#darn you lab reports... making me work so late...

[that-foul-legacy-lover]

wahgguhghh my brain is. melted. i am going to fall over goodnight

[thekytchensynk]

Choices (Fictober Prompt 11)

Prompt number: 11

Fanfiction Fandom: Ducktales

Rating: G

Warnings: No Warnings

Read this story on AO3

Gyro paced.

When Mr. McDuck, holder of the pursestrings, had determined that “Gizmoduck” was the “hero” that Duckberg needed, Gyro hadn’t agreed, but he had agreed, if you take the difference. The idea itself? Pure madness. The thought that some half-baked intern in a mechanical utility suit would somehow many the city safer rather than in far more danger struck him as the same sort of fairy tale nonsense that led to children staying up late at night enthusiastically waiting for some allegedly benevolent creature to break into their homes and leave free items, as though there would be no strings attached to THAT down the line.

But while Mr. McDuck and Gyro were on the same wavelength regarding the jolly fat man, they were not seeing eye to eye on the superhero thing. And since Gyro didn’t hate the idea of … ugh … Gizmoduck enough to potentially jeopardize access to his benefactor, he’d gritted his beak and tried to sound enthusiastic about it.

He liked to think he’d done a good job.

But the idea of actually managing the day-to-day nonsense of a superhero had turned out more complicated and irritating than he’d even imagined. For instance, despite being an intern with Gyro himself, the pilot of the suit wasn’t really a mechanical sort of thinker -- he could do passably well with wiring or a circuit board, but there was far more of a chemistry and physics bent in that one. Which meant while he could patch up the suit, and even make changes to it, he wasn’t as comfortable in that world as he was wearing the darn thing.

Which left it all to Gyro, of course. And did anyone think about that? Did anyone thank him? No, of course not. That wasn’t the flashy bit, why should anyone care if the suit was working well when Duckburg needed it?

And that was only the beginning.

There were the letters. Because people allegedly didn’t know where Gizmoduck lived (a fact Gyro assumed had to be a lie, the guy couldn’t keep the secret from literal children), they sent letters for him to McDuck Enterprises, since it publicly sponsored him. And the corporation wisely wanted nothing to do with them, so what did it do? It sent them here, to his place of work, where they were nothing more than a processed-pulp annoyance. Thank you for helping me cross the street, Gizmoduck! Thank you for finding my puppy, Gizmoduck! Thank you for swooping in to grab the gunman holding those kids hostage, ending the incident without any injuries Gizmoduck! A parade of saccharine paper waste.

And then there were nights like tonight. When Mr. McDuck and his family had hared off to some obscure corner of the world chasing money or mysticism, and some weather-based villain or something had attacked city hall (Seriously, there were so many weather baddies at this point, Gyro didn’t even bother learning names).

Gyro got notification on his phone whenever the suit started activating its more combat-oriented functions. Because combat functions meant combat. And combat meant the suit getting damaged.

And that meant Gyro up late repairing the darn thing, because if he let the city’s superhero fall into disrepair while Mr. McDuck was away … well, neither he nor his expensive invention ideas wanted to think what would happen after that.

The feed was mostly audio and a series of indicators showing the integrity of various systems -- power, the bigger weapons systems, propulsion, core movement, pie filling levels, etc. Mostly, watching them felt about like watching UV-protective resin coating dry. Sometimes he tinkered while he watched, but sometimes?

Sometimes he paced.

Tonight was one of those nights. The weather guy had attacked after a city council meeting about the curriculum in the Duckburg City Public Schools. Apparently he wanted meteorology to be a full year of study for every class in the fifth grade, and when the city council refused to vote on it (because the school board and not the city council would be the ones voting on a curriculum, Gyro assumed), he had decided to throw a tantrum and was holding the council, two reporters and everyone who’d shown up for the meeting hostage with an overly excited lightning storm.

The reason he’d chosen to pace instead of tinker this evening was that all the lightning was wreaking absolute havoc on the wifi that was beaming all this data back to the lab. He had the readouts on one of the larger displays, and the audio feed piping in through the lab speakers, but every once in a while the inane banter between hero and villain would break up in an absolutely ear-splitting burst of static. The sound invariably made Gyro jump, then he’d hop over, checking the readout and waiting for the feed to stabilize. And each time, it would come up -- power dropping but at an expected rate, pie filling holding steady, movement systems at ninety-five percent with some limited movement in the left shoulder which had been injured, as far as Gyro could tell, when Gizmoduck had dived to save someone from a blast of lightning. Nothing to be worried about. They just had to wait it out because getting hit by lightning was perhaps one of the worst things for the suit to handle.

Gyro paced.

“Professor Gearloose?” came a voice over the comm -- not the loud, self-assured tones of Gizmoduck, but the quieter, more urgent ones Gyro was more familiar with.

“Intern,” Gyro said by way of reply, expecting his word -- and tone -- to be picked up by the mics in the lab.

“I think something’s going on.”

“Things have been going on for almost an hour,” Gyro replied, unimpressed. “You should know, you were there.”

“No, I mean … something else.”

As he said this, Gyro finally picked up on a few facts. First, this marked the first time tonight the comm had been used for communication, not just monitoring the sounds at the scene. Second, it sounded like the intern was trying to keep his voice low.

And third? Well, even underwater, Gyro finally noticed the pickup in lightning activity. Echoes of lightning bolts were even making themselves seen all the way down here. It looked almost like a strobe light going off up there.

“What?” Gyro said, doing his best not to sound irritated or impatient despite being both of those things at the moment.

“He’s building up for something big. I don’t know, it’s looking apocalyptic up here. I think he’s going to try to take out the whole building with some sort of supercharged lightning bolt!”

“What makes you think…” Then Gyro’s mind wandered back over the past hour of ranting he’d half-heard from this weather villain and he answered his own question. “He told you that, didn’t he?”

“He did, but I didn’t think he actually had the power. Take out some of the brickwork, maybe, but he wasn’t showing anything like enough power to bring down a building.”

“What changed?”

“He pulled something out of the storm generator he’s using, and everything started ramping up.

“Describe it.” And as the intern did, Gyro’s suspicion quickly switched to certainty. Some sort of limiter. He’d put something similar in his own weather changing device before Mr. McDuck shut that avenue of study down. The problem was the limiter also acted as a regulator, and without it, the machine would cycle into ever-higher levels of power until…

“He absolutely can take down city hall with that machine,” Gyro said, urgency building in his chest like a physical pressure. “If that thing is allowed to continue, it might take out the whole surrounding block with it.”

“The whole … oh no, what am I going to do, what am I going to do?” The intern was clearly not talking to him anymore.

Not being directly addressed had never stopped Gyro before. “You need to get out of there,” he said. “Get the people and get out of there.”

“I can’t!” he hissed back. “There are too many. Not just in City Hall, but in most of the buildings around here, people got trapped by the fight. There have to be a hundred that I can see from here, and … I’ll just have to move it”

“What, through the streets?” Gyro asked, trying to emphasize just how terrible an idea this was. “It’s going to follow you. All you’ll be doing is picking a new spot for the guy to destroy.”

“If I fly-”

“You’ll just speed up the process,” Gyro said, frustrated that his intern didn’t understand the workings of a weather machine just because he’d never build or worked on one before. “It’s like magnets, the closer the machine is to the storm, the sooner that mega-bolt is going to come down.”

A pause. Then, “But it’ll stop at the machine, right?”

“Of course it’ll…” Gyro realized what he was unintentionally condoning in the middle and threw the brakes on hard. “Wait, wait, you can’t do that. The suit can’t handle it.”

“The city can’t handle it,” the intern came back quietly. And he was right.

Gyro tried to think. “The body of the suit should be able to take a lot of the load,” he said, voice dropping into a clinical tone, words coming fast. “But this isn’t like a normal lightning bolt. Do you have time to bond anything to it that could work as a static wick of sorts?”

“There’s no time,” he said. “And I don’t have a properly conductive bonding agent anyway.”

“Then how about-”

“There’s no time,” he repeated, and the sounds in the background shifted. He could hear the copter blades in the background, and the weather guy shouting in unintelligible rage.

“That suit is tied into your brain,” Gyro practically shouted. Why wasn’t he listening? “If you throw yourself directly into Thor’s temper tantrum, then-”

“Dr. Gearloose, you worked on this suit dozens of times,” the intern said.

“Yes, so you should listen to me when I say-”

“I think it’s stronger than you think it is. I think you underestimate your work. “I think I’m going to be safe.”

“You idiot intern, you-”

KA-BOOM. The sound of lightning striking the suit and the machine and the intern lanced deafeningly through the lab, so loud that it made Gyro jump, startled, and left his ears ringing.

The volume made the silence that followed all the worse.

“Intern?” Gyro asked into the quiet, even though a strike like that had to have taken out the systems. It might have kicked to auxiliary for a safe landing, but communications would be gone. The readouts from the suit had gone dark.

So Gyro paced.

Two hours later, the elevator started up. Gyro looked up from where he was working over the suit’s blueprints to see the doors pop open and reveal his intern, a little worse for wear and lugging that familiar duffle bag. The guy’s eyes roved over the lab before landing on the invetor.

“Dr. Gearloose!”

He sounded entirely too chipper. Gyro carefully tucked the blueprints into a waterproof sleeve and stood up. “What’s wrong?” he asked.

“Nothing!” The intern sounded super enthusiastic about that answer. “The cops said I should go to the ambulance, but … hahaha no.” He started giggling, and for a moment, Gyro wondered if he’d spent the last two hours out getting drunk. If that were the case he wouldn’t have to fire the guy, he;d have to make sure he met with an accident before Mr. McDuck came back instead because Gyro was not going to put up with being left here, alone, wonder if-

“I told you so,” Fenton said, grinning at Gyro. “The lightning didn’t get to my brain. The suit handled it fine! Well.” He paused, then corrected himself. “Not fine. Like a blackout, too much light then everything goes dark and whoooosh, down I went.” He simulated the descent with one hand, like a child. When his palm impacted the work table, he almost knocked himself off balance.

Gyro blinked. “The auxiliary didn’t auto-loose the parachute?”

