m so glad you’re here,” you say, breathless and frantic and very much meaning it.

There’s a flash of something on his face that makes you think of heat lightning or splintering ice of the second right before a pomegranate seed bursts between teeth. You are not thinking enough about things that aren’t your immediate anxiety to register it.

“I need your help,” you tell him.

He grows progressively stiffer as you explain the situation, and when you’re done he says nothing, just stands up and pushes his chair in and says, real low, “I’ll go— talk to them. Don’t worry.”

The bell above the door chimes when he leaves.

You stand there at the edge of his table for what feels like some impossible amount of time, every muscle in your body wound up like a spring, jaw clenched so hard it’s starting to drive the beginnings of a headache somewhere on the top of your skull—

He comes back.

“Are you— did they—“ you break from nervously picking at your fingernails to make some vague and anxious gesture. Barnes looks fine, unscathed, cool and neutral and controlled as ever, but when he looks at you it makes something base and instinctive deep inside of you buzz with— alarm. Or— something.

“They were just— being stupid, just drunks,” he says, and maybe you’re imagining it, the thread of tension in his voice. “It’s fine. It’s all— it’s fine.”

You feel yourself visibly relax. “Oh, god, thank you so much, dealing with drunk guys is— it’s the worst.”

He flinches, when you say the first words, just a little, his eyes almost closing and the muscles around them going just briefly tense, like he’d managed to suppress most, but not all, of the instinct. “You don’t— you don’t need to thank me.”

You study him for a minute, like maybe if you look hard enough that flicker of whatever it was would come back, linger long enough for you to make sense of it.

“All right, fine, no thanks. Thanks rescinded,” you say finally, bemused. “I’m going to refill your coffee, though.”

You say it with your hand already half-outstretched, close enough that he can’t stop you even with his reflexes, and whatever entirely reactive and entirely accidental noise of triumph you make when his hand closes around empty space is— not on purpose.

His mouth twitches, the closest you’ve ever seen to an actual smile.

Something in your stomach flips.

You shove that shit down, too.

When you come back with the coffee he’s sitting back in the chair with his legs stretched out and he’s staring out the window again.

“Thanks,” he says, when you set it down.

“Oh, so you can thank me, but I can’t thank you?”

His mouth twitches again. “Yes.”

You make some entirely performative tch sound of affected annoyance as you retreat back behind the counter; you still have to take the garbage out, clear out the pastry display case, start emptying and scrubbing down the coffee pots you’re not using now that business has slowed to a crawl.

“Are you still coming Friday?” you call out to him, over the hum and hiss of the espresso machine running through the automated cleaning program, the milk foaming wands steaming in pitchers of sanitizer water, all of it loud enough that you’d never be able to hear him over it, something you realize too late, “Sorry, hold on, I should have asked before I—“

“Do you want me to?” His voice is clear and close and you startle reflexively; he’s at the counter, at the register, staring. Always staring. You thought in the beginning you’d get used to it. It’s not uncommon; those with power stare, and those without cast their eyes down and away. It’s the nature of customer service jobs in New York City. You meet a lot of powerful assholes in suits who make more money than you probably will ever handle in the entirety of your life, and they look at you and talk at you rather than to you, like you’re nothing, a rodent or an insect or something even less than that. You’ve never once flinched away from any of their stares, and never so much as felt like you wanted to, either.

James Buchanan Barnes doesn’t look at you like that at all. He doesn’t look at you like you’re lesser. He looks at you like he can see you— like he can see right through you, like you’re transparent, like everything going on in your head is out in the open, visible, vulnerable, or maybe like he just wants it to be. Like he’s looking for a door hidden somewhere in the minutiae of your expression, some way to force himself inside and pull all of your thoughts and secrets out like unraveling a spool of thread.

He doesn’t look at you like you’re not human. He looks at you like he knows, precisely, intimately, exactly how human you are, and that’s—

Kind of worse. Or maybe it isn’t. It’s definitely weird.

You realize with a start that he’d asked you a question, and you’d been silent for way too long. You tear your eyes away from him and focus on pulling all the cup lids out of the tray at the edge of the counter, sweeping the donut crumbs and sugar crystals and coffee grinds out and onto the floor.

“I mean—,” your tongue feels thick and clumsy in your mouth and it trips over the words, the syllables, stumbling and uncertain. “Not if you have plans, I— you don’t have to.”

“I never have plans,” he scoffs, scathingly self-deprecating, and then there’s the steady rhythm of his fingers drumming against the counter and you feel it on your neck, the hairs raising there, that he’s staring at you still, “I just—since I came today, I thought maybe you wouldn’t— I don’t want to bother you.”

You freeze, stack of iced coffee lids in one hand, half-lowered back into the now-spotless tray.

You force yourself to look back up at him.

“You’re not bothering me,” you say, stressing each word, like it’s important. It is important. “You’re— I like you. We’re friends.”

That thing, from before, the almost-maybe-flinch; it happens again, and you feel your own expression do something reflexive in response, your lips part and your brow furrow in the seconds before you can school your features back to composure. Whatever he does, the control he has over his affect; you’re not very good at that.

“Besides,” you say, into the silence, eyes cast back down and focused on filling the lid tray, “I found something you’ve never tried before, this time. And since I paid for it already, you are, in fact, contractually obligated to be here.”

He laughs, the same kind of laugh, the only kind of laugh you ever get from him; the cut-short one, like he doesn’t mean to, like he’d tried to stop it.

Like he couldn’t.

Barnes leaves at about 10:45, and you bring the trash out right before he goes, just in case. You wouldn’t have seen it if it weren’t for the fact that you were still kind of nervous and had your phone in hand, shining the washed-out beam of light back-and-forth across the little fenced-in area by the dumpster, trying to keep the garbage bag at arms’ length to avoid getting some disgusting coffee sludge mixture on your shoes where it’s leaking out of the corners.

The light catches on it. It glitters, captures your attention, red against the sun-bleached gray concrete. Pomegranate seeds. Shards of garnet.

Drops of blood.

#bucky barnes #bucky barnes x reader #i'm uploading all of the things to tumblr. finally.#fic; drops of blood

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megamindsecretlair · 1 year ago

Text

It Started With a Whisper - Chapter 3

Chapter 2 Chapter 4

Pairing: Sam Wilson x Black!Fem!reader / Plus Size reader

Warnings: 18+. Minors DNI. You are in charge of your own reading experience. Some sentences are intentional AAVE. Cursing, mentions of sex and private parts. This is some time after Steve jogs next to Sam. Soft Sam, fluff. Non-inclusive language, mentions of emotionally abusive family, caregiver, burdens, ill family members. Lots of fluff, dash of angst.

Summary: You are the front desk clerk who started a few months ago and you have a major crush on Sam Wilson, the handsome and sweet trauma counselor. Sam made you eat your words as Steve does swing by the VA and you have to hold up your end of the bet.

Word Count: 5,256k

Masterlist

A/N: Yeah...this ended up on the long side. Rare of me, but I hope it flows and that you melt like I did reading it. Writing about him has...made me love him even more? I've never been to DC, so don't shoot me. Don't forget to take breaks and hydrate! Ik the gif isn't from the movie, but this is a really silly Sam. Likes are always awesome. Please consider commenting and reblogging to help support writers!

Taglist: @multiversefanfics @wanniiieeee @hidden-treasures21 @targaryenvampireslayer @chaos-4baby

“Excuse me, do you know where I can find Sam Wilson?”

You looked up from this week’s schedule with a polite smile on your lips. Your eyes shuttered as you took in the man before you. Your smile dropped.

“You’re…”

“Steve Rogers,” the man said. He held out his hand to you. You continued to stare at the man. The videos didn’t do him justice. He was handsome in the classic American kind of way. His hair was short, he had a boyish grin, and clear blue eyes. He wore a dark jacket and white shirt.

And holy hell…the muscles. “Well, fancy seeing Captain America here.” Ariel rolled her chair closer to the front and took Captain America’s hand. She held on a second too long and a faint blush crossed his cheeks.

“Please, just Steve.” He swung his hand to you and Ariel nudged you with her elbow.

“Right. Hi, Mr. Rogers.” You shook his hand and mentally kicked yourself from here to Egypt. You were going to smack Sam when you saw him. He set yo ass up. And you fell for it hook, line, and sinker.

“Steve, please. Please,” he said with a chuckle.

“Sam’s in the middle of a meeting. If you’d like, I can tell him you’re here,” you said.

“No, thank you. I’d actually like to catch some of it, if that’s okay?” Steve asked.

You nodded and giggled. Like a teenager. Get a grip. You told him the room that Sam works out of and Steve thanked you. Ariel eyed him up and down and waved to him.

“Thank you. For everything you did for New York,” you managed to eke out. You had no idea what his life was like but from all the dozens of documentaries floating out there, it wasn’t every day that you actually got to meet a real life superhero.

People were still on the fence about superheroes. Some thought they were a government conspiracy. Some thought they were unnecessary. And there was only so much arguing with online trolls you could do. If it weren’t for these superheroes, the world would be bowing to that Loki guy and those freakish aliens.

You thought of your mom and her growing paranoia. It was so bad, she stopped leaving the house. You couldn’t fathom her having to see them every day or being under their control.

“Team effort, wasn’t all me. But thank you,” Steve said. He smiled with that boyish grin and took off down the hall towards Sam’s meeting room.

“Hm, I just want that white boy to pick me up and throw me across the room. I’d say thank you,” Ariel sighed. You laughed and smacked her arm. “Shut up.”

Ariel leveled you with a shit-eating grin. She slid along the desk until she was in your personal space. “Soo, what are you wearing to your date with Sam?”

You groaned and plopped your head on the desk. “I’m so dumb. Why did I agree to that bet?” You kicked your feet under the desk.

“Because you like that man. And you wanted to go. I don’t know why you keep actin’ like you don’t.”

Now it was your turn to level a glare at Ariel. “I would love to go out with Sam. But my family…”

“Your family nothing. What, you’re gonna wait on them hand and foot? At some point, they have to let you grow up.”

You pursed your lips. Ariel had heard every complaint and incident involving your family. So she knew the whole sordid affair just like you knew her feelings on the matter. She thought that you should just move out and to hell with all of them.

But you weren’t built like that. Behind all the gaslighting, the toxicity, and narcissism, there was a kernel of love there. You couldn’t tell your Dad that you couldn’t take him to his appointments. You couldn’t tell your mom that you refused to run errands for her since she can’t go outside anymore. Your siblings were in school. If you didn’t take them, who would?

It was unfair that the burden was all on you. There were times when you went to bed crying your eyes out. Every morning, you got up and squared your back and handled business. For right now, there was no alternative so it was pointless arguing with Ariel when she would only tell you the same thing.

She was your best friend, but she reacted so strongly to anything involving your family. After a while, it was easier to stop bringing them up.

Both of you returned to your work. You idly gossiped about how Sam knew Steve. If he said they went jogging, then he wasn’t such a liar after all. You’d pay good money to see Sam jog near Steve, a whole super soldier.

Hell, you just wanted to see Sam jog, let’s be a little honest. You daydreamed for the next hour or so until the sound of Ariel’s chair rolling caught your attention. You swiveled to face her.

She half stood and half squatted as she looked down the hallway. “What are you doing?” You asked.

“They’re done with the meeting. Sam’s talking to Steve right now,” she whispered, even though Sam’s room was a ways down the hall.

Not one to be left out, you mirrored Ariel’s pose and caught a glimpse of Sam and Steve talking in the hallway. Sam wore a blue and gray plaid shirt, open at the collar, and a white tee underneath. He also wore khaki pants. You had teased him relentlessly about his old man way of dressing. He merely struck a pose and said he knew he looked good.

Your lips curved into a smile at the thought. That boy was goofy as hell. You often caught yourself smiling over something he said or did while you talked during your coffee runs.

As you watched, their conversation seemed more on the serious side. Captain America was right there, but your eyes kept drifting over Sam and the way he filled out the outfit. Damn him. He did look good.

Sam shook Steve’s hand before Steve left with a final wave down the hall. You and Ariel sat down with soft giggles at being caught. Whistling drew your attention back over the counter as Sam floated into view with an annoying grin on his face.

“Well, well, well,” he said.

You lasted two seconds before breaking out into a laugh. You stood up and leaned over the counter.

“That was a set up and you led me right to it,” you said.

He shrugged with a sugary sweet smile. “I merely used all of my hard earned battle training to my advantage. Never enter a bet you aren’t sure of winning,” he said.

“Then you’ve clearly never had a wild night in Vegas,” Ariel piped in.

“I’ve had a couple,” Sam said.

“Naw. The stories I could tell about me and–” You glared at Ariel and silently dared her to say another word.

“Oh, wait, wait. You get down like that?” Sam matched your pose and brought his face closer to you. It was the closest you two had ever been and your eyes flicked to his lips before you remembered yourself.

“Not telling. And neither is Ariel,” you said.

Sam groaned and tilted his head. “Just one story?” He gave you an adorable pout and you laughed.

“No! What happens in Vegas…”

He sighed dramatically. “You’re no fun. So what time should I pick you up tonight?” He asked.

“Tonight? That’s not enough notice!” Mild panic rushed through you. You had to pick up your siblings, make sure everyone had dinner, and make sure your mom actually took her meds. Then, you had to find an outfit and get dolled up and…

“Hey, hey, I was kidding,” Sam said. He reached out and patted your hand. You turned your head away and took a few deep breaths. He squeezed your hand in short bursts until you looked at him.

“I’m sorry. It was a dumb joke. When can I take you out?”

“You have nothing to apologize for. I’m the one that’s sorry. I…I do better when I have advanced notice for things,” you admitted.

Sam nodded. “I can work with that. Is Friday okay? Or do you need to check your schedule and rearrange your other dates?”

You laughed and tapped his arm. “Shut up. Friday is fine, Sam.” You smiled at him, hoping he’d forget all about your mini freak out. He eyed you as if he didn’t but smiled and nodded.

“Friday it is. Wear something comfortable,” he said.

You squinted at him. “Where are you taking me?” You asked.

“And spoil the surprise? Not a chance. I’m gonna get this right, don’t you worry,” he said with a smirk.

You wanted to challenge him on it. However, a bet was a bet and you always kept your word. Sam hadn’t let you down so far and there was no reason to keep giving him the third degree.

“I’m really looking forward to it,” you said.

Sam raised his eyebrows and glanced at Ariel. “You didn’t tell her to say that to put me out of my misery, did you?”

Ariel threw up her hands. She wasn’t even trying to pretend that she hadn’t been paying attention this entire time. You supposed it was better than having to rehash it all.

“That’s all her. I’m sure Captain America finally convinced her to give you a shot,” she said.

“He did not!” You laughed. Sam laughed with you.

“I mean…have you seen him?” Sam joked, making Ariel and you laugh.

You slapped his arm again. “You have serious issues. I hope you know that,” you told him.

“Nope, I just got a date with the most gorgeous woman in all of DC. Nothin’ can bring me down right now,” he said. He rapped his knuckles against the counter and walked backwards. He smirked and bowed his head before turning around and heading back to his meeting room.

You stood there, frozen, your mouth slightly agape. That…

“Girl, you need to get under that man and lock it down,” Ariel said.

Her voice saved you from having to think about what he just said. You knew you were gorgeous. But to hear him say it with his deep voice just turned you into a puddle.

You sat down in your seat. His words replayed over and over in your head. You had a date with Sam Wilson. Who had that on their bingo card, show of hands?

***

Friday night arrived and you were a ball of nerves. You wore a navy babydoll tee, leggings, and sandals. It was appropriate for a date and still sexy. The babydoll tee had a low neckline, giving a little peek at your boobs. You didn’t know if you’d sleep with Sam tonight, but the night was young.

You paced in the living room and wrung your hands. Your siblings were squared away, eating their dinner to rising protests about how they weren’t babies. Your dad was left snoozing in front of the TV and his legs up on the recliner. And your mom…paced with you and asked you a million questions about Sam.

“Are you sure he isn’t an alien?” She asked.

“As much as I can be. I’m not a doctor,” you said.

“Where did you meet him?”

“At work, mom.” You tried to keep the annoyance out of your voice. She had a serious condition that everyone was doing their damndest to accommodate. At the same time, you wished someone would accommodate you for once. You hadn’t been out on a date in…you didn’t want to think about how long.

On the off chance that you recognized someone was trying to ask you out, you made excuse after excuse. You didn’t want the extra drama. You didn’t want to…well, be in this exact situation with your mom breathing down your neck and making your own anxiety worse.

All day, your stomach had been in painful knots. You’d talked yourself out of going a million times. But yesterday, on your coffee run with Sam, he asked for your number. You gave it and he had been just as sweet over text as he was in person. You worried that you’d run out of things to talk about. That was impossible with Sam. He made sitting in bumper to bumper traffic sound interesting.

Blessedly, the doorbell rang. Your mom squealed and headed for the dining room with your siblings. They knew the drill. They started to engage her in conversation until she stopped focusing on you and answered their questions. They were little shits, but they were yours.

You went to the front door and took a deep breath. You opened it to find Sam standing there wearing a dark gray Henley, a mocha leather jacket, dark jeans, and sneakers. He looked scrumptious. With a fresh haircut and his goatee trimmed.

He looked you up and down with equal scrutiny and he smiled. “You look amazing,” he said.

“Not so bad yourself. I see you trying to step it up,” you said.

Per his usual, he struck a pose and chuckled. “Had to show out a little bit. As much as I definitely want you to stay perfect, you’re gonna need a jacket. A real one. Nothin’ like a sweater or those half-sweaters ya’ll be wearing,” he said.

You laughed and shook your head. On the wall by the door, there was a hook with jackets and sweaters that you wore all the time. You grabbed a heavy black hoodie that still went with your outfit.

“Is that going to work for this mystery date?” You asked.

He reached out and felt it. “It’ll do. Ready?” He asked.

You nodded and locked up behind you. Before long, you were in his car and heading…somewhere. He refused to tell you where. You grew up here so you tried to guess with each stop and turn that he made.

“Is it a rooftop bar?” You asked, thinking of the various hotels that had attractions inside.

He chuckled. “No, stop guessing,” he said. You watched him as he drove. It was so…sexy. One of those things that shouldn’t be. Most adults drove. You drove. There was something incredibly hot about watching a man drive one-handed, his other hand on his thigh, and his eyes trained on the idiots in traffic.

Sam made it look powerful and engaging. “I got something on my face?” He asked.

You laughed to cover up your embarrassment at being caught staring. “Yeah, it’s sort of around your mouth,” you said.

Sam patted his face and looked in the rearview mirror. He came to a stop at a red light and checked again. “I don’t see anything,” he said. He looked to you for help and you rolled your lips inwards to keep from laughing.

“Oh…sorry. It’s just your mustache,” you said.

Sam’s face dropped for a split second and then he laughed. “Oh, I see we got jokes,” he said.

On green, he continued forward and you laughed. “You kinda walked into it,” you said.

Sam nodded and poked your leg. “We’ll see who’s laughing more later on tonight,” he said. You poked him in the arm. It was like poking a bag full of quarters. He was deceptively buff.

You joked more as Sam pulled into a parking garage in Georgetown. “The Waterfront?” You asked with an excited squeal. He chuckled at your enthusiasm. “Surprise!”

You laughed as he pulled in and found a parking spot. You both got out and he offered his arm. You shook your head as you placed your hand around it. He guided you to a restaurant you’d never been to before.

“I didn’t know this was here,” you said.

He shrugged. “I know some things. Better stick with me,” he said. He smiled at you and there it was again. That sense of familiarity. As if you could imagine this over and over and never get sick of it. You pulled your gaze away from his. This was something breezy and casual. Unfortunately, that was all you could offer.

