#fuck old man steve

[vintage-tigre]

[godsworstson]

the jackass guys want to bang brad pitt (literally no one is surprised)

[fr00tbats]

posted all these muppets i drew the other day and i FEAR THAT IF I SAY THE COMMONALITY BETWEEN THEM ALL EVERYONE WILL GET THEIR KNIVES OUT ON ME AGAIN LMFAO

[vomelets]

banners from jackassworld.com (2008)

[wanderingmind867]

Poor Nighthawk. His company's chief executive has been secretly running the sons of the serpent this whole time! I guess this is what happens when nighthawk was so bored by business that he let other people do it unsupervised, but it's also sad and super sympathetic! I bet batman never has a story as interesting as this! (Defenders #25):

[queen-of-obsessing]

say whatever you want about merlin and its bad writing but at least they didn’t make a teenager commit suicide for shock value

[husband-steve-cortez]

I hate being one of those "oh my ocs have a mind of their own" people but it's true and it's so sad how much I want to fuck that old man but none of my muses will play ball. Also sucks that I'm a guy who only cares about his ocs.

[pussymasterdooku]

.

[feddy-34]

i just know jerry calls him jonathan (not even the right version) just to piss steve off in the morning lmaooooooo

[narke]

he was really chatty yesterday. and very much on his banter game even tho i was very low energy. and he demoed a shotgun armbar on me and told me i was awesome. and he was changing his gi on the side of the mat and i was very tempted to look at his shoulder waist ratio in his tight little shirt but i had to focus on spider guard sweeps

[drdawnbreaker]

Here me out. Right after Bucky has finally settled into a routine at the compoud with the others now that he's a free man. He slowly starts to explore hobbies again and pick up old habits he used to have when he was younger in the 40s. One of those, being smoking.

Now, I'm not saying smoking is not good for you. And Bucky knows thats, but fuck does it feel nice to have a smoke right after a mission. One with a glass of whiskey and a vintage vinyl lowly playing as he sits spread leg on his nice leather sofa that Sam and Nat helped him buy.

And when he met you, oh he was fucked. You quickly became his little devil on his shoulder. He'd have a cigarette after sex (pun intended) with you, and he swore He'd never felt more relaxed. After a long mission, you could taste the whiskey and cigarettes on his tongue, driving you to ride him until he was near past out. He thought you were everything he needed in his life...

Until you convinced him to try weed. Oh boy. The team thought he was a different person the one time they caught him high. His filter, gone. His sass, tripled. and his sex drive... through the fucking roof!! He has you bent over the back of the couch, blunt between his plump lips as he pounds into your dripping cunt. Your fogged brain high and happy as you feel Bucky send you over the edge again and again. Both of you would be fucking like rabbits before, either A) you both pass out. Or B) someone would come looking for you two. God forbid the poor sap that walks in on you two going at it.

Double points if it's steve. He's either joining or becoming a tomato and running away. Noting in-between.

[arpicityandneed]

My Turn

18+ f!reader. best friends steve and bucky. dirty talk. bisexual steve. bisexual bucky.

~

"Tell me again where you want it baby." Your new husband had you in his lap thumbing your clit while you rode him. Your thighs were shaking but you were desperate, tears of frustration on your pretty lashes as you balanced yourself with both hands on his shoulders.

"Inside, Stevie, please?" His hands were roaming over your body possessively, gripping the fat of your ass and thrusting his soaked cock up into you with every down stroke of yours.

"Don't make the sweet thing cry Stevie." Bucky groans as he palms himself through his slacks, waiting his turn for once in honor of your wedding night. Usually he and Steve would've flipped a coin or fought for who got to bully their way inside your pussy first.

"I'm not gonna Buck, she's just so pretty when she begs. My wife." Steve's baby blues were dancing with mischief as Bucky cursed.

"You met her first by accident, Rogers. I'm older-" Bucky started growling the same damn argument they'd been having since they decided they wanted a baby and therefore a wedding. (They were too old fashioned for anything else.)

"Boys, can we argue later?" You cut in breathlessly, and Steves arm wrapped around your waist. Your only warning before he took over- fucking you up and down his shaft like a rag doll as he groaned,

"Alright baby. I gotta do right by my Mrs don't I?" With the smuggest grin you'd ever seen his balls twitched, and spurt after spurt of cum filled you fluttering walls.

"Goddamnit, Stevie." You would've comforted your other boyfriend if you could focus. But Steve's thumb was rubbing your clit as you seized up, coming hard and milking his cock for all he had to give.

You collapsed against his chest.

"You gonna be good for Bucky baby? You got one more in you?" Steve murmured gently as he rocked you on his softening shaft, his cum leaking out of you and drenching his balls in your combined juices.

"Mhm. Want him inside too." You smiled as you kissed him, soft and sweet like you had several hours earlier in front of all your friends and family.

"My turn." You hadn't heard him move but you weren't surprised when you were lifted and bent over the massive bed, Bucky was hardly a patient man once he had the green light.

"Fuck sweetheart, you're dripping." Bucky's voice was hoarse. But Steve, who was laying down close enough for you to tongue at his soft cock, just snorted.

"Don't complain like you don't love it, jerk." Steve guided his shaft into your mouth and murmured softly, "Clean me up baby."

"'M not complaining punk, it's a compliment." You moaned around Steve as Bucky took one good lick of your stuffed pussy before straightening and dragging his cock head through the mess. "Your cum tastes better inside her by the way."

"Shut up, you love my cum anyway you can get it, Barnes."

"Maybe." One smooth thrust and you were full once more, and Bucky goes from teasing his boyfriend to cursing how good you feel. "I gotta say doll. You're kind of a slut."

"B-Bucky!" Your scolding would be more effective if your pussy didn't clench around him from his words and the memories flooding you brain of watching Bucky swallow down Steves cock.

"Greedy fucking pussy-" His moans were loud, shameless. "Back me up here Stevie."

"He's not wrong sweetie. Youre an absolute slut for us. But just us, yeah?" Steve sounds proud. Proud that on his wedding night his wife is being tag teamed by him and his best friend.

Fuck.

You were going to cum, hard and Bucky- the smug bastard- wasn't going to let it happen quietly.

"Someone likes being reminded how needy her pussy is. Clenching down so hard on me doll." Bucky fucked different than Steve. Harder, filthier. His hands were dragging you back onto his fat cock until the audible slap of his hips against your ass echoed around the room. He was getting close you could tell. His heavy balls were slapping against your clit, aching to add to the cum already slicking him inside you. "Should've waited till after the honeymoon to let me fuck her Steve."

His hand snaked around to find your clit and with quick tight circles over your swollen nub you came apart with a cry.

"Yeah, Buck? And why's that.." Steves eyes were narrowed like he was annoyed at being told what to do, but you knew the truth. His cock was growing hard in your mouth again. Bucky thrusted hard inside you before he started to unload, grinding into you as if to make sure his seed took first.

