Ik we stevetonies love our ‘Steve pulling Tony out of a bender in the workshop’ trope but me? I LOOOOVE the other way round. A bad mission and Steve loses someone - he tried to save them but it was too late, he couldn’t get there in time. And post-mission he just holes himself up in the gym and stays there. For days. Working himself to exhaustion just so he can shave half a second off his sprint (half a second and that person would be alive), punching bag after bag until his hands are bloody and raw.
Tony is the only one who can get through to him like this. It’s only his voice that can make Steve pause, come back to himself. Sometimes Tony has to actively stand in front of whatever it is Steve’s attacking, which absolutely infuriates him, but damn if it isn’t effective in a way only Tony no-thought-to-his-own-self-preservation Stark could be. And Tony is equally as infuriated that steve is insisting on doing this to himself, but even though his tone is angry, his touch against Steve’s knuckles is impossibly soft.
He’ll drag Steve back up to the land of the living. Put him in the shower and clean him off, freshen him up, make him feel human again. Steve will already be healing, of course, but Tony still tends and bandages his hands - attentive to the finest detail, devoting every part of his mind to just making Steve feel a little bit better.
They don’t talk much throughout this. God knows Tony’s tried it before, but Steve is never in the headspace for it, and Tony never says the right thing anyway. But he’s there.
He runs his fingers over the back of Steve’s palms. Up his forearms. He strokes the sharp curve of Steve’s neck, settling against the quick pulse. Steve’s face is blank, but Tony is always surprisingly patient with him. He waits.
“I’m fine,” Steve will say every time, while his face will say the opposite.
“You’re an idiot,” Tony will respond. “I’m locking you out of the gym.”
He won’t. Steve needs it, even if it’s unhealthy, even if it’s agonising for Tony to watch. This is just how they get through.
But Steve will see the way Tony is looking at him- distressed, angry, worried - and it’ll break through the fog. The thing that always takes priority over everything is Tony, and even though Steve’s brain is screaming at him to get right back to it, he just can’t put it above Tony’s well-being. He couldn’t ever do that.
“I Guess I can take a break now.”
263 notes
·
View notes
Do you ever want to be held so badly that it eats away at you and you constantly feel the intense urge to cling to your loved ones because you crave physical intimacy so much but have no idea how to ask for it?
427 notes
·
View notes
Obsessed with the POV choice in Imperial Radch as well, both because Leckie does some really wild stuff with how expansive the strict first-person is able to become due to the worldbuilding and who her narrator is, and because it's SO entangled with the central thematic concepts of identity. In the first book flashbacks when the narrator is still a warship, "I" can encompass so many things, and sometimes explicitly refers to different facets in the narration--is "I" Justice of Toren, or One Esk, or a specific segment, or Breq narrating from twenty years in the future? "I" isn't simple, isn't unified, and while this is most literal and obvious with Breq/One Esk/Justice of Toren and Anaander Mianaai's split factions it's true constantly throughout the work at every level of scope. Individual characters struggle with internal conflicts and hit their breaking points--what is it that makes someone decide they have to disobey orders and make a stand or they won't be themself anymore? How do you know who you are if you've been forcibly changed (Tisarwat) or if the world you knew has moved on and become unrecognizable (Seivarden)? How does a character on a colonized world navigate the split identity that comes from the pressure to assimilate to the dominant culture? And then there's the Radch writ large, all the Radchaai so deeply invested in the idea that there is only one true concept of Radchaai society, of civilization, but of course there isn't! It changes based on location and over time, and Breq muses that the Radchaai empire would be largely unrecognizable to the isolated sphere of the Radch itself. In these books, even if you aren't the last remnant of a destroyed spaceship and its legion of bodies, "I" is such a complicated concept and the narrative never lets you forget it.
221 notes
·
View notes
my nobleflower hcs:
-narcissa and alice are both 2 years older than the marauders/valkyries
-alice is barely taller but never looks like it because narcissa is always wearing heels (narcissa LOVES being taller than alice)
-pubicly alice is physically clingy, but privately narcissa is wayyy more
-narcissa said I love you on the second date and alice was thrilled
-frank is alice's best friend and has known about alice's crush for years, he's the first to notice when they get together before alice ever tells him (he still lets her come to him anyway and acts surprised when she tells him, but later on he tells her that he knew from the start) he also helps her plan dates
-narcissa is nervous to talk to frank for a while but soon they warm up to each other and now narcissa always asks when they're hanging out with him again (alice jokingly asks if narcissa's leaving her for him)
-they're both very passionate about quidditch (it's part of what brought them together) and have a playful rivalry but are always excited when the other one wins (it annoys marlene and dorcas who are the polar opposite, quidditch is life or death to them but they fuck about it later anyway)
-when something happens at home alice is the first person narcissa tells about it, but she tells her not to worry because "it's normal" (alice knows that it is not, in fact, normal) so later when alice breaks into the boys dorm room to tell sirius they're gonna go kill druella and walburga, he's a little confused but doesn't question it (it's james and remus who have to hold them back)
I love them sm I need more people to appreciate them💖😭
OMG NOBLEFLOWER HCS THANK YOU I LOVE THEM SO MUCH
i have nothing to say about this, everything is absolutely perfect
also alice, james and remus def have a group about to exchange about how it is to date a Black, tips to know and mistake to never do (such as calling them dramatic)
35 notes
·
View notes