The thought of your family dimmed your smile. As wonderful as Sam was, there was no way in hell you were asking him to deal with them. They were your cross to bear. He’d find someone else, someone with less baggage to love on him and hold him.

Acid boiled in your gut at the thought of Sam taking someone else out to dinner. At the thought of their hands on him. It stole your breath, robbed you of any clear thought.

“Hey, where’d you go? You okay?” Sam asked. He nudged you and moved to get out of line. You stopped him. He planned a beautiful evening and you wanted to see it. You wanted to see it with him.

“I’m fine. Promise. Where’d you hear about this place?” You smiled at him but he only frowned.

“If you’re not feeling well, I can take you home. There’s no pressure here,” he said.

You sighed. Damn the man. “Sam, if you don’t buy me dinner, I’ll tell Ariel you were very rude on our date,” you said.

The fake betrayal on his face made you laugh. “You would sic Ariel on me?”

You nodded. “Sure would. In a heartbeat,” you said.

Sam gave you a fake hurt look and approached the host. He had called ahead and made a reservation. The host was a short, spunky dude with greased hair and a practiced fake smile. He waved for a waiter to come by and show you to your seat.

The restaurant was tasteful and warm. It had intimate lighting but it wasn’t so low that you couldn’t see the other person right next to you. The atmosphere was inviting. The waiter led the both of you out onto the patio area with a perfect view of the sunset over the harbor.

“Sam, this is gorgeous!” You furiously whispered to him as he held your seat out. Once you sat down, he took his own seat. The waiter handed you both menus and asked if you wanted anything to drink. Sam took a light beer, his only one as a promise, and you got a glass of wine.

“I wanted tonight to be special. Don’t expect this all the time. This is just to sucker you in,” he said.

You laughed and rolled your eyes. “Shut up. This is really wild. Did you really plan this?”

“Okay, maybe a little help from my sister. I can’t take all the credit. Can’t let me have one, can you?” He teased.

“Not a one,” you said and laughed.

You talked all throughout the night. Conversation with Sam was so easy. You asked him about growing up in Louisiana and what’s the biggest critter he’d ever seen. You asked him about his parents running the fishing business together and why he joined the military.

He asked you about your family and you told him most of the good stuff. You told him about the shenanigans they got into and what your dad did for a living. As for your mom, well, she primarily worked from home. It was a tiny, white lie that you felt horrible about. Sam was always so honest. But it was too much to dump on someone.

The sun lazily dipped below the horizon beside you. You knew now why he insisted on a jacket. The breeze from the harbor was bitter but enjoyable. He stopped after one beer like he promised. You stopped after two glasses. You didn’t want to get sloppy wine-drunk.

That’d be embarrassing. If he was going to see you wasted, it might as well be on Tequila when you’d really let loose. You wondered what he’d be like drunk. If he ever got drunk.

“I’ve been drunk, I’m not a saint,” he said with a chuckle, as your dinner drew to a close. The food was criminally delicious. Sam told you about an ice cream shop that stayed open late if you were open to dessert later.

You didn’t want the night to end either. So while you waited for the check, Sam sipped on water. “Trust me, we got pretty wild overseas on deployment. There’s nothing to do but fight and try to forget,” he said.

“You saw his mouth turn down at the corners. Sore subject. So you pivoted. “Wild, huh? Like stealing humvees and doing takeovers?”

He laughed so loud that the people around you gave you disapproving looks. Sam apologized and waved to everyone. “You’re gonna get us in trouble!”

“Me!” You waved him off. “I’m not the one who tried to make me snort while I was drinking,” you said.

He raised his hands in surrender and smirked. “I can’t help it if I’m hilarious,” he said.

“As long as your ego is well in hand,” you said.

He shrugged. Damn the man. “To your earlier point, no, we didn’t do takeovers. But we got into stuff. Pranks, teasing, we would play ball with the local kids. It was fun sometimes,” he said.

“Anything to pass the time over there. I know nothing about it, so I can’t speak on it,” you said.

“It’s alright. It was like a fucked up version of summer camp. Except summer never ends so it’s always hot as hell and you’re just trying to survive the day,” he said. “But enough about that. I have to hear about these wild and unchaperoned Vegas trips you took with Ariel.”

You covered your mouth to keep from laughing too loud. The waiter came by, saving you from having to talk. Your shoulders shook with quiet laughter and Sam took the check. He tilted it towards you.

“Not gonna try and reach for the bill?” He asked with a smirk.

“Okay, smartass,” you said. He chuckled and took his card out of his wallet. He signed it and handed it to the waiter. “So…Vegas?”

“You couldn’t pay me to get that information,” you said.

“It must’ve been something freaky,” he said.

You tossed your napkin at him and he caught it with a laugh. The waiter came back and wished you a good night. Sam led you out of the restaurant. “You’re gonna have to roll me out of the car,” you said. You rubbed your belly and Sam laughed.

“I’m stuffed too. Let’s walk it off,” he said. He held his hand out for yours. You took it with a grimace. “You’re not gonna make me into a jogging partner or anything right? I hate running,” you said.

“I promise to keep my jogging to myself,” he said and chuckled. Together, you walked up and down the boardwalk next to the harbor. Lights from the Waterfront stretched out over the water and people milled around you. Conversation flowed well. You learned so much about his childhood and his sister. He lamented the fact that he didn’t get home as often as he wanted to. Counseling wasn’t completely demanding but he also didn’t want to pass it off to someone else.

“I formed a good group of people. I want them to know I’m there,” he said.

“People love you, Sam. They love attending your meetings. But you know that it’s okay to take breaks and vacations right?”

“I know. I left Louisiana and just haven’t looked back. I love it there, but there’s so much world to see, you know? Food to try. Pretty girls to flirt with,” he said.

You rolled your eyes to keep from grinning so hard. “And you’re not even shameless about it,” you said.

“How can I be?” He gave you a pointed look. He winked and opened the door to the ice cream shop. You both got different flavors and took a tiny piece from each other’s cup. You walked back outside. The boardwalk was starting to wind down.

You walked and ate. You were proud that you hadn’t spilled anything on you. Sam was still a ball of energy, talking and telling you more stories. He was full of them. It was like he collected them from every person he met.

As you walked to the car and finished up your ice cream, you gave him a side eye. “So I have to know…Captain America? Really?”

Sam chuckled. “Hey, all I did was jog. He chose a new spot that day and passed me like a million times. No, he's a solid dude. Just…regular,” he said. “Well, regular and he can whup alien ass,” he said and laughed.

“I don’t think it’s easy for him to be in our time. When he went into the ice, we were at war with the Nazis. When he came out of it, suddenly there’s internet and TV shows, and everyone’s got a car. It’s a lot,” Sam said.

You nodded. “I’m glad he has you. Everyone needs a Sam in their life, it’s kind of the requirement if that’s your name,” you said.

“How you figure?” He asked.

“Lord of the Rings, Supernatural, Game of Thrones…” you listed off. Sam stopped walking and stared at you.

“Don’t tell me you’re a nerd,” he said. He made ‘nerd’ sound so dirty. You opened your mouth to argue from here until kingdom come about how awesome being a nerd was before you saw him fighting a smile.

“You get on my nerves!” You said. He laughed and you threw away your ice cream cups. Even after eating that and being out in the harbor, Sam’s hand was warm as he grabbed yours. You smiled and put your head on his shoulder.

“This was amazing, Sam,” you said as you walked to the car.

“I’m very glad,” he said. He put his head next to yours before letting you go and opening the car door for you.

“You know you don’t have to do that,” you said. He shrugged. “I like doing it,” he said.

You slid into the car. Your nerves were shot. You know he didn’t expect anything from you, but you also promised your mom that you wouldn’t be too late. You knew that no amount of coaxing from your siblings would get her to settle down. She would stay up until every member of her flock was at home.

She wasn’t that bad, most nights. But it had been too long since you went on a date. Sam slipped into the car and backed out. “Back to your place, right?”

You smiled. Damn the man. He seemed to pick up on your thoughts as if he could read them. You squinted at him. You can’t actually read my mind, can you?

“If you say my goatee is on my face again, we’re gonna have a problem,” he said and chuckled.

Okay, couldn’t read your mind. You laughed. “My place is good, thank you.”

You talked more on the way back to your place. The itis was starting to hit you and you yawned. Sam chuckled. “Almost there,” he said.

He pulled onto your street. All the carefree fun you had soured in your gut. You didn’t want to return to the hellhole. Some wispy part of you wished Sam would keep driving and kidnap you, take you far, far away.

Fairytales didn’t happen in real life. Even lives filled with gods and aliens. And not for Black girls who had to grow up too fast.

Sam pulled up to the curb. The porch light was on. You were sure your mom was somewhere in the house, listening and waiting for you to open the door. You stared out of the window and mentally rallied your patience.

“Hey, I want you to know that you can always talk to me. It’s not that I demand to know everything up front, but I can tell when you’re holding something back. I’d rather you tell me that you don’t want to share something than feel like you have to hide it or lie to me,” he said.

You smiled at him. “My home life is really insane. I don’t want to get into something deeper if it’ll end up being too much for you. My family will always require more of my focus,” you said.

Sam nodded. “I’m not asking you to choose between me and your family. I’m asking for a chance to decide that for myself. I can’t do that without all of the facts.”

He was right. You knew he was right. It wasn’t fair to keep all of the cards and blame him for not being able to play. “It’s a lot. Can I swear to tell you in chunks?”

“I can work with that. So, that means I get a second date?” He asked and waggled his eyebrows.

“Boy, bye,” you said and chuckled. “But yes. Safe to say I want to go on a second date with you,” you said.

He nodded and got out of the car. He came around and opened the door for you. It was pointless fighting him on it at this point. He was just going to find a sneakier, faster way to do it. While it would be hilarious to see him scurry around the car to open the door for you, it was much easier to let him be a gentleman. And it was lowkey really nice.

You got out and Sam took your hand. He walked you to the door like a proper gentleman. At the door, Sam faced you. “I had a really good time with you. And I’m glad you enjoyed yourself. That’s all I want,” he said.

You stepped closer. “Just shut up and kiss me already,” you said.

Sam chuckled before getting closer and pressing a soft kiss to your lips. It was practically chaste. But then he smiled against your lips and kissed you like he meant it. He pressed his lips more firmly against yours.

He licked your bottom lip and you gasped. He slipped his tongue inside and cupped the back of your head. You melted against him and he held you up, taking the kiss from you. You followed his lead as he explored your mouth with his. The kiss felt magical. So magical that your panties grew damp.

You didn’t know how much time passed by before you broke apart, needing air. “Damn,” you said on a sigh.

Sam chuckled. He placed his forehead against yours as he caught his breath. He smelled faintly like the ice cream he had. “I’m gonna be counting the days until I can do that again,” he said.

“Don’t wait too long,” you said.

He chuckled and kissed you again. “You better get in the house before I embarrass myself,” he said.

You chuckled and kissed him one more time for the road. You unlocked the door and went inside with a tiny wave. He nodded. You closed the door and locked it and knocked on the door. He knocked back.

You heard the car door slam shut and then the driver’s side open and shut. The car turned over. You rested your back against the door, grinning like an idiot. You were glad that the house was dark so no one would catch the little dance you did.

As far as first dates went, he knocked it out of the park and you couldn’t wait for the second one.

Masterlist | Chapter 2 | Chapter 4

#Megaminds Secret Files #The Secret Sam Wilson Files #Sam Wilson x Black!reader #Sam Wilson x Black reader #Sam Wilson x Fem!reader #Sam Wilson x Fem reader #Sam Wilson x plus size reader #Sam Wilson x reader #Sam Wilson x you #Sam Wilson fanfic #Sam Wilson fan fic #Black writers #Sam Wilson Falcon #Sam Wilson Captain America #marvel smut

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dairy-farmer · 2 years ago

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Family doctor Bruce who’s been fucking Tim for years, ever since his orients stopped coming to his check ups.

He’d get the regularly, no adult supervision, and Bruce would press him over the bed, his legs dangling off the side, and pound into his tight little pussy and press deep while he cums.

Little preteen Timmy is pregnant before his first period

!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!BRUCE FOLLOWING IN HIS DAD'S FOOTSTEPS AND BECOMING A DOCTOR!!!! not a surgeon like his dad because bruce was never one who ever felt comfortable or reveled in blood and gore. and if bruce was being honest...he did have a bit of a sensitive stomach. he had one ever since he was a kid and it just...it just never quite went away not even when his ambitions became too big to contain. family practice puts bruce in a unique position to help.

it would allow him to help people who come through with bruises from "slipping in the shower", people with bloodshot eyes and tremors and asking about pain medication for their recent "fall", and teenagers in vulnerable points in their lives and confused about what's happening with their bodies.

bruce had worked hard to open up his own family practice. dr. thompkins had helped him out, guiding him through all the careful processes and allowing bruce to shadow and follow her around at her small crime alley clinic.

bruce couldn't deviate too much from his "brucie" persona when setting up his clinic and as he set up a family practice office in a more affluent part of gotham despite areas like park row desperately needing more physicians, bruce reminded himself that at least he was still doing good.

doctors were invaluable to society and the first to notice when something wasn't right in the family dynamics.

take for instance the drakes. janet and jack, like many of the wealthy of the area, had switched to bruce being their family physician despite hardly ever being in the city. the one drake who did see bruce the recommended amount of times a year (once for a physical and then 3-4 times through the year for various sickness, weather, and allergy-related reasons) was young timothy drake who, to date, had been bruce's youngest patient. there were plenty of pediatricians in the area but sweet timothy had insisted on bruce being his doctor. he was the reason bruce kept a little jar of lollipops by the front desk and why he had variously assorted superhero band-aids for when blood needed to be drawn or to bandage various scrapes and boo boos.

unlike the rest of his patients that came through his office, bruce didn't want to cut his own ears off during their appointments. timothy was a sweet young dear of a child. he giggled at bruce's jokes and did his best to do well on his physicals and unlike some of the teenager bruce saw, he wasn't moody or angry or resistant to bruce trying to help them when they'd roll their eyes at his lectures about drugs and sex.

tim wasn't like that. tim listened avidly to everything bruce had to say, watching with big eyes with the diagrams bruce would show him of the various parts of the human body. tim was a captivated audience and would even ask questions like what this or that medical device was for. before jack and janet had stopped accompanying tim they'd shush him and tell him not to bother 'dr.wayne'.

tim was a sweet child.

he was nothing like bruce's other snooty patients or the awkward and angry clientele from when he worked with dr. thompson.

dick never liked accompanying bruce to his office but since tim lived barely a block away in one of the apartment complexes that meant a little dark-haired and blue eyed boy still ran around his clinic and...something about the sight tugged at bruce's insides. when bruce had been little he'd accompany his father to the hospital. he'd color on empty charts and bounce on the stiff, leather therapy couches or build forts with the catalog furniture in some of the grief rooms.

timothy's nanny never cared to notice when he'd disappear from her care and bruce could do nothing but send another email to the drakes that would go unanswered and allow tim to play in his office and the various empty examination rooms. empty. because a lot of the affluent families that made bruce their family physician had just done it for appearances and rarely ever utilized his services. most of them continued seeing their old primary care physicians because no one in their "right mind" would ever entrust their family's health to bruce wayne's hands.

so bruce was stuck in a medical office that hardly ever saw patients and most days he considered just...going back to leslie and hoping his years of schooling could be utilized elsewhere.

not that bruce was allowing himself to get rusty. tim was a very willing patient. his favorite game was playing doctor with bruce. where bruce would perform a physical on tim by doing things like testing his reflexes, listening to his heart, and checking tim's throat while he opened his mouth and said 'aaah!'.

bruce had spent half a fortune outfitting his office with every possible medical tool he may need to perform through medical evaluations including one meant for pregnant and expecting mothers and young women. tim managed to find the room while ducking around for somewhere to hide when he and bruce played hide and seek.

bruce ended up finding tim curiously holding up a speculum and peeking through it to see.

tim truly was a brilliant little child. curious too.

he asks bruce about it and the various tools around like the ultrasound machine sitting uselessly in the corner. it's never even been plugged in and bruce had specifically trained for because....because he was awaiting the day he'd congratulate a young mother on her pregnancy.

bruce tells him about how these are all tools he uses to help people feel better, showing tim how the examination table in this room had stirrups for people to rest their feet so he could sit at the end and check what needed to be checked.

tim's eyes grew big and he held the speculum in both hands as he followed bruce around like a shadow watching with bug eyed curiosity as bruce plugged in the ultrasound and showed him the gel that accompanied him.

bruce knows that that he probably shouldn't have allowed it but...something about having tim around and bobbing around the office like bruce had done when he was little just made it...hard for bruce to tell him no.

before long tim's clothes are off, including underwear and he's wearing a too big white paper gown that makes him look like a child wearing a wedding dress. the thought has something in the back of bruce's head flickering but he ignores it as tim climbs up onto the table and rests his little legs into stirrups that have him spreading open and exposing himself to bruce who suddenly feels like his throat is painfully dry.

tim's little baby cunt is bare and pink, growing redder and pinker the deeper inside you looked. the lips were puffy and velvety soft, bruce gently dragged the pads of his fingers against them watching, fascinated, as tim jumped and his insides clenched with surprise at bruce's touch.

bruce was seated in a rolling chair directly in front of tim's open legs, a quiet part of bruce's brain was telling him that he needs exam gloves, that hygeine hygeine hygeine and he couldn't go around examining patients without them but.... this wasn't really an examination. bruce was just...playing. he and tim were playing doctor so it was okay if bruce didn't put in those sterile gloves.

bruce let two fingers gently stroke the sides of tim's little kiddie cunt, trying to ignore the trembling of his entire arm as he pushed his glasses further up his nose and gently...pressed his fingers against and....spread tim open more.

"h-here-" bruce cleared his throat, "here we can see that your....your-"

"my kitty?" tim asked curiously, staring at him and letting his head dangle off the side of the examination table.

bruce pressed his lips together, biting back the anatomically correct term to correct tim because it was important tim knew these things in case any perverts ever preyed on him- it would make it easer for lawyers and police to understand when tim ran to them and cried that someone touched his kitty on the playground, they would think 'oh some brat lost their cat' and not 'oh some brat went and got himself fingered at the park'.

but bruce doesn't say that. his eyes drift back to the little, pink baby clit sticking out from under the clitoral hood- exactly like bruce's old anatomy textbooks in medical school. he swallows and reaches for the coldly labeled tube of lube and the duck-billed speculum in the other. with one finger bruce snaps open the cap and squirts a thick glob along the body of it. it's....big. too big to probably fit into tim's little hole that's maybe the size of bruce's nail.