The intern squinted at him, mouthing the word parachute like someone who’d never heard the word before. Then his eyes lit up. “Oh! Yeah, the parachute happened. But then it caught on one of the gargoyles and riiiiiip.” He really drew the sound effect out. “The last bit was fast. Really fast. Bumped my head.” He giggled again, one hand going to the side of his head.

Where, Gyro could now see, a bit of dried blood crusted among the feathers.

“You gave yourself a concussion?” Gyro demanded.

“Teeechnically the ground gave it to me,” The intern corrected him. “But it caught me, so I can’t be too mad.”

“Come on. We need to get you to a hospital. Now.” Gyro said, walking over and turning him back toward the door.

The intern followed him unsteadily but with clear determination. “Right,” he said. “Hey, did you know you build in a breaker? Up there?” He tapped at the air where the Gizmoduck helmet would normally have been.

“I what?”

“It disengaged when the surge came,” the intern told him with the severity of a child explaining a very serious diorama of toys. “Disconnected from my brain. Just as the lightning hit. You don’t remember?”

And now, suddenly, he did. He’d put that in almost as an afterthought -- a clearly forgotten afterthought. But once the intern said the suit had been rewired to use an organic processor … well, all those thoughts of things going wrong had swirled in his head, and he had spent an afternoon putting together a couple different prototypes. Testing. Installing the best. Forgetting about it. Worried about literally nothing.

Well, not worried. He hadn’t been worried. Of course not.

“Let’s go,” he said, ignoring the fact that they were both already in the elevator. He hated that the night was about to become a lot longer while he got the concussed idiot medical care, to make sure his brain wasn’t leaking out the side of his head.

But one thing for sure. He was absolutely done pacing for tonight.

[soupandtissues]

Prompt: Caught in the Act

Fandom: Star Trek reboot

Pairing: Kirk/Spock/McCoy

McCoy leaned forward on his desk with a groan and rubbed at his eyes.  It was times like this he hated being a doctor.  There wasn’t a whole lot he could do for his patients outside of watching for spikes in fevers and pushing fluids.  Now that the illness had been confirmed to be annoying but not dangerous there was no adrenaline rush in finding a cure or vaccine.  Not there were a lot of people left that sort of thing anyway.  Lord knew Spock had enough on his plate that he hadn’t even stepped into a lab in a week. Charlene Masters had currently taken over engineering while Scotty was under the watchful eye of Uhura and he didn’t even know who was flying their tin can of a ship at the moment.  

At least there were no new cases being reported, but that really didn’t matter at this point did it? Everyone was sick and those lucky few who weren’t were exhausted.

“heh-HEH’ggntchu!”

McCoy now had the honour of being both.

He just hadn’t reported himself as such yet so technically he wasn’t a new case.

Burying his face into his sleeve he coughed as the stifled sneeze irritated his throat, still trying to keep quiet so no one would hear.  He pulled back and began searching the desk drawers for tissues.

“Leonard.”

McCoy jumped and turned to see Spock in his office, when had the door even opened?

“I should make you wear tap shoes so I can hear you coming.  Is something wrong with Jim?”

“No, he is resting. I merely came to inquire why you are late returning to our quarters.”

McCoy snorted and then immediately regretted it as it started a fresh tickle in the back of his nose.

“In case you haven’t noticed we’re all busy plugging personnel leaks trying to get this ship to port.”

He ducked his head and rubbed at his nose trying to halt the upcoming sneeze, and where were the tissues?!

Spock meanwhile moved behind the desk and easily lifted McCoy up and pulled him into his arms.

“There is no need to hide that you are ill, Leonard, I heard you coughing from the hall.”

“Darn Vulcan e-hehh-ears.”

McCoy let himself fall into the embrace pressing his quivering nose to Spock’s shoulder.

“Spock, you shouldn’t I really do need to-heh-need to s-sneeze.”

Spock merely tightened his embrace and McCoy released the desperate fit against him “heh’ERSUu! IERSUu! Huhh-ASSHhh!”

“You should be resting.”

“Spock, you know as well as I do how much backlogged work there is to do.”

“Work you can do from a PADD as you have already informed me there is no cure at this time and you do not need to monitor the patients directly.”

“Yeah, so I can feel more useless than I ihhh…oh not a-again huhh’ISUhh! Ehh-ESHHU! Huh-hehh…Spock, I-I can’t huh-ehhh…”

Spock shifted slightly, pressing a kiss to the side of McCoy’s nose.

“huhh-ahh’ASShu! ERSHUuh! ”

“Bless you, Leonard.”

McCoy sniffled thickly not even bothering to move from his position against Spock.  His fever must be higher than he thought. “Sorry.”

“Don’t be I only wish you to be well.”

Spock reached into his pocket and pulled out a handkerchief.  McCoy noticed that it was new with all of their initials embroidered on it.  He smiled at the gesture.

“You have a good bedside manner, Spock, you know that?”

“I do try.”

[obsidiancreates]

Preparing A Party For The Glitchiest Birthday Boy

(Yes, this is two days late. What are you gonna do about it, report me to Jackieboy?)

(I realized right at the end that I should add this disclaimer: Not trying to make them or their actions seem okay or soft or cute of anything. This is what they view as nice and being good friends and having a good time, and it’s written from their perspectives. It’s all obviously fucked up, but they view it as fine and normal.)

-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------Jimmy gnawed on a bone and stared at the wall, deep in thought.

“Wil, I just wanted to remind you not to go online today-” Dark walked into the room while looking at a phone, and when he lifted his head to see Jimmy he had to stifle a groan. His shell cracked ever so slightly, just enough that one of the mirrored images could be seen rolling its eyes. “Where did you get that?”

Jimmy snapped out of his trace. “Huh?” He took the bone out of his mouth and looked at it. “Oh, I found it in Ghost’s purse.”

“... What is it from.” It may have been a question in nature, but the way Dark said it most certainly replaced the question mark with a period.

“Don’t know! Could be human, could be from a monster, an alien, it’s anyone’s guess.”

Dark just stared with disgust. “Where’s Wilford?”

“He’s out getting Anti’s cake.”

“Anti’s cake?”

“It’s his birthday!” Jimmy stabbed the bone into his leg repeatedly as they talked. It was too dull to pierce, luckily. Dark was sick of blood getting all over the carpets. “I’m trying to think of a good present. Do you think a knife would be too expected?” Jimmy snapped his fingers. “Oh! Maybe a needle felt dying Jack! Homemade means I don’t have to spend any money!”

“You’re a disaster,” Dark deadpanned.

“I know!” Jimmy threw the bone onto the couch, and Dark made an audible noise of disgust. “Hmm, I need to get my stuff from home... could you kill me real quick?”

Dark didn’t even speak, he just reached out with his aura and snapped Jimmy’s neck.

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

Wilford tsked. “Is this your whole selection?”

“Yes, although we can do custom cakes. We need a few days though.”

Wilford sighed. “How red is your red velvet?”

The girl behind the counter stared at him. “The... normal amount?”

“Can you make it even redder?” Wilford leaned on one elbow, raised his eyebrows, and wiggled his mustache. 

The girl behind the counter, Marie according to her nametag, looked slightly confused and uncomfortable. “Um... I don’t think so.”

Wilford frowned. “Well shoot,” he mumbled. “What about frosting? DO you have any that looks like blood?”

Marie seemed to be inching away from the counter. “I guess... what um, what for?”

“Oh, my friend just likes blood,” Wilford said, waving his hand in dismissal. “How about- hey, where’d you go?”

The swinging door to the back room was doing exactly that, swinging. Wilford shrugged. “Well, if you want something done you’ve got to do it yourself!”

He set off for the grocery store, humming.

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

Jimmy was surprisingly quiet as he worked, stabbed the tufts of wool to shape them. It was a relief, really. Dark was sat comfortably in his favorite chair, going through the Markiplier tag on Tumblr.

He supposed he should be grateful that the glitch shared his birthday with the anniversary of that awful series. It would keep Wilford busy, hopefully keeping any incidents to a minimum. Wilford was always hard to handle when he remembered some of his past life. 

And... maybe, maybe, some small part of him disliked seeing Wilford upset.

Maybe.

A half-finished needle felt doll was shoved over Dark’s phone. “Does this look like he’s dead enough?” Jimmy pointed at the red line on the throat. “Or should I make it look like this is dripping?”

“I couldn’t care less.” Dark pushed the doll away and focused back on scanning the tag. He made a mental note to have Google block Wilford from social media privileges for the next few days.

“Come on! Be helpful!”

“To you? Absolutely not.”

“You and Anti go way back! What, you won’t even get him a card?”

“Pre-canon doesn’t count, Casket.” Dark made the ringing around him more intense to drive the murderer away. 

Jimmy ignored it. “Whatever. You’re the rudest of us all.”

“I am the only one who hasn’t actually murdered anyone.”

“You’ve killed me tons of times!”

Dark scoffed. “Those don’t count. You don’t stay dead.”

Jimmy crossed his arms. “It’s still murder! The police back home say so!” He scowled. “Besides, you didn’t either,” he muttered, quiet enough that Dark didn’t hear. He looked down at the half-finished doll in his hand. “Should I dip this in some Septic blood?” he thought aloud.

“As long as you don’t get it on my carpet or walls, I don’t care.”

Jimmy ran out the door. Dark cracked his neck. “Finally.”

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

Anti held up the knew puppet to the light. “I͡f y̶ou̡ ̨c͘ha͏ng̷e y̴o̶u͠r l͜o͞o̶k ͞agaìn,̴ ͟Bro̢dy͟,͢ I'm ͟g̶oin͠g aft̶e̡r yo҉ur ͘ḱi̡ḑs̨ ̡ag̡ain,” he mumbled. 

He had to knit a whole new puppet, of course, after Chase got his hair cut. He’d tried cutting the hair of his other one, but it just didn’t look right. He needed his puppets to be perfect matches if he wanted them to have any kind of power.

It wasn’t the worst way to spend his birthday. Sure, he’d rather be attacking the Septics brutally, but the timing would be just too predictable. They’d be prepared, and he didn’t want to have to struggle with anything on his birthday.