"Cause now we're never gonna know who knocked her up first till the baby's born."

[never-quite-buried]

“2) to make real amends to her primary victims. Also, having her sit and talk to Tony about her anger against the American military industrial complex (which was what killed her parents) and how she conflated that with Stark.”

In what way does IM1 not tell us that Stark IS the MIC? Like. This scene is pretty explicit.

_____________________________________________________________

anonymous  asked:

1) Re: Wanda and her lack of redemption arc- One of the MCU’s biggest fuck yous was that they allowed Zemo to apologize to T'challa for his Father’s death as collateral in his revenge scheme, but didn’t have the decency to allow Wanda to do the same to the Avengers for stripping them of their autonomy and using them to hurt other people (of which the primary victims were Tony and Bruce). If they wanted to redeem her and make her more sympathetic, they really should have allowed her _____________________________________________________________

ambitious-witch  answered:

I’m really sorry that I didn’t answered this last night, nonny but it was very late here and I was on mobile.

1) Exactly. But honestly I like Zemo more than Wanda for that. They allowed him to apologise, but also they showed him not being so bat-shit hateful blaming all the evil on his life to the Avengers (just the death of his family) and he neither played the victim. Like Wanda did.

The problem with Wanda lays directly in her “tragic backstory”, I mean, just listening to it, it’s ridiculous:

This is a backstory that doesn’t work for an anti-villain/anti-hero to go straight up a hero. Because it’s illogical. The audience that has a minimal knowledge of how the world works knows that blaming the person that made the weapon is stupid an illogical.

Second part of the ask:

2) to make real amends to her primary victims. Also, having her sit and talk to Tony about her anger against the American military industrial complex (which was what killed her parents) and how she conflated that with Stark. She has serious trauma that needs to be laid out. I mean, Tony could have talked about how he too realized the faults in the MID and is trying to make amends for his ignorance and inaction. How it has led him to believe in accountability and checks and balances

Part three:

3) LIKE THE FUCKING ACCORDS. It would have been 10x better than Steve’s convo w/ her in the beginning of Civil War, where he treats her unintentional murder of 12 ppl as a small hiccup that can be corrected w/ “try try again”. But no, all we end up w/ is a character marketed as a child half the time, and an adult the other half. It’s character assassination and it sucks. Either show her struggle w/ redemption and accountability as a member of the Avengers, or keep her a villain.

The problem here nonny, it’s that the dynamics are terribly flawed and bad placed. With Wanda, her deed of joining the Avengers it was not for goodness, it’s was common sense and self-preservation. We never see her re-thinking about Tony or showing a single little remorse about hurting him, neither she seems to want to stop and think about the situation. Tony talking to her would have required she trying to go closer and talk but to the first moment that we see her on screen with him her intention are clearly hostile:

Look at the corporal language of this part. This is a hero? No.

This is an anti-hero? No.

This is someone who is conflict?

I dare say: no.

The point about anti-heroes and anti-villains is they know, very deep in them, they have a doubt, a conflict. Wanda doesn’t. She knows what she is doing. She knows that she is hurting someone and she knows what she did. Take a look to Bruce too:

Also take her reaction when he calls her out for mindfucking him:

Her expression seems to be the one of someone who regrets her bad deeds.

But…

Her face hardens when he threatens her and she doesn’t speak about the topic again. Not with him, not with Clint in their oh so marvellous pep talk.

Someone that answered one of my posts said that showing Wanda’s struggles were that ridiculous scene whit with her crying in front of Clint, so the audience have to see her as a poor misunderstood child that was very scared and didn’t know what she was doing…

That’s not how it works!

Wanda should have showed struggle and conflict since the beginning of the movie! She should have interacted with people that she hurt as you said but she didn’t!

And before somebody says something…

Clint doesn’t count! Steve doesn’t count!

Clint was not attacked by Wanda, he didn’t suffered in her hands. Steve? He forgave her at the instant. He attacked his armour-less teammate because of her word. He told Natasha, one of Wanda’s victims “she with us”, like she hadn’t some right of feeling uncomfortable by her presence!

They don’t count!

The base, the point for an anti villain to be redeemed and made an ally or friend in front of their enemies is the interaction and and the villain admitting that they hurt the protagonists. It’s simple, take Regina Mills in Once Upon A Time. She never became in a full hero but she earned trust by admitting her bad deeds. She showed struggle and doubt. She became a wondeful anti-hero Wanda didn’t.

Just look at the moment when she decides to side with the Avengers:

What choice do we have?

This is someone that learned form her mistakes. No.

No.

No.

No!

This is somebody that wants to fucking live. She wants to keep herself and her brother alive. There’s no doubt here. Not struggle in the loyalties. No conflict! She switched sides in the beginning and she does it again because it’s convenient for her. Not for goodness or anything that changes that she hurt people during all the movie!

She doesn’t doubt for a fucking instant to go to the “winning side”:

What kind of anti-hero can you get of that?

Which leads to CW. You said that she siding with Tony would have been the better, and yes, it would have been a good character development she being remorseful and keeping her initial supposed believes about accountability but with motherfucking Johannesburg, how it’s that possible?

How?

Like, that’s what the Russo and M&M tried to to do and failed miserably. They tried to sell us an anti-hero. They washed her awful deeds and make her look as conflicted when she never hesitated at the beginning.

They tried to us to believe that she can’t control her powers.

And that

is

bullshit.

And just bullshit.

They also made her clothes more clear, her hair too. Miss Elizabeth was wearing a wig, it was not difficult have one as her hair was in the previous movie.

They tried to vanish the darkness of her. Why? Because it its more difficult present a redemption for villain than a anti-hero. Or as that idiotic writers seem to think: that poor kid that did no wrong.  

Because it was more easy to forgive this:

Than this:

So, they invented this new Wanda, and put all the blame in Tony’s shoulders. The funny thing it’s that the audience it’s stupid enough to believe it. That might talk about the power of the female characters of being forgiven for everything as long they have a pretty face and a delikate body.

Even if it’s a character without struggles or good intentions, or remorse.

So, nonny, my opinion is firm. Wanda Maximoff’s redemption arc was a fuck you because she didn’t deserved or needed one.

Because Wanda Maximoff is better as a villain.

______________________________________________________________

An interesting take, to be sure, @ambitious-witch​. But as with most of these types of posts, you’re leaving out a few key details that vastly change the meaning of the extracted clips.

Let’s start at the top.

Wanda as a villain in AoU had one stated goal - destroy Tony Stark in revenge for her parents’ death. (The Avengers were kind of lumped into that revenge plan because they were acting as ally and protector to Tony.)

However, what you’re failing to mention is that this isn’t just a ten-year-old girl experiencing an intense, two-day long trauma that scars her for life and imprints the name that she had to stare at the whole time in her mind as the culpable party.