"this is your hole" bruce tells tim, poking the tip of a finger in, still wet with a little lube. tim tightens around the tip. bruce swallows the sudden thickness in his throat.

it's slow. the examination. the speculum won't fit until tim is...looser. tim asks bruce how he can loosen his kitty and bruce launches on a short lecture about massaging the area, inserting a finger- then two and working your way up, and that even orgasms can help relax the muscles of the hole-

"what's an orgasm?" tim asks innocently, sweet eyes slightly cloudy as bruce continues working a single singer into his baby hole. bruce takes a shuddering breath.

tim is much looser after his first orgasm. to bruce's immense pleasure tim didn't squirm much, only whimpering and arching his hips off the exam table and pressing down on the stirrups as bruce rubbed at tim's little clit with a middle finger. bruce watched as tim's pussy grew shiny with his organic slick and release drooled out of tim, pooling up in his hole and running out in a small gush when tim clenched his hole around nothing. bruce didn't allow the droplets to hit his floor and instead wiped the clear streak running down tim's ass with the cold speculum before pressing the tip into tim's suddenly looser opening.

it's still a challenge getting it in. bruce can only work about an inch in before it gets tight again. when bruce tells tim that tim is panting and there are tears in his eyes and he asks bruce is this means he should orgasm again.

bruce has never used a speculum on a patient before but he's pretty sure he's not supposed to rock it in and out of the hole it's in like it's a dildo. tim doesn't seem to mind. but after the second orgasm bruce rubbed out of him he seemed to mostly be going in and out of consciousness. bruce thinks tim falls asleep when he finally gets it all the way in.

bruce takes a moment to ignore tim's little hole, shining a penlight in to see tim's pink insides. he's about five inches deep and can see the beginnings of his cervix with a little hole in the middle like a doughnut, the entrance to...to his womb. it'll be many years before tim gets his first period and bleeds for the first time, telling bruce that his little womb was ready to be home to a baby.

bruce swallows back his saliva at the thought.

bruce has his fun and tugs the speculum out when finished. tim's hole is bigger than when they started, more the size of a quarter from the stretching it had done. bruce is able to sink his middle finger all the way in with barely a flinch from tim who is blinking slowly like he's in a daze. bruce knows that pelvic exams aren't easy, especially on first timers so to thank tim for his bravery- bruce gently rests his thumb against tim's twitching clit and rubs out a slow, gentle orgasm until tim is whining and trembling under him.

tim is tired by the time they're finished. bruce has to help him dress before waving him back home where his nanny is probably still passed out drunk in the apartment.

bruce locks the door when tim's form disappears down the hall and hastily pushes down his slack to release the painful erection he'd gotten at one point. bruce's hand is wet from some medical lube but mostly from tim's release. but bruce doesn't think about that as he pumps his red cock and bites back groans about tim's stretched out baby cunt.

the next day tim returns just as bouncy and eager as he did the day before. once again bruce has no patients aside from him. bruce hasn't had a scheduled appointment in months.

bruce is barely able to greet tim as he opens the door before he's darting off to the exam room. when bruce arrives, tim's little shorts and underwear are off and he's climbing bare butt onto the exam table and lifting his legs onto the stirrups.

"i need another checkup!" tim sweetly insists, cheeks red with that blush that's always on him and breathing slightly hard. his sweater vest is still on along with his little velcro sneakers and lacy socks dangling in the air. tim's pussy is still as pretty as the day before but....redder.

bruce can see how tim's baby clit is practically pulsing. his slit is shiny and sticky as bruce spreads open the lips and runs reverent fingers down the edge. tim inches closer, pushing his butt to the edge of the table and looking at bruce with big, earnest eyes.

bruce thumbs softly at tim's clit, watching his shivers with critical eyes as he asks in his 'doctor voice' "what seems to be the problem?"

tim is already rocking his hips against the motion, eyes going half lidded and distracted as he shakily breathes.

bruce stops playing with tim's clit and raises a brow at the whine he receives.

"doctors can't help you if you don't tell them what's wrong," bruce tells tim sagely. "like if you're throwing up and sick, or hurting, or itchy-"

"i'm itchy!" tim insists immediatly. "i'm itchy, i swear! i-it's just...i didn't know how much i needed it scratched until yesterday b-but i'm so itchy dr. bruce! please dr. bruce i'm itchy!"

tim is practically crawling into bruce's lap from how desperately he's offering his baby cunt to him. bruce needs to keep ignoring the fire steadily burning in his gut.

bruce's cock aches so fucking bad.

and...and the speculum is in the autoclave. bruce hadn't taken it out after putting it in to sanitize it for later use...

but...tim was itchy now. not much bruce could do about it.

but. bruce was a doctor. it was his job to find solutions to people's health problems. tim had already gotten used to the initial stretch and he'd orgasmed more with something inside of him so....maybe it would be better to recreate circumstances using the tools he had.

"okay, tim....i can help you but...it's going to be a bit different from yesterday, alright?"

tim practically sobs a yes.

bruce unzips his pants with his free hand, the one not pressing down on tim's throbbing clit. he pushes his slacks down to mid thigh and stands up from his seat, pushing his underwear down enough to free his cock that practically springs from its confines.

tim is young. a kid. a sweet kid. a sweet kid that hasn't gotten his period yet.

bruce presses the hot, wet cock head to tim's sloppy, wet slit and bites down on his lip as he meets warm cunt. gently, bruce thrusts his hips, sliding his cock along tim's warm slit and coating his cock nicely in frothy, sticky tim slick.

bruce fumbles for the lube from the day before in one of the storage cabinets of the table. he squirts more than he means to and most of it drips to the floor. bruce doesn't care and drops the entire tube somewhere off to the side. he hears it 'clatter' but is too focused on hastily stroking himself and watching as the mushroom-shaped head of his cock eases into a baby dole clenching tight around him.

it doesn't take as long as it did the day before.

bruce roughly rubs tim's clit and rocks into him with every clench of his abdominals, sinking deeper and deeper until he's bent over and groaning at the hot vice of the pussy stretched around him. bruce swears he could die happy inside tim as he inches closer until there's no cock to give. it's a tight fit, bruce's cock is getting the life squeezed out of it really and he can't really thrust, only rock back and forth into virgin insides. the slide is eased by the lube and the second orgasm that rips through tim's body. tim is gasping and twitching under him, bruce grips the underside of tim's thighs and nearly bends him in half in order to feel more of tim's warmth around him. he stays like that, rocking and sawing and increasing in speed until he's grunting and growing at the build-up in his balls.

the release is deep and hot and tim makes some sweetly confused sound as bruce fucks and cums deep enough that the initial jolt of cum had to have shot some release into the little opening of the cervix bruce has seen the day before.

the stirrups make fucking tim a little difficult so bruce picks up a weak limbed tim, still attached to bruce's cock, and carries him over to his office where there's a nice soft couch bruce uses to catch up on the sleep he misses out on at night.

tim softly whines but makes humming noises when bruce rests his back onto the plush, warm leather cushions.

bruce keeps his cock plugged in because if he knows himself, he'll be ready to go again in just a few minutes. tim's forehead is a little sweaty and bruce brushes the locks back before drifting the hand down and pushing up tim's sweater vest to expose his pink nipples and little breasts. tenderly, bruce presses a gentle kiss to them before letting his mouth fall on tim's who opened it to ask "why did you do tha-mmph"

slowly, by rocking into the hot, wet mess inside tim's little pussy, bruce felt himself start to get hard again.

this time he didn't rock and try get off with tim's wet walls clenching around him. bruce spread tim's thighs further apart, took a breath, and fucked the little cunt around his cock.

he didn't inch his way in or saw back and forth. he pounded the little pussy until tim was arching and gasping and letting out incomprehensible noises because every thrust dragged against tim's little clit. bruce didn't touch tim's clit until his mouth was open and he was chasing after the warm clenching feeling in his balls that led to him spilling a hot fat load into baby pussy.

tim's hands were on either side of his head. his eyes closed as he sweetly moaned into bruce's ear and let him fuck his little hole until it was tingling and sore.

tim was a good patient and allowed bruce to keep going, even shifting their positions and laying on his back while tim sprawled on his chest and panted with bruce's soft cock tucked inside him. bruce couldn't go too hard. not unless he wanted tim stumbling all the way back home. so after the second one bruce pulls out and kneels between tim's legs. he laps up the mess and kisses and sucks on tim's clit until he's exhaustedly pushing on bruce's head.

the next day bruce is waiting by the door for tim. they don't even make it to any of the rooms. good thing bruce choose carpet for the waiting room. tim is wearing a little skirt and when bruce pushes it up he finds no underwear waiting for him.

bruce's cock was ready and tim was warm and leaking from anticipation.

bruce fucks tim roughly on the floor of his waiting room, cupping the back of his head with his palms so it doesn't bang on the floor and hurt as bruce hoists tim's little legs over his shoulders and fucks him hard and fast.

tim loves their new game of how they play doctor, almost as much as bruce does.

bruce fucks tim in nearly every room of his clinic, almost always ending it in his office where tim's ass hangs off the edge of the couch and bruce pounds into his cunt to his hearts content until he's spilling deep and painting that little womb white. sometimes tim returns home with a bulge in his tummy from all the warm cum bruce fills him with. bruce never thinks about it.

until one day tim arrives looking...a little rounder in the middle. childhood chubbiness is common and bruce sees no reason to worry about it and fucks tim like normal. there's a persists pudge in the front of him and bruce is staring at it one day as he's sinking his cock into a moaning tim when he realizes...it's right where tim's womb would be.

bruce would know if tim had his period. he's been fucking little timmy for months and he'd know. not only would he notice but tim would tell him.

but...bruce had learned something in medical school. about how...technically it was possible for someone to get pregnant before having menstruation. because young people could still ovulate.

and if little timothy drake ovulated and bruce had been fucking him without protection.....

there was no way to tell how far along tim was. he was already so small so any bulging ends were clearly visible. still, bruce pulled out the old ultrasound he never got around to using.

tim is pawing at bruce's clothing and asking what's going on as bruce lays him down and searches around for the aquasonic that's never been opened much less used. he squirts some onto tim's lower belly and presses the transducer to where that little bump is barely showing and-

bruce stares. he stares at the little gray blob that keeps flickering on the screen until he adjusts his hand and glides the transducer to different angles until he realizes....no, that is exactly what he thinks it is and...and bruce can't stop the words even if he wanted to.

he turns to tim who's trying to arch his head in a way that will let him look at what bruce is doing until he realizes bruce is staring at him.

tim blinks big, innocent doe eyes at him and bruce-

"congratulations." he croaks out almost like a robot. "you're pregnant."

with a baby. with bruce's baby.

tim stares at him like an owl. he blinks.

"what does 'pregnant' mean?"

bruce's laugh comes out wheezy and out of breath, almost choked.

oh fuck.

what has he done.

#anonymous #asks #answered asks

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munchkinmarauder · 11 months ago

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Technically yeah. They were still teenagers when they joined the Avengers and the youngest members of the Quartet so Cap was probably the closest thing they had to a positive father figure at the time (outside of Django) or the very least an older brother figure (I think he was written as in his mid to late twenties at the time with Clint in his early twenties).

But like that does make Steve and Wanda's short lived relationship uncomfortable to look back on. I'm not saying he groomed her but it's definitely a little unfortunate.

I'm hoping we get a Kooky Quartet book in 2025 to celebrate the teams 60th anniversary (seeing as the twins and Hawkeye are getting minis for their individual 60th anniversaries). It'll be fun to revisit this little dysfunctional group - the original unity squad. They've come a long way as individuals but I still want that chaotic tired and stressed older brother/shithead attention seeking middle child/hyper little shit baby brother/angle child but so done with everyone's nonsense little sister dynamic they had in the 60s. Also it's so fun to see Steve Rogers, one of the most respected superheroes and America's darling just be driven to his wits end and get dunked on by his rebellious former criminal children. I think it's also a good challenge of Steve's ideals of what his country stood for as he came from a middle class Christian American family, is blond haired and blue eyed and otherwise that seemingly perfect American postboy and hes then put in charge of this young ex criminals wanting to make a change. People that had circumstances in their lives that forced them on dark paths, Hawkeye came from a poor background with a troubled family. The twins were extremely poor immigrants who faced a lot of discrimination for being Roma and Mutants. It'll be good to see how the Quartet has changed and grown and how the power dynamics have shifted over the years.

Cap was a more influential father figure to Wanda and Pietro than Magneto ever was, Pass it on

#captain america #quicksilver #scarlet witch #Hawkeye #pietro maximoff #wanda maximoff #maximoff twins #steve rogers #Clint Barton #Caps Kooky Quartet #Avengers #Marvel comics

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nanoland · 2 years ago

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The Amateur, by TJ Land

the title: The Amateur

the deets: M/M, poly romance, superheroes, novella

the blurb:

Worst thing about being a supervillain? Getting your butt handed to you by caped do-gooders. Best thing about being a supervillain? Getting your hands on caped do-gooders' butts. Heh. Red Velvet and his two partners in crime – super-strong beefcake Ares and proud degenerate the Electric Eel – are the League of Larceny, the most notorious gang in town. They’ve been together in every sense of the word for years, and these days everyone knows better than to mess with them. Which is why they're surprised to have their weekly heist interrupted by a rookie hero. His costume is hideous. His banter is corny. His body is amazing. He’s Mister Valiant and he’s here to save the day. Or if not, then at least he might prove to be an amusing distraction for a few bored bad guys…

the link: https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B089QTYD22

the extract:

Leaning against the side of the building, hidden in the shadows, Red Velvet watched a tattered newspaper being blown across the street. When it passed below a street light he could make out the headline:

THE SCARLET WEB:

MERCY CITY’S NEW FAVORITE FEMME FATALE!

Underneath it, there was a picture of a dark figure with a grappling hook leaping down from a high rooftop, their face obscured by a hood.

“Femme fatale,” Red Velvet muttered. “I hate that shit. They call every superheroine a ‘femme fatale’ these days. The only ones who don’t get called that are the silly ones like Daphne Dawnbright and Pudding Girl, or the ones who’re blonde, blue-eyed and wear a costume with stars and stripes on the ass. Seriously, that’s the only way to escape it. Otherwise you’re a femme fatale. Wear dark lipstick? Femme fatale. Wear something too skimpy or too concealing? Femme fatale. Don’t like talking to people? Femme fatale.”

“It’s bullshit,” said Ares, standing beside him and looking at his watch. “Where is he? It’s been ten minutes.”

Even in the dim light, his boss was a sight for sore eyes; dark curling hair, large and watchful brown eyes, a strong jaw and a body that would have stopped traffic even if it hadn’t been clad in tight Kevlar and midnight-blue spandex. There was a reason every major fan blogger ranked him fourth or higher on their Top Ten Sexiest Villains list, and it wasn’t just that they were afraid he’d show up at their homes and break all their stuff if they didn’t.

Not one to be easily deterred from his pet peeves, Red Velvet continued, “You know Laser and Ray, the speedster twins? I read an article last week that called those two femme fatales. I mean, that’s fucked up. They’re teenagers.”

“Yeah, Red, it sucks. Where the fuck is…”

The security camera they’d been keeping an eye on flashed. A lightning bolt shot out of it, briefly making the alley as bright as day. A second later, the lightning had taken on the shape of a slim man with his face hidden behind a vaguely piscine mask. The rest of his costume involved skin-tight grey spandex with a gold pattern on the arms and legs suggestive of scales, and thigh-high bitch boots that Ares had once tried to forbid him from wearing when they were on the job.

“Done,” said the Electric Eel, giving them both a thumbs-up and a crooked grin. “Alarm, cameras, drones, force field and nineteen booby-traps all toasted. Sorry it took a while. The guy who owns this place was prepared for fucking everything, from a crowbar to a cosmic monstrosity. Not for me, though.”

“People in this city are getting way too paranoid,” said Ares.

He wasn’t wrong. These days it seemed like every store and bank in Mercy City had high-end anti-supervillain tech on hand, courtesy of that precocious shit Digital Boy, the Remarkables’ top inventor.

the cover:

#books #bookblr #indie publishing #writeblr #gay romance #mm romance #queer romance #lgbtq books #novellas #selfpublished

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johnkrrasinski · 4 years ago

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𝙞𝙣𝙫𝙞𝙨𝙞𝙗𝙡𝙚 𝙨𝙩𝙧𝙞𝙣𝙜

Chapter 4: hell was the journey but it brought me heaven (final)

full masterlist // series masterlist // commission open // support my work

Pairings: bucky barnes x reader

Word Count: 2,943

Summary: blessed with telepathic abilities since birth, you were captured by HYDRA and turned into one of their weapons to kill. after the blip, you were pardoned by the government and you were obliged to check up with dr. raynor everyday which you had no clue would lead you to the one soul you’d been waiting for.

Warnings: SMUT!! (18+) dirty talk, oral (female receiving), fingering, shower sex, happy ending.

A/N: this series is dedicated to the lovely @ohmickeyhenry who commissioned this story and developed the concept. thank you for trusting me with your story. i sincerely hope you like it.

You sat on the front porch as your fingers flipped through the page of the romance novel you had your nose in. It was a beautiful day, the weather wasn’t too hot or too cold, perfect to spend hours escaping into a story outside. Alpine purred on the chair where Bucky would sit if he was here but he wasn’t because he was on an overseas mission with Sam and though you offered to come with him, Tony said that it would be best if you sat this one out. You didn’t take it personally, however, it was hard to be separated from him for nearly a month.

Bucky said he’d be coming home soon and though the mission kept delaying them to come home, Bucky called and texted you every day to let you know that he was alright and how far on completing the mission had they gone. You were glad that Sam and Bucky had each other while you weren’t around to take care of him because you knew that Sam was the only person who could ground him other than you.

You and Bucky had been together for nearly five months now, after your recovery in Wakanda and adjusting to the new life of being superheroes, you both decided that you wanted to settle in a more remote place. All of the Avengers had their own places outside of the compound so you thought, why don’t you get yours? You talked about getting your own place in Brooklyn but eventually, you came to a decision where somewhere in the country would be better for both of your mental beings, while also still residing in the New York area so that you’d be ready in case there are emergency missions.

Since moving to the countryside, you had felt much more at peace and you had learned more about yourself than before. You were in the middle of the process of moving in when Bucky was needed by Tony to take care of an international matter with Sam, so Tony helped call in some people to help you with your stuff.

The place you had with Bucky was lovely, it wasn’t anything big or swanky, it was simply a rural rustic home that blends woods and stones as the foundation. It had a large loft where you placed your bed, and the roof had upper windows which shed lights into the entire room. It was even more stunning at night where you could see the stars and the moon that illuminated the dark space. From the veranda, you could enjoy the beautiful view of greenery and the lake surrounding you. It was heaven, but most importantly, it was your and Bucky’s little heaven.

You’d often feel lonely living in the cabin, so you decided to adopt a cat while Bucky was away. You didn’t tell him because you wanted it to be a surprise. You named her Alpine. You’d always wanted to have a pet and now that you had your own place, you could have one without worrying it would bother anyone.

You talked to Bucky this morning and he estimated that he’d be coming home in two days, which means he’d be home by his birthday. You couldn’t think of a more perfect gift than this adorable, blue-eyed cat. It was as if she got them from her dad whom she had yet to meet. You also wanted to make his birthday and celebrate his coming home more special so you put down the book and went to the grocery store in town that afternoon to shop for the ingredients to bake a cake.

You had learned a lot of new things after you moved here, and baking was quickly becoming your hobby, so you were excited to utilize that new skill to surprise the love of your life. You spent the next day in the kitchen so once Bucky walked through the front door, the cake would be ready to be served. You were giddy thinking about the look on his face and how proud you would feel to make him happy with something you made of your own.

You were lying on your couch with Alpine by your feet, reading the book that you didn’t get to finish yesterday when you heard your phone notifying you a text had been received.

I’m outside, babydoll.

You instantly got up from your couch and put your book on the table. Your first thought this morning was Bucky would back to your arms this afternoon and you were ecstatic. You had missed him terribly and you wanted to curl up in his embrace and never let him go. He was your anchor and you were his rock, you both needed each other to get through the days. How you managed to survive so long without him was beyond you.

You chose a nice outfit, nothing fancy just a simple sundress that you feel your best in, put on some makeup and did your hair. Though you didn’t have a clue on makeup products, let alone apply them all over your face, you did spend a handful of times watching Youtube for guidance. You knew you didn't have to put all that effort to keep Bucky in love with you but you wanted to do something nice for him. For the first time in forever, you were a free woman who was allowed to make her own choices, you were going to revel in exploring them.