He hadn’t heard from Wilford or Jimmy at all, but he didn’t mind. Really, he didn’t. He had his phone close in case he wanted to set the community on fire. Not because he was waiting for a call or text. Not at all.

He tied some strings to the puppet and flicked it in the head. He glitched over to his monitors and saw Chase rub the back of his head and look around, confused. Anti grinned. Well, at least he had some entertainment.

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

Wilford plunked the grocery bags down on the counter. “GOOGLE!”

Google made his way to the kitchen, grumbling. He scowled at Wilford, who grinned right back. “What?” 

“Okay Google, pull up a cake recipe!”

Google glared at Wilford but did as he was told. Wilford started (messily) measuring the ingredients.

Google watched as various ingredients began thoroughly coating the counters. His core ached with the knowledge that he would be the one who had to clean it all up. “You could just make one appear,” he said, struggling to maintain his monotone voice.

Wilford gasped. “But then there’s no love in it!” He smiled as he mixed the dry ingredients together. “I used to do this all the time! Back in the day I was a master of cake making! I would make it, and then-”

The smile slowly faded.

“And- and then...”

Google didn’t say anything. He just watched as Wilford stared into the bowl, his eyes moving all around the room, like he was searching for something.

“He decorated them... I- I can’t remember his name...”

Google stiffened. Dark had made it very clear that he was to be alerted if Wilford had an “incident”. Google waited, seeing if it would escalate.

“D-Dames? Dam- Damien?” Wilford blinked. “Damien?”

Google was about to message Dark when Jimmy burst into the room. “Wil! Which Septic would Anti want blood from the most?!”

Wilford kept staring for a moment. Jimmy waved Knifey in front of Wilford’s face. “Helloooo? This is urgent! It’s for Anti’s present!”

Wilford blinked, stared at Jimmy, and then grinned. “Jimmy! When did you walk in?”

“Just a second ago! Quick, which Septic would Anti most want the blood of?!”

“Hmm...” Wilford stroked his mustache, then tapped on it, then went back to stroking it. “That doctor! Or the silent one! Of maybe the one with the hat!”

“THAT’S NOT HELPFUL AT ALL!” Jimmy ran out of the room, spouting off “heck”s and “darn”s the whole way.

Google smirked. Jimmy’s inability to curse always made him feel smug, same as with Bing’s safesearch filter.

Wilford went back to baking. “What was I talking about before? Ah, nevermind. There’s cake to be made!”

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

Anti took a break from watching the Septics and went to look at the community tag. “O̢h̷ hell ͘y͠e͡a̴h.̢ I'm so fuçk͡in͟'͜ c̸o͏ol,͝” he said to himself as he scrolled through the fanart. “Oh͟,̀ that̴'̀s ͝g̷oo̡d͘!͝ I'm uśing tha͏t͝. W͝o̷w͘,̨ t̡hey͝'̨ve͘ g̡oţ some g͘r̕e̴at i̷dea̸s..̵.͠”

It was fortunate he took the break when he did. Otherwise the surprise of his present would have been completely ruined.

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

Jimmy no-clipped through the wall, into where he was pretty sure the lab was. Anti had shown him around the place once before, right before he tried to murder the hero one. Good times...

Jimmy looked around. Yup, he got it right! Bright lights, cold title, hospital beds...

A slightly blue mouse sitting on a desk in one of the corners started squeaking at him, quickly and furiously. 

“Shut up,” he hissed. 

The mouse squeaked even more.

Jimmy ignored it. No time!

He moved to the back room, where Anti had told him Jack was kept. He got his own room. Seemed like overkill to Jimmy, but it did make sneaking up to him easier.

The magic spells protecting the room did nothing to keep Jimmy out. They’d been made with Anti in mind, after all.

Jimmy walked up to the bed where the comatose Jacksepticeye laid, unmoving and unresponsive. “Not here to kill you,” Jimmy said as he got Knifey out, “That would be a terrible birthday present. Anti really wants to do that himself.” Jimmy tapped his chin. “Where to get the blood from...”

The neck? That was part of Anti’s whole style... but maybe somewhere less risky, after all for once Jimmy wanted the person he was stabbing to live...

He shrugged, went for a part of the abdomen that usually bled the least in his experience, and just hoped for the best.

He coated the doll thoroughly, until it was fully red and dripping. “Perfect!” He cleared his throat. ‘HEY SEPTIC WEIRDOS! I JUST STABBED JACK IN THE ABDOMEN!”

He heard some distant crashing, shouting, and then all five of them burst into the room at once. He grinned at them. “Don’t worry, I didn’t try to kill him! I just needed some blood!”

Chase shot him. Jimmy re-spawned immediately and went in for a few stabs.

He only managed to get some more blood from Schneep and Jameson. Jackie and Marvin kept killing him before he could get them. Schneep ran for Jack as soon as he could, despite the others trying to hold him back, so he was an easy target. Jameson tried to attack him with a cane sword (where the heck did he even get one of those?), and Jimmy managed to cut his hand.

“Well, that was fun! Bye!” Jimmy waved at them with the bloody doll and no-clipped through the wall again. He stole a car and quickly drove back to the Iplier household, somehow, despite them being across the ocean and hours away.

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

 Wilford took the cake out right as Jimmy burst back into the house. “I GOT THE BLOOD!”

Wilford peered at the doll. “Wow! That’s a fantastic likeness!”

“I know! I’m very proud of it!” Jimmy beamed. He looked at the cake. “Ooooh, that’s really red!”

“I was think green frosting, your thoughts?”

Jimmy licked some blood off of Knifey. “Kinda Christmas-y.”

“Well, he did have that whole Overnightwatch thing. He loved that!”

“True! Add some black too! OH! Let’s do black eyes!”

“Genius!” Wilford got right to mixing up the frosting colors. “Want to help?”

“Can I eat the leftover frosting?”

“Sure!”

Jimmy wasted no time furiously mixing the colors, and then slathering the cake with frosting. He set the doll on the counter, much to the annoyance of Google. 

Soon they had a fully-decorated cake. Green frosting, black eyes, black sprinkles, and as an extra touch, a knife with fake blood (really just translucent writing frosting).

“It’s perfect!” Wilford gazed at their creation with adoration. 

Jimmy whipped his phone out and texted Anti. “Let’s move it to the living room!”

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

Anti glitched into the Iplier’s living room. “Ìs͟ Dar̵k̵ ́actuall͡y̨ ̴c̡ove̕re̛d i͞n̵ ͜gl̨itt̸er̴?́ ̕B̕eca͏ųse ̕if̶ s̴o thi̶s ̵i͜s ̛t̛he ̧best͢... b̨i̵rt͝hd͞a҉y̵... “

He stared at the cake on the coffee table, the small box next to it, and his two friends standing on either side.

“Surprise!” they shouted. Jimmy threw some of that sharp plastic confetti at him while Wilford went with shooting a glitter bomb out of a grenade launcher.

“.̨.. ͡wha̶t̡ the ͠f͡u̕c͜k̀?̨” was all Anti could think to say. He didn’t mean it in a bad way though.

“Come open the present!” Jimmy grabbed his arm and pulled him closer. He slammed the box into Anti’s hand. 

Anti tore the wrapping paper off and pulled out-

“Is ̢t̡h́i͞s͟ ҉a ́de͠ad ̵J̢a̸c͜k?̨”

“Covered in his blood! I didn’t kill him, but I did also get some blood from the doctor and the old-timey one! Do you like it?”

“L̨i̢ke͟ i̢t? It's ҉p̢erf͠ȩct.” Anti grinned deviously. “I̶ ̵ca̶n'̛t ͢w͝a̛i̴t ̶to p̸o̶s̛t a͟ ̡pictur̀e ǫf̸ ̡i͜t̕ and̨ śe̸t͘ th̛e ̨f҉a̵n͝s on ̶f̡i̢r̀e̛!”

“YES! I DID GOOD!”

Anti looked down at the cake. “Are̶ t͟hos̀e̴ m͜y͡ ҉ęy̷es̶?”

“They are! and the inside is bright red! Red velvet flavor!” Wilford gestured to the knife. “Go ahead!”

Anti cut a piece and ate it off the knife instead of getting a fork and plate.

Jimmy took that as a queue to dive in his his hands.

Wilford got a plate without actually grabbing one and shoveled it in.

They finished the whole cake in mere minutes. Then they all ran out to the yard, buzzing from the sugar. Anti tackled Jimmy and killed him, cackling. Now this was his kind of birthday!

[irondad-not-ironsad]

Better Place

AN: So this ideas been in my brain for weeks. and I wrote a bunch of it a few days ago but I accidentally deleted it, so here’s take two

“and ah, you’re my favorite thing

ah, all the happiness you bring

well it feels like I’ve opened my eyes again

and the colors are golden and bright again

and the sun paints the skies

and the wind sing our song

it’s a better place since you came along” -rachel platten

Tony wishes he could say the day he walked into Peter Parker’s life was a day like any other, but that was unfortunately not the case. It was likely one of the lowest points of his life. Pepper had left him a few weeks ago, and now half of his team was following. Worse yet, he was now resorting to recruiting a teenage kid to help detain what were now being called the Rogue Avengers. He tried to push that all aside as he put on his mask to introduce himself to the kid’s aunt. Not his Iron Mask, as that would likely startle her quite a bit, but his figurative mask that was the persona he took on at press conferences and business meetings, the persona of a cocky, flirtatious, carefree billionaire. After a brief questioning. Mrs. Parker buys his phony story of a grant and soon the boy arrives home and he is allowed to speak with him in private. Seeing the kid in person for the first time, it felt hard to breathe. Years of practice allowed him to hide his panic but he was internally at war with himself, he knew this kid was a 14, but his brain did not truly realize how young that was until his eyes were seeing it. Even his brain, which many considered genius, struggle to consolidate this gangly teen with the graceful vigilante from the videos. Be brought the kid to Germany and told himself that he was helping him by giving him a safer suit, but the guilt came crashing down on him when he saw the boy knocked out by the giant Ant Man, ad felt panic that he refused to admit felt vaguely parental when he did not get back up. Thankfully, Peter seemed to be okay, albeit slightly roughed up.