This is an entire country that believes that Tony is at fault for their loss.

In the beginning of AoU we are shown the Avengers attacking Strucker’s lab. In one of the scenes, Tony lands the Iron Legion in the middle of Sokovia and has them announce to the citizens that the sector is not safe.

The citizens are extremely wary - a few of them fleeing the area - but as soon as they figure out that the suits are just standing in place talking, they all start throwing things and attacking the suits.

Why is this?

Because HYDRA has been set up there for years, using stolen (or purchased) Stark tech to terrorize the city and kill people.

This isn’t just one random bomb. This is years of weapons emblazoned with the Stark logo being dropped on the city, knock-off iron legion suits shooting people in the street…this is and has been an all-out war, and the only clue that anyone’s had is that all of the weapons say “Stark” on them. And coming from an American weapons tycoon, that’s pretty damning evidence, as far as they’re concerned.

So damning, in fact, that when Strucker is looking for human test subjects for a highly dangerous and potentially deadly experiment, he gets dozens of volunteers, all of which die at his hands.

Except for the twins.

Destroying Tony is Wanda and Pietro’s main goal, yes, however at this point it is no longer just about revenge for their parents.

Maria shows video clips to Cap of the two of them leading riots in the street, trying to fight back. In response to Maria’s comment of “we aren’t at war anymore,” Steve tells her “they are.”

This isn’t two kids with a crazy revenge plan. This is two young adults who have suffered bitterly and are determined to see the cause of that suffering stopped before it can do any more damage to anyone else, even at the expense of their own lives. Because even if Tony Stark is not the one personally pushing the “fire” button on the missiles, he is the one creating them. And with no arms supplier, there will be no more weapons to use on Sokovia.

If the story had been shot from the perspective of someone in Sokovia, Wanda and her brother would have been the heroes of this story all along.

We as viewers are purposefully kept in the dark about what’s been going on there until the twins are established as the “villains” of the story - making sure the revelation is received as a sad explanation of why they’ve set themselves up as opponents to the Avengers as opposed to starting with a goal that we as viewers can get behind.

In fact it’s not until near the end that we figure out that Sokovia isn’t just some HYDRA-loving anti-Avengers stronghold, but victims of numerous and immeasurable crimes committed in the Avengers’ names.

Making Wanda and her brother “unlikable” before making them sympathetic was done purposefully to make sure that the viewers didn’t pity them or sympathize with them too quickly, or else the Avengers would seem far too harsh going into later fights.

The twins had to throw the first stone, or the Avengers would come across as unsympathetic.

More importantly, we are only ever shown the twins acting villainous toward the Avengers.

Maria states that Wanda only ever seems to inflict non-lethal damage to her victims, leaving them temporarily traumatized but alive and more than able to recover. (Ultron is the only one killing when they are stealing their resources, and he is leaving very telltale signs that it was him.)

A number of the places they hit up are run by HYDRA or smugglers - all of them “bad” people doing bad things.

The twins are kind to and friendly with the poor people in Sokovia. Wanda is protective of Dr. Strucker. The two of them are hesitant and uncertain when Klaue doesn’t immediately cower in fear, not wanting to escalate the situation any further than they have to.

And the second that they find out that Ultron’s goal is more than just the death of the six Avengers, they pull a 180 and attack him.

They follow a very common movie arc: fight against problem, join “ally” to fix problem, find out that “ally” is lying/backstabbing and that enemy isn’t quite as bad as we thought, team up with former “enemy” to stop the bigger threat, form a new alliance with once-enemy, save the day.

(Hell, a number of these themes show up in the plot-line of movies like Iron Man and Black Panther.)

These two are not villains. They’re a pair of teenagers fighting in a war to save their people.

A pair of teenagers who have been manipulated and abused and made to think that they were doing the right thing since they were ten.

(And yes, I realize that the actors are in their mid twenties, but canonically Wanda and Pietro are closer to 18 or 19 during the events of this movie, and thus are not yet legally “adults.”)

I don’t see you throwing a fit over Zemo torturing and eventually drowning that one HYDRA agent. Or Stark blowing up a terrorist group. Or Fury shooting the people attacking his ship in Avengers.

The difference? We as the audience know that they’re bad guys, so it’s okay to do whatever to them, because they clearly deserved it.

We don’t care, nor are we made to care, if the person being thrown down a flight of stairs or stabbed in the face was just a desperate man who needed money for his family, or someone who was there because some higher-up had blackmail over their head.

We don’t know, and quite frankly (as far as most viewers are concerned) it doesn’t matter.

This is the same situation, just seen from the other side of the coin for once.

Wanda and Pietro know that the Avengers are bad. Therefore why would they question if what they’re doing - attacking them - is wrong?

The other problem with painting these two as hardened criminals is that they don’t ever really act it. Every scene that they’re in, the two of them are hovering around one another, uncertain. Seeking reassurance. Comforting. In Wanda’s’ case, quite often, hiding.

In fact, Wanda’s always shown to be the more hesitant of the twins.

Pietro is quick to rush off into a fight, while she lingers behind until it comes to a confrontation that she cannot avoid. This is shown three times. First, in Strucker’s lab, where Pietro rushes outside to mess with the Avengers and Wanda hides in the base until Steve tries to get Strucker. Second, in the scrapyard, where Pietro zips off and Wanda hesitates at Ultron’s side until he tells her “time for some mind games.” Third, in the tower scene, where Pietro is first to take action when he unplugs the cradle, but Wanda doesn’t join the fight until she’s the last one on her side that’s still standing.

Even in the very first scene, you see them holding hands, and Wanda chewing her nails with nerves.

Immediately after that we get a close up of their faces, showing the two of them looking scared when they hear that the Avengers are on their way.

They aren’t out there actively hunting the Avengers down. They’re waiting for orders, because they don’t really know what they’re doing. They’re frightened of what’s about to happen. They’re both in this way over their heads.

They may not be ten anymore, but a lot of what they do is very child-like because of the rough and traumatic childhood the two of them had. They never grew out of it.

These two put on a bold act, but the minute the real teeth come out they’re just a pair of frightened and uncertain children. Often, until Ultron shows up as the “adult leader” of the group, the two of them don’t even take action.

And again, I’ll bring up the scene with Klaue.

The two of them step into his office and pull their go-to “be afraid of me” act to get info, but Klaue straight up brushes it off.

He laughs at their threats. Talks down to them. Offers them candy. Teases them. Dares them to do their worst.

And Wanda and Pietro are at a complete and utter loss because they don’t know how to approach a situation where their threats have not been enough. Ultron’s instructions did not include a caveat for “if the dude straight up laughs at you instead of spilling everything he knows and begging for his life.”

Therefore, the two of them are left standing in the doorway, looking to one another in confusion for what to do next, and Wanda even starts moving back into the shadows where she’ll be more safe.

Similarly, in the end fight, Wanda constantly looks to Clint - the nearby adult - for instruction.