You opened the door and there he was, as handsome as the devil, as gentle as an angel. Everything about him captivated you yet, he soothed every nervous system in your body too. He was grinning at you like he had just won a prize and you couldn’t help but throw yourself at him as soon as the door was fully opened. “Bucky!”

He hugged you back, holding you so tightly to his chest and he kissed you as a lover would until you needed air. “You’re a sight for sore eyes,” he swept the hair that was falling on your face, slightly hiding your beauty.

You smiled at his flattery, “I got a surprise for you…”

“A surprise?” He looked genuinely perplexed. “What’s the occasion?”

“It’s your birthday, silly. And to celebrate you coming home, of course, because I missed you so badly.”

“Sweetheart, you don't need to get me anything, you’re all the blessing I need in my life.”

“And you are mine, but you deserve more. So, close your eyes.” You ordered him like you were an excited 10 years old ready to show off her science project to her parents. He did as he was told and you took his hand and led him to the kitchen where his cake was sitting perfectly. “Don’t open your eyes until I tell you!”

He chuckled, “okay.”

Bucky trusted you wholeheartedly so he didn’t worry he’d walk into a wall or slam his hips to the kitchen counter as he was being led down to where his cake was. “Okay, now open your eyes.” He did so and he saw you standing behind the tiny dining table, near the kitchen chanting Ta-Da! Presenting a chocolate birthday cake, in the shape of a heart in front of you.

You lit up the candles that were in the shape of 106 and you brought the cake closer to him, “happy birthday, my love.”

Bucky was grinning from ear to ear, he couldn’t contain the happiness swelling in his heart. While he was on his bike, driving from the compound to his cabin-like home, all he expected was a warm shower and being tangled between the sheets with you. Since he was turned into The Winter Soldier, he no longer cared about birthdays or his age. Time felt blurry and all that mattered was his purpose in his life which is to make amends to the wrongs he committed during his winter soldier days and the few people that he cared about.

But now you were in his life, you were going to make sure his birthdays are special and that every second you both spent together was precious. “I got another surprise for you…” You walked to the couch to carry Alpine and when Bucky saw her, his eyes lit up.

“You got us a cat?!” You handed her to Bucky gently like a newborn baby and Bucky cradled her to his chest, looking like an affectionate father.

“I did. I felt lonely while you were away so I thought I’d get a pet now that we’ve got our own place and I saw her at the shelter when I went to town and she looked so adorable, I just had to take her home, Buck,” you watched Bucky lovingly stroke the cat’s ear.

“I never had a pet before…”

“I know, and neither had I so I thought, the three of us would make a wonderful family.”

“Thank you, doll. This is… This is the best birthday gift I could ever ask for.”

“You’re welcome, love. By the way, her name’s Alpine.”

Bucky nodded, “suits her.”

“Now, as delicious as that cake looks, I really need to take a shower, would you mind joining me?” Bucky held out his hand for you.

“There’s nothing else I’d rather do,” Bucky took your hand and carried you in bridal style to your bathroom, which had rustic walls like the rest of the house and dark brown sink vanity with a mirror at the centre above.

Bucky put you down and you both began stripping out of your clothes. You helped Bucky with his once yours were on the hanger because you wanted to feel him, really feel him now. Once only his boxer remained, you slid the shower glass door and you pulled him, giggling like teenagers trying to sneak out in the middle of the night as he struggled to take off his boxer with the way you were pulling him.

You turned on the shower, just warm enough to soothe your nerves and help Bucky relax. Bucky cupped your face and you both began making out, the stream of water made it difficult to keep your eyes open but you always got so lost in his kisses that you could never keep your eyes open even if you wanted to. It felt like heaven to feel those lips again after a month of his absence.

Bucky lifted you and you wrapped your legs around his waist. He slammed you to the bathroom glass as he dominated your mouth, his tongue tangled with yours as his vibranium arm leaned against the glass. Bucky trailed kissed to the column of your neck and you threw your head back, giving him easier access. He bit the skin, marking you as his.

The water kept flowing down and you both forgot what you were there for in the first place. “Oh, missed you so fucking much, doll.”

“I missed you too,” you said as you panted.

“Those nude pictures you sent weren’t helping either. Each time I see you naked, it went straight to my cock. It was torture not to have you right away.” Bucky put you down and kissed your body, down to your stomach until he reached the part where you needed him most. Bucky lifted your right leg onto his shoulder and kissed the inside of your thigh as he left a love bite with his teeth there too.

You didn’t mind, you were his as much as he was yours and you loved it when he got a little rough or possessive, though you knew Bucky would never hurt you and if he did, you wouldn��t hesitate in telling him. But you loved to walk around with his marks on you, you wore them proudly.

Bucky dipped his head to your core, tasting your arousal like a famished man. He had been deprived of your taste for a month, he wasn’t going to hold back. He could spend hours in between your legs if you let him and he’d never get tired of it. Bucky licked a stripe of your slit, making you throw your head back again and moan.

He grabbed your arse to keep you standing, with the way he was devouring you, your thighs began to shake, and you would’ve crumbled to the floor if he wasn’t holding you. You tugged his hair, keeping his face close to your cunt. You couldn’t help but grind yourself onto his face and you could feel him smirking.

The way his stubble grazed your delicate skin was tantalizing, you’d tried to close your legs a few times around his head but he always held them back. You could feel your muscles tightening, but before you could burst, Bucky put your leg to the floor and he stood up, kissing you again and you could taste your arousal all over his tongue. It was erotic yet intimate at the same time.

Bucky grabbed your hips and spun you around, you could feel his stiff member nudging you from behind as you both fought for dominance with your tongues. Bucky took a fistful of your hair and lifted your head back, once again trailing open-mouthed kisses to your throat. His fingers made their way down to your clit, rubbing it in circles furiously as if you weren’t soaked enough already from the way his tongue ingurgitated you.

You whimpered at his touch, the way he always knew how to light up every cell in your body with his touch was a wonder. It was as if your body had given itself completely to him and it was going to comply with whatever his touch tells you to do. Like the way you willingly bared your soul to him, you didn’t fight it at all, let the love and passion you had for each other consume you.

“You’re dripping all over my hand, doll.”

“I need you to fuck me now, please.” You were losing your mind with the way he was stimulating you, you needed to have him inside you now.

“Anything for you, baby.”

Bucky used your wetness to lubricate his member, making it easier for him to slide in. You leaned against the glass with your hands against it as he gripped your hip with his flesh hand and your shoulder with his vibranium one. Bucky pushed himself until he was fully sheathed and he groaned, “oh fuck, I ain’t gonna last long. Missed this tight cunt so much.”

Bucky gave you a few seconds to adjust to his size, and once you told him to move, he began with slow paces. You threw your head back and leaned against his shoulder as he kept thrusting in and out of you at a faster speed. Bucky moved his vibranium arm to your hip and wrapped his flesh hand around your jaw, directing it to his face so he could kiss you deeply.

The sounds of your skin slapping were salacious. Bucky felt you clenched around him and the coil in your stomach tightened. His fingers that were gripping your waist once again furiously rubbed your clit, igniting the fire in your muscles. Your cries grew louder as his rhythm began to falter, and the dam in you broke, your squirts streamed down your thighs, clouding your brain with pleasure.

Bucky started to get messy as he chased his own orgasm. He followed you to the place of euphoria, releasing himself deep inside you, panting your walls with hot white gush. Bucky leaned his forehead against the glass as he breathed heavily with his heart thumping against his chest. His weight on your back was comforting so you stayed there for a while until you both began to come down from your highs.

Bucky pulled out of you and his orgasm ran down your thighs, following yours. You turned around to face him and kiss him again. “That was fucking amazing,” Bucky said as he cleaned you up.

“I should be the one doing that, I wasn’t the one who just came home from a one month mission,” you retorted as you watched him going down to scrub your thighs where your juices were sticking on your skin.

“Well, now that I’m here, let me take care of my girl, will ya?”

You only chuckled and eventually, you both helped rinsed each other off. Once the shower was done, Bucky dried you with a towel and carried you to your bed, which he had yet to sleep on since it got here.

Life was a funny thing. Sometimes it dragged you down to hell, making you question if you had ever committed such a heinous crime in your previous life that cost you such misery in your present. But then, slowly but surely, the journey that you had to endure, led you to your fate, for better or for worse.

You couldn’t change where you had been and what you had done, but you could choose how you were going to redeem yourself and how you were going to spend the remaining years of your life now. You didn’t know much about your future as an Avenger. Hell, you were barely an Avenger, to begin with, but eventually, when you were ready, you knew there’d be nothing too big to overcome because you had Bucky by your side to walk through the storm with.

You didn’t have the privilege to believe in mystical things such as lucky stars but you were going to thank whatever was out there for the invisible string that tied you to Bucky.

tags; @ohmickeyhenry @suitofvibraniumarmor @themaddies-obx @themaddies-obx @beminetokeep @bluemoon-icecream @bluemoon-icecream-blog @harprs @thefridgeismybestie @abitofeverythingg @wolfonthemoonwatchestvshows @julimelodi @bookscoffeandotherstuff @tanyaherondale @artisancowbells @ferxaniti @intothesoul @hallecarey1 @buckybarnesplumwhore @thefallenbibliophilequote @andiyholly @emizla @capxwinter @jevans2 @alwaysreadingimagineschick @swtltlmrvlgrl @extremelyblackandwhite

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perksofbeingradioactive · 3 years ago

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Dick and Wally loved rom-coms. It was a public secret at the Mountain. At first if someone caught them watching, they would find an explaination as to why it was on or blame M'gann, but after a while (and too many "accidental" scenes of "Love,actually") they ran out of excuses and just gave in. Wally's all time favourite was "Four weddings and a funeral", while with Dick, it was a tie between "One day" and "When Harry met Sally" (because, friends to lovers). The first time they watched "Four weddings and a funeral" when the scene with the funeral passed,Wally turned to Dick:

"I want somebody to recite that at my funeral"he stated,mouth full of popcorn.

"Dude,why are you thinking about that??"Dick responded, still a bit shook from the emotional scene that just passed.

"Well, it could happen any day in our line of work, so I'm telling you, as my best friend, my requests"

"Pfft, any musical wishes?"Dick asked sarcastically, "Also,who do you think would read the poem anyway? I don't recall you having a husband last time I checked. And if you do, well, that funeral will be much sooner than expected, given that you didn't invite me to the wedding."

"Hmm" Wally furowed his brows, deep in thought, "I haven't figured out that one yet, but when it happens I bet it'll be my smoking hot, smart-ass girlfriend with whom I'll have at least two dogs".

Dick scoffed "Okay,sure Kid Mouth, lets lighten up a bit, we still have two weddings left"...

Every single time they watched the movie, the same conversation would come up and it would never get past the"Who will read the poem" part.

...

The night before Kid Flash officially retired, he and Dick watched their favourites in Wally's room one last time. After "Love,actually", "Notting Hill" and "Bridget Jones' diary" (it almost seemed like Wally had a thing for Hugh Grant,the blue-eyed,brown-haired heart throb) "Four Wedding and a funeral" got its turn. As the funeral scene was ending, Dick was ready to repeat the same sentences he always did during the years,but Wally's opening line surprised him:

"I've decided who's going to recite at my funeral" he said with a smirk(yet again, mouth full of popcorn).

"I hope you told Artemis cause she does not like surprises" Dick looked away, feeling a sting of jealously over a hipothetical situation. And even if it weren't, god forbid, Arty is his girlfriend, Dick snap out of it!

"Oh no, she doesn't, but she shouldn't be worried cause I chose you" Wally turned to Dick, who went through 17 different emotions in 3 seconds.

"Why me?" Dick asked after processing the newfound information for much longer than his mind usually did.

"Well, your my bestest friend in the whole wide world plus with how many times we've watched this masterpiece, I bet you know the poem by heart"

"Just because you love it doesn't mean it's a masterpiece" Dick tried averting from the conversation.

"I know, but it still is. You haven't responded"

"But its a love poem and most oftenly linked to these two guys!" Dick slightly raised his voice, panicking.

"If someone even tries to comment anything even slightly negative on that matter, they will be haunted by yours truly for the rest of eternity" Wally joked, punching Dick in the shoulder.

"So,will you do it?"he asked after few minutes of silence.

"Yeah, of course" Dick huffed "but don't you dare die any time soon!"

"Well, with Artemis' cooking, it might be sooner than you think" Wally grined,enjoying his best friend's company...

...

It was a rather gloomy day, although it wasn't raining. You'd think that rain was an essential part of every funeral, but people died throughout the whole year. Dick was sitting in the first row, next to Artemis and her mother, Barry and Iris, wearing dark sunglasses and a black suit. He felt a deja-vu, but unlike at his parents' funeral, he wasn't crying. Not that he didn't want to (he wanted to lie and weep and scream at the sky and curse into the ground all at the same time) it just wasn't his assigned role. Artemis was sobbing into her mother's shoulder, Barry's face was puffed, he definitely spent the night crying, same as Iris'. Dick couldn't cry in front of them, he was just Wally's friend. Who also got him killed. Wally was never supposed to get back into the superhero business and now he was gone. It was all Dick's fault. No one said that to him,but Dick knew it was the truth. And there was nothing more that Dick wanted than to dig up a hole and just die in it(that is actually a lie,more than that he wanted his best friend back) but unfortunately, that wasn't possible, so he got up to hold an eulogy for his (former)oldest,best friend.

Dick cleared his throat, checking if he actually had the strength in his voice to pull this of, and started: "Wally loved romantic comedies. He would cheer when it came to the happy ending and complained and cried when there wasn't. It was always easy to figure out Wally's emotions. When he was happy he smiled and when he was sad he ate 2 gallons of chocolate ice cream. When he asked me to read a poem from one of his favourite movies at his funeral I could see he was being serious. That was weird because: 1)he wasn't serious very often and 2)we were teenagers and you don't really think about these thing when you're a teenager. So here I am, today, respecting my best friend's,at the time,riddiculous wish."

Dick pulled out a piece of paper with the scribbled poem but then he stopped and put it away. Wally was right,he knew it by heart.

"Stop all the clocks, cut off the telephone, Prevent the dog from barking with a juicy bone,

Silence the pianos and with muffled drum Bring out the coffin, let the mourners come.

Let aeroplanes circle moaning overhead Scribbling on the sky the message He Is Dead,

Put crepe bows round the white necks of the public doves,

Let the traffic policemen wear black cotton gloves.

He was my North, my South, my East and West." Dick paused,trying to keep himself together.

" My working week and my Sunday rest,

My noon, my midnight, my talk, my song;

I thought that love would last for ever: I was wrong.

The stars are not wanted now: put out every one;

Pack up the moon and dismantle the sun; Pour away the ocean and sweep up the wood;

For nothing now can ever come to any good. "

He whispered the last line,saying a final goodbye to the one that got away.

#birdflash #dick grayson #wally west #nightwing #kid flash #young justice #the flash #dc

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redhoodieone · 4 years ago

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Welcome Home

A/N: Hi everyone! This is an old fic that I’m re-posting for those who want to read it. Enjoy!

WARNINGS: Language and Smut.

I knew my family was different the moment I found out my adoptive father was Batman. I was just a ten-year-old girl when I snuck down the stairs at midnight for a drink of water and spotted Batman leaving a trail of blood from his study and calling out for Alfred for help. The moment our eyes locked, Bruce instantly knew that I was clearly aware of his secret. He had also confessed it was him who saved me from a shootout that my parents were involved in and that it was him, as Batman. I felt I owed Bruce my own life for saving me, and I vowed to keep my father’s secret and pray that he would return home safely every night back to me.

It didn’t help that I soon discovered my adoptive older brother Dick Grayson was Robin. Not only did I have to keep his secret as well, but it made it more impossible to not have a crush on him. I mean, Dick has such a charming personality, beautiful baby blue eyes, and a devilish smile that can make any girl crawl on her hands and knees. And that ass…

I later found myself becoming the second Robin once Dick left to assume his own identity, Nightwing. Bruce trusted me, and he saw potential in me the second I told him I couldn’t see myself being a hero forever. Perhaps he never really wanted me to be his sidekick and figured if I got it out of my system that I could resume my life as a sixteen-year-old and do normal teenager activities. As if my life was normal anyways.

But things changed as soon as I was finally embracing myself as a hero. Bruce had taken in a new kid, Jason Todd. He was a troublemaker, a rebel, and a mysterious kid, who had never even spoken to me unless he had to. I don’t think my age helped the situation either; I was a couple of years older than him and he may not have seen me as an equal. But of course, the dark haired, icy blue eyed, bad attitude boy was given the Robin title, and I was removed because of a patrol-gone-wrong situation.

Stupid Harley Quinn and her baseball bat. Who knew one hit to my knee could bench me for two months (Alfred added an additional five months of rest).

Then the unthinkable happened. The second Robin was killed by the Joker. Jason Todd’s death put Bruce into a depression, and he swore he would never put another kid’s life in danger. Our father and daughter relationship broke apart before my very eyes. I spent my remaining teenage years in the mansion isolated, except for Alfred’s loving company.

I had graduated high school on time and I quickly decided to go to Gotham University to escape the Bat family. Before I moved out, I discovered Bruce had taken in another kid, Tim Drake, who was currently the new Robin. Was I hurt? Of course, I felt I was somehow replaced. Would I miss the Bat family? Maybe. Maybe not.

I did in fact wish the new younger Robin good luck. When Tim looked up at me, his light blue eyes were so innocent and frightened about me leaving him behind. I didn’t know why he would be so upset about me leaving; wouldn’t he want all of Bruce’s attention without me hanging around the mansion?

Now I’m twenty-one-years-old, and I’m still a student at Gotham University. Alfred had just called and informed me Bruce wants me back home.

As I sit in a taxi while anxiously waiting to pull up to Wayne Manor, I honestly don’t know why Bruce wants me back at home. Alfred has kept me up to date about the Bat family incidents and activities I have missed out those few years such as:

Dick Grayson becoming a womanizer (I saw it coming) and how he’s juggling working as a police officer and Nightwing. He’s still the favorite and golden child in Bruce’s eyes.

Jason Todd is back from the dead, and he’s currently operating his own team: Red Hood and the Outlaws (who knew he was leadership material underneath that thick skull of his?).

Tim Drake is Red Robin (does the fast food chain restaurant know about his superhero name?), and he’s currently assisting the Teen Titans when necessary while simultaneously aiding Bruce with detective work.

Damian Wayne is Bruce Wayne’s unknown biological child. I think he’s about fifteen-years-old now; from what I remember the last time I spoke to Alfred. I met Damian once, when Bruce asked me to meet him once Talia al Ghul practically dropped him off at Bruce’s doorstep. The boy was a little shit: bratty, stuck up, and insensitive. Even though he is the spitting image of Bruce, minus the different colored eyes (Bruce has blue and Damian’s are green), Damian claims he is set to take over the cowl when Bruce is either dead or done. God help us all…

But I still can’t figure out why I am needed back home. Is Alfred sick? Is Bruce dying after fighting all these years? Is it one of my brothers?

I jump in surprise once the taxi comes to a hard stop. After paying the man, I grab my duffel bag and I climb the front steps that I suddenly remember jumping off them as a kid. Alfred scolded me many times, and I still did it because being bad was fun.

I scoff loudly, and I jump down the five steps that would have given Alfred a heart attack. Maybe I haven’t changed as much as I thought.

I find the wooden front door unlocked, which is odd considering Alfred always makes sure to lock it. As a matter of fact, Alfred hasn’t greeted me like he always does when I come home. Where is Alfred?