In the time that followed Tony’s life just seemed to keep going further and further downhill, starting with Rhodey falling from the sky and Tony being unable to help, to Tony facing what he considered the ultimate betrayal from the Captain he used to call a friend. Returning from the fight, Tony immediately rushed to be with Rhodey while the doctors ran tests. While they awaited results, Tony kept checking for messages from Happy, who he had left Peter with.

“I can tell your worried about more than just my legs Tones, your waiting for Happy to message you about the Spider Boy, right?”

“It’s Spiderman” Tony mutters

“That’s not the point and you know it. How do you know the guy? You haven’t told me anything about him but judging from what I’ve seen, he can’t be older than 25, which places his birth right around the time of your-”

“He’s fourteen, actually” That manages to put Rhodey into a stunned silence as Tony looks away guilty. After taking a few seconds to process Rhodey whispers

“Jesus Christ, Tony” after pausing for a few seconds “How could you recruit your teenage son to fight with the Avengers, and how could you have not told me?”

If Tony had been holding a drink he would have spit it out. Instead the man shook his head, and explained what had happened.

“Despite your denial, i can tell you care a lot about the kid. Go, check on him. I know you sent Happy to take him home, based on how eager the kid was to please you, I bet he’ll be glad to see you”

“Rhodey I can’t just leave you here alone”

“Why not? I’ll be here when you get back, it’s not like I’m gonna get up and walk away.” Tony laughs for the first time in what feels like weeks, bids his friend good bye and good luck and goes off to check on the spiderling.

Tony had originally planned to take a hands on approach in mentoring the kid, but upon seeing his eagerness to get involved with the big leagues he decides a more distant approach may be better. Tony already made the mistake of bringing him to an Avengers fight, he wasn’t going to get the kid killed by introducing him to a level of fighting he is to young for. Instead, he has the kid send Happy status reports, but in truth he has them all forwarded to himself. When he spends long days working with politicians to fix the accords, listening to Peter’s voicemail reminds him that there is good in the world. Living alone in the tower was rough, it seemed every corn he turned he could feel the ghosts of the happy memories he and the team had had their. Now, the rooms that once seemed vibrant and full of life faded to a dull gray.

Over the next few weeks several things happen very quickly. While Tony is away in India Tony has t send a suit to save Peter after he got involved in crime that was a little to advanced for him. Tony briefly thought that the stress he felt for Peter’s safety must be what it’s like to be a father, but he quickly pushed that notion out of his head.  Next comes the incident in DC, which Tony only saw a few hours later and he swore that kid was TRYING to give him a heart attack. A few days later, Tony calmed down and realized, despite how stressful it appeared, the kid did a good job. He had just got off the phone from telling him this when he saw Spiderman on the news, and he was most definitely NOT at band practice. 

The events that follow happen in a bit of a blur, one second he’s fixing the ferry, the next he’s on top of a building with Peter, taking the suit. He feels awful about it the next day, but he also thinks that he cannot go back

Of course, then comes moving day, and the plane crash, and Tony decide that maybe he ought to keep the tower after all.

(Pepper suggests he wants a location to stay close to New York  to keep a eye on Peter. Tony will never admit it, but she isn’t wrong)

After the shocking turn of events that was Peter turning down the offer to join the Avengers, Pepper and Tony were in their kitchen, celebrating their engagement when his phone rings. He does not recognize the phone number calling and he answers in the manner he does all of these calls

“I don’t know how you got this number but don’t even think about cal-”

“This is Spider Man’s aunt. You may remember recruiting my kid to fight behind my back?”

“Crap.”

No women could ever scare Tony as much as Pepper, but May Parker came pretty darn close. After she finished thoroughly chewing him out she agreed to allow him to continue under the basis of Tony training him and personally monitoring his patrols (which Tony normally did anyways, not that he’d admit it) and that he give her access to monitor the suit (he sent her a StarkPad that was completely synced with Karen the next day.) After Peter accidentally blew up his school lab making web fluid, she added the condition that he go to Tony’s lab once a week. What started as Peter using the facility to make web fluid, led to Tony teaching the kid all the inner workings of the Spider Man suit to Peter being his personal intern. 

(Pepper suggested that it was less like he was his personal intern and more like he was his son, but what does Pepper know?)

Occasionally they would work so late into the night that Peter would just stay the night. This led to Peter coming to the compound every Friday after school with a duffle bag and then returning to his apartment Sunday afternoon. This definitely was not because they were forming a father son bond (”I swear to God  if you call me Iron Dad one more time Rhodey....”) It was just convenient. May had the most shifts on weekends and Peter got bored being home alone. Any good mentor would invite him to stay. For an early birthday present, Tony decided to redo the guest room to personalize it for Peter. Pepper suggested he just hire someone to do it, but he brushed her aside. If someone leaked that he was having a room decorated for a teenage boy God only know what kind of rumors would spread. That is why he was sitting on his tablet at 11 PM stressing over what color paint would prefer.

“Just buy both and ask him which he likes better when he comes over”

“Pep I can’t just.... actually your right, I’m a billionaire, I’ll get both.”

That is how, a few days later the billionaire finds himself hand painting a room with a 15 year old boy. Peter returns from the bathroom just to feel paint drip on his face from above. He looks up to see Peter on the ceiling painting the part of the ceiling he couldn’t reach from the ground.

“Whoops, sorry Mr. Stark” the laughter in his voice told him he wasn’t really sorry. picking up a paintbrush he exclaimed

“I’ll get you for that little you little twerp” and with tat flung some of the paint at Peter.

When Pepper went 30 minutes later to see what kind of pizza to order for lunch, she finds them laughing hysterically and covered in paint.

A week later Tony hosted a surprise birthday for Peter at the tower.  He, shockingly enough, kept it small, only inviting Peter’s closest friends, May, Rhodey and Pepper. He and May had spent the past few hours painstakingly setting everything up to be perfect. Tony’s back hurt more than he cared to admit, and part of him was wary the girl, Michelle, who watched him with a far to knowing look. It was all made worth it when he say the look on Peter’s face when they surprised him. When Peter crushed him into a hug his initial reaction was to jerk away, but instead he returned the hug. He wasn’t certain, but he thinks he heard the boy mumble “thanks dad” into his shoulder. After a few seconds he released the boy and ruffled his hair.

“Anytime, son” he said to quietly for anyone to hear. Than, louder, he said “Enjoy the party, kiddo” and handed him off to his aunt.

Now, when Tony walks the halls of the tower, instead of seeing the ghosts of his ex teammates he see’s Peter’s homework strewn across the table, his backpack propped against the couch, his report card that he had jokingly taped on the fridge and often time the curly haired teenager himself, breathing life back into the place.

One day he realized that the world is no longer all gray.

AN: Thanks for reading, i haven’t actually read back over this, though I might sometime soon. Hope you enjoyed!

[chaniters]

UPSTAGED

I’ve been promising to write this series for so darn long... Finally got an idea on how to start it. Hope you enjoy it! (Sentai themed. This is just the first part, introducing the setting!) 

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

"You'll never get what you want, you maniac!"

"Now now, Governor... let us keep calm. My terms have been most generous."

"We can't negotiate with terrorists! You know that!"

"I do. But we both know what will happen if I use my disintegration touch on the West Coast's entire gold reserves"

"Ha! The Rangers will stop you!"

"I doubt that, considering I locked them down myself in one of the vaults." You let out a loud cackle.

You got him. You can hurt the system right where it hurts. Money. If the reserves are out, west-coast dollars will lose all value, destabilizing its flourishing economy, the only reason it's status as a free economic zone was never revoked.   And a place like the farm cannot operate in the main country. They have real laws there. Still, it isn't a sure bet. A million things could go wrong if you actually destroy the economy. Too unpredictable. But you know they'll have to relent.

Unpredictable is something the politicians at play hate just as much as you do.

"W... Damnit! Damn you freak...! You wouldn't dare do it! Do you know how much chaos that would cause?"

"Of course I do Governor. And there are many other banks for me to visit after this one, you know... unless you want to tell the world you can't your valuables safe?"

"Go to hell!" he yells exasperated. "I know you won't do it! There's nothing for you to win in this! Why don't you just steal some of the gold?" He doesn't get it. He can't understand that you don't care about money at all.

"You test my patience governor. Perhaps a little demonstration is in orde..." You are interrupted by a loud siren noise from the Governor's office. "What is that?"

"It's the citywide alarm system... what's going on? Are we at war?" the Governor turns to one of his aides, who fumbles a remote control to turn on the TV.

You activate a console on your helm to watch as well. Is he trying to gain time? Maybe you should make a third of the gold reserve evaporate... that ought to make him reconsider.

The Governor's TV settles on the main news channel, as do you.

Mia Ochoa is in Los Diablos according to the labels, reporting from under a table, as pieces of ceiling fall all over. She appears to be at a bar. What the hell is going on and how did you not catch up on it sooner?

"... there is a very unstable situation on the ground, that is unfolding very quickly. The floating disc descended from high altitude at great speed and emitted a blue ray over the fields, which released a swarm of humanoid creatures armed with energy weapons. They are firing indiscriminately on civilians!"

"Quickly! Call all of Los Diablos police stations! Contact Los Diablo's Mayor! Send in the National Guard!" The Governor seems to be going into overdrive mode as his aids run back and forth.

Mia goes on with her reporting.

"I will try to get some images for our viewers! I remind you, we are risking our lives doing this so we might not be able to get the best takes. Also, we might see graphic violence!"

Fuck. Mia Ochoa does not back down, you have to give her that.

The film crew creeps to the bar's door, and soon enough, you can see the armed soldiers. They seem to be wearing similar outfits and move in a robotic fashion. Drones? Worse of all, there is a giant spinning metal disc floating above them. They start firing again and the Mia Ochoa and her camera crew go back inside.

You mute the governor's and the news channels open a third one to Mortum's lab.

"Doctor, are you seeing this?"