Wanda and Pietro don’t even attack the Avengers at the scrapyard until Ultron gives the command.

It’s the same scenario in the scene right after they go to the tower with Steve, when they confront the other Avengers alone - the twins ultimately let Steve make the calls for them.

Unfortunately, the still-shot you have of Wanda doesn’t quite do justice to her reaction in the scene.

This isn’t “closing off.”

See the way she leans back a little? The little hitch in her chest? The way her throat tightens? This isn’t this isn’t her hardening off, this is her trying not to show fear. She’s seen the Hulk. She knows that Banner is the only one who might be able to tear her in half despite her powers.

It’s why she immediately stops fighting and freezes up when he grabs her.

You can clearly see the terror in her eyes the second she realizes who it is that’s got their arm around her throat.

In this scene, the twins have walked into the lion’s den - the Avengers’ home base - and even though they’re trying to look tough and keep their cool, they’re both terrified for their lives.

You can hear the fear in Wanda’s voice when Clint shoots the floor out from under Pietro. You can see the two of them sticking right by each other’s sides and looking around nervously in case they’re attacked.

They don’t argue or make excuses when they’re confronted, they back down because they know that they’ve wronged these people and the Avengers are under no obligation to listen to them.

The two of them are risking death at the Avenger’s hands so they can try to warn them about Ultron and prevent things from getting any worse.

And I would beg to differ with your interpretation of this scene. This is in no way self-preservation. This is suicide.

Her last little act of defiance barely a scene before nearly wound up with her and Pietro being shot.

And yet here she is, standing up to Ultron again. But this isn’t her siding with the Avengers to save her skin.

This is her picking death with the losing team.

Because in this scene?

ULTRON IS THE WINNING SIDE.

Ultron’s plan for a new world included Wanda and her brother. He was going to wipe the slate clean, and leave the two of them as the “better” humans in his new world. The “evolved” race that would rule at his side. If they’d stayed with him, they would have been guaranteed safety, because as we saw at the scrapyard, the Avengers are no match for the three of them, and Ultron is fond of the twins in his own strange way.

But they don’t stay with Ultron, where they are guaranteed life and safety.

This line here is Ultron’s last warning that she either assist him, or die with the rest of the Avengers trying to fight him. This was far less “oh well, Ultron is losing, guess I’ll change sides because I’ll get to live” and more “I don’t see how there is a choice here because unless I stop him he’s going to destroy the world.”

“What choice do we have” is a statement of morals, because as far as she’s concerned, there IS no choice. She has to stop him or die trying.

Helping him any longer is not even an option.

Now, as far as your point about Steve and Clint’s trust in her being “worthless” because:

“They don’t count!“

It’s quite frankly ridiculous.

There is one person who even comes close to fully trusting them before the final battle starts in, and that is Steve.

Steve has been playing devil’s advocate this whole movie, because he understands what the twins are going through. He’s not so caught up in his own country and his own issues that he can’t look at a situation from another perspective and say “I understand why they’re doing this.”

In fact, he even offers the twins a chance to walk away right before the fight at the scrapyard.

He didn’t magically start trusting them out of the blue, he’s been willing to hear their side of things from the start.

“Clint was not attacked by Wanda, he didn’t suffered in her hands. Steve? He forgave her at the instant. He attacked his armour-less teammate because of her word. He told Natasha, one of Wanda’s victims “she with us”, like she hadn’t some right of feeling uncomfortable by her presence!”

And here is where you start leaving out key details again.

Of the Avengers, Clint was the only one to fully escape having Wanda play with his fears, because he beat her to the punch. However, despite the fact that he’s the only one unscathed, he’s the most vocal about not trusting her.

It is not until much, much later - when Clint has already seen her in action, desperately trying to save the civilians from Ultron’s clones despite her own fear - does he step in to talk her down and keep her from having a panic attack because he realizes her heart is in the right place.

Even then he doesn’t actually decide to trust her until she saves him from being cornered and killed by the robots.

Out of the remaining Avengers, three of them suffered major trauma from Wanda’s actions, and two of them got off relatively okay.

The one who got off with the least damage from the encounter was ironically Tony Stark, who was shown a vision of what was supposed to be his worst fear - him being responsible for the death of his team - and who proceeded to shake it off and walk away, none the worse for wear.

(Note, this is one of Wanda’s early attempts at this kind of thing, a point which relates to a section further down about Wanda’s skill with her powers. She’s not very good at the whole nightmare vision thing just yet in the story, but by the time the scrapyard scene rolls around she’s gotten plenty of practice.)

Tony never actually voices any opinion on whether or not they should trust the twins. He just rolls with it.

The other Avenger who got off pretty light was actually Thor, who took his vision as a warning that something big was coming and went to investigate further. He also doesn’t specifically voice an opinion on the twins, but seems to be A-okay with trusting the two of them.

Of the three that had it pretty bad, Steve was able to recover the best. Perhaps this is part of the serum - his body fixing the physical symptoms of mental trauma - or perhaps he’s just better at coping with his particular fear because he’s been doing it since he awoke in the present. Either way, Steve is at least relatively functional after his run-in with Wanda.

He’s also the first one to trust her, because she and her brother risked their necks fighting Ultron to save both him and the innocent people that Ultron tried to kill as a distraction. Like I’ve mentioned before, Steve is still willing to give them a second chance because he knows there’s backstory there and he can sympathize.

The two that had it the worst were Natasha and Bruce.

Natasha, who straight up went out of commission when all of her heavily repressed trauma got dragged back to the forefront, isn’t really around for the scene where the twins switch sides. She comes in after the fact, when they’re already mid-fight, to find that the twins are fighting against Ultron with them.

Steve reassures her that the twins are on their side, and Natasha rolls with it.

She takes Steve’s word for it because she trusts Steve as much as she trusts Clint - absolutely and entirely.

You forget, these two just went through the events of Captain America: Winter Soldier together, where “everybody we know is trying to kill us.” Natasha and Steve had to trust in each other completely, it’s the only way they lived to see the end of that movie. Natasha’s trust in Steve is not reset just because the film title changed.

However the real key here is that Natasha’s trust in the twins is not complete.

She’ll trust the twins for this fight, because Steve said they were there to help, and then she’ll make her own call on whether or not she feels like forgiving them. This wasn’t Steve saying “I’ve cleared these two, I expect you to magically be okay with that.” It was Steve reassuring her that during this fight, their only attacker would be Ultron, and that the twins were helping to fight back.

In a battle situation, that’s all Natasha needs to know before her attention turns to saving people, because there is no time for a debate or questions during an all-out attack.

There is, however, a good amount of time that passes between the end of the Sokovia fight and the credits scene where we see Wanda with the other “new recruits,” and we are left to assume that something has been worked out between everyone because they all seem okay with each other now.