After I unwrap my scarf, I pull my hoodie over my head to be more comfortable in the warm house. Sadly, I forgot to do laundry yesterday, so I came home in just my black yoga pants and red tank top. What would Alfred say?

I kick off my shoes and walk to the kitchen barefoot. Pulling my long hair into a ponytail, I notice a note on the counter that’s written for me. I unfold the note and stare at the nicest, well done cursive handwriting only one man can do here.

Dear Lady Y/N,

I sincerely apologize for not being there to greet you properly. Master Bruce had wanted me to take my holiday to London early, and Lord knows I can use a week to myself after stitching up countless wounds, tidying up bedrooms and Bat caves, and playing messenger between you and your father. I have a cooked roast with garlic mash potatoes in the refrigerator if you are hungry. Do heat it up and perhaps show your father and brothers how to use the microwave.

I dearly love you and the boys,

Love Alfred Pennyworth

P.S.

Look into the highest cabinet above the refrigerator, and you will discover a jar of freshly baked chocolate chip cookies just for you.

I grin widely, and before I can turn around and find the cookies, I’m stuck between the counter and a tall, hard body behind me. I freeze.

“Welcome home, Y/N. I missed you so much,” Bruce whispers in my ear. I can feel his hot breath above my shoulder and neck. The familiar smell of his expensive cologne fills my nostrils. His large hands rub my legs and grip onto my hips very hard. “Did you miss me?”

“H-hi dad. W-what are you doing?” I ask softly, but I know it came out like a whisper. One of his hands is holding my waist, while the other caresses my abdomen. It feels strange considering Bruce is supposed to be my father, and we shouldn’t be this close or even touching each other. But a part of me wants to keep feeling his hands on me and see what he does next.

“Holding you. Smelling you. Touching you,” he answers, as if it’s the most obvious thing in the world. He breathes harder when I press my backside against his front by accident. “It appears you want this too. Am I correct, Y/N?”

His hand pulls down my yoga pants enough, so he can reach into my underwear. Bruce continues to breathe hard from his nose when his fingers find my core. His thumb rubs fast circles on my clit, while he pushes two fingers inside me. I bite my bottom lip to stop a loud moan from coming out of me, but he appears he’ll have none of that. He stops fingering me.

“You better be loud, or I won’t let you cum, Y/N.”

Before I can beg him to keep going, he turns my face, so I can look him in those cold, pale blue eyes. “Please tell me you’re…not a virgin.” Bruce’s face is twisted in pleasure from just fingering me, but I can tell his lips are trembling and there’s a soft but pleading look in his eyes. This must hurt him as much as it’s hurting me.

“I-I’m not,” I confess, and wonder if he would change his mind if I said I was.

“Who was it with?” Bruce demands. He kisses along my shoulder to my neck before he bites on my soft spot. I hiss in pain and I grind into him again.

“Josh Mitchell. I was sixteen,” I answer harshly.

“Was he any good?”

Before I can answer, Bruce shoves the front of my body onto the counter, while he pulls down my yoga pants. My adrenaline is rushing, and I can feel myself wetting the counter from just his roughness. I can feel him unzip his pants and I can already imagine this thick, hard cock fucking me into oblivion.

“No, no he wasn’t good at all!” I cry out.

“Good, I’m actually relieved to hear that,” Bruce says, as he starts to stroke himself. “Do you want me to fuck you, Y/N?”

I want to turn around and watch him jack off. Hearing him pleasure himself isn’t enough. Bruce then jams two fingers back into my pussy and I whimper loudly. It has been too long since I’ve been intimate with a man. I need his cock now!

“I asked you a question, Y/N. Do I need to remind you who you are supposed to answer to?” he says seriously before adding a third finger inside me. I grip the counter and I breathe harder. I find myself rubbing my pussy on the edge of the smooth countertop for more friction, but he grabs my hips and stops me. “Now, do you want me to fuck you, Y/N, or should I leave you here, so you can dry hump the countertop alone?”

I growl louder, while my nails scratch the counter top. “YES! Yes, I want you to fuck me, Dad!”

As soon as those words left my mouth, I immediately wonder if I killed the mood. Why would I call him ‘dad’ when we’re about to have hot, rough sex in the kitchen? I need to apologize. I push myself up on my elbows and I shift my head to the side to apologize. I open my mouth to speak but stop when Bruce’s eyes darkened, and he growls as he slams his thick cock inside me.

I moan louder than I have in my entire life. His cock fills me up so much that I fear I won’t be able to walk straight for the next week or two. Bruce lifts my legs up and continues to shove me against the counter with every hard thrust. He wasn’t kidding when he said he was going to fuck me. The man is practically drilling into me with no kindness at all.

“Oh fuck! You’re so fucking tight. So wet and so hot,” Bruce groans out. With each thrust, I can feel he wants to let go and fuck me like he owns me.

“Go ahead, Dad. Fuck me. Fuck me like I’m yours and only yours,” I tempt him playfully.

Bruce growls and rams his cock faster into me. He keeps knocking the air out from my lungs, and I can feel my body pulsating against his. I grip the countertop harder each time, and I know my knuckles are turning white and becoming numb every second. With one hand on my hips, Bruce moves his other hand up my tank top to hold my tits.

“No bra? You’re a bad girl,” Bruce says in between panting.

“I forgot to do laundry,” I choke out.

“Excuses,” he manages to say, as he holds me up more, so he can penetrate me deeper. His cock is hitting a deeper spot in me. It must be my g-spot, because I have read about it but never actually felt it to know. I can feel myself clenching his dick tightly, and I know I’m getting closer to release. “You wanted me and your brothers to see your tits, huh?”

“Maybe,” I cry out louder than what I intended to. Fuck, what if one of my brothers hears me? They’ll really think I’m insane for fucking our father and for loving it every second. Bruce readjusts our position once more, so he can hit that spot continuously. “I-I think I’m going to cum!”

“Not yet, you better not!” Bruce growls, and drills into me harder and faster. With his powerful thrusts and the constant friction from the countertop on my clit, I know for a fact that I can’t last longer. His hands hold onto my hips while he fucks me harder than before.

I become a moaning mess. I can feel my mouth drop open because I feel liquid coming out from my core. Did I just squirt? What the hell is happening to me?

The sounds of skin on skin is louder because of my mess. I drop my head onto the counter while Bruce continues to fuck me. Before I can catch my breath, Bruce chuckles and lifts me up. “I just made you squirt. That has never happened before, has it?”

“No, that was my first time,” I answer breathlessly. He kisses my neck.

“You’re so wet,” Bruce grunts into my ear. Breathing heavily, he lifts my hips again, so he can rub my clit with his fingers. “You’re making a mess all over my cock. You’re such a bad girl.”

“I’m your bad girl,” I moan out, as I can feel another orgasm threatening to take over my body.

“Fuck yes, you are!” Bruce groans, and continues to shove his cock into my soaking wet pussy.

With every rough thrust, I know Bruce won’t last. I whimper once more when my pussy clenches his dick as he fucks me through my orgasm. A few more hard thrusts, Bruce pulls out and turns me over onto my back. He jacks himself off as I watch his cum spurt out all over my stomach.

Just seeing his hard, veiny thick cock before me turns me on once more. I lick my lips at how the tip of his dick glistens with his cum.

Bruce sighs heavily, and just when I think I should try to get up and clean myself, he pulls me up and kisses me. He shoves his tongue into my mouth, and we explore each other’s mouths as if this was our last chance to. He pulls away from me and rests his forehead against mine.

“You’re mine, Y/N. You belong to me, and the Batfamily. I don’t care who wants you, because you will never give them what you have given me. Do you understand?” Bruce asks, before giving me his famous bat glare.

“I understand, and I promise,” I swear before he kisses me once more.

“Good, now go wash up,” Bruce instructs before he helps me off the counter.

I grab a paper towel and wipe Bruce’s cum off my stomach before I pull up my yoga pants. As soon as I toss the damped paper towel into the trash, I immediately notice Dick Grayson is standing there at the entrance of the kitchen staring at me with fire in his eyes.

#dc comics #batman #bruce wayne #bruce wayne x reader #bruce wayne x y/n #bruce wayne x reader smut #bruce wayne x y/n smut #bruce wayne smut #batman smut

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zagged-again · 3 years ago

Note

So, since Liv is the only girl superhero of her school (...as far as we know), and Zoé stated she had only one friend in New York (the French dub of Sole Crusher uses feminine words for said friend)...

I think you get my drift. What if Liv was the friend Zoé had? Given she too leads a double life as a superhero, perhaps she managed to figure that Zoé was acting out an idealized self and went on to try and befriend the real Zoé.

(would also be quite fitting that Zoé's friends in both towns would be dark-haired animated as blue, blue-eyed teenage girls with a like for the color pink and a superhero double life)

That'd be super cute!! It would add more to Zoe, and I'd love to see Liv befriend another girl. (I mean, she does seem to get along with Charly and Carla, but we don't really get to see them bond)

That would make for an interesting AU 🤔

#ghostforce #miraculous ladybug #liv baker #zoe lee #replies

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iloveitwhen · 4 years ago

Text

First Meetings

I really should have posted this a long long time ago but.............. oh well.

@jasonette-july-2k20

Sibling Jasonette

The first time he met Marinette he was pissed, she looked nothing like him! How dare she claim to be the daughter of his mother.

“Listen, little girl,” he snarled at the dark haired teenager who stood calmly in front of him, “I don’t care how you got that name but I do not have a sister.”

“Don’t the eyes match?” she asked emotionless, staring at him in a challenge. Jason was startled and took a better look at hers and felt the blood drain from his face. She was right, despite only meeting his mother for a short time he committed the face in his memory, the girl shared the same shaped rose lips, small nose, and shade of blue eyes that matched not only his mothers but his own.

“My father was another doctor in Ethiopia, I was five when Shiela died and I was sent to live with my biological father’s sister and her husband in France.” She took a deep breath, “look. You don’t have to believe me but I wanted to let you know, I think people deserve the decency to know these things.” She adjusted the strap of her backpack on her back and turned to leave. “I’m sorry you didn’t want me for a sister.” she says as she walks away.

Jason stands there for a moment, he doesn’t know if he wants to believe it, but she had proof on her face that held his mother’s features. Could she only be after him for his connection to Bruce? Was she really his sister?

Sister.

He had to make sure.

“Wait!” he stepped outside of his apartment and looked down the hallway the way she walked but she was already gone. He quickly shut his door and chased after her, letting his long legs bound over the running children down the hall. He skidded to a halt when he came to the reception desk.

“Did a teenage girl with black pigtails just walk out of here?” he shouts at Riley, the receptionist who nods vigorously noticing his panic. He runs out and looks around the small area, luckily he was taller than most people and could easily look over the heads of the few people who were around in the early morning. Unluckily she had disappeared just as quickly as she had appeared.

“Shit!”

“You know it’s not polite to curse.” Jason whipped around and found the girl was leaning against the wall with her arms crossed.

“You played me.”

She shrugged, “you wouldn’t listen to me and I wasn’t sure if you’d come down or not to be honest.” then she pushed herself off the wall and gave him a bright smile and laughed a little, completely different from how she was acting before at his door, “I am glad you came though!”

This girl was throwing him for a loop.

“How do I know you're telling the truth? And what do you want?” she gave him a quizzical look.

“We can do a blood test, and I don’t want anything from you!” she said as if it was the most scandalous thing. “I would never do such a thing, I just wanted to meet you.” she gave another, more soft smile, it was quite disarming and Jason got the distinct realization that this girl could be very dangerous.

---

The first time he met Ladybug he was quite confused. She was standing in front of him in the filthiest part of Gotham in a strange red and black polka dotted superhero spandex suit with thick brown accents. Just who did she think she was running around in that suit. He eyed her warily, she had a similar face shape as his sister except she was taller and had big brown eyes and white hair crafted into twin braided tails that fell down to her waist.

“Please, Red Hood.”

"Look. I don't know you, you could be some evil mastermind for all I care, and besides, I'm really not the person you should ask. Even if this all is real I have anger issues and hearing about this guy really fuels my desire to kill the bastard." He shakes his head and shrugs. "I don't know what to tell you, I'm not even the best detective, actually, I might be the worst out of the bunch." He turns to leave but the girl calls him back.

"Wait. You can help, I sought you out specifically, and you are also quite good at keeping secrets and this definitely needs to be kept a secret. We already know who is behind the mask but we need proof and that's where you come in. We need help, please, just think about it. I'll be here in two days at the same time for your answer. If you decide to help bring a bag with a few changes of clothes and whatever you need."

"I'll think about it."

She nodded and gave him a sad smile before turning and yelling, "voyage!" And stepping through a portal.

Weird. Well at least he’d be able to see his sister, she did live in Paris after all. For a moment he thought that Ladybug could be Marinette but shook his head she would have told him about bleaching her hair, not to say that she wouldn’t be the type to hero around but there was just no way, Jason wasn’t that unlucky.

---

Red Hood waited at the agreed upon spot with a duffle bag on the ground at his feet when the weird hero chick opened a portal and stepped through.

“Red Hood!” she says, relief passing through her features and she spots his duffle and looks at him with excitement in her eyes. “Have you decided to help?” she asks with a hopeful smile.

Red Hood grunts in response before threatening, “look, I don’t kill kids but if this is some sort of joke I might break my rules.” But instead of looking scared she sighed in relief, keeping her smile.

“Thank you Red.” Jason’s heart broke a little at the utmost gratitude from her voice, like no one ever bothered to help her when she asked for it. Before she could say another word the round thing on her hip beeped and when she opened it she grimaced.

“We have an akuma attack. Come on, I want you to watch but stay out of sight.” she called “voyage” again like last time and a portal appeared but she looked back at him and added, “please stay out of this fight, we have this handled and you will get in the way.” He nodded and they stepped through.

She had portaled them to the top of a tall building, it was nighttime in Paris when it was dusk at Gotham and in the distance he saw the Eiffel Tower getting picked up by a giant kid who looked about six years old but was half the size of the Eiffel Tower itself that he just chucked. Behind the mask Jason's brows went high and his jaw dropped.

“Don’t worry,” the girl reassured him. “Gigantitan isn’t too bad, just a poor kid who gets akumatized regularly. Dismount.”

“Dismo-?” Jason began but was caught off guard by the flash of teal colored light surrounding the girl. In place of the suit from before she stood in a mostly black suit with red and black polka dots covering her arms and torso, the bottom was black with a thick red stripe around her ankles and black under her forearms and palms. Her hair had changed to black with short pigtails and her eyes blue.

“What the f-”

“Stay out of sight, I’ll come back for you.” She pulled the round thing off her hip and started swinging it in a circle by a string, was that a yoyo?, and swung off after the giant baby child. Jason was slightly panicked, she just transformed in a flash of light and looked like his sister when they first met. Marinette had outgrown the pigtails and now usually wore her hair down, in braids, or in buns. And her eyes were blue. Jason shook his head of the thought, this Ladybug must have just made the pigtails popular, and plenty of people have blue eyes. He then ran after the hero to get a closer look without getting in the way.

He saw two more heroes trying to keep the monster contained when they converged to meet up with the Ladybug. He decided to get closer and leaped across the rooftops till he could see and hear the heroes working clearly but was also out of the way.

It was clear Ladybug was the leader, she barked orders while joining the fight as well. It was a quick win but the weirdest part wasn’t when the giant-baby-thing was enveloped in purple goo and shrunk to reveal a young six year old boy, it was when the girl tossed something in the air and a burst of little flying things came out of nowhere and magically fixed everything, including the destroyed Eiffel Tower. Jason was very confused. Sure he’d seen some crazy things over the years but that didn’t mean it was any less strange. He observed how they surrounded the boy and comforted him, soon the blonde haired man in the all black suit and cat ears gathered the boy in his arms and bounded away, likely taking the boy home. The black spotted hero with her third partner, pointing to the place he was told to stay and they both sprouted wings and flew in that direction.

“Hey!” he called out, stepping into the light. The two heroes looked over and started in his direction. They landed softly on the roof and their wings disappeared into wisps of white smoke.

“Red Hood I told you too-”

“I know, I know, I just wanted to get a better look. I think I need a lot more explaining.”

The leader nodded then gestured to her partner, “this is Hornet, Hornet, this is Red Hood.”

He looked her over as she did him, her suit was mostly black as well, her torso was black with burnt yellow along the seams in honeycomb shapes and in the same color she had several diagonal lines down her legs. She also had a mask like his though it resembled a bee’s head.

“Nice mask,” Hornet commented, her voice wasn’t muffled as it should have been and Jason nodded his thanks.

“Yours is a lot cooler.” He paused for a moment then continued, “I know it’s late here so we can meet up some other time so you kids can get some rest, I can have an explanation later.” Ladybug’s eyebrow quirked up but she nodded.

“Thanks. Hornet will lead you to the hotel you’ll be staying. Don’t worry, it’ll be safe, no one will find your identity.”

---

The second time he met Marinette, well, let’s just say the magic that conceals the identities of the Miraculous holders did not work on Jason.

I did a second part that technically follows this and explains how Mari and Jason are related

Soulmates Day 2

#sibling jasonette #maribat #jasonette july

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milstrim · 4 years ago

Text

The Wound Won’t Sew Itself

Penny Parker was afraid of abandonment.

That was a fact. It had stemmed from an early childhood loss and only heightened to an extreme after her uncle had bled out from a gunshot wound in front of her. It made her nervous, a lot. Her aunt and friends knew, and would often not mention it when she curled a finger into their belt loops or entwined her fingers with theirs. Every once in a while, they'd offer their hands too, allowing for her to attach and not make her feel weird about it. It was a gift, she'd decided, to have a family that anticipated for her.

Problems arose when Mr. Stark started to become part of that family.

Mr. Stark wasn't mean, but she knew their relationship was rather precarious. One wrong move and she was sure that he'd take the suit and cast her out, leaving her without her mentor and the man that had slowly become...like a father? He was like her uncle, but not. No one could replace Ben, but Tony had taken up a space in her heart she hadn't known was empty until he came along.

So when she felt nervous, Penny instead shoved her hands into her pockets, or bundled them up into her sweaters, refusing to even mention her discomfort or her fears to her mentor. She'd only been going up to the compound to work with him on the suit for a few months ever since the whole Homecoming incident, and losing him was terrifying beyond belief. It kept her up at night on bad days, the unthinkable nightmare of him dying or casting her out. Thus, she kept to herself, she made sure she was the perfect intern and mentee, quiet but enthusiastic when necessary and with no mental health problems at all.

When she arrived at the compound for her internship that Friday afternoon, waving goodbye to Happy and stepping into the elevator that took her up to Mr. Stark's lab, she flinched at the shiver that ran up her spine. Penny glanced around the lab as the doors opened for her, squinting nervously through the glass entrance to the high tech room, the dread attacking her gut and stuck in her throat only growing stronger.

Mr. Stark wasn't hunched over at his desk, or dancing around trying to keep up with the speed of his own ideas, a broad smile on his face whenever he turned around to greet her like he usually was. Instead, he stood ramrod straight, staring intently at a small hologram in front of him that she couldn't see the contents of. She thought she saw a glimpse of her face.

Penny pressed her hand on the scanner to the door, flinching back when it beeped a harsh red instead of its usual welcoming blue. The noise caught Mr. Stark's attention, who swirled around at the noise, throwing the hologram to the side defensively. Penny found herself rooted in place from his intense stare, another tremor racking her body, ending at a pounding thrum at the base of her skull.

"I, uh--hey, Mr. Stark!" she greeted, waving nervously from behind the door, "The uh--sorry--the door didn't let me in. I didn't mean to disturb you."