"Afraid so Retribution."

"Is this for real?"

"I think so. Never seen anything like this."

"Thank you. I'll get back to you later...I'll be at the lab soon" You close Mortum's and Mia Ochoa's channels and focus on the Governor again.

"Afraid I'm going to have to leave you Retribution," he says.

"WHAT?" you ask outraged.

"I've got a bit of a situation on my hands, can't you see?"

"But the gold reserves..."

"Are irrelevant if I lose an entire city to an alien invasion. All I can say is please don't do it? Thank you"

"..." awkward silence as you have no idea what to even say after that.

"Anyways, I really have to go so..."

"WAIT!" You plead, the roles reversed.

"What for?"

"There might be a win-win situation here... you know what I want. And you have a bit of a situation in your hands. What If I helped deal with it...?"

"You mean work for us? Fight off those things"

"Yes," you say finally.

"I could consider it...yes... You know what if all you want me to do is close that camp of horrors from the feds, I can do it. I'll fucking evict them from the entire West Coast if you want. But I want results!”

“Oh, I’ll get you results! I’ll exterminate those things so fast they won’t know what hit them!” you say energetically

“Also, I want you to release the rangers. We need all hands on deck"

"...fine" you grumble with a complete loss of your previous enthusiasm.

A wave of cold anger flows through your body as you walk towards the smaller vault. You've never done any of this out of revenge or seeking fame, but having someone steal your thunder like this when the governor was right at the palm of your hand..., even if it's an alien... it just makes your blood boil. Whoever's responsible is going down. Big time.

***************************************

"HARDER!" Steel commanded as Herald flung him at high speed against the vault's reinforced gate at great speed. Ortega and Argent joined with a combined strike, but the gate remained impervious.

"Fuck! It's no use!" Charge cursed outraged. Argent continued slashing at the metal, only creating superficial marks. Herald looked defeated, and Steel just studied the gate with his sensors, trying to find a weakness. There was none.

"You're right" he let on sitting on a pile of gold bars. "He got us good this time"

"FUUUUCK!" Charge went on kicking a few bars against the wall. Argent just kept slashing.  

"That's not helping" Herald muttered while trying to get signal with his cellphone.

"At least I'm doing something!" Argent replied breathing heavily. "You'll never get signal! We're in a sealed VAULT!"

"The kid's right" Steel spoke tiredly. "Even if we can’t get signal we have to get someone to open it from the outside. It's not going to magically open just because you..."

And then the gate did just that, unsealing itself.

The Rangers gathered together, shocked to see Retribution on the other side.

"What gives? Lost something here?" Steel asked sarcastically walking over the gate ready to fight. The other rangers assume fighting stances behind him.

"Only my time." His terrifying voice lacked the characteristical aggressiveness this time. "Come out already, we've got a lot of work to do," he said motioning them out.

Steel looked puzzled but then advanced striking a warrior's pose. "I don't know what game you're playing or what you're planning, but it will never succeed! And we'll never EVER work with you!"

"Well tough luck hunk because you're totally going to be seeing a lot more of me! Oh, and by the way, you better hurry to Memorial Park unless you want to be late for your first alien invasion!" He said, before pressing a palm to the bank's wall which instantly dissolved, creating a circular hole for him to escape with his jump jets.

"The fuck?" Steel was astonished

"Did she just call you hunk?" Charge asked with a wide grin.

"What do you mean she? Retribution's clearly a guy!" Steel replied.

"Oh wow... I didn't think you were into...him"

"Wha... No, I mean... I never meant it that way..."

"Come on... first I learn you're gay, now you're really wanting that one to be a guy... I can see where this all leads Chen!"

"THAT'S NOT WHAT I MEANT YOU IDIOT!"

"Yeah right," Ortega was cracking in laughter by now.

"Hey I've got phone signal finally," Herald says. "The Mayor's calling us! And the Governor too! We've got to go to Memorial Park right now!"

"Let's go, Herald... They'll catch up when they grow up" Argent said hurrying to the Ranger's helicopter dragging floating Herald by his arm.

Steel and Ortega soon followed.

____________________________

My fanfics: https://chaniters.tumblr.com/post/181692759294/my-fanfiction-for-fallen-hero

DISCLAIMER: This is a work of fan fiction using characters and the setting of the Fallen Hero: Rebirth and upcoming Fallen Hero: Retribution games written by Malin Riden. I do not claim ownership of any characters from the Fallen Hero wold. These stories are a work of my imagination, and I do not ascribe them to the official story canon. These works are intended for entertainment outside the official storyline owned by the author. I am not profiting financially from the creation of these stories, and thank the author for her wonderful game/s, without which these works would not exist.

[sour--strawberries]

Distraction

summary: Steve is trying to be responsible while Tony does everything to keep him away fro being responsible.

A/N: It’s been a while since I have had the time to write, and I had fun with this one. This is pre Civil War, established Stony. Just some fluff to make you all smile! :)

aaah, classic Stony <3 Thank you for this sweet fanfic!!

———

Distraction by @pleasantlyjovialfun

“I need those reports by tomorrow, Rogers”.

Fury’s words echoed in Steve’s head as he left the room. He had been in the same damn room for three hours, listening to Fury bark the latest orders and attempt some sort of semblance with a room full of tired agents. Normally, the meetings were held at headquarters in Washington DC, but since most of the agents present had been on assignment in the city, Fury had decided to hold it in NY.

 It wasn’t Fury’s fault, really. It was nearing the end of the month, and this was the time when SHIELD usually planned for the next upcoming month, so a longer than usual meeting couldn’t have been helped. He could have done without the report that Fury had nonchalantly dropped in front of him as the meeting was adjourned, though.

Steve found his car in the parking garage, and as he slipped inside and turned the turned the key in the ignition, the car came to life with a satisfying hum. He rubbed his hand across his tired eyes in an attempt to focus a little more, and then he pulled out of the garage and onto the road.

After the long meeting, and with the knowledge that he had a report due by tomorrow, all Steve wanted to do was go home and get things done. As he drove through the streets and closer to Stark Towers, his mind drifted to more pleasant thoughts.

He still couldn’t believe that Tony was his boyfriend. It had taken a lot of convincing on both sides to finally come to the mutual realization that they truly cared for one another and that they were much stronger as a pair than apart. The rest of the team all drew a collective sigh of relieve when they had made the announcement six months ago that they were a couple. This meant that they could finally stop dancing around one another, acting like they weren’t secretly lusting after one another,

Steve still marveled at how far he and Tony had come in six months. When Steve first met Tony, he considered him to be arrogant, pretentious and downright impulsive. He thought that many times, some of Tony’s actions jeopardized the safety of the team, and this was something that put Steve on edge whenever the brunette was in the room with him.

Over time, though, Steve had come to realize that he was really wrong about the person Tony really was. After a lot of quiet observation and reflection, he started to see Tony as someone who truly cared about those around him and that really only ever wanted love and acceptance from others, no matter how smoothly he tried to play it off like their affection didn’t really matter to him. He came to see Tony as someone who was selfless to a fault at times and someone who just wanted to protect those he let into his small inner circle.

Yes, he was still cocky and reckless at times and he still drove Steve nuts on a good day, but who was he to judge? Steve was well aware of his own character defects, and he wasn’t about to try to act like Tony was the only person in the relationship with issues. Steve knew that he himself lacked self-confidence at times and was often quick to judge, but then again, who doesn’t have things they need to work on? Tony’s good qualities far outweighed his flaws, for sure. The more time Steve spent with Tony, the more he realized that he was done searching. He felt like he had found his life partner with Tony, and he planned on loving him for the rest of his life. He knew that Tony felt the same way. He wasn’t as forthcoming with his emotions like Steve was, but his actions said much more than his words ever would. The way he had let Steve into his world, had asked him to move in with him, and had trusted him enough to sit up late some nights, telling Steve things that he knew no one else had ever heard told Steve that Tony wanted to spend the rest of his life with Steve as well.

A half hour later, Steve was home. After putting his keys and sunglasses away, he pulled out the report that Fury had given him and sat down at the kitchen table to start working on it. He had seen Tony’s car in the garage, so he knew he was home. He hadn’t seen any sight of him since he had gotten home. His best guess was that Tony was probably downstairs in his lab, tinkering with something or coming up with a new idea. The genius was always on the hunt to develop something new. In between missions, he got bored easily and always needed to be working on something. Steve wanted to get a start on the report now so that he would have the evening to himself to be able to spend some time with Tony. That was, of course, if the engineer didn’t plan on staying in his workshop all night like he so often did. He was hoping Tony would be up within a few hours.

He didn’t have to wonder for long, because within the hour, he heard the door to the workshop opening and saw Tony as he walked towards the kitchen. It took Tony a moment to realize that Steve was at the table, but when he did, he gave Steve a big smile.

“Hiya Cap. How’s it going?”

Steve smiled and gestured to the paperwork in front of him.

“It will be great once I get this darned report finished, Fury wants it done by tomorrow morning,”

Tony wrinkled his nose, causing a few creases to show on his forehead.

“Ugh, if Fury wants that report so bad, why doesn’t he just do it himself? It’s bad enough you have to sit through all those meetings.”

Steve smiled. “Unfortunately, it comes with the territory. Not all of us can sit back and play in our workshops all day. Some of us have real jobs.”

Tony scoffed, but recognizing Steve’s playful tone, he decided to play along.

He fake sniffed, sticking his nose is the air.

“Fine, I can see when I’m not wanted. If I wanted to stand here and get insulted, I would have invited Rhodey over.”

Steve smiled and rose from the chair to give Tony a peck on the cheek. He frowned when he almost got a lip full of grease.

“Why don’t you jump in the shower and get cleaned up. I should be done with this by then. Afterward, we can get something for lunch.”

Tony rolled his eyes. “Six months in, and you’re still telling me when to take a shower? You’re such a mother hen, Steve. Steve looked up and saw the playful sparkle in Tony’s eyes. Before Tony had the chance to react, Steve reached down and planted a playful swat on Tony’s butt. Tony let out a little yelp.