It is also a full year before we really see Wanda again, in Civil War, and the first thing we see is Natasha coaching her through a stake out, as a mentor.

Clearly there is no lingering animosity here.

As for Banner, well…

Bruce basically says that he could kill Wanda without remorse. He’s pissed, and rightfully so.

However, he ALSO doesn’t deny needing the twins’ help when fighting Ultron. He never says “we shouldn’t trust them” or “we shouldn’t let them come with us;” and Hulk flies off into space (literally) before Banner gets a chance to actually sit down and think about whether or not the twins should be allowed to join the Avengers.

In fact, the only one who straight up says that he doesn’t trust anything to do with the twins is Clint…

The only one who didn’t get affected by Wanda’s nightmares.

So I’m honestly not quite sure where you’re getting your argument from.

As far as I make it out, the people who got the nightmare treatment were aware that they were seeing their own memories and thoughts and fears played back to them. Wanda wasn’t showing them anything new, so most of them didn’t take the attack as anything personal, and in fact we see Natasha having a bit of a personal crisis over the not-so-great bits of her past that are being shoved back in her face for the second time since CA:tWS.

She’s not mad at Wanda for bringing it up, she’s mad at herself for being the way she was before Clint saved her.

Clint, who isn’t sure what the others saw and is watching everything from the outside, is pissed. He watched his friends suffer because of whatever the witch did to them, and he’s not only angry with her, but dead set on not forgiving or trusting her, either.

At least until she and her brother both save him, and he starts wondering if they might not be so bad after all.

”You didn’t see that coming.”

As for Wanda being in control of her powers, I would say it depends on what aspect of her powers we’re talking about.

In AoU she has been sitting in a cell for God knows how long, practicing the same four moves:

Move small solid object. Shield. Look through people’s heads and pull certain thoughts to the forefront. Throw her power around like an energy burst.

Of these four, by the time Civil War rolls around, we only ever see her use the first two.

Age of Ultron:

Civil War:

When she does this trick, she does it with great proficiency and incredible accuracy. She’s good at this one. Her shield has also improved to the point where she can multitask while holding it.

In Civil War, however, she’s picked up a number of new moves:

Levitation/flying with her powers. Moving non-solid objects like poisonous gasses. Forming a net with her powers to lift teammates. Manipulating large solid objects with her telekinesis. Manipulate object behavior.

However, we no longer see her using throwing her power directly at anyone anymore. She picks up objects to throw at them, or grabs them by a hand or foot and tosses them back, but she no longer throws the raw energy around.

She also doesn’t go into anyone’s heads.

Do you have any idea how easily she could have pulled something like this at at the airport battle? Re-routed team Stark on some wild goose chase while Team Cap all waltzed over to the jet and flew off with no problem?

Stark and Co. wouldn’t have even known what hit them until Team Cap were loooong gone.

But she doesn’t.

Because Wanda doesn’t do that anymore. She’s not that person anymore.

Even with Vision, she’s not going inside his head, she’s just changing his density - first to de-materialize him and make him let go of Clint, and second to make him so heavy that he fell through the floor.

Wanda doesn’t throw her raw powers at people anymore because it’s too dangerous and unpredictable, and she doesn’t go into anyone’s heads anymore because of privacy issues and “brainwashing” and the other negative connotations that come with it, even if it means taking the hard way out of a situation.

She’s changed up her whole fighting strategy.

That being said, I would argue that she is NOT in control of her powers as a whole.

She is in control of certain aspects of her powers to certain extents - namely the ones that she’s practiced repeatedly - but in the grand scheme of things, she really has no idea what she’s actually capable of, therefore she cannot control exactly what her powers will react like if she tries something that’s not on her list of “the eight tricks I’ve practiced for the past six months.”

Thus, Lagos.

She probably didn’t even realize that she could bubble that much raw kinetic energy into such a small space - she was just reacting to the fact that a bomb had gone off in the middle of a packed marketplace and she needed to do something or hundreds of people would have died…likely including everyone in the building, had the foundation gotten destroyed by the blast.

(And would you demons please stop saying that she murdered people in Lagos? I mean really. Do you consider it murder when firefighters can’t get everyone out of a burning building? Or when rescue workers can’t find everyone buried beneath earthquake rubble in time to save them? Or when ambulance workers can’t rescue everyone from the remains of an awful car wreck? Wanda was stopping a bomb from killing people by containing it, and couldn’t get it far enough away to save all of them before the bomb went off. She did not murder anyone.)

In the grand scheme of things, no, Wanda doesn’t know how to control her powers, because she’s not entirely sure just what her powers can DO.

She’s still learning.

I also understand where you’re trying to go with the “lightening the color scheme” angle, but I highly doubt that’s a “nefarious plot to trick the audience into thinking she’s good when she’s not” so much as it’s a stylistic choice to show that she’s in a better place now, both mentally and physically.

Her hair is not only lighter, but has far fewer tangled curls at the bottom, and sports two highlights at the bangs. This isn’t an attempt to portray her as “suddenly good now” so much as an attempt to make her look a bit less like an orphaned street rat. Her hair is clean and brushed and bright and with an actual style, much like Bucky’s hair was actually kept when we saw him in Civil War as opposed to Winter Soldier. It’s to show that she’s taking care of herself better now because she now has the means and mental presence to do so.

Case in point: Her hair appears lighter here than at the final battle. It’s all cinematic, to make her look more or less filthy as the scene requires.

As for the outfit, she’s wearing lighter clothing in that one picture because it’s summer and she’s trying to blend in. Just like how Natasha, who normally sports black, is dressed in pale colors and wearing very little makeup.

In many other scenes in the movie, Wanda retains the black/grey/red color scheme that she’s had going since AoU, such as in the knife clip I linked above:

Black clothing in a similar overall style (short dress, boots, and jacket) just with less heavy eyeliner because she’s grown up a little and is keeping herself a bit more maintained than before.

Claiming cinematic trickery here is really reaching for threads.

So, to wrap this incredibly long post up…

NO, Wanda is not, and never was, a villain.

Up until the truth is revealed, each party (the twins, and the Avengers) believes themselves fully in the right. When the truth does come out, it is revealed that to some extent, both parties are in the wrong.

Wanda is not conflicted about facing the Avengers because she’s fighting to protect innocent people from them. She becomes conflicted when it turns out that the Avengers weren’t fully to blame for what was going on in Sokovia. (Side-eyeing Stark, here.)

Wanda is neither villain nor anti-villain…

She’s the hero of her own side of the story.

Wanda and Pietro are both heroes, whose story - through the lies and manipulation of people claiming to be allies - intersected with that of the Avengers.

Case in point: these two are alone.

The other Avengers have left the area.

If they were really doing this to save their skin and not to help people, wouldn’t this be the ideal time to say something like “make sure you get on the ship before it leaves” or “as soon as the Avengers aren’t looking, we run” or “the minute the crisis is over, we turn on them?”