Mr. Stark stared at her for a moment longer, trancelike, before he seemingly snapped out of being a robot and walked over. But he still wasn't...Mr. Stark. He was too quiet. Immediately nausea churned in her stomach at the off glint in his eyes. Had she done something wrong? She didn't think she had. She'd been so careful! She hadn't disturbed him or Happy as much, she hadn't done anything too crazy, she'd even stuck to curfew!

...Most of the time.

Her good behavior didn't stop her from feeling like she was about to puke out her entire soul as Mr. Stark spoke, opening the door.

"It was supposed to do that," he said.

Penny shuffled nervously, shoving her hand in her hoodie pockets, "Do--do what, Mr. Stark?"

"Not let you in."

"What--why?"

"Because I don't want you here." She flinched. Her face heated up as tears swelled in her eyes, her mouth falling open in shock, "I guess I forgot to give Happy the memo, so let me remedy that here. I. Don't. Want you here. Plain and simple. I expected more from you by now. I offered for you to be an Avenger, and you're still saving cats from trees, or helping little old ladies across the street."

Penny took a halting step back, shocked. She stared up at her mentor. She'd never seen him like this, even during the Ferry, he'd said he expected more than too, and if she hadn't been as hurt as she was, maybe she would've thought about Mr. Stark's sudden 180 about her skills. About her. But as it was, she was just sad, and scared. Her worst fears coming true and bursting forth.

"I'm--I'm sorry," she stuttered.

"Sorry isn't good enough," he bit, holding out an expectant hand, "Give me your bag."

"What?"

"We tried this, it didn't work out. Sorry not sorry, give me the bag."

Working on autopilot, she did. He ripped it open, tearing out her suit, the red and blue sticking out painfully against the background of his dark gray blazer. She let out a cry of protest as he took, but he didn't respond other than throwing the bag roughly into her hands.

"I'll be taking this, since you're clearly not worthy of it," he said. She stared at him, unable to stop the tears that escaped down her cheeks. Wrong move. "What are you still doing here? The transaction is over. Get out of here. Go! And don't try to contact me again. Don't even call Happy."

Penny swallowed, stepping away hesitantly, as if this was all a cruel joke and someone was going to jump out and yell 'Surprise!!' But this was real life, and Mr. Stark had really told her to leave. He'd taken the suit back and...and everything.

"Yes, sir..."

She left.

Penny cried a lot that night.

May was covering a shift at the hospital, having expected for her to be at Mr. Stark's until late, so Penny came home to her dark apartment seeping with the December chill of New York. All the shock came rushing forward. All the pain.

She dropped her bag the moment the door clicked shut behind her, choking on a confused sob. She ran her hands through her hair, pulling too roughly at her curls and sliding down on the door. She mumbled through thick tears, "What did I do? What did I do? What did I do?"

There was no answer to her question. No way of knowing. There was no one to answer, no one but her own fear.

She hadn't been enough, she concluded, and really, why had she ever thought she could be? Her former mentor was Tony Stark! Iron Man. A superhero who'd escaped terrorists with nothing but scraps and wits. And what was she? A science experiment. A poor kid from Queens who could barely hold her own in a fight even with superpowers practically just gifted to her. She could barely take down bank robbers.

Mr. Stark's words hurt, but they were right. She wasn't worthy to be his mentee.

But it still hurt.

Confident that May wouldn't be home until late, she allowed herself to stay a crying heap on the floor. She didn't move for an hour, crying herself dry, gasping for seething air that refused to come, blocked by the lump in her throat. She dug her nails into her palms, leaving little crescents of blood. She bit her lip in an attempt to stave her pitiful cries, a trail of blood following.

By the time she picked herself off the floor, the city was dark.

Weeks passed by, and Penny heard nothing from Mr. Stark or Happy. Stupidly, she'd stare at her phone, anxiously waiting for hours on end. Maybe an apology, or just an assurance that she wasn't a screwup. Something. But of course, nothing ever came.

Penny didn't retell the exact events of what had happened to anyone, but she'd proclaimed to her friends that she no longer had the internship--much to Flash's great delight, and even she had to admit how much like a lie all of it sounded--and refused to delve into the details. Telling May had been a bit more difficult. A teary eyed afternoon in which Penny had said that Mr. Stark thought that she wasn't right for the superhero role and had taken the suit back. The woman had been furious and had attempted to call Tony, but found little success other than an automated voicemail.

They'd spent the whole night watching romcoms and planning how to make Penny her own homemade suit. Not as good as the Starksuit, but still a hell of a lot better than her old one. It didn't have Karen, and it definitely didn't look as cool, but Penny had outfitted it with her own tech that helped her senses and webshooters that did their job. She refused to stop trying to help the community. Not even Tony Stark could put her off from it.

The Daily Bugle didn't like her new suit, tearing her down for it despite having criticized her for 'mooching off of Iron Man' a couple months prior, but it was whatever. Life was...life was okay.

Her nerves had only shot higher than before, and the teenager often found herself texting her friends and aunt at odd times to make sure they were okay, grabbing onto Ned's hand between every class that she could, and even slipping into bed with May every once in a while. She felt horribly clingy and unworthy of their time and patience, so many nights filled with laying in bed and staring out the window, unable to stop envisioning May telling her what Mr. Stark had. Ned leaving. MJ abandoning her.

Sometimes eating felt like too much. By the time Christmas had come and gone, she'd gained as much bags under her eyes as she had lost weight. Exhausted and fatigued all the way down to the bone wasn't enough to describe how she felt. How on edge and worried she constantly was. But at least she was still Spider-Woman. At least she still got to help people, to save them. With or without Mr. Stark. Even if it hurt.

Penny let out a sigh that billowed out in front of her on the cold January air, rubbing on her arm as she tried to block out the cold. She hadn't managed to give her suit a heater in a cost effective way. Her eyes still narrowed with her though, which had honestly been her favorite part of the suit.

The vigilante had been patrolling for most of the day now--eating from street vendors and unfortunately going to the bathroom in porta-potties--since school was still out. Until tomorrow anyway. Oh the woes of waking up early once again and having to face Flash and his unending taunting. She was ready to see Ned again, and maybe chemistry class would distract her from Mr. Stark.

She shook her head, scolding herself. She was doing it again. Thinking about the man she'd thought as a father figure. No matter how hard she tried, his words always came back to bite her in the middle of the night. In the middle of a panic. And even while she sat atop a building while snow sprinkled down around her.

With a worn sigh, the girl leaped and began to swing her way back to her apartment, which was sure to be a while away since she was at the edge of the city. Well, first she had to stop to get her bag (and pray that it was still there) and then she'd head home. Maybe make some hot chocolate. It was freezing.

Spider-Woman swung for only before a few minutes before a chill ran up her spine, and not from the cold. She spun in midair, grabbing onto an outstretched flagpole of the building her senses directed her to and planting herself nimbly on top. She listened.

"--verything's going fine, I suppose. Crushing the brat didn't completely get rid of her though. I thought she cared about what you said, Stark."

"Don't you dare talk about her," snarled a familiar voice. Penny flinched at Mr. Stark's tone, narrowing her eyes and beginning to creep around the building. The windows were boarded up over broken glass, but the warm yellow light still slipped through the cracks. She continued to listen as she tried to find a better spot to perch.

"I could've been a lot worse, you know. Be thankful I just made her think you hated her and thought everything terrible about her to make her feel like shit instead of just killing her. Though that would've made quite the fuss. Too much to clean up, don't you think?" the voice asked, rich and smooth and terrible. It sent shivers down her spine. She finally came across a window with a large enough gap for her to slip through and cling onto the rafters in the ceiling, unnoticed, "Though nothing's impossible. It might be a good reminder for you to not try and break your chip again, hmm? Your lovely fiancee might be next."

Penny stifled a gasp as she surveyed the room. Mr. Stark was strapped up against the wall, his hands cuffed tightly. A bruise bloomed against the right side of his face, leaching over his nose and covering his eyes in a sickly blue. His face was tightened in anger, defiance evident in every part of his body. From his eyes, bright yet dark at the same time, a stoked fire ready to burn, to his hands, cuffed and restrained, but curled in anger, shaking with either the force of straining or the force of his will to break free.

The Iron Man suit sat idle in the corner of the room, its eyes deactivated and its posture slumped. It looked strangely dead. A strange descriptor of something that had never truly been alive. She had to hold back panic at the realization that it wasn't going to save Mr. Stark, probably having been deactivated or hacked. What were these people going to do with it? Not that they looked particularly threatening.

The host of people appeared as though they belonged at a PTA meeting instead of a kidnapping. There was a short balding man with a friendly looking mustache. A woman with a chopped bob, short and stout and wearing a flowery blouse. Two tall and thin people that were so painfully average in their completely beige clothes she had to blink in confusion. This did not look like a group of supervillains.

The only man that looked like he somewhat belonged to the supervillain lifestyle was standing in front of Mr. Stark. He was surprisingly handsome, with dark hair slicked back in a groomed puff and a neatly groomed beard. He held crazed confidence in his frame, bulking with muscle even through his long sleeves and cargo pants.

"So," the handsome man said, "Are you going to comply or are we going after your little pet? I'm sure she's still out there right now. And we'd be happy to go to her home. Or school. Gosh, just think of all the other people who could get hurt while we're carrying out your business. We could even make you do it. Your choice, really."

Mr. Stark held for a moment, stiff and angry, but like a switch had been turned, he slumped in defeat with a slow nod. It was unlike anything she'd ever seen from the man. A drubbing failure that exuded from him, tired. He had never more looked his age as he did now.

The man gave him a condescending pat on the cheek, his smile unsettling, "Good. Glad we've come to an agreement, Stark."

Penny swallowed nervously, watching with sharp eyes as the short man with a mustache stepped over to the handsome man, a small device in his hand that fit easily in his palm. She didn't like the look of it, and she crawled forward from her hiding space just a little, an instinct to protect pulling her forward. She stopped almost immediately.

Mr. Stark looked up as the two men in front of him talked, glancing over in her direction. His eyes widened ever so slightly at the sight of her, now frozen in the shadows of the roof. Neither moved, just staring at each other for a moment.

It had been a while since Penny had seen him. Almost two months. She hadn't even looked at pictures of him in the news, always turning the channel off at the mention of him or anything to do with even Stark Industries. May had told her to leave him behind, so that's what she'd been trying to do. Now, in the old building filled with hostile people with weapons, she wondered if that was a bad decision, because now she couldn't look away from his brown eyes.

Or maybe she couldn't look away because of the warmth in them. The sorrow. The apologies swimming in his face, a silent 'I'm sorry, kid' mouthed her way as the people in the room weren't focused on him.

She shook her head furiously, slipping back into the shadows as a tremor ran up her spine. She hid behind a scratchy wooden column just before Handsome Man glanced her way, her heart beating painfully against her chest. She took a deep, shaky breath, waiting in anticipation for the relief of the pounding against her skull to disappear, indicating the man was no longer looking her way.

Penny scrunched her eyes tight, sure that she was imagining things. She was so confused, and her entire body hurt, disoriented and dumbfounded. Embarrassed. What were they doing to Mr. Stark? Had his harsh words been protection? How long had he been hurt trying to protect her while she'd pranced around New York, refusing to hear his name and wallowing in her own sadness? And what the hell was that device?

The teenager shook her head. She couldn't think about it right now. Answers were for when Mr. Stark was safe and away from these crazy people. Answers were for when she apologized for being such a dumbass. Answers were for when she got her shit together and got down there and started doing what superheroes were supposed to do.

Penny peeked around the column as the man began talking to Mr. Stark again.

The man held up the device that had been handed to him, "Now this has been fixed. So if you try that little stunt again, it'll one: Not break, and two: we'll get a little alert that tells us it's time to go and take out Spider-Woman, capeesh?"

"Capeesh," Mr. Stark muttered. The man smiled. Penny's heart dropped.

"Good. Glad to hear. So stay still while we pop this back in and we'll be back to setting Stark Industries off on the right track, along with the rest of the world. None of this 'no weapons' nonsense."

"You were fired for a good reason, Beck. Maybe if you look past your own horseshit, you'd see why."

She could practically feel the man's blood vessel pop. Wasting no time, he punched her mentor. Mr. Stark's head snapped to the side, but wasn't given a moment of reprieve as Beck gripped his neck, slamming Mr. Stark's head against the wall, choking him. Beck bared his teeth in a crazed grin. Penny flinched, unwillingly clinging to the darkness.

"And maybe if you'd get your head out of your own ass, you'd remember that you're not in charge anymore! I control you!! I'M IN CHARGE NOW!!! AND THERE IS NOTHING YOU CAN DO ABOUT IT!!!"

Without any pretense, the man shoved the device into Mr. Stark's ear. Mr. Stark answered with a short scream at the pain that was quickly cut off. Another shiver ran up her spine, warning her of the danger to come and making Penny sick.

The cuffs around Mr. Stark let go as Beck took a step back, an appreciative smile on his face as Mr. Stark stood ramrod straight. His eyes were no longer warm, but robotic and unseeing. She flinched.

"Good, glad to have you back, Tony," Beck teased in his deep voice. The Iron Man suit standing vigil in the back of the warehouse rose to attention. In the same metal nature of the suit, Mr. Stark walked over to it and stepped inside, "Now. Go get Spider-Woman please."

The head turned, and slanted blue met wide white.

Tony was screaming, but no sound escaped his lips. Tony was crying, but no tears slipped from his eyes. Tony was hurting, and his heart scarred with every painful beat.

It had started two months ago. Well, if you really went back, you could say it started sometime about a year ago during his introduction of the September Foundation and BARF. Quentin Beck had led the team, and although Tony had been wary of the man's seeming instability, he believed in second chances and that first impressions aren't always a great indication.

He might have to change that policy of his, because as it turns out, he should always trust his instinct. Beck had insisted that his invention could be for more than 'just therapy' and could change the world. One war at a time. Firing him had seemed like the only logical conclusion, but maybe Tony should've kept an eye on him. If only the Avengers hadn't broken up. If only he hadn't been stumbling after a monstrously ambitious spider kid. If only he'd thought ahead. If only he was able to keep people safe.

The chip had overtaken him at a charity gala he'd attended on a Thursday night. He'd been sipping champagne from a tall flute, mingling with aggravating businessmen and wishing he'd brought the kid along so he'd at least have someone to talk to. Then the billionaire had slipped away to go to the bathroom, but he was intercepted by a waitress, and then suddenly his body was not his own.

Of all the things that had happened to Tony, he could at least say that this was one of the most interesting. Terrifying to his core for sure, but still pretty interesting.

Tony had made his way through the night, an imposter in his own skin, a spectator as he watched himself talk business in charity, exchange handshakes and cards, climb into a car driven by Happy--who'd furrowed his brows as Tony got in the back rather than taking the wheel--but hadn't questioned it.

He'd never been more afraid. The chip in his ear, small and stuck in deep, buzzed constantly, making him sick and tired, but his body never stopped moving. He had to at least appreciate they kept up a healthy sleep schedule, but nothing else was helpful in the slightest. Knowing that he was being controlled by an enemy, Tony watched in terror as he opened up top secret government programs and codes, keys to the Iron Man suit and how to access them, and then, everything about Penelope Parker.

Despite the lack of control over his body, his left arm had still shaken with fear.

The words began to appear then. Somehow spoken yet somehow not. They were just there. Clear and yet fuzzy, understandable yet unreadable.

Ah, so this is the girl, Stark? the voice had said, What a sweet girl. Oh! And smart too! You must feel so lucky that she thinks so highly of you, huh?

No. Not her. Anyone but her.

Yes, her, the voice had responded, an ounce of sympathy leaking into it, Tell you what, Stark, I'll strike you a deal. I'll send the kid home today, I won't get her involved in any of this, as long as you don't fight back.

And what is this?

This is going to change the world. And get me some revenge on the way.

Who the hell are you?

I'm--

The door behind him buzzed. He swerved, dismayed to see Penny Parker, smiling and waving at him adorably at the door.

Someone who can do a lot.

Tony's heart would stop if it could.

Tony's heart didn't stop. In fact, it kept on ticking, a bomb in his chest. A bomb that didn't go off until he set it off, the chip exploding in screeching vibrations in his ear. It had knocked him out--and really he should've expected the failsafe. Kidnappers had learned from the Ten Rings' mistakes. And Tony had learned as well.

There were three things Tony knew about the voice that had been planted in his head.

One: They had a plan. It was complicated, and it took an embarrassingly long time for Tony to piece together as he was forced to gather materials, invent things, and make deals with people he normally wouldn't touch with a ten-foot pole. And honestly, their goal was straightforward, if a little stupid.

They wanted fame, retribution. They wanted to be noticed for the work they'd done, to be the face people expected when something happened. They wanted to be the next him. Or, a crude copy of what they thought was him. Well, you know what they say, imitation is the sincerest form of flattery.

Two: He knew these people. Sorta. Their names took a while to click, long enough that a punishing shock was sent through his veins along with an annoyed remark from the voice, but he'd never been one for remembering names. He'd remember these ones though.

William Ginter Riva.

Victoria Snow.

Gutes Guterman.

Janice Lincoln.

Quentin Beck.

Some rightfully fired employees anxious for revenge, and a bit of the spotlight he'd seemingly stolen.

Three: They were willing to do anything to be the next him. Anything included cutting Penny out of his life and taking the suit. Anything included bullying Pepper out of the tower until she left, telling him in a beyond hurt voice that he wasn't himself and to call her when he was ready to be the Tony she knew. Anything included avoiding Rhodey, not attending his PT or fixing his braces and forcing him away in a way too similar to how Tony had treated him in college. Anything included hurting the people Tony cared about until they didn't care about him.

Anything included sending the Iron Man suit to kill Penny Parker.

Penny leaped as the suit rocketed towards her, spinning around and swinging to the other side of the room. She hit Iron Man with a web, pulling the suit down as hard as she could justify while trying to escape, attaching the web to the ground. She knew it was fruitless to even try and escape--he was Iron Man after all, and he wasn't going to stop even after she left the building--but fear propelled her forward.

The web pulling down the armor only held for a few moments, Mr. Stark turning and easily burning it away with a repulsor shot. The few seconds she'd saved were crucial though, giving her just enough time to smash through the nearest window, shooting out a web as far as she could and zipping away. But the knot in her gut didn't disappear, and the rattle up her spine only grew. She flinched at the sound of crashing, sure that Iron Man had burst through the window she's just crashed through.

Her head start didn't end up giving her much help at all. She didn't think she'd been swinging for ten seconds when the repulsors charged behind her. Penny tried to twist in the air, flipping, and only getting a glimpse of the armor before a blast from the chest reactor caught her square in her stomach. She lost her grip on the web, free falling for a terrifying, painful moment, before metal arms scooped her up by her armpits.

Spider-Woman began to struggle, but she couldn't break free. A horrified chill settled in her stomach as she realized how much weaker she'd gotten from eating and sleeping less the past few months. And how much the blast that had singed her new suit black really hurt, like a hot iron pressed down on her. She groaned in pain, but continued to try and force her way out of the steely grip.

Iron Man only tightened her into a ball in his arms, diving back through the window of the building to the smiling face of Beck. Iron Man landed, but she was still held tight in his grasp, unable to break free as Beck approached her. She tried to rip her face away, but Beck grabbed her chin, tearing off her mask.

His clutching hand squished her cheeks together painfully as she was forced to look him in the eye. She narrowed her eyes, trying to be as threatening as she could appear.

"Hi, Penny," Beck greeted, his hand still on her face, "You were invading my privacy right now, and that's disrespectful. Do you have anything to say for yourself?"

"Suck my dick!" she grit out. Beck chuckled.

"Cute kid, eh, Stark?" Mr. Stark didn't respond, still robotically still. "Put her in the cuffs. We'll see how well your new chip works in a moment."