“Ok, ok. I’m going!. Geez, I thought you liked my ass, too.” Steve let out a small laugh.

“That goes without saying. It’s one of your best ASSets.”

Tony rolled his eyes at the obvious emphasized word and headed towards the bedroom to get ready for his shower. All Steve could think about as he watched him walk away was that he had a very nice ass, indeed.

A half hour later, Tony came back into the room. He was wearing a black ACDC t-shirt and blue jeans. They were in between missions at the moment, and it felt good for him to be able to dress down and be comfortable. He looked over at the table and saw that Steve was still immersed in his report.

“Hey, I thought you said that you’d be done by the time I was ready. What gives?”

Steve looked up from the table, turning slightly so that he could see Tony.”

“Sorry, babe. This is taking a little longer than I thought. I should be done soon. Just give me a little more time and then we can go out.”

Tony made a humming noise in response and went to sit down on the couch. He sat quietly while Steve worked, but that only lasted for a few minutes. Waiting had never been his strong suit. He rose from the couch and strolled over to the table where Steve was. Glancing over his shoulder, Tony saw that Steve was still writing. He waited a moment for Steve to be finished with the word he was on, and then he bent down and placed a kiss along the back of Steve’s nape. Not expecting it, Steve was startled and scrunched his shoulders up to try to protect his ticklish neck. Tony kissed his nape again, and Steve let out a few giggles before he could control his reaction. This brought a smile to Tony’s face. He knew that Steve was trying to work, but based on this reaction, he now had a more fun way to pass the time as Steve worked.

“Tony, I’m trying to work!” Yes, he was scolding him, but he couldn’t help the slight tremor of laughter that was lacing his words. He loved it when Tony go into these playful moods, but he really still did have work to do. Tony watched as Steve went back to his writing. Huffing in annoyance, Tony sat back on the couch to wait. After a few more minutes, Tony was getting even more impatient.

“Steve are you almost done? I’m starving!”

Without looking up from his work, Steve told Tony that he was almost done.

Tony lasted all of two minutes before rising from the couch again. He debated with himself about bugging Steve again because he didn’t want to make him upset, but the lack of complaint the first time he had approached Steve did not go unnoticed. Deciding to let his playfulness take over, he approached Steve again. This time, Steve was more aware of Tony’s presence. Knowing Tony the way he did meant that the snarky brunette probably had something else up his sleeve.

Steve continued to write, albeit a little slower since he had a certain someone standing close behind him. He was aware that Tony was watching him as he worked, but so far, Tony had not moved from his spot, and seemed content to just watch Steve as he worked. He thought this was a bit weird, but then again, considering the source, he wasn’t that surprised.

A minute or two passed. Tony saw how Steve was now fully engrossed in his writing again and that he had dropped his guard, so to speak. Once again, Tony waited for Steve to be done writing the word he was on. After all, he really didn’t want Steve to mess up his report because he wanted to play. Once Steve was done his word, Tony got closer to Steve and started tasering both of Steve’s sides in quick, rapid bursts. Steve jumped, slamming both his elbows to his sides in protection. This only served in trapping Tony’s hands against his ticklish flesh.

“Tohahahny stop!” These were the only words he could get out through his laughter. After about ten more seconds, the tickling stopped and Tony withdrew his hands. Smirking at the fact he was able to pull one over on Steve, the grin faltered when Steve rose from his chair.

“You really can’t just let me finish this, can you? You’re so needy, you know that?” As he said this, he got closer to Tony. Tony heard the annoyance in Steve’s tone, but he also heard something else. Was there an underlying tone of playfulness, or was he just imagining things? His suspicions were confirmed when he looked into Steve’s blue eyes and saw mischief in them.

As annoyed as Steve was that Tony just couldn’t leave well enough alone and let him finish his report in peace, he was also happy. It wasn’t an everyday occurrence that Tony was in a playful mood like this, and Steve was going to take advantage of it, even if he was giving Tony what he wanted.

“So, that’s the way it’s going to be, huh Tony? You want to play? We’ll play.”

With that said, Steve lounged in Tony’s direction. Tony gave a startled yelp and took off running. Steve let him get a little jumpstart, because he didn’t want to end the game that Tony had initiated too soon. After a few moments of halfheartedly attempting to snag Tony and listening to his panicked squeaks whenever Steve got too close, he finally put his full effort into the chase.

They were currently in the common room of the tower and Tony was on one side of the couch, with Steve on the other. They were circling it, with Tony trying to use the couch as a buffer to keep Steve at bay. Steve endured this for a few moments, letting Tony think that he had won. When the brunette’s guard was down, Steve suddenly took off at a run, snagging Tony around the waist before heaving him over his shoulder. Before Tony could do much more than give a startled yell, Steve brought him over to the couch and dumped him unceremoniously onto the cushions. Tony tried to scramble off, but his bare feet could not get a good enough grip. Before he knew it, Steve was climbing on top of him and using his weight to push Tony down into the cushions. He then straddled Tony’s hips, using his knees to pin both of Tony’s hands to the couch.

Steve looked down at Tony, noticing the slightly reddening face of the billionaire.

“All I was trying to do was finish that report, and you couldn’t even let me do that. Then you have the nerve to sneak up and tickle me. What do you have to say for yourself?”

Tony, realizing the position he was in, knew there wasn’t a whole lot he could say to save himself.

“Umm, I love you and I’m sorry?”

The last part of the statement came out as more of a question, and Tony cursed the nervous wave that ran through his words. Steve was slowly melting from the adorableness that was Tony Stark, and he had to fight hard to keep the smile off his face.

“So, now that I have you like this, what do you think I should do with you?”

He smirked down at Tony, trying to ease a little of the tension for him. Tony looked back up at Steve, trying to squirm, testing how stuck he really was. He quickly came to the realization that he was royally screwed. There was no way he was going anywhere until Steve decided to let him up. He put on his best puppy dog eyes.

“Why don’t you just let me go and we can go to lunch? Steve chuckled at the hopeful tone he heard in Tony’s voice.

“Yeah right. You were pestering me and not letting me finish my work. Why would I let you just get away with that?

“Um…because you love me?”

Steve smiled down at Tony.

“I do love you, Tony, but your actions can’t go unpunished. As a matter of fact, I think I’m going to give you a taste of your own medicine. You tickled me, so I think it’s only fair that I do the same to you.” After having said that, Steve wiggled his fingers in the air in the classic tickling motion that Tony was all too familiar with.

Tony started to panic. He knew deep down that retaliation was in store and a part of him didn’t really mind, because come on, who wouldn’t want Steve running his hands all over you? Part of him didn’t mind. He liked it when Steve tickled him because he trusted him and knew that he always kept it playful and only made it torturous when they were feeling particularly inventive in the bedroom. He couldn’t help his body’s natural instinct to want to get away, and he squirmed as much as his limited movements allowed. He looked up at Steve with big, pleading eyes.

“Can’t we talk about this? I said I was sorhahahah!”

Steve effectively cut off Tony’s rambling by softly digging into the black material of Tony’s tshirt. He started scribbling on the soft sides of the man beneath him, making Tony giggle and buck. He pulled on his arms in an attempt to protect his ticklish skin, but Steve had him hopelessly pinned. Steve then started to squeeze the fleshy parts of his sides, in the same way that Tony had done to him only moments earlier. Oh, the irony.

Steve saw could tell how much his touch was affecting Tony, based off of his laughter and his previous experience. He knew first-hand that Tony was helplessly ticklish, but he also knew that deep down, Tony didn’t really mind being tickled, as long as he trusted the person doing the tickling. Steve knew Tony trusted him and only made a show out of not liking it because he didn’t want to come across as being too obvious. Steve’s internal thoughts were interrupted by Tony’s chaotic laughter and pleas.

“Steve, hahahha stop!!”

 Tony was going crazy. The fact that he couldn’t protect himself or do anything to stop Steve was making him even more ticklish, if that was possible. Things only got worse for him when Steve moved his hands higher and started to pinch and knead his ribcage. It wouldn’t be so bad, but Steve was taking the time to get in between the ticklish spaces of each rib, driving him up the wall. Tony was thrashing his head back and forth in an attempt to distract himself from the ticklish sensations that were currently assaulting his brain. He felt his shirt being lifted up, bunched at his armpits, and he felt as Steve squiggled his fingers on his now bare skin.

“Steve, please Stop! You’re gonna kill me! Haahhah!!! Steve laughed at Tony’s theatrics.

“Tony, you would know if I was trying to kill you. If I was really trying, I would do this!”

 He then wormed the pointer fingers of each hand into Tony’s armpits, tickling the center of each hollow. Tony tried with all his might to clamp his arms down to protect his armpits, but Steve’s knees held firm, and all he could do is lay there, desperately laughing and squirming.

He then felt Steve adjust his weight so that he was sitting more upright. He watched as Steve bent his face down and got closer to his stomach, and he knew what was going to happen next. This sent alarm bells ringing in his head, and he tried desperately to get Steve to stop.

“Please, Steve. Not there! I said I was sorry!” Steve looked up from the area around Tony’s stomach, big grin on his face.

“I’ve got you all pinned down and helpless. Why wouldn’t I take advantage of your most ticklish spot?”

In response, Tony thunked his head down on the couch cushion.

“Ugh, you really are trying to kill me Rogers, aren’t you?”

Steve just chuckled and took a big breath. Soon enough, Tony was in hysterics again as Steve blew raspberry after raspberry on Tony’s ticklish lower belly and on the sides of his belly as well. He only kept this up for a few moments, knowing how intense raspberries were for his boyfriend. He leaned down, circling Tony’s sweet outie belly button with his nose, letting Tony know what he was going to do next.

“Please Steve, don’t do it! Hahah stay away from there!!”

Steve adored the panicked squeaks and shrills that Tony was making and the way his stomach muscles were protesting as he continued to run his nose across Tony’s skin.

“Pleading already? I haven’t even started yet. I bet this is going to tickle so much!”