There is no reason for Wanda to lie in this situation.

This is why I argue that she was never truly a villain.

In fact I’d go so far as to say that these two are no more the villains of this story than the Avengers were the villains for them.

It was all a big misunderstanding.

Wanda and Pietro were only ever in this to help the people of Sokovia, and they got screwed by the lies and manipulation of the only adult influences they’ve had in their lives since they were ten.

The second that they found out Ultron’s real plan they tried to stop him, even going so far as to approach their enemies for help.

They both act selflessly to rescue civilians and even to rescue the Avengers in the fight for Sokovia.

Throughout the film Wanda and Pietro rather pointedly avoid all collateral damage where they can, and never intended to cause any harm to innocents in their quest for revenge.

(And because I know this is your main screaming point: Johannesburg was 300+ miles away from the shipyard. How was Wanda to know that Hulk was going to run over 300 miles to attack a city when all of her other victims went comatose when shown their greatest fears? It doesn’t logically follow that she would expect anything else, because only the audience knows that making Banner agitated enrages the Hulk, and Banner even says in the movie that Johannesburg was when the world saw the “real Hulk” for the first time. The destruction in Johannesburg was never Wanda’s intended outcome when she went after Banner so you really can’t treat that as intentional.)

In the end, they were willing to overlook their own lust for revenge in order to do the right thing.

And both of them were willing to die fighting to fix what they’d done wrong.

Wanda missed the escape boat because she went to finish off Ultron.

She is shocked when Vision comes back to save her, because at this moment she was entirely ready to die.

Pietro does die.

They were both willing to put their lives on the line to make what they’d done right, and Wanda just got lucky enough to get saved.

Because of all of the above reasons, I think we can firmly state that Wanda was never meant to be a villain in the MCU.

Although on that topic, let me ask you…what exactly do you think would have happened if the writers had decided to go your route? If they’d decided to make her the villain instead of going the redemption route?

She single-handedly takes out every member of Team Stark at the airport battle in Civil War. The only one who even managed to land a hit on her is Rhody, and he only did so by sneaking up behind her while she was preoccupied holding up thousands of tons of rubble, and shooting her point-blank in the back.

And all of that was Wanda being gentle and holding back.

If she was a villain - if she was actually going all out - would any of the Avengers even survive a fight against her?

Based on the way she disintegrated those robots with just a second of lost control, I severely doubt it.

You do not want her as a villain in any capacity. I guarantee you that.

That being said, by strict definition, no, Wanda is not an anti-villain.

But she’s not a villain either.

She’s a unique and complicated character, whose story was approached at a fairly new angle as far as script writing is concerned, and who managed to be both protagonist and antagonist at once.

There is not a doubt in my mind, however, that by the end of Age of Ultron, that girl was just as much of a hero as anyone else on that screen.

Chirpingtiger out.

[navybrat817]

Lovelies, I'm exhausted and in a mood. Indulge with me, if you will.

Warnings: Steve Rogers, explicit sexual content, dry humping, grinding

banner by the talented @cafekitsune

We all know Steve Rogers can fuck for hours, right? Peak condition and all, but can we talk about the flip side and how sensitive he is some days? Just hard for absolutely no reason and he feels like he'll blow his load if you even look in his direction?

So, naturally, you decide to be a little bratty when you see him on the couch trying to hide the massive hard-on he’s sporting. And why wouldn't you play a little? The thought of the commanding, blonde, sculpted super soldier about to burst because of you is just too hot to ignore.

“Aww. Poor Steve. Hard in your pants just because I walked into the room,” you tease as you straddle him, the outline of his cock making you shiver. He's strong enough to push you away, but doesn't. So you take it as an invitation to shove your hips down in a slow, dirty grind. “Let me take care of that for you.”

He grunts, his pretty blue eyes fluttering as you roll your hips. You arch your back when he grips them hard enough that you can feel it in your bones. Other than that, he doesn't move. In fact, he hardly breathes. Because he doesn't want to lose it so quickly.

“Keep doing that and I'll come in my pants,” he grits.

And that makes you double your efforts.

You tug at his hair, biting at his soft lower lip. His eyes are hazy, his breathing heavy. “All the panties you've made me ruin. Only fair I return the favor just this once.” You smirk when his head falls back. “Can you smell how wet I am? Bet you wish you were fucking me. Too bad. You owe me an orgasm first.”

“Sweetheart.” He warns, his voice a bit hoarse, his cheeks flushed. He's beautiful. He’s yours.

“It's okay. You can come. I want you to. Make a mess for me.” Your lips move to his ear to breathe out, “Captain.”

Steve moans your name when you shove your hips down once more and he finally moves. His body shudders and you can't help but smile when you feel the wet patch through the fabric. You made Steve Rogers, Captain America, come in his pants. God, he even whimpers when he’s finally spent.

“Think you can get it up again, old man?” You tease.

Steve may spank you when he bends you over the arm of the couch and makes another mess.

This time inside you.

Nothing to see here, lovelies! Go about your business! ❤️

[gr3yearl]

robin buckley as chappell roan and steve as her backup dancer and platonic soulmate (obviously)

something something they go to the vmas, perform, look cool as fuck whilst doing it, and eddie munson, lead guitarist of corroded coffin, is physically incapable of not making a fool of himself on social media, much to his manager's chagrin

everything goes along swimmingly between the two and with robin's career until someone, probably a rabid corroded coffin fan, digs into steve and discovers robin and steve are married, and have been for years

cue an extensive media circus where a not-small minority of robin's fandom cancels her for lying about being a lesbian. robin and steve work together to search for the patience to explain midwestern homophobia and lavender marriages to 12 year olds on tiktok and are reasonably successful, much to their surprise

roughly half a year after the fiasco had died down -- besides the occasional over-zealous kid trying to remind people why their fav is #problematic -- eddie tweets 'i <3 sleeping with married men', followed by a frantic reply of 'THERE WAS MNEAT TO BE A PICTURE WITH THIS', before he finally manages to post the intended picture of him and steve

robin, Shit-Stirrer Supreme, innocuously posts a week later a wedding picture of her and steve, captioned 'the only man i'd trust to always be faithful to me' and eddie quite publicly unfollows robin

the groupchat with all three of them in it is full of screenshots and videos of reactions for them to laugh over, reaching its peak when robin features on a corroded coffin song

[runraerun]

Steddie Amnesia Fic: 1/3

-> Part 2 | Part 3 | AO3

cw: lots of head trauma/brain injury/recovery stuff.

Steve wakes up in the hospital with someone snoring loudly on his leg, mouth open, drool getting soaked up into the scratchy hospital blanket over him.

Steve just stares.

It’s… Freddie? No, that’s not right... Eddie! Eddie ‘the freak’ Munson, known delinquent and drug dealer… resting his head on Steve’s lap.

What the hell…?