The Iron Man suit marched across the room, forcing her into the same cuffs Mr. Stark had been placed in earlier. They locked around her wrists so tightly she felt like her hands were about to pop off.

Pleadingly, Penny stared into the face of the Iron Man armor, unable to keep the fear from her expression. Mr. Stark still had to be in there somewhere, right? The man who had ruffled her hair every chance he got, who gave her nicknames and pressed protein bars into her hands like she was in constant danger of passing out. Where was the man she had considered family?

The suit stared at her stonily. Beck stepped up behind him, a scotch in his hand and tapping something in his ear. Taking a sip, he ordered, "Break her nose."

A metal fist snapped against her face. Her head was slapped to the side at the force. She grunted in pain, gritting her teeth against a whimper as she felt blood trickle down her nose. The pain, sharp and cutting, had already receded, leaving behind a stinging numbness that was almost worse. Needles prickling at her skin.

"Good," Beck commended, "Hit her again."

He did. Repeatedly. Pulverizing her face. Butchering her skin. Crushing to her heart.

Penny tried to fight back against the pain wrecking her, lashing out with her legs, but Iron Man only gripped her ankle and broke it. The snap was lost to her scream. By the time it was all over, she was sobbing, tears mixing with blood on her cheek. Her leg was mangled, broken so roughly she could see the bone, and when she looked at it she couldn't hold back from throwing up.

Beck wrinkled his nose at the smell. The smaller man with the mustache skittered up beside him, nervous as he muttered, "I don't know if we should--"

"Shut up, Ginter. I'm having fun."

"But people will notice she's missing!" Ginter protested. Beck sighed as if the answer was obvious, his shoulders slumping.

"She's a vigilante. All we have to do is drop her body off, leave a mess and make sure our prints are nowhere near the scene. We'll never even be noticed."

Penny shivered. She was going to die. She was going to die, not alone like she'd feared, but killed by someone she loved. And, she knew, Mr. Stark would never forgive himself for this. Shakily, the girl looked up, glaring daggers at Beck. She wasn't going to let this happen. She wasn't going to die. And she wasn't going to let Mr. Stark be responsible.

Penny turned to the Iron Man armor, swallowing, she said, "Sorry, Mr. Stark."

The cuff snapped. She lashed out as quick as a whip, punching the Iron Man armor in the face as hard as she could. No holding back.

The suit flew across the room, allowing for her to break her other cuff. Strangely, the other people in the room did nothing, clearly entertained as she sprinted/hobbled over to Mr. Stark. She switched over the webs in her shooters, praying that they would work. She hadn't tried them out yet.

The suit had already recovered, standing back up and holding out a repulsor. It hit her shoulder, but she refused to stumble, fighting her way forward. Thankfully, the Iron Man armor met her halfway, barreling into her. She allowed for herself to be picked up, sticking herself to the suit and, with a last burst of energy, ripping off not only the faceplate, but the whole helmet as well.

Mr. Stark's face was just as inhuman and stern as the faceplate had been, his eyes dark and lost, unseeing. Penny gulped, aiming her wrist at the arc reactor. She shot.

Electricity flooded from the webs, leeching into the suit and crackling around it in a static fizzle. The suit dropped, Mr. Stark grunting in pain that swam in his eyes. Penny grunted as she was crushed under the suit. unable to stop the scream as it landed on her ankle, but she smiled as she heard Beck scream in protest across the room.

"NO!!!" the man yelled, beginning to sprint over, but it was too late. The chip fell from Mr. Stark's ear, clattering to the ground beside her.

He looked down, awareness in his eyes as he looked at her. She smiled weakly, the pain overwhelming.

"Hey, Mr. Stark."

She passed out.

Penny passed out.

Tony felt like he went with her, but unfortunately, he was still awake. He was still awake to remember what he'd done. The screams he'd caused, the pain he'd forced, and his helplessness to stop through all of it. And fortunately, he was still awake. He was still awake to feel the thrum of power in his armor as it recovered from Penny's electric shock. He was still awake to stand up, huddling over Penny protectively, as he took in the terrified expressions of his oppressors.

Everyone but Beck took a step back, eyes twitching to the nearest exit, prey attempting to escape. Beck held his ground, rooted to the wood of the floor as though he were made of the same material, unmoving. Tony took a step forward, metal thudding against timber, cracking under his force.

Filled with rage and beyond ready for retribution, these people were no match for him. They were unprepared to fight, and they were unprepared to fight him when he had everything to fight for. Every blast felt like retribution. Every punch payback for what they'd done to his family. He left them all in a pile, destroying their tech and having Friday alert the police.

Still seething, Tony turned to look at Penny, his rage fizzling out immediately. The teenager still lay on the ground, her head turned to the side and her ankle splayed out unnaturally. It hurt to even look at. Pain and regret bubbled up as he stepped over to her, and he had to force down sick as he kneeled down beside her.

Without his helmet, he couldn't get her stats in front of him, but Friday still reported nonetheless, "She's alive, boss, but she needs medical before that leg can heal up."

"A hospital?"

"Yes, sir."

"Yeah. Yeah, okay. I can do that." he nodded breathlessly, instructing the AI to alert a medical team beforehand and mentally preparing for the NDAs he was going to need. He slipped his arms under her as gently as he could, lifting her as he tried as hard as he could not to disturb any of her injuries. The man flew out the crumbling wall that had once been a window, zipping over to the nearest hospital as quick as he could. The wind against his face was bitterly cold, settling into his chest right alongside his too fast and too tired heart.

It took Tony too long to fly to the hospital. Penny was cold against him and he prayed that the burning cold of her skin was just the frostiness of drifting snowflakes. When he arrived there was barely any color in her cheeks, and it was all he could focus on. He ignored the stares and points as he clunked down in front of the hospital, focusing only on getting inside and shielding Penny's face.

He practically tore out of the suit, sprinting inside and almost sighing in relief as a harried team approached him. They looked panicked, clearly freaked out by the fact that Tony Stark had arrived in the middle of the night and needed their help, but they didn't ask any questions. Instead, cool professionalism fell over their faces as they ushered him into the nearest room.

Regretfully, he let Penny go. He only caught a glimpse of her pale face as he was forced out of the room, left to stare at the door in cold regret.

Tony swallowed. He needed to make some calls.

The world slipped by. Everything was bathed in haziness, washing over her in a blurry mess that left her feeling shaky down to her bones. Not that she felt like she had bones. Did she? She must. Humans have two hundred-six bones, her brain supplied helpfully, but it refused to tell her what was happening, where she was, or even who she was. All she could tell was that she had a body, and that she didn't want it anymore.

Everything hurt. It hurt so badly she wanted to scream. Not that she knew how. But the pain still escaped her, fizzling in burns everywhere it could find. There were times when the pain dulled, paired with murky voices and whirring machines floating above her, wafting along the air and drifting through her head. Most of the time the voices were unknown, lost in a sea of anonymity, but then they were gone, and someone familiar took their place.

A rough, calloused hand gripped her own, a voice matching his skin dancing gently on the air. A sorrow symphony. She focused like she'd never focused before, seeking out the voice.

"...sorry, kid," the voice mumbled, a broken sob leaking through, "I'm so sorry, Penny. I didn't mean for any of this to happen. I didn't want you to get hurt. Not--not because of me. Not ever."

Penny? Penny. She was Penny. And this was Mr. Stark.

Like a switch had been flicked, everything fluttered back. Her life, and then the night's events. Snow. Beck. Mind control. Pain. And Mr. Stark, who sat next to her right now, vulnerable in a way she'd never heard him before. It drew something out of her, catching onto her will. She squeezed her eyes, and, after a moment, they fluttered open.

The world was a sterile white. It smelt of death, chemicals, and sorrow. Or maybe that was just her. She wasn't sure.

"Penny?"

She turned her head with a wince, blinking dark spots out of her vision as she stared at Mr. Stark. He looked so helpless. Dark circles deepened his eyes, which were wary and crazed with worry. He looked like he'd aged a hundred years in an hour. She plastered on a weak smile, "Hey, Mr. Stark."

"Penny."

"You said that already." Mr. Stark huffed in dry amusement, but his face remained dark. "It wasn't your fault, Mr. Stark. He made you do it."

He shook his head, "No, kid. I--"

"You didn't want to do it."

"No. I didn't. But I still did, and now you're hurt. You almost died, Penny, because of me." She tried to protest, but her words were lost to hacking coughs. Mr. Stark grabbed her a cup of water as the racking died down, helping her sit up and drink the water from a straw. It felt like heaven against her throat, "I like your new suit, kiddo. It's real great, but you're allowed to have yours back now, if--if you want it."

"Thanks. I miss the heater," she joked, forcing down every doubt that rose to her head. What if he took it away again? For real? Would they be accompanied by the same words as last time? Cutting and tearing her down until she felt like she wasn't even a superhero anymore?

"I see your brain ticking, kiddo," Mr. Stark interrupted, "It's yours. You deserve it. Not only should it have not been taken away in the first place, you saved me tonight. And you saved the city too. They had...they had plans."

"I'm sorry I didn't realize sooner."

"No. That's not your job, kid. Even Pepper and Rhodey didn't know what to do with me. I'm the one who's sorry. I should've planned for something like this, or at least a way to keep you from being hurt."

"It's okay, Mr. Stark. I'm just glad you're okay."

He sighed, closing his eyes as though exasperated. She worried she'd done something wrong, when he smiled at her, soft and tired, "Yeah, well, I better I'm gladder you're okay."

"I don't think gladder is a word, Mr. Stark. But I missed you too."

It wasn't long before Penny fell asleep again, darkness biting at her heels. Mr. Stark sat beside her the whole time. He was there when she woke up again. He was there when she was discharged from the hospital. And he remained beside her side for the following months as everyone recovered from the shock of what had happened, patient and caring. And whenever she slipped her fingers into his belt loop, too afraid to let go, he'd press a kiss to her forehead.

Penny Parker was afraid of abandonment, but her family wasn't going to abandon her.

#peter parker #tony stark #quentin beck #female peter parker #mysterio #irondad #kidnapping #mind control #febuwhump 2021 #spiderman #Iron Man #spiderson #irondad and spiderson

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dearest-bucky · 4 years ago

Text

There went my heart (One Shot)

Bucky Barnes x reader

Summary: A new nurse starts working with the Avengers and she takes an immediate liking to one blue eyed, metal armed super soldier. The best part is that he likes her too.

Words: 2.5K

Warnings: None, I think.. Fluff

Originally posted: May 28, 2020

How does one starts working with the Avengers? Or rather for the Avengers, but these are just technicalities, really. Truth is, she had no idea! It seemed as if she was just a very lucky person. When Tony Stark offered her to be a part of the medical team alongside Helen Cho and Bruce Banner, she wasn't dumb to decline. It's not that she wasn't happy working as a nurse in one of the many hospitals of New York, but being able to work with the Avengers themselves, was really something else. And she couldn't wait to meet them all and introduce herself.

On the first day of her new job, most of the team was away on a mission, so she only met with the other nurses and lab assistants. She was walking around the med bay, getting familiar with her surroundings when one of her new colleagues, a dark haired nurse named Jessica, called her from the door of the lab.

"Come on Y/n, we have to get ready. The team will arrive in 30 minutes and Captain Rogers informed us that they need medical assistance. Several team members were injured in this one." As the other woman finished speaking she ran towards the infirmary room to prepare for their arrival.

No longer than the 30 minutes Captain America had informed, several people came barreling through the doors of the infirmary. A red head woman that she recognized as Black Widow was leaning heavily on Steve Rogers' shoulder, one of her hands putting pressure on her side. One of the nurses moved quickly towards them to assist. Following was Sam Wilson, walking alone but with a small limp and just a black eye. He seemed to keep himself up fine, but another nurse ran to him too, tending to whatever little wound he had. Sitting in a chair to let the nurse do her job, his voice a little gruff as he spoke. "Someone check on Bucky, a bullet pierced his shoulder through."

She turned her head towards the door where Bucky had entered last, a scowl on his slightly pale face, but Y/n couldn't help but see that he was in fact a very handsome man, despite his current state. No camera, no matter how advanced its lenses were, could ever do justice to that man's beauty.

Next to her, she felt Jessica go stiff and shift her feet slightly, but not daring to move. Y/n was thinking she'd be the one to take care of him since she'd been working in the compound longer than she had, but seeing the other woman had no intention of leaving her spot, her professional training kicked in and before she knew it, Y/n was walking towards Bucky where he had already taken a seat in one of the cots.

His shoulders were slumped and his head was hanging low, so she carefully cleared her throat to make herself present. She didn't want to startle him or hurt him in any way, so with a soft voice, she spoke up. "Hello Sergeant Barnes, can I take a look at your shoulder?"

At the sound of her voice, he picked his head up to look at the person who was talking to him and he was surprised to see a young woman standing so close to him, he had no idea how she had gotten this close without him noticing. Her light skin complexion, illuminating more under the artificial lighting made her looked like an angel. Yeah, Bucky was surprised, but good surprised. He only nodded his head, not trusting his voice to speak up, but that was all she needed to begin working. Her touch was light as a feather as she cut his shirt to take care of his wound. He noticed she was careful as she touched him, almost cautious, but it wasn't because she was scared of him, not at all. She just didn't want to inflict him any more pain that he was already enduring, and that warmed his heart like nothing and no one had done in decades.

His eyes were glued to her face as she worked, the tip of her tongue poked out in concentration as she tended to his wound and Bucky thought she was nothing short of adorable. He was lost in thoughts of her and he didn't even feel her cut the thread as she finished sewing his wound. She put a clean bandage on it and with a small smile playing on her lips, she spoke up again. "I'm done."

Bucky moved his eyes to look anywhere but her face as he mumbled a "thanks" and a blush crept up his neck and cheeks in an instant. He felt as if she had caught him daydreaming about her; in fact he'd been so lost in his head he hadn't even felt the needle pierce his flesh at least a dozen times as she sewed him up. But could anyone blame him for losing his mind when she stood so close to him looking like an angel?

It was later that day when the Avengers were all cleared from the med bay and sent to bed rest, after cleaning and putting things back to place, that she had a chance to sit for a few minutes to catch a breath. Jessica sat in the chair next to her, her hair a little disheveled from the many times she'd carded her fingers through it. She let out a sigh before speaking. "So, how was your first day? Were your expectations for this job met?"

Y/n let out a small chuckle at her questions. "It was great really. I mean, working with superheroes is really something. But I loved it. I'm happy to be here." She said sincerely.

"Yeah, about that. You were really brave to walk up to Barnes today." At that, the smile that was playing in Y/n's lips dropped in a second, only to be replaced with a small frown, a crease forming between her brows. She waited for Jessica to continue speaking, to explain what she meant, so she silently tilted her chin up to nudge her to speak again. "It's just that he's kind of scary, you know..." She started and Y/n's brows only furrowed more. "You know of his past, right? You know what he has done, everyone knows. Plus he's always wearing a scowl on his face, as if he hates everyone around here. None of the nurses work with him, only dr. Cho or dr. Banner take care of him when he comes in."

Y/n couldn't believe what she was hearing. He was still being judged for his past, for something that wasn't his fault at all. She knew he was a victim just like every other person he'd been forced to hurt and kill. She scoffed in annoyance at her co-worker's words, the other woman's eyes widening in surprise at the reaction.

"I can't believe you're saying this. None of that was his fault, you know that, everybody knows that. Yet here you are, judging him for something he had no control over. He's a war hero, you know. He gave his life for this country once and he's doing it again everyday he goes out on a mission, just like the rest of the Avengers are." A fire was ignited in her chest, a strong desire to defend the man and that's what she was doing. She would defend him in front of the whole world, she decided right then and there, if it was needed. "You should be happy to have the honor of taking care for him afterwards, not talk behind his back."

Jessica only lowered her head, in shame or something else, Y/n couldn't tell, but she was glad to have given her a piece of her mind, plus it made her shut her mouth. She got up from the chair and took off her white coat, her job for the day being finished. She was ready to go back home and get a good night's sleep after a really active first day.

The next couple of months passed in a blur, really. Everyday she'd get up and go to work, weekends too. After all, there are no weekends off from saving the world. Doctor Banner was kind enough to give her a day off every week, but most of the time she refused because she had no better place to be.

During this time, Bucky would enter the med bay more times than she could count, but she never complained anyway. His presence was always welcome to her, and if it was up to her, she'd be happy to have him there every day. Just to see him. Most of the time he came in with the pretense to see Bruce, others he'd be back from a mission with several cuts and bruises that Y/n was always ready to tend to.

She was conversing to one of the other nurses, listening to the other woman talk about her 14 years old daughter and her challenges as mother of a teenager, when she heard someone clear their throat behind them. She quickly turned her head around, only to be met with Bucky's figure, a sheepish look in his face.

"Hi." She said, a little breathlessly. No matter how many times she saw him, he never ceased to amaze her. He was so handsome she wanted nothing more than to smother him with hugs and kisses every minute of every day. She shook her head lightly as if to get rid of those thoughts and got up to walk to him.

"Hi, doll." He replied and she blushed at the pet name. He'd started calling her that a few weeks ago and now it stuck. And she liked it more when he called her 'doll' than her actual name. Before she could ask him what was he doing there, he showed her his arm, a slash on his bicep and blood dripping down the entire limb.

Her eyes widened at the sight and she quickly grabbed some cotton balls and antiseptic, urging him to sit on one of the chairs before she started cleaning the blood off of his arm. "What happened?" She asked as she wiped the blood, throwing one cotton ball in the garbage can and grabbing another.

"Knife training with Nat, I lost focus and didn't step back in time so she grazed my arm. It was merely an accident." He explained and when the blood was cleaned she could see it wasn't that deep of a cut anyway. She still continued to nurse the cut though, silently dabbing the cotton and applying an antibiotic ointment as to not get it infected.

"I didn't think a super soldier could lose focus." She replied with a playful smirk on her lips and Bucky smiled down at her.

"I guess there's just a lot in my mind lately." His words were accompanied with a small sigh and she didn't dare ask him more, for fear of overstepping a boundary or something. She finished with his arm and was about to move away, but he grabbed her wrist with his metal hand, preventing her from moving too far.

She turned her head to look at him, a questioning look in her eyes. "Thank you doll." He said simply and she returned his smile with one of her own.

"You're welcome." She replied simply despite his touch causing her entire body to flush with warmth and she tried again to move away from him - suddenly the closeness was too much. He only tightened her grip on her wrist, enough to let her know he didn't plan on letting her go, but not enough to hurt her in the slightest. Her heart was beating fast inside her rib cage and she knew he could hear it too, the thump thump's almost echoing in the otherwise silent room.

She realized then they were alone in the infirmary, the other nurse had left without so much as a word.

She could only stare at his face, his eyes locked to hers, a look she couldn't really place, before he spoke again. "No, thank you Y/n." The use of her name surprised her a little. He hadn't called her that in a while, opting to go for doll instead. "For being so kind to me. Kinder than anyone had been in a long time."

"Bucky..." She wanted to interrupt him, to say something, but he shook his head a little before speaking again.

"Before you, none of the nurses would take care of me, always glancing in my direction in fear and suspicion, as if I'd lash out and go all psycho on them. But then you came, and you walked to me, so soft and caring and with a touch so light I thought you were an actual angel." His words were causing her to blush a deep shade of pink but she didn't dare interrupt him again, scared that if she did all of this would have been a dream, a figment of her imagination.

Without even noticing, the hand that was holding her wrist had moved slightly towards her palm and their fingers were intertwined. She lowered her head to look at their joined hands and a smile formed on her lips, her thumb moving to caress his metal knuckles.