Hearing these words only made Tony’s laughter go up aa notch. Steve knew that teasing Tony when he was so worked up only made the sensations feel that much worse, and of course he was taking advantage of it. He swore he could see little horns on the blonde’s head. Steve knew how much teasing affected Tony, so he kept it to a minimum. He gave one last circle with his nose before huffing his cheeks and blowing one long, loud raspberry right on the center of the extremely ticklish belly button. Tony howled, his whole stomach convulsing as he tried to get Steve away from his most ticklish spot. His feet were digging into the cushions, trying and failing to get the leverage he needed to push Steve off of him.

“HI HI HI omg Steve stop stop stop! Hahaha!!

The raspberry only lasted a few seconds, but to Tony, it seemed like an eternity. It took him a few moments to realize that Steve had stopped tickling him and was now just holding onto him without moving his hands. Tony blew the hair out of his eyes.

“Ugh, Steve you’re such a jerk. My muscles are going to hurt for days!”

Steve just chuckled, continuing to hold onto Tony’s arms with his knees.

“Serves you right for bothering me while I was trying to finish my report. It’s still not done, by the way.”

Tony just huffed, pretending to be sulky just for the sake of it. Steve caught on quick and reached towards the back, quickly running his fingers on any part of Tony’s bare feet he could reach. Tony gave a startled yelp, falling back into laughter quickly.

“Steeheeheve!’

Steve adored the sound of Tony’s giggles and wanted to hear more, but he knew that Tony had had enough for one day. He stopped, and looked at Tony. His hair was all disheveled from tossing and turning on the couch, and his usually olive skin had a slight red glow to it from laughing so much. To Steve, he looked utterly gorgeous.

“You’re such a distraction. Do you know that?’

Tony gave Steve a tired grin.

“So I’ve been told.”

Steve then leaned down and placed a gentle kiss on Tony’s lips. Tony responded by kissing back, and soon enough, deeper, much more passionate kisses were following. Steve let go of Tony’s hands and this allowed him to wrap his hands around Steve’s neck.

Steve wasn’t too upset that his report never got finished. It was near completion and he could just do the rest first thing in the morning. Screw Fury. His biggest priority was currently under him, taking his breath away with his wonderful kisses. Tony could be a little hard to handle and a distraction at times, but if this is where those distractions led them, Tony was free to distract him any day of the week.  

[holtzmannish]

Lab teamwork with Holtzmann

holtzmann x reader where the reader has a sleeve of tattoos and in general just really badass and holtzmann thinks that she's hates her cause she doesn't talk as much around her and holtzmann confronts her one day and the reader tells her it's bc she thinks she's cute, and has anxiety and had no idea if she liked girls & holtzmann just kisses her?? sorry if this doesn't make sense 😬

This was super awesome and inspiring so props to whoever sent this in! Been thinking a lot about education and stuff lately so that’s the direction this went in. Hope it works :) (for the record, I have never caused a fire at school... :P) ((it may have happened one time))

You flick strands of hair behind your ears as you try to focus your attention on the professor, who stands at the front of the lab trying desperately to explain safety procedures and group-work to the less cooperative members of your class. She waves her hands in exasperation, stressing that “if we only have one fire in class today, it’ll be a goddamn miracle”.

This draws a slight chuckle out of the entire class, but your attention is elsewhere, on the woman sitting at a bench a row in front and to the right, with blonde hair, eclectic fashion sense. She keeps looking at you and you make an effort not to meet her gaze. She’s probably the most intelligent person in this class, which is really saying something about her, seeing as this is a fairly select group of the best and brightest science students at your university. 

You see her eye your bare arms, turning around in a sly attempt to appear as if she is stretching. You cannot quite read her eyes, and in this attempt to gauge her emotions, your eyes meet. You’re unsure of what she’s thinking, as she presses her lips together and raises her eyebrows slightly at you. You attempt to give her a friendly half-smile in return, but before you can really do anything, your lab partner elbows you impatiently, handing you some paper to write on as she dictates your lab report.

Too distracted to resist her bossiness, you comply and begin scrawling down her words, trying to pry your thoughts from the pretty and intriguing woman in your class. You wonder what she’s thinking when she looks at you. How was she looking at you? Might she like you? Or perhaps she just doesn’t really care. Just being friendly. Your lab partner drags you into conversation and soon you are chatting animatedly about the experiment, your weekends and other trivial matters in your life, you thoughts not quite leaving the girl as, from the corner of your eye you see her head turn as if she’s waiting for something. When it seems as if she too is absorbed in the exercise and ceases to grant any attention to you, you feel your heart sink a little for the rest of the class.

The next week there’s talk of some group work. A thesis, combining the research of two groups, four people, and your lab partner is already gesturing to the blonde girl and her partner to join the two of you. You’re familiar with the boy who partner’s the blonde woman, though introductions had never been made between you and the blonde woman. She walks over confidently, stretching out a hand to you in a way which seems oddly familiar for a ‘formal’ greeting.

“Call me Holtzmann,” she says with a grin, energy bubbling off of her. “Or you can just call me.”

You feel heat rise to your face but noone seems to notice, as instead you let the other two take charge of the assignment, only speaking to correct them on some incorrect information. Several time you catch Holtzmann eyeing you, yet you say nothing, do nothing, as her very gaze makes you feel as if you’re at the apex of a roller coaster, about to go over the edge. You’re not quite sure whether you like roller coasters but you definitely know that roller coasters and Bunsen burners have no business associating with one another. So you attempt to ignore her, only stealing quick glances at the slight furrow between her eyebrows as she thinks, the messy scrawl she uses in her brilliant calculations and the deftness of her fingers as she turns pages or gestures wildly with her hands as she explains new concepts to your teammates. (You fail miserably at ignoring her, instead basically dismissing the task at hand as you become increasingly smitten with Holtzmann.)

The two weeks allocated to finish the assignment go by, the four of you meeting up in the library, or for milkshakes, to finish work and discuss theories, all the while you manage to barely say two words to Holtzmann, though your eyes are familiar with every curve and angle of her face. One day she’s late to class and as the rest of the three of your group set about finalizing and editing your paper, you take charge for the first time, standing over the two of them as they edit out commas and polish grammar on the final copy, ready to hand in the next day to your professor. It has to be perfect, much of your grade is relying on it to be so, and as Holtzmann is not here right at this moment, your entire attention is focused upon getting it just right. Slight nods are the main communication you get from the pair as you polish it and the next thing you know, a hand is on your shoulder. Holtzmann stands next to you, reaching out to make contact with your bare shoulder as she scans the writing on a computer before your lab partner. You can feel the heat radiating off of her, smell the faint seductive smoky scent of her, combined with a light citrus that must be her shampoo and this consumes you. She opens her mouth to speak and your gaze has narrowed to only encompass her in the world around you. 

“It’s per -“ All of a sudden you are aware of this effect she is having on you and you step away, her hand dropping to her side mid-sentence.

“-fect. It’s perfect,” she says, her brow furrowing as she obviously notices your sudden withdrawal from her touch.

“Well you did most of the calculations and [Y/N] is an absolute whiz with the report, so I dare say we’ll be getting a brilliant mark on this!” your ab partner says with a grin, and a slight knowing glance between you and Holtzmann.

“Yeah it’s pretty darn good, if I do say so myself,” says your other friend, reaching out to give the whole group a light high-five. You dodge this, slinging your bag over your shoulder and taking the computer from the desk, calling behind you that you’ll bring in a hard copy to the professor tomorrow morning. Only one person has to be there to hand this in and you volunteer to do this tedious job just so you can leave and catch your breath.

“Hey, [Y/N]!” you hear as your exit the door and round the corner. You do not stop. You do not pass go, nor collect $200. You head straight home, trapped in the prison of your mind, obsessing over your interactions between yourself and Holtzmann, and why the hell you’ve been acting this way. How can one person, who you’re not even sure is interested in you, have this much of an effect over you?

Barely rested from obsessing ost of the night, like the adult you are, you turn up a minute before class ends, presentation neatly displayed in a clear folder and perfectly printed up. You hand it to the professor, flustered, who confirms she received your digital copy and thanks you, commenting that the brief glance she gave it looked highly promising. You smile faintly in response, and having collected everyone else’s work, she slips it into her briefcase and exits the room, saying a quick goodbye to you, and Holtzmann. Holtzmann? You hadn’t even noticed her when you walked in.

She stands leaning against of the benches, arms folded and lips pursed. The usual aura of energy which surrounds her is absent, as she purses her lips and looks at you expectantly. You give her a small awkward wave, suddenly keenly aware of how you’re dressed and how you didn’t brush your hair this morning. You see her eyes graze up and down your body and she runs a tongue over her lips, seemingly thoughtful.

“Holtzmann,” you say with a nod in way of greeting.

“[Y/N],” she responds, mimicking your nods before standing up straight and fixing you with her gaze. You feel that roller coaster tumble in your stomach at this and wait for her to say something else.

“What’s your deal?” she asks, walking over to you. “I’ve been getting this weird vibe off of you the entire time.”

She’s studying you as if you’re some curious experiment or specimen which she doesn’t understand, but maybe she wants to. “You’re smart, you have ideas. You’re not exactly shy from what I’ve seen. But it seems as if you hate me.”

At this you can feel the anxiety in her and what it takes for her to be able to say this to you. All of a sudden you feel completely guilty but she has advanced towards you with each word and is now so close you can hardly think.

“You’re cute,” you manage to get out, but you say this as if the words are poison on your tongue. You can see that she doesn’t receive this sentiment as it’s intended, in her body language and how she backs away slightly.

“I- I like you?” you say, furrowing your eyebrows and not meeting her eyes.

“Is that a question?” she says, a touch of humour breaking through the confusion in her voice.

“No, no. It’s a fact,” you say, trying to express yourself with at least a smidge of eloquence, and failing. “You make me nervous and I like you. Obviously this isn’t something I’m good at dealing with.”

“No kidding,” she says, reaching out a hand to linger lightly upon your forearm, tracing the intricate patterns of your tattoo. She does this instead of meeting your gaze, perhaps giving you a little space within your head to straighten (A/N: HA!) your thoughts out.