Steve reaches up with a wobbly, IV-ridden hand to clumsily pat along his head, but instead of meeting messy hair, he meets a thick wad of bandages. He flinches when he hits an especially tender spot.

It’s not much but it’s enough to wake Eddie Munson up with a jolt, and a random jumble of words that sounded something like, “the dice have spoken!”, but Steve can’t be sure. Not with the sharp ringing still going off inside his skull.

“Steve? Steve! Oh thank fuck, Jesus H. Christ, you scared the ever loving shit out of me.” Eddie stood and grabbed at one of Steve’s shoulders, shaking him enough to elicit another wince.

“Oh, damn, sorry. I’m like a fucking bull in a china shop here, man. There’s way too much expensive, breakable shit here. I’m not used to it. I accidentally ripped your IV out the other day... Fuck. The nurses hate my guts.” Eddie chuckles, eyes wide and solely on Steve, talking like they were old friends or something.

But that can’t be right. Steve doesn’t remember saying more than two words to Eddie Munson during the entire time he knew he even existed, and even then it was just to discuss weed prices.

“For real though, talk to me Harrington, how you feelin’, hm? Loopy? Gonna yak again? Apparently they got you on the good stuff,” Eddie flicks a liquid filled bag hanging above Steve and shakes his head, “but they keep cutting you back. Dicks.”

Steve’s eyes try and follow Eddie’s erratic movements but his eyes ache the more he moves them. He blinks against the harsh fluorescents and tries to open his mouth. And thank God, Eddie Munson seems to take this as a sign and shut up.

“What happened?” Steve finally croaks.

One of Eddie’s brows jumps. “You don’t remember?”

Steve gives his head a small shake. Did Eddie hit him with his car or something? Is that why he’s sleeping at his bedside and talking to him like they’re buddies?

“You fell, Stevie.” Eddie makes a whistling noise and mimicks something falling with his hands, then makes a crashing sound when his hand lands on Steve’s bandaged head. “Like a coconut out of a tree. Landed right on that big ol’ melon of yours. There was blood everywhere. It scared the shit out of me and the kids. Especially when you wouldn’t wake up.”

Steve’s throat feels like sandpaper, but he manages to swallow, his throat clicking as he did, and gets out, “The kids?”

Eddie seems to notice, even before Steve can ask, and reaches for a water bottle with a straw already in it, and half chewed. Eddie’s own, no doubt. Against his better judgment, Steve accepts it when Eddie offers it to him. He was just so goddamn thirsty.

“Don’t worry, they’re all fine. They were just shaken up. I’ll radio the little gremlins and give ‘em the good news in a sec.” Eddie’s smile falters a little, seeming lost for words. Like he wants to say something, but can’t quite get it out.

Steve finishes swallowing his few, meager gulps of water before he asks, “What is it?”

“Don’t freak out—“ Eddie begins.

And, okay, that’s exactly the thing you tell someone before they freak the fuck out. Steve’s stomach is subject to a growing, sluggish panic. “What? Dude, tell me—“

“It’s your hair.” Eddie seems genuinely pained at having to deliver this crushing of a blow to Steve ‘The Hair’ Harrington.

Steve can hear the beeping from the monitors he’s hooked up to begin to pick up speed as his heart begins racing. “My hair?”

“It’s okay! It’s okay, it’ll grow back! They just had to take a little bit off where the stitches went, you can hardest notice it—well, that’s a fucking lie, you could spot that landing strip from space—but I think if you part it to the other side it won’t look so… y’know.”

“No, dude, I don’t know.” Steve says, eyes wide, brows pinched.

“Like a drunk toddler took a pair of rusty kitchen shears to your mop.” Eddie says, huffing out a nervous sort of laugh.

Steve groans, half due to the bastardization that’s happened to his favorite feature, and half due to the migraine that’s looming on his horizon.

“You’re still pretty, Stevie, don’t worry.” Eddie grins, eyebrows raised, like he’s trying to be cute or something.

That weirdest part is, it’s kind of working.

Steve must have hit his head really, really hard.

The doctors eventually come in and perform all sorts of tests, and he tries his best to comply with them and jump through whatever hoops they make him jump through. He just wants to get the hell out of this hospital bed.

Unfortunately for him, Steve hadn’t exactly aced any of the tests.

In fact, he had failed most of them pretty fucking dismally. He couldn’t remember the date, who the president was, where he lived, couldn’t say the alphabet backwards… although, who the fuck can do that? He stands by that failing grade.

A couple of CAT scans later and it’s clear that Steve’s brain got smacked around a little more than they had originally thought.

Among a pile of other stuff, the thing that sticks out the most to Steve is his diagnosis of something called short term amnesia. They explain it like the past 2 to 3 years has just been wiped from his brain. The last clear thing he really remembers is getting the shit beat out of him by Billy, and then it all sort of gets jumbled. Fragmented. The doctors explain that this is pretty typical for head trauma patients.

He’s a head trauma patient, now.

It’s normal for memories of trauma to link, creating spiderwebs throughout your brain.

Which, that’s great. So when he gets beat up again, there’s always a chance his brain will try and erase his easy, happy years and revert back to a trauma default. Really helpful brain, thank you.

And the thing that sucks the most is that his years after the Billy beat down sound pretty great. Traumatizing, sure, but great. Once the Upside Down shit was locked up, with every scary nightmare fuel monster inside of it, life in Hawkins didn’t sound all that terrible.

He lived with Robin, who’s his best friend, (his ‘platonic soulmate’ even, as she explains it), he’s working a retail job, (also with Robin), and coaches the high school basketball team during the evenings. He’d even been talking with Hopper about joining the force.

Well, he was. Now he’s more or less useless, working full time at re-learning his life, along with a couple of fine motor skills that got glitchy after the fall.

And then there’s Eddie.

Eddie, who’s apparently also his best friend, only their soulmate link isn’t platonic at all.

The strange and weirdly exciting reality was that Steve Harrington had woken up from his 3-day medically induced coma with not only a full fledged relationship, but a boyfriend.

It’s a lot to digest, and part of him still doesn’t even know how to process it, but hearing the stories being told around him, seeing how Eddie is practically living in his and Robin’s two-bedroom apartment, and just… the way Eddie looks at him?

It’s with love—Steve can see it. Feel it. Eddie’s practically vibrating with it.

What’s even crazier is that when Steve looks at Eddie, he feels the exact same way.

It’s like looking at the stars. Steve’s heart skips a beat when those dark eyes of hit him, and Steve wants nothing more than to make Eddie smile—no, better than that, to make him laugh, just so he can watch Eddie’s adam’s apple bob up and down and hear that manic, unhinged cackle. It’s downright delightful. Steve loves being in relationships like this, where it’s all consuming.

Steve may not have the memories of falling in love with Eddie, but he has all the feelings.