"Doll, forgive me if I'm outta line now but if I don't tell you this I think I'm gonna die in the spot." At that her eyes moved up to meet his expectantly, hopeful. A spark that she'd come to see more and more of lately was glinting in his own eyes and she could only wait for him to continue speaking. That he did. "Ever since the moment I saw you I felt something I hadn't felt in decades and doll I like you so much and maybe all of this is my imagination, but I think that you like me too and I was really hoping you'd want to have dinner with me sometimes?" He finished a little breathless, despite having spoken the words so slow as if he was afraid she'd miss it if he didn't enunciate each one of them.

The smile on her lips kept widening with each passing moment and she squeezed his hand in hers a little before speaking up her answer to him. "Bucky, I'd love nothing more."

A wide smile mirroring hers bloomed on his lips and all he could do was stare at her in admiration, not wanting to ruin the beauty of the moment with any other word or move. After a few minutes in silence, only staring at each other lovingly, Y/n finally found her voice to speak again. "Bucky?"

"Hmm..?"

She cleared her throat before speaking, taking a small moment to muster up the courage to speak the next words, but she couldn't help the blush that deepened in her cheeks as she spoke.

"I was really hoping you would kiss me."

#bucky barnes x reader #bucky x reader #bucky barnes x y/n #bucky barnes one shot #bucky barnes fic #bucky barnes imagines

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li-karina · 4 years ago

Text

The Girl in the Bakery (Part 2)

Marinette stomped up to her room after her mother excused her from the counter. Flashes of the blond boy had run through her mind with each step. Something about him was comforting and almost familiar. Marinette shrugged it off.

Once she arrived in her bedroom, the blue-eyed girl spotted a small, red being sleeping restfully on her pillow. Tikki had fallen asleep moments before, exhausted from transforming earlier that day. Marinette smiled fondly at her friend, reminding herself how lucky she was to have Tikki.

The lamp on Marinette’s desk was clicked on and her swivel chair pulled out, prepared for the nightly routine of sketching until Marinette could no longer stay awake. It was a very unhealthy habit, as it was the main cause of Mari’s consistent tardiness; however, it was their daughter’s absences that worried Tom Dupain and Sabine Cheng.

Not that she could control when Paris needed Ladybug’s heroic nature--if only her parents knew she was skipping class for good reason.

Cool air blew through the open window, making Marinette slightly shiver. Her hand swept across the pages of her sketchbook, pouring out idea after idea. Soon, she found that inspiration had left her, leaving her staring at her designs in shock.

There were six in total, covering 8 pages front to back. Immense detail and measurements littered around her drawings. Marinette couldn’t even remember her thought process from the last two or three hours; she had completely lost herself in her own creative outlet.

The first design was a skirt: long and flowy with a floral pattern made up of pastel colors. On her silhouette, the skirt was matched with a tank top and sun hat--a very summery ensemble. Specific sewing patterns and materials were listed in the margins; Marinette thanked herself for writing those down.

On the second page, a blazer was modeled. It showed texture and minimalistic lining, as well as being reversible. The outside layer was a sleek dark purple while the inside was scattered with polk-a-dots. She laughed at the subconscious acknowledgment of her superhero counterpart.

The third and fourth page were covered in components for a beautiful dress. A ball gown that could transform into an A-line. Marinette’s expression could’ve been confused with sadness, but inside, she was torn with disbelief. How could she have designed something like that without batting an eyelash? Professionals spend years trying to master their craft, working hard so that maybe one day they could design something half as breath-taking as what Marinette was capable of designing in a few hours.

Mari’s fingers traced over the unique sequence she formed. Curves and lines and many other shapes were depicted, meant to be incorporated into lace. Awe completely struck the ameuter designer as she gazed at the most extravagant piece she would've ever thought of. There was nothing that could ever top, what she decided to call, Belle en Tissu. Her own masterpiece.

Clearing her throat and regaining her senses, Marinette flipped to the fourth design. Utter bewilderment hit her as she glared at the page. It was a shirt. White and flattering, made of crêpe, with a paw print embroidered on the collar.

Interesting, she thought as her fingers cautiously flipped to the next design.

Now it was time for Marinette’s jaw to drop. She had already thought the shirt was strange, but waiting for her was a leather jacket. Normally, she wouldn’t think that was weird, but for some reason, her brain had drawn a very specific model to wear her design.

Adrien Agreste. The boy she had just met hours before. Why the heck did she draw him? How did she even know how to draw him? They’ve met once and she already knew to capture his bright eyes and tossed hair, his fantastic posture and smiling lips. Of course she’s seen his modeling ads, but not enough to know how to sketch out the way his arms bent casually to stuff his hands into his pockets.

Marinette slammed the book shut, not bothering to check the last page in fear that she would see something she didn’t want to. It astonished her; she had designed gorgeous pieces without thinking. But she also drew a random blond who happened to stumble into her parents’ bakery. This was ridiculous.

Once her eyes were no longer focused and wandered around her room, Marinette noticed how heavy and strained they felt. She glanced at her phone, the screen dark and shiny.

“God, what time is it?” Marinette asked aloud, quickly looking to the open window. It showed a sky full of stars lighting the night sky. The last she had checked, the sun was setting and the shadows of near-by buildings were still casted over streets. Now everything blended together in an abyss of darkness. She felt tired.

Spinning her chair around, the blunette finally settled her eyes upon the alarm clock that had failed to wake her up so many times before. It was 2 in the morning and she had school the next day. A yawn erupted from Marinette’s mouth, allowing her to accept the fact that she was going to fall asleep soon. It was a rare occasion as of late that the girl with a double life was able to sleep at all, so she was thankful for nights where she could rest peacefully.

Changing into pajamas and brushing her teeth, Marinette hummed softly to herself. She then happily climbed into bed next to her kwami. The last thing she saw was her window, still wide open, letting in moon beams. She wondered if Chat Noir could see the moon from wherever he was.

It was 2:31 when Adrien found himself lying in bed, staring aimlessly at his ceiling with Plagg asleep in an empty container of Camembert. Unlike Marinette, their encounter kept him awake. He thought of how friendly she was and how kind she must have been to offer him comfort. The box that once contained croissants lay discarded in his trash can. He ate one as he worked on an assignment given by his Mandarin teacher, the other was eaten by Plagg (who thoroughly enjoyed it, but would never admit that.) A grin was etched on the teenage model’s face as his interaction with the girl in the bakery floated through his head. Again and again.

Adrien shook his head as a word echoed in his mind. Friend. He finally had a friend, and not the kind of friend Chloe was to him. Someone he could be himself around and seek comfort in. When he first met Ladybug, he thought maybe she was the friend he wished he had, but then he realized that she was much more than just a platonic partner to him--even if it was one sided.

He propped himself up on his elbows, eyes no longer concentrating the void of his bedroom. His gaze landed onto the moon which lit his room. The light it provided accentuated the shadows and crevices of Adrien’s room, bringing it to life in a muted way. It reminded him of his own alter-ego, bringing his real personality to light, but also not.

Adrien fell back onto his pillows, humming to himself. He wondered if Marinette liked looking at the moon, too.

#miraculous fanfic #miraculous ladybug fic #miraculoustalesofladybugandcatnoir #miraculous fandom #marichat #adrienette #ladynoir #marinette dupain cheng #adrien agreste

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quicksilversquared · 4 years ago

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The Wavering Peahen: Chapter 2

When Nathalie started feeling oddly ill again, both she and Gabriel were worried that the Peacock Miraculous might somehow (impossibly) be to blame again.

So naturally, they pick someone else to be the Peacock for a bit. You know, as a test subject. Except the new Peacock… doesn’t exactly know that.

links in the reblog

Knocks at her window well after dark and after her mom had gone to bed were rarely a good thing, particularly in a city with that had akumas popping up every other day whenever someone got upset.

Lila knew that she was sitting perched on top of a mountain of lies. If someone somehow found out and got mad, that could more than explain a knock at her window at night. Except...

Well, an akuma wouldn't knock, would they? Smashing through walls was much more their style.

A second knock sounded, clearly much more impatient. Ever-so-cautiously, Lila finally pushed herself off of her bed and approached her window, squinting into the dark outside. A large shape came into focus, and then Lila caught sight of a purple suit and a full-head silver mask.

Hawkmoth.

Grinning, Lila scrambled to open her window and let Hawkmoth in. Maybe most people in Paris would be screaming and running in the opposite direction, but they were weak. Hawkmoth offered power and opportunities, kinds that she would never get otherwise. Whatever he had come for- whatever new opportunity he was offering- she was going to grab onto it with both hands and not let go.

"Ms. Rossi," Hawkmoth greeted her coolly, slipping through the opening. He straightened, and- okay, he was tall. Lila straightened reflexively, hoping not to feel so small next to him, but it didn't do much to close the height gap. "I hope this evening finds you well?"

Lila nodded, trying to keep herself from looking too eager. "I'm doing all right. And you?"

"Well enough." Hawkmoth glanced around, his steely eyes catching on the door. Lila followed his gaze, then immediately picked up on his concern.

"My mom is asleep already," she assured him hastily, not wanting him to decide to leave and not tell her about whatever opportunity he had clearly decided to offer. "And she's the only other one who lives in this apartment. And she's a heavy sleeper, so she shouldn't wake up randomly."

Hawkmoth nodded sharply. "Good."

"So, uh, how can I help you?" Lila asked, wondering if it would be proper etiquette to offer a supervillain a chair. It would make him not tower so much, but she also suspected that he wasn't planning on lingering. It would be better to get straight to the point. It would show respect for his time, and that would help make a good impression. "Do you need an akuma with specific powers or something? I can do that!"

"Not at the moment, but I will keep that in mind for the future. No, what I have in mind is a little more responsibility than that." Hawkmoth reached into a pocket, pulling out a small drawstring bag. "Mayura is unable to come out and join me on the battlefield for a undetermined period of time. Normally, I would simply go back to just sending out akumas. But I don't want to give Ladybug and Chat Noir time to re-build their superhero team more than they already have."

Lila's eyes went wide and she started nodding at once, already putting together what Hawkmoth had come to her for. "Right. And you don't want to give their backup team more time to practice and get better."

"Precisely. So I need a temporary holder until Mayura can return." Hawkmoth stared at her, steely-eyed and intimidating. Lila gulped and straightened up again, trying her best to look reliable. This was an incredible opportunity, and she was not going to let it simply slip by. "So what I want to know is... can I trust you?"

Lila had to stop herself from nodding like a frantic bobblehead doll. She didn't want to come off as an overly-excitable teenager. It was just- well, this was the opportunity to help get back at Ladybug that she hadn't ever expected. She had thought that her only chances were going to be to occasional (or not-so-occasional) akumatizations, where she would maybe be allowed to have some influence in what powers she got. But now, to get a Miraculous- even if it was only for a short while, until whenever Mayura returned- that was amazing.

She would get to go after Ladybug during every fight. And she could dream up the perfect sentimonster to go against the annoying superhero, one that could maybe be the one to take Ladybug down once and for all. If she got to coordinate with Hawkmoth, then they could maybe do a sentimonster-akuma pairing that would be incredibly strong-

-she was getting ahead of herself. Lila had to be calm, and work on gaining Hawkmoth's trust before she started making suggestions. She would have to be more cautious than she was with her classmates, since Hawkmoth was an adult, and probably a proud and paranoid one at that. That meant that he wouldn't be so quick to completely trust her. Trying to maneuver to be a more important part of his team right away would probably just result in her opportunity being ripped away from her.

Besides, he could sense emotions, right? So that meant that she had to be way more careful than usual.

"Of course you can trust me," Lila assured him, refraining from pressing a sincere hand to her heart. It worked at school, but with the supervillain it would probably appear dramatic and over-the-top. And maybe he was probably a bit dramatic and over-the-top (definitely so, if the fact that he had akumas providing a soundtrack for him on Heroes Day was any indication), but something told her that he wouldn't appreciate that in a potential ally.

Besides, he knew that she liked lying and manipulating, and so steering away from those mannerisms during her interactions with him would probably go over better.

"Good." Hawkmoth nodded once, sharply, then passed the drawstring over to her. Lila's fingers trembled as she practically tore the strings open to pull out the pin inside. A blue bubble burst into being as soon as her fingers touched the pin, and then it popped and revealed a blue floating...thing. "This is Duusu. Take good care of him. Now... let's discuss specifics."

The next morning, Lila added a simple scarf to her outfit to cover the Peacock pin and give Duusu somewhere to hide. It felt a little odd to have a constant companion, but that was the price she had to pay for power.

She could not possibly look forward to the next akuma attack more. She just wanted to get out on the battlefield and kick Ladybug's butt. Lila had even found a generic keychain that she could put the amok in and tucked it in her pocket, so it would stay with her and Ladybug and Chat Noir would have to work harder to defeat the sentimonster.

"Ah, that's a nice scarf, Lila," Mrs. Rossi commented, setting Lila's breakfast down in front of her. "I don't recognize it- is it from one of your friends at school?"

"Oh, it's from Adrien," Lila claimed at once, running one hand down the scarf. It wasn't, of course- it was just something that she had stolen from one of her photoshoots- but since it was Gabriel brand, it was believable enough. "He said it went well with my hair."

"It really does. That's very sweet of him." Mrs. Rossi grabbed her own half-eaten plate from the counter, sitting down across the table to finish her breakfast. "Will you be out with your friends again today after school?"

"Yes, I've been invited to come along to a couple clubs this week and check them out," Lila lied. Or- well, it was a partial lie, at least. Several of her classmates had extended invitations for her to come check out the clubs at the school, but that had happened ages ago and besides, Lila just wasn't interested. It would be more adults that she had to interact with and make excuses to when she was 'on a trip', and while she had been on a roll with the number of adults who were just believing her without any questions it just wasn't worth the risk. "So I'll be busy."

Not that it made any difference to her mom, really. She would be at work regardless. It was just- well, it was good to keep up the illusion that she was always with her friends and 'boyfriend'. And if an akuma attacked and her mom tried to get in contact with her, then she would have an excuse for not picking up, since her mom would expect that she would be busy.

"Fantastic!" Mrs. Rossi smiled, then scraped up the last couple bites of bites on her plate and shoved them in her mouth, rising from the table and carrying her plate to the sink. "I have to get going to the embassy, since the ambassador has a whole pile of paperwork that he needs pulled together for his meeting this morning, but I made lunch for you. It's in the fridge. And if you have any menu requests, just text me during the day. I'm going to make a grocery run after work."

"Okay." Lila smiled at her mom, waiting for her to leave before rolling her eyes. She knew exactly what was in her packed lunch, and she would much rather go out to eat or have whatever was in the cafeteria. But she and her mom had argued about Lila getting lunch money instead of bringing a lunch only a few days ago and she hadn't won the argument- apparently it was cheaper to just bring a sandwich every day, as if that was important. If her mom was actually an ambassador and not just a secretary for the ambassador, then Lila would be able to afford to buy lunch every day.

She would use her earnings from the photoshoots, but she needed that money to buy new outfits. If she didn't stay in fashion and wear nice clothes, then her credibility would start slipping.

Daughters of the ambassadors and friends of celebrities simply didn't wear off-brand clothing after all. And while that maybe forced Lila into the same handful of outfits over and over, she had managed to explain that away by claiming it was for environmental awareness reasons.

Maybe she could claim that about her lunches, too. Except- well, it probably wasn't a good idea to use the same excuses too often. Maybe she could claim that she had decided to divert her lunch money to a charity for child hunger, since there were starving children across the world who could use it more than her. Yes, that sounded like a good excuse.

...it still wouldn't make her sandwich taste any better. Maybe she could at least persuade her mom to pack something better for her lunch if Lila stopped arguing about eating out every day.

With a couple more quick bites, Lila finished up her breakfast and stuck her plate in the sink. It didn't take her long to collect her school things- including her lunch, which was definitely a boring old sandwich- and then head down to the bus stop to ride over to school.

As she waited for the bus, Lila's mind went back to the night before. She was still super excited about the opportunity, even though- well, it came with some risks, Hawkmoth had made that clear. Risks, and also an ally that had made it very clear that he Did Not fully trust her, at least not yet.

There had definitely been some not-so-veiled threats against her mom for if Lila decided to 'take liberties' while she had the Peacock Miraculous. And while Lila was really more or less indifferent about her mom, if anything happened to her and Lila had to be placed with a foster family or something...

Well, that wouldn't be a good thing. But that was fine, because she wasn't planning on pulling anything stupid while she had the Miraculous, like trying to keep it after Mayura became available again or trying to manipulate him to do what she wanted, even if it conflicted with his goals. After all, their goals already lined up- she just wanted to take down Ladybug and get her revenge, even if Ladybug (unfortunately) now wouldn't know who was behind her defeat.

Lila supposed that it didn't really matter if Ladybug knew or not in the end. All that was important was taking her down.

Hopefully the superheroes' defeat would happen while Lila was still involved, before Mayura came back. Maybe the supervillain team's shake-up would be just what they needed to finally make the jump from always narrowly losing to actually winning. Lila could bring in new ideas, new plots, and a new pair of eyes. She didn't even necessarily have to convince Hawkmoth of all of them- some, she could just carry out on her own.

And no, he hadn't forbidden that. If he wanted her to follow his lead, she would. But she also had to be independent, able to fight on her own and act independently when Hawkmoth's focus had to be elsewhere in the battle. She could carry out her ideas then, and maybe they would turn out to be just what Hawkmoth needed. He would get the Miraculous for whatever he needed them for, and- well, he would reward her for her help, right? Maybe she would get another Miraculous to use, one she would get to keep permanently.

Which one would she want? Lila tilted her head, considering. Maybe the Ladybug Miraculous, to really rub it into Ladybug's face. It would be a trophy. And she would go out often, just to rub it in her nemesis' face. But maybe Hawkmoth would need to keep that one and she would have to choose another. Presumably he would be able to retrieve the box of Miraculous from Ladybug after she was defeated, so Lila would be able to take her pick. There would be a lot of choices, a lot of tempting offers.

Her first choice- after the Ladybug Miraculous, for gloating reasons- would be the Fox. Those powers were what she had used most often when she was akumatized, and they were familiar and useful. She could make illusions of herself with all sorts of famous people and take pictures and show them off to further discredit annoying little dissenters. She could make illusions of the aforementioned dissenters doing bad things, just to get them in trouble. It would be super useful, even if the actual Fox Miraculous was apparently a tad more limited in the amount of power it had compared to her akuma self.

Another choice would be the Horse, maybe. She could hop over to other countries and actually call in to her classes from there for added realism when she was off 'traveling'! She might even be able to meet some of the people she was always claiming connections to and actually start forming those connections- though that might be a bit of a stretch. She was smart enough to know that a few chance encounters would not automatically lead to songs written about her and promises to always drop everything to do things on her request. So maybe the Horse wouldn't be quite as useful.

Maybe there was a kwami of manipulation among the ones Ladybug held on to. That would be really useful, something she could use to force the famous people connections and make all of her dreams reality. It would make manipulating her peers easier, too- or at least more foolproof- and that would be really, really helpful. That would be the ideal Miraculous for her, if it even existed.

All she had to do was be the best sidekick Hawkmoth had ever had and defeat Ladybug. And once that was done, and she had her own source of power- an unconditional source, no threats to her (or, she supposed, to her mom's) general well-being- then, well, then would come rewards to her civilian self. And after that?

Well, the world would be open to her, and the possibilities were endless.

The bus pulled up and for once, Lila had a real smile on her face as she got on. Maybe for everyone else on the bus, it was just a normal day. But for her?

It was the start of a new era.

#Miraculous Ladybug #My writing #The Wavering Peahen

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