“I’m just a really anxious person and have a massive crush on you. There, I said it. And I’m really sorry if that makes you uncomfortable or anything, I don’t know if you’re into girls, or me or-”

All of a sudden she cuts off your rambling by standing toe-to-toe with you, hands placed lightly on your arms and planting the sweetest of kisses on your mouth. Legs turning to jelly, you reach one hand out to hold onto her, yet this turns into a deeper embrace, and the other to brace yourself against the bench behind you.

She deepens the kiss and you involuntarily let out a soft moan, which sends a smile to her lips. Your shoulders relax and all of a sudden your book bag crashes to the floor with a loud bang. She pulls away, leaving you feeling a little disappointed. She sees this look on your face, more able to read you now and smirks.

“You know, I do think that this goes against the lab safety procedures, in some way. It’s getting hot in here, we don’t want to start a fire,” she says with a wink, reaching down to pick up your bag and handing it to you. You accept it and return her smile, accompanied by a blush.

“Yeah I guess you’re right. How about we go someplace else?” you suggest.

“My apartment is a ten minute walk from here,” she says heading towards the door. You take her offered and follow her out of the room, unafraid of getting burnt by the flame that has sparked between the two of you. Perhaps you do like roller coasters...

[theconservativebrief]

I don’t know if you’ve heard, but Americans are pretty stressed out lately. In part, it is the political situation; in part, it is our times. Late last month, the American Psychological Association released their annual Stress in America survey, breaking down the reasons we are pulling out our hair, strand by strand.

“Forty-five percent of the survey respondents said they ‘lay awake at night due to stress,’” wrote Vox’s Brian Resnick. “Sixty-two percent said the current political climate is a significant stressor in their lives. And 56 percent agreed ‘this is the lowest point in the nation’s history they could remember.’” Other widespread sources of mass stress were work, money, health, and personal debt.

The ever-growing wellness industry is one response to this mounting pressure. (Are you worried about wage stagnation? Try celery juice!) But Applebee’s, middle-market icon of American cuisine, has a different prescription for the country: Get it tipsy and order the mozzarella sticks. “Americans are stressed,” Applebee’s president John Cywinski told CNN, suggesting that when your product is comfort food, stress translates very nicely into sales.

He is not wrong. For the second year in a row, just over a third of American adults reported eating “too much” or “unhealthy” food because of stress, according to the APA survey. “When stressed,” Cywinski said, people “tend to go to comfort food … and we’re pretty darn good at comfort food.” (They’ve also seen an increase of booze sales.)

The question is: Does it work? And if it does, what are we — miserable, but aspiring toward health — supposed to do about it? A. Janet Tomiyama, an associate professor of psychology and director of the Dieting, Stress, and Health Lab at UCLA, has been trying to figure that out.

I spoke to Tomiyama about what we know, what we don’t, and why ice cream might be a salve for our political anxieties. Our conversation has been edited for length and clarity.

Let’s start at the very beginning: What is stress eating? Is it different than “emotional eating” or “comfort eating”?

I can tell you that the researchers are also arguing about this, and so your confusion is not unusual. It seems as if emotional eating is a broader thing. So emotional eating can be in response to stress, but it can also be in response to anger or sadness — some researchers even characterize boredom as an emotion. If there’s a Venn diagram, then “emotional eating” is the biggest circle and then within it is what I call stress eating or comfort eating. That’s when you’re eating specifically in response to stress, and not any of these other emotions.

So maybe the real question is: How do you define stress?

You’ve waded into another huge theoretical argument: What is stress? Some people define it as a stressful event happening, so you lose your job. That equals stress. But there’s another view — and I would say this view is a little bit more well-established — that it’s a negative experience you feel like you can’t handle.

So it’s a very psychological thing: It’s not, “My tire went flat.” It’s, “Okay, my tire went flat, and this is really upsetting to me.” If you’re a billionaire and you have 10 cars, a tire going flat doesn’t matter to you — you have a chauffeur who will fix it. That’s why it’s really important to focus on how you subjectively feel. And if you feel stressed, then we trust you — we say you’re stressed.

Does it work? Ignoring other potential downsides, if I eat a pint of ice cream because I’m stressed, will I feel better?

So I first came to this after I read a series of really interesting studies in rodents, actually. And those studies show that when you give rats access to comfort food — in their case usually Crisco mixed with sugar — and you stress them out, what you see is that over time, that comfort food actually dampens their stress hormones, it dampens down their brain’s responsivity to stress, it dampens down the signaling between the brain and the rest of the body, so they don’t secrete as many stress hormones.

I was thinking, okay, well, is this the case in humans, too? Because currently, we really demonize this behavior of stress eating. We shake our fingers and we say, “Don’t do that, it’s not good for you.”

But in my mind, if it’s serving this really important function of actually dampening down our physiological stress level, it warrants a closer look. And we find across several studies, that yeah, it seems to be effective. Not just psychologically, but also biologically — people who do a lot of comfort eating tend to show a reduced level of stress hormones and stress.

So if/when I eat the ice cream, what’s happening?

When you do anything that’s rewarding to you — meaning that the reward parts of your brain sort of light up — those parts of the brain can sort of dampen down the parts of your brain that are freaking out with negative emotion. And that’s why comfort foods tend to be foods that are high in sugar and fat. They’re really rewarding; they really do light up the reward centers of our brains.

There’s also some work showing that when you do comfort eating, it builds up fat in your belly region and that fat pad sends a signal to your brain to decrease the amount of stress hormones that you’re producing, and the specific signal hasn’t been worked out yet. So that’s another pathway.

And then there’s conditioning. If throughout your whole life, you’ve paired stress relief with comfort foods over and over again, then soon enough, your body is going to automatically respond to eating these comfort foods with relaxation.

A lot of us have grown up, we had a bad day at school, our moms baked us cookies, right? If all those things happened at the same time, over and over and over again, pretty soon you don’t even need mom or her hug. You get comfort from just the cookies.

So it kind of sounds like you’re saying maybe eating isn’t the best way to destress, but it is soothing.

Yeah. If you see something in multiple species, to me — to scientists in general — that means that that is an important behavior. And, in addition to rodents, we also see comfort eating working in some non-human primate species as well. So my main take home from this is self-compassion: You’re not doing the comfort eating because you’re some sort of weak-willed human being; you’re biologically driven to do this.

And layered on top of that is your whole life, pushing you toward comfort eating. And so it’s — how do I want to say this? The people who don’t comfort eat, those are the weirdos.

Speaking of weirdos, why doesn’t everyone have the same response? Everyone (presumably) feels stress, but some people eat, and others totally lose their appetites.

We don’t know the why. The best numbers we have currently are that 40 percent of people increase their eating when they’re stressed, 40 percent decrease their eating, and 20 percent stay the same. That’s really old data, so we’re actually this fall launching a new nationally representative study to see if that’s even true. I just think the percent of people who eat more when they’re stressed is higher than 40 percent.

But anyway, those are the numbers we have right now. Men tend to stress eat less than women, so that’s something we know. But that’s about as much as we know for who does it and why, and that’s really an important next step.

I’m trying to figure out what to do with this. Like, even if stress eating works, we still probably shouldn’t do it all that often. But it’s tempting, because it works!

So we’ve amassed a little bit of evidence showing that comfort eating actually comforts, but a lot of people say, “Okay that’s great, but we don’t want people eating Snickers bars every time they’re stressed, so what do we do here?”

So what I’ve been trying to do very, very recently is to see if we can get healthy foods to also be comforting. In the rat studies, it’s Crisco mixed with sugar, or some have used Oreo cookies. They’ve only tested unhealthy foods, and I think that on a cultural level, we assume comfort eating has to be ice cream or brownies — really unhealthy stuff. Nobody’s even tried to see if we could also be comforted by a strawberry.

I literally have a note here that says “nobody stress eats strawberries, do they?”

Yeah, nobody does. Well, I shouldn’t say nobody, we have some survey data showing that some people do, which makes me roll my eyes because who are these people?

But there are reasons to believe that strawberries might work as comfort food. There’s some research showing that any sweet taste can dampen stress. There’s other research about, this is about emotional eating, where they had subjects either eat chocolate or potato chips or fruit, and actually it was the fruit group who reported the highest positive emotion afterward.

But, you know, I’m a skeptical scientist. Part of me is like, I don’t know, guys … I don’t know we’ll ever get there with strawberries. So in a study that we’re running right now, we’re trying to do a mind hack to get people to be really calmed and soothed by strawberries, or whatever fruit. We’re literally doing Pavlovian classical conditioning: We’re having people do a relaxation exercise and eat fruit at the same time, and we have them do that over and over and over and over again, with the hope that eventually, just the strawberry alone will automatically elicit this relaxation response. And so that way, even if fruit doesn’t naturally comfort you, maybe we could use this mind hack to get you to feel really soothed from strawberries.

Is there more stress eating than there used to be?

We do know that stress is on the rise in America. We also know that of all the different stressors that there are out there — exam stress, jumping-out-of-a-plane stress — it’s stressors that are uncontrollable that pack the biggest punch.

The political situation feels really big and really uncontrollable, we know that that kind of stress is really potent, and we know that that’s the kind of stress that most increases the stress hormone cortisol, and cortisol is what makes you reach for these comfort foods. So I see a direct path between stress increasing and stress eating increasing.

Does that have public health implications? If people are increasingly stressed, and at least 40 percent of those people are stress eating, it seems like a problem.

Well, we know that no matter what you actually weigh — it doesn’t matter if you’re skinny or heavy — if you have a bad diet, that’s really bad for you. Many studies have shown that diet is really the number one driver of all these chronic diseases people are experiencing today, so diabetes, heart disease, it plays a big role in cancer as well.

We know stress alone is bad. And we know that diet is bad, too. And we know when you combine these two, it’s even worse. That’s why I’m really trying to engage in this mind hack of flipping stress eating to be fruits instead of brownies. If you could get this mind hack working, then every time you’re stressed, not only are you eating one more serving of fruit, which in itself is linked to decreases in mortality, but you’re also not eating what you would have eaten, so you’re not eating the ice cream. It would be a double benefit.

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Original Source -> Does stress eating actually make you less stressed?

via The Conservative Brief