No one talks about it with Steve, of course. Maybe they think it’s going to be too heavy for him to process that he’s into dudes now, but Steve isn’t a big dumb baby. Sure, he’s got a pretty severe brain injury, and yeah, alright, it takes him a minute to remember people’s names sometimes, and he has a harder time controlling his emotions, but he isn’t a complete invalid. Only a little bit of one. He’s working on it, dammit.

And Eddie is so painfully, frustratingly patient with him. He never pushes. He’s clearly letting Steve retrieve his memories before he makes a move, because despite his whole outward appearance, Eddie Munson is a goddamn gentleman. He never so much as reaches for Steve’s hands, but Steve can tell by the way their pinkies graze when they watch movies late at night that he wants to.

Steve can tell by the way Eddie teases him, the way he’s there with him through his recovery, that he doesn’t ever make Steve feel stupid when he asks the same questions over and over again, when he cries at the drop of a hat or when he gets sort of confused about the lay out of his apartment—he doesn’t care about that of that.

Because he’s in love with Steve. It’s so painfully romantic, it brings a painful lump to Steve’s throat every time he thinks too much about it.

The two of them are driving to one of Steve’s therapy sessions, Eddie in the driver's seat, Steve in the passengers, listening to a low racket of some kind of heavy metal music. Eddie always keeps the volume low now, for Steve.

He’s just been so intensely good about everything that Steve needs to try and do something good for Eddie in return. He needs Eddie to know that there’s a light at the end of this tunnel that they’re both currently lost in.

“I’m sorry about this, y’know.” Steve says when they finally pull up the building that has ‘Brain Injury Recover Center’ written on the front. So all the boys and girls with scrambled eggs for brains know where to converge.

“Don’t worry about it, man. I work the evening shifts, remember? My days are free.” Eddie explains, and Steve wonders if he’s had to be told this bit of information a couple of times now. Sometimes it takes a few times before something sticks to his brain now. His short term memory is still majorly flighty. But no, Steve remembers that Eddie bartends at a local bowling alley most evenings. He’s gone a few times. Not to bowl, of course—too much hand eye coordination involved—but just to hang out with Eddie. He’s pretty decent at Ms. Pac-Man though.

Steve shakes his head. He knows his mind must have wandered because there’s been a lull where no one’s spoken. Eddie never seems to care about that though. “I don’t mean about the drive. I was talking about… y’know.”

“Wha’dy’mean?” Eddie mumbles as he backs into his parking space, hand on the back of Steve’s headrest.

Steve sighs and decides to just come out and say it: “I mean having your boyfriend forget everything about you and your relationship. I just… that must be really tough.”

Everything in Eddie Munson comes to a jarring halt, hand frozen over where he’s turned to ignition off.

It’s sort of unnerving—Eddie is always moving, fidgeting. Damn near bouncing off the walls. But now it’s like someone hit the poor guy with a freeze ray gun.

Steve chuckles softly as he reaches out and touches Eddie’s arm, giving him a playful jostle, to loosen him up a little, “it’s okay, Eddie. I know. You don’t have to keep going easy on me. I’m gay! Or, bi-sexual. Whatever.” Steve shrugs, “see? Not falling apart. I can handle being in love with another dude. You don’t need to keep babying me.”

The side of Eddie’s mouth twitches into a downturned smile that he seems to be trying to hide.

“I know, I know. Not just any dude.” Steve rolls his eyes, a smile still firmly on his face. He takes Eddie’s hand from the steering wheel, and Eddie seems to watch it go in a detached sort of awe. Steve wonders if Eddie’s proud of him for being so cool with it all. “In love with you.”

“Steve, I don’t think—

“Wait, just let me finish.” Steve asks, and Eddie blinks and works on closing his mouth. Knows it’s important to let Steve get his thoughts out quickly, lest they be lost to the giant black hole inside of his beat-up brain now. “I know that I don’t remember any of the important stuff with us. Our first date, or our first kiss or, y’know, any of our other first firsts. So maybe it feels like you’re cheating on the old Steve with me? But… Eddie, I know it’s crazy but even though my brain forgot all of the specifics; my heart didn’t. I look at you, and it’s all there. I’m still so into you, dude. I can feel it, even though I don’t remember how I got here. I’m in l—“

“Steve! Stevestevesteve wait, holy shit—!” Eddie’s eyes snap up from his intense stare at the place where their hands are linked. “Steve—”

“Yeah?” Steve prompts when Eddie doesn’t seem to be able to find the words. He runs his thumb gently over Eddie’s knuckles. It feels so nice to finally be able to hold his hand again. They fit together so well, and Steve wonders briefly if it’s some kind of muscle memory.

Eddie opens his mouth a few more times before he remembers how to make the words come out.

“Steve. Buddy. We’re… we’re not dating.”

Steve’s face falls, and he can feel a lump form in his throat, but he keeps a firm hold of Eddie’s warm hand in his own. “Yeah, I know, I know. We haven’t had any time to be a couple. And it’s probably been torture for you, man. You’re so busy taking care of me and making sure I don’t freak out over everything that you’ve clearly been neglecting your own hierarchy of needs.”

Eddie raises a brow.

Steve chuckles, “Shut up. It’s a therapy term.”

Eddie laughs in his throat. “Steve, you gotta slow down and listen to me.”

He turns his shoulders so that he’s fully facing Steve while he reaches his free hand over and tugs at one of his earlobes. “Got your hearing ears on?”

Steve rolls his eyes, but he nods just the same.

“We… we weren’t dating before your accident,” Eddie speaks slowly, his voice warm, gentle. “Hell, I didn’t even know you were, y’know, into dudes like that. Much less me.”

Something throbs dully behind Steve’s eyes. It’s the start of a migraine—the one that makes it hard to process much of anything. Steve squints, trying to make sense of what Eddie’s saying. “…you’re not my boyfriend?”

Eddie shakes his head very, very slowly. “No.”

Steve snatches his hand back like he’s only just now noticed how burning hot Eddie’s hand is.

He settles back in his seat, staring out the front window. The sounds from the outside world are muffled, and everything feels far away and sort of… Made up. Just like everything he’d imagined was going on between him and Eddie. Not real.

He feels painfully detached from reality. Unmoored. Maybe this was the disassociation thing the doctor mentioned might happen…

“Are you sure?” Steve asks, risking another glance over to Eddie, who hasn’t taken his eyes off him for a second.

“Pretty fuckin’ sure.” Eddie snorts.

“Oh, God. This is… I’m—sorry. I’m so stupid. Fuck, I gotta—“ Steve suddenly attacks the door handle with a clumsy fury that has his hand fumbling with the handle for way too long. Fucking busted up, bruised as fuck fucking brain-!

“Steve, it’s okay, dude,” Eddie says from behind Steve, but that’s easy for him to say; he didn’t just humiliate himself in front of his not-boyfriend, definitely-crush, possibly ex-friend—“Steve, wait!”

Steve flees the van on unsteady feet, not daring to